Government Orders
Madam Speaker, on the clawback of the GIS for seniors, the impact is detrimental. I have met seniors who have now been evicted and rendered homeless, and the government still is not taking any action. Some 83,000 seniors will be impacted. Very specifically, would the member support the call for the government to eliminate the clawback for seniors who received the CERB or the CRB during the pandemi…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I note that the member actually did not answer the question about how many Conservative members have gotten some sort of medical exemption. That is as an aside, but I want to bring this debate back to the issue at hand, which is about health. The reality is that we are still in the fourth wave and COVID is still very active in communities. The other clear health measure is that if a p…
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Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to this debate for hours and my colleague, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, perhaps made the best speech of the day. He has touched on all of the issues. One thing that has not really been a highlight in the discussion here is leadership, and what our role is to show leadership to the public to say how we can work together and support each other to beat this thi…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, in addition to the emergency debate about what is going on in British Columbia with the climate crisis, I would like to request that you consider granting an emergency debate on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. As we know, the election was called on August 15, the very day on which the Afghanistan government collapsed. As a result, many people have been put at risk under the Ta…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, I think we have all listened very carefully to the details he has offered around the situation with which his constituents are faced. He can be assured that the New Democrats will work with him and with the government to ensure they get the help they need. Being from British Columbia, I will ensure that all British Columbians get the help they need. On that note, the government has …
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, the member mentioned the need for housing and he is absolutely correct. In the most recent throne speech, I was dismayed that the Liberal government did not even mention anything about the urgent need for a for-indigenous, by-indigenous urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy. I wonder if the member could comment on that and what his views are. Do we need one or do we …
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, congratulations to you. The member said the government is on track to meeting net-zero targets. The reality is this. I will remind him that the current government has missed every single target to date. We are in fact not on track. The reason we have the climate emergency we are faced with in British Columbia today is exactly because successive governments have failed to take the cl…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, imagine Canada recognizing the asylum claims of refugees, only for them to be told their children must wait patiently in an environment where they are at risk. The processing times for dependants of asylum seekers is 39 months. Right now, from Gaza alone, there are at least 10 refugees in Canada who have been separated from their loved ones for over two years. The Canadian Council for…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to table today. The first petition is from my constituent, Brookes Bayfield. She notes that the UN Special Rapporteur and Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have recently expressed concerns that the Canadian government continues to hold reservations on article 12, which ensures that persons with disabilities have the right to refuse treatment, …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we know that during the pandemic inequalities have increased. The ultrarich are becoming richer than ever and those who need help are still struggling to get by. However, we do not see a wealth tax or a pandemic profiteering tax in this budget bill, Bill C-30. In fact, the government has opted to do more consultation in tackling the problem of tax havens. Does the member think that …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, a scathing report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reveals that Canada jails thousands of people fleeing persecution, including those with disabilities. Many are held in maximum-security provincial jails and put in solitary confinement without any charges or convictions. There is no legal limit to the length of immigration detention. Black and racialized people are …
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his hard work. I know he works day and night on these issues. One of the issues that I know he cares deeply about as well is that the government intends to cut the CRB in the last eight weeks, from July to September, for members of the community. I know the member has been trying to bring these issues to the attention of the government to get it to walk …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified existing vulnerabilities of the homeless and those who are precariously housed. With REITs and capital funds poised to sweep up older apartment buildings as distressed assets, the older and often lower-rent market rental stock in our community is at serious risk, and the people who call these buildings home at severe risk of displacement. I hav…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, if the government will not listen to me, perhaps it will listen to Tim Richter who basically said that even with this budget the government tabled, it is not going to achieve the goals that it has set out to end homelessness. That is the reality. The parliamentary secretary may not like it, but that is the reality. I have been strongly advocating for a human-rights-based approach to h…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I am very delighted to enter this debate. I would first like to thank the member for St. John's East for bringing his private member's motion forward, Motion No. 62. Before I turn to the substance of the motion, I would like to take a moment to say how much I enjoy working with the member for St. John's East. I enjoy debating, discussing and collaborating with him on many issues. He…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government took six years to introduce the bill to modernize the Official Languages Act and, in my view, has taken very little action to protect French. A lot of parents and students in British Columbia want to get into bilingual schools, however, they do not have the resources or the funding. More to the point, the province does not have enough resources and funding to su…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, developers are buying up billions of dollars of single-family homes so they can profit off their rent. Not only is this not creating a housing supply, but it actually drives up the cost of home ownership. Similarly, they are acquiring low-rental properties and treating housing like a stock market, yet the housing minister's spokesperson is saying that everything is fine and the govern…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, speaking of vulnerable people, during the pandemic, and because of the impacts of COVID, people with serious illnesses such as cancer or other long-term illnesses need extended EI sickness benefits more than ever. Of course, the government has limited the expansion of EI sickness benefits to only 26 weeks, instead of the 50 weeks the NDP is calling for. Can the member explain why th…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, Chief Shining Turtle has indicated that there is a great need to have CMHC's section 95 program funding for home construction increased to adjust for the inflation in building costs and materials. For example, the band receives about $148,000 in CMHC subsidies to build a house, but with housing costs running at $400 per square foot, a 1,000-square-foot home would cost over $400,000.…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, since the federal Liberal government walked away from the national housing program in 1993, Canada's housing crisis has escalated to a feverish pitch. In 2017, the federal Liberal government announced a national housing strategy. It even declared that adequate housing is a basic human right. Two years after the announcement of the national housing strategy, in 2019, the Parliamentary …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, in 2019, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, in fact, noted that $11.6 billion of the national housing strategy is just matching dollars from the province, and it is not meeting the needs. Minister Selina Robinson is absolutely correct and British Columbia had actually been shortchanged with respect to the funding. Through my work in getting Order Paper questions and answers, we discove…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, what is interesting is that the Liberals, and particularly the parliamentary secretary, would actually double count the numbers for rhetorical advantage. If the member wants to talk about numbers, I ask that he actually check himself what he has been putting out, and frankly, the rhetoric he has been promising to the community. I heard him promise over and over again the delivery of a…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, when investors buy up rental housing, they deepen Canada's housing crisis by taking existing rental housing off the market or by increasing rent, making it unaffordable. According to housing policy expert Steve Pomeroy, between 2011 and 2016 Canada lost more than 320,000 units of affordable rental housing. This is more than double what the national housing strategy promises to creat…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary is obviously oblivious to the fact that it was the federal Liberals who cancelled the national affordable housing program in 1993. With that being said, Winnipeg has the highest number of indigenous households in need of housing, estimated at 9,000. Indigenous, Métis and Inuit people should not have to be told time and again that their housing needs can w…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the RCFI program, as has been indicated, is not a program that really targets affordable housing. Some of the announcements the government made clearly indicate it is not affordable, and in fact, it is above market rent. What the government is doing is providing low-interest loans primarily to developers to get these projects done. There is a real question about what the government's …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, a 2019 report from CMHC shows that 11% of metro condos are owned, at least in part, by people living outside of Canada. According to Andy Yan, director of the SFU city program, who did a further analysis into the numbers, of the 965 billion dollars' worth of residential real estate in the Vancouver census metropolitan area, $75 billion is tied to at least one non-resident owner. Out…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the Liberals' national housing strategy aims to create 150,000 to 160,000 units of new affordable housing over 10 years. As stated by Tim Richter from The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, the budget has “[l]ittle new dedicated affordable and supportive housing construction”. He goes on to say, “To have a fighting chance at ending homelessness and addressing housing need, Canad…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Madam Speaker, the Liberal government's national action plan to implement the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls' 231 calls for justice was finally released yesterday. Sadly, instead of an actual plan, Kukpi7 Chief Judy Wilson called it a bunch of “aspirational statements”, with promises we have all heard before. What the Liberal government needed to do was say clearly that Canada was…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary spoke about the importance of newcomers knowing about our history. He referenced the new citizenship guidebook that has been under development for five years now. Of course, one of the important components of this history is the fact that Canada committed genocide against indigenous peoples and, in fact, continues to do so under the UN convention's defini…
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Mr. Speaker, the member said that he will do whatever he can on the path of reconciliation. There is something that he can do: He can tell his own government to stop taking indigenous kids to court. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found Canada's discrimination to be “wilful and reckless”, in a worst-case scenario, resulting in unnecessary family separations for thousands of children, and seriou…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the rate at which the government has acted on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action is simply unacceptable. It is unacceptable that the government continues to take indigenous children to court. It is unacceptable that there are drinking water advisories existing in indigenous communities, where the water is not safe for people to drink. It is unacceptable for th…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, of course, what we have seen is the failure of successive Conservative and Liberal governments in addressing the genocide that was committed against indigenous peoples, and the ongoing genocide. We need the government to act. I am happy to hear the Conservatives will be supporting the NDP motion, but, equally important, I need every member of the House to admit that a genocide is be…
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Madam Speaker, I am dismayed that, despite it being six years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action had been tabled, the Liberal government has been exceedingly slow at implementing even the simplest of the calls to action. According the CBC Beyond 94 tracker, it remains that there are still only 10 out of 94 TRC recommendations completed as of June 1, 2021. Bill C-8 is e…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, the parliamentary secretary spoke about closure and the need for closure. In the wake of this horrific situation, we also, of course, need to honour the children. However, in order to move forward on closure and to honour the children and the lives that have been lost, we must also accept, acknowledge and admit that this was genocide. Will the member call this a genocide, and not a cu…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for her very moving speech. I would particularly like to recognize her for sharing her personal story of her family with us. This bill is so important to ensure that everyone is accepted for who they are. That is what this bill is about. With respect to conversion therapy, one of the issues that New Democrats want to see is to include body-affirming therap…
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Madam Speaker, there is no question that conversion therapy is an attempt to fix members of the SOGI community, and it is wrong. New laws alone will not be sufficient to repair the damages of the past from conversion therapy nor to combat the hate that underlies these programs. Would the member agree that the government needs to fund capacity building within the SOGI community, so these challenges…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, part of respecting indigenous peoples would be respecting both hereditary chiefs' points of view and those of the elected bodies. What we should do, in fact, is give them the time, space and resources to resolve these issues. All too often, as we just heard from the member, we hear people say, “This is my perspective.” Well, good on them, that is their perspective, but what we need …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, absolutely, we must honour indigenous peoples and recognize their right to self-govern, and that in fact they did exactly that before settlers came to this land. When we talk about action that needs to be taken by the government, and when we talk about resources, for example, we need to honour indigenous peoples and their rights, and recognize their inherent rights. Informed prior c…
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Madam Speaker, speaking of reconciliation, the Canadian government continues to fight first nations children at the Human Rights Tribunal. Dr. Cindy Blackstock has done tremendous work in challenging the government and advocating on behalf of indigenous children and their rights. Why does the government persist in taking indigenous children to court?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, to the member's point on action, what we know is that there has been such a delay in implementing the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls calls for justice. The government promised that it would, in fact, deliver on those last year, and we are still nowhere near. I wonder if the member could comment on that. Should the pandemic be an excuse for the delay, or is it the op…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, there is no question. Absolutely, every single member in this House should do everything they can to ensure that this becomes law. It was shameful that Georgina's bill did not pass the Senate in the last Parliament. Likewise, UNDRIP did not pass because of the Senate in the last Parliament. We are back in this Parliament, debating UNDRIP as well. That should never happen because of …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I will ask the member questions in two areas. The first is about smuggling and ensuring that CBSA has the resources to do that job, yet when the Conservatives were in government, they actually cut CBSA resources to the tune of 1,000 staff, which would have helped prevent smuggling at the borders. I wonder what the member's response is to that. Second, the member mentioned that munic…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA): (a) broken down by month, gender, location of processing office, and country of origin, what is the total number of Humanitarian and Compassionate applications since 2016 that were (i) submitted, (ii) accepted (iii) rejected; (b) how many applications in (a) included gender-based violen…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I have to say that the NDP absolutely supports fast-tracking Bill C-5. This should have actually become law in the last Parliament, as it mimics the bill that former MP Georgina Jolibois brought forward. With that being said, I hope that this will in fact pass through the Senate this time. What assurances can the member provide the House that this will become law this time around?
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Madam Speaker, I will wrap up by simply saying this. We should not just talk the talk, but walk the walk and put it in action. That is true reconciliation. Let us get this bill passed. Let us honour the work of former MP Georgina Jolibois and all indigenous peoples, their history and their culture, and get this bill passed. The House should not rise until it passes through the Senate and becomes l…
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Madam Speaker, I am speaking today from the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Today is a dark, dark day and the dark clouds that hang in the air as we learn of the news in B.C. at the Kamloops residential school just shake us to the core. I cannot imagine what the families and friends of the children must be going through. We can say we mourn wi…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the Liberals have promised to deliver universal public pharmacare to Canadians for 24 years. While the Liberals talk a good game, the fact is they have failed to follow up with action time and again. The fact is, the Liberals have delivered red book after red book of broken promises. In 1997, it was a campaign promise. In 2019, it was a pledge to implement the Hoskins report. In 202…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, all we have heard from the Liberals are promises and platitudes, whether it is universal public pharmacare or dental care, more consultation and more studies. They say that they understand Canadians need help with their medical and dental care. They said in their throne speech or during the campaign that they would deliver, but time and again, the Liberals fail to deliver head-to-to…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, the government should decriminalize, then. The City of Vancouver has submitted an application to the federal government in support of having Vancouver's Chinatown designated a UNESCO world heritage site. Will the federal government support the city's effort and help revitalize Chinatown?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, I will follow up directly with the minister about the wage subsidy for the PNE, then, and move on to another issue. Nearly 20,000 people died from the overdose crisis between January 2016 and September 2020, and in B.C. alone over 17,000 people died from an overdose in 2020, the deadliest year yet. To save lives, many advocates, including Moms Stop the Harm and Dr. Bonnie Henry, have ca…
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