Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I know that the Conservatives are blinded by partisanship, but the key issue here is that they seem to continually forget that it was the NDP, by the way, that first moved the motion to call for a public inquiry at committee and in the House. Here we are again, calling for Mr. Johnston to step down, for a public inquiry and for PROC to undertake this work. We are taking the issue se…
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Madam Speaker, what nonsense that is. It is not partisan politics; this is the report that was tabled by Mr. Johnston, and I am raising issues with the report. I will just go on and raise another issue with the report on the issue around the nomination of the member for Don Valley North. Mr. Johnston notes that irregularities were observed in the member for Don Valley North's nomination in the 201…
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moved: That, given that, (i) the House called on the government to launch a public inquiry into allegations of foreign interference in Canada’s democratic system, on March 23 and May 8, 2023, (ii) the government did not heed this call, and instead appointed an independent special rapporteur who has recommended against holding a public inquiry, despite noting significant gaps and leaving many quest…
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Mr. Speaker, I wrote an urgent letter to the ministers of public safety and immigration about 700 Punjabi international students who are victims of a targeted exploitation scheme. A consultant used fake university admission letters for their student visas without their knowledge. As a result, 150 students are scheduled to be deported. This is unacceptable. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this Senate bill. First, I would just like to point out that the Conservative member who spoke earlier talked about how much the Conservatives support the bill. Of course, they could really show that support by ensuring that it receives speedy passage to move on to the next stage, instead of prolonging debate on the matter. Canada's built environment i…
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Mr. Speaker, giant housing corporations are treating people's homes like a stock market and evicting long-time tenants to jack up rents. The Minister of Housing thinks a 1% tax on empty homes and a two-year ban on foreign investments will solve the housing crisis. He is wrong. The housing advocate says these Liberal half-measures are dangerous and short-sighted. Financial firms already own 20% to …
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Madam Speaker, New Democrats absolutely support the idea that Purdue Pharma should be sued and made to pay. That is something the NDP called for the Liberal government to do a long time ago. I am glad that the Conservatives finally figured that out and are now on board. However, to suggest that safer supply is somehow equivalent to what Purdue Pharma is doing is wrong. Purdue Pharma, by the way, w…
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Madam Speaker, we know Conservatives are trying to mischaracterize the entire situation. One of the effects of the harm reduction approach that is being proposed is that it helps connect people to other health services, including the possibility of treatment and rehab. However, if they do not make that connection, that is never going to happen. My question for the member is this. When Conservative…
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Mr. Chair, I am sorry, but that is wrong. The national housing strategy is missing the mark, and the Auditor General has pointed that out. In fact, the Liberals do not even know what they are doing. They are developing housing that is not helping those most in need. The minister should read the Auditor General's report. Real estate investment trusts enjoy preferential tax treatment in that they do…
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Mr. Chair, the minister says he agrees with me. When is he going to announce that they will put a moratorium in place?
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Mr. Chair, the minister should know that what he needs to do is put a moratorium in place and create an acquisition fund for non-profits so that they can get into the market to purchase housing units. This is like what British Columbia is doing, by the way. The federal government has not done that. The Federal Housing Advocate said that the government has a really important role to play in creatin…
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Mr. Chair, a serious way to address this issue is to stop the profiteering in housing, stop corporate financialized landlords from sweeping up undervalued affordable housing stock and create an acquisition fund for non-profits so that they can acquire and hold that affordable housing stock for the community in perpetuity. Will the minister place a moratorium on the acquisition of affordable homes …
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Mr. Chair, the national housing advocate pointed out that the financialization of housing is a widespread issue that has negatively shaped Canada's housing system. She noted that large institutional investors and financial firms focus on making maximum returns for their shareholders. This is causing real harm to people, contributing to housing unaffordability, worsening housing conditions, and lea…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the Ocean Lady and Sun Sea ships refugees, broken down by age and gender: how many people (i) remain in immigration detention, (ii) were identified as having security concerns, (iii) were granted permanent residence status, (iv) had their application for permanent residence status rejected?
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Mr. Chair, that comment from the minister really just goes to show he has not even read the report from the Auditor General. For years now, in the midst of this unprecedented housing crisis, unhoused people seeking relative safety in encampments have been displaced in my riding in the Downtown Eastside from Oppenheimer Park to CRAB Park to Strathcona Park, and now from the sidewalks of the streets…
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Mr. Chair, Romy Bowers said that CMHC had to ration the funding to non-profits for the co-investment fund by limiting the per unit funding to $25,000 at a time when construction costs are going up. Is this what the minister means by leadership? Was that his decision?
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Mr. Chair, who made the decision to limit the funding for the co-investment fund to $25,000 per unit?
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Mr. Chair, if it is such a good program, why is the minister working to kill the projects within it, with that $25,000 limit per unit? Why did the government not actually put in new allocation to the co-investment fund in budget 2023, instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul with a reallocation from the repair component of that stream? Why will the government not invest the real money that is necessar…
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Mr. Chair, he can be proud of the fact that the housing crisis is getting worse and worse under their watch. From coast to coast to coast, it does not matter what city one is in, in cities big or small, there is a major housing crisis, and what the government is doing is not working. That is the reality. Listen to the people on the ground. Walk the streets. Open one's eyes. Come to my community in…
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Mr. Chair, actually, it was the Auditor General who did the report. The minister should read that, by the way. When he says they have launched a review, the clock is ticking. The units are being lost. For every one unit the government builds, we lose 15. That is the reality of the crisis, the magnitude of the crisis that we are faced with today and the government says it is doing a review. Get on …
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Mr. Chair, the minister did not answer the question, so the answer is no. He cannot pretend to agree with me and then do nothing. When is the minister going to announce an acquisition fund?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, according to a media report, nurses are leaving the public health care system in droves and returning through private job placement agencies. The health care crisis is getting worse under the Liberals' watch. Poor work conditions, low wages, forced overtime and high patient-to-nurse ratios are causing burnout. The structural problems must be addressed, and budget 2023 missed the mark.…
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Madam Speaker, we are talking about immigration. Of course, there are many different ways we can have newcomers come to Canada and be part of those immigration levels. In fact, currently, there are many migrant workers who are already here in Canada, including undocumented individuals. At the bare minimum, we are looking at at least half a million individuals who are in that category. They are alr…
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Madam Speaker, one of the issues that has been raised in the speeches is about the fear of the dwindling impact or representation for Quebeckers. Part of the issue is the immigration targets that the federal government has failed to achieve in ensuring new francophone immigration targets are actually met. The government adopted its targets and it has not met them. The FCFA has recommended the gove…
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Madam Speaker, part of the motion says, “tripling Canada’s population has real impacts on the future of the French language, Quebec’s political weight, the place of First Peoples, access to housing, and health and education infrastructure”: I want to address this issue. I appreciate the member's work at the immigration committee. I have come to know him and respect a lot of the work that he does. …
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Madam Speaker, there is no question that the provinces and territories need to step up and address that issue, but the federal government also needs to do the same. Because the federal government, with its immigration measures, only allows migrant workers to come to work in Canada with the identified employer, they are not able to work elsewhere. Those with the talents to work in other sectors are…
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Madam Speaker, that is precisely what I fear with this motion. That is why the NDP is not going to support it, as it ties housing to the immigrant community. The housing crisis exists because successive Liberal and Conservative governments failed on housing. They cancelled the national affordable housing program, they cut funding, and then they were developing initiatives that do not meet the need…
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to say that I am heartened to hear my colleague's words, to say that, when we engage in this debate, it is about the importance of it and what it means for all of us, but at the same time not to take an approach that vilifies and points fingers at others. I look around this chamber and there are very few of us, truth be told, who are not immigrants, either ourselv…
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Mr. Speaker, the government should have initiated a completely independent public inquiry. It should have engaged all party leaders in the House to agree to a process and a commissioner, so there would be no question about who would be leading this work and the mandate related to it. There would need to be interim reporting of this work so we would put an end to it. All this bickering about who kn…
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Madam Speaker, the NDP agrees. There is no question that there needs to be a public inquiry, one that is completely independent and transparent. To that end, my question for the member is this. What does he think is necessary in order to ensure the process is one that all parties could agree to? For example, would the commissioner be chosen with the participation of all leaders in the House to mak…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's reasoned voice in this House where the hyperpartisanship has reached through the roof. The matter here is too important to get into that sort of back-and-forth hyperpartisanship. The issue around the significance and importance of an independent inquiry, along with measures that would send a clear message to any country that tries to interfere with our demo…
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the NDP House leader, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby. This is such an important debate, and let me put this in some context for all members in the House. A hundred years ago, the government of the day brought in the Chinese Exclusion Act to say that Chinese peoples were not welcome in this country, to make a very clear statement on that. After …
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Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the member for owning up to the fact that what he said was inappropriate and making that apology. I do appreciate it. To the question about what would be a completely non-partisan public inquiry, which is absolutely essential, it would be for all the party leaders to come to an agreement on the mandate and who the commissioner is. It has to be completely above b…
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Mr. Speaker, with respect to what is happening, it is clear there is an ongoing tit-for-tat situation of she-said-he-said-they-said without getting into the central issue, which is to take partisanship out of this debate and for the Canadian government to make a course correction regarding the action that needs to be taken by putting in place an independent, public inquiry. Aside from the points i…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals abandoned their responsibility to build social housing, and Canadians are paying the price. Under this Prime Minister, the cost of a home has nearly doubled. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments allowed corporate landlords to buy up affordable housing stock and jack up the cost of housing for renters and homeowners alike. Will the Liberals stop treating housing…
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to engage in this debate today about housing. In fact, I could talk about housing all day long. The motion before us today is indeed an interesting one. In the Conservatives' approach, per usual, they focus only on issues where they could actually put out buzzwords to rev up the community about a situation. The solutions they provide often have tremendous gaps and, …
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Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct in saying we have a housing crisis from coast to coast to coast, and that no matter what community one is part of, big or small, this crisis is significant. The federal Liberal government cancelled the national affordable housing program back in 1993. As a result, Quebec and British Columbia are the only two provinces continuing to try to address the…
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Madam Speaker, the member just made the comment of having “all hands on deck” in a crisis. What is missing, of course, over all these years with the housing crisis is the fact that both Liberal and Conservative governments have given a free pass to corporate landlords. Real estate investment trusts walked away without paying their fair share of taxes to the tune of $1.7 billion for the seven large…
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Madam Chair, one issue is of particular concern for indigenous peoples. The minister talked about education as a key component in supporting opportunities. In British Columbia, one of the first acts of the former minister of advanced education, Melanie Mark, was to ensure that children in care and coming out of care would have access to free education in British Columbia. If the minister really be…
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Mr. Chair, one of the issues the member raised was about indigenous children who have been brought into care, and far too many of them have. In fact, in my home community of Vancouver East, our community call this the modern-day residential school where indigenous children have been taken into care. What is worse is that when they come out of care, they have zero support whatsoever, and many of th…
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Mr. Chair, I believe that in her heart, the member really wants to move the issues forward. Most recently, with the Coalition on Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls in B.C., in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, our community has been talking about this issue. In fact, it was in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside where the first memorial march was led back in the day, so many years ago, when I …
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Madam Speaker, I have to say what we need is for the federal government to show the kind of leadership that is necessary. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has been calling for a national acquisition fund for a couple of years. The government has been talking about this and consulting about this. NGOs in the community have been calling for this. The NDP has been calling for this. However, …
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Many of them do because they don't have a pathway.
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Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with the member that we need the federal government's leadership in investing in housing. That is why the NDP calls for the government to build at least 500,000 units of social housing, co-op housing or community housing, because the community deserves housing and housing is a basic human right. As long as the approach by the Liberal government or the Conservatives …
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Mr. Speaker, what I am saying, and the member knows this, is that real estate investment trusts should pay their fair share of taxes. They should not be given special tax treatment and not pay the corporate tax rate. They should be paying the corporate tax rate. Canadians are losing close to $2 billion in taxes that should have been collected and could have been invested into housing. No wonder th…
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Madam Speaker, part of the immigration problem is that the government has decided to continue to use temporary foreign workers to address our skilled labour shortage, including in the construction sector. What the government should do is regularize people so they have the status to come to Canada, and ensure that those who are already in Canada have full status. Would the member support the regula…
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Mr. Speaker, the motion talks about housing and not industrial land. There is another whole debate I would love to get into about industrial land, but for the purpose of this discussion, what we need to focus on is the housing crisis. I call on the Liberal government to do the right thing and show leadership by investing in social housing back to the level when the government was doing it in the s…
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Madam Speaker, the issue around how money laundering is impacting real estate is very significant. In fact, a special panel did a review on this in British Columbia, and one of its top recommendations was to have a beneficial ownership of land registries across the country. B.C. did that, and I believe we need to do that, given the housing crisis we are faced with. The conservative estimate on the…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, in terms of eye care, the member is absolutely correct to say that it is critical. However, the cost of eye care is increasing and, oftentimes, what we are seeing is that it is getting delisted in terms of coverage under the health care plan. That certainly is the case here in Ontario. From that perspective, what does the member have to offer in ensuring that coverage is provided so…
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Madam Speaker, before I begin my speech on the bill today, I want to take a moment to recognize today as the National Day of Mourning, to honour every worker who goes to work, and to say very clearly that they deserve to return home safely at the end of their workday. I would also like to take a moment to remember those who have been injured or lost their lives, and to recommit ourselves to fighti…
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