Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for her advocacy for Canada's most vulnerable. While I will not pre-empt the decisions that will be outlined in the upcoming budget, I will reassure her that from the very first day we formed government, our focus has been to support middle-class and low-income Canadians. The very first thing we did when we formed governme…
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—and workers have remained on payrolls. We are going to move forward with a budget that will continue to fight COVID-19 and set the course for a recovery that Canadians will be very proud of. I will be pleased to share those details with the hon. member on Monday of next week.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite seems afraid to embrace the idea that public investment can actually support Canadians during their time of need. I point him to the words of the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Gita Gopinath, who indicated that it can be not only economically responsible, but fiscally sound at the same time, to make public investments to support Canadians durin…
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Mr. Speaker, it is rich of the hon. member to critique the government's economic record, as he was a member of the government that had the worst economic growth rate of any government in Canada's history since the Great Depression. The reality is that because of the measures we put in place, Canadian households have remained afloat—
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Mr. Speaker, I will not pre-empt announcements that will be shared as part of next week's budget, but I will reassure the member that from the very first time we formed government in 2015 our priority has been to support middle-class and low-income Canadians, and we have not been afraid to ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share. In fact, the very first thing we did in 2015 was raise taxes on t…
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Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. member opposite that when we move forward with the budget next week he will see decisions that will both support Canadians during their time of emergency and set the course for a recovery that will ensure Canada will prosper years from now. I can reassure him all the investments that will be contained in that budget will be fiscally sound and will be supporting t…
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard to take lessons from the member about what happened at a party convention when his own party members voted to deny the reality of climate change. With respect to the issue at hand, from the very beginning of this pandemic our focus has been to ensure that households and businesses remain afloat. We delivered benefits like the Canada emergency response benefit, which has now…
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Madam Speaker, it may be outside the scope of Bill C-14, but that does not mean it is outside the scope of what the government is working on. When we tabled the fall economic statement, I did not anticipate there would be a need to continue to debate the fall economic statement in the following spring. Unfortunately, there has been a series of delays for this bill, which I believe were for largely…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's question. There are a couple of key points I would like to offer in response. First, the activities of the Bank of Canada, including to whom it lends, are made completely independently of the bank. I will note that the bank has put forward a number of measures over the course of the pandemic to ensure there is sufficient liquidity in the financial system…
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Mr. Speaker, with great respect to my hon. colleague, the line of questioning he just launched is absolutely ludicrous. From day one, we have made it a priority to support middle-class Canadians and have not been afraid to ask the wealthiest Canadians to pay more. The very first thing we did when we came into office was to raise taxes on the wealthiest 1% and cut them for the middle class. We exte…
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Mr. Speaker, at the outset of this pandemic, we made certain that we were going to be there for Canadians in their time of need. That approach led to the creation of the Canada emergency response benefit, which has now landed on the kitchen tables of more than nine million Canadians. As we come out of this pandemic and look to continue to support Canadians as we enter the recovery phase, we are go…
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Mr. Speaker, with respect, the federal government has been working hand in glove with provincial governments from the first time we got elected, in October 2015. I note in particular the health care transfers we have made to the provinces, which allow them to take care of their citizens but also target particular measures for areas such as mental health or in-home care for seniors. I look forward …
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Madam Speaker, I sincerely appreciate my colleague's advocacy on this issue, not just today but over the past number of years. It is important to reflect upon the opioid crisis, which is a massive problem that is perhaps, in some regions, underappreciated in its severity. We may not see the concentrations of case numbers they have in his community, but nevertheless we are suffering serious consequ…
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Madam Speaker, I do not view this to be an overreach in any way, shape or form. The details of our spending plan have been laid out in the fall economic statement, including a variety of different potential scenarios. I point out that in 2016, we passed a piece of legislation in Parliament that mandated a review periodically of the federal government's borrowing limit. The time has come to conside…
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Madam Speaker, this piece of legislation includes certain measures that were included in the fall economic statement. It is not meant to be a comprehensive outline of the government's public health response throughout the pandemic or going forward. Of course, the budget will have more to say. I note in particular the recent announcement by the government to advance $4 billion directly to the provi…
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Madam Speaker, the short answer is no. The long answer is that I agree it is important, but I do not think its inclusion in a fairly modest piece of legislation, which has only a few parts, diminishes the ability of parliamentarians to debate it, particularly given the extensive debate that it has received on the floor of the House of Commons and the delay that has cost about four months in its pa…
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Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to take part in this important debate on Bill C-14, which is set to implement certain aspects of the fall economic statement that was tabled in Parliament a number of months ago. Before I get into the specific measures included in Bill C-14, I think it is important to reflect upon the year we have just been through and the pandemic that very much co…
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Madam Speaker, from the outset of this pandemic we understood that COVID-19 created immense costs for businesses, particularly in some of the sectors that were hardest hit. That is why we moved quickly to establish support programs that would help them keep the doors open and help their workers keep food on the table. We recently announced that we were extending some of these emergency support pro…
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Madam Speaker, at the outset of this pandemic we made a decision to extend supports to ensure that workers remained on payroll, and we did not discriminate as to which kind of employer the employees worked for. We wanted to ensure that families could continue to keep food on the table. However, from the very beginning of this pandemic, one of the strengths of our response has been our willingness …
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his advocacy on this important issue. As a result of our program rollout, we have learned that we need to make certain adjustments as we go, including what was originally the Canada emergency commercial rent assistance program, which was converted to the Canada emergency rent subsidy program. We made certain changes, and now have seen nearly 100,000 businesses r…
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time. I expect I will only have time to hit on some introductory points. I view this motion not necessarily to be the best use of the House's resources, and perhaps that is obvious, given the nature of the debate we have had so far. The principal reason is that it flies in the face of ministerial responsibility, which is a fundamental pillar of our Westminster s…
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Mr. Speaker, with respect, I take exception to the allegation that I had anything to do with friends at WE. I have no friends who work for the organization. In any event, I think the point he is trying to dig in on is whether the staff members he is calling to appear are the appropriate individuals to come testify and give evidence before committee. With sincere respect for the member opposite, I …
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Mr. Speaker, I absolutely believe in the principle of responsible government. I should give a plug to one of our provincial forefathers, Joseph Howe, who was responsible for advancing the notion of responsible government in Canada, right here in my home province of Nova Scotia. One of the issues the member raised though, and I think maybe we will find common ground here, is that some of the member…
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Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the member's parliamentary work, having watched her in action during the entirety of my time as an MP. To be clear, I did not make the suggestion that it is inappropriate for the Prime Minister to appear before committees. In fact, I supported his appearance before the finance committee on some of the same issues for which they are seeking to have him come bac…
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Mr. Speaker, there are several problems I have with the motion on the floor. Some are problems of substance, and some are problems of process. Some relate to the fact that this motion is extraneous to the issues that really matter to Canadians, who are going through a once-in-a-lifetime public health and economic emergency that demands the full attention of the House of Commons. I will begin with …
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Mr. Speaker, I will not be lectured on the importance of following evidence and data from a party that muzzled its own scientists, tried to end the long-form census and literally destroyed research in my home province at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. If the member is looking for a reason that we did not have a budget last year, I remind him that he voted in favour of a measure that allowe…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. member for divorcing himself from the conversation on the reality of climate change at the convention over the weekend to bring the focus onto economic issues. Only the Conservatives would suggest our emergency benefits have been too generous and that Canada could not afford them. The reality is that when the coronavirus stopped the Canadian economy in it…
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Mr. Speaker, if my friend opposite thinks that the cost of action has been too great, I would ask him to consider the cost of inaction. It would have been paid for with bankruptcies of local businesses and individual Canadian households not being able to afford to put food on the table. With respect to his assertion, I would point out that the recent report of the International Monetary Fund has e…
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Mr. Speaker, with respect, the Minister of Finance will be sharing details soon on the timing of this year's budget. However, I will remind the member that during the course of this extraordinary, once-in-a-century pandemic, we have gone to great lengths to make sure that Canadians have access to information about where their money is being spent. I can point to a 237-page fall economic statement,…
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Mr. Speaker, I will point out that there is no conversation about SMRs that will be short-term spending. This is a long-term part of the energy mix as we go forward to establish a potential for a net-zero Canada. Just to wrap up, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is moving closer to its goal to help prove the commercial viability of SMRs. It wants to host a demonstration project at one of its sites in…
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Mr. Speaker, I will begin by saying that it may not be often that we find ourselves in agreement, but I thank the hon. member for her statements of support for the government's direction at the beginning of her remarks. I am pleased to address an issue that is important to Ontario and New Brunswick, and indeed the entire country. The timing of this question could not possibly be better. We are con…
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Mr. Speaker, before I begin with my rebuttal, let me first echo the comments of the member for Kingston and the Islands on your superior service in the chair as Deputy Speaker over the past five years, my entire time as a member of Parliament. I will begin out of the gates by doing what I can to debunk the approach laid out by my Conservative colleague opposite. He went to great lengths to try to …
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Madam Speaker, I will do my best to avoid impugning the motives of my political opponents, whom I view as friends and colleagues. However, I will register my disappointment with their approach of insisting on multiple hours of debate to affirm a unanimously supported report that dealt with the competence of the Canadian Tourism Commission's president; to extend debate on a unanimously supported mo…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague's question was bifurcated. It covered two specific areas: the role of the opposition and the tourism sector. First, let me put on the record my appreciation for my opposition colleagues, who I have worked with recently, including the Bloc Québécois, on the issue facing sugar shacks in his province and for raising issues to educate me and my colleagues on our side of the…
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Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I am able to take part in this debate. I was tempted to say, “to rise in this House”, although it has been more or less a year since we have had the opportunity to be there in the flesh, and maybe that is a good point to begin my remarks. It was a little more than a year ago when the world did not know what COVID-19 was. As I mentioned, a year ago we w…
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Madam Speaker, I had my first opportunity to visit his hometown just a couple of years ago. It is a beautiful city and I find there is hardly a person I have met from Saskatchewan with whom I do not get along. We Nova Scotians have a natural affinity for our friends in Saskatchewan. With respect to the support for the aviation sector, including in his province and mine, I point out that $1.8 billi…
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Madam Speaker, again, I have a two-part answer to a two-part question. I will be the first person to acknowledge the value provided by parties from all corners of Canada and different partisan persuasions to the development of the emergency programs. I have spoken with a number of the member's NDP colleagues, who certainly were adding their voices to calls from different parties, and to those with…
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Madam Speaker, from the outset of the pandemic, we were focused on extending support to workers no matter what kind of business they were engaged in. We worked to develop the Canada emergency wage subsidy and covered 75% of the wages for workers who had been impacted by the pandemic. We have also extended support for individuals who needed personal income support and suffered a loss of that income…
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to work with the hon. member to get more details on the back end of this question. With respect, it is not an issue that has come to my attention personally, so I will make myself readily available as soon as this afternoon, if he would like to delve into this issue in more detail.
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Madam Speaker, with great respect, if the hon. member wants to compare apples to apples, I would point him to the fact that 71% of the jobs have returned from the peak pandemic job losses in Canada compared with 56% in the United States. If he wants apples to apples, I point him to labour force participation, which is 64.3% in Canada, compared with 61.3% in the United States. Before we get to the …
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Madam Speaker, with respect, the hon. member who is the critic for jobs ought to know that the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States uses a different definition for unemployment than we do in Canada through Statistics Canada. He is comparing apples to oranges. The reality is that because of the measures we have put forward, we have been able to support 4.5 million workers who hav…
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Madam Speaker, I have great respect for the hon. member who posed this question, but I must register my disappointment with his attempt to conflate liquidity support from direct financing from the federal government. The fact is that our focus from the beginning of this pandemic has been to extend supports directly to households and businesses to help them weather the storm. I can point to the 8.9…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to share some good news with the hon. member. With the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in place, we anticipate that over six million Canadians will be vaccinated by the end of March. I am pleased to report that, this morning, Health Canada approved the AstraZeneca product as well. With respect, we know there is a clear link between the economic and public health response. W…
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Madam Speaker, I will point out that we are well aware that some of these sectors have been hit particularly hard. That is why we advanced programs like the wage subsidy, to cover 75% of the cost of the work force, and the rent subsidy, for up to 90% of the rent. We have also established certain loan programs to help hard-hit businesses, including HASCAP. When it comes to the eligibility criteria …
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to inform the hon. member that labour force participation in Canada is 64.3%, compared with only 61.3% in the United States. However, what is most important in this conversation is the fact that the recent job losses we have seen in Canada are tied to the restriction of economic activities that would spread COVID-19 and cause further economic consequences for the economy. I…
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Mr. Speaker, it is ironic that the hon. member would cite Stephen Harper's economic record as a measure of success when he had the worst economic growth rate since the Great Depression and was the only government in the G7 to actually re-enter a recession in advance of the 2015 election. I point the hon. member to the fact that 71% of job losses from the peak of the pandemic have recovered in Cana…
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Mr. Speaker, we have been transparent about our plan from the beginning. Our plan has been to respond in an unprecedented and ambitious way to ensure Canadians have had the support they need to see them through this pandemic so they can help contribute to the economic recovery when it is safe to do so. If he is curious about how our plan has panned out, I would point him to the nearly nine million…
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Mr. Speaker, to the contrary, I will point out that Canada has had fewer people die than many of the comparator countries the hon. member points to. Moreover, he is using mistaken statistics to try to trick Canadians into supporting him. If we actually want to compare the employment record of Canada against the U.S., 71% of the jobs lost during the pandemic in Canada have returned, and 56% in the …
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Mr. Speaker, I have watched the hon. member try to use the same statistics to trick Canadians for the last number of weeks. The unemployment data kept in Canada measure something different from what the federal labour statistics do in the United States. If he wants to compare apples with apples, I would point him to the labour force participation rate. In Canada, it is 64.3%; Japan, 62%; the U.S. …
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct the record. The member may be aware there has been a global pandemic during the past year that has interfered with the way we ordinarily do things when it comes to our budgetary practices. If he is interested in transparency, I would remind him that during the heart of the pandemic a little less than a year ago when we were launching unprecedented strategies to…
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