hazylavender/hi huggingface dataset:
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Louise Chabot: several measures in our policies discriminate against women. Employment insurance is a prime example. When the employment insurance program was initially designed, it reflected the fact that workers work full time and that male-dominated jobs were the most important. That may have been appropriate at the time. Now women are being discriminated against in two ways. The eligibility rules work against them because the rules are designed for those who work 40 hours a week. If a person works only 20 hours, they are necessarily discriminated against. Then there are pregnant workers, women who carry a child and then lose their job. The rules currently discriminate against them because they will not be entitled to employment insurance if, when they return, they no longer have employment. They are no longer entitled to their benefits. They won in court and the ruling was appealed. I hope that decision will be upheld. The EI program needs to be reformed. It is essential and a matter of fairness.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: I disagree with the member. We can think of the Canada workers benefit, the supports from the government for the trades and unions, the $10-a-day child care and the credit for tools. In many ways, the government has been there for the workers of Canada. Can the member give a tangible example of any other government that has done more than this government has for the workers of Canada?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Louise Chabot: my colleague truly believes what he is saying. I would not be able to sleep at night if my beliefs held that we cannot support workers. I would remind the House that there is a universal program in Quebec, the program for early childhood education services, that has been around for more than 25 years. The Liberals have decided to feel good about themselves by introducing a similar program across Canada when that does not fall under their jurisdiction. They spent $30 billion when the people for whom the government--
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Andreanne Larouche: I want to thank my colleague, whom I recently worked with on issues of violence against women. I would like to come back to that, because I know that she is very interested in feminism. How is it possible that a government that claims to be feminist is not providing better support to women who are victims of domestic violence by increasing health transfers to shore up our social services system, particularly in Quebec? How is it possible that a government that claims to be feminist is not keeping its promise to reform EI? We know that the people having the most issues with EI right now are women who, for a variety of reasons, have difficulty qualifying for the program. My colleague also talked about the issue of mothers, pregnant women. I would like to hear my colleague talk about these two critical issues, namely increased health transfers and EI reform. That is feminism.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Anju Dhillon: I thank my dear colleague for her question. I would also like to thank her again for supporting the bill that she mentioned in her question. Her help is really a generous gift, and I agree with her. That is why, as I mentioned in my speech, fewer women have to choose between their families and their careers. Paying $10 a day for child care is something that will truly help women continue their careers and stay in the workforce.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. John Brassard: within the budget, the government has committed $80-plus billion in tax credits toward investing in a newer, greener economy. In the budget, it is very clear that it is there. It is not a secret, but with the announcement of Volkswagen creating a new plant near St. Thomas, Ontario, there is a tremendous amount of secrecy, in terms of what that $13-billion investment would actually be going toward. I am wondering, if it is no secret what the tax credits are in the budget, which are coming from hard-earned taxpayers' money, why there is this level of secrecy in terms of this contract with Volkswagen. Should Canadians not know what that deal is all about, considering the fact that the government would be spending that money on that investment?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Anju Dhillon: I am a little puzzled by my colleague's question. I am just wondering if he is against the investment. That is what it sounds like, but I would like to say that Canada has one of the cleanest electricity grids all across the world. We are very proud of our record on this, and it is very important to continue with green technology to make sure that our environment and our economy can both work at the same time to improve the lives of all Canadians and contribute to the world as well.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Charlie Angus: in a previous life I was a carpenter, I was a chimney sweep and I was a roofer. I ran a small business from my home, and we used to feed our kids french fries to help us get the mail-outs done in time at the end of the month. I had to go to the dentist and try to cut deals so the kids could get their teeth fixed. I looked at the leader of the Conservative Party 's LinkedIn, and I was astounded. He has never actually had a job; what he has had is 19 years of free dental care, and he has the gall to tell senior citizens and working-class families that they are not entitled to free dental care. I would like to ask my hon. colleague why she thinks the leader of the Conservative Party thinks he is so much better than people who have actually worked their whole lives.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Anju Dhillon: it is incredible that there are people who would still want to be against dental care in this manner. Dental care helps all Canadians. It helps those who are most in need. As we know, dental issues can cause other health issues as well. It is very important that we allow those who have the least to be able to maintain health security for themselves when they are just trying to live their lives. As my colleague said, he lived on a tight budget growing up. These are the people we want to help. This is why we are here.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Dan Albas: I would actually like to talk about the topic of a slush fund. The housing accelerator fund, which will be put out by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, has billions of dollars set aside for, well, we just do not know. We do not know exactly what it will go towards. I am concerned for municipalities, because I have heard from a local chief administrative officer who had no idea what the project does. How is this going to tangibly build homes that people can live in?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mrs. Salma Zahid: housing is a really important issue for my constituents. We believe in a long-term approach to housing. We have a national housing strategy, which is based on a 10-year plan for building more affordable housing for Canadians. In the budget, we are building on that. We will make sure that housing becomes more affordable for all Canadians. It should be a right for all Canadians to have a safe place to live and to call home.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Sebastien Lemire: my colleague spoke at length about housing. I think the logic is very simple. It is about supply and demand. The problem in my riding--and I think it may be a problem in my colleague's riding too, as it is throughout Quebec and Canada--is that there is not enough housing supply. There are several reasons behind this, including the proliferation of Airbnb, people living alone and so on. All this means that there is far less housing available. The priority should have been housing construction. I welcome the measure included in the budget for a $4-billion increase over seven years for urban, rural and northern housing for indigenous people. However, there is nothing for housing construction for the rest of Canada. In my view, the biggest impact of the labour shortage is that people cannot find housing in our communities. That is a problem. Why has the government not taken concrete action on housing construction?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mrs. Salma Zahid: housing is an issue that one government cannot resolve. As the federal government, we are working with provinces and municipalities to make sure that we build more affordable housing. In budget 2023, we have taken some measures to make sure we build more affordable housing, including announcing that financial institutions would be able to start offering tax-free first home savings accounts to Canadians as of April 1. We are publishing a guideline to protect Canadians with mortgages who are facing exceptional circumstances. We are committing an additional $4 billion to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to implement a co-developed urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy. We have announced a housing accelerator fund to make sure that municipalities could work to build more affordable, better housing for Canadians.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Bonita Zarrillo: although I thank the member for the comments on housing, the Liberal government is tinkering around the edges in a crisis. I am happy to see that there are structural investments in this budget around dental care, which will be long-standing and eternal for Canadians. However, what the government really missed was housing. Where is the investment in affordable housing in this budget? We knew operating agreements that were made 40 years ago were going to expire. Ten years ago, we should have had our eye on it. Municipalities had their eye on the fact that operating agreements were expiring this year, last year, next year and the next three or four years. Where is the investment in affordable housing in this budget?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mrs. Salma Zahid: I want to thank the hon. member for her concern in making sure that Canadians have access to affordable housing. Housing is not something that we could resolve in one or two years. Since we came to power in 2015, we have worked on building a national housing strategy, which is a 10-year plan to make sure that we build more affordable housing. In this budget, we have taken certain measures to make sure that Canadians get access. We have announced a housing accelerator fund, which is a great investment and which would help in building more affordable housing, working with more municipalities and making sure that they cut the red tape to have quicker processes for building more affordable housing.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Michael Coteau: the hon. member and I share a border. Our ridings are next to each other. I am always aware of the great work that she is doing with young people in her community, with her youth council and with the local schools. In the budget and past initiatives, we have seen $10-a-day child care and dental relief. We have seen relief on interest rates, as well as many programs, such as the child benefit, which help young people in our community. Could the member tell us what the response has been from young people in her community?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mrs. Salma Zahid: since we came to power in 2015, certain measures that we have taken are really helping to make a difference. They include the Canada child benefit, $10-a-day child care and programs to make sure that we provide more support to students. When I talk to people in my youth council, they tell me how these additional student grants are helping them to make sure they can concentrate more on their studies. Many students find it difficult to find a job after graduating. However, they have some room in that they do not have to pay their student loans until they start earning $40,000. That is really helping our young kids to grow and be more successful in life.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: in so many ways I disagree with the member's statements. Let us take a look at what the Conservative Party has said. Hundreds of millions going into billions of additional dollars being spent every year to support health care, $198 billion over 10 years. Hundreds of millions of dollars going into billions of dollars every year to ensure that child care is more affordable. These are the types of needs that Canadians have and the expectations that Canadians have of the government to provide. The Conservative Party believes that the child care investment is nothing more than a slush fund. All the provinces' different political parties have signed on. Is it still the Conservative Party's position that we should rip up the child care $10-a-day plan? Is it the Conservative Party's plan to get rid of the tens of billions of dollars that we are putting into national health care? What is the Conservative plan? It does not have one.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Kyle Seeback: this is incredible. I just read two emails from the hundreds I have been getting about how tough life is even after all the spending. What does this member stand up to say? He asked if they know about the spending. Of course they know about the spending. They know that all the spending has made their lives worse. That is what they know and this member stands here, effectively gaslighting Canadians, asking how dare they say things are so tough; look at all the money being spent. They have spent the money in such a way that it has made Canadians' lives worse. We had a member just before who said the exact same thing. It was actually enlightening to hear that housing is unaffordable and all those kinds of things. However, their answer is to spend more money on things that are not going to make life better.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mrs. Julie Vignola: members of the official opposition party have repeatedly mentioned the deficits being racked up by the government. They have also mentioned the Parliamentary Budget Officer's reports. However, they are overlooking some information, including information from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I would mention the tens of billions of dollars in funding announcements that remains unspent. In 2021-22, this added up to $38 billion, and it was roughly the same amount last year. I would also mention the fiscal imbalance that is keeping funds in government coffers. This money comes from taxes paid by taxpayers. The situation has now reached a point where, in a matter of decades, the federal government will have settled all its debts stretching back to 1867, while the provinces and Quebec will be on the verge of technical bankruptcy, or will have lost much of their budgetary autonomy. Is my colleague not outraged about this situation, this budgetary and financial hypocrisy, and the damage to the public and workers?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Kyle Seeback: I am always happy to talk about deficits. What every prime minister up until this point accumulated to the national debt, the Prime Minister and the current government have doubled over the span of eight years. Think about that. All the history of previous prime ministers, a certain amount of debt, has been doubled. What has that done? It has significantly reduced the fiscal capacity of the government just on interest payments alone, I would suggest. What could go into transfer payments to the provinces if the national debt was not causing $50 billion a year just to service the debt? That is interest on the debt. Imagine what that could do to help the fiscal situation of the provinces. The growth of the government is contributing to that, $176 billion a year more, and it is still not transferring enough to the provinces. It is a remarkable disaster.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Gord Johns: in my riding, the Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce said the number one priority to help solve the labour market crisis is increasing spaces in child care. In fact they are saying to keep going because we are seeing more and more spaces open up because of the agreement with Canada and the provinces. As someone who ran a chamber of commerce, as someone who actually had children in child care as a single parent at one time, I know how important those child care spaces are. Does my colleague not agree that this would be a very important measure to help solve the labour market crisis in this country? What does he have to say to the chambers of commerce in my community?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Kyle Seeback: child care is important. That is why we were the first government to actually send money directly to parents for children. That was back under former prime minister Harper. While $10-a-day child care sounds like a great idea, the problem is about how many spots and access people have to them; there are not very many. There are also lots of people who do not want to put their children into institutional child care. They want to take care of the children themselves or they want to put them into a family member's home or a neighbour's home. To me this is so exclusionary. It is only open to a very small number of people. It is just not going to help enough.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: as members know, we hear time and time again Conservatives stand up and indicate concerns about the deficit and the debt. Having gone through the pandemic, with respect to the massive investments in things such as Canada's health care system and child support and the amounts of money we are talking about, including the wage loss subsidy programs, CERB, the rent subsidy programs to support small business owners, literally keeping hundreds of thousands of jobs intact, supporting Canadians to be able to get through the pandemic and meeting the needs of health care going forward, do the Conservatives not believe those to be wise investments in Canadians or would they rather we had not done that?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Hon. Michael Chong: not once in my speech did I mention government debt or deficits. I focused on our declining standard of living. In the five-year period from 2017 to 2021, economic output per capita was flat. We have not had any per capita growth, and that is why Canadians are struggling to pay the bills. The government has focused its economic agenda on consumption rather than investment. In the long run, only through investment, whether private sector investment or government investment in public infrastructure, are we going to get to higher levels of productivity, with the attendant increases in wages and prosperity for all Canadians, but the government has not been doing that. In fact, it has been doing the opposite, which is why our per capita GDP is now much lower than that in the United States. Per capita GDP here is $44,000 U.S., while it is $61,000 U.S. south of the border. The American economy now has fully 40% higher output, per capita, than we have here in Canada, and that is affecting our ability to pay for social programs, such as health care and education. That is what the government does not get and is incapable of addressing.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Sebastien Lemire: my colleague spoke about people's quality of life. Agriculture is a sector where the workers' quality of life has been hit hard this past year. Our agricultural producers have been severely impacted by the cost of inputs and fuel. In Abitibi--Temiscamingue, costs could be $40,000 higher this year than last just because of the cost of fuel. This has huge consequences. Our farmers need cash flow. There is a rather interesting measure in the budget that would increase the interest-free limit under the advance payments program from $250,000 to $350,000. This helps farmers manage their debt a little better, but does not provide them with cash flow. If we want to maintain our agricultural production and food resilience in Canada, we need to make investments. Why are there none in the budget? What would the member have done?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Hon. Michael Chong: I come from an agricultural riding that has many dairy and beef farms and farms that produce hay and other agricultural products. I really understand the importance of our agricultural sector and our farmers. Agriculture is one of the few sectors in the Canadian economy that is a free trade sector and not heavily regulated by government, like the banking and telecommunications sectors are. What does the government do? It saddles our farmers with ever-increasing regulation and taxes, making it even more difficult for them to sell corn, wheat, soy beans, beef or pork on global markets. The government cannot get anything right. We could be an agricultural powerhouse, but we are not. In fact, the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world is the Netherlands. It is far ahead of Canada. We have the second largest landmass in the world, and we are not taking advantage of it because the government has a completely misguided industrial strategy.
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Gord Johns: we know there are 3.2 million Canadians who are underhoused. Now, the government set out an ambitious agenda of inviting 500,000 new immigrants a year for the next three years, but it has no cohesive strategy on where they are going to live. Desjardins has made it clear that we would have to increase all new housing starts by 50% in the next year, just to meet immigration. The provinces are saying they need money for non-market and social housing. Does my colleague not agree that, after 30 years of Conservative and Liberal governments lacking investments in social housing, this is the time to invest in social and affordable housing?
Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Hon. Michael Chong: quite simply, the government is putting roadblocks in the way of constructing purpose-built apartments buildings in this country. It is almost impossible to build a purpose-built apartment building, which is why all the focus is on building owner-occupied dwellings. It is because the government has subsidies for owner-occupied dwellings through CMHC's mortgage insurance, OSFI's regulatory structure and Finance Canada's rules, while on the other hand it is putting up roadblocks to building apartment buildings. That is the fundamental problem that the government is not even talking about, and it is something it should be focused on.