Routine Proceedings
With regard to Canada’s pledge at the UN Women Generation Equality Forum in 2021 to commit $100 million in new funding for standalone programming addressing unpaid and paid care work in low-and middle-income countries: (a) how much international assistance funding dedicated to care programming has been dispersed by Canada since July 2021, broken down by month; (b) how much of that funding has been…
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With regard to disability benefits provided by Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) since November 2015, broken down by year: (a) what is the median time to process (i) an initial application, (ii) a reassessment application; (b) of the applications in (a), how many were processed after 16 weeks of receiving all the information needed for processing; (c) of the applications in (a), what is the percentage…
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Madam Speaker, I think I speak for everybody in the House when I say that any measure that would help people living with diverse needs or with disabilities is a positive measure. However, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this is only a framework, and it does not identify who will receive disability benefits, how much they will get or when. The fact that this is unnecessary is proven by the legi…
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Mr. Speaker, health experts are raising the alarm. According to the Canadian Medical Association, our health care system is collapsing around us. Health care workers are dealing with severe burnout and leaving the profession. Patients are being treated in cars. They wait months for diagnosis and are suffering without care. Despite this, the Liberals are missing in action. Will the government call …
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Mr. Speaker, I guess what I am struggling with is there seems to be a relatively straightforward connection and a couple of principles that underpin this bill. One of them is that we have a very high percentage of people locked up in our country who are suffering from mental health or addiction problems. In fact, when I was the public safety critic for the official opposition and toured Canada's c…
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Mr. Speaker, one of the, I think, good things about the bill is that it removes mandatory minimums for drug sentences, but it leads to a larger question of consistency with the government. The member and the government voted against the NDP Bill C-216, which would have treated addiction as a health issue and decriminalized it for everybody. The government continues to say that it does believe that…
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Madam Speaker, the bill before us raises some really fundamental questions about what is effective in terms of criminal justice. Of course, those of us on this side of the House in the NDP believe that the evidence is crystal clear that mandatory minimums are simply not effective in helping to reduce crime. One thing I think that we are well aware of is the very high degree of addiction and mental…
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague quoted Lisa Lapointe, a very respected public health official in British Columbia. She has called for the decriminalization of drugs and for treating drug use and substance use disorders as health issues. My hon. colleague properly empathizes with the unbelievable, astronomical death rate in British Columbia. The New Democrats have pointed to the problem being the …
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill. By way of introduction, it is important to note that this bill was reintroduced from the 43rd Parliament. It is an almost identical copy, with no changes except for the omission of coordinating amendments, which made some changes to the Firearms Act and adjusted some penalties for firearms off…
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Madam Speaker, of course, I guess this is a matter of perspective. If one believes that punishing people more harshly and putting addicts and people with mental illness in jail cells for longer will keep communities safe, then I suppose one will critique this bill, as the official opposition is doing. However, we actually believe it is important to make an individualized assessment of what has hap…
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Madam Speaker, I would answer that by approaching the latter part first. I had both the privilege and the trauma of suffering through the Harper government the whole time. I have been in this House for 14 years, and it was a major political issue the entire time of the Harper Conservatives to adopt this tough-on-crime approach, where they did bring in mandatory minimums. In fact, those are the man…
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, we need to start addressing in a more meaningful way the social determinants of crime. That is part of it. Also, I think the bottom line is that we need to give our courts and judges the tools they need to make proper individualized assessments to find out what the root causes of the person and the circumstances are before them. Punishment is an aspect of our penal syste…
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Mr. Speaker, experts are clear that we will not control COVID until the world is vaccinated, yet only 10% of people in low-income countries have received a vaccine, compared to 77% in high-income nations. The Liberals promised to send 200 million doses to COVAX, but fewer than 15 million have been delivered to date. Last year, the WHO said we stood “on the brink of a catastrophic...failure”. Today…
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague gave a thoughtful speech. About 14 years ago, I had occasion to sit with some parliamentarians who had served before me for several decades. Among the wisdom they imparted to me was that there are very few privileges of an individual member of Parliament, and they need to be judiciously protected. One of them is the right to vote the way they want to on private mem…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, it is my distinct pleasure to mark the beginning of Filipino Heritage Month in Canada. I am privileged to represent a riding that is blessed with one of the largest communities of Filipino Canadians in the nation. It is full of dynamic, creative and talented people who contribute so much to our society, culture and economy. From the health sector to the business world, from the arts t…
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Madam Speaker, I hear the Conservatives laughing at that. Maybe they should go back to medical school and take a beginner's course in virology. This motion also attempts to blame the problems of Canadian airports on public health rules. This fundamentally misunderstands what is happening. The core problem is that there are few flights due to reduced traffic and, more importantly, reduced staffing …
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Madam Speaker, someone asked why I am not wearing one. We take masks off when we speak, and they know that. It is for the interpreters. The Conservatives understand that, but the fact that they would heckle on that point shows how bereft of rationality and evidence they really are. Again, this motion calls for the policy to immediately revert to prepandemic rules. That assumes things have returned…
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is a privilege to rise in the House to speak to important issues of the day, not only on behalf of the great people of Vancouver Kingsway, but on behalf of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I want to start with an observation. As health critic for the New Democratic Party of Canada, I have had a front-row seat to the issues, unfortunately, since the beginning of …
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague raises a very poignant and, I think, foundational point, which is that, when we engage in breaking new ground and experiencing something as unprecedented as a global pandemic, it will raise very difficult public policy issues concerning the rights of individuals versus the protection of public health. That is why playing politics with a pandemic is so harmful and d…
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Mr. Speaker, it is now clear that long COVID cases are spiking across Canada. Half of all Canadians infected with COVID‑19 are expected to develop significant long-haul symptoms. Experts are warning that this will create a mass disabling event with serious and debilitating impacts on patients, yet the Liberals have ignored long COVID in their public health policy and guidance. What concrete steps …
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Madam Speaker, I would like to also say what a pleasure it is to sit on the health committee with my hon. colleague from Montcalm. I appreciate his contributions there and in the House. I absolutely agree with the need to recognize the horrific impact that COVID has had on the Canadian economy and, in particular, industries such as tourism and hospitality. I get letters about that constantly, and …
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Madam Speaker, I think the essence of science and research is to listen. If he were listening, my hon. colleague would have heard me quote in my speech research that shows that being vaccinated now appears not to have any significant impact on preventing or transmitting COVID. I said that in my speech. Had he been paying attention, he probably would have caught that. That is why I think it is so v…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his support of this motion. I must say that in my 14 years of Parliament, I have never seen the Bloc side with the Conservatives more than I have this Parliament, so it is a pleasure to see it supporting a progressive cause. I cannot understand how anybody in the House concerned with facts could possibly oppose the motion. It says, “Canadi…
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With regard to the Safe Return to Class Fund, since its inception, broken down by province and territory: (a) what is the total amount allocated through this fund; (b) what is the total amount received by each province and territory every month; and (c) what accountability measures exist to ensure that students, educators, and other school staff benefit from this fund?
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Madam Speaker, I want to quote a few key sections of this bill for my hon. colleague. In the bill, proposed subsection 2(2.1) says: A person who uses a social media service to upload programs for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service — and who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or the agent or mandatary of either of them — does not,…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to note that I really appreciate my hon. colleague's wonderful radio voice. I have to pick up on the comment by the previous speaker, my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party. I appreciate much of what was said, but I think the analogy between a radio station in the 1980s is not a completely apt metaphor for the Internet today. The average radio station listener co…
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With regard to provincial and territorial requests for assistance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, broken down by province and territory: (a) what was the nature of each request received by the government; (b) of the requests in (a), was the government able to meet the request in full; and (c) of the requests in (b) that were not fully met, what was the reason the government…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have repeatedly said that the bill regulates the platform, not content or users. However, proposed section 4.2 says that the CRTC can create regulations that treat content uploaded to social media services as programs to be regulated by considering three factors: one, whether the program that is uploaded might cause direct or indirect revenue generation; two, if the progr…
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Madam Speaker, in the House, we all share the idea that we want to make sure Canadian content is protected in this country. We want to make sure that Canada's linguistic duality is supported. We want to make sure that the big Internet companies pay their fair share and that they are regulated properly. The member must have heard from constituents who are concerned that the attempt to regulate the …
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Madam Speaker, I will respond to the substance of the motion. I agree with the principle of the separation of church and state, and I agree that references to religious concepts are also are not appropriate in public sector proceedings, so I will support the motion. Equally, I know that the climate crisis threatens our planet. The housing crisis means millions of Canadians are right now living wit…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize National Nursing Week. This is our opportunity to thank Canada's nurses for their outstanding leadership delivering health care to all Canadians. During this pandemic, nurses made tremendous sacrifices to answer the call when we needed them most. They provided care with skill, compassion and courage in the face of unrelenting waves of COVID-19. We know Canada…
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With regard to the mandate letter of the Minister of Health and the direction in the letter to invest in the study of the long-term health impacts of COVID-19, including the effects of long COVID on different groups, notably vulnerable populations and children: what is the total funding allocated for this purpose, broken down by (i) fiscal year, (ii) department or agency, (iii) initiative, (iv) am…
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Madam Speaker, the budget contains $300 million this year, $600 million next year and $1.2 billion the year after, for a total ongoing commitment of $1.7 billion thereafter, to provide dental care to some 6.5 million Canadians: the children, seniors, people living with disabilities and low-income families with no dental insurance now. My hon. colleague talked about being unable to afford things. I…
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-272, An Act respecting the development of a national employment strategy for persons with disabilities. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the employing persons with disabilities act, with great thanks to my colleague, the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, for seconding the bill. This legislation would provide for the development of a national employmen…
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague touched upon housing. I think there is not a member in the House who does not have constituents with serious concerns about the lack of affordable housing. There are some measures in this bill that deal with housing, I think, mainly about underutilization of property, but there is nothing in the bill about an anti-flipping tax. There is nothing on blind auctions. T…
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Madam Speaker, I am sure that Quebec is no different than any other province in that the citizens of these provinces are having a terrible time finding affordable housing. This is one of the areas where we are all in agreement that it takes all levels of government working together in order to provide a supply. In my riding, we still have many constituents who have benefited from the very successf…
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Madam Speaker, as I said in my speech, and I think my hon. colleague touched on it a bit, one of the signature pieces of this budget is the creation of a dental care program that will help six-and-a-half million Canadians get access to primary health care for their mouths. I know the Conservatives are opposing the budget and, in fact, they oppose dental care. I have not heard any positive comments…
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Madam Speaker, I can tell the member that I have been an MP for 14 years, and I cannot tell her how many seniors have come into my office who do not have access to dental care. I have had seniors in my office who had no teeth. Can the member imagine what the impact is on nutrition and oral health if one has no teeth? This budget, next year, would provide every single senior who makes under $70,000…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for a very astute and fair question. The last time Canada had two minority parliaments in a row in which the Liberals were in government and the NDP held a balance of power, we got medicare, old age security and the Canada pension plan. That was in 1965. I think that if we asked Canadians today what they are most proud of as Canadians, they wo…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to split my time with my hon. colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. It is a great privilege to rise in the House today and speak in support of this budget. I want to say at the outset that no budget is perfect. There are many, many provisions in budgets with which we agree, and there are obviously many with which we disagree. This budget is no different in that rega…
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Madam Speaker, in short, yes, it is, and I share my hon. colleague's concerns about the climate crisis. As I said at the outset of my speech, we do not agree with everything in this budget, nor were we able to get all of the New Democrat priorities in the confidence and supply agreement. We negotiated as best we could. I think we have to do much more, and do it much more urgently, to take the clim…
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Mr. Speaker, we just learned the Liberals are backing down on drug price reforms that would make life-saving medications more affordable and save us billions. This means Canadians will keep paying excessive costs for prescription drugs, which are among the highest in the world. Meanwhile, the Liberals choose to protect the profits of large pharmaceutical companies. The Liberals say no one should g…
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Madam Speaker, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, meeting the 2% of GDP target called for in this motion would mean increasing our military spending from about $24 billion a year now to over $54 billion. That is an extra $30 billion per year. While I think all Canadians want to make sure that our military is well equipped and properly funded, I want to get my hon. colleague's take on t…
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Madam Speaker, it is quite clear that this 2% figure of GDP for military spending has no real basis in sound military thinking. Of course, it was coined by Donald Trump. I understand recent testimony before the defence committee has made it clear, from a number of academics and experts, that the 2% has no grounding in any real figure. What is important, of course, is effective spending. I am curio…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member on her bill. She has the NDP's enthusiastic support, and we will always be there to support our brave heroes in the firefighting profession in every circumstance. I want to ask her specifically about a particular aspect. Toxic chemicals are commonly used as flame retardants in a wide variety of household products, such as upholstered furniture.…
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Madam Speaker, I would first like to thank my hon. colleague from Essex who just spoke so passionately and powerfully. I thank him for sharing his experience and for his service. He is a tough act to follow. Firefighters risk their lives every day to protect our communities. They have our backs when we need it most. In turn, we have a responsibility to take care of Canada's firefighters. Cancer is…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, April is Oral Health Month and today marks the beginning of National Dental Hygienists Week. This week's theme, “Oral Health for Total Health”, reminds us that taking care of our mouth, teeth and gums is critical to our overall well-being. However, despite clear links between poor oral health and serious medical conditions, over 35% of Canadians have no dental insurance and seven mill…
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Madam Speaker, Canada's rising food prices are hurting families that were already struggling. Two million children are now at risk of going to school hungry. In a country as wealthy as Canada, no child should have to get through the day on an empty stomach. For many years, New Democrats have called for a national school nutrition program to give every student access to healthy food. In the last el…
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-265, An Act respecting the development of a national perinatal mental health strategy. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to introduce the national perinatal mental health strategy. I would like to thank the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona for seconding this legislation and for her tireless advocacy in support of perinatal mental health. Perinatal menta…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague spoke a lot about jurisdiction. I wonder if he is aware that the Supreme Court of Canada has declared that health care is shared jurisdiction in this country. I wonder if he is aware that the words “health care” do not appear in the Constitution at all. I wonder if he is aware that the only power given to the provinces in our Constitution is the establishment and mainte…
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