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Madam Chair, I am pleased to answer this question on child care investments and the Canada child benefit. It is very important support to families. Through the housing investments—
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Madam Chair, the example of Edmonton is a very good one. It gives me the opportunity to talk about the $4-billion housing accelerator fund. These are dollars that we look forward to investing with municipalities to help them build new homes.
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Madam Chair, I mentioned a million Canadians. There were 530,000 Canadians lifted out of housing need because of the measures that we put into place. There are 300,000 homes being renovated and 150,000 new homes to be constructed with just one of those programs, and there are many more things to come.
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Madam Chair, I am very pleased that I am asked a question about housing. There is too little time to describe the loads of measures that we have put into place that have helped, in many respects, one million Canadians since the start of the national housing strategy in 2017.
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Madam Chair, that is indeed quite a funny story, because we have been leading the world concerning vaccination for many, many months. I am sorry to say that I have heard that perhaps the last to be vaccinated in Canada, and perhaps not before 2030, would be some of our Conservative MP friends.
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Madam Chair, I was not aware of the term “liberty caucus”, but I find that to be a strange caucus and a strange way of thinking about liberty. The liberty to transmit the virus to others and to infect a community is an unusual definition of liberty and I would take the liberty to signal that yes, the member for Calgary Nose Hill has a right to her views, but she did say not long ago that Canadians…
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Madam Chair, these are great percentages. Talking about everyone of all ages in Canada, approximately 80% of the population has received at least one dose and 76% of the population has received two doses, making us again a leader in the world when it comes to vaccination.
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Madam Chair, I visited the member's beautiful riding of Kingston and the Islands some time ago and was able to taste the beauty of the riding's landscape, its people and their hospitality. The member is right. Canadians have been informed, but also misinformed over the crisis, informed by the incredible input of experts and scientists. Many of them were little known prior to the crisis. Now, not o…
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Madam Chair, we have already gone over this many times in earlier answers. I obviously do not have enough time to repeat what has been said. We spoke about the Canada child benefit, the guaranteed income supplement, old age security, the increases that are already in place and the ones that were announced during the election campaign.
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Madam Chair, my colleague said earlier that people are already seniors at age 60. It is more a state of mind. I do not think—
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Madam Chair, it is a little more complicated, because our platform included numerous measures for seniors. It is obviously a little more straightforward if we look at—
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Madam Chair, in our platform, the age is 65 for the increase in the guaranteed income supplement—
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Madam Chair, I am happy to hear a mention of the election, since I did not see anything in the Conservatives' platform on—
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Madam Chair, all seniors are entitled to the measures I mentioned earlier. The indexation based on the increase in the cost of living applies to all seniors. It is for old age security—
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Madam Chair, that is a great question. I have a colleague who already considers himself a senior at the age of 60. I think he is still in good shape, at least physically—
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Madam Chair, I will quickly provide two examples. The first is the Canada child benefit, which continues to be increased in line with the cost of living and lifts nearly 400,000 children out of poverty every month. The second is the increase to the old age security pension. I know that he is less interested in that than his other colleague, but it is one—
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Madam Chair, Canada has been facing a housing crisis for years. That is why, in 2017, we implemented the first—
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Madam Chair, I will not ask my colleague how old he is because I can see he is reluctant to share that sensitive information. However, what I can tell him is that, in Canada, since 2019—
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Madam Chair, I see that my colleague is getting ready for his golden years. There are two types of increases or indexation. The first is the increase that has been happening for 50 years, the cost-of-living increase. The second is the extra one we promised during the election campaign.
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Madam Chair, I know my colleague is looking forward to getting that increase, but I am telling him he must be a little older to become eligible for it. One day, when he is old enough, he will get the 10% increase that we promised for those 75 and older.
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Madam Chair, I doubt my colleague is getting the benefit since he is not old enough yet, but if he were old enough, he would have already received $500—
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Madam Chair, I am very happy to answer that question. I do not know exactly how old my colleague is, but he seems very young and in good shape. I wish him a long life filled with happiness and good health, although not necessarily with the Conservatives. He would be even happier if he were to come over to the Liberals. That is up to him. As for his question about seniors, there was a 25% reduction…
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Madam Chair, that is indeed an important area to consider, along with home care, mental health care, long-term care, virtual care, primary care and many other sorts of care that Canadians not only need but deserve.
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Madam Chair, there are four key statistics here: first, the $41-billion-plus Canada health transfer; second, the $11-billion investment that we put into place in 2017 on home care and mental health care; third, the $55-billion investment we made during COVID-19; and fourth, the $25-billion promise we made—
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Madam Chair, my colleague is pretty well informed and mindful of the important challenges to deal with. Section 56 exemptions are being considered in that particular context. We are working, obviously, very closely with the City of Vancouver and the Government of B.C. in that regard.
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Madam Chair, obviously caring for people in such facilities is absolutely essential. These people require appropriate treatment, and we expect all of these service providers to meet and abide by all appropriate labour and health laws.
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Madam Chair, that is a great example of something that is extremely important. We look forward to doing this as quickly as possible, and we know that we can count on the member's input to make that possible.
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Madam Chair, it means the increase is tied to an increase in the cost of living.
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Madam Chair, I am glad that the member has an eye on the fall economic statement. Our colleague, the Minister of Finance, is going to produce and share a great statement.
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Madam Chair, I understand the concern and share it very much. In my own province, if we add up all those people who died in long-term care centres, we—
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Madam Chair, I have two things on this. First, it is being developed now, and we started many months ago in collaboration with the provinces and territories and experts. Second, we have announced in the platform an investment of $9 billion to support investments in long-term care.
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Madam Chair, if I may continue, we have announced and already made significant investments in biomedical fabrication and development in Canada, leading to some serious advances in the production of and access to medicines—
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Madam Chair, in a brief summary of what we are doing and what we have done, first, we are extremely active on the regulatory innovation to make sure that medicine research and development and production come quickly—
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Madam Chair, I thank my colleague for his hard work and his good words. No, we have not abandoned this. In fact, it is all in progress because of the important advances that we have seen in the past six years. I look forward to describing them in a moment in greater detail as more questions come in.
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Madam Chair, I congratulate my colleague once again. I will add another statistic. In Quebec alone, approximately 1.5 million people do not have access to a family doctor. I will now add two more figures. We did not wait, and I believe the member is fully aware of that. We immediately invested the very significant amount of $55 billion during COVID-19. We should not forget that $25 billion was inv…
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Madam Chair, I commend my colleague on all his contributions and I would remind him of another number. The number of surgeries that were delayed these past months because of the COVID‑19 pandemic is estimated at 780,000. The extraordinary partnership we saw between the governments during the pandemic can be just as important in the short term for cleaning up that mess.
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Madam Chair, I am very grateful to my colleague for the question. I will quickly share two numbers with him. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, the Canadian government invested $55 billion in addition to the $43 billion under the Canada health transfer, not to mention part of the $11 billion that has been invested since 2017. That is a lot of resources invested in a short amount of time, without waitin…
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Madam Chair, the first part of my colleague's question is about mandate letters. In 2015, the Liberal government was the first government in history to make mandate letters public. To answer the second part of his question, I invite my colleague to look at the Liberal Party's election platform from the last campaign. He will see that health care was a huge part of it.
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Madam Chair, I assure my colleague that I am well aware of the priorities of my mandate. The first is to help our country definitively recover from the COVID‑19 crisis. The second is to repair the damage this crisis has caused to our health care system. The third is to build our health care system for the long term.
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Madam Chair, there are a lot of ministers, and I am not sure who the member is addressing. I have not yet received my mandate letter. I hope it will be made public soon.
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Madam Chair, I think having respect here would be for the member to tell the House clearly what measures she proposes should be in place.
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Madam Chair, again, we do not know what the alternative is. Are they proposing that we should remove all testing and quarantine measures?
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Madam Chair, $1 billion spent to protect the health and safety of Canadians, I think, is a good idea.
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Madam Chair, what would be acceptable would be to hear the views of the opposition members of Parliament. Do they really believe we should take away all measures at the frontiers, including quarantine and testing measures?
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Madam Chair, I do not understand exactly what the objective of this is. If the objective is to suggest that we should not have measures for quarantine and testing procedures at the border, then maybe the member should say so.
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Madam Chair, I will say it again. Strict measures have been put in place at the border since the start of the pandemic, and they were the right measures to put in place to protect the health and safety of everyone.
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Madam Chair, I am going to smile because she mentioned a vaccine advocate. I think there should be more vaccine advocates on the other side of the House, and they should let us know how many Conservative MPs have not yet received one dose out of the 62 million doses administered to Canadians.
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Madam Chair, that is right. To minimize harm is exactly what we should be doing. That is what we have done throughout the crisis by putting strict measures in place at the borders to protect everyone, including those inside Canada.
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Madam Chair, again I have not heard the answer yet. Is the intent to ask the government to remove all testing and quarantine measures, as has been suggested by this—
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Madam Chair, that is not acceptable. What is also not acceptable is to follow the proposal of the Conservative MPs. Just a few days ago, they asked for the removal of all tests and quarantine measures.
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