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Madam Chair, I will first mention that the national housing strategy is the first-ever housing strategy in Canada. We implemented it in 2017, and it led to other measures.
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Madam Chair, one million is the number of Canadians who have been helped since the introduction of the national housing strategy in 2017.
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Madam Chair, is the suggestion to take no measures whatsoever and to remove all testing and quarantine? If that is the intent, maybe we should hear that more clearly.
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Madam Chair, I think the member may have misunderstood. I spoke about one million Canadians who have been helped with paying their rent since the introduction of the national housing strategy.
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Madam Chair, I am sorry to say, and I say it with some respect and regret, that what the Conservatives were proposing in the campaign would have helped rich landlords sell their stock of housing.
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Madam Chair, an example is the $4-billion accelerator fund, which we are going to invest in municipalities and provinces, because we know that to partner with them is key to solving the housing crisis.
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Madam Chair, another example is the rental housing construction initiative, a $26-billion investment in support of housing builders in Canada. That is going to create tens of thousands of new homes.
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Madam Chair, we said that just recently, and we have repeated it. What I could add now is that a new Canada housing benefit has been in place for a year, and it has helped 300,000 Canadians pay their rent.
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Madam Chair, another number to add to all of the other numbers I mentioned earlier is 530,000 Canadians being lifted out of housing needs because of investments in the national housing strategy.
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Madam Chair, another number to add to all the numbers I mentioned is 300,000. This is the number of homes being renovated—
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Madam Chair, one program I have not mentioned yet is the one dealing with innovative systems and programs in building housing. There are 125,000 homes being constructed because of this particular program.
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Madam Chair, one more initiative we have announced recently is the rapid housing construction initiative, which is going to lead to the construction of tens of thousands of new homes in just a year.
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Madam Chair, time is short, so let me repeat the numbers. They are 1,000,000, 300,000, 125,000, 71,000, 530,000, 9,200, plus a $4 billion acceleration fund to work with the provinces, territories and municipalities.
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Madam Chair, indeed I have a binder because I am being told that I forget many other measures that are going to create many more homes.
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Madam Chair, the member is correct to mention that we have had to look after Canadians, both those who remained inside the country and others when they came back to Canada. We followed the important health and safety measures we put into place.
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Madam Chair, the member is correct. The people who come to these places need to be treated with respect and care. That is what the Public Health Agency has to do in collaboration with the providers of the service.
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Madam Chair, I am sorry to say I do not know the exact number. What I do know is that we need to look after all those people who come into Canada and treat them—
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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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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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, $1 billion spent to protect the health and safety of Canadians, I think, is a good idea.
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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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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, it means the increase is tied to an increase in the cost of living.
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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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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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