Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-06-10 13:58

The approach is so very flawed, Madam Chair, in that it attempts to punish people as opposed to encouraging them. I think the Liberals have been overly influenced by the Conservative Party’s cries that there’s vast fraud, that Canadians are cheating. The reality is that if you want to create an incentive to go back to work, you don’t threaten people. What you do is create a sliding scale. You let people continue to receive CERB, but maybe less as they begin to earn more, so that you have a transition on a sliding scale to go into the wage subsidy or into CERB.

I ask the honourable minister this: How can it be considered fair to say that someone isn’t eligible, even though they believed they were? The language in this bill, particularly at proposed paragraph 12.1(1)(e) in the penalties section, is an unreasonable determination that someone has violated the act and is subject to jail time and heavy fines.

Hon. Carla Qualtrough (Delta)
2020-06-10 13:58

Madam Chair, because of parliamentary privilege, I can’t and won’t speak to specific acts of a piece of law that hasn’t actually been introduced in the House, but I’ll tell you that what we’re trying to do is enhance our integrity measures. We’re working with those people who made an honest mistake, those who took advantage of returning to work when they were still receiving the CERB. We’re working with those people. We’re absolutely confident that those people will find a path forward.

We want to deal with intentional fraudsters, people who are criminally taking advantage of seniors. Members of this House have brought fact patterns to my attention and have said, “Please deal with these.” This is exactly what we’re trying to deal with, Madam Chair.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-06-10 13:56

Much worse than part 3, from our point of view, is the treatment of people who are at this point potentially to be jailed for refusing to return to work when it’s considered reasonable and they are recipients of CERB. I wonder about the reasonableness here. It’s a subjective test. This is a wrong-headed approach to go after people and threaten them. The retroactive section has already made the Canadian Civil Liberties Association question its constitutionality.

To the minister, what’s reasonable, and in whose eyes is it reasonable? In today’s news, Hamilton’s chief medical officer says there is a spike in cases among young people, who likely were exposed while taking public transit to get to work. Their commute wasn’t safe. Who determines reasonableness in deciding it’s not safe to go back to work?

Hon. Carla Qualtrough (Delta)
2020-06-10 13:57

Madam Chair, as with the current CERB, moving forward it tries to encompass the situations of people who are unemployed, people who can’t work because of child care responsibilities, people who are ill or sick. Moving to a broad term of “reasonableness” allows us to look at the individual circumstances of the person. If we stuck to language like “suitable” or “appropriate”, that would qualify the job. We’re trying to look at the person and their particular circumstances as we work to ensure that if someone is immunocompromised and can’t take transit to their job, then it’s reasonable for them not to take that job. That’s the exact example we’re trying to encompass with broad “reasonableness” criteria.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-06-10 13:54

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just to put it on the record, because we may or may not be debating it, the draft embargoed bill that we’ve seen is unacceptable to members of the Green Party caucus. My questions will relate largely to those sections that are troublesome.

I’ll start with a question to the honourable minister for disabilities.

I certainly appreciate her work and I know her intentions are the best, but part 3 of this bill allows for the information to be shared so people can get a one-time payment of $600, which is not enough to really deal with the COVID crisis for people with disabilities. It’s clear—and I thank the honourable leader of the New Democratic Party for making this point clearly in question period—it will reach approximately 40% of people with disabilities because of the structure of going through the disability tax credit.

To the honourable minister, are other measures under consideration to reach the rest of the people in Canada with disabilities who need help?

Hon. Carla Qualtrough (Delta)
2020-06-10 13:55

Madam Chair, the disability support payment we are proposing and that we hope to get through the House today complements a whole suite of measures our government has put in place that people with disabilities have access to.

We know that people with disabilities who were precariously employed are now taking advantage of the CERB. Students with disabilities get the student benefit, including a $750-per-month top-up for four months. Families with children with disabilities are getting the CCB payment. Disproportionately, people with disabilities are benefiting from the GST payment. I should talk about the provincial letters that are being delivered to recipients of provincial disability supports.

All around, Madam Chair, we’re trying to get to every citizen with a disability, and this measure fills an important gap.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-05-27 13:52

My next question will be for Minister Blair, but as an aside, I will say that last answer completely fails to meet the legal requirements of the Paris Agreement to file a new target this year.
To save some time, Minister Blair, let’s pretend to go back to the questions from my colleague MP Paul-Hus and to your last answer. This is dealt with on a case-by-case basis by CBSA agents. There are thousands of them. They are exercising personal, subjective judgment. This is not acceptable.

I’m begging the minister. Could the minister please put out a directive, advice to every CBSA agent on the ground, that when a non-status entry point sees a non-status direct relative—husband, wife, child of a Canadian citizen—that relative be deemed to be entering Canada for an essential purpose?

Lib. (ON)
Hon. Bill Blair (Scarborough Southwest)
2020-05-27 13:53

I’d like to thank the member for bringing this issue forward again. It’s an important one.

We have been working very hard to ensure that we do everything possible to keep families together. At the same time, we’ve been working with the provinces and territories, listening to the concerns of Canadians about ensuring that travel across our international border, particularly with the United States, is limited to essential travel. As I’ve indicated, I’ve had a number of important conversations and necessary conversations with our provincial and territorial partners. I believe there is a consensus on the right way forward on this, and we’re working very diligently to put it in place. I want to assure the member opposite that we have given very clear direction to our CBSA officers. I believe our border services officers have been doing an extraordinary job for us in the exercise of their discretion. At the same time, they have been doing the important work of ensuring the health and safety of Canadians at our border.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-05-27 13:50

This question relates to another current emergency: the climate emergency.

This week it was reported that the concentration of greenhouse gases reached 417 parts per million. That’s not just unprecedented over thousands of years; that’s unprecedented over the last one million years. The temperatures in the Arctic broke 86°F, 30°C in the Arctic circle. The recognized parties in the House have established standing committees to work, but not the committee on the environment. We’ve asked for this in negotiations.

When will the recognized parties remember the June 2019 emergency resolution that we are in a climate emergency, and start making sure that we hit 2020 commitments under the Paris Agreement to improve our targets?

Hon. Marc Garneau (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount)
2020-05-27 13:52

Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague’s questions. I will remind her that we have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050. We’ve also committed to surpassing the targets that we had originally set for 2030.

We realize that along with the COVID pandemic, which is the major problem that exists in the world today, there is another problem as well that affects the entire planet, and that is the problem associated with climate change. We remain committed to achieving those targets.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-05-27 13:49

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is with regard to the urgent problem of mental health crises across Canada. My colleague, Jenica Atwin from Fredericton, held a press conference this morning in which she used the term “echo pandemic”. We will face an echo pandemic. We’re already seeing increases in suicides on southern Vancouver Island.

My question to the minister is this: Will we see direct funding to community mental health services as urgently requested by the Canadian Mental Health Association?

Hon. Patty Hajdu (Thunder Bay—Superior North)
2020-05-27 13:50

Mr. Chair, I read the honourable member’s colleague’s letter just today, and I want to reassure all members that we have invested in mental health supports for Canadians, obviously before the pandemic hit but certainly since we’ve been living with the pandemic.

I’d like to remind all members to direct their constituents to the wellnesstogether.ca website and portal. There Canadians can find online resources, as well as connections to real and alive counsellors and other professionals who can help them with their various concerns.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-04-29 14:01

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s good to see the faces of friends, and not just on our laptop screens.

I want to start by positing that in this pandemic, it looks as though the greater the degree of collaboration within a country, the more effective its response to COVID. Contrast, unfortunately, the United States versus New Zealand.

Within Canada, we see that New Brunswick has done very well. New Brunswick is the only province that has put together an all-party cabinet committee to confront COVID-19. I’m wondering if the equivalent of a war cabinet is under consideration by this government.

Right Hon. Justin Trudeau (Papineau)
2020-04-29 14:02

Mr. Chair, like the honourable member, I do want to underline the degree to which Canadians have worked together. Across the provinces and territories, with the federal government, we’ve been able to move forward on significant measures that have worked.

As the member herself has highlighted, the regular calls that public servants give to opposition members have contributed significantly in improving the legislation that we have put forward in this House in response to COVID-19. We will continue to collaborate, but we are not at this time looking at a war-style cabinet.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-04-29 14:02

Mr. Chair, one thing that makes us think of war times, of course, is seeing the enormous struggles on the ground of communities like Fort McMurray. All Canadians are looking at that community and thinking, “Oh, my goodness, how are they facing this?” They had the economic downturn, the fires and now the floods. The other day, the Deputy Prime Minister referred to spring as flood season and summer as fire season. Before the climate crisis, we used to call them spring and summer.

In the context of this pandemic, acknowledging that we are also in a climate emergency, what preparations has the government taken to help house people under evacuation while maintaining the COVID public health advice?

Hon. Bill Blair (Scarborough Southwest)
2020-04-29 14:03

Mr. Chair, I thank the member opposite for a very important question. We share her concern about the challenges facing communities that are experiencing flooding conditions, and that will also perhaps eventually face fire conditions, and ensuring that we can safely house them during those climate emergencies that do take place in our country. We are already facing a situation in Fort McMurray, and we anticipate that in the very near future in many indigenous northern communities we’ll face a similar challenge with regard to ensuring that we find safe housing.

Historically, we would put these people perhaps in a community centre, but that’s not appropriate during this particular medical crisis. We are exploring with our provincial partners all of the ways in which we can safely house those individuals as they face those crises of flooding and fires in their communities.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-04-29 14:05

Thank you.

Turning to the crisis for our seniors, I really want to commend the government. I can see that we’ve been moving, step by step, dealing with the crisis that hit Canadians. A lot of people are still being left behind. In the spirit of pushing for more, I want to know when we are going to help our seniors. They are watching their retirement savings shrink. They are wondering when it is their turn to see some help.

Hon. Mona Fortier (Ottawa—Vanier)
2020-04-29 14:05

Mr. Chair, I thank my honourable colleague for her question.
As we’ve been discussing, since the beginning we’ve been supporting seniors with helping them to get access to their GIS and OAS, and we will continue to do that. We have also invested to make sure they get access to services at their homes or access to more food. We will continue to work with seniors as we go along in this crisis.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-04-29 18:24 [p.2275]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today.

I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-15, an act respecting Canada emergency student benefits. This is another bill in response to the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis, the great pandemic. It is an unparalleled and unprecedented situation.

We have never been through anything like this before, and we are seeing level after level and aspect after aspect of debate taking place in this place on different pieces of legislation as we rush to fill the gaps.

There are a few things to say about this, but before I do, I want to acknowledge that I am honoured to speak today on the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation and express to it our enormous thanks for its patience and generosity. Meegwetch.

We are in the midst of something that we can say is unknown to us, but I was very taken with the analysis by the parliamentary budget office, and I want to speak to that for just a moment.

I am hearing from some constituents who are saying, “Yes, we need all the help we can get right now in this pandemic, but who’s going to pay the bills for all of this? What are we going to do when the bills fall due?” I think it’s important to take a moment there.

I have been privileged to participate in the finance committee meetings and to ask questions of the Bank of Canada governor, Stephen Poloz, who with his team has done an amazing job; to have an insight into what governments all around the world are doing; and to let Canadians know that we are certainly not alone in this. I think it is obvious that we are not alone in fighting the public health crisis that is COVID-19, but we are also not alone in deciding that there are certain prescriptions for an economy that will help us all.

I do not think Canadians have noticed the absence of certain things, but let me just say that there is an absence of things that we would not want to see, such as runs on the bank. We are not seeing people lining up, saying, “I better get my money out right now. I don’t trust the system.” We are not hearing people say, “I can’t make my credit card bills because of usury levels of interest rates that have been hiked up.” We have seen that rates are supposed to be going down. A lot of these things we are seeing are the result of very specific prescriptions that are being followed not just by the Bank of Canada but by central banks around the world.

To colleagues and friends here, I recommend the International Monetary Fund review of what is going on. The trillions of dollars that are being spent by governments around the world are, in a sense, backstopped by monetary policy that says we can get through this, but we have to do a couple of things. We are going to ramp down interest rates to as close to zero as possible, so that the cost of borrowing goes down. We are going to introduce more liquidity into the system with a number of measures, including the Bank of Canada’s purchase of federal bonds and provincial bonds in the billions and billions of dollars. Bond purchases by our central bank do not add to debt or deficit. They increase liquidity and keep cash in the system so that we do not have a credit crunch.

It is important to note that we have been through situations when things were much worse for our financial picture than now. Even when we get through this, after all the money that is planned to be spent, our debt-to-GDP ratio will not be nearly as bad as it was in the early 1990s.

We have the International Monetary Fund report and the report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. No one is sanguine about this, but if we read the International Monetary Fund reports and the report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, as Canadians we are left knowing this: We are not in this alone, and the measures taken by the central bank and by the finance minister and the government are so far not putting us in financial peril.

One of the things we do not mention enough is that we are in a very privileged position. An analogy used by Stephen Poloz when he was speaking to the finance committee is that just as COVID-19 will be much harder for people who have underlying health conditions and do not go into this situation in a healthy state, so too are nation states more at risk when they do not go in healthy. However, we are in a privileged position. Our debt-to-GDP ratio was the lowest in the G7 when this crisis hit, and we had historic levels of employment.

Certainly in my living memory, it is the closest thing to full employment that I have ever seen in Canada. This is what the Governor of the Bank of Canada meant when he talked about fiscal firepower, and the finance minister has used the same term.

That is not to say that this is not a deep economic crisis that has befallen us, along with a big deep public health care crisis that has befallen us, but just to say that it is not piling on debt, while being a deficit for sure.

The PBO suggested that when spending is temporary, such as it is now, we would most likely expect to bounce back as we did at the end of the Second World War with a large surplus in 1947, but only if certain conditions are upheld. One is that we need to hold the country together. I am so grateful to every province when I hear the deputy prime minister say that there are weekly calls with every premier of every province and territory with the Prime Minister. That is a very healthy thing.

I think it is very important that no matter how much sparring is going on today while we are meeting in person, behind the scenes there is tremendous collaboration and no one party can claim credit for things. Yes, the Greens advocated that 10% was not enough and we had to have 75% in the wage subsidy, and that was done. I think that is a credit to all of us in this place, those who came to it more slowly and those who advocated first. We have to work together or we will not get through this.

Back to where we are in terms of our financial position, I am hoping we do not bounce back in the sense that we go to an economy such as we had before, which had glaring inequities. I hope that we bounce forward and that when the pandemic is over that we look at an economic prescription for the country that is consistent with the urgency of the climate crisis, that is consistent with getting people back to work, but doing things like retrofitting our buildings to make sure that we maximize energy efficiency, even that every building could produce more energy that it uses. That is doable. Also, that we have an electricity grid that works as a national energy corridor east to west, north to south, and it is 100% renewable energy.

There are things that we can do so that we can come out of this crisis with, again, closer to full employment and with less social inequity, with clear action to ensure our seniors are well housed and well cared for, with clear action to make sure that we do not have a social safety net full of holes but that it is repaired, and that we move toward guaranteed livable income.

I just made a note of the most recent book title that came to my attention. I commend it to my friends in the Conservative Party because it was written by a Conservative. Senator Hugh Segal’s new book is out and it is called Bootstraps Need Boots: One Tory’s Lonely Fight to End Poverty in Canada. I would love to see that fight be less lonely and I thank our former parliamentary colleague, former Senator Hugh Segal, for bringing forward a book at a time when the topic of guaranteed livable income, or universal basic income, has never been as hot a topic.

I will pause parenthetically because of my recent exchange with the hon. member for London—Fanshawe about the fact that I say guaranteed livable income and others say universal basic income. We have adopted, as Greens, the term “guaranteed livable income” because if we want to make sure that the amount that every Canadian receives actually creates a situation in which they find their situation livable and not beyond some level of poverty from which they are moderately better off than they were before. That is a debate for another day.

We are here to look at Bill C-15. It is coming again, as we have seen, in waves, in response to the pandemic. We can look at it and see that first the government looked at people who did not qualify for EI. What did we do? The Canada emergency benefit, CERB, came in first and then we had to make sure that that amount of money was improved upon by looking at things like reducing student loans. Bill C-13 in this place had 19 different parts and was dealing with the impacts on individual Canadians. There was not enough there for small business. We have been pushing harder on that. Bill C-14 gave us more, looking at programs to help small business with access to loans to cover their rent.

New announcements are made almost daily and we still have people falling through the cracks. We still have small business falling through the cracks. However, some of the people falling through the cracks who are helped today are our students. It is terribly important to recognize that for many students who did not earn $5,000 last year, they will not qualify for the CERB. For some other reasons, they certainly cannot expect to find jobs this summer in their chosen field and the Canada summer jobs program cannot absorb the number of people who need the income supports right now and who need enough money to live on.

Many students are, as we have heard today, people living as a married couple with children, or a single mom with children also going to school. Currently, the benefit provided in this piece of legislation is not adequate to help all of those people with their bills because the amount of money in the initial offering is $1,250.

However, I note that under this legislation the minister may make changes by regulation to improve that. That of course is the minister of employment and social development. This piece of legislation requires that the minister receive approval by the Minister of Finance to make changes to the amount received or the weeks it is available.

Personally, I would have gone in the other direction with this legislation. The Conservatives have made it more restrictive. I would have made sure that the minister for employment and social development could make those changes without permission from the Minister of Finance because they make so much sense.

I want to pause because I note the minister for employment and social development has been with us all day today. I want to thank her for her hard work. I know she has been working around the clock like many ministers. I know she is a mom with kids at home. Like all of my friends with kids still at home, keeping the kids occupied while also being on a computer and the phone day and night to make some of the most massive changes in that portfolio and in living memory is daunting. I want to thank her for her diligence.

The missing piece in this that still concerns the Greens greatly is what we are doing for international students. This legislation applies to a person who is a Canadian citizen, it certainly applies to indigenous Canadians, it applies to permanent residents as found under the definitions in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act or a protected person under the meaning of that act as well. What do we do about our international students?

We have something in the order of potentially half a million international students in this country now. The international students program contributes over $20 billion to our economy and leads to the employment of 170,000 Canadians. As we all know, international students pay far higher fees. They come into Canada and of course contribute to our economy by paying their rent and buying their groceries.

I do not know how many members saw on CBC a few nights back a young woman being interviewed about her experience as a foreign student in Canada. Her landlady was telling her not to worry and that if she could not pay the rent, she would not charge her. She was also giving her groceries. That is a really wonderful Canadian moment. It brought tears to my eyes to hear this young student saying that if it were not for her landlady, she would have neither a roof over her head nor food.

What about the international students who do not have a landlady like that? So far here are their options. If they made $5,000 last year, they can qualify for the CERB, but if they did not make that amount of money, they will not qualify. If they are an international student and also a permanent resident, they would qualify under today’s bill for the emergency benefit for students. However, if they are not a permanent resident, if they only have their student visa to be in Canada, they would not qualify.

We still have a problem. It has been identified by the Canadian Federation of Students, which is asking for improvements to this bill. It has two asks. One is that it be $2,000 a month, which is something the minister can do by regulation after this bill passes, but we would have to come back here and re-legislate this to change the definition of “student” in order to allow it to apply to an international student, unless we tinker with one of the other programs such as the Canada summer jobs program. There is still a deep concern for people who are falling between the cracks.

For the simplest way to avoid falling between the cracks, I go back to my earlier reference to a guaranteed livable income. That would be one way of making sure there would be no one in Canada so economically insecure they would be pushed out of the place they are living, unable to afford food, and unable to find a job and not fitting any of the existing programs.

I am grateful for the effort of everybody in the cabinet who have been working so hard, as well as all the civil servants who clearly have been working. As members of Parliament, we are on the phone with them on Saturdays and Sundays. If Canadians do not know, everybody I can find within any government department is working really long days seven days a week.

I have worked with them on rescuing Canadians stranded in other countries. It is extraordinary. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the whole team at Global Affairs Canada seem to have converted themselves into what I have been doing at home myself, part-time travel agent, but to rescue over 20,000 Canadians from over 144 countries is a monumental feat. However, I see the same level of hard work happening when we have Sunday phone calls and my questions are being answered by officials in the Department of Finance, correctional services or indigenous services.

By thanking everyone involved, I am not saying everything is perfect, but for Canadians watching or listening to this now, they need to know that thousands of people are working in ways that I have never seen a government work ever in my life. It is important to say to them, as we say to our front-line health care workers, to the people in our neighbourhoods who are still stocking the grocery store shelves, who are driving the trucks, who are planting their fields now so we will have food in this country, to everybody who is doing the work while most of us are locked up at home, we are deeply grateful, including all of the civil servants who I know have been knocking themselves out.

I heard a story from a friend about a family Zoom call and the husband of one of the people on the family Zoom call mentioned that his wife was working in the federal civil service. He started to say “my wife”, broke down and started crying. There is a level of strain on families working in the federal civil service and I want to pause to say thanks to everyone who is working so hard.

When I mention the gaps, it is not to say this is not good enough and I am angry with the government. It is to say we have to keep working. Maybe, in hindsight, we can agree it would have been better to bring in one measure, as we have been advocating, but I am not angry the Government of Canada has failed to do that so far. What we need to do is help each other as much as possible. I think that means being kind toward those who we see are falling short of what needs to be done, recognizing that nobody has ever worked this hard ever. If we hold together as a country and keep our partisanship to a bare minimum, though I would actually like to see it erased into a nothingness that says we are all in this together, there is plenty of time when it is over to try to get a gotcha point in to try to score something for television, but right now we need to be deeply grateful that we are in this country.

We could be anywhere around the world and trying to rescue people. Knowing what is going on in places like Ecuador and India, knowing what might happen in the continent of Africa, knowing how hard people are working and knowing how relatively safe we all are, I know every single person in this place recognizes how very fortunate we are as a country and as a people.

I also ask us to think in this moment about whether we cannot do more for the developing world, if we cannot do more to avert famine, if cannot see ourselves stretching ourselves a bit more. However, for now, I will be voting for this legislation, but with a very strong plea that we do more for our international students, that we figure a program out where it is needed, so that no student falls through the cracks.

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