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Results: 31 - 45 of 223
View Bob Zimmer Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak in support and recognition of today being Red Dress Day. It started with the REDress art installation project by Jaime Black.
Red dresses hung in public spaces are a visual reminder of Canada's missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It has grown into a national day of awareness. It is a day dedicated to remembering and honouring the precious lives that have been lost and to stand against racism and hate.
The victims of these horrific tragedies and their families deserve justice today. A red dress is on display at each of my three constituency offices to honour these indigenous women and girls. I encourage everyone to wear red today to help raise awareness to support the victims and families of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
View Jagmeet Singh Profile
NDP (BC)
View Jagmeet Singh Profile
2021-05-05 14:48 [p.6675]
Mr. Speaker, the problem is that those aggressive commitments continue to be broken and pushed back again and again.
Another commitment the government made was to do something about the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls calls for justice. Today is a national day to recognize the losses, reflect on those losses and commit to doing something to protect indigenous women and girls. It has been two years since the report. Why has the Liberal government not done anything to advance those calls for justice to truly honour and respect the demands and needs of the indigenous communities?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Justin Trudeau Profile
2021-05-05 14:49 [p.6675]
Mr. Speaker, today is Red Dress Day, the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. We honour and remember the women, girls, two-spirit and gender-diverse people who have been taken from their families and communities. We are actively working with provinces and territories, indigenous leaders, survivors and families to develop a national action plan that sets a clear road map to keep indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people safe. From the very beginning, we have made investments and fought against gender-based violence and the ongoing tragedy that is missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We will continue to work hand in hand on this path to reconciliation.
View Elizabeth May Profile
GP (BC)
View Elizabeth May Profile
2021-05-05 20:37 [p.6728]
Mr. Speaker, my thanks to my hon. colleague from Jonquière for splitting his time with me.
We are in a terrible place now. When we were first getting used to the idea that we were in a pandemic and needed to adjourn Parliament on March 13, 2020, some of us stood in this place to say that by unanimous consent we were going to adjourn until April 20, 2020. It seems absurd now. I clearly remember saying that the Greens had given their unanimous consent, while wondering if we really needed to stay out as long as April 20. It seemed maybe a little extreme, but we would see.
We have learned a lot. We started talking about flattening the curve. We thought that would be adequate, because we were told it would be, but we have learned more. This has been a very steep learning curve. We could have learned faster, gone faster, and followed the models of countries like New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, the countries that decided to go hard and fast, using the kind of advice that the World Health Organization, Dr. Michael Ryan, recommended back then of, “Go hard, go fast. Don't wait to be perfect. Speed trumps perfection.” I thought we were going fast and I certainly am not at the level of someone who wants to start casting blame.
I find this debate tonight difficult because, as much as there is blame to be cast, does it help? I do not want the people of Alberta to feel that the federal Parliament has decided to lay into them with clubs. It is pretty clear that their premier miscalculated badly and cost people's lives.
I want to reflect a bit on something that I do not think gets said enough in this place. I think there is a perception in Alberta that people like me, who want to see the fossil fuel industry shut down, phased out over time and take care of the workers that that somehow means we do not love Alberta. I really love Alberta and I love Albertans.
I have so much respect for the grit of Alberta in facing major disasters. I remember very clearly, of course, the 2013 floods in Calgary. I went. I pulled rotted debris from people's basements in High River because I found myself in the days after the 2013 flood in Calgary for the stampede and just thought I could be more useful if I got a friend and we went up to High River to see if we could help. I have the t-shirt that says, “Come Hell or High Water”. Mayor Nenshi decided that even though it looked impossible to have the stampede, they were going to have it. I admire that spirit.
Soon thereafter, during the 2016 fires at Fort McMurray, there was incredible community spirit with no one left behind. There was a very strong image of a patient, orderly evacuation with fires on all sides, and the residents of Fort McMurray moving out along the single road. If somebody's car ran out of gas, they got into somebody else's car. It was inspiring.
For Alberta to be the site of the highest COVID rates in North America is devastatingly frightening, because we know more about this pandemic now. We know about this virus. We know the longer the virus lives among us, the more likely we are in a human petri dish to have more dangerous variants. We do not know yet if it is all about getting vaccines in case a variant overcomes a vaccine. We are in a very dangerous place during this third wave.
Today we are marking Red Dress Day, to think about and to pledge solidarity with all of the families of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It was early June, two years ago, that the government had delivered unto it the report of the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirited peoples. One of the inquiry's key recommendations was to shut down the “man camps”. At that point, the threat to human life was from what were called the “man camps” in the inquiry. Many Canadians may not know the term, but it meant that large construction sites represent a threat to the vulnerable, to the marginalized who have to hitchhike.
I know there was a very strong reaction from people in Alberta, and of course most of the workers are the dads, the grandads, the brothers, the sons and thoroughly decent people, but there is no question but that the evidence shows that missing and murdered indigenous women and girls are at more risk when there are transient camps of workers.
In COVID, I just want to ask why it is that we, public health officials and governments, decided that when others things had to close down, like mom-and-pop shops and various places where people might have been able to be better off than in a concentrated place like a work camp, the work camps were so essential that we could not shut them down. The highest rates of COVID in Alberta right now are in the region of the oil sands. They have very high rates.
In British Columbia the NDP Government of British Columbia has decided Site C is so important to continue, that we would not possibly think of shutting it down when it has outbreaks. We have outbreaks right now at the Site C dam site, the Kitimat LNG facilities that are being built, along the Trans Mountain pipeline construction link, the Coastal GasLink. All the man camps turn out to also be places where COVID flourishes.
One of the key things about the oil sands is that the workers commute by airplane. Members can think of poor Newfoundland and Labrador, where they were in the Atlantic bubble and felt that the rates were low enough to meet the requirement under Newfoundland and Labrador law that new Premier Andrew Furey had to call an election within a few months. Suddenly, they had an outbreak of COVID from the oil sands workers, and they are having them now. If we search this we will find it everywhere that academics and scientists are saying they have a problem with these fly-in, fly-out camps. One expert said that COVID did not just walk in there by itself, it showed up on an airplane.
While we worry about international borders and why we are not being tighter with our borders, how is it that we are so addicted to oil that we turn a blind eye to the impact of these man camps that we should have been shutting down, or at least ensuring that the work force there was not commuting across many provincial borders? There were ways, perhaps, to keep people in the construction industry working when many other industries were shut down, but we have turned a blind eye to the fact of these squashed, busy workplaces like slaughterhouses. We have shut down parts of our economy, but turned a blind eye to the places that seem to me, in reviewing the evidence, to be the places where COVID flourishes.
We have seen the mayor of Lethbridge, Chris Spearman, say, “We have done the least of the provinces. We’ve tolerated protests against masks and at the hospital and rapid vaccination clinic.” We need to do more. One of the Albertans I admire the most, because he is brilliant, is journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, who wrote a piece just a few days ago in The Tyee entitled “A Coronavirus Hell of Kenney’s Own Making”. I only mention the title so members can look it up.
He said the “numbers reflect, first and foremost, Premier Jason Kenney’s callous and persistent disregard for scientific findings and mathematical reality.” One of those mathematical realities is exponential growth. Alberta is in a dangerous place right now, and it is certainly not the fault of Albertans. We had a government in Alberta that, over Christmas, had a fairly significant portion of its elected provincial leadership decide it was okay to go on a vacation. As I dug into it, I found one of the ministers excused herself by saying she wanted to make sure she was helping the airlines in this economic crisis. I thought it was a facetious comment that would not land well, but then I read further and found that the premier had thought it was a good way to help WestJet and that there would be a kind of safety on an Alberta-to-Hawaii corridor that could somehow live outside the reality of COVID.
There were problems in leadership. There were problems of not leading by example. There were problems in not wanting to address the science of COVID by allowing the policies to be ideological. None of us can let this be ideological. We have to set aside whatever partisanship we bring to this and end up where Andrew Nikiforuk's article ended, which was, “It's time to pray for Alberta,” and I will also note that faith by itself does not do the work.
We need to do the work to help Alberta and Albertans in any way we can.
View Leah Gazan Profile
NDP (MB)
View Leah Gazan Profile
2021-05-03 14:47 [p.6529]
Mr. Speaker, a national action plan to implement the calls to justice in response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is almost two years late, and every time I try to get an update from the minister she tells me she is working on it.
Another woman goes missing or murdered: “I'm working on it.”
A girl goes missing, leaving her family searching for their loved one: “We're making progress.”
A 2SLGBTQQIA individual is beaten: “I'm working on it.”
The Liberal stalling is costing lives. When will the government release a national action plan to address this ongoing genocide?
View Carolyn Bennett Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her concern, and our hearts are with all the families and survivors in this ongoing tragedy. There is no question the 100 indigenous women and two-spirited and LGBTQQIA+ people working on this plan were very, very pleased to see $2.2 billion put in last week's budget to put in place the concrete actions that will stop this tragedy.
View Leah Gazan Profile
NDP (MB)
View Leah Gazan Profile
2021-04-27 14:48 [p.6246]
Mr. Speaker, the government is almost two years late releasing a national action plan to uphold the calls for justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. What do we see? Internal emails showing a continuation of a fragmented, uncoordinated response by the RCMP, a failure to address call for justice 9.5. COVID is not an excuse. Indigenous women and girls and 2SLGBTQ2IA individuals continue to go missing and murdered.
When will the government release a national action plan to stop this ongoing genocide?
View Carolyn Bennett Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, as always, our hearts are with the survivors, the families of the missing and murdered indigenous women, two-spirit and gender-diverse people. They are helping us develop the best possible effective and accountable national action plan.
In the response to the first-ever national public inquiry on this ongoing national tragedy, our government is working with all provincial and territorial governments as well as indigenous leaders, survivors and families to develop that national action plan that will set a clear road map to ensure that indigenous women and girls and two-spirited people are safe wherever they live and—
View Gudie Hutchings Profile
Lib. (NL)
View Gudie Hutchings Profile
2021-04-26 17:13 [p.6196]
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to discuss budget 2021, a transformative agenda that values the work of women and recognizes the contribution of women in creating a more sustainable and resilient economy.
I will be sharing my time today with my colleague, the member for Surrey Centre.
Budget 2021 is a feminist plan. It is a plan built from the continuous advocacy of Canadian women all across our country from coast to coast to coast, and for the first time in our country's history, it was tabled by a woman.
We have long understood that supporting women's safety, prosperity and leadership will help ensure a truly inclusive post-pandemic recovery.
All throughout the last year, we have heard from front-line organizations and women's rights advocates who have been doing the heavy lifting throughout this pandemic. I am proud of this gender-progressive plan, because I know it will make a difference for millions of women and under-represented Canadians.
It has now been over a year since COVID-19 first impacted our communities. This has been a hard time for everyone, but it has been particularly difficult for those who are already marginalized, vulnerable or struggling.
Women, girls, LGBTQ2 people, youth, indigenous people and minority groups have been hit the hardest by COVID-19.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, women have faced job losses, reduced work hours and have had to take on most of the additional unpaid care responsibilities at home. In the early stages of the pandemic, women lost jobs at almost twice the rate of men. This was particularly true for young women and younger people in general. More than a year later, women are still struggling. During the second and now the third wave of COVID-19, as the public restrictions have tightened again, women have lost jobs again at nearly double the rate of men.
In times of greater isolation, we have seen an increase in intimate partner violence as well as unprecedented barriers for those seeking help. Let us pause and think about what this really means.
When the world shut down, it took away safe locations for women to access outside their homes. It created new barriers for child care, employment loss and took away community supports. In the third wave of the pandemic, the problem is only getting worse for these women. Rates of gender-based violence have increased somewhere between 20% to 30%, and the severity of violence experienced by women has intensified.
The prevalence of gender-based violence means that it is happening or has happened to someone near us. It means that it is happening in my community and it is happening in other members' communities too. If any of the women or girls we know are indigenous, living with a disability, lesbian, bisexual or trans, then they are at an even greater risk.
From the onset of this pandemic, our government has been there for Canadians. We have provided the support they need to continue to make ends meet while staying safe and healthy. We also took action in providing $100 million in emergency funding to women's shelters and sexual assault centres to help them accommodate public health measures and to keep their doors open during this crucial time. This funding supported over 1,000 organizations and another 500 are receiving long-term funding. Six million people have benefited from their important work.
We know that women's safety has to be the cornerstone of all progress. Budget 2021 reflects that commitment.
This budget includes significant, historic investments to address and prevent gender-based violence. We are committing $601.3 million over five years to continue work on the national action plan to end gender-based violence. This includes $200 million over two years to support gender-based violence organizations; $105 million over five years to enhance a gender-based violence program with a focus on initiatives that engage men and boys, combat human trafficking, support at-risk populations and survivors and provides support for testing and implementing best practices; $14 million over five years for a dedicated secretariat to coordinate the ongoing work toward the development of an implementation of a national action plan to end gender-based violence; $11 million over five years for gender-based violence research and knowledge mobilization; $55 million over five years to support gender-based violence prevention programming led by indigenous women and LGBTQ people; and $30 million over five years for crisis hotlines to serve the urgent needs of more Canadians to prevent the escalation of gender-based violence.
It is impossible to speak about gender-based violence without acknowledging the disproportionate violence, systemic racism and the long-standing structural and inequalities faced by indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, and LGBTQ2 people in Canada. It is an injustice that simply cannot continue.
This budget includes $2.2 billion over five years and $106.9 million ongoing to support initiatives to preserve, restore and promote indigenous culture and language, foster health systems free from racism, support culturally responsive of policing, develop an indigenous justice strategy to address systemic discrimination, enhance support for indigenous women and LGBTQ organizations, and work with indigenous partners to monitor and to measure the progress.
We are also taking action to support a more diverse and inclusive Canada through targeted measures to promote LGBTQ equality, promote LGBTQ rights and address discrimination against LGBTQ communities both past and current. This includes investing $15 million over three years for a new LGBTQ2 projects fund. This will support community-informed initiatives to overcome key issues facing the LGBTQ communities, such as assessing mental health services and employment support.
Earlier this year, courageous women have been sharing their stories of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces and unfortunately, these stories are not new. For 30 years, women have been advocating for cultural change. This was highlighted in the Deschamps report. Now we are at a pivotal point where we can actually make it happen.
This budget also includes $236.2 million over five years and $33.5 million per year ongoing to the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada to support the contributions to the national action plan to end gender-based violence and expand their work to support survivors and eliminate sexual misconduct and gender-based violence in the military.
Our government had committed that there was no recovery without child care, and we are delivering on that. The budget makes a generational investment of $30 billion over five years and $8.3 billion ongoing to build a Canada-wide early learning and child care system.
Only weeks ago, a Conservative member introduced back door anti-abortion legislation. Women are tired of this debate. Women and women alone have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. To provide every person in Canada with equal access to sexual and reproductive health resources and services, no matter where one lives, budget 2021 commits $45 million to improve access to sexual and reproductive health care support, information and services for vulnerable populations.
Since we know that being able to stay home and stay safe is not an option for everyone, we are investing $2.5 billion in additional funding over seven years and $1.3 billion in reallocating funding to support a wide-range of affordable housing initiatives. That includes $1.5 billion to address the urgent housing needs of vulnerable Canadians; $315 million over seven years to help low-income women and children fleeing violence with their rent payments; and $250 million in reallocated funding to support the construction, repair and operating costs of an estimated 560 units of transitional housing and shelter spaces for women and children fleeing violence.
Women still face unique and systemic barriers to starting and growing businesses, so to help women entrepreneurs adapt their businesses to meet current and future challenges, we are committing up to $146.9 million over four years to strengthen the women entrepreneurship strategy.
To provide affordable high-quality, high-speed Internet to everyone in Canada, including those living in rural, northern and remote communities, we are investing an additional $1 billion over six years for the universal broadband fund. That is bringing us one step closer to reaching our goal of connecting 98% of Canadians all across the country by 2026 and all Canadians by 2030.
As we celebrate our progress, we recognize that there is still a lot more to do.
We know there can be no recovery from the pandemic if we do not address the systemic challenges and inequalities facing women. They have been amplified through this past year—
View Iqra Khalid Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Iqra Khalid Profile
2021-04-22 10:27 [p.6000]
Madam Speaker, I will start by sharing the story of Sandy, a constituent of mine. She has a really good education, but her struggles are those of many Canadians around the world. She gave up her career to start a family, and she continued to stay away from her career because child care in Ontario was too expensive and the waiting list was too long. Now, as her children are age five and seven, she finds herself living in a shelter, because she does not have housing as she tries to flee from an abusive marriage. She is now working part time while staying at this transitional house for women just like her. She is looking for housing and a stable job, but because of COVID, the situation of schools, and everything becoming so precarious, it is so hard for her to get into that workforce. The jobs that she does find are precarious, part-time and minimum-wage.
Women, in particular low-income women, have been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. They have faced steep job losses and shouldered the burden of unpaid care work at home. All the while, many have bravely served on the front lines of this crisis in our communities. There is no doubt that we remain firmly in a “she-cession” as lockdowns continue to impact our communities and many Canadians stay at home to stem the spread of an even more aggressive third wave.
I have heard from businesses in my riding about what would ensure the health of the economy of a city like Mississauga, a province like Ontario and, indeed, a country like Canada. For example, the Mississauga Board of Trade in my city has been quite clear: We need to have increased labour force participation. We need to have an empowered labour force of people who are willing, able and eager to contribute to our economy, to empower themselves and those around them, and to bring financial stability and economic prosperity, not just for themselves and their families but for all Canadians. Based on that feedback, our government has a plan through budget 2021 to emerge from the pandemic with a stronger and more inclusive society. Increasing opportunities for women's participation in our economy is at the forefront of our growth and recovery plan.
As I mentioned, the closure of schools and child care centres due to COVID-19 has really exacerbated work-life balance challenges for parents, and especially for women. It has made it more difficult for some women to work full time or, in some cases, such as Sandy, at all. More than 16,000 women have dropped out of the labour force completely, while the male labour force has grown by about 91,000. Child care is an essential social infrastructure and without it, parents, particularly women, cannot fully participate in our economy. Parents have told me this. Businesses have told me this. Single mothers have told me this.
This is an economic issue as much as it is a social issue. TD Economics has pointed to a range of studies that have shown that for every dollar spent on early childhood education, the broader economy receives between $1.50 and $2.80 in return. It is a sound investment. We can simply look at the impact of Quebec's early learning and child care system, where women in the province with children under the age of three have some of the highest employment rates in the world. Further, a study shows that child care alone has raised Quebec's GDP by 1.7%.
It is clear: Now is the time for the rest of Canada to learn from Quebec's example, and this is exactly what our government is proposing to do through budget 2021. We are making generational investments of up to $30 billion over five years to work with provincial, territorial and indigenous partners to build a Canada-wide, community-based system of quality child care, bringing the federal government to a fifty-fifty share of child care costs with provincial and territorial governments and meeting the needs of indigenous families.
Our government's plan includes a strategy for unprecedented expansion in child care across the country. This proposed investment would also be a critical part of reconciliation.
Early learning and child care programs designed by and with indigenous families and communities give indigenous children the best start in life. That is why this generational investment includes $2.5 billion over five years toward an early learning and child care system that meets the needs of indigenous families.
By 2025-26, new investments in child care will reach a minimum of $8.3 billion per year ongoing, including indigenous early learning and child care.
Our vision is to bring fees down to $10 per day on average by 2025-26 everywhere in Canada outside of Quebec. This would start with a 50% reduction in average fees for preschool care by 2022. Simply put, this investment will drive jobs and growth. It is a smart economic policy and it is the right policy for Canadians at this juncture.
However, it is not the only way that we are supporting women through budget 2021.
Budget 2021 also lays out an expansive jobs and growth plan that is very much a feminist plan. It seeks to build a recovery that gives all women in Canada the ability to fully participate in our economy.
For example, Canadian women entrepreneurs still face unique and systemic barriers to starting and growing a business. In light of this pandemic, that has become even more challenging.
To address these challenges, budget 2021 proposes to provide up to $146.9 million to strengthen the women entrepreneurship strategy, which will help provide greater access to financing, and support mentorship and training activities. Ensuring women have opportunities to work and grow in their businesses is absolutely crucial, but, of course, protecting the health and safety of women is also a priority.
Our government is also moving forward on developing a national action plan to end gender-based violence through new proposed investments of over $600 million, which will provide support for action against gender-based violence, for indigenous women and for 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations, for the design and delivery of interventions that promote healthy relations and prevent violence and for increased access to information and support. This is in addition to reallocating $250 million in existing funding to support housing and shelter spaces for women and children fleeing violence.
We are accelerating work on a national action plan in response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ calls for justice and the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. To support this work, budget 2021 proposes to invest an additional $2.2 billion over five years, and $160.9 million ongoing, to help build a safer, stronger and more inclusive society.
Finally, budget 2021 proposes to invest $236.2 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, and $33.5 million per year ongoing to expand work to eliminate sexual misconduct and gender-based violence in the military and support survivors. This investment will reinforce the systemic efforts to change the culture and working conditions in the Canadian Armed Forces. Ultimately, these measures support the objective of increasing representation of women in the Canadian Armed Forces from 15% to 25% by 2026, which, if achieved, will further positively reinforce culture change.
It is absolutely absurd to think that, in 2021, we are talking about the need for some of these measures instead of simply living in a society where women and men are on equal footing, with the same opportunities to succeed in a truly inclusive society.
Our government will continue to build a feminist intersectional action plan for women in the economy that will work to push past systemic barriers and inequalities for good. The—
View Jenny Kwan Profile
NDP (BC)
View Jenny Kwan Profile
2021-04-20 18:40 [p.5902]
Madam Speaker, one year ago, my riding was shaken by the tragic news of a newborn infant found deceased in a portable toilet in the Downtown Eastside. That horrifying incident was followed by a horrendous video where a woman was violently assaulted in broad daylight and nobody did a thing to help.
Community advocates believe that there are numerous factors that led to these tragedies, some of which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but most of which had started long before. They call on the government to work collaboratively with advocates in the Downtown Eastside to develop an immediate action plan to end violence against women and to provide core funding to advocacy groups and service providers. Sadly, this has fallen on deaf ears.
Our social security net is woefully inadequate in meeting the needs of those most in need. Too many live below the poverty line. Too many do not have access to safe, secure, affordable housing. Too many cannot afford the medication that they need.
At the grassroots level, family and community members in the Downtown Eastside continue to lead the effort in locating women and loved ones who are still going missing without any government support for their efforts. Other grassroots and frontline organizations had to resort to crowdfunding when they could not access government funding.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these existing issues and pushed them to a breaking point, which has led to one horrific tragedy after another. There are many emergent issues that have been coined with the term “shadow pandemic” over the years. Rising violence against women is one and rising racism is another. There has also been a sharp rise in gender-based and domestic violence since the onset of the pandemic and quarantine directives.
Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 700%. Homelessness continues to be a growing problem and in B.C., the opioid overdose continues to kill more people than the pandemic itself. Why is it that the federal Liberal government refuses to declare a national health emergency on the opioid crisis?
The housing crisis has been named time and again as one of the key contributing factors in violence against women, especially indigenous women. Access to washrooms, sanitization facilities and other safe community spaces for women in the Downtown Eastside have been inadequate before the pandemic and the pandemic has made the situation so much worse. Surely, the government recognizes that all of these issues are interconnected and require an urgent, comprehensive and intersectional approach.
On July 28, the YWCA and the Institute for Gender and the Economy released “A Feminist Recovery Plan for Canada”. The report identified that the COVID-19 pandemic is having disproportionate economic, health and social impacts on women. Economic precarity and housing precarity are intrinsically linked. Women workers are on the front lines of the pandemic as the majority of women workers are concentrated in the essential occupations that cannot be done remotely, including health care, cashiers, restaurant workers, cleaners and clerical functions.
As a result, COVID cases and deaths have also been experienced disproportionally by women and 63% of pandemic job losses were experienced by women. For every three months of lockdown, there has been a 20% to 22% increase in domestic violence and the majority of victims of anti-Asian violence have been women.
The pandemic should have been a giant wake-up call that spurs urgent and significant investments to address the core fundamental issues that Canadians struggle with. The government must come to the table with community advocates and develop an action plan to address violence against women and provide stable funding to NGOs on the ground. The lives and safety of women are at risk.
View Gudie Hutchings Profile
Lib. (NL)
View Gudie Hutchings Profile
2021-04-20 18:44 [p.5903]
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Vancouver East for her important and continuous advocacy for survivors of gender-based violence.
Gender-based violence has devastating impacts on women, children and their families. I commend the Downtown Eastside community advocates in Vancouver as they work tirelessly to provide services to women in need. We hear them, we see them and we are working with them.
Even before COVID-19 came into our lives, gender-based violence was all too prevalent in Canada. Since 2015, our government has taken immediate steps to end it in all forms. More recently, we have seen how the pandemic has increased barriers for women and we have been active on the file, collaborating with all governments and advocates as well as women's and equality-seeking organizations across Canada, including those in British Columbia and Vancouver.
In recent years, we have worked closely with the Feminists Deliver working group and we have sought advice from equality-seeking organizations across British Columbia to support those experiencing social and economic marginalization, including people experiencing marginalization due to their gender, their gender identity and their gender expression. We have discussed our mobilization efforts on gender equality and highlighted the importance of inclusion and the need to elevate unheard and diverse voices.
Women's organizations in Vancouver and all across Canada continue to be the backbone of the movement. They have worked tirelessly to protect and advance the rights of women, girls and people of all gender identities and expressions. These organizations provide shelter, healing and guidance. They serve survivors and their families from all ethnocultural communities, all religions, all work backgrounds and with a multiplicity of life experiences. We have made it our utmost priority to fund and support their work to ensure they have the resources they need to best serve women, girls, LGBTQ2 and gender-diverse peoples.
Since 2015, Women and Gender Equality Canada has invested more than $118 million in over 300 organizations all across Canada for 345 projects addressing violence.
In 2017, we launched the first-ever national strategy to end gender-based violence, and this was supported by an investment of $200 million, which was a landmark in our commitment to the safety and security of women.
In Vancouver, we have invested more than $9 million in 20 organizations for 23 projects addressing a variety of pressing issues affecting women and girls, such as gender-based violence, human trafficking, homelessness, LGBTQ2 equality and indigenous women's safety. We also provided over $1.4 million in emergency COVID-19 funding to 39 organizations in Vancouver alone.
Yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, tabled the budget for 2020-21, our plan to continue the fight against COVID-19 and to ensure a resilient economy and a feminist recovery. Our government, alongside all our partners in the provinces and territories and indigenous leaders, are moving forward with a national action plan to end gender-based violence. Budget 2020-21 builds on this work, and is investing over $600 million over five years.
Women have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic, but we have always been at the forefront of our recovery. We know of the devastating increase of gender-based violence and intimate partner violence. Each life lost is a tragedy. The investments from budget 2020-21 will make a difference. From my riding in the Long Range Mountains to the hon. member's community in Vancouver East—
View Jenny Kwan Profile
NDP (BC)
View Jenny Kwan Profile
2021-04-20 18:48 [p.5904]
Madam Speaker, if the Liberal government sees the people in the Downtown Eastside and the organizations that work every day to support the community in need, will it then provide them with core funding and stable funding so they do not have to scramble around from program to program to provide the supports that are so necessary in the community? Will the government then provide resources to the families that are putting up posters for women and girls who are still missing in the indigenous community so they do not have to scramble around to do that work on their own?
The government must use an intersectional gender-based analysis to understand the differential impacts of COVID-19 in policy and program design to ensure that economic recovery policies address gender-based inequalities. It should also ensure that urgent action is taken. It should give them core funding, stable funding and take immediate action to support the families that do this important work right now in our communities. That would be a good start.
View Gudie Hutchings Profile
Lib. (NL)
View Gudie Hutchings Profile
2021-04-20 18:49 [p.5904]
Madam Speaker, we have listened to more than 1,000 experts and advocates working to prevent and address gender-based violence across the country as we build the national action plan. We have heard all of their comments and concerns, and that will be built into the plan. With their help, we are going to reach the most affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the women experiencing GBV in B.C.
Since day one, we have been there for Canadians through the pandemic. We have provided $100 million in emergency funding to those organizations. It got out the door right away, and we are going to continue to provide and help them provide their essential service. We are going to continue to have their backs, too.
Our investments supported more than 1,500 frontline organizations that delivered essential services to survivors of gender-based violence and over six million people benefited every year from the important work of these organizations.
Yesterday, history was made when the first female finance minister tabled the budget to make transformative investments toward a safer and more inclusive Canada. Our government has a strong record in progressing for equality and combatting gender-based violence. There is more work to be done, and we are committed to getting it done.
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
moved:
That this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government.
She said: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 83(1), I would like to table, in both official languages, the budget documents for 2021, including the notices of ways and means motions.
The details of the measures are included in these documents.
Pursuant to Standing Order 83(2), I am requesting that an order of the day be designated for consideration of these motions.
I would like to begin by taking a moment to mourn the tragedy in Nova Scotia a year ago yesterday. We grieve with the families and friends of the 22 people who were killed, and all Nova Scotians.
This is also a day when people across Canada are fighting the most virulent wave of the virus we have experienced so far. Health care workers in many provinces are struggling to keep ICUs from overflowing and millions of Canadians are facing stringent new restrictions.
We are all tired, frustrated and even afraid, but we will get through this. We will do it together.
This budget is about finishing the fight against COVID. It is about healing the economic wounds left by the COVID recession. And it is about creating more jobs and prosperity for Canadians in the days—and decades—to come.
It is about meeting the urgent needs of today and about building for the long term. It is a budget focused on middle-class Canadians and on pulling more Canadians up into the middle class. It is a plan that embraces this moment of global transformation to a green, clean economy.
This budget addresses three fundamental challenges.
First, we need to conquer COVID. That means buying vaccines and supporting provincial and territorial health care systems. It means enforcing our quarantine rules at the border and within the country. It means providing Canadians and Canadian businesses with the support they need to get through these tough third wave lockdowns and to come roaring back when the economy fully reopens.
Second, we must punch our way out of the COVID recession. That means ensuring lost jobs are recovered as swiftly as possible and hard-hit businesses rebound quickly. It means providing support where COVID has struck the hardest to women, to young people, to low-wage workers and to small and medium-sized businesses, especially in tourism and hospitality.
The final challenge is to build a more resilient Canada: better, more fair, more prosperous and more innovative. That means investing in Canada's green transition and the green jobs that go with it, in Canada's digital transformation and Canadian innovation, and in building infrastructure for a dynamic growing country. It means providing Canadians with social infrastructure from early learning and child care to student grants and income top-ups, so that the middle class can flourish and more Canadians can join it.
Our elders have been this virus's principal victims. The pandemic has preyed on them mercilessly, ending thousands of lives and forcing all seniors into fearful isolation. We have failed so many of those living in long-term care facilities. To them, and to their families, let me say this: I am so sorry. We owe you so much better than this.
That is why we propose a $3-billion investment to help ensure that provinces and territories provide a high standard of care in their long-term care facilities.
And we are delivering today on our promise to increase old age security for Canadians 75 and older.
Our government has been urgently procuring vaccines since last spring and providing them at no cost to Canadians. Nearly 10 million Canadians have received at least one dose of vaccine. By the end of September, Canada will have received 100 million doses, enough to fully vaccinate every adult Canadian.
We need to be ready for new variants of COVID, and we must have the booster shots that will allow us to keep them in check. That is why we are rebuilding our national biomanufacturing capacity so that we can make these vaccines here in Canada. Canada has brilliant scientists and entrepreneurs. We will support them with an investment of $2.2 billion in biomanufacturing and life sciences.
When COVID first hit, it pushed our country into its deepest recession since the Great Depression. But this is an economic shock of a very particular kind. We are not suffering because of endogenous flaws or imbalances within our economy. Rather, the COVID recession is driven by an entirely external event—like the economic devastation of a flood, blizzard, wildfire or other natural disaster. That is why an essential part of Canada's fight against COVID has been unprecedented federal support for Canadians and Canadian businesses.
We knew Canadians needed a lifeline to get through the COVID storm. And our approach has worked. Canada's GDP grew by almost 10% in the fourth quarter of last year. We will continue to do whatever it takes. Our government is prepared to extend support measures, as long as the fight against this virus requires.
As Canada pivots to recovery, our economic plan will, too.
We promised last year to spend up to $100 billion over three years to get Canada back to work and to ensure the lives and prospects of Canadians were not permanently stunted by this pandemic recession. This budget keeps that promise. All together, we will create nearly 500,000 new training and work experience opportunities for Canadians. We will fulfill our throne speech commitment to create one million jobs by the end of this year.
Some people will say that our sense of urgency is misplaced. Some will say that we are spending too much. I ask them this. Did they lose their jobs during a COVID lockdown? Were they reluctantly let go by their small business employers that were like a family to them but simply could not afford their salary any longer? Are they worried that they will be laid off in this third wave? Are they mothers who were forced to quit the dream job they fought to get because there was no way to keep working while caring for their young children? Did they graduate last spring and are still struggling to find work? Is their family business, launched perhaps by their parents, which they hope to pass on to their children, now struggling under a sudden burden of debt and fending off bankruptcy through sheer grit and determination every day?
If COVID has taught us anything, it is that we are all in this together. Our country cannot prosper if we leave hundreds of thousands of Canadians behind.
The world has learned the lesson of 2009, the cost of allowing economic hardship to fester. In some countries, democracy itself has been threatened by that mistake. We will not let that happen in Canada.
About 300,000 Canadians who had a job before the pandemic are still out of work. More Canadians may lose their jobs in this month's lockdowns. To support Canadian workers as we fight the third wave, and to provide an economic bridge to a fully recovered economy, we will build on the enhancements we have made during the pandemic.
We will maintain flexible access to EI benefits for another year, until the fall of 2022. The Canada recovery benefit, which we created to support Canadians not covered by EI, will remain in place through September 25 and extend an additional 12 weeks of benefits to Canadians. As our economy fully reopens over the summer, the benefit amount will go to $300 a week, after July 17.
Low-wage workers in Canada work harder than anyone else in this country, for less pay. In the past year they have faced both significant infection risks and layoffs. And many live below the poverty line, even though they work full-time. We cannot ignore their contribution and their hardship—and we will not. We propose to expand the Canada workers benefit, to invest $8.9 billion over six years in additional support for low-wage workers—extending income top-ups to about a million more Canadians and lifting nearly 100,000 people out of poverty. And this budget will introduce a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage.
COVID has exposed the dangerous inadequacy of sickness benefits in Canada. We will do our part and fulfill our campaign commitment by extending the EI sickness benefit from 15 to 26 weeks.
We know the pandemic has exacerbated systemic barriers faced by racialized Canadians, so budget 2021 provides additional funding for the Black entrepreneurship program as well as an investment in a Black-led philanthropic endowment fund to help fight anti-Black racism and improve social and economic outcomes in Black communities.
One of the most striking aspects of the pandemic has been the historic sacrifice young Canadians have made to protect their parents and grandparents. Our youth have paid a high price to keep the rest of us safe. We cannot, and will not, allow young Canadians to become a lost generation. They need our support to launch their adult lives and careers in post-COVID Canada, and they will get it. We will invest $5.7 billion over five years in Canada's youth; we will make college and university more accessible and affordable; we will create job openings in skilled trades and high-tech industries; and we will double the Canada student grant for two more years while extending the waiver of interest on federal student loans through March 2030. More than 350,000 low-income student borrowers will also have access to more generous repayment assistance.
COVID has brutally exposed something women have long known. Without child care, parents, usually mothers, cannot work. The closing of our schools and day cares drove women's participation in the labour force down to its lowest level in more than two decades. Early learning and child care has long been a feminist issue. COVID has shown us that it is an urgent economic issue too.
I was two years old when the Royal Commission on the Status of Women urged Canada to establish a universal system of early learning and child care. My mother was one of Canada's redoubtable second wave of feminists who fought and, outside Quebec, failed to make that recommendation a reality. A generation after that, Paul Martin and Ken Dryden tried again.
This half-century of struggle is a testament to the difficulty and complexity of the task, but this time we are going to do it. This budget is the map and the trailhead. There is agreement across the political spectrum that early learning and child care is the national economic policy we need now. This is social infrastructure that will drive jobs and growth. This is feminist economic policy. This is smart economic policy. That is why this budget commits up to $30 billion over five years, reaching $9.2 billion every year permanently, to build a high quality, affordable and accessible early learning and child care system across Canada.
This is not an effort that will deliver instant gratification. We are building something that, of necessity, must be constructed collaboratively and for the long term, but I have confidence in us. I have confidence that we are a country that believes in investing in our future, in our children and in our young parents.
Here is our goal: five years from now, parents across the country should have access to high quality early learning and child care for an average of $10 a day. I make this promise to Canadians today, speaking as their finance minister and as a working mother. We will get it done.
In making this historic commitment, I want to thank the visionary leaders of Quebec, particularly Quebec's feminists, who have shown the rest of Canada the way forward. This plan will, of course, also provide additional resources to Quebec, which might well use them to further support an early learning and child care system that is already the envy of the rest of Canada and, indeed, much of the world.
Small businesses are the vital heart of our economy and they have been the hardest hit by the lockdowns. Healing the wounds of COVID requires a rescue plan for them.
Budget 2021 proposes to extend the wage subsidy, rent subsidy and lockdown support for businesses and other employers until September 25, 2021, for an estimated total of $12.1 billion in additional support. To help the hardest-hit businesses pivot back to growth, we propose a new Canada recovery hiring program, which will run from June to November and will provide $595 million to make it easier for businesses to hire back laid-off workers or to bring on new ones.
However, our government will do much more than execute a rescue. With this budget, we will make unprecedented investments in Canada's small businesses, helping them to invest in new technologies and innovation. We will invest up to $4 billion to help up to 160,000 small and medium-sized businesses buy and adopt the new technologies they need to grow.
The Canada digital adoption program will provide businesses with the advice and help they need to get the most out of these new technologies by training 28,000 young Canadians, a Canadian technology corps, and sending them out to work with our small and medium-sized businesses. This groundbreaking program will help Canadian small businesses go digital and become more competitive and efficient.
Increased funding for the venture capital catalyst initiative will help provide financing to innovative Canadian businesses, so they can grow.
We will also encourage businesses to invest in themselves. We will allow immediate expensing of up to $1.5 million of eligible investments by Canadian-controlled private corporations in each of the next three years. These larger deductions will support 325,000 businesses in making critical investments and will represent $2.2 billion in total savings to them over the next five years.
Building for the future means investing in innovation and entrepreneurs, so we propose to invest in the next phase of the pan-Canadian artificial intelligence strategy and to launch similar strategies in genomics and quantum science, areas where Canada is a global leader.
In 2021, job growth means green growth. This budget sets out a plan to help achieve GHG emissions reductions of 36% from 2005 levels by 2030 and puts us on a path to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It puts in place the funding to achieve our 25% land and marine conservation targets by 2025.
By making targeted investments in transformational technologies, we can ensure that Canada benefits from the next wave of global investment and growth.
The resource and manufacturing sectors that are Canada's traditional economic pillars—energy, mining, agriculture, forestry, steel, aluminum, autos, aerospace—will be the foundation of our new, resilient and sustainable economy. Canada will become more productive and competitive by supplying the green exports the world wants and needs.
That is why we propose a historic investment of a further $5 billion over seven years, starting in 2021-22, in the net zero accelerator. With this added support, on top of the $3 billion we committed in December, the net zero accelerator will help even more companies invest to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, while growing their businesses.
We will propel a green transition through new tax measures, including for zero-emissions technology, carbon capture and storage, and green hydrogen. We are at a pivotal moment in the green transformation. We can lead or we can be left behind. Our government knows that the only choice for Canada is to be in the vanguard.
Our growing population is one of our great economic strengths and a growing country needs to build. We need to build housing. We need to build public transit. We need to build broadband. We need to build infrastructure. We will. We will invest $2.5 billion, and reallocate $1.3 billion in existing funding, to help build, repair and support 35,000 housing units. We will support the conversion to housing of the empty office space that has appeared in our downtown areas by reallocating $300 million from the rental construction financing initiative.
Houses should not be passive investment vehicles for offshore money. They should be homes for Canadian families. Therefore, on January 1, 2022, our government will introduce Canada's first national tax on vacant property owned by non-resident non-Canadians.
Strong, sustained growth also depends on modern transit. That is why, in February, we announced $14.9 billion over eight years to build new public transit, electrify existing transit systems, and help to connect rural, remote and indigenous communities.
Therefore we are committing an additional $1 billion over six years for the universal broadband fund, to accelerate access to high-speed internet in rural and remote communities.
We intend to draw even more talented, highly skilled people to Canada, including international students. Investments in this budget will support an immigration system that is easier to navigate, more efficient and more efficient in welcoming the dynamic new Canadians who add to Canada's strength.
Our government has made progress in righting the historic wrongs in Canada's relationship with indigenous peoples, but we still have a lot of work ahead. It is important to note that indigenous peoples have led the way in battling COVID. Their success is a credit to indigenous leadership and self-governance.
We will invest more than $18 billion to further narrow gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, to support healthy, safe and prosperous indigenous communities and to advance reconciliation with first nations, Inuit and the Métis nation. We will invest more than $6 billion for infrastructure in indigenous communities and $2.2 billion to help end the national tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
This has been a year when we have learned that each of us truly is our brother's and our sister's keeper. Solidarity is getting us through this pandemic, and solidarity depends on each of us bearing our fair share of the collective burden. That is why, now more than ever, fairness in our tax system is essential.
To ensure our system is fair, this budget will invest in the fight against tax evasion, shine a light on beneficial ownership arrangements, and ensure that multinational corporations pay their fair share of tax in Canada.
Our government is committed to working with our partners at the OECD to find multilateral solutions to the dangerous race to the bottom in corporate taxation. That includes work to conclude a deal on taxing large digital services companies.
We are optimistic that such a deal can be reached this summer. Meanwhile, this budget reaffirms our government's commitment to impose such a tax unilaterally, until an acceptable multilateral approach comes into effect.
It is also fair to ask those who have prospered in this bleak year to do a little more to help those who still need help. That is why we are introducing a luxury tax on new cars and private aircraft worth more than $100,000 and pleasure boats worth more than $250,000.
This budget lives up to our promise to do whatever it takes to support Canadians in the fight against COVID, and it makes significant investments in our future. All of this costs a lot of money, so it is entirely appropriate to ask, “Can we afford it?” We can, and here is why.
First is because this is a budget that invests in growth. The best way to pay our debts is to grow our economy. The investments this budget makes in early learning and child care, in small businesses, in students, in innovation, in public transit, in housing, in broadband and in the green transition are all investments in jobs and growth. We are building Canada's social infrastructure and our physical infrastructure. We are building our human capital and our physical capital. Canada is a young, vast country with a tremendous capacity for growth. This budget would fuel that. These are investments in our future and they will yield great dividends. In fact, in today's low-interest rate environment, not only can we afford these investments, it would be shortsighted of us not to make them.
Second is because our decision last year to support Canadians is already paying off. Decisive action prevented economic scarring in our businesses and our households, allowing the Canadian economy to begin strongly rebounding from the COVID recession even before we finished our fight against the virus.
Third is because our government has a plan and we keep our promises. We said in the fall economic statement that we would invest up to $100 billion over three years to support Canada's economic recovery, and that is what we are outlining here today. We predicted a deficit for 2020-2021 of $381.6 billion. We have spent less than we provisioned for. Our deficit for 2020-2021 is $354.2 billion, below our forecast.
Finally, and crucially, we can afford this ambitious budget because the investments we propose today are responsible and sustainable.
We understand there are limits to our capacity to borrow and that the world will not write Canada any blank cheques. We do not expect any. This budget shows a declining debt-to-GDP ratio and a declining deficit, with the debt-to-GDP ratio falling to 49.2% by 2025-26 and the deficit falling to 1.1% of GDP.
These are important markers. They show that the extraordinary spending we have undertaken to support Canadians through this crisis and to stimulate a rapid recovery in jobs is temporary and finite. They also show that our proposed long-term investments will permanently boost Canada's economic capacity.
In 2015, this federal government was elected on a promise to help middle-class Canadians and people working hard to join the middle class. We promised to invest in workers and their prosperity, in long-term growth for all of us. And we did. Today, we meet a new challenge, the greatest our country has faced in a generation, with a renewed promise.
Opportunity is coming. Growth is coming. Jobs are coming. After a long, grim year, Canadians are ready to recover and rebuild. We will finish the fight against COVID. We will all get back to work, and we will come roaring back.
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