Madam Chair, any Canadian who wants to know the attendance figures can look on the House of Commons website. There they will see the respective parties and which party, which will remain nameless, had only 40% attendance during the course of the last month. The member who just spoke could perhaps defend that record at some point.
I am pleased to speak today about the fiscal snapshot.
I would like to mention, as did the NDP leader earlier, that we cannot say that the strategy put in place covers everyone, because there are no measures to help people living with disabilities get through the pandemic. Close to $750 billion has been invested to help bankers, but no money has been allocated for people with disabilities, even though three million Canadians are living with a serious disability. This measure must be changed. The government must take action.
I know that the NDP leader and his entire caucus continue to work on this file. We must provide support to all people living with disabilities in Canada.
I will not repeat the very eloquent words of the leader of the NDP, who talked about an economic snapshot and the reality that the government is not addressing, in any way, the revenue side that allows us to make the investments that will help people. He spoke very eloquently. I think his words stand.
What I would like to talk about is the moment we are in at this time in this country. The finance minister just stood in the House and said that all hands are on deck, that we are all in this together. Given the many neglected groups that we have been mentioning in the House, it is very clear that this is not yet the case, and it is not the case that Canada is responding the way it should to this pandemic.
To understand what we need to do now and what we need to do moving forward, we can look at the historical precedents of the great generation from the Second World War. In the 1920s, we had, as we do today, incredible inequalities. There was a concentration of wealth that has not been repeated until now. In 1929, it reached its zenith. Today, as we know, because the Parliamentary Budget Officer has told us, 1% of Canadians now possess as much wealth as 80% of Canadians. That was the case in 1929, and that was one of the reasons we had the Great Depression, the collapse of our economy. Then Canadians joined the fight against fascism and went overseas. Many left their lives. Many did not survive. Two members of my family are on the cenotaph in New Westminster in front of city hall. So many other families across this nation sacrificed.
The generation of that time said they were at a watershed moment. They did not want to go back to the old normal, the normal of inequalities, with the great economic meltdown that they saw. They wanted to build a better society.
I am not pretending that the great generation was perfect. Of course, they did not deal with the reality of colonialism and address reconciliation with first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. They did not address systemic racism. They did not address those realities, and the devastation is still felt today.
Despite the fact that this generation was not perfect, it did have a vision. That vision was based on public investments and making sure that, as far as possible, nobody was left behind, that we would build with public investment a better country. They set to work.
In my home in New Westminster, the house that my family and I reside in, built in 1948, was part of the 300,000 affordable housing units that were built across the length and breadth of our country after the Second World War by the people of that great society, who decided that they were not going to return to the old normal. They were going to build a better society, a more equitable and fair society. They built affordable housing. They built the network of hospitals and health care centres.
As we know, that great generation following the Second World War also, under the leadership of Tommy Douglas, in a minority Parliament much like this one, put in place our universal health care system that stands today as a pillar, as one of the things that Canadians are most proud of.
New Democrats built the system of education with colleges, universities and high schools. We built highways and public transit. We ensured that there were water systems in many places. We neglected first nations communities, there is no doubt, but there was a desire to build a new normal that was better than the old normal.
We are facing that same watershed moment today. As the leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South, has said so eloquently in this House, we have to build a better normal, a new normal. We have to be inspired by the great generation and how it responded to the Second World War.
What does that mean when we talk about a new normal? It means no longer accepting the idea that we are not going to, in a very real sense, end colonialism and put in place true, meaningful and lasting reconciliation with first nations and Métis people.
It means that we must fight. The member for Burnaby South is the foremost leader in the House of Commons on this issue. We must fight and eliminate systemic racism in all our institutions and in our society.
We must be inspired by the great generation in terms of public investments, ensuring that nobody is left behind, whether we are talking people with disabilities, first nations communities or single-parent families. We need to make those public investments so that our new normal is different and much better than the old normal.
There are sobering statistics of the last few decades, after the great generation had finished its work. Subsequent governments, and I criticize equally Liberals and Conservatives in this regard, cut into pieces all that had been built following the Second World War. They cut into pieces that public financing. They cut into pieces what was a fair tax system, where everybody, rich or poor, paid their fair share of taxes and profitable corporations were not able to take their money offshore. Instead, they invested it here in public investments. That was cut into pieces in subsequent decades.
Now we have this watershed moment of great sacrifice. We are seeing our front-line health care workers and first responders putting their lives on the line every day. We have seen the devastation in our long-term care facilities. We have seen how people have stepped up, but we have also seen the horrible results and consequences of the thousands of lives lost in Canada.
The lives lost must stand for something, and that means we need to step up during this pandemic to make sure that nobody is left behind. As the member for Burnaby South said eloquently just a few minutes ago, that starts with people with disabilities, who have received no supports during this pandemic.
It also means coming out in the rebuilding phase. We have to build that new normal to be much better than the old. That new normal will be one that addresses the needs of everybody in this country, that ensures meaningful national reconciliation with first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples, and that eliminates the systemic racism we have seen afflict our country, like so many others.
We have to make sure that we put in place all the investments that need to be put in place for the recovery, investments in things such as child care, access to post-secondary education and the kind of job creation that comes with moving to a clean energy economy, which the member for Burnaby South has also spoken very eloquently to.
We have a new normal to establish, and the NDP caucus is ready to work with all members of Parliament so that coming out of this pandemic we will have a much better country than we did going in.