Richard Cannings

[The Budget, April 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, of course residents of Nunavut are really at the pointy end of climate change as well. Things are changing there much faster. Yes, we have to put everything we can into fighting climate change, fighting our emissions and adapting to climate change.

My riding is in the middle of all those wildfires we hear about, and there are floods everywhere as well. Therefore, we have to spend more on preventing climate change, doing our bit not only to bring down emissions, but also to adapt to climate change. I mentioned the wildfire fighting force. We have to do more things on the ground ahead of time to make sure communities are safe from the floods, from fires and from other disasters being fuelled by climate change.

[The Budget, April 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I would have to say that Quebec has been leading the rest of Canada in many of these areas, in parts of health care, in education, in child care, and the list goes on. I salute Quebec for that leadership in showing the way, literally, for the rest of Canada.

Here, we have a federal government that is trying to make sure that Canadians can live better lives when we have better health care and better education, and when we have child care so that everyone can get back into the job market. Perhaps these are ideas we are getting from Quebec, but I think that if the federal government has those initiatives and has the money, we have to put some sort of boundaries on where that money is going to be spent. Right now, we send money to the provinces to fund post-secondary education, and they can spend it on filling potholes in roads. We want to make sure the money is being spent for the reasons we are providing it. Those are taxpayer dollars.

[The Budget, April 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member for Guelph's work as chair of the science and research committee.

I hope this is the start of a new future for science and research. It is certainly a big step in that direction, where we actually recognize the very important work that not only young researchers do in Canada, but also scientific researchers in general. There was a considerable uplift in the amounts of the grants given to researchers across the country, and that will also help fund students.

Canada is so far behind other countries in the OECD and in the G7. I had someone from the British High Commission come into my office a couple of weeks ago, and it was kind of embarrassing when I heard what the U.K. has been doing for research compared to what Canada has been doing. This is where we are going to form a really solid economy for the future. We have to make those investments in research and have to develop the information technology that will make this, and continue to make this, a great country.

[The Budget, April 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, today, as we have heard, we are debating the budget introduced by the Liberal government a couple of weeks ago. We have also heard, time and time again, how Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. They are having a hard time finding housing they can afford, facing soaring rents and rising mortgage costs, or even finding anywhere to live at all. They are seeing rising food costs at grocery stores and paying more for gas at the pumps.

On the other side of the coin, Canadians are seeing big corporations, oil and gas companies, grocery giants, corporate landlords and big banks making absolutely record profits. The more we pay for gas, for food, for housing, the more those corporations and their CEOs are making billions of dollars in profits. People are looking for ways the government could be helping them get by, because it does not have to be this way.

In this budget, the NDP has used its power to force the government to help Canadians. It is a glimpse of what an NDP government would be doing, which is what is best for ordinary Canadians and not for big corporations and the wealthy. However, I will say that this is not an NDP budget, and I will certainly spend some time talking about how it could have been improved greatly.

What did the NDP accomplish for Canadians? First is dental care, which will change the lives of nine million Canadians when it is fully rolled out to all qualifying people next year. Free birth control will benefit another nine million Canadians who now have to pay for those products. Free diabetes medication will benefit 3.7 million Canadians with this disease. Insulin was discovered in Canada, but every year thousands of Canadians, many of them younger Canadians, die prematurely because they simply cannot afford the medication needed to control diabetes. These are completely preventable deaths, and it is shameful that Canada has been allowing this to happen for many years. Thanks to the NDP, this will get fixed.

These provisions are the leading edge of the NDP's program of a universal, publicly funded, single-payer pharmacare plan that will be developed over the next year through legislation outside of this budget. It is a program that will save Canadians billions of dollars every year. Estimates from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and expert studies done for the government estimate savings of between $4 billion and maybe more than $10 billion per year through a single-payer plan.

Thanks to the NDP, this budget also contains funding for school meals, which will help all children, no matter their situation, with the nutrition and energy they need to succeed in their studies. Education is the great equalizer, but we have to provide all students with the conditions for success, and this school meal program will be an important part of those conditions.

The housing crisis is affecting millions of Canadians and there are some real steps in this budget to address that, such as a rental protection fund, a program to use federal lands to build new affordable housing and a $400-million top-up to the housing accelerator fund. There is $1 billion set aside for non-market housing to build truly affordable homes, again, something the NDP has been asking for, in contrast to the Conservatives who seem to think that if we just build more units prices will magically become affordable.

In my riding, we are building more housing units than we have ever built before, but according to municipal planners, every day we have fewer affordable housing units. These additional units that are being built are simply bought up by people who already own homes and people who are using them as investments. We need more affordable units, and to accomplish that the federal government has to get back into the affordable housing business like it was 30 years ago.

I would like to highlight a couple of smaller line items that may not have gotten as much publicity but will still make a huge difference to all Canadians.

I entered politics to provide a voice from a scientific background to Parliament. Science and research are the real basis of a successful economy in this day and age, and I have been calling on the government for two years now to provide more support for researchers, especially young researchers.

Postgraduate students do most of the research in Canada and are expected to work full time at that job. The best and brightest of these are funded through federal scholarships and fellowships that have remained at the same level since 2003, over 20 years ago. Master's students have been expected to live on $17,500 a year. Out of that, they have to pay their tuition fees, which are $7,000.

Finally, in this budget, the government has recognized that shameful situation and has significantly increased the amount and number of these supports, as well as provided an overall increase in research grants to investigators, which will help even more young researchers do the work they want to do and that we need them to do.

On another front, I want to give a shout-out to my colleague, the MP for Courtenay—Alberni, who has been leading the charge for an increase to the tax credit for volunteer firefighters. Previously, those brave and generous members of communities across the country have received only a $3,000 tax credit for the work they do to keep us safe. This budget would increase that to $6,000, short of the $10,000 we were hoping for but still a significant increase for very deserving community members.

What is missing from this budget? How does it differ from one that an NDP government would bring in?

First of all, there is the Canada disability benefit, something the NDP has been fighting for. We were hoping that it would finally be there in this budget, to really lift people with disabilities out of poverty. It is there but it is a paltry $200 a month, a complete insult. The NDP will continue fighting for people with disabilities, to make sure this benefit will be enough and to make sure they will have at least $2,000 per month to live in dignity.

I was also disappointed that there is no provision for a national wildfire fighting force, which could really benefit every community facing the rising threat of wildfires every summer.

Once again, the government has been timid in its willingness to try to address one of the biggest threats to this country and its economy, and that is the growing gap between the rich and the rest of Canada. Harper Conservatives cut the corporate income tax in half, immediately putting a $16-billion burden on middle-class Canadians. That cut was made in the name of trickle-down economics, the outdated and debunked belief that, if we give tax breaks to the wealthy, it would trickle down to the rest of us in the form of more jobs and benefits. It has not happened. The profits of corporations have climbed steadily over the past 30 years, while wages have remained stagnant.

Most Canadians are paying more in tax and getting nothing in return. The Liberal government, and the Conservatives would certainly be no different, refuses to put a windfall tax on big oil and gas companies that are making a killing on the backs of Canadians. Other countries such as Spain and the U.K. have brought in such a tax, a measure that would bring in about a billion dollars a year. We could also bring in a wealth tax that would affect only those very few Canadians with personal wealth of over $10 million. Such a tax would bring in another $12 billion per year.

It is often said in this place that budgets are about choices. We have to make choices on both sides of the ledger, spending wisely to make sure that Canadians have the programs that make this the best country it can be and leave no one behind, and finding revenue options that ensure that the costs of those programs are borne by those who can afford it.

We know that this budget could have been better. We know that, under a Conservative government, it would have been far worse. An NDP government would truly put the interests of ordinary Canadians first, not the interests of big corporations or CEOs. We would listen to workers and other Canadians who are really struggling, not to lobbyists for grocery giants, fossil fuel companies and big pharma.

We are proud of what the NDP has accomplished by using the power we have to take a big step in making this a fairer and more prosperous country.

[The Budget, April 29th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg North mentioned CERB, basically an NDP initiative through which everyone agreed that Canadians needed at least $2,000 a month to live in this country, yet in this budget we have supports for people with disabilities that amount to $200 a month. When combined with provincial supports, it is far less than what is needed for those people to live here in Canada.

I have been deluged by comments from people with disabilities. This is an insult. The government should have done nothing, almost, rather than bring this in.

I am just wondering whether he and his government will commit to fixing this over the coming months, so that we can truly support people with disabilities in this country with an income they can live on.

[Emergency Preparedness, February 29th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, last summer's wildfires devastated communities across Canada. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness has admitted that the upcoming wildfire season will be even worse.

Canadians want their government to take decisive action. According to last week's Abacus poll, 74% of them want to see this done through a new national wildfire fighting force, but the Liberals are taking a go-slow approach. The wildfire season is already starting.

When will the government act to create a national wildfire fighting force?

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, February 27th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, preliminary estimates of the direct economic impact on the wine industry in the Okanagan Valley from last month's freeze are on the order of $450 million in one valley. That does not take into account the indirect impact on the tourism sector: motels, hotels, restaurants and tour companies. Small wineries are already being impacted by the imposition of an excise tax for the first time. The federal government did bring in an 18-month support program for the sector to soften the blow of that cost, but that program is due to end at the end of March. A renewed program would be essential to rebuild a sector recovering from this year's crisis.

Last week, I met with the wine sector and the fruit growers to discuss this urgent situation. I will close by simply urging the parliamentary secretary and his minister to listen to the deep concerns and to the suggested solutions from the vineyard owners and orchardists who are such an iconic part of my riding and its economy.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, February 27th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I asked in question period a couple of weeks ago about the catastrophic damage that was suffered by the wine and soft fruit sectors in the southern interior of British Columbia in the middle of January. As I have said before in this place, that region and in particular the south Okanagan makes the best wines in Canada and grows the best cherries, peaches and apricots. These sectors support the B.C. economy to the tune of $2 billion or more, providing thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in taxes.

However, after a very mild winter, grapevines and fruit trees were very much in spring mode. The sap was rising. Then, on January 11, a river of Arctic air poured in from northern valleys. A friend of mine has a weather station in his orchard near Penticton and his temperature records showed a drop from 2°C to -23.5°C in just 12 hours. That temperature plunge killed essentially 100% of the buds on grapevines in the Okanagan Valley. It killed the apricot and peach buds and many of the cherry buds as well. That means there will be no harvest of grapes this year and has huge impacts on soft fruits.

Whether this one-season impact of dead buds will recover next year or there will be a longer-term impact of completely dead vines and trees remains to be seen. If the plants have not survived, it would mean an expensive replant program followed by four or five years with no crops at all. For the wine industry, this crisis means, at a minimum, no white wines the next year and no red wines the year after. This is after a similar freeze in December 2022 that cut the grape harvest in half and then wildfires literally shut down the tourism to the southern interior last summer that is an essential part of the wine and soft fruit economy. Therefore, wineries and orchardists were already reeling, and fighting for survival when this even more drastic impact hit their sector.

I just want to pause here to mention the cause of this sudden freeze because in normal situations, extreme Arctic temperatures are kept in the far north by the polar vortex and a strong linear jet stream that holds the southern boundary of that vortex in place. However, the polar vortex and the jet stream are driven by strong temperature differences between the frigid polar air and the milder temperate air masses. When we have increasingly frequent and increasingly strong global warming, and last year was a record breaker in all regards, that jet stream weakens and meanders in big loops and brings polar air southward and milder air northward. It was this situation that caused the abrupt temperature changes that killed the vine and fruit tree buds.

What can we do to help the wineries, the vineyard owners and the orchardists survive this serious setback? There are a number of policy changes that the B.C. provincial government can make to temporarily make it possible for these sectors to get through for a year or two. The federal government can provide emergency funding through the AgriRecovery framework and the AgriStability program, but whatever that support looks like, we need to see it quickly before the sector is devastated. As well, all the winery, brewery and distillery operators in my riding and across the country are demanding that the excise tax regime be changed so the tax does not automatically increase based on inflation every year. That causes extra pain in years when the business owners are already dealing with rising costs of everything that goes into their fine products.

[Committees of the House, February 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague across the way mentioned, this is a global situation where the vast majority of scientific research is now published in English. It has become the lingua franca of science in the world. There is very little we can do about that trend in Canada. However, what we can do is support francophone researchers in their work, so that Canadians who want to work in French can do their research in French and can apply for federal funding in French and get the support they need.

One of the recommendations was to have an office within the scientific advisory for the government. Dr. Mona Nemer could have a francophone office under her that could really keep an eye on this situation, find ways to monitor the situation and find ways to make sure francophone researchers get their support.

[Committees of the House, February 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my hon. colleague on his work in our science and research committee. He is a very strong advocate for research. He and I have been pressing the Liberal government to provide more sufficient support, especially for graduate students. That is not what I am going to ask him about today. We are talking about a different subject, but I wanted to thank him for that work.

He claimed, in his speech, that the funding rates for francophones were lower than for anglophones, but in the report, there is conflicting data that shows that the percentage of francophone applicants asking for money from the tri-council is actually higher, in all cases, than for English applicants.

I am wondering if he could comment on the source of that conflicting information. It looks like, to me, francophones do very well in funding applications.