Heather McPherson

In response to a question from John-Paul Danko

“We need laws to protect Canadians from fake news and foreign interference on social media. We need to teach people how to spot fake accounts and content made by artificial intelligence. We also must support local news so our democracy stays strong.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a bit of a bigger issue, and the government has a role to play on a larger scale. This is not just about making web giants pay their fair share. It is not just about taking $600 million from Canadians to make up the shortfall. It is a bigger picture. We need to have guardrails and legislation in place to protect Canadians from the disinformation, misinformation and foreign interference we are seeing on social media platforms. We need to make sure that Canadians have the education they need so they are able to recognize AI slop, bots and whatnot. We also need to make sure that we are supporting our local news. I have incredible local journalists and news outlets in Edmonton and in Alberta that do not get the support they need to continue to provide the services we need as Canadians for our democracy to be strong.”

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In response to a question from Martin Champoux

“I support this motion. The government failed to show leadership by giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to big tech companies while taking $600 million from Canadians to cover the cost.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for bringing this motion forward and making sure that people in Quebec and across Canada are aware of what is being done right now in Canada, what the government is doing. I think it is really important. It is an important moment. Right now, our sovereignty is under attack. We all know that. Everyone in this place knows that our sovereignty is being threatened by Donald Trump and the United States administration, and the fact is that the Government of Canada has decided to give a gift to web giants. These are among the most bad actors in the corporate world. The government gave them billions of dollars in subsidies, in effect, and then took $600 million from Canadian citizens to make up for the shortfall. The member spoke about cynicism. It is not just cynicism. It is so disappointing. It is such a failure of leadership.”

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“I support this motion. The government must make foreign web giants pay their fair share to support Canadian culture and media. Our arts sector creates over a million jobs, but the government gave tax breaks to big streaming companies instead of protecting local news, the CBC, and French-language media.”

“Mr. Speaker, the NDP has long been a champion of diversity in Canada. We have also long been defenders and promoters of Quebec’s cultural distinctiveness within Canada and the rights of francophones. The NDP has long supported the right of Quebec, as the only majority French culture in North America, to protect and promote the French language, including in broadcasting. We strongly support funding for media and cultural production sectors in Quebec and across Canada, and we are pleased to support this motion today. There is a major imbalance in Canada right now between the web giants operating in our country and support for actual Canadian media and culture. Canada’s culture sector is under serious pressure from underfunding and from American web giants that are profiting from our stories and our labour but not paying their fair share. The government has not done the work to protect the cultural sector across Canada. New Democrats have long demanded that the government ensure that web giants like Netflix contribute to the creation of French-language content at the same level that broadcasters are being asked to contribute in Canada. I want to talk a little about what this actually means, and I am going to speak a bit about what it means in my constituency of Edmonton Strathcona. In Edmonton, I saw just how important francophone media are to keeping our culture alive. Media outlets such as Le Franco, Radio-Canada Alberta and Radio Cité do more than just report the news. They tell the stories of Franco-Albertans, feature local artists and community activities and give a voice to francophones in Alberta. These media outlets are important to francophone families, keeping them connected to their language, their history and their community. They also help young people discover Alberta’s francophone culture. When a local media outlet closes its doors, we lose more than just journalists; we also lose part of our culture and history. Protecting Canadian media means helping members of every community, including Franco-Albertans, tell their stories and make their voices heard. Canadians overwhelmingly support our broadcasting sector. Recent polling shows that Canadians support the Online Streaming Act at 83%. That includes voters for all parties. That includes 65% of Conservative voters. Canadians understand this is about defending cultural sovereignty. It is about telling Canadian stories. It is about supporting jobs in the Canadian arts sector. The arts sector contributed $131 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2024. The arts and culture sector supported 1.1 million jobs across Canada in 2024. The sector deserves the support of the government. Instead, what we are seeing is a government that is willing to give up our sovereignty, back down on our stories and stop support for our cultural communities. We saw that when the Government of Canada was willing to give up the digital services tax, income that should have gone to our cultural communities and to telling stories: francophone stories, indigenous stories, Canadian stories. Instead, the Liberal government bowed to Donald Trump and the tech giants that support him. New Democrats supported measures announced by the CRTC that would have helped ensure that Canadian stories continued to be told and made sure Canadian stories were available to audiences across the country. In May, the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture overruled the CRTC after he had stood in this House and told us it was independent. He effectively gave a massive break to foreign streaming giants and instead replaced those potential revenues with a $600-million promise, none of which we have seen yet and none of which has benefited broadcasters. I want to be clear. That $600 million is our money. That is my money. Those are taxpayer dollars. That is not revenue being paid from the billions made by web giants. It is money that is coming from the pockets of Canadians to support Canadian industry. I am all in for supporting Canadian industry, but I sure would like the web giants to pay their fair share, and that is not what the government is demanding. I want to talk about another issue that is very close to my heart and very important. The CBC and Radio-Canada are the Canadian institutions we need in this country to tell our stories. We have a massive country, and having a public broadcaster is so vitally important. Mr. Speaker, I know you are an Albertan as well. I came out of the Alberta referendum on Monday thinking how dangerous it is that our media landscape is not getting the support it requires. At this moment in time, when misinformation, disinformation and foreign interference in our media landscape continue to rise, we do not see the commitments to our public broadcaster that we need to see. To show the cynicalness of the government, weeks before it called the 2025 election, the then minister of heritage brought forward a massive investment for the CBC. He said the government was going to invest in the CBC, our public broadcaster. It was going to make it permanent. It was going to make it stable. It was going to make it reliable. Well, the Liberals won the election and are still in government, yet we have not seen any of it. None of those protections for our public broadcaster came forward. We know the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation are funded at a level so much higher than the CBC receives in Canada. I also met recently with representatives from Press Forward, an association of over two dozen news media publishers that employ journalists, editors, photographers, video journalists and other professionals dedicated to informing the public. Again, I will go back to the referendum in Alberta. Canadians are increasingly confronted with complex questions and this maelstrom of disinformation, fear and foreign interference. The lack of local, human-verified, quality journalism is a real problem that we need to address in this country. I fully support Press Forward’s three asks of the Government of Canada: to maintain the Canadian journalism labour tax credit at its current level of 35%, so that independent news publications can continue to provide value to the communities they serve; to expand the local journalism initiative by $6 million per year and have it go past 2035; and to defend the Online News Act to ensure sustained investment in Canadian news. This is not just about making sure we have local news. It is about sovereignty. It is about our democracy. A strong media landscape and the ability of Canadians to get the information and the stories they require to make good decisions are cornerstones of a strong democracy. Without those, we have an uneducated electorate that does not get the information they require to do their duty as citizens. Therefore, I urge the government to take this seriously, to start making the web giants pay their fair share, to make sure that cultural communities and our industry have the resources they need to tell our stories, to protect our sovereignty, and to ensure that francophone and indigenous stories are front and centre across this country.”

“Hundreds of steelworkers at Stelco are facing layoffs. The company that bought Stelco promised to keep these union jobs for five years. The government must enforce that deal and hold the company accountable. Any public money given to the steel industry must come with strict rules to protect Canadian jobs.”

“Mr. Speaker, for years, United Steelworkers has warned the government that Canada’s dependence on American markets and the failure to have a good, comprehensive industrial strategy, including a national steel strategy, were putting our steel industry and Canadian workers at risk. Now at Stelco, hundreds of United Steelworker members are facing layoffs. The human cost of this decision is devastating. Workers who have spent years building this country are now facing uncertainty about their job, their mortgage and their family’s future, and the circumstances around this make it even more outrageous. Cleveland-Cliffs, the American corporation that owns Stelco and has cheered on Donald Trump and the U.S. steel tariffs, made binding legal commitments to maintain unionized employment for five years, when the federal government approved its purchase in 2024. Now those jobs are at risk. United Steelworkers has demanded an immediate compliance review and enforcement of these commitments. It has asked the government to act decisively and not simply issue press releases after workers have received their layoff notices. The government has legal tools available under the Investment Canada Act. It must use them aggressively and without delay. If Cleveland-Cliffs will not honour the commitments that secured approval for its takeover, the government must be prepared to pursue meaningful consequences, because if the Liberal government does not act, then it is telling every single corporate bad actor that agreements do not matter, that breaking legal commitments does not have consequences and that impunity will be rewarded. Today the Prime Minister and Doug Ford announced a package to support Ontario’s steel sector, and that is a good step, but let us be clear: An announcement is not a plan to protect every worker facing a layoff right now, and billions of dollars in support cannot be a blank cheque for corporations while workers are left behind. How much of this support will protect jobs at Stelco right now? What conditions will be attached to public money? Will the government finally use every tool available under the Investment Canada Act to enforce Cleveland-Cliffs’s commitments? United Steelworkers has laid out what Canada needs. We need stronger protections against dumped steel, tighter import controls, and loopholes closed, so foreign steel cannot displace Canadian production. We need buy Canadian procurement that creates reliable demand for Canadian-made steel. We need investment in modern steelmaking technology and a comprehensive industrial strategy that builds on Canadian production and reduces our dependence on the United States, and we need immediate action for workers, including retention and income supports, alongside enforceable conditions that protect Canadian jobs whenever public money is provided to industry. These are not new demands. The USW has been calling for this kind of action for years. The government should not have needed a trade war, layoffs at Stelco and mounting uncertainty for Canadian families to understand the urgency. The Liberals talk about building a stronger economy, protecting our sovereignty and creating a better future, but we cannot build a strong economy while workers lose their livelihood. We cannot build a strong Canada by weakening unions and allowing good jobs to disappear, and we cannot build a strong future by asking working people to sacrifice their security while corporations protect their profits. Workers’ rights are not separate from economic strength; they are part of its foundation. It is time for the government to act.”

In response to a question from Scot Davidson

“Yes, life is too expensive right now. Wages are not keeping up with rising prices, and seniors and people with disabilities are struggling. Regular people cannot afford to live while the richest people get richer off everyday workers.”

“Yes, Mr. Speaker, there is an affordability crisis. There is a crisis with wages not keeping up to the rate of inflation. There is a crisis with seniors and people living with disabilities. There is a crisis of people being unable to afford their lives while the ultrawealthy are getting wealthier on the backs of everyday Canadian workers.”

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In response to a question from Eric St-Pierre

“I have a heat pump and solar panels, but I can afford them because of my job. We must help people who cannot afford to upgrade their homes. I have not read the Prime Minister's new announcement yet, but he should make announcements here in the House.”

“Mr. Speaker, we installed a heat pump in my home in Edmonton just this summer, and I am absolutely delighted with it. We also have solar panels. However, let us be realistic. I have a very good job where I can actually afford to pay for these things and to install them. We need to do everything we can to provide supports to those folks who cannot afford to retrofit their homes. Any part we can take in making sure that Canadians can retrofit their homes, and the buildings in our communities, helps. It is insufficient, though, if it is not done in a way that Canadians can access. I have not had an opportunity to look at the Prime Minister’s announcement that he made an hour ago. Of course, as always, I would prefer that the Prime Minister share his thoughts with parliamentarians in the House. That does not seem to be his priority, but certainly, I will pay attention and will read it after I am done in the House today.”

“Life is unaffordable because wages and pensions are not keeping up with costs. To fix this, we need stronger unions, better pay, and higher benefits for seniors. The government also failed to protect hundreds of steelworkers in Ontario when a foreign buyer broke its promise to keep their jobs. We need to help those workers now and protect good jobs across the country.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am very happy that I have an opportunity today to talk about the opposition day motion on affordability. I want to bring up the point that affordability is not just about prices or lowering the cost of living. It is also about whether people have enough income security and bargaining power to afford a decent life. Right now, Canadians cannot afford life. They cannot afford their life when wages and income are not keeping up with the cost of living. The reality is that people in my community of Edmonton Strathcona and across this country are struggling with the cost of groceries, rent, mortgage, utilities and transportation, those basic necessities that all Canadians need in order to survive. We often talk about making this or that cheaper. These are important discussions that parliamentarians should be having, but for me, the bigger impact is the discrepancy between the cost of living and wages, as well as the support that workers have been getting from both the current government and previous administrations. The National Advisory Council on Poverty heard directly from Canadians that wages and government benefits have not kept pace with inflation and that people working full-time are still struggling to meet their basic needs. Let us talk a bit today about wages. Let us talk about whether a person who works hard can afford a home, raise a family, retire with dignity and weather an emergency if that happens in their life. This is why affordability policy has to also be about good, strong union jobs, with workers having the power to negotiate better wages. Affordability is not just about what things cost. It is also about whether or not working people can afford to purchase them. Good union jobs is an affordability policy. It is one of the most effective affordability measures we can put in place. The difference between people simply having a job and having a job they can build a life around is important to recognize. Permanent union jobs with good wages, pension, benefits and collective bargaining give workers economic security. Unions provide those benefits not just for workers in their unions. Unions also allow for those benefits to be across the entire sectors so working conditions across the economy improve and working wages improve. Therefore, it is vital that governments do more to support the right to organize. We have been speaking a lot in the House about Bill C-39, which would take away the ability of workers to strike. It would hurt the ability of workers to have collective bargaining. I am bringing forward a private member’s bill for a vote very shortly, Bill C-259, the fair representation act, which would make sure that unions represent only the workers they are supposed to represent, not corporations, business or other interests. We need to make it easier to join a union. We need to stop employers from using precarious work to undermine wages. We need to protect Canadian industrial capacity. We need to use investment to create not just jobs but good jobs. If we want to make life more affordable, we need to make good jobs more available. I am going to bring up an example of this. Stelco is the perfect example of what happens when we allow good Canadian jobs and industrial capacity to be treated as disposable. Cleveland-Cliffs announced the indefinite idling of Stelco’s Hamilton steel plant, which will affect 350 members of United Steelworkers, with another 40 layoffs expected at Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke. It is appalling that these workers are going to lose their jobs and that the company is blaming trade disruptions, weak demands and tariffs. However, here is the contradiction: Cleveland-Cliff’s CEO has publicly supported U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel. USW has pointed out that the company cannot champion those tariffs and then use the resulting trade environment as a justification for walking away from Canadian workers. Marty Warren, the national director of United Steelworkers, said, “Cleveland-Cliffs cannot champion those tariffs and then invoke them to walk away from commitments to Canadian workers”. What is in the Investment Canada Act agreement? Why are we not defending that? This is not an abstract economic debate either. We throw things around in this place, but these are people. These are people with mortgages and families, people with pensions, and they have invested decades into their communities. I was happy to see the Minister of Industry write to Stelco steel, but it was too late. It was too late. Those layoff notices went out today. Those workers are getting laid off this week. We needed the minister to advocate for those workers. Canada approved the Cleveland-Cliffs acquisition of Stelco in 2024 under the Investment Canada Act, and the approval came with commitments around maintaining unionized employment. Now that workers are already being laid off, now the minister is threatening legal action. It is too late. Once people are laid off, it is so much harder. We needed a government that was standing up sooner. Workers should not have to lose their jobs before the government decides to enforce the conditions attached to a foreign takeover. The government should be asking why the Investment Canada Act commitments were not enforced earlier, what penalties Cleveland-Cliffs will face, how the government will ensure that production stays in Canada and what immediate supports will keep workers attached to their jobs. USW is explicitly calling for emergency worker retention and wage supports and for stronger protection of Canada’s steel market. Again, I will go back to the premise of this speech. We cannot have affordability or affordable communities without a productive economy that provides well-paid jobs. Steel is not just one plant. It feeds automotive, machinery, construction, appliance and other manufacturing. Experts have warned about the domino effects of tariffs through supply chains, with impacts extending well beyond the directly affected steelworkers. USW has argued that this crisis reflects decades of trade policy that has left Canadian producers vulnerable to unfair trade excesses. Canadian jobs should always come with conditions attached. If the government wants public support, there should be strings attached so jobs are protected. Those jobs should be protected throughout, not once the layoffs have started and people have already been let go. We need to also have domestic capacity. We need to develop a national steel strategy. Affordability and industrial policy are connected. That is important. I am going to talk very quickly about another issue that is important when we talk about affordability in our communities, and this has been raised in the House this afternoon. Seniors in our communities are dealing with a cost of living crisis as well. Seniors who have spent their lives working should not be forced to choose between groceries, rent, medication and keeping the heat on. The national advisory council on poverty reports that unattached seniors had a poverty rate of 11.5% in 2023. The amount that seniors receive in OAS has not been changed to reflect inflation. The GIS has not been changed to reflect the increase in the cost of living. Seniors in our communities are struggling. For too long, affordability has been treated by the government as a communication problem, but it is not. It is an economic problem. It is a wage problem. It is a housing problem. It is a retirement security problem. It is a disability income problem. It is a workers’ rights problem. Liberals like to talk about affordability, while workers lose good union jobs, companies receive approvals and make commitments, and workers are left behind. As we sit in the House and talk about affordability today, I would really like us to remember the other side of that, which is the protection of workers’ rights and workers’ wages.”

In response to a question from Dan Muys

“The government is rushing this huge bill through without enough time for us to debate it. Governments use giant bills like this to hide bad laws from scrutiny. The Conservatives did the exact same thing when they were in power, but they are right that this is a bad way to make laws.”

“Mr. Speaker, to be honest, the Prime Minister has shown a shocking dismissal of Parliament and a dismissal of the value of Parliament to debate bills and bring them forward. This is an omnibus bill. One thing I will say to the member is that the champion of omnibus bills was Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party. I would also say that I think his party’s members were falling over themselves to support another massive piece of legislation, Bill C-5, which took away indigenous and environmental rights in this country. However, the member is right. This is not the way we are supposed to bring legislation forward. It does not give us adequate time to debate it. Omnibus bills are always a way for governments to bring forward bad legislation that they do not want to have scrutinized. Even the media got a 250-page bill half an hour before they were meant to discuss it. This is not good legislation.”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The government should not give one minister the power to order people back to work without a debate or vote in Parliament. This hurts workers' rights. When employers know a minister can just force people back to work, they stop bargaining fairly.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member should know very well that they have used the essential services provision for section 107 to undermine workers’ ability to bargain in good faith with their employers more than any other government has ever done before. To not bring it to Parliament for a vote, to not debate it within the House of Commons and to give unilateral power to one minister is the opposite of what we should be doing. It is undermining workers’ rights in this country. He can try to find some ways of saying there is a rationale for it, but what this does is it allows any minister to order workers back to work. The minute employers know that power exists, they do not bargain in good faith.”

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“I do not want this bill. It makes it easier for the government to stop legal strikes and rushes environmental reviews. It gives ministers too much power and hurts workers.”

“Mr. Speaker, this is an urgent fight over what kind of country we want to build. As a member of Parliament and as a Canadian, I want to build a stronger, more resilient country. I think that the majority of members of the House right now want that. We want good unionized jobs. We want a country where a family can afford to pay its rent or its mortgage, can afford to buy groceries, can afford to send its kids to school and can access health care services that it needs. That is what we all want. That is the Canada we are trying to build. Canadians are being told that Bill C-39 is about building Canada strong, but let us look at what the government would actually be doing. The bill would make it easier to shut down a legal strike. The bill would put enormous environmental decisions on reckless and dangerous timelines. It would create new ways to pre-approve development without proper consultation or review, and it would concentrate more and more decision-making power in the hands of ministers and cabinet. This would not be building Canada strong. This would be taking power away from workers, from communities, from indigenous peoples and from independent experts, and putting more of it in the hands of Liberal ministers. Canadians are being told that we need to move faster because Donald Trump is threatening Canada, and I agree. Canada needs to move with urgency. We need to diversify our trade. We need to build. We need good union jobs. We need energy security. We need need to stand up to Donald Trump, but we do not stand up to Donald Trump by becoming Donald Trump. The Canadian Labour Congress commissioned a comparative legal analysis of strike intervention powers across the G7, and the finding is extraordinary. With Bill C-39, the Liberal government would give itself broader unilateral government power to end a strike than any other country in the G7. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and even the United States respect a worker’s right to strike more than the Liberal government does. Even in Donald Trump’s America, the president cannot simply decide that a legal strike is inconvenient, order workers back to work and impose a binding settlement. There are legal thresholds, there is judicial oversight and there are limits on the duration of intervention. The Liberal government wants to give one Canadian minister extraordinary powers to decide that a legal strike is in the national interest, and then have workers ordered back to work. Canada would go further than every other G7 country. Think about that. At a moment when Canadians are looking south at Donald Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions, the government is proposing a labour regime that would give a Canadian minister powers that even the American president does not have. Why would workers trust the government with that power? Let us look at what the government has already done with Air Canada. Who remembers, in 2025, when it took mere hours for the government to order Air Canada flight attendants back to work because they wanted to get paid for the hours they worked? In fact, this government has used section 107 within the Labour Code 10 times, more than any other government. Bill C-39 would make the kind of intervention of section 107 explicit in the Labour Code. If economic disruption is the reason we end a strike, what happens to the right to strike? A strike is supposed to create economic pressure. That is the point. Workers have very little power individually. They have power collectively. They have the power of withholding their labour, and the consequence of that is that this is where their voice comes from. The scales are not equal, but that is the power that workers have, and Bill C-39 would take that power away from workers. What happened with Air Canada was not an isolated incident. The government’s own documents tell us that since 2023, nine of the 10 interventions under section 107 involved ending or temporarily suspending strikes or lockouts or imposing arbitration. With Canada Post, the west coast ports, the port of Montreal, the port of Quebec, CN, Canadian Pacific and of course Air Canada, the government has reached to take away the rights of workers time and time again. When the government says to trust it, that it will use these powers responsibly, my question is very simple: Why? Why should workers trust the government? The government has repeatedly intervened to end legal strikes. One labour expert described what Bill C-39 does as “section 107 on steroids”. That is exactly what the government is doing. The government is not removing the power it has been criticized for using. It is taking that controversial power and writing it more explicitly into law. It is putting a government escape hatch into every difficult bargaining relationship, and it is telling workers they can strike, they can exercise their constitutional rights, they can bargain and they can withhold their labour, as is their right, but if their strike becomes too “effective”, a minister can decide that it is in the national interest to end it. What did workers tell the government during its sham consultation? The government’s own consultation report says that nearly all unions and labour organizations called for section 107 to be repealed or amended. They warned that government intervention removes union leverage. They warned that it encourages employers to hold out for government intervention. One union participant put it bluntly: Frequent use of section 107 can disincentivize employers from coming to the table because they know the government will intervene and bail them out. These are unions that represent millions of workers in this country. I am talking about the Canadian Labour Congress, CUPE, Unifor, USW, ILWU, PSAC and every one of the federations of labour across this country. The government heard that, knew that and then did the opposite of what labour asked for. Canada should not be the G7 country where workers have the weakest protections against government intervention in a legal strike. We should not be competing with Donald Trump to see who can put more power in the hands of one executive. We should be competing with the world to build the strongest democracy, the strongest labour rights and the strongest working class in the world. We should be building a strong Canada with workers, for workers, by workers. I am going to end with a quote from Gil McGowan, the head of the Alberta Federation of Labour: ...you cannot build Canada strong by weakening the right to strike, worker bargaining power, wages and living standards. That’s the opposite of what Canadian citizens, including workers, voted for in the last election when they supported...elbows up to defend Canada.”