Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-30, the spring economic update 2026 implementation act. As parliamentarians, our responsibility is to examine not only what the government has chosen to include in an economic update, but also what it has chosen to leave out. Bill C-30 would implement selected measures announced in the spring economic update, but budgets and economic updates are not technical exercises conducted by the Prime Minister on his own or by his narrow circle of advisers. They are statements of priorities for all Canadians. This is the hope and vision of what our constituents expect of us: to take off our blind spots and look at the bigger picture. What we ask of the Prime Minister today is to review what the government values, where it is prepared to invest and whose needs it is prepared to postpone. The question before us is not simply whether the measures contained in Bill C-30 should proceed. The question is whether this bill would respond to the realities Canadians are living every day. This is where my concerns lie, which is that this legislation does not not meet the moment of the challenges everyday Canadians face. It does not live up to the hype of the projected progressive Prime Minister that was portrayed during the election or what we have come to read about him. There is a dissonance between words and action, and therein lies the problem. In my constituency of Vancouver East and in communities across this country, the gap between policy and lived experience is widening, and the concerns around the centralizing tendency of the government are being noticed across the country. In Vancouver East, constituents are facing housing insecurity, food insecurity, gaps in health care coverage. uncertainty in indigenous housing initiatives, delays in compensation programs and rising affordability pressures across every essential service. They are also increasingly concerned about federal priorities shifting toward expanded military spending while social programs remain underfunded or delayed. Across all these areas, a pattern is becoming unmistakable: announcements without delivery, commitments without timelines, programs without certainty sunsetting out of existence, and decisions increasingly centralized in Ottawa, far removed from the communities they affect. Communities know what they need, municipalities know what they need, indigenous housing providers know what they need and frontline organizations know what they need, yet funding decisions remain concentrated in Ottawa while people on the ground continue to experience delays, uncertainty and shifting eligibility rules. This is not administrative complexity. This is a failure of delivery, and Canadians are living the consequences of this unfortunate reality. I will begin with first nations education. In B.C., first nations education is supported through the BC Tripartite Education Agreement between first nations leadership, the province and Canada. At the centre of that agreement is the First Nations Education Steering Committee. This is not a symbolic structure. It is the core funding architecture for first nations education in B.C. It determines staffing, curriculum and infrastructure. It determines whether first nations children have stable access to education. It is in effect the backbone of educational stability for first nations students in this province. Despite early assurances that a renewed long-term agreement would be included in the 2026 spring economic update, first nations partners were instead informed that only a one-year extension would be provided. A one-year extension does not provide for stability. It produces uncertainty, and uncertainty in education is not abstract. It affects staffing, planning and children’s outcomes. The First Nations Education Steering Committee and first nations leadership have been clear: What is required is a 10-year renewal agreement that provides predictability, continuity and proper fiscal planning. Reconciliation is not achieved through short-term extensions, but is achieved through durable commitments that governments keep. Right now, that certainty is missing. The same pattern is evident with support for survivors of residential schools. Many indigenous leaders, survivors and advocates have repeatedly raised stable funding for the Indian Residential School Survivors Society. For decades, survivors have carried the trauma inflicted by Canada’s residential school system. They have carried grief, loss and intergenerational harm resulting from policies designed to erase indigenous identities, cultures and communities. Today, many continue to rely on the Indian Residential School Survivors Society for culturally appropriate counselling, crisis support and healing services. In fact, for 30 years, the Indian Residential School Survivors Society has provided support to indigenous people harmed by Canada’s colonial systems, the sixties scoop, the ongoing missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and 2S+ crisis, and more, yet despite repeated commitments to reconciliation, despite having been told by Indigenous Services Canada that the organization would receive confirmation for its two-year funding by mid-May, to date, there is still no action. The funding will end on July 1. This delay is going to have serious operational impacts for the people it serves. The organization continues to seek certainty regarding its long-term core funding. Reconciliation cannot depend on year-to-year uncertainty. Reconciliation is not a slogan. It is not a press release. It is not a commemorative statement. Reconciliation requires action. It requires resources. It requires government to ensure that organizations serving survivors have the certainty necessary to continue their work. If the government can find fiscal room for subsidies for big oil, it can find the resources necessary to provide stable support to those serving residential school survivors. Turning to housing, the “for indigenous, by indigenous” urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy was something that the Liberals committed to in the last Parliament. It was something that the NDP prioritized in the confidence and supply agreement. I fought for that. We fought for that and won interim funding of $300 million and long-term funding of $4 billion over seven years for FIBI URN, and an equivalent amount of $4 billion over seven years for distinction-based funding, yet the funding of the long-term component has yet to flow. Indigenous housing providers continue to face uncertainty about governance, timelines and implementation. Even as funding is referenced in the federal announcements, there remains no clear guarantee that delivery will remain indigenous-led in practice, nor a firm timeline for rollout. While policy frameworks evolve in Ottawa, indigenous communities continue to experience the highest rate of homelessness in Canada. In Vancouver alone, indigenous people represent a disproportionate share of those experiencing homelessness, despite being a far smaller share of the population. They are the predictable result of decades of underinvestment and policy delay. Housing providers are ready to build. Friendship centres are ready to build. Indigenous-led organizations are ready to build. The problem is not capacity. The problem is execution. People cannot live in promises of affordability. They cannot sleep in frameworks. They cannot raise children in consultations. Constituents are also increasingly concerned about rental assistance for co-operative housing members. Co-ops work. They provide stability. They provide affordability. They provide community-based housing that has proven effective for decades. Phase 2 funding under the federal community housing initiative will sunset. This subsidy support is critical to co-op housing members whose household incomes would cause them to pay more than the current 25% rent geared to income. If this program is not renewed, more than 14,400 families across the country will lose their homes. Rising Star and China Creek, for example, in my riding, will be hit hard if the rental assistance subsidy is not renewed. The expiry of the FCHI phase 2 funding without a successor program or extension risks undoing decades of investment in this model and displacing established community members, including families with young children and seniors who depend on it. Access to rental assistance is necessary to enable co-ops to be a deeply affordable housing solution. FCHI cannot, and must not, sunset. Aside from housing, Van East constituents continue to raise serious concerns about the Canadian dental care plan. I have written to the minister regarding applications for medically necessary procedures, including crowns, that are being rejected using template language that provides no meaningful explanation of what criteria were not met. Patients are left without clarity, providers are left without guidance, and appeals are effectively blocked. Even more troubling are cases where some of my constituents were previously approved for the Canadian dental care plan, received care in good faith and are now being told that they are not eligible after all. In some cases, they are even being asked to repay benefits that they already received. These are often seniors who opted out of private dental care insurance years ago because premiums were unaffordable on fixed incomes. At the time of approval, they met eligibility criteria and were approved. They acted in good faith. They made irreversible financial decisions based on the government’s approval. Retroactive reassessment after reliance undermines trust in public programs. A system cannot function if eligibility is uncertain at the outset and reversible after the fact. This is not fairness. This is instability. Health care affordability is another glaring omission from this bill. Many Canadians welcomed the promise to establish an expanded universal pharmacare, yet constituents increasingly tell me that they worry that those promises are being quietly abandoned. They see that the Prime Minister is abandoning the provinces and territories that did not sign the pharmacare agreement prior to the last election. People do not care about talking points. They care about whether or not they can afford their medication. They care about whether they must choose between prescriptions and groceries. They care about whether universal pharmacare will actually become universal. The Prime Minister sent a clear message that universal pharmacare is not a priority for him when the spring economic update did not provide additional resources to this key initiative. On affordability, Canadians are increasingly concerned about surveillance pricing. This is the use of personal data, behavioural tracking and algorithmic systems to charge different prices to different individuals for identical goods and services. It means two Canadians can stand in the same digital marketplace and see different prices based on what a corporation believes they can pay. Even when legislation such as Bill C-36 references algorithmic pricing risks, it does not actually prohibit surveillance pricing. It does not even name it. It does not stop it. Instead, it leaves Canadians exposed to opaque pricing systems that they cannot see and cannot challenge. Premier Wab Kinew has taken decisive action in Manitoba to stop it. The Prime Minister and this government have refused to take a stand. What side is the Prime Minister on? Unlike the Liberals, who will always be on the side of big corporations, the NDP will stand on the side of the people. That is why I will be introducing a private member’s bill this fall to ban surveillance pricing outright. Food safety is also at stake. Proposed changes to pesticide regulation have raised concerns from environmental and public health organizations, including Ecojustice, which warns that reforms risk weakening scientific oversight and transparency. Canadians expect food safety to be grounded in independent science. They expect precaution where health is at stake. They expect transparency in regulatory decision-making. Anything less undermines public trust. My constituents have also raised concerns regarding the Prime Minister’s intention to privatize ports and airports. Even Stephen Harper would not dare to touch these critical assets. They are strategic national infrastructure essential to supply chains, trade and economic resilience. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission repeatedly flagged concerns over monopoly pricing, noting that user costs, passenger charges and parking fees surged dramatically. Airlines passed escalating landing fees directly to passengers via higher ticket prices when they privatized. The Shipping Australia industry association noted that private port operators prioritized maximizing shareholder returns, implementing heavy rent increases on terminal tenants that trickled down into standard freight and consumer goods. If Canada goes down this track, this is what Canada can expect. This neo-liberal playbook seems to be from another era. A broad pattern is emerging. We are seeing the increasing centralization of decision-making in Ottawa from the Prime Minister. We are seeing delays in social program delivery and increased military spending, alongside constrained social investments. Budgets are about choices, and choices are about priorities. Canadians are asking, what does increased military spending mean for housing, for pharmacare, for dental care, for indigenous housing, for transit and for disability supports? These are not abstract fiscal questions. They are real-world opportunity costs, and Canadians deserve transparency about them. In Vancouver East, the consequences are very real and very visible. Seniors are relying on food banks. Families are skipping meals. People are delaying medical care. Housing is increasingly out of reach. Affordability is being eroded not just by prices but by systems that are less transparent and less responsive. One constituent described losing weight because they cannot afford enough food. Another, a 77-year-old senior, said they are relying on a food bank for the first time in their life. These are not isolated cases. They are becoming systemic. As one constituent put it, on the issue of transit, we need our transit to green commutes more than we need another pipeline. Every budget decision involves trade-offs. Canadians deserve transparency about those trade-offs. We are faced with deep drought conditions across Vancouver Island, the Okanagan, the Chilcotin and the South Thompson regions. Climate change is real. Instead of investing in transit, the spring economic update cuts it by $5 billion, while the Prime Minister signs an agreement with Alberta to build yet another pipeline. Canadians deserve to know why the Prime Minister would prioritize pipelines over funding for transit expansion, especially when B.C. faces the highest and most sustained fire risk in the country. Similarly, Canadians deserve to know why billions of dollars can be found for military expansion when communities continue to be told to wait for desperately needed social investments. If the government believes military spending must increase, it should explain why the same urgency is absent when it comes to homelessness, poverty, housing and health care. Increased military spending is happening when there has not been a robust public debate on it, during the last election or thereafter. It was just announced by the Prime Minister as a fait accompli. Many constituents have raised concerns regarding military goods and components exported to the U.S. that may subsequently be transferred elsewhere without the same level of scrutiny that applies to direct Canadian exports. Those concerns were reflected in proposals such as my private member’s bill, Bill C-233, the no more loopholes act, which was defeated by the government. Canadians want robust risk assessments. They want transparency. They want accountability. They want assurances that Canadian-made military goods are not contributing to human rights violations or breaches of international humanitarian law. Economic policy and trade policy cannot be separated from human rights obligations. Many constituents have also written regarding the humanitarian crisis facing the Cuban community. They have called on Canada to increase humanitarian assistance; support access to food, medicine and fuel; and pursue constructive diplomacy. They have urged Canada to work with international partners to ensure that relief reaches those in need and to maintain an independent foreign policy grounded in dialogue, co-operation and respect for self-determination. Canadians understand our international role and Canada’s proud history of our commitment to peacebuilding, humanitarian assistance and international solidarity. It is not time to turn our backs on what has historically made Canadians proud. Let me close with this, Mr. Speaker. This bill reveals clear patterns. Housing is delayed. Indigenous housing remains uncertain. Health care programs lack transparency. Dental eligibility is unstable. Survivors are waiting. Disabled Canadians are waiting. Families are waiting. Waiting has become the default policy, but Canadians cannot wait indefinitely. The crisis is before Canadians. It is time to act for the people, not for corporations.
