Bill No. 279 - Financial Measures (2023) Act. - 2nd reading
CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mx. Speaker, I'll rise tonight to say a few words on the Financial Measures (2023) Act. As we all know, this is the Act that enables the budget. I haven't had the opportunity to comment on the budget yet and so I will say a few words tonight on how we feel about the budget.
Well, the budget is more, faster, except for when it's less, slower. There's a lot of funding for a number of health care initiatives, but I have yet to hear an articulated plan for what comes on the other side of those, other than fixed. And that is really concerning because we've eliminated all of our oversight mechanisms. We don't have a board for the Nova Scotia Health Authority. A great deal of decision-making is done in secret. We certainly don't have order-making powers for the Information and Privacy Commissioner - that was a platform promise from the Progressive Conservatives - and we don't have any oversight of the money that flows through the Legislature, as has been pointed out by the Auditor General.
Some day, I suspect, the government will stand up and say, "We fixed it." And we'll all have to argue over whether or not that's true. And that's a shame. We measure this budget by its impact on people's lives. By that measure, I don't know what is going to happen faster.
People won't get access to primary care faster. In fact, we are looking at something like 10,000 more residents of HRM who will be without a family physician in the coming weeks and months. People won't - immediately anyway - get their surgeries faster. What is the sought-after result? We're told that you will have access to some kind of care. So if you have strep throat, you'll get antibiotics from a pharmacy. If you live near one of those clinics, that's good. If you have a minor ailment and you can have access to a computer and the time to wait, maybe the money to pay if you don't have the time to wait, you'll get access to virtual care. Maybe they'll help you.
But you won't get access to collaborative care. You won't actually get access to health care you can count on. You won't, if you're sick or if your kids are sick, or if you're really concerned, have an office you can call up, and they know your name, and they have your file, and they can give you an appointment, and they can follow your care. If you're diagnosed with cancer, you won't have, in this budget, necessarily, a physician or a physician's office that will follow you, that will order your tests, that will make sure to follow your condition. And that, from our perspective, is truly a missed opportunity.
We were talking about the budget, and we were talking about the additional $1 billion-plus in revenue that this government is the beneficiary of, and we were reminded of the Barenaked Ladies song "If I had a Million Dollars," only this is if I had $1 billion. We started playing the if I had $1 billion game - what would you do if you had $1 billion extra in revenue as a provincial government?
That brings me to the parts of the budget that are slower, because there are so many things that this government is not acting on, is waiting to act on - there are so many ways that $1 billion could make a difference in people's lives. If I had control over a government that had an unexpected $1 billion in revenue in a province with skyrocketing home prices and less than 1 per cent rental vacancy, I would spend a lot of it on affordable housing. I would build housing. I would leverage the money for truly affordable housing - almost none of which we have seen from this government.
I will say on the record that 80 per cent of market rates just isn't affordable. It's affordable for some people, but if we're going to define the term "affordable," that has to be geared to income. Incomes have not risen at anywhere near the pace of the cost of housing, so 80 per cent of market rate which is what - when the government talks about affordable housing they have created is affordable, it doesn't count in our estimation.
I would set up an enforcement branch for Residential Tenancies. That's going to be complicated; that takes time; and that takes staff. You have $1 billion, let's get to it. There's something that I would do. I would establish a reliable system of rent control so that we can actually make sure that people have a place to live. We have been told - we haven't had the opportunity to ask the minister about this yet - that the Department of Community Services has leased a 204-room hotel in my constituency. We're assuming that will be a shelter. That's not what I would spend the money on. I would spend the money on affordable housing. I would actually start a housing-first approach and make sure that people have a permanent place to live, something on the other side of a shelter.
I would freeze Pharmacare fees. I would make sure that people don't have to choose between medicine and food. When this government announced their budget, they went out of their way to say they were not raising Pharmacare fees. I almost couldn't believe it. Like that is supposed to be something that anyone could be proud of. Why would you even say that? I don't understand, Mx. Speaker.
At least this government should be putting a temporary pause on Family and Seniors' Pharmacare. Feed Nova Scotia tells us - and I've tabled this document before, I can do it in the future - that people are choosing between food and medicine every day in this province. The government has a very simple tool that they could enact to stop so many people from having to make that choice, but they are going slower on that one.
I would enact the Coastal Protection Act. The IPCC has told us that we have no time to wait. All we hear is empty talking points about the Liberal carbon tax from this government. I don't even know what to say about it.
Yes, there have been some good things. The move towards efficiency has been good. The investment in heat pumps has been good. We applaud that work, make no mistake, but we have no time to waste. I have three children and the world that they become adults in will look fundamentally different than the world we live in today and that is terrifying to me, and it should be terrifying to all of us. It should be so terrifying that this government should stop their stupid conversations about Liberal carbon taxes and start talking about how they are going to be constructive on the environmental file. I'm sorry I used the word "stupid," Mx. Speaker. I meant empty.
In light of what we heard today but also, as we have been advocating for for years, we would use $1 billion to substantially increase funding to organizations working on the front lines of gender-based violence, including safety. We would strengthen and transform our approach to community safety. It's an idea whose time has come. We all know it. It's heavy lifting. It's a lot of work. It takes money and this government has an extra $1 billion.
These areas - housing, income assistance, cost of living, action on climate change, transforming our approach to safety and to gender-based violence, are all areas where this government is going very slowly.
I will close by pointing out that these are all health care. Housing is health care. (Interruption) But since the member mentioned it, the ESIA rates are frozen in this budget. A freeze of ESIA rates in the context of CPI is a cut. It is a cut to the income of the most vulnerable people in this province.
Housing is health care, food security is health care, stable income is health care. Safety, the ability to live and not be in fear, protecting our province from the ravages of climate change is health care. I look forward to the government investing in it.