CERB payments were ‘vote buying before the 2021 election,’ says Senator Leo Housakos
During the first of what is almost certain to become a series of electoral pitches in Laval before the next federal election, Conservative Party organizers claimed last week that the Trudeau government has been “buying votes” in recent years through an extensive program of subsidies – including Covid-era CERB payments.
Purchasing votes
“A hundred percent,” Quebec Conservative Senator Leo Housakos said while answering journalists’ questions during a Sunday-morning press conference in Laval organized by the Conservatives. He said he agreed the Trudeau government has effectively been purchasing votes.
“What’s the first thing that many corporations do when taxes go up?” Conservative MP for King-Vaughan Anna Roberts, who was also in Laval to take part, asked while making a point about subsidies provided by the government to create employment.
No revenue, no jobs, MP says
“They lower their costs,” added Roberts, who worked for more than 30 years in the banking industry before first being elected in 2021. “And where does that come from? The biggest cost of any company is HR, right? Human resources.
“If you look at a balance sheet, how can we add more employment when the revenue’s not there? We don’t have the revenue to pay for it … Would you hire more staff if the company wasn’t making money? You couldn’t.”
So, why is the Liberal government providing subsidies to hire individuals, she asked. “They’re buying votes. That’s what they’re doing,” she said, answering her own question.
‘Vote buying,’ says Housakos
When asked whether he felt the Trudeau government’s Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) – doled out by Ottawa to millions of Canadians in $2,000 per month payments during the Covid crisis – also amounted to an attempt by the government to buy votes, Housakos again said he agreed “a hundred per cent.”
“They’re going to say CERB was necessary – we went through an existential crisis – but they went overboard,” he maintained. He suggested that in the heat of the moment, the Liberal government gave every student $2,000 a month, regardless of whether they needed it or not.
“I know students in my neighborhood who were working for $1,200 a month, $1,400 a month, living at home with their parents. And all of a sudden Trudeau is sending them $2,000 cheques. So that wasn’t aid to compensate for lack of work: that was vote buying before the 2021 election.”
‘Compensation’ over CERB
Asked how a Conservative government would have dealt with the Covid crisis, which came close to shutting the Canadian economy for more than two years, Housakos said, “When you give out CERB and aid you make sure it’s compensatory. You make sure if somebody lost a job at $1,100, then they’re getting $1,100.”
He said that around the same time as the crisis, the government also “went on a spending spree,” giving away millions to non-profit organizations “that didn’t need it.” He said hard evidence also emerged after the crisis “that we had a lot of fraud because of mismanagement during the Covid crisis. People receiving three and four payments of CERB every month. And Revenue Canada’s still having difficulty getting this money back.”
Merakos in Laval-les-Îles
Konstantinos Merakos, who is running for the Conservatives in the riding of Laval-les-Îles, said that as a constitutional lawyer and as the son of a Greek immigrant, he decided to run because he felt it was his duty “to give back to Canadian society and do my part for democracy,” while also helping enact legislation “to build homes, to stop crime, fix the budget and axe the taxes.”
Housakos, noting that Anna Roberts managed to win her riding – a former Liberal stronghold – after losing in her first attempt in 2019, maintained, “We think we can win here” with “young brilliant candidates like Konstantin Merakos that we have here carrying our torch.”
