Michelle Dockrill

[Petitions, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I would like to table multiple petitions that I continue to receive with respect to the opposition from hundreds of people of Cape Breton Island in the province of Nova Scotia with respect to the changes to the Canada pension plan.

[Health, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, obviously the member was not briefed on my question.

If the Department of Health is not responsible in assisting Canadians when they become ill due to no fault of their own and intends to withdraw funding for proven preventive measures for seniors and children, my question is simple. What is the ministry responsible for if not for the health and welfare of all Canadians?

[Health, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

If governments had to carry warning labels the Liberal government would be plastered with the message “Warning: Continued dependence on this product could be hazardous to your health”. Hepatitis C victims learned that the hard way. Now young people and old people are in peril. The Department of Health intends to cut funds to programs that allow kids and seniors to stay active and improve their chances of staying healthy.

Will the government abandon these hazardous policies today and give Canadians the chance we all deserve to work and to stay healthy?

[Court Challenges Program, April 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, after rising in the House on March 16 to ask the government about the future plans for Devco I was attacked by the Minister of Natural Resources who, when asked by a fellow government member about the Liberal position on Devco, the Donkin mine and other issues of grave concern to the people of Cape Breton Island, resorted to the worst form of heckling and insult.

I was accused of not thinking of my constituents, but of trying to save the skin of the NDP. Regardless of what the hon. member thought my motives to be, it was clear that I had no need to worry about saving the skin of my party, as we are all aware of the stunning defeat suffered by the Liberal government on March 24 and of the NDP's rise to official opposition status.

Perhaps the minister and the House would also be interested to know that of the seats on Cape Breton Island that went NDP, the two with the biggest majorities are in the areas where coal mining has been the way of life for hundreds of years. Those are the people who stood on March 24 and rejected the party that has hurt them and their communities, which has refused to listen and to speak honestly.

I hope that this latest political rejection of the Liberal Party will be noted by this government and we can now start a new era in relations between this federal administration and the people of Cape Breton, an era where justified and factually supported questions are no longer dismissed as fear mongering, where questions are answered instead of questioners being attacked, and where the people of my island are treated as equals with those from any part of this great country.

I hope that this new era will begin. As the weeks pass I grow more and more concerned that the process of closing down the coal industry is continuing with increasing speed. Since I last spoke on this issue, the international coal piers have been closed, shutting Devco coal off from the export market for at least two years.

It is easy for the government to comment on Devco's inability to make a profit, but it should also be critical when the crown corporation is cutting itself off from valuable future markets. While more and more miners are being placed on indefinite layoff, the latest Devco revelation comes in a letter I received this week from the tripartite task force on fires and explosions in coal mines that expresses grave concerns over the shutdown of the coal research lab in Sydney earlier this year. The lab, which was urged to expand its activities in the report on the Westray disaster and whose necessity has been reinforced by the recent coal mine disasters across the former Soviet Union, was closed down despite objections from the industry and from the task force, which itself is a government funded body.

We have a government body questioning and condemning the actions of the government. More than that, in a copy of a letter from 1996 included with the pleas to restore funding to the research lab, the former chair of the task force talks of how he has been made aware of a government plan to shut down the lab if it cannot be privatized.

The orderly shutdown of Devco continues. The government continues to hide the truth. Why is this government helping Devco to shut down its future by destroying the corporation's ability to develop new markets and new technologies? I have asked this question so many times. I hope you will indulge me one more time, Mr. Speaker. I hope that the government will take advantage of the changed political landscape and start a new relationship based on open dialogue with the people of Cape Breton.

Will the government release its real plan for the future of Devco and come clean with Cape Bretoners?

[Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, that is a really taffy question. Certainly I agree with my colleague.

One of the things I would like to make a point on concerns the people of Bras d'Or.

As I have said in this Chamber on numerous occasions with respect to the problems that are occurring both in Bras d'Or and in Atlantic Canada, what we are finding is that our population is aging rapidly and we have a serious problem with respect to the exodus of our young people.

Contrary to what we hear from the other side of this House, I am not aware of very many jobs that are being created at my end of the country. Therefore, our young people are leaving at a very rapid rate.

As the seniors critic, I am doubly concerned with respect to what is happening with our population in Bras d'Or and how those people perceive these changes will affect them.

[Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the member's question, yes, I am aware of that.

I would like to say that a lot of my comments today have come from the perspective of senior citizens whom I have both talked with and received correspondence from in terms of their concern for their future with all of these changes that the government has proposed.

[Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I concur with my colleague from Qu'Appelle with respect to where this piece of legislation has initiated. If it is all right with the Speaker I would like to talk about why I believe this piece of legislation will not improve pension benefits for senior citizens.

Not acting on opportunities to improve pensions and therefore benefits simply adds to the financial struggles of too many vulnerable people. It is beyond me how this can be the goal of any Canadian government. If the letters I am getting from seniors are any indication, the government will have a lot of explaining to do during the next election.

This bill is part and parcel of the government's piecemeal approach to updating the public pension system. The entire set of proposals from the Canada pension to senior benefits has met with opposition from the business community and seniors. The seniors benefit proposal has universally been characterized as too complicated and unworkable by financial planners.

Maybe that is why the finance department has been up to its elbows in a redesign that has no end in sight. The cornerstone of this half finished pension reform is an unqualified failure and the entire policy has no integrity. The finance minister knows that seniors are watching every stumble.

The bill before us provided an opportunity to diminish the government's attack on older Canadians who have claimed what author John Myles calls the citizen's right to cease work before wearing out.

However, in Bill S-3 the government is proposing a mechanism to take the surplus out of private pension plans rather than offer incentives to improve pension plans. This is the wrong message to send. The government's role is simply to do what it can to add to the quality of life of citizens. It can do so by encouraging the improvement and strengthening of pension funds in an attempt to increase benefits.

Pensions and medicare have institutionalized the concept of retirement. Imagine a society where retirement is not institutionalized, where we are not granted the right to a peaceful time in our final years, free from the struggle of the labour market. We have this right today and cutting pensions is an attempt to take that away. To deinstitutionalize retirement, destroying the institution of retirement one pension cut at a time means a person never stops working regardless of age or health.

The evidence is irrefutable that the private sector does not provide enough money by age 65 to create a suitable retirement nest egg for the vast majority of Canadians. This is why there has been consistent public pressure throughout the 20th century for the government to step in. Now it is stepping back from that mandate and the result is clear.

If hon. members go to fast food restaurants and shopping malls they will see some seniors who want to be working, but they will mostly see seniors who have no choice but to stay on the job.

The destruction of retirement, one pension cut at a time, is big brother's right wing dream of social engineering, a sick utopia being administered by the finance department. Canadians do not want the finance department carrying out centrally planned social engineering experiments on their senior citizens. They want pensions the way they were working well before these experiments became so fashionable in corporate and government boardrooms.

If there is one constant theme in the government's scorched earth campaign against the long held Canadian consensus in favour of public pensions it is a complete lack of interest in making life better for seniors. We have seen it with the Canada pension plan where seniors' hopes for a little more money so some can literally turn up the heat another degree next winter were put through the shredder at the finance department. Hopefully it is using the same shredder on the proposed seniors benefit.

The seniors benefit is like some foul monster worthy of the X Files television program, speaking a language that even financial planners cannot understand and striking fear into the hearts of seniors everywhere.

Again the government is slashing benefits by cancelling the old age security and guaranteed income supplement and letting loose the cynically titled seniors benefit.

It should be pointed out that although the government's plan to institute a seniors benefit has been stopped dead in its tracks at least for a while, this did not come about because the government was sensitive to the needs of seniors. The government was unmoved by the outcry from seniors groups and their disbelief on seeing the planned benefit.

No, it was the outcry of wealthy Canadians through their financial planners who said this plan makes it difficult to organize the complicated financial affairs of better off retirees. This group saw the losses involved and together with lower income Canadians delivered a universal message. Thankfully this wretched seniors benefit has been put on hold, and that is the strength of universality.

A nation is not a thing to be divided and conquered by its own government. We are a nation of citizens who deserve to be treated with equal respect. Universality is about equality and balance and the government's approach to destroy universality by expanding means testing for pensions through the seniors benefit has simply upset the fine balance of universality and equality born from the Canadian soul and enshrined in the institution of retirement that we have erected as a symbol of our nation. To dismantle these things is to dismantle Canada.

Bill S-3 has some good intentions. The bill strives to set clear ground rules for housekeeping, restores a better balance between the employer and those who benefit from the pension plan and enhances the ability of the minister to enter into agreements with provinces to apply and enforce a province's pension legislation.

However, the bill also adds unaccountable power to bureaucrats in the name of lowering costs and only addresses the issue of taking a surplus out of a pension fund. This is what most seniors and future seniors are concerned with.

Bill S-3 is an opportunity for the government to address the need to use the surplus wisely. There could have been something in the legislation which encourages pension fund managers to find constructive ways to use any surplus, to perhaps leave the surplus in a fund for the good of those who receive benefits. But the legislation does not do that, which is a shame.

We should be improving benefits or striving to improve benefits. After all, the goal here is to improve the quality of life of our senior citizens.

The government cannot even be bothered to appear to be striving to improve benefits. Clearly, a discussion on how to use any surplus for the good of beneficiaries is lacking in this bill.

Canadians are a prudent people. We like to know there is money in the bank for a rainy day. Statistics show that for the vast majority of seniors old age is that rainy day.

In December Statistics Canada announced a 2% rise in the rate of seniors' poverty over many years of decline, largely attributed to the long established pensions in the country. However, that is not the most telling statistic.

I will quote from a StatsCan report. It states:

A large percentage of the elderly population have incomes near the low income cut-offs. Consequently, rates for seniors are particularly sensitive to small income shifts. The rise in the elderly low income rate reflects the fact that more seniors fell just short of the cut-offs.

Senior citizens are hanging on by a thread in a world where governments are cutting pensions. The government is making cheaper medicine more difficult to obtain and social assistance for the victims of this wild west economy is being rolled up into meaningless tax cuts just so the wealthy can smoke a few more cigars.

The StatsCan report of just five months ago, three days before Christmas, makes it clear that seniors are amassing on the last rung of the economic ladder. It reminds me of the hundreds of thousands of refugees amassing in the city of Dunkirk during the second world war with nowhere to go, looking across the sea for any sign of hope.

This government has millions of economic refugees staring at it through wizened eyes and all the government can think about is who will blink first. It is shameful. This is not about blinking, it is about eating and staying healthy and warm.

There was recently an elderly gentleman from Cape Breton who had to resort to a public plea over radio for help. Unable to pay for his expensive heart medication and facing a refusal for help from the cash starved provincial health plan, the man said he expected to die the next day.

Faced with a member of their community dying in such appalling circumstances, Cape Bretoners responded, as they always do in Atlantic Canada, with generosity. The senior is now being taken care of, but for how long?

What about the thousands of others we know are suffering the same indignities across this country? If the government does not care about them, who will? It will not be multinational drug companies or the multinational insurance corporations. I doubt it will be the banks who are bent on service charging senior citizens right into the grave. The banks are probably the ones who came up with the phrase “You can't take it with you”.

This is the job of the government. If the government is going to treat people the way corporations do, then why have a government? It seems the marketplace is crowded with organizations trying to figure out ways to get their hands on people's money in exchange for nothing but promises and apologies.

Seniors were not born yesterday. They know the government should return to its only market niche of good government, adding to the quality of life of its citizens. Why will the government not through this legislation encourage pension managers to search for ways to increase benefits and help seniors become more independent? This bill makes the improvement of pension plans unlikely and that makes seniors and future seniors less secure. So why bother?

It is part of this government's disturbing pattern of behaviour in the area of pensions. Why did this government announce it was going to cancel the old age security and guaranteed income supplement which Canadians knew they could use as a building block for their retirement, a building block that would not shrink every time they earned a dollar of their own through an RRSP or some other form of investment? Why does the government plan to replace it with a seniors benefit which will give a couple about $18,000 and then take away every dollar of seniors benefit for every dollar earned?

It seems that the government has taken its cue from thieves lurking around banking machines, lying in wait for senior citizens. Seniors are only withdrawing their own money paid through pension contributions and taxes.

Why is the government forcing seniors to work harder, making it harder for them to earn money for their final years, and then taking away their pension, dollar for dollar, with the seniors benefit? Why has the government put senior citizens on a treadmill? Senior citizens do not need to be on a treadmill. They have worked hard all their lives. They have paid taxes. They have defended this country, with their lives in many instances. They have raised families, built businesses, passed on their lessons learned and made their communities better places for all of us. After all that, all the government can come up with in terms of social policy for seniors is to put them on a treadmill.

I think the finance minister needs an education. He needs to learn that senior citizens have a right to cease work and he has a responsibility to ensure that when the private sector uses them up and throws them away it is his responsibility to take them in and thank them for the contribution they have made to this country. That is his job.

We are compassionate people and a Canadian government devoid of compassion is un-Canadian. This is the unseverable cord of this nation's definition of patriotism.

The Minister of Finance says that all of these pension initiatives are designed to maintain the viability of benefits for seniors. If he can maintain them, then he can surely role up his sleeves, get to work and go one step further to improve them. If he does not like the idea of improving benefits, he should step aside and allow someone else who has the stomach for the job to do it.

How can anyone not be interested in caring for the elderly in this country? How can you say no to that? How can you not want to improve pensions and benefits and improve the lives of our wonderful senior citizens?

People who cannot bring themselves to care for senior citizens should think of this. We are all pretending here. We are all senior citizens. We run pensions at our own peril. We are hurting ourselves because we all have our senior years to look forward to. That is who we are hurting when this House passes legislation like the recent downsizing of the Canada pension plan benefits program and, God forbid, the seniors benefit.

How can the government on the one hand slash the Canada pension plan, old age security and the guaranteed income supplement by claiming it is running out of money and then present this bill today with no encouragement to improve pension funds? Is that how we want to teach our children to handle finances? As soon as you get ahead, just throw your money away.

The government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth and seniors have stopped listening. The government should give senior citizens a little more credit.

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, just over a month ago, on February 4, I stood in this House and asked the Prime Minister to explain a document that had come into my possession that detailed a government plan to shut down the Cape Breton Development Corporation.

This plan, stamped “secret” on every page, included a precise chronology for the privatization of Devco. Then, in the likely event that privatization would be unsuccessful, the government was told exactly which parts of Devco could be sold off, parts like the Donkin mine. Most important, the plan told the government what it had to say to convince the people of Cape Breton that the destruction of their jobs, of their traditions and of their communities was a good thing.

When I revealed this document the Prime Minister would not answer my question. He passed me off to the natural resources minister who had not even been paying attention. That is how seriously this government takes the voice of Cape Breton Island. The Prime Minister had advance notice of my question and he did not even bother to brief his minister.

It took a week for the Liberals to respond to my release. It took them a week to come up with a line to explain away written proof of their underground strategy to destroy the Cape Breton coal industry. The best they could do after a week was to say that the plan they had authorized at cabinet level had never been presented to the cabinet.

This defies belief. Is the government asking us to believe that when the cabinet requests a study it simply disappears? If the cabinet tolerates civil servants behaving that way then our country and this government are in more trouble that I thought.

Eventually the Liberal spin doctors decided this line was a little too unbelievable as well because they dropped it and said that yes, there had been a plan but that it was abandoned because of the pressure applied by the island's Liberal MPs David Dingwall and Russell MacLellan.

A cabinet minister who was explicitly mentioned in the cabinet memorandum as being a key player in implementing the privatization or shutdown was suddenly transformed into the saviour of the corporation. Even better, Russell MacLellan, a backbencher, was supposed to have input into a cabinet document that he could not have known anything about.

This explanation insults Canadians. Any grade 10 political science student knows we have a parliamentary system that relies on cabinet confidentiality as one of its central pillars. So if a backbench MP is getting access to secret cabinet documents, then at least one cabinet minister should be forced to resign.

This fudging of answers has reached a fever pitch as the Nova Scotia election gets closer. The backbench Liberal MP turned Liberal premier struggles to convince Nova Scotians that his total lack of activity on their behalf over the past two decades is not due to his total lack of ability. Paul any economic recovery will bypass Cape Breton Martin and Jean your out of luck Chrétien are singing Russell's praises in trying to pretend that they actually remember who he is. But this will not work.

The people of Cape Breton are still waiting for the Liberals to answer the question I asked last month. We do not want any promises, we just want the truth. If the truth is that the government has tried and failed to make Devco commercially viable and has tried and failed to privatize it, why will it not be honest with the people of Cape Breton Island?

[Devco, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

When asked to confirm the existence of a plan to shut down Devco, this government claimed to know nothing about it. Today I ask the government to confirm the existence of a new 15 month shutdown plan for Devco.

Is it just a coincidence that this 15 month plan dovetails perfectly with that secret cabinet memo on Devco? Will the government release this plan to the House so that Cape Bretoners can know what this government plans for them today and not after the polls close in Nova Scotia next week?

[Cape Breton Development Corporation, February 4th, 1998]

Yes or no.