Christian Ouellet

[Petitions, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, first I wish to thank my colleague from the riding of Québec for the two petitions that I will present today regarding SCIPI, the supporting communities partnership initiative.

The first petition is from 119 individuals who signed for Gîte jeunesse inc., a community housing organization which is a centre for the prevention of mischief, vagrancy, and homelessness. This organization provides shelter and assistance to 100 youth almost every day. Consequently about 3,000 individuals in difficult circumstances are helped each year.

The second petition is from Centre femmes aux 3A. According to this petition, it is the government's responsibility to look after the disadvantaged in our society. There is a real need for SCIPI in our society and it is a valuable program for our communities.

[Committees of the House, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to my hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst that he deserves to be admired for what he just said about this bill, which is really very ambiguous.

The court challenges funding is truly a democratic instrument. I must say that some of what he had to say about the Bloc was a bit too partisan, but I guess he felt the need to say it.

I would like to ask the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst whether he thinks that private enterprise will take the place of public funding when it comes to defending collective rights.

Will the fishers in New Brunswick provide money? Will VIA Rail Canada, Bombardier in Quebec, General Motors in Ontario or construction companies provide funding, will they invest the funds that are needed to challenge oversights and regulations that are often to the detriment of minorities? These minorities often consist of disadvantaged people. Can neo-liberalism replace public funding?

I would like to ask my colleague whether he thinks we could have public collections to replace this funding.

[Hazardous Materials Information Review Act, October 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Sarnia—Lambton for her documentation and for knowing her file well.

I would like to get an answer about something that puzzles me a lot. We always talk about industries, but an agricultural business such as a big farm can be seen and is seen as an industry.

On farms, whether small or big—but mostly the big ones—all kinds of very dangerous materials are used. Some materials even come from far away, for example, building maintenance materials. I remember seeing creosote on farms recently. This product is extremely dangerous. It is there, as if it were nothing and it is not a worry. No one feels the responsibility of treating it as a dangerous product. I also saw products that were used to sanitize and clean farm buildings and even products for cleaning animals.

I ask my colleague from Sarnia—Lambton when a farm is considered to become a big enough industry that the regulations that the government wants to pass are applicable?

Second, I would also like to ask her whether, on farms, the implementation of ISO 14000 could help to make toxic and dangerous products more safe.

[Hazardous Materials Information Review Act, October 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my honourable colleague opposite, the member for Winnipeg Centre, got sidetracked somewhat since Bill S-2 does single out asbestos, and I think he used the bill to talk about the era when he worked in the mines. I agree with him that it was actually dangerous at the time. He is correct, back then it was called long fibre asbestos.

However, the asbestos produced at that time is not the same fibre as the cryolithe being produced today. That is a lie. It is not the same fibre, it is not the same thing, it is not as dangerous and does not even come close to posing the same risks.

My colleague stated that he was a carpenter, and so was I. I imagine that we worked at similar workplaces. At the time, we knew very well what it involved.

He stated that asbestos was extremely dangerous. It was a hazard for the workers, for those who mined it and those who carried out renovations. This fibre remains dangerous. However, it was never dangerous when properly installed in walls, around beams or when properly contained or hardened.

Asbestos cannot be readily replaced in high temperature areas. Contrary to what my colleague stated, it cannot be replaced with cellulose, which can be used as insulation but not for anything else.

I would like to ask my colleague for Winnipeg Centre why he did not once mention cryolithe?

[Petitions, October 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present two petitions that call upon the government to immediately reinstate government programs. One demands the immediate renewal of the national homelessness initiative. The other demands that the SCPI and RHF programs be made permanent and strengthened.

The first petition is from the Hébergement Maison de la Paix, a youth shelter in Longueuil. I would like to thank my colleague from Saint-Lambert.

The other petition is from the Auberge du coeur in Victoriaville. I would also like to thank my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska.

The first petition, which has 95 names, indicates that funds are needed to maintain a minimum of decent resources for the homeless. This would allow for more than just providing shelter; it would also open doors to increase social reintegration for many homeless people.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her excellent question because, when I meet with labour unions in my riding, that is one of the things we talk about. This is indeed an interesting and worthwhile program, but, as I said earlier, it does not do much to find work for people who cannot be easily retrained, if at all.

That is why both programs are necessary: one to help workers find a new job, and also one for those who cannot find a job because they are too specialized in their field and, beyond a certain age, cannot even imagine themselves doing something else.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for asking this question because it gives me an opportunity to talk about what is happening in my riding and then to elaborate on the question.

In my riding, there are job losses and job creation as well. A great number of jobs are generated. There is job creation in high technology companies and job creation in sectors where materials are produced and then shipped directly to the United States or Europe.

In my riding a lot of jobs are created; so that is not the problem. The problem is that people 55 and older cannot be retrained or take these jobs because they lack the knowledge or adaptability to do so. They were never shown that they could do something else.Therefore they have no options even though new plants in my riding are hiring. These workers cannot take these jobs because they lack the skills to work in these factories. The same thing is going on all across Quebec.

This summer I travelled across Canada and I made the same observations. Even in Edmonton there are unemployed people. Workers do not stay long in Edmonton because when they get there and realize they do not have the sought after special skills, they leave. The principle of communicating vessels does not apply here. In other words, when someone 55 or older is laid off, this does not create a new job opening. This is not an automatic process. Some workers find other jobs, but it is far from automatic.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for sharing his time with me and for giving such a fine presentation that really explores the problems facing older workers.

I would also like to thank my colleague from Chambly—Borduas who introduced this motion and so keenly defended it.

This morning, the minister told this House that Canada is experiencing a growth in employment and, as a result, we do not need to help older workers. It is completely absurd to link the number of jobs to the fact that older workers cannot find work.

The minister acknowledged that losing jobs also has a domino effect in the community. This is true, and we know that people who become impoverished at 57 or 58, and who have lost everything, cannot contribute to their community, far from it. Money given to people who have worked all their lives thus helps the entire community and even helps younger people find new jobs.

This morning, the minister said that people would retire more universally if there were a program such as POWA. On the contrary, people want to work. If they suddenly stop working and receive assistance from a program such as POWA, it would be because no other solution is available to them. People do not want to live off POWA. They would prefer to have a real salary. The minister must realize this.

I got the impression that the minister had not gone to see what was happening in the field. She does not know the people these measures are designed for. She is mistaken when she thinks that assistance programs for learning new skills will apply to these individuals. It is very seldom possible to retrain them. She is even talking about new careers. Come on. Men and women who have worked 18, 20, 25, 27 or 28 years for the same company have become experts at their jobs and cannot be readily retrained. They have skills, which they learned on the job. In general, workers in the textile, furniture, lumber and soon the rug industry—since the problem of the rug industry is getting dangerously close to my riding—cannot easily learn another trade or start another career, contrary to what the minister may imagine. Why? Because they have very little education.

My colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup has just said that people are often illiterate. They have lots of knowledge and have acquired extraordinary expertise. They are professionals in their job. But they have a grade two, grade three, or grade four education. Some have a hard time reading. So they cannot easily begin another career at an advanced age. How can anyone think that it is possible, when it is not?

I will take the example of my father-in-law, a typical man, who spent his life working for Goodyear, in textiles, and who became an expert. This man did not have an education. He had maybe gone to school for two or three years, and then he had to work after the war because he came from a large family.

In Quebec, there are still large families. Some people still leave the country to go and work in factories, where they get their training. They become open-minded and capable people who can help others. My father-in-law even became a foreman. But at age 57 or 58, he could not find a job elsewhere. It was impossible. He did not have the knowledge required.

Someone who changes jobs every five or ten years is mobile, and so is his head. He can easily find employment in other fields. As the minister said, he can enter an assistance program and possibly start another career. But people who have done the same job their whole life long find this hard to imagine and are not able to easily find another way of working and living.

For these people, POWA is therefore absolutely necessary. It cannot be replaced.

My riding has many workers. Unlike the minister, I meet with them and talk with them.

I meet with these people, I talk to them, and I know how much they would like to work, how much they would like to find another job. But this is impossible, because these people specialize in just one area, so there is less work for them, or else none at all.

For example, CSBS, the former CT Brooks company in Magog, is currently restructuring. Every week, it is laying people off or rehiring. Why? Because we are facing huge competition from China, a phenomenon that could be described as dumping. The definition of dumping is giving things to a company free of charge. In China, the government is giving companies land, not charging them tax on equipment, lending them money at preferential rates and giving them tax breaks. This is dumping, because the selling price is less than the production cost.

But the government has never done anything about this. With the WTO, it could have put up barriers over the past 10 years, as the United States has done. There was also NAFTA, and because we are big exporters to the United States, we were hamstrung.

CSBS is a textile plant that is experiencing huge problems, and it is not alone. This morning, the local papers in my riding reported that Consoltex, a textile company in Cowansville, my own city, wants to cut its employees' wages, vacation and benefits, because it is in financial difficulty. Just imagine, if the employees refuse a wage cut that will leave them with starvation wages, the company will close. This will be one more closure that will leave textile experts out of work. The younger workers will be able to find new jobs, of course, but those who are 55 or older will have a tough time finding work.

All the national unions in Quebec and the local unions support us. I have met with them personally, and they are all in favour of assistance for people 55 and over, because they know that these people cannot find new jobs, that they cannot embark on a new career as easily as the minister may think.

We absolutely must help manufacturing companies that are having trouble surviving and we must realize that this is a humanitarian issue. We cannot ask the international community to help our older workers aged 55 and over. It is up to the government to help them. I am convinced that the assistance requested is not an inordinate amount for the government and that it represents peanuts when compared to the total budget.

However, it is very important because half of Quebec's industries have lost 100,000 jobs over the past 10 years. In my riding, thousands of jobs are being lost. These workers cannot be placed as readily as we would like or hope.

Furthermore, we have opened our borders which has created even more difficulties. These conditions did not exist 20 or 25 years ago. They are new conditions and we now need a plan to directly and immediately meet the needs of those aged 55 and over.

We can be certain that older workers will prefer to continue to work or to find another job rather than to receive assistance under POWA.

POWA is like first aid or a safety net that will prevent workers from suffering psychologically and from having their health adversely affected. Money not invested in POWA will be spent to maintain workers' psychological and physical health.

The government can spend in one area or the other. I prefer to have healthy men and women who are no longer employed than to spend money on health care to keep them going to the end of their days. In my opinion, POWA must be established immediately.

[Petitions, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of people who have expressed their support for the RHF and small SCPI communities programs. This petition is from the Maison d'accueil pour sans-abri de Chicoutimi. This is a shelter for homeless men and, with great support, it is calling for the SCPI program to be renewed.

I therefore present this petition.

[Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my colleague, the member for Québec, for introducing this bill, and for defending it with such feeling. The Bloc Québécois is proposing that CMHC limit its capitalization capacity by paying out some of the huge surpluses it has accumulated over the past few years to Quebec and the provinces.

Bill C-285 will enable Quebec and the provinces to invest in housing—specifically, to build social, community and affordable housing. In Quebec, nearly 450,000 households urgently need housing, and in all of Canada, approximately 1.7 million need it.

To learn more about people living in substandard housing and the homeless, I criss-crossed Quebec and Canada last summer. I went to Trois-Rivières, Montreal, Rimouski, Quebec City, Victoriaville, Sherbrooke, Granby, and in my riding, Magog. I also travelled around Canada, visiting Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Red Deer, Regina, Calgary and Vancouver. In all of these cities, the people and the volunteers who look after those living in substandard housing are desperate for help.

What really struck me was the lack of permanent housing for vagrants and the homeless. How can we lend a helping hand if there is no housing to give them a fresh start?

The situation is becoming increasingly difficult given the growing income gap. In Canada I have seen so many women, elderly people, entire families living on the streets and aboriginal people without a decent place to live. Even a French travel guide, the Routard guide to Western Canada, talks about it as though it were a Canadian phenomenon. Imagine, it says that Canada has an inordinate number of homeless people in comparison to what Europeans are used to. This is scandalous in a country as rich as ours.

In CMHC's latest annual report, the crown corporation acknowledged that 15% of all housing in Canada is substandard. Consequently, the 15% living in inadequate housing can be added to those without housing.

Edmonton is in the midst of a boom and rents are rising so rapidly—in one case, from $85 to $1,100 per month—that a growing number of individuals and families are living in temporary shacks, despite and even because of full and highly-paid employment. The situation is the same in Regina and in Calgary. People who work in this sector have urged us to publicize this and the fact that there is a need for shelters, cooperatives and housing that is affordable for everyone. Seniors—especially elderly women, single-parent families and unskilled workers, the working poor are being left by the wayside amidst the prosperity in Alberta, Quebec and all Canadian cities.

Since 1998, CMHC has accumulated a surplus of $5.3 billion. It has never been required to have a reserve fund like a bank. Its mandate is to help households obtain quality housing that is affordable for all, including the most disadvantaged.

CMHC is not a private corporation; it is a crown corporation that serves the citizens of Quebec and of Canada. Thus, it makes no sense, and is even immoral, for it to turn away from its mandate and accumulate such a large surplus when most metropolitan areas in Quebec and Canada are currently experiencing a shortage of affordable housing.

This bill will limit CMHC's reserves to 0.5% of its loan portfolio, or just over $1 billion, enabling it to establish an annual reserve of approximately $100 million. According to experts, this amount is more than sufficient to deal with any reasonable eventuality.

In addition, the consolidated revenue fund has always been the ultimate guarantee. In fact, the legislative mandate and the objectives of CMHC are to promote housing construction, repair and modernization; access to regular, affordable housing for everyone, including the most vulnerable in our society; housing for families with three or four children—this no longer exists, you have to buy a home if you want enough space for three or four children; the availability of low-cost financing, in order to include the working poor one day; and stability for the homeless.

This mandate must be reflected in the plan of the crown corporation known as CMHC.

It is our responsibility as the government to ensure that CMHC carries out this mandate and does not get sidetracked into market forces that do not apply to it. This makes poverty a barrier to a just and equitable society.

The government is swimming in recurring surpluses while the poor in our society are drowning because they are unable to pay market rent. I often think about elderly women.

There are two schools of thought now. Europe is abandoning government housing for market housing. However, it is paying for the poor to live there. Until 1993, England, Australia, the United States and Canada helped house the poor in a more traditional manner. Now, the government seems to want to do neither. Has it lost its mind? How can the government of a developed country give up housing its citizens?

Last week, the minister told us that the government was investing $2 billion a year in affordable housing. Let us be clear: this $2 billion is only for mortgage payments on homes built before 1994.

There has been nothing new since then, except for a paltry $800 million from Bill C-48 in the winter 2005 budget. That is far too little money for the government to live up to its responsibilities in Quebec and the rest of Canada. The federal government has completely given up on developing new social housing units. Once again, it has offloaded this responsibility. It is easy to understand why people are disillusioned with this government.

This disengagement on the part of the government, which has the money, has had a devastating effect on low-income households, both in Quebec and in Canada. CMHC is not an insurance company or a bank. Why is it departing from its role? Is it government neoliberalism that is making its way into government institutions such as CMHC?

By creating a reserve fund, CMHC pretends to be engaging in fair play with the big Canadian banks, but it is not playing fairly with the 5 million Quebeckers and Canadians who live below the poverty line, and the 1.7 million households that do not have proper housing, or any housing, for that matter. Its true reserve fund is constituted by subsections 29(1), 29(2) and 29(3) of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act to provide assistance for housing, not to provide assistance to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

I must emphasize that the losses from CMHC activities are guaranteed by the government's consolidated revenue fund. With this bill, the Bloc Québécois and the other responsible parties of this House would like to return CMHC to its mandate, which consists in investing its retained earnings in social housing, affordable housing, cooperative housing, and upgrading the 15% of homes that are not up to code.

We are convinced that the provinces are in a much better position to decide how to use this money most effectively. There is therefore no reason not to give this money to the provinces, which will manage it perfectly.

There is therefore no problem with the fact that it is handing this money over to the provinces, which will manage it perfectly.