Jean Crowder

[Petitions, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want to present petitions on behalf of people with children with autism, calling for amendments to the Canada Health Act to include specific therapies as medically necessary.

[Softwood Lumber, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, that is the rubber stamp agency. There were 11,000 applications and not one turned down.

The United States has been refusing to play by the rules of free trade for years now. It is the Liberal government that has taken no action to protect our forestry workers. There have been 20,000 jobs lost.

Is the government finally willing to consider the NDP's suggestion that we look at the possibility of export charges on our oil and gas, so that the U.S. administration knows that we are serious?

[Softwood Lumber, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration keeps up its attack on Canadian softwood jobs, holding thousands of workers in British Columbia, northern Ontario and Quebec hostage. Now Kinder Morgan wants to buy Terasen Gas to ensure its pipelines are available to carry Canadian gas to U.S. markets.

When will the government take the NDP's advice to link energy exports to fair play in softwood lumber?

[Health Care, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we know the upcoming election will be on ethics. No place will that be clearer than in the debates around health care.

A few weeks ago the NDP presented the Liberals with its proposals to stop the erosion of public health care: prohibit provinces from using federal transfers to pay for private health care; ensure doctors working in the private system do not have billing privileges in the public system; and make it mandatory that provinces report on how transfers are used.

The Liberal response was disappointing. It began with the words “when private involvement threatens the integrity of the public system”. Doctors know private involvement already threatens our public system, which is why it was the focus of their annual general meeting this year. Nurses know the public system is threatened. That is why they are calling on all parties to support conditions on federal transfers that limit spending to not for profit health care. Health care advocates know a private system threatens universal access to care. That is why they are calling for strategies that support publicly delivered care.

The Liberals do not get it. After giving away $41 billion, they said that only future funding would have conditions attached. Their bold plan to protect health care was to fully enforce the Canada Health Act--

[Pay Equity, November 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, recently I was asked by a student who was writing a paper on federal pay equity why the government was taking so long to draft proactive legislation. The Ministers of Labour and Justice appeared at the status of women committee this week to answer that question and their response was not reassuring.

Although the ministers referred to pay equity as a fundamental human right, they said nothing to indicate that we would see draft legislation any time soon.

The pay equity task force studied and consulted for more than three years. It produced a comprehensive report that called for proactive legislation and the establishment of an independent pay equity commission. That report was completed in May 2004 and still nothing from either department.

Women have read the report, have studied the recommendations and know there is no reason for this delay. The departments of justice and labour could immediately draft legislation based on the report's recommendations and move forward.

Canadian women want legislation, no more studies, no more consulting and no more Liberal excuses. Where is the legislation?

[Canada Labour Code, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want to applaud the member for bringing this issue before the House and giving us an opportunity to talk about issues around equality for women and their unborn children.

The NDP supports the intent of the bill to amend the Labour Code to allow a pregnant or nursing employee to avail herself of provincial occupational and health and safety regulations.

When I talk about it being an equality issue, I am going to go back to the royal commission report of 1984 on equality in employment to talk about the fact that this does remain an equality issue in Canada for women. It is important to understand that when we talk about a definition of equality, then Judge Abella, now Justice Abella, said, “sometimes equality means treating people the same despite their differences and sometimes it means treating them as equals by accommodating their differences”.

She goes on to say:

Ignoring differences and refusing to accommodate them is a denial of equal access and opportunity. It is discrimination. To reduce discrimination, we must create and maintain barrier-free environments so that individuals can have genuine access free from arbitrary obstructions to demonstrate and exercise fully their potential. This may mean treating some people differently by removing the obstacles to equality of opportunity they alone face for no demonstrably justifiable reason.

This is very much an issue for women who are either pregnant or nursing in the workplace. There should not be barriers to their participation in whatever way that they are able in the workplace. When they need to withdraw from the workplace, they must be able to access adequate support systems that allow them to have a liveable kind of condition.

Justice Abella goes on to say, and I think this is a really fundamental piece of this:

For women, equality in employment means first a revised approach to the role women play in the workforce. It means taking them seriously as workers and not assuming that their primary interests lie away from the workplace. At the same time, it means acknowledging and accommodating the changing role of women in the care of the family by helping both them and their male partners to function effectively both as labour force participants and as parents.

That quote gets to the heart of this bill.

In our country we talk about the importance of children. If we are talking about the importance of children, we must be talking about the importance of their mothers. It seems when we have systems set up that do not look toward protecting pregnant women or women who are nursing their children, we have systems that are failing the children and families of our country.

One of our challenges, and I am sure this is part of the reason this has come forward, is we have an employment insurance system that fails many women. Significant numbers of women no longer qualify for employment insurance as a result of changes in 1995. We have fewer and fewer women who can even qualify for regular benefits, let alone maternity.

We have a shameful condition in our country where no matter what the unemployment rate is in any given area, women still need 600 hours of insured employment to qualify for maternity benefits. This precludes a number of women from accessing a support system when they are most in need of it.

We have provincial areas that provide a much more generous approach. We have heard others talk about regional disparities and how this somehow would not be fair. It seems to me that what we really need to be talking about is ensuring that all women have access to the kinds of progressive systems available in some of our provinces, such as Quebec.

I have heard members talk about getting the bill to committee. This would be an opportunity at committee to ensure, when we look at the bill, that we talk about all women in all provinces having access to those kinds of supports.

One thing we know is that when women are pregnant or nursing, they are very susceptible to a variety of environmental conditions and these are very important to a child's development. We often put too much pressure on women to change their behaviour in terms of pressuring them to stay in a particular job or in a particular workplace, with little attention to ensuring they have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink and that they are not exposed to pollutants that not only impact them but also their unborn children, or to have access to mothers' breast milk.

As well, in the workplace we often find employers would rather women look to leaving the workplace rather than changing the environment to make it safer for them. Women should not have to face a financial penalty for needing to withdraw from dangerous work while they are pregnant.

The Canada Labour Code does not go far enough on these issues. Although we are hearing about a commission that is examining the Canada Labour Code, we need to move faster than that. We often wait for these commission reports and then they gather dust somewhere without any substantial changes to what is happening in the actual workplace.

Although I applaud the member for Shefford looking for an alternative and seeing that many provinces have better protection for pregnant and breast feeding workers, it really raises the question about what is happening in other provinces and why women do not have access to the kinds of protections afforded in the province of Quebec.

That is why I appreciate the provisions in the bill that would provide women with almost a full replacement wage if they are pregnant or breast-feeding after pregnancy so they will not be forced to leave their jobs and suffer those financial consequences.

This brings up another subject. Many workers are not covered if they are self-employed or contract workers. Quebec is certainly moving ahead in this vein to ensure that self-employed workers do have coverage. However, currently nowhere in the rest of Canada, under the existing employment insurance system, do self-employed workers have access to maternity and paternity benefits.

The Women's Network of Prince Edward Island has been doing an extensive amount of work on this issue, closely looking at the Quebec model. Parental benefits and before that maternity benefits were never a good fit with the unemployment insurance system or as it is now called, employment insurance. Having a baby is not like losing a job or being laid off. Every parent knows that being a parent is a full time job.

Today, when we emphasize more and more the importance of early days in child development, it seems less and less sensible not to fully support parental leave for all Canadians, not just those who have met the strict eligibility requirements for employment insurance.

We have been hearing from women from all over the country about what it means for them to not have that safety net when they become pregnant. It seems to me it is a failure in the system to address this very critical need. Again, I suggest that we look to Quebec for its progressive model around providing wage replacement to self-employed workers.

The Women's Network of Prince Edward Island recommends that we extend eligibility for maternity and parental benefits by allowing self-employed individuals the option to pay into the employment insurance program. Although the Women's Network of Prince Edward Island is suggesting that it would be optional, many people feel it should not be optional and it should be part of the requirement so all women who are self-employed have access. It also recommends that the federal government extend eligibility for maternity and parental benefits by enacting a 360-hour qualification requirement regardless of regional unemployment rates.

I spoke earlier about the fact that so many women are shut out of the employment insurance system despite the fact that they pay into the system. We have women paying into a system from which they cannot collect. Many would argue that these women who are often part time seasonal workers are subsidizing the full time full year workers. They pay in but have no way of collecting.

The Women's Network of Prince Edward Island also has asked that eligibility be extended by allowing an option for parents to reach back hours over a three to five year period prior to the birth of a child.

These are all extremely important steps to take. They show, as the bill of the hon. member for Shefford does, that working women still need some action to ensure that there is equity in the workplace.

Earlier I mentioned equality and equity. I would like to close on that note. We have so many items that demonstrate women still have not achieved equality in our country. Women are still fighting for pay equity. They are still not eligible for the employment insurance benefit. We see this disparity when we talk about women who are pregnant or breast-feeding.

Equity does not mean that all people are treated the same, but that accommodations ensure that all workers have the same opportunity in the workplace. I urge all members of the House to support the bill and send it to committee for a fuller discussion.

[Health, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Copeman Healthcare Centre opened in Vancouver today, providing unhurried care for a membership fee. B.C.'s Minister of Health said he was concerned that this clinic violates the Canada Health Act. The head of the B.C. Nurses' Union said preventative care should be available to everyone, not just those who can pay.

Liberal Senator Michael Kirby has called for even more clinics like the Copeman. Will the minister tell us that Kirby's ideas are not those of the Liberal Party?

[Supply, November 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I need to say that compromise does not only happened once. Compromise is an ongoing process where parties can learn to work together as issues emerge.

When we are talking about substance versus procedure, the Prime Minister already talking about an election date in the spring. Circumstances have now changed somewhat. We can now revisit that and compromise as new information is provided to the House by the second Gomery report. This would be an opportunity to take a look at this new piece of information. If the situation has changed it would give Parliament an opportunity to suggest a new election date in the spirit of compromise.

We have talked about health care over the last couple of weeks. We offered up a compromise solution but the Liberals would not come to the table in a meaningful way to save health care. We want to stop the creeping privatization of health care. It was just another way of not having that kind of thing happen.

When we talk about a minority Parliament and the opportunity to make it work in a different way, all parties must come to the table for that happen. It means that we must be willing to dialogue in a different way and that has not happened. That is why we have ended up in the situation that we are in today.

[Supply, November 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the member for Hamilton Centre for sharing his time with me and I want to begin by echoing something that the member said.

One of the elders from the Cowichan tribes in my riding has expressed a concern over the years about how often we talk and how we do not listen. He said, “I know you can hear me, but are you listening?” In the great tradition of Parliament, we have often thought that this was a place for debate, discussion, the exchange of ideas and thoughts, and sometimes for compromise.

I want to put compromise in the context of the kind of language that is important for parliamentarians to bring to this discussion. According to the Oxford English dictionary, compromise is a coming to terms or arrangement of a dispute by concessions on both sides; partial surrender of one's position for the sake of coming to terms; the concession or terms offered by either side.

It seems that is what we are talking about when we talk about compromise today. We are talking about various parties coming together and coming up with a solution that will work for all Canadians, not just for one particular group who are desperate to hang onto power for however many days they can do that.

In the tradition of other great parliamentarians, I want to quote from Lester B. Pearson's Nobel acceptance speech. This is a good reminder of the kind of tradition that we have the opportunity to bring here, the kind of discussion and debate that we could have the opportunity to engage in. Mr. Pearson said:

In his response to the situations he has to meet as a person, the individual accepts the fact that his own single will cannot prevail against that of his group or his society. If he tries to make it prevail against the general will, he will be in trouble. So he compromises and agrees and tolerates.

It seems to me we have 37% of the House unwilling to compromise. We have 37% of the House unwilling to tolerate the kind of discussion that brings another view to the table, that says there are important issues before the House right now that we want to clear up. There are important issues such as Bill C-55, Bill C-66, and the first ministers and aboriginal meeting next week.

These are important issues that we are willing to stay at the table and work together on to ensure that these issues are passed satisfactorily for Canadians. This is an opportunity for the House to demonstrate its goodwill in meeting the needs of Canadians.

Let me briefly speak about Bill C-66. We are coming up to wintertime. We have snowflakes falling in Ottawa as I speak. This is an important bill to ensure that Canadians who are the least advantaged and who are at most risk in our world have access to the benefits that are available under Bill C-66. I would urge all members to look at this very good compromise solution that has been offered by the NDP and work hard together to pass this important piece of legislation.

We have heard much talk over the last several months about democratic deficit. We have heard the Prime Minister talk about how important it is for the government and for all parties to look at electoral reform. The member for Ottawa Centre put a very good proposal before the House. We thought we had a commitment to move forward on electoral reform that would make a difference on how each and every one of us behaved in the House, and how each and every citizen was represented in the House. Have we had any action? None. We are still waiting for that process to be put in place.

The reason I specifically wanted to talk about electoral reform is because the very premise of having electoral reform, a proportional representation system in the House, would mean that every one of us would have to come to the House with a willingness and a tolerance for compromise. It would be the very foundation of working together around a collaborative consensus kind of a way. It would be the very foundation of ensuring each and every Canadian voice was heard when members voted.

It would be the very foundation of working together around a collaborative consensus kind of a way. It would be the very foundation of making sure each and every Canadian voice was heard when they voted.

We have had a Prime Minister who has thumbed his nose at electoral reform. He has thumbed his nose at the democratic deficit and it appears that he will thumb his nose at this very sensible compromise that the House has proposed, a compromise that would allow us to clear the business, avoid a holiday election, avoid Liberal campaigning at taxpayer expense in January and have us go to the polls in February. That seems like a very excellent compromise.

I want to talk a bit more about electoral reform and how important it is for the House to address this democratic deficit. Many of us are very well aware of the fact that only 65 out of the about 300 seats in this House are held by women. We know from studies that have been all over the world that electoral reform increases the equality of representation in our democratic systems. Again, we had this opportunity to do this. Have we had any action? Absolutely not. The Prime Minister has not said one about moving forward on these kinds of initiatives.

In these last days, whether there is other action that happens over this next couple of weeks or whether we reach our natural conclusion in the middle of December, we have heard much talk over this last couple of days about how the sky is falling. We have heard much talk from the government, the Liberal benches, about how if we do not do this the world will come to an end and if we do not do that the world will come to an end. The Liberals have been around for 12 years and all of a sudden, with a few weeks left in the sitting of the House, all of this business is going to be done at the very last minute. I am shocked.

The Liberals have had 12 years to get on with this kind of business. We have had 18 months for the Liberals to get on with this kind of business and we still wait.

Today I met with the National Farmers Union and they were talking about the kinds of issues that must be taken care of in the next 10 days. I asked them how long the discussion had been going on. It has been eight years that we have been talking about these very important issues for farmers and in the last week the deal is coming very close to fruition.

What has been happening for the last 7 years and 51 weeks? All of a sudden the deal is coming to a conclusion. What a miracle. Of course it is just before Christmas and perhaps miracles do happen at this time of year, but it seems like there are so many miracles that are happening all of a sudden.

It is beyond belief that the work that could have been done over the last 12 years has not been accomplished. We still do not have enough affordable housing in the country. We still have women who do not qualify for employment insurance. We still have women who are living on substandard wages because of the Canada pension plan that does not recognize their needs. We still have farmers who do not have a decent income. We still do not have any resolution to the softwood lumber issue and many other issues, such as the BSE. I could go on and on about the failure of the government to meet its commitments to the Canadian people.

Why would we now not come to this compromise solution that would allow us to finish the business that is currently before the House, go into an election that misses the Christmas period and give Canadians a chance to talk about the kind of government they want, the kind of solutions that the NDP brings forward, of government that truly puts the interests of Canadians first.

We talk about the common sense compromise which is actually predicated on the fact that people are willing to come to the table and talk to each other. It is predicated upon the fact that we listen to people in a meaningful way and that we are willing to take our agendas and park them at the door to really work on solutions in the interests of all Canadians.

However we can see that is not been what has been before us. I would urge all members of this House to support the motion that is before the House today so we can give Canadians an opportunity to see the business concluded, enjoy Christmas with their families and then call an election in January.

[Supply, November 15th, 2005]

Billions of dollars. Mr. Speaker, my colleague just pointed out the amount of money that is involved in this.

I would urge all members to support this very important motion so there is transparency and accountability to the Canadian taxpayer.