Jean Crowder

[Softwood Lumber, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should take that victory to the workers in our communities who are still not working.

As members know, President Bush will be in Ottawa tomorrow. Last week the WTO condemned the Byrd amendment and opened the door for Canada to retaliate if the U.S. government gives one cent of softwood duties paid by our industry to U.S. forestry companies.

When he meets with the President, will the minister call for the President to dump the Byrd amendment, immediately remove the illegal duties, and cut a cheque dated Wednesday morning payable to the Canadian softwood industry for $3.7 billion?

[Softwood Lumber, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Canada and the U.S. have been without an agreement on softwood lumber for almost four years. NAFTA panels have told the U.S. to halt its duties three times. The minister called the WTO's March 2004 decision on softwood a major victory. I am having trouble finding the major victory on softwood. The duties are still being paid and the workers are not.

Can the minister tell us why the free trading Liberals and the free trading White House cannot get any trade on Canadian softwood?

[Violence Against Women, November 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the work of the women's committee of the Canadian Labour Congress and their postcard campaign “15 Days, 15 Ways to End Violence Against Women”.

From now until December 6, Canadians can send a postcard a day to remind the Prime Minister his government needs to do more than just make promises to help end violence against women.

This December 6 will mark 15 years since 14 young women were murdered at Montreal's École polythechnique because they were women.

This month is also Family Violence Awareness Month, a sad reminder that violence also comes not just from strangers but often from those closest to us.

It is time to act. The Canadian Labour Congress has shown us 15 ways to make it happen. Now the government must show us it has the will to end violence against women.

Our thanks go out to the Canadian Labour Congress for its vision and its campaign to end violence against women.

[Department of Social Development Act, November 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Sault Ste. Marie for raising a couple of important points. He talked about the Campaign 2000 report which was just released regarding poverty, and children and families.

He also mentioned the OECD report which was sharply critical of Canada's child care system, describing it as a patchwork of uneconomic, fragmented services within a small child care sector and seen as a larger labour market support often without a focused child development and education role.

If child care is not kept in the not for profit sector, what kind of impact does my colleague think it will have with regard to NAFTA and the WTO?

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, our party supports the bill in principle as long as there is adequate consultation. We think it is absolutely essential that there be broad based full consultations on the implications of this legislation.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the fact that this is an opportunity for us to examine the Employment Insurance Act and the impact it has had on Canadian society. Since the major changes happened in the Employment Insurance Act, we have seen a significant number of Canadians no longer covered by the Act.

For example, one of the key measures of protection is the percentage of unemployed workers who actually receive employment insurance. We have discovered a precipitous decline since 1990. In 1990, 74% of unemployed people actually received employment insurance. By the year 2001, only 39% of those unemployed were actually eligible.

There has been a significant number of changes to the Employment Insurance Act that have adversely impacted on Canadians' ability to take advantage of this social safety net. One of the more significant facts is that EI has more than tripled the minimum number of qualifying hours. It further reduced the length of the benefit period and quadrupled the number of weeks to qualify for thousands of part time workers. This meant a substantial erosion in the safety net for Canadians.

This is an opportunity for the department to take a look at implementing gender based analysis. The 1996 changes in the Employment Insurance Act have seriously impacted on women's ability to collect from the fund. For example, many women workers are either part time or seasonal workers and a substantial number of them no longer qualify for employment insurance.

Unemployed women are much less likely to qualify for EI benefits than men. The jobs of women are more precarious and insecure than those of men, and the level of precarious employment has increased in the 1990s. About 62% of working women were either full time permanent employees or full time self-employed employees compared to 73% of men. This decline has meant that women are less able to qualify for employment insurance.

In 2001 just 33% of women who were unemployed received regular benefits compared to 44% of men. One major reason has been the large increase in qualifying work requirements for part time workers. In addition, a significant number of women are now seeking self-employment. This means they do not qualify for employment insurance at all. This is best explained by the difficulty of finding paid employment rather than self-employment.

Gender based analysis is voluntary right now across departments. This would be a good time for the government to implement this in this particular department while it is doing this housekeeping. Gender based analysis would examine the full impact of these kinds of policies on women and children.

Today we heard in the House that there has been a rise in the poverty level of families with children and employment insurance directly plays into it. Another factor that can be considered with the employment insurance surplus is an opportunity to proactively invest in training. What we know from a variety of sources, including the Conference Board of Canada and the government's own reports, is that we are facing critical skill shortages over the next 10 to 15 years, not only as the baby boomers retire, but as we have new entrants in the workforce. We are seeing critical skill shortages in many areas, including the trades.

In reviewing this bill, we would look for a proactive approach to increase trades and skills investment in Canada. We need funds to address communities in transition. My community of Nanaimo--Cowichan has been adversely affected by a number of factors, including softwood lumber, BSE and fishing. We would like to see a proactive, responsible approach in supporting workers and their families when their communities are facing significant transitions due to changes in the workforce.

We need a comprehensive industrial policy that looks at many aspects which include, social, environmental and economic issues. This industrial policy would look at building long term community capacity and would foster the integration of economic, social and environmental issues in all aspects of how we look at economic development.

This is more commonly known as community economic development. There is a role for human resources in this aspect. Individual and community self-reliance, through collaborative action, capacity building and returning control of business enterprises, capital, labour and other resources to the community, is an essential part in a healthy and vibrant community.

There are many tools for community economic development which can be looked at through the employment insurance surplus. These include significant investments in small business, supporting capacity building so that people know how to increase and grow businesses in their community, and looking at import replacement in communities which talks about investment in our communities.

We need targeted, long term policies that promote and support our domestic economy. These include funding things like important job creation. These are policies that would require input from our communities and our provincial governments so that we have policies that are developed and that actually support initiatives that are grown in communities.

Again, I come back to softwood lumber. The softwood community adjustment is a good example of a policy that was developed without significant input from communities, and as a result does not meet community and worker needs.

We could also institute and support things like community development corporations, downtown development authorities, and loan funds. We need to walk the talk, and this includes things like government procurement, campaigns on buying local, and taxing the polluters to ensure that we are investing in things that we think are important in the environment.

Skills and training are important factors in community economic development, and we not only need to look at small business training but also at training for the future. This includes things like our apprenticeship programs. Right now, we are seeing an erosion of apprenticeship programs in some of our provinces, including British Columbia. In British Columbia we are seeing that some of our apprenticeship training programs are being divided and conquered so that we are not going to have things like interprovincial transfers possible.

We need to grow green business, and we can provide tax incentives and energy conservation initiatives that would support that.

Another aspect that the employment insurance fund could look at is supporting many of our rural economies. Right now, the definition of a rural economy is less than 50,000 people, yet we know many of our communities are far less than 50,000 and they get lost in policy development. When we are talking about a rural economy of only 1,000 people, a policy that is made for 50,000 just does not suit. Many of these smaller communities are losing out to these larger communities in their support and development.

One of the things that we need to do is reclaim our communities and grow our economies without sacrificing our livability. The revamping of this legislation is an opportunity to have a much broader labour market context and labour market policies that support the long term viability of our communities. I would urge the government and the committee to take a look at this.

[Office of the Auditor General, November 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, clearly the President of the Treasury Board has a problem with strong women. On Wednesday, some hon. members heard him refer to a woman MP as a sweetheart. Now he has followed through on his relentless attacks on the Auditor General and cut her budget.

I ask the President of the Treasury Board to stand in his place and restore the funding to the Auditor General, because Canadians trust this strong woman, not his strong-arm tactics.

[Supply, November 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of issues that the hon. member raised and part of it revolves around zero tolerance. There are historical precedents where we have indicated that certain substances will not be either in our food or in our environment.

It is incumbent upon us to act once we realize something like trans fats have such a serious adverse impact on health of Canadians. It would be irresponsible to not take the issue on and ban it. Education will also be necessary in terms of how people look at fats in their diet. A number of organizations like the Heart and Stroke Foundation are working very actively with the Canadian population to put forward an education program.

As to trading, Denmark is one country that has banned trans fats. I do not see the collapse of the Danish economy as a result of that. I would urge us to take a look at how Denmark has effectively implemented this and determine how that will affect how we deal with some of the imports that come into our country. Certainly, there are a number of imports that we would look at as not being safe and we would not engage in that behaviour.

[Supply, November 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely correct. First nations communities suffer from diabetes at a higher proportion than the population as a whole. Certainly, my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan has a significant number of first nations people living in the community. The impact of diabetes has been the subject of a number of studies in our communities and they are working very hard to combat that.

Trans fats is a significant factor in the diets of many people. I talked about low incomes and food security. We have a responsibility to ensure that our food sources are safe. Mandatory labelling will not do it. We really need to take a stand and say trans fats are unacceptable in our diets.

[Supply, November 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, food safety and security touches all of us. A growing body of research shows that trans fats contribute to health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. I would like to talk about some of the other factors that impact on people's ability to have access to safe food.

One of the things that we know about is food insecurity. Food insecurity is defined as the inability to access nutritional food in sufficient quantities. This can be related to poverty, low income, neighbourhoods without supermarkets and lack of knowledge on how to prepare food. Food insecurity is significantly associated with poor health, chronic disease, obesity, major depression, stress and food allergies. Food insecurity directly ties into what is actually in the content of our food.

Some mothers reduce their food intake to ensure their children get better food. This compounds the problems of trans fatty acids in foods because these women eat them as a higher proportion of their diet. I have heard stories from mothers who talked about struggling to balance their desire to provide an adequate diet along with their inability to access a sufficient income to provide that safe food.

Lack of choice impacts on people's ability to eat safe food as well. The report, “The Cost of Eating in BC”, 2003, states that a low income family would need to spend up to 44% of its disposable income on a nutritious diet. This compares to the average Canadian who spends only 17%. That is shameful in a country like ours that has access to adequate food and resources to adequately feed all of our population.

Pregnant women living alone on income assistance would be in the most desperate situations.

We know that at least 20% of women and children live in poverty in Canada today. These consumers end up buying food full of trans fat because they are the cheapest option. If the trans fat in those foods were replaced with a healthier fat, their overall health would improve.

Low incomes reduce choice in food buying decisions. Lower income neighbourhoods do not always have supermarkets or stores that provide healthier choices. We need to ensure that the food that is available for people in those lower income residential neighbourhoods is safe food to eat.

Lower literacy levels also remove choice from some consumers as they cannot read and understand or use the food label to make an informed choice. That is one reason that labelling, as a stand alone option, would be insufficient to protect our Canadian population from poor food choices.

Let me talk a bit about literacy. Low literacy limits opportunities, resources and the control which people have over their lives. As a result, people with low literacy have limited opportunities to make informed choices about their own lifestyle. The following information is from the paper on “How Does Literacy Affect the Health of Canadians?”

This is a fact. Twenty percent of Canadians have very low levels of literacy. These people with low literacy skills have limited access to health information, including both written and verbal. Much available information about health, both from health organizations and practitioners, as well as other sources such as the media, is in a written form and therefore very difficult or impossible for many people to understand. The printed word is not a preferred or credible source of information for many people who tend to obtain their information about health via word of mouth.

Health is also a gender issue. As the women's critic, I am pleased to be able to talk about how trans fat impacts on health and women.

Heart disease is the number one killer of women in Canada. We know that the use of trans fats directly contributes to heart disease in Canada. We also know that fat intake affects women differently than it does men. Research is beginning to look at health issues for women as opposed to health issues for men.

Research from the University of British Columbia shows trans fats pass through the placenta to the fetus. In Europe, another study has found that the higher trans fats in the diet of a pregnant woman, the more likely they are to give birth prematurely and have smaller babies. This is a serious lifetime health issue for women and children. I would urge us to take a look at legislation that protects children from being exposed to trans fats in the womb.

Once born, trans fats ingested by mothers is passed to their babies through breast milk. A study by Health Canada found that Canadian breast milk contained among the highest levels of trans fats reported, and that is a shameful statement to date.

In a nurses health study, women who consumed the greatest amount of trans fats in their diet had a 50% higher risk of heart attack compared to women who consumed the least amount of trans fatty acids.

Trans fats may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in women as well. In a 2001 study, researchers found that when women replaced 2% of the trans fats that they ate with polyunsaturated fat, they dropped their risk of diabetes by 40%. This impacts in a major way on our health care system. A recent study showed that high levels of dietary trans fats doubled the risk of colon cancer in menopausal women not on hormone replacement therapy.

There is more. Trans fats have also been implicated in developing breast cancer. A Dutch study suggested an association between the amount of trans fats stored in the body and the risk of disease in women after menopause.

Dr. Walter Willett, a physician and chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, was co-author of a 1993 report on 75,521 women who were tracked in the Harvard nurses study. Women with a high intake of trans fats were 1.5 times more likely to develop coronary disease than women with a low intake of these so-called foods. Data from a preliminary study suggested that diets high in trans fatty acids were associated with an increased risk of preeclampsia, which is induced hypertension and very dangerous for both mother and fetus.

The accumulated evidence on how trans fats affect women and children, and our population as a whole, is a really important issue before the House today. I would urge members to seriously consider supporting this motion. It is the age old story. When we invest in preventive care up front, we save money in the long run.

All of the evidence talks about the fact that as we continue to have trans fats in foods available to the Canadian population, we are actually increasing our health care costs over the long run as we need to continue to spend money on acute care dealing with things like diabetes, heart attacks and cancer. We are putting our health care system under undue pressure. It is really important that we support this motion to ban trans fats and look after our population as a whole.

[Supply, November 16th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, in January 2003 the United Nations CEDAW committee reviewed Canada's fifth report to the UN and its adherence to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. That was ratified by Canada in July 1981. This review resulted in 23 recommendations for Canada and the provinces and demonstrated perhaps a lack of commitment to some of these initiatives.

What has Status of Women Canada done to develop an action plan to address these recommendations and when will it be fully implemented?