Judy Sgro

[Automotive Industry, April 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the manufacturing sector contributes over $613 billion and approximately 1.8 million jobs to the Canadian economy. Canada's manufacturing and auto sector was once the envy of the world. Now it is in dire straits, losing jobs every day.

When is the government going to have a specific plan for the auto sector to back this mainstay of our economy and show some respect for the auto workers and their families?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely important issue and it is not one that we should be pushing politics and trying to play games with.

If the NDP members really cared about the country they would be working with everyone to try to make things change and make some improvements. All they are interested in is trying to do showcasing and trying to shame and push people around.

We on this side of the House will do what we need to do when the time is right and when it is in the best interest of Canada.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, let me begin my response by saying how important immigration is to Canada. To continually find ways to improve our legislation should be on the top of the list for all of us in the House.

The reason 800,000 people are on lists is because many of those people are no longer alive, or many of them no longer want to come to Canada for different reasons, or many of them were fleeing countries because of economic issues but some of those countries are now in a much better state.

It is not a question of our immigration system not working. Many people want to come to Canada. We need to look at how we are handling application forms. Our current system does not allow us to say no. We have to take all applications as they come in. There are a variety of things that could be done by regulation.

All of us have an interest in seeing our immigration system to be the best that it can be. That is a natural interest for all of us. If that is the case, then why are we trying to sneak reforms into our immigration system through a budget implementation bill? Why is the issue not going to a special legislative committee?

If we do not want Bill C-50 to go to the current citizenship and immigration committee, then we all have to agree to is to send it to a special committee where we could spend a month or six or seven weeks going over it to make sure that it is the best that it can be. Why would we be afraid to debate it?

We have lots of opportunity to work together on this bill, but we cannot do that by sending it as part of a budget bill to the finance committee. It is irresponsible to send it there and expect finance committee members to suddenly become experts on immigration issues. We all know the complexity of the issues in and around immigration. I remind the House how important it is for us to do this right.

If there are going to be reforms, then let us do the reforms. The bill should be sent to committee so we can all work on it together.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, things have quietened down a bit now and I am happy to participate and offer my comments on Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East.

Imitation is often mentioned as the highest form of flattery, so Canadians are now experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu with the minority Conservative government's 2008 budget.

It seems that the Conservatives lack any ideas of their own and instead have decided to present a watered down version of our Liberal policies.

Perhaps if the finance minister was not so busy bashing his home province and my home province of Ontario, he would have had more time to come up with more original policies, some of his own policies, rather than recycling ours and trying to pass them off as new policies.

Some of the many excellent Liberal initiatives that the finance minister repackaged are: making the gas tax transfer permanent, as we had committed to in February 2007; providing direct support to the auto sector, as we called for in January 2008; creating jobs and improving public transit through additional investments in infrastructure, as we called for in February 2008; providing funding to hire more police, as we committed to in March 2007; reversing some of the Conservatives previous cuts to university granting councils and the indirect costs of research programs, which would have grown substantially under the Liberal economic update of 2005; replacing some of the funding from the Liberal 2005 update for student grants; and modernizing the Canada student loans program.

That is quite a list of Liberal accomplishments. I could go on further with more Liberal achievements and more of our exceptional policies, but I will go back to minority Conservative government's budget implementation bill.

I am glad the Conservatives really and truly appreciated those policies and those ideas that we had and went forward to implement them because they could see they were very good policies as well.

I certainly would have preferred it if the Conservatives had not already spent the cupboard bare with their previous budgets and fall economic and fiscal updates, leaving a razor thin surplus to protect Canada's economy should it continue to falter.

The next six months will be very important in Canada's economy and we can only hope that Canada will come through this without finding ourselves back in a deficit position again.

All the Conservatives are looking for is a boost in their poll numbers, continuing to demonstrate to Canadians what their priorities are. By focusing on the election that it is so desperate for, the government has again showed its incredible shortsightedness and total lack of ability to build our great nation.

Everything is built on polls and more polls. There is no planning for next week because everything is being done on the fly. The Conservatives have wasted a major opportunity to address Canada's infrastructure deficit by not acting on the Liberal proposal to use $7 billion of this year's debt paydown to fund infrastructure projects across the country. The investment of that $7 billion in infrastructure across Canada could clearly have protected us against what many of us fear is a possible recession here in Canada.

Nevertheless, we did not vote against this budget as there was nothing in the budget that warrants an election that Canadians clearly do not want, particularly at such a difficult time for the Canadian economy.

People that I speak to tell us to be patient and give it more time and that they are watching what everybody is doing. Clearly the polls are showing that because frankly nobody is going up and nobody is going down.

However, now that the minority Conservative government has very sneakily slipped legislative changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act into the budget implementation bill, it really gives us cause for concern.

These changes would give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration unilateral authority to determine priorities for the processing of immigration application requests. These measures could potentially reduce the number of new immigration applications that the federal government accepts each year, particularly in the number of family class applications.

All of us need to be concerned about family reunification, as well as the whole issue of filling the needs through our skilled trades and economic requirements.

We have never seen any compassion from the government and I am certainly not expecting it to start now by exercising humanitarian and compassionate grounds on any application, but I am also appalled at the Conservative approach of shutting the door on immigrants by simply reducing the number of applications the federal government accepts.

Does it really think this is an appropriate way to address the immigration inventory? This bill puts far too much discretionary power into the hands of the minister to cherry-pick the type immigrants that the Conservative Party would like to enter Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada's mission is to build a stronger Canada. Let me read the mission statement for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It states:

Developing and implementing policies, programs and services that:

Facilitate the arrival of persons and their integration to Canada in a way that maximizes their contribution to the country while protecting the health, safety and security of Canadians;

Maintain Canada’s humanitarian tradition by protecting refugees and persons in need of protection; and

Enhance the values and promote the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship.

That is a very important mission statement and I am not sure the minister has had time to read that herself. Perhaps the immigration minister should take a few minutes to try to familiarize herself with that because the mission statement very much clarifies and illustrates exactly what Canada is all about.

Possibly she is too busy selecting what immigrant she is going to fast track as she moves forward or perhaps she shares the view of the Prime Minister when he wrote in the 1988 Reform Party platform that immigration should not “radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada”.

Using the budget implementation bill is an outrageous way to deliver promises made by the Reform Party 20 years ago. Immigration reforms should simply not be buried in a budget implementation bill.

If the government wants to table these changes, it should put them forward as a separate piece of legislation that can be studied by the appropriate House of Commons standing committee, as any other critical piece of legislation would be.

If Parliament is to work effectively for all Canadians, regardless of the fact that we are in a minority situation, we must have a full and honest debate on all critical issues, certainly including immigration reform.

I consider immigration to be critically important. It is a part of moving Canada forward. It is very important that we have an immigration system in Canada that will help to build our country in a positive way. I believe that requires all of us, not in a partisan approach, to sit down in a committee, maybe a special legislative committee if the government does not want to send it to the current citizenship and immigration committee. We need to have an opportunity to fully debate the reforms that the minister is talking about.

There are areas that I am sure we would all agree on to move forward and there are other areas that possibly we would not but on something as important as immigration in Canada, I do not believe we should be doing it while it is buried in a budget bill.

It has been suggested that we are having a debate today but it is not. We are dealing with a budget implementation bill. We need to spend many hours going over exactly what it is the minister wants to achieve. It should be done in a non-partisan manner at either a special legislative committee or in some other manner, where people with experience in dealing with immigration files could come forward. We could work together to bring forward some reforms to the immigration bill that would benefit all Canadians and not simply be done in a partisan manner in a budget implementation bill.

That is not the way we do things in Canada. I do not believe it is the way that we can build a country any more than I believe we should be pitting one province against another. I continue to see the politics of division happening across the way by the government. It is pitting communities against each other and provinces against each other. That is not the way to build a nation.

While the government is so busy throwing the “nation” word around, clearly that is not how to build a country. I call on the government to work much more cooperatively with us as we try to move our great country forward.

Many other issues were mentioned earlier, things that Liberals are concerned about. Picking and choosing who comes to Canada is not the Canadian way, nor is it the way that we should be moving things forward.

I want to thank the House for allowing me the opportunity to comment on Bill C-50. There are many issues in the legislation, but the immigration one concerns us on this side of the House a lot as we move forward to build a strong country together.

[Jane and Finch Community, April 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I met recently with members of an important community group in my riding of York West.

Jane and Finch on the Move is a grassroots group of community members whose mission is to promote community solidarity and harmony as they strive toward removing barriers that many in our community face.

I applaud Jane and Finch on the Move's ongoing dedication to improving the quality of life in our riding in York West. Their initiatives can strengthen our neighbourhood and I would like to thank them for taking the time to inform me of their positive activities.

I look forward to working with Jane and Finch on the Move in the future as we continue to build a strong, healthy and successful riding of York West.

[Municipal Affairs, April 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the environment minister claimed that he met with his cabinet colleagues in Ottawa in October of 2006 concerning the contribution agreement for Ottawa's LRT project. But, according to public records, the ministers that he claimed to have met were out of town.

Either these government records are false or the minister is not telling the truth. Which is it?

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear the hon. member complain because in effect it was his party that brought the previous Liberal government down. If it were not for that, we would already have the early childhood care program, the early learning program and a whole lot of issues would have been dealt with.

The NDP members keep complaining that they want more money invested. We were doing all of that but because they were not content to wait another couple of months, they decided that they would defeat the government. They got what they got and we will do what we need to do at the appropriate time and when we are ready.

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, those folks over there should be careful because they might get what they wish for.

One of the issues that we need to pay attention to is that we are in a minority government. We were elected to try to make the government work and to try to work together in a cooperative manner. We have gone over and above every effort possible to make it work.

I have many seniors in my riding and many disabled people with whom I talk all the time. They would love to have some money invested in programs. I would much rather see the $500 million or so that it will cost for the next election turned around and invested in the people in our provinces. I am doing my best, as are my colleagues, to try to keep the government's feet to the fire to the extent that we can.

I do not want an election right now because I do not think the people of Canada want one. That is what I hear when I am out there. They do not like the guys on the other side of the House but they also do not want an election today. We are doing our best to do our job to try to make this minority government work and we will continue to do so as long as we can. Maybe it is only another day or two, who knows?

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, we often hear that the three levels of government are supposed to do the very best job they can within the realm of their responsibilities. I agree with my colleague's comments regarding criticizing other ministers of finance in other provinces. If the current Minister of Finance wants to become leader of the Conservative Party in Ontario, then he should step down, go there and take over that job. However, for him to stand here and rather than concentrate on how we can make Ontario stronger and better, to bash Ontario and try to take out investment is totally uncalled for. He should be ashamed of what he has already done.

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on the whole issue of investment in the auto industry, we know that thousands of jobs are created as a result of a successful auto industry. Canada, and Ontario in particular, is well positioned when it comes to the auto industry. In the whole realm of things, taking $17 million of the $60 million in the GST cut and matching Ontario's commitment is not a huge amount of money.

We all want to see tax cuts, but the reality is that someone has to pay for the different services that are required.

Just to give an example of what we are talking about when we are talking about priorities in investing, whether or not it is the $17 million in the auto sector, when the current finance minister was the finance minister in the Mike Harris government, in the 2001-02 fiscal year he cut $603 million from hospital care. A hospital in my riding was forced to close because it did not have the funds to carry through. Schools were closed. All of this happened because corporate taxes were being cut so that there would be more money to invest in other things.

There was $154 million cut from social assistance. There was $309 million cut from post-secondary education. There was $583 million cut from housing. That was simply in a one year budget in the province of Ontario.

All of us want tax cuts, but there has to be a certain amount of money there to provide the services that are required for our country. When we are reinvesting those dollars into things like the auto industry or post-secondary education to make sure that our kids are getting a good education, all of those are investments in the people of Ontario or the people of Canada.