Peggy Nash

[Committees of the House, February 15th, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-403, An Act to amend the Holidays Act (Flag Day).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce an act to amend the Holidays Act. This private member's bill seeks to declare February 15, Flag Day, a national statutory holiday.

I think we should be celebrating the birthday of Canada's first very own flag that was first flown over Parliament Hill on February 15, 1965. What better way to celebrate than to declare Flag Day a national statutory holiday.

February is one of the few months of the year that does not have a national statutory holiday, something I hope to change with my Flag Day bill. Canada does not have a single day off between New Year's Day and Easter. Many comparable industrialized nations enjoy more holidays year than we do. Hard-working Canadians need a mid-winter break. I think it is time we celebrated this special day with a national holiday.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Committees of the House, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as I have listen to the debate this morning, I have to shake my head and remind myself that we are talking about a situation in Canada, where people are being held without charge. They have no right to defend themselves and there is no independent process to investigate any of their complaints. These men are protesting what has become intolerable treatment, clearly to the point of risking their very lives.

We all know about the American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. Many of us have spoke out, deploring that terrible situation. Yet in Canada we have a situation where people are being detained under security certificates with no idea why they are being detained. We are allowing a situation to take place when these men could lose their lives. We are not even offering them the opportunity for an independent investigation into the situation. To hear the parliamentary secretary say that there is food there, that they can eat the food available to them, or that the door is open and they can leave the country, is, quite frankly, shocking.

Would he justify to Canadians how he can allow this situation to continue? How can he allow the health of these men to deteriorate day after day without his government intervening? How can he sleep at night and allow this to continue?

[Committees of the House, February 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I and many people in my riding are troubled by these targeted cuts to Status of Women. As was said earlier, $5 million, 12 offices and 63 staff people were cut by the government. Frankly, in a caucus that has only 11% women, the government has lost the support of the majority of women in this country.

The money has been cut. She says that it is being reinvested but it has not been reinvested. When will the government actually put this money into equality seeking organizations that can advocate on behalf of women to do the job and work toward women's equality which is so desperately needed across Canada?

[Infrastructure, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad he has re-announced the NDP budget money.

In 1993 government transfer payments to local governments accounted for 25% of municipal revenues. Under the Liberals it sank to just 16%.

The Conference Board of Canada is a non-partisan, non-profit group. Its report is recommending a national urban transit strategy, increased investments in affordable housing, and a strategy to deal with the infrastructure deficit.

When will the government come forward with a real urban agenda? When will it help our cities fulfill their potential as engines of our economy?

[Infrastructure, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, a new report released by the Conference Board is showing that Canadian cities have been abandoned for far too long. The report shows that after years of Liberal and now Conservative neglect, the needs of Canada's big cities are being ignored by the government. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is estimating the investment needs of cities with regard to infrastructure at $60 billion.

Will the finance minister take this report seriously? Will he respond to the needs of our cities and fix this infrastructure deficit in the budget?

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for Timmins—James Bay for his eloquent presentation on the bill. I share with him the real concern about growing poverty in our country. That is why I introduced a private member's bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour. We actually have no minimum wage in Canada at this point in time.

It seems bitterly ironic that the people who are at the very lowest end of the economic spectrum, the absolute poorest people in our society, are the ones who end up paying the shockingly exorbitant interest rates from the payday loan companies. The status quo is simply untenable. It is forcing people further and further into a downward spiral of poverty.

I am very familiar with this issue from an urban setting. Even in a place with lots of transit, people have trouble getting to a bank to do their financial transactions. In a riding as remote as the hon. member's, and especially with the large numbers of first nations people, could he talk a little more about some of the examples of people who confront this lack of banking resources in their community?

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in regard to the hon. member's remarks on the payday loans bill, this is an issue that we deal with in my riding of Parkdale--High Park, where increasingly the banks have pulled out of neighbourhoods and very quickly the payday loan operations have moved in to fill the gap.

As poverty has increased on the streets of Toronto, we have seen more people falling between the cracks. They are not able to set up regular bank accounts, so they resort to these payday loan operations.

I agree with having some regulation rather than no regulation. That is what the bill would allow to happen.

Could the hon. member elaborate somewhat on what the banks should be doing? When I met with one bank, representatives said that they had a cut-off level of so many transactions at a given branch and if that does not happen then they are out of the community. Does the member think there should be regulation and public debate about that level or some minimal requirement for some regular bank presence in all of our communities regardless of income level?

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, yes, of course, I share the goal, as I said at the outset of my remarks, of minimizing or, ultimately, eliminating election fraud. We work too hard, all of us, to persuade people to support us during an election to see any kind of underhanded advantage that someone might gain through fraud.

However, in this report that come from the committee, our party, the NDP made a number of amendments. Some were adopted but many were not adopted, and we just think that the legislation will not be workable.

Again, speaking for my riding with regard to the requirement for two pieces of photo ID, some people just do not have it, and I think that is a problem that they are not going to be able to overcome.

I am also concerned that we are making a change possibly right before an election. Would people even be aware of this change? What kind of voter outreach and education is going to take place?

Also, I would argue that if we are talking about a minimum intrusion, I do not think that sharing personal information with political parties, as is proposed in this bill, is a minimal intrusion and I think that is going to be challenged.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member's riding is probably the diametric opposite of my riding in downtown Toronto. For people in rural areas, enumeration would be of tremendous advantage. Enumeration raises awareness of a voting opportunity. Most of us read the newspapers, listen to the radio, we are on the Internet and watch television, but for many people, it is quite remarkable, whether they are in rural or urban settings, how cut off they are from mainstream forms of communication.

Enumeration would alert people of the opportunity to vote. It would allow a person, on a one-on-one, private basis to ask questions that they might feel are silly, or to which they should know the answer. It allows them the dignity of being able to ask a real person, face to face, some very basic questions about the voting process. I think it would boost voter turnout, especially among the native population in rural areas.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. At the outset, if the goal of the bill is to improve democracy in Canada, then that is a laudable goal.

I had the privilege of being an election observer for Canada in the first free elections in South Africa in 1994 and then again in the presidential run-off elections in Ukraine in 2004. It is with enormous pride that Canadians like myself have the opportunity to visit other countries and observe their election procedures with the goal of commenting on their fairness and democratic nature. We do that because Canada in general is known as a country with a good democratic record. Our elections are known as generally fair and democratic. If the goal of the bill is to enhance that, then it is a laudable goal.

However I fear the bill will not achieve that goal because it has some serious flaws. As a result of the identification requirements in the bill, I believe thousands of individuals will be unable to exercise their right to vote because they lack proper identification due to poverty, illness, disability, or no stable address. Homeless people, or those who are temporarily housed, or who stay in a shelter often do not have the identification that reflects their address.

My riding of Parkdale—High Park is an urban riding in the west end of Toronto. We have a large majority of renters as opposed to homeowners. There is a very high turnover in voters in the riding because of the huge number of people coming in and going out of the community. I see it all the time. We have a large number of newcomers to Canada, people who come as refugees or as landed immigrants. They stay and get their citizenship. We know from recent studies that they are disproportionately under-represented on the lists of voters. Unfortunately, we also have a large homeless population in Parkdale--High Park. I see them on the streets in Parkdale and other parts of my riding every day. We also have people with mental health issues, who unfortunately, because of a lack of government support, do not have the kind of care and supportive housing and services they definitely require.

These people do not go around with a big wallet in their back pocket with multiple pieces of ID. Many people in Parkdale struggle to get bus fare let alone photo ID. To say that, as a result of their economic circumstances, or their mental disabilities, or their newcomer status to Canada, they might be denied the opportunity to vote in an election, ought to worry all of us. I believe this will most likely be an outcome of this bill.

I firmly believe we should go back to the system of enumeration. We ought to be going door to door, finding out who is in the ridings across Canada. We ought to be signing them up and telling them what their rights are when it comes to voting. I wish this was in the bill. We tried to get it in the bill, but were not successful. We have abandoned that system in Canada, and I think that is to our detriment. It makes it harder for people to vote, especially people who already have multiple barriers before them.

So many times in an election I will talk to people on a street corner or I will go through an apartment building. For those of us in political life, we may be consumed with political life, but I will knock on people's doors or talk to them on the street and they do not even know there is an election going on. They feel so disenfranchised and powerless to be able to make a difference, and so I encourage them and tell them that they can make a difference, that every vote will count.

The last thing I would want is to have those individuals make the effort to show up to vote, in spite of working two or three part time jobs, family responsibilities, lack of child care or no transportation, and when they get to the voting registration area, they cannot vote because they do not have proper ID. This bill would disenfranchise them in that respect.

I am also concerned about the privacy elements of this bill. I do not know why we would have to have people's birth date information shared with political parties. I have a concern about that and that may well be challenged.

For me, the fundamental issue is about voter disenfranchisement. We know that south of the border, where there are similar bills and laws that have been put forward and passed, they have been challenged because of the disenfranchisement of many people. Quite frankly, it is not those of us in this room who will be disenfranchised by this bill. It is not people who are informed, who have the wherewithal to make sure that they are aware of their rights and opportunities under the law. It is the people who, through no fault of their own, are not engaged in the political process, and yet have that very basic fundamental right to democracy and the right to vote.

I believe that there is a way to achieve the goal of reducing the potential for voter fraud and extending the franchise as broadly as possible to include people who, little by little, have been dropping off the voter lists, but I do not think this bill does it. We should go back to the drawing board and bring in something that makes a better attempt to marry those two goals, but this bill does not do it.

Canada can do better. We are an example to many other parts of the world. This bill does not live up to our reputation as a model of democracy and well run elections.