Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to support Bill S-11, an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, in order to add social condition as a prohibitive ground of discrimination.
I express my thanks to Senator Cohen who worked very long and hard to raise this issue not only in the Senate but in Canadian society. Senator Cohen has done a lot of very good work including producing an excellent report on poverty in Canada. I also thank the member for Shefford who has brought this bill from the Senate into the House for debate.
In March the chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission said: “Poverty is a serious breach of equality rights which I believe has no place in a country as prosperous as ours. Human rights are indivisible. Economic and social rights cannot be separated from political, legal or equality rights. It is now time to recognize poverty as a human rights issue here at home as well”. She said this in her annual report to parliament in 1998.
The commissioner is saying what we know from our own experience and what I know from my own riding of Vancouver East, that poverty is one of the greatest barriers to equality in Canada. There is no question when we look at what is happening around us that poor people are losing their rights. Discrimination is growing. We are witnessing a growing homelessness that is now at crisis proportions in Canada. There is an increasing environment of poor bashing. We are seeing municipal bylaws that are discriminatory against poor people such as anti-pan handling bylaws.
There is a growing environment in this country where there is increasing discrimination against poor people.
All of that is contrary to the universal declaration of human rights. It has been very interesting to hear members from the Liberal Party and the Reform Party talk about how this bill and the idea of a prohibited ground based on social conditions is too difficult for us to deal with.
We can always find reasons not to do something. But the fact is we all know in our hearts that poor people do face vicious discrimination. We need the political will to say it should be a prohibited ground as we do in provincial legislation so it is not an issue that there will be too much litigation or it is too difficult, too complex. It already exists as a legal entity, as a legal ground. We are now saying this should be included in Canadian human rights.
What I want to focus on is real point here, that the greatest source of discrimination against poor people in Canada comes from government policy. Yes, there is discrimination by landlords, banks, businesses, services and even in our general attitudes and stereotypes about poor people. But there is no question that the greatest discrimination is from public policy.
Yesterday and today in Geneva representatives from NAPO and anti-poverty groups are briefing UN officials on Canada's hypocrisy when it comes to dealing with poverty. This deals with the UN covenant on economic, social and cultural rights which Canada was a signatory to in 1976.
The anti-poverty groups are meeting with a UN committee to expose what has been Canada's blatant disregard for the covenant as we now are seeing in this growing environment of discrimination against poor people.
I think it is interesting to note that this is not the first time that anti-poverty groups have had to appear as witnesses to the UN committee to point out what is happening in Canada.
In 1993 NAPO and the charter committee on poverty issues went to the UN committee and exposed the extent of Canada's shocking non-compliance with the UN covenant. This is where we really get to the heart of discrimination and what is happening with growing poverty in Canada.
I would like to talk about some of the things that have taken place. We could go back to 1989, to a good day in the House of Commons when the House unanimously passed a resolution to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000, something all members stood up and voted for and it was a very noble gesture. What happened?
In 1993 the federal government abandoned social housing, one of the key issues that determined health and poverty in this country. In 1995 we saw the loss of the Canada assistance plan that had laid out basic rights and conditions in terms of social entitlement.
In 1996 we saw the era of the Canada health and social transfer that abandoned and eliminated those universal rights in Canada and for the first time saw a massive downloading and slashing of social programs that were now up to $6 billion or $7 billion that has affected the most vulnerable people in society.
This brings us to 1998. This discrimination is still going on and I believe it is the worst form of discrimination, discrimination by government and public policy. The child tax benefit discriminates against the poorest families in Canada by denying people and families on welfare the right to the child tax benefit. That is discrimination, something that should be outlawed if we had social conditions in the human rights act.
We only have to look at the EI cutbacks to see another form of discrimination. I think it really begs the question why the government is reluctant to support this amendment.
I went back into the records to see what kinds of positions have been taken by Liberal members in previous years and I came across a very interesting quote in Hansard of May 1993. This is what a Liberal member had to say with regard to the UN covenant on social, economic and cultural rights: “The UN, hardly an enemy of Canada, says that the government record on child poverty, on homelessness and on food banks is deplorable. We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world yet we are condemned internationally because the Conservative government has disregarded the reality of poverty”.
That was a statement by the Liberal member for Hamilton East in May 1993. The same members who are now part of the government have systematically created policies and programs that have discriminated against poor people and have increased poverty in Canada.
There is no question that our goal and why we should support the bill as a very important step is that we should be working together to end discrimination on the basis of social condition. It is very important to say that is not enough. Our goal must also be to force the federal government to set concrete targets to eliminate poverty and homelessness.
As pointed out by my colleague in the Bloc, if we eliminate the conditions of poverty, elevate people out of poverty, provide jobs, housing and social support, we are meeting the goals and targets we should have.
The greatest challenge for us is to get governments, not just the Liberal government but all governments, to examine their record and acknowledge their policies which have quite deliberately and consciously created increased poverty in Canada.
This is not an issue of individual poor people who are to blame, although they often are. We only have to look at workfare programs as yet another form of discrimination. It is the years of slashing social programs and of scapegoating poor people that has brought us to where we are today.
We have an opportunity in the House today to do the right thing and to say that social condition is something that can work. We can join together like we did in 1989 with the resolution to eliminate child poverty. We can say that social condition should be a prohibited ground of discrimination and should be in the Canadian Human Rights Act. We can do the right thing. I ask my colleagues to think seriously about the issue, join us and vote for the bill.