Debates of Feb. 11th, 1999

Supply

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the member from the Liberal Party for whom I have great respect.

When she talks about national standards and caring Canadians why did her government abandon social housing in my province of Nova Scotia?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in this complicated federation it is extremely important that when the provinces have requested certain programs it is a collaborative effort. Now when we realize what happens with social housing, what is happening in terms of affordable housing and when we realize that there is going to be no way of ensuring food security when some people are paying more than 50% of their income on rent, we have to look at how we establish national standards. So it is not a matter of who delivers the program. It is a matter that all Canadians feel there is a security that those programs will be delivered.

[Jocelyne Girard-Bujold, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would have greatly appreciated having the hon. member for St. Paul's provide us with some examples and solutions for eradicating the situation we have in Canada at the present time of 1.6 million children living in poverty. We are not talking of figures here, we are talking about children. They are our future. We should stop talking about this and that. We are told what Mr. Chrétien—

[The Deputy Speaker]

I must interrupt the hon. member. She is well aware that other hon. members must be referred to by title or riding name, and not by name.

[Jocelyne Girard-Bujold, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

The Minister of Human Resources Development has been going on and on about this for weeks.

I would like my colleague to come up with some concrete facts and examples that will lead to elimination of poverty by around the year 2000 in Canada.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as of July 1, by merely increasing the personal tax exemption, we took 400,000 Canadians off the tax rolls. I think it is extraordinarily important that we look at the future in terms of the 3% surtax, which came off last year, and understand that those are the simple things that the federal government can do in just taxation.

The sentinel event I think last week where the provinces agreed to the way they will co-operate to make sure that the vision and values of this country come to be I think is something we should not underestimate.

[The Deputy Speaker]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Jonquière, The Environment.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle.

First of all I thank the hon. member for Shefford and her party for introducing the motion today. I think it is an extremely timely debate with the crisis of this country, although it is not a crisis that just happened yesterday, this is an ongoing crisis which has been going on for many years. I am glad that today is a good day to discuss this.

Next week my hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst will be bringing out his long awaited EI report. After his travel across the country from coast to coast to coast he will be relating the report and putting a human face to exactly what this government and the previous governments have done to people who are collecting EI and exactly what has happened to these people. He will be relating their personal stories for the House of Commons for all parliamentarians to have.

If I may digress to a personal experience, my mother and father and I were born in Holland. In 1956 when Holland was discussing the closure of the coal mines, and my father was a miner then, my mom and dad and six brothers and sisters plus thousands of other people in Europe at that time had no other opportunities but to abandon not only their homes but their countries and migrate to a great country like Canada and other countries.

I am very proud to say that my mother and father and all my brothers and sisters have done very well in Canada in terms of the social fabric of this country. The only unfortunate part is I now speak to my mother and father on a regular basis and what they see around them is the degenerating of the social fabric of this country.

For over 20 years my mother and father ran a group home for various children from across this country who were abandoned or abused, neglected or just basically forgotten about. They had well over a few hundred children go through their home. It was their way of thanking Canada for opening up Canada's doors when we needed a place to come and live and survive.

Unfortunately after living in this country for over 43 years they feel now that Canada is reverting to dog eat dog, forget about them society, a user pay, merger monopoly society aided and abetted by the provincial and federal governments.

A tax program like the GST is not implemented without having some detrimental effect on the lowest paid citizen. To give a tax break to citizens start lowering the GST. That is probably the most balanced and fair tax break that every single Canadian in the country can be given, especially for those who are the lowest paid.

Ravage cuts to EI cannot be introduced without a negative effect. I would like to give a quote of a very famous Canadian from February 17, 1993: “By reducing benefits and by imposing even higher penalties on those who leave their jobs voluntarily, it is clear that the government has little concern for victims of the economic crisis. Instead of addressing the underlying cause of the problem it attacks the unemployed”.

Believe it or not that was a quote by the Prime Minister. If that is not a metamorphosis in the Liberal Party I do not know what does.

The Liberals have abandoned all the principles of the great leader Lester Pearson. They have abandoned all the principles and the moral fabric of Mr. Warren Allmand. They have abandoned all it was to be a Liberal in the 60s and 70s. Their agenda is tax breaks for the wealthy and their friends high on the economic scale while completely abandoning poverty, those who are homeless and those who are disenfranchised in society.

I work on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. When we had the previous member from Gander—Grand Falls as the chair of the committee, we were on extensive tours across the country, especially in small isolated coastal communities. It did not take a rocket scientist to understand the problem these people were going through.

What the government with those in the corporate sector has done is take a common property resource, the fish, and given most of it through the ITQ, IQ and EA programs to their friends in the corporate sector.

Someone like John Rifley of Clearwater can go from 15 years of selling lobsters individually and on a small scale to a grand scale. People will say that is really great but what has happened is that Clearwater and also Highliner Foods have managed to grab most of the licensing in the scallop sectors for example. Literally thousands of people on the east coast and the west coast have now been taken out of an economic opportunity in terms of their livelihood which is fishing.

The same thing is happening to our farmers, especially in the prairies. Back in 1977 there were 110,000 registered farmers in the province of Saskatchewan. These were family farms. They were independent and proud people who did not want to rely on the handouts of government to put food on their tables. These were people who put food on our tables.

Unfortunately now in 1999 we are probably down to about 58,000 registered farmers in Saskatchewan and with the recent crisis in the country, by next year we will probably have fewer and fewer farmers. That indicates that instead of being individually run and family owned by people who are proud to call themselves Canadian who support us and put food on our table, now we are going to the corporate sector of farming. We are literally giving these farms away because of the policies of the government. It is the same as in the fishing industry.

I find it absolutely abominable that the government can talk about its pride when it comes to the financial record of the country when in essence over $20 billion has been taken out of the unemployed of the country. It is proud of that record. It is absolutely scandalous when only 35% of people who pay EI can actually qualify for it now.

Last week the government again got its hand caught in the cookie jar with a memo that was leaked from HRDC that indicated that if HRDC personnel in Prince Edward Island did not cut enough people off EI and maintain a certain quota they themselves would be on the unemployment line.

Knowing the way this government works, it probably would not have been able to collect EI. This government is absolutely hollow when it comes to the concerns of the unemployed, the homeless and those who have to rely on shelters and the generosity of food banks in order to get by in their daily living.

For Canada to have an increase in food banks should send alarms right across the Liberal caucus telling them very urgently that we have a crisis and a problem in this country. But no, the Liberals talk about the 1.3 million jobs they have created. They never ever talk about the thousands and thousands of jobs that have been lost in most cases by people with limited education but with great vocational skills. They are proud working people. Now they are in their forties and they no longer can look after their families.

Recently I was in Sointula, British Columbia. There was a gentleman in his forties with his wife and his three children. The man was extremely proud to be living in that community but he stood in front of the committee, a group of total strangers, and he started weeping. He no longer knows how to survive. He no longer knows how to look after his family. And all this government does is say it will probably give him a tax break or try to look at some sort of program. All the man ever wanted was a job.

Years ago a Cape Breton woman wrote to Prime Minister Mulroney saying “Go ahead, threaten me with a full time job”. I encourage every single one of the Liberals and my fellow opposition members to go ahead and threaten the unemployed with a full time job that pays them a decent salary, that gives them proper labour standards, that gives them the opportunity to look after their families and live in their communities without being forced to abandon their homes like they do in Catalina or Burgeo or up in Canso, Nova Scotia. They literally board up their homes and then leave.

The track record of this government is very poor and abysmal. I thank the hon. member for Shefford for this opportunity. I know the work she does very well with the homeless and impoverished.

It is time that the government understood the crisis of what it has done. Not only is it important to pay attention to the fiscal problems, but it is also important to talk about the social deficit that has been caused by the previous Tory government and this current Liberal government.

[Tom Wappel, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech of the hon. member from the NDP.

I would ask the hon. member to correct me if I am wrong but my information is that in 1997 the NDP's document “A Framework for Canada's Future” called for the elimination of federal surtaxes on low income earners. It is my information that during the 1997 federal election campaign the NDP leader asked for tax relief for low income Canadians. If those things are true, would the hon. member agree with me that this Liberal government delivered on both of those requests in our respective budgets?

We have begun by helping low income Canadians with tax relief first. That is why our last budget reduced taxes for 13 million Canadians and completely eliminated taxes for 400,000 of the poorest taxpayers in the country and also eliminated surtaxes. Would the member not agree that we have delivered on many of the things that the NDP wants?

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that the hon. member of the Liberal Party recognizes the pressure and the good work the New Democratic Party can put on the Liberals.

The problem is that if a tax break is given to the lowest income earners and then they are charged user fees on products that they obtained before, it does not work. The private services that have been downloaded from the federal government on the health care issues would be an example.

What used to be taken care of by the government for these low income workers, they now have to pay for. The government gave them back 10 cents but now they are charged $1 for the services that they had before.

The government did not go all the way with it. It credited them in one hand and debited them in the other, which was most unfortunate.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the member that cost recovery for instance is simply just another tax. It is affecting many sectors but primarily it is affecting agriculture.

The member mentioned agriculture in his speech. Because of the poverty we have on farms I was wondering what solutions the member could recommend the Liberal government take to alleviate poverty in the agriculture sector. Does the member have an answer for that?

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, there is one thing the government can definitely do. The government could work closely with the farmers to find out about the Crow rate. We cannot take $200 million off the Crow rate and expect the farmers to be able to pick that up. We cannot abandon grain elevators in a lot of the communities and expect the farmers to drive an additional 100 miles with their product and still keep it at the same price.

The member for Selkirk—Interlake knows very well that farmers are the breadbasket of our country. If we cannot look after them and their families so that they in turn can look after us, we have a very serious problem. I think this government has completely abandoned farmers in terms of the agriculture crisis that is happening with the pork farmers and the wheat farmers. We negotiate trade deals that do absolutely no good for the farmers.

It is time we sat down and talked to the farmers to find out exactly what their concerns are instead of telling them from Ottawa what they should be doing.

[René Canuel, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Jean-Paul Sartre said that hunger is far more than being hungry. I would say that poverty is far more than being poor. The battle against poverty, in my opinion, involves job creation. I would ask my colleague: does he believe that job sharing could be part of the solution?

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.

I do know that social democratic countries in Europe are now looking at that very seriously. In fact the country of Holland, which most people call the Dutch miracle, is implementing that program as we speak. It probably would be a very good time to debate that in this House of Commons for the new economy for the new millennium.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the hon. member for Shefford for asking that there be a debate on poverty in the House.

The whole issue of poverty is becoming more and more prevalent as we look around this country. Just yesterday on Parliament Hill there were hundreds of homeless people who had come here from the Ottawa area, the Montreal area, the Toronto area and other parts of this country to demonstrate the need for some real help.

I was thinking about this speech this morning and I came across a very interesting statistic. In the last while the gap between the rich and the poor has been widening in this country and in much of the world.

When I was first elected in 1968 I was very proud of the progress being made in our country with the implementation of medicare and social programs toward the narrowing of the gap between the rich and the poor.

I remember you, Mr. Speaker, when you were member for Kingston and the Islands, an ordinary member of the House, making a statement in the House that we had virtually eliminated poverty among senior citizens in this country because of the Canada pension plan, the old age pension and the supplement.

Then somewhere around 10 years ago we started going in the other direction and the gap between the rich and the poor began to widen. If we look around the world, we are now in the midst of creating through this technological revolution and the Bill Gates and so on, a class of the super wealthy and also a class of people who are getting poorer and poorer all the time.

I came across an interesting statistic this morning which said that the 358 wealthiest people in the world—and I suppose that includes none of us in this chamber—have more wealth than the income of the 45% poorest people in the world, or 2.3 billion people put together. This is a startling statistic. Two billion, three hundred million people have less income than the wealth of the 358 wealthiest people in the world. I am sure you are not one of those people, Mr. Speaker, but they are people like Bill Gates and probably people like Conrad Black.

I can see the hon. member of the Reform Party shaking his head over there. I know a while back they called for a tax break for Conrad Black and some of these wealthy people and it strikes me as very puzzling that they would do that.

That gap is widening in this country.

I also remember when Ed Broadbent was retiring as the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. In December 1989 he moved a motion in the House of Commons that was supported unanimously by all members of the House and all political parties including the then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The motion said that we are going to set as a goal the elimination of child poverty in this country by the year 2000, that in 11 years we are going to eliminate child poverty in this country.

What has happened? Child poverty has not been eliminated. In fact, there is more child poverty now than there was 11 years ago. More kids are going hungry. There are about three times as many food banks now as there were 11 years ago. There are more kids out there with fewer opportunities. There are more homeless people with fewer opportunities. There is more sadness and dispossession out there now than there was 11 years ago. We have to ask why. There are three or four reasons.

First, we have poor kids because we have poor parents. We have poor parents because for all too long this country has had a very high unemployment rate. It has gone down recently, but it is still very high at 7.8%. For many years and many, many months we had an unemployment rate of over 10%, month after month after month. Because of that we have driven more and more people into poverty.

Second, even with the creation of more jobs, the average income in real terms for most Canadians now is lower than it was in 1989 when that laudable objective of eliminating child poverty was set by the House of Commons. It is lower because there are more and more part time jobs, more and more low wage jobs and more and more jobs with fewer and fewer benefits for Canadians. Because of the belt tightening in this country, for all but the very rich, incomes have actually gone backward instead of ahead.

That is why there is more poverty now than 11 years ago.

It is an issue we are going to have to tackle.

Yesterday I talked with a former prime minister. I do not want to use his name, but he told me that he was surprised at the anger that he saw among people demonstrating yesterday compared to five or ten years ago. That is true. More and more people are getting the short end of the stick in terms of economic fairness and justice in this country. It is because of years of high unemployment. It is because even though there are more jobs now, they are low wage jobs, part time jobs, fewer benefits and fewer opportunities. Those are two reasons.

Another reason, and I think members of the Liberal Party have to hang their heads in shame on this one, is the cutback of some $6 billion in transfers to the provinces, primarily for health care but also for education and social programs. Turn on the newscasts. What is happening in every province? What is happening in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Regina, Halifax, wherever we go? There are waiting lists in emergency rooms and hospitals are being closed. People are waiting in every province primarily because the federal government has cut back by $6 billion in the funding of social programs in Canada.

We can go back to the sixties and people of that day like Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas, Stanley Knowles, Bob Stanfield, when this country had the foundation of national medical care. At that time the federal government funded 50% of medical care. What is it today in some provinces? It is 12% or 13%. Put up a dollar and only 12 or 13 cents is paid by the federal government. It used to be 50%. We have gone backward.

The reason for poverty is that the federal Minister of Finance in February 1995 cut back by $6 billion and it is no wonder members in the Liberal Party hang their heads in shame over this massive cutback, a bigger cutback than any Conservative government ever made in terms of social programs. Yet some Liberals like to think that they are really progressing.

I know that you agree with me, Mr. Speaker, because you are a very progressive Liberal from the Kingston and the Islands constituency. I do not know why I always commend you so much but you are a very progressive man. Perhaps that is why you occupy the chair.

Finally we have the issue of taxes. The Reform Party might think it has a monopoly on talking about taxes in this country. The important thing when it comes to taxes is that we need tax fairness and a cut in taxes for the poorest people of this country. They need the money, they will spend the money and they will stimulate the economy in doing so.

In 1986 this parliament passed a bill to end the indexation of income taxes. That has put more and more people in the tax brackets. It has meant that the poorer people are paying more and more taxes all the time. We have also had the partial deindexation of the child tax credit and the GST tax credit for poorer people.

If it wants to do something about poverty, in the budget next Tuesday the government should end bracket creep for low income people and it should index the taxation system for low income people. There should be a fully indexed taxation system for the GST tax credit and for the child tax credit. I agree with my friend from Nova Scotia that we should have a 1% cut in the GST right across the board.

Those are some of the things we could do. I would like to see Liberal members opposite stand in the House of Commons and speak out on the issue of poverty. There is a minister of the crown about to take his place in the front row, the minister of fisheries. I am sure that he too was scandalized by the Minister of Finance in February 1995 when he cut social programs by $6 billion, throwing more and more people in this country into poverty.

The time has come for Liberal backbenchers to speak their piece and say how they feel about restoring funding to social programs. We should have a fair taxation system in this country. We should make sure that we fight for full time, meaningful and well paying jobs. That is the way to end poverty. We have gone backwards. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, which is why this debate today is extremely important.

Once again, I thank the Conservative member for Shefford for her motion.

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that by suggesting this government has done things wrong the member is suggesting that an NDP government would do things better and correctly.

He tried to blame difficulties in the health care system on federal cuts to health care spending. However, there is an NDP government that he knows very well. Hospitals were being closed in Saskatchewan by an NDP premier long before the federal government, under the Liberals, started taking responsibility for the deficit and getting it under control. One of the areas in which we did that was in reducing transfers to the provinces for health care, which we have since started to augment.

Did Premier Romanow of Saskatchewan, as an NDP premier, not close hospitals long before there was any decrease in federal funding?

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, if the member was listening, I said that we have had problems in every single province, including the province of Saskatchewan. I made that very clear. I also said that the biggest single cutback in the country was the $6 billion cutback made by the federal government.

The member should also know that Saskatchewan was the only province, if not one of only two or three provinces, which backfilled the cutback dollar for dollar. There was no cutback in the province of Saskatchewan in terms of health care funding. Every single dollar was backfilled by the provincial government.

The premier of her province did not do that. She defends her premier as a great and wonderful man, but that did not happen in the province of Ontario. Premier Romanow did that and that is one of the reasons he is one of the most popular premiers in this country. Can she say that about her premier? I doubt if she can.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I wish to thank the hon. member for Shefford for putting this motion before the House, in spite of the fact that my party is somewhat uneasy with its possible financial implications. Still, her concern is a very healthy one.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague from the NDP if he agrees that, looking back on the last 60 years, it would be difficult to find a government as heartless, unfair, incompetent and stupid in the management of antipoverty efforts as the one opposite.

This is a rather unique case of a government that is not only facing particular conditions but also making people poorer though its fiscal policies. Does my colleague agree that the best thing that could happen to the poor in this country would be for this government to be defeated?

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with most of what my friend, the hon. member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, said.

I would not go as far as to say that the government is stupid, but I do agree that it is not fair. Never in the history of Canada have I heard of a government making a $6 billion cut to social programs. That is not fair. It has been very hard on thousands of Canadians. This government is more conservative than the Conservatives are.

It is not fair to cut $6 billion. It is the doing of the current Minister of Finance. That is not fair at all, something which many progressive Liberals have a problem with and which hopefully will change after the minister brings down his budget Tuesday evening.

[Gar Knutson, Liberal, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member was quoted in the Ottawa Citizen on February 11, 1999 saying “The party, and the left in general now has realized that we have to have a sound financial base”. He went on to say “You can't do anything for people unless you have your financial house in order”. He then went on to say that it was only after that that the NDP left its roots with Tommy Douglas and that “the federal party didn't take the deficit as seriously as it should”.

I would like the hon. member to comment on that.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have not read the Ottawa Citizen today, but the very first government in this country that balanced its budget in recent times was the Government of Saskatchewan under Roy Romanow.

The legacy of the Saskatchewan CCF and NDP has been that of governments which have always had balanced budgets, contrary to my Conservative friend and those who sit in the Reform Party. In our province they are now Reformers. They used to be Conservatives. They ran up the biggest deficit in the history of this country under Grant Devine. That is what the Reform Party would do if it was in power.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address this motion today, put clearly by a party in search of an identity, in search of policies, in search of anything. It has been searching for a leader and I think it is still looking for him. I saw him coming through the gallery earlier today, or maybe it was a look-alike.

It would appear that having gone through the metamorphosis of being in government under Brian Mulroney, having led this country into record deficits, massive debts and doing nothing whatsoever for poor people in the country, it is now on a policy hunt, so it put forward a motion which I would have thought would have come from the NDP.

It is interesting to hear the New Democrats, particularly the previous speaker, defend the government of Mr. Romanow. We should give credit where credit is due. Mr. Romanow balanced the provincial budget. It is too bad that Mr. Rae in Ontario did not go to the same school as Mr. Romanow. That was a New Democratic government, leading by its adopted principles, which intentionally ran up deficits of $10 billion every year. It kept piling up the debt and left the once strong and healthy province of Ontario, arguably one of the engines of economic growth in this country, over $100 billion in debt.

To hear the New Democrats in debate on a Conservative motion on poverty cite an example of great economic leadership by a New Democratic government is really rather ironic. To try to pretend that they have the answers on how to run the ship of state financially is really quite laughable.

I want to focus on the Conservative motion which is before us. The solution, the solution du jour we might call it, the solution of the moment, seems to be that the way to help poor people in this country is to cut taxes. It really is an interesting notion.

At least members of the Reform Party are upfront. They would cut taxes and have a flat rate right across the land. They think that in some miraculous way that will trickle down and solve poverty. The rich will get richer and somehow, according to the Reform Party's mentality, that will help the poor. We know that is not the case.

In the case of the Conservative Party, it is suggesting in the motion that we increase the basic income tax credit, index the tax brackets and index the child tax benefit. Most of the people who are truly poor in this country do not pay taxes in the first place. Even Homer Simpson would understand that.

I am at a loss to understand how this party in this motion could try to perpetrate the fraud upon the people in this place and the people of Canada that the solution is simply to reduce taxes and that will make poverty disappear.

That party could have made some constructive suggestions. It could have recognized, as we all do, that we have a void in the provision of social housing. We have a responsibility, and I am hopeful that our government will work with provincial governments and municipal governments to put in place some serious housing programs, which I know will be opposed by Reform. That is a given. Anything that is in any way constructive, that in any way would deal with social policy, will be opposed. We know we will have that battle.

If the Conservatives really want to find a new identity and do something to help solve poverty in this country they should recognize what their leader recognized yesterday. I dare say, he was assaulted, insulted and might have been attacked if it were not for the RCMP intervening. The new leader of the Conservative Party found out yesterday that popping in for a photo op might not be the smartest thing to do when one has an angry mob on one's hands.

What did they say? I will not use the words. I heard them on CPAC. They are not for family hour viewing, so I will not repeat them. In any event, expletives were hurled in the face of former Prime Minister Clark. There was also a Reform member who tried to get a photo op with all of these folks, thinking that by snuggling in and cuddling up and being warm and friendly these folks would realize that Reformers are really not the big, bad right wingers from the west. The Conservative leader might have realized that this was an opportunity to forge some kind of coalition or position or relationship with these folks. They got a very blunt message.

[Murray Calder, Liberal, Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, ON]

Whoops.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Whoops would be putting it kindly. The leader of the Conservative Party was just about kicked and had to be protected and taken away. The message was that the leader of the Conservative Party created this mess in the first place.

Was he not a former prime minister? Was he not a member of the Brian Mulroney government? What did they do for us then? They would stand here and say: “That was then and this is now. We have changed”.

They will not be uniting the right in a couple of weeks although I appreciate we hear rumblings that might occur. Why not put forward some positive resolutions to deal with housing? They must have the ability to contact the premier of Ontario. He might return their phone calls. I am not sure he would return mine. They could contact him and say “Why have you gutted the housing programs and passed everything on to the municipalities? Why do we not work together to try to come up with a national housing strategy?”

If they put that forward in this place they might find that there is not quite the criticism or the cynicism that exists when we see this motherhood and apple pie in their trying to wrap themselves in the issue to prove that they are a kinder and gentler party than when they ruled the roost under the infamous Prime Minister Mulroney. We do not see that kind of positive suggestion.

The budget is coming down in the next few days, next Tuesday. The Prime Minister, the health minister and the finance minister have said that it will be a health care budget. There will be a substantial investment in health care, in medicare, in taking care of sick Canadians. Recently an accord was signed, interestingly enough, by all 10 premiers including the Premier of Quebec.

Lest I be accused of neglecting the Bloc, let me refer to a comment made by one of its members who said that the best thing that could happen to the country would be for the government to be defeated. The best thing that could happen to the country would be for a strong, united country working together to solve poverty. The only way that could happen would be if we were able to witness the historical demise of the Bloc.

Would that not be a lovely day for Canada? Then we could have motions and debates that could rebuild this great country, build on Confederation, deal with health care, deal with balancing budgets, paying down our debt, reducing taxes and building housing for the poor. These are things the government cares about.

We do not talk in rhetoric. We talk in action. They will see more of it on Tuesday when the new budget comes down. They will continue to see the kind of leadership Canadians have come to expect from the government over the balance of the mandate of this term.

[Diane St-Jacques, Progressive Conservative, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell the hon. member opposite that I thought he would express more compassion toward the poor. Poverty is an issue that concerns everyone.

Earlier, criticisms were leveled at all the parties that try to find solutions. As regards Mr. Clark, he at least had the courage to meet those who were outside yesterday, unlike the member's leader, who was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Clark showed courage and we went with him. Some people were pleased to see us and others were not, but one must face the music.

In his speech, the hon. member even gave the impression that he finds poverty funny. I guess he is not concerned by this issue. Perhaps there is no poverty in his riding. I would like to hear his suggestions, because this debate is about finding concrete solutions. Let us stop talking and start finding solutions to help the poor.