Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill and to discuss an issue that is important to many Canadians, the human rights issue in Canada. Although I am not convinced it is the proper way to address the issue, it at least raises the issue of human rights. Often a discussion of it and the debate that surrounds this kind of important issue helps to not only educate members of parliament, but also to make sure that we put it on the front burner instead of the back burner here in the House.
I am disappointed that this bill originated in the Senate. As usual, anything that comes from the Senate is a little tainted in the sense that it did not come from elected representatives, those chosen by the electorate. Those people are chosen by prime ministers, and that is unfortunate. We might say that the party with convictions is over there. Unfortunately, the Senate is not the place to originate bills. Bills should come from the House of Commons, from both government and opposition benches.
Bill S-11 has good intentions. The bill is intended to add social condition as one of the designations in the charter of rights that cannot be discriminated against. I believe that the intention of the bill was to make sure that poor people are not discriminated against. That is what it amounts to.
While a lot of legislators may feel they are looking after the poor by adding social condition as one of the listed items in the charter, I do not believe this technical listing is going to add another red cent or look after the needs of the poor at all, if that is the intention. I do not believe it will change the personal situation of the hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of people who have the greatest needs in this country.
It almost makes a mockery of the real solutions to helping poor people by easing the conscience of legislators who say “Maybe if we just put this into the legislation then the poor people will go away and we will not have to worry about the situations that are causing the poverty and the distress for families and so on”. That is almost worse than nothing. Then it means that instead of putting together taxation laws and actions and creating a society that gives poor people the greatest opportunities, we somehow ease our conscience by putting a word in the charter. I do not believe that will help people in the long run.
I believe the Liberals have actually hurt the poor over the past years. With their pay more, get less budgets they have gutted health care without providing an alternative for most people. They have hiked taxes to the tune of billions of dollars. They now take $39 billion to $40 billion more out of the economy than they did a few years ago. There is the usual waste in government. We have been talking in the House over the last while about the decline in the standard of living, the decline in productivity and the decline in opportunities for Canadians, as well as the tax discrimination against single income families.
Often some of the poorest families in the land are the single income families and this government has chosen not to address that taxation discrimination. It found itself before the United Nations in a rather embarrassing situation trying to justify why its tax laws discriminate against single income families.
Poverty is not just a children's issue, it is not just a single income family issue, but it certainly does affect entire families. People are not poor in isolation. Often they are poor due to a whole set of circumstances.
Lowering taxes is one way to help those who are poor. That is not just putting words in the charter, that will actually help people. If we allowed them to increase their personal deductions, a proposal put forward by the Reform Party, we would actually put more money in their pockets, which would allow them to make the decisions that would help them out of the poverty trap.
Our proposals to end bracket creep and reduce taxes by some $26 billion over the next three years would help poor people the most. They would take poor people off the tax rolls altogether. That is what should happen.