Mr. Speaker, I want you to know that in no way did I intend to usurp your authority. I am well aware of the great influence you have on the House. I accept your leadership without question. If I had had the opportunity I would even have voted for you.
This being said, we now have to deal with less pleasant issues. I would ask government members to pay attention. We have many complaints about the budget.
I want to stress again how important it is to vigorously fight poverty. I will benefit from the presence in the House of all my Bloc Quebecois colleagues, since I believe those who are the most sensitive to the issue are here today. It is a quirk of scheduling. It was not planned, it just happened that way. I therefore feel all the more comfortable talking about this issue.
Last year, I went on a tour of Quebec to promote community reinvestment by banks. This idea is gathering a fair amount of support.
I have some support from the Progressive Conservative Party. I have some support from the New Democratic Party. I know there is some fragile support among government members, but it is bound to get stronger.
As a matter of fact, in his report the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board reviewed the whole issue of bank involvement in the community.
Since 1977, the United States have had the Community Reinvestment Act. It provides no constraint. It sets no quotas. It simply requires banks to become involved in the community.
The strength of the U.S. legislation, which appeals to a number of my colleagues—whom I thank for welcoming me in their region—is that it provides for a yearly assessment of what the banks are doing in underprivileged communities.
Banks can get involved in underprivileged communities in a variety of ways. They can do it by supporting community groups, by providing lower income people with a range of financial services at preferential rates and by making mortgage loans. All this is called community reinvestment.
Community reinvestment by the banks is a matter of balance since they make profits from the money deposited by individual investors. It has to do with the multiplier theory.
I think Canada needs a legislation to assess what the banks are doing in their communities, and that assessment should be made available to consumers. That is what made the success of the American formula. Once a year, in June, the assessment of the banks' involvement in the community is disclosed in what is appropriately called the disclosure process. Naturally, consumers are better informed when they have to make choices.
I do not understand why the government never proposed anything similar in the budget or elsewhere over the years.
This brings me to talk about poverty. I think members of the House are very sensitive to the issue of poverty.
We, on this side of the House, do see a paradox in having an increasingly rich society, which is able to produce and has gained access to export markets like never before, yet a society where the number of poor people has never been higher.
For example, the National Council of Welfare estimates that one out of five Canadians lives in poverty. In certain communities, the ratio is two out of five, and among certain groups, particularly young people, it is three out of five.
What are we talking about when we speak of poverty? We are talking about people who have to spend more than 55% of their income on basic necessities, like clothing, housing and food.
Our colleague, the member for Shefford, has embarked on an antipoverty fight—this the kind of word we should use when we talk about poverty—and she has suggested what could be part of the solution. Nobody thinks there can be one single solution to the problem of poverty. We all know we need a whole range of measures.
But the hon. member for Shefford did suggest one idea that could be part of the solution and that got a great deal of attention in the House and a lot of support from the Bloc Quebecois, from me as the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, from the hon. member for Québec, who has also joined us in this fight, and from the hon. member for Laval East. We did not ask the government for a budgetary measure, but for something that could make a difference for underprivileged citizens.
In a spirit of honesty and camaraderie, we have asked the government to add social condition as a prohibited ground of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act, but not in the charter, because it is obvious we cannot reopen and amend it without new constitutional negotiations.
Hard to believe as it may be, this despicable government has rejected the consensus reached by the main opposition parties. What would have been the impact of including social condition in the Canadian Human Rights Act? It would have given a remedy to all those who receive federal services, or who work in companies under federal jurisdiction. All those who have been victims of discrimination on the basis of their fortune or their wealth could have taken their case to a human rights tribunal to obtain redress.
As members know, Quebec has no choice but to become a country. It is a matter of time, of months, but Quebec will become a country as, indeed, the case should be for any nation. Quebec, which will be a sovereign country, has a lot of expertise in the area of human rights. Since 1977, the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination on that ground. With what result? It has allowed us to take three major steps forward in matters of law, in particular for single parents, who are often women.
For instance, a landlord refuses to rent an apartment to a single parent, on the ground that income may be inadequate, there can be a legal challenge. A human rights tribunal has ruled on this issue. Discrimination against a recipient of income security is not allowed. A landlord cannot refuse to rent an apartment to a recipient of income security in Quebec.
This is an example of what lawmakers can do to support less fortunate people, who are often victims of discrimination.
There was a similar case regarding financial services. For instance, there is the case of a credit union near Quebec City, one I will not identify because it would not be relevant to my argument.
A credit union had refused a mortgage to a single parent, despite the fact that the person clearly had the means to meet the terms of the mortgage. Again, because the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms allowed that person to take her case before a tribunal—