Madam Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague from the Bloc, the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, for introducing Bill C-228. It is a fine and excellent bill and something that is long overdue. It is an important piece of legislation and I am very glad we are debating it today.
We need an anti-poverty law. We need something to spell out clearly that targets need to be established to eliminate poverty. We need legislation reviewed through a poverty lens.
I strongly support the idea of adding social condition to the prohibited grounds of the Canadian Human Rights Act. In fact when I first came to Ottawa as an elected member, I too had a motion on social condition. If the member remembers, there was also a motion from the Senate that came forward but unfortunately it was defeated. I too had a motion to set targets to eliminate poverty.
I was surprised to hear the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice say that the government has broken the vicious cycle of poverty. If that is the case, I wonder why we are here today debating this bill.
If the truth be known, the gap between the rich and the poor in our country has actually increased. The number of people who are struggling below the poverty line is increasing as evidenced by a recent report from the Caledon Institute.
Even today in the Toronto Star there is an article about 300,000 Canadians, and I believe they are in Ontario, who because they are living on minimum wage and are living way below the poverty line, are struggling to make ends meet. There has not been an increase in the minimum wage in Ontario since 1995. All of these are indications of how difficult it is for millions of Canadians who live below the poverty line.
There has been a lot of work done by a lot of groups to really bring this issue forward. Using Quebec as a model, there has been some excellent work done by a coalition of groups that convinced the national assembly of Quebec to pass a unanimous anti-poverty bill, Bill 112. It is a fine example of what can be done when elected representatives work closely with community representatives to tackle the issue. I wish we could adopt the same kind of thing here.
In the last couple of years we have seen an important court case, the Gosselin case, that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. It challenged the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and put forward the notion that social and economic rights need to be recognized in our country. They are recognized in international law, for example in the international covenant on social, economic and cultural rights to which Canada is a signatory, but unfortunately we are in violation of that covenant. We have even been criticized by the United Nations for the status of aboriginal people in our country, or the state of homelessness.
The Gosselin case, although it was not approved by the Supreme Court, did raise a very important debate in the country and that is we need to be upholding social and economic rights. We need to be upholding these international covenants. I would say the government, far from breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, has contributed to the social and economic environment that is driving more and more people into despair.
I heard the government member speak about the child tax benefit. Let us be realistic about this. Even the child tax benefit is not available to the poorest of the poor, that is, people who live on income assistance. Before the demise of the Canada assistance plan, which was before the Canada health and social transfer, at least there were some principles and rules about social expenditures and social rights. That was abandoned long ago by the Liberal government.
One only has to look at my own province of British Columbia to see what is happening to poor people. There have been massive cuts in disability pensions and services to low income people.
Today I was reading an announcement about women's centres being cut. I had another motion in the House and I know that my colleague has had a bill on the whole question of the sex trade and prostitution as well. There is a correlation here because in my own community in east Vancouver, more and more women out of desperation are going to the streets and living off the avails of the sex trade. They are living so far below the poverty line that they are there out of economic desperation.
I raise this because it seems there is a very strong connection between a federal government that has abandoned this field and the need to have strong anti-poverty measures, setting targets, bringing in social condition as a prohibited grounds for discrimination, the child tax benefit, the lack of a national housing program, not having any rules for the provinces to abide by. All of this is now having an impact. In provinces like B.C., Ontario, Alberta and elsewhere, the available resources for poor people and the income structure have been so fragmented and cut back it is leaving more and more people out in the cold. More and more families and children are struggling to live in an environment where they have no support.
Supposedly we had a goal of eliminating child poverty by the year 2000. It was a unanimous resolution in the House put forward by the former leader of the NDP, Ed Broadbent. It was an honourable goal and resolution. Not only did we fail to meet the target of eliminating child poverty by the year 2000, but the situation has actually deteriorated. I would say it has deteriorated because we have not seen the kind of resources and attention that is needed from the federal government. As a result the provinces have cut back on welfare and have introduced things like workfare programs. As a result we see more and more discrimination against poor people.
For all of those reasons, this bill is very important. We never really debate in the House what is a national disgrace which is poverty in a country as wealthy as Canada. We can set targets to eliminate poverty. The Liberal government is very proud of what it did with the deficit. The finance minister set targets to eliminate the deficit. Why are we not able to do the same thing when it comes to our social deficit? Why are we not able to say that this is a political priority?
I encourage members of the House to consider the bill as a step in the right direction to establish an anti-poverty agenda which I think would have broad support. I congratulate the member and say to him that we in the NDP support the objectives and the measures that are contained in the bill. We are very disappointed that the government has not seen fit to support it. At least it was a place to start. At least it was a place to say that social condition is an important factor in preventing discrimination against poor people. Setting targets is a place to begin.
We will continue to support these kinds of measures. We will continue to advocate for them. We will continue to hold the government to account for its dismal failure and its record of abandoning low income and poor people in this country.