moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should make available to Members a support fund for community activities in each of their ridings.
Madam Speaker, I wish to thank my hon. friend from Jonquière and all the hon. members who support me in this motion.
I am pleased to speak today on behalf of a sector of society that, unfortunately, is somewhat neglected and not often talked about. It is a sector without which society would have great difficulty functioning. Naturally, I want to talk about community groups. I think the time has come for Ottawa to invest in this fundamental social activity.
There are many community groups and without them we would have trouble coping, as I said before. In fact, all the so-called “institutions” of Quebec and Canada would not be a match for this task. We cannot simply say that we will look to the hospitals, the CLSCs, or all of Quebec's and Canada's institutions to help people in trouble.
There are community groups which are noteworthy for the type of intervention they offer and which are extremely useful to society. I have just noted a few of them, but there are hundreds in any riding.
For instance, there are all those people who take care of literacy activities and those who provide support to families. In my riding there is a group called “Famille en coeur”; instead of going to the CLSC, children and parents go there to talk about families and to share ideas about the way they can support each other, trading services or other things. There is no institution providing this service.
We also have suicide prevention groups. Suicide among young people is enormously costly for society in psychological, social and economic terms. These people are available to try to listen to young people and take preventive action.
There are also youth centres. Some villages in my riding have youth centres, and if it where not for these centres, there would be no young people left in the village. They would move away because there is absolutely nothing to do at night in their village. They would take off every night for the nearest big town without telling their parents. So, youth centres make a significant contribution. Those who work there are dedicated to youth. They are often experts, and they listen to and help provide guidance to young people.
The Mouvement écologique du Haut-Richelieu is another example. I am sure that there are many environmental movements in the various ridings across Quebec and Canada, some looking after a river or a lake or fighting to save wooded areas. We were just talking about the environment. These are the kind of people who develop the collective consciousness of a community. They, therefore, have important roles to play.
There is also what I call the disability constituency, with groups looking after disability support and housing for persons with disabilities, even if there is public funding for that. Ottawa is sometimes criticized for not making enough money available for social housing. Individuals who promote and advocate social housing for persons with disabilities get together and establish boards, many of whose members are often persons with disabilities. This is totally voluntary work they are doing. Transporting disabled people is no easy task. Specialized transportation is required.
Some of these people who get together, these groups of volunteers and boards who set up this kind of community group make an extremely worthwhile contribution to society.
As I said earlier, we must also think about what would happen if these groups were not there. I can also think of volunteer groups, volunteer centres, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Optimist Clubs and their credo “Friend of Youth”, the Lyons Clubs and their motto “We Serve”.
MPs are not the only ones serving society. And these people are doing it on a voluntary basis.
Let us also not forget that these people spend half of their time looking for funding. Recurrent funding is very rare. When these people get some appreciation, some recognition, when their member of Parliament tells them that they are doing a great job, they are always very pleased.
It is all fine and dandy to tell people, “We recognize your contribution, you are extraordinary, you are doing a fantastic job and we wish you luck”. This has happened to me on a number of occasions. Unlike the federal government, the Quebec provincial government does recognize the work of community groups through a discretionary fund.
An MNA from Quebec or an MLA from another province that has the same type of fund can say, “I am pleased to support you and to give you a cheque for $1,000”, whereas a federal member of Parliament can only say, “I am proud to give you my support, I wish you luck and good night, everyone”.
This puts us in a slightly uncomfortable position. The federal government is not doing its share to help these community groups. It is important to support them.
At the present time, the only recourse we have is to take the money from our advertising budget. Imagine how I feel when someone representing a youth drop-in centre comes to my office and says, “Mr. Bachand, I got some money from the Member of the National Assembly. Can you do your part?” I have to say that we do not have that kind of funds at our disposal, but that we do have an advertising fund. So I have to ask, “Are you able to organize some kind of activity where we could put up a sign from the MP or put his card on the tables? If you can, I can give you $300 or $400”. Often they have no activity planned, so we have to either go through all the red tape or take indirect means of recognizing them and helping them out
I think the importance of this budget is obvious, but people will probably have objections. “You know, it makes for more red tape”. As for me, if I got another $10,000 or $60,000 in my budget, my staff would find the extra time to manage it, because I would have told them to. When it comes down to it, it will mean considerable recognition. It will be a plus for the riding, something community groups can count on.
Others may say, “It is too complicated, and I will have to choose between them”. Obviously, as MPs, we do have to decide where to focus our time and attention among the causes submitted to us. When we do indirect publicity in order to help out, we are more or less saying, “I am doing this for you, but I cannot do it directly for this or that reason”. This is part of what an MP has to do every day.
If hon. members read my motion carefully, they will see that I did not want to get into the nuts and bolts of it. When one does, one has to get into the mechanisms for acceptance, how the funds will be allocated, and if a minister of the Crown needs to be involved.
I do not want to get into that, but I just want to say that I imagine the Board of Internal Economy will have something to say about it. I hesitated, I wanted to put an amount, but finally decided not to, because what I want to do primarily is convince my colleagues of the principle.
I want to convince my hon. colleagues that it is important to have such a fund and that it be available to them. Of course, there are programs in the federal system and people can be referred to them. But to do that, someone has to make calls and try to find the person in charge. Then that person calls us back two weeks later and no one is certain just what the criteria are for this kind of activity. When things get completely bogged down, we go over and see our hon. friends on the other side, the ministers, to try to convince them that the group's application is for a worthy cause and that it deserves funding.
That is very complicated and takes a lot of time; success is not guaranteed. Finally, the application gets sent on to someone else, in programs for which the individuals in question do not qualify. At times, it is the beginning of a term or the end of a fiscal year and there is no money left. Apologies are made, and we are told to try again in the next budget; we have to go back to another budget and the process slows down accordingly.
People get discouraged. Community groups begin to understand that they cannot count on the federal member for their riding, but only on their member of the National Assembly. In Quebec, that is often what happens.
Therefore, I have not set an amount, nor have I indicated how the fund is to be created. I invite my hon. colleagues to remember that the idea is for them to have some discretionary funding available.
If they decide they have a particular affinity for one group and they find that they do excellent work in the riding, they cold give it the amount they wanted. If they find that another group is not as good, or if that group's results are less impressive, they can give less money, or they can say, “We will not give any money”.
I think that it is important for members to recognize this kind of work. It is important that members say, “yes, you contribute to society in Quebec and Canada. Yes, we recognize that the work you are doing helps. We know that your situation is difficult, because you are constantly looking for recurrent funding”.
However, when someone from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul came to see us, saying, “My fridge broke down, what can you do to help?”, I was forced to improvise. I had a steel panel made, which I attached to the fridge because the man could not afford a new fridge, and the MNA had already given him money and did not want to give more.
So we are forced to come up with these types of solutions to try to abide by the law, because we do not want to do anything illegal, either. We abide by the law. We have been told, “This is now done through advertising”. Obviously, since the sponsorship scandal, there have not been any more sponsorships in our ridings. If we send a bill to Ottawa with sponsorship written on it, it is rejected.
So we are forced to advertise. We put signs on tables. We stick posters on the walls. We attach panels on fridges. We are forced to do all sorts of things. We leave MP business cards on tables at the Cage aux sports, or other steakhouses, because there is an organization there that night doing fundraising that wants our support. We have to do that kind of thing.
It would be much simpler if we could say to these organizations, “Drop by my office. Bring your mission statement. Come with your board of directors. Bring your results. Then we will see what kind of money we have and how much we can spare”. Then we could decide how much money we have and what we want to give this group. It seems to me that this would be the right way to do things.
I also want to point out that advertising will remain an item. However, instead of allocating $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 of a member's budget, which may total $230,000 next year, to advertising, this will help members, who will no longer have to resort to the kind of ploys I just described to have money to recognize the work of community organizations.
It is therefore important that this be available. I want to remind my hon. colleagues that this will be an additional budgetary tool. As I said earlier, I do not know whether it will be included in their budget or be separate. I leave it up to the Board of Internal Economy to decide. What matters to me is the principle, and it is on this principle that I urge my hon. colleagues to vote.
If you recognize the work of organizations in your ridings, you will have a tool especially designed for that, and they will be very grateful to you. It will be one more tool.
I think the time has come to recognize these community groups. I listed a number of them earlier, and there are many more. I am sure that the hon. members who are listening can think of many such groups and are as inclined and anxious as me to help them. The costs involved will not be astronomical. When the government is running budgetary surpluses totalling $13 billion, it seems to me that a few millions should be made available to recognize these community groups.
I notice that my time is almost up. I will conclude by saying that the time to recognize these groups has come. They need to be encouraged. They need to be supported. I urge my colleagues to think hard and long about this. This kind of budget and funding should make everyone happy. Let us set the issue of arbitration and mechanisms aside. Let us make this budget available and promote the work of community groups without which the community and society at large could not function.