Debates of May 2nd, 2006

Public Health Agency of Canada Act

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague from St. Catharines and appreciate his words on this important bill before us today.

I come from Kelowna—Lake Country, the home of Firestorm 2003, the national disaster. The fires of August and September 2003 saw 30,000-plus people evacuated from their homes safely. There were no fatalities. At that time, we fortunately had a regional plan, a provincial emergency plan, albeit with some flaws, but we learned a lot from it.

Of course, Mr. Filmon had a national name and there was a presence to his report, which helped solidify things with our B.C. fire chiefs. In that recommendation was the need for a coordinated approach. Specifically during the fire, our fire chief, Gerry Zimmerman, was the credible, trusted voice during that national emergency. That is definitely something we need during a national crisis.

I have a question for my hon. colleague. While professional leadership and integrity are required during a national health crisis, will this legislation allow the Chief Public Health Officer to be the top go-to person during such a health crisis?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member's question speaks directly to the legislation. When enacted, it will allow, in the case of a provincial and certainly a national emergency, our chief medical officer to indeed respond directly. In fact, this legislation enshrines that authority for the chief medical officer, giving him the authority to speak directly to the public about the crisis, to speak about the need to take action and the type of action necessary.

Let me add that over the past number of weeks I think the government certainly has shown that same type of leadership and dedication that our current medical officer has over the past year and a half that he has been in the position, and that in fact when it comes to times of crisis and need, the government will be there and the chief medical officer will also be there.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I will advise the hon. Parliamentary Secretary of Health that there are two minutes for both his question and the answer.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the member is quite simple. The member correctly pointed out that the previous government seemed to take a long time to bring forward this legislation. The current government is doing it in its opening weeks. I wonder if the member could elaborate on why public health is such a big priority for the government when it did not seem to be under the previous government.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to priorities, this is the first of the five bills introduced that is specific to health care. It is interesting that it represents the number five, which is the five priorities that this government stands for. We are going to hear more about that this afternoon in the budget speech.

However, the commitment we have to health care waiting times and the commitment we have to implementing Bill C-5 shows leadership, shows direction.

The former government had 13 years to talk about how important these issues were. It had the opportunity to speak and, more important, act on the issue of providing good fundamental leadership when it came to health care and standing up for the five principles of the Health Care Act. It is not by coincidence that the number five plays a key role in why the legislation is before us. One of our five key priorities is health care, the five principles of health care in the Canada Health Act, and the fifth bill presented in the 39th Parliament regarding health care.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate this afternoon on Bill C-5, the Public Health Agency of Canada act.

This is legislation that my New Democrat colleagues and I want to support. We will be working hard on this legislation and our health critic, the member for Surrey North, will be working hard on it at committee to improve it, but we are happy that the legislation is before Parliament.

It was a resurrected bill from the 38th Parliament, Bill C-75. I have to say, given the last exchange we just heard, that both the previous government and the current government deserve some credit for moving forward on a public health agenda. The previous government did in fact institute the position of minister responsible for public health and did appoint the Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones. The member for St. Paul's, who spoke earlier today, spoke enthusiastically about the work of public health in Canada. He was the first minister of public health.

The current government deserves credit for giving it a high priority, for formalizing the agency through this legislation and for putting the bill forward so early in this Parliament. I think there needs to be some joint credit on this issue.

The genesis of the legislation was probably the SARS crisis, which a number of members spoke to earlier in the debate. SARS affected Toronto in particular. Outside of Asia, I think Toronto was the major area that SARS affected. It shook up people in Toronto and in Canada fairly significantly to say the least. Their faith in our system their faith in our ability to deal with a major infectious disease was shaken.

Canadians want to know that their families are safe. They want to see that there is an ability for health care professionals to coordinate their activities. They know that there are dedicated teams of health care professionals. We saw that during the SARS crisis where people came together under very difficult circumstances, where, in some cases, their own lives were in danger. They worked very hard and in very creative ways to address SARS.

Canadians want to know that kind of cooperation and those kinds of skills are coordinated and effectively utilized all across the country during those kinds of crisis points in our health care history. The SARS crisis demonstrated clearly the need for a national coordination of public health issues.

A national advisory committee on SARS and public health was struck after the SARS crisis. It was chaired by Dr. David Naylor and it made many recommendations. I think this legislation flows directly out of those recommendations.

It is good to have something tangible on the agenda of this Parliament and something tangible to deal with the concerns of Canadians with regard to infectious diseases and to deal with the concerns of health care professionals who have to attack those infectious diseases.

I have a real bias when it comes to talking about public health and that bias is to increase the influence of public health nurses and public health professionals in government, in our health care and in our social systems.

Before I was a member of Parliament, I worked in the community of Burnaby for 18 years. I was always impressed by the approach that public health care nurses took to dealing with issues in our community. Public health care nurses have a particular skill set that brings something crucial to almost every discussion in our community. They bring very specific health care skills through their nursing training. They have particular people skills that are not always evident in every professional group. Public health care nurses are particularly good at analyzing the context of crises and problems in our community. Public health care nurses have shown that they are excellent organizers. In fact, I cannot think of better organizers in our community than the public health care nurses who serve Burnaby.

In my experience, if we are looking for someone at a community meeting to work on a community project or for someone to cut through the rhetoric and get to the core of an issue, that person is more likely to be a public health care nurse than any other professional in the community. They also have a particular understanding of grassroots organizations. Because they deal with people who are experiencing health problems or who are experiencing the problems that lead to health problems, they really understand what is going on in the community. I think they are actually grassroots experts in many ways

Public health care nurses take a holistic approach to solving problems in our community. They do not limit themselves to specific health issues. They go to environmental issues and other social issues, like poverty, to understand the importance of public health in the community. They draw connections between all of the issues that face the communities. They would draw connections between the environmental, between human rights issues and between poverty issues to come up with a holistic approach to solving a health problem. That is very typical of the entire profession and the entire professional group. These are people who bring broad experience and know how to apply that and know how to organize around that experience.

That is something that is needed more in this place. I remembered this morning that a former colleague, the former member for Hamilton Mountain, Marion Dewar, a former mayor of the city of Ottawa, came out of a public health background. I think one of the reasons for her success in her political life was from the expertise she gained there. We need to integrate that perspective into government.

In the future, I would be happy if we saw more public health care nurses in this place. A few less lawyers and more public health nurses would be a good thing in my opinion.

Public health care has five tenets: disease prevention and injury prevention, health promotion, health protection, health surveillance and population health assessment. Those five tenets are very important but they are often the flip side of our health care system where we are dealing with the more acute and treatment issues in health care.

Specifically, the bill seeks to address those five tenets of public health care. Where that is evident is if we look to the preamble of the bill specifically. In the preamble we see that by undertaking the establishment of the Public Health Agency, that the government wants to take public health measures, including measures relating to health protection and promotion, population health assessment, health surveillance, disease and injury prevention and public health emergency preparedness and response seriously. Those relate directly to the five tenets that I just noted.

We also see that the government wishes to foster collaboration within the field of public health and to coordinate federal policies and programs in the area of public health. The agency is:

--to promote cooperation and consultation in the field of public health with provincial and territorial governments;

The agency is:

--to foster cooperation in that field with foreign governments and international organizations, as well as other interested persons or organizations;

We have heard many times today how viruses, bacteria and disease do not respect any border, let alone international borders and provincial borders and how this kind of coordination is very important in the public health area.

Finally, from the preamble, it states:

--the creation of a public health agency for Canada and the appointment of a Chief Public Health Officer will contribute to federal efforts to identify and reduce public health risk factors and to support national readiness for public health threats;

The preamble says it all and it shows why the bill is so important and why it is so important to Canadians. We need to recognize that this is a significant step forward, that there are specifically focused public health measures in the federal government, is something that is perhaps overdue and it is a measure that I think we can all enthusiastically support.

We need to have confidence in the leadership in public health and we need to have confidence in the structure of public health in Canada. This will fill a gap that has existed for some time.

Earlier this morning, my colleague, the member for Surrey North, the NDP health critic, talked about some of the concerns that we have in this corner of the House with regard to the bill. I will just go through six of the concerns that we would like to outline.

The first one, which I raised earlier today and we have had some discussion on this afternoon, is the question of the resources that will be dedicated to the agency and to the important tasks of the agency. We have heard that there is concern out there that there are not enough financial resources nor not enough human resources available to do this important work. A group like the Canadian Medical Association and other stakeholder agencies have raised that issue. I do hope, maybe even today in the budget that we will hear later today, that we may hear a commitment from the government to ensure the resources are there, if necessary, to do this important job.

We also have raised the concern that the Chief Public Health Officer is not given authority over other areas of federal jurisdiction such as airports, railways and military bases, as well as the health of aboriginal people. We need to ensure, given infectious diseases often spread through our transportation system, as we saw with SARS, that the Chief Public Health Officer has the a mandate to deal with health concerns in those areas.

Also, there is an important role for the Chief Public Health Officer in correctional services in terms of harm reduction around drug use and the spread of diseases like HIV-AIDS and hepatitis in the prison system. We know that is a public health issue. It is not only concentrated in the correctional facilities. Prisoners get released and they go back into the general population. Therefore, the health of folks who are incarcerated in our prison system is of concern of all Canadians.

We are also concerned about the power to enforce the Quarantine Act. Under the current system, and this bill would not change that, the power would remain with the Minister of Health. In other jurisdictions the power around the Quarantine Act rests with the provincial public health officers. This seems to be a bit of a disconnect between the provincial system and the federal system. It is probably something that merits attention in the committee.

The Public Health Agency is also not given authority to act when a province or a territory is overwhelmed by a crisis or when a crisis transcends provincial and territorial borders. As I mentioned earlier, we know that viruses, disease and bacteria do not respect borders created by people.

Our fifth point is that the Public Health Agency is not given authority to impose mandatory reporting of diseases by the provinces and territories. Part of the health surveillance mandate is to assess risk in the population. We cannot have a system where we have 13 different strategies. We need to have the ability to control a communicable disease outbreak. This morning my colleague discussed the current outbreak of mumps in North America, specifically in the United States, but also in Canada. Also, the re-emergence of tuberculosis is a major health concern in many of our cities across Canada. We have to ensure that there is the ability to coordinate and that someone is looking at the overall picture across Canada. We cannot have 13 different strategies to address these important issues of communicable diseases.

Finally, our sixth concern is to ensure that the Chief Public Health Officer has some modicum of independence from the Minister of Health. We think there is an important role for independence of this officer and that he or she should have the ability to run with the issues within the mandate of the officer and to take the initiative, as seen fit, to promote the important mandate of the agency. I know my colleague, the member for Surrey North and the NDP health critic, will be raising this when the bill gets to committee.

This is very important legislation. We strongly support getting it to committee and moving on this. We know how important it is to the public health of all Canadians. We know it has been an important response to a major health crisis in SARS. We want to ensure that we do not delay, that we take the appropriate action to follow up on both that crisis and the recommendations made by those who we asked to study this. We should get on with the work, get it into committee and get the bill enacted.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in addition to those that do not respect borders, there is also the federal government which does not respect the borders of infringement on the provinces’ jurisdictions.

We know that the new agency, which is already in operation, but which is going to be given powers by Bill C-5, with its mandate and its mission, will not respect the “borders” of federal jurisdiction.

I would therefore have a question for the NDP member regarding the structures that will be put in place in order to fulfill this new agency’s entire mission.

There are currently 2,000 public servants to carry out this entire mission. The mandate is a broad one, it does not relate just to SARS or diseases and viruses that can be transmitted from one “border” to another, as the member said. It has much more to do with diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. We are well aware that a lot more public servants will be needed. Already, this agency has been given $1 billion to meet its responsibilities.

Does the member not think that this is an enormous bureaucracy that is going to be created, particularly in provinces like Quebec, which already has all the institutions to meet the needs and comply with global requirements in relation to health prevention and in the event of a pandemic or other diseases or viruses?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I probably have a different understanding of the jurisdiction and the importance of the federal government. That is probably a given in this conversation. However, she raises an important question about not creating an unnecessary new bureaucracy, which would be the wrong thing to do. We have to respect that some provinces have excellent measures in place in this area.

We often hear from her corner of the House of the good work that has been done in Quebec. We often hear about as Quebec being Utopia. I do not think it is always as good as it sounds, but there are some good models. The community health agencies in Quebec are an important model of health care delivery and preventive care from which we could all learn something. I wish we had a similar institution in my province.

However, we do not want to go around willy-nilly creating a new bureaucracy that is not effective. This is something that all of us in every corner of the House will be interested to follow to ensure that the agency does the work it is supposed to do effectively and efficiently.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his party's support. This is an excellent example where the Conservatives and the NDP can work together for the betterment of all Canadians.

Could the member comment on the fact that it seems to have taken the previous government forever and a day to introduce the bill, and nothing came of it, while this government, with the support of the NDP, has worked quite quickly to bring the bill forward? Does the member have any comments on the commitment, or lack thereof, of the previous government in the area of public health.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, to go back to where I began my speech, I want to recognize that the former Liberal government took some important steps in this area. I recognize that it established the minister of state for public health as an important cabinet position. It appointed the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, which was important action to take.

I am glad the current Conservative government has given this bill high priority and put it fifth on its list of legislation in this Parliament. That is a significant thing to do.

Credit needs to be shared. I do not agree necessarily with the parliamentary secretary's position that there was no action. It would have been nice if the legislation had come to the previous Parliament and gone through, but that did not happen. To say the previous government did not take any important initiatives in this area, is wrong. At the same time, I do not want to take away from the initiative that the member's government is currently taking in this area.

We need to get on with this important work, get the bill to committee and get it through and enacted so the system is up and running as it should be.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the New Democrat member to be a little more specific in regard to his fears about the bureaucracy. In his speech, or in the answers he gave just a few minutes ago, he referred to a fear, an apprehension in that regard. I would like to hear him speak to that subject.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I can be any more specific than I was in my speech. The reservations we have in this corner are not huge ones. I am not sure they are ones that cannot overcome even by further discussion at the committee and by further clarification on the roles of the agency and the Chief Public Health Officer and the relationships of that agency with the 13 other provincial and territorial governments in Canada.

That is what I heard from my colleague, the member for Surrey North, this morning when she spoke on behalf of our party as our health critic. I think these issues can be addressed in committee and worked out so we will have a clear understanding of the legislation by the end of that discussion.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It being 2 o'clock, we will now go to statements by members. There will be three minutes left in the period of questions and comments for the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to express outrage that the Conservative government seized two children from St. Jude Catholic School in my riding last Friday. Officials threatened to take away the two young sisters if their parents did not show up within 30 minutes.

It is disgraceful that these children were removed from their classes and held as bait by the government. They must have been scared to death.

What took place was not only contrary to CBSA protocols, but a truly unconscionable act. We talk about Canada being a compassionate and caring country, and then the government seizes innocent children from the safety of their classrooms. The government clearly should be ashamed of this. Not only is this traumatic, unjust and insensitive to this hard-working family, but it tarnishes Canada's reputation on the world stage.

I would like to remind the minister of his ability to assist many families who find themselves in similar situations. The minister clearly has the power under humanitarian and compassionate grounds if he chooses to assist.

John Kenneth Galbraith

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, John Kenneth Galbraith, a native of Iona Station, Ontario, died last Saturday at the age of 97.

A proponent of the school of thought of John Maynard Keynes and institutionalist theory, he defended the state's role as an economic regulator and a catalyst for wealth sharing.

An economic advisor to every Democratic American president since Roosevelt, he was one of the harshest critics of the triumphant market economy.

In his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud, he stated: “The best of the human past is the artistic, literary, religious and scientific accomplishments that emerged from societies where they were the measure of success...The more than minimal fraud is in measuring social progress all but exclusively by the volume of producer-influenced production, the increase in the GDP”.

We pay tribute to John Kenneth Galbraith, an outstanding economist and great humanist.

Budget Day

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Speaker, today is budget day, and while the economists, the lobbyists, the activists and the journalists will all have their pronouncements, millions of Canadians will each have a very simple test: Am I better off? Is my family better off? Is my family better off with lower taxes on fuel, clothing and furniture? Is my family better off with more police to serve and protect? Is my family better off when the government empowers real child care experts, mom and dad? It is a simple test, but a necessary test.

For us as members of this House, we must remember that this is our test too. Not are we individually better off, but is the country better off for our being here?

Last budget day I mentioned my friends Andrew and Vicki, farmers with three small children in eastern Saskatchewan. This budget will be a success tomorrow if they are better off than they were yesterday. They will be better off because this government has asked and answered one simple question for all Canadians.

Official Languages

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, to date, the Conservative government has done nothing to deserve our congratulations on official languages.

The throne speech said nothing about the importance of promoting the two official languages in Canada. The Prime Minister's appointment of a unilingual anglophone as Parliamentary Secretary for La Francophonie and the government's delay in appointing his successor certainly impressed no one, nor did the decision not to translate Canadian Forces instruction manuals.

I was also very disappointed to see that, once again, job offers on the government's jobs website are being translated by machine. At the bottom of job postings, we sometimes see a note indicating unrevised machine translation. This is an insult to linguistic minorities in this country.

As the member for Acadie—Bathurst, where English and French proudly co-exist, I will continue to closely monitor this government's actions on official languages.

Engineers Without Borders

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in honour of National Volunteer Week I had the pleasure of hosting an event in my riding this weekend to recognize the outstanding efforts of the dedicated volunteers with the University of Alberta chapter of Engineers Without Borders.

Engineers Without Borders embodies the best of Canada's tradition of compassion and constructive assistance on the world stage. Over the last year, volunteers in Edmonton have organized to expand their membership and reach students at the high school level with regular outreach programs.

They successfully implemented a campaign to lobby elected officials to play their part in improving overseas development assistance and raised funds to send students abroad to developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa to share their expertise with communities in need.

I am proud of the volunteers with the U of A chapter of Engineers Without Borders. I share their desire to see Canada play a lead role in making the world a more helpful and equitable place.

Enumeration System

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Speaker, Elections Canada has to change its method of enumerating electors in this country. The present system, which has been in effect for the past three elections, is not working. The system is getting worse, not better, and is disenfranchising many voters. I believe it is contributing to low turnout in Canadian elections, an issue that should be of fundamental importance to Elections Canada and the House.

Voters arrive at the polling stations on election day only to find that they are no longer on the voters list even though they were there in the previous election and had not died. As a result, hundreds of people in my riding and across P.E.I. leave embarrassed, blaming the government of the day, and they rightly should. If this is happening in P.E.I., how many tens of thousands of voters across Canada are affected?

My constituents have let me know this is their largest issue of contention regarding the election process. New technology and processes are supposed to be adopted because of the improvements they achieve. If this does not occur, then the status quo should be maintained. The old way worked best, door to door enumeration. Let us do it again.

If P.E.I., the smallest province, can afford to enumerate, then everybody else--

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member for Macleod.

Multiple Sclerosis

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable and at times disabling disease of the central nervous system which affects Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

May is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month. I am honoured to help kick off the 30th annual MS carnation campaign this year. Tomorrow, volunteers from the MS Society and I will be pinning carnations on members of Parliament to help raise awareness of this campaign. It is a tradition that has been followed on Parliament Hill for many years now.

This weekend volunteers in over 280 communities across Canada will be selling carnations to raise money for MS research and services for people with MS. In the past 30 years the program has raised close to $45 million to fund MS research and services.

I encourage all members of the House and all Canadians to join me in supporting the MS Society to help make a difference for individuals and families living with this disease. Together we can find a cure.

Literacy Group

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, for the past 15 years, the literacy help group Écrit Tôt of Saint-Hubert has been offering, free of charge, various reading, writing and basic math classes to people over 16 who have difficulty reading and writing.

I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the work of Monique Poisson, president of the organization, and Geneviève Beaudet, its coordinator, as well as the efforts of all those who work with Écrit Tôt to help people who have special literacy needs.

I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to our fellow citizens who decide to acknowledge their illiteracy and work hard to overcome it.

Perry Kazemi

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to pay tribute to a remarkable woman.

Perry Kazemi was born in Tabriz, Iran. In 1985 at the age of 35, with her husband Sy and their children, she came to Canada. Thus began her love affair with this country.

Her husband describes her as the most considerate and compassionate person he has ever known. He would say to her, because Canadians are so polite and considerate, “Perry, you were born Canadian and you didn't even know it”.

In this country she started her own business, made friends with people of different backgrounds, created a garden and loved to make beauty with the flowers she grew. And always there was her family. She came here to build a new life for them. Her daughters have grown up. Two are married and there are two grandchildren. All of them are proud Canadians.

On March 27 Perry Kazemi passed away at age 55. In her 21 years here she made Canada a better place. The family she has left behind will make Canada an even better place in the future. That is the wonderful legacy of Perry Kazemi.

Liberal Party of Canada

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, spring is in the air and Liberal leadership candidates have sprung up across Canada wondering where all the Liberal ad scam cash has gone.

The member for Kings—Hants said that the dirty money never went to the Liberal Party. We knew his pants were on fire, but it took Justice Gomery to catch the Liberal Party red-handed. Then the member said that the dirty money was paid back. Not so say his Liberal colleagues from Etobicoke—Lakeshore and York Centre.

It is hard to follow the ad scam dirty money trail, but let us try. Start with the Liberal Party of Canada, add a few Samsonites stuffed with thousands in small, probably unmarked taxpayer dollars, throw in a great Italian restaurant, a few brown envelopes and 18 Liberal Party candidates in need of serious cash donations and what do we get? Every rule in the book broken, $40 million still missing after a forensic audit, and a Liberal Party badly in need of being sued.

With Liberal leadership hopefuls finally admitting the dirty money has not been paid back, when can Canadians expect the Liberal Party cheque for $40 million, and could that cheque be certified?

Poverty

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in 1998 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights examined the causes of poverty in Canada.

Yesterday, Craig Foye of the Hamilton Income Security Working Group presented an update to the UN committee in Geneva, Switzerland. His report was shocking. Thirteen thousand of Hamilton's children are living in poverty today because their parents have too little income to pay for housing and the other necessities of life. It found that provincial and federal government policies are at the root of family poverty.

Thanks to Mr. Foye, a lawyer with McQuesten Legal and Community Services, and his co-authors, Chabriol Colebatch and Deirdre Pike, we now understand better the real impact of government cuts on the lives of many Canadian families.

We will be looking at today's federal budget for some action to end poverty in Hamilton and across Canada.

Where do we begin? Stop allowing the national child benefit supplement to be clawed back. Increase employment insurance eligibility and rates. Invest in affordable housing. These are real solutions to a real crisis.