Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share the member's time.
When I talk to people in the constituency of Surrey North, which I have the privilege of representing, they talk to me about the things that matter in their weekly lives which is really what matters to most of us. People talk to me about being concerned about affordability, about being able to afford things for their children for school. Many of them despair of ever being able to afford to send their sons and daughters to anything past high school, the trades, apprenticeship, college, university. They know there is a growing gap between what they have and what other people have. They see that growing gap and it frustrates them and they do not understand it. They expect their elected representatives to do the job we were elected to do which is to represent them.
As I look at today's motion put forward by the Liberals, there are some comments I would like to make.
I am very concerned about child care and child care choice. I have spent most of my paid and unpaid adult working life, which is longer than I might even want to say, looking for child care opportunities for families, not just child care during regular workday hours, but child care that is within the reach of everyone, regardless of what they do for a living. I still do not see that.
I was very disappointed. I worked with the Liberal government in the early 1990s, from 1991 to 1996, looking at universal child care and a national child care initiative. If that had worked and had been in place, we would not be standing here now saying that the lack of child care is the crisis that it is, because it would have happened. It would have had roots and would have been in place. It would not have been something that could have been so easily cancelled by the current Conservative government.
When the Conservative government cancelled the national child care strategy, it also sent a message to provinces about the lack of importance of child care. What the Conservatives did was not child care choice. One hundred dollars a month before taxes is not child care choice. No one would deny that parents could use an extra $100 a month, or whatever it is after taxes, to provide support for their sons and daughters, although they must be under six years old. After a child reaches six years of age, what does the child care choice become? It does nothing for child care. It creates no spaces. It trains no child care providers. It speaks not at all to the needs of a child over the age of five. I would hope that the Conservative government is not suggesting that children who are six, seven and eight would provide their own care. This really has created a crisis across this country.
I was very interested in the cancelling of the Status of Women offices. One of the best pieces of research I have ever seen done by that office was about how to get more women into government. From looking at the Conservative caucus, I would have thought that the Conservatives would want that research to continue. Surely the Conservative Party more than any other party in this House could use that research about how to have more women elected as part of that party. That was very puzzling. I hope it does not mean that the Conservatives do not want more women as part of their caucus. That was the research that was going on and they certainly could use that assistance, I would suggest.
People in Surrey North are very concerned about the affordability of housing. The amount of CMHC money going into Surrey North this year is $48,000 for the entire constituency. That will do some rent subsidy I am sure, but it is not going to get housing for the homeless and it is not going to help with affordable housing for people in any significant way. If people do not have a safe home, they cannot raise their children in safety.
Speaking of safety and the cutting of child care, the Conservatives talk a lot about crime but they do not talk very much about the prevention of crime. Anybody knows that child care and good early childhood initiatives and interventions would make an enormous difference in preventing children from getting into crime and making those very bad choices that lead them down that road. The Conservatives are at the other end around punishment, but they have cut off the avenues of preventing the crime in the first place by cancelling the child care initiatives. In many ways that is a travesty.
I have noticed the Conservative government reaching out into the ethnic community. Every time I turn around there are Conservative members at events in my riding. I know the Prime Minister has been there. But on truly embracing cultural diversity, where are the centres on credentialing? Where are the centres where physicians, nurses, teachers, engineers and accountants can have their credentials from other countries assessed? We welcomed those people to Canada to address skills shortages because they had those degrees.
I have a motion on the notice paper, but I do not know how quickly it will come forward. The motion talks about seniors from other countries, in particular, India, who cannot collect the seniors pension even if they are citizens in this country. They live in poverty. They cannot collect a pension because we do not have a signed treaty with that one country. Many people from India have contributed to our country, but they cannot have a seniors pension for 10 years, even though they are working, contributing and volunteering in their communities, because India is not one of the, I do not know, 112 countries that have signed a treaty. That has been raised with the government on a number of occasions and there has been no action on it.
I agree with my colleague who just spoke, that people who elect us to come here judge us by what we say and what we stand for. People will judge governments in power by their actions, not by what they say they are going to do, not by what they say they care about, but by what they do.
I do not see the kind of action that will make a difference for the people I have the privilege to know and to work with in Surrey North. A post-secondary education is no closer for the children of those people who cannot afford the still very large tuition fees. Many people want their sons and daughters--many daughters, I hope--to go into apprenticeships and work in the trades because they can make a good living. We have a huge skills shortage in British Columbia because of the building boom. Their sons and daughters cannot take advantage of that opportunity because it is too expensive and there has not been enough money put into the post-secondary education envelope and student loans for those people to afford it.
People just want their lives to be a bit better. They want to have a bit of hope for the future, just like all of us do. They want to know they are doing the best they can for their children. They do not expect miracles. They do not expect to be rich. They do not expect special privileges. They just expect to live safely in their communities with access to the kind of resources that their families might need. That is not what they are seeing. That is how the government will be judged.
There are some missed opportunities, as I said, with child care. The child care initiative could have had deep roots if the Liberal government had moved on it when it was first discussed. I do not know when it was first discussed, but when I first started discussing it with the federal government was in 1991. It would have had deep, deep roots in the community by now and would have created more spaces.
The issue around protecting and promoting linguistic and cultural diversity that is in the Liberal opposition motion is an important one. We cannot just go into communities that have contributed to this country at the last minute, whether they are Asian, South Asian or whatever the country of origin is, and try to make friends without addressing the things that those people have said are important: the seniors pension for people in the South Asian community; credentialling for people from every community.
People ask what we do for foreign trained physicians in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mostly we just let them drive taxi cabs because we do not have a way that they can be credentialled, even though the federal government encouraged them to come. It said we needed physicians. It said we needed accountants. It said we needed engineers. But there they are, driving taxi cabs. There is nothing wrong with driving a taxi cab, but they want to use the skills in the profession for which they were trained.
There have been many missed opportunities by the previous government and there have certainly been choices made by the Conservative government that will not give more hope, a better life, and a little bit of hope for the future to the constituents of Surrey North. It will simply reinforce for them that there is indeed a growing gap, that they are at the bottom of that growing gap, and that they are not going to be able to provide the kind of future that they want to see.
My constituents do not care who we are here. They do not care what colour hats we wear. They just want us to do our jobs, make their families safer, and let them provide good lives for themselves and their families.