Debates of May 17th, 2007

Komagata Maru

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, May 23 will mark the 93rd anniversary of the arrival of Komagata Maru in British Columbia, carrying 376 South Asian immigrants to our shores, only to be met with injustice and denial of the right to land.

I would like to recognize the tremendous work of Mr. Sahib Thind and the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada as well as those Canadians who have worked so hard to bring this issue to national attention.

This was truly a Canadian tragedy. I call upon the government to formally acknowledge this with an apology.

Celebration of Love

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, last Saturday, May 12, 2007, I had the pleasure of attending the reception to mark the Fête de l'Amour in Lac-Saint-Charles. The Fête de l'Amour is an event for couples in the Lac-Saint-Charles area who are celebrating their anniversary, in multiples of five years.

During this annual celebration, which was organized again this year by Maurice Cooper and his amazing team of tireless volunteers, I had the pleasure of meeting several couples from my riding of Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles who have been married for 50 or 55 years. The event is a wonderful celebration of life and love. I offer my congratulations to these extraordinary couples and wish them continued happiness and long life.

I would like to send special congratulations to the two couples attending the reception who celebrated their 55th anniversary this year: Ludger Rhéaume and his wife, Jacqueline Renaud, and Laurent Lepire and his wife, Patricia Lepire.

They are a model of sharing, love and harmony to those around them and an example to us all.

International Day Against Homophobia

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

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats are proud to mark the International Day Against Homophobia.

Canada has made progress combating the various forms of negative behaviours that target gay, lesbian, bisexual, two-spirited, trans and intersex people.

This year's theme is “Taking Action in Schools”. We pay tribute to the many gay-straight alliance groups that meet in schools across Canada, groups that provide safe places for youth to discuss sexuality and plan action supporting equality.

In my riding, I have visited gay-straight alliance groups at Burnaby Mountain, Burnaby North and Moscrop Secondary Schools. Whether straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans or questioning, group members are learning to be themselves and to stand up for human rights.

On this day we also remember that transsexual and transgender Canadians face daily discrimination and must be explicitly protected by our human rights laws.

Canada's foreign and international human rights policies must also reflect the Montreal declaration and the Yogyakarta principles, which call for worldwide action on equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual and intersex people.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today is International Day Against Homophobia.

In some ways there is much to celebrate. Canada has made great strides in ensuring equality under the law for gays and lesbians.

I am proud to have played a role in bringing about these significant legislative changes under the last Liberal government.

However, much of the credit must go to the activists within the GLBT community itself. They fought long and hard to bring the bitter realities of their inequality to the attention of Canadians, using the court challenges program to demand their minority rights under the charter.

Today, other minority groups such as transgendered persons, who still face discrimination in law, have no such recourse.

The new Conservative government, like the old Conservative government, cancelled the Liberal initiated court challenges program, effectively denying disadvantaged groups in Canada access to justice.

On this International Day Against Homophobia, we need to remind ourselves that in today's Canada minority groups can no longer take their rights for granted.

Quebec

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this government claims that Bill C-56 does not threaten its relations with Quebec. However, it should consider the concerns expressed by the National Assembly, which yesterday introduced and unanimously adopted a joint motion calling on the Parliament of Canada to withdraw Bills C-56, which will change the number of seats in the Parliament of Canada, and C-43 on the Senate.

The National Assembly is so concerned over the latest events involving the French language that it adopted another motion reiterating the importance of defending and promoting French as an official language of Canada and calling on the government to take action in response to the latest report by the Commissioner of Official Languages.

The Bloc Québécois is here to defend the interests of Quebec. The Conservatives had better watch out, because we will always demand that the decisions of the National Assembly be honoured.

Memorial Cup

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, hockey fans across Waterloo region are ecstatic with the recent announcement that Kitchener has been selected to host the Canada Hockey League's 2008 Memorial Cup.

Kitchener loves hockey. It will be a thrill for hockey fans to watch the best of Canada's young players on the ice at the Aud for our biggest major junior hockey tournament.

We can be sure the Kitchener Rangers will make us proud and Kitchener will turn out in droves to support the hometown team. Already volunteers are signing up to support the Memorial Cup. There is no doubt that all of Kitchener will benefit from hosting this prestigious event.

The Rangers last hosted the Memorial Cup in 1984 and in 1975. The Rangers won it in 1982 and 2003.

I ask the House to join me in congratulating the Kitchener Rangers and the city of Kitchener on being awarded this enormous opportunity. I invite hockey fans to plan to attend Kitchener May 16 to 25, 2008, for the 90th anniversary of the Memorial Cup championship.

Liberal Party of Canada

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first a Liberal called for a new national energy policy. Now Liberal candidate for Papineau, Justin Trudeau, is panning capitalism and millions of jobs it creates. Like father, like son.

Two days ago the Liberals went from zero to Bill C-288 in 43 seconds to kill the auto industry. Now Trudeau muses about ending capitalism in the automotive capital of Canada, built by capitalists like Ford and Chrysler. Perhaps Trudeau is revealing a deep dark secret Liberal agenda dating way back to his dad?

The weak Liberal chief will not rein him in like he refused to with his other star mouth, Elizabeth May, for her Nazi hysterics. I guess he concedes no capitalism and no jobs are his Liberal Party's position, and to prove it, the Liberals voted against budget measures to make it easier for industry leaders, a.k.a. capitalists, to create more Canadian jobs.

With his star candidate, the Liberal so-called leader has gone back to the Trudeau days of deep recession and high inflation to chart their future. Canadians just cannot afford the Liberals again.

Court Challenges Program

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, at the official languages committee meeting held in exceptional circumstances, we heard a great deal of poignant and moving testimony, including the words of Gisèle Lalonde, the great franco-Ontarian who helped to save the Montfort Hospital. She said: “The end of the court challenges program is an assault on the weakest members of our society. If that program had not been there, we, the francophone minority communities, would not be here today”.

Is the Prime Minister not moved by that testimony? Will he reinstate the court challenges program?

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Minister of International Cooperation and Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, as the Leader of the Opposition well knows, the program is the subject of proceedings in the courts and no comment will be made on it.

That being said, an additional $30 million has been allocated for promoting the linguistic duality of Canada. The Leader of the Opposition and his party voted against that additional $30 million.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to object to the false figures that the minister has just given.

The action plan for official languages is $750 million. In the budget, the government falsely stated that it was $640 million, to which it added $30 million, which means it has been cut by $80 million.

Will the minister do the right thing and put back the missing $80 million?

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Minister of International Cooperation and Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, this is what is false.

The budget allocated to the action plan for official languages provides for $642 million. The $100 million the Leader of the Opposition is talking about was money that had been reallocated. The new money is the $642 million. That is what we kept in place, and we have added $30 million.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, $80 million has been cut and taken away from official languages communities. That is the truth.

But the official languages communities are not the only victims of the government’s hard-heartedness. Parents of students, unilingual Canadians, women, people with disabilities, racial minorities, the economically disadvantaged and the sick were able to get justice under this program.

Why is the government working so hard to deprive minority groups of access to the protections in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Minister of International Cooperation and Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, here is where we see a genuine generous intention when it comes to minority communities: $30 million additional dollars for the communities. This very morning, with my colleague from Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, I announced funding of up to $195,000 for L'écho d'un peuple. These are concrete actions to promote the linguistic duality of Canada.

Official Languages

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Globe and Mail reports today that Conservatives want to think small. Doing big things makes Canadians uncomfortable they say. This small-mindedness exposes a government that has simply run out of gas and worse, does not understand who Canadians are.

The Conservatives failed to appoint an ombudsman for crime victims--

[An hon. member]

We appointed one.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

--the ombudsman does not speak French.

They appointed a chairman of the national commission of a bilingual region who is not actually bilingual.

When will the government stop dividing Canadians, think big instead of small, and start understanding who Canadians are?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I could understand the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, having trouble understanding what a real Canadian is since he spent 30 years outside of Canada, in the United States recently.

Let me tell the House what a real Canadian is. A real Canadian is somebody who stands up for middle class taxpayers, who helps working families with lower taxes, who stands behind our troops in Afghanistan, and who does what he said he would do. That is what real Canadians are, and those are Conservatives.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday members of the National Assembly called on the federal government to take action in response to the latest report of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

This is a call from Quebec for leadership from the federal government to defend linguistic duality in Canada.

I have a very simple question: will the government promise today to adopt all the commissioner's recommendations?

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Minister of International Cooperation and Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, we took good note of the motion passed yesterday at the National Assembly, just as we took good note of the motion passed by the National Assembly calling on us to correct the fiscal imbalance. And that is what we have done.

Democratic Reform

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister unleashed a wave of discontent in the rest of Canada when he recognized that Quebec forms a nation. To seek forgiveness, he has announced democratic reform that favours western Canada and Ontario over Quebec, which will see a reduction in its political weight.

What reason can the Prime Minister give for reducing the political weight of Quebec except to show his electoral base that recognizing the Quebec nation does not have any real and practical consequences for him?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, that is not true. Bill C-56 guarantees Quebec's level of representation. I will quote an article by Gilbert Lavoie published in Le Soleil:

There is nothing really new about the [Conservative] government's Bill C-56. The federal government is required, as are the provinces, to review Canada's electoral map after each census and to adjust ridings to reflect demographic changes. As a founding nation, Quebec has a constitutional guarantee: it will never have fewer than 75 members in the House of Commons in Ottawa, even if its population were to decrease.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member should read the same paper and look at the unanimous motion of the National Assembly. I think he would understand something.

This government's Quebec ministers have done nothing to defend the political weight of their nation, the Quebec nation. None have spoken to the motion adopted unanimously in their National Assembly, that of Quebec, which asks this government to withdraw this bill. Only the Bloc Québécois is here to defend the interests of the Quebec nation.

What is this minister waiting for to rise and ask the Prime Minister to withdraw the bill, as requested by all elected members of—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, before the hon. colleague gets carried away, I would like to say this to him: I do not think he has a great deal of experience in the National Assembly. I can say that I have sat in the National Assembly with other members who are here today.

With regard to defending Quebec's interests, I believe that they are very well served in this House.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has indicated in the past that he respected the will of the National Assembly, which is the supreme body of the nation of Quebec. Yesterday in that assembly, federalists and sovereignists alike voted unanimously against Bill C-56, which would dilute Quebec's political weight in the House of Commons. Quebec is therefore calling on the government to withdraw the bill.

If the Prime Minister truly respects the nation of Quebec and the decisions of its National Assembly, what is he waiting for to withdraw the bill?