Debates of Jan. 30th, 2009

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

Natural Health Products

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by my constituents from Three Hills, Carbon, Trochu and Linden.

The petitioners are concerned about the availability of natural health products in Canadians stores. They are also concerned about the research and development of these products, the inspection regime required to oversee the quality assurance of these products and the penalties for infractions related to the mishandling of these products.

Criminal Code

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I also have the honour to present a petition signed by 40 of my constituents from Drumheller, Carbon, Brooks, Delia, Hanna and Okotoks in Alberta.

The petitioners are calling on Parliament to allow the disclosure and publication of the name and/or picture of any serious violent offender, regardless of the age of that offender. They want tougher laws for serious violent offenders and tougher consequences and jail time with no mandatory release at age 18.

They are petitioning Parliament in reaction to an incident one year ago where a six-year-old boy was held at knifepoint by an eighteen-year-old male who they say was out on bail for violent sexual assaults and awaiting sentencing.

My constituents have had enough of our criminal justice system mollycoddling violent offenders.

Bullying

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today to table a petition containing thousands of signatures from people all across Canada, from the young to the young at heart, who are concerned about the serious issue of bullying; a serious problem that we face as Canadians and an act that has brought fear into the lives of many, including our young people.

Many organizations and individuals across the country are working to put an end to this type of behaviour. The petitioners are asking the government to recognize the work of these anti-bullying organizations.

They are therefore calling on Parliament to declare December 17 Blue Day, an official day to recognize the work of anti-bullying organizations in Canada.

Darfur

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to present a petition signed by my constituents of Okanagan—Shuswap who are concerned about the atrocities in Darfur affecting well over 4.5 million people in the past years.

The petitioners call upon our government to use all diplomatic channels and appeal to the international community to pressure the Sudanese government to end the destruction in Darfur.

Asbestos

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by thousands of Canadians who would bring to Parliament's attention the fact that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known and yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world.

These signators point out that asbestos now kills more people than all other industrial causes combined in this country and yet Canada continues to allow asbestos to be used and promotes it, dumping it into third world countries.

These petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all its forms and to introduce a just transition program for asbestos workers and the communities in which they live. They also call upon the government to end all subsidies to the asbestos industry, both in Canada and abroad, and to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Acting Speaker, Mr. Barry Devolin]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government and of the amendment.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I must ask my colleague from South Shore—St. Margaret's a question in light of what is happening in Nova Scotia. We have seen the devastating impact of this budget on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and the untenable position in which it puts the people of that province. However, in Nova Scotia we have the spectacle of a premier saying that Nova Scotia will be okay. Even though the budget implication is that the money will be taken away, the premier says “don't worry, don't worry, it's okay, we made a little side deal over here”. There is nothing on paper, nothing to back it up except not to worry with a wink and nudge.

Knowing that my colleague's wonderful wife is a minister in the provincial Government of Nova Scotia, could he bring home a little piece of paper that she might scratch out and send it over to us so that we know for sure that Nova Scotia will be taken care of?

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member would know that the Premier of Nova Scotia's word is good and the Prime Minister's word is good. The Province of Nova Scotia will certainly get the full amount of its transitional fund delivered. It is an agreement between the Prime Minister and the premier.

I spoke to the premier last night and he thought this was a great budget. A lot will be delivered to the province of Nova Scotia.

The budget has a few hidden gems. I would ask the hon. member to take a look one of the little gems in the budget that has gone primarily unnoticed, and that is the proposal to spend $5 million in two years on an independent task force to come up with recommendations to the Minister of Finance on a cohesive national strategy on financial literacy. These are the types of programs that can go a long way to help all men, women and young families, people who are trying to make a living and trying to get ahead in society, to plan their financial future.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have two quick points. First, a professor emailed me this morning and he is very upset about the cut to the granting councils and the cut in money for science researchers.

Second, would the member commit to trying to lobby the Treasury Board minister to keep his word, to keep the commitment and to keep the honour of the government on the deal it had with the RCMP to increase its wages? A number of Yukon RCMP are very upset at this.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very prudent and practical budget for these very trying economic times. The Minister of Finance, the President of the Treasury Board, the Prime Minister and everyone involved in the budgetary process knew what the economy was doing and where the economy is going. We put together a budget that would provide a stimulus for the Canadian economy at a time when the economy needs a stimulus. The stimulus of $35 billion this year and $30 billion next year is unprecedented in Canadian history and is exactly what is needed in these very difficult and trying economic times.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to split my time, as I split my seat every day, with my colleague, the member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

The budget we are discussing is not perfect. It is quite imperfect, but it is at least a step forward from the economic update of this past November when the government carried on its tradition of putting politics before people.

After years of budget surpluses and sound fiscal management by previous Liberal governments, we now find ourselves in deficits and with a growing debt. The responsibility rests solely in the unsteady hands of the Conservative government.

This is a turbulent time for Canadians. Real people are suffering and many are worried about their future.

It is not easy for some politicians and political parties to set aside their personal wishes and personal ambitions to do what is best for the country. We should and the Liberal Party will. It is our view and my view that the budget needs to have an opportunity to work but there has to be strong oversight.

The government will be judged on its progress or lack thereof and it knows that it will face the Canadian public if it fails this test. In my review of the budget, I have placed the measures into three categories: first, measures that could be positive for Canadians but which will have to be watched very carefully; second, measures that do not go nearly far enough; and finally, measures that are totally absent.

In terms of measures that might be positive but need safeguards is the working income tax benefit. I think that WITB, a refundable tax credit that supplements earnings for eligible working low income families, is a positive program and it does help some families climb over the so-called welfare wall. The government is adding $580 million, effectively doubling it, and, in fairness to the government, if this goes through it is a positive measure.

On housing, there are some measures outlined in the budget that go to support affordable social housing for seniors, aboriginals, persons with disabilities as well as incentives to retrofit existing social housing to make them more energy efficient. That should be good as well.

On skills training, I believe the investments in what the government is calling the Canada skills and transition strategy will allow unemployed workers more time to find a good job and get the training to compete for tomorrow's jobs.

Those supports are welcomed by us as they will be welcomed by Canadians but they need to be tracked very carefully.

On deferred maintenance at universities and colleges, up to $2 billion is dedicated to colleges and universities to address deferred maintenance; that is to say, repair the facilities that students and researchers use. That can be very positive but, again, the details are very blurry. I have significant concern about the provision that universities, community colleges, polytechnics, provinces and municipalities will be expected to kick in matching funds to get the money. In particular for smaller colleges and universities, and especially in my province of Nova Scotia, freeing up money to match federal money is not an option. As a professor said to me this morning, “This may be a gift we cannot afford”. I think that is well said.

On research, we saw today the spectacle of the minister saying that we need not worry about the cuts. In Canada, eight or nine years ago we invested in research and innovation in a huge way at a time when the American administration of George Bush was cutting research funding. It was a perfect storm for us.

We now face the exact opposite. Under President Obama, the United States in investing in science at a time when we are not. Researchers across the country are concerned about that and they should be. One of the best ways to increase productivity is to invest in research. We will have to keep a very close eye on that.

There are provisions in the budget that are weak and not well thought out. Surely equalization is a prime example. We have seen what a devastating impact it will have on the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In my own province we have this spectacle of a premier saying that it is okay, that he has made a deal with the Prime Minister. However, there is nothing on paper to say the deal is any good. That is so far from the Atlantic accord negotiated by Prime Minister Paul Martin and Premier John Hamm. It is a disgrace and it will need to be watched very carefully.

We were told there would be all kinds of changes to EI. There were great signals from the minister. We have added five weeks, which is good, and some training money. The government might though have used some creativity. If it had wanted to create stimulus, why would it not have eliminated the two week waiting period? That money would go into the economy right now, instead of adding five weeks at the end that some may use or some may not. It could have got rid of the two week waiting period and added three weeks at the other end so at least people could take advantage of the money now when they need it.

It is troubling to hear about wait times for the processing. The minister seems not particularly concerned and yesterday we had a headline saying that the government would not pay the unemployed to stay home. The minister in charge of employment insurance is saying that it may be too lucrative, that Canadians will flee from their jobs and jump on to employment insurance to make $340 a week. That is a disgrace and an insult to working people in Canada. I would encourage the minister and the government to get serious about employment insurance reform as we go forward.

Our leader has indicated a Liberal government will take the necessary steps to bring about changes to EI, in concert with stakeholder group, changes that are fair and treat workers equally.

In support for families, we could have done something significant for the poorest families in the country. There was some tinkering with the national child benefit, but it does not even help those who are most affected. That is a disgrace.

In terms of categories that are not even covered in this budget, what about early learning and child care? We continue to have a government that holds firm on its ideological opposition to any national leadership role in child care. Child care is a tremendously important issue for Canadians and this budget contains nothing to help working families with the difficulty and the cost of accessing child care services in Canada.

What we have now, sadly, is a small taxable benefit that does little or nothing to enhance access to child care and does not create a space. Families who want to go out into the workforce or go back to school in order to better live their lives are stuck again.

It was a Liberal government, led by the member for York Centre, that brought in a national child care program, a program advocated for for years by child care advocates across this country, people like Pat Hogan and Sue Wolstenholme in Nova Scotia, like Martha Friendly in Toronto, Monica Lysack from Saskatchewan, and many others who fought hard, only to see their success turn into despair when the government tore up those agreements. Again, politics trumps people. It is unacceptable.

One of the overarching concerns that touches upon a number of the issues that I mentioned is poverty. Poverty should concern everybody in this country. It is one of the issues on which, along with other colleagues from the human resources committee of the House, we worked in the previous Parliament, and I hope that the HUMA committee will again take up that work when the committees resume.

I hope that we will have in Canada a national strategy to combat poverty, something we do not have now and something for which I hold out very little hope under this government.

I was proud that our party brought forth the thirty-fifty plan in the past election. It placed poverty, and particularly child poverty, at the centre of our platform. It continues to be a national disgrace that we have so many children going to school with little or no food, whose basic needs are not met, and it should be a shame to us all.

I believe that a Liberal government will one day, perhaps sooner than some think, end the dark ages of the Conservative government and replace ideology with hope.

We will say to all Canadians that we support: literacy, equality, the mandate of Status of Women Canada, the court challenges program, child care, proper funding and access to universities and colleges, and that we support the right of all people to live in a country that is generous and fair. Those are the beliefs of most Canadians and they are our beliefs as well. We will form a government that will once again place people first and politics last.

This budget will pass, but we will hold the government to account and the day will soon come when Canadians will have their say again.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech on the budget. He is certainly a person that we in this House recognize as one who holds the progressive notions of government.

We have not seen those of course in the Conservative government, yet today we have once again the spectacle of the government achieving support from the Liberals for a budget that has very little vision of where we are going, very little concern about those most affected by the downturn in the economy, and really no sense of where we are going to go once we come out of the current economic downturn, other than business as usual.

My question for the member is this. How does he see that his actions today in supporting the budget, and not working with us in coming up with a new answer, are really going to cast the direction for this country?

This budget is spending billions of dollars and putting us in a direction that will not help us once the recession is over. How does he see his actions here today serving Canadians three or five years from now?

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we are not saying that this budget is perfect. If this budget were a school child, the report card at mid-term might say it is a D, but the student has to apply himself or herself a little more over the coming months and learn to play nice with others. That is in essence what we are saying about this budget.

The editorial in The Chronicle-Herald yesterday, headed “Grits make right call”, said:

Indeed, the opposition's job is to evaluate a budget's merits on balance, not to rewrite it to its liking or to force the government to make spending commitments it does not want to be responsible for...With his budget, Mr. Harper has already met the Liberals halfway.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Before I go to questions and comments, I remind the member not to refer to other members by name.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Yukon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder how the member for Western Arctic, who just spoke, is going to explain his actions to his constituents. The NWT Chamber of Commerce supports the budget. There is money for infrastructure, northern housing and arctic research, all for his constituency.

I am glad the member mentioned the cut in research funds. I received an email from a professor from Yukon College this morning that said:

I just want to say that I am concerned about the proposed reduction in research granting councils tucked away in the new federal budget. Our neighbour is doubling research and we are cutting it...Reducing money for on-the-ground research does not make any sense to me whatsoever

Would the hon. member support me in asking for the government to maintain its honour with the deal it had with the RCMP negotiated settlement? The RCMP are integral to the north and have a very dangerous profession. We should honour our commitments to them.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with my hon. colleague on his latter point. In terms of research, I too received an email from somebody very involved in research in my province and a national leadership role across the country. It said, “--I have had the chance to digest a bit more information about the impact of the proposal on research. In brief--it's not good!!!” One, two, three exclamation points. Three exclamation points.

We came so far eight years ago when we invested in CFI, more when the granting councils created CIHR and Genome Canada, and the Canada research chairs, all of the things we did. That was at a time when the United States was reducing its commitment to science.

As signalled in Mr. Obama's speech, the United States is now putting a real focus on science at a time when the Canadian government is levelling down its research commitment. It spite of what it says, it is levelling it down. The tri-councils, NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR are losing money. This is critical for Canada. This government needs to accept that fact and stop telling people it is not the case. It is the case. We are losing our function, purpose, and ability to attract and retain researchers in Canada. It is going to cost us big time.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to say that it is an honour for me to follow my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, who gave an excellent speech on the budget.

One of the first things this budget brought to my mind was an interview I read a number of years ago with the then labour secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, who is, of course, a political and philosophical liberal.

In the interview he was talking, in frustration, about the neo-conservative winds that were still sweeping the United States at that point, that had begun with the Reagan administration. He was railing in a sense against these neo-conservative winds because those winds were denigrating longstanding, respected social safety net programs in the United States that had been in place for many years.

At the time, the economy was good, everyone was happy, people were prospering and forgetting in a sense that some day they might need those programs such as employment insurance and different forms of medical insurance. Previouis governments had been using this change in political culture that had been engendered by the good times to further denigrate these programs and make them seem dated and less valuable.

Reich said that one day middle-class Americans, who were earning good wages and salaries, would need those programs. He felt it was the role of the government, the Clinton administration, not only in its discourse but in its concrete actions, measures and policies to restore support for these programs. Now, of course, with the onset of the economic crisis, the point has been driven home more clearly than ever that Americans need these programs, like Canadians do.

I was watching 60 Minutes last weekend and there was a very heart-wrenching story about a one-industry town in Ohio called Wilmington. I am sure other members saw it. It is a town that houses one of the hubs of the DHL express courier company. The town had been thriving but with the recession the courier company's network is shrinking and it is conducting waves of massive layoffs, one week after another. Sometimes both spouses had been employed there and now find themselves with nothing, barely enough money to purchase groceries and sometimes not able to do that. They face mounting health care bills. They were in tears while being interviewed by 60 Minutes.

In one case a woman said what broke her heart more than not being able to put food on the table regularly was that she and her husband had to pull their son out of college before he graduated. It was a very sad tale. When I saw it, I felt terrible for them and I also felt grateful that I live in Canada where we have programs like employment insurance, publicly-funded post-secondary education, and a national health care system that is not perfect but is a safety net.

What I found disappointing in the budget was that the government had an opportunity to take a leadership role in this new era of hope and Obama-style vision. It had the opportunity to reinforce these programs through concrete spending measures at a time when Canadians need to have these reinforced, but it let the opportunity go by to some extent.

For example, we have to improve the employment insurance program at this time when unemployment is rising but we can also use it as a counter-cyclical economic instrument to help us get out of the recession. What better way to pump up the economy. What quicker, more efficient way to pump up the economy than to put money in the hands of the unemployed, who will spend it right away. Unemployed individuals do not have to wait until they file their tax returns; it would show up on a cheque right away.

The Globe and Mail called for this kind of reform to employment insurance. Forget the fact that we have to make the program better for compassionate reasons, but in terms of hard economic reasons that program could have been reformed and made into a counter-cyclical economic program. The government did not bite. It did not take the opportunity to do that.

The government also did not take the opportunity to further support the health care system. We know that in times of recession people suffer. They suffer stress and stress leads to disease and more hospitalization. We have done the research. The science shows it. The government may not believe in science, but what we have learned through science over the years is that these are facts, facts that are not debatable any more. Recessions lead to family problems, to stress, to disease and to hospitalization.

We had the foresight in our Liberal election platform to say that if we were elected, we would put $1 billion aside to hire more doctors and nurses. Why did the government not take inspiration from that? We would have given it credit for doing the right thing. The government left another national program weaker when it could have made it stronger.

The government could have invested more in post-secondary education and research, but it did not. It seems to be cutting research.

What is really galling about the Conservative government is its systematic lack of foresight.

There will always be ups and downs in the capitalist economy, and we know this now. There will always be speculative bubbles. If it is not the dot-com bubble, it is a real estate bubble or it is a credit crunch like we are living through today.

I was reading an interesting article the other day that explained why we never seemed to learn that we would have some kind of speculative run and that it would come to an end. One of the reasons we do not learn is because the people involved in the markets at a particular time do not remember the last crash. When we say it has crashed before, they tell us it is different this time because governments have surpluses or inflation is low. They are blind to the possibility that it will happen again.

I am so proud to say that we had a finance minister who built in a $3 billion cushion because he was wise enough to know that bad times would return.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague touched on one issue that I thought was remarkable, and that was the $3 billion fund that the previous government had allocated.

We are dealing with a deficit from the status quo in excess of $10 billion. We are dealing with a stimulus package that will be taking the deficit to $64 billion in two years. The situation comes back to cutting taxes, the fiscal policy of the previous government.

My colleague and his party will support the continuation of the same fiscal policy we have had over the past three years, which has led us to this point today. We had the opportunity within the laws and the directions of the Parliament we all sit in as members to change that. His party chose not to do that.

Could the member explain to me why now he says that the policy of tax cutting, of reckless abandonment with the good revenues of our country, is something that his party should support?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that a $3 billion cushion seems relatively small in respect to the kinds of deficits we are looking at this year, next year and going into the future. There is a reason that the deficit will be so large and that reason does not relate to the previous Liberal government.

As the member knows, the GST cuts brought in by the Conservative government will deprive the economy of $12 billion a year. That is $12 billion that could go into water infrastructure. That is $12 billion that could go into science and technology. That is $12 billion that could go into the arts, one of the country's biggest industries. It is a lot of money. I think that was an unwise decision by the government, but we are not voting on unwise decisions from previous budgets.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the floor indicated something to the effect that the government did not believe in science.

One of the obligations we have as members of Parliament is to reflect accurately what is in the budget proposal. It seems to me, from the comments that were made, that perhaps the member has not read the budget.

I would like to read a few excerpts from the budget, on page 138 and 139:

Dedicating up to $2 billion to repair, retrofit and expand facilities at post-secondary institutions.

Providing $750 million for leading-edge research infrastructure through the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Providing $50 million to the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo...

Allocating $87 million over the next two years to maintain or upgrade key Arctic research facilities.

Providing $250 million over two years to address deferred maintenance at federal laboratories.

It seems very clear to me that the government is very committed to research and innovation. Could the member explain how he could make a statement like he did in his earlier remarks.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the figures that the hon. member has read out. We are pleased with some of the funding increases. There is no doubt about that. We are supporting the budget.

However, we know that in a competitive world, it is not always about the absolute numbers; it is about how we are doing relative to our competitors.

We know that in the United States the Obama administration will pour billions and billions of dollars into science research. What do we see in the headlines today? We see headlines like Genome Canada has been forgotten.

It is good that the government has invested, but it would not have invested had it not been faced with the threat of a coalition government, so we have to take credit for some of those additional investments.

There was another article in the paper today saying that the Prime Minister is a Conservative in name only at this point, that he seems to have abdicated on all of his principles. If he has abdicated in the direction of spending to stimulate the economy, then good for him and good for us.