Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and privileged to be sharing my time this morning with the member for Halifax, a new member of the House of Commons who has proven herself over the last couple of years as a capable, well-researched and hard-working member. She was actually recognized by Maclean's magazine and named best rookie of the year for the year 2009.
Maclean's states:
In less than six months in the House, she has attracted an unusual amount of notice—enough to win her the best rookie MP title in the Maclean’s poll of her peers.
I congratulate her very publicly for that.
However, it is not just since she has been here. I think people need to recognize this and, because of it, be willing to listen very closely to the advice that she gives in this place and to the voice that she brings to the House of Commons on behalf of so many who have no voice and cannot find the place to have their voice heard. For example, when she was back home in the wonderful city of Halifax, she was part of the Community Coalition to End Poverty. She was part of the Metro Immigrant Settlement Association's legal workshops for newcomers. She also participated in the Dalhousie Association of Women and the Law.
She also was the developer of a very unique and helpful project in Halifax called the “Tenant Rights Project” . She was also awarded for her excellent community development work and her social justice activism in Halifax.
People can get all this information if they google the member. I would suggest that anybody who wants to understand how this place works and the voices that are here, they might want to do that.
She was awarded the Muriel Duckworth award for raising consciousness of women's issues and feminism in the legal community and also the CBA Law Day award for encouraging and promoting access to justice.
As I said, I am very pleased to be sharing my time with such an accomplished, effective and now recognized member of this chamber.
I want to put a couple of thoughts on the record today on Bill C-51 that we are debating.
First, for all the reasons articulated by the member for Halifax, I also will be supporting Bill C-51 but I must say that I do it with a heavy heart. Even though there are some things in this bill that would be helpful to some people, I have some real concern about the overall agenda of the government and whether it understands fully how we got ourselves into this very difficult economic circumstance in the first place and if in fact it has a program to get us out of it.
I will use a couple of the initiatives that the government has brought forward to show the shortcomings and how it is that even though it may make a difference for some people it would not go that full distance to make it better for everybody.
For example, the renovation tax credit, which was announced to great applause in this place and across the country, it turns out that at the end of the day it will probably not benefit those at the low end of the income scale because it is a non-refundable tax credit. Therefore, if people do not get anything back on their taxes or if they do not pay taxes because their income is so low but they have already done the renovations that they thought they were going to get a tax credit back for, at the end of the day they may end up not getting a tax credit at all.
In my view, the renovation tax credit is very short-sighted. It should have been a refundable tax credit and perhaps could have been done differently. It could have focused on those who really needed it in these difficult times to renovate their homes, particularly from an energy efficiency perspective so they could change their windows and doors, put more insulation in or buy more efficient furnaces. That would have gone a long way toward helping people on fixed incomes who are trying to stay in the little homes they have been able to purchase over the years and are struggling now to pay the bills on. That is just one of the initiatives in this bill that I would suggest the government take another look at.
On the other end of the age spectrum, the initiatives in the bill that my colleague from Halifax has spoken to, such as the improvements to the CPP program, will help some seniors but for other seniors who have worked all of their lives, many very hard in workplaces that were very challenging, the government is saying that instead of increasing the CPP or OAS or giving a little bump to GIS that would cover the increasing cost of energy to heat their homes, as the member for Halifax suggested, the government has come up with a plan that actually makes it easier for seniors to continue to work.
It has been said that McDonald's was from birth to the grave work for people. That in fact will be what we will see in this country.
I understand that some seniors will appreciate this but for my money it would have been better had we focused on how it is that we might help seniors who have already done their life's work, raised families and helped build their communities. We need to allow them to enjoy some comfort and dignity in their senior years and those senior years should start earlier rather than later if for no other reason than it creates space for younger people to pick up good well-paying jobs.
Those are just two examples of why it is that even though we will support this, in a very unique and particular time with the economy still falling apart and many people being affected more and more every day we should, as a House of Commons and as different parties, be working together to support things that will be helpful, we think this does not go near far enough.
In my office in Sault Ste. Marie I am beginning to hear the voices of those who have been on employment insurance for a significant period of time and who are looking at it ending. There will be no new jobs for them so they will have very few choices to make. One choice will be to go on welfare, which we know is not nearly sufficient. EI in the first place is not sufficient, but when people fall onto welfare it becomes a different world altogether. People who will fall onto welfare will find that it is a difficult challenge to make ends meet, to keep body and soul together and to look after their families.
The other option they have will be to take on part time jobs. We already know that people working full time in many of those part time jobs that nearly always pay minimum wage are already living in poverty. If people are working part time at one of those minimum wage jobs, they will be falling even further into poverty. The government has no comprehensive program or role to play in eliminating poverty or dealing with poverty, particularly in these very difficult times for hundreds of thousands of people across the country. I find it unconscionable that we would not be putting our minds to that and moving quickly here in this place as we debate initiatives that could be helpful to those most as risk and the most vulnerable.