Debates of Nov. 1st, 2010

Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned that, since 2005, Canadians are worse off today. I would suggest that he take that timeline and go back to 1995 and he will find a StatsCan report. Albeit we are going to lose some of that great data when it comes to the census being eliminated by the Conservative government, but nonetheless, it is there today and it shows that the majority of working Canadians are no better off and in some cases are worse off in 2010 than they were in 1995. We cannot blame the Conservatives for the entire piece, but we can talk about where we lost jobs and how we lost jobs and how budgets have an effect on that.

I wonder if my colleague would like to comment on the fact that the continual two-party alliance of blue and red has decided to continue with free trade. As we lose those jobs, and we see that at an accelerated pace this past recession, how does the member intend to make sure that those good jobs come back so Canadians can actually prosper as we head to 2011, 2012, 2013 and on?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the hon. member talked about free trade, because I want to take this opportunity to highlight the fact that I very much support free and fair trade. We are a trading nation. It is absolutely critical that we look to foreign markets, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises that have the opportunity to penetrate into those markets, to get market access, to create jobs. Many businesses in my riding rely on free and fair trade to be able to expand and to grow. This is something that the Liberal Party very much supports. This is something we tried to promote through various initiatives, in particular with SMEs as I have indicated.

I am actually shocked that the NDP is against free trade, because when we talk about free and fair trade its members say they support it. Any time we have discussions around that on any bills, they tend to go against those positions without any hesitation. In this particular matter I want to go on the record by saying we support free and fair trade.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-47, sustaining Canada's economic recovery act.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on behalf of my party today because I strongly oppose the government's vision and I think Canadians deserve to know the truth about how it is rapidly destroying our social infrastructure, which was once strong and proud. Budgets are about making choices. Time and time again, we have seen the government make choices that are not in Canadians' best interests.

Borrowing billions to give corporate tax cuts, building more prisons, sole source contracting for fighter jet planes, the government's choices have led to a proven track record of poor economic choices.

Canadians want their money to be spent wisely on things that improve the quality of life of their families. I even find the title of the bill misleading. We are led to believe, based solely on the title of the bill, that the current government is making the choice to do everything possible to help our country recover from a tough economic time. In reality this budget bill is doing exactly the opposite.

It is a typical game of the government, smoke and mirrors, clouded by wasteful spending and irrational choices and shattered by mistruths.

I am deeply concerned that the choices that the current government is making are not to the benefit of Canadians. On Friday I listened to Power and Politics and heard the Parliamentary Secretary for Official Languages telling the CBC about how the government has undertaken significant consultations with Canadians across the country and that these consultations had been meaningful. That means having a real substantive impact on public policy.

I find this disconcerting because a few weeks ago I had the opportunity, in my role as critic for democratic renewal, to travel across our great country to talk to Canadians about issues that matter to them. What I heard during this “Canadians Make the Rules Tour”, as it was called, was that Canadians across the country felt shut out and disengaged from the decision making that goes on here in Ottawa.

I heard about how Canadians are tired of the government's top-down, paternalistic, father-knows-best style of governing. They want change. They want another option to choose from.

At every round table across Canada, I heard about the importance of having a strong independent media holding the government of the day to account. Canadians believe that a Prime Minister should be accessible and take unfiltered questions.

I was shocked at the overwhelming ground swell of concern that the CBC has no longer sufficient funding to do its job properly.

This is a choice, a strategy on the part of the current government to limit the democratic discourse in Canadian public life by silencing any dissenting voices. Instead the government has made the choice to bloat the PMO communications budget in order to sell its bad choices to Canadians.

In Vancouver, people expressed concern about the government's failure to listen to the people and about how stakeholders are basically being left out of the decision-making process.

In Calgary, people expressed concern about the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office and talked about how the government should be accountable to Parliament.

In Fredericton, people talked about the importance of Parliament's role as a place for dialogue and developing policies that are in the interests of the Canadian people. Unfortunately, the government does not share that vision of parliamentary supremacy.

Rather, the government seems to think that Parliament is a kind of suggestion box and a good place to put up Christmas lights once a year.

It is a terrible shame that Canadians have to watch our democratic institutions go downhill over time. Those are the facts. Canadians have spoken. When will the government finally choose to listen to what Canadians have to say?

Scholar Ursula Franklin has said that good governance is fair, transparent and takes people seriously. This government has not been fair, funding only Conservative ridings. It has not been transparent in terms of the redacted documents that are now the joke of a government elected on transparency. With sleight-of-hand announcements of the re-announcements of the re-announcements, this is a government that does not take people seriously. It bullies and silences civil society, choosing only to listen to the small number of Canadians who actually agree with it.

The government has made choices to eliminate the Canadian Council on Learning and to cut government funding to organizations like KAIROS, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation and women's groups across the country that represent the voices of social justice. This does not even mention the government's ideological bungling of maternal and child health, which is both failing Canadians and ruining what was once a sterling international reputation.

Time and time again, we bear witness to the shell game of this government. We have seen funding announcements recycled. The theme here, though, is consistent: never any new money.

The chill in the NGO community in Canada must come to an end. Within civil society is real expertise that could and should be tapped in order to get the best possible public policy for Canada and Canadian families.

As Liberals, we do not adhere to the same principles as the current government. We know that there are tough choices to be made. That is what governing and democracy are all about. We believe we should be investing in people and bringing about transformative change with the dollars that government spends.

However, time and time again this government has made the choice to abdicate governing in favour of never-ending campaigning and trying to convince Canadians that its draconian actions are not as bad as the dissenters make them out to be.

The leader of the official opposition has indicated a three-pronged approach to the return of a fair, open and compassionate Canada. It would put the emphasis on learning, care and a renewed sense of Canadian leadership in the world.

We have listened and made our intentions clear to take care of Canadians who devote a good portion of their lives to supporting their ailing loved ones.

We listened to the ideas that came out of the May 2010 public consultation on the digital economy and have announced a strategy to make our government more open, with free access to government data, a policy that the U.K. estimates has created an economic benefit of over six billion pounds.

With that in mind, we in the Liberal Party are committed to maintaining a government strategy.

As we have demonstrated with my private member's bill to bring back the long form census, we believe it is crucial to provide Canadians with evidence-based data so they can make informed decisions.

Contrary to what the Parliamentary Secretary for Official Languages said last Friday, we want to conduct real consultations with Canadians in order to draw on the knowledge and expertise of a strong civil society.

As former chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, was quoted in the Toronto Star on Sunday:

With the government’s decision to abolish the long-form census, it is not clear how one would get reliable answers to these important questions.

...in the absence of high quality census data, it may become considerably more difficult to deal with some of the fundamental economic and social issues we face.

In fact, I would like to note that the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories last week passed a motion to urge the Government of Canada to reverse its decision to eliminate the mandatory long form census.

We believe that without the empirical evidence needed to create policies, ideology will inevitably become the default foundation for debate and discussion in Canada, something that truly frightens me.

This government will spend $30 million more to get less reliable information.

I do not believe that public money should be used to finance projects like the construction of prisons for hypothetical prisoners who, strangely, cannot even be counted.

It has just been pure ideology and fear mongering. Speculation and hearsay is not sufficient evidence. It is crucial that we have the best possible information on which to make proper decisions with public money.

Choices governments make can be transformative or hold a country back. Progressive governments invest in their people, invest in science and invest in the future. Borrowing money for prisons, fighter planes and corporate tax cuts are on one side; care, learning and earning back Canada's place in the world are on the other.

This bill demonstrates the priorities of this government. It refuses to invest in our people and those people who share our tiny planet with us. Canadians deserve a government that listens and understands the reality of their daily lives. Young entrepreneurs keen to conquer the digital economy, single mothers who want to go back to school and women trying to take care of a loved one at home know this government could and should be helpful. This government has not heard their needs. The budget bill has let them down terribly.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. We will have to move on to questions and comments.

The hon. member for Newmarket—Aurora.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I sometimes think the members across the way have selective memories. They talk about re-announcements. I remember in 1993 when the Liberal government promised in the election campaign to get rid of the GST and we were still waiting in 2005. They promised a national day care program, which never came to fruition. They cut $25 billion to the provinces in health and social transfers, and they were responsible for the sponsorship scandal and Canadians are still waiting to get their money back.

I have been privileged to make many announcements on behalf of our government in Toronto ridings for infrastructure programs. None of them are yet Conservative-held ridings.

I would also like to refer back to the public accounts books, which talk about major transfers to other levels of government increasing by $10.5 billion over the previous year. That is money going into the provinces for health care, education and social programs.

My question to the hon. member is this. When her party was in government, why did it not get these things done?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member that the 6% increase in the health transfer is because of the 2004 accord that was signed. The member should realize that it is an annual increase that the Minister of Health stands up virtually every day taking credit for. It was signed by all levels of government, and therefore, the Conservative government did not have the opportunity to cut it as it probably would have.

I would ask the hon. member to listen to the answer to the question posed. It is absolutely ridiculous for her to declare that there was nothing done on early learning and child care. The deals signed by the provinces with the minister of human resources and skills development at the time have created thousands of child care spaces across this country. In fact, the number of child care spaces has actually doubled in this country from the time that the Liberals formed government in 1993.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague talked about controlling government with regard to how democracy gets eroded and people having the sense that somehow they do not play a role and are not listened to. I could not agree with her more. That is absolutely true. I used to be in municipal government when the budget process was opened up after looking at the example of Pôrto Alegre in Brazil, which has an open and transformative budget process in which citizen engagement is the primary piece.

It is not just this PMO that tries to put a straitjacket around the House and all the other things that happen inside government. I hate to say it to my hon. colleague, because we have worked very closely in other areas, especially in the CFIA, and worked very well, but her government indeed did something similar. This has been an ongoing problem for a number of years, where the PMO has talked about control and exerted it from the top down.

I wonder where she has suggestions, because I know she always has good suggestions, about how we can democratize that process and open it up so that Canadians will re-engage themselves and indeed feel not only comfortable, but assured that their voices are heard, listened to and eventually acted upon.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before Paul Martin became finance minister, there was a very close process in which a few elite people would whisper in the ear of the finance minister, and voilà, there would be a budget. In 1993, Liberals began the process of prebudget consultation, which became a best practice in the world.

The member would have to admit that after going across the country in prebudget consultations a number of Liberal budgets were no surprise. People knew and citizens were onside with what needed to be done. A lot of the good ideas came out of those consultations and many members of Parliament did prebudget consultations in their ridings that actually became part of the finance committee report.

People need now to not feel that it is some sort of occupational therapy that they come and submit their papers or speak and the government has already decided what it is going to do. We have to move forward—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. Resuming debate. The hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on Bill C-47 and address a couple of issues in the bill, both hearkening back to the original budget bill, which this is just apart of, and also some specifics in this bill.

In that regard, the budget, last time, was a classic of opportunities missed, and even where issues were addressed, government having gone offside.

I want to address in particular the funding that was promised, first, in the throne speech back in late February or early March of this year, then the actual dollars put into the budget, and then an announcement made just this past weekend on the issue. It was with regard to the horrendous issue of the number of aboriginal women who have gone missing in this country over the last decade or longer.

The sad part about this is not just the tragedy of all those women going missing and presumably, in a lot of cases, having been killed, but the fact of both the current government and the prior government not paying any attention to the issue at all. The dimension of the problem was raised by groups coming out of the first nations and having to do work that should have been done by our police forces, our justice system and our governments, which was ignored in large part by all of those sectors of our country.

It is inevitable, I think, to conclude that had the issue been treated seriously from the very beginning as these women went missing, a great deal of the loss of these women to our society could have been prevented. The current government in particular, but the prior government as well, spent way too much time on prosecuting crimes, on punishing criminals, as opposed to spending much more effort as is needed to prevent those crimes from ever happening.

Again, the announcement that we saw on Friday is just typical of that.

What was promised in the throne speech was that $10 million would be spent on what in effect I thought, from reading the speech and hearing the speech, would be mostly on prevention and assisting aboriginal groups in particular in identifying the loss of these women and trying to use methodologies that would teach us what happened to them and ways to prevent that from happening in the future.

One group in particular, the Sisters in Spirit, had done tremendous work. I was totally amazed when they brought it forward both to this House in a standing committee and to various members of Parliament who have responsibility in these areas. What was clear was that they had done very effective work in identifying how severe the problem was, but they were also literally begging the government to provide them with additional resources. That is what I thought part of that $10 million was going to be used for.

Did that happen? No, it did not.

The announcement on Friday by the minister responsible for women's issues made it very clear. When we look through the individual areas where these funds are going to get spent, it is not focused, certainly, on first nations people, aboriginal people, Métis or Inuit women. It is much more broadly dispersed among the whole population.

In spite of that promise in the Speech from the Throne that it was going to be dedicated to first nations, the aboriginal population, in fact it is not. If we do any kind of apportionment of the dollars, less than 10%, or maybe 15%, would end up aiding those communities. The rest is going to be spent on the general population.

In addition, this is not an issue that was new this past weekend. We have known about it for some time because of the work, over the last couple of years, done by the Sisters in Spirit and other groups like that from the first nations.

However, what has happened? The government says that it is going to spend the money. It is only $5 million per year for two years. That is all it has committed to. We get the announcement of how it is going to spend it, more than six months after the promise, when in fact Sisters in Spirit in particular were ready to go immediately. They had an outstanding application for funds. The government could have given them a portion of the $10 million back in March, quite frankly, when the budget first got passed. It did not do that. It spent all this time, I am not sure doing what, because when we see what it is proposing to do, it did not take six or seven months to plan that out.

In any event, we are now here, again too late, unfocused, for the $10 million. Some of that money is supposed to be spent this year on aiding some of the groups that would be providing some preventative work. It is very small amounts of money, maybe as little as $1 million per year for the next two years. I cannot see how any of that money is going to get spent this year, given how late the government has come down with it. We are going to have to wait for proposals to come forward. With the year-end break, very little of the $5 million for this year is going to get spent this year, and of course, with the risk of an election next year, it may not get spent at all.

However, it is typical of the government's attitude towards this problem, that it is not taking it seriously. Nothing could make that clearer than the way it has handled this money. There have been lots of photo ops, lots of press conferences and press releases about how it was going to do something, but the reality is that it is too little, not nearly enough money, for sure, for the problem that the aboriginal community is faced with. It is too late and what little it is doing is going in the wrong direction.

We look at this and ask why we are bothering with the government even doing this. The answer, of course, is that it gives the government the opportunity to do those press releases and have the photo ops.

The other reality with regard to this particular money is that it is quite clear from our discussions with first nations people and aboriginal communities generally that they are not at all happy, but we are not hearing any negatives from them because they are intimidated by the government. So often with so many other groups, it has intimidated them into silence by not renewing contracts and cutting off funding, KAIROS being a classic example of that and any number of other groups that it has cut funding to because they did not toe the government line, and this is again another example of that. The $10 million is really of questionable value, and whether it is going to get spent or not is questionable as well.

Let me switch to the other point that I want to raise in this brief speech, which is with regard to the pension issue.

We have in Bill C-47 one paragraph on pensions. We have had the finance minister running around the country, as well as in this House, making all these forecasts that the government is going to do something about reform of the Canada pension plan. We are promised repeatedly that it is coming, and again what we see in this bill is one paragraph that really has nothing to do with reform of the Canada pension plan.

We had been promised repeatedly, and even some dates were put on this. We were supposed to have something by the spring. Then we were supposed to have something this fall when we came back from the mid-term break. There is nothing in regard to pensions. We know, and I say this from a really negative personal experience as a member of Parliament, how traumatizing this is to a large number of our constituents.

I come from a city that is heavily dependent upon the auto industry. When it looked as though both General Motors and Chrysler were going to go into bankruptcy, and that the pensions were going to be in serious jeopardy, we expected more from the government. We expected them to deal with it. We expected them to deal with reforming Canada pension plan.

Let me conclude by saying that paragraph 70 in this bill does nothing for any of those issues.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was disturbed to hear comments regarding the comprehensive strategy to deal with the horrific incidents and missing aboriginal women across this country, particularly in the riding and the province where I live.

The strategy is comprehensive. On one hand, he says there is not enough money; on the other, he says they will never even be able to spend it this year.He cannot have it both ways.

Can the member actually say that it is not important for the policemen to have the tools to find these women? Is the funding not important, the funding that is going to the groups, for the awareness materials, and for pilot projects in the communities?

Again, it is a comprehensive strategy, and I think he needs to speak to the good work it will do for the missing aboriginal women and their families.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that it does not do it.

Is this not a serious problem? Yes, it is. I have been the justice critic for my party for nearly seven years now. I understand how serious this is. I also understand that the proposals and the so-called programming that were put out on Friday go nowhere near meeting the requirements.

It is not focused. A good deal of this money is not being spent on the aboriginal community or the missing women. It is being dispersed in various programs throughout the Canadian community.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to comment on the stimulus plan and its deadline.

Would the member care to comment? Right now many of the communities in my riding are suffering as a result of this hard deadline. Perhaps the member could talk about a possible extension.

The member did talk about the pension situation, which I raised in the House several times today. He mentioned the auto sector. In my riding, a plant that had been shut down in the last two years belonged to AbitibiBowater. The pensioners throughout the community, and there are a lot of them, are facing uncertain times because of the uncertainty of the company. It has since made great gains in getting out of bankruptcy, but it was touch and go there for a while. We had an uncertain pension plan that created defined benefits for a large swath of the population in my riding.

Can the member comment on the future debate on security for these plans? They are held by large corporations or even smaller businesses. Just how much trouble they are in, and where will this debate be going in the near future?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the government, I do not see any programming coming in at all.

This is not radical thinking. This is not radical planning. Most of the states in the United States, which are much more conservative than we are, much more oriented to a free market, have provisions at the state level for guaranteeing pensions. They are backed by the state governments. That is not a radical plan. It is quite common throughout most of western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, all societies that have markets similar to ours.

In the case of insolvency or insufficiencies in the pension plan, we need for those to be backstopped by a reserve fund, and that reserve fund needs to be backstopped by government, at both the federal and provincial levels.

We are probably 40, 50 years beyond where we should be in providing this in our social safety net. It is not so difficult to do it. We know how to structure it. But we need the political will to put that legislation in place.

With regard to the stimulus program, my community is somewhat unusual. I am in the southernmost part of the country, and so weather has not been a problem for construction. My community was in such bad economic shape that they had a number of programs ready to go as soon as the funding became available.

We think we are going to meet our deadlines, but we are pretty unusual. There are other parts of this country that are going to need extensions.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before the House regarding this bill. On September 30, 2010, the Minister of Finance introduced Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.

A lot of it is smaller plugs filling the holes on the back end of the budgetary process. Nonetheless, in the spirit of fair and balanced debate, I would like to congratulate the government on some of the measures.

Part 1 implements a number of income tax measures. It allows for the sharing of the Canada child tax benefit, the universal child care benefit. That is a different debate. The universal child care benefit, through which parents get $100 a month, is being passed off as a child care program. I have misgivings about it. It does not give enough attention to the policy of early childhood education, and it does not address the fact that we have early childhood educators who are not given the right tools.

The problem with this type of thinking, just mailing out a $100 cheque every month, is that no one knows where it ends. Where is the broad vision for what we want to do, which is to allow accessible, universal child care? Under this thinking, we might as well mail $50 to everybody and call it a pharmacare program. It might work, but members will see what I am getting at.

I do not want to sound facetious, but I want to get to a positive aspect: allowing registered retirement savings plan proceeds to be transferred to a registered disability savings plan on a tax- deferred basis. I was considering doing a private member's bill on that, but the government introduced it in its budget, and here we have it, so I would like to congratulate the government. That is a positive step for people with disabilities. RRSPs are much more prevalent now than they were previously, and this provides a bit of flexibility for caregivers to pass it on to people in their families who suffer from disabilities. There we have one positive step.

In the spirit of raising the bar, there are also other issues we could look at with respect to the flexibility of registered retirement savings plans, whether to bequeath them to another person in the family after a death. This should be looked at. It is a positive first step to take the unused part of an RRSP, after a death, and pass it on to someone who is invested in an RDSP, a registered disability savings plan.

The other issues in part 1 amend the Canada Pension Plan, the Employment Insurance Act, and the Income Tax Act to provide legislative authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue online notices if the taxpayer so requests. In the digital age, online notices are more prevalent, more available. As a member of Parliament, I get a lot of calls regarding the Canada Revenue Agency. A lot of people are in arrears, owe money, fines, interest, and so forth. These things can be quite crippling, and the financial forgiveness that is available is always hard to get. Sometimes there is a lack of information, not just for individuals, but also for small and medium-sized businesses. This could be a positive step toward a free flow of information.

The only other issue is that the government has to commit to 100% penetration on broadband Internet. During the economic stimulus plan, part of the budget announced the penetration of broadband Internet to rural and northern areas. In all of Atlantic Canada, despite all the money that was talked about, only one project was approved.

I do not want to take away from the rest of the country, and I wish them all the best in their projects. But there was only one in Atlantic Canada. This leads me to believe that we did not put enough emphasis on the availability of broadband Internet. It would have allowed far more communities, small groups, and educational institutions to be connected.

We ask people to sign up for Service Canada, EI, and the Canada pension plan, and we create a flow of communications so that people can receive their benefits that much quicker. But without a commitment to 100% penetration, our attempts to promote on-line interactive government services will fall short.

In light of how much the government has gone from paper to on-line services, and how much we interact with the government, whether municipal, provincial, or even federal, it should be a right for people to be connected on the broadband Internet.

In the beginning, we had a railway service that connected our country. Then we had the Trans-Canada Highway, and now everyone would consider it a right to have highways and roads that connect even small communities.

I have 191 communities in my riding. That is a lot of pavement, a lot of asphalt. But of the 191 communities, 31 do not have access to broadband Internet. Put aside the issue of affordability. It is just not there.

On an individual basis, that is bad enough. But how do we attract industry? How do we say to a company that our plant has closed down, but we have a well-trained talent pool within this community, and we want the company to come in and set up a business?

Do I have vital services? Yes. Water hook-up? Yes. Asphalt to the back of the business? Yes. Do I have broadband Internet? No, we do not. We have dial-up.

How can a company bidding on major contracts do this when it is already at a terrible disadvantage? That is part of the issue.

I applaud the government for moving toward more on-line services, but I think the debate has to continue beyond this. We have to talk about the fact that not everyone is hooked up under broadband services.

Part 7 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to implement the total transfer protection for 2010-11, to set out the treatment of the one-time transfer protection payment under the fiscal stabilization program. That is pretty straightforward.

Let us talk about equalization and transfer payments. We joined Canada in 1949, and today I can stand in the House and say that I live in and represent a “have” province. That was a long time coming. There were certain sacrifices along the way, but we have become a “have” province.

We are not doing things just for the sake of making more money out of revenues from oil and natural gas development. My province now has one of the best poverty-reduction strategies in this country. I congratulate the provincial government for doing it. It is well managed and it is going to make a big difference.

Recently, a program for a home heating rebate for seniors was announced. It is a fantastic program. This was done federally in 2005. It was the energy rebate. As far as I can gather, energy prices have not decreased, so I think that is something we should look at.

It also mentions the Pension Benefit Standards Act. It is almost as if we do pension reform on the margins. I discussed this earlier.

Pension reform is going to be part of this debate. I understand first ministers are currently discussing it. I hope that they come up with a plan that allows more flexibility in the Canada pension plan.

I do like the fact that we could have a supplementary Canada pension plan. That is one element and a visionary element that could bring a greater amount of benefit and income for our most vulnerable seniors.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to convey greetings from the sisters and brothers of the AbitibiBowater workers local to our fellow sisters and brothers in Grand Falls. I know the work the member has done on behalf of those workers.

We know what it is like. There were five paper mills in my riding not that long ago and we now have one. We know what it is like to watch the Domtars and Abitibis leave and then become the Gallahers. We understand what it is like to see pension plans wound up. We understand, like the Atlas workers in Welland, what happened to them when they received a registered letter on a Friday that said, “As of 12 p.m. on Sunday night your benefits are terminated” and this was to retirees, “and your pension will be cut in half”.

We understand the need for pension reform in this country that not only talks about an enhancement to CPP. This is where my friend and I have a slight disagreement about what we should do with CPP, whether it be a voluntary piece or a mandatory piece as we expand that program. However, I think we would agree upon this one aspect. When workers work all their life and contribute to a defined contribution plan, their expectation is to get it out. I would ask my friend to comment on that and on how we should ensure they get what they deserve when they retire.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I had one mill that closed down. The member had five mills and there is now one. I did not know that before. If there is not a better illustration of how we need to look after people who relied so heavily on their defined benefit plans, that gave them that chunk of security for the rest of their lives, and not just them but most of these people raised entire families on this defined benefit plan that now finds itself at half value and no benefits. Five plants and now one. If there is not one hallmark, one sign, one beacon of distress out there that is it.

If it is AbitibiBowater or Domtar, to back these pensions up for security is so necessary and yet so vacant from a debate in the House. It is absolutely incredible.

The member for Windsor—Tecumseh had a good point when he mentioned that many American states have gone further than we have on pension security. What do people do if they are in their mid-seventies? They know they are going to live for another 10 or 15 years and they need to rely on this defined benefit plan that is no longer is backed up, is half the value and is out the door. How do we pick up that slack? Through what, social welfare? This is something that they have invested in all their lives.

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

Mr. Speaker, to understand what we are talking about today, I would like to understand what the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor is saying regarding his position on the budget. We are discussing the implementation of the budget today because when it was time to vote on the budget in the spring, the Liberals abstained.

Based on what I just heard, it sounds as though he thinks we should throw everything out, even though there may be some worthwhile measures in this budget. The budget before us today was supported by the Liberals, but it contains some amendments or applications that could be worthwhile today. It is a bit too late, in a way.

I would like to know how the member could say what he did today, in light of his past actions.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to my personal actions, I have never wavered from the fact that pension security in this country was never an issue or something that just came about over the last two or three years. We knew this. Unfunded pension liabilities have been around for the last 20 or 30 years, particularly when it comes to DB plans.

The mindset is now beginning to change. Due to the recent downturn, people are now realizing that these pensions are not as bedrock solid as they used to be. Now, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a situation where we need to educate ourselves, educate the public and make legislation that would help these people decide on how to live the rest of their lives.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the other budget tabled in Parliament, blah, blah, blah. The short title is “sustaining Canada's economic recovery” and the blah, blah, blah is about sustaining Canada's economic recovery because, although I will speak specifically to the universal child care benefit and pensions, I want to highlight for people that this so-called economic recovery has not reached from coast to coast to coast in our beautiful country.

I want to refer to a Statistics Canada study that was in The Globe and Mail article entitled, “Natives bore brunt of job losses, study shows”.

When this recession was rolling out across this country, first nations, Métis and Inuit said very clearly, I am sure to many members of this House, that they did not want to be left behind in this recession and that we should not forget that they are already the poorest of the poor.

In Canada's economic recovery act, we see that first nations, Métis and Inuit are absolutely left behind.

According to Statistics Canada, this article reads:

Aboriginals have long struggled with higher unemployment than the rest of Canadians, but the recent economic downturn saw the trouble mount, widening the gap between natives and non-natives.

...in communities across Canada, aboriginal people not living on reserves were hit by bigger drops in employment rates from 2008 to 2009 than the rest of the population.

It mentioned that Statistics Canada did not measure employment on reserves.

The article goes on to state:

The unemployment rate among aboriginal people aged 15 and over rose to 13.9% in 2009 from 10.4% the previous year. At the same time, the unemployment rate for non-aboriginals rose to just over 8% in 2009 from 6 per cent in 2008.

We can see that clearly highlights the starting point difference between aboriginal people working off reserve versus the non-aboriginal population.

The article goes on to give a couple of numbers in a couple of different sectors. It states:

There was a 30% employment decline for natives in manufacturing, compared to just 8% among non-native manufacturing workers. A similar decline was noted in construction, with a 16% drop for native workers compared to 5% for non-natives.

The reason I raise this today is that the legislation before us would do nothing to change those numbers for first nations, Métis and Inuit. We had fair warning before we entered into this recession. We simply have not seen the kind of action that would alleviate the poverty in some of these communities from coast to coast to coast.

I want to speak very briefly to the part of the legislation that deals with the universal child care benefit.

When the Conservatives introduced the child care benefit, the New Democrats stood and said that it would not provide quality, affordable, regulated, licensed, publicly-delivered child care for families in this country.

Despite the fact that people receive $100 a month per child, which is partially clawed back through the tax system, we are now seeing, just as we predicted, the disappearance of child care spaces. The government talks about having a choice in child care. How is $100 a month a choice in child care when the child care bills can run up to $1,000 a month or more, depending upon the city in which one lives? Mothers and fathers are left struggling to figure out how they can continue to work. I must point out that work is often not a choice for people. It often takes two working family members to pay the bills and keep a roof over their children's head. These families are struggling with the fact that they must work and are concerned about what happens with their children when they drop them off at a child care centre. There are many fine family-run child care centres in this country, but that is not the point. The $100 a month is not a choice in child care.

In my riding, an article recently said “Childcare shortfall reaches five hundred kids”. In an article in the Cowichan News Leader, on July 30, it said, “There are 538 fewer childcare spaces in Cowichan compared to 2007”. I happen to know that it is not because we have 538 fewer children in the Cowichan valley. It is because these child care centres are being forced to close.

An organization called Social Planning Cowichan is doing a lot of work around examining the reasons why these child care spaces are disappearing and what the options are for families. It says:

According to [Social Planning Cowichan] numbers, about half of Cowichan's 10,000 kids under age 12 need care—a percentage and total virtually unchanged from three years ago.

There are 10,000 children just in the Cowichan Valley who are requiring care. These are children under the age of 12. It goes on to say:

In 2007, childcare support was available for 48 per cent of those needing it, and now that figure is just 37 per cent.

One suspect is the recession, stealing families' childcare cash. An accomplice could be government cuts to childcare programs. Wages often in the $12-$13 an hour range have also made it hard to attract and retain qualified help.

Somebody once reminded me that we want to provide really good child care for these children because they are going to grow up and change our diapers when we are in long-term care facilities. However, what we are saying is that we are going to pay those workers $12 to $13 an hour, and they are raising the future generation. They are raising the future business leaders, community leaders and perhaps politicians. That is what $100 a month in child care choice contributes to.

We should be looking toward the province of Quebec that has done a very good job in providing child care for the children in the province. It is a model for the rest of Canada and we should look to it for a program that has been very effective in terms of providing real child care choice for family members.

I want to touch briefly on pensions. Before I do that, this is relevant because it is about poverty.

HungerCount 2009, put out by Food Banks Canada, has a couple of interesting figures in its report. It says:

This year’s HungerCount survey confirms what we all suspected: food bank use across the country has escalated as a result of the economic downturn. More than 790,000 people walked into a food bank in March 2009, 72,000 of them for the first time. Not surprisingly, food banks themselves, running on shoestring budgets and staffed largely by dedicated volunteers, are struggling to meet the demand. This year’s HungerCount portrays a country in need of change.

Sadly, I only have 10 minutes so I cannot read all of the very good information about poverty in our country, which is resulting in increased food bank usage, but it does say who is turning to food banks. It says:

In terms of household composition, food bank use did not change significantly from 2008 to 2009. Nearly half of assisted households were families with children, split about evenly between two-parent and single-parent families. The proportion of single people turning to food banks for help edged up.

It says that 49% are families with children. It also points out that 12% of those assisted are aboriginal.

That was going to be in the context of pensions, and this economic recovery bill, Bill C-47, does have amendments to the Pension Benefits Standards Act. However, what it sadly does not do is look at increasing CPP, OAS and GIS to some of the poorest, marginalized seniors in our country. What we know is we have the capacity to do that if we only do not go ahead and implement those corporate tax cuts. The $700 million annually that would be required to lift seniors out of poverty and protect pensions in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency could come from those corporate tax cuts, so we could afford to pay for it.

New Democrats do not support the bill and do not see it as a full-blown economic recovery bill.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are two areas that I would like to ask the member about with respect to impact as a result of Bill C-47 and the budget. One is in the area of green technology and the fact that the government cancelled most of the eco-technology grants. It has suggested that in this budget there is an opportunity through the capital depreciation allowance for green technology that it will make up, but it does not really give incentives to consumers. How does the member feel about that?

The second question is about how this budget fails families. I would like the member to explore that a little, if she would not mind, for the benefit of the House. We have recent data which provides a strong rationale that the poverty gap is in fact increasing as opposed to decreasing. What does this budget do for families and could it be improved?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, those are two very good questions. On the green technology end of it, he is absolutely correct that there are two problems with the approach the government has taken. First, the retrofit program that was in place, which could have been converted to a longer-term sustainable environmental retrofit program for households, is gone. Those retrofit programs would have been one way of reducing our ecological footprint in the country.

I want to talk more about that, but he mentioned family poverty. We know that renters and seniors live in homes that could benefit from environmental upgrades. Oftentimes seniors are cash poor and house rich and they do not have an opportunity to do an environmental upgrade. If we want to help families reduce their heating and water bills, we should provide some funding to help them reduce those costs, which would help their bottom lines in terms of eating, for example.

The other piece with green technology is for businesses we need a long-term fund so they can make 5 and 10 year plans for the kinds of environmental upgrades they need to make their businesses more efficient.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's remarks and was quite taken with what she had to say about the $100 a month child care benefit. It very clearly has failed. It was a bill of goods sold to Canadians and it utterly fails.

I want to ask her about the studies done by Fraser Mustard, which show very clearly that registered regulated child care provides an important foundation that would allow children to flourish and prepare them for the future. Our kids will be competing with the kids of the world and they will need that good start. Could my colleague comment on that importance?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune to hear some presentations from the Women's Committee of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. It was very difficult to listen to the stories that some of these women had to tell about their struggle with raising their children and ensuring they had the kind of quality regulated licensed child care that was so important to them.

One single mom was telling me that she was the mother of two children and one child was disabled. She is in the position of trying to find two separate kinds of child care because a disabled child needs some additional care. She was talking to me about her struggle and said that the $100 per child simply did nothing to defray the expenses of having to deal with her particular situation. Hers is just one of many stories.

The member for London—Fanshawe has ably pointed out that these children are the future of our country. We want to give them the best start possible and that kind of quality child care is an important part of the best start possible.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to have a few words at this point in the debate over the budget implementation bill.

First there is the overall situation within which the budget is being considered, and then there are the issues that the budget is silent on, where it could deal with some of the confidence issues that I think Canadians are very concerned about at the present time.

The budget implementation bill is within the context of a stimulus approach that the government initiated with the support of all parties in the House, I believe, certainly of this party. The objective of the stimulus package was to look at infrastructure in particular from coast to coast to coast, with municipal levels of government, the construction industries and the future needs of the country, to invest in literally thousands of projects. These projects would add value and create confidence. Investors and those looking particularly at small business expansion would see this as a background for the confidence needed to make their decisions. The stimulus package, to some extent, has been successful in doing that.

However, there are some ominous signs. Even against the added value that has been created, there there are some signs that Canadians are worried about the future. Let us look at a few of those signs. The unemployment rate today is 2% higher than it was a few years ago, but that does not really tell the full story. We have heard others speak about the erosion of full-time career-type jobs, which are being replaced with the creation of short-term contract jobs. Particularly for young people coming out of university and trades apprenticeships, this has given them a sense that there is not the same stability and continuity that would allow them the quality of life that their parents and their parents' parents had. This is creating a great deal of uncertainty within the present and future generations.

Also, in real terms the economy is seasonally adjusted, sort of like the weather used to be. In real terms, the economy in July shrank. When we think about the objective of the stimulus initiatives that were taken under the action plan, the hardest hit have been in the area of construction. Their percentage of GDP has shrunk. The overall economy has shrunk, but the percentage occupied by the construction industry has disproportionately shrunk. That has to give all of us concern.

The budget talks about adjustments to the capital tax allowance, which would allow a more rapid writeoff of capital equipment. It is a good thing, but on the other side of that, we mention the green energy plan. There are no incentives to the consumers that would be the variable in the equation that would, in fact, absorb those green products that are being created.

On the one hand, yes, those in small businesses, in green technologies, and so on are being encouraged to write off capital equipment sooner. However, on the product they produce out of that, there is no incentive to the consumer to participate in the economic activity that would create more jobs and sustainability in that field.

It is sort of an opportunity that is there as a result of one part of the capital plan in the budget but not offset by an operating infusion of money that would put money into consumers' pockets that they could then go out and use to purchase green technology and green equipment, be it heating, air conditioning, different automotive products or whatever.

One of the areas that I found extremely concerning in that light was that from coast to coast to coast there has been an absolute understanding of the role that rapid transit, high-speed transit and transportation systems, plays. We are a tremendous exporter of transportation technology into the rest of the world. It always befuddled me somewhat that while we are a grand exporter of the best that Bombardier can produce, we are not the highest user of those same goods.

So I link the absence in this budget of the opportunity to create, for example, electrified technology that would in turn deal with issues related to climate change, urban and inter-urban transportation, and converting the older diesel technologies into electrified technologies that would in fact add value and deal with the issues related to climate change.

I use that as an illustration because every so often we have a chance to link government policy, supported by the House, to an issue that is very top of the mind in our ridings. The whole issue of expansion of rail corridors, the use of those corridors to relieve the congestion on the roads and for the transport of goods and people is looked at as an absolute objective that we want to achieve, but on the other hand, we have not invested in the technology that grabs the confidence of the cities and commuters to be participants in a very firm strategy to create those systems.

Another thing that shows a great deal of lack of confidence is that it appears that consumer confidence has declined for the fourth or fifth straight month. Again, that has to do with the taking away of some of the incentives that people have to participate in the purchase of green goods, and so on and so forth. There is no mention of that in the budget.

Household debt has apparently climbed to all-time high levels. We have been privy to what happened with respect to the disastrous decline of the economy in the United States, the fact that because of borrowing policies laid out by the federal government and state governments, the elasticity was so great that there was actually a point where people where paying for mortgages on their debit or Visa accounts.

We have to be very careful, obviously, that we do not reach that point. As has been said, there has been government support for a strong banking and financial institutions regime. Perhaps that is a counterbalance to the kind of thing that could happen in Canada and mirror that situation that happened in the United States.

It is an ominous sign that while the budget attempts to stimulate confidence, there are some indicators that this is not happening.

Much has been said with respect to the area of pensions. I think we have to be very clear that while there are some mechanisms in this budget that allude to the pension issue, we have to deal with the issue of actuarial solvency.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, on the one side, there are some very positive aspects of the budget, but--