Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Fredericton.
It is an honour for me to rise and speak to the House for this, my first real speech. First of all, I want to once again thank the people of Châteauguay—Lacolle for the trust they have placed in me.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank my family for their tremendous support, which I enjoyed even before I decided to run. Thank you to my daughter Emily and her husband Michael, my twin boys Benjamin and Daniel, my mother and father, as well as my three brothers and five sisters. We have a small family. I also warmly thank the fathers of my children, my ex-husband John and my ex-husband Bill, for their good advice and, above all, for the mutual support we have given one another over the past 30 years as parents raising our beloved children.
My life experience brought me to a place in my career in which I felt the need to transition from being a banker to a social worker. I began a mission to help Canadians better understand and better manage their financial resources.
In 2005, I came here to Ottawa on my own initiative to attend the first national conference on financial literacy, called Canadians and Their Money: A National Symposium on Financial Capability. The participants represented an impressive range of Canadians with the authority to define the notion of financial capability, which is defined as “a concept with three different components: financial knowledge and understanding, financial skills and competence, and financial responsibility”.
I have applied these principles, which are now recognized as being part of financial literacy, in my work presenting workshops on personal finance, and also in my work as a columnist. I have had the pleasure of taking part in various forums on the subject and developing financial education activities for all stages of life. The goal was to help people achieve what they truly wanted in life, regardless of their choices or lifestyle, and that is financial security.
In doing this work with Canadians from all walks of life, and in particular with vulnerable and low-income Canadians, I realize that financial education by itself cannot solve the problem of insufficient predictable monthly income for families and seniors. That is why I am delighted to see that our government has committed to implementing a tax-free Canada child benefit as of this month. That will not only benefit nine out of ten Canadian families with young children, but will effectively lift 315,000 children out of poverty, much as the guaranteed income supplement did for low-income seniors, reducing seniors poverty significantly 20 years ago.
In the same way, I applaud our government's attention to increasing the current guaranteed income supplement by 10%, and its intention to work with provinces and territories to enhance the Canada pension plan, another important source of predictable periodic income for people retired or contemplating retirement. By the way, as one of the 58ers, Canadians born in 1958 or later who were subject to that change in the OAS eligibility age from 65 to 67, I am thankful that the measure has been repealed by our government. Let us just say that my long-time retirement plan is back on schedule.
On another topic, I want to reiterate our government's commitment to having a strong economy in concert with a healthy environment, a highly important target for the riding of Châteauguay—Lacolle and one that generated a lot of interest throughout Montreal's south shore area.
More than 120 stakeholders took part in our pre-budget consultation in Montérégie last week, including local economic players, mayors, business people, educators, social development leaders, and the list goes on.
People almost unanimously agree that the environment must be protected in the economic development process, not only because we want a healthy environment for ourselves and our families, but also because the real Canada is back on the world stage.
We also have the opportunity to become leaders in the area of clean technologies and to export them around the world. For example, in Châteauguay—Lacolle, stakeholders in the agriculture industry want to improve integrated pest management for land. However, they need financial support and support for research on new practices.
The people of Châteauguay—Lacolle are also very proud of the Île Saint-Bernard protected area, which was purchased in 2011 by the City of Chateauguay and has been protected since then. It is one of the most beautiful wildlife areas in Quebec, and it also has a sound tourism, cultural, and educational business model. It has won several awards of excellence for its heritage efforts. This tourist attraction, which includes an ecomarket, sightseeing cruises on Lake Saint-Louis, and an archaeological site, hosts almost 180,000 visitors every year and provides 40 quality jobs.
However, we also have a serious environmental disaster in the lagoons in Mercier and Saint-Martine. These lagoons were industrial waste dumps from 1968 to 1972. The groundwater is still so contaminated that the people living along the Châteauguay River cannot even drink their own water.
Consequently, I am very relieved that our government has committed to implementing a major investment program for infrastructure, including green infrastructure. This financial participation will encourage innovation and fund the development of technologies to clean up environmental messes, such as the Mercier lagoons. I know that this will not be easy given the complexity of the problem, but we can and must do better.
In fact, just like President Kennedy did in the United States when he created NASA, our government has given us an opportunity to come up with and carry out major projects under its green infrastructure program, the purpose of which is to protect and revitalize our environment in a sustainable manner for our future generations.
Finally, in recognition of the many anniversaries we are celebrating this year, such as the 175 years since the elections of Robert Baldwin and Sir Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, partners in achieving responsible government, and the150 year anniversary of Confederation next year, I would like to close with a quote, slightly amended from one of our honourable predecessors here in this House, my personal hero, Irish immigrant and great statesman, Thomas D’Arcy McGee.
In 1860, seven years before Confederation and eight years before he was tragically murdered by a Fenian on his way home after a late night debate here in Parliament, Thomas D'Arcy McGee said:
I look to the future of my adopted country with hope [...] I see in the not remote distance one great nationality bound like the shield of Achilles by the blue rim of Ocean.[...] I see within the round of that shield the peaks of the Western Mountains and the crests of the Eastern waves, the winding Assiniboine, the five fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Saguenay, the St. John, and the basin of Minas. By all these flowing waters in all the valleys they fertilize, in all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented moral men [and women] free in name and in fact - men [and women] capable of maintaining in peace and in war, a constitution worthy of such a country!