Bill Graham

[Human Resources Development, February 17th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, today I share with the House the contents of a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail sent by the executive director of Dixon Hall, an important social agency in my riding located near Regent Park, the first social housing complex built in Canada. Still today, a very fragile social environment.

Mr. MacDougall's letter challenges an editorial about HRDC which suggests that they are lining up at the trough for easy money and recommends that the fund be closed. It describes the much needed projects that this funding supports for women, for homeless individuals, and projects that train people for jobs and work in carpentry, child care, baking and small business development.

“For this money” he says, “we write extensive applications, sign contracts and report monthly to HRDC—The deep impact of HRDC funding cannot be so callously dismissed”.

Every week I visit worthwhile projects funded by HRDC in my riding. I want the House to know that the funding that HRDC delivers to my riding is well spent and is having a real effect on the lives of vulnerable Canadians.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, they can duke it out over there if they want to. It is kind of fun.

The member from Burnaby put his finger on it. The problem existed in the country that there were many heterosexual people who were living in relationships that were not protected by the law. They were not married and the courts and we as legislators both in the provinces and the federal government said this was not fair. Women were being discriminated against. We assimilated a common law relationship to that of a matrimonial relationship.

I am a married person in the province of Ontario. The whole of the Family Law Reform Act was introduced after my wife and I had been married for 20 years. It completely changed the nature of family law as it applied to us as couples, our children and everything else. That is what we did in our society. All this is doing is moving couples of the same sex into the exact same category.

What they want to do is turn back the clock. They want to say that we cannot have any common law relationship because they are not registered. They have the same problem that the member raises.

If it is not a problem for common law relations, it cannot be a problem for the bill. If it is a problem for the bill then it is a problem for common law relationships. I suggest that the member and his party go to the Canadian public and say that they intend to turn back the clock 25 years and get rid of all forms of common law relationships.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, somehow we are getting the debate going over there.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate the member has insisted on the term clarity in the House at this time. It perhaps might evoke reaction from other parties of the House that have trouble with that concept, but I will leave that aside.

The member is obscuring something here. This is not that complicated. The member knows, as does everyone who knows anything about the way in which society has evolved recently, that at one time the only way in which one got benefits under pensions or many other statutes was if one were married. We moved away from that concept to one where we recognized common law relationships. This was in the law of the provinces. It was recognized that men and women could live together in a relationship that was not blessed by holy matrimony.

All the bill does is assimilate relationships between people who are living together in similar circumstances to that of a heterosexual common law relationship and same sex couples who are living in the same relationship. That is all it does.

The whole business of sex police and everything is some sort of myth. Are there sex police going around now knocking on the doors of heterosexual couples and asking “Are you really sleeping together? You made a declaration that you are common law”.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the eloquent member for Mississauga West.

When I rose to make my maiden speech in the House in 1994, I pointed out that my riding contains the largest gay and lesbian population in Canada. They bring a sense of diversity to our city and enrich many areas of our community, including the artistic and cultural life of our city. These citizens, fellow citizens of ours, look to the government to fulfil long unkept promises of many previous governments to ensure that discrimination in their lives and in their employment will cease so that they may play their full role in society. It is their right to live in a world with a level playing field and we owe that to them. That is what I said in my maiden speech.

Later that year, on the occasion of World Human Rights Day, I said that, “As Canadians, we can be proud of our contribution to the international community on the issue of human rights and on the development of international standards to which we adhere”.

This said, we must also be ever vigilant that our human rights respect international standards and ensure the right of all Canadians to live free from discrimination in this country.

A recent decision of the United Nations human rights committee ruled that sexual orientation is protected by the equality guarantees of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a document which Canada helped prepare and which binds us.

Let us, in remembering World Human Rights Day, recognize that it is our duty to ensure that our laws in this country are amended to eliminate all forms of discrimination, including any based on sexual orientation.

Today the House has an opportunity to fulfil that duty and with it to achieve one of the most important tasks for which we are elected: the implementation of laws which guarantee that all our citizens may live in equality and dignity. In so doing we as Canadians know that all of society will benefit as we have so often found in this great country where our tradition of tolerance and acceptance of diversity has enabled us to create a nation which is the envy of the world.

I have news for the member from West Vancouver. This is not a diversionary tactic for my constituents. This is the process of fulfilling long overdue longstanding obligations of the most fundamental kind. This is a priority for real people who are living with real problems. They merit our attention and they do not deserve to be denigrated by the words such as were used by the member who last spoke in the House.

The path to this moment has not been easy. The need to take these steps was recognized by governments long before ours, but I am proud to say our government has had the political courage to deliver on something that many had recognized was the right thing to do.

I was proud to be part of the government elected in 1993 which recognized the need for these measures and implemented them. We started with Bill C-41, the sentencing act. We then passed Bill C-33 to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act. We then adopted Bill C-78 which extended pension benefits to same sex federal employees.

All of this legislation had the support of such associations as the National Association of Women and the Law, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'Nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Foundation of University Women, and the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies, for the very good reason that they represent basic Canadian values.

For a good number of these important institutions, these are important measures, contrary to what the Reform member who has just spoken said.

They also had the support and encouragement of our courts which in a series of charter cases such as Egan, M. and H. and Rosenberg recognized that our charter of rights and freedoms required total equal treatment for gay and lesbian couples. There is no justification in a free and democratic society, to employ the language of the charter, to discriminate against them in the manner in which our laws recognize the rights of those who live in a conjugal relationship and contribute to society together.

Today this measure completes and complements the reasoning of our courts. It enables us as legislators to voice our views on this issue and to complete the work we started when we adopted the landmark changes to our human rights act, changes which foresaw and necessitated the measures being considered by the House today.

I heard what was said by our colleagues opposite about this measure. They spoke about its irrelevancy, its lack of relevance and pertinence to the life that takes place in Canada today; but we already debated the appropriateness of the measures before the House when we debated the changes to the human rights act some years ago. We decided then by a free vote in the House, supported by 75% of the members voting, that the basic values of our Canadian society require that we eliminate all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

At that time we knew our view was shared by the vast majority of the Canadian population, that some 70% of our fellow citizens across the country were in favour of that measure. That was then and the same 70% is in favour of these measures now for the same reasons.

What does the legislation do? Quite simply, where there is discrimination it eliminates it. It guarantees that throughout our laws there will be equal treatment for all common law relationships in relation to benefits and obligations. As pointed out by the member from Mississauga, this is not a matter that changes anything. This is extending to common law relationships the same rules and regulations. That is the essence of the discrimination that is being eliminated.

It does not go as far as some of my constituents would have liked. For example, there are those who might have wanted to see crafted some form of matrimonial relationship for couples of the same sex; but those who would have preferred that solution know the complexity of this issue as was referred to by my colleague, the minister from Vancouver. This issue requires political co-operation between the provinces as do all matters dealing with marriage.

I am sure they agree with me that what we needed to do today was to address the inequality of treatment in our statutes and to eliminate it wherever it is found. The bill accomplishes that. In so doing we have dealt with such issues as those addressed in Rosenberg. I am sorry my colleague who spoke about the courts and denigrated them earlier is not here to hear what the court in Rosenberg stated:

Differences in cohabitation and gender preferences are a reality to be equitably acknowledged, not an indulgence to be economically penalized. There is less to fear from acknowledging conjugal diversity than from tolerating exclusionary prejudice. As L'Heureux-Dubé J. said in Canada (Attorney General) v Mossop...“Given the range of human preferences and possibilities, it is not unreasonable to conclude that families may take many forms. It is important to recognize that there are differences which separate as well as commonalities which bind. The differences should not be ignored, but neither should they be used to delegitimize those families that are thought to be different”—

I agree with the formulation of the court and I respect the formulation of the court. I say to members of the House that when our courts speak this way they are speaking forcefully. They are speaking with the voice of the majority of the Canadian population which accepts that we live in a society of tolerance and respect for others, and not with the voice of those who say that we should sweep away the courts which speak for no one, sweep away the Constitution of Canada, get rid of the whole idea of the charter of rights and freedoms which is one of the fundamental notions of what this country is all about, sweep it all away and we will somehow live in a world where we can apply all our discriminatory views and all our worst views of one another and impose them on ourselves and on one another.

We chose to have a charter in this country. We chose to give our courts authority to interpret our laws. I respect the decisions of those courts because I think they have fundamentally followed their requirements under the constitution. I am pleased to say that I think my constituents support the decisions of the courts too. They support this statute because it is important to gay and lesbian communities that discrimination be eliminated so they can contribute fully to society. It is important to send a signal to everyone that discrimination is not a part of our social fabric. It is also important for society in general.

As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, many institutions in Canada like universities and important companies wish to hire the best people possible. They want the Income Tax Act changed so that they are not discriminated against when they enable their finest employees to work for them in a non-discriminatory manner. This is why these measures have been adopted by many other jurisdictions, provinces and countries.

I will complete my speech by saying I am proud to speak in favour of this measure. I am proud of my fellow members from all parties who support it. I am proud of our government and I am particularly proud of the many Canadians who have forced this on the House and whose indefatigable work in favour of justice and equity brought us to this historic moment in our life as a modern, diverse and equitable society.

[Committees Of The House, February 14th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite surprised both by the tone and by the content of the member's speech for whom until now I had a lot of respect as a member of our committee.

I am a little astonished for a number of reasons. First, he rose to move that the report be concurred in by the House, but he spent his time not so much attacking the report as attacking the behaviour of our Liberal colleagues on the committee.

I regret what he said all the more because, until now, I thought that members of our committees worked rather well together. Attacking the behaviour of other committee members seems to me somewhat out of place in this House.

As far as the substance of the report is concerned, I believe it stands on the strength of its very responsible recommendations. I might remind members of what was happening when the House was about to rise, last year.

Members of the House will recall what occurred at the end of the last session. The committee met with the intention of adopting a serious report which had been the subject matter of a long series of reviews.

I totally disagree with the member's analysis as to the comportment or attention of any of the members. Many members followed these debates with a great deal of interest. All members on all sides were very interested in ensuring that there was a balance in the report of the role of the EDC both in guaranteeing that corporations and individuals who export from this country receive adequate financing to enable them to carry on their business globally and at the same time ensuring that the EDC respected human rights values and the other concerns members rightly raised before the EDC.

The report strikes a good balance between the needs of the EDC to ensure that Canadian exporters are well served by financing tools outside this country and at the same time to ensure that the human rights and environmental concerns of our citizens are met. It is a balanced report. It is a responsible report which has the support and the concurrence of members of the House.

Since the member saw fit to challenge the way in which the report was adopted, let me remind the member that the report was adopted in the absence of members of the Bloc Quebecois. They knew that the meeting was taking place. They were aware that it was taking place and they chose not to come.

It seems to me disingenuous to say that the report was approved by the Liberals in attendance, the Reform members and the other parties present, in the absence of our Bloc colleagues. Bloc members were boycotting the meeting precisely because at the time they did not want any committee report to be approved before the House adjourned for the holidays.

I have a lot of problems with what the member said. I respect his opinion as far as the substance is concerned. I am ready to debate it on its merits, but as far as the form is concerned, we can criticize neither the committee nor the procedures it adopted.

[Income Tax Act, February 14th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague, the member for Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans, had to say about his bill. He is to be congratulated for having taken this initiative.

In my opinion, and in the opinion of other members of the House, the idea behind this bill compels us to look for the best way to reduce the tax burden of our citizens. Everyone agrees that the tax burden is too heavy. The question is: What is the best way to reduce it?

As the parliamentary secretary said in his remarks, when one examines the question of what is the best way to reduce the tax burden on our citizens we always have to choose. I was a little surprised by the remarks of the hon. member for Kings—Hants. Usually one looks to him for some sort of knowledge in these matters. He is on the finance committee and speaks regularly on finance matters in the House. I would have thought that he and other members of the House would recognize the wisdom of the words of the parliamentary secretary when he pointed out, if I can put it in a colloquial way, “You can't have your cake and eat it too”.

We cannot reduce tax burdens sectorally in individual areas and at the same time say we want broad based tax relief as well. The consequence of a continued sectoral approach is one of tax expenditure. This will be followed by demands and important requests, as the parliamentary secretary pointed out reasonable requests for those who are artists, for those who are working on computers and for others to have reasonable deductions made for them in the name of tax equity.

Equity is what we seek to achieve in the House, but it seems to me that the real equity we are seeking to achieve at this time when we are discussing taxes is equity in terms of a broad based tax relief. That is what the government has been seeking to achieve with tremendous difficulty since our first mandate in 1993 in bringing huge budget deficits under control and having broad based tax relief.

We have managed to achieve a balanced budget. As a result in 1998 we were able to take 400,000 people off the tax rolls. That seems to me most important. From 1998-99 we perhaps got 600,000 Canadians off the tax rolls with a total of $16.5 billion in tax relief spoken to in the last budget, without thinking of what is ahead in the next budget.

I have heard about the issue of the mechanics. I sympathize a great deal with it and with other sectors that also have certain tools for which they should have relief. I talked with a single woman in my riding during the last election. She earned $21,000 a year. She had two children to raise in downtown Toronto. She did not have any professional tools for which she could seek relief. In my view she should not be on the tax rolls when we look at the type of problems of a person like that living in our downtown communities.

We have to look at broad based tax relief. We have to look at moving the middle class, lifting its general levels and making it available to all Canadians. This must be our first priority before we turn to specific issues in specific sectors.

That is what the government has been doing. We have managed to balance the budget. We have kept our obligations to increase our social policies. We have used the tax system to help those in need through the child tax benefit and we have been reducing the deficit.

In my view this is what we have to do. We must keep all priorities in view and not single out one group. In the future we will see this done. We have heard that the minister intends to have further measures designed to move more lower income people off the tax rolls; to increase the tax brackets so that the burden will not be so heavy on those who are in the middle class; to gradually approach the surtax issue; and to deal with the issue of capital gains, which addresses the question of productivity.

I agree with the member for Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île-d'Orléans, when he describes the problems faced by mechanics. However, we need to strike a balance. There must be some investments in garages if we want mechanics to be employed. The idea is that we have to look for the right balance in the system.

Speaking for my constituents in Toronto Centre—Rosedale, I think that they are looking for that balance. They want a system which alleviates the burden on those less able to pay, yet encourages entrepreneurship and creates a dynamic economy of benefit to all citizens. I dare say that we have proven the qualities of this approach by the government. We have gotten the economy back on track.

Unemployment is at its lowest rate ever. That was not achieved by looking at sectoral issues; it was achieved by having a broad based and balanced approach for all Canadian citizens.

What do the people of my riding want? They want to see a continuation of those policies, whether they be mechanics, artists, theatre employees, lawyers or doctors, all of whom have special needs in their professions, in their work, or in other ways in which they carry on, benefit and create economic benefits for the country. Ultimately what they want is a better system for everyone. They want to bring the general tax level down in a way that will benefit all of society. That is the present policy of the government.

While I congratulate the member for bringing forward the bill and while I recognize the merits of the comments of each of the members from the opposition who have spoken to the bill and the needs of mechanics, I believe in my heart that the mechanics and all other citizens who might make an equal claim for this form of personal tax relief directed to themselves would say that it is better that the general tax burden come down, that we address it in a way which guarantees a balanced economy such that all participate, that we create a sense of entrepreneurship and fairness in the system so that all sectors benefit and that we do not concentrate on one specific area in a way which would, as the parliamentary secretary wisely pointed out to us, create tax inequities, because it would create a need for certain types of supervision. It would create a sense where one person would say, “Why are they able to deduct that? Why cannot I deduct my dress which I bought for my work on television? Why cannot I deduct this because I am an artist? Why cannot I deduct that?”

Let us concentrate on the main issue which is before us. Let us concentrate on bringing down the general tax rolls, on bringing down the burden for all Canadians. I am confident that is what we will hear from the Minister of Finance when he speaks to the budget in the House at the end of this month. We will hear that balanced approach.

The business of the governing of the country requires focusing on the debt, the general tax burden and the needs of the economy, which must be dynamic, which must grow and benefit all for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Petitions, February 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to present a petition signed by over 100 of my constituents calling on parliament to use the federal budget for the year 2000 to introduce a multi-year plan to improve the well-being of Canada's children.

[Committees Of The House, February 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee met and listened to church, human rights and trade union organizations, as well as Canadian government officials on the subject of human rights in Columbia.

The committee denounces violence, kidnappings, massacres and repeated attacks against human rights in Columbia and asks the Government of Columbia to intensify its efforts in order to prevent such acts of violence and such abuses of human rights in that country and in order to put an stop to impunity, especially in the case of crimes against humanity.

[Human Rights, February 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, today the Minister of Justice will table in the House legislation to ensure that federal laws conform to our human rights obligations. This represents the culmination of the work of many groups and individuals around the country, too many to name, who have worked so hard over the past 15 years to achieve the goal of equality in our society. They deserve our thanks.

This historic legislation will enshrine in the statutes our obligations under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act.

This is the right thing to do. It is also supported by a vast majority of Canadians who believe that one of the most important characteristics of our society is its tolerance based on the elimination of discrimination.

Recent court decisions have indicated that our statutes must be updated and this will end the need for constant litigation such as that presently brought by the Foundation for Equal Families.

This is an important piece of legislation for all Canadians and of particular concern to my constituents. I commend the government for acting proactively in this place to ensure equality for all our citizens.