Bill Graham

[Peacekeeping, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister and it relates to the position of our Canadian troops in the former Yugoslavia.

It is my understanding that the government's present commitment to retain troops in that area expires on March 31. Will the Prime Minister advise this House whether it is the government's intention to maintain troops in the former Yugoslavia or in the Balkans area after the expiry of our present mandate.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his very nice comments about me but he also reserved something for the end that may give us the opportunity to voice more opposition than today.

I would like to put some emphasis on what I said about Rosedale. I suggest to him that it is not only a matter of Quebecers being welcome in other parts of Canada. I assure you that Quebec's attitude and the fact that Quebec and Quebecers have succeeded in keeping alive their culture and their language is an inspiration to francophones outside Quebec, including those in my riding.

I urge you not to endanger, through your actions and what you will do in the future, this fragile flower that must be tended by you, by us and by all members of this House so that the francophone culture can flourish in the rest of Canada like it did in Quebec.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I rise today to give the first speech in this House in which I have the opportunity to speak to the members of this House, my colleagues, to some extent about the nature of my riding in introducing my observations about the budget.

I am very proud to stand here as a representative of the people of Rosedale riding and to take the place of a great Liberal who was the last Liberal to represent that riding, the Hon. Donald Macdonald. I do not say that I will be able to fill his shoes. As I am sure you, Mr. Speaker, and his other friends in this House will remember, that would be a difficult task both physically and mentally.

I would like to introduce my remarks by saying to my colleagues in the House that the name Rosedale does not entirely describe the diversity of the riding. I would like to tell members about the diverse areas that we have in our riding. It stretches from Davisville to the waterfront and includes such interesting areas as Moore Park, Rosedale itself, Cabbagetown, Regent Park, Moss Park, Crombie Park and St. Lawrence.

In this area are located six major hospitals, two universities, part of the University of Toronto and a new university, Ryerson University, and other institutions of higher learning.

Toronto's financial district, the notorious if I may say that, King and Bay area is located there and includes the headquarters of five major banks and many other financial institutions. Osgoode Hall, the seat of the justice system of the province of Ontario, is also located there as are many theatres of local and national reputation including the Théâtre Français of Toronto and some 18 co-operatives. In addition, I am sure it will be of interest to members of this House to know that we also have the Riverdale Farm located in the riding. It is perhaps not of enough size to give me credibility among my colleagues in the rural caucus but is at least a presence and a reminder to the people of this urban riding that we too must always be conscious of rural issues.

In human terms, we have here a complex urban mixture, a microcosm, as other members of this House have said, of the society in which we live and, if I may say, not only a microcosm of Canadian society but in fact of the integrated world which we are now living in and adjusting to. It is an exciting dynamic community which represents, if I may say, the best of what Canada has to offer.

The area of Rosedale proper of which I spoke contrasts in some ways with St. James Town, Regent Park and Moss Park where we have many people living in assisted housing, many seniors and single mothers, and others who are working hard to keep ahead. All are united in their desire to have good government, a government with a sense of balance, a government that puts their interests first. Our government I believe achieved that in this budget.

We have in our riding a large component of new Canadians. Some have come to us as immigrants, some have come as refugees. All are decent hard working people, bringing their skills to contribute to this country in the tradition of our forefathers.

The riding also contains the largest gay and lesbian population in Canada who bring a sense of diversity to our community and who enrich many areas of our community life, including the artistic and cultural life of the city. These people look to this 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 our society. It is their right to live in a world with a level playing field and we owe that to them.

You will also find in my riding a French community which may not be large, but is important to us. This community is proud, different, and fully contributes to our culture and our economy. Our French Canadian community considers the presence of Quebec within our federation as an asset and a source of inspiration for its own linguistic and cultural future. And our French community hopes that our friends in Quebec are aware of it.

This diversity raises challenges and opportunities. I would suggest that many of those challenges and opportunities are reflected in the budget which we are discussing here today. The merit of this budget in my view is its balance between the various financial imperatives which influenced it, the directions that it sets for the future and the way in which it relates to real people's lives. It puts people first. It does not sacrifice them on the altar of fiscal dogma or orthodoxy.

The people in my riding have responded well to this budget. The people in Rosedale proper who are self-employed were pleased to see that they will be able to contribute to their RRSPs and guarantee their financial future so they will not become a burden on future taxpayers of this country.

The small and medium sized businessmen in the riding were pleased to see their initiatives adhered to and their concerns referred to in a way which will enable them to compete more effectively in this complex world in which they have to operate.

The new Canadians of whom I spoke seek to employ their skills to advantage and are looking for ways to use their languages and their cultural skills in a way in which they can take them out and invest them into medium and small sized businesses and the export markets. This budget points the way in that direction. These skills are a resource of this country which we owe to ourselves to mobilize for the good of all of us because it is the future of the world and the future of Canada which is at stake in the way in which this particular community brings its cultures and skills to play. This budget specifically focuses on that.

People in my riding living in assisted housing see the human resource development initiatives in this budget as an excellent beginning on the way to ending their dependency and giving them back control of their lives so they may live productively without having to rely on the government handouts which they despise.

I had the opportunity last week during the break to assist in a very proud moment in my riding. I went to a meeting at George Brown College where, because of a grant of the Government of Canada, Goodwill Industries was able to reach out and train people who hitherto had been unable to get training. Some of the people had disabilities, some had had drug problems, they all had problems which had inhibited them from being able to take advantage of their lives. They were given a program, thanks to a government grant, which enabled them to complete this program and 70 per cent of them had jobs as of the night they graduated.

When I heard the leader of the Reform Party speaking yesterday about the need for budget cuts and Draconian measures I could not help but think of the smiles on their faces and the smiles on their families' faces, showing the pride with which they graduated from this program. Those programs are the type of programs that this government is creating for people to enable them to get back to work. This is a resource that we cannot afford to lose in our society. This is the budget that is going to enable us to do it.

That is why I am proud on behalf of the people who live in my riding to speak for them, whatever class of society they come from.

It is that element of the budget which makes me proud. I think it maintains an essential, constructive, necessary Liberal role of government and the people of my riding, all parts of it, support it.

Even in the university community there are many problems of finance. I was speaking to the president of the University of Toronto the other day. He told me that the cuts in unemployment insurance premiums, which have had to be paid by the university, are a significant contribution. Universities are very big employers. This will make a contribution to their financial stability.

The infrastructure program has been ridiculed on the other side of the House as being nothing but a bricks and mortar operation. The president of the University of Toronto tells me it is creating a tremendous opportunity for his institution of higher learning to do a better job of training young Canadians who are going to take us forth into the 21st century.

Why do we do negative things like this, just for partisan political purposes? I heard the minister speak, just before I got up to speak, eloquently about the need to deal with our infrastructure. We all have to realize that this infrastructure program has an intellectual component to it which is just as valid as bricks and mortar and I am proud to be part of a government which has seen that, seen the need to renew and seen the need to look forward to the future.

Let me conclude my remarks where I began. I am proud to stand here in this House and make my first speech, recognizing the people of Rosedale who elected me and who put me here. I will do my best for them. I will do my best for my country. I will do my best for this government which I think in this budget has set the framework for a productive and human future for this country.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Chicoutimi for his speech. Surely I can say that all members here agree entirely with his comments on violence against women and the measures we should take to prevent such violence.

What I would like to tell the hon. member is this: I believe he is right when he addresses the issue from a national perspective. He referred to Canadian activities to lessen the problem. He did not separate the women from his riding or his province from the other Canadian women. What I would suggest to him is that the women of his province or Canada should not be separated from the world they live in. I come from a riding where there is a high proportion of immigrants, and we know that the problem is international as well as national or provincial.

Therefore, my question to the hon. member is this: Given the complexity of the problem and the fact that it is a national and an international as well as a provincial issue, does he not agree that the initiatives required to correct the situation and better protect the women of Quebec and Canada should not be measures co-ordinated at the provincial, national or international level, but federal measures taken right here, together, because it is our responsibility?

[The Budget, February 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his eloquent speech and for his description of a city that has fallen on hard times. Many of us who live elsewhere in Canada also find this situation very distressing. I was born in Montreal, but have lived many years in Toronto. I also taught at McGill University and at the University of Montreal. I do have a question for my colleague and I ask it of him humbly and with no malice. Will he not concede that the problems experienced by the big city of Montreal, which should be a prosperous city after all, are due to his own policies and threats of independence? In order for a city to be prosperous, it needs to attract investment. Investors are shying away from Montreal. Even Montrealers themselves refuse to invest their money because they fear the current policies. You are responsible for creating this situation, and we are having to pay for it. This budget attempts to correct the imbalance created by your own policies.

Montreal first lost its advantage over Toronto when Mr. Lévesque was elected. I remember, because I living in Montreal at the time. We can trace everything back to this time. That is when Montreal lost its edge over Toronto. People in this world are free to do as they please. They are free to leave, free to travel, free to invest their money wherever they want.

I would like you to be honest and to ask yourselves whether your sovereigntist policies encourage investment in Quebec or whether in fact your policies are responsible to some extent for creating the problems which you have so sadly ascribed to us. I put this question to you very humbly, as all Canadians are very fond of Montreal.

[The Budget, February 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member on his remarks.

I would like to ask him a couple of questions that arose out of his remarks. The first is a specific one and the second is more general.

The member made specific reference to the fact that in his view old age security to high income families was still being paid as a result of the budget. Exactly what level does the member and his party set as high income? Where does the member set the line? Where would he cut the line and say that thereafter no one would get supplementary payments?

As the member knows the budget referred to a possible cap at $49,000. Where does the hon. member drop it to? Would it be $30,000 or $35,000? What is the member's definition of a high income family? The member heard the minister specifically say that the budget was trying to deal with the problem of people trying to survive in complex urban societies who need money to live. The top cap is $49,000. Where would the member draw that line?

It is easy to criticize, but we were here when the Minister of Industry explained what was in the budget for precisely, it seems to me, the types of items the member has been talking about: the need to get the economy going and the need for small businesses to have government services that would enable them to participate fully in the economy.

Is the member suggesting that all those should be cut as well? Where is the member going to cut in three years to bring us down to a flat no debt position?

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. SPeaker, I thank the hon. member for Mercier for her comments, and although my answer may not be entirely adequate because I have not had time to develop this aspect, I am sure that during this Parliament there will be opportunities for discussion to clarify our thoughts on the matter.

To get back to your comment on small countries, if we take, for example, the European Community, small countries which maintain their identity can do so because they have agreed to give up a certain amount of their sovereignty within a broader context. I can say that to the people of Ontario, there is no difference. Fine, we in Ontario could say that we want our own solution. Everybody wants his own solution, but we have to look at the facts. We have to be practical.

Everybody cannot have his own solution. The problems of GATT are a good illustration of this. Canada wanted to keep the supply management system we built up over the years, but we could not keep it any more. The other countries would not agree. We have to face the facts. It is not just a matter of saying what we want. The important thing is what we can accomplish.

In this situation we have to look at the global economic climate and our own resources. I believe that it will be much easier to deal with these problems as Canadians than as individual provinces.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, some hon. members may know that my riding of Rosedale is located in the heart of downtown Toronto. Its population encompasses people who are very fortunate and are members of the business community who are surviving in the present economic environment to those who are far less successful in the present environment, to the elderly and young people who are dependent upon the support systems which Canada has developed to create a better and humane society.

I am particularly conscious of the need to adjust our programs to achieve a decent balance for the need of job creation and also to protect the less fortunate members of our society.

If we were to go to Rosedale riding to areas like Moss Park, Regent Park or St. James Town and speak to the elderly people there they would find little comfort in the words from the former speaker from the Reform Party who drew an analogy to the collapse of the Spanish empire.

It was a very interesting analogy of several hundred years ago. It did collapse from a dependence on slave labour and importation of gold from the New World and a lot of other problems that were developed in the 16th and 17th centuries. However we live in a modern world with different problems. I would urge upon this House that we must approach our problems from a modern perspective and I am going to get to that in a moment.

Part of the modern way in which we must approach our problems is to understand what those problems are. Parachute Community Employment Centre in Rosedale riding has produced a very interesting report. I would be glad to make it available to all members of this House.

The survey was prepared among the people of Regent Park who are consumers of many of the services that are going to be the subject matter of the minister's task force and study when considering the way in which we go about reforming and

readjusting our delivery of services that are of need for Canadians to fit modern realities. That survey offers some very interesting statistics.

Seventy per cent of the people who were surveyed told us that they could make more money taking welfare than getting jobs. That is not an argument for lowering the amount of welfare payments. It is an argument for that which the hon. member for Malpeque was pointing out with respect to the agricultural community.

The problem is that the available jobs and the training people have for those jobs are not sufficient to enable them to take advantage of the modern marketplace. Therefore the people we spoke to in the survey were telling us that what they need are better training programs. For that they need English as a second language and for that they need literacy.

Many of them were young women. Evoking the words of the member from Quebec who spoke recently, 25 per cent of the women who were interviewed lost or left their jobs because of inadequate daycare. Once out of the job market it makes it very difficult to break back into it.

Therefore trying to get a more adequate daycare program going in this country is a very important part of the red book and an important part of the Liberal program.

I would like to turn to a different perspective on this issue. To some extent it echoes the words of the member for Malpeque. It is the perspective of the global economy.

We have to recognize that if we are going to craft a solution to our problems in Canada today whatever they are, whether we are speaking of social policy, taxation policy or other policies, we have to look at the reality of the world in which we live.

Today we live in a global economy world. It is one in which we have recently seen the GATT changes which brought much anguish to many members of this House when they tried to come to grips with the problems that is imposing on our agricultural communities. It is the world of NAFTA and a world of free movement of capital, of goods and more and more, of peoples.

Unless we take that fundamental fact into account when we are addressing this issue of social policy changes we will fail in what we adjust. We cannot craft and create solutions to problems which are and will always be uniquely and particularly Canadian but we must take into account the global realities of the world in which we live.

In that context I would like to draw the attention of the House to a report from the International Labour Organization which was reported in today's Globe and Mail . I would like to take the opportunity to read some of that report:

Thirty per cent of the world's labour force is either out of work or underemployed-a global jobs crisis gripping both rich and poor nations, a United Nations agency says.

"It is a crisis that in some countries could really explode and undermine the social fabric very badly," said Ali Taqi, chief of staff of the International Labour Organization.

The Geneva-based ILO estimates that more than 820 million people worldwide are either unemployed or working at a job that does not pay a subsistence wage.

This evokes the words of the hon. member for Malpeque who just spoke about the problems of our farm community. Further on in the article it states:

Mr. Taqi said the global jobs crisis is not just the result of the recession that has plagued the world economy in recent years.

It is something more endemic and longer lasting than that and reflects the rapid pace of technological change and increasingly fierce global competition.

I suggest that part of the answer to our problems in our social programs and our social agencies lies in our need to see how we fit into this global context and the need to address an international answer to the problem.

We cannot go this alone. We need the International Labour Organization. We need to work with the social charter within NAFTA and our other trading partners if we are to have long lasting solutions to our problems.

On that subject, I would like to say a few words to my colleagues of the Bloc Quebecois who talk passionately about preserving social services in this country.

I know from experience that the world we live in today is not a place where it is possible to solve problems by acting as an isolated country, with an individual perspective; quite the contrary. The solution today is global. Take the European Community for example; more and more Brussels is the one to determine solutions. Why? Because Spain by itself cannot solve its problems; France alone cannot solve its own problems. Therefore, the European countries have to work together to find a solution.

I suggest we have the same kind of situation here in Canada. In order to solve social problems in this country and to face the difficulties created in a way by the United States, we must have a national policy. We will not solve problems by creating more tariff or non-tariff barriers between various regions of Canada but by working together to ensure our security. It is through co-operation and hard work leading to a strong economy that we will solve these problems.

Therefore, I ask my colleagues of the Bloc Quebecois to review this issue with the other members of this House and to co-operate with them in order to find Canadian solutions, efficient solutions which will apply to national and international problems alike.

On that point, Mr. Speaker, I see my time is drawing to a close. I would like to complete my remarks by going back to what I heard the member for Malpeque saying. I would to some extent differ from him on this. I am not sure that the solutions to our

problems are something we are able to construct by ourselves without facing the facts of the international world in which we live.

It seems to me that our duty as members of this House is to look and serve as a prism to the global world. If it is a world of greater competitiveness and greater free trade, then we must serve in a way in which that international world may be brought to our fellow Canadian citizens and then turn around and craft solutions to problems which are both local and global and take into account that global context.

I am confident that when the minister responsible, the task force which he sets up and the members of this House examine these questions, they will be looking for solutions which are both local and global, but will also take into account the need for a strong Canadian solution to our problems. That in turn will enable us to exist in a global environment, one that is more and more difficult but one which forces us to provide solutions for our citizens which will enable them to live with dignity in our own country.

[Speech From The Throne, January 28th, 1994]

Yes, I agree, Madam Speaker.

[Cruise Missile Testing, January 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, there are two elements to the member's question and I would like to start by going back to the finish of my talk which, given the time constraints, I did not have time to address properly.

The thrust of what I was trying to say about the Arctic Council-and I would recommend this to the hon. member because it does not directly relate to the Canoe Lake Band to which he refers-is that it is a proposal which has been espoused in Canada for a long time. It would involve the Soviet Union, Alaska and all the countries and participants in the Arctic Circle. It would enable the peoples of that area, including the aboriginal peoples of the Soviet Union and other countries in the Arctic area, to get together and co-operate.

As a backbencher what I was urging on the government was that if the testing was to go forward an opportunity might be seized to say to our American counterparts that if they proceed with these tests we would like to see some movement on the development of the Arctic Council. This might go some way toward addressing the concerns of the member for Western Arctic to which I referred in my talk.

Forgive me but I am not familiar with the specific concerns of the Canoe Lake Band and the facts to which the member referred. Therefore just in the light of what he told me, it would seem that the position is more than reasonable to say that we should pursue with all vigour an examination of the legitimacy of the claims and do our best to make sure of the result in the light of the debate and see if we can make sure that anybody living in the area where the missile might or might not be tested would be ensured of the full preservation of their rights as was suggested by my hon. friend, the member for Vancouver Quadra, in his intervention.