Alexa McDonough

[Petitions, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition with many signatures that I have the privilege to table today is one that is addressing the failed access to medicine regime that was put in place two and a half years ago, supposedly intended to allow drug companies in Canada to produce and export cheaper versions of brand name drugs to developing countries where people are suffering with HIV-AIDS. Yet not a single pill has flowed from that supposed Chrétien legacy bill.

Therefore, the petitioners are urging the government to reform that law and to review the obstacles in the legislation preventing the drugs going to those who most desperately need them in developing countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa

[Petitions, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions that I have the privilege to table.

The first petition is urging the federal government to provide funding for programs supporting women's issues for advocacy and research, and for organizations working to end violence, poverty and discrimination. The petitioners make the point that in an era of huge surpluses the government should be putting more money into such programs, not cutting from such programs, and that supporting women in this manner will also result in supporting children who are our future.

[Committees of the House, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely clear that culturally relevant programming is very much a requirement. In that regard I want to take the remaining few seconds to cite the tremendously valuable film that was done in my own province about the history of the Mi'kmaq people, and the history of broken treaties and agreements with the Mi'kmaq people. It forms the context in which people in my province and in my region are trying to build new lives and break down barriers.

That kind of culturally relevant experience and understanding of the context have to be not just a starting point, but an ongoing part of the support system and part of the educational content, the curriculum material, for first nations students and for other students. That is important so they understand the history and take up the responsibilities that come with that historical context.

[Committees of the House, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, actually I want to leap to my feet and agree with the opening comment of the member. I do not very often agree with members who happen to be on the same side of the House but sit in the Conservative government caucus. I agree and I said it I think three times during my 10 minutes that we should celebrate the successes. We should underscore why the opportunity to pursue post-secondary education is so important to all our youth, but in particular first nations students who face more barriers than the vast majority of young people in this country. I used many examples to say so.

One of the things that I became aware of when I was the post-secondary education critic, and I do not think it has changed all that much in a couple of years, is that we do not really have an overall systematic approach to post-secondary education for aboriginal students.

I worked very closely with Richard Johnston in relation to the First Nations Technical Institute here in Ontario. What was clear is that institutions are forced to lurch from crisis to crisis. Even if funding is there for the students through their own resourcefulness, through other support, through some but inadequate government funding, despite the 2% cap, many institutions are in crisis. The funding has not been sufficient to ensure that those students get a good quality educational experience that is continuous and ongoing for future groups of students.

[Committees of the House, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to have an opportunity to speak briefly in this debate on the motion introduced by my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan.

I am very pleased for several reasons. First, it gives me a chance to say a word about the really excellent work she has been doing on behalf of my caucus and, I certainly know, on behalf of her own constituents, but also, I think, for any who follow her passion, devotion and intelligence for the work she does on behalf of aboriginal Canadians. She does it with incredible respect for the achievements of aboriginal Canadians, first nations and other aboriginal groups.

Second, I had the opportunity for a very short time after I stepped down as federal leader to be the post-secondary education critic for two years in this House. One of the things I enjoyed very much in that role was learning a great deal more about the challenges of first nations students in Canada in the context of post-secondary education. I say “enjoyed” in one sense, but in another sense I was horrified.

I will always recall that the then Liberal minister of aboriginal affairs, now the member for Fredericton, commented many times on how tragic it was, but true nevertheless, that there were so many more first nation students in jail than there were in post-secondary education institutions. That is one of the blights and one of the challenges that we face.

Hence, I am very glad to have had just a few hours this afternoon to immerse myself in the report that we are focusing on here, the report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, entitled “No Higher Priority: Aboriginal Post Secondary Education in Canada”. Because I feel like I need an update. I do not have a large number of aboriginal students in my riding who live in my riding or who come from my riding, although I am very privileged to have a good many students who are attending the post-secondary education institutions in my riding of Halifax.

I have come to have enormous respect for the challenges faced by Mi'kmaq students from my own province, but also those from other parts of Canada, the challenges that they have tackled and overcome given the fact that in so many instances they are really struggling financially while they try to give the kind of attention to their education that they want to give.

I will go back as far as 1971-75, to when I taught at Dalhousie University and had an outstanding young woman student by the name of Joan Glode, who was from Nova Scotia from a Mi'kmaq community. I knew at the time that she was going places. Subsequently, at a surprisingly young age, she became head of Nova Scotia's Mi'kmaq Family and Children's Services, which is quite literally the self-government agency that administers family and children's services in the Mi'kmaq population in all of Nova Scotia. I know for a fact that she has provided leadership around the same evolution happening in other provinces.

Today I think of another very outstanding Mi'kmaq, not from my riding, and in fact not from my province but from New Brunswick, a woman by the name of Candy Palmeter, who graduated from Dalhousie Law School, from a program that is very much focused on giving additional support where needed to both the Mi'kmaq students and the Afro Nova Scotian students. Not only did this woman graduate from law school, but today she is a well known columnist and a well known radio commentator who has her own radio program. On the side, she calls herself a recovering lawyer and actually is a very popular comedian and moderator for various public events.

My point in mentioning a couple of those students is only to highlight the fact that we should be here celebrating the incredible success rate of first nations students who overcome the tremendous obstacles they face, and we should be recommitting ourselves even more determinedly to helping to remove barriers, which is why we have to speak out with some dismay, I think, at the government's response to the recommendations contained in this important report.

I do not know about anyone else, but I found the tone of the government's response to be quite patronizing. It was really a sort of lecture about the government being willing to help, but what are people looking for, a free ride? The tone of it is just insulting, it seems to me, and not worthy of a Canadian government responding to this challenge, which I think the vast majority of Canadians want the government to do.

Second, it seems to me that the government is just not very well informed. The government talks about the fact that students should be able to pay a significant portion of their own costs. That just shows profound ignorance of the fact that a great many Mi'kmaq students who are trying to put themselves through university are bearing financial responsibilities to help with younger brothers and sisters back home, who need the most basic kinds of supports because of the fact that there have not been serious commitments to the kinds of social and economic development programs that would put them in a much more favourable economic circumstance today.

I think the government responses are disappointing, and I think we very much should be recognizing a good deal of the leadership that comes from first nations people who have graduated from our post-secondary education institutions and who are giving tremendous leadership. One person who comes to mind is Phil Fontaine. I think we would all agree that he is an example of somebody from that very excellent set of policies and programs that were introduced in Manitoba. The member for Churchill, who spoke earlier, referred to this.

For over 30 years, Manitoba has really blazed a trail around improving access, with a particular program called the access program, which I think was introduced under the NDP government of Ed Schreyer and was carried on and enhanced under the NDP government of Howard Pawley. To this day, it probably is one of several reasons why Gary Doer for the third time finds himself premier of Manitoba yet again: because of a high level of satisfaction with a program that has been able to blaze some trails in spite of there not being the federal supports for those programs.

What is the result? In Manitoba, in the legislature and in the NDP caucus alone there are several first nations cabinet ministers, including Eric Robinson and Oscar Lathlin. George Hicks is not Cree but Inuit and has ended up as Speaker of the Manitoba legislature.

We need to redouble our efforts to get the government members to get behind these recommendations to understand, and they do seem a little more responsive to this than they used to be, how much the investment in providing this kind of support for aboriginal post-secondary education can literally transform first nations life opportunities.

I hope for more instead of this just being yet another report that the government feels is a sort of obligation, although it does have an obligation because it is required to respond. That is one of the good things about the rules of the House. When a committee works hard, hears a lot of witnesses and brings forward such a report, the government is required to respond. Here, I think, the government did so in a very inadequate way.

However, let us resolve today, on behalf of the first nations youth and children of this country, to work together to propel forward these recommendations, to remove the barriers in the thinking of government members that would allow them to respond so inadequately so far to this report. We now need them to respond in terms of resources and in terms of policy changes. I hope that is going to be the result of this successful report.

[Committees of the House, June 18th, 2007]

Wow, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what to do with that.

I appreciate the comments made by the member for Nunavut. She will know that recommendation two in the report has to do with the committee recommending that the 2% annual cap on spending increases for the department's post-secondary education program be eliminated immediately.

Could she comment on that very specific recommendation given what we know about the socio-economic circumstances of the vast majority of Canada's first nations people?

[Palestine, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, tragically, the Palestinian unity government has collapsed. Never in 40 years had a Palestinian political body brought together the views of so many Palestinians. All major political movements were included.

Instead of seeing the unity government as a unique opportunity to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Conservative government shamefully boycotted, undermining the advocates of compromise, compounding political divisions within Gaza and the West Bank and increasing the insecurity plaguing the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.

The only viable government in Palestine is one that represents all Palestinians. Peace cannot be achieved without Hamas at the table. It is a fraud to pretend otherwise. It is imperative for the Canadian government to provide leadership and push for a unified, multilateral diplomatic front.

The current strife and tragic loss of life in Palestine and Israel will only be stemmed when a policy of peace and inclusive dialogue replaces the politics of militarism, boycott and division.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I did not have the opportunity to hear the government House leader who just spoke and identified why we want to preserve the integrity of our electoral system, but I have no doubt that we in the House would have no disagreement on the importance of doing so.

I did hear his comment that if we do not introduce more stringent measures around identification requirements that before long we may get, and I am not sure the exact words he used, a lot of electoral fraud because sooner or later people are going to catch on to the fact that they can commit fraud. Those kinds of allegations have been made, particularly in large urban centres, in a very exaggerated form and found to be completely groundless.

There is no problem in requesting identification, but the concern arises because in real life circumstances in today's world some people do not have the kind of traditional identification that the rest of us have. The government, and other parties as well, seem to have a problem understanding this. That attitude, unfortunately, is related to the fact that the same failure to understand is why we are not doing what we need to be doing about homeless people, people living in dire poverty, and so on.

Does the minister not agree that there are a good many people who are homeless, who are in temporary shelters and so on, for whom alternate provisions appropriately need to be put in place?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 11th, 2007]

With respect to allocations for Passport Canada in the 2007-2008 budget and the announcement of a “renewal process in which low-risk applicants are targeted with an offer to renew their passport using a simplified process”: (a) on what grounds will a “low-risk“ applicant be determined; (b) when was the government's last evaluation of the need to open new passport offices and what were the results of that evaluation; and (c) what other measures are being taken within Passport Canada to expedite passport application processing during the current elevated number of applications?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is really hard, in response to such a straightforward, sensible question, for me to restrain myself from just letting rip at the member for Central Nova, but I will not take the opportunity to do that this morning, although I have to say there is a problem with the statement made because it clearly was not a spontaneous statement.

It was not one made without consideration. No one can tell me that whipping, flipping, hiring and firing was not a kind of a cute term that was worked into an answer all ready to throw out there in response to the question that would be asked.

I think that in itself was really pretty reprehensible. We are sort of left wondering, actually what does it mean? Does it mean that he actually thought that this expulsion would not take place? In which case he was pretty out of touch with his leader, but it would not be the first time. Did he actually know otherwise and was quite prepared to see a member with that kind of principles, guts and integrity, stand up and vote on the wrong side and then get punished for it? I am not sure how he would think that would be a positive thing.

I want to appeal to the member for Central Nova today and the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's to say that they can yet play a role in fixing this. Their minds have very likely been cleared over the weekend by seeing what is going on in their ridings.

The same is true, not only in Newfoundland and Labrador but Atlantic province-wide. People are furious at this because it is an injury to all of Atlantic Canada.

I want to appeal to the member for Central Nova by saying that he is in the position as the political minister for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as the ACOA minister, who understands better than probably anybody else in his riding what the Atlantic regional impact is of this broken promise. I say to him, show some leadership, show some backbone, show some integrity, and if none of those are good enough reasons, show that he is willing to respond to his own constituents and the people of his region in his riding. He should reverse his position and put the pressure on to have this fixed.

At the very least, the hon. member should show that he is prepared to work with--