Alexa McDonough

[Railway Continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to make a brief comment and ask a couple of questions of my colleague from Vancouver Island North. She should be commended for having shared with the House her perspective as a proud trade unionist, as someone whose family for generations has been affected by the existence of the railways and the importance of the railways to logging communities, and as someone who has a considerable amount of expertise and experience in relation to health and safety issues.

Let us make no mistake about it. The implications of the health and safety issues at stake here are enormous, and not just to the railway workers themselves, but they are enormous because health and safety issues in the context of rail travel translate into very considerable threats, potentially, to the travelling public. Even more broadly, they pose very serious threats with dire consequences in the event that failed health and safety practices result in train derailments and in spills of toxic chemicals and so on. They literally can affect not just families who are living immediately adjacent to rail lines, but actually whole communities that have railways passing through them or even running nearby.

I know that the member for Vancouver Island North shares a very deep concern for those families, as we all do, families whose immediate livelihoods and immediate jobs can indeed be adversely impacted by an impasse and a prolonged strike. In relation to the jobs they perform, they may depend upon supplies coming in or products going out. One should be very clear about this. This is every bit as much of a concern to the workers who find themselves in this untenable situation in this dispute as it is a concern to each and every New Democrat member of Parliament.

It is precisely because these concerns are widely felt that we are adamant that taking this wrong-headed approach of back to work legislation, instead of respecting and supporting a proper collective bargaining process, can unnecessarily cause very long-lasting negative impacts on the workforce.

I have a couple of very brief questions. The member has a great deal of experience with collective bargaining and with the trade union movement. I wonder if she could comment on what it says about the existing nature of the relationship between CN and its workers that 79% of the members of that union actually felt it necessary to vote against ratification of the tentative agreement. In other words, this obviously is not a frivolous decision on their part.

I wonder if she could comment on what the long term damage can be to the morale and the working relationship between a corporation and the workers, especially one headed by a CEO who is collecting $56 million. That is so obscene it is impossible to get my head around it. In regard to a corporation like that and the workers, what are the implications over the medium term and long term for both the morale and the quality of the work that one can expect to emerge from that situation? What are the implications when the collective bargaining rights of workers are simply quashed, which is what the government is trying to do with the support of both the Bloc and the Liberal Party?

[Court Challenges Program, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the court challenges program was very important to Canada's francophone communities. Ordinary Canadians have to use their own money to defend their Charter rights.

Big corporations and wealthy people who want to circumvent the Charter have an advantage over ordinary Canadians.

Can the Minister of Justice tell us what he really thinks of the Charter?

[Court Challenges Program, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats are proud of our influence in shaping the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and especially proud of Canada's women who demanded to be included.

What should be a 25th anniversary celebration of the charter is instead a scramble to protect advances gained by ordinary Canadians under the charter. Why? Because the government has shut down the court challenges program. Only the wealthy can afford constitutional challenges.

Will the Prime Minister today take a stand for the charter and reintroduce funding for the court challenges program?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the hon. member's question on what I think about the registered savings disabled persons plan.

I can only tell him what many disabled persons have told me. They are individuals who are living with disabilities and struggling with inadequate incomes. They cannot even pay adequately for nutritional food, let alone additional costs associated with their disability, whether it is added transportation costs or added costs for technical aids or whatever.

The reaction I have heard overwhelmingly from individuals as well as advocacy groups for the disabled is that a disabled persons savings plan misses the fundamental point, which is that disabled people do not have enough money at the end of the day or the end of the week, let alone at the end of the year, to invest in a savings plan. It misses the point that today 60% of our persons who are living on the streets and homeless are disabled persons and that disabled persons make up 40% of the users of our food banks.

I think such a plan utterly misses the mark. I think it misdiagnoses what it is that persons living with disabilities most need. Like everything else, there is a little of this and a little of that, but it does not add up to anything significant or meaningful that would actually alter the lives of working people or persons who are not able to be in the workforce precisely because the nature of their disabilities and the lack of support services do not enable them to be self-supporting.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, with a surplus of $14.1 billion, the government cannot spend the amount of money it is spending in dribbling a little here and a little there and end up saying that this is huge progress.

One of the problems is that we have never returned to the base funding. Huge cuts were introduced in 1995 and subsequently did enormous damage to our post-secondary education infrastructure. They did enormous damage to our health infrastructure. They did untold damage to the level of commitment to overseas development assistance. The result is that we need nothing less than major infusions into rebuilding the base and ensuring that we are not just introducing a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit somewhere else, which effectively atomizes our capacity as a nation to really deliver on these national, universal and exceedingly important programs.

Nobody is fooled. The government can go through it and say there is some for this and some for that and some for something else, but one thing is absolutely clear. Until the funding gutted out of these important programs by the previous Liberal government is restored to the base so that year after year it is built in, then we are still going to see the erosion of the quality and the accessibility of our health, education and other social welfare programs.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy today to have an opportunity to speak briefly on the budget debate. I want to indicate at the outset that I am planning to share my time with the hard-working member and NDP finance critic from Winnipeg North.

Much has been said about what is and is not in the budget. I think there is a pretty broad consensus that it is a budget born out of political cynicism and that it is simply an array of broken promises and spectacular betrayals. One hears many comments about the many aspects of those broken promises and disappointments. I want to run through a couple of them in the time available.

I think every member of the House can appreciate that it takes a pretty major force to bring every member of the Newfoundland and Labrador legislature, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats alike, together with every member of the Nova Scotia legislature, Conservatives, New Democrats and Liberals alike, to stand together in opposition to the broken promise and spectacular betrayal with respect to the government's treatment of the Atlantic accord and offshore revenue resources.

I am not going to go into all the ins and outs, but let me say very clearly that it is no secret to anybody that what inspired this budget in general, the many choices made by the government and the betrayal with respect to the treatment of offshore resource revenues is the crassest of political objectives. It is the idea that the Conservative minority government can throw overboard anybody in any community, any constituency and any province where it does not think it can make gains to elevate itself to a majority government in the election that it wants to call at the earliest possible opportunity when it calculates that is achievable.

I do not think that this is going to stand up in history as one of the most inspirational visions for a nation. It will be up to the people of Canada to decide, but I think it is absolutely transparent that this was the driving force behind the budget.

Let us be clear that for starters, going into the budget, the government was sitting on and dealing with a surplus of $14.1 billion. Yet when we go through the things that are not even touched or addressed in the budget, it is clear that there is a complete disregard and insensitivity. One cannot even give the government members the benefit of the doubt and say that it is just out of total ignorance that they do not know of the depth and breadth of the unmet needs ignored by the budget.

There is no national housing strategy, this after the previous Liberals destroyed the best national housing program in the world over a decade ago. Nothing has been done to replace it.

There is no national transit strategy. Never has it been more important to have a public transit strategy with our Kyoto challenges and the climate change fiasco that is unfolding.

If it were not for Bill C-30 and, frankly, the leadership of my leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, we would have no strategy, no timetables and targets. It is my leader who provided tremendous leadership in saying that we cannot face the nation or the world without a strategy, without timetables and targets, and without something meaningful to begin address climate change, the devastating impact on our country and our commitment to try to work with the other countries of the world to minimize that impact and start to rebuild alternative energy plans.

There is also nothing to repair what remains with us as outstanding damage to the employment insurance system. Again, those damages were so fantastic in areas of high unemployment that to this day people are still angry at the smashing of that unemployment insurance system by the Liberals in the mid-1990s. We still have not seen it repaired and there is nothing in the budget to address it.

There is nothing to reduce student debt or the continuing crisis of escalating tuitions.

I could go through the many omissions, but I want to dwell on two in particular.

There is absolutely nothing meaningful in the way of a national anti-poverty strategy. That is despite the fact that what we had in this budget was the opportunity to take a significant portion of this $14.1 billion surplus and ensure that we begin to reduce the gap between the haves and the have nots, to reduce that growing prosperity gap, which is growing in part because this government saw fit to continue on through and implement further corporate tax cuts contained in the past budget. It is an absolute tragedy when we look at the impact on the lives of individuals and families and literally whole regions.

Finally, I want to speak briefly about the complete failure to deal with our disgraceful record with respect to meeting our international obligations for official development assistance. I know that Conservative members are fond of jumping up and down and saying that the budget honours the commitment made by the Liberals to increase by 8% our ODA budget. Our level of ODA is such a humiliation and such a disgrace in the world today that anything short of beginning to make a major leap forward to make up for the foot dragging and the lagging by the Liberals over a 10 year period is simply inadequate.

As a matter of fact, with this budget, to the best of anyone's ability to calculate, we will be at the lowest level of international development assistance since the beginning of really tracking the OECD countries' development assistance levels. Just very briefly historically, that of course was actually making some progress under the Mulroney government and had reached 0.52%. A former finance minister's budgets dragged it down to less than half of that.

As a result of this budget kicking in, we are now going to rank 14th of the OECD countries, moving lower to 15th, and falling so short of those obligations that we do not even begin to contribute to meeting the millennium development goals. Today was a day of teachers in this country coming together to plead for the government to deliver on 0.7% or we will not even begin to make progress toward ensuring universal education for the children of the world.

This budget is a spectacular betrayal. It is a humiliation. One hopes that the government understands that the people of Canada are not prepared to reward the Conservatives with votes of applause until they mend their ways and get on a more progressive track.

[Persons with Disabilities, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take the opportunity to briefly enter into the debate on Motion No. 243. I commend the member for Kitchener Centre for having moved the motion. I had not intended to speak to this motion, but I was prompted to do so by the suggestion that any member of this House would want to delay the impact and lessen the importance of the private member's motion so that the report back date is later rather than sooner.

The reason I was prompted to speak to this motion is that I was thinking back to my former colleague Wendy Lill, the former member of Parliament for Dartmouth who did magnificent work. She breathed tremendous energy, life and compassion into the issues before the subcommittee on the persons living with disabilities during the seven years that she worked on behalf of her constituents of Dartmouth and also on behalf of persons living with disabilities in this country. At the same time she also served as one of the best, if not the best, arts and culture critics that this Parliament has ever known. I am thinking of how apoplectic she would be if she were sitting in this House today to hear that anybody would be thinking of a single reason for delaying reporting back on something as important as the issue of the level of CPP benefits for persons living with disabilities.

I was listening to the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's talk about the various other income sources that are available to some--and I say some because it is not all, and he did not say otherwise I want to make that clear--persons who are living with disabilities who are in receipt of, or who are potentially eligible to receive CPP disability benefits, sources like EI sick benefits, social assistance and so on.

My colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster has made the point again and again that what is really needed is a national strategy around the whole issue of income and other supports for persons living with disabilities. Until we have a commitment to a comprehensive national strategy, then what we are doing is dealing piecemeal with different aspects of what profoundly affects the lives of persons living with disabilities.

It is often not recognized by the public, and no wonder, given the nonsense of a dug-in partisan nature that goes on, that from time to time there has been collaboration across party lines in this House around these issues. We have seen over the last while the collaboration of opposition parties in the face of what seemed to be foot dragging by the government to step forward with a real sense of urgency and leadership to make sure that we were among the first to sign on to the international convention on the rights and dignity of persons living with disabilities. We saw the government move. Congratulations to the government for moving ahead with a more appropriate sense of urgency and indicating that it will actually participate in the signing ceremony that will help to propel the convention toward ratification.

Surely to heaven we can find the same resolve, the same appropriate sense of urgency to say that income supports for persons living with disabilities are inadequate. They are fragmented and fractured. There are people who are falling between the cracks. There are not appropriate bridges to ensure that people do not fall back in having the income needed to meet their everyday needs and the associated additional costs for persons living with disabilities.

Let us have a national strategy. Let us treat this with a sense of urgency. Let us deliver not piecemeal but comprehensively to those millions of people in Canada living with disabilities.

[Mining Industry, March 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, under the leadership of the Hon. Ed Broadbent, the Subcommittee on International Human Rights and the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs made strong recommendations for improving the government's role in preventing and addressing human rights and environmental abuses by Canadian corporations operating overseas.

Today, civil society and industry stood together to release the findings of their follow-up report, with recommendations for an ombudsman's office to deal with complaints about the activities of Canadian extractive companies overseas and for strong mechanisms for holding offending companies to account.

Canadian mining companies invest $50 billion in mining operations around the world. Canadians want to know that our companies are improving the lives of people, not ruining their livelihoods and trampling on their human rights.

When corporate leaders and industry watchdogs sit down together and can come up with a single vision of how our companies should act, there is reason to celebrate.

Today I urge the government to adopt the recommendations of this report. Civil society and industry agree on the steps that must be taken, and we simply ask, why would the government ever say no?

[Canada Council for the Arts, March 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts. We applaud the contributions of men and women across Canada who help us express the deep, rich, diverse character and soul of our nation. In a thousand forms, their works inspire a vision for our country, inspired by hope and imagination, not by today's politics of fear.

We salute the 50 artists gathered on Parliament Hill, symbolizing 50 years of Canada Council achievements.

Every Wednesday, our New Democrat caucus, 41% of us women, shines the spotlight specifically on women. Today, we delight in celebrating the special contributions of women artists, such as: our beloved Wendy Lill, playwright and parliamentary champion of arts and culture; Marie Chouinard, dancer and choreographer extraordinaire; Sarah Diamond, videographer and president of the Ontario College of Art and Design; Inuit musician Lucie Idluit; visual artist Wanda Koop; and Judith Marcuse, artist driven by her passion for social change.

We welcome these representatives to Parliament and, through them, express our deep admiration for all Canadian artists.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it must be the Prime Minister who thinks that it was a gerrymandered deal that he proposed that was supported.

I welcome the member's reference to one of the declared candidates for the Conservative Party, namely Jane Purves, who made it known she was seeking the nomination to represent the people of Halifax. Jane Purves is a character. She also served very ably as the chief of staff to the premier of Nova Scotia, who actually played a very constructive, positive role in bringing political parties together to fight for fairness for Nova Scotia. I want to give him credit for that.

No wonder she is dismayed. I do not know whether she is going to try to put herself forward to say she can represent that party after it has turned its back on them, but I do know that when she declared her intentions to seek the nomination, she said that in Nova Scotia since 1980, in Halifax, people would rather eat lobster shells for lunch than vote Conservative. I can say that they now would be more prepared to eat whole lobsters within their shells for lunch before they would ever vote Conservative in the foreseeable future. I think probably that woman knows that.