Alexa McDonough

[Supply, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises the issue of whether this is simply a matter of poor judgment on the part of Reform members, whether it is a matter of discernment. The member suggests, as others have already suggested including myself, that it is really about two very serious issues.

It is about Reform members playing games that on the surface may just look silly. They may annoy Canadians, and heavens knows by all the indications we are getting in our offices that people are becoming very impatient. Reform members are wasting the time of the House and trying the patience of Canadians to reduce the issue of Canada's future to one of whether we will display flags on the corner of our desks as the key to Canadian unity.

It goes much deeper than that. It is more serious than that. It is an insult to Canadians. Reformers think they can wrap themselves in the flag and present themselves as the only true patriots because they have chosen this tactic. At the same time they are escaping the real issues. Each and every one of us were elected to the House to represent our constituents, not in a simplistic or petty partisan way but to the best of our ability and to try to grapple with finding a consensus on how to strengthen and improve this great country.

On their official opposition day Reformers could have dealt with some of the issues of substance. They could have put forward recommendations for good substantive debate that might actually help to improve the unemployment problem in Canada. They could have come to the House and said that they understood it weakens and divides Canada to continue down the path of Americanizing our health care system so that it is two tier. They could have come to the House and said that they have reconsidered their position on universal access to education and would no longer advocate two tier education so those with personal wealth could gain the education they need to get into the new economy and enjoy prosperity in the future. They could have said they realize that if we do not deal with the issue of access, only those who could afford to gain education would get it and the others would fall further behind. The very kind of growing gap between the super rich and everyone else which the Reform Party has been fuelling with its policies would grow even wider.

We were really hoping these were the kinds of issues that would be debated on an official opposition day from a variety of perspectives. We have five different parties in the House with different views on how to deal with substantive issues. However Reform Party's contribution to official opposition day and to solving these problems is to push them aside, push them under the rug, and to wave the flag on their terms and the heck with whether or not the concerns of Canadians get dealt with.

[Supply, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I very much welcome the opportunity to enter the debate on the official opposition motion which is before us.

I want to say a few words about what the debate may appear to be about, what the Reform Party would like to pretend this debate is about, and then I want to say something about what this flag flap issue is really about.

The Reform Party would try to create the impression that this is a simple, straightforward issue, that it is a simple question of whether members of the House want to display on the corner of their desks a Canadian flag. That is all it is about. That is all there is to it. Let us just vote for it and get on with it.

I want to say that I do not think that is what this issue is really about. I do not think that is why the official opposition has put before the House today a motion which it wants Canadians to interpret as meaning that we either vote for its motion on its terms and show we are for Canada, we are for the flag, or if we vote against the motion on its terms and then we are not for the flag and we are not for Canada.

This debate is about Reformers whose approach to politics is so simplistic that they would have Canadians believe that flags on the corner of the desks of members of Parliament will unite the country.

There is no committed federalist in this House who is not proud of the Canadian flag. There is no committed federalist in Canada who is not proud of the Canadian flag. Let us be clear. What this is about is the Reform Party trying to create division among those who were elected to this House of Commons to stand up for Canada and to fight for a united Canada. We will not be divided by those crass, cheap political tactics.

Let me briefly review the tactics used by the Reform Party in this flag flap.

First, in what our Speaker has properly ruled as inappropriate, Reformers used a proud symbol of Canadian freedom, our flag, to stifle the freedom of speech of one of our colleagues. Then, not having got their way with the Speaker, out of respect for the Canadian flag, a Reform member threw it on the floor of the House of Commons and marched out of this chamber.

Then Reform members, again not in a very proud moment in the history of this Chamber, tried to intimidate the Speaker by suggesting that if he dared to rule that Reform members had used the flag improperly he should fear for his job. Those kinds of intimidation tactics of the Speaker have no place in this Chamber and have no place in parliamentary democracy.

To make matters worse, the leader of the Reform Party suggested that this kind of hooliganism by his members was perfectly acceptable; it was, after all, just a question of freedom of speech. When I last checked the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it did not guarantee the right of people to threaten and to intimidate, particularly in this parliamentary institution. It was a shameful display by the official opposition and its leader. It did no credit to any of us.

This is not a debate about the flag. The Reform merely wants to take advantage of any opportunity to create division and confusion. Major issues for Canadians, such as jobs, education and health care, are too important for us to waste the precious time we have here in the House of Commons on other matters. But the Reform members do not seem to find them important.

It is ironic in the extreme that this is the week Reform members wrap themselves in the flag and say they are the true loyalists, the true patriots of Canada. This is the very same week that Canadians across the country are calling on their government and their members of Parliament to stand up for Canada's future, to say no loudly, clearly and without equivocation to the multilateral agreement on investment.

If the adolescent pranksters of the Reform zealots had their way, all that would be left of our country would be the flags in the corner of our desks. They want to see the MAI, an investors bill of rights, approved, an MAI without protection for Canada's culture, without protection for our health care, our environment or our employment standards.

The job of running the country would move from Parliament Hill to corporate board rooms in New York, Tokyo and Seoul. We might be able to have flags in the corner of our desks, but in Reform's Canada after the MAI, MPs would not be able to effect most of the issues that directly affect the lives of Canadians.

That is Reform's vision for Canada. That is Reform's vision for the flag, a small flag on the corner of our desks in a toothless, powerless parliament.

The Reform members showed no respect to the Canadian flag when they threw it on the floor of the House of Commons. I want Canadians to know what the Reform is up to. They are playing a dangerous game, a divisive game, a childish game, and we must join forces to put an end to it.

The official opposition is behaving like a school yard bully. We all know the way to deal with bullies and that is to stand up to them. Mr. Speaker, in your ruling yesterday you did that. In our dealing with their antics today we also must do that.

The motivations are suspect and transparent. They say they want to reduce the question of whether we are for or against Canada to a simplistic question of whether we are for or against flags in the corner of our desks.

Last week it was Reform members who thought so little of our Canadian flag and who were so disrespectful of the Canadian flag that they flung it on the floor in this Chamber and retreated from the debate. That kind of cheap, crass approach to politics has no place in this parliament. That partisan petty form of politics will not strengthen and unify the country.

New Democrats are proud Canadians. We can match the pride and the patriotism of any federalist party. English Canadians, French Canadians, allophones, immigrant Canadians, aboriginal Canadians, our caucus is made up of people who choose Canada and are proud each and every day to stand up for our Canadian flag.

What is to be done about the motion? What is our responsibility as members of Parliament? Our caucus has carefully reviewed this matter. We have debated this matter. We are absolutely unanimous in our view that Reformers have been irresponsible in their handling of the issue.

They are playing silly games to avoid the reality that they have nothing to say. They do not want to deal with the substantive issues that are at the real heart of the future of a united Canada. That is why we will not play their silly games. We will not dignify those silly and dangerous games by reducing the future of our great country to whether we can accept on their terms that the future of Canada depends on the display of a flag in the corner of our desks.

That is why the New Democratic Party caucus will vote against this official opposition motion and for a united Canada.

[Employment, March 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, what kind of a hoax is this? Who is the Prime Minister kidding? This government has slashed $1 billion from federal training funds. That is a 50% reduction. Seven hundred million dollars was cut from EI training alone.

I challenge the Prime Minister to come to my province of Nova Scotia in the next week. Let me show him firsthand the disastrous effects of these policies.

Does he have the guts to face unemployed Nova Scotians? Can he explain to them why these 51,000 unemployed cannot get the training they need to fill these high tech jobs?

[Employment, March 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister. This government has shoved 730,000 Canadians off unemployment insurance and on to welfare, and 1.4 million Canadians remain unemployed. In my province of Nova Scotia alone 51,000 people cannot find work. Yet in Halifax this very day high tech firms offer $1,000 finders fees to get the employees they need because of a skills shortage of 20,000 software programmers.

How does the Prime Minister justify training and employment policies that create these disastrous results?

[Home Care, March 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week the minister acknowledged that inadequate home care was causing health care crises across the country each and every day. He avoided mention of the $3.5 billion that his government hacked out of health care and the pain and suffering it is causing Canadians.

Will the minister sit down with the provinces and health care partners to work co-operatively? Will he accept the conference recommendation to begin significant funding and set standards for home care no later than 1999, no later than next year's budget?

[Home Care, March 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are sick and tired of waiting for home care. Yet the health minister told home care delegates in Halifax that Canadians may have to wait up to two more years. That is not good enough, not for the sick, not for family caregivers and not for health care providers.

Will the health minister accelerate the introduction of comprehensive home care by establishing in partnership with the provinces a 90 day emergency task force to get on with home care once and for all?

[Health Care, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, following Tuesday's budget only Ralph Klein and Russell MacLellan applauded the government's betrayal of its health funding promise.

Most Canadians and all other premiers believed the red book promise “as we get our fiscal house in order a Liberal government will commit new resources to address priority needs in health care”.

Why did the finance minister choose to break this promise?

[Health Care, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.

Canadians want to have access to quality health care, but the Liberals are not listening. Despite its election promise, the Liberal government will not be investing one cent more in provincial transfer payments to improve the health system.

Can the Minister of Finance explain this decision to Canadians, whose health is jeopardized by the overcrowding in hospitals?

[William Ormond Mitchell, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the wonderful thing about life is that it always leaves us coming back for more. The wonderful thing about our writers and artists is that they remind us of that.

W.O. Mitchell did that for us. His prairie stories sing to all our hearts, whether or not we have ever seen the wind chase the sun across an ocean of wheat. His voice is stilled now, but life goes on.

It went on last night with the Ottawa premiere of the member for Dartmouth's play Glace Bay Miners' Museum . The play is a story from the east, a story about coal miners and their loved ones. It is a story about all of us.

We will not hide our joy and pride at having this playwright from Nova Scotia in our caucus, but we are happy to share her.

The gift our writers and artists give us is the most precious any nation can ever give, the gift of belief in ourselves, in the conviction we can and will see to it that today is better than yesterday but nowhere as good as tomorrow. And you can bet we will all keep coming back for more.

[The Budget, February 25th, 1998]

That just reflects how little he, his colleagues, the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister understand the real priority and pressing needs of Canadians.

There is one heck of a lot of people who want to understand how the government could have turned its back on this commitment in this year when we have people lined up and trying to get into surgery when they need it. We have people on stretchers in hospital corridors. We have people who desperately need home care and cannot get it. We have people who desperately need prescription drugs and cannot get them. Why? Because the government rips away $7 billion every year.

When some people hear those figures they think that $7 billion is a lot of money but they guess the government had to do it. This is a government that is doing it year after year after year. It is literally killing people.

How could the government say it will do that later, that later it will reinvest some of the surplus dollars, but in the meantime decide to take up the cause of the Reform Party that says we should not worry if we end up with a deteriorating health care system and in fact we should not worry if we have to introduce a two tier health care system because somehow or other people will just get by.

This is a government that has a lot to answer for. One of the questions that it has to be prepared to answer is why it is prepared to turn its back on the priorities of Canadians. Why is it prepared to betray a promise it made during the campaign that 50% of the budget surplus would go to health care?