Svend Robinson

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, the obvious question is if Canada is serious about its obligations under international law and particularly these conventions that we have signed, why on earth is this government refusing to evaluate the legislation against that and refusing to respect those international commitments?

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, as the minister will be aware, Canada has undertaken international obligations with the International Labour Organization and it is signatory to a number of international labour conventions.

I wonder whether the minister could indicate whether he has gauged the acceptance of the bill which is now before the House against Canada's international commitments under ILO conventions. I would suggest through the Chair that in fact Canada is in breach of our ILO conventions through this legislation.

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, the obvious question that flows from that is why on earth the government put Canadian farmers and Canadian public servants through this agony for $5 million of taxpayers money.

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions. Could the President of the Treasury Board inform the House of what the total cost difference is between the agreement outlined in the bill now before the House and the tentative agreement that was arrived at with the table two workers?

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, just for clarification, is it then the intention of the government to extend these benefits to gay and lesbian partners of public servants covered by the collective agreement?

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, my question for the minister relates to the definition and in particular to the provisions which are included in the collective agreement affecting gay and lesbian partners of public servants.

As the minister knows, in other collective agreements that have been negotiated with the federal public service benefits have been extended to gay and lesbian partners. In the English language definition of common law spouse, the definition reads as follows: “Relationship exists when for a continuous period of at least one year an employee has lived with a person, publicly represented that person to be his/her spouse and continues to live with the person as if that person were his/her spouse”.

In French, the definition of common law spouse reads as follows:

Common law spouse Il existe des liens de conjoint de fait lorsque, pendant une période continue d'au moins une année, un employé a cohabité avec une personne du sexe opposé et l'a présentée publiquement comme son conjoint et continue à vivre avec cette personne comme si elle était son conjoint.

I wonder if the minister could clarify and confirm that it is his intention to extend the benefits of the collective agreement fully to same sex partners and that the French language definition of conjoints de fait will be amended to reflect that equality.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1998, March 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the opportunity to ask him a question and to wish him well in his upcoming leadership campaign.

I agree with the member completely with respect to the importance of a fairer tax system. I want to ask a very straightforward question. Under the proposed budget changes of the Liberal government a millionaire will receive a tax cut of $8,000 this year. A single mother with two children living in Metrotown in my community struggling to get by on welfare will receive not a penny. Under Reform taxation policies that same millionaire who gets $8,000 from Liberals would get $70,000 in Reform Party tax cuts.

Where is the fairness? Where is the justice when under Reform Party tax proposals a millionaire gets a $70,000 tax cut and a single mom in Esquimalt or in Metrotown, Burnaby gets not a penny?

[Petitions, March 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition this morning which is signed by over 100 residents of my constituency of Burnaby—Douglas. It draws to the attention of the House that volume discounts for rapists and murderers, which is the law in Canada today, cheapen life, that an average one murder per month in Canada is committed by a released person on parole, that the lives of individual victims are erased from the sentencing equation and that the suffering, the pain and the death of the second, third or eleventh victim is of no consequence to the courts.

Therefore the petitioners call on parliament to enact legislation to reduce the inhumanity to families of victims, restore truth in sentencing and to enact Bill C-251 to prevent multiple murderers and rapists from getting one sentence for multiple offences and to narrow the gap between justice and our justice system.

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will try again with the hon. member because it is important for Canadians to understand clearly that the Reform Party made a written proposal to the Government of Canada with respect to what it said were its priorities and what it wanted the federal government to do. In that list of Reform Party priorities there was not a word about housing or homelessness.

When the hon. member stands and cries great crocodile tears about the fact that Liberals did not do anything about housing—and he is right in that criticism—how does he explain that his own party, the Reform Party, did not have any proposals whatsoever on housing?

Let me give him one last opportunity to fess up and acknowledge the error of Reform Party ways. Will the hon. member tell this House now just how much money the Reform Party is suggesting the federal government put into a national housing plan?

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the comments of the member for Surrey Central. There is no question that all members of this House should be deeply concerned about the housing crisis in Canada.

Recently we heard from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities about the national disaster of homelessness, not just in Toronto, but in my own community in the lower mainland of British Columbia, in the greater Vancouver area and in many other parts of Canada.

We know as well that this Liberal government has completely abdicated any leadership in the area of national housing strategy. This is one of the only industrial countries in the world that has no national housing strategy.

It used to be that Liberals believed in co-op housing. There is not a penny in funding for new co-op housing in this country.

It used to be that Liberals believed there was a federal role for housing for seniors, for students and others. There is nothing at all.

We know as well that the great market simply is not delivering affordable rental housing. The federal Liberal government is silent on that as well.

My question is for the Reform member. He said that he agrees that the Liberals are not doing what they should be in the area of housing. He said that the Liberals should be doing more to support social housing and to tackle the plight of the homeless in our country. Yet I read with great care the budget document that was prepared by the Reform Party before the government budget was tabled. I looked everywhere. I looked on the cover. I looked inside. I looked on every page. I looked on the back cover. There was not a single word, not one word, in the Reform Party's proposals to the Government of Canada about housing or about homelessness.

What planet is the hon. member on when he stands and rightly attacks the Liberal government for its failure to show leadership on housing when his own party is totally silent on the fundamentally important issue of federal support for housing? Why the double standard?