Mr. Speaker, let me begin by congratulating you and your fellow Speakers. You certainly have an important job in the House ensuring that decorum is maintained and the impressions of Canadians are enhanced.
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Brampton—Springdale.
I would also like to congratulate all the other members of the House, those who have been re-elected and those who were newly elected. I started out on this side of the House, over in the rump. I remember the Prime Minister was down on that side back in 1993. Certainly, as new members, we were very enthused and in some ways naive, but it has been a really incredible privilege, and I say that for all of us, in being able to serve our constituents in the Parliament of Canada.
There is no question that our families greatly assist us in the work that we do. In my case in particular, my wife Nancy and my daughter Erin have put up with a husband and a father being off in Parliament since 1993. I extend a special thanks to all the volunteers who believe in the democratic process, and help each and every one of us get to this place.
When I first came into the House in 1993, this country was on the verge of bankruptcy. Unemployment was very high. There was not a lot of hope and there was a lot of despair. Over the years when the Liberals were in government, we restored the country's fiscal health. Instead of going on at length, I draw the House's attention to the Globe and Mail article on March 31 that stated:
A strong economy, a booming job market and generous government benefits have lifted more than one million Canadians out of the low income ranks since 1996.
Poverty has been reduced to 11.2% from 15.7% in 1996. That is important. Granted, one person in poverty is one too many, but the fact of the matter is we made change. The other part of the issue is that we were able to give hope versus the despair that we inherited.
I looked over the throne speech and I must say it is a throne speech that I have seen in my years in the House. The government talks about bringing back accountability. We as a government have done a whole lot of those things, but it is one of those issues where the work is never done and we have to continue working on it.
I urge the President of the Treasury Board, as he is making up the legislation, to perhaps take a look at the book entitled On the Take, which chronicles the abuses of the Mulroney government. I also ask him to pay special attention to W-Five, which pointed to Schreiber making payments of $300,000 to the former prime minister. I think that is important. The people of this country have a right to have some kind of accountability framework around it.
In terms of helping families and Canadians, we all want to do that. Over the years the Liberal government put in place record tax cuts.
On the issue of tackling crime, I am a bit bothered at the U.S. style approach that has been taken. I say that because the rhetoric around that issue from the Conservative Party is very much like the rhetoric that comes from the Republicans in the United States. When we compare the crime rates of the two nations, while we have our problems, we are much better than the United States of America.
Providing child care support is going to be a real issue for us because it is not going to create one child care space nor is it going to enhance early childhood education. It is going to give money to parents who have preschool kids.
I must commend the government on another issue that it talked about and that is regarding an apology to Chinese Canadians with respect to the head tax. I agree that is long overdue. What is lacking is a comprehensive approach. We as a country have to come to terms with that. Apologies should also go to Ukrainians, to those Canadians who were interned during the wars, to first nations people, and also to all those people who were discriminated against in the evolution of Canadian history until we arrived at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In a very real way it was the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that said those acts of discrimination were wrong. It was the charter that said we are not going to go there anymore. We are going to have it guide us in our future legislation. To that extent I have proposed a policy, call it the hall of the charter, which would educate Canadians about past injustices. Whether one is French, a first nation, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Italian, Black, or Asian, it is important that we understand each other's history because then we can understand why we need something like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ensure that we learn from our past mistakes and to ensure we never go there again. I am a bit disturbed that in this document there is no mention of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is supposed to bind all of us as Canadians.
I have a greater concern with this throne speech about what is missing. There is no mention of post-secondary education. There is no mention of research and development. There is no mention of the Kyoto accord or the Kelowna accord. There is no mention of the charter. There is no mention of protecting manufacturing jobs in Canada which are under threat by countries that dump here from overseas.
Most important, there is no mention of anything really substantial with respect to citizenship and immigration. Reforming the Citizenship Act was part of the throne speech of the last government. When the House fell in November of last year, we were on the verge of receiving legislation from the government to upgrade the Citizenship Act. There was all-party agreement in committee on how that should be done. The report on the revocation of citizenship received concurrence in the House, but there is no mention of that here. I really hope that we are going to deal with this issue.
I look forward to working in the 39th Parliament, recognizing that I am a temporary guardian of the public trust. I am here, just like every colleague in the House, to represent our respective constituencies.
