Lost her last election, in 2004, with 28% of the vote.
Supply October 16th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, the member gave a beautiful vox intellectus. I would like her to speak on the challenges of women in politics,
She experienced a bit of her ordeal through all this. There are challenges at every level including women who are in poverty and some who are not. We have a whole global problem when it comes to women in this advanced country. I believe that we have to look at all the issues. I would like the member to speak to that.
Poverty October 16th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I believe that everyone would recognize that the government has failed badly when we talk about women and children. There are more women and children living in poverty today than we have ever seen, especially since 1993.
Will the Minister of Finance recognize these women in crisis and introduce solutions in his upcoming budget so that we can put an end to the suffering and the unfairness that women and children are facing in this rich country? We should not have one woman or child living in the kind of poverty we are now seeing. Will the minister introduce something—
Taxation October 5th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I spoke today on the EI bill, Bill C-44, which is quite clearly a vote buying piece of legislation when we look at what the government is really doing, which is practically nothing compared to the suffering of people who have been affected by the Liberal government's 1996 cuts to unemployment insurance.
I know I only have four minutes so I will never get to everything that I want to say, but before I go into that it is important to look back at why I am a member of parliament in the House of Commons today and to look at what really happened.
In 1993 the Liberal government campaigned that it would be helping workers in rural Canada, that it would be helping to develop those regions and would make life easier for those people, like the Prime Minister said when he campaigned in Beauséjour and told seasonal workers that they were not being treated fairly in those days. Surprise, surprise. I wonder what happened once he got elected.
Once the Prime Minister was elected he introduced all kinds of legislation in the House. The bill that was absolutely unacceptable was the one regarding the unemployment insurance program. I am sure there are Liberal members on the other side who do not agree with what took place in 1996, but they were silent then. At the time in Atlantic Canada 31 out of 32 MPs were Liberal MPs. With 31 MPs on the government side, the government was able to pass a piece of legislation that out of the whole country most affected Atlantic Canadians. The 31 MPs were totally silent. They closed their eyes and supported their government. They did not care about the people of Atlantic Canada.
I started to listen to what was happening. I thought, there is something wrong here. We have an elected member of parliament on the government side. He is there. He has been an elected member for a long time. He actually stepped down and gave his place to the Prime Minister. The riding voted for him and gave him a one way ticket to Ottawa. I thought, why are those same people being punished for electing the Prime Minister and giving him his one way ticket to Ottawa.
I started questioning the MP. I asked him if he were not concerned. He indicated that they were abusing the system and that the system would have to be changed because there was too much abuse. He was saying this about the same people who were voting for him. I walked out of his office and I thought, my God, I have been voting for the wrong man all this time. He has no interest in defending my interests and the interests of the riding.
That is when I got involved and started to have public meetings. I organized coalitions. I told people that we had a problem, that we had elected a member of parliament whose sole interest in government was self-interest and that was it. I am not saying every member of the government is bad, because I know there are very nice people on that side, but he was our member of parliament and he should have been defending our interests and that did not happen.
What happened on June 2, 1999? The people asked me to run because actually I had been representing them for the last three years. Too many people were suffering and they asked me to run. I was a seasonal worker and I was going to run in an election. I could not imagine it would happen.
I am sure my time is almost over, but what I want to say is that people in Atlantic Canada are tired. They are not for sale. The bill will not buy their votes. They voiced their opinion on June 2, 1999. I will make sure that Atlantic Canadians, people from Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, be they from Albert county, Kent county or Westmorland, remember what the Liberals did to them in 1996.
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. It is certainly impossible for our young people to work 910 hours. That is the problem. Our young people end up leaving our communities. Instead of coming back to contribute to the economy of our region after finishing their postsecondary education, they have to leave. It is a problem and I agree with the hon. member on that.
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
That is regional prejudice. She is dividing them. She should be concentrating on the majority of seasonal workers who are in trouble today.
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I am just going to quote her words from the French Hansard .
She said “Now that he is about to call an election, the Prime Minister has decided to increase EI payments to seasonal workers who already earn a very comfortable annual income”.
What I am saying is I would rather concentrate on the majority of seasonal workers, like I see in New Brunswick, who are living on less than $10,000 a year. The member would rather look at the small percentage of some seasonal workers somewhere in Canada. I do not know where she is finding them but she is saying there are some. I know that in Hansard she specified a comfortable annual income in Atlantic Canada.
She would rather concentrate on that small percentage—
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I have to say that the member might have her facts a bit wrong.
I was a seasonal worker at the time the PC Party was in power and I was able to feed my kids. When the PC Party was in power there was a $6 billion deficit in the UI fund. Today there is a $30 billion surplus. We cannot look at the difference. I never had a problem feeding my son when I was on UI. There was enough money available for me to do it.
With the Liberal Party in power, single parents do not have enough income to feed their kids or provide them with shelter.
The member should put her politics aside and look at who the culprits are here. The culprits are the Liberals. The PC government did not have a $30 billion surplus. We had a $6 billion deficit. That was the reality.
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, the member should not make statements about seasonal workers having a comfortable annual income and that they do not need any help. On top of that, the government is going to cut all regional development for the same regions that need development to solve the problem.
The employment insurance program is not the problem in our rural communities. The problem is that we do not have jobs. The party that the member represents is saying that it does not agree with regional development. I have no problem saying that the Liberal government has made mistakes and has caused a lot of hardship, but I can also say that the Reform Party would do the same, if not worse.
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
Yes, lazy maritimers.
A report was released last week stating that 40% more children are living in poverty today than we had 10 years ago. It keeps increasing on a daily basis. The Liberals are wondering why we have more poor children. If the parents are poor the children are poor. That is how it works.
I have eight food banks in my riding and I have 82,000 people living in the riding. Every one of those eight food banks told me last week that they have seen an increase in people using the food banks directly because of the cuts to EI. They are not saying maybe. They are saying directly. Who made the cuts?
I collected EI when the Progressive Conservative Party was in power. I was able to feed my son and myself and pay my rent with that EI cheque. We cannot do that any more with this Liberal Party in power. We need to change. Not only do we need to change the EI program, we need to change the government. We need to sit on that side and fix what the Liberals have broken, which is exactly what we intend to do after the next federal election.
Employment Insurance Act October 5th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a very serious issue that is a concern for many people, not only in my riding, Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, but also right across the Atlantic region and the country.
Workers who depend on seasonal industry are found not only in the riding of Beauséjour-Petitcodiac but anywhere in Canada where the main industry is seasonal.
In 1996, the Liberal government decided to make changes to employment insurance plan, while knowing that HRDC had a document showing that, just as an example, 75% of seasonal workers in New Brunswick lived on less than $10,000 a year. Still, the government attacked these workers, even though they had been saying day in and day out that they opposed the changes. When I led the coalition against the cuts to employment insurance in New Brunswick, we told the government what impacts the cuts would have.
I came to meet with the former human resources development minister and present her with a petition containing 17,000 names. These people were saying that the cuts were going to hurt them badly, that they represented discrimination against seasonal workers and were therefore unacceptable, and that the poorest of the poor would be the ones paying for the deficit.
But the Prime Minister, who came to get elected in the riding of Beauséjour, turned around and said “I visited the area and people there are all drunk in taverns, while collecting UI benefits”. The people of Beauséjour—Petitcodiac responded to that comment on June 2, 1997.
People from my area have had enough of being laughed at, denigrated and called lazy. The Prime Minister of Canada said it and the Canadian Alliance said it again just now, everyone in the Atlantic provinces is lazy and does not want to work.
I have one thing to say to the members of the Liberal Party and the Canadian Alliance: people from my area are hardworking, they are educated and they work very hard. When there is work, they work. They have no problem with working, except that work in our area is seasonal. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying “I want to be a seasonal worker”. It is the nature of the industry to be seasonal.
Canada must understand that, Ontario must understand that, Alberta must understand that, the government must understand that. The members of the Canadian Alliance must absolutely understand that people in my area are not lazy.
I myself worked in the seasonal industry, and I can assure the House that nobody can call me lazy, far from it. I am tired of hearing this sort of thing. I am tired of hearing that the people in my community are all lazy.
Who are known as hardworking people in western Canada? Who are considered relentless workers, people who work seven days a week? The people from Atlantic Canada who have to leave their communities to find work. Our young university graduates who have to leave their communities and their families to go and work in western Canada.
That is not what Canada is about. That is not what our party wants. Our priority is to ensure that everybody has equal opportunity to be gainfully employed all year round. As people in my region would say “We would easily trade our EI benefits for a full time job. Any time. No problem”.
The problem is, we have a government that is attacking the worker instead of the problem, and that is not right.
A couple of weeks before a federal election and the Prime Minister comes in and says “Oops”. The Minister of HRDC said herself that it was a punitive measure. Ça punissait les travailleurs. If it does punish the workers why did it take the Liberals four years—two weeks before an election call—to say that they made a mistake? Can they fix all the problems they have caused in those communities over the last four years? How many family break-ups have there been? How many kids have been forced into the school breakfast program because their parents can no longer feed them because of the cuts to EI? How many parents have been forced to go to food banks because of the cuts to EI?
Can anyone imagine being a single parent making $10,000 a year and having the Liberal government take part of that money away? According to a member of the reform alliance party, $10,000 is a comfortable salary. I would like to see that member try to live on $10,000 a year. I think she would change her mind. Perhaps what she needs is to end up living on $10,000 a year. Then she would understand what it means.
The Alliance members are saying that they are going to govern this country. I doubt it. I doubt very much if Canadians will accept the kinds of comments made in the House by the reform alliance members.