Marlene Catterall

[Committees Of The House, November 21st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 49th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding associate membership of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.

If the House gives its consent, I intend to move concurrence in the 49th report later this day.

Madam Speaker, I move that the 49th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, presented to the House this day, be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to.)

[Recall Act, October 28th, 1994]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, then the debate closes without unanimous consent?

[Recall Act, October 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I accept your ruling on the point of order. However inadvertently I do believe that the member who just spoke has provided some incorrect information to the House and I do want to put on record a correction in the context of speaking on the motion of the member for Beaver River.

The member has suggested that Liberal members of Parliament are somehow avoiding this debate. To this point an equal number of Liberal and Reform Party members have spoken in this debate. It is an ongoing debate. It is not just this particular hour. Four Liberal members of Parliament spoke on the issue and four Reform members of Parliament spoke on the issue.

I think that indicates clearly our interest in this debate. Nonetheless, this issue of a recall is a matter of Reform Party policy and so today we did feel that we wanted to leave the floor to the members of the Reform Party to explain their policy to Canadians.

However, having been challenged to enter the debate I am not going to by any means give up that opportunity.

I have spoken on this issue before in this House but I am pleased to do so again if the Reform Party members do not wish to use the full-time we wanted to accord them the courtesy of.

I have compared this legislation to a kind of instantaneous divorce and suggested that when I chose a spouse and I think when most people choose a spouse they do so very carefully and with great forethought, and they make a long term commitment to that relationship. Because it is a long term commitment, they tend to choose very carefully and take their choice very seriously and recognize that there will be in any relationship, a marriage or an elected representative, some good times and some bad times.

As I said at that time, I am sure that in 33 years there have been many times when had instant divorce been available either my husband or I would have taken advantage of it. Looking back on 33 years we will conclude that all in all the good times outweighed the bad and we are glad we stuck with it.

Participatory democracy is more than paying a buck to pick up the phone and register your opinion without the responsibility to engage in dialogue with others who perhaps have different opinions, or to consider other interests involved in the opinion you are expressing.

It is very easy to selfishly say "this is my opinion". It is not so easy to say "I have an opinion but I also want to know what the impact of that opinion is on other people. I want the opportunity to engage in dialogue with them about the pros and cons and the effects this will have on our society as a whole and, the bottom line, what is good for the country".

Members express a lot of concern about special interest groups. Frankly, one of my concerns about this legislation is that it does very much put members of Parliament at the mercy of very special interest groups that have both the social standing and the economic means to organize to unseat a member of Parliament because they do not like a decision that member of Parliament made. This has happened in many jurisdictions around the world. Sometimes that special interest group is the military which manages to unseat a whole government with disastrous results for its society.

Recall in fact has the potential to produce a very selfish citizenry who look at every vote from the point of view of what is in their interest and whether the member is serving their interest. It is not: Is this member serving the interests of the community or the country at large? Is this member sensitive to interests that are not his or her own? Are they concerned not only about today but about tomorrow and the next generation? That is what we are here for. It is not to please people in the very short term. We are here to try and listen to our constituents and do what is best for them, for our country and for all citizens.

This government has taken significant measures to ensure that in fact democracy is not simply a question of what happens at the ballot box and then go away and forget your constituents and they forget you. We have done our best to introduce ongoing participation in the democratic process.

I want to say one final word about caucus. I do not know how the Reform Party caucus operates. I do know that every Wednesday morning we in the government caucus have the opportunity to freely and openly express our point of view to our Prime Minister and to one another. Together we resolve those differences of opinion we have. When we come in here we do what we believe is in the interests of the country.

Finally, we made a commitment as a government. We made numerous commitments to the country during an election campaign. We want to be able to keep those commitments. We are working at that day in and day out. We need to have some solidarity of caucus to do that because that is what Canadians expect of us.

Let me just return to my main point in rising today. In the first hour of debate on this bill on April 29, 1994 there were four Liberal speakers and one Reform speaker. There have only been three Reform speakers today.

[Recall Act, October 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to draw to your attention and to the attention of the House that the member speaking has commented on the participation of the government in this debate, suggesting it is some kind of cowardice that prevents us from speaking on this bill.

In this hour of debate we have chosen to leave the debate to the Reform Party hoping that it will display through it speeches how foolish an idea this is.

[Department Of Canadian Heritage Act, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this is going to be a very short intervention to reply to some of the nonsense I have heard today in the debate.

The debate has focused on what culture means to a society and to a nation. I have come to the conclusion there is very little understanding on the other side of the House when they can ask how many gallons of paint does a painting take to determine the worth of the painting.

I had the privilege and the pleasure this morning of being at breakfast with the director of the National Gallery. We were talking about "Voice of Fire". We were talking about other things too. Next year, and I am sure members opposite are not aware of this, is the 75th anniversary of the Group of Seven. I asked the director of the gallery what she thought the media reports would have been about and the outraged comments of the House of Commons would have been at the time our National Gallery was purchasing paintings of the Group of Seven, when the popular taste was pastoral landscapes in the European style. Those purchases were very unpopular and yet what is one of our great Canadian icons? The Group of Seven.

A gallery that was independent of political control 75 years ago had the foresight to recognize something uniquely Canadian in the style of Canada, something not based on imitating what was being done elsewhere.

I am not qualified to judge "Voice of Fire". I really do not know if that is the kind of painting that 75 years from now we will be extremely proud to have had the foresight to buy and have in our national collection. I hope so. I do not know.

I do know that I want a gallery that is free to buy what it believes is the best being produced. I thank the gallery for having fulfilled that role and for having preserved for us something as uniquely Canadian and valuable as the paintings of the Group of Seven, among others.

I want to make another comment. We have heard about multiculturalism today as if all it does is support cultures that are unique to specific groups. What in fact it does is build understanding among Canadians.

Members on the opposite side have demonstrated that they really do not know a lot about what they are saying because they consistently talk about certain ethnic groups which do not rely on government funding not being aware obviously that in fact those groups do rely on government funding and are quite competent in getting it.

Let me report another incident recently. I attended an award ceremony at the Boys and Girls Club in my riding not too long ago. It was a wrap up of their summer program. I saw young people whose families have been in Canada for generations and whose skins are white. I also saw young people whose families have been in Canada for less than six months, Somalians, Ethiopians, people from southeast Asia, people from all over the world playing together, working together, and getting to know each other.

I know that many of those Somalia youths are involved in the community to the extent that they are because of organizations like the Somali integration and settlement agency, which gets funding from the very program that the members opposite are criticizing.

They get funding because they are coming here as refugees. They have left everything behind. The majority are women with young children coming here for safety. These people do not come here with a lot. This agency gives these people coming to our country job training, language training, access to services so they have the ability not to separate themselves, but to integrate more fully and more completely into Canadian society. One of the results of that is young Somalian, Ethiopian and Cambodian children and children from all over the world I see playing together at the Boys and Girls Club in my riding.

I want to say one final word about special interest groups. The people who talk about special interest groups frankly are the biggest special interest group in the country. They are the ones who by tradition and by the practice of all our laws, our courts and all our systems are the privileged class.

If we fund certain groups in our society it is because without government support the poorest, the disabled, women, children would not have a voice in our public debate. I do not want a public debate on public issues on the future of this country that is dominated only by those who already have the wealth to make their voices heard.

I do not want the decisions we make in the House made on the basis only of opinions from those who can afford to travel to Ottawa, to write to Ottawa, to hire lobbyists, to hire lawyers and to hire accountants. I want the voices of all Canadians to be part of what we decide in the House, what we determine in our committees and what the future of Canadian society is. Canadian society is not just for the privileged few; it is for all Canadians.

[Committees Of The House, October 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I think there would be unanimous consent to dispense with the reading of the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs concerning associate membership of committees.

If so, and the House gives its consent, I move that the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs presented to the House earlier this day be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to.)

[Committees Of The House, October 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the forty-third report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, concerning the associate membership of committees.

If the House agrees, I intend to move concurrence later today.

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to respond to this question. Some of my colleagues will remember that it was a former Tory chair of the committee on employment and immigration that tried to redefine poverty and pretend that poverty went away.

Let me tell the member opposite about the people in my community, the children who start school behind the eight ball because they are identified as poor the minute they walk into the school. They are not as well fed. They do not have the bright and shiny hair. They do not have the nice clothes. Their education is immediately crippled from the day they walk into school.

If we pretend that poverty in this country is not really a problem we will not solve that problem. The victims of not solving that problem are our children. Poor children are much more likely to be involved in serious accidents, to fall seriously ill, to commit suicide, to die, to drop out of school and to end up in jail. What more information do we need to solve the problem of our poor?

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to deal with women's issues. I think it is very important to stress what I said in my speech. This is a discussion. We have made a number of proposals. I think the question raised by the hon. member is very important and that it has an impact on women and on children as well, to some extent. How can we have a better system? That is a topic for discussion and dialogue with Canadian women. We want to find out what they think about the impact of certain options.

I hope the hon. member will have a chance to discuss the existing system with his constituents who are now on welfare. When he talks to women who are in the system, he will hear about the problems in the present system and the problems that keep them in a state of dependency.

I am not certain that I agree that in the past, when Liberal governments introduced our social programs, the country was poorer. It would be very easy for me to say the problem was created by the previous government, but I will not say that.

We are now in a situation where we spend 40 cents out of every dollar on servicing the debt and, of course, it is unacceptable that we cannot spend these 40 cents on something that would be of far greater benefit to the country and to Canadians.

However, I think it is just a matter of using the resources we have to improve the situation for the people who are in the system, and not leaving them high and dry.

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today and compliment the Minister of Human Resources Development for his commitment and contribution in proceeding with the government's job and growth agenda.

The minister in his discussion paper has given us an opportunity to participate in the revamping of our social security system. We must bring our social programs in line with the realities of today, realities that are tough and constraining, realities that our society can no longer ignore.

Close to 80 per cent of Canadians agree that Canada's social programs are in need of major reform. We are inviting all Canadians to consider and to advise us on how we can improve our programs and make them suitable for the 1990s and into the next century.

The Canadian social security system was created a number of years ago to meet the specific needs of a bygone era. Today, the needs are different because society and economic parameters have changed considerably.

For example, when the unemployment insurance program was originally developed, it was to give temporary relief to people who had lost their jobs. However, today, Canadians must adapt to an economy which requires fewer workers. Consequently, the Canadian government must provide its people with a different support system for all those who want to enter or re-enter a highly competitive job market.

It is clear to all Canadians that the necessity for change not only applies to our unemployment insurance program but to all our national social programs. The social security system that has provided support to Canadians for decades must now be modernized. Our social programs must be redefined according to the economic and social changes that have affected our society.

However, despite the government's strong determination to pursue a thorough reform of our social safety net, it will strongly abide by the fundamental principles that have guided Liberal governments in the past. Hence, the first and foremost priority of our government is to preserve our traditional and cherished values of justice, of tolerance, of compassion for those who are most vulnerable, while providing to all Canadians the opportunity for the dignity of work.

In helping Canadians to get good jobs we have to consider that nearly half of all new jobs require 16 years or more of education and training. Yet we still have 30 per cent of students dropping out before graduating from high school.

This is one of many contradictions that must be eradicated for the benefit of our social fabric and our economic future. We need to supply better job counselling for unemployment insurance claimants. We realize that basic skills training is essential for any job and that classroom and workplace training is also a key element for the revival of our workforce.

Canadians think that our social programs are too bureaucratic, inefficient, wasteful and that too many people are put in the position of becoming dependent on them. We are not helping anyone by assuming that some people cannot do anything to improve their state in life. That is exactly what some of our social programs do and it must be stopped.

Our social security system must protect everyone in need. Among them are the people who cannot work, people with disabilities or chronic illness, low income families and children who live in poverty.

In the discussion paper the minister outlines four main objectives for reform: helping Canadians find and keep employment; providing support for those who are most in need; ensuring programs are fair, affordable and effective, while eliminating waste; creating a social environment that fosters independence and mutual responsibility.

We want to reform our social system to protect the values we universally hold true, namely equality, freedom, compassion, and mutual support. As a society built on these principles, we have the duty to give all the help we can to those who need it the most.

This means that we must share our resources more fairly. Canada is abundantly rich and, in this, is the envy of the world. Unfortunately, too few Canadians benefit from our country's wealth. This is precisely what we want to rectify with the help of all the people.

We as a government need to address the issues of an economy with fewer jobs, a society with an aging population and a shrinking middle class, and an increased poverty level among our population. I want to take the opportunity to remind the House and Canadians that those who are most in need of social reform are those who are the poorest in our country. That is women and it is children.

We have to look at the difficulties that women have to face in this new era. Women make up the majority of lone parents and 60 per cent of them live below the poverty line. Women have to work hard to support their families but face unfair wage gaps compared to their male counterparts. They are still very poorly represented in well paid occupations and positions.

Tragically women who do earn a living, however inadequately paid, may consider themselves lucky because two-thirds of the work of women is unpaid. This reality is unacceptable in a country where equality has always been a basic element of our national values.

For all these reasons Canadian women are entitled to receive appropriate assistance. For instance affordable child care is more than ever a necessity, not a luxury. Our government recognizes the urgency of the matter and is committed to work jointly with the provinces to increase the number of quality child care spaces across Canada.

Raising the standard of living of women is of crucial importance for the fate of many poor children across the country. We must act now to ease the life of over one million children living on welfare. The number of poor children in our society is increasing not decreasing with our current social programs. Obviously we need an improvement.

I want to say as one who has worked with women and young people living in the social security system that they are the first to recognize the need for changes in the programs, they are the first to recognize the barriers that prevent them from getting the job they need, from getting the training they need. Our system is set up in such a way that to do so they have to jeopardize the financial security of their children and there are not very many women who will do that. Those are the barriers we have to get rid of.

There are other groups in our society still coping with the lack of adequate services, people with disabilities. These people too need greater access to training and to employment related services.

If there is one commitment in this reform, it is the commitment of our government to create opportunity for every one of our citizens who can contribute to the building of our country.

I conclude by reminding the House and Canadians that this is a participatory process. There are a number of recommendations and options in the paper that the minister released two weeks ago. It is important that all Canadians inform themselves of what is in those papers and engage in the dialogue that will happen over the next few months.

This coming Saturday, October 29, in Ottawa West I will be having an all day community consultation. I know that these same kinds of consultations are going on right across the country. With my few remaining seconds I simply remind every organization and every individual out there that their participation in this dialogue is crucial to the future of this country.