Marlene Catterall

[Supply, March 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment generally on the comments the member has made. I really think it is up to him to be quite open and forthcoming with Canadians about the kind of impact the deficit reduction targets his party proposes would have on Canadians.

What the Reform Party proposes is exactly a more concentrated version of what we have seen in this country for the last nine years. They are the kinds of programs that have left 1.6 million Canadians unemployed and over six million Canadians dependent in one form or another on unemployment insurance or social assistance.

This is not the particular issue I want to raise with the member. I would ask for some elaboration on his final comments where he seemed to disparage the concept of equality as somehow destructive of freedom and democracy.

I know that some people do not quite understand that equality does not mean being the same. My personal view is that our world, our nation and our communities require a multitude of talents that our people possess. To not allow those talents to be fully and completely used and developed through various equality measures would limit our capacity as a society.

I really would like the member opposite to explain what he has against equality and why he thinks that some groups really are not quite as equal as he is perhaps. Could he just expand on what he has against equality.

[Sexual Harassment, March 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, International Women's Day and Week for 1994 have passed into history. Tragically what is still with us is the violence that has damaged the lives of more than half of Canadian women.

One form of violence against Canadian women is sexual harassment. While 37 per cent of women experience sexual harassment, less than 40 per cent do anything about it because they feel they have no options.

A survey in our Canadian forces shows these equally frightening statistics.

Sexual harassment both reflects and perpetuates womens' economic inequality. Like other employers the federal government is legally responsible to ensure a workplace free of sexual harassment. Yet I continue to hear from victims of harassment who are often revictimized when they try to take action.

I therefore urge ministers of the crown to take personal responsibility to ensure that in their departments zero tolerance is not just a pronouncement but a reality.

[Privilege, March 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have asked that you take this item under consideration. I do not want your consideration to be limited to how reports are presented. I do not want the comments of the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell to necessarily limit your consideration of the question of privilege. I think it should go to the content of legislation presented before the House and a number of other things.

Individual members can choose to use whatever language they wish. However, my question of privilege goes to how the House operates generally and the formal instruments of the House.

[Privilege, March 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to comment on the report that was just read into the record from the table and to raise a question of privilege on the use of language in the House, in particular the use of the word chairman in the report.

For some time in the House we have tried to use gender neutral language. My point is simply that the use of male terms in this way diminishes my role in the House and the role of every other woman member of Parliament and therefore diminishes my ability to be taken seriously in the House and to perform my duties as a parliamentarian.

I do not want to make a long statement but I would like to make a few points. The use of male terms gives a status to the male sex and to male members of Parliament that it denies to women members of Parliament. I realize many members of Parliament may consider that these are traditional uses of the terms, and I grant that. They are traditional uses of terms that in fact have led to our understanding that certain jobs in society belong to men and certain jobs in society belong to women. This perception has for many years delayed the entry of more women into positions of decision making in our society.

We can all rationally say we know what we mean by the word chairman. It does not refer to a man. However, it does reinforce the perceptions that become ingrained in our society that the positions of authority and responsibility belong to the male gender. It may be possible for us to rationalize that is not the significance of the use of those terms.

However, we have a society in which it means that little boys and little girls grow up with a certain perception of where each of them belongs in society. As the Parliament of Canada I believe it is not worthy of us to continue that perception.

Therefore I come back to my original point that it undermines my ability to perform on an equal footing in the House. I would ask Your Honour to take this question of privilege under consideration to determine what measures are necessary and to ensure that we take all steps necessary to make sure we are using gender neutral language.

[Supply, March 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I find it the hon. member's comments rather mean. He knows full well that these things are not included in the government's budget. It is very nasty of him to say things like that to Canadians, when he knows the truth. For example, the infrastructure program is but one phase of our economic strategy, which also includes investments in science and technology, as well as measures to help small businesses create employment.

The hon. member also knows that we have launched a project to review, as he mentioned, each government budget item, in order to identify what needs to be done to implement effective programs.

He knows as well that our budget includes many measures to eliminate the tax shelters he complained about. I do not object to hearing dissenting opinions in this House but, for the sake of our fellow Canadians, we must be honest.

[Supply, March 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the House and Canadians have had 10 years of promises that would have slashed, burned, cut and destroyed programs that would bring the debt and the deficit down. Has that happened? No, it has not.

We have presented a three-year program toward the first real reduction in the deficit that this nation has seen in many years. We are going to do it by cutting spending and we have done that dramatically in this budget. But we are also going to do it by increasing the prosperity of the country. That is what Canadians want us to do.

If the hon. member's roof was leaking, would he leave it until it collapsed and he had to replace the whole roof? If his foundation was leaking, would he allow it to fall to pieces before he replaced it? If there was poison in his water supply, would he allow his children to drink it? Of course not.

If necessary, would he borrow the money to fix those problems? Of course he would because he knows it costs far more to replace a broken roof, to replace a basement, or to heal a sick child than it does to fix the cracks.

[Supply, March 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, may I indicate to the Chair and to the House that government members speaking on this motion will be dividing their time for the remainder of the debate.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to rise in the House and address this motion. On February 22 the Minister of Finance tabled the government's first budget. It was a budget based on, as the minister said at that time, an unprecedented process of consultation with Canadians.

What we as a government have put before the House and before the Canadian people in our first budget is only a first step. It will not solve everything overnight but it will provide a basis that we can build on. This is not a simplistic unidimensional step. It is the first step to economic recovery, to the well-being of individual Canadians and to the elimination of the deficit.

We have listened to Canadians. We are pursuing our game plan and it includes jobs and growth. During the election campaign we made very clear the solutions we were proposing and we are following through on these commitments.

Members opposite would have you believe that they somehow hold some kind of secret solution. Yet their only solution is to cut. This is a scorched earth policy and we feel, frankly, that what Canadians said on October 25, 1993 was that they were burned enough by that approach.

One of the best examples of what can be expected from the government is a positive, constructive program, the infrastructure program. Infrastructure Works is a shared cost initiative which brings all levels of government together working on opportunities for Canadians, working on job creation, working on investing in the very foundation of our economic prosperity for the future.

Each level of government, federal, provincial and territorial, and municipal will contribute $2 billion for a total of $6 billion over the next two years. This is what Canadians want to see, governments co-operating to solve our problems, not governments at each other's throats, competing with each other. The program is also open to private sector investment in these public purpose initiatives, if such investment is useful and can assist local governments.

A federal share has been allocated to each province and territory based on a formula melding population and unemployment shares, a formula I might add that was agreed to by all first ministers in December. Each province and territory will match the federal allocation as will local governments.

Infrastructure Works is intended to speed the economic recovery while meeting the well documented needs of renewing and upgrading Canada's infrastructure. The program should help municipalities and communities use new, efficient and environmentally sound technologies as well as improve our competitiveness and productivity.

There has been a dramatic decline in what we have invested in infrastructure over the last few decades. In the 1960s the three levels of government invested 4.3 per cent of gross domestic product in infrastructure. This declined in the 1980s to 2.5 per cent.

Many members in the House and I have substantial municipal experience. We know from experience that a road not repaired and maintained today means one spends 10 times as much when that road falls apart. We know that allowing bridges to rust and collapse means a much bigger burden for the next generation than the cost of repairing that infrastructure today. We know that unhealthy water systems in our communities are neither in the best interests of this generation or the next, nor is it responsible of us to leave that burden to the next generation.

We have just started to renew the Great Lakes clean-up agreement with the province of Ontario. The province has stressed to us and the International Joint Commission has stressed the important contribution that this program can make to cleaning up our lakes and rivers by having sound water and sewage systems. These are not inconsequential projects now or for the future. These are a protection of our future.

There are communities right in this region that cannot develop their industrial parks because they still have old wooden sewers from the last century. Those are the kinds of investments that are going to be made under the infrastructure program. They will allow the communities of Canada to prosper and grow and provide employment to this generation and provide a sure economic future for the next generation.

This program is going to create jobs immediately. Directly up to 65,000 jobs will be created in the municipal infrastructure program and with indirect jobs many more than that. That is what the desperate people out there wanting employment, wanting a better future for themselves and their children, wanting to see the government doing, and that is what we are doing.

This is a program municipalities have wanted for 10 years. I was sitting on the national board of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in 1983. We were gathering information to demonstrate the deteriorating nature of the infrastructure of Canada and the negative impact it was having on our potential for economic growth and jobs and a better future for our citizens. Ten years ago the municipalities and the provinces agreed that this program was what was needed across our country. The government is implementing it and will make it a success for every community across the country. Yet that is the program endorsed by every municipality the members on the opposite side by this motion want to cancel.

They also want to pretend that this is new money we are spending. Liberals are responsible in government. We know that if we want to implement a new program, and Infrastructure Works is a new program, then we have to reorder our priorities and that is what we have done.

We have not increased spending, no matter what the members on the other side want to pretend, to create this program. We have changed other priorities. We have cut other spending programs because we know that this program is important.

There could be no more ideal time for this kind of investment. National unemployment is at an unacceptable level. This is a terrible waste of human talent, a constant stress on hundreds of thousands of households across Canada. Infrastructure Works will have a significant impact on unemployment.

The government believes it should keep its promises. We should put Canadians back to work. We should allow our communities to use the new and innovative technologies in the upgrading of water and sewage treatments that are going to provide new opportunities for Canada in the future.

This program is an investment in the future; in the future of individual Canadians, in the future of our communities and in the future of our nation.

[Parliamentarians' Compensation Report, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the President of the Treasury Board, I am tabling this morning, in both official languages, the report prepared by Sobeco, Ernst and Young on parliamentarians' compensation.

The report, entitled Parliamentarians' Compensation , examines the allowances and privileges of members of Parliament.

The government is referring this report to the Lapointe commission to review allowances of members of Parliament.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, perhaps I can give the hon. member some specifics on this history that I think we intend to defy. Since 1978, over a decade and a half, equal pay for work of equal value has been the law in this country but it is still far from the reality.

We intend to defy history. Why should this government be exempt from legislation that applies to every other employer in the country?

We intend to defy the tradition that has ensured that women are poorer than men throughout the country; that has ensured that women are concentrated in the lowest paying jobs in this country; that has ensured that the largest percentage of single parents, women, live in poverty as well as their children. We intend to defy those traditions.

The member has commented that the market has determined these things. He mentioned a personal example. It may be fine for his wife, if he wants to bring her into the debate this afternoon, to work for less than a living wage. It is not fine for a woman who has to support her children.

Perhaps the member can tell me why a dogcatcher gets paid more than somebody who looks after the welfare of children, twice as much I might say. He might have a reasonable explanation for that.

The fact is that we have traditionally had a society in which men have done most of the money making work and in which women have traditionally done most of the unpaid work. That unfortunately has carried over into the labour market in which the work most often performed by women is seen as less valuable; in which the salaries of women have been seen as peripheral to the economic well-being of the family. For many families that is no longer the case. The exploitation of women doing work of equal value for less pay is no longer acceptable. It is not.

The market does not always establish fairness. It is up to a society to take some leadership in establishing fairness.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I have the pleasure to inform the hon. member that I too have two daughters who work in professional jobs and I hope that their future will be a little more comfortable than what the previous generation had to put up with. So we share an interest in women's future prosperity. I think that the President of the Treasury Board clearly indicated in this House that pay equity is not an option. There is no choice between pay equity and fighting the deficit. The two are separate. We are looking for ways to correct that. As I just said,

we invited the unions to talk with us about finding a solution for pay equity. I hope that they will come and meet with us to pursue these discussions in order to come up with a solution finally. We did not use the deficit as an excuse for not solving the problem.