Dick Proctor

[Grain Transportation, November 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, despite the settlement at Prince Rupert, the real problem has always been in Vancouver with the grain workers' lockout that has been going on for over three months. Reopening Prince Rupert simply allows grain companies to ship the smallest crop in 30 years through that port and leaves the Vancouver folks high and dry for the next nine months. It also impacts prairie farmers who have plugged up terminals and are unable to dry tough grain.

My question is for the Minister of Labour. She has said she is urging the parties but there is one party that is not terribly interested in coming to the table--

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Egmont for his comments. I think parenthetically he is alluding to the point that I made, that I thought a lot of members on the government side were uncomfortable with their executive branch decision on this issue.

With regard to the specific question about the certificate, I believe that if we consulted with the medical community, the people charged with filling out these disability tax credit forms, we would find that they are very concerned about the fact that they are pretty much restricted to yes or no answers. There is little opportunity to put in sufficient explanatory notes that would allow somebody who was assessing a form at a CCRA office in Winnipeg or somewhere else to make an honest determination as to the condition of the individual. There is only the briefest amount of space for the doctor to respond. If there were more opportunity for the doctor to expand and explain the condition of the individual that he or she had seen, it may result in a happier outcome.

Our point is that the medical forms are simply too restrictive for that currently to happen.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to talk about the NDP opposition day motion. It is a pleasure because there are many people in my riding of Palliser who are very interested in this topic. They have come to my community offices to talk about their concerns and experiences with regard to the disability tax credit and the sudden decision by the government. These people had been declared disabled but must now reapply.

I congratulate the leader of our party and our critic on disability from Dartmouth for putting the motion forward. I also want to recognize the work that has been done by the Subcommittee on the Status of Persons with Disabilities. I know the chair, the member for St. Paul's across the way, is following the debate closely as I think are a number of the members of Parliament.

That subcommittee has done excellent work which unfortunately has been ignored by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and the Minister of Finance. Therefore it is doubly important that our caucus has brought this issue forward to remind Canadians and the House that we as a country are failing those who have received the disability tax credit. They need our help, not the back of our collective hands.

The great American song writer, Woody Guthrie, had a line in one of his songs about the kind of people who would take nickels from a blind man's cup. I was reminded of that when my colleague from Windsor West talked about the years that he had spent with the chapter of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Windsor, helping people who desperately need our assistance.

Unfortunately some of those people may be on the other side or may be working with the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. We maintain that they are harassing disabled Canadians.

Many people with disabilities encounter costs that the rest of us do not have to bear, as the member for Windsor West so eloquently noted. This may mean, for instance, that they need to have help in preparing their meals or help in getting dressed in the morning.

We know that about 200,000 Canadians who receive CPP disability benefits have also been eligible for a modest disability tax credit, $960, against the federal income tax they pay. This is not a lot of money for individuals. There have been problems with the credit because the federal government has been applying the regulations, as I have indicated, in the most restrictive way possible. Some people who have been denied the credit have gone to court and have won.

Six years ago a federal judge broadened the general scope of the restrictive tests that the government put people through by saying, “If the object of Parliament is to give to disabled persons a measure of relief that will to some degree alleviate the increased difficulties under which their impairment forces them to live, the provision must be given for a humane and compassionate construction”.

A humane and compassionate construction is something we have not seen from the government on this particular issue.

Last fall, CCRA sent letters, as has been pointed out, to 100,000 Canadians receiving the disability tax credit telling them that they would have to reapply in order to maintain that benefit. These letters were sent despite the fact that the individuals involved had been receiving the tax credit for years and despite the fact that opposition members from the Bloc Quebecois, the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservative Party had stood up and asked pointed questions to the appropriate minister of the day as to why the government was proceeding with those letters.

People now have to get a doctor's certificate and have to fill out a form all over again. Incidentally doctors often charge those people who do not have a lot of additional disposable income to spend in that regard.

As I indicated at the outset, we have received many calls in Regina and Moose Jaw from constituents who are frankly confused, frightened and angry about what has happened, people who know that their health has not improved. At the very least, it has been probably maintained and in many cases it has probably worsened. They are asking why in heaven's name they are being put through this kind of a torture chamber.

Our fear was that the government was using this bureaucratic process to force some recipients to give up their credit, and we believe that these fears have now been realized. About one-third of those receiving letters have been denied the tax credit because they are no longer considered eligible to receive it.

Then a few short months ago, at the end of August, the newly minted Minister of Finance announced that he would amend the Income Tax Act to write these new restrictions into the law. These changes to the Income Tax Act clearly reverse the gains that people with disabilities have made in court. I cited the 1996 decision. The minister has indicated that he intends to tighten the rules by restricting the definition of whether people are capable of feeding themselves. A tax credit will no longer be provided to someone who has to spend a great deal of time shopping or preparing food.

These narrow definitions mean that as long as people can manage to put an arm through a sleeve they will no longer qualify for the benefit. These are callous decisions. One individual said that people almost had to be dead now before they would receive the disability tax credit. I maintain that is not what was ever intended, but it is the way it is being interpreted.

A lot of people are saying that people with disabilities are being cut off. I would also like to emphasize that I met with a couple last week during our constituency week in my office in Regina. It is not just a matter of the fact that this couple's two sons have now been cut off and have been denied at all the appeal stages. It is also the fact that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency sent them a bill for more than $1,200 because they had been receiving the tax benefit. Suddenly it was deemed to be money that was owed by this couple for their sons who had previously been considered as eligible for the disability tax credit. That is just totally unacceptable. They came to my office and said that their collective decision was that whatever was required they would continue to fight because this was simply wrong, that it was inhumane and that something had to be done.

The government is doing a very good job of uniting not only opposition parties on this issue, but I think a lot of their own backbenchers, and the disability community is galvanized as never before. If changes are not made, this fight will grow and continue. I put the government on notice for what will happen if it does not wake up and realize that it has made a significant mistake and is perpetuating that mistake.

Another person who came to my office had been receiving the tax credit for 10 years as a result of a heart attack. Her tax credit has now been disallowed.

A woman in Saskatoon, who I spoke to at our convention on the weekend, said:

I am still waiting, as are many, for a response saying that I still qualified for the Disability Tax Credit. I qualified in previous years and believe, as do my doctors, that I still qualify...

I filed my taxes and expected over $3,000 in a refund based on the Disability Tax Credit. Instead, I was billed. I paid that amount in anticipation that someone would realize a mistake was made. The doctors I see know a heck of a lot more about me and my condition than some doctor that reads my tax files from Winnipeg.

These are comments from ordinary Canadians across the country and across my province. The government has to make the significant changes to address this problem and eliminate this crazy notion of having people who had already qualified for disability tax credits to reapply.

[Citizenship of Canada Act, November 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and take part in the debate on Bill C-18. First, I want to make some general comments and then I want to refer to a couple of specific examples in the riding of Palliser that could have a general application to a number of other members of Parliament from across the country.

There are several predominant concerns evident in the bill. It is an effective response to the issue of war criminals and perpetrators of human rights abuses who seek shelter behind Canadian citizenship. It is important to close loopholes and to close the doors to organized criminal activity. We must meet the level of security expectations in the post-September 11 atmosphere. Our caucus does not challenge these objectives.

We intend to ensure however that others are not unfairly denied citizenship for lack of due process or inadvertent error. We intend to ensure that there is one Canadian citizen with one set of rights and that Canadian citizenship is encouraged for all in an equal way.

As with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, there is much government talk of openness and welcoming, but we see here a bill that creates some barriers to the realizations of those worthy goals.

Overall Bill C-18 is similar to its predecessor, Bill C-63. There have been some improvements made in response to previous criticisms but there are also areas of concern that remain unaltered. Contrary to the spirit of clause 12, and we heard this in the House today during question period on the equality of rights and responsibilities of all citizens, there remains the inequitable treatment of citizens born here and those who have acquired citizenship at a later date. In addition to the language requirement and tests which are not applied to born citizens, the bill would permit the revocation of citizenship within five years but only for naturalized citizens.

The residency requirement may still be considered too stringent by some.

The language requirement and not being able to use an interpreter remains a proposal. Knowledge of one official language may indeed be a worthy objective in the settlement and integration of citizens, however in practice it may present a barrier to some otherwise qualified applicants. Those would include: older family members, homeworkers and refugees who may have been traumatized in a previous country.

Canadian citizenship is the highest right that we, as a democratic nation, can confer upon those living within our borders. These rights and responsibilities define the egalitarian and democratic values that we hold. No one has legal or political rights extending beyond citizenship. A citizen's right to vote and run for political office are our basic and fundamental democratic rights. The rules for defining citizenship run right to the heart of who we collectively are as a nation.

Canada's multicultural citizenship, our multicultural heritage, is unique and has become a defining characteristic of our nation in the eyes of the world. Certainly in my lifetime, the evolution of Canadian citizenship truly reflects our evolution as a society from our ethnocentric past to our multicultural present and future.

Since its passage the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has become instrumental in enforcing citizenship rights. We must ensure that this standard is rigorously applied, especially to something as fundamental as the citizenship act.

The wake of September 11 has presented the most significant challenge in recent years to our rights and freedoms as citizens. There are those who, in reaction to the horror, would severely restrict the rights and freedoms that this terror aims to destroy. We must carefully guard the balance between security and freedom in this defining legislation.

We believe it is unacceptable for some Canadian citizens to be singled out for discriminatory treatment. The rise in the occurrence of racially or religiously motivated hate crimes is profoundly disturbing.

We have raised in this caucus, for example, the recent case of Maher Arar, a 32-year-old Canadian citizen arrested during a stopover at New York's Kennedy airport in late September. He was travelling to Montreal from Tunisia. He was promptly deported by American authorities to Syria. That brought home just how fragile our citizenship rights have become in this electrically charged era that we are in.

Similarly, we have the well-known author, Rohinton Mistry, who was born in India. He has cancelled a speaking tour in the Untied States because he fears continuing harassment by U.S. airport security authorities. We find that regrettable and unacceptable.

Canada continues to rely on immigration. We have completed a parliamentary discussion and debate to finalize the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The government's stated objective is to increase Canada's openness to immigrants. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, earlier this year, reported and studied on that. Everybody on both sides of the House acknowledged that the future of Canada's prosperity depended on our success in attracting immigrants.

I want to speak about a couple of specific instances that have occurred in recent months in the community of Regina. By way of introduction the community offices that I have in both Moose Jaw and Regina probably have more immigration cases than any other category of cases that come before the capable staff who work in those offices. I am sure that is not a unique situation and that other members of Parliament would find that they have a similar intensity on this issue of immigration and trying to get people here on visitors' visas and the like.

The two specific cases that I want to indicate to the House are quite different, but both are troubling.

One involves a gentleman named Charlie Smoke, who is a native North American. He says that he was born in Ontario but does not have a social insurance number. He currently resides in Regina. He was working a few years ago at an inner city school, the Kitchener school. However the only way that he could be employed and on the workforce was to have a social insurance number, so he used his wife's number to qualify for work at the school.

He had never denied that he used his wife's social insurance number. He did not use it for fraudulent purposes or anything else. That was the only way that he could work in a school that had a high proportion of aboriginal students, and he was doing good work at that school.

However, on June 19, 2001, Mr. Smoke was visited by Citizenship and Immigration. His troubles began then and have continued ever since. Mr. Smoke asserts that the Canadian government's harassment is a continuation of colonial practices that have robbed indigenous peoples of their self-determination by usurping their land thus destroying their livelihoods and denying their self-identity.

The Canadian immigration department alleges that Mr. Smoke was actually born and raised in South Dakota and has come to Canada since then. The department tried to deport him last year but the Americans would not accept him when he was taken to the border crossing, so he was brought back. He was out on bail, which was posted for him last year.

He recently had his social insurance case dismissed. However he continues to struggle against the harassment by Human Resources Development Canada and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration officials in Regina. One wonders where this will end for Mr. Smoke. He is out on a speaking tour these days. There is a growing awareness of the issue of an aboriginal person who insists that the borders between Canada and the United States should not impact upon this individual or upon aboriginal peoples who were here long before those frontier lines were drawn. That is, in essence, the case of Charlie Smoke.

The other case involves a person of Algerian descent. His first name is Ahmed. He came to Canada in 1995 and sought refugee status from Algeria. He was in Toronto for a couple of years. He moved to Calgary where he married a Canadian woman and subsequently moved to the city of Regina where he continued to work for four years. He worked in a couple of upscale Regina restaurants as a cook and, like Mr. Smoke, never ran afoul of any of Canada's laws. His application for landed immigrant status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds was rejected.

In recent months he was brought in to see immigration officials to have his case reviewed. Immigration officials visited him at his home and insisted that his marriage was not bona fide, but a marriage of convenience.

I became involved in this case and spoke directly with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I was told by the minister that the department would be looking at Ahmed's case specifically. What I did not know was that on the very day the minister told me that when he was in Regina, Ahmed was brought in to the Canada immigration office in Regina. He was fingerprinted and cautioned, and told that the next time he would be picked up and probably detained while awaiting an extradition order.

He was so traumatized by this that Ahmed subsequently left the city of Regina. He continues to live in Canada. His place of residence now is the city of Montreal, although I do not know that for sure. He has committed no crime. His crime was that he wanted to apply for Canadian citizenship and to continue to reside and work in the city of Regina.

There continues to be harassment toward both Ahmed and Mr. Smoke with regard to citizenship. It raises the matter that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has correctly identified, that we have many people in this country who choose to come to Canada, who were not born in Canada, but choose to settle in the major cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. There are many Reginas and Moose Jaws across the country, places that need and would love to have increased population.

Here are people, Mr. Smoke and Ahmed, who have made contributions to their communities, have never had difficulty with the law except as it pertains to their citizenship rights, but certainly have never run afoul of the law in terms of any charges being laid. Yet they are being pushed away and rejected.

I agree with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that we need to find some way to bring people like these to less populated communities.

Saskatchewan has a population of just under one million citizens. It was just about that in the 1930s. The population of Saskatchewan has been steady for 70 or 80 years now around that basis. I think everyone in the province would like to see Saskatchewan grow and not remain stagnant. However it will grow only with an older white population. It will grow only with the assistance of a different outlook on immigration and by trying to direct some traffic to less populated communities. That is what we have been trying to seek in these cases.

It is terrific that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration convened a meeting last month involving his counterparts in the provinces and territories. It is absolutely astounding, practically incomprehensible that it was the first such meeting in 107 years. It speaks to the need for the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments to work together on this and see if we cannot develop some ways that people can be designated to come to other locations than our major Canadian cities. That is the concern we have.

To go back to the case of Ahmed, I am pleased that the minister is looking at the situation of a similar Algerian family that sought refuge in a church in Montreal. He says that he will deal with that. The indications are that the government is in the process of dealing with that. I am taking him at his word that whatever applies in the province of Quebec will also apply in the other provinces and territories and in the case of the Ahmed, who approached our office, that he will feel sufficiently protected to return to Regina and have his case heard there. Obviously he is at large in the province of Quebec and presumably would be unable to work there given the decision he made to leave Regina because of the threat of imprisonment and deportation to Algeria.

I think the government has badly misread the Algerian situation. It has argued that it is safe for people from Algeria to be returned to that country. Obviously the Algerians who are in Canada do not agree with the assessment. That is why they are seeking refuge in churches and leaving the Reginas to go to larger centres to disappear while this is being sorted out.

I encourage the government to look at this, deal with it and deal with it in a fair way that allows people like Ahmed, who has made a contribution in the City of Regina and wishes to continue to make a contribution in our community and our province, to have the right to do so.

[Supply, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, as I understand it there are two competing priorities on value added. I think it is fair to say that all politicians in the House, regardless of party, would like to see more value added, especially in the Canadian Prairies. It is one of the things that we were told was going to be a benefit of free trade and it has been pretty doggone slow in coming.

As I understand it, the difficulty with the situation in terms of pasta plants and the like is that the concept of single desk selling is price pooling, that is, everyone gets the same price for it. The problem is that if someone is then hiving off some especially top quality durum to go to a pasta plant, and if it does not seem to be viable for the company and the company says it has to have an incentive to buy the product, that seems to take away from the concept of price pooling. Therein lies the conundrum.

The Wheat Board says that it is continuing to work with these pasta plants and others who would like to do value added. Certainly this party would like to see that. It has not been resolved, but I do not think it is for lack of effort. I think there are a couple of competing principles. Maybe they can work it out. I do not know.

[Supply, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I was at Grand Prairie and I am glad the hon. member mentioned that. I was also in Grand Prairie in 1999 when the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food was present. That was a very obstreperous meeting and a completely different meeting than the one in February, 2002.

I do not recall the member being at the meeting in Grand Prairie, but my memory may be failing. I certainly remember the meetings and they were two entirely different meetings with very significant views that did not reflect the position of the Canadian Alliance on this issue today.

[Supply, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I was in Davidson on Tuesday, February 19, along with the hon. member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar. No, I am not a farmer. I grew up on a farm but not in Saskatchewan.

The more important point that the hon. member raises is about the organic farmers. In the letter I referenced earlier from Elmer Laird, he said:

I have been an organic farmer for over 30 years. In order to market my wheat and barley I have to sell my grain to the Canadian Wheat Board and then buy it back to do my own marketing. Over the years I have known many certified organic farmers who have lost huge sums of money on sales because they didn't sell to a grain buyer who was bonded by the Canadian Grain Commission. Once his product was on the truck and out of sight, the producer lost control.

On the question raised by the member about how difficult it is for organic farmers, by no means is it evident that the solution she and her party propose would have any better effect or result for organic farmers.

[Supply, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, no, I am not going to correct anything I have said. While it is true that in Vulcan, Alberta speaker after speaker did oppose the single desk selling and had other ideas about it, the hon. member for Wild Rose was not at the other meetings that we held in western Canada where other people just as vehemently got to their feet to defend the Canadian Wheat Board. That was the point I was trying to make in the earlier answer.

There is some very significant debate taking place on the Prairies about the future of the board and it ought to take place with the farmers and farmer organizations, and not MPs and political parties deciding this in the House of Commons.

[Supply, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thought that the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board put that question into proper context by saying that there is a genuine debate among farmers, some of them on one side of this issue on single desk and others for an open market or a dual market. The position of this party is that it should be up to the farmers to decide.

As I indicated, the board is having elections this month and five of the positions are up for election. If farmers so choose to elect people who believe in dual marketing or open marketing, then that is what they will receive.

It is not up to the members of the House of Commons or any political party therein to decide the future of this. This is a complex issue. Farmers know best in this situation and we should leave it up to them, rather than dictate to them what their future will be.

[Supply, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Calvin goes on. In reference to the current leader of the Alliance Party, he says:

It should be noted that when [this gentleman] was president of the National Citizens Coalition they tried to break the C.W.B. election process by breaking the rules that were put in place to run a fair and democratic election.

Even the agriculture critic for the Canadian Alliance does not escape in this letter, because it states:

It should also be noted that the C.A. is not a democratic party. Agricultural critic...said that even if all 10 elected directors want the C.W.B. to remain the single desk seller of wheat and barley, the Alliance would move to change the Board into a so-called voluntary marketing agency.

Mr. Calvin ends up by saying:

Because of the foreign control of our grain companies, a strong C.W.B. is more important than ever. Individual farmers would have very little power against the grain giants, therefore, I strongly suggest that the committee rescind this recommendation about C.W.B. marketing powers.

I want to also make reference to a letter that came in on the same subject from Elmer Laird, who farms in central Saskatchewan, because it is relevant to the dual marketing notion that has been put forward by the Canadian Alliance. This is something that I am not aware of, and maybe others are not as well, but is important to note that according to Mr. Laird:

It is true that when the Canadian Wheat Board was established it was in the form of dual marketing but the government of the day established a floor price for wheat of 52 1/2 cents a bushel at Davidson.

Mr. Laird goes on to say:

It couldn't have functioned without the floor price. However, a compulsory wheat board was established in either 1942 or 1943 which gave the Canadian Wheat Board total control of “board grains” in the market place. The board was then able to estimate the volume of product it would have for sale and develop long term contracts in some instances nation to nation.

In terms of the dual marketing, we have been there, we have done that. Apparently it did not work. It certainly will not work in the future. It will either be single desk selling or it will be open market; there is no in between.