Catherine Bell

[Electoral Reform, February 19th, 2007]

moved:

Motion No. 262

That a special committee of the House be created to continue the work on electoral reform as outlined in the 43rd Report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs from the 38th Parliament and to make further recommendations on strengthening and modernizing the democratic and electoral systems; that the membership of the special committee be established by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and the membership report of the special committee be presented to the House within five sitting days after the adoption of this motion; that substitutions to the membership of the special committee be allowed, if required, in the manner provided by Standing Order 114(2); that the special committee have all of the powers granted to standing committees by Standing Order 108; that there be a maximum length for speeches by members of the special committee of 10 minutes on any single item; that the special committee be authorized to hold hearings across Canada; that the special committee be allowed to look into creating a citizens’ consultation group and issue an interim report to the House on this matter within six weeks of the special committee being struck; and that the special committee table its final report in the House of Commons no later than March 1, 2008.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a motion that seeks to continue the important work started in the last Parliament to follow up on the recommendations made in June 2005 by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and to move Canada forward on reforming our electoral system.

Motion No. 262 calls for the creation of a special committee of the House, as well as a citizens' consultation process to make further recommendations on strengthening and modernizing the democratic and electoral system of Canada.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the former leader of the NDP and long-standing parliamentarian, Ed Broadbent, who has been working on electoral reform for more than 50 years. Ed Broadbent was instrumental in the procedure and House affairs committee that made recommendations to the House, recommendations that were unanimously passed with the support of parties but were never acted upon.

I want to publicly thank Ed for his perseverance on the issue of electoral reform, to bring our country in line with most of the world's democracies to make Parliament more accountable to voters.

In a speech at Queen's University in March 2005, Ed Broadbent gave the following summation of why electoral reform is so necessary.

The truth is that the most seriously flawed component of our democratic society is our profoundly undemocratic electoral system. We have impartial courts and the rule of law, a Charter of Rights & Freedoms, a vigorous independent civil society and an independent press, but our electoral system is an outdated, non-representative, conflict-prone, gender discriminating, regionally divisive mess, bestowed to us from a pre-democratic era. The good news is that governments in six provinces have begun to embrace this issue and are calling for major reforms in their electoral systems. And with a minority government in the House of Commons, federal electoral reform, initiated by the New Democratic Party, has at last been put on the Parliamentary agenda.

I am pleased to carry on the work of Ed Broadbent and other NDP MPs like Lorne Nystrom and, once again, also in a minority Parliament, place electoral reform on the parliamentary agenda. It is possible to get work done in a minority Parliament and the time for electoral reform is long overdue.

People in my riding of Vancouver Island North and all across Canada want the House to move forward and decide how to reform or modernize our electoral system because our current electoral system is outdated and unfair. It has been in place for more than 100 years. When it was created, there were only two major political parties and now there are five. It came into effect before we had electricity, before women were persons under the law and before first nations had the right to vote.

In 1974, we made changes to Canada's political financing laws. We introduced the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 and the Access to Information Act in 1983. We changed parliamentary processes along the way, including the election of the Speaker by secret ballot and overhauled the Canada Elections Act in 1996. Further political financing reforms were passed in 2003, and in 2004 changes were made to candidate registration.

We have been studying the question of reforming our electoral system for over 25 years through various government task forces and royal commissions. We had the Pepin-Robarts task force in 1979, the Macdonald Royal Commission in 1985 and the Lortie Commission in 1992.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs did extensive study in 2004 and 2005, hearing many witnesses and travelling around the world to study other parliamentary systems. Its report to Parliament in June 2005 forms the basis of the motion I am presenting and that I am urging all parties to support.

In its Speech from the Throne in 2005, the previous Liberal government pledged:

To examine the need and options for reform our democratic institutions, including electoral reform.

In response to the 43rd report, the previous Liberal government said:

Nevertheless, it is essential for every democracy to take stock regularly, to ensure that all aspects of its system of governance meet the needs and aspirations of its citizens. The Government of Canada has a duty to build on Canada's strong democratic traditions by modernizing our democratic processes to ensure that they reflect the values and interests of Canadians.

Motion No. 262 calls upon the government to continue the work that was started in the last Parliament, to follow the recommendations of the procedure and House affairs committee's 43rd report to Parliament to strike a special committee to hold hearings across the country and to make further recommendations on strengthening and modernizing Canada's electoral system. However, the most important part of the motion is the creation of a citizens' consultation process.

Following the recommendations of the 43rd report, the citizens' consultation group would make recommendations on the values and principles desired in Canada's democratic and electoral systems. As Nathalie Des Rosiers, a witness at the 2005 procedure and House affairs committee, said:

There's a gap between Canadian values and results, and that troubles a lot of Canadians.

If we are to hear what Canadians want, then we must engage them at the grassroots level on the values that they want to see represented and design a system that meets those goals. Everyone counts and so should our votes but, more and more, Canadians feel that their voices and choices are not heard.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, in its report to Parliament in 2005, found that:

A major source of worry for many Canadians, and many Parliamentarians, is decreasing voter turnout in Canadian elections. It is a particular concern that young people, and certain ethnic and social groups, are less likely than others to vote.

Between 1988 and 2004, voter turnout dropped dramatically in federal elections. In 1988, it was 75.3%. In 1993, it fell to 69.9%. In 1997, we saw a further drop to 67%. In 2000, it was 61.2%. In 2004, only 60.9% of Canadians bothered to vote. Last year, in 2006, the turnout rose slightly to 64.7% but this is still not anywhere near acceptable.

The Law Commission of Canada, in its 2004 report “Voting Counts: Electoral Reform for Canada”, states:

For the past decade or so, Canada has been in the grip of a democratic malaise evidenced by decreasing levels of political trust, declining voter turnout, increasing cynicism toward politicians and traditional forms of political participation, and growing disengagement of young people from politics.

It contributes to the under-representation of women, minority groups, and Aboriginal peoples. Critics maintain that countries with first-past-the-post systems routinely under-represent women and minority candidates.

It prevents diversity within the House of Commons. As a result of regional concentration, disproportionate votes to seats, and an under-representation of women and minority candidates, legislatures within this system lack a diversity of voices in political decision-making processes.

This system favours an adversarial style of politics.

That is something that we see daily in this House.

The Law Commission further states:

--many citizens want to be involved, want to have a real voice in decision making, and would like to see more responsive, accountable, and effective political institutions.

This is something I have heard from many of my constituents and from people all across the country. Canadians are telling us that every vote should count. However, in the last election, 665,940 votes for the Green Party elected zero MPs, while only 475,114 votes in Atlantic Canada elected 22 Liberals. It took 89,296 votes to elect each NDP MP, 43,339 votes for each Conservative member, 43,490 for each Liberal and 30,455 for each Bloc MP to get elected.

When ordinary citizens feel disenfranchised from the process, they tend to not participate. They feel their votes do not count.

When we look around the world, we see that other industrialized countries have embraced a fairer system of electing their representatives. We can look at the example of other Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand, a longstanding Westminster democracy that adopted proportional representation in 1993. Nigel Roberts, in New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR, said:

--the change can be regarded as a good example of how to move from one voting system to another. It was done only after a great deal of research, debate and public consultation. Most experts on electoral reform would agree that major electoral reforms should not be undertaken lightly, and the move to...PR in New Zealand was certainly not undertaken likely.

New Zealand's Royal Commission on the Electoral System sat for over a year before releasing a detailed report in which it defined the following criteria for testing both first past the post and other voting systems: fairness between political parties; effective representation of minority and special interest groups; effective Maori representation, the Maori being New Zealand's indigenous ethnic minority; political integration; representation of constituents; voter participation; effective government; effective parliament; effective parties; and legitimacy.

At the same time, however, the royal commission stressed that no voting system can fully meet the ideal standards set by the criteria and pointed out that the criteria were not all of equal weight. New Zealand's parliament is an example of how we can have diversity. As Nigel Roberts again points out:

Six parties are represented in the [New Zealand] new Parliament, each in close accord with the share of the votes it won throughout the country as a whole; the system is highly proportional. There are now 15 Maori in the House of Representatives, and Maori are represented in the New Zealand Parliament in rough proportion to their numbers in the population as a whole. The same is true of Pacific Islanders, and the country's first PR election also saw the election of the country's first Asian MP. In addition, the overall proportion of women in Parliament rose from 21 per cent in 1993 to 29 per cent in 1996...Furthermore, voter turnout in New Zealand was even higher in 1996 than it had been in either 1990 or 1993.

There are many members of Parliament who know it is time to change our electoral system. In its throne speech, the current government talked about electoral reform, saying:

--this Government will seek to involve parliamentarians and citizens in examining the challenges facing Canada's electoral system and democratic institutions.

The Law Commission of Canada agrees:

While there is no single magic bullet that will instantaneously stimulate Canadians' involvement in the political system, a consensus appears to be emerging among political parties of all stripes, experts in electoral behaviour, and grassroots organizations that electoral system reform is a good starting point for energizing and strengthening Canadian democracy.

I urge the government to implement the recommendations of the 43rd report of the procedure and House affairs committee to have open, meaningful engagement with the citizens of Canada and have their values and principles reflected in an electoral system that works for all Canadians.

The people of Canada are concerned about many issues: climate change and the environment, fairness and affordability for working families, and the war in Afghanistan, to name but a few. I share their concerns and I believe that a fairer, more representative voting system will give us a government that is more responsive and accountable to their concerns.

The makeup of our Parliament should reflect the will of the voters and the diversity that is Canada. The time has come to change our electoral system for the better. Everyone matters. Every vote should count.

[Adventurer of the Year Award, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate two extraordinary individuals from my riding. Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei have been awarded the National Geographic 2006 Adventurer of the Year Award for their two year human powered world circumnavigation.The team used zero emissions travel to highlight issues of global warming and to inspire others to use non-motorized transportation.

Colin and Julie completed the expedition last May, 720 days of travel. Colin travelled 43,000 kilometres by rowboat, bicycle, canoe, ski and on foot, a journey that voyaged across three continents, two oceans and seventeen countries.

Julie travelled with him for most of that expedition, including rowing 10,000 kilometres unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean, making her the first woman to row across the Atlantic from mainland to mainland and the first Canadian woman to row across any ocean.

Congratulations Colin and Julie on receiving this award and on highlighting the issue of climate change.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Newton—North Delta talked a lot about child care. I somewhat agree with him that the Conservatives have not done anything to create child care spaces. All we have heard so far is their promise that in the coming year they will create some spaces. They seem to be following along the same lines as the Liberal Party in that respect.

I have been an advocate for child care for over 20 years. I have done a lot of lobbying and did call on the previous Liberal government to deliver on the national child care program that it promised in 1993 under Jean Chrétien's leadership. However, even after the Liberals won majority after majority and had a surplus of billions of dollars, no national child care program was delivered.

Why, in the face of all that, did the Liberals wait until the last minority Parliament to introduce a national child care program?

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in this debate today, especially with regard to women. I did not get an opportunity to ask a question of the previous presenter from the government side, but she talked about options for women to change their lives if they were in violent or abusive situations.

I know that her colleague who just spoke would want to tell us about what the government is doing and what those options are, because from my perspective what I have seen in my community is cuts to services for women. The $100 a month for child care really is not a child care program. It is a nice family bonus, but it does not do anything to create child care spaces. I also just heard that the unanimous voices of the First Nations Women Leaders Forum in British Columbia are calling on the government for systemic change to stop the cycle of abuse and poverty.

Would my hon. colleague comment on what the government is doing with options for change for women?

[Committees of the House, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I also would like to thank my hon. colleague for his passionate concern for the security certificate detainees in the Kingston Penitentiary. His ongoing work on this file is commendable. I would also like to thank him for raising this issue so that all Canadians can understand the travesty that is being inflicted upon these men.

I want to reiterate what a shameful moment this is in Canadian history. People are being held without knowing what the charges are. They are being held without the benefit of any assistance and without adequate provisions such as appropriate foods, their religious ceremonies, and all those things that make life a little more bearable in a place where no one wants to find themselves.

I want to let my hon. colleague know that people in my riding of Vancouver Island North have taken up the issue as well and, in support of these men, have started their own hunger strike. This is happening across the country.

I wonder if the hon. member could let the House and those people in my riding know about the work that he has been doing and how long he has been working on this issue to bring an end to this shameful moment in Canadian history.

[Climate Change Accountability Act, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak in favour of Bill C-377. I would like to start off by recognizing the incredible work done by the member for Toronto—Danforth, for his many years as a Toronto city councillor where he brought forward ideas to cut smog and pollution, and for his ongoing commitment in his role as leader of the NDP to make sure that Canada lives up to its commitments to the world on reducing greenhouse gases and addressing the crisis of climate change.

I would like to also recognize the Canadian public who for years have been calling upon the government to act, to clean up our air and our water, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ordinary Canadians are far ahead of us in recognizing it is long past time to take our promises to the world seriously. In 1992 at the Earth Summit, Canada urged the world to act on the looming crisis of climate change. We promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but we failed to act and instead, our emissions went up, not down. We not only failed to act, we failed our country and we failed our planet.

I want to thank the member for Toronto—Danforth for bringing this bill before the House. It lays out a plan to ensure that Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and creates an accountability measure to make sure that we follow through and meet those targets.

It is important to pass this bill because we are in a crisis. We can point to many examples around the world. Scientists have pointed out these examples, such as melting polar ice caps, bigger and stronger hurricanes in the south, and longer periods of drought in many places around the world. Many people in this House and in this country have probably seen Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, which follows the trend of global warming over many years and highlights some startling examples.

I would like to talk for a few moments about what I have seen in Canada in my riding of Vancouver Island North.

My riding is on the west coast of Canada and it is typically known as a rain forest. We jokingly refer to it as the wet coast. We do not worry about smog days because we have fog days. A few years ago we noticed our summers were getting longer and hotter. Cedar trees were wilting by the end of summer because of a lack of rain and because of the intense heat.

Because the forest is drying out more quickly, there is more likelihood of forest fires. While forest fires are nothing new in British Columbia, they usually happen in July and August, but last year we had our first fire on Vancouver Island in May, not very far from where I live. We counted ourselves lucky because there was no property damage; however, the birds, the deer, the frogs and all the other creatures that lived in that forested area perished or are without a home.

Another example of how our weather is changing is the Cliffe Glacier in the Comox Valley. It is the focal point of many beautiful postcards, as well as a source of cold water for the lakes and rivers that it feeds. For the last few years we have been seeing more and more of the mountain poking out of the ice as the glacier melts a little more every summer. It is an eerie feeling when I look up at that glacier in the summer and see rocks that have been covered for thousands of years. It makes me sad knowing that if Canada had acted sooner on its commitment, we would not be in this crisis.

The most startling example of climate change on the coast is in our oceans. For thousands of years people on the west coast have relied upon the oceans for their food, for their livelihood and for their recreation. Fishermen used to be able to count on returns of salmon at certain times of the year, but with the warmer rivers running into a warmer ocean, fish migration patterns are changing.

Last year, as an example, with the warmer water salmon were returning later to the streams to spawn and die as they usually do, but the streams were low due to a lack of summer and fall rains. Then when the rains did come, they came with a vengeance, flushing away everything in the river, including the tiny eggs in many small streams. This will have an impact for years to come. Couple that with the increasing acidity of our oceans due to carbon dioxide and the impact on fish habitat is enormous.

Yes, Canada must act. Those are just a few examples right here in our own backyard. I could list many others, such as the pine beetle infestation in the B.C. interior and melting in the Arctic which has a profound impact on wildlife and vegetation. I am sure there are thousands more examples we could point to for reasons that Canada must act quickly to address the now imminent crisis of climate change.

Bill C-377's short title is the climate change accountability act. It proposes measures to meet our commitments and creates an obligation for the environment commissioner to review and report to Parliament on our progress.

This is something we did not have in the past. There was no accountability of the previous government to live up to our commitments. Because of that, our greenhouse gas emissions went up instead of down. We are further behind many other countries. Canada can afford to live up to its commitments to the world. We are a rich country in so many ways. We have the technology to act.

In 2005 the NDP put forward a plan to help Canada act on its commitments to the world. It is called “Sustainability within a generation: A Kyoto plan to clean our air, fight climate change, and create jobs”. It would save future generations health, economic and ecological costs. It is a comprehensive plan to create jobs building clean renewable energy solutions right here in Canada, incentives to reduce energy consumption for businesses and homes, invest more in public transit and sustainable transportation, retrofit federal government facilities to reduce energy consumption, and cap large emitters with a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This plan is achievable and would put Canada on the path to reverse the growth of emissions. I am proud of our party's commitment to work in this House with other parties on Bill C-30 to put some of these ideas into action.

Ordinary families want to retrofit and renovate their homes to be more energy efficient, but the constraints of everyday living and the costs of conversion are out of reach for them. This is where government could help with subsidies for families. It is unfair to Canadian families who see the oil and gas industry, one of the largest CO₂ emitters, get government subsidies while those companies make enormous profits. It is unfair to the families who are working to make our environment a cleaner place to live.

I was pleased to see the recent announcements of the government to invest money in alternative energy solutions, more money for wind, solar and wave generated power. That investment is long overdue and falls short of what is needed to help Canada achieve its clean energy commitments. I will be watching the government carefully and reminding it that it also needs to live up to the commitments Canada made to the world.

In British Columbia there are no windmills, no wind generated power. We are the only province in Canada that does not have them and it is not for a lack of desire. There are small companies working very hard trying to implement wind, solar and wave generated power, but they need help from the government to make it a reality. Solar panels for homes are expensive and working families need assistance up front to purchase clean energy solutions, not after the fact.

If we are going to make real changes quickly, the government needs to make a stronger commitment to the people of Canada and the environment.

Again, I am pleased to support Bill C-377, an act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities, preventing dangerous climate change.

I am pleased to hear that the government wants to work together, because we have an obligation to act. We promised we would act in 1992. We promised we would dramatically cut pollution. We promised we would act in Kyoto. Canadians want us to act. Our children want us to act. Our children's future depends on us. We must act now.

[Canada Pension Plan, January 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard the concern from other members of the House this morning on what they see in their communities with regard to seniors living below the poverty line and the hardships they are facing.

I am glad the parliamentary secretary feels that the Conservatives were elected because they understood the concerns of seniors and that they did not want to see any seniors left behind. However, as we have heard from other members, seniors are falling through the cracks, and I have seen this myself.

We know that women who earn less then men are doubly impacted. Aboriginal women even earn less so there is a double whammy for them.

When I read that about a quarter of a million seniors are living below the poverty line, there is nothing in increases in income for the OAS and GIS. Could the parliamentary secretary tell me if the government will be increasing the supplements to seniors so they can live with dignity and have a better opportunities? We know that living in poverty also creates more health problems.

Could the parliamentary secretary commit that the government will raise the OAS and GIS for seniors?

[Canada Pension Plan, January 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her remarks on this important issue. I was lucky enough to attend a meeting the other day with seniors who were talking about health care and pensions. Some of the things they told me about their personal experiences and others that they represented included how seniors, women seniors primarily, were living in poverty, were having a hard time paying for their medications and were looking for affordable situations in which to live.

One of the things they talked about was home care, which is so desperately needed in my riding and in this country, as we have heard from other speakers, so I would like to thank the member for mentioning home care and how it relates to assisting seniors and some of the costs that seniors have to face.

Women especially are traditionally lower paid. We know that women still earn 73¢ for every dollar that men earn. With regard to improvements to our pension system and opportunities to access it in a more timely fashion with respect to the GIS, could the member elaborate on some of those things that would go a long way to assisting seniors and also would help them to live a dignified life in their old age?

[Marriage, December 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Burnaby—Douglas both for his comments and for all the work that he has done for so many years on this issue in standing up and speaking of equality rights for gays and lesbians. The speech he made was very moving, as were the beautiful vows that he talked about between such loving couples that he has the pleasure to know.

I myself have had the pleasure of knowing many gay and lesbian couples over the years. I have seen at first hand their love for one another and their pride in being able to share that love in a way that is equal in society, in being able to take part in marriage vows and to feel like they belong in society as equals with the rest of us.

I want to ask my hon. colleague one question. It has been over a year now since the passing of Bill C-38. Has he has seen anything that would give him any indication, as some people have said, that the state of marriage in Canada is in jeopardy, that there is a crisis in marriage? I want to ask him if he has seen anything to give him pause there.

[L'École Polytechnique, December 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, today we remember and mourn the 14 women killed in Montreal, women who have been murdered by their domestic partners and girls who have been violently killed.

Violence against women is still all too prevalent, stemming directly from women's inequality.

I and the women of Vancouver Island North also mourn cuts to services from Status of Women Canada. These are cuts women cannot afford. These cuts mean women of the Pacific DisAbled Women's Network headquartered in my riding will now have to travel not to Victoria or Vancouver but to Edmonton in order to consult with staff in the department. Not all women in Vancouver Island North live in equality. Their basic rights are not guaranteed, particularly if they are aboriginal women.

The NDP, along with the Canadian Labour Congress, believes that $2 for every woman and girl in Canada should be allocated for women's equality. It is not too much to ask for women who live in poverty, who live in fear or who need more, not less, from the government.