Gilles Bernier

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I respect the points of my colleague from Nova Scotia. They were really just a comment. He referred to some of the comments the NDP member made earlier. I totally agree with my colleague from Nova Scotia.

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, when I talk about Canada as a country, natives are Canadians also. If there would be such a conference of all leaders, I believe aboriginal leaders should be involved.

I live four kilometres from the second biggest native community in New Brunswick. It is no fun to take a ride on that reserve and see how natives are living. Many have to live and feed their families on $68 a week. It is a disgrace to Canada for them to be living in such conditions.

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the motion proposed by my hon. friend from Shefford. I will be sharing my time with my good colleague from Chicoutimi.

Perhaps the most visible sign of poverty in Canada's cities is the growing number of homeless people. In the 10 minutes I have available to me I would like to discuss the cause of homelessness and the lack of adequate housing for many low income families. I will also show how this government has failed Canadians in need of housing and suggest some ideas on how we might begin to tackle this problem.

In the recently released Toronto task force report on the homeless, Dr. Anne Golden noted that there are four principle causes of homelessness. First, there are social factors that have contributed to the breakdown of families and other social support networks. Domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse and the alienation of individuals from family and friends have all added to the problem of homelessness.

Poverty as well continues to aggravate this problem. In recent years the incidence and depth of poverty have increased because of changes in the structure of the labour market. For example, Canada's unemployment rate continues to be about double that of the United States. As well, reductions in transfers from the federal government to individuals have left low income Canadians with fewer resources to pay for housing.

Third, many people who suffer from mental illness and addiction become homeless after being deinstitutionalized because communities lack adequate support programs. Inadequate discharge planning of hospitals and jails also results in people being released on the street with no support systems.

Finally, since this Liberal government was elected in 1993 the supply of affordable housing has shrivelled. The dwindling supply of low cost rental units and rooming houses, the withdrawal of federal support for new social housing programs and the abandonment of social housing by the federal government have all made affordable housing much harder to find.

All these factors have combined to send the numbers of Canadians who are either homeless or who lack adequate affordable housing skyrocketing in the last six years.

Ironically, the current finance minister, the man who has had the ability to address this problem for the last six years and who has done nothing, once promised that he would fix it. Yes, it is hard to believe, but the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard who has been Minister of Finance for the last six years once cared about homelessness in Canada.

In 1990 he co-chaired, along with the member for London North Centre, a Liberal caucus task force on the homeless. He told us that he was concerned about this important social problem. He and his Liberal cronies shuffled all across the country. They met with all the right groups. They said all the right things. They smiled for the cameras. They tried to look concerned. Then they wrote a flowery report. The finance minister said “Trust me. I have the answer. If you elect Liberals we can fix the problem”. We all know what happened. They got elected and promptly and conveniently forgot their promises.

Let us take a look at exactly what the finance minister promised to do for the homeless when he got the power. He said that housing is a fundamental human right. The Liberals promised to discuss housing rights at a first ministers' conference and they promised to enshrine in the Constitution, no less, the right to adequate shelter. What happened? When they got elected they said “Thanks for your vote” and they tossed out their promise.

The finance minister also promised to provide more money for housing to the provinces through the Canada assistance plan, now called the CHST. Guess what? They got elected and instead slashed provincial transfers by 40%. So much for the promises of the member for LaSalle—Émard.

They said we would get a new federal-provincial social program to assist the working poor with housing costs. It never happened.

They promised they would hold a national conference, bringing together federal, provincial and municipal governments to fix the problem. The Liberals still have not set a date.

The finance minister promised a few other things. He assured us that if Canadians elected a Liberal government he would increase funding for housing co-ops and look at new ways of using co-ops. He gave us his word that he would make surplus crown lands available below market value for low income housing. He said he would encourage private-public partnerships to build affordable housing. Get a load of this: he promised that he would eliminate substandard aboriginal housing by the year 2000.

If we were keeping score, so far the finance minister has hit zero out of eight.

I could talk all morning about the failures of the Liberal government, but that would not help solve the problem. Let us talk about some of the things we can do. This is a solvable problem which does not take brain surgeons to fix.

First, let us hold the national conference on the homeless which the finance minister promised nine years ago. I realize that there are those who will roll their eyes and say that we need less talk and more action, but I am not talking about a bunch of politicians sitting around, complaining about how awful a problem this is and that someone should do something about it. What I am proposing is that all three levels of government come together to devise and implement a strategy to address this problem. We need to identify measurable targets with time lines and divide up the task between the three governments with respect to their jurisdictions. And then we need to do it.

Second, the federal government needs to stop the downloading of social housing to the provinces. You cannot fix your house if you have given all your tools away and we cannot fix the housing problems if the Liberals have given up control over social housing. Let us be frank here. The decision to offload the responsibility for social housing to the provinces has been an unqualified disaster.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but if the housing minister had purposefully set out to royally screw up our system for providing affordable housing to Canadians he could not have done a better job than he already has. Half the provinces will not sign the agreement and those are the provinces with the vast majority of social housing units. The provinces that have signed are the smaller provinces which are also cash starved.

Let us not kid ourselves. Look at what happened to job training. The Liberals had this bright idea that they would transfer job training to the provinces. We all know what happened. The provinces gladly accepted the job training money and then had to use that money for hospitals, schools and social services because this same federal government cut those transfer payments by 40%. Now there is no more job training in Canada and the exact same thing will happen with social housing.

We can raise the supply of affordable housing in Canada, but that is only half the answer. We also need to address the income problem, and there are two things we can do. No Canadian who earns $10,000 a year or less should have to pay personal income tax. We need to raise the personal income tax exemption to $10,000, not the $7,900 the Reform member said we should raise it to. This will immediately put cash into the hands of low income Canadians. We need to create more jobs for those on the margins of society. Let us make it less expensive for employers to hire by reducing payroll taxes.

I reiterate that this is a solvable problem. Despite its promises the Liberal government has abandoned the homeless and allowed this problem to get worse. Some people may wonder why the Tories are interested in helping the homeless. Why worry about the homeless? None of them ever voted PC. If we think about what it means to be a Conservative, we will understand why this is important. We believe in family and in our communities. We are the party of nation building and we believe in equality of opportunity. Homelessness strikes at all these core beliefs.

If we can deal effectively with these issues it will solve problems in our families. It will strengthen our communities and our country. It will ensure that Canadians who have been forgotten by the government will once again have access to the same opportunities as everyone else. This is why we need to act now.

[Homelessness, February 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, what the minister is talking about is not enough for the Canadian homeless. I know the Prime Minister always likes to speak to his homeless friends.

Why did the Prime Minister not speak to the homeless people this morning who travelled to Ottawa to meet with him today, although it is a great day for skiing?

Did the Prime Minister discuss homelessness with the premiers last week? If not, when will he meet with other levels of government to devise a comprehensive plan to solve this serious problem?

[Homelessness, February 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in 1990 the current finance minister chaired a task force on the homeless. He promised a Liberal government would hold a national conference on the homeless and provide more money for social housing.

Nine years later, like so many other broken Liberal promises, all the task force recommendations have been forgotten.

Given that the number of homeless Canadians has skyrocketed since this government took office in 1993, will the Prime Minister commit today to new measures to reverse this serious problem?

[Tax On Financial Transactions, February 3rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the motion of the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle on whether we should enact a new tax on financial transactions.

During the Christmas break I had the opportunity to travel throughout my riding and talk to many of my constituents, as I like to do whenever the House is not sitting. I also held a number of town hall meetings and many private meetings where my constituents voiced their concerns on a number of issues. They told me that they need more money for better health care. They said they need more jobs and better opportunities in rural Canada. Many people also told me that politicians need to get to work to solve our national unity problem.

In all of my travels in the last six weeks and in all of my discussions with constituents not one single person said that what this country needs is a new tax. Since I was elected in June 1997 I cannot think of one single time when any voter asked me to raise their taxes.

I read several newspapers every day. I also look through many press clippings. This may be hard to believe, but I cannot recall ever seeing an article or an editorial calling on the government to raise taxes or to bring in another tax. Yet we are discussing how we can take even more money out of the pockets of hard working Canadians.

I have heard other members talk ad nauseam about James Tobin, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian financial crisis. I will talk about why introducing a new tax is a bad idea.

It is important for members on all sides of the House to remember that when taxes go up there are very real consequences on the lives of every Canadian. Whenever I hear a politician suggest that we should increase taxes I think of a gentleman from my riding by the name of John Minard. John Minard did not come from a wealthy family. He did not always have an easy life, but he made the most of his life and shared his successes with others.

John built a successful building supply business that employs his family and many members of his community. He and his family worked very hard at making this business successful and at making sure that the family's needs were always looked after.

John was usually the first one at work in the morning and the last one out at night. He worked six days every week to make sure that his family and his employees had a job to go to and that their bills were paid. However, John Minard did not stop at providing for his very large family. John always felt that he should give something back to his community. Mr. Minard gave time and money to minor hockey, to baseball and softball for children. He was involved in the local Rotary Club and he always had money for the Christmas Miracle for Kids.

Unfortunately, John Minard is no longer with us. He passed away just over a year ago. I bring up his name not just to pay tribute to this good man, but to make a point to my hon. friend from the NDP. There are many John Minards in every community around this country. All across Canada there are people who work days, nights and weekends to make sure their families have enough to eat. These same people are the ones who always have a few dollars for the scouts, for the hospital drive or for many other worthy causes in their communities.

What I want us to consider before we forge ahead and raise taxes is this. Whatever project we would spend this new money on, we are taking money away from the John Minards of this country. Is this project important enough that people like John Minard should have less money to feed their families? Is getting money for whatever whim happens to strike members of parliament this week so important that we should deny that money for all the kids in John Minard's community who benefited from his generosity? I do not think so.

Yes, I understand that the hon. member thinks it would be a neat idea if we could get all of the countries and all of the principalities of the world to agree to do something about the nasty currency trader, but that tax fails the John Minard test.

Lots of Canadians buy Canada Savings Bonds and lots of Canadians save for their retirement. Those are the people who would have to pay this new tax. Is it more important to bring in this trendy new tax just so we can say “We showed those money traders in Singapore who is boss”? Or is it more important that the kids who play minor hockey in Woodstock, New Brunswick still have people like John Minard and those who have come after him who they can count on to help support their communities? In my opinion, I say let us support the hard working generous people like John Minard in our communities and take a pass on this tax.

[Parliament Hill, December 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in a news report this morning the public works minister said that the auditor general is completely wrong in saying that the Hill renovations are way over budget.

In March 1997 the minister submitted a construction plan to Treasury Board showing the cost of major renovations at over $750 million.

Does the minister want us to believe his March 1997 plan or his September 1998 plan?

[Parliament Hill, December 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am talking about Mr. Glen Duncan. I will quote what the Prime Minister also said: “Every minister in the cabinet that I will be presiding over will have to take full responsibility for his department. If there is any bungling, nobody will be singled out”.

The cost of parliament renovations are out of control, but the minister is more interested in hanging his own staff out to dry.

Will the Prime Minister direct his public works minister to take full responsibility for these cost overrides?

[Parliament Hill, December 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister said in 1991: “The rule is simple. You take the blame when something is wrong. You do not finger anybody else but yourself. This is what a person of dignity does”.

Does the Prime Minister support the decision of the public works minister to not take the blame for cost overruns on Parliament Hill renovations and to instead blame a civil servant and ruin his career?

[Parliament Hill, December 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that the minister will get a copy, because Stephen King himself could not have written a better novel than the minister's Preserving the Hill .

Tuesday, the auditor general said that the cost of renovating the parliamentary precincts would reach $1.4 billion and that it was urgent to provide a long term comprehensive plan that would include all renovations, and not only the minister's pet projects.

How could the minister not mention in his report on the renovation of the parliamentary precincts the hundreds of millions of dollars referred to by the auditor general?