Michelle Dockrill

[National Housing Act, April 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to comment on the amendments to this legislation, Bill C-66, dealing with the mortgage insurance function of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation put forward by my hon. colleague from Kelowna.

As we debate the legislation, it is important to remember the original reason for CMHC's existence. It was at the height of the depression in 1935 that the federal government got involved in housing with the Dominion Housing Act. This involvement continued during the second world war with the Wartime Housing Corporation which was set up to address the housing needs of war workers. The CMHC was created in 1946 to address the housing needs of returning soldiers. The CMHC enabled thousands of Canadians to live in decent, safe, affordable housing by building housing or providing mortgage insurance.

Today, if one believes the government, CMHC's role in making housing affordable for Canadians is no longer required. The Conservatives got CMHC out of building new social housing in 1991. More recently, the Liberal government has tried to download its responsibilities for social housing to the provinces. Now, with this legislation, the role of CMHC in providing mortgage insurance for social housing or to people who may not otherwise be able to buy a house is under attack.

In the past, CMHC has been able to offer insurance on 100% of a mortgage loan for co-operative and non-profit housing. Without this support, there would have been very little co-op or non-profit housing for low and moderate income Canadians built in Canada, according to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada.

CMHC programs have also meant that many Canadians who could only dream of buying a house have become homeowners. It has played a particularly important role in areas which may be ignored by private insurers, remote and rural areas and first nations.

Now with this bill, which we in the New Democratic Party feel commercializes CMHC, the role it played in the past, financing the construction of social housing and opening up the possibility of homeownership to Canadians of modest means, may be lost.

In the past, when CMHC suffered a loss in underwriting a mortgage, the federal government absorbed that loss. Under this legislation, CMHC will have to absorb any losses from underwriting itself. Absorbing losses may force CMHC to deny mortgage insurance to high risk applicants such as people with limited means.

How can the government justify reducing the role of CMHC? If all Canadians had access to decent, safe and affordable housing I would see the sense in the bill. If the provinces had sufficient resources to meet the housing needs of Canadians I could accept that there were other governments or agencies that could fill the gap. However, that is not the case.

We have recently seen the government give the responsibility to the Minister of Labour to look into what we feel in the New Democratic Party is a national disaster; that is, homelessness in the country.

The generation entering the workforce today knows it is the first one in decades that will have lower real income than the generation that came before it.

Is the government trying to tell us that people in their twenties will not need the support their parents did? If members of the government are doing that, then I can assure them they will not be believed. Are they telling people trying to find a way to afford to buy their own home that there are agencies other than the CMHC which will offer service to higher risk customers? I would hope the government has more respect for the intelligence of Canadians than to try to suggest that.

The role of the CMHC as a bulwark against recession is also threatened. Currently, because it can underwrite mortgages in poor market conditions without risk, the CMHC can encourage housing development at a point in the market cycle when the market discourages it.

Commercializing CMHC's mortgage insurance will force it to weigh risk according to market cycles. Thus, it will no longer be able to play a valuable counter-recessionary role in the economy.

I realize, and this might explain the attitudes of some of my colleagues, that in relatively prosperous urban areas the loss of the service that the CMHC has been able to provide may not be noticed. However, in many of the communities I represent in Cape Breton, and thousands of similar communities across Canada, it would be a very serious blow. That is why I am disappointed to see the amendments put forward by the member for Kelowna. The amendments the member has moved do nothing to ensure that the CMHC is able to meet the housing needs of all Canadians. What they do is respond to the concerns of GE Capital, a large American owned multinational which is in competition with the CMHC.

When we vote on these amendments the decision we have to make is who comes first, a foreign owned multinational or Canadian families?

My party members know which side they are on. We will be voting against these amendments.

We should be ensuring that the CMHC is able to do what it was set up to do, that is, to work to improve the availability of decent, affordable accommodations for all Canadians. It is not only our responsibility, it is our duty to Canadian families.

[Pensions, April 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-78 is about a basic principle: Who owns pension funds? Most Canadians agree that pensions are delayed earnings and belong to the workers. At one point the Liberals believed this too.

In 1986 a Liberal member spoke on pension legislation and said:

Those pension funds should be solely directed toward the payment of pension benefits to retiring and outgoing workers.

Last night that member, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, proved how much value we can place on the words of a Liberal in opposition. She could have voted to protect the rights of members of the armed forces, public employees, RCMP members and their families. Instead, she voted for legislation to take away their pension surplus and turn it into a personal account for the Minister of Finance.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage got it right in 1986. Pension funds and any surplus belong to the workers. The federal government should set an example for other employers. Instead, the government is ramming through legislation that tramples the principle for which people have fought for decades.

[Employment Insurance, April 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, government reports have finally confirmed that women and young people have been hit the hardest by the changes to the EI.

The government's own figures show EI claims by women are down 20% since the last changes. They also show only 44% of Canadian women are now eligible for maternity benefits. More than half of Canadian women do not qualify.

If the government is not interested in changing the EI legislation, what will it do to address the discrimination against women that it created and that its report has now acknowledged?

[Division No. 360, March 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it would be a lie for me to say that I am happy to be standing here in this early morning light trying to convince this Liberal government from riding roughshod again over the backs of Canadian workers.

Why is it that it always seems to be the Liberal government that has the most difficulty with the working people of this country organizing and standing up for their rights as equal citizens of this great country? The Liberals, despite their lofty rhetoric, have always been the first to turn their guns, in some cases quite literally, on Canadian workers.

I look to my own island of Cape Breton and talk to people of my grandparents' generation. They remember the strikes of the twenties, thirties and forties. They remember a Liberal government that sent in soldiers to guard the property of British mine owners against the men who had worked and died in the pits, and that ordered Canadian soldiers to shoot Canadian workers on June 11, 1925.

It is a transforming experience for any community to have the army that is sworn to protect you ride down your city streets with guns drawn and blazing. Because you are a worker, because you refuse to stand the gaff of a government and society that treats you as a slave to foreign capitalists, you are now an enemy of the country you love.

Perhaps this is why Cape Bretoners have maintained a long and honourable tradition of union activism and have always been quick to speak out against oppression and exploitation.

It is that constituents from my riding support the Public Service Alliance of Canada members, the men and women who have in their hands the fragile structure of our public service; our health care system, our parks and national monuments and the agencies that connect Canadians to their government.

Over the past seven years these people have been on the front line as the Liberals here in Ottawa sold off the family silver to pay off the deficit. Not that that fight was not an important or necessary one. But why is it that the Liberal Party always seems to think that crises must be solved by attacking the middle class and working people? Why is that when they are presented with any dilemma they feel that they, the members of the private gentlemen's clubs of Ottawa, should create policies which the working people from coast to coast to coast are forced to pay for?

It is not the members of the government who have had to endure the cuts to health care. They have not had to endure the effects of their cuts to government departments where regular Canadians must often wait weeks before their case is dealt with by a stressed and overworked PSAC member. They have not been forced to see the effects of their cuts on their children in the schools. Not so for most children who endure leaking roofs, old books, and teachers whose class sizes go up and up as their colleagues are fired or pushed into early retirement.

No, it is a remarkable thing about the Liberal Party, this ability to hurt regular citizens and then to tell us that it is all for our own good. When banks pay not one penny in income tax, a single mom with a low paying job pays thousands. But that is for her own good. Telling a senior citizen that because of cutbacks his drug plan will not be processed on time, that is for his own good.

It is strange that the Liberal Party is viewed as the party of the centre in this country because when I look at its history I see a party that, when necessary, takes good ideas from wherever it can find them. I see a party that on its own has never had a good idea, that has never had any ideas beyond the absolute necessity of winning election after election, principles, policies and decency be damned.

I come from Nova Scotia where we have been cursed by a system of political patronage that could compete with the southern United States. We are used to having our roads paved if we vote the right way and having them torn up if we vote the wrong way. We are used to seeing the graveyards send ringing endorsements of Liberal candidates. For Liberals in my province, short term jobs with a Liberal contractor, just enough to qualify for EI, are the Liberals' ideas of good social programs.

That is why I have a tough time stomaching this government's endless speeches about how it is helping Canadians do this and that, how it has made life so much better for all of us, and how we should be grateful for the stewardship it has provided us.

Should my constituent who was refused federal housing assistance be happy for the piece of plastic sheeting that she uses as a roof for her trailer? Or the man who needs to decide between paying the rent that keeps him off the streets or paying for the drugs that keep him alive, should he be happy for that?

No doubt many people are happy with this government, the people that are in the top 1% income bracket who run the corporations and own the banks that give such huge donations to the Liberal Party every year. Those people who think Brian Mulroney was too progressive and too tough on business are thrilled with this government. Of course they are.

Instead of government of the people by the people for the people, we have a government of the people by the Liberals for the Liberals. They just cannot stand it when we the people say that we are fed up with that kind of government, when we want something that is for all the people, not just those fortunate enough to inherit fortunes from the shipping industry, an example that just happens to spring to mind.

Then the Liberals start to do the only thing they know how to do, they lash out. Just as they did on June 11, 1925 in Cape Breton when the troops ran down women and children in the streets. Just as they did in 1997 in Vancouver when Canadian students became the enemies because they were angered that their government supported and defended brutal dictatorships. They too have learned what it is like to have the Liberals decide they are the enemies of their government.

Now we have the strike by the PSAC workers who are upset that they are paid one wage while their contemporaries are paid more or less depending on where they live. What is so bad about that? It is a case of one rule for one and another for the other. While lower ranked staff are paid differential rates, their managers are not.

Here is a challenge for the Liberal members. If they are so supportive of regional discrimination as the President of the Treasury Board says he is, how about they volunteer here and now to have their salaries decided based on where they live. When I look across the way, it is no surprise that I do not see any takers. Maybe they are too tired to jump on board, or maybe deep down they see the obvious, that this issue is not what the government says it is about.

It is not about workers trying to sabotage Canada's public service. It is not about radical trade unionists trying to pull down the government. All this is is a group of Canadians supposedly protected under Canadian law and the Canada Labour Code. They exercised their rights to free and fair collective bargaining and they waited year after year for their employer to sit at the table with them and discuss demands that seemed obvious in their validity to most people. Equal pay, equal standards. What is so hard to deal with in those four words?

Equality has gone out of favour in this country. Now this government, not happy with making the rich richer and the poor poorer, has decided to create artificial divisions from province to province, territory to territory. No, this is not a surprise. We expect nothing different from this government.

That is why I am proud to sit on these benches, a member of the party that introduced universal health care and pensions to Canada, the party that believes in those things because they are right and not because it was electorally convenient to adopt them a few years ago. It is a party of conviction and principles and most important, a party that supports Canadian workers.

[Criminal Code, March 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government has misled Canadians about Cape Breton Island.

Since Liberals decided to close the door on my home two months ago they have spread convoluted and inaccurate information. Let us look at the facts and not at Liberal rhetoric. Just over $1 billion have gone into Devco and $5 billion has come out, which is a five to one return on the public's investment. No stockbroker would sneeze at that.

The men who worked hard and paid taxes will not receive benefits. Our tax dollars will go in and nothing will come out. It is Liberal financial planning.

For every job lost at Devco another three will disappear from the private sector. Picture the impact in towns where unemployment is already over 40%.

This economic vandalism is all the more upsetting when looking at the reality of Cape Breton coal. The government has tried to say that $1 billion was wasted on Devco. It conjures up images of lazy workers and inefficient operations. What it does not say is that most of the money spent on Devco went on cleaning up sites the government inherited from the private mining companies which ran Cape Breton like a private empire for 200 years. When they bailed out they left the taxpayers the bill.

It has nothing to do with inefficient workers but everything to do with a government that did not have the spine to stand up to foreign companies and the big banks that backed them.

The truth is that Devco's coal mining operations, stripped of the clean-up costs and the numberless failed economic development schemes hatched by the government, actually made money. That is right. Do we hear about that from the government's spin doctors? Do we hear how Devco miners are known to be the best in the world or how Devco's employees have provided power for Nova Scotia and cash for their communities? No, of course not.

All we hear are more derogatory stereotypes, more contempt. Now, to add insult to injury, the government has announced its latest plan to revitalize our economy. There is $40 million for the social research and demonstration corporation, $40 million for a corporation based in Ottawa hiring Ontarians to study Cape Bretoners. What an insult.

I want to be on the record opposing yet another Liberal patronage gift. I want to be on the record condemning money for Cape Breton being spent in Ottawa. Just as the books were fudged with Devco and whole communities demeaned by slander and innuendo from the government, so now we see the future: more money for friends of the government, more money for Ontario.

I hope the government will have the courage to admit the obvious truth, that it thinks of Atlantic Canada as nothing more than a convenient way to channel money from the taxpayers to its friends. The government should stop studying Cape Bretoners and start listening to us. We want honesty. We want accountability and we want to control our own destiny.

[Families, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, what Canadian mothers need is the freedom to choose between working at home with their children and working outside the home for pay.

Reform members believe the only barrier to women staying at home is the tax system. The fact that the government's changes to employment insurance prevent many women from even getting maternity benefits escapes them.

Canadian women want to know when will the government take the first steps toward allowing women a real choice and support them in their choice by repealing its anti-family changes to employment insurance?

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore.

If I were to summarize this bill in one word it would be destructive. It is destroying the hopes and dreams of Canadians who can only imagine living in decent housing and who see this bill as the final step away from any chance of their dreams being fulfilled.

These are people from across Canada who can talk of the difference social housing has made in people's live. However, as the member of parliament representing the community of Reserve Mines I feel I have a unique perspective on what we will lose if this bill is allowed to go through. It was in Reserve Mines that the first housing co-operative in Canada was built. At one time people in Reserve Mines were forced to rent houses from the mining company that were overpriced and often substandard.

Owning their own homes was a dream many thought was unachievable. However, with the encouragement of their parish priest, Father Jimmy Tomkins, the co-operative that the people of Reserve Mines formed succeeded in planning, financing and building houses for its members. For people who had never thought they would have a decent home for themselves and their families, it was a dream come true.

The dream of living in well maintained affordable homes that inspired the people of Reserve Mines in 1938 continues to be the driving force behind efforts to build and maintain social housing. Unfortunately in the last few years the federal government has been doing its best to kill that dream.

On the surface Bill C-66 appears harmless. The government has attempted to portray this bill as little more than a housekeeping measure to simplify the current legislation, remove unnecessary restrictions and improve the flexibility of the CMHC. To use an old saying, the devil is in the details. There are a number of details to which this government is not keen on drawing attention. It is these details that administer the coup de grace in the Liberal government's retreat from social housing. They pave the way for the privatization of social housing in Canada.

We have already seen the first step in the destruction of social housing in Canada with federal downloading. Every province except Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia has had the complete social housing portfolio dumped on them. It is disappointing but not surprising that my own province of Nova Scotia was the first to agree to the downloading. Housing activists warned that the compensation offered by the federal government for taking over its housing responsibilities would not be enough in the long term but, as with DEVCO, a small pile of cash persuaded the Nova Scotia Liberal government to bend over backwards to capitulate to Ottawa.

In contrast, New Democrats in British Columbia have held out against the download. They have looked at the long term costs of downloading and they know the federal government has an important role to play in housing. I know housing activists appreciate the efforts of British Columbia to get the federal government to live up to the commitments made in the many operating agreements it signed with individual non-profit housing providers across the province.

In the provinces that have accepted the downloading we have seen that the end result is abandonment of social housing. For instance, the Filmon government in Manitoba has made clear its intention to gradually withdraw all funding from social housing. In my own community we see the effects of abandonment of housing by the federal government.

The Open Door shelter is one of two homeless shelters in Sydney. The building it is in is 60 years old and is in need of repair. In a region where the real unemployment rate is 40%, there is not a lot of money to go around. Since the federal government is not providing support for the community, the staff and board of the shelter must go elsewhere to look for money.

In the last few months I have had constituents coming to my office desperate for help. There are people in my riding who are living in homes with plastic sheeting for a roof. They are looking for help from the federal government and all too often there is none.

Now the federal government is preparing to take the final step toward abandoning any responsibility or obligation for responding to housing problems in this country.

Current statutes contain very clear definitions of what is meant by terms like public housing project or eligible contribution recipient. This bill eliminates these definitions from the act and puts them at the discretion of CMHC. This opens the door for private, for profit corporations to be recognized as social housing providers. This bill also eliminates the statutory requirements for social housing to be safe, sanitary and affordable. These are currently minimum requirements for social housing units. Now this Liberal government apparently feels that getting rid of these requirements will, to use its language, remove unnecessary restrictions.

It would be nice to believe its intentions are honourable. It would be nice to believe that the maintenance of social housing projects across Canada is so good that including any minimum standards in the legislation is redundant.

Unfortunately the evidence points to another, nastier conclusion. The reason the Liberal government is getting rid of these requirements is so it will not be required to live up to them.

The government has tried to justify getting rid of these definitions on the grounds it needs flexibility. According to it, dumping minimum standards for housing is just a little housekeeping measure.

What I want to know is exactly why requiring homes to be safe, sanitary and affordable is so restrictive. Is the government trying to tell us it needs the flexibility to allow people to live in fire traps, to allow conditions where diseases develop and spread, to raise rents through the roof?

Either one believes all Canadians should have a right to decent, safe, affordable accommodation or one does not. By removing these requirements the government is saying it does not think the homes of Canadians should have to meet even the most minimal standards of safety, sanitation or affordability.

I would also like to touch on the proposed changes to mortgage insurance. Under the current CMHC act, if the CMHC takes any losses when it underwrites someone's mortgage, the federal government absorbs those losses. This enables CMHC to underwrite mortgages for people who cannot get mortgage insurance from banks such as people with low incomes, people with poor credit ratings and people in remote areas who do not have access to a bank or credit union.

What the government is proposing is that CMHC will have to absorb any losses from underwriting mortgages itself out of the mortgage insurance fund. Having to absorb any losses itself may force the CMHC to deny mortgage insurance to high risk applicants. This will exclude applicants with low incomes.

Under the current mortgage insurance system the CMHC acts as a bulwark against a recession because it can underwrite mortgages in poor market conditions without risk. This encourages housing development at a point in the market cycle where the market may discourage it. This will change with the commercialising of CMHC's mortgage insurance. CMHC will now be forced to weigh risk according to market cycles. Thus it will no longer be able to play this valuable counter-recessionary role in the economy.

Now we come to the real reason for these changes. It is well known that GE Corporation of the United States, which has large interests in the insurance industry, wants to expand into Canada. It is well known that it has been lobbying the Liberal government for the commercialization for CMHC's mortgage insurance to make this possible.

In this bill, the agenda of GE seems to have been put ahead of the needs of Canadians. According to the government, there was a risk that if it did not make the changes in this bill, GE could have forced the changes using NAFTA. In which case why, if NAFTA is such a fundamentally flawed agreement, was this government willing to sign it in 1993 and why has it not tried to change it since?

I would like to touch on what this bill says about the real agenda of this government. In the last few months we have heard regular expression of concern from this government about the problem of homelessness. The recent announcement that social housing would not be transferred to the province of Ontario was portrayed as an attempt to protect social housing in that province.

This bill proves that all the lip service the Liberal government has paid to the problem of homelessness was nothing but hot air. Homelessness has skyrocketed since the Liberal government came to power. More and more Canadians are freezing to death on the streets. This bill could have addressed these problems. Instead it will make things dramatically worse.

[Judique Creignish Consolidated School, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today, after one week, parents ended their occupation of the Judique Creignish Consolidated School, but the issues that drove them to the desperate act of staging the occupation remain unresolved.

Judique is not alone. Last weekend students and parents in Inverness formed a one kilometre human chain to express concern about the future of their schools. In Richmond County parents and students are worried about the site of a new high school.

Once again the federal government has created a budget squeeze with its cuts to transfer payments. This is combined with a shiftless provincial government more interested in lining its friends' pockets.

It is another example of the government cutting off an arm and then telling the person to be grateful when it gives them back their hand. It is typical of the contempt with which the Liberals in Halifax and Ottawa treat rural areas, areas most affected by the cuts to education and other services.

In this case the provincial government is trying to tell us that the school whose graduates include Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac is to be closed so students get a better music program. The Grammy count for the graduating class must be down this year. I take this opportunity to express my support—

[Division No. 332, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, how has the Liberal government misled Cape Bretoners on Devco? Let me count the ways.

The Minister of Natural Resources said in this House on many occasions “There is no plan to shut down Devco”. The facts are different.

The federal government commissioned a study by Nesbitt Burns in 1995 to plan the sale and closure of the Cape Breton Development Corporation. This plan called for a sale in 1996 or, failing that, in 1999. The plan has been followed to the letter.

In the fall of 1998 the management of Devco said it did not have enough money to make the payroll and it had to be bailed out by a $41 million cheque from Ottawa. Devco's management then spent $11 million to buy new jacks, new jacks that would only be needed if new walls were being developed, new mines opened. There was $11 million worth of jacks, a gift to whomever buys Devco.

At the same time, the corporation sold seven diesel locomotives without tender, locomotives needed to haul coal, locomotives needed to provide emergency power to the mine in the event of a power outage.

While miners have been laid off over the last two years, more management personnel have been hired.

These examples are just two of the many that prove a pattern of managed mismanagement at this crown corporation.

From the election of the Liberals in 1993 Devco has suffered from a slow hemorrhage, a hemorrhage of money, of workers and of political will. Ultimately that is the central issue. This government has been unwilling to talk openly about its very obvious agenda.

The Nesbitt Burns communication synopsis outlined problem areas for the government that it needed to address in order to facilitate the divestiture of Devco. A popular call-in show, Talkback , was cited as an obstacle to easing the sale. In 1998 the show was cancelled following pressure applied by Liberal advertisers, leaving Cape Bretoners without a forum to exchange their views.

Every angle was covered. The report raised the issue of ownership of the coal leases, perceived as being a source of possible conflict with the provincial government. Just weeks ago the Liberals in Ottawa announced that the issue had been examined from a legal perspective and they were confident of their jurisdiction.

The only thing that changed between then and now was the wave of change that swept Nova Scotia. That change saw the rejection of the former minister of health because of his abandonment of the coal industry and the election of a coal miner's daughter.

I have been on the record on this issue many times. I have predicted events concerning this process, and despite accusations of being hysterical from the Liberals, time has unfortunately proven my predictions correct.

I promised to stand up for the miners when I was elected. I am here once again to demand accountability from this government. I call on the government to openly discuss the future of Devco with Cape Bretoners and, as a first step, to immediately launch a forensic audit of the crown corporation.

[Division No. 329, March 8th, 1999]

New Democratic Party will be voting yes, Mr. Speaker.