Wendy Lill

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, April 6th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, in the past the heritage minister has personally intervened to save CBC radio and Radio Canada International. Will she commit today to intervene with cash and save regional TV news programs if the corporation decides to kill supper hour shows? That is what the CRTC wants and that is what Canadians want.

She has said that she does not want to see one big program coming out of Toronto, but my question is, will she guarantee that it will not happen while she is the minister, and will she provide the money, where necessary, to make that guarantee?

[Questions On The Order Paper, April 6th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to seek unanimous consent of the House for an emergency debate on the protection of regional programming for the CBC.

[Communications, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry. On Friday Bell Canada announced that it would increase the basic residential rate for rural telephone service by up to 600% more than the planned increase for city phones.

Does the minister support having a two tier price structure for basic phone rates in Canada? Does he think it is fair that rural Canadians in places like Plevna and Gogama pay more than Ottawa residents for basic telephone service?

[1911 Census Records, March 2nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Motion No. 160, which reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take all necessary steps to release the 1911 census records once they have been deposited in the National Archives in 2003.

I appreciate the intent of this motion. I have received many letters of concern from genealogists in my constituency and from around the country over the issue of releasing information.

My understanding is that Sir Wilfrid Laurier passed the first law citing the issue of confidentiality in the early 1900s. The information in the census of 1911 was collected from Canadians with the understanding that the material would not be released. Subsequent laws have reinforced the confidentiality of all data collected by Statistics Canada.

The information gathered in these surveys provides an important resource for the basis of policy and program creation, as we all know. However, people do not give out their personal information lightly. I have received many calls and letters over time from people in Dartmouth who have been contacted by Statistics Canada for various surveys, such as the census survey that we are required to complete every five years, and people are not happy about this. They have a pre-eminent concern about confidentiality.

I come from a part of the country where geneology, memories and our roots are extremely important and where our family heritage is a resource for which people are fiercely proud. Amateur genealogists are researchers and storytellers and they have a determination to find out where they came from and a determination to use every possible resource to do so. We in the NDP take their concerns very seriously.

When we first learned about the cries from historians and genealogists, the previous NDP industry critic, Chris Axworthy, wrote to the Minister of Industry asking that he make a decision about releasing this information to the National Archives after 92 years, which had been the standard.

The feeling of the NDP caucus was that the issue demanded a balance be struck between confidentiality and reasonable access. However, the need to restrict access by Canadians to the post-1901 census records was highly questionable, particularly when there is much greater availability of census materials in the U.S.

The Minister of Industry deferred to the chief statistician who pointed out that he could not legally release the data to anyone. Since then the federal privacy commissioner, Bruce Phillips, announced his strong opposition to releasing the data by saying:

People who give information to the government under penalty of law on an unqualified promise of confidentiality are entitled to expect that that trust will be honoured.

Mr. Phillips also speaks of the right of Canadians to have control over their own information rather than “people with a vested interest” using and making decisions about that information. In these days of limited privacy and control of our own information, his point is well taken. The passions and implications for public policy surrounding this are fierce.

As the culture critic for the New Democrats, I am aware that one of the major uses of our public archives has been for genealogical research and that this community feels that the denial of access to the 1911 census information makes their search for roots much more difficult.

In response to the concerns of the privacy commissioner and to calls from historians and amateur genealogists, the Minister of Industry has now appointed an expert panel on access to historical census records.

I believe that a respectful course of action at this point is to wait for that panel's report and see if some kind of balance, which I believe can be achieved, will be found to let Canadians find their roots and allow us assurances of privacy.

[Petitions, March 1st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased this afternoon to present a petition on behalf of over 75 people in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia who are horrified by pornography which depicts children and are astounded by legal determinations that possession of such pornography is not criminal.

My constituents would like to see, through the enactment and enforcement of the criminal code, the protection of the most vulnerable members of society. They would like to see parliament take measures to ensure that possession of child pornography remains a serious criminal offence and that federal police forces be directed to give priority to enforcing the laws that protect children.

[The Budget, February 29th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday's budget abandoned the promise of investing in our children.

The minuscule social spending announced does almost nothing to reduce child poverty, to give our kids an adequate education or to protect our children's health. It says that it is okay that one in five children live in poverty. It does not help families find affordable child care. It does not help students with crushing debt loads. It shrugs off the despair driving aboriginal children to suicide.

Last evening, while the finance minister was out selling tax cuts, CBC Radio's Ideas talked about our social obsession with youth and the fact that we pay no real attention to the harsh reality of our children.

The budget is a clear example of this. There is nothing about overcrowded classrooms, too few teachers or out of date books. The budget is silent on kids without food, without housing and self-respect. Tax cuts come before poor kids, highways before public caring.

The budget says that this is an acceptable condition for our children and that this government knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

[Broadcasting, February 28th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, last week's bid by BCE to take over CTV is just the latest corporate merger focusing on the Internet as a broadcast medium. Why is our government abandoning us to the private broadcasters in the new media?

The CRTC has said it is stepping back from any kind of regulation of the Internet. What about Canadian content? The CBC continues to bleed from a thousand cuts.

It is time to get with it. Britain has been proactive by allowing the BBC to become an Internet service provider and creator of high quality national content for both the Internet and their own public network.

It is time our government called an inquiry into how to take back our public broadcasting system in the face of national and international corporate concentration. It is time to keep Canadian spaces on the net, make access to the net affordable to Canadians, enforce our copyright laws on the Internet to protect creators, use the new media to promote culture and act to ensure future control over our broadcasting content on the new media or we will all be losers.

Who wants to be multi-billionaires? BCE and CTV. Who will pay down the road? Canadians.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, February 10th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, today 173 more workers were pushed out the door at the CBC, following 3,000 who have already gone down the road.

The mother corp says it is due to money problems, but people know that it is due to a government which ignores culture and the role it plays in a nation. Now is the time to reinvest in the CBC, not stand by as cuts tear out our cultural bones.

The CBC is our largest stage, our most loved book, our most revered painting and our most recognized song. It is where Canadians tell each other stories.

For Canada to have an independent future in a world of globalization and media convergence we need to strengthen public broadcasting. We need to invest resources in protecting culture. We need to invest our surplus in protecting culture.

To all who listened to the CBC this morning or who watched The National last night, please do not sit idly by and let our public broadcaster die on the vine. Please protect our culture.

[Canada Health And Social Transfer, December 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.

The minister knows that his surplus was created by withdrawing important services to Canadians. His draconian transfer cuts shredded the social fabric of Nova Scotian communities. Nova Scotian citizens are hurting. Last month over 10,000 children were fed from Nova Scotian food banks. Thousands in Dartmouth live in substandard housing and the health and education systems are in tatters.

Nova Scotians want their money back as well as their quality of life. Will the minister today commit to a complete restoration of social spending transfers to Nova Scotian communities?

[Disability Tax Credit, December 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance is on record as saying Canadians with disabilities must rank very high on everybody's priority list. However, he sets policy on the disability tax credit, which is so narrowly defined that persons with schizophrenia do not qualify, even though 1 in 100 Canadian families have a member with schizophrenia.

Furthermore, a doctor has told me that patients with cystic fibrosis, who spend a good deal of their day just trying to breathe, are also disabled from the current policy.

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who desperately need financial support to deal with the crushing costs which stem from their disabilities find it easier to get through the eye of a needle than to get help from the government. If the minister is truly committed to assisting disabled people to become fully functional citizens, he must broaden his rules around the disability tax credits and the medical and the infirm dependent tax credits so that they will provide real refundable benefits for all disabled Canadians.