Wendy Lill

[Bill C-55, May 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Margaret Atwood once said, in the wake of the signing of the free trade agreement, that it is fitting that Canada has as a national symbol the humble beaver, the animal which when cornered bites off its own testicles and hands them to his adversaries.

I ask the Minister of Canadian Heritage is this not exactly what her government has done today with Bill C-55?

[Publishing Industry, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am only going by reported newspaper articles. The reported trade-off is that we allow Canadian advertising in American split-runs and they put in some Canadian content. I am not convinced that this protects our magazine industry. In any event, this fundamental change is taking place without public debate.

If there are some issues around Canadian content and American ownership on the table, these issues have to come back to parliament before they are signed on the dotted line. Do we have any assurance of that?

[Publishing Industry, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, last fall our cultural community rallied around Bill C-55, spending months lobbying and participating in public debate. Now we discover that the bill has been left bobbing in the weeds in the Senate and the real action is taking place behind closed doors in Washington. So much for the parliamentary process.

When will the government let Canadians know the content of this secret deal? Will it allow adequate public debate before signing on the dotted line?

[Bravery, May 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize five very brave members of my community of Dartmouth today: Rodney Kenneth Druggett, Marion MacClellan, Lindsay Woodin, Laurie Boucher and Jill Louise Quinn, all of whom received the Medal of Bravery this morning. I will focus on two people for the moment.

On July 5, 1997 Laurie Boucher and Jill Quinn saved their children from drowning at Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia. Seeing the boys were being carried to the open sea by a strong undertow, Mr. Boucher and Ms. Quinn swam to their rescue 30 metres out. Ms. Quinn reached her panicked son and towed him to shore. Mr. Boucher managed to grab hold of his own son and repeatedly pushed him against the waves to keep him afloat. Despite his valiant efforts he was unable to fight exhaustion and was swept out to sea. The boys and Ms. Quinn were able to reach shore.

Laurie Boucher's son Jeffrey was here today to accept the Medal of Bravery for his father from the Governor General. A brave father who will not be forgotten.

[National Housing Act, May 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-66, an act to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and the Housing Corporation Act and to make a consequential amendment to another act.

I wish to look at this bill and its intentions and implications in the context of the housing crisis which is plaguing our country, and specifically my community. When someone says “housing crisis” we often think of the problem of homelessness. We hear of 200,000 or more Canadians who are sleeping on hot air grates, in cars or in parks because they do not have addresses or roofs over their heads.

However, for millions of other Canadians the problem is not nearly that dramatic, although it is just as serious. I am speaking of the problem of finding decent, affordable housing. I am not suggesting that solving the problems of homelessness should be traded off against the problems of adequate and affordable housing. On the contrary, I would say the two are very interrelated. When the housing supply becomes less and less accessible or more and more decrepit we see more and more families and more children descending into homelessness.

There are some significant aspects of Bill C-66 that concern me, such as the fact that it will amend two pieces of legislation that deal with federal involvement in housing, the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act, and it will also make a consequential amendment to another act. This legislation could potentially remove a number of measures specifically intended to provide housing for low income Canadians and it could allow the federal government to avoid any responsibility for housing.

Across the harbour from where I live in Halifax I see dozens of families who are homeless waiting in line for dinner at the Hope Cottage.

In Dartmouth there are thousands of people who I would say are the homeless in waiting. They are people who are living in substandard housing. It is clear to me that the primary factor which keeps people trapped in poverty is a lack of decent, affordable housing.

Neighbourhoods such as Highfield Park in my riding have thousands of families, many of which are headed by single mothers. There are many disabled Canadians and seniors who are living on public support. These people are paying over half of their meagre income for walk-up apartments in poor condition. They are living in poverty and they are constantly juggling the problems of food, clothing, medical care and shelter.

One woman wrote to me this week depicting her own dilemma, which I think sums up what we are talking about today. She is a mother, a survivor of cancer, and she is raising a child with a disability. She is doing all of this in low income, decrepit housing. She is trying to make ends meet. She states in her letter:

Ms. Lill:

I do not drink, smoke, go to bars, go to bingo or even go to a coffee shop in the evening. I try to maintain good eating habits for myself and my daughter, but I still never have enough money. I live in a semi-safe place.

That is how she identifies where she lives with her daughter. She continues by saying:

But I still have to delve into my grocery money. There are a number of vitamins and prescriptions which I am supposed to take to keep my immune system up. However, I am not able to do that and still pay the rent.

This is a woman who has to trade off her health to live in a semi-safe place with her disabled daughter. That is a disgrace as far as I am concerned.

As the hon. member for Vancouver East, the NDP housing critic described, our substandard housing crisis is an unnatural disaster. That is what this woman who I just referred to is dealing with every day of her life.

Families are having to make trade-offs about whether to feed themselves and their children or pay the phone bill. Do they let their hydro bill slide and risk a few days of darkness, or do they spend the money on their daughter's field trip? All of these things are being juggled in light of the fact that they are paying too much money for substandard housing. I do not believe people should ever have to make those kinds of trade-offs.

I remember speaking with a group of local boy scouts in my riding recently about the universal declaration of human rights. I asked them what human rights meant to them. One of them answered “Food to eat. We all have the right to eat”. Another one said “A dry, clean, warm place to live”. In fact these are included in the universal declaration of human rights; the whole idea that we have the right to a safe place to lay our heads at night.

These are rights that many residents in my community of Dartmouth are being deprived of, as are hundreds of thousands of people across this country. That is why we need a national housing program which will deal with these problems, not just one which tinkers around the edges and slowly erodes even further the housing program which we have. That is why Bill C-66 fails the test of good public policy. It simply tinkers with a system in crisis and it fails to deal with the real problems.

We need a housing program which sees community based, non-profit, mixed income housing as the best vehicle to deal with our national housing crisis, not private partnerships with the same landlords who are currently failing to provide maintenance. We need more housing which is accessible to all Canadians, including the four million who have disabilities in this country.

We need more seniors housing in Dartmouth, not more rhetoric coming out of Ottawa about partnerships and developers. We need the government to understand that investment in housing is no more of a frill than investment in health care. We need this government to understand that housing is related to health care. It is counterproductive for us to be spending more on hospitals without looking at alleviating the conditions which land people in hospitals. Poverty is caused by bad housing.

We need a national housing strategy. The federal government has a responsibility to develop a national housing plan and a housing supply program in co-operation with the provinces.

The New Democratic Party believes that the federal government should meet that goal of providing an additional 1% of the budget, approximately $2 billion, over five years, to meet the basic housing needs of Canadians. This 1% investment by all governments is a key recommendation of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee and must be supported.

I call on the government to reject the theme park approach to budget building and to adopt an approach which recognizes that investing in non-profit housing, investing in health and investing in children are ongoing requirements, not annual theme pronouncements which are based on extensive polling.

I call on the government to take back Bill C-66 and come forward with an anti-poverty agenda which will build quality, non-profit, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians.

[The Late Terry Riordon, May 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Terry Riordon, 45, former marathon runner, dedicated husband, father of two and a Canadian veteran of the gulf war, died in his sleep on April 29.

I met Terry last May in Halifax, his body and mind wracked with pain as he tried to put forward his case for fair compensation for his condition, which he believes was caused by vaccines administered to troops and chemical exposures during the 1991 war.

Terry had no idea that his battle for a disability pension, assistive devices and appropriate housing would take up the rest of his life on earth.

His wife, Susan, a fierce fighter for justice for our enlisted soldiers, has said “What this country must learn from this is to take care of those who care for them”.

Or, as the president of the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association said “Terry's passing is another failing grade to a country that asks its service personnel to give all but gives little in return”.

May Terry Riordon rest in peace and may we never forget the sacrifice that Terry and all of our peacekeepers make to this country.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, April 30th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, public broadcasting should be a place for Canadians to find independent, quality programming, free from commercial and political interference. However, there is a new threat to the integrity of the CBC and it is called sponsorship. The CBC has asked the CRTC for permission to air commercials, which it calls sponsorships, on its demographically desirable radio networks.

Will the government intervene now to preserve CBC radio's integrity as a commercial free service? Will you stand up here and now and say no—

[Social Union, April 30th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Canada is in the early stages of implementing the social policy framework called the social union. However, I am frankly worried that these programs could end up designed to aid bureaucrats, but not necessarily Canadians.

This month, the auditor general looked at the first two programs being implemented under the social union, the national child benefit and the employment assistance program for persons with disabilities.

Among his comments, he found that the NCB failed to make a reduction in child poverty a measurable goal of the program. He also noted that success for the EAPD will be measured by counting participants, not by determining the increase in employment or employability of disabled Canadians.

It is not good enough for the social union to claim success because it spent a pile of money. Success should be measured by the increase in the quality of Canadian lives.

I hope that the House and all Canadians will watch the evolution of programs implemented under the social union like hawks to ensure that the benefits go to needy Canadians, not to bureaucrats and politicians for clever sleights of hand.

[Publishing Industry, April 29th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I have always been lukewarm in the support of Bill C-55, believing it did not go far enough in providing sufficient protection for the Canadian magazine industry. We now know that it has been on the negotiating table with the American trade representatives, a very precarious place to protect Canadian culture.

The government says it is respecting the spirit of the bill, but we are afraid that there is nothing left but the ghost.

Can the minister explain how relaxing Canadian content requirements and encouraging foreign ownership protects Canadian culture?

[Transport, April 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I think the minister's stonewalling is nothing short of arrogance.

The minister is not a safety expert. Firefighters are safety experts. Their leaders today said that they do not believe in the government's safety assurances when it comes to its plan to transport plutonium. They say the plans are irresponsible and that an accident is waiting to happen.

What will the government do about the concerns which Canadians have about plutonium?