Wendy Lill

[National Post, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this morning Canadians awoke to a new national newspaper, the National Post . My party and I believe that our democracy can only survive with strong, diverse and independent voices commenting on the news of the day, but we will not get them from the National Post .

Diverse opinions in papers require journalists who are allowed to express a wide variety of reasoned arguments. Conrad Black said this morning on TV that he wanted diverse opinions. At the same time he is suing the communications workers union and two of its organizers for questioning the editorial integrity of the Calgary Herald during a recent organizing drive.

What Mr. Black is really saying to Canadians is that many opinions are good as long as he agrees with them. Mr. Black's behaviour showed why it is important for the government to bring forward measures now to promote real diversity in the Canadian media, not stand by while the views of Conrad Black gain any more weight.

[Canada Customs And Revenue Agency Act, October 21st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-43, a bill which I believe will have profound effects of my community of Dartmouth.

This bill will convert Revenue Canada, a government department accountable to parliament through a minister, to a separate agency with authority which for most other departments and agencies is vested in Treasury Board and the Public Service Commission.

This to me is another example of this government's determination to privatize public services. We have seen the Department of Transport privatize airport services, we have seen the privatization of ports, of services in our military, of training, of postal services. The government now wants to privatize the collection of our taxes.

Generally speaking I reject the notion that the private sector is somehow better than the public sector. There is no proof to that contention and it just does not make much sense to me.

Recently I had the opportunity to meet with representatives of the workers currently in Revenue Canada who represent the union of taxation workers. They were in my office in Dartmouth last week. They presented me with some material which was quite disturbing and very educating on this issue. I am a firm believer that many of my best ideas I hear from my constituents and I would like to put some of this background material on the record:

When the notion of the Canada customs and revenue agency was first mentioned in the 1996 Speech from the Throne, it was presented as a cost effective, more efficient vehicle for improving service to the public. With the primary mandate to assume tax administration and collection functions from provincial and municipal governments, it was also touted as a means of strengthening the Canadian federation and contributing to national unity.

We submit that the events have overtaken the agency concept to the point that it fails to meet its stated objectives. The agency cannot now be justified on the basis of either bureaucratic efficiency or cost effectiveness. Its original business plan is in tatters. Its supporting arguments are riddled with contradictions, misstatements of fact and flimsy rationalization. The concept of the Canada customs and revenue agency is bad policy and should be stopped before it starts.

Their document continues to discuss how the original idea for the agency was to implement the HST across Canada.

I know about the public attitude to the HST, which people in Dartmouth still call the BST with a heavy emphasis on the BS. The size of the 1998 Nova Scotia Liberal caucus shows strongly how Nova Scotians feel about this tax.

However, the fact that there is no mood for expansion of this tax in this country, nor is there a single agreement with any other province for the implementation of this mother of all taxation agencies, shows how far the government has misread the country on the question surrounding Bill C-43.

Why is the government doing it? I think it just likes to privatize. It thinks it pleases its business friends. However, in this case even that call seems to be the wrong one.

Going back to the same document, I quote:

The business community was supposed to be the biggest beneficiary of the new Agency. However, doubtless to the dismay of the Agency's bureaucratic backers, the response has been ambivalent. Small business organizations—such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business—are particularly leery of the massive, centralized power the Agency would possess.

A full 40 per cent of business respondents to a Public Policy Forum study, commissioned by Revenue Canada, saw no advantage to the Agency. More than two-thirds thought it would either increase or maintain their costs of dealing with the Department as currently structured!

The administration of tax, an ancient right which has historically led to events such as the Magna Carta and the American revolution, will be hidden away in a separate agency which a minister will be responsible for sort of. After all, he does not run the agency and does not manage it on a day to day basis, so his accountability will be indirect.

It is bad enough to have witnessed the solicitor general recently covering for the Prime Minister about APEC, but if Bill C-43 passes we will see the Minister of National Revenue covering for an agency which is run by a board of directors that he does not even select.

Parliamentary democracy is based on ministerial accountability to parliament. However, with the Liberals' obsession to grab more power another principle is expendable. If this bill is passed it will be five years before this House will look at it again. A lot can go wrong in five years.

The people of Nova Scotia rejected the government in a rather absolute fashion in the last election and one of their main concerns was the HST. The fact that the government would bring in this bill, partly based on the theory that the HST will become a reality in all provinces, suggests that this bill is fatally flawed from its conception.

There are other very sneaky parts to this bill which must be mentioned and must be put into context with other power-grabbing Liberal policies.

This new agency will have the power—in fact one could see this as a responsibility—to impose user fees on Canadians who use tax services. They could start charging us a user fee to obey the law and pay our taxes. This is a ridiculous notion. It is also a mean notion.

This Liberal government did away with our universal safety net when it abolished the Canada assistance act. As a result of this action and the deliberate underfunding of health, post-secondary education and social assistance transfers to the provincial governments, means testing has become an increasing fact of life for the increasing multitude of poor in our country. To be eligible for many provincial programs, catastrophic prescription drug programs, student bursaries and some welfare services, the applicant must produce their tax records from the previous year.

It may come as a shock to the cabinet, which seems to see the world through corporate eyes, but poor people do not have accountants. One of the few things Canadians can still get from their federal government without charge is their tax assessment from the previous year. They just go into the office, show their SIN card and great public service employees give them great service. They then can go to their underfunded provincial programs to receive basic services.

I believe that under the new agency proposed in Bill C-43 poor Canadians will be asked to pay for their tax records, a charge some will be unable to pay. This will place their access to other programs at risk and make life even more difficult for them and their families.

The reality of the Liberal government is that it believes Canadians are best served by quiet cabinet orders, by a contracted out public service with no regard to actual service to the public. That is what Bill C-43 is all about.

The overall power grab is further seen by yanking the chain on independent and well-loved agencies like the CBC and the NFB, placing them under direct cabinet control as proposed in Bill C-44.

I will candidly say that Bill C-43 is flawed, as the overall thrust of this government is flawed. On behalf of the thousands of citizens and their families in my riding who work for Revenue Canada I will oppose this bill. I believe it is a wrong-headed bill. I would like to see it defeated.

[Pay Equity, October 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today Canada is launching its participation in the International Year of Older Persons. Yet following 14 years of battle, more than 50,000 retired public service workers, most of whom are women receiving pensions based on the lowest salaries, are still fighting for pay equity. Twenty of these women are in parliament today.

My question is for the Prime Minister. Will the government honour these older women by paying them retroactive pay equity and recalculating their pensions as ordered by the human rights tribunal?

[Supply, June 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am speaking to the Department of Canadian Heritage estimates.

[Supply, June 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the subject of the Department of Canadian Heritage estimates. I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Palliser.

Canadian heritage may seem like a vague term to most Canadians. However, when they begin to understand the areas which heritage covers it has tremendous importance to each and every one of us. When we talk about the heritage department we are talking about the Canada Council, the CBC, the Canadian Film Development Corporation, all of our libraries and museums, the art gallery, the CRTC, the NFB and all of the community grants and supports to individual artists.

I remember back in September of last year at one of the first meetings of the heritage committee we had a visit from the minister.

[Status Of Women, June 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's largest women's organization, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, has no funding to carry out the work of promoting justice and equality for women in Canada.

New funding guidelines are threatening the viability of women's organizations.

Will the minister responsible for the status of women ensure that her government spends at least $2 per woman and girl in Canada on women's equality and drop the new funding guidelines that are causing such unnecessary grief for women?

[Lieutenant Colonel William Barker, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this occasion to speak to Motion No. 251 to create a memorial recognizing the outstanding contributions of Lieutenant Colonel William Billy Barker, a World War I flying ace and hero of Canada and the Commonwealth.

Billy Barker was born in Dauphin, Manitoba. He died in Ottawa on March 12, 1930. He was a cohort of Billy Bishop. I remember Billy Bishop through a work of art basically, a play written by John Gray called Billy Bishop Goes to War . It was an important play that helped me to understand in a very real way what it meant to go to war.

Billy Barker was a cohort of Billy Bishop, just another young scared boy probably of the age of many of our children who went off to war. It is very important to remember people such as Billy Barker and Billy Bishop. It is important that we acknowledge their contribution to the military and to World War I. It is important for Canadians to recognize heroes who served in the armed forces, both men and women.

As the member of parliament for Dartmouth I represent a community with a long and proud military tradition. I have met many of the heroes of today in the military, the peacekeepers, the sailors and the soldiers who make tremendous sacrifices for peacekeeping, national security and such things as environmental clean-up and natural disasters.

Many people right now in Canada are very aware that these people are heroes when they manage to put sandbags around their houses and save their homes or save their children or save their lives from fires. We have many heroes today in the military.

I am also aware that there is a parliamentary committee crossing the country right now looking into the situation of people in the military and addressing the fact that perhaps DND and the Canadian government are not at the present time recognizing the heroes we have here and now. I have also talked with people, peacekeepers who have come home from various war zones with their health is ruined. They are trying to cobble together veterans assistance and basic disability payments. We have to be aware of them also when we are talking about recognizing heroes.

How do we recognize our heroes? There are ways. There are memorials. That is one way. I would say that a memorial for such a person as Billy Barker is an important way to do it.

I also urge that we continue to recognize heroes on a daily basis by recognizing the values that people such as Billy Barker fought for. These are values such as democracy, equality, freedom of speech, freedom from fear, freedom from racism and freedom from injustice. I again say that we have to recognize people in the here and now.

As well I recognize a massive commitment to such things as education of our young people about the contributions of Canadians to politics, war, peace, culture, humanitarian efforts and strengthening our communities. I take this opportunity to talk about some of the real heroes right now in our country.

Today I had the privilege of taking part in the buddies celebration in the centre block of the House of Commons. Over the past year, 18 young people with special needs have been on the Hill every week working in MPs' offices with their staffs. This buddies program gives young people with disabilities a chance to build self-esteem, learn job skills and be part of the world of work.

We have some heroes today, people like the teachers at Ridgemont High School, Ilse Turnsen and Pat Mainwaring, who have put together this program to allow disabled people to fight for their rightful places in our communities. They are heroes of the here and now.

I have in my office once a week a young boy named Capnello Bueti, who is trying to be part of our world of work and I appreciate that.

In closing I reiterate my desire to show the living practical commitment to the values of people such as Billy Barker for all the many years ago he sacrificed for the kind of society we want to live in. In terms of memorials to people such as Billy Barker let us remember by doing, by educating and by committing our public resources to the struggle against such things as poverty, hunger, inequality and racism. As well let us remember by example Billy Barker in the present.

[Tobacco, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, tobacco claims the lives of 40,000 Canadians every year. The World Health Organization has declared this Sunday “World No-Tobacco Day” in the hope of preventing this addiction in young people.

The Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society and others concerned about the health of young people point out that tobacco sponsorships of sporting and other events are a significant factor in getting kids to start smoking. Associating cigarettes with fun activities or sports heroes contributes to disease and death.

As culture critic for my party and as an active member of the arts community I want to see that arts, culture and other groups now dependent on tobacco sponsorships are given replacement funds.

The answer is definitely not, as the Minister of Health proposes, to water down the sponsorship provisions of the Tobacco Act. In so doing, he is going in the opposite direction to the rest of the world and it is a very dangerous direction.

For the sake of our children, I urge the Minister of Health to uphold the Tobacco Act and support arts, culture and sporting groups until they are able to find other sponsors.

[Crtc, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Baton Broadcasting announced 334 layoffs across the country yesterday. Forty-one of those jobs were lost in the maritimes.

Baton bought CTV and made a commitment to the CRTC to serve the needs of local communities. It seems its promise was not worth the licence it was written on.

It is the CRTC's job to enforce regulations to ensure companies like Baton live up to their commitments. If the CRTC will not do it, it should be scrapped.

Will the minister of heritage tell us what she will do to make the CRTC protect local news and programming across the country?

[Supply, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the motion by the member for Compton—Stanstead:

That this House condemn the government for its failure to provide strong political leadership to Her Majesty's Canadian forces.

I regret to say that I have to agree with the conclusion reached by this member that the government has indeed failed to provide strong political leadership to Canadians who are within the military and also working for the Canadian forces.

In the last 11 months that I have had the privilege of representing the people in Dartmouth, I have been quite frankly astounded by the deep malaise I have seen in every sector of the community involved with the military.

That sector is substantial. In Dartmouth and Halifax there are 10,000 military personnel and over 2,000 civilian personnel working for the military.

Our citizens have been central to the war effort in both the first and second world wars. Thousands of sailors and merchant marines have sailed out of our harbour and thousands have never returned. Thousands of civilian workers stayed a home during the wars and fuelled the war effort.

My communities, probably more than any in this country, have really felt the effects of war. Everyone has a grandmother or an aunt who can remember the exact place where they were during the Halifax explosion. That explosion killed thousands of people in our community, an east coast community right here, during the war.

I remember something that happened to me when I first arrived in that community. I went to a church that has now become my church. I was there on Remembrance Day with my children and a couple of people in the choir came down from the choir.

They took off their robes and started singing “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” which is a very poignant song about a young Australian soldier going to Gallipoli, fighting in that war and then returning with his legs blown off. It is an anti-war song.

I looked around me and there was not a dry eye in sight. There were many military families in that church that day. I thought these were people who have a whole different view of fighting for a country and investing a great deal in it from what I ever had. I think I really changed my mind that day. I began to understand some new things about what commitment meant.

I am now the MP there. A great percentage of the people who come through my door or call our office are from the military or civilian workers.

They are asking for assistance intervention with DND, with DVA. They need ministerial inquiries into pension issues, unfair dismissals from the Department of National Defence and simply the draconian methods of downsizing that have been going on under the process of alternative service delivery.

In trying to fight for some of these citizens, I have run up against bureaucracies and a leadership that will not take responsibility, is not responsible or responsive to the concerns of these people.

On May 8 and 9, I sat in on the parliamentary committee which is crisscrossing the country to hear quality of life concerns within the military. I listened to dozens of soldiers and sailors, some of them fathers, and their wives speak out about the situations facing them. I heard from a peacekeeper who had been sandbagging PCBs in Sarajevo for seven months. He had been exposed to incredible environmental poisons so that now his health is completely gone. He was pleading before the committee for a decent pension level so he could look after his family.

A father named Al Lannon spoke for his son Glen Lannon, a young man from Truro who was injured during a military exercise at Camp Shilo. He was trying to receive some sort of pension that would allow him to take care of his family. A woman named Susan Rierdon spoke on behalf of her husband Terry Rierdon who returned gravely ill from his deployment in the gulf in 1990. They are still fighting for recognition of his illness. They are still waiting for the government to take some responsibility for the wounded soldiers and their families.

Mrs. Rierdon had a question for the committee:

Why is it that our country will not stand up with us in our hour of need? Veterans affairs is a minefield, and as I speak, Terry's pension is under complete and total review. The outcome will not be known for one or two months due to misplaced paperwork. Medical documentation that was misplaced at veterans affairs.

It's not new to me. Misplaced files, unreturned calls, constant delays are standard. I am the sole paper fighter for the military and veterans affairs. As an ex-military wife, I am ashamed, not only of the way our family has been treated by this country's agencies, but the treatment of all our ill and forgotten lost soldiers. I appeal to each one of you to restore dignity to those brave men and women, they all served us with no questions asked.

A sailor who now has AIDS and hep C from tainted blood transfusions done in a military hospital said:

I am in a battle for my life and to make matters even worse I must now fight a major bureaucratic battle with national defence and veterans affairs to ensure that when I no longer breathe that my wife and children will not starve, will not lose the family home.

All these submissions paint a picture of an oppressive, vindictive leadership, a bungling, secretive bureaucracy. All expressed fears of reprisal for coming forward and all are waiting for such things as pensions. They are in line-ups for operations. They are waiting for diagnoses from military doctors whom they have lost faith in.

The civilian military workers await the next round of cuts which will see their jobs diminish. Jobs that used to bring $12.50 an hour, family supporting jobs, are now privatized and restored at $7.50 an hour. I do not blame them for their feelings of anger and betrayal. Their years of service have been met by the prevailing government attitude of privatizing everything that moves, of shifting responsibility to the private sector so it does not show up on the government books, so the Minister of Finance can gloat and bray about his surplus, while communities such as mine become weaker and more anxious by the day about their futures.

These people did not become part of the military effort to fight for those values. They did not fight for the values that now pervade the leadership of the military and the government. They committed their lives because they had an ideal of a country and a community they wanted to live in and were willing to fight for. That ideal involved the concepts of justice, fairness, equality and protection of the weak.

We now have parliamentary committee crisscrossing the country to hear quality of life issues from military personnel and their families. Each night we see on the news the horror stories of the families that have no money and are going to food banks. We hear the horror stories I have just put forward.

I am glad to hear that the country is waking up, that our own citizens are waking up and changing some of the stereotypes and mythologies they carry about the military.

This has to go further than that. In the fall there will be probably a very large report released by the committee. There will be lots of trees cut down in the interests of this weighty document. However the document will mean absolutely nothing unless there are ears to hear and unless there is a strong political leadership within the government to back up the recommendations of the report.

That leadership must herald the return to the values for which these young men and women have fought and put down their lives: justice, co-operation, care for the wounded, the vulnerable and the ill. If it does not happen we will in the not too distant future have no one left willing to stand up to fight for a way of life: democracy, fair play and justice. All we will have is generals who will be by themselves rattling their sabres. We will have our ministers flaunting their reports. However the battle for the way of life we believe is valuable will be lost.