Wendy Lill

[Goose Bay, February 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today is a day of mourning in Goose Bay, Labrador. Everything is shut down to bring attention to the fact that 119 workers will lose their jobs at the Canadian forces base due to a government decision to contract out non-military operations to a British firm.

Kitchen workers making $13.50 an hour have been cut to $7.50. Senior clerical workers making over $20 an hour were offered jobs as cleaners at $8 an hour.

In a community where a pound of potatoes costs $1.50, the impact of these cuts is terrifying.

The people of Goose Bay now have to reconsider their future. Fifty houses have gone up for sale in a week. Some people are in hospital suffering from stress. Low paying jobs, zero security, foreign control, fear for the future, this is the legacy facing the young people of Goose Bay. There will be more communities facing the same fate.

Is this the Liberal government's new world order?

We want the Minister of National Defence to go to Goose Bay, tear up the deal with his British buddies and start making decisions that will help communities, not destroy them.

[Poverty, December 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, food bank organizers have called on the federal government to reassert national standards for social programs at this week's first ministers conference. They are asking the first ministers to repair the damage they have done to the poor.

The federal transfer cuts to the provinces have been devastating. At the same time the Minister of Finance has created a general atmosphere of cynicism and doubt in the minds of people toward the legitimacy of the poor. That has led to reduced food bank donations. First the people are devalued and then others do not feel as guilty about turning their backs on them. Even at this holiday time of giving and sharing we feel hardening of attitudes toward the poor.

The prime minister must recommit to all Canadians, most important the vulnerable; give back some of the surplus money he has been bragging about; and make sure the poor have food, shelter, a job and basic needs to live with decency and dignity, unless like the Grinch the prime minister looks inside himself and finds his heart is two sizes too small.

[Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the member for Kitchener—Waterloo would be able to give me some comfort at this point with some of my concerns about a young person. A young person who has just entered the workforce gets injured on the job. They have not been working for three years, maybe for three months, and does not have a wealthy family. Their family is not labour force attached and has no facilities whatsoever. What is the future of that person at that point in their ability to make their way through the world? Does he have some real comfort that he can give me now given the new changes in the plan that is being instituted?

[Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have to go back to the astounding figure of $1 billion being taken out of disability payments by the year 2005. I have to go back to the fact that we are looking at young people who in the future will grow older and who will possibly become disabled. We have to make sure there is enough money available to allow them a decent quality of life in the future. That is the bottom line. We find the money wherever we can, but find it. That is all there is to it.

[Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, $1 billion by the year 2005 is not going easy on benefits. Although the CPP disability program has its weaknesses, nevertheless it has been an important cornerstone in Canada's safety net for those who have become disabled. The CPP disability cuts will save a few pennies from everyone's paycheques but thousands who become disabled will suffer the consequences.

Shame on this government for the legacy that we are leaving our young people now and in the future.

[Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the hour is late on this bill although it has been an indecently short debate that has occurred on this important legislation.

It is important to read into the record some excerpts from a report by Eric Norman, the president of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, and Harry Beatty, the director of policy and research for ARCH: A Legal Resource Centre for Persons with Disabilities. At the same time I would like to comment on some of the more chilling aspects of this report.

The disability component of the Canada pension plan has been targeted for billions of dollars in cutbacks in the recent legislative amendments announced by the finance minister and by the Minister of Human Resources Development. The impact of these changes on Canadians with disabilities has been consistently understated or totally ignored by both politicians and the media. To a great many disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals however the new rules will be devastating.

The sixteenth CPP actuarial report prepared by federal chief actuary Bernard Dussault projects a total cumulative reduction in CPP spending on disability pensions by the year 2005 of over $1 billion—

I would like to repeat that, $1 billion.

—while the cutback in retirement pensions and other benefits for the same period is less than $.5 billion. Since the disability program is only about one-fifth of the total CPP, this means that it is being cut much more than any other component of the CPP.

I find it astounding that what we are doing is cutting the benefits of the most vulnerable members of our society.

The depth of this reduction in CPP disability has been carefully hidden from the public by the federal government and the eight provincial governments which support the cutbacks.

Those already receiving CPP disability pensions will not have them taken away or reduced. The persons who will be adversely affected by the “reforms” are now working, often blissfully unaware of the career-ending disability which will affect them in future. The government has adopted the same strategy for persons with disabilities as for seniors: “grandfather” those now eligible, to blunt criticism, and apply the cuts to those whose needs will arise in the future.

The finance minister has recently indicated a willingness to rethink the seniors benefit—he should look again at the disability proposals as well. It is unjust to do otherwise.

But that is an unjust government we are facing right now across the floor from us.

The new CPP plan, scheduled to come into effect on January 1, 1998, has the support not only of the federal government but of eight provincial governments. Only B.C. and Saskatchewan are opposed. Under the amending formula, which requires CPP amendments to be supported by two-thirds of the provinces representing two-thirds of Canada's population, there is sufficient provincial support to have the changes apply across Canada—. Quebec participates fully under the amending formula, although it has its own Quebec pension plan. The PQ government is co-operating with the federal government in making the disability program cuts.

As of 1998, the new rules will require CPP disability pension applicants to have earned more than a specified amount in four of the last six years prior to being determined to be disabled. Current rules require contributions in either two of the last three years or five of the last 10 years. Who will be excluded from eligibility? Young people in the first three years of employment will not qualify.

For example, if a young person who is 21 and has an accident in the first year of his job and he is not covered by workers compensation or he has no private pension plan, which very few people do, that young person will in fact go straight on welfare for the rest of his life.

In another example perhaps a young person with a disability such as Down's syndrome lives with his family and has modest means with no other pension plan. That person may have no labour force attachment—that very strange phrase we use today meaning a job. And the chances as we know are very limited that people with disabilities have jobs unless there is enormous support available for them to get those jobs to begin with. We also know that those supports are disappearing at a great rate. The future for that person without labour force attachment will be either institutionalization or welfare.

It is a cruel irony that this government spends so much time talking about youth when in fact what it is doing is setting them up for a very bitter harvest in the future. That is what we are doing now for our youth.

Others who will be affected very negatively by these changes will be those with recent attachments to the workforce who have for reasons beyond their control such as unemployment or caregiving responsibilities somehow been unable to be eligible.

Of particular concern to us are those who have tried to keep working despite the onset of a disability—multiple sclerosis, or psychiatric disability, cancer, amongst many others. They will be “rewarded” for their determined efforts in many cases by complete disentitlement to a CPP disability pension, which in turn will greatly reduce their eventual retirement pensions. To top it all off—pensions will now start to rise above the minimum contribution level, so someone with low earnings may have to pay CPP contributions to the government in a year, only to be told later that the contributions do not help in qualifying for a disability pension.

Those currently receiving CPP disability will not be affected. Those who apply before the end of 1997 will also have their cases determined under the present rules, so if you believe you may qualify, you should apply as soon as possible. But thousands who become disabled in the future will be disentitled, especially as they reach their fifties and sixties, where the likelihood of disability is much greater.

I guess we should say baby boomers wherever we are in this crowd, beware because it could happen to us.

The cutbacks under the new CPP disability program do not end there. Those who do qualify for CPP pensions will have their eventual retirement pensions lowered by the new rules. Widows and widowers who are themselves disabled will have their combined survivor disability benefits reduced.

Worse still, the federal government states it will continue its administrative changes to the CPP disability program which it describes as “improvements”. What Human Resources Development Canada has really achieved through its administrative “improvements” has been a restricted approach to determining who is disabled, which has disentitled thousands of Canadians unfairly. Older workers in particular, in their fifties and sixties, are being found “capable of working” despite significant health problems leading to physical and mental limitations. The “jobs” they are supposedly able to do may exist in a bureaucrat's CPP manual but they do not exist in Canadian communities in 1997. CPP continues as well to penalize those who attempt training, education, rehabilitation programs or a part time or time limited return to work by finding them “employable” as well, in spite of a supposed policy which says this should not happen.

You do not get rich on CPP disability. Monthly disability pensions in 1997 range from a minimum of $330 to a maximum of $883. Payments are taxable so they are reduced in value for those with higher incomes. But for many who have a limited attachment to the workforce—

There is that great phrase again.

—because of unemployment, caregiving, home making or the onset of disability, the CPP pension benefit is desperately needed. It may be the only benefit a disabled person qualifies for, for example, if his or her spouse is working or if there is a modest income from savings. It is unfair to take the CPP disability pension away from those who need it the most.

Completely unnoticed in the debate is the cost impact of reductions in the CPP disability program on other disability income programs, including provincial social assistance, workers compensation and long term disability insurance. Those other programs top up CPP where a person qualifies for both. So if CPP is cut—

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, 160 CBC employees were given their pink slips yesterday. Most government departments have been cut by 19%. The CBC has lost one third of its funding. The latest $30 million cut will hit the local and regional operations the hardest, especially in the west.

This government claims we need the CBC to bind Canadians from coast to coast. Is the minister of heritage in fact endorsing the CBC plan to centralize and further target jobs in local and regional operations?

[Business Of The House, December 3rd, 1997]

Madam Speaker, today is International Day of Disabled Persons. I would like to revisit the issue I brought to the attention of the House on October 28, on the first anniversary of a federal task force report on persons with disabilities, and that is the growing desperation of the disabled.

I will start by setting the stage for the task force. It was set up after the Minister of Finance eliminated the Canada Assistance Plan and instituted the CHST, no strings attached money to the provinces where health care, education and social services would all be fighting for the same dollars.

The Minister of Human Resources Development stated that he was planning to end federal responsibilities to the disabled and the families caring for them.

In the grand scheme of downloading and devolving, people with disabilities and the families caring for them, my own family included, were facing an anxious and uncertain future in this new world order: reduced resources, reduced protection, and reduced commitment in the areas of health care, education and social services.

The task force held out a ray of hope for all of us that the rights of the disabled would finally be dealt with by the federal government. The task force called for a Canadians with disabilities act. It recommended earmarked funds in existing programs, tax reforms and refundable tax credits. It urged the government to address the extra costs of living with disabilities.

The task force led people to believe that the very real issues of training, education and labour, the life issues of the disabled, would finally be dealt with. One year after it was tabled and where are we? The Liberals have only implemented 8 of the 52 recommendations, and I must say they were the easy ones.

Persons with disabilities and their services are under attack more than ever. The federal government is trying to ram through changes to the Canada Pension Plan Act, which will have the impact of cutting $1 billion in spending on CPP disability pensions by the year 2005. Disabled widows and widowers will have their combined survivor disability pension benefits reduced. Disability pensions will be harder to get and worth less.

Now with the CHST and cash strapped provinces having the discretion to spend money as they want, services to the disabled are dropping like flies. In the nation's capital there are two accessible taxis available on 24 hours notice. The para-transit service has been cut in half, and it was underfunded to begin with.

How are people supposed to go to work or to the doctor? How are they to visit their mothers? Attendant care is being slashed. People have to fight for the right to have a bath once a week. It is a farce to say that persons with disabilities have the same rights when supports are being withdrawn for them to participate at the most basic level.

What about protection under the law? With the sentence handed down this week on the murder of Tracy Latimer, the disabled believe they were sent an even stronger message, that their lives were somehow not worth as much as others. Tracy Latimer was disabled and she is now no longer with us.

It is time that we all took a very close look at the conditions facing the disabled in Canada. It is time the federal government finally acted on the recommendations of its task force.

On behalf of the disabled I urge the government to appoint a minister responsible for persons with disabilities and to introduce a persons with disabilities act. It is time to safeguard the quality of life for our most vulnerable citizens. Some 4.2 million disabled Canadians and their families are waiting and hoping that these issues will finally be addressed.

[Goods And Services Tax, November 28th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, that is about as much time as I am going to need.

I cannot tell you, Mr. Speaker, how disappointed I am that I was not able to get unanimous consent on this motion. I thought this was something we might be able to come together on.

I am speaking on behalf of all the readers and the potential readers in Canada who were negatively impacted by this decision to not open this issue one more time for discussion. Given the fact that 83% of Canadians would like to see the GST removed from reading materials, I would say that it is a sad day for democracy.

I would also say that it seemed to me that it should have been possible for a dozen or so people left in this House on a Friday afternoon to actually address the issue at hand, which was the very direct relationship between the cost of books and literacy. That was really the only issue we had to be discussing today. We did not have to take each other down ideological paths around labour, around school boards and around Hustler magazine. A lot of red herrings were hauled out on to the floor this afternoon. I am very disappointed at that. The people who were hoping that this might be chance to discuss the GST again are really going to be saddened by that.

I want to close with a request to the Liberals. Why will you not keep the promise that you made many times over your reign and before you were elected? Please, do what you said you were going to do. In the words of your Minister of Canadian Heritage, “Food is not subject to GST because it is a necessity. So are books. They are needed for young minds to grow”. This is from the heritage minister. I hope that at some point your party will somehow get together on your ideas on this and you may in fact do what people in Canada have been asking be done for many years.

[Goods And Services Tax, November 28th, 1997]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of increasing literacy in Canada by removing the Goods and Services Tax on all reading materials.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure and privilege to rise today to put forward Motion No. 93 which reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should further contribute to increasing literacy in Canada by removing the Goods and Services Tax on all reading material.

Since the GST was introduced in 1990 under the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and implemented in 1991 the people of Canada have been subjected to a 7% tax on all reading material. That includes books, children's books, magazines whether at the news stand or by subscription, and newspapers. In fact all reading material.

The GST is the first federal tax on reading in Canada's history. Provinces have never taxed books. Every time someone opens their wallet to buy a magazine or a novel they pay an extra 7¢ on the dollar to the federal government. Post-secondary students who buy their own books must pay tax. Literacy learners who mostly buy their own materials must pay tax. Tutors in literacy are also affected. Canadians purchasing books for self-health purposes and to further their knowledge must pay tax. Parents who buy their children books must pay tax.

We recognize there are GST credits and other educational credits for students, but these do not make up for the fact that we tax textbooks. We are talking about a tax burden on a fundamental activity which people the world over take part in and benefit profoundly from, reading, something very simple, something very intimate when shared.

I had the honour of attending the public readings of the governor general literary award winners last week. It was a very special event to be involved in a public reading. We all know reading is something quiet and restorative. It helps us to connect with ourselves and link up the outside with our inner selves. It is a healthy, nurturing and calming pastime.

Unlike our national sport, fights never break out in groups of readers. Reading is educational, sustainable, non-polluting and non-violent, an A1 activity. Yet we are being taxed by the federal government for the privilege of engaging in it.

I would even go so far as to put forward the radical idea that reading is an important cornerstone of the country's culture. If writing is so then reading must also be.

In 1960 the O'Leary royal commission asserted that magazines and newspapers were the most important publications in creating a Canadian culture and sense of identity:

So far as the written word is concerned it is left largely to our periodical press, to our magazines, big and little, to make a conscious appeal to the nation to try to interpret Canada to all Canadians, to bring a sense of oneness to our scattered communities.

One does not have to be reading a 400-page novel by Jane Urquhart or David Adams Richards. One can be enjoying a favourite column in the newspaper or the weekend funnies.

My children still love to pour over magazines which advertise toys at Christmastime, reading every word about the toys they are interested in over and over and over so that they can conjure up a perfect picture in their minds of how wonderful that toy will be when they finally see it under the Christmas tree.

Magazines and newspapers are the reading material of choice for young Canadians and new learners. For someone young or old trying to crack the barrier between the non-reading and the reading world, magazines provide a colourful, picture filled non-threatening and potentially successful journey into the world of print.

Reading is thankfully something which Canadians continue to engage in despite the barrage of audio visual images coming at us at all hours of the day and night. Reading, however, like many other good things in our cultural and physical environment is somewhat on the endangered list and not helped along in the least by the GST.

Canada has a very high illiteracy rate. One if five Canadians tested in a recent international literacy survey could not understand the label on a bottle of aspirin well enough to know the safe dosage. When provided with a nutritional analysis, only one out of four Canadians could calculate the percentage of calories that came from fat in a Big Mac.

On September 12, 1997 the Globe and Mail quoted the Minister of Finance as saying: “I can't see how taking the tax off books is going to stimulate literacy”. The Minister of Finance continues to contend that literacy is not a financial issue and therefore, I guess, somehow not his responsibility.

This kind of thinking is very disturbing because it indicates that he either does not understand his own job or he is flailing about for any excuse to denounce the Don't Tax Reading Coalition's ongoing campaign.

I will try to take him through it step by step. The GST makes reading material more expensive. Reading is the foundation of literacy so literacy in this case is entirely the responsibility of the minister.

Clearly the best way to promote literacy is to ensure no obstacles are in the way of those who are trying to achieve it. Anything that makes books more expensive, for example a 7% federal tax, is certainly a large obstacle.

An international survey done in 1996 found that 97% of Canadians who achieved the highest literacy levels had more than 25 books in their homes. Only 50% of those in the lowest literacy levels had more than 25 books in their homes.

The GST prices reading materials out of reach of low income Canadians. It is truly regressive for that reason. Relatively speaking, lower income Canadians spend a larger amount of their income on reading materials than those of higher income Canadians. The government's own data say so.

Why should the Minister of Finance care if we are a nation of bookworms? After all, it is the age of the Internet and computers. Why not toss out the idea of reading along with the time honoured belief in universal health care and pension plans?

Why do we want to be literate? Because it is good for business. Britain, Japan, Australia, Ireland and the United States do not tax books. They know that strong literacy skills are essential in the modern workforce. Strong literacy skills are even more essential in this technologically driven era. Bear in mind, one has to be able to read to use the Internet. Canada's ability to train and redeploy its workforce to compete internationally is hindered by inadequate literacy skills.

Senator Joyce Fairbairn opened an international policy conference on adult literacy in November, saying on behalf of the Minister for Human Resources and Development:

A highly skilled literate workforce is crucial to a strong and internationally competitive economy as industrialized countries around the world fight to maintain and expand their share of high wage jobs.

Decision and policy makers have to take literacy seriously because the information society and the global economy require individuals and economies with high literacy and numeracy skills.

Today's new jobs require highly literate workers. Literate adults and senior citizens will be far better equipped to maintain their independence and quality of life in the future, thus lessening the need for social services.

The percentage of unemployment decreases as the literacy level decreases. The Minister of Finance and his government should surely be interested in these facts. He should also be interested in the stunning impact the GST has had on the Canadian publishing industry.

Within the first three months the GST was introduced, book sales dropped by 14% and the market has never really recovered. The used book trade has dropped even more sharply from 15% to 20%. Magazine sales are down 15%. Newspaper circulation is down 5%.

During the most recent recession of the early 1980s and every previous recession in Canadian history sales of reading materials have increased but not this time. It is astounding to think of the revenues that have been lost because of this regressive tax.

Writers' royalty earnings dropped significantly due to the imposition of the GST. We should think of the legions of artists, printers, book sellers and publishers who are no longer working because of the plummeting fate of the publishing industry.

The Government of Ireland, incidentally, tried a tax on books 10 years ago and withdrew it after six months because it was having such a negative impact on sales, but not our government.

Let us consider the astounding economics of book publishing. The authors of children's books currently gets 5% royalties on the sales of their creations. The government gets 7% in tax. Yes, the government is earning more than the writer while the publishing houses continue to tread water with the odd infusion of funds from a beneficent government.

The impact on the magazine industry with the imposition of the tax has been profound as well. Many consumers simply would not remit the GST on their subscription renewals. Magazine publishers have had to remit the 7% even if they have not collected it.

All of this reminds me of a story in Jewish folklore found in a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail from a Charlottetown reader. It is about a mythical town of fools. In one story the citizens of the town discover that a storm has left a wide crater in the middle of their main street and they fear that passers-by will fall in and break their legs. After much discussion they decide not to fill the hole but to build a hospital beside it.

Rather than removing the GST from the sale of books Ottawa is throwing life rafts to the publishing industry and the Canadian literacy program. What we need to do is empower the consumer. Take the 7% stranglehold off the book marketplace and then the demands for and sales of books will rise. That is what is really needed to benefit the publishing industry.

Finance claims that the general public has become accustomed to GST on magazines and books. But the Don't Tax Reading Coalition to this day gets hundreds of phone calls, letters and petitions complaining about the GST. People hate the principle of paying tax on reading. Books are for learning and improving. They are not cash cows. Eighty-three per cent of Canadians are on record as opposing a tax on reading.

I say to the Minister of Finance that it is time he filled that hole caused by the devastating tax on books. It is time to do the right thing, do what the Liberals promised before the 1993 election at a policy conference chaired by the Minister of Finance. As well during the election and after the 1993 election the Liberals promised to reaffirm the historic principles embodied in the tax free status of the printed word and remove the GST from reading materials. The prime minister said so himself.

We recognize that the government has tried to reduce the impact of GST on books by offering tax rebates to municipalities, schools and qualifying literary organizations, but these rebates are only for institutions. What about the individual consumer?

Taxing books deals a crippling blow to our fight against illiteracy. If want to be a country that reads, then we must eliminate the tax on books.

In closing, I would like to read from a well loved and respected Canadian children's writer, Sheree Fitch, on the topic of GST:

On the road to Lunenburg A village by the sea I met some politicians Here's what they said to me; This is the road to Lunenburg We're committed to literacy I said I know you really care... So...what about reading and the GST?

On the road to Heart's Content In the middle of Newfoundland I met a group of children Here's what they said, off hand; We really like your books miss, We really like them a lot Where do we go to get them? Two dollars is all we got.

On the road to anywhere In the middle of the galaxy, I met a child who always smiled Here's what she said to me; Yesterday I saw the moon It wasn't in the sky It was in a book—it sounded round The gold got in my eye. You see—I learned to read, miss. Isn't it grand? I never knew it possible To hold the moon in my hands I never knew it possible To hold the moon in my hands.

In closing, I believe it is time we tackled the problem of literacy in our country by taking the tax off the printed word. It is time we took the tax off our country's imagination.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to put forward a request for unanimous of the House to make this motion votable.