Penny Priddy

[Bank Act, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure it was a young turk, not a young turkess.

I do not remember that there were fees when ATMs started. What I remember next was that there was a fee for one's own ATM but there was not a fee for using one's card at another bank's ATM. That was sort of stage two, if I recall correctly, and I certainly stand to be corrected.

[Bank Act, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to what is an important issue for many people but not one that is part of their dinner table conversation every evening. Nevertheless, certainly in the constituency I represent, Surrey North, it is one that affects the lives of people daily.

Most people who are members of a family, be it a lone parent family or an extended family, are trying to make enough money simply to feed the children, maybe to get them new sneakers for school, maybe to pay for field trips, and to have a safe roof over their heads. Those people do not have the time or the opportunity, or perhaps the knowledge to read in any great depth the Bank Act, the regulations within it and how they might affect their family. Constituents count on their MPs to represent them and to be their voices in this Parliament. Some people have the time to sit down and work this through, but for those who may not have that opportunity, there are some questions that they would be asking us.

I represent Surrey North, which is one of five constituencies in Surrey. The city of Surrey has 400,000 people. The average three bedroom house is worth about $350,000. That is an average starter home, which for many people would be wonderful, but there are many young people who will not get into the housing market.

One of the recommendations made by the Consumers' Association of Canada had to do with the limitation on first mortgage funding. I realize there are some disadvantages to raising first mortgage funding from 75% to 95%, but I am not sure that the risks outweigh the benefits. There are many people, some of whom perhaps are our children or grandchildren, who, if they stay in urban areas like the B.C. lower mainland, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary or Edmonton, will never get into the housing market because they do not have $50,000 to $60,000 or more for a down payment. That recommendation made by the CAC should have been looked at very carefully. I recognize there are challenges with it, but I think that the benefits outweigh the challenges.

One of the things that my constituents will notice on a fairly regular basis has been talked about at some length lately, and that is the use of automated teller machines, ATMs, and not just the use of ATMs but the cost of using ATMs.

Some of my family have been living in Great Britain for the last three years. When I was visiting there, I discovered there was no charge for using a debit card. I was quite surprised, because I know what the charge is for using one here. People may not talk about the Bank Act at the dining room table, maybe because they are too busy trying to make sure there is enough food on it, but people do notice the charges when they use the ATMs.

Some people only take out very small amounts, maybe because that is all they have in the bank. They may be paying 25% on what they are taking out, and that is just to get the money out. They cannot get into the bank during what are called regular working hours, or their bank branch has closed and they cannot get to a bank of any kind. The ATM fees are ones that people notice with great regularity.

When folks pick up either a newspaper to which they have a subscription or pick up one of the free dailies out there and see a huge headline in big bold print that says, “Bank Profits $19 Billion”, they look at their bank statements.

I do not know whether everybody in the House looks rigorously at their bank statement every month, but people who do not have very much money look at their bank statements regularly. They are just cutting the line. The speaker from the Bloc, who would have much more money than some of the people I have talked about, said earlier that he ran into a difficulty with having money in the bank but not being able to access it. However, these folks pay attention to that part.

When they see bank profits of $19 billion, they do not know why they have to pay money to take their money out of the bank. Nobody wants the banks to suffer losses. People would expect the banks to make a profit. They invest their money. That is why people put money in banks. However, charging twice for the money they invest for us seems to my constituents to be a little beyond the realm of reason.

I do not happen to currently live in a rural area, but I have lived in a rural area in a small town of 1,600 people and the bank closed. The next bank was about 42 miles away. What is the responsibility of the banks when they close? Is it simply to pack up the boxes, lay off the staff and move out town?

I know motions were put forward to the committee on public accountability for bank closures or proposed bank closures. I know the motion was defeated. I do not know what we expect people to do. Perhaps people who have cars or trucks and can drive in every kind of weather et cetera, can get to that town 42 miles away. Otherwise, what does one do?

If people cannot get the cash from the bank, they might do the rest of their banking online, which is a presumption that everybody owns a computer and has Internet service. There are parts of provinces where Internet services are not available to them. Also some people do not have computers or if they have, they not have Internet service.

The fact is there is no accountability for those people who have supported and counted on that bank. In a small town a different relationship is built with a bank than in a big city. It becomes part of the family, something that they count on, or some buddy to count on, the bank manager or others in the bank, and that is gone. Where does one go for advice? Where does one even go to take money out? An amendment to suggest that there be some accountability for that was defeated.

As I said, I live in an urban area. I do not consider that to be an issue for me, but it would be for many of the MPs who represent their constituents in the House.

One success is the member for Winnipeg North has put forward a motion to review ATM fees. I congratulate her for that. I hope, as I think others do, that the standing committee will look at banks and subsidiaries, other financial agents and networks that provide financial services to people. I hope everybody will come forward to testify so the results of the study will be comprehensive.

This is one of the things that constituents count on us to do. They cannot do this for themselves. They do not have the time nor the expertise. They expect us to do it. We have that responsibility.

We have heard a lot about accountability and transparency. I do not know if those words still mean anything, but we hear a lot of talk about transparency. I spent too many years teaching college, I guess, because for me transparency is a slide on top of an overhead. Nevertheless, the concept is important.

The motion to publicize the names of banks that violated the consumer provisions of the act was disallowed. The names of businesses that violate their business licence are published by the Better Business Bureau. The names of physicians or teachers who have been disciplined or have had their licences removed are published. The public has the right to know. The motion that we publish the names of banks that violated consumer provisions of the act was defeated.

Why should violations by institutions that make a $19 billion profit be disallowed when we hear a great outcry from the public, and often a very legitimate outcry? Constituents in my riding want to know if teaches, or physicians, or accountants or anybody for that matter have violated their professional code of ethics or their business licences. They want to know who these individuals are. Why should banks be somehow exempt from this? I am very puzzled and somewhat disappointed that the motion was defeated.

If we buy something at a store and we ask the price, we are told, for example, that it costs $7.99, just like it says on the tag. The store discloses the price. However, when we asked about the mandatory disclosure of ATM fees, which was another motion put forward, we were denied.

My bank provides a service to me. I do not provide a service to it. Yet I am not allowed to know what ATM fees are so I can make some comparisons, as anybody would if they were good consumers. Good consumers want to know how much something costs, no matter what they buy. Somehow the committee felt there could not be mandatory disclosure of ATM fees. Perhaps there is some extremely complex reason that I fail to understand as to why these fees cannot be disclosed.

Constituents in my riding do not think there is any reason why these fees cannot be disclosed. That is one thing they understand. They understand credit card interest and they understand their ATM machines and what they pay to use them. They do not have time for the rest. My constituents are raising families and trying to get their kids to soccer, read report cards, take part in school curricula. They do not have the time to look at this kind of information on a regular basis. The publication of this information would be a real service to people. It certainly would be a real service to people in my riding of Surrey North.

Earlier the member for the Bloc spoke about holding cheques. If people live below the poverty line and get a cheque, they do not have the luxury of waiting a week for somebody to clear it. They need that cheque for food. Maybe their child has a chance to participate in sports and they need to buy soccer boots to participate. They need to cash the cheque, not have it held for 24 hours.

I put a Government of Canada cheque in the bank the other day. From what I hear, its reputation is superb, but the cheque was held by the bank for 72 hours. For me it did not matter, but for those people who truly are living from dollar to dollar, to hold a cheque like that is not fair, it is not right and it is not just. It may prevent them from buying a prescription for penicillin, for which they did not budget, for a child who has a rip-roaring ear infection or for somebody else in the family who needs something that requires a medical fee. They need it then, not in a week when the medication will not work on that child who has laid in pain for the week. I am using a very simple example in that case, but in the lives of most people they are simple examples.

We have people who do not have an address. They live on the streets. None of us wish for this, and people are working at ways to correct that situation, but thousands and thousands of people still live on the streets. How do they bank because they do not have an address? There are all kinds of banks that discriminate against people because they do not have a home address. This is one of the issues that should have and could have been addressed, but it was not.

I have talked about the credit card fees and interest rates. We can say people should not run up their credit cards because they have such a high interest rates and the cards will never be paid off. How many of us have been in a position of having to make the decision to feed the kids, or fill a prescription?

We hear a lot in the news about pharming of identity information on the Internet and the fact that there is no public disclosure when there has been a breach of security. No one has a duty to notify me or any of us. Yet this has happened recently to stores and companies and people have been up in arms that they have not been notified. It is terrible that these companies have not notified these individuals, but what about the duty of banks to notify any of us. Maybe some of us if that happened would not have our rent cheque bounce. Companies do not have a duty to call and say their security systems have been breached, that there has been identity fraud and that individuals have been affected by this. The motion to include that was defeated as well.

There are many missed opportunities in this bill. The comments of the CAC have been very relevant about what could have been accomplished and was not.

With that I will close and say that while I know we have a duty to review the Bank Act every five years, I hope we will take it more seriously than a housekeeping measure.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I come from the riding of Surrey North, where there are a fairly significant number of urban aboriginal people, as well as many other people who are feeling the growing prosperity gap in terms of not being able to have affordable housing, not seeing a future for their children. We have a very overcrowded hospital at Surrey Memorial Hospital. It is one of the busiest in the province.

I would like to know how the member would respond to far more people living in poverty and what that will do to our crowded hospitals, given that we know that people in poverty use hospitals more and use the health care system more? What is his position on how that will affect future health care and the use of our already overcrowded hospitals?

[Justice, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last month I joined the member for Toronto—Danforth in Surrey to announce the NDP strategy for getting smart on crime.

Some crime is down in Canada, but violent crime is increasing at an alarming rate. It is time for a new approach. Hard-working families in Surrey deserve to feel safe on their streets and in their homes.

Getting smart on crime means focusing on the three Ps: prevention, policing and punishment.

Prevention is important to stop crime in the first place. It costs a few hundred dollars to help a youth in Surrey get a summer job. It costs $150,000 a year if that same youth gets involved in a gang instead and gets sent to prison.

Adequate policing is crucial. We need to ensure that the Surrey RCMP has the people and the resources it needs to keep our street safe When a person commits a crime, there should be appropriate punishment. This guiding principle is needed to protect our community from those who would prey upon it.

Many politicians talk about getting tough on crime, and I agree, but not with oversimplified answers to complex questions.

I am proud to be working toward real solutions for making Surrey safer for everyone.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by the hon. member about the debt that the Liberals inherited. Having been the health minister and held several other portfolios in the province of British Columbia, I know that there was a debt. I know that there was a great deal of pain paying off that debt because we felt that pain in British Columbia as we watched our health care transfer dollars go down as we picked up the deficit that was created, and we were not able to spend money in other areas as a result of that. I do appreciate that the debt needed to be paid off.

I have 10 babies a day born at Surrey Memorial Hospital. That is almost 4,000 babies a year and they do not understand about debt. All those babies who, during that time, missed out on having early support, early intervention, and support for their moms at home or child care choice do not understand that. It should always be a choice and we should support parents regardless of what that choice is.

We have a whole generation of children who missed out on that kind of support, for which we will probably be paying $125,000 a year in the prison system while that debt was being paid down. I would suggest that while the debt needed to be paid down, it did not need to be completely done on the backs of the health care system and all of those children who missed out on opportunities during that time.

I watched our health care system for two years as health minister and two years as the minister for children and families, and watched those tremendous missed opportunities for a whole generation really of children for whom we will pay that price.

I agree that the debt had to be paid down, and the member can blame whomever for that debt, but during that time, we had a whole generation of children who missed out on opportunities. People missed out on having good opportunities for health care, and health care under medicare, a publicly funded, maintained, accessible, and universal system which the Liberal government found itself seemingly unable to address at the time.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share the member's time.

When I talk to people in the constituency of Surrey North, which I have the privilege of representing, they talk to me about the things that matter in their weekly lives which is really what matters to most of us. People talk to me about being concerned about affordability, about being able to afford things for their children for school. Many of them despair of ever being able to afford to send their sons and daughters to anything past high school, the trades, apprenticeship, college, university. They know there is a growing gap between what they have and what other people have. They see that growing gap and it frustrates them and they do not understand it. They expect their elected representatives to do the job we were elected to do which is to represent them.

As I look at today's motion put forward by the Liberals, there are some comments I would like to make.

I am very concerned about child care and child care choice. I have spent most of my paid and unpaid adult working life, which is longer than I might even want to say, looking for child care opportunities for families, not just child care during regular workday hours, but child care that is within the reach of everyone, regardless of what they do for a living. I still do not see that.

I was very disappointed. I worked with the Liberal government in the early 1990s, from 1991 to 1996, looking at universal child care and a national child care initiative. If that had worked and had been in place, we would not be standing here now saying that the lack of child care is the crisis that it is, because it would have happened. It would have had roots and would have been in place. It would not have been something that could have been so easily cancelled by the current Conservative government.

When the Conservative government cancelled the national child care strategy, it also sent a message to provinces about the lack of importance of child care. What the Conservatives did was not child care choice. One hundred dollars a month before taxes is not child care choice. No one would deny that parents could use an extra $100 a month, or whatever it is after taxes, to provide support for their sons and daughters, although they must be under six years old. After a child reaches six years of age, what does the child care choice become? It does nothing for child care. It creates no spaces. It trains no child care providers. It speaks not at all to the needs of a child over the age of five. I would hope that the Conservative government is not suggesting that children who are six, seven and eight would provide their own care. This really has created a crisis across this country.

I was very interested in the cancelling of the Status of Women offices. One of the best pieces of research I have ever seen done by that office was about how to get more women into government. From looking at the Conservative caucus, I would have thought that the Conservatives would want that research to continue. Surely the Conservative Party more than any other party in this House could use that research about how to have more women elected as part of that party. That was very puzzling. I hope it does not mean that the Conservatives do not want more women as part of their caucus. That was the research that was going on and they certainly could use that assistance, I would suggest.

People in Surrey North are very concerned about the affordability of housing. The amount of CMHC money going into Surrey North this year is $48,000 for the entire constituency. That will do some rent subsidy I am sure, but it is not going to get housing for the homeless and it is not going to help with affordable housing for people in any significant way. If people do not have a safe home, they cannot raise their children in safety.

Speaking of safety and the cutting of child care, the Conservatives talk a lot about crime but they do not talk very much about the prevention of crime. Anybody knows that child care and good early childhood initiatives and interventions would make an enormous difference in preventing children from getting into crime and making those very bad choices that lead them down that road. The Conservatives are at the other end around punishment, but they have cut off the avenues of preventing the crime in the first place by cancelling the child care initiatives. In many ways that is a travesty.

I have noticed the Conservative government reaching out into the ethnic community. Every time I turn around there are Conservative members at events in my riding. I know the Prime Minister has been there. But on truly embracing cultural diversity, where are the centres on credentialing? Where are the centres where physicians, nurses, teachers, engineers and accountants can have their credentials from other countries assessed? We welcomed those people to Canada to address skills shortages because they had those degrees.

I have a motion on the notice paper, but I do not know how quickly it will come forward. The motion talks about seniors from other countries, in particular, India, who cannot collect the seniors pension even if they are citizens in this country. They live in poverty. They cannot collect a pension because we do not have a signed treaty with that one country. Many people from India have contributed to our country, but they cannot have a seniors pension for 10 years, even though they are working, contributing and volunteering in their communities, because India is not one of the, I do not know, 112 countries that have signed a treaty. That has been raised with the government on a number of occasions and there has been no action on it.

I agree with my colleague who just spoke, that people who elect us to come here judge us by what we say and what we stand for. People will judge governments in power by their actions, not by what they say they are going to do, not by what they say they care about, but by what they do.

I do not see the kind of action that will make a difference for the people I have the privilege to know and to work with in Surrey North. A post-secondary education is no closer for the children of those people who cannot afford the still very large tuition fees. Many people want their sons and daughters--many daughters, I hope--to go into apprenticeships and work in the trades because they can make a good living. We have a huge skills shortage in British Columbia because of the building boom. Their sons and daughters cannot take advantage of that opportunity because it is too expensive and there has not been enough money put into the post-secondary education envelope and student loans for those people to afford it.

People just want their lives to be a bit better. They want to have a bit of hope for the future, just like all of us do. They want to know they are doing the best they can for their children. They do not expect miracles. They do not expect to be rich. They do not expect special privileges. They just expect to live safely in their communities with access to the kind of resources that their families might need. That is not what they are seeing. That is how the government will be judged.

There are some missed opportunities, as I said, with child care. The child care initiative could have had deep roots if the Liberal government had moved on it when it was first discussed. I do not know when it was first discussed, but when I first started discussing it with the federal government was in 1991. It would have had deep, deep roots in the community by now and would have created more spaces.

The issue around protecting and promoting linguistic and cultural diversity that is in the Liberal opposition motion is an important one. We cannot just go into communities that have contributed to this country at the last minute, whether they are Asian, South Asian or whatever the country of origin is, and try to make friends without addressing the things that those people have said are important: the seniors pension for people in the South Asian community; credentialling for people from every community.

People ask what we do for foreign trained physicians in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mostly we just let them drive taxi cabs because we do not have a way that they can be credentialled, even though the federal government encouraged them to come. It said we needed physicians. It said we needed accountants. It said we needed engineers. But there they are, driving taxi cabs. There is nothing wrong with driving a taxi cab, but they want to use the skills in the profession for which they were trained.

There have been many missed opportunities by the previous government and there have certainly been choices made by the Conservative government that will not give more hope, a better life, and a little bit of hope for the future to the constituents of Surrey North. It will simply reinforce for them that there is indeed a growing gap, that they are at the bottom of that growing gap, and that they are not going to be able to provide the kind of future that they want to see.

My constituents do not care who we are here. They do not care what colour hats we wear. They just want us to do our jobs, make their families safer, and let them provide good lives for themselves and their families.

[National Strategy for the Treatment of Autism Act, February 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the bill introduced by the member for Charlottetown has been troubling many of us who know people with autism and who have talked to the families of children and adults with autism. The member's bill contains a number of factors that need to be considered.

We do know that for many parents of children, teenagers or adults with autism, it is an autism spectrum disorder. This is not something where when someone brings a baby home from the hospital, a physician can say that the child has autism. The diagnosis may be early or it may be at the age of three, at the age of five or it may only be when the child starts school. However, that is fairly unusual when we look at the kinds of disabilities that we see with children, teenagers and into adulthood.

What we do know is that we are seeing increasing numbers of children with autism and the federal government does have a role to play in consultation with parents.

I have talked to parents about the incredible frustration of finding supports for their child and then, once having found them, not being able to afford them or literally bankrupting families. When I say bankrupting, I mean they are selling their homes and their possessions to finance the treatments which, a good percentage of the time when initiated and administered early enough, are successful.

The other devastating thing for families is that the services are so displaced that families move from places they have lived all their lives, or their families before them, into perhaps an urban area because it is the only place they can find somebody who is trained in either Lovaas or intense behavioural intervention.

The lives of most families are emotionally, physically and financially disrupted and often bankrupted by these circumstances. The other thing we need to look at when we look at the supports for people with autism is that this is lifelong. Even when we can initiate support early, the individual will perhaps always require some kind of lifelong support. Those supports are not only for children aged 3, 5 and 12, they are also for teenagers. What happens after they leave high school? How do we support an adult who is at some stage in that autism spectrum disorder, perhaps at a stage where they need a significant amount of support in their adult lives?

I certainly do not disagree with what the previous member said about creating national standards for autism treatment, about the need for more research, actually an oversight mechanism to monitor what is becoming a crisis in many parts of our country, and that we need to provide increased funding for autism research, part of which has been spoken to by the federal government.

However, there is no question that families need financial support. They cannot afford all the things their children are going to need. However, I would question whether opening the Canada Health Act is the best way to do it. However, they should be covered medically for their expenses. They cannot afford it. We would not expect somebody whose child has spina bifida or some other kind of neurological disorder to cover the treatment expenses, nor should we be expecting these parents to cover the treatment expenses and ongoing expenses that their child, teenager and adult might incur.

I will be interested to hear the member speak more about how he believes opening up the Canada Health Act would actually make a difference and whether he has looked at other ways that individual provinces could provide that kind of service.

I want to see a national standard of treatment so that people do not need to move from Prince Edward Island to Alberta or from British Columbia to Alberta, which many people have done in order to receive support for their child with autism. In point of fact, some people who have worked with us in a previous government had to do exactly that with their young son. They moved from British Columbia to Alberta in order to receive the kind of treatment that their child needed.

We cannot have that because it is a piecemeal approach. We do not have a piecemeal approach with other neurological disorders. We do not have a piecemeal approach if one's child, as I say, is born with spina bifida or some other kind of neurological damage or trauma. We do not tell them that this kind of surgery is only available in New Brunswick and not in Manitoba. We tell them that there is a reasonable standard across the country for the kind of support that they need.

Our goal is to have a national standard of treatment that is available to all parents of children, teens and adults with autism. I will be most interested to hear the mover of the motion speak more about all of the options he looked at in terms of funding and the availability of funding as he looked at opening up the Canada Health Act.

However, we absolutely support covering the expenses of those parents. They should not bankrupt themselves in order to provide for their child.

[Committees of the House, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the previous speaker. We have talked today about many broad issues, but it has been mentioned that we are here today to talk about the expansion of the oversight of the Correctional Investigator. I am wondering if my colleague could perhaps speak to the difference that he feels it would make in these men's lives if the Correctional Investigator had his authority expanded to have oversight over these three men as well. What difference would that make in their lives?

[Committees of the House, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to support both the motion of my colleague, the member for Burnaby—Douglas, and some of the comments made by the previous speaker. In my constituency of Surrey North there is a lot of concern being expressed in the papers and in phone calls to my office for Mohammad Mahjoub, Mahmoud Jaballah and Hassan Almrei.

I was picturing bringing together university students or people from democratic countries and sitting them around a table. I would then describe a situation of three people who have been held in jail for over five years, do not know what the charges are against them, do not have an advocate to ensure that they are safe and doing well, who are not allowed to pray according to their religion, and then I would ask this group of people from democratic countries where they think this might be happening in the world. I do not think they would say that this is happening in Canada. I do not think most people would even imagine in a country like Canada that there would be people who do not know the charges against them, are in jail, and are not even allowed to pray according to their religion.

I want to concur with the comments of the members who visited yesterday and what they have shared about the physical situation in which these men find themselves. We know that there is food. We understand that, but what other recourse have these men been given? They do not have an advocate. They have nowhere to take their grievances. They cannot even pray to the God of their understanding in a way that respects their religion.

I hope the House passes this motion quickly because we really may be in a situation of minutes or hours because their bodies are shutting down. From what people have said, they have lost large percentages of their body weight and they are listless. This means their bodies are shutting down to protect their vital organs, their hearts, lungs and brains. Fairly soon their kidneys will shut down and then their hearts. That is how people die during hunger strikes. We have seen that happen.

Not to know that it is at least being monitored on a daily basis, people would not believe in a country like Canada that could happen. People would name 10, 20, I cannot imagine how many other countries, but nobody would--

[Employment Insurance Act, February 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-265 and to comment on the EI injustice in my community.

In the past, part time workers needed 910 hours to collect employment insurance. Under those circumstances, only 32% of women are eligible for employment insurance. In point of fact, only 37% of men are eligible for employment insurance. No matter what we do with the hours, the injustices in the EI system will continue as long as we continue to look at seasonal workers the way we do.

I represent Surrey and the lower Fraser Valley where about 8,000 to 10,000 farm workers are considered seasonal workers. They are primarily elders and almost 100% of them do not speak English. They depend entirely on the farm contractor or farmer to fill out their forms and then they sign them.

These people are trying to make a small amount of money to add to their family income. They are grandmothers and grandfathers living with their families. They are not used to being dependent upon someone and they want to make their own contribution. These people work many hours a day beyond what is acceptable. When harvest is in, picking hours are long.

These farm workers sign the forms that the farmers give them but they do not know what they are signing. No one is in the fields to tell them in their own language their rights but they do know that if they do not sign the form they will not get paid and will not be able to go back to work. They, therefore, sign the form even though they do not know what they are signing.

These elders, who do not speak English, did not have someone explain their rights, were used by farmers and farm contractors and are now being sued by the government. They really work piecemeal. A farmer or farm contractor divides the piecemeal work by the number of hours and tells the worker to sign the form. The government is now saying that they tried to defraud the EI system but they did nothing of the kind. They had no idea what was going on. The workers who worked in 1997 are currently before the courts, which means there are another four years yet to go.

It has been suggested that it will take about $6 million to try this case that will collect $600,000 for the government. Is that economic efficiency to spend $6 million to collect $600,000? This money is not being collected from large corporations that are not paying the taxes they should. This money is being collected from 80 year old people who have moved to this country because they believe in justice. They are trying to do the right thing but because they are frightened by their employers they sign the form. They did not know it was wrong but the government is taking them to court. What on earth would they pay us back with? They barely have enough money for the clothes on their back.

As I have not worked in the fields I would not suggest that I know what it is like. However, I have talked to some of these elders through translators and they have told me what it is like to be in the fields with the sun or the rain beating down on them for 14 to 16 hours a day picking fruit. It is outrageous for someone to tell them that if they do not sign a form they will not get paid and they will not be allowed back to work.

I have been told about a similar circumstance in New Brunswick involving fish plant workers and a former Liberal MP who found a particular way to deal with those seasonal workers.

I am not saying that is the same situation. What I am saying is that we need a different kind of EI structure for seasonal workers, such as those working on the farms in the lower Fraser Valley from which many of us across the country receive our fruit, particularly blueberries and cranberries.

The other people involved in part time work are in security, in construction work and so on.

These farmers are just trying to do their best. They have come to this country to be with their children and make a contribution to the household. Therefore, for the bill to be fair, it needs to look at B.C.'s seasonal workers. The act has an overall inherent flaw in how EI is granted to farm workers.