Steve Mahoney

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, May 1st, 2000]

Yes, Mississauga, of course, as the minister says.

They live in danger all the time.

I went to the refugee camp and saw 110,000 people with one source of water. Many of them had lived there for 10 years in what can only be described as the most horrific living conditions that I have ever seen and that any Canadian would ever see.

I was hoping I would still have time left to tell the story of the woman from Ethiopia with two children, who saw her husband murdered, her teenage son murdered, her other teenage son kidnapped, whom she has not seen since, who was imprisoned for two months and gang raped every night as they hung her on a chain against the wall. I saw this woman cry tears of joy when she was told by the visa officer that she and the four little kids she had left in her care were going to be approved to come to Canada. I was never so proud to be a Canadian.

I am hopeful that the staff in Nairobi will follow up and inform me of this individual and her children. Her 11 year old daughter said through an interpreter that she wanted to grow up to be an airline pilot. It was amazing.

We do wonderful things in this world through citizenship and immigration. This bill will make it easier for all of our staff to do those things and for Canadians to have confidence in one of the finest systems in the world.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, May 1st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill. For the three years of my incarnation or reincarnation as a member of parliament in this place I have had the privilege of serving on the citizenship and immigration committee. This past year I was elected as vice-chair of the committee.

As a member of parliament from Mississauga, my riding, as members will appreciate, is a hotbed of new immigrants, refugees and problems dealing with citizenship and immigration. Indeed, I have a full time staff person, Terry Kirsch, who virtually does nothing but deal with citizenship and immigration issues. In our community, which is a very diverse community, this topic is near and dear to our hearts and is extremely important to my constituents and to constituents right across the region of Peel.

One of the things we have learned in our time in federal office is that the citizenship and immigration system appears to have bogged down in a tremendous amount of bureaucracy and red tape. The minister has recognized that exact problem and has brought in changes that will improve the system. She is really known as the just do it minister, the let us fix the problem minister and the let us find out where the problems lie minister.

It was interesting to hear some of my colleagues speak, notably the critic for the official opposition who spoke for about 40 minutes. In the first 15 or 20 minutes of his speech he talked in terms of all the positive things he saw. I was getting a little nervous. I thought he was about to come out in full support of the bill and that we might have to go back to the drafting table. However, that of course did not happen. As is usually the case, while he and other members opposite were able to find some good things in the bill, they tended to focus on the negative. That can be no more clearly demonstrated than when we deal with the very sensitive issue of refugees.

As everyone knows, this country became a signator to the Geneva convention in 1949 wherein we agreed to take our share of refugees, of people in trouble because of conflicts in their country. The issue then is how to define our share. In reality it has defined itself in terms of the numbers. Where we may see 200,000 plus or minus new immigrants come to this country, we will see approximately 20,000 declaring refugee status.

What happens in the case of a refugee? If individuals quietly show up at Pearson airport, come forward without documents, simply claim refugee status and then tell a story of persecution and problems back in their homeland, they go through a process. In years gone by that process has taken several years to play out. However, if they arrive on a rusty boat off the shores of British Columbia or wade ashore in the maritimes, soaking wet, having come out of some kind of a boat, the TV cameras go on and it then becomes big news.

Just to put this in perspective, while we were dealing with approximately 600 migrants coming ashore on the west coast in what has been termed an illegal way, which it clearly was, we deal with close to that number every single month at Pearson International Airport. Do they get the attention? Do they get the media? Do they get the negative comments that we hear from critics of the government who simply want to use this tragedy?

Let me be clear. This is a human tragedy. This is as a result of bondage, of trafficking, of slavery. This is as a result of organized crime. It is easier today to smuggle people than it is to smuggle drugs and, some would say, it is even more profitable and less dangerous.

They get all of the attention when, as a result of the interviews that have been done, they show that the majority of these people are indeed victims. They are victims of an international crime ring, of human traffickers and smugglers who must be sought out, punished and dealt with in the strongest possible terms.

I was proud to see our minister in China last week telling the Chinese government that it must help us put a stop to this, and going to Fujian province and telling the officials there that they must tell their sons and daughters that this is not safe, that paying $40,000 or $50,000 to be put on an obviously unseaworthy, rusty, old tanker of a ship and being sent out to sea for weeks to cross the ocean is just not safe, not sensible and must stop. Our minister told the people in China that they have the key to solving this particular problem.

However, there are people on this side of the ocean who would like to use this for political advantage. I understand the sentiment of, for example, the Chinese community in British Columbia who said “We are upset because we do not want people jumping the queue. We came here through the proper channels, through the right methods and we don't want people coming in the back door”. I understand and sympathize with that.

I say to them and to all Canadians that we must understand who the victims are. The vast majority of these people who are in detention in British Columbia are women and children. They are not the criminals. The criminals are the people who organized this trip from China with promises of better lives and days of wine and roses or whatever. What happens? Why are they in detention now when it is so costly to keep them there? If they are released as refugees, the young girls could wind up in prostitution, in the drug industry or in all kinds of illegal underground activity that is equally unsafe.

This is not an easy problem to resolve. We are dealing with language and cultural barriers. It is extremely difficult to communicate the facts properly and appropriately to the people in China but our minister is trying. In taking that message directly to them and I am hopeful we will see some success. Notwithstanding that issue, the bill brings forward some ideas that members opposite have talked about, some in support and some not in support, that will streamline the process.

It makes no sense whatsoever to put someone into a motel unit in Mississauga or somewhere in this country to live as a family when they have children who should be in school. Why are they here? They are here because if they are legitimate refugees they have a serious problem. As a result, it is up to Canada, as one of the countries involved in the Geneva convention, to find a solution to the problem.

I believe that most Canadians, the vast majority of Canadians, notwithstanding some of the rants that I have heard from members opposite both in this place and in committee, would say that if they are legitimate refugees, if they are in danger of persecution, if they are in danger for their lives, if they are in danger of being thrown into a rat infested prison somewhere, then we should not send them back. We should find a way to make that determination in as timely a fashion as possible so that if they do have children they can get into the education system and have the opportunity to build a new life.

I thought it was interesting this weekend, as we witnessed the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, that someone talked about the boat people. In fact, John Downing in the Toronto Sun wrote about his experience in helping a number of the boat people settle in the Toronto area when they arrived. They rented a couple of houses. They put those people up first in one house until the health authorities came along and told them they had too many people crammed into the house and Downing and the Sun rented another house to make more room for these people. We all remember them. They were called the boat people.

There was this great paranoia, this fear that they were coming up the credit river in tankers, for goodness sake, and that they would somehow destroy our communities. The misinformation was frightening, but it was fuelled by the negativity that existed in people who opposed Canada accepting its fair share of refugees, and that was the minority in my view.

I thought that Mr. Downing's article was brilliant because it talked about the success of those people today. There was the story of the Vietnamese refugee who showed up here, wound up in Winnipeg and started a small tailor shop. Today, with no education and no financial assistance, he has built a family business. He has kids and a wonderful life in Canada. That is what it is all about. That is what the Citizenship Act and the Immigration Act should be about. How do we share the wealth of this country and at the same time solve the problems, whether it was 25 years ago coming out of Saigon or today coming out of the Fujian province of China, wherever it is coming from?

I understand the frustration when people hear that refugees show up at Pearson airport without identification. They must have had it when they got on the plane. Where did it go? We know that it gets flushed down a toilet, it disappears somehow or it is given back to the carrier who sold it to them. We know that there is illegal activity and we must put a stop to that.

The bill will increase the fine to the potential of life imprisonment for trafficking in human beings. In fact, when we spoke at committee I suggested that we need to create a crime against humanity status for trafficking in human beings. It is not referred to as that, but I believe it should be. There could be nothing in this world more hideous than taking money from people through criminal activity and putting them into a situation where they know not what they are getting into. They wind up in this country in detention, in uncomfortable situations, and it is absolutely a crime against humanity.

The minister will close the back door; the back door that is opened and fueled by criminals, whether they are in organized crime or in ad hoc crime, who are using the situation to line their pockets.

The minister says we have to close the back door. Then, very interestingly, she says “so that we can open the front door wider”. It is an interesting idea.

If we were to ask in the good times if we should bring in more immigrants, some Canadians would say yes, some would say no, and some would say that we should ensure we get our employment up. The reality is, what is Canada if it is not a land of immigrants? If it is not a land built by the toil and the blood, sweat and tears of immigrants, then I do not know what this land is.

My father came from Cardiff, Wales to work in the steel mills. I am sure most of us could trace our ancestry, history and family lineage to another part of the world. Some of us are even first generation. That is one of the greatest things about this country. Imagine coming from someplace else in the world, maybe even destitute, and rising to become a member of parliament. It is a job that I happen to think is dignified and worthy of the respect of Canadians, notwithstanding comments made from time to time in the media and by those on the opposition benches. It is all about immigration.

We recently dealt with the citizenship bill. We see the pride that new Canadians feel every time there is a citizenship ceremony and they become new Canadians. It sends shivers up our spines to see how they feel about it. People can be proud anywhere in the world they go to say that they have a Canadian passport.

We say often that Canada has been voted the greatest country in the world in which to live for six years in a row by the United Nations. I always say it is the greatest country in the world in which to live unless people live here, and then they just want to complain about it.

I went on a trip with a colleague from the Conservative Party and the minister. We went through London, England and spent three days meeting with our Department of Citizenship and Immigration staff there, the visa officers, the young men and women who try to process all of the applications for visitor visas, landed immigrant status and refugee status. They try to deal with all of that. In London they are overwhelmed without a doubt because they have the reputation of being the most efficient and the best place to go. People from Nigeria and all over the western world are funnelling into London saying they know they will get their visas quickly and that is why they are there. They line up.

I sat in on some of the interviews. The London experience was very insightful, very interesting and very educational for me. I was astounded at how many we turn down. I thought this was a rubberstamp and they all just came through, one right after the other. Not true. They are turned down if there is even the slightest inkling that they are not telling the truth. They are turned down if there is even the slightest inkling that there might be some security risk or danger to the Canadian public.

I was extremely impressed with the dedication of the people who work for us in London, England, but the experience of a lifetime in my 20 years in elected office was the next leg of the trip. That was to Nairobi, Kenya. It is a city of six million people. It is a city where 500 people a day die in the hospitals from AIDS. It is a city where one dares not go out at night. It is a city where, the minister will remember, people do not even drive with their arm outside the window of the car for fear someone will hack it off to get their watch. It is a city where our employees, about 80 people in total, live in compounds that are surrounded by a wall with electric fences, with 24 hour security guards and with bars on the windows and doors of these beautiful, magnificent homes with yards to die for. People would think they were in Florida or Hollywood.

[Canadian Alliance, April 12th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, today I have an ode to the Canadian Alliance and the former Reform Party:

C.A. so it seems Are still living in dreams As they continue to strive To merely survive.

Changing their name Still makes them the same Changing their leader Won't help them much either.

With Klees backing out, & Long jumping in The battle within is about to begin. So it's east versus west To determine their best.

And so we must wonder When we'll see their next blunder 'Cause as sure as the sun More errors will come.

So it's back to the west With pretensions of zest After leaving in their wake A political mistake.

Reform or C.A. “What's the difference”, you say As Canadians all know, They're the “same ole”, “same ole”.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 10th, 2000]

I will be voting in favour of the bill, let me tell the member that.

The minister responded by putting in the bill the definition of marriage, which to me was acceptable. I have shared that information with my constituents at the Mississauga Gospel Temple and to everyone else who has written with concerns.

What I found interesting was that the definition, which clearly is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, has caused some concern in the gay community. They have called and said that somehow we have gutted the bill.

I have a message regarding that. If they are saying that and they are partners in gay or lesbian relationships, then what they are really telling me is that they want, perhaps through a hidden agenda, to move toward gay and lesbian marriages being defined in the same way as heterosexual marriages. I do not support that.

I have said that before. Members opposite want to bring up some comments I made in the provincial legislature as an MPP. I am quite prepared to defend them because that bill did not clearly define marriage as the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others.

While I may be prepared to draw my line in the sand which says that marriage is the union of a man a woman to the exclusion of all others, I have introduced a private member's bill which would amend the Marriage Act and amend the Interpretation Act to lay that out clearly.

I am not doing that to be mean-spirited to the gay and lesbian community. I believe they are entitled to the rights outlined in Bill C-23 and to the obligations outlined in Bill C-23.

I have said this before. I do not consider it to be homophobic. I just understand, have been raised to believe, and my constituents in the majority believe, that marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. That is based very much on procreation, on children and on families. I understand that to be the case.

Having said that, if two same sex people get together in a union, draw up a contract, do whatever they want and live their lives loving one another, I can assure you that does not jeopardize my marriage of 31 years. I am the only one who does that, and I do that on a regular basis, as my wife would say.

The fact that two women love one another, are in a relationship and live together has no impact on my relationship with my wife, nor should it for anyone. The reality is that we take the issue and decide what kind of society we want.

Let me use an example. Suppose there were two people working on the assembly line at General Motors. One of them was heterosexual with a wife at home. The other was gay with a partner at home. Are we prepared as a society to say that the heterosexual person should receive full access to General Motors' company benefits, pension survivor benefits and dental plan for his partner at home, but that the person making the same dollar, working the same hours and taking the same risks should not have access to those same benefits? Is that the kind of society we want? I do not think so.

The Canadian people understand the differences between the former Reform Party, or the C-C-R-A-P, or the UA, or the CA, or whatever it is, and the government. I think it is wonderful that it is having a leadership debate. We will hear the vision for Canada and the world according to Stockwell Day and according to the present leader of that party. I cannot wait to hear the debate. We will hear “praise the Lord” all across this great land. They will be standing and saying that if people come to their bosom they will make those people more free and more democratic. It is nonsense. They can stump it and thump it any which way, but the vision in which Canadians believe is not one of the extreme right. It is not one of the extreme religious right. It is the belief that we all have the ability and the freedom to worship in whatever form we want or not to worship in whatever form we want.

Nobody can tell Canadians that they must believe in certain philosophies. That is absolute nonsense. The Canadian people are saying that we will not discriminate. It is as simple as that.

Where do we want to go? Do we want to take away a woman's right to choose what to do with her body? I think they do. I think that is part of their philosophy. That is not the vision of this party. Frankly, that is not the vision of the majority of Canadians.

Do we want to have boot camps? I know they believe in that. They believe in the fist. They believe that a block of wood on the rear end of a kid will cure him. That is their vision. That is not our vision and that is not the vision of most Canadians.

Fundamentally, they believe in discriminating for whatever reasons they choose. That is not our vision and that is not the vision of the vast majority of Canadians.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 10th, 2000]

I did not heckle the member. It was not me. It was somebody else. He should settle down. The hon. member said he would like to live long enough to see change. I do not know if he is going to see change, but I would like him to live too. He should take it easy, lower the temperature, take a Valium.

Let us talk about Bill C-23. I do not care if the courts make the decision or if parliament is making it, but fundamentally the issue is whether we are prepared as Canadians to have a society in which we will say to people who are gay that they cannot have access to the dental plans of their partners in their places of employment, that they cannot share in some form of survivor benefits having lived in a relationship with someone for a number of years, or that because they are gay they are not entitled to those basic rights in the workplace.

I had some concerns about the word conjugal in the bill. That word was defined for me by members of the Mississauga Gospel Temple. By their name alone we can tell they are Christians and their belief in the Bible is very strong. They are very good people. Reverend Horton in a letter pointed out to me that the word conjugal in the dictionary refers specifically to the act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman in a married state.

I said “Just a minute. If we are using the word conjugal, how can we say that this bill does not in some way reference marriage? I think it does”.

I went to the minister, as had others, and said that we needed to address it. For us simply to continue to say that this is not about marriage in some way, or that it could not be interpreted in some way by a lawyer somewhere down the road, is unrealistic.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 10th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I do not know how I get so lucky to follow the hon. member for Wild Rose. It just must be my day. Actually the member puts forward very valid points and some interesting questions, must of which have to do with Bill C-23, human rights, equal rights, the way we see differences in society and the way we see differences among people.

I was intrigued and entertained by the comments just made about what kind of society we want. That member and his party have stood in this place for the three years I have been here and continually gone on about what kind of society they want. They want a society where the views of Charlton Heston are more important than the views of the average citizen. They say that. They want a society that does not have any laws to deal with gun control and that believes in the American constitution which says one has a right to bear arms and a right to defend oneself with those arms.

That is not Canadian society by any stretch of the imagination, but it is certainly their society and their vision. They believe in a society that would discriminate against individuals because of their sexual preference. Let us deal with that just for a second.

[Canadian Women's Hockey, April 10th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the gold medal was on the line. The American team was leading 2-0 after two periods. The tension was high in the Hershey Centre in Mississauga last night as Team Canada took the ice for the third period. They were down but not out.

In the Women's World Hockey Championships, Team Canada made it 2-1 and then 2-all and then, in dramatic fashion in overtime, they lifted the roof and won their sixth consecutive world championship.

Congratulations to the entire team under coach Melody Davidson, to Fran Rider, executive director of the Ontario Women's Hockey Association, who hosted the tournament, and to Mayor Hazel McCallion, honorary chair of women's hockey in Canada and an inspiration to the players.

This was Canada's 30th consecutive win in the world championships. True Canadian grit, determination and character came out in these proud Canadian athletes; a true tribute to Canadian hockey and a great victory for Canadian women's hockey.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the very point the member makes in referring to political slush funds makes my point. By taking grants that are used to support organizations in our community, whether it is the March of Dimes, Community Living or whatever, and effectively throwing everything into a big pot and calling it a political slush fund, denigrates the use of those funds.

When Canadians read the front page of the National Post they get excited because they somehow think the government has misplaced a billion dollars. We know that is not true, yet opposition members stand in this place every day and consistently say it even though it is not true. What they are doing is damaging the good work that is being done by all of these organizations because people get frightened. They are afraid that some reporter is going to show up. They are frightened to write a cheque even though it is a properly approved, sanctioned and processed grant that should go to those people.

In closing, if I may, Mr. Speaker, I referred to raising money for Community Living on the Thursday night. There was also a scholarship fund established, led by Jim Murray of J.J. Barnicke in the amount of $5,000 in the name of Tyler Williamson to help young people with disabilities. This is the community helping out in addition to government grants. Anyone who wants to contribute to that can contact Community Living.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have to admit that I have no idea what the member is talking about.

The government is open. Access to information is clearly available. The Internet can be used. There is no problem getting information. The government increased the number of times that the auditor general performs audits from once a year to four times a year.

That party's own member is chair of the public accounts committee on which I also sit. The auditor general brings forth extremely detailed audits on various departments that he determines he wants to audit. It is not the government and not the opposition, but the auditor general who determines which audits to bring forward.

The chair does a good job on the committee; I have no problem with him. But I am constantly amazed at the lack of research and lack of in-depth questions by members of the opposition in asking the auditor about his audits. In fact, the record would show that as a member of that committee, I ask more difficult questions in relation to government programs than they do.

If the opposition members want to get information out to their constituents, let them do their homework. Let them dig into the auditor general's reports. There is more information in them than they could possibly begin to disseminate. They could at least start by recognizing that the programs exist.

The government is open and accessible and information is clearly available to Canadians.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I want to change the tone of the debate a bit and the direction, because I think there is something fundamental in the nature of an opposition party which puts forward on its opposition day a motion which suggests that the government is being dishonest and that funds are not going to the right people in the communities.

I can appreciate the fact that opposition members might disagree with government programs. They might disagree with the direction we take. They might disagree with where the money goes in terms of helping certain people in the community. If I were on that side and they were on this side, I might have some questions about what was happening. That is a scary scenario, I admit, but it is obviously the role of the opposition to question and to hold government to account. I have no problem with that.

What bothers me about this almost incessant attempt to get at the HRDC grants and other government grants that are community based and go to help people in the community is that while they may succeed in the public's mind in marking up, if you will, the government, they do serious damage to the community groups and the people who need the help. Members opposite know full well that the audit procedure has improved dramatically since this government came to office. However, I do not want to stand here and spend my time simply defending the government. I want to talk about some of the programs.

We know that HRDC, for example, helps to fund the Ontario March of Dimes. What is the role of the Ontario March of Dimes? It is to help adults with disabilities integrate into the community. If that program is in jeopardy because the opposition is in hysterics about questions to do with audits and things that were actually instituted by the minister and the government, then I would suggest to members opposite that they do a disservice to that organization.

I received a frantic phone call two Fridays ago in my office on Parliament Hill from the chief administrator of the Canadian Mental Health Association. He told me that people in the area HRDC office were so frightened and afraid to move that they would not release the money so that he could pay the staff. The Canadian Mental Health Association could in fact be put in jeopardy.

We corrected the problem. We contacted the office and the money flowed in time for people to be paid and for that organization, which does tremendous work in all of our communities across Canada, to live up to its mandate. But why should it be put in jeopardy so that opposition politicians can simply mark up a minister or mark up the government, or score what some might call cheap political points?

Last Thursday evening in Mississauga I was pleased to be part of an event put on by Community Living Mississauga. Many members of the House were part of it, even some members of the opposition. A roast is held every year by members of Community Living. I think they have been doing it for 22 years. This year, as one of the roasters said, they scraped the bottom of the barrel and I was the one they were roasting.

I was delighted to be put in that position, mainly because I knew at the end of the night that the outcome would be a successful fundraising event for Community Living. Including an auction item, we raised close to $70,000 in one evening for Community Living Mississauga.

The event is vitally important because of the young people it supports, young people with mental handicaps who need help. Are these people funded directly by HRDC? No, they are not. They are funded by the social services programs at the provincial level, which are in turn partially funded by the CHST from the federal government. This is not about claiming credit and saying that we are a great government because we are giving all of this money to those groups; this is about the bottom line and the impact when the rubber hits the road in helping these young Canadians and in helping organizations deliver services to them.

A young man was born 19 years ago by the name of Tyler Williamson. Tyler was born to Laurie and Jane Williamson. He was autistic. Many people may have seen the movie Rain Man , in which Dustin Hoffman portrayed an autistic young man.

Many people would recognize the incredible talents of Mr. Hoffman in portraying that autistic young man. Tyler had those same types of gifts; not exactly the same in terms of mathematical skills perhaps, but he was a very special individual. He passed away a month ago.

Tyler fought a four-year battle with leukemia, but what he achieved in his short 19 years, by working with the organizations at Community Living, and what his mom and dad achieved, was truly miraculous. His sister, Taylor, actually donated bone marrow to him as he went through this very debilitating time.

This was a young man who, if he had not had Community Living, sure, he would have had the support of his mother and dad, his sister, and the support of his aunts and uncles and many friends. Tyler was known as the guy in charge of the keys around his dad's car dealership, Laurie Williamson Pontiac Buick in Erin Mills, Mississauga. He would take care of the keys. Everybody would run to Tyler to get the keys for the car, the back shed or whatever was needed.

He was an active young man in the community, but I would venture to say, and I am absolutely sure that Laurie, Jane and Taylor would say, that without the support of Community Living their lives would have been much more difficult. While it was a difficult time for them, and a tragic time for all to lose Tyler, there was at least some recognition that he fought a tremendous battle, not only against cancer and autism, but against attitudes in the community.

One of the important goals of Community Living is:

We believe that the whole community is enriched when people who have a handicap have opportunities to live alongside their non-handicapped neighbours.

That is so incredibly important, because the community is actually enriched as a result of young people like Tyler Williamson being able to participate in community events. The real tragedy, scandal and frightening aspect is the entire acrimonious debate surrounding the issue of precious taxpayer money. It should be on what is even more precious, the Tyler Williamson and Community Living and all the young people who benefit from it.

At the roast I was delighted to see a video with the member for Wild Rose in it showing less partisanship, having some fun. There was a purpose to the video and he understood that.

While I can disagree strongly, passionately, almost physically in some instances with the philosophies, comments and issues that are raised by the former Reform Party, I cannot believe that individually they are so inhuman as to want to jeopardize the good programs that are put in place by the men and women who work at places like HRDC or who work at social services departments in our provincial governments, funded in part by the federal tax grants that are passed on through the CHST. The mitigating damage as this flows downstream is potentially catastrophic.

I wish members opposite could come up with a motion with some teeth to it. The big issue today is health care. We should be debating that issue. Have we put enough money into health care? Are we simply writing a blank cheque to the provinces so they can reduce taxes while cutting health care? These are important issues that need to be debated here, not an issue relating to an administrative matter such as when an audit gets reported.

I ask members to think of the Tyler Williamsons of Community Living and what this money has done to help Canadians with and without disabilities right across the country.