Shaughnessy Cohen

[Supply, March 17th, 1995]

The Reform Party does not want to support sick people. That is what I just heard.

[Supply, March 17th, 1995]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the admonition. Whatever the language, we just heard it. The Reform Party does not want to support women who choose to get pregnant.

[Supply, March 17th, 1995]

Hello. Earth to Reform. Mr. Speaker, Canadians want the deficit handled. They want the deficit managed. We are doing that. We are taking a little longer than Reform would because we do not want babies to starve in the street, we do not want children to miss their education and we do not want old people to not have income support.

Hello. Earth to Reform. This is the real world over here.

[Supply, March 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, during this debate members of the opposition have raised many issues arising from the budget, in particular about building an effective social security system for Canadians.

The motion before the House today and pronouncements from the Reform Party indicate one perspective on social programs, a perspective I do not share, one which no one on this side of the House shares, a perspective not shared by most Canadians and certainly not by the constituents in Windsor-St. Clair.

In the federal budget and in the vision sketched out by the Minister of Human Resources Development there is quite another vision. The difference is clear. While Reform rambles on, indiscriminately cutting here and hacking there, the government is taking a thoughtful approach to human resource issues.

The government is turning the page from the strait jacket of rigidly centralized Tory programs. The government is leaving behind the Tories laissez faire approach of writing cheques and to the more Tories the better.

It is an innovation, something Reform does not know much about. It should not be the Reform Party. It should be the regression party. It is innovative in terms of social programs far beyond the simplistic notions of the Reform Party.

In essence the budget reinvents government for the 1990s. These social programs and the budget are built on our belief that Canadians want communities and individuals to have the tools to make their own decisions while ensuring basic principles are in place on a national basis.

It is very important to listen carefully to what Reformers say so that one can compare what they say to the government's vision of social security, peace and good government for this nation.

Here come the guns. This government's approach begins with a focus on three priorities. We want to keep our citizens alive. We do not want them shooting each other. We are concerned about employability. We want to find the best way to combat poverty.

Employability by helping people to find, keep and improve their jobs and skills and the elimination of poverty are our goals.

We have learned there are many ways to achieve these goals. The employment needs of a single parent led family in a housing project in Toronto are substantially different from the employment needs of a family which formerly made its living in the Atlantic fishery. In a country as diverse as Canada, there is no one size fits all, quick fix answer like Reform would suggest.

For that reason provinces and territories are joining us in finding these new answers. They know innovation is not reserved to one level of government in our Constitution. One place that will become clear is the new Canada social transfer. This will shift federal support for post-secondary education, health, social assistance and social services into one package starting in the fiscal year 1996-97.

Currently transfers under the Canada assistance plan come with a lot of strings attached. Strings have become less and less relevant to today's world. We believe some of these strings are unnecessary. We believe they impede innovation, restrict flexibility and increase administrative costs. They also impede regional solutions to very real and very different regional problems.

In short, this cost sharing approach hampers provinces that need the breathing room to design and deliver social programs in line with their local needs.

We believe the provinces share our goals to improve the employability of Canadians and to reduce poverty. What they also want is the flexibility to deal with these problems in a way that responds effectively to people's needs.

Under the Canada social transfer we will allow this to happen while remaining faithful to certain fundamental national prin-

ciples. First and foremost the conditions of the Canada Health Act will be maintained. In other words, universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness and public administration will be respected.

Canadians also do not want to see their mobility restricted because of minimum residency requirements. Beyond those principles but consistent with them always there will be flexibility and partnerships.

The Minister of Human Resources Development will be inviting all provincial governments to work together to develop through mutual consent a set of shared objectives that will underlie the new Canada social transfer. By achieving a coherent framework with provinces and territories we will be able to tackle the core problems of employability and poverty.

This government wants to work with the provinces and territories to increase access to good quality child care. This can help improve the employability of many Canadians with low income. It can offer children a great environment that helps them learn and grow.

We would like to work out better means of helping persons with disabilities to get jobs and to achieve greater independence. We believe provinces and interested groups will welcome that commitment and will help us achieve it.

In these two areas, as in our entire array of federal-provincial relationships, we want to build new partnerships that focus on results and that are grounded in common values.

While that is the government's approach, what about Reform? The record is silent. Reform has nothing of substance to say about any of these issues. Employability? Who knows. Reducing poverty? I think we can guess what Reform's perspective is.

Perhaps I should simply move on to some other subject on which Reform members actually do have a policy. Unemployment insurance is a very good example. Their position is that we should knock $3.4 billion loose from the unemployed by cutting out all special benefits and the interest differences tied to local unemployment rates.

Who would pay? Women would pay. There would be no more Maternity benefits. That is the Reform's idea of a baby gift. Welcome to Newt Manning's Canada, little one. The sick would pay. The sickness benefits under unemployment insurance would be cut out. Under Reform's plan we would have to guess that we might break our leg in advance and save up for it. Welcome to Preston Gingrich's Canada, convalescent Canadians. People in less prosperous regions would pay. Reform wants to see UI entrance requirements that would be sharply higher than they are now to bring them up to the level of the wealthy regions. Welcome to the land of neo-Newtism, unemployed Canada.

Can the UI program be reformed? Absolutely, but this is not the way. The government has been quite clear that we need to move forward from the current unemployment insurance program. We believe it does not do enough to help people get back to work. We believe it can be a far more active policy. We have set a target for program savings of at least 10 per cent.

As the Minister of Human Resources Development has already said in the House, unlike Reform we will not achieve these results at the expense of 165,000 new mothers a year. We will not achieve these results at the expense of 155,000 people who fall sick annually. We will not achieve these results at the expense of 30,000 fishers. These are precisely the people Reform is attacking when it claims saving for a rainy day equals an intelligent social policy.

The same holds true for seniors and seniors benefits. The Reform Party claims there is $3 billion waiting to be plucked from the old age security program. I cannot wait to hear what the seniors I meet for coffee at McDonald's on Wyandotte Street in east Windsor have to say about that.

Like so many Reform proposals, we know the price but it will not tell us what we would be buying. Precisely who would lose their benefits and how much would they lose? Would it be a clawback? At what rate? From what income level? There is no way anyone can squeeze $3 billion from OAS without taking it from the seniors, whom no one would call wealthy.

It is clear from the budget response Canadians support the direction the government has taken very strongly. They see the complaints from the opposition and from some provincial capitals about this new direction for what they are: pure politics, old fashioned politics, politics as usual. Our citizens know, even if some partisan politicians do not, we must build real ways to work together productively. They have no time for transparently obvious grandstanding. They have no time for ideological shell games.

The government is determined to build a better system of social security for Canadians, one which could be sustained financially, one which sets clear goals and one which enlists consistent support to achieve those goals. The government's budget is a blueprint for that system.

At the end of the day we have to wonder which approach is better. Canadians clearly prefer the approach of the government and reject the simplistic, facile approach of the Reform Party.

[Health, March 17th, 1995]

It seems the testosterone levels are a little high on the other side today. Those members do not take women's health matters seriously. Maybe when they get their guns they will feel better.

Breast cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and other ailments remain a serious and deadly threat to the women of Canada, although apparently amusing to the Reform Party.

What is this government doing to keep its red book promises to Canadian women to improve their health care?

[Health, March 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health.

It is widely accepted that in the past medical research and therefore practice and treatment have to some extent failed women.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

You are quiet now. No response.

[Gun Control, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, come with me now to those wonderful days of yesteryear, back to the days when the NDP thought themselves a force to be reckoned with.

Where are the NDP members today? Well, I will tell you that eight out of nine members of the NDP caucus are going to vote against gun control.

I look to the left and see Buzz Hargrove and the CAW. They support gun control. I look to the left and see Bob White and the CLC. They support gun control. I look to the mainstream and 80 per cent of Canadians are what I see. They support gun control.

Where are the NDP? Oh, there they are on the right.

[Property Rights, February 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this motion. I want to thank the hon. member opposite for bringing this issue to the fore.

He seeks to initiate an amendment to section 7 of the great Canadian Charter of Rights to recognize the right of the individual to the enjoyment of property and the right not to be deprived thereof, except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, a right which exists.

I caution the member to recall-he seems to be quite the student of history-that there was another great revolution against the crown of Britain, the American revolution. As a result of that, it also has a constitution. It is a constitution that has created a tremendous problem in its courts with the issue of the entrenchment of property rights.

We have had a pleasant visit this week from the President of the United States. Perhaps it is timely to raise this issue today, even as he departs from our country.

It is probably a good idea to look at what happened down south when we look at the question of the entrenchment of property rights. As I understand it, the courts in the United States have extended property rights beyond traditional forms of property such as land or housing to include such things as social security benefits, drivers' licences and employment with the government; entitlements, I think they are called. These are considered to be forms of property in the United States to which constitutional property rights protections apply.

This is an interesting notion, particularly when one contrasts this with what I think is the traditional view of the Reform Party. If the reform Party in its infancy can have any tradition, surely it is its opposition to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its opposition to what it thinks is government involvement in the activities of ordinary citizens.

I would suggest that an amendment to section 7 conflicts with those fundamental beliefs it purports to have. Certainly the American experience raises questions about how Canadian courts would interpret a property rights amendment if such rights were added to the charter.

One wonders what the impact would be. The impact would be an unwarranted interference in the property rights of Canadians. Our American neighbours also had some unfortunate experience with constitutional property rights during the first half of this century. This was under what became known as the doctrine of substantive due process. Under this doctrine the American courts, the United States Supreme Court included, struck down some important social legislation such as laws regulating the maximum hours of work, laws regulating minimum wage and child labour laws.

Child labour laws were struck down because they were seen to be violations of the employer's property rights, or should I say the slave owner's property rights.

The United States Supreme Court ultimately repudiated this approach in the 1930s. Nevertheless the American courts have continued to apply American constitutional protections in a variety of areas.

Canadian courts would be free to follow their own approach to constitutional rights issues and have done so even where provisions in our Constitution and our charter are similar to American constitutional provisions.

Given that we share so much in common with the United States in terms of our legal foundations, I would suggest to the members opposite that it would be well worth studying the American experience.

Undoubtedly this effort would be repaid in the greater understanding that we would develop about the meaning of property rights and their potential impact on our system.

The more one delves into this matter, the more one realizes that it is not easy and it is not clear. Nevertheless, the Reform Party typically puts forward the quick fix, the simple solution to a problem that exists primarily in its mind.

We should start with the simple and basic idea of the right to own and enjoy property. Your home, your property should not arbitrarily be interfered with. How could anyone dispute that?

When we start to examine the concept of property and when we start to see its actual and possible scope, when we begin to understand the range and the extent of laws that regulate or affect property, when we begin to understand all of these concepts, we need to take a step back and look at this in a concerted fashion.

It is one thing to talk about this in general and abstract terms but it is quite another thing when we consider the entrenchment of these kinds of rights in our constitution, an action that would result in power to the courts to review a whole range of laws which in some way may affect ownership or use of property.

Entrenching property rights in the Constitution would require the approval of the majority of the provinces. Given that the Constitution already gives the provinces jurisdiction over property and civil rights within their boundaries, I would assume they would have a rather prominent interest in this and certainly a real and valid one. Given that their agreement would be required for any change to the Constitution, I would argue that this is not the sort of step that could or should be accomplished through unilateral measures.

Students of the Constitution will tell members that this may be the kind of measure that a province could opt out of under the amending formulas set out in section 38 of the Constitution Act of 1982.

The parliamentary record from the debates leading up to the patriation of the Constitution and since that time indicates that some provinces have had concerns about constitutional changes that would constrain their ability to regulate property.

I do not know where the provinces stand on this issue at the present time but I am fairly certain that it is not a priority for them. The party opposite should know very well that reopening the Constitution is not a priority for the vast majority of Canadians at this time.

We have evolved elaborate laws regulating and protecting the ownership and enjoyment of property. Real and personal property laws regulate acquisition and disposition of all kinds of property and they regulate in some cases how property is managed or the use to which it is put.

The point of these laws is not, as the member opposite suggests, to burden individuals, but rather to ensure that these transactions occur in an orderly and fair fashion and to guard against mistakes or fraud in the purchase, sale and management of property.

In Quebec the civil code provides for the disposition of real and personal property and in other provinces statutes and common law deal with the same issues.

These common law rules can be traced back hundreds of years in English law. While we are on that, they can be traced back farther than the Magna Carta.

I cannot stand on this side of the House and not comment on my friend's argument concerning the glorious revolution. I would suggest that the glorious revolution and the Reform Party cannot be seen to be synonymous. The Magna Carta, which really is a predecessor and a direct line to our own charter, provided basic fundamental rights.

The Reform Party today stands in the House and seeks by this amendment to narrow those rights. The present charter for Canada was a part of and proof of the glorious revolution; the glorious revolution in Canada being the revolution that entrenched for us forever basic human rights and other basic civil liberties, my friend says the most important of which is the right to own property.

There are other views on which of these rights is more important. One of those rights is clearly the right of the citizen to live freely in this country.

The glorious revolution, an amendment to entrench property rights in the Constitution. I say that is an attempt by those who

support it to limit the rights of Canadians and to prevent Canadians through their government from protecting themselves.

[Social Assistance, February 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question which is in pursuit of compassion is for the Minister of Human Resources Development.

After today's rather scary announcement the women of Canada are breathing a collective sigh of relief that the Reform Party is not the government. Women want social security reforms to be sensitive to their plight and to that of their children. I know the minister has met with many women's groups and I know he is very concerned about child poverty.

What measures has the minister taken to address the needs of Canadian women and their children?