Shaughnessy Cohen

[Religious Freedom, February 15th, 1995]

moved:

That this House, recognizing the fundamental Canadian right of religious freedom and the courageous contributions of our veterans of all faiths, urge the Royal Canadian Legion and its constituent branches to reconsider their recent decision so that all of their members will have access to their facilities without having to remove religious head coverings, including the Sikh turban and the Jewish kipa.

Madam Speaker, I am splitting my time with the hon. Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women.

Although I proudly represent the riding of Windsor-St. Clair, I was not raised there. I grew up in a small town, a village actually, Thamesville, Ontario, in the riding of Chatham-Kent. I grew up in a warm, wonderful home with caring parents, four caring sisters, in a caring village of only 1,000 people. I grew up thinking that our way of life, my family's way of life, the way we related to one another, the expressions we used, our relationships to our extended family, the food we ate and all the things we did were just plain Canadian.

However, as I grew older and my personal world expanded, my perception of what was Canadian changed radically. My parents adopted three sons, my brothers, who are proud to be aboriginal Canadians. I went to a university. I made friends with men and women of colour, of varying religions and heritages. I married a Jew and I raised with him our daughter in a new multicultural world.

Eventually it came full circle as I came to know friends who were recent immigrants to Canada from Ireland. I visited their home. I watched their way of life, the way they related to one another, the expressions they used, their relationships to their extended family, the food they ate. I realized with something of a jolt that I was seeing my own roots. There remained things in my life that still hearken back to the Shaughnessys and the Brennans who came to Canada in the 1840s and to the Murrays and Bradys who came here at the beginning of this century.

I realized then that I, a fifth generation Canadian on my mother's side, am different. I realized that I am a product of my heritage, and I am entitled to be proud of that heritage. Pride in my heritage is pride in my present. My heritage is very much a part of the Canadian fabric.

Over the centuries there have been vast waves of immigration to Canada. Aboriginal people migrated here; Europeans came. People came from the Middle East, Africa, India, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, China and points east. With them came their heritage, their culture and their religious beliefs. My maternal ancestors, like many of them, came here not voluntarily but because of persecution in Ireland.

They were fleeing an artificial famine. They lost their property and were hoping to find a place where they could live in economic freedom and could practice their religion.

That is one very good reason why new Canadians come here today. I say that it is the duty of all Canadians to welcome them, their heritage, their religions and to honour their traditions and let them practice them, just as my great-great-grandparents were allowed to go to mass, to dance their jigs, to drink their beer and to live in peace.

This motion is not just about the Canadian Legion. This motion is about Canada, our multiculturalism and our tolerance of our fellow citizens. On Remembrance Day 1993, the Newton Royal Canadian Legion hall in Surrey, B.C. refused to permit four Sikh veterans into the hall because of their religious headgear.

The four individuals were a retired Indian air force technician and three Sikh World War II veterans. Thirteen other veterans trooped from the hall to show their support for the Sikh members.

On entering the Legion hall, removing hats out of respect for fallen comrades is a dearly and deeply held tradition. On May 31, 1994 delegates to the Royal Canadian Legion's national convention voted against a bylaw that was revised by the dominion executive council that would have required all of its 1,700 branches to admit those wearing religious headgear into public areas of Legion halls.

Today only about 5 to 10 per cent of the Legion's constituent branches are opposed to the wearing of religious head-dress as they feel it displays disrespect to Canada's war dead. They claim that it is their right to make this decision because they have a private club. They say that because they took a democratic vote, the majority must rule.

Both the Canadian Jewish Congress and the World Sikh Organization realize that this decision does not represent all veterans and is not binding on all Legion branches. I would like

to point out that in zone 10 of the Royal Canadian Legion, which is the town of Tecumseh that I represent, the city of Windsor part that I represent and the town of LaSalle, the newest town of Ontario which is part of the riding of Essex-Windsor, no Legion discriminates against people based on their headgear.

I call on the Legions and I call on other organizations to recognize that headgear and other religious symbols are simply that. They are the symbol to that person of a deeply held belief.

The Quebec Human Rights Commission yesterday ruled that the wearing of a veil by Muslim women is not something that can be interfered with by the state, nor is it something that should be forbidden in schools or in public places. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have accepted religious headgear as part of their uniforms.

My father, who is a veteran and my constituents who are veterans, are proud to march next to the many great Sikh veterans, the many great Jewish veterans who wear kipas or yarmulkas. They are proud to march with them and we all should be. Instead of forbidding them from entering our institutions, instead of giving them a hard time, we should be thanking them for the freedoms they have preserved, so that Shaughnessy Cohen can go to mass, so that she can serve in the House of Commons, the freedom that others have in this society that we would not have if it were not for them.

I call on this House to support this motion. I call on all members to urge the Royal Canadian Legion and it constituent branches to reconsider their recent decision.

[Employment Equity, December 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board.

Although it is 1994 it seems that the Stone Age has returned to certain quarters in the House. We have listened to the Neanderthal ramblings of the third party on social programs, women and violence, and employment equity.

Will the President of the Treasury Board please explain slowly, so that our friends opposite will understand, why it is only fair to apply employment equity to the public service?

[Violence Against Women, December 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. In the pantheon of the politically correct, sir, may I say that I do know. I was there, and you are wrong.

[Violence Against Women, December 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, that is quite an opening. I am going to resist. I have no doubt that the member for Wild Rose believes everything he just said. I have no doubt that he abhors violence against women. The problem I have is this difficulty in seeing the bigger picture, this tremendous desire for the quick fix, for the simple solution that I see in his party's policies.

In the dirty thirties women were victimized in the same way, perhaps worse than they are now. The problem is that in the thirties the culture was such that they did not report it. They were afraid to. They thought it was their place to take this. They thought they had to put up with it.

Times have changed. Unfortunately some people have not changed with the times and some people refuse to accept that women have a place in society. We are not a special interest group. We do not want a privileged position. We just want to be equal.

[Violence Against Women, December 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is difficult for me to simply start into my text when I have been faced with the address we just heard in this House. I have to say that if education is the answer to many of the ailments in our society and if the problems we have are problems of ignorance, we need to spend a great deal more money and a great deal more time educating people so that attitudes such as those that were just reflected do not become prevalent in our society.

When I stand on this side of the House and I look across at so many middle aged, middle class white male faces and hear the kind of venom that was just spewed I have to react strongly.

One woman is shot dead every six days in Canada on average. On December 6, 1989, 14 women were wiped out with bullets in just a few minutes.

Others have risen in this House from the other quarters today to recognize these women, to remember their lives, to mourn them and in their name to look toward a time of hope when violence will be a thing of the past.

One woman is shot dead with a bullet every six days in our country. A woman is nine times as likely to be killed by her spouse as by a stranger. They do not just use bullets. They beat them, stab them and suffocate them.

Some want to talk about statistics. Some want to talk about women engaging in crime. Women are violated and abused because of an attitude in our society that suppresses women and that seeks to continue to suppress women even though it is 1994, even though we are moving toward the 21st century, even though women are in the political leadership of our country, in the business leadership of our country and in the parenting leadership of our country; even though women have struggled and continue to struggle to make the same salary as their male counterparts and even though women continue today to lead single parent families from a position of poverty.

Life is very simple on the other side of the House. Those members would like to arm us all. They would like to cut $15 billion out of our social programs with no priorities. They would like to suggest that statistics in the most comprehensive study that has ever been done on violence against women in Canada are eschewed because they do not like the sound of them. Life is not that simple.

We have tremendous problems in this country. We have people who want to help. They want to help women, children and yes, they even want to help white, middle aged, middle class men to have a better life. We do it by bringing prosperity to this country, jobs to this country, by observing the precepts of the Charter of Rights of Freedoms and by following the rule of law. We do it by treating other human lives with the dignity that they deserve and by remembering respectfully, very seriously and very intently the lives of women like the 14 at l'École polytechnique that were lost because our society is less than perfect.

This Friday evening I will return to Windsor-St. Clair and I will join former colleagues, colleagues who are also great and tremendous friends of mine in Windsor. We will have a little Christmas cheer but we are going to do so as persons joined, friends and colleagues united in a cause, a cause which is very important in my community which is the support and the perpetuation of the programs and the spirit of a place called Hiatus House.

Hiatus House is an interval home in Windsor, a transition home for battered women and their children. It is a home that, in spite of what my friends opposite think, is always full, always has a waiting list and does wonders in our community. Hiatus House operates under the guidance and direction of Donna Miller, executive director. I am proud to say that she is a friend of mine and I am also happy to tell this country, through this House, that she is a visionary as are many women and men who work in this field.

This is an incredible place. This is a place that pioneered transition homes in Canada. It pioneered special programs for the children of battered women. It has also pioneered a program called "Fresh Start" which is a program designed for the treatment of spouses who batter, of men who batter their wives and children.

It is a transition home that faces the ugly realities that these people live with and that tries so hard to put these people back together in one piece again, to break the cycle of domestic violence.

I am proud to stand today as the member for Windsor-St. Clair to talk about Hiatus House. I wish I could have spent more time at it but I felt compelled to comment on other things.

December 6 can never be forgotten by Canadians. It can never be forgotten because there are still Canadians who are oppressed. There are still Canadians who are repressed and there are still Canadians who are not white, middle aged, middle class males who make $64,000 a year.

As long as those people are suppressed, as long as our greater political and societal structure is such that there are people who are less equal, then I think we have an obligation to continue. I am proud to be part of this government. I am proud to follow a leader who believes in these principles and I am proud to be on this side of the House even if talking about those principles means that one has to be hackled.

[Youth Service Canada, October 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I call upon all members of this House to support imaginative project ideas from their respective ridings for Youth Service Canada. There is a great deal of work to be done in our communities.

We should put the talent, energy and creativity of our young people to work in our own backyards. Young people will stand taller and our communities will grow stronger for it.

On October 25, 1993 Canada's youth voted overwhelmingly for the Liberals. That generation put its x over here, because they trust us to deliver.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I just love to hear this stuff from over there.

I am from Windsor. I may not have mentioned that any more than two or three times today. Windsor is on the Canada-U.S. border for those from far away who maybe have not been there. Detroit is so close that people go there for lunch and get back in an hour. When we go to Detroit we can see what happens when

people start talking about debt walls and knocking money off of our social programs for the sake of the bottom line.

Over there we can see seniors in the gutter because they have no other place to go. We can thank a right wing governor for that, a guy whose policies sound very much like the policies of the current Canadian Reform Party.

The Canada pension plan is fiscally sound. The government is sound. The government will be here for a long time and so will the Canada pension plan.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, with this cold, this laryngitis and this temperature, this member can barely stand at all. However I am happy to stand in the House and say to my friend opposite and to all Canadians that the senior citizens of Canada are absolutely, perfectly, totally and completely safe with the Liberal government in power.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I did not refer to replacing civil servants with technology. I did not say that at all. What I did say was that we could mechanize offices and make more efficient the administration that we have. There will still be civil servants. This will never be, at least in our mandate, a totally mechanized system.

The Canada pension plan is absolutely precious to Canadians and certainly to the Liberal government which established it in the first place. When we look at the Canada pension plan we know as a government that it is important that we continue to streamline it so that the money in this plan goes to its clients and not to inefficiencies which have been built into the system, particularly over the last nine years.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, we are fortunate to live in 1994 when technology has reached a point that by its use we can implement mechanized and virtually foolproof office procedures and administrative procedures that are much more efficient and less labour intensive than 25 years ago when the services we currently have were put into place.

The nice thing about the Canada pension plan is that it is a unit. Administration comes out of the plan itself so that the lower the administration goes, the more money we have to make payments to our friend who in 23 years is worrying about how much money he is going to get every month.