Sergio Marchi

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the member points out one particular mayor in one particular municipality. He should know that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities was a big supporter and initiator of this program. In fact some of them have suggested that we should have gone even further.

I do not hear too many municipalities disputing this program. We do not hear too many provincial governments disputing this program. I think the member puts a very negative spin on what can come out of an infrastructure program.

Yes, there are jobs and that is important. I tried to allude to the fact that this is but one program. We are not suggesting that the economic recovery of Canada is simply and solely on the back of this infrastructure program. We are saying that it is a very important cog in the economic wheel.

Second, it will upgrade our infrastructures. Whether the member likes it or not those infrastructures must be upgraded in order for our cities and towns to be competitive.

Third, there are going to be infrastructures that are also going to attract further business and further investment. There are proposals being submitted to the city of Toronto that if in fact realized will attract additional tourism, additional dollars in the marketplace. It is not only a question of simply upgrading sidewalks or bridges. Those are also important. We are also trying to realize innovative and creative structures that are needed and are going unaddressed in terms of trying to capture a greater market share of that tourist dollar or of those convention goers or of trying to provide some additional lifeline into some of those municipalities.

I do not think we should be inhibited by the lack of creativity that the member brings to the infrastructure program. It is an important sector of our economy. I think if we get that sector going, together with the automotive sector and the other sectors of our economy in terms of the home building and the programs that we have in terms of home ownership, the cumulative effect and the cumulative impact of those different programs kicking in will make our economy more vibrant and psychologically lift the spirits of Canadians. Quite frankly we have been living through an economic depression and a psychological depression.

I think if people get the confidence that things are moving, the confidence factor in an economic equation is absolutely vital for that equation to be alive and well.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his two questions on the aspect that small business requests less government and less taxes.

I think those were the very words the Minister of Finance spoke about when he announced his budget in reference to small businesses. The payroll deduction, the question of trying to have less red tape and less bureaucracy for small businesses and a consistency in trying to allow them to grow with some kind of predictability are the very elements that underline the elements in the budget with respect to small business.

I believe we are both on the same wave length in terms of the budget as it treats small businesses.

With respect to the deficit and the debt, obviously he and I are agreeing to disagree. His party certainly came at the national campaign and since then with the feeling that we should have moved further. There have been a number of commentators in the country who have suggested that we cut too much and others who have said that we have done too little. Perhaps once one gets commentaries on both sides there is an indication that one has probably done the right thing at the right time.

We come to this Parliament with our first budget after nine years of a Tory administration that made it its focal point to be a government that was going to reduce debt and deficit. We certainly know something untoward and something very different about that. We believe that the commitments we made in our red book with respect to the 3 per cent that the member alluded to is the correct approach.

This budget starts us down that road. We believe that allowing the economy to grow, providing some job creation and some confidence in the marketplace is certainly an impact that should not be underestimated in order for us to address the other ledger. It is also a question about balance. I think the budget that my colleague, the Minister of Finance, presented spoke to the

balance between the two ledger sheets that are both, not one but both, on the mind of Canadians. Both are priorities.

I think we can only do justice to both if we try to balance both a responsible reduction in our costs of government and doing government which we did and at the same time try to ensure that the economy will certainly produce as Canadians would want it to.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me as the member of Parliament for York West to participate in the debate on the government's budget.

Budgets are about many things. Budgets are about ledgers. As the government and specifically the Minister of Finance approached the budget essentially two ledgers were imposed on him, on the government and indeed on Parliament.

On the one side of the ledger was a population of Canadians who were looking to the government and to Parliament to try to control spending and to try to bring the deficit and the debt into line. On the other side of the ledger were those who expressed themselves through the recent election campaign and essentially demanded some economic renewal, some economic hope, a strategy and a plan to put Canadians back to work.

Those in essence were the two ledgers with which the Minister of Finance and Parliament has had to come to grips in the budget. I would suggest we will have to come to grips with the two ledgers for the duration of Parliament and this mandate. They are not two easy ledgers. Both are very real. Both are very worthy. At the same time both are priorities as articulated by average Canadians.

We have talked about the budget cuts. We have talked about the $8 billion in cuts. We have talked about the base closings. There is a base right next door to my riding that was closed. Those decisions are not taken easily. Those jobs that have to be transferred from the bases to other sectors of our economy are not easy. In fact that was debated moments ago during the question and comment period. Yet I believe Canadians are understanding.

Budgets have to go beyond ledgers. Budgets have to go beyond simple figures and numbers that obviously make up the bottom line. Budgets are also about a document that should provide and inspire a sense of hope and a sense among the

population that budget and fiscal commitments have been honoured and kept.

I would like to spend the few minutes available to me talking about the ledger, about jobs and about keeping economic hope alive. Individuals in the House have suggested much more Draconian cuts to try to bring the deficit and the debt under control. They have a cost; they certainly do not come free of charge. In fact the ultimate aim of the budget was to try to balance the two ledgers.

During the recent election campaign I heard that the ledger on the side of jobs and economic growth was not only important to the future aspirations of Canadians looking for work but as a long term answer to the other ledger, trying to come to grips with the debt and deficit. Particularly as a member coming from the region of metropolitan Toronto I am sensitive to the kind of commitment Canadians gave to the government which had the ability to convince them that it was in a position to offer economic hope.

I come from a city that is not and should not be seen as the fat cat city of Confederation. Yes, there is the city on the shining hill. That is certainly a side of metropolitan Toronto and we are very proud of it. However there is another city in metropolitan Toronto. There is a chronic underbelly that speaks to a sense of despair over the last number of years. We have been through a very brutal economic recession that has also touched metropolitan Toronto.

Sometimes we thought that Toronto would have been sheltered, given that Toronto and Ontario are seen as the economic engine in terms of the manufacturing heartland of the country. Sometimes we felt Toronto would be sheltered from the ravages of a national recession.

Obviously the reality is there for everyone to see. There are record line-ups at food banks and record welfare rolls. Canadians who for the first time in their lives found themselves on the unemployment line were embarrassed to come to see me during my Saturday constituency days. They were actually embarrassed to ask me how to fill out a claim for unemployment insurance or to ask me to help them find a job that would give them back dignity.

I am familiar with that side of the ledger. In the last number of years metropolitan Toronto and other parts of Canada have not had an easy time of it. As a government we have lived and seen reality. We have campaigned largely on the question of how to put the economy back on track and to focus on job creation and economic growth. That bottom line dictated the outcome of the election campaign.

There were many more issues than just that one, but the national overriding concern was who had the answer, who was able to capture the imagination and create economic growth and economic hope. I would submit the budget that was presented kept faith with that side of the ledger. It kept faith on what we talked about with respect to small businesses. The budget also kept faith on a number of areas we have talked about in the throne speech and during the campaign.

I remember when I was sitting on the other side of the House in the last Parliament. I moved, for instance, an opposition day motion respecting the credit crunch faced by small businesses because, like many members of Parliament in this House and in the last Parliament, we ran into countless numbers of small business and medium size business owners who simply could not get the time of day from lending institutions.

Many individuals who had been good corporate citizens of lending institutions, who had good ideas and good projects, who had track records in their communities, who in the end wanted a lifeline not only to be able to expand their businesses and realize those ideas and dreams but to see their way through the economic drought, were simply turned down.

I believe there needs to be a shift in the banking culture in the country. In the red book and in the campaign we talked about moving and encouraging our lending institutions to be better equipped and better structured to meet the realities of the small business sector.

The Minister of Finance followed through on that in the budget by establishing a task force of small business leaders and with the leadership of lending institutions to come to grips with the credit crunch. I believe that crunch is a reality. We are not trying to suggest that the blame should be cast on the our lending institutions; far from it. However, they have a key role in the economic equation of our country. They have to go the extra mile to put on solid footing the network of one million small businesses.

Why is it that banks, parliamentarians, economics professors and economists tell us freely that 80 per cent or 85 per cent of job growth and job creation comes from small and medium size firms? Why is it that 25 per cent of the overall business loan portfolios of our big five or big six banks, if we include the National Bank of Canada, are loans to small and medium size firms? This means that 75 per cent of business loans go to the large multinational corporations of the country. Why is that? Why is it so out of whack that 85 per cent of job growth comes from small businesses, yet only 25 per cent of business loans or thereabouts, according to the Canadian Banking Association, go to small business?

I am not suggesting that we have to tell the banks who to support. I am not saying that the banks should not be beholden to their shareholders. I am not suggesting that the banks should not worry about their credit worthiness.

I am suggesting that if politicians and Parliament have to change the way they do business and if the world is changing at a rapid pace, just maybe the banks have to revisit how they do business.

Sometimes it is easy to understand why a lending institution would rather make 10 loans of $10 million each rather than 200 loans of $200,000 each. Obviously there is a greater investment of time and labour. Obviously the big corporations might have the business plans all fit and proper with professional accountants, as opposed to spending time with small and medium sized entrepreneurs. If job growth is to come from the small and medium sized sector there is an onus on the banking fraternity that gets its licence exclusively from Parliament, through an act of Parliament, to work with us and with the small and medium sized businesses in better partnership to try to resolve the credit gridlock.

If we were to do so, we could imagine the one million plus small industries across the country and the kind of job creation that would accrue through that partnership. Therefore I am excited by a task force that tries to create that partnership. I am excited when the Imperial Bank of Commerce appoints a small and medium sized business ombudsman, a senior corporate vice-president to redress and look at the complaints with respect to lending applications of small and medium sized firms.

Some may say it is a small step, but it is an important recognition on the road to trying to change the way the lending fraternity does business with small and medium sized firms. Therefore I believe the budget has kept faith with the small business sector. In addition to the other issues enunciated by the Minister of Finance including the premium rollback on UI, a net creator of some 40,000 jobs with the millions of dollars that will be saved through that program initiative, the budget keeps faith with the infrastructure program. Some will say it is not a good program. Some will say it is a wasted program that talks about tinkering with construction.

During the election campaign the former Prime Minister almost ridiculed the kinds of benefits that would accrue in construction, trades and home industries across the country, as if construction workers, trades people and the infrastructure of our cities and towns were not important enough.

We should talk with the mayors of the municipalities. Many individuals in the House were municipal politicians. I started there. I only served two years, but I speak from experience about the numbers of projects that would otherwise dwindle on the shelves, that would never see the light of day because there was no partnership with senior levels of government. For instance, I served on the city of North York council. Given that it only gets dollars from the local property tax base, it was not in a position to fund many of those projects; it was not in a position to fund 100 cents on the dollar.

Now we have a partnership, one program. We are not saying that is the nirvana of the economic miracle. We are saying it is one program. Nonetheless it now offers the city of North York, as it does cities across the country, the opportunity to fund some of those projects and kick in 33 cents on the dollar. Yet, as we contemplate that, it would be doing two things. First, it would be upgrading their facilities, their infrastructure as a city or as a town. Upgrading our facilities is paramount to trying to upgrade our competitiveness. That is a variable in the competitive equation, whether members like it or not.

Second, it would create and stimulate jobs in a key economic sector of our country. I was in Windsor last week and, automotively speaking, people in Windsor were very happy that the big three would be moving positively and aggressively in the coming months and years. The prognosis is very healthy for a kind of recovery in the automotive industry. That is a key economic indicator.

So is construction in the trades and in the home industry. Certainly in my home town of metropolitan Toronto where that part of the economic pie has been dead as a door nail for far too long they see this as an economic hope or a partnership that stretches out an olive branch.

When we look at the creation of 50,000 to 60,000 direct jobs across the country, we are putting people back to work. We are stimulating the local economy because there are spinoffs and indirect jobs that flow from those direct job impacts.

We are upgrading our cities and towns, our communities, our neighbourhoods. Which country can afford not to upgrade its cities and municipalities? We do it as a family, we do it in our homes, and as each of us does it our neighbourhoods go up.

Look at the city of Montreal. I believe that Montreal, with all due respect, is a classic example of how the lack of upgrading of its infrastructure has reduced the ability of Montreal to be able to compete aggressively. In a city like Montreal, which I visit from time to time because my wife's family is from there, you can see over a number of years that the inability or the avoidance of keeping those infrastructures upgraded has had an impact in the overall economic life of that urban centre.

Third, this budget has kept its faith with training. We also know that we have to do a better job about how we go about training and educating our workforce. We often have pointed out by constituents and colleagues alike some of the European models. Germany is often put on the table very quickly. We are told that we need to do a better job of equipping individuals, our youngsters as well as those who are displaced from one economic sector and have to face a future of shifting their education or their training.

Our budget has committed itself over the next couple of years to investing almost a billion dollars in the area of training. It creates youth internship and apprenticeship programs in partnership with the private sector, not at the exclusion of some big government program, but together with the private industries of this country. Only in that partnership will those training programs be the success that we all hope they will be.

It keeps its commitment to trying to equip our country and our peoples with the right tools. That too is upgrading our national infrastructure. As we give our Canadian people the skills and the equipment needed, we are also upgrading the skills and the talents of our country.

It also keeps its faith with the youngsters through its youth corps. Again one program, but we heard countless times over the course of the campaign and certainly after it about the consternation that parents have about the future for their children. Here is one project, just one, and we are not suggesting that it is the cure-all, that once it is up and running will take approximately 15,000 young Canadians per year and have them do a job in a community outside their own so that they get to see what this country is all about. It will also give them that first all important experience so that they can hopefully get on the march toward establishing themselves in their careers.

You mentioned, Mr. Speaker, that my time has just about run out. I suppose I should have timed my remarks because I had wanted to say a few other things in terms of the innovation, the new economy and the job and entrepreneurial skills that immigrants, for whom I have the honour of being the minister, bring to this country.

I look forward to concluding my remarks at another time and answering any questions if there are any.

[Immigration, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I find the statement by my friend a bit difficult to swallow. He asked me to meet with this group of 50 Salvadorian refugees. My officials have already met three times with the group in Montreal. I should also say that the hon. member who requested that this meeting not be held here in the first place.

As a result of the three meetings of those refugee claimants and my officials and because of the concern after the automatic review of cases from El Salvador an automatic review on top of that will be given to all failed refugee claimants. In that way we can make doubly sure through due process that has rendered an adjudication that it is in fact safe for those individuals to return to El Salvador.

[Women Refugees, March 8th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I would like, first of all, to thank my colleague for Saint-Denis for her question and her interest in immigration and refugee matters.

First, I am very proud that Canada is the only country with guidelines in its refugee determination system that permit women to make claims based on gender persecution. One hundred and fifty women have made such claims. Over 70 per cent have been accepted.

Second, since 1988 we have had a women at risk program that allows us to select those women who are most at risk and most vulnerable in their societies in our overseas selection of refugees. The international community has much more work to do because the majority of international refugees are women and young children, while the majority of refugees selected by countries are male. We have miles to go before we sleep.

[Immigration, February 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, we do not speak for a few, select numbers of special interest groups. I find that statement offensive. We speak and we decide and we make policy based on the national interest. We did not hide our immigration policies anywhere. They are found in the red book; the red book was distributed across the country and we got a tremendous national majority government as a result.

Consequently we proceed in the national interest. I have cited a number of reports. The member continues to cite the C.D. Howe report, or used to, and it was quite specific in saying that at the very worst, net immigration is neutral to the economy. We are not misleading, we are simply using the facts and evidence before us to build a case.

[Immigration, February 25th, 1994]

I have been asked to speak for myself.

[Immigration, February 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I try to study as much as I can. I do not claim perfection nor does this side claim a monopoly on virtue.

[Immigration, February 25th, 1994]

Quite gladly, Mr. Speaker. The Economic Council of Canada suggested the approximate 1 per cent figure. It also advocates a gradual approach toward that 1 per cent, and that is what I had cited before and is what I cite today.

[Immigration, February 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question and the interest he and other members have shown.

In his question, he alluded to the fact that the Immigration Act has a section which permits the government to remove senior officials and persons of any government that were part of serious human rights violations and atrocities. The government has confirmed that the Barre regime was one of those governments.

When the story broke on this individual I instructed my officials to collect the information from Nairobi where the application originated. We have now compiled the necessary information and I have instructed my officials to immediately write a report which will trigger an immigration inquiry before

an independent adjudicator. As the member knows, anyone who is found to have violated the act or broken any laws will be the subject of a removal.