Gilbert Fillion

[The Budget, March 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise the Chair that members of the Bloc Quebecois who will now speak in the debate on the budget will each take ten minutes to express their views.

I think it is important to compare the government's intentions as expressed in the speech from the throne with what the government is actually doing in the budget. I would like to quote a short passage from the speech from the throne: "It will be the policy of the government to seek to clarify the federal government's responsibilities in relation to those of other orders of government, to eliminate overlap and duplication, and to find better ways to provide services so that they represent the best value for taxpayers' dollars and respond to the real needs of the people".

Could anyone tell me where in the budget we can find the government's response to these good intentions expressed in the speech from the throne?

Again, the budget brought down by the Liberal government is a centralist one, and the burden of reducing the deficit has been laid squarely on the shoulders of the taxpayers and the provinces.

That is not the kind of equity Canadians expected. This is one more instance of the government's inertia. Once again, we have ample proof that Quebec is stifled by federalism, which tends to neutralize any constructive and innovative policy that would be useful to Quebec society.

The Minister of Finance keeps repeating to anyone who is willing to listen that his budget followed an unprecedented series of consultations with Canadians, and a costly one at that. Yes, he consulted, but he picked and chose his consultants. Did he go to the middle class and the neediest in our society to hear their views and concerns? Did he go to the Lac-Saint-Jean area, to which the Prime Minister referred as a small community?

I represent the riding of Chicoutimi, where unemployment is particularly high. The unemployment rate for the metropolitan area of Chicoutimi-Jonquière, according to Statistics Canada, was 15.7 per cent for January 1994, not seasonally adjusted.

The average annual unemployment rate for 1992 was 13.9 per cent, while in 1993, the average rate was 16.1 per cent. These figures are unacceptable. In January 1994, the Chicoutimi-Jonquière metropolitan area had 9,000 unemployed workers out of a total labour force of 60,000. When we speak of 9,000 unemployed persons, we are really talking about thousands of other people who are affected, families, children and households in dire straits. Furthermore, the rate of 15.7 per cent does not include those who are no longer looking for work, those who have grown discouraged. This figure of 15.7 per cent does not include seasonal workers either. It is a conservative figure which masks a reality that is far bleaker.

Did the Minister of Finance consult with the people on the streets? This budget contains all kinds of recipes to fight the unemployed, instead of unemployment. The maximum period during which a person can collect benefits will be reduced. The number of weeks of work required to qualify for UI is being increased from 10 to 12 weeks. The benefit rate has been reduced to 55 per cent, a drop of 3.5 per cent. The overall feeling of certain well-known economists is that more than 50 per cent of the projected drop in the federal deficit will be borne by unemployed Quebecers and Canadians. This is the government's recipe for fighting unemployment.

People's privacy will not be spared. Various factors, such as family status, common law relationships and economic circumstances, will be checked. One inquiry after another will be made before a person can qualify for the program. Moreover, the government has also called for a review of the country's social security programs, including unemployment insurance, the Canada Assistance Plan, the child tax credit program, employment and training programs, established programs financing in the education field and social development. What is the government planning for the future?

After raising some hope among the people by talking about job creation, this budget disillusions workers; even worse, it attacks the poorest in our society. The Liberals' pseudo-strategy for employment is based mainly on consultations, studies and committee work.

There is less and less food in Canadians' refrigerators. Let us not wait for the fridge to be empty; otherwise the people will rise up and we will have to bear the blame. On October 25, 1993, Canadians forcefully said that they want change. The government side seems to have already forgotten that because it is now following in the previous government's footsteps, it is repeating the same scenarios.

Furthermore, it is the first government since Confederation to forecast such a large deficit, $39.7 billion, just under the psychological level of $40 billion. No economist and no tax expert would have dared to make such a forecast.

Surely an infrastructure program where the costs are shared with the provinces and the municipalities will not solve all problems by itself. Cities and towns will have to go into debt to participate in the program.

To reduce the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP in 1996-97, it would have to be brought down to about $25 billion. The government's budgetary objectives are hit or miss. The proposed measures do not announce what was promised, namely jobs. The budget presented by the Minister of Finance is deficient and misleading.

In its speech from the throne, the government announced its intentions. Today, with its budget, the government is showing its colour, the same as the colour of its book. Canada is in the red and nothing is being done to fight the underground economy, black-market employment.

[Congregation Of Notre-Dame-Du-Bon-Conseil, March 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, a century of teaching will be the theme of the centenary celebrated this year by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil, the only religious community founded in Chicoutimi. Theirs is a history of dedication which deserves our attention.

The Congregation has helped educate residents of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, since 1894, without interruption. The sisters also extended their ministry to Charlevoix and the North Shore. Finally, they have also worked in various countries in Africa and in Chile.

I would therefore ask all members of this House to join the people of Chicoutimi in wishing the Sisters of Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil a happy and prosperous centenary year.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, if I understood the question correctly, I must say it is not a question of giving preference to women in legislation, but simply of wishing to ensure their equality with men in every sector of society. Then, whether we are looking at wages, social housing or equity in employment, the main thrust will be that our legistation must reflect the equality of men and women once and for all. At some point, men and women should be considered simply as human beings.

I want to mention in passing that I have relied heavily on data prepared by Statistics Canada since some had criticized the figures contained in the report on the status of women. These figures were later adjusted, to a certain degree, to reflect today's reality and the data available from Statistics Canada.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

I thank the member for her remarks. You can be sure, Mr. Speaker, that what I said is not a one-day thing. I made my career in teaching. I spent 34 years of my life with teenagers. Through the years, I met a great number of parents who would come and confide in me regarding the many different kinds of problems their teenage daughters were experiencing and I always listened very carefully to them. My job as a teacher taught me that, beyond political partisanship, everybody must join the fight against violence.

In any case, I am grateful for a job which allowed me to celebrate every day, 365 days a year, for 34 years, this event we mark once a year, on March 8, Women's Day. Thus, I directly carry this over into my family life, with my three daughters, my wife and my son. As you can see, I am in very good company.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question and comment. I must stress that in my presentation on the status of women, I have not taken a provincial political point of view because some would have said that the Bloc Quebecois wanted to use the issue to its advantage, that it wanted to score some political points.

When I speak about the status of women, in my mind I know that problem concerns the riding of Chicoutimi, the ridings of my friends from the other side, all my colleagues' ridings, the province of Quebec, all the provinces in Canada and Canada as a whole. Given the amounts spent on the preparation of that report dealing with many subjects, which was requested by the Canadian government and cost $10 million, at a certain point we should use that document as a basis for discussion and as a basis for dealing equally everywhere with violence against women.

Now how should we go about addressing the issue for all of Canada? What kind of committee could we create to make sure we are more alert? I leave it to those who will speak on the issue today to make some suggestions. I think that such a process is an important one; it is important to find solutions to the problems women are faced with.

[Supply, March 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to mention the presence in the gallery of my wife Louise and two of my daughters, Marie-Hélène and Marie-Christine. I should also add that my other daughter, Isabelle, a student at McGill University, and my son Jean-François join me in stressing the importance of this day for all Canadian women.

On this day, March 8, I would like to talk about an issue of extreme importance to women and which we have to address if we are to give a true meaning to the word equality. I am referring to violence against women.

The very existence of this violence shows clearly that there is a power relationship underlying a serious imbalance and the absence of effective equality. Violence against women is an integral part of our social structure.

The tragic massacre at the École Polytechnique on December 6, 1989 brought back to the fore a brutal and far reaching reality and we are still torn apart by the whole thing.

This situation required action. In August 1991, the federal government set up a Canadian committee on violence against women. This committee was co-chaired by Mrs. Marthe Vaillancourt, a respected person in the field and also the director of the Centre d'aide aux victimes d'actes criminels in Chicoutimi, and by Mrs. Pat Freeman Marshall.

The committee did a lot. Hearings were held all over Canada. A final report was submitted in July 1993. From these hearings in 139 communities across Canada, as well as submissions and research documents, we gained a better picture of the situation of women. The committee proposed 494 recommendations in a 500-page document.

A framework had to be established and the committee defined violence against women as all forms of violence committed by men, as opposed to marital and family violence.

Violence takes different forms. It can be psychological, sexual, physical, financial and spiritual. Some aspects are unfortunately more familiar than others. There is no hierarchy in that list of various forms of violence; all forms of violence against women are to be banned, whether they are threats, rape, incest, unrequested sexual fondling, blows, withholding of money, contemptuous attitude towards one's personal beliefs, etc. Our tolerance of violence against women generates costs, human, financial and social costs.

Let me quote the final report of the committee: "A Quebec study compared the health of a sample group of women and children who had left a violent environment with women and children of a comparable group who had not experienced violence. It concluded that: The health of these women and their children was distinctly different from that of the general population, and they were affected first of all by problems of mental health".

We can see also that there are no case detection measures and that diagnostics are often false. Financial costs impact on health care and work-related costs and also on the judicial system. Let me quote the report again: "The costs of one sexual offence,

where the offender serves three years in prison, can be very conservatively estimated at more than $200,000". The Final Report of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women first describes the problem and its various aspects and, in a second part, presents a national action plan.

That national action plan comprises an action plan for equality and a zero tolerance policy. The action plan for equality makes recommendations on two main aspects of the issue: on the one hand, improve the economic status of women which is directly related to violence against women and, on the other, acknowledge and treat women as independent persons. Emphasis is to be put on eight specific areas: right to equality, equal access to the legal system, equal participation in politics and the civil service, improvements to processus aimed at promoting equality for women, economy, family, taxation and transfer payments.

Finally, the zero tolerance policy involves a responsibility structure for the implementation phases and an application model. This policy is based on the premise that no form of violence is acceptable and that sufficient resources must be allocated to eliminate violence against women.

In my riding, according to the 1992-93 statistics released by the Centre d'aide aux victimes d'actes criminels of Chicoutimi, spousal abuse and sexual assaults make up close to half of all complaints made pursuant to the Criminal Code. Note that 82.3 per cent of crimes are made against women.

At the national level, a comprehensive survey of 12,300 Canadian women conducted by Statistics Canada and made public in November 1993 provided eloquent information about violence against women. In Canada, more than one out of two women suffered physical or sexual abuse at least once during her adult life. In a great majority of cases, the assailant was known to the victim. The definition of an act of violence which was used refers to actions considered offences under the Criminal Code of Canada.

According to Statistics Canada, physical assaults vary from threats of imminent bodily injury to assaults causing serious bodily harm, while sexual assaults vary from sexual interference to violent sexual assaults causing serious injury to the victim.

This survey also shows that one in four Canadian women reported being abused by her current spouse or a previous one. The most recent national survey conducted in 1980, which was highly criticized for being speculative, indicated that one in ten women had been physically abused by her spouse.

Most of the 10 per cent of women who declared being victims of violence in the 12-month period preceding the survey were young women, between the age of 18 and 24.

The survey also shows that men tend to be more violent if they were witnesses to violence against their own mother.

Alcohol plays a major role since, as the study indicated, the assailant is intoxicated in more than 40 per cent of violence cases. One in five acts of violence mentioned in the study was severe enough to cause injuries, a quarter of which demanded medical attention. It is also noted that nine out of ten assaults not only caused physical injuries to the victim but left emotional scars as well.

Fear is on the mind of a good number of women whose spouse is violent. It is made worst by the prospect of finding themselves in a potentially violent situation. Thus, 83 per cent of women reported being afraid to enter alone an underground parking lot. Seventy-six per cent are afraid to use public transportation at night. Sixty per cent do not feel safe walking alone in their neighbourhood at night. Only 14 per cent of violent acts and no more than 6 per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police. In only a third of the reported cases, charges were laid against the assailant.

Further to this study, the Secretary of State responsible for the Status of Women stated that her government would launch a national campaign to heighten public awareness and take steps to force the violent spouse to leave the marital home. She promised in the same breath to better finance organizations for battered women and their children. As we say, desperate times call for desperate measures. One does not put a poultice on a gaping wound. These figures are very revealing and we deplore the fact that such a sad situation can exist in a country like Canada.

The budget allocated to the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women was $10 million. A great deal of money and energy has been invested in this initiative, and the situation as it is depicted requires a follow-up on this report. Furthermore, the survey conducted by Statistics Canada, at a cost of $1.9 million, shows the extent of the problem.

Violence against women can now be measured. It is a serious problem that we must address despite its complexity. Community groups have shown us the way. At the moment, there are 360 shelters for battered women across Canada, and waiting lists to get in these shelters are often very long. The services provided are sensitive to budget cuts. Eighty per cent of these shelters were opened after 1980 and 95 per cent of them have less than 20 beds.

In the vast majority of cases, the services provided are short-term, as 70 per cent of the women remain in these shelters less than 20 days on average.

Beyond emergency services, we must offer more to women. We need to adopt a more reactive approach. The status of women in our society is directly related to their economic situation, among other things. Equality is also a matter of money. Let us take, as an example, pay equity and access to housing.

Women deserve the same treatment as men, and the violence that they have to suffer in our society clearly indicates that we have a lot of work to do. We must not think that it is a present-day problem. Let us remind ourselves of the suffragettes who fought for the formal recognition of women's political rights.

In 1931 and 1964, successive reforms to the Lower Canada civil code guaranteed full legal capacity to the married woman. In fact, in 1931, the introduction of reserved property allowed a woman to administer the proceeds from her work because it was said that many men would go off and drink their wife's savings. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples and, not too long ago, women had to fight for their rights.

The violence that they experience is a dramatic situation to which we cannot remain indifferent. It is very tempting to be legalistic, but we must go beyond that. To a systemic problem we must bring systemic solutions.

In the 1994-95 Estimates, Status of Women Canada plans to launch the following project: Co-ordination of the preparation of the federal program concerning the equality and security of women in co-operation with federal departments and other partners. This will incorporate the government response to the report of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women.

Status of Women Canada was given the mandate to produce the government response to the panel. That response will be submitted in the form of a federal program concerning gender equality and women security.

Finally, the co-ordination of a national public information campaign geared towards prevention will be pursued in order to eliminate the circumstances that promote violence against women. In view of the magnitude of the problem, the proposed action only allow the government to make an act of faith.

We are no longer trying to prove that there is violence against women; people are convinced that it exists. The consultation exercise has taken place, the problems have been identified and solutions have been suggested. What is the government waiting for to implement the national action plan that was tabled here in this House?

[Canadian National Railways, March 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Seven hundred and twenty CN workers will lose their jobs soon. With the agreement of the National Transportation Agency, the company has already begun dismantling the rail system in Quebec. Two thirds of Quebec's rail system is thus threatened, although the impact of such a decision on the economy, tourism and the environment has not been thoroughly evaluated.

Can the minister say whether he will agree to set up a special parliamentary committee to evaluate the impact of dismantling the rail system in eastern Canada and if he is prepared to order a moratorium on the abandonment of rail lines until the committee has completed its work?

[Université Du Québec In Chicoutimi, March 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Université du Québec in Chicoutimi is celebrating its 25 years of existence. In its first year, back in 1969, this university had 857 students, including 521 full-time students, and 336 part-time students. Four university-level institutions were grouped together: the École de commerce, the École de génie, the Centre de formation des maîtres, and the Grand Séminaire de Chicoutimi.

Today, some one hundred different programs, including 15 at the master and doctorate levels, are offered to more than 7,500 students. It is important to have a university in our region.

We want to wish a long life to the Université du Québec in Chicoutimi, which is truly a development tool in our region.

[Fight Against Cigarette Smuggling, February 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it only took two weeks for the Ontario government to realize how detrimental cigarette smuggling can be, a situation that the Quebec government has lived with for nearly five years.

The Ontario government finally saw the light and announced yesterday that it would join the federal, New Brunswick and Quebec governments in their plan to fight cigarette smuggling.

In a moment of lucidity, Mr. Rae finally understood that the smuggling plague has become a national problem in Canada. By hesitating, the Rae government compromised the implementation of a national anti-smuggling plan.

It seems that Mr. Rae forgot about the virtues of co-operative federalism for several unfortunate hours.

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I must first thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice for his speech. He dealt in particular with the priority of petitions to be debated in the House, but I notice that all the motions, and the three examples given by the Reform Party, could become bills or motions discussed here in the House.

I would like the parliamentary secretary to add a little to what the previous speaker said when my colleague was questioned about referendums and petitions. I would like to know either his view as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice or the distinction he makes between referendums and petitions.