Adam Vaughan

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think any of us believe that the members opposite want to do nothing. The problem is that they are doing nothing. They think they are accomplishing something with their programs, but clearly the situation, even when they asked the RCMP to report on it, gets bigger.

When they trot out a spending announcement, which effectively was made in 2010 and renewed again and again, it simply reinforces the status quo. Quite frankly, the status quo in this country is deadly. When person after person stands up and asks for more and the response from young aboriginal women themselves is “Am I next”, surely one sees that something different needs to be done. Instead, we get the same programs repeated over and over again. Repeating them over and over again is putting people in harm's way. It has to change.

The point that is made repeatedly about the contrast between a single missing child in the Amber Alert program, for example, or the other issue that was raised with respect to what would the response be if it were 1,200 nurses missing, tells us that the response is not scaled to the size of the dynamic and that we need to do more.

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, many members know that housing to me is not a problem in this country; it is a solution to so many of our problems.

One of the facts we have come across as we have started to look at this issue is that on reserves where aboriginal housing is now being built, there is a training program. The Minister of Industry may be interested in this. There is a skills shortage, for example, of skilled tradespeople right across this country, but in particular out west. I have asked how many aboriginal youth are being trained to produce housing that may also produce the safe spaces for women to escape to so that they can solve problems in their lives. There are 125 single individuals, hired by the government, in training programs to build housing on reserves in first nations communities across this country. We do not have a robust program on any front to deal with any of the challenges facing us.

When the government talks about action, we do not see that action matched by spending for programs. It is a situation that requires a deeper conversation with our partners on reserve and in aboriginal and first nation communities to make sure that we solve these problems and do not simply pay lip service to them and list prior spending engagements, which have not changed one iota with this month's announcement.

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly why it is a sociological issue. All of us are the authors of this misfortune. It is not a single situation that requires a singular solution. It is not simply a criminal problem, as expressed by the Prime Minister.

We all have had a role to play in the past injustices, and they must be corrected. We now have to act in the present day so that tomorrow another group of parliamentarians is not back here saying that we did not solve the problem either.

When we look at the fact that there is not one new shelter created from what the government announced this month, we see the status quo. The status quo will only protect the past. It will not produce a better future.

I plead with the members opposite to act but to also consult and to also make sure their actions are new and dynamic, because the old status quo has put people in graves. It is time to get past worrying about being blamed and to start worrying about what the solution is. It is time to put real resources, new resources, effective resources in play. We cannot do that without being in consultation with first nations and aboriginal leadership right across this country, whether on reserve or off.

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard comments made that this is simply a local issue, and the local shelter system should pick up the slack on this. However, we know that the circumstances that are challenging us have a sociological and cultural formation.

I constantly hear the focus being placed on first nations or aboriginal communities on reserves. However, we know that far too many of those 1,200 women disappeared and met a violent end in urban areas. The urban approach is as fundamental to solving this crisis and providing that hope as any action taken with the individuals who represent our communities on reserves.

We need shelters in urban centres that respond directly to the cultural needs that are being expressed. We need employment programs that deal with training and some of the other conditions that exist. To deal with this issue and not talk about urban aboriginal populations is not going to solve the problem. Employment, the shelter system, and prevention programs need to have an urban lens as well as a lens on reserves.

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend opposition for allowing us to bring this issue forward quickly. It is one the Liberals want action on, and we support the call for a national inquiry.

When I was contemplating remarks today, I went for a walk. I have the enormous privilege of having an office that is across the street from the Supreme Court. As I walked around the grounds of the Supreme Court, I noticed the two statues that adorn the entranceway, Truth and Justice, two statutes of women.

It struck me as profoundly important in terms of what that symbolizes and who we entrust with ensuring that truth and justice are in fact symbols not just of our country but of our justice system.

Having listened to the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou and the story that was presented to the House, the story of the women in his life, tell us why truth and justice are so critically important and why, when it eludes us, the need for action is paramount.

What puzzles me in the response from the government side is why we cannot study an issue and act at the same time. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why does it have to be study first and act after? Why can the government not study and act simultaneously, especially with the body of work on this issue?

It scares me, quite frankly. I would not like to see those two women also go missing in this debate, those notions of truth and justice.

We know, and the facts are so abundantly and horrifically clear, that while comprising only 4% of our population, one in four homicide victims are women from aboriginal, first nations, indigenous communities.

When we turn our attention to what happens when a single child goes missing in the country, with the Amber Alerts, the news programming, the fear and panic that is unleashed and the commitment that is made to finding a single child and contrast that with the near silence on the uncalculated absence of close to 1,200 women, it breaks my heart. Action of course is needed.

We know we do not fully understand the dynamics which have given cause to this issue rising to the number it has risen to. We know that because even as we read all the reports, when the RCMP reports, suddenly the numbers double. If that does not tell us the action being taken is simply not working, nothing else will.

As I listened to the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, I also heard about missing services. If members go through the reports, it is glaring as the missing members of people's families in our country. The missing services are remarkable.

As part of the research on this, I read the reports. There are 41 shelters in 600-plus reserve and aboriginal communities in our country. That is just 41 shelters for more than 600 different communities spread across the entire geography. How does that work? If a woman seeking safety cannot find a safe place, where does she find that safety?

These services are missing in hundreds of communities, yet when we listen to the action plan that is presented, what we see is there not a new dime, let alone a new dollar put into the program.

I represent a downtown riding in Toronto, Trinity—Spadina. There are more ridings in the House of Commons named with words from indigenous and first nations communities than there are shelters in first nations communities. There are 40 shelters, but close to 60 ridings, like mine of Trinity—Spadina from the Ojibwa word, ishpadinaa. It just boggles the mind that the government cannot see that there is a shortage of services.

Yes, we can go back and read the studies to find that out, but what we do not see from the government is action on this. Yes, study this problem, and that is what this motion asks and compels us to do, and act. It is the lack of action that makes this issue so urgent.

I also have to say that I represent an urban area on Spadina, where the native centre is, where we have a library for indigenous and first nations languages and a seniors residence. There is a shelter in my riding that gets virtually no support from the government, or, in fact, from any government. This shelter has never had, year-in, year-out, support to deal with indigenous women seeking shelter, whether they are from a reserve or whether they are from the streets. It does not matter where it is. The challenge we see here is that the program is not being extended into the areas where these women live.

The other issue with the missing services is that when the announcement is made, it is a cobbling together of existing services, and the Conservatives pretend it is new money. They tell us that they have read the reports and have done the studying, but their action does not produce results. The status quo is putting people in harm's way. How can we tolerate that condition?

Let me tell the House about the images that are striking and that are affecting us in ways that are even more profoundly disturbing than the number 1,200. They are the photographs now appearing on social media of young women asking, “Am I next?” The fear that creates in all of our hearts and the sadness it creates in the communities where those women come from is more profound than we can possibly describe.

We heard a member talk about personal circumstances. It compels us to act, and it compels us all to support the motion here today.

I remember as a journalist doing a story about a young man who did not lose his last name through residential school but lost his family. For him, the missing woman in his life was not murdered or disappeared; he had disappeared. I remember the story he told about how he found his mother. He was travelling west. He stopped at a native friendship centre in Winnipeg and passed his name on a slip, to ask for room and board for the night, across to a women he had never seen before, or thought he had never seen before. When the woman saw the name, she broke into tears. She had found her son.

That is also what defines this issue. It is not just the women who have disappeared and have been murdered. That is a horror on its own. It is the women who have been taken out of people's lives. I have yet to find a report anywhere that talks about that hole, that missing woman, and a program that reconnects those people to those individuals. We will not get it with the DNA bank, looking for victims, because the victims are walking among us.

When we talk about and think about how we would address this issue, we get repeatedly told, and the quote that comes up that scares us most, I think, is the one the Prime Minister delivered, that these are just single acts of crime and that this is not a sociological problem.

It is entirely a sociological problem. It is entirely present in every corner of our society. When we do not address it sociologically, when we do not understand that when people leave the reserve and head into town for safety, or head into town for a job, and they are disconnected from their community and disconnected from their way of life, and when they move and are not charted as to where they are moving, they start to disappear, even if they have not met with a violent fate.

Our ability to reconnect these families, to reconnect these women to their lives and the lives of their families to these women, is what we are trying to address. It is the connection that will create safety, not studying it, and acting now.

However, we do not know how to act if we do not talk to the people who have been impacted. If we do not sit down and study and think and consult simultaneously with our action, we will be doing what generations before us have done in this country, which is assume that we are acting in the best interests of people. However, we will not be delivering the results we want, the results other people need, the results our friends, our neighbours, our aboriginal co-Canadians, our aboriginal partners are looking to us to deliver a solution on.

I started this conversation by talking about the women who are on statues outside the Supreme Court. There is another word we need to deliver, and we can deliver it by supporting the motion, and that word is “hope”. Ironically, hope, in the same pantheon of gods in Roman symbolism, is also a woman. The goddess of hope is the missing statue in this conversation.

We can chart the problem. We can study the problem, and we can promise to act on the problem. However, at the end of the day, if all we have talked about are truth and justice, and we have not delivered hope to the families, and more importantly, to the mothers, the sisters, the daughters, the nieces, and the granddaughters, through the actions we have taken in Parliament, we will not have solved this problem.

I do not want be part of a country that allows truth, justice, and hope to go missing any more than I want to be part of a country that tolerates and turns a blind eye to the 1,200 missing indigenous aboriginal and first nations women. That is why I will be supporting this motion. That is why my party supports this motion. That is why I implore the government side to please listen to the voices being raised around the country now asking, “Am I next?”

Give them the hope that truth and justice will prevail.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with what the member just said. Partnership is the solution. While I have heard criticism that EI benefits are not solved by the motion—and I understand the sensitivities that have been raised here—the reality is that job creation and the challenge of creating jobs is addressed by the motion and the support of the motion would create jobs and would create them in an effective and responsible way, and it is that partnership we are driving at and trying to achieve.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one of the fastest growing and most successful sectors of the economy in the riding that I represent is the high-tech sector. When we look at the opportunities for the high-tech sector to create jobs, it has a choice not just to create them inside Trinity—Spadina, but it has the choice to create them outside the riding and in fact outside the country. In order to create a favourable business climate to create a new job, a high-paying job, in a strong sector, we need to create the economic conditions that induce that decision being made locally.

EI premiums alone are not going to necessarily create that circumstance. No single-purpose bill in the House will ever do that. However, when we look at the structure of that business and at the cost of employment, when there is a way to reduce the cost of employment, it induces the creation of a job. The good news about the motion is that the tax cut does not just roll through because someone wants and hopes to create a job. Only if the job is actually created is the EI benefit reduced. We are not spending money in the hope of creating a job. We are compensating for the actual creation of a job and creating the environment in which to create jobs.

That is why I thought the motion would appeal to your party.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

If the member had ever run a small business, he would know exactly what $200 means. To belittle that is to belittle the hard decisions made by small business owners right across this country day in and day out. It is quite often the difference between whether or not they feed their families.

The issue in front of us, and the proposition we have placed in front of the House, is to create it a situation where all jobs are met with this benefit. When new jobs are created in any business—small, medium or large—the benefit would kick in, and not the way the government's proposition stands, which actually is an inducement to cut jobs.

When I heard the official opposition members describe this proposition, they made it sound like this whole program would be voluntary. Let me assure the House that all businesses would qualify, not some, and second to that, they would have to create a job to receive the benefit.

This is where we differ from our colleagues across the aisle. All businesses would qualify and they must create a job in order to get this break in the fee they pay into the employment insurance program. Therefore, small businesses under our proposal would have the opportunity to grow, but it would not preclude medium-sized or large businesses from growing and creating jobs too. That is the difference in the position we have taken.

It puzzles me when I hear New Democrats talk about the program as being bad when it uses funds that workers have created to create more work for more workers. I do not understand philosophically what the problem with this concept is. Yes, one can be an economic literalist and say that every dollar paid into employment insurance should be paid out as a benefit. I understand that philosophy and have heard it espoused today. However, the trouble is that at some point the benefits run out. At some point the ability for the country and economy to generate the funds to pay employment insurance will have a hard limit.

Our proposal simply seeks to grow the pie, and in growing the pie, create the opportunities and possibilities for better and more secure futures for Canadians. I do not think that is fundamentally at odds with the philosophy of the party that sits on this side of the House with us. However, apparently, it is now.

The other issue that I think separates the approaches that we are putting in front of the House is that we believe as a party that it is not simply the market that is going to provide a solution and it is not simply government that is going to provide a solution, but it is a partnership that will provide the opportunities and the solutions.

I have heard official opposition members speak to us and say that when we were in power we took the surpluses and simply balanced our books. We did balance the books and put the government in this country into a surplus, but the investments we made through those budgets while we balanced the books created work. The gas tax was made possible by the balancing of the books and the use of EI surpluses, and that put people to work building and providing public transit in this country. The budgets that were balanced also provided the foundation for the kick-start and rebirth of a housing program. The money was also there for daycare and daycare also created work. It did not just provide care for children.

Therefore, when we talk about these partnerships and when we talk about the opportunity to work with all sectors of the economy and include the government as part of that program, we talk about solving problems, not simply describing them.

That is why I will be supporting our party's motion.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, there are many members in the House who may remember me as a city councillor and may also have memories of me being a journalist here in the foyer outside of the House of Commons. What members may not know about me is that I also have run small businesses in the riding I represent. In fact, I ran a small restaurant and I know the fear, danger, trouble and opportunities around meeting a payroll that are part of every business decision.

The reason the party I represent is putting the motion forward in this way is that it is about job creation and helping small businesses create those jobs, but also making sure that there is a guarantee those jobs arrive. What confuses many of us who have run small businesses about the Conservative government's approach is that it creates an artificial threshold. This $15,000 seems to be pulled right out of the air and dropped in front of us as if it is some sort of magic threshold that is good or bad for small business and will or will or not create jobs.

The truth is that the employment dynamics in small businesses are much more fluid than simply that hard calculation of $15,000, which places a cap. When one hits that amount, one is in a position of having to make very tough choices and will or will not hire based on whether that threshold is met or not.

[Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, September 22nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, through the Chair, I apologize.

The member has identified that the legislation would attack the system of advertising these services. The legislation talks about the system of reporting to the police and the conversations that would be possible between people who have been trafficked and the law enforcement agencies. The member talked about a series of systemic approaches that need to be changed in order to change the culture around this issue.

However, when it comes to missing and murdered indigenous women, the same government responds to it as an individual situation, that there is no sociological or systemic reason there.

I would like the member, through the Chair, to explain to the House exactly why this is a systemic problem, but the other one is not; it is rather one of individual choices and individual situations.