Adam Vaughan

[Business of Supply, September 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I trust the provinces to respond in their jurisdictions as they see fit. What I do not trust is the current government's record on poverty.

The riding I represent has, within an hour's drive, more poor children living in it now than any other time in its history. There are more poor children living within an hour of City Hall in downtown Toronto than there are in the entire Maritimes combined. That is the record of the member's government. That is the record of a government that has walked away from this conversation and walked away from its responsibilities on housing, on child care, on income support.

The member's government, the government opposite, has had a deplorable record on dealing with poverty. Perhaps it is precisely because of the government's response to poverty that we have to step up and provide some leadership. That is why we will be supporting this bill, because this bill starts to speak to one of the pressing issues of our day, which is income inequality, and it has become decidedly worse, cruelly worse and unfairly worse under the leadership of the party across the aisle. The reason we have to provide this leadership is that, quite clearly, industries under federal regulation have changed and it is time for a new approach. We cannot be stuck in the past if we are trying to deal with the future.

[Business of Supply, September 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is without a doubt. Universal child care and making sure that child care is part of an employment strategy—but also a fundamental human right, I believe—is something that the party I belong to has believed in for a long time and is prepared to work on. Again, the issue may come down to who we consult with, how we deliver it and what provincial agreements are required to deliver that program. On that, hard work lies in front of us. If only we had accepted it the last time this Parliament dealt with a national child care program; if only we had supported that, imagine where our children would be today.

However, the issue I speak to and the issue my comments were directed at was that we need to knit this together. The example I highlighted was one from the telecommunications and broadcasting industry, a federally regulated program, where quite clearly the hourly rate has gone out the window and what we now have are individuals bidding on work and bidding on that work in a way that defies the hourly calculation. Therefore, this proposal, while in principle it deals with income inequality, does not deal with the actual working conditions people are dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

[Business of Supply, September 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

We just heard talk of supporting the principles behind this member's motion. It is obvious to us in the Liberal Party that we should stand in support of those principles. We all understand that income inequality is one of the most challenging and volatile economic conditions we face in society today. I represent a riding very close to Davenport, and many of the issues that have been raised are poignant and personal to the residents and folks I represent.

We cannot create a strong middle class by continually cutting taxes for people of affluence and strong means to earn. The middle class is created with income support and with speaking to income equality. That is an important issue that the House should be seized with.

The problem we have in Trinity—Spadina is that it is not simply a matter of an hourly wage. We have a lot of people who work in the health care sector, and other federally regulated sectors as well, who require three jobs to earn a single salary. We can boost all the wages we want, but when employers are not providing the hours, the take-home pay at the end of the day does not change. That is an issue we struggle with as we try to figure out a way to create a more just society.

We also know that those same employers will pay what we want them to per hour but will cut employees' hours so that they can avoid paying them benefits. Simply talking about wage increases and the absence of a comprehensive strategy for income support and the eradication of poverty is a strong gesture, but in the end, it is only a symbolic gesture.

We will support this, but we think there needs to be much more work done on it.

In the past, when previous governments moved to tackle this issue, one of the things the opposition party used to remind others in Parliament was the fact that we needed to do this in concert with partners. Employers, labour unions, and the government need to work together on this. One of the challenges in the way this bill is being presented to us is that it is not a tripartite agreement. It does not consolidate the conversation and bring it forward as a consensus, and it does not bring it forward with reforms to other parts of the Canada Labour Code that the federal government and we in Parliament have carriage of.

I know that the member for Davenport has spoken with great eloquence about the need to deal with contract workers in the telecommunications and broadcast industries. In the riding I represent, where many of these businesses are centred, we know that contract work escapes the hourly wage. We are contracting out work that used to be done by people who were paid by the hour, such as editors and other technicians. Their contracted-out work rarely captures an hourly rate and is almost always bid on by the job.

Simply talking about minimum wage is not going to capture the industry as it is currently configured, nor is it going to solve the problem of income inequality, let alone the precarious nature of much of this work. Therefore, work needs to be done on this file, and it needs to be done comprehensively.

While we support this bill in principle, we are astonished at the lack of a comprehensive approach by the party that has presented it.

We also know that there is a trend emerging here, where symbolic gestures from one side of the House are met with empty gestures on the other side of the House. The EI premiums are a perfect example of this. We see strong statements being made, but when we get down to the details, it is simply an empty gesture or a symbolic gesture.

What we need is a comprehensive approach to income inequality, one that knits the various challenges into a comprehensive approach in partnership with everyone involved in this very challenging issue.

We also know that when we talk about $15 an hour, what we are not really capturing is the annual salary. The annual salary works out to about $31,000 a year. That is the problem. To many of us, $15 an hour sounds like five times what we used to earn when we were on minimum wage, but to try to support a family of four on $31,000, with or without income splitting, is impossible in places like Toronto. If we do not also have a housing policy, a national day care program, and all of these issues that are comprehensive and part of a knit-together approach to dealing with income inequality and poverty, what we are making are gestures and nothing but gestures.

This party will support this bill in principle, but we look forward to returning to a time when the tripartite agreement the opposition party spoke to in principle while it was the third party is also part of this comprehensive movement going forward.

What businesses were consulted? What sectors were consulted? We can rely on reports that are 10 years old all we want, but a new era requires new thinking and requires a new collaborative approach. That is the approach that the party I represent will be standing for and speaking toward. That is why I have spoken here today.

[Co-operative Housing, September 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking the people of Trinity—Spadina for granting me the privilege of serving them in the House of Commons. They have sent me here with a clear mandate to fight for a national housing program. In particular, they want co-op housing programs protected. This program is an internationally celebrated and respected housing strategy. However, as CMHC mortgage agreements expire, not only are co-op housing communities being plunged into a made-in-Ottawa housing crisis but at the same time, the federal program that provides subsidies to lower-income co-op residents is being eliminated.

At a very real, human level, this means that seniors who have lived in co-ops for years, paying market rents, who have invested volunteer hours building these communities, seniors who depend on rent subsidies as they hit retirement age and go on fixed incomes, now risk being evicted because the subsidy program is disappearing.

The Co-op Housing Federation of Toronto and Canada is calling on the government to re-assert its responsibility in this area, to renew the mortgage agreements, and to continue to provide rent-geared-to-income subsidies for co-ops.

We should be building housing, not getting rid of it. We should be supporting Canadians, not deserting them.

[Ebola Outbreak, September 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising the issues and in particular for speaking about the issue of SARS.

The riding that I represent in many ways was the epicentre of the SARS epidemic that hit Toronto, and there were lessons learned that extended well beyond just the health care sector.

For example, we know that many people within the health care sector require three jobs to earn a single salary, and the way they moved between hospitals played a significant role in the spread of that disease. We came to understand in Toronto that cuts to other parts of government and government programs sometimes impact epidemics in ways that are catastrophic not just for health care professionals but also for the people who are directly affected, the victims.

We know that the government has reduced the number of embassies and consulates in Africa and is now requiring people from different African countries to travel through three, four, five, and six different countries simply to file immigration documents or business documents or even inquiries to the Canadian government, just because they are required to do it in person. That movement through these different countries in Africa is becoming more and more difficult, and it also risks becoming an agent by which the disease gets spread.

I am curious as to whether there has been any discussion or response you are aware of to try to see if the Canadian government should not be restructuring its response diplomatically to Africa so that it can support these countries and also avoid playing a role in unexpectedly spreading this disease to unaffected parts of the continent.

As well—

[Aboriginal Affairs, September 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to ask the Prime Minister a question about the 1,200 missing indigenous women who have either been murdered or who have disappeared.

In Winnipeg, volunteers do not have the Prime Minister's support. Instead, they turned to social media to raise funds to search lakes and rivers to find their missing loved ones.

On social media, indigenous women now ask, “Am I next?” When will the Prime Minister admit that this is a sociological phenomenon? When will he put as much effort into finding these missing people as he did into finding the missing Franklin expedition?