Andrew Cash

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, April 23rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the bill as it stands would create desperate situations for many people in my city of Toronto and in many cities across the country. Like my colleague, I am happy to serve the city of Toronto as a member of Parliament. Could he tell me how the restrictive elements of this legislation would impact some of his constituents?

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, April 23rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague made a very informative and polite speech. I want to ask him about one specific aspect of Bill C-31.

We have a Minister of Public Safety who tells Canadians that if they are not with a particular piece of legislation then they stand with child pornographers. We have a Minister of National Defence who cannot give straight answers on a massive procurement. We have a Minister of Industry who is getting his hands slapped for cozying up to big business. We have a President of the Treasury Board who shovels money out the back door. How can we really trust the Conservative government to put more power into the hands of a single minister without proper oversight?

I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that part of the bill.

[Safer Railways Act, April 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to answer that question.

Indeed, we have things turned a little on their head, because when we pass legislation in this House it goes to the Senate, which then kills those bills. That is wrong. We know it, Canadians know it and it is time the government knew it.

[Safer Railways Act, April 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with my hon. colleague. The bill is a step and not the last word on rail transit development in Canada.

In fact, we have a national transit strategy that we have presented in the House. We think this is the right way to go. We are one of the only, if not the only, G7 countries that does not have a national transit strategy.

In that vacuum we have these issues that my hon. colleague is raising. We can right that course and change direction, and our national transit strategy is the right way to go.

[Safer Railways Act, April 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, members on the government side love to talk about how they are great fiscal managers and brilliant economic planners, but the fact of the matter is that if we look at emerging economies, they are investing in high-speed electric train technology right now.

We have the tracks laid. We need the major infrastructure investments to bring our rail transit up to speed for the 21st century.

[Safer Railways Act, April 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place today and speak to this important bill on behalf of the residents of my riding of Davenport in Toronto.

The bill addresses many important issues, one of them being rail safety, which I will get to a bit later. It also puts some focus on the importance of rail infrastructure, which a number of my colleagues have spoken to this morning. They have spoken of the need for a heightened focus on our rail infrastructure for a number of different reasons.

Of course, Bill S-4 is pertinent and weighs heavy on our minds and hearts right now because of the tragic accident that happened in Burlington in February.

We in our party have long called for heightened rail safety measures and so we are very supportive of seeing Bill S-4 get through the House.

This bill seeks to do a number of different things. When we look at the way our rail infrastructure has been developed and how our cities and towns have developed around it, it is increasingly important to ensure that issues of rail safety are really top of mind when we are talking about urban development, safe cities and environmental issues.

As for my riding of Davenport, I know that everyone in the House likes to study maps of Toronto and if we looked at one we would see that my riding is the only landlocked riding in the downtown core of the city and is criss-crossed with rail lines, some coming right up against backyard fences in many of the neighbourhoods. Rail lines run right up along parks and playgrounds. Fences are very much a part of the streetscape of my riding. Rail safety becomes a very real issue in a riding like mine with many level crossings, and so we take the issue of rail safety and rail infrastructure seriously.

A number of my colleagues today have talked about the importance of investing more fully in this infrastructure. The GTA loses $5 billion to $6 billion a year in lost productivity due to gridlock. It is going to be hard to build more roads to accommodate this gridlock because, as we know, if we build another road it will soon fill up.

We need to start thinking much more seriously about how we can incorporate more passenger rail service, speedier passenger rail service, more affordable passenger rail service. When we start talking about intensifying rail infrastructure, we necessarily have to talk about how to deal with greater safety measures and better technology as well.

Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Chambly—Borduas.

The speeches this morning have been interesting. I say that because on this side of the House we talk a lot about environmental issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and local environmental issues. An increase in public transit, in mass transit, is one of the most obvious ways to deal with both greenhouse gas emissions and gridlock, and the way we can build and develop more intensification in our urban areas.

We need to do this. Countries around the world are investing in clean rail technology. Just as an example of how backward we are in doing things here, we have a link from Pearson airport to Union Station being built right now to run diesel trains. Toronto is the only major city in the world right now that is building rail infrastructure from its downtown core to its international airport using diesel. Not a single country in the world is doing this but us.

For a long time we have been calling on our federal government to engage in this very serious issue. So far it has been willing to sit on its hands and has been doing that for years. I would add that the Liberals before it had a similarly poor record on this file. The Liberal government, when it was here on the other side of the aisle in 2001 and 2003, ignored calls from the Transportation Safety Board for additional rail safety measures. We have been calling not just for increased rail safety but also a heightened focus in the House on the need for municipalities to develop green transportation infrastructure.

I recall the days of the Mulroney era, and I know the folks on the other side do not necessarily like us to use the former prime minister's name, but we do. They were cutting passenger rail transit back then. I was on one of the last trains across the prairies to Toronto, then they were cut. As some of my colleagues this morning have underlined, one cannot get from A to B in many places in the country by train. One can get from Toronto to Ottawa by train, but at virtually the same speed as driving a car, and so there are a lot of missed opportunities there. There is no doubt that Canadians would love to have more access to passenger rail transit.

One of the reasons we need to see greater safety measures, accountability and transparency and a better order of things, a better chain of command, is that we really need to focus our attention on this mode of transportation, because this is the future of mass transit. As a matter of fact, in my city of Toronto, we have a rail corridor that runs along the west end of my city. It is a perfect place to run greater mass transit. We need to be looking at all opportunities to do that.

However, if we are going to do it, we have to look at greater measures for rail safety. That is why this is an important bill and why we on our side are going to support it. I am happy to be standing here in this place today on behalf of the great citizens of Davenport in Toronto speaking on this issue.

[Housing, April 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her comments and for sticking around tonight. I appreciate it.

However, the answer she has given me is perplexing. We know the statistics, that 44% of first nations living on reserve live in dwellings that need major repairs. According to the Native Counselling Services of Alberta, the aboriginal homeless rate is at about 40% Canada wide. Moreover, 15% of Canada's homeless population is aboriginal.

At some point the government has to come to terms with the fact that whatever it thinks it is doing around housing, it is not working. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are either in core housing need or are homeless, or cannot afford the place they are living in. The government continues to ignore the issue of affordable housing, not just in our big cities but also in our rural municipalities and small towns.

We have to do something about that. We on this side have a national housing strategy, and we think that it would be the right first step.

[Housing, April 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to rise in the House this evening to seek clarity on the issue of affordable housing and the answer I received some weeks ago by the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development.

We need to address the housing crisis that currently exists in every city across Canada.

Indeed, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has identified the lack of affordable rental housing as a crisis in this country that affects not just big cities and not just small towns but also rural municipalities from coast to coast to coast. This is the reality in Canada and is the subject of the question I asked the minister around affordable housing and the crisis, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are in core housing need.

The answer we got, which was rather laughable in my view, was that the government is building some and renovating some.

When we look at the budget that was just released, what we see is that in the last year of the economic action plan there were no investments in affordable housing, not one dollar.

In this budget we also see cuts to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

We also know that we will see further cuts to social housing. However, it is not just social housing; it is middle-class families who cannot afford to buy a house.

To a previous question I asked the minister, the answer that came back was that the affordable housing issue had been solved because interest rates are low and people can buy houses, as if that somehow magically solves the problem of affordable housing.

Whatever the government and the minister have said about affordable housing and the government's commitment to it has rung utterly false, not just in the House but right across the country, because the facts have not changed, as one of our colleagues across the way likes to say. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are in core housing need, and the government does not have a plan.

A few weeks ago, we presented a national housing strategy. One of the key issues included in that was for the government to convene a meeting with all the stakeholders on the housing issue. It would not cost a lot, especially if the government does not go too wild on the hors d'oeuvres. It should include provincial ministers, those in municipal affairs who are responsible for housing, aboriginal communities, non-profit and private sector housing providers and civil society organizations, including those that represent groups in need of adequate housing, in order to try to understand and come to terms with an overall strategy that would actually deal with housing instead of just the spin we get from the government.

It is not just me saying this. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has underlined this as one of the key issues affecting all its members from coast to coast to coast.

[Petitions, April 3rd, 2012]

Madam Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, the Minister of Public Safety stood in this House and told Canadians that if they were against the Conservatives' lawful access legislation, then they were for and stood with child pornographers. The very good people of my riding in Davenport in Toronto beg to differ.

Many have signed this petition I am presenting today because they have deep concerns about major parts of this legislation. The bill compels telecommunications companies to collect and store personal information about users and hand over this information to law enforcement agencies without a warrant.

Upholding civil liberties, including the right to privacy, is the bedrock on which liberal democracies have been built.

The folks in my riding who have signed this petition wish to add their names to the well over 80,000 people who have signed a similar petition on OpenMedia.ca. I am honoured to be able to present this petition on their behalf in this House today.

[Petitions, April 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago the Minister of Public Safety stated in the House that anyone who stood against the government’s lawful access legislation was standing with child pornographers.

I have a petition here from the good people of my riding of Davenport in Toronto who beg to differ with the minister. They have grave concerns about the lawful access legislation, in particular, the part in the legislation that would require telecommunications companies to collect and store personal information about their users and hand that over at the request of law enforcement without a warrant.

With a lot of pride in my constituents, I humbly place the petition before the House.