Bill Siksay

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that my colleague has outlined some of the measures that the government is taking.

I want to correct a misapprehension that may have been left in the debate today, that somehow under Canada's current age of consent laws, prostitution, luring or enticing a young person into prostitution, no matter what the young person's age, is somehow tolerated by the current law. That is not the case. We should be very clear that anyone who engages in that kind of activity can currently be prosecuted under the law. The changes that the government introduced recently, and which are in the Senate now, do not change that fact. That is already covered in the law. It is illegal, as it should be. I do not want to leave any misapprehension that somehow it is tolerated currently.

The member outlined some of the activities the government is taking relating to human trafficking. The report that has come from the Standing Committee on the Status of Women has asked that a specific plan be developed to deal with trafficking at the 2010 Olympic Games. We know that around these large international events there is an increase in human trafficking related to them. We have seen some of the difficulties that it has caused at other events. We have seen different approaches.

The Athens Olympics did not have a very good approach, frankly. The Munich World Cup of Soccer actually had an effective approach. Here in Canada, we do not have a plan yet. We have heard that London, in preparing for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, already has a plan in place.

Could the member address why there is no specific plan here? We heard the head of security for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver say that he really did not see that as being on his agenda. Why has that situation developed? What measures is the government going to take to specifically address the development of a plan for the 2010 Olympic Games to deal with the issue of human trafficking?

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it always strikes me as strange as we have these important and large international events like the Olympics that we all enjoy. We enjoy watching them. Many people participate directly in them and it is very important in terms of their various athletic endeavours. It is a very big deal for all of us to host, to view and participate in an event like the Olympics, but we often ignore the social consequences of those large international events. We see that today with the need for this debate about a plan for human trafficking.

I know my colleague has also been very concerned about labour standards and labour issues associated with the 2010 Olympic Games. We have seen temporary foreign workers brought into British Columbia to build facilities related to the Olympic Games, like the rapid transit line from downtown Vancouver to Richmond and the airport.

They have been subjected to terrible working conditions. Working conditions that ignore wage standards and other employment standards. Working conditions that have ignored reasonable hours of work, provided terrible accommodation for those workers, and things that violated very basic workers' rights in this country. It would appall all Canadians.

That is a related aspect to this. I wonder if the member could comment about the situation of temporary foreign workers who come to Canada to help build facilities for the 2010 Olympic Games.

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her intervention in this very important debate despite her cold. I also want to thank the Standing Committee on the Status of Women for putting this issue forward, because this very important piece of the planning for the 2010 Olympic Games has been neglected.

For the standing committee to say that the government must develop and implement a plan in collaboration with provincial and municipal governments as well as experts from the police, international organizations and NGOs prior to the opening of the 2010 Olympics, and to put that on the agenda of the House of Commons, means that little work has been done on it. We have seen that in terms of the Future Group's report, which talks about how little planning has gone into this important social consequence of this kind of major international gathering.

For instance, we know that London, in the U.K., which has the summer Olympic Games in 2012, already has announced an action plan on tackling human trafficking. Officials there announced that almost a year ago in March. It has been a significant piece of the planning they are doing for the 2012 Olympic Games. We have the 2010 winter Olympics here in Canada in British Columbia, in Vancouver and Whistler, yet this piece of it has been ignored.

Could the member comment on why she thinks that here in Canada we have given so little importance to this? Why it is taking this debate and the actions of the standing committee to really give impetus to putting this on the agenda as part of the planning for the 2010 Olympic Games?

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to ask a question in this important debate about coming up with a plan to curtail trafficking of women and children at major events like the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

We have heard that time is of the essence in regard to planning this kind of campaign, this kind of program, this kind of coordinated approach to dealing with trafficking at the 2010 games. When people are in downtown Vancouver outside the art gallery, they see the big clock, which constantly ticks down to the start of the Olympics, two years from this month. Everyday that comes closer, but the plan does not seem to be in place yet.

We know trafficking is a $32 billion global industry. We know traffickers have incredible resources available to do this terrible work. We also know there is an incredible amount of money and these big international events are a prime site for trafficking and related activities like the sex trade and drug trafficking that go on around them. We have seen differences between approaches that the World Cup in Munich and the Olympic Games in Athens took and the very different results. There was a much more positive result in Munich than there was in Athens.

When we plan these big international events like the Olympics, we always seem slow to put the social problems related with those games at a high priority. We hear constantly that the facilities are coming along well. In Vancouver a lot of the facilities are completed and are being tested and used already, yet some of the social issues related to the games are still not being addressed, issues like housing and the displacement of people caused by the games. That plan is in trouble. We also hear now that there is not a clear plan in place yet for dealing with the trafficking issues around that.

It is very frustrating to see that we can deal with issues of facilities and training our athletes, but the other social problems related to big events like the 2010 Olympic Games seem to be further down the list. When the member for London Fanshawe said that the official in charge of security for the 2010 games really had not even considered the issue of trafficking, I get very worried.

We have also heard from Dr. Benjamin Perrin from the UBC Faculty of Law. He wrote a report on this issue in November. He said:

Canada's already attractive, but primarily it is a transit country to the U.S. The Olympics give traffickers an easy cover story, and the border guards aren't sufficiently trained to identify these people.

Does the member know what measures are being put in place to ensure border guards and other Canadian border officials are getting the training we need immediately to put this in place?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, December 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Parkdale—High Park for tabling the bill.

There are others of us in the House who have tabled similar legislation in the past. The member for Vancouver East, the member for Winnipeg North and I have all tabled similar legislation, because we in the NDP caucus believe that the definition of family that is in the current immigration act does not apply to all families. We know that in many families the relationships that are formed between a brother and a sister are stronger than that between parents and that the definition discriminates against those families and those relationships.

It is something that we know is very important. We also know that it is very important to strengthen the whole family reunification aspect of our immigration law. That has been a keystone of immigration policy in Canada. It is one of the strongest aspects of our immigration policy, because people who arrive with family members already in Canada tend to be happier. They settle faster. They integrate into the communities faster because they have that family network to help them to settle successfully here in Canada.

This will also make Canada much more competitive with our main competitors for immigration, such as the United States, because we will be seen as a country that encourages the maintenance of family relationships when immigration happens.

I think that makes this a very pro-family piece of legislation. I would like the member to comment on how pro-family this piece of legislation is.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Outremont for his speech this afternoon because it was very helpful in understanding some of the problems with the Conservative government's approach to the budget and its mini financial statement.

I wonder if he would agree with me that there is a fundamental flaw in the bill. It puts all the government's eggs essentially in one basket, that being the corporate tax cut basket.

We have seen time and time again that these types of corporate tax cuts do not deliver the kinds of benefits that they proclaim. Reaganomics and the corporate tax cuts that were done then did not trickle down to people like they were supposed to. The tax cuts proposed by the member for LaSalle—Émard, when he was finance minister and then prime minister, did not trickle down to ordinary Canadians so they could improve their lives.

I heard the member for Outremont talking about a more balanced approach that would see us using some of the funds available to address the needs of Canadians and the important concerns about the environment. I heard him talk about the importance of not gutting our fiscal capacity with these irresponsible corporate tax cuts.

I wonder if he might talk a bit more about how he sees this issue.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was glad the member for Parkdale--High Park talked about the way seniors were being shortchanged because of the error that was made in calculating the indexing of guaranteed income supplement pensions.

The member noted that there was a huge surplus available right now to go into some of our social programs and that the government has chosen not to correct that error that was made and ensure that the seniors who lost that $1 billion in income would receive it. The previous Liberal government also refused to correct that error.

I wonder if the member would talk a little more about why those governments are refusing to help some of the most vulnerable people in our society, seniors who have the lowest income of all of our elders. Why would the government not use some of that money to address that shortfall in their income and to supplement their income so they can have a reasonable life in their so-called golden years?

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Parkdale—High Park for her intervention in this debate this afternoon. It has been a very important one.

We have seen a trend over the last decade or more in the governments that we have had. We have seen Liberals and Conservatives pursuing the same kinds of policies, the same mistaken approaches to managing our economy and to managing and addressing the needs of Canadians.

We have seen both Liberal and Conservative governments fail to estimate correctly the size of the surplus. It announces surprise record surpluses and then directs that money directly toward the debt, without considering the needs of Canadians and without considering what else might be necessary in our communities, what families might need and what seniors might need.

We have seen both the Liberals and Conservatives adopt a flawed approach to program and economic planning in Canada. We have seen many other occasions where the Conservatives only seem to be improving on the bad Liberal record of 13 years when they were in government, where promises made about important new social programs were not kept or flawed approaches were adopted.

I think the best example would be the Liberals' failure for 13 years to address child care. They promised it continuously but never put something into action until the very last minutes of their government.

We have seen those kinds of approaches for many years. I wonder if the member could comment on why the current government seems to be adopting so many of the same directions as the previous failed Liberal approach on these important issues.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

I am glad the member mentioned the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and its work on the infrastructure deficit in Canada. In its report, “Danger Ahead: The Coming Collapse of Canada’s Municipal Infrastructure”, the FCM talks about the fact that there is an infrastructure deficit in Canada of $123 billion.

The FCM breaks that down into separate categories. It says: water and waste water systems need $31 billion; transportation needs $21.7 billion; transit needs $22.8 billion; solid waste management needs $7.7 billion; and community, recreational, cultural and social infrastructure needs $40.2 billion

All of those are services and facilities that none of us are going to be able to build unless we cooperate, unless we do them collectively. Saving $100 a year on our income tax is not going to help us build a waste treatment plant in our community. It is not going to guarantee clean drinking water in our community unless we work together and pool our resources to make sure those kinds of facilities are built.

I know that member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek has a particular interest in sport and recreation in Canada. The recreation deficit is particularly troubling given that a lot of the recreation facilities in Canada that are part of our cultural life and keep us healthy, and which have a lot of community-building activities happen in them, are aging now. Many of them were built as centennial projects and are wearing out. They have had important maintenance deferred over the years and they are crumbling as we speak. This is an important aspect of the infrastructure deficit.

I wonder if the member could talk to us about the importance of including infrastructure funding in this budget and why it is not there to do these important things as pointed out by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his work on poverty issues over many years in the province of Ontario and across Canada.

He will agree with me that there has been report after report on poverty in Canada. All those reports call us to action, but they also stress the importance of a national housing program to eradicate poverty.

There have been many reports in the last few months about the need for affordable housing, for social housing, for programs to deal with homelessness, such as the preliminary report from the UN special rapporteur Miloon Kothari and the report put together by northern agencies on homelessness and women in northern Canada. Report after report have stressed the need for affordable housing and still we do not have a national housing program in Canada.

We used to have a housing agency that did excellent work. It was very creative and was known around the world. Canada Mortgage and Housing was known for its housing development work. Sadly, it has been gutted by Liberal and Conservative governments over the past decades. It does not do that kind of work any more. We need to get back to that again.

In question period today, the member for Sault Ste. Marie asked questions of the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development on the need for a national housing program. The minister said that the government was doing something. It is doing something with the money the NDP fought for in the last Parliament and in the last Liberal budget.

Could he talk a bit more about the importance of a national housing program to Canadians and as an anti-poverty measure in Canada?