Bill Siksay

[Petitions, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by many residents of Burnaby. They point out that Canada's banks are making record profits in the billions of dollars, while at the same time Canadians are being charged for using automated teller machines when they deposit, withdraw or transfer their own money.

They call on Parliament to amend the Bank Act to eliminate fees associated with the use of automated teller machines.

[Petitions, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table two petitions.

The first is signed by over 100 folks from the Lower Mainland of B.C., including people from my constituency of Burnaby—Douglas, students at Simon Fraser University and members of the congregation of St. John's United Church in Vancouver.

They call on the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development to change the student loan system to create a needs based grant system, reduce the student loan interest rate, create a student loan ombudsperson, improve interest relief provisions, establish standards of practice for student loan collection agencies, reduce the ban on bankruptcy protection for student loans and consider the recommendations of the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness and other student groups.

[Criminal Code, December 11th, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-494, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (gender identity and gender expression).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table, also seconded by the member for Vancouver East, a private member's bill entitled “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (gender identity and gender expression)”.

The bill would add gender identity and gender expression as distinguishing characteristics protected under hate propaganda section 318 of the Criminal Code.

The bill would also add gender identity and expression as aggravating factors to be considered at the time of sentencing of an offender under section 718.2 of the Criminal Code.

Transgender and transsexual people are regularly victims of abuse and harassment, and physical violence. The bill would ensure that transphobic violence against transgender and transsexual people is clearly identified as a hate crime by addressing the lack of explicit protection for transsexual and transgender people under the current hate provisions of the Criminal Code.

It would also allow judges to take into account whether crimes committed were motivated by hatred of transgender or transsexual people when they are determining the sentence of an offender.

Including gender identity and expression in the hate provisions and the sentencing provisions in the Criminal Code would send a strong signal that violence targeting people for their gender identity or expression will not be tolerated in Canada.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Elimination of Racial and Religious Profiling Act, December 11th, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-493, An Act to eliminate racial and religious profiling.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table, seconded by the member for Vancouver East, a private member's bill entitled “An Act to eliminate racial and religious profiling”.

The bill seeks to ban racial and religious profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and officials. I and my NDP colleagues have been very moved and often angered by the experiences of racial and religious profiling shared with us by constituents and other Canadians.

The impact of this practice has been serious and costly to those who have been its victims, and to our society. Such actions by law enforcement officers and agencies are based solely on false stereotypes. It is not good public policy nor is it good law enforcement practice, plain and simple.

This is an updated version of a bill introduced by the member for Vancouver East in the last Parliament. It defines racial and religious profiling as an action undertaken for reasons of safety, security or public protection that relies on stereotypes about race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion or place of origin, rather than on reasonable suspicion to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment.

The bill would require the RCMP, customs, immigration, airport screening officers, and CSIS agents to eliminate racial and religious profiling. Those agencies would report to Parliament on their progress. They would also required to have a working analysis of how racism functions in their law enforcement context. Victims of racial or religious profiling would have access to the Federal Court to seek relief or remedy.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. We know that these budget arrangements are a huge giveaway to very profitable large corporations in the oil industry, the gas industry and banking. We also know there is a group of Canadians who receive the guaranteed income supplement who were cheated out of a reasonable payment because of an error that was made in calculating their income and their benefit.

I wonder if the member could address that problem. Why do seniors not deserve the appropriate assistance, the fair dollar that they were to receive, but the large corporations get this huge corporate tax giveaway?

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we know that is already the case. Municipalities are already having to look at increasing property taxes to cover the expenses that they cannot meet given the current fiscal situation. We have seen the mayor of Mississauga directly say that this was going to be necessary in her community. Other communities across the country are having to look at that.

The offloading onto the shoulders of municipalities, because of cutbacks at the federal government level and at the provincial government level, have been quite serious all across the country in many municipalities, including my own of Burnaby. They have had to struggle against that.

Senior governments would have been happy to see municipalities step in and take over responsibilities that really were not in their jurisdiction. However, municipalities know, they are on the ground every single day and they know the difficulties of their citizens. They have often struggled with how to meet those commitments and how to meet those needs in their communities, but we cannot afford to let that continue.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, in its recent report which all of us received in this place, points out a $123 billion infrastructure deficit that affects our communities all across this country, big and small. It points out that this is increasing, that the infrastructure deficit climbed far faster than even it had expected.

In my own riding of Burnaby--Douglas there are a number of important infrastructure needs that are not being assisted by the federal government even when they fall in areas of federal jurisdiction. Burnaby receives a large number of immigrants and refugees each year and is one of the major settling points of immigrants and refugees in British Columbia.

The city of Burnaby, seeing the need for services to that community, proposed establishing an immigration service hub, a physical centre in the city of Burnaby where new Canadians, where immigrants and refugees could find the services that they need to access regularly without having to go into the city of Vancouver or travel all over the Lower Mainland.

Something like that would be absolutely necessary to help them establish in our community and get the services they need to settle appropriately. Yet, the federal government will not participate in that program. The city found the money to offer the land, but no other level of government would step up to the plate and help that happen.

We have also seen it with Burnaby Lake which is an urban lake and subject to all of the pressures of being smack dab in the middle of a large urban area. It is infilling because of the silt that regularly flows into the lake. This is an important open water lake. A number of species demand and need an open water lake, and gradually it is turning into a mud flat.

The city has had for many years an environmentally sound proposal to dredge that lake to ensure that it continues as an open water lake, to ensure that those various species can continue to live there successfully, and also to ensure that it is available for the citizens of Burnaby and the surrounding communities as a recreational place. Yet, we cannot get the money from the federal government to assist with that kind of program.

The previous Liberal government found money for a similar program to dredge Wascana Lake in a Liberal member's riding, but no, it could not find the money to assist Burnaby with that and now the Conservative government seems to be having the same difficulty.

We are going to continue to push to ensure that this important municipal infrastructure spending happens in our communities because we know how crucial it is to its success.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate again in this debate on Bill C-28, the budget and economic statement implementation act.

The first time I spoke to the bill at second reading there was a lot of discussion on what exactly the government's direction was in how it dealt with financial planning.

Colleagues today have been stressing the fact that the measures included in the bill and in the government's other economic measures are gutting the fiscal capacity of the federal government. It is gutting it by a total $190 billion over the next six years. That is money that is taken away from the government and Canadians collectively to address the problems that face our society, the needs in our communities and the important aspirations of our families.

When we do not have that money and we take that money out of the capacity of government to respond, it is very hard to get it back, if at all possible. We need to pay attention to the direction of the government when it comes to gutting the fiscal capacity of government.

We also need to pay attention to the way that surpluses have been dealt with, both by the Conservative government and by the previous Liberal government. The constant refrain of “surprise, it's bigger than we thought” and “surprise we're going to put all of that money toward the debt and the deficit”, that is not good financial planning. To take that money out of any financial planning process related to this place and to the needs of Canadians is not a responsible course of action.

We have seen it time and time again where those huge sums of money that could be helping Canadians, that could be going to meet our obligations to our neighbours and to people across the country, are taken out of that discussion and do not become part of the priorities of the government.

There is a real problem with how we set priorities for government spending, both with the present government and the previous Liberal government.

In this corner of the House, we have had some success in trying to draw back governments from making that mistake. When the Liberal government was in power, the NDP negotiated to bring an end to a corporate tax cut that was being proposed at that time. We knew that corporate tax cut would not help Canadians in the way it was proposed. We knew that it was not the way to go. We knew that it was wrong. We proposed instead that the money that would have gone to that tax cut go to important programs that would actually help Canadians: lowering student tuition fees, building affordable housing, supporting public transit projects that help the environment, and to help our neighbours around the world by ensuring that Canada was doing a little bit better in meeting its obligations on foreign aid.

We were successful in that and now the only major money that we have seen spent on social programs in recent years is the result of our action in this corner of the House turning back that last Liberal corporate tax cut in favour of spending in those very important areas.

I am proud when I walk down the street in Vancouver now and I see the new blue and grey buses that are part of the Coast Mountain bus fleet in Vancouver. I know those buses were possible because of the money that the NDP fought for and obtained in that last Liberal budget. It is making a difference in people's lives.

Unfortunately, it is not enough. More needs to be done in the area of public transit and in the area of housing. We know that money went some way to helping and it is being spent now by provinces across the country but we need more to do that. It is not dealing with the crisis in affordable housing and in homelessness that confronts our communities and our citizens every day.

We know that students still face high levels of student debt. We know that was only a beginning in what needs to be done in continuing efforts to address those important issues.

On the foreign aid issue we are still nowhere near the commitments we made years ago to dedicate a certain percentage of our gross national product to ensuring assistance to people around the world.

We have a record in this corner of the House of showing what we would do when confronted with corporate tax cuts, corporations with high levels of profit that do not need our assistance right now. We know that big oil and gas companies and the big banks do not need our assistance because they have sky-high profit rates and are doing very well. They do not need the kind of assistance that the Conservative government is putting forward.

I am pleased we are debating an amendment to Bill C-28 that would remove the corporate tax cut completely and ensure that money is available for important programs. Hopefully, the government will engage in a process that will see the ideas and needs of Canadians engaged so that money could be spent more appropriately.

What are those areas where spending needs to happen? One of the areas that I want to talk about is the need to deal with the levels of child poverty in Canada. Back in 1989, this place made a commitment to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. The Conservative government and Liberal governments of the day failed miserably in even approaching that commitment. In fact, child poverty has gone up in Canada over that same period of time. That was a failed process. It did not happen because nobody in the governments of the day paid attention to that commitment. It is still an issue.

Firstcall is a cross-sectoral, non-partisan coalition in British Columbia made up of 79 provincial organizations, anti-poverty and community organizations, and 25 mobilizing communities of which I am happy to say the city of Burnaby is one. Last week, Firstcall released its annual report card dealing with the issue of child poverty. Sadly, British Columbia has the worst record on child poverty in Canada. Statistics in 2005 showed that almost 21% of B.C. children lived in poverty. That is absolutely shameful in a country as wealthy as Canada and a province as prosperous as British Columbia.

In its report card, Firstcall proposed setting targets where governments could be held accountable for reducing child poverty. We know the importance of setting those kinds of targets. We often do it in other areas but for some reason we cannot seem to bring ourselves to do it in important areas of social policy.

Firstcall is calling for a minimum 25% reduction in the child poverty rate by 2012 and a minimum 50% reduction by 2017. It has some suggestions about how that could happen and what kind of policies could deal with that. It suggested that the federal government increase the Canada child tax benefit to $5,100 per child. It said that cuts to employment insurance should be rescinded. It also said that we should be working with the provinces to provide universally accessible, affordable and high quality child care. I am proud to say that New Democrats have all of those things on our agenda.

We know that the child tax benefit needs to be increased. If the Conservative government had put that taxable $100 a month toward the child tax benefit, we would be approaching that $5,100 figure. That would have put it up into the high $4,000 range, which is where it needs to be to provide significant assistance to families and children.

The NDP has fought long and hard for that. Our colleague from Acadie--Bathurst has been the prime figure in terms of restoring EI. The NDP's bill to establish a national child care program would do exactly what Firstcall is calling for. We will continue to push for that because we know it will make a difference to children and families in communities in Canada.

As the spokesperson on cultural issues for the NDP, the government needs to pay attention to CBC service. My colleagues from Hamilton East--Stoney Creek and Hamilton Mountain will agree with me when I say that the CBC proposal to ensure local radio programming in communities all across this country needs to go ahead. It is not an expensive program, which makes me wonder why it is not in the proposals that we have before us from the government.

Eight million Canadians currently do not have access to CBC local radio programming, which is one of the most successful aspects of CBC work. Local radio programming increases the cultural life of Canada. It has brought Canadians together. It has increased the democratic participation in Canada by informing Canadians about what is happening in their communities. However, 15 communities need that kind of service, including Kitchener, London, Montreal South Shore, Barrie, Kingston, the Laurentians, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Drummondville, Red Deer, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Fort McMurray, Chiliwack, Saskatoon and Cranbrook, not to mention Hamilton. Canadians living in those places deserve to be connected in the same way that the rest of us enjoy CBC services.

[Petitions, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I have is signed by over 400 residents of Ontario and Quebec. They call on the House of Commons to commit to respecting and promoting international standards of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual human rights by adopting the principles of the declaration of Montreal on LGBT rights and the Yogyakarta principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity. They note there are also motions tabled in this House by me on these two important documents for which they seek Parliament's approval.

[Petitions, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have two more petitions I would like to table. The first is signed by residents of Burnaby—Douglas. They point out that the federal minimum wage was eliminated in 1996 by the then Liberal government. They note that a $10 an hour minimum wage just approaches the poverty level for single workers and say that this would establish a best practice for labour standards across the country.

Therefore, they call on Parliament to ensure that workers in federal jurisdictions are paid a fair minimum wage by passing Bill C-375, tabled by the member for Parkdale—High Park, to establish a federal minimum wage and set it at $10 an hour.

[Petitions, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by over 225 individuals from Ontario and British Columbia. They point out that contributing to the Canadian military through the payment of income taxes is an infringement of the freedom conscience and/or religion of those citizens who conscientiously object to participating in any way in the military and associate activities which train people to kill and use violence, produce and purchase lethal weapons, conduct military and related research, prepare for war and killing, and other activities which perpetuate violence.

Therefore, the petitioners call for the establishment of peace tax legislation by passing a bill such as the conscientious objection act which recognizes the right of conscientious objectors to not pay for the military, but apply that portion of their taxes that was to be used for military purposes toward peaceful, non-military purposes.