Brigitte Sansoucy

[Child Health Protection Act, September 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for introducing this important bill because we do need to fight childhood obesity. My NDP colleagues and I are pleased to support this bill.

As my colleague pointed out, Quebec was the first to address advertising aimed at children. Quebec's law applies to children 13 years of age and under. I have concerns about the fact that we are considering applying this legislation to people 17 years of age and under. As my colleague said, ads target teenagers too, but as Canadian restaurant owners told us, teenagers are also employees. That means they are exposed to advertising at work in the restaurant and food service industry. The issue for me here is setting the age at 17 and under versus 13 and under.

[Petitions, June 20th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition regarding automatic registration for the guaranteed income supplement. Most of the petitioners are members of the Saint-Damase branch of the FADOQ.

The federal government announced that it was launching a process to automatically register seniors for the GIS, but that process will not apply to everyone who is eligible. It will not apply until they reach the age of 65. This is an important federal government program because it provides low-income seniors who collect old age security with extra income.

For these reasons, the petitioners are calling on the government to extend automatic registration for the GIS to all seniors.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 14th, 2018]

With regard to the statement by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue during the adjournment proceedings of April 17, 2018, that “In 2015-16, the EI program received more than 365,000 sickness benefit claims, and paid out over $1.5 billion for this type of benefit. On average, recipients claimed 10 weeks of benefits of the maximum entitlement of 15 weeks. This shows that, in the majority of cases, the available coverage is sufficient”: (a) how many people applied to use the benefit for each calendar year between 2004 and 2017; (b) how many people received the benefit for each calendar year between 2004 and 2017; (c) how many people claimed 10 weeks of benefits out of the maximum entitlement of 15 weeks in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017; (d) how many people claimed 15 weeks of benefits in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017; (e) how many people claimed 14 weeks of benefits in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017; (f) how many people claimed 13 weeks of benefits in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017; (g) how many people claimed 12 weeks of benefits in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017; and (h) how many people claimed 11 weeks of benefits in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017?

[Main Estimates, 2018-19, June 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, after all these hours, I believe it would be fitting to thank the staff here with us for these votes, specifically the clerks, pages, and security staff. I took the shuttle in the middle of the night. I would like to thank the people responsible for the food services in the lobbies, the staff in the anteroom, and the library staff. It is important to note this.

[Latin American Heritage Month Act, June 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House today to discuss Bill S-218, an act respecting Latin American heritage month. This is an opportunity for me to point out the work and presence of a vibrant community in my riding, whether in Saint-Hyacinthe or Acton Vale.

As we know, members of the Latin American community in Canada have made an invaluable contribution to our social, economic, and political fabric. The objective of the bill is to designate the month of October of every year as Latin American heritage month. I am proud to support this bill.

I would like to acknowledge in the House important members of and organizations in the Saint-Hyacinthe region who do valuable work in my riding with the Latin American community. Some of them come from this very community.

It is an honour for me to rise to talk about the great work done by the Maison de la famille des Maskoutains. For 25 years now, this organization has been helping to integrate and settle newcomers to the Saint-Hyacinthe area and give them the support they need to adapt to and manage their new lives.

The Maison de la famille des Maskoutains helps all families, accommodates them and provides family members with support, reference, and prevention services. The mission of this organization, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in February, is to help newcomers integrate into Saint-Hyacinthe and help them adjust to their new life.

The Maison de la famille des Maskoutains seeks to anticipate and remove obstacles that every newcomer might face and help them regain their autonomy as they get their bearings. To that end, it has 51 interpreters on staff and provides interpretation services in 17 languages. Last year, the centre responded to requests from a hundred or so newly arrived families, either for appointments or home visits. The Maison de la famille des Maskoutains is very present in community, education, and early childhood settings, and it organizes events all year long to address themes from different categories of immigration to culture shock. I thank the Maison de la famille des Maskoutains for its good work.

I also want to acknowledge the amazing work being done by the team at the Maison de la famille des Maskoutains, some of whom are members of the Latin American community. I will start with Lizette Flores, the executive director, who took over from Carlos Martinez in December 2016. Like me, Ms. Flores has a master's degree in public administration from the École nationale d'administration publique. She also has management experience in the non-profit sector and does terrific work for this organization.

Then there is Jubilee Larraguibel, an immigrant services coordinator, who founded the organization Solidarité éthnique régionale de la Yamaska in Granby in 1996. She has been a compassionate and dedicated employee of the Maison de la famille des Maskoutains for 19 years.

Alvaro Sierra is a settlement worker. His job is to facilitate the settlement experience for young immigrants as soon as they arrive. He meets with families before they enrol their kids in school and guides them through the process. Then he follows up with the child, the parents, and the school to make the settlement process as smooth as possible.

Kawthar Ouazzani and Carmen Cecilia Calderon are settlement workers too. They both work closely with families and newcomers. Carmen Elena Serna is an early childhood educator and facilitator, and Luz Dary Marin Morales is an early childhood education assistant. They are both with the children and youth program. They bring a compassionate approach to meeting the needs of the young and old. I thank them for their amazing work.

It is also my honour to talk about Forum-2020, a non-profit that helps people looking to settle in and around Saint-Hyacinthe. Forum-2020's mission is to attract fresh blood to the RCM of Les Maskoutains through immigration. The organization breaks down barriers to immigrant integration and helps immigrants integrate by encouraging civic engagement in institutions and organizations. It works toward aligning immigration with the region's needs in a way that honours everyone's values.

For the past 10 years, Forum-2020, whose management team includes members of the Latin American community such as executive director Ana Luisa Iturriaga and immigration development and communications officer Claudia Mansilla, has been dedicated to promoting cultural diversity in Saint-Hyacinthe. The organization hosts cultural events on Saturdays in the summer. I am always delighted to attend these activities, which showcase cultures from a dozen different countries and give residents and newcomers an opportunity to connect.

To sum up, Forum-2020's goal is to attract, mobilize, and integrate families from around the world and help them flourish in our community. I thank the team at Forum-2020 for their hard work and wish them a happy 10th anniversary.

Saint-Hyacinthe and Acton Vale are vibrant communities, in part because of the contributions of their cultural communities. I want to highlight the extraordinary work that the Société de développement du centre-ville de Saint-Hyacinthe, or SDC, as it is known, does in collaboration with Forum-2020. SDC has been running cultural events on Saturdays since 2015, where new residents from diverse backgrounds can share their values and traditions with the Saint-Hyacinthe community. I want to thank Simon Cusson and Chantal Lefebvre for the incredible work they do to keep our downtown abuzz with cultural exchanges.

Saint-Hyacinthe and Acton Vale have a vibrant, well-established Latin American community. I have had the pleasure of visiting a number of businesses that employ members of this wonderful community. I am thinking of Gloria Jaimes, a project management engineer who manages manufacturing supervisors at Beaulieu Canada, a company in my riding that is on the cutting edge of flooring trends and is constantly coming up with innovative products to meet the market's needs.

I am also thinking of Odilso Rocha Rodriguez, a volunteer who is very dedicated to our community; Martha Rincon, an active and enthusiastic volunteer; and Nilda Benito, a tireless volunteer and entrepreneur who created PachaMama Canada, an eco-friendly company that works directly with Peruvian artisans to sell high-quality, fair trade alpaca products. I am also thinking of Jesus Sauce, who works at Penske; Celso Kossaka, Davi Almeida, and Sallira Sanchez from Denis Cimaf; and Carlos Chacon from the Tienda la Fé grocery store in Saint-Hyacinthe.

I am thinking of Lorena Meneses, an outstanding young entrepreneur who is the head of Mareiwa Café Colombien, a successful business that imports, roasts, and distributes high-quality Colombian coffee; John Sanchez, who works for the diocese and welcomes immigrants with open arms; Erick Gonzalez, a sales support manager at Caisse Desjardins de la région de Saint-Hyacinthe; and Angelika Gill, the executive director of Le Phare, which supports the loved ones of people with mental health issues by offering resources tailored to their needs.

I am thinking of Lucie Kablan, a field crop researcher at the Coop fédérée and author of a study on crop production that was published in the American Society of Agronomy's prestigious Agronomy Journal; Nestor Arrieta Bernal from Techno System, which produces heat exchangers; and many others who enrich our beautiful riding with their expertise, professionalism, and passion.

In closing, I would like to take a moment to invite new residents of Saint-Hyacinthe and Acton Vale to a celebration that I am hosting on Sunday, July 1, at 1 p.m. at Jean-Claude-Patenaude Park at Loisirs Bourg-Joli, which is located at 2520 Sainte-Catherine Street in Saint-Hyacinthe. I will be very pleased to have the privilege of welcoming them to the community, and I hope to have the opportunity to talk with them on July 1. Once again, I am proud to support this bill, and I thank the Latin American community for its exceptional contribution to our community and our country.

I look forward to celebrating Latin American heritage month with them.

[Infrastructure, June 13th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, it is the government's responsibility to ensure that our public infrastructure can adapt to the reality of tomorrow and the effects of climate change.

The NDP believes the government must consider the possibility of implementing a protocol like the one proposed by Engineers Canada to assess infrastructure climate risk and vulnerability and recommend ways to adapt to extreme weather events and future climate conditions.

The government must enable small municipalities to access this protocol so they can build lasting public infrastructure. The NDP believes that Canadians should be able to count on infrastructure funding for viable, long-lasting infrastructure that can stand up to the challenges of climate change.

[Infrastructure, June 13th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, in March, I rose in the House to call on the government to present us its plan for spending billions of dollars on infrastructure over the next 12 years, a plan that the municipalities are still waiting for.

The Minister of Infrastructure and Communities told me that nearly $180 billion would be released in order to build the necessary infrastructure that Mr. Harper's Conservative government had neglected for 10 years. That is all well and good, but as the Parliamentary Budget Officer pointed out, it would be nice if the Liberal government established a real plan for spending all that money and building the high-quality infrastructure that our constituents expect.

I would like to share with my colleagues my deep concern about the government's lack of transparency and organization in managing our infrastructure. In response to my most recent question on the Order Paper, I was told that the plan to invest in Canada consisted of a number of programs and initiatives implemented by 14 departments. The programs target different types of infrastructure, and therefore there is no funding criteria standard. Wow.

The federal government is not tracking the requests received or the scheduled payment dates for any of the programs. I do not see how the so-called plan is being managed.

The NDP believes that our country needs public investment right now to ensure that our roads, airports, and public transit systems meet Canadians' needs.

Our public infrastructure is the cornerstone of our country. That is why we must ensure that the $180 billion invested over the next 10 years will benefit all Canadians and our municipal and provincial partners. I also want to draw the Liberal government's attention to small municipalities, which, in my opinion, deserve more attention from Ottawa.

As a former municipal councillor with the City of Saint-Hyacinthe, I am convinced that the realities and needs of small municipalities are quite different from those of big cities. I truly believe that the the federal government should consider their specific needs and realities when making decisions about infrastructure.

I have sat on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities several times. I listened to witnesses who explained how a lack of financial resources can sometimes prevent small municipalities from submitting projects that their communities need.

For example, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities said that the traditional process is onerous for small communities. Other witnesses said that some very small municipalities are understaffed and do not have an up-to-date inventory of their infrastructure funding needs.

The NDP therefore believes that it is imperative that the federal government establish means and mechanisms to further support these small municipalities so that they can identify their own needs for infrastructure funding. We believe that it is the federal government's duty to be more flexible and to make the process less onerous for small municipalities that need the government to take their realities and unique characteristics into account.

I also believe that we should expect a lot from a government that often describes itself as progressive and says it is concerned about climate change.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, like my colleague, I will oppose this bill, but certainly not for the same reasons. In her speech, she mentioned her concerns that the minister's discretionary power would allow her to veto projects. I think that this discretionary power discredits the entire process, because for Canadians and organizations to have confidence in a process, the process needs to be clear from start to finish. This political power, at the end of the process, discredits everything that comes before, and makes the outcome of the process uncertain and unclear.

I would like to know whether my colleague agrees that, regardless of who will be environment minister, and regardless of which party will form the government in the years to come, having politicians wield such discretionary power is detrimental to the process.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, before I became an MP, I worked for six years as the chair of an environmental advisory committee in my capacity as a city councillor, so I know that the people I represent are very concerned about the environment.

I was listening to my colleague talk about navigable waters, and that made me think of the people who wrote a brief to BAPE that was thousands of pages long. They have a very comprehensive view of their environmental concerns. When they think about our navigable waters, they also see the social and environmental benefits that go along with that. As I listened to my colleague talk about very technical matters, including posting notices, I thought to myself that her view is too narrow to satisfy the people I represent.

Could my colleague tell us about the Canadian navigable waters act? Beyond the technical considerations, what social and environmental benefits were considered when drafting the bill?

[Housing, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, over 100 organizations came to tell the committee that Canada needs a coordinated poverty reduction strategy. Even the minister wrote, in a document entitled “Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy--What We Heard About Poverty So Far”, that we need:

...a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy that is focused on achieving real results that can be measured....

The plan to fight homelessness that was announced yesterday is not enough. We need a real strategy, like the government promised, not a series of phony strategies or piecemeal plans.

My question is simple. Where is the strategy?