Carolyn Bennett

[Child Poverty, November 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, November 24, marks National Child Poverty Day. I draw attention to the importance attached to this day.

Canadian children are the future of the country and are our largest investment. This means we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the early years that pave the way for the child's future development physically, emotionally and cognitively. We must continue to make children one of our key priorities by helping families ensure that their children get the best possible start in life.

It is for this reason that we invested nearly $9 billion last year to help families with children. It is for this reason that we are putting billions back into the hands of Canadian parents to help provide clothing, food, adequate housing, day care, dental care and toys. It is for this reason that the government committed to a third significant investment into the national child benefit in the Speech from the Throne by July 2001.

We must continue on the path toward the eradication of child poverty in Canada. Children are our future.

[Diabetes, November 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, between one and two million Canadians are suffering from the debilitating effects of diabetes, and the numbers are three times higher among aboriginal people. Each year, 60,000 new cases are diagnosed.

Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health tell the House what the government is doing to fight diabetes?

[Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, November 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on Saturday, November 6, 1999, the esteemed Governor General's Performing Arts Awards took place here in the nation's capital. This annual event celebrates Canadian performers who have enriched our lives and recognizes these artists who have made tremendous contributions to the cultural life of Canadians.

Each year, six artists are nominated for the awards by members of their own arts community. I am pleased to announce that two of this year's recipients Mr. David Cronenberg and Mr. Mario Bernardi are from my constituency of St. Paul's.

Mr. Cronenberg is a world-renowned filmmaker whose work has been characterized by his unique ability to examine the subtle motivation of human psychology. An officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France, this year he chaired the Cannes Film Festival jury and was the first Canadian to be honoured to do so.

Mr. Bernardi is most known for his complete understanding of the composers and the music he conducts. As creator of the National Arts Centre Orchestra and founding conductor, he has played a pivotal role in developing the cultural centre in the nation's capital and it is his leadership that laid the foundations of the NAC which has endured for 30 years.

It is an honour for me to offer my congratulations to both of these artists who have contributed so much to our culture and to the arts community.

[Health, November 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health. In our 1999 budget we promised the creation of the new institutes of health research which was further promised in the Speech from the Throne.

Can the Minister of Health please tell us when the dream of these poor Canadian researchers will actually become a reality?

[Immigration, November 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

The minister of finance from Ontario has recently complained that in spite of a large influx of immigrants to the area there has been no help from the federal government. Could the minister of immigration please help clarify the situation for them?

[The Late Hon. Ian Wahn, October 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a former member for the riding of St. Paul's, Ian Wahn.

He was born in Herbert, Saskatchewan, schooled in Swift Current and obtained his Bachelor of Law degree at the University of Saskatchewan. After that he obtained a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University in England and then his M.A. there in jurisprudence. He was called to the bar from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto in 1943. By that time World War II had broken out and Mr. Wahn served with the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada in both the Netherlands and Germany. He earned the rank of captain by the end of the war.

In 1942 he married Pearl Lychak who died in 1988. They had two children, Ian and Gordon.

Mr. Wahn was first elected to the House of Commons in 1962 having defeated Progressive Conservative Roland Michener who then was Speaker of the House. He was re-elected in 1963, 1965 and 1968. While in the Commons he served on many committees, including banking and finance, justice and legal affairs, industry and energy, privileges and elections. After he was re-elected in 1968, he served as chairman of the national defence and external affairs committees.

As a member he sponsored bills to reform the laws relating to immigration, divorce and birth control. He authored the Wahn report from the committee on Canadian-American relations on Canadian control of the economy and culture.

In 1972 Mr. Wahn lost his seat to Ronald Atkey who had won the seat for the Conservatives under Robert Stanfield. He returned to his law practice afterward working with the firm of Borden and Elliot and in 1961 helped form the firm of Wahn, Mayer, Smith, Creber, Lyons, Torrance & Stephenson, now known as Smith Lyons.

This morning I asked the member for Davenport who had served in his constituency association in 1964 about his remembrances. He felt that Mr. Wahn served a valued role as a parliamentarian. He called him a small l liberal of the first order with a true understanding of democracy. He said that Mr. Wahn had a skill for organizing community meetings and citizen fora and for explaining and obtaining feedback on some of the most complex issues that affected the country. He had regular meetings from November until June each year with invited colleagues from Ottawa.

He was viewed as a first rate bridge between Ottawa and Toronto. He had a highly developed social conscience which resulted in effective representation on behalf of his constituents on issues such as pensions, disability and services for immigrants.

It was in the services for new immigrants that he made a huge impact. The Deputy Prime Minister reminded me that a large number of the constituents in St. Paul's in those days were of Chinese origin. Mr. Wahn would say that some of his constituents thought he was Chinese but when they found out that he was not Chinese they voted for him anyway. I think he had earned his stripes in the way of immigration services and by being an excellent constituency representative.

As we now strive for antidotes to the cynicism and apathy about government, politics and politicians, we must endeavour to look to the example of the true constituency MPs like Ian Wahn. Every day he demonstrated a true respect for the role of the citizen in a working democracy.

As the member for St. Paul's, the success of Ian Wahn in the area of citizen engagement and social justice provides a daily inspiration to me.

[Sleep-Wake Disorders Canada, October 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform the House and all Canadians that October 25 to 30 has been designated National Sleep Awareness Week.

This week coincides with the changing of clocks to help remind us how important sleep is to our everyday lives. Over two million Canadians suffer from sleep disorders and in several cases many people are not even aware they are affected. Sleep disorders decrease the quality of life of many Canadians by decreasing alertness and the ability to perform effectively on a daily basis.

Sleep-Wake Disorders Canada, a national voluntary health organization, responds to the needs of people with various sleep disorders, ranging from the most common insomnia to sleep apnea where breathing stops several times during the night.

Sleep-Wake Disorders Canada recruits and trains many volunteers through chapters across the country that help people suffering from sleep disorders to improve their quality of life. The organization also distributes information, encourages research and establishes local self-help groups.

[Women's College Hospital, October 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on October 12, 1999, I was honoured to be asked on behalf of the Minister of Canadian Heritage to unveil a historic sites and monuments plaque commemorating the importance of Women's College Hospital in providing medical services for women by women.

Women's College Hospital has always played a vital role in the community. Today's commemoration is a deserved recognition of the hospital's contribution to the women's movement, to the community, and to medicine.

The plaque reads:

Women's College Hospital has earned a distinctive place in Canadian medical history. From its beginnings as a small outpatient clinic in 1898 to its development as a modern teaching hospital, the institution symbolizes the struggle of women to claim their place in the medical profession. It offered them opportunities in teaching and in hospital practice, which were often unavailable or extremely limited elsewhere in the country. The hospital has made innovative contribution to the treatment and diagnosis of disease through its vital focus on health issues affecting women and families.

I would also like to thank Lindalee Tracy for the film Passing the Flame: The Legacy of Women's College Hospital .

[Canada Elections Act, October 19th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to take part in a debate as important as the one we are conducting today.

The vast majority of the measures in the bill are as a result of a long broad based, painstaking consultation process. Today we are referring this bill, the new Canada Elections Act, to committee before second reading. The results of the consultation were subjected to careful analysis by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The proposed amendments to the current Canada Elections Act stem directly from that analysis which was performed by members of all parties represented in this Chamber.

Our first responsibility as parliamentarians is therefore to pass those improvements into law and give Canada an elections act which is suited to the society of today and more important still, to the society of tomorrow. We should bear in mind that the new elections act we pass will govern the election of the first government of the next millennium.

Our second responsibility and no less important, far from it, is to uphold Canada's role in the eyes of the whole world as a leader in democracy. The virtues of our democratic system are known and recognized the world over. In this area as others, Canada has served as a model, one which is acclaimed at home and indeed abroad.

Although we have a firmly established reputation for democracy, we must always work continually to maintain it. Our whole democratic system in its fullest and most noble expression rests first and foremost on our electoral process, the very process which is our task to perfect here today. We must work to perfect it. We must ever strive for perfection knowing however we will never fully achieve it.

No matter how strong our collective commitment as members of parliament to the shared cause of serving Canadians may be, there will always be new circumstances, special situations, unforeseen snags and impediments along the way. Simply the process of social change, the pace of which has increased exponentially as a right of technological explosion, makes a periodic review necessary.

The amendments before us today are in keeping with the existing act's three hallmarks: fairness, transparency and accessibility. They relate chiefly to the three distinctive areas of administrative adjustments, publication bans and spending by third parties during election campaigns.

On the last point, the courts have found some aspects of the act to be too restrictive and incompatible with the charter of rights and freedoms. However while that decision settled one problem, it has created another. The result is while the official parties and candidates must abide by stringent spending rules, the third parties remain exempt. We believe this is fundamentally unfair.

In view of the broad public support in the regulation of election expenses, especially as we look to our neighbours to the south and see that it seems that now only the rich may run, there has been demonstrated public support for extending this rule to third parties. To make these rules fair for everyone, Bill C-2 will raise the spending limit for third parties to $150,000 nationally and $3,000 per riding.

The second main issue of the bill deals with the matter of publication bans which have also been contested in the courts. The regulations concerning partisan advertising and the publication of public opinion polls have been the subject of various court challenges. On this point too the new measures are based on the principles of fairness but also accessibility. They would limit publication bans to the 48 hours before the vote and require that the methodology used in opinion polls be released at the same time as the poll results.

As I have mentioned, the first major component of the bill relates to various changes of a basically administrative nature. Here more than anywhere else the three great principles of fairness, transparency and accessibility apply and are in evidence.

We had previously settled the problems relating to the release of election results and closing of polling stations given the existence of different time zones in Canada. However, we had not dealt with the special case of Saskatchewan which, unlike the other western provinces, does not move its clocks forward in summer. The bill provides for this adjustment.

Another inequity had cropped up under the current act which was with returning officers not having the right to vote except in the event of a tie. This did not appear consistent with the provisions of the charter of rights and freedoms. This bill will give the returning officers the right to vote like all Canadians. If there is a tie, there will simply be another vote.

The third point relates to urban concentration. Multi-unit buildings, condominiums and homes for the aged are proliferating in some towns and are home to a growing number of voters. We are proposing in Bill C-2 to let candidates campaign in dwellings of that type and to let tenants or owners, as the case may be, put up posters and signs.

It has been my experience that certain boards of condominiums have instituted private bylaws prohibiting canvassing which then is enforced by security guards. I was involved in one situation where the security guard was fired for having let canvassers into the building.

Our existing Canada Elections Act is an exceptional, remarkably effective document which has served Canadians well for many years. Many other countries in the world would like to be able to say the same. It remains however, like many other laws, that it needs to be updated periodically. Some of its provisions are 30 years old.

As I have pointed out, the changes before us are based on a thorough analysis of the situation performed by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, an analysis which I think we can all agree is untainted by partisanship. That analysis yielded a number of suggestions and in some cases, conclusions which were included in the committee's nearly unanimous report. Based on that report the government framed the new measures that are being proposed to improve the Canada Elections Act.

Personally, I believe these new measure will achieve their purpose. I am convinced that in the medium term and the long term the new provisions will raise the quality of our democratic system to a still higher level.

The main purpose of a new elections act is to build democratic respect for the rights and freedoms of a country's citizens and let all citizens freely choose the people who will represent them, defend their rights and ultimately ensure their quality of life. I wholeheartedly recommend passage of the bill in its entirety.

[Speech From The Throne, October 15th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I remind the hon. member that most of the people moving to the United States are moving because of opportunities. In terms of salaries that are offered there, for example, there is the fabulous Howard Hughes grant of $1 million a year to a researcher. We have trouble competing with that. There is no good evidence that these people are moving purely because of taxes. It is opportunity.

When my patients moved to New York and had to spend $10,000 a year on their health insurance they understood what comes with the taxes in our country and a reliance on a public health care system, a fabulous public education system and a huge reduction in crime.

People do not want to live in armed communities. The kind of approach demonstrated in the Speech from the Throne will actually prevent the cop killers the hon. member talks about. We will actually be able to demonstrate that we have much smaller numbers of people who require being in prison 20 years from now if we do the right thing now.

It is not that we want more cops and more prisons. That is not an approach to crime. We have to deal with people who were abused as children, who have fetal alcohol effects, who have learning disabilities that were not recognized and then ran into trouble in the school system, dropped out, got into trouble with drugs and then later into trouble with the justice system.

This is a prevention problem. This has nothing to do with what the hon. member suggests is crime and punishment. It just does not work. We know it does not work. We have to prevent psychopaths before they are formed.