Denise Savoie

[Price of Consumer Goods, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian dollar achieved parity with the U.S. dollar eight months ago, yet prices on either side of the border still differ significantly. On average, Canadian consumers are paying at least 18¢ more than Americans for the same products. Some products cost 30% or 35% less in the United States.

Why is the Minister of Finance not taking the necessary measures to protect Canadians consumers?

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has raised extremely important issues. I will try to address some of them.

The question that Canada could do more in terms of overseas development aid to help countries build capacity is excellent. It certainly is what we on this side of the House have been calling for. We have been asking the Government of Canada to meet its millennium development goals. We are still far from that. Although development aid has increased, it has not in comparison to GDP. We are falling behind our own promises in terms of our responsibilities to the world.

It is absolutely understandable that countries in the developing world often do not have the capacity to implement some of the laws that are in place in those countries.

We only need to look at some of the agreements that were made, for example, in Suriname. Agreements were made with Canadian companies in the extractive sector with very little, if any, benefit to the aboriginal people. We know that by definition the extractive industry is finite. It is important that Canada do everything possible to ensure there is some social justice. We know that these trade deals are often coercive and unequal and we need to have more equitable trade.

The whole point I tried to make earlier is that there are many companies in Canada and business leaders in my own city that are giving leadership and showing the way. They are demonstrating to the government that they would like the government to take a stand on that, to make it easier.

As my hon. colleague just said, it would facilitate the task for those companies that want to uphold these higher standards.

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Ottawa Centre for moving this motion and for sharing his time with me.

In my opinion, this motion is long overdue. It is very important for me to speak to this issue because I am keenly aware that in my riding of Victoria, the business community has been exercising leadership on this front by forming what has been called a values based business network through which they promote a triple bottom line approach in business. The business community develops business cases for sustainability. It works, learns and promotes ethical business practices. It collaborates on marketing and branding. It develops projects that strengthen the micro-economy.

This is an issue that is particularly important to me. I have seen how it can work. It is beneficial not just for the bottom line, but in promoting social justice.

My colleagues in the NDP caucus and I have been calling for such measures for a long time. My colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster has presented Bill C-492 which would begin to address the issue of basic human rights and environmental abuses by Canadian corporations abroad. This is a continuing problem that received extensive national attention in 2007 with the release of the advisory report from the National Roundtable on Corporate Social Responsibility. The report's recommendations to enhance Canada's social responsibility standards were inevitable, given the disturbing accounts by round table participants on human rights abuses, allegedly perpetrated by Canadian companies while operating overseas. A year and a half later, the federal government has yet to adopt these recommendations designed to prevent such injustices. It is the responsibility of the government to give leadership and to ensure that the standards set out in the report's recommendations are met.

The basis of this report offers a pragmatic and comprehensive series of recommendations for the Government of Canada to implement toward developing the world's most progressive framework of corporate social responsibility. The report recommends standards based on existing international best practices, voluntary frameworks topped up with additional made in Canada standards that put as their focus assurances that Canadian extractive corporate practices enhance and protect human rights and the environment. This is not just good for social justice, but it is good for the bottom line as corporate social responsibility practices are increasingly being recognized.

Recently, Niall FitzGerald, former CEO of Unilever said:

Corporate social responsibility is a hard-edged business decision. Not because it is nice to do or because people are forcing us to do it...but because it is good for our business.

Companies are beginning to realize that a business has a responsibility beyond its basic responsibility to its shareholders, a responsibility to a broader constituency that includes key stakeholders, customers, employees, and in the case of corporations functioning abroad, to the people, the foreign nationals in that country and the aboriginal people.

There seems to be an irony between the government's inaction on this file and its historic apology to the aboriginal people of Canada yesterday. The government continues to allow for exploitation of aboriginal people in other countries through unsustainable and harmful corporate business practices, as has happened in Suriname or Tanzania where the labour practices of Barrick Gold, a Canadian company, caused conflict.

We have begun to see the cracks form in bottom line capitalism with the demise of huge multinational corporations such as Enron and WorldCom and with the trials of Conrad Black or Ezra Levant. It has opened our eyes to the need for corporate social responsibility standards.

As the global food crisis increases, these discussions are broadening and suggest the need for a paradigm shift. Business must find new ways to contribute to society. The emphasis on free trade must give way to the promotion of fair trade principles. Doing business must no longer mean exploitation of people or devastation of the habitat.

The implementation of measures to ensure corporate social responsibility is anything but a business as usual approach. Rather, a corporate social responsibility is effectively part of what I would call a new social contract between business and society. Government must stand up, take note and look at these recommendations that were made through a consensus report. The government must begin to consider these more seriously and implement them.

Throughout Canada successful businesses have taken on the challenge toward corporate social responsibility. One such company in Canada at the forefront of this new way of doing business is Mountain Equipment Co-op. Former CEO Peter Robinson, one of the new thought leaders, has remarked, “Ethics is the new competitive environment”. Companies like MEC believe that corporate social responsibility is not only good for business, but it also offers a net competitive advantage for their businesses. In my own city, as I said, the values based network is comprised of hundreds of small businesses. They are exercising leadership by recognizing a triple bottom line approach to doing business.

The Conservative government must follow the lead of businesses across the country. Canada's brand as a democratic country that respects human rights depends on it. We must make corporate social responsibility a part of Canada's policy.

Today Canada can take action to ensure that we do not continue to exploit aboriginal people in other countries through its corporations. The recommendations that were proposed in the report stress that corporations operating abroad have a responsibility not only to follow the rules of the countries where they are operating, which in many cases especially in some developing countries are not applied, but they should follow the standards of corporate social responsibilities and the laws as they are in Canada.

This is what this report attempts to do. I do not know if the business community in Canada is leading. This is what Canadians expect. Yesterday the Conservative government itself expressed regret and apologized to first nations people for the exploitation that has occurred over the years. Now it has the opportunity to prevent that kind of exploitation in other countries by taking action on this report.

[Petitions, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition on behalf of many Canadians who are asking that the government rescind a provision of Bill C-10 that allows the government to censor film or video productions under some ill-defined, vague criteria. We have all heard of the impact these provisions will have on the film industry, and there are already laws that contain provisions regarding pornography, child pornography, hate propaganda and violent crime.

These Canadians are asking the government to put in place objective and transparent guidelines that respect freedom of expression when delivering any program intended to support film and video production in Canada.

[Committees of the House, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's words and as usual he had some interesting and very wise comments about the issue. I would tend to agree with him that it is not just an issue of an exit strategy for tobacco farmers.

He raised a point that is of particular concern to me and that I think is important for all regions of Canada. That is the point about developing, with regions and provinces, comprehensive economic development strategies so that we are not always in a position of crisis and can plan ahead. This is precisely, it seems to me, what the Conservative government is not doing and what the former government perhaps has done on the cheap.

For example, in western Canada, western economic diversification is now funded on only a by project basis, rather than through working with regions and municipalities and looking at how to best develop their assets in order to look forward and really respond to the needs of the communities.

Would the member comment on that? What does he think government could do to strengthen that regional economic diversification and development component?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is one of reasons that led me into federal politics.

As a councillor in the municipality of Victoria, I saw the download that happened over the years by a former Liberal government in an attempt to cut costs at the federal level. It simply passed the costs on to provinces and municipalities. This led municipalities across Canada to an infrastructure deficit. I have stopped counting in the past couple of months, but it had reached the $85 billion mark and that was for sewage treatment plants, storm water disposal and community centres.

The mentality of the Conservatives seems to be putting more money in the pockets of people pockets, which we all appreciate, but those members have to remember that individuals cannot build schools, hospitals or sewage treatment plants. We get this infrastructure from taxes.

The government has been remiss in its responsibilities in helping municipalities cope with these issues.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this was a very important component of the study we did. The government has been remiss in investing properly not only at the primary and secondary school levels, but also at the post-secondary level for first nations. We noted in the report that the government has not adequately financed post-secondary education for first nation students.

One of the recommendations was to put in place a number of programs to better support them, for example, mentorship programs and skills training. The latter could help first nations build capacity as well.

At least 15 recommendations touched specifically on issues on which the federal government had been remiss, and it is shameful to admit that. These recommendations would go a long way toward helping first nations. They were endorsed by many of the first nations people who spoke at committee.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion we are not going to manage to receive a higher number of immigrants simply by making the rules more arbitrary, as the government is proposing. Not only that, I recall the minister stated that the new rules would not apply to applications prior to 2008, so I do not know what will happen to that backlog.

What I find more worrisome about the government's way of approaching the problem is it seems to be turning immigrants into economic units. That is deplorable. Immigrants have contributed and continue to contribute much to the fibre, the quality, the diversity and the richness of our country. Simply reducing that population to becoming economic units to fill jobs is not the way to go.

Family reunification, as I described earlier, is an important component that we must maintain. There may indeed be a skills shortage. As I tried to also express, there are many measures the government could take to address the skills shortage that may exist in the country. Simply short-cutting to bring in workers on a short term basis, with no commitment to their well-being in the long term or their stay in Canada, is not the way to go.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-50. I want to touch on a number of issues, one relating to the widening income gap that we are seeing in Canada. On another issue, I want to touch on some solutions that my colleagues and I have proposed.

I also want to talk about what the government could have done with some of the money received from Canadians other than continuing to subsidize large oil and gas companies and other big corporations. I also want to speak about the changes to the immigration act, as they will really touch some of my constituents who come into my office to speak to me.

The latest census figures paint a grim picture of our economy. While incomes for the richest 20% of Canadians have increased, the poorest have become poorer and meanwhile the incomes of those in the middle have just simply flatlined. This is according to the recent Statistics Canada report.

This corporate wealth grab is the result of a well orchestrated partnership with neo-liberal governments of past decades. The Thomas d'Aquinos have syphoned off all the benefits. We hear a lot about the trickle down effect. I am sure that it might make sense if it were not for the sponges at the top that are preventing any kind of trickle down.

In Victoria alone, according to recent research published from a “Quality of Life Challenge” report, parents need to make almost $16.50 an hour just to earn a basic living wage. It reports that 27.2% of families in B.C.'s capital fall below the acceptable living standard line. What is more alarming is that the research reveals that the majority of parents had 70 hour work weeks, the equivalent of two full time jobs. This is up 10 hours from last year.

What we see also are young people, aboriginal and immigrants, who are marginalized and trapped in part time, unstable, low paying McJobs, despite the government's rhetoric about job creation.

It is important for all of us in the House to talk seriously about the living wage. Victoria's housing costs are among the highest in the country. While the unemployment rate is the lowest in nearly four decades, I concede, employment trends are toward more low wage, part time and more insecure jobs that support the service sector, including tourism.

The labour pool will continue shrinking as the boomers retire and not many families with children can afford to live in Victoria. Only a small number of new immigrants make their homes in my riding. Young people tend to move away.

When more people are paid a living wage, the quality of life in the community improves. That is well known. A healthy economy attracts families, businesses and tourists. A living wage begins to close that income gap that we are seeing and reduces the number of people who are disadvantaged because of poverty.

In the study that I mentioned, expenses for a family of four were calculated on approximately $4,600 income per month. The rent took the largest bite with about $1,300, approximately 28% of costs, but it was closely followed by child care which amounted to approximately $1,000 a month, and then food and transportation costs. However, we know that food prices are rising exponentially.

This is where the government's neo-liberal approach is failing Canadian businesses and families. The federal government's absence from the table to make housing more affordable in Canada is inexcusable. The government's inaction in establishing national standards for child care and providing multi-year funding is adding to the crisis that families face.

These are all actions that we know would help working families and small businesses.

A couple of months ago, I met with some mayors of rural communities in the province of British Columbia. They told me that the absence of a national child care system and stable multi-year funding from the federal government were creating serious problems for those communities' ability to attract new businesses, because business owners know that they will not be able to attract employees.

High living costs are impacting businesses as well. They are having difficulty in attracting employees to our own high priced city and retaining them. Despite historically low unemployment and new sources of wealth creation, poverty in British Columbia's capital region, particularly among the working poor, is unacceptably high.

I was intrigued to read in the Statistics Canada report a couple of weeks ago that in 2007 British Columbia had its second best year for retail sales since 1995. That was a 6.7% increase over the previous year in Victoria, yet Victoria's downtown shopping centre, with its report of double digit sales growth for most of 2007, showed that the actual number of shoppers going through its doors was flat.

There is something wrong there. Or if it is not wrong, it is at least interesting that businesses have higher sales but fewer shoppers. Perhaps this indicates that fewer shoppers were simply purchasing more. This could be explained by the fact that in Victoria more than 30% of residents live below the poverty line and are unable to shop for anything beyond the very basics of food, transportation and so on.

This percentage could be reduced if more people who want to return to work were able to do so. At the moment, they are hampered by the fact that affordable day care, for example, is simply not available in the capital city of British Columbia.

Another recent report, from the University of British Columbia's Human Early Learning Partnership, highlighted an immediate need of 13,000 child care spaces for children from infant to school age. These numbers clearly cry out for a high quality national day care program to be put in place.

Along with high quality child care, education and skills training must be the starting point in breaking the cycle of poverty and illiteracy and ensuring Canada's competitiveness in the knowledge economy. Yet since 1995, when the then Liberal government initiated devolution for training to the provinces, Canada has remained leaderless in setting national standards or certification and qualification systems.

An OECD report,“Beyond Rhetoric: Adult Learning Policies and Practices”, states:

Governments' influence over national legislation and public resourcing policies is perhaps the most important way it can express clear commitment to supporting integrated policies for adult learning.

We need government policies, legislation and regulation that facilitate adult learning. We need financial incentives that encourage firms to invest in their workforce or incentives for individuals to engage in learning. All of this was cut by the Conservative government in last year's budget, at a crucial time when we know that many Canadians still lack the fundamental skills they need to move ahead.

Basic skills training and equitable access to education obviously remain a low priority for the government. Many Canadians come to my office and tell me about training needs and the difficulty in accessing programs. According to a recent Canadian Council on Learning report, 30% of Canadian workers reported in 2002 that there was job related training they needed or wanted to take, but they were unable to do so.

Although I realize this represents partly the former government's under-investment in training, important issues remain. Not enough is being done, and certainly not in this budget, to address the problem nationally.

Along the same lines, many families have spoken to me about the high cost of education. Without a meaningful investment in student grants for students of low income and middle income families, the Conservatives' transfer of funds from the Millennium Scholarship Foundation to a government-administered grants system will do nothing to improve access. If it is essential to our prosperity, why are we not doing more?

Not only does the lack of skilled workers affect ordinary Canadians' ability to cope, but it is impacting businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up Victoria's business community, face greater barriers. Some small business owners have told me that poaching is a real problem for them. If the Conservatives chose to act on the employability report recommendations, it could help address these issues.

The employability report was tabled several months ago. If the government decided to implement these recommendations, it could help reduce the problems associated with poverty and also help small and medium-sized enterprises. I would like to mention a few of these recommendations. One of them recommends:

that the federal government provide funding to assist individuals who agree to relocate to enter employment in occupations experiencing skills shortages.

That is exactly the type of recommendation submitted by my colleague for Hamilton Mountain to the government. Another recommendation proposes “a national agency for the assessment and recognition of credentials, especially foreign credentials”.

Yet another calls on the government to consider:

expanding and restructuring the apprenticeship job creation tax credit and the apprenticeship incentive grant to encourage growth in apprenticeships and the completion of apprenticeship training generally.

Several recommendations seek to make access to education more equitable. At present, low to middle income families find it quite difficult to pay the very high tuition fees charged by Canadian universities.This employability report recommended that the federal student loan interest rate be considerably reduced or simply eliminated.

At present, students from low to middle income families have less access to education than students from rich families. Although the government has announced some changes and improvements to the administration of the student loans system, which I certainly applaud, there remain many bureaucratic and administrative problems to be resolved. We recommended the creation of an ombudsman for student loans to promote the better use of the loan system.

Various recommendations of this type would help solve the problems faced by many Canadians with respect to precarious jobs and would also help small businesses facing labour shortages.

I also wish to take a few minutes to speak about the changes to the immigration act that the government has proposed. These changes are going to encourage queue jumping. They are going to make family reunification more precarious and that is of serious concern.

I want to give members two typical cases. I could give many cases, but these two really illustrate some of the basic problems.

We are all aware that there are problems with the huge backlog of applications that has accumulated over the last decade, and these problems must be solved. However, they should not be solved by simply accepting that we have an immigration policy that becomes totally arbitrary, withdrawing it from the purview of Parliament and putting it in the hands of one person, the minister.

The son of one of my constituents, for example, still has not received a visa after many years. We have contacted the Canadian embassy in Nairobi. When it did not respond to our emails, I called the ministerial inquiries division and asked it to check into the situation. I was told that Nairobi was waiting for the medicals to arrive from the doctor, but when we spoke to the constituent, she said that she had called the doctor's office and had not heard back.

The message is that this reunification of a mother and a son has taken an unacceptably long time. This is not a problem that we will solve by simply making the kinds of changes that render our immigration policy totally arbitrary.

We need that family reunification clause. It is an important aspect of our policy, a longstanding policy that Canada offers to families we welcome in our country to allow them to better settle here.

I would like to give a couple of other examples. Back in 2004, one of my constituents and his wife began the process of applying to sponsor her parents from the Ukraine. It took two years before the application was actually received in the embassy in the Ukraine, which was November 2006. They continue to wait. My question is, why does it take so long to reunite a family?

I see that I have a couple of minutes left and would like to end by touching just briefly on the environment. The 2008 budget does not take decisive action to tackle climate change. It continues to reflect a regressive approach to the issue, focusing on such measures as carbon sequestration to further increase the development of the tar sands rather than a comprehensive program to reverse climate change.

Just in the past few days, we have seen Ontario and Quebec get together to put in place measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, as have B.C. and Manitoba. As the Globe and Mail stated, the country's most populous provinces “are turning their backs on Ottawa” by setting up a cap and trade system.

Faced with the government's inaction, Canadian premiers are giving up on Ottawa. For example, Quebec's and Ontario's use of 1990 emission levels as a baseline for setting caps contrasts with the government's baseline, which is 2006.

The Minister of the Environment said just today in the House during question period that Canada must actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I wish he would actually take action to do that rather than maintain the Conservative government's intensity based targets--

[Climate Change Accountability Act, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-377, which ensures that Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing climate change. This bill is even more important because it does not put a partisan spin on this issue, an issue that is probably the greatest challenge of the 21st century. Canadians expect us to be above partisan games.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I was very honoured that you asked me to replace you for a few minutes. I had the opportunity, while sitting in the green chair, to look at things from a different perspective. I spent a few minutes thinking about how important it would be for the government to show true leadership on this issue that is so important for the future.

I recently attended a conference in Victoria.

The conference, called “Gaining Ground”, was held in Victoria during the break week. There were people gathered from all over B.C. and indeed from all over Canada and even from the United States. There were students, scientists, economists, and business people.

The students, the young people, said, “Do not mortgage our future”. The economists were saying, “Do not treat environmental impacts as externalities, as we have been doing and as we continue to do”.

Business leaders are far ahead of where we are at the moment. There were builders there who talked about the incredible impact that we could have by simply having some leadership at the level of changing the rules around construction in Canada and beginning to build green buildings, green homes, the kinds of green economy jobs that we could be creating, but that has not happened yet.

This bill would allow us to work together to build consensus. This bill is really science-based and I would like to go back to that. However, I want to talk a little about the consensus that I think the New Democrats have tried to build on during this Parliament, given how strongly we feel about this issue and how important we believe it is.

There was the Liberal Bill C-288, the Kyoto bill, and we agreed to work with the Liberals to bring that bill through committee to the House and to pass it. It was the same thing with Bill C-30, the Conservatives' climate change bill, which in its initial stages would have done very little to mitigate climate changes, but we proposed that all parties bring their best ideas and work together in consensus at committee.

We did that and there were some great ideas that came from all parties and this bill remains at third reading. The government has refused to bring it to the House for a vote and that simply goes against what Canadians expect of us. They want real change.

As everyone tries to understand the shifts that are required to achieve a more sustainable future, they are discouraged by the lack of action by successive governments. We know that biophysical and social changes can reach a tipping point, beyond which there is potentially irreparable change.

My colleague from Western Arctic spoke about his visit recently to Greenland and observed with scientists the way glaciers are receding. I had the fortunate experience to do the same thing on the other coast. I had the opportunity to visit Prince William Sound and the glacier called Nellie Juan. The people who were with us, who had been living in that area for some 30 years, showed us the way the ice was receding. There were beginnings of growth of vegetation where the ice had stood for centuries.

That is our children's future and our grandchildren's future that we are looking at. This is why I take this issue so seriously, as I think do all Canadians. The reason this bill is so exciting is it sets firmly into law the responsibility Canada must assume to prevent the tipping point that I mentioned.

Setting targets into law is key. Before I ran for election I remember having a conversation with the former minister of the environment. He was discouraged by the lack of action and the lack of commitment of his own government to move forward on climate change after accepting the Kyoto agreement.

I got the impression that the reason he felt there was a lack of commitment was that the discussions always occurred behind closed does in cabinet and there was no formal legislation requiring government to take action. It was always discussions behind closed doors and power plays that prevented any real decisions to take action. This piece of legislation would change that process.

Scientists tell us there is a consensus that an increase of 2° in the world's surface temperature from pre-industrial levels would constitute dangerous climate change and trigger global scale impacts and feedback loops from which it is difficult to imagine coming back.

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a leading scientist, Nobel prize winner, a professor at the University of Victoria, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, spoke to the committee. Here is what he said:

What I can say is that any stabilization of greenhouse gases at any level requires global emissions to go to zero.

I had to reread that because it is difficult to imagine how we can get there. Dr. Weaver is one of the leading world experts and certainly is a well-respected Canadian scientist. He said:

There is no other option. To stabilize the level of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere at any concentration that is relevant to human existence on the planet, we must go to zero emissions.

Hence the importance of this bill, because it will set into law the targets and the timelines that science tells us we must meet if we want to stop irreversible damage: medium targets of 25% below 1990 levels and long term targets of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

The Conservatives have set a new starting date and we know from all the comments we have heard that their targets simply do not get the job done as they would like to tell us they do. Science tells us that if we follow the government's plan we are going to--