Denise Savoie

[Municipal Infrastructure, February 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is time to resolve the real fiscal imbalance in Canada that falls on the shoulders of cities.

If the finance minister thinks that cities have only potholes to worry about, he should come in from the burbs for a day.

He might find it challenging to repair antiquated storm sewers, meet increasing transit demand, create new affordable housing units, tackle addiction and mental health issues, keep libraries and community centres open, and retrofit civic buildings to fight climate change, all on eight cents of every tax dollar collected in Canada.

He might find it unfair that our property taxes are going up while corporate taxes for big banks and big oil are going down.

City residents deserve healthy and sustainable communities and it is time that Ottawa did its share.

[PREBUDGET CONSULTATIONS, February 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments of my colleague. I was pleased to hear his reference to the standing committee's visit in Victoria. He quoted the Victoria Chamber of Commerce. However, its comments were not only praise for the Conservative government's tax cuts. It stated:

—the Government of Canada needs to take a far more aggressive lead in solving the problems of chronic homelessness across our country....By comparison, the U.S. government invests 3.6 times per capita what the Canadian government does on results-oriented homelessness initiatives.

It went on to say:

In this time of record government surplus, it is absolutely necessary for the federal government to apply a focused effort to reducing homelessness across Canada, and in doing so improve the business environment for thousands of Canadian companies.

Therefore, this is not an issue to address for humanitarian reasons. It has become an economic one and our tax system works at cross purposes with the efforts of cities.

Will his government commit to dealing with homelessness and housing affordability issues in Canada?

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the member is right. The banks and resource sectors benefit the most from these cuts. The financial sector will get one-third of Canadian corporate pre-tax profits. The oil and gas and mining sectors will get one-sixth of Canadian corporate pre-tax profits. Yet the single mom who is struggling to make ends meet and has no day care, was offered $100 a month and yet in Victoria she has to pay about $1,000 a month.

Not only does it affect parents and ordinary families, but these across the board cuts will do nothing to target the sectors that we want to stimulate, like the manufacturing sector or green industries.

These are just untargeted, across the board cuts that will have no impact on our productivity. As former cuts during the Liberals' term have shown, there were no improvements in productivity.

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that 25% of the population in Victoria is living under the poverty line. This is at a time of supposed great economic boom for the Canadian population. The government chooses to ignore this, or indicated that it was ignoring it in its fiscal update and preferred to give large corporate tax cuts to the banks and larger financial institutions and the same thing to the oil and gas sector which is making profit beyond a sustainable level.

People in my riding are confused as to the priorities of the government. Frankly, they feel that the Prime Minister is leading us toward a new country, a country that we will not recognize.

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby.

For me, this year's prebudget consultation process included hosting a public town hall meeting in Victoria that was well attended, presentations and attending finance committee hearings in Victoria by the committee last December, reviewing hundreds of letters and emails from my constituents and having countless conversations with folks on the street.

Throughout this process, I heard two predominant messages from the residents of greater Victoria. First, invest with vision in a more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable future. Second, that investment in Victoria should begin with housing.

They asked the government to review the massive corporate tax cuts announced in the fall fiscal update in favour of targeted measures to restore balance in our communities and in our social and physical infrastructure and to tackle climate change.

I would like to highlight a few of the excellent presentations we heard in the Victoria meetings of the House of Commons finance committee. The non-profit group, Heritage B.C., spoke eloquently about the importance of conserving heritage buildings and rehabilitating them for modern use, especially affordable rental housing. Its very pragmatic proposal would strengthen the federal historic places initiative by restoring the commercial heritage properties incentive fund and creating a federal tax incentive to amplify the success of tax measures in Victoria and Vancouver that has allowed us to protect some properties but, unfortunately, has not been supported by the federal government.

We heard from the BC Sustainable Energy Association, which expertly warned not only of the environmental hazards of the government's non-response to climate change, but also the economic hazards of being left behind as the rest of the world shifts to clean, renewable energy while we stay wedded to an obsolescent fossil fuel economy of past centuries. We must put a price on carbon to turn this around. Left unchecked, global warming could cost B.C.'s economy in the billions of dollars.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society identified six key actions that the federal government should take to protect healthy ecosystems in the face of climate change. I hope it considers those seriously.

The president of Results Canada made a compelling call to increase our foreign aid which he noted has actually dropped even further below our commitment of a 0.7% target from 0.34% of our gross national income in 2005 to 0.3% in 2006.

Before the finance committee came to town, I hosted a public town hall meeting to hear the priorities of my constituents that were not necessarily linked to the narrow focus of taxes. Overall, those in attendance expressed a strong desire to see the federal government re-establish its leadership role in the arena of social policy and to nurture the social contract we have together as Canadians.

However, overwhelmingly, the number one area of urgently needed investment in Victoria continues to be housing and homelessness. In October, the City of Victoria released its task force report on breaking the cycle of mental illness, addictions and homelessness after four months of work. The task force did an excellent job analyzing the problem and mapping a way forward, but many of its recommendations cannot be implemented without support from Ottawa. In fact, the report clearly identifies the past Liberal government's withdrawal from the social housing sphere in the early 1990s, along with cuts to federal transfer payments, as two of the contributing factors to our current crisis. Now the Conservative human resources minister does not even bother attending housing meetings with his provincial counterparts, pretending it is not his problem.

The chorus of voices pleading for federal help from the perspective of ethics and social justice has been joined by that of members of Victoria's business community who have come out as forcefully and unequivocally as they possibly could.

I would like to quote briefly from the testimony of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce. It stated:

...the Government of Canada needs to take a far more aggressive lead in solving the problems of chronic homelessness across our country.

So much for the absence of our federal human resources minister from the meeting with his provincial counterparts.

The Chamber of Commerce added:

In this time of record government surplus, it is absolutely necessary for the federal government to apply a focused effort to reducing homelessness across Canada, and in doing so improve the business environment for thousands of Canadian companies.

This sentiment from the Chamber of Commerce echoes what I have heard on the doorsteps in Victoria. Even in the more affluent areas, I frequently hear concern for affordable housing and homelessness mentioned on the doorsteps of homes that might cost $700,000 in Victoria. These residents understand that even if this issue does not afflict them personally, it is relevant to them because they are members of the Victoria community.

It is that community spirit, the truly Canadian quality of caring for one's neighbour and choosing to contribute solutions to our common problems, that is alive in Victoria and in communities across Canada, which the Conservatives do not seem to recognize in their obsession with tax cuts, especially corporate tax cuts that benefit the banks and large financial organizations. It shows that affordable housing is a fundamental issue that strikes the hearts of all Canadians and it shows that tax cuts are not universally popular if it means that some in our society go without.

That brings me to a couple of other areas that require targeted investment in the upcoming budget, according to my constituents.

First, it is time for the government to accept the majority will of Parliament and allow the NDP's early learning and child care act to pass. Bill C-303 has now passed two votes in the House and one in committee. Parents across Canada who desperately need affordable child care cannot wait any longer and parents who want to choose quality early learning over big box day care deserve that option.

Next, one million Canadians struggle to repay student loans, which have reached record levels, and they need help. The federal government expects to make $497.9 million in interest on student loans in the coming year. Every dollar in interest is one more dollar that a low or middle income student pays for his education compared to other students whose parents pay for theirs.

It will not be easy to level this structural inequality in our post-secondary education system. However, a good starting point in this budget would be to reduce the interest rate paid by students, to establish a system of immediate grants based on financial need, to improve options for lightening the debt load and to establish a student loan ombudsman's office to help students navigate this inefficient system.

Finally, public research informs good public policy, but it would appear that the Conservatives are allergic to both. They have cut key funding for the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network, eliminated the federal science advisor, overruled and fired Canada's nuclear safety regulator and continue to grossly underfund research in the social and human sciences.

Meanwhile, corporate influence on Canada's campuses and in university research continues to rise because the Liberal cuts from a decade ago have yet to be adequately restored. Our colleges and universities need stable, adequate core funding that corresponds with their economic growth in order to remain internationally competitive and provide the best possible education to our children.

We need increased funding for research in the public interest if we are to avoid letting profit become the guiding factor in public health, safety and environmental decisions. Budgets 2006-07 were colossal missed opportunities to invest in key strategic areas for more sustainable--

[Prebudget Consultations, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the member's comments. He was very quick to point out his former government's good fiscal record, as he put it, but we are all aware of that government's not so good environmental record.

Does he not think that the present government's problem is very similar to the former Liberal government's problem in the fact that it is caught in this false dichotomy that pits the environment against the economy? It seems unable to balance economic, environmental and social factors in its decision making process.

[Petitions, February 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have another petition from many seniors who are facing lowered benefits because of an error made by Statistics Canada in its calculation of the consumer price index. This resulted in Canada's inflation numbers being underrated by half a percentage point. This mistake is being felt by everyone whose benefits are tied to the consumer price index, including the recipients of the Canada pension plan, old age security and the guaranteed income supplement.

The petitioners are asking the Parliament of Canada and the government to take full responsibility for this error and take the required steps to repay every Canadian who was short-changed.

[Petitions, February 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the first petition I wish to present to the House today concerns students who are facing incredible and soaring tuition fees and an average student debt of about $25,000.

The petitioners are asking that the minister make certain that the review of Canada's student loan system address some of the key flaws in that program by creating a needs based grant system; by reducing the federal loan interest; by creating a federal ombudsman; by ensuring better relief payments that include things like expanding eligibility for permanent disability benefits; by creating enforceable standards on the conduct of government and private student loan collection agencies; and, by amending the lifetime limit on student loans.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, February 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (certificate and special advocate) and to make a consequential amendment to another Act. As we know, this is a bill that would reintroduce security certificate legislation with the provision for special advocates to address the civil liberties issues raised by the Supreme Court.

I am opposed to this bill because I believe it would compromise some of the fundamental principles of our justice system by circumventing due process which is a fundamental right in any democracy.

The Conservatives, supported by the Liberals, are proposing a law that attacks section 9 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that states, “Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned”. This section specifies not just Canadians but everyone in Canada and yet this law would deny that right to permanent residents and foreign nationals.

It seems somewhat ironic that we say that we are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and that we want to help them build a justice system that treats all people fairly at the time when there is slippage of those very principles in our own country.

I believe there are many ways to erode democracy. Corruption in government, for example, erodes democracy, free trade agreements that favour commercial rights of corporations over the rights of their citizens, of which the Conservative government is an ardent proponent of, or laws that disenfranchise groups of voters, as did Bill C-6, for example, introduced by the Conservatives, or indeed, as my colleague has just mentioned, the behaviour in the House which undermines true democratic debate.

Bill C-3 is just another law in that series that undermines the fundamental principles that many have fought for and that are being traded away in a very bad law.

There are two major problems with security certificates. First, as one of my colleagues has mentioned, they do not punish people who are plotting or have committed serious crimes, like terrorist acts or espionage. Security certificates allow for the detention and deportation of those suspected of terrorist activities but do not ensure suspected terrorists are charged, prosecuted or jailed for their crimes.

Because there are very serious consequences facing those named in security certificates, like deportation orders, possible removal and even torture, strong safeguards are required and this legislation does not go far enough in protecting civil liberties.

Canada must take strong measures to protect itself and its citizens against terrorists and spies. These are not nice people and we must take strong measures. However, we must find a better balance between protection against terrorist activities and protection of civil liberties than that offered in this flawed bill. The NDP believes that the Criminal Code is the right tool for the protection of our national security, not the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

I listened very carefully to some of the Conservative and Liberal members who have argued today in favour of this law. The member for Vancouver South said that security certificates offered the only effective mechanism, as the evidence may be out of country and we could not get a conviction in a court of law.

I think there is something fundamentally wrong with sending someone away under the cloud of accusation of terrorism without any proof. There is something equally wrong in sending them away so they can continue their criminal activities elsewhere. Why would we allow someone we suspect of terrorist acts to leave the country? How does that improve our global security?

The second flaw in this bill includes secret hearings, detention without charge or conviction, detention without knowing the evidence against someone, indefinite detention and lack of an appeal process. This again undermines the core values of our justice system.

The right of full answer in defence, the right to know the allegations against someone and the opportunity to respond to those allegations is a well recognized aspect of fundamental justice and that right is abrogated under the security certificate process. The detainee may never know the reasons why he or she is being deported. As with the Maher Arar case, we have seen the abuses that can occur.

It is understandable that security may be needed in some cases. I am not a lawyer but I understand that there are very clear provisions within our Criminal Code and the court system for matters of national security for hearing evidence when there is a need to withhold information in the interest of national security. One has to ask why we are rushing to abrogate basic democratic rights.

I believe it was the member for Vancouver South who admitted that this law was flawed but, like most of his Liberal colleagues, he has indicated that he will vote in favour of a bad law. It was an incomprehensible statement Liberal opposition members made in our Parliament that they would support a bad law because we are running out of time, the time having been set by the Supreme Court. I do not know how often I have heard this. It seems very convenient that the government has waited nine months or until the very last minute to reintroduce Bill C-3.

Another argument that has been used by those supporting the bill is that they have improved the security certificate process by introducing special advocates. Special advocates have been used in New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the process in both of those places is seriously flawed and under heavy criticism by many credible people. The United Kingdom keeps being cited by those who support modifying rather than abolishing the security certificate system despite court cases that have ruled against them there.

Given that the United Kingdom Lords of Appeal have ruled against provisions of the process and that Ian Macdonald, QC, a special advocate with over seven years experience, quit over the failure of the government to address the problems with the system, it does not seem to be the ideal solution for Canada to adopt.

The NDP strongly believes that a system that denies the right of answer in defence cannot be corrected by mere procedural tweaking. Even if all civil liberties were protected, security certificates within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act would still not be the appropriate mechanism for dealing with threats to national security which should be pursued under existing articles of the Criminal Code.

We strongly oppose security certificates because the process is fundamentally flawed and this measure would further diminish democratic rights in Canada.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, February 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned the tone in the House. I was glad he raised this issue. I think it is very pertinent to the debate about democratic rights.

Many young people in my riding are concerned about the bullying, the catcalls, the kind of behaviour that is displayed here. They are becoming discouraged with the democratic process with our government and believing in what we are doing here.

Would my colleague like to comment on the link that he makes between the erosion of democracy and behaviour in the House?