François Choquette

[Official Languages, October 27th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, the Minister of Canadian Heritage appeared before the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

However, all her answers were evasive. She could not tell us whether the RCMP had set up a system to monitor bilingual services on the Hill, nor could she name one single good recommendation of the unanimous report on the Translation Bureau. I will give her one more chance.

Can the minister tell us, yes or no, whether she believes in the principle of by and for? In other words, does she believe that services provided in the official languages must be offered by and for official language minority communities?

[Immigration to Atlantic Canada, October 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to talk about immigration to Canada and, more specifically, to Atlantic Canada. I am doing so because the Atlantic provinces are so beautiful. Yvon Godin has been a very important mentor to me in my political career. I speak with him often these days. He is teaching me a great deal about the official languages portfolio, since I am now the NDP critic on that file.

As members know, Yvon Godin is the former member for Acadie—Bathurst. He fought hard for the well-being of his Acadian community, the Atlantic provinces in general, and francophones in Canada. I am therefore pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Motion No. 39, which deals with immigration to Atlantic Canada. This motion was moved by my Liberal counterpart from the riding of Fundy Royal in New Brunswick. I mention where this motion came from because New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada. That is very important and I will explain why in my speech.

I support this motion because the NDP supports all initiatives that promote the socioeconomic well-being of the Atlantic provinces, a region that, quite frankly, has been hard hit in recent years, particularly by the Harper government's bad public policies.

Motion No. 39 instructs the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to undertake a study on immigration to Atlantic Canada. The committee must consider, among other things, the challenges associated with an aging population and shrinking population base. It must also consider possible recommendations on how to increase immigration to the region. It is also being asked to report its findings to the House within one year of the adoption of the motion.

My colleague who just spoke is a member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, where she does excellent work. Like her, I support this recommendation. The NDP is in favour of a study on how to help the Atlantic provinces take full advantage of the benefits of immigration to Canada.

Increasing immigration to the Atlantic provinces is part of the solution, but it is not the only solution. We should take a comprehensive, holistic approach so we can address all the issues related to demographics, the economy, and social inequalities in the Atlantic provinces.

We are in favour of a study of the best ways to reduce inter-regional disparities in Canadian provinces, thereby fostering sustainable development in Canada.

Here are some figures. According to Statistics Canada, Canada's population grew by 0.9% from 2014 to 2015, although during the same period, the Atlantic provinces' population shrunk by 0.1% to 0.2%. In other words, their population is not continuing to flourish and grow. Naturally, the francophone population in Atlantic Canada is following the same pattern. We therefore need to use every available means to improve that situation.

In 2014, Canada welcomed about 260,000 new permanent residents. As for the Atlantic provinces, they welcomed only 8,000, which represents about 3% of those new permanent residents.

In 2015, the Atlantic provinces had the highest proportion of the population aged 65 and over in the country. With an aging population comes a smaller workforce, which could cause numerous challenges for the Atlantic region. That is why it is so important to have a closer look at this issue, and this study is a first step.

I mentioned my colleague Yvon Godin earlier. He worked very hard on behalf of the Canadian francophonie and the Atlantic provinces.

Yvon Godin also fought for immigration to ensure that we kept a significant threshold of francophone immigration across Canada where there are official language minority communities.

New Brunswick is an important example where the francophone population represents roughly 40% of the population, while 60% are anglophones. As I was saying, it is the only officially bilingual province and it is important to maintain this high francophone ratio. That is why immigration is essential.

To that I would like to say that currently at the Standing Committee on Official Languages, we are studying immigration in official language minority communities. However, we do not have a lot of time for our study. We are studying this and seeing how we might improve the situation. I will be pleased to share the results of our study with the members of the committee. Those results might inform their upcoming study.

We have a target for francophone immigration to official language minority communities across Canada. That target is 4.4% of francophone immigration to official language minority communities outside Quebec by 2013. We are nowhere near that, and for that reason we are conducting studies in order to improve the situation in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the other Atlantic provinces, for example.

Some members mentioned the return of the Mobilité francophone program, which, unfortunately, was abolished by the Conservatives. I want to acknowledge this Liberal initiative. Collegiality seldom happens in the House, but it is important to recognize good work. The return of Mobilité francophone is a good example. Congratulations to the Liberals for bringing it back. The Conservatives made a mistake when they abolished it. This does not solve everything, but it is a good step forward that will improve the situation of francophone minority communities. Improvements are necessary, as I mentioned.

Furthermore, one of the annual reports of the Commissioner of Official Languages indicated that immigration needs to be understood as a tool for the growth and development of official language minority communities.

Immigration should therefore be considered a tool for growth and not a problem or something difficult. The problem that we have with francophone immigration to official language minority communities is that we often forget that francophone immigrants need to become productive members of society, that the organizations must be run by and for official language minority communities. The services must be offered by and for francophone communities, otherwise it is very difficult to build the ties needed for the community to flourish.

I do not have much time left, but I would like to mention that efforts to promote immigration are also under way in my riding, which, by the way, is not in the Atlantic region. We are welcoming many newcomers and enriching the greater Drummond area with many communities from various countries.

Recently, we welcomed a number of Syrian families. We are very proud to have participated in this effort. We are working hard to integrate them into our community, to help them find jobs, to send their children to school, and to help them to grow, so that they, in return, can help grow our community. We must not forget that immigration benefits us all. It is what helped us grow as a nation. Canada is a country of immigrants, and we need to continue to enrich our culture and our communities through immigration to the Atlantic provinces and other areas of Canada.

[Canada Pension Plan, October 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, it is extremely important that we continue to enhance the Canada pension plan, as I said in my speech. I agree with the Liberals on that, and I said this was a first step in the right direction.

However, we still need to remember to tackle certain important challenges. As my colleagues said earlier, women tend to be much poorer in retirement than men at this time. A lot of women receive smaller pensions than men. We need to come up with solutions to this urgent problem.

A broad range of measures is needed to do that. However, $36 billion in health cuts and inadequate investment in affordable housing are not going to help matters any. A whole series of solutions are needed. I therefore congratulate the Liberal government for this first step, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

[Canada Pension Plan, October 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I did indeed have the honour of working with my colleague on the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

I am always shocked to hear my Conservative colleagues say that a price on carbon is a tax on carbon. A price on carbon is an investment in a low-carbon economy. It is quite different.

Even though the Liberals' plan is far from perfect, everyone who wants the government to invest in the environment can agree on one thing: transitioning to a low-carbon economy cannot happen without pricing carbon.

That being said, as far as the Canada pension plan is concerned, it is true that the Liberals must absolutely think about all the SMEs. My riding, Drummond, is another riding that depends a great deal on SMEs.

The Liberals have introduced some tax deduction measures. I will not list them all, but they ensure that employers and employees alike do their part, put money aside for improving CPP. The adverse effects can be mitigated by the fact that this is considered a tax credit, as it currently is by the way. This is an investment in the Canada pension plan.

[Canada Pension Plan, October 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for North Island—Powell River.

Today I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-26, an act to amend the Canada pension plan and other acts.

Today is a very important day. Every day spent in the House of Commons is very important, but today is especially important because we are talking about our seniors and how to show them the proper respect. They are the ones who built our country. They are the ones who raised our families. They are the ones who created and protected our culture. It is very important to show them the respect they deserve.

Every year, I tour the seniors' residences in my riding and I am always saddened to hear seniors talk about how worried they are about their precarious financial situation. They tell me they worked their entire lives and now they are receiving the minimum, roughly $1,000 a month. It is incredible to think that after working their entire lives, seniors are receiving barely $1,000 a month. That is why it is very important to talk about it and to do something about this situation.

Therefore, I would like to congratulate the Liberal Party for finally understanding, as did the NDP, that the retirement age had to be brought back to 65. The Conservatives wanted to increase it to 67. As a result of the NDP's many efforts, the Liberal government understood that that was not the way to go. Therefore, it changed the retirement age back to 65, which is a good thing.

Although it would have been possible to do better, we should mention that enhancing the Canada pension plan is an important first step in improving retirement security for young Canadians. We congratulate everyone who was involved in improving the CPP, especially the unions, who worked very hard to lay the foundation for this agreement. Nevertheless, steps must be taken now to help seniors and Canadians who will be retiring soon and who will not benefit from these measures. The government must examine this issue. It must build on the enthusiasm created by this agreement and take the steps required to improve the long-term security of today's workers when they retire.

We also need to start paying attention to something else, namely, retirement insecurity, which is beginning to reach crisis proportions in Canada. In fact, many Canadians have not saved enough to maintain their standard of living in retirement, and for various reasons. Sometimes their wages were too low, so they could not save. My constituents are asking me a lot of questions these days about the fact that people who work full time at minimum wage cannot make ends meet.

If you really think about it, that is a very serious problem. Some people work full time at minimum wage and are forced to turn to charities in order to provide for their families. That is not normal, and that is why it is important to have a closer look at this issue.

Much of the problem can be attributed to the erosion of pension funds offered by employers, to the point where, at present, six out of ten Canadians have no pension plan from their employer. Of course, some can set money aside through RRSPs, but not everyone can do that. As I just mentioned, some people who work full time for minimum wage are having a hard time making ends meet and providing for their families, so they cannot invest in RRSPs, and these are people who are working—they are not lazy. Instead, they sometimes have to turn to charities for help. Unfortunately, this is a very real situation that needs our attention and must be dealt with.

As I said earlier, the maximum pension benefit is $1,092 per month, or $13,100 per year, which is really the bare minimum for survival. People who collect that much in a year do not live high off the hog. Far from it. They live below the poverty line and have trouble making ends meet.

As I said, seniors are people who devoted their lives to our country, to raising Canadian families, and to sharing our culture. When we see what is happening to them, it is clear that they are not getting the respect they deserve, unfortunately.

We would also like the government to further enhance the Canada pension plan to offer our seniors a more dignified retirement. That is really important. The NDP is also calling on the government to stop trying to convert public sector defined benefit pension plans into undefined pension plans. People work very hard and expect a decent retirement income, but they are being offered undefined pension plans, which can increase or decrease in value depending on the vagaries of the stock market.

That is a problem. Look at what happened in 2008. That did not seem to wake anyone up because the measures that should have been implemented to prevent such situations have still not been adopted. Unfortunately, this could happen again. That is why it is important to have secure pension plans to ensure our seniors' well-being, as well as our own well-being in the long term.

We also need a long-term vision for our seniors, not only when it comes to the Canada pension plan but also when it comes to health. Right now, the Liberals are maintaining the Conservatives' bad decision to cut $36 billion in health transfers over the next 10 years.

As they say, as you get older, your body starts to give out. Seniors have more and more health problems. That is to be expected, but we need good health care services. The Liberals are not going to achieve that by making $36 billion in cuts, like the Conservatives planned to do, quite the contrary. We need to think about seniors. We need to think about our family caregivers.

I always think of my mother and my sister, Suzanne Brodeur and Maryse Choquette, who do amazing work with the elderly in a seniors' residence. They are so devoted. I often say that an MP has to be devoted, but what those women do in the health care field is true devotion.

Housing is another factor. Thirteen thousand dollars a year does not cover much in the way of housing. That makes access to affordable housing extremely important. I know that the Drummondville municipal housing office is working hard to find more housing for seniors. Without accessible, affordable housing, how can seniors survive on such a low income?

According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities:

Some cities are already showing a significant and growing need for seniors’ social housing. Seniors are on social housing waiting lists and are at risk of becoming homeless.

Some seniors may even become homeless because we failed to take proper care of them.

I would like to congratulate the Liberal government on taking the first step toward making things better for seniors by lowering the pension eligibility age to 65 at the NDP's urging. I would also like to congratulate the government on enhancing the Canada pension plan, again at the NDP's urging. However, there is still a lot of work to do. The government needs to see the big picture and further enhance the Canada pension plan right away for everyone currently living below the poverty line. Housing and health care have to be part of the equation. The Liberals should cancel the $36 billion health care cut immediately because it is totally unacceptable.

[Canada Pension Plan, October 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is extremely important to ensure that our seniors have a reasonable pension. We all know that many seniors are living in poverty. Many seniors in Drummond receive less than $1,000 per month. That is no way to show respect for our seniors, who built this country and raised families.

Speaking of people who raised families, the latest available figures show that 30% of female seniors living alone live in poverty. That number has tripled in the past 20 years. That is why I want to know how my colleague would help end poverty for vulnerable senior women.

[Petitions, October 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present dozens of petitions from the people of Drummond. They are concerned about the consequences of tax havens. They say that the use of tax havens results in massive losses for the public treasury, which causes problems in delivering public services such as health care, for example, when we know that there will be $36 billion in cuts.

Accordingly, the petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to take the necessary legislative measures to combat tax havens with the aim of reducing social inequality in Canada.

[Official Languages, October 18th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, yes, the documents are in French, but that was not the case until a month later. That is hardly equality.

Furthermore, the French version is not on equal footing with the English version. In other words, the English text is the one considered valid, while the French text is merely for reference, because it cannot be relied upon, when both documents should have the same value when they are tabled.

The Centre québécois du droit de l'environnement is still fighting this in the courts, because it wants both documents, the English version and the French version, to be recognized as having the same value, with both having the same force of law during the hearings that will take place. At present, one is considered superior to the other, which goes against the spirit of the Official Languages Act.

[Official Languages, October 18th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I am hoping to get better answers during my adjournment debate than my colleague from Trois-Rivières got.

I want to talk about the fact that documents relating to TransCanada's energy east project were submitted in English only. On May 19, I asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage about the many ways TransCanada's energy east pipeline proposal violated the Official Languages Act.

My questions coincided with the publication of a report by the Commissioner of Official Languages that identified grievous instances of non-compliance with the Official Languages Act and found that major work was needed to improve the situation.

The energy east project application to the National Energy Board was submitted in English only, which is of course totally unacceptable. Pursuant to the Official Languages Act and bilingualism, both languages, French and English, are equal. Neither is superior to the other. Accordingly, documents must be submitted in both official languages at the same time.

That is why, on May 19, I asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who, I would remind hon. members, is also the minister responsible for official languages, how she justified the fact that francophones had to wait a month longer to have access to the document in their language. All these months later, the matter is still not closed.

This is not a new situation. On December 15, 2014, the Centre québécois du droit de l'environnement, the CQDE, had already started tackling certain problems. The centre does excellent work, not only on this file, to have the official languages respected, but also on the environment, particularly on the striped chorus frog file, which I followed closely. This centre managed to protect the striped chorus frog in Quebec and we must congratulate it on its excellent work.

The CQDE made a request to the National Energy Board concerning a TransCanada document the NEB posted on its website in French. Instead of posting all the documents, totalling some 39,000 pages in French, the NEB posted only a six-page summary.

Just imagine that for a moment. A francophone concerned about a TransCanada pipeline receives nothing more than a six-page summary, while anglophones have complete access to 39,000 pages of documents in preparation for possibly taking part in public consultations.

This is totally unacceptable. The Liberal government said it would reevaluate the environmental assessment process and that it would remove it from the National Energy Board in order to have a more sound, more serious, and stricter assessment process. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet.

I would like my colleague's comments on that.

[Paris Agreement, October 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech. He is passionate about improving the environment and creating a better future for coming generations, and he is dedicated to making that happen.

There are two possible approaches here. As the Liberals like to say, we could go the Conservative route and do nothing, or we could go with the New Democrats' approach. The NDP has a plan and has already introduced a bill on accountability with respect to dangerous climate change. Jack Layton's bill was introduced twice in the House of Commons.

Jack Layton had very high ambitions. He wanted to reduce climate change to 80% below 1990 levels—not 2005 levels, which makes no sense—by 2050. That is proof positive the NDP really wants to make progress.

The Liberals have plenty of nice things to say, but they do not actually do much. We need to take meaningful steps now. According to the now-defunct National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which lasted until the Liberals killed it, not tackling climate change right now will cost us $50 billion a year.

Does my colleague agree that, if we invest in fighting climate change now, future generations will benefit for a long time to come?