Jack Layton

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is up to the Prime Minister to determine what is a confidence issue. In such a case, by voting for these amendments, we are in fact putting an end to the work that we wanted to do. Elections will have to be called or something even worse could happen.

What I mean is that we support the proposals in these amendments when they refer to something real, when they represent something that can produce results. However, what we are seeing here are merely political games, schoolyard games. We want no take part in them.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the condition of 3% growth in GDP was achieved within three years of the promise. We have had almost 10 years. This project could have been on the go but it did not happen.

The old line about matching funds is the oldest trick in the book. First one says that one has a great idea and claims credit for it. This is the strategy of the Liberal Party. The Liberals say that they have a wonderful idea but that they have to ask the provinces to pay part of the costs. Then they ensure cynically that they never have the capacity to meet that obligation and then do it by cutting huge amounts of transfers from the federal government to the provinces.

I must say that it was a brilliant strategy, if one is a cynic. It was a brilliant strategy because it allowed the Prime Minister to claim the status of hero when it came to deficit reduction simply by transferring the deficit to the provinces which, some enthusiastically, others reluctantly and some resisting, transferred that deficit on to the municipalities, or worse, directly on the shoulders of individual Canadians whose poverty levels went up, whose student debt went up, whose homelessness went up and whose illness went up.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, our critic in this field has just finished a cross-country tour, getting right down to work on the question of child care. In fact, he visited small rural communities and represents that type of northern Ontario region himself. He found that smaller communities right across the country had an enormous interest in a child care strategy.

The tragedy of this is that women, who primarily bear the burden of looking after children, are unable to work and make the contributions they might like to make, and unable to have the choices that they wish their families had. They were counting on the promises to be delivered. I think we have waited long enough.

The good news is that we have a minority Parliament, the kind of Parliament that produced our health care program, something put together by the New Democratic Party government, the CCF government in Saskatchewan. The fact that we have a pension plan emerged from a minority Parliament right here in the House. In fact, the principles of asymmetrical federalism were recognized at the time. It shows that it is possible to put together a strategy to address Canadians' needs no matter in what community or province they might happen to live, whether it's a large or small community.

We have the capacity as Canadians, if we work together, to address these issues and solve these problems. The question is, will we actually take the opportunity we have to realize these opportunities or will we squander it in a game of chicken.

I have looked at the amendments that have been proposed, for example. They are very interesting amendments. Of course the fundamental question is not whether the amendments contain good ideas. In fact, some of them are ideas that we discussed. The question is will the government fall on the vote. It has nothing to do with the content of the words. Any words whatsoever could have been composed. This is the political gamesmanship that is underway.

I argue that what we need to do is get to work. The other parties are playing a game of brinkmanship. It is like people speeding up their cars heading toward each other to see who will blink first. I say to the other party leaders, in whose hands these questions reside, that they should not to get into a blinking game. They should open their eyes to what Canadians want to see done. They want to see us get to work. They do not want to see the shenanigans and the politics that we see unfolding here.

We look forward to having an opportunity to vote on these issues in a forum that will actually make a difference, a vote in the House of Commons on missile defence. I would like to quote the words we just heard from the Prime Minister. He said “In all that we do, it will be Canadian interests that will prevail, and that will be the case with ballistic missile defence”.

Not one page later he said “There are so many instruments of war in our world. Let Canada continue to be an instrument of peace”.

Let us start by saying no to the weaponization of space and the spending of money on missiles on the North American continent.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, once again I would like to congratulate you on your election. To other public servants, namely the members of the Public Service Alliance, I express my thanks and my solidarity.

I extend my congratulations to the Prime Minister, to the leader of the official opposition and to the leader of the Bloc Quebecois on their re-election.

I want to send a special thanks to our NDP caucus for its patience and tolerance while I was hanging out in the lobby these last many months. I want to thank, in particular, the member for Elmwood—Transcona. I hope one day to be as faithful a parliamentarian as he is and has been. I also want to thank the two leaders of mine who are joining us in the caucus, the members for Ottawa Centre and Halifax, who are examples of wisdom, intelligence, decency and service to us all.

I would like to take this opportunity to quote a man who is very special to me:

On this first opportunity I have to rise as a member of this House, I thought I should express my special appreciation to all those back home, on the shores of Montreal, who have given me the chance to serve in this Parliament.

My father spoke these words nearly 20 years ago, in 1985. I am proud to be his son. Like my father, I am proud to come from Quebec and proud to represent a riding located on the shores of a lake.

That brings me to a thanks to the constituents of Toronto--Danforth for having bestowed in me their confidence to serve here in the House and to work with all members. I particularly want to single out one of those residents, the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario, Marilyn Churley, who also sits with me as the representative for Toronto--Danforth in the Ontario Legislature.

I would like everyone to know a little bit about Toronto--Danforth. It is a community of enormous diversity. It holds one of the largest Chinese communities in Canada and indeed I have been blessed to have the support of the Chinese community in Toronto--Danforth on a very active basis.

[Member spoke in Chinese and Greek]

And of course we know the Danforth. We have heard of the taste of the Danforth. It is the centre of Greek culture, activity, music and food. I invite everyone to my riding to share in the magnificence that is the taste of the Danforth with another million aficionados of garlic and fine wine.

It is also the location of the South Asian community markets and businesses on east Gerrard where people talk to me about their families and about their desire to end discrimination including racial profiling in our society.

Finally, I would like to mention that it is the location of a very special church called the Metropolitan Community Church. It is a church wherein the first gay marriage was performed in Canada. I had the experience of being there and I am very proud to have been there. It is the home of the gay and lesbian community in many ways and it is one that speaks out on the issues of human rights.

Toronto--Danforth is very special for many reasons and Toronto itself, as my home city now of 30 years, is very special to me. I have a particular role to play as the lone member of the opposition from Toronto and I can assure members that I intend to take that role very seriously.

However, needless to say, the most important part of Toronto for me is my family. I particularly want to thank Olivia Chow, my wife, Mike and Sarah, my kids, and of course, my mother Doris Layton who is watching and I appreciate very much her support throughout.

Let me speak a little about the purpose of this Parliament and the circumstances in which we find ourselves in the House at this very moment and in the weeks to come. David Lewis, another distinguished parliamentarian and former NDP leader said in his maiden speech in 1962, “We have seen in the last few years that the Liberals have revealed themselves to be thoroughly unreliable”.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, we might say.

However, it was a minority parliament at the time, a parliament with Lester Pearson as Prime Minister. In Pearson's minority parliament, we created public pensions and public health. They would never have occurred with a majority. They would never have occurred without my party. We have 19 MPs here with the support of 2.1 million Canadians. We will not play chicken with historic opportunities to make positive change in this country.

If our party had played chicken in earlier minority governments, we would not have the health care program that we celebrate today. If our party had played chicken in the minority parliaments of the sixties, we would not have the national pension plan that we have today.

In a later minority parliament, often referenced as a good example of how minority parliaments can get progressive things done, from 1972-74, if our party had played chicken, we would not have had a national housing program that houses almost two million Canadians today.

We have an opportunity to create and build once again or we can play politics and let Canadians down. The ones we will be letting down are the families who are sitting at home wondering how they are going to provide for their children and how they are going to meet their needs for child care. The ones we will be letting down are the ones who are trying to breathe clean air and are wondering where they are going to be able to get clean water as they face yet again another boil water order. The ones we will be letting down if we play chicken and play politics instead of getting to work and seizing the opportunities are those who want to see our voting system changed and made more democratic. We have an historic opportunity to do so in this Parliament.

I have observed debates in this place under majority governments and I think that, like me, the public did not like what it saw. That is why we have a minority government now.

Let me be clear: I do not share the Prime Minister's values.

We do not draw our values from the same well as the Prime Minister suggested during the election campaign. He talks about rights, but he dodges on equal marriage for all. He promised to help cities, but he is the one who abolished the affordable housing program. He promised to bring in child care time and time again and did not. He promised to cut pollution and it is up significantly.

It seems that progressive ideas emerge from the Prime Minister and his team only when it suits them. We would like to change that. If he is serious about the environment, if he is serious about cities, and if he is serious about democracy and jobs, well then, we would like to help. If he is serious about child care, we will be there.

I would like to quote from the maiden speech made by the member for Halifax in 1997. She was referring to broken promises and said:

Women are the most vulnerable. It is no surprise that this government has abandoned women. The first 1993 red book promise broken was that of a national child care program. Canadian families and Canada's children are still waiting.

That was seven years ago. Seven years ago our party leader at the time had to bemoan a seven year broken promise. It is now 14 years. This leaves families in real trouble.

I was calling to get a taxi to go to the airport three days ago and the dispatcher said to me, “Mr. Layton, I hope you go up there and make them keep their promises”. I was not sure which promise he was going to pick. He was coming on quite strongly

He said that the Liberals promised a national child care program in 1993 and they broke their promise. On the basis of that promise his wife went out and took early childhood education to become trained to be a daycare worker. They decided to have a family in the expectation that there would be child care available and that her job would be as a child care worker.

I found it amazing to hear this guy speaking this way. He then said that his wife is now looking after their kids at home. She was unable to find a job. Without child care, at the cost that it is available, it was simply impossible for the family to function in any other way.

Broken promises attack the very foundation of what Canadians are looking for, which is some sense of hope. The member for Halifax was waiting seven years ago and we are still waiting.

I say to my fellow opposition leaders that our collective responsibility is to make this place work. We must choose our battles. We must choose the battles not over what the Prime Minister says, but by what he does. My party will do just that and we will always speak up for the people that we represent.

Let me say a word or two about the throne speech itself. Again, I am finding some inspiration from former leaders in their maiden speeches. If members do not mind, I would like to reach back to 1936 when Tommy Douglas was first present in this House prior to being Premier of Saskatchewan. Here is what he said about the Speech from the Throne at that time, “I would point out that the Speech from the Throne is notable, not so much for what it says but for what it fails to say”.

One wonders what Tommy would think about specifics for debt reduction being laid out with such specificity, but with no specifics for child care. The biggest spending priority that has been announced by the government in the throne speech, and again in the Prime Minister's reply today, is the reduction of debt.

Let us be absolutely clear about that. The reduction of debt is being put as the sine qua non of the government's fiscal strategy. This means that it will stand ahead of the environment, of people's basic needs, of affordable housing, just like we have seen for the last decade. Yet we have no specifics on something as important, grand, significant as a child care program.

Let us have some specifics on child care. For example, 3 million kids in Canada have mothers who work, but there are only 515,000 child care spaces in this country. There are fewer child care spaces in my city of Toronto today than there were in 1993. We are falling backwards under this government.

In St. John's it now costs $415 a month for child care per child. In Yellowknife it is $605. In Ottawa it is $750. There are no targets, no dates, no specificity on child care. This is not acceptable.

Tommy Douglas would also have had a few well chosen words about the Prime Minister's seeming desire to help George Bush launch the next arms race, without mentioning even once in the throne speech the so-called missile shield.

Let us hope that this omission means that the Prime Minister has converted to peaceful values and decided to say no to George Bush's star war.

Let us hope that the Prime Minister's values shift from the promotion of war and arms race to the values of peace.

My party wants to built a 21st century economy in Canada, one that is green, that is smart, that has child care, that invests in education and that puts investments into the economic engines of cities. I would like to speak briefly about these.

As members know, I have taken on the responsibility of being our party's energy and climate change critic. After four Liberal throne speeches, I simply do not believe the fifth. We have a commitment to climate change efforts, but time and again that promise has been broken, and I do not believe that it will be followed. We intend to bring forward proposals and I hope the government will take a look at implementing them.

In 1993 the Prime Minister's own red book promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. Instead we have received a report from the OECD saying that we are last among the industrial countries and that we have a massive increase of global warming emissions.

We are facing a global crisis. It is transforming the very planet on which we live. Species that we may or may not care about are losing their capacity to survive on the planet. Hundreds of millions of people will find their lands flooded and their ability to live with any kind of quality of life attacked. That means we have to take urgent and direct action. It is not enough to call for more talks and more discussions of possible plans down the road. I was part of those talks in the past. They led no where.

Let us get going on these issues. It is possible to find solutions. I had a considerable amount to do with the wind turbine on Toronto's waterfront, as did others. I commend the mover of the motion on the Speech from the Throne for his help on that project, but it took six years to get up one turbine.

How long does it take to make change in the country? Surely it cannot take that long.

Let me quote another leader, J.S. Woodsworth, in 1922, on the matter of communities, cities and investment. He said, “As a taxpayer I objected decidedly in my own little municipality to paying out taxes and receiving nothing whatsoever for those taxes”.

What can one say about the commitment to cities and communities in the throne speech? It is pathetic. I stood on the stage with the Prime Minister when he made a promise to municipalities and said there would be 5¢ per litre of the gas tax. Why can the number 5¢ per litre not make its way into the throne speech? Is there something so distasteful about a promise that it cannot be repeated?

What is going on? We see a rapid retraction of commitment on this issue and it is not something that we intend to accept. Instead, we hear about a portion of the fuel tax being phased in. These are the words of someone who frankly does not intend to follow through on a commitment once the election is over.

Also, there is no separate infrastructure program. It will now be folded into the gas tax, I guess. There is no dedicated fund for public transit so we will have more smog and gridlock. That is something to which we can look forward. The infrastructure deficit is growing by $10 million a day and yet the Prime Minister chooses to spend $11 million a day on debt reduction. There is the priority. That is the value wellspring that is being utilized.

Let me turn to the words of the member for Ottawa Centre. He gave a maiden speech in 1968, which is instructive. He said, “serious deficiencies which still remain about which the government gives almost no indication of seriously concerning itself. One, the abysmal lack of affordable housing“. We saw in a minority parliament a national affordable housing program that took us somewhere, that housed hundreds of thousands of Canadians. As soon as the majority Liberal government came into power, it eliminated the whole program and homelessness began to grow across the land with terrifying consequences.

I would like to close on a more positive note by mentioning that the last words in the Speech from the Throne called for a democratic renewal, including the electoral process. We welcome this initiative. We intend to work very hard to achieve the concept of a citizens' assembly and ultimately a referendum so we can fix this place, so we can see that the democratic politics that Canadians want to see in full operation are able to function and clean up Parliament as we know it, clean up the process that we have seen, the scandals and the corruption, and represent the voices of Canadians.

We are ready to work. We are ready to go. Let us end the games of chicken and the politics and get on with the job.

[Speech from the Throne, October 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps as expected, more words and more promises.

While I appreciate the good wishes, the government does not seem to have the sense of urgency that must be applied to the issue of the climate change crisis. What we have had are speeches after speeches, throne speech after throne speech with the same promises and yet we fall further and further behind.

Will the Prime Minister give us some reason to hope that there will be some action this time rather than more broken promises, such as we have seen year after year?

[Speech from the Throne, October 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday's Speech from the Throne marked the fifth time this government has promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

However, since the first promise 11 years ago, Canada's pollution rate continues to rise. Canada is one of the worst polluting countries in the industrialized world.

My question is for the Prime Minister. After so many fine speeches and empty promises but no concrete action, why should Canadians believe the Prime Minister this time?

[Election of Speaker, October 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the last time you said my name, I was among the spectators and not a member of this House. I am delighted to be here now as an elected representative. Thank you very much.

I want to acknowledge first of all the role that was just played by the dean of the House and to indicate that it is typical of the role that the New Democratic Party will be able to play in the future in pulling perhaps disparate points of view together around a common cause, the first act of which was your acclamation, Mr. Speaker.

Your acclamation sends a very strong signal that the members of the House wish to work together in order to achieve common objectives. I think it is going to place before you a challenge the likes of which has not been seen for quite some time. In actual fact, on each and every vote the results will by no means be predetermined.

This is going to put you and all members of the House into an interesting position. We are all going to have to work a lot harder. We are going to have to be considering the will of Canadians a lot more carefully because nothing will be prescribed in advance.

Our role as a political party will be to pursue our perspectives, and to hope and count on you to ensure that your wisdom, your eyesight and your intuition will cause you to notice that we are down at the far end of the chamber wishing to raise our points of view.

In addition, we will not to be facing a House of Commons with proposals coming simply from the government. We will be having proposals for interesting legislation and initiatives emerging from all parts of the House, and certainly from this corner. It will be very important that your judgment and your role here ensure that all members of the House are able to bring forward effectively the kind of recommendations that Canadians want to see, and to allow the votes and decisions to reflect that broad consensus of Canadians that exists out there.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to extend to you my congratulations and a cordial welcome. Let me assure you that we will be working hard in the interest of all Canadians, as will all the members of this Parliament. I expect to have many interesting discussions with you and my new House of Commons colleagues.