Joe Comartin

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Chair, so that we do not finish on a completely partisan note, I have a concern and a reform that I would like to see. It has been proposed by our party and comes from the experience of the member for Ottawa Centre who has had many years in the House. It concerns appointments. A great deal of government policy is both developed and deployed by appointments.

Our party has proposed a methodology for appointments that would take into account the criteria of merit, that a person knows what they are doing for the appointment that they are being considered for. There would be some kind of meaningful review at the parliamentary committee level.

I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary would care to comment on whether he would think that would be a good way of introducing more democracy.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I want to share with my colleague from across the way my experiences of observing and in fact studying some of the history and the reforms that have occurred in England, Australia and New Zealand. I have been in all of their parliaments now in my almost five years in the House. In those cases, they had a practice that was not dissimilar to the practice that goes on in this House, oftentimes a house that is basically out of control. It required a change in the corporate culture, but they did it.

Interestingly, England did it at the time when television was introduced. We did just the opposite. Our situation degenerated after we introduced television to this chamber. We know people play to the cameras. It is in fact worse I am told by parliamentarians who were here before cameras were.

I learned an example when I was observing the New Zealand house when I was there a few weeks ago. It has empowered its speaker to do greater things than we have empowered our Speaker to do. The example I will give, because it is a practice which it follows, almost was used the day I was there. One speaker pressed very close to the line and was almost disciplined by the speaker, and that is done. Our Speaker has very little authority to discipline.

It has adopted a rule from soccer. Its speaker cards, as a way of disciplinary action, an individual. That means a person has to leave the chamber for the question period. If they misbehave during question period, they are in effect required to leave for the whole question period. They cannot take part. It has proven a great authority on the part of the speaker and has been used regularly. I share that with members, and any comments the member may have in response.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, if we are going to make a change to our electoral system, it is going to have to be done very carefully.

We were there primarily for active engagement. We were looking at some of the processes that both New Zealand and Australia had gone through in terms of engaging their people in various attempts to change their electoral system and/or their government system. It is absolutely crucial we get it right.

On one hand, we have to be careful not to look at it as a panacea. I do not believe that just by making a change in our electoral voting system will increase participation. We have to change a good deal of our system. We can look at other groups. Those who are less economically advantaged vote at a much lower rate because they have no vote.

On the other hand, some of the evolving democracies in South America are engaging individual communities that are oftentimes very poor. They are involving them in the process not only at election time, but during the whole period of governance on an annual basis, for instance, taking the budgetary process to them.

That has worked up to this point in time in Porto Alegre in Brazil. It is still novel, but it has been doing it for over a dozen years now. On an annual basis, it engages citizens from the barrios and the very poor parts of cities on how to spend the amount of money which has been allocated. That is what we have to do.

I do not think electoral reform by itself, even though how we do it is very important, will not increase participation in elections. We have to do other things.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, I have been a strong proponent of lowering the voting age. It was interesting that in a number of the meetings I attended across the country on electoral reform the issue always came up about how to engage young people. It did not come up in most cases by young people, but by other members of society who felt very strongly about the loss we suffered and the fact that it was becoming worse.

I think lowering the voting age would help. I say that because of my experience when I go into schools. I go into high schools in particular. These are students who because of the civic course, or the history course or sometimes the political science course they take are very knowledgeable. They are engaged in the course they are following. I would not say that it is universal but it is quite extensive. They ask probing, knowledgeable questions.

Two years or three years later when I have run into those people, oftentimes when canvassing during an election or at other times in their work places or at university, a great deal of that enthusiasm has been lost. I am not sure what happens in that process. However, I cannot help but think that if we get them voting at a somewhat earlier age, before they leave secondary schools, would they fall into a pattern that would follow on through their adult life, during the crucial period of time from 18 to 24. In the last two federal elections turnouts in that age category was 25% or under.

I will make another point with regard to this. When we travelled in Australia to look at its system, we discovered that it was compulsory to vote. However, its system is very complicated. People vote, and young people vote obviously as much as older members of the population, because they have had the experience of voting. They learn about the electoral system in high school and they continue to vote on through their adult lives. There does not seem to be any differentiation, even though they have to pay a small fine if they do not vote. The proportion of votes among the youth, the 18 to 24 age group, is roughly the same as in the rest of the population.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, I rise with some appreciation for the process that we are using but I want to say to my colleague from the Bloc that I share a great deal of his concern over the historical role that the present Prime Minister has played and the previous prime minister and the one before that in concentrating so much power in the Prime Minister's Office, oftentimes to the exclusion of the departments, the ministers, this House and the electorate generally in Canada.

In preparation for this evening I spent some time reviewing material of other authors and researchers who have done work on the whole issue of the term that is becoming popular, which is civic literacy. In the course of doing that, I have to acknowledge the work of our colleague from Ottawa Centre who provided me with a good deal of this background and pointed me in a certain direction.

One of the authors he pointed me to was Henry Milner who has done a great deal of analysis on civic literacy and how it is achieved. A good deal of his work was done in countries in the northern part of Europe and then some comparison work with other democracies in the world. He came up with a list of ways of achieving a greater civic participation by all citizenry. One of the points that we should make is that he spent a good deal of time looking at Denmark specifically, as well a number of the other northern European countries.

While in Denmark he did quite extensive research in terms of trying to ascertain why the rate of participation in Denmark was substantially higher than it was in Canada, oftentimes exceeding 80% or 85% of eligible voters. One of the conclusions he came to was that voter participation was higher in countries where people read newspapers. In Denmark the average citizen reads three to five newspapers a day from a broad spectrum of newspapers across the ideological parameters and they do that on a regular basis. There was an exact correspondence to the people who read multiple newspapers to the percentage of the population that voted. It was almost an exact number.

He said that there were five things a government really had to do to make sure civic literacy was achieved to its epitome. The first one on his list was encouraging newspaper reading. He pointed out that a number of northern European countries provide public subsidies to newspapers to ensure they are widely available. It is an interesting concept given the way our newspapers function in this country.

The next one was to make sure that there was not an overreliance on commercial TV and that public broadcasting was readily available, well funded and, in effect, useful in developing that civic literacy. He talked a great deal about the need for society to ensure that the maximum amount of intellectual awareness is guaranteed and provided for by that particular society, and public television was one of the ways of doing that.

The next one is interesting given the current experience we are undergoing, at least at the federal level. He says that we should limit the authority and power of money in politics. Of course the last election in this country was run under legislation that substantially reduced the ability of large monied interests to have influence in politics.

Looking again at the experiences in both the province of Quebec and the province of Manitoba, which have been ahead of us in working on that, it has changed the way politics function in those provinces. More important, from the analysis that I have made of those provinces, it has engaged the average citizen more extensively than I see in other provinces where money is still a major factor in elections.

The next point he made was that society and governments had to enact transparent laws and regulations. Coming out of a legal background myself, I can identify with the difficulty that the average citizen has in understanding our laws, being able to read them and understand them, even with post-secondary university degrees. If one does not have a law degree, a good deal of our legislation is quite frankly not very comprehensible. That is something I would suggest that we need to work on, and it was the same findings he made.

The final point he made is what I think we will deal with to a more extensive degree in one of the subsequent take note debates on trying to expand democracy in the country. That is the issue of governance and the use of a consensual model, that the first past the post, which is the present system we have, does not lead to this and that we go to a consensual model of proportional representation where both during and after the election and during the whole period of governance after an election the interests and policies of a wide range of parties and interests are reflected in the House, first is the natural representation. However, in terms of the nature of not having majority governments. where one party dominates the House exclusively, we always will have a Parliament, the law-making body, forced to deal with the interests of other parties and other sectors of society. Therefore, we never have a very narrow scope. It always will be a broad one. We have seen some really good examples of how that does not work well at the provincial level in particular, but also at the federal level.

He comes back to the importance of this repeatedly in his analysis by arguing that if we do not have that model just about anything else we do to try to develop civic literacy is doomed to fail. If the average citizen does not feel Parliament, the House or houses if it is bicameral, are making decisions on a consensus basis, by building consensus in the country, they are going to be much less interested in participating on an ongoing basis in their governance.

I was interested to listen to the comments by the minister. We heard about a number of things we could do. I agree with him on the point he made about the need for most of us to have greater resources as members of Parliament. For instance, I have tried to hold public debates and forums in my riding and I have felt inadequate in my ability to do them as often as I like. If I had the resources, I could conduct public debates in my riding, and perhaps the city as a whole, where people from different perspectives could come to and take part in, or run seminars and forums that would encourage that kind of debate.

I just spent the weekend in Windsor speaking to one of our city councillors. She said that she needed to do more of that but she did not have the resources.

The minister spoke about the need to try to democratize our committees in the House. I agree that we should be doing that. We could look at the English experience and how they do much more work in advance before the laws are put to the House. Committees and representatives deal with them at that level.

I would like to conclude by saying we will be unable to do that unless we have a government forum that builds this consensus. If it does not come with that attitude, with that as an essential theme, we will not get any of those other democratic reforms in place.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, I thank my Bloc colleague. One of the suggestions I heard was to have more democracy and more engaged people, as well as to enhance the powers and rights of the political parties. I would like to know whether my colleague has any comments on this. Does he think this is a way to encourage the people of Canada and Quebec to become more engaged with the political system?

[Committees of the House, April 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, with all of the work that has been done by our member for Winnipeg North and the member for Mississauga South, I was very concerned, perhaps even shocked, by the committee's decision not to proceed. I wonder if my colleague could make a quick comment on why she thinks the committee decided not to proceed.

[Income Tax Act, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker, the Conservative Whip, has touched on what I think is the essential point. It is fairness and justice with regard to this issue.

Like him, I want to pay a testimonial in my opening remarks to a couple of people from my riding in the city of Windsor, the county of Essex. They have been instrumental in keeping the fight going. This fight is basically 10 years old now. This fight has been conducted by and large by people who were retired when it started. These were people in their early sixties to early seventies who of course have now advanced in age, and a good number of whom, sadly I have to say, have passed away without achieving justice from the government.

I want to mention Olive Smith who has been the leader in our community for a good number of years. In spite of ill health on her part and ill health on the part of her husband, she has led the fight and been an inspiration to the community. She helped start a group that is commonly referred to as CASSE, Canadians Asking for Social Security Equality. This is a group that started back in the mid-nineties. It has continued on pursuing this fight for the people in my riding and my community, but also for people who are in the same circumstances right across this country.

The other person I want to mention is Bill Thrasher. He has really picked up the ball in the last few years. He was instrumental at the start, but as Olive's health has become more difficult for her to cope with, he has picked up and provided the leadership. He is constantly pressing this issue because he has a desperate need to obtain justice for himself and for those people on whose behalf he is working.

The whip of the Conservative Party mentioned some numbers. I would challenge him a bit on these numbers. When this process began, 80,000 individuals in Canada were affected by this change in their tax status. There were 80,000 recipients of social security benefits in Canada at that time.

We are not sure, because I cannot get the figure from our Department of National Revenue, but the estimate is that almost half of those people have passed away without receiving justice.

It is quite simple. This is about a contract that was made between a government and their taxpayers. The government said that if they made this contribution, it would tax them on only some of that revenue now and not on others, but when the taxpayers received the benefit from this down the road when they retired, the government said it would similarly only tax them on this amount, and it was a fifty-fifty split.

As they made the contribution to social security, they were taxed on only 50% of that money. They were exempted from the other 50%. On the other hand, when the money was coming out, they were taxed on only 50% and received the other 50% tax free. It was a straight contract between citizens and their government in the United States.

We then entered into a tax treaty with the United States, so that people receiving Canada pension in the United States would have their tax assessed on that revenue income by the United States national government, and people receiving social security residing in Canada would be taxed by the Canadian government.

The American government, to their credit, honoured the arrangement between Canadian pension receivers, who were Canadians, but living in the United States, so that they were taxed at exactly the same rate, although they were now being taxed by the U.S. government. To our eternal embarrassment and shame, Canada broke the deal. Instead of taxing on 50%, Canada began taxing on 85%.

We have to appreciate, in the sense of personal tragedy, that we had 80,000 recipients of social security in Canada who had their income changed overnight, fairly limited income in a lot of cases. All of a sudden they were losing a significant amount of dollars to the federal government in this country because of additional taxation.

They had established their lifestyle based on what the U.S. government had been taxing them. In most cases they had no way of adjusting. They were on a fixed, retirement income. Most of them were too elderly at that point to take a part time job, but some of them were forced to take one, actually.

I always tell a couple of stories with regard to this because the conduct of the government is really offensive. This was done when this Prime Minister was the finance minister. He knows because the member from Calgary told him, Mr. Thrasher told him, and Ms. Smith told him. There were hearings in the Senate on this and it was made very clear to the government that it had messed this up. The Prime Minister has repeatedly refused.

He was in my riding one time and the CASSE people were out front demonstrating. He would not confront them. He slid in through the backdoor of the hall and he left through the backdoor of the hall. That is real leadership in this country. That is a really fair way to treat our retirees and our senior citizens.

I want to mention a couple of stories. I was canvassing in one of the elections. One day a man started talking to me about the social security injustice. He mentioned that his brother, who had lived in his own apartment, was now living with him because he could no longer afford his own apartment. He had to move in with this brother. This was a man in his mid-sixties who had been independent all his life.

The man told me that his brother spends almost the entire day in his room. He comes out to go to the washroom, he comes out to get his food, and he takes his food back into his room. He has become a total recluse because he is so embarrassed that he cannot pay his way through life. He worked hard all his life, built up a pension plan that would allow him to retire with some dignity, and this is what happened.

The other story I tell is about a couple who are members of my church. Both of them had worked in the United States and had retired to Canada. They were Canadian citizens. They had never owned a house because their jobs had never allowed for that. They had looked forward to owning a house in their retirement. In fact, they bought a house the year before this change came into being. They both got slapped with what, in effect, was a 35% increase in their taxation.

For about a year they were able to continue holding on. They had taken out a relatively modest mortgage, but their incomes were small and that taxation was hurting them badly. To add to the tragedy, the husband contracted an illness and died within a year after that. There was absolutely no way his wife could manage to keep the house, so within a two year period, she had to give up that dream they had all their lives and give up the house. She had to sell it. To this day, when I see her in church, and I mean this literally, she still curses the Prime Minister. She is that angry. That anger reflects the attitude of most of the recipients of social security in Canada today toward the government.

This group has been extremely effective at bringing their cause forward. The government cannot claim it does not understand it. They met with the former deputy prime minister from Windsor West, the Right Hon. Herb Gray repeatedly. They met with both of my Liberal predecessors in my riding. They also met with the former member from Essex and the member from Chatham.

They educated them so that they would understand this. They met with the federal functionaries, who I think made the mistake initially and convinced the government; however, when they were proven wrong the government did not have the ability to reverse what was a real error and a gross injustice.

That injustice continued up until the members from Essex and Windsor West lobbied. It was a bipartisan lobby. We lobbied the finance minister who prepared the last budget and we received no response. What is it going to take for the government to come down because I have no hope that it is ever going to change? The government is going to be gone in another few months and we will finally get some justice for these people.

[Income Tax Act, April 14th, 2005]

It's for money.

[Supply, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, there have been a number of references today, I believe by the Minister of Transport and by other members of the Liberal Party, of these forensic reviews. I believe those forensic reviews were commissioned under the direction of that minister. He may want to confirm that the reviews have been filed with the Gomery commission.

Would he would be prepared to table those in the House so the public would have access to them?