Judy Sgro

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is always good to have the opportunity to address various issues in the House.

I will be splitting my time with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.

Today, we have the following motion before us. It reads:

That, consistent with the spirit of the Liberal New Deal for Cities and Communities, this House believes it is in the best interest of Canadians, that the government should take steps to make permanent the sharing of the Federal Excise Tax on Gasoline with all Canadian municipalities for the purpose of enhancing local community infrastructure.

It is an important motion and I am pleased that the opposition has put it on the table, so that we can have a true and honest debate on this very important issue.

In my opinion, the minority Conservative government has turned its back on Canada's communities and cities. It has cut infrastructure programs in spite of all of what it is saying and the cities are far worse off under the present government than they clearly were previously.

The Conservative government has cut $7.5 billion from infrastructure programs launched by the Liberal government designed to address the growing infrastructure deficit. Cities will now have to compete against each other and against large scale highway projects for funding under the government's new building Canada fund.

If large scale projects are approved under the Conservative funding plan, huge amounts of funding will be wiped out from Canada's smaller municipalities and no longer available to them. This misrepresentation, frankly, is a disaster for cities that need infrastructure.

To add insult to injury, the Conservative government claims that its $33 billion infrastructure investment is the largest infrastructure program in Canadian history. Let us dispel that myth this afternoon.

Of the $33 billion program that the minister speaks so proudly of, $18.2 billion of that comes directly from Liberal government programs that it had committed to. Then the government adds everything but the kitchen sink into this program to make it look like a huge fund. However, it is all really just more spin. In actual fact, it has cut $7.5 billion of funding that was critically needed in our cities and communities.

Liberals know that we need a vision to build a strong and prosperous Canada, which means that all three levels of government must plan and work together cooperatively if we expect to go forward.

The Liberal Party recognizes that urban communities play a vital role in Canadian society and it will keep fighting for cities through the newly established urban communities caucus. There is a very strong contingent of Liberal MPs and senators, and they are determined to make sure that Canada's urban communities get back on the national agenda.

I was very honoured last week to be appointed as co-chair of that particular caucus. I intend to work very closely with communities to ensure we have their support and that they know we are there for them.

The minority Conservative government has ignored urban communities from the day it took office and Liberals are going to change that. The quality of life in Canadian cities is clearly deteriorating.

The federal government needs to work with provinces, cities and communities, large and small, to improve living conditions and lay the foundation for a strong Canadian economy. Canada's competitiveness in the global economy is rooted in the strength of its cities, a fact that the government continues to ignore.

The new Liberal urban communities caucus will look at a variety of issues facing Canada's cities, including housing, poverty, transit, child care and infrastructure. It will build on the Liberals' excellent record of working together with urban regions.

In 2005 the Liberal government had renewed the municipal rural infrastructure fund, the Canada strategic infrastructure fund, the border infrastructure fund, and the public transit capital trust. This commitment was worth $1.65 billion annually through to 2014, for a total of $11.5 billion from 2007 to 2014. The 2007 Conservative budget only included $4 billion of the funds that were renewed for these same programs, a cut of $7.5 billion.

Furthermore, the Conservatives have included $11.8 billion in gas tax funding and $5.8 billion of GST rebates to municipalities as part of their $33 billion building Canada fund. Both the GST rebates and the gas tax transfer were Liberal government initiatives.

The $33 billion also includes a substantial amount of money that is not available for cities, including funding for gateway and border crossings and funding for P3 projects. Even the building Canada fund includes funding for the national highway system and other non-municipal projects. Let us be clear here. This is not a huge fund for only our cities and municipalities to be able to draw on.

The physical foundations of Canada's cities and communities are near collapse, according to a report on the state of municipal infrastructure released last month by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. The report, “Danger Ahead: The Coming Collapse of Canada's Municipal Infrastructure”, says that Canada has used up “79 per cent of the service life of its public infrastructure”. It sets the price for eliminating the municipal infrastructure deficit at $123 billion.

What was the government's response to this important report? The finance minister said that the cities should stop “whining” and “do their job”. He showed total disrespect for our municipal leaders when he said that the Government of Canada is “not in the pothole business”.

This is nothing short of disgraceful. Municipal leaders are elected to represent constituents the exact same way that we are. They are looking for help. They are looking for partners as we continue to build Canada.

Canada's Minister of Finance is supposed to be the political minister for the GTA, which is stuck with him, I guess, because the Conservatives could not elect a single MP in Toronto. If they could not do it before, it does not look like they are going to do it now.

When it comes to investing in our cities, the government will not put its money where its mouth is. I remind this House and everyone watching at home that the previous Liberal government had committed $800 million to public transit alone.

Sadly, transit has fallen off the Conservative government's radar screen. The minister said in June that this “national transit strategy is not about new funding”. I asked him in the House “how many buses and rail cars he thinks cities can buy with his empty speeches”. I am still waiting for an answer to that question.

Another failure by the Conservatives is their transit credit, another selective tax measure designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by increasing public transit ridership in cities. However, a small price decrease in public transit has apparently done nothing to increase ridership. Those who use transit will continue to use it because it is convenient for them.

Those who do not use transit will not suddenly run out and buy a transit pass for a $12 a month tax break. I wrote the book on cities, so I know that this will do nothing to increase public transit. We would have been far better off investing this in the infrastructure that is part of our national transit objective.

The Conservatives can continue their charade of funding for our urban regions. They can continue to re-announce funding commitments that had already been made by the Liberals. Canadians are not going to be fooled by the Conservatives' repeated deceptions.

The government must apologize for abandoning our cities, bring them to the table and work with them to improve the quality of life in Canada's urban regions.

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the minister go on about his huge commitment, but I will speak to that later.

Since the Conservatives took office, I have asked the minister several times about the commitment regarding the transit expansion for the GTA, and in particular, the route that was to go to York University. I continue to get non-answers from him.

I ask him today, where is the commitment that the Liberals made? You had initially said that you would support it. Where is it now? When will that be followed through?

[Ethics, December 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would expect that the minister would be well aware of what the rules are anyway.

Yesterday, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs said:

There is nothing preventing members of Parliament, backbench MPs, as he would have been classified at the time, or even today, from engaging in activities outside of their parliamentary responsibilities.

Will the justice minister remind that member and all other government members who do not seem to be clear on what the law is, that it is illegal for MPs to accept money to make interventions on a government file? Even a 10-year-old knows that.

[Ethics, December 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, section 41 of the Parliament of Canada Act states:

No member of the House of Commons shall receive or agree to receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, for services... to be rendered to any person... for the purpose of... attempting to influence any member of either House.

What steps is the government taking to determine whether Brian Mulroney should be prosecuted for the $100,000 cash he received while still a member of Parliament in 1993?

[Ethics, November 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that is not what we heard yesterday. The Minister of National Defence got a job straight out of school working for the very company that Schreiber used to provide cash to Brian Mulroney that very same year. We also know that Elmer MacKay acted as a go-between for Mulroney and Schreiber. The minister's father drafted a letter for Schreiber that Brian Mulroney hand delivered to the Prime Minister.

Would the minister have us believe that at no time did he discuss any of this with his cabinet colleagues or the Prime Minister? Why did he fail to disclose his conflicts?

[Ethics, November 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last November the Minister of National Defence made light of the fact that his father, Elmer MacKay, used the minister's fax machine to send a letter concerning his good friend, Karlheinz Schreiber.

What was the subject and content of that faxed letter? Will the minister table that letter and the fax transmission slips here in the House? Does the minister still think this matter is so funny?

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the hon. member is from Nova Scotia but I would like to remind her, in case she forgot, that I was born in the Maritimes, in Moncton, New Brunswick. There is a piece of one's heart, I believe, that is always where one is born, so the issues in and around the Maritimes are always things I am pretty sensitive to and am always concerned about, as I am for all of Canada, but I think all of us carry that little special part in our hearts about where we were born.

I would like to remind the hon. member, referring to Tom Flanagan's book on our current Prime Minister, that on page 230 there is a quote in regard to our last election. It says, “No matter how well-designed our campaign had been, it would have been hard for us to win if the NDP had not held up its end.”

Therefore regrettably, when the accord was dismantled and put together again in what the Conservatives think is an acceptable way, which clearly is unacceptable to me or to the member, we would not be dealing with this issue had the NDP not supported the bringing down of the government.

However, in addition to dealing with the accord, there is the issue of $39 million being cut from the regional economic development agencies. That is just one of the many cuts that the Conservatives made in the last budget.

I am sure that $39 million would have been very helpful in the Maritimes in dealing with many of those challenges. They have to make sure that jobs are created, that money is reinvested in manufacturing and all of the other issues and the pressure areas that they deal with in the Maritimes, as they deal with other issues in the west and in central Canada.

There was an $18 million cut from the literacy skills program. Again, there are areas of our country that use these programs intensely and welcome them. That was cut again. We have also called for that to be reinstated. Those continue to be just a variety of some of the many cuts that have been the Conservatives' priorities, rather than reinvesting in Canadians.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, when talking about budget bills, a ways and means motion is something I think all of us have a real interest in. When we have an opportunity, whether it is a last minute opportunity or not, to stand and speak in the House on things that matter to us, I am glad to have that opportunity.

Bill C-28, which we are talking about today, is not something with which we are 100% happy but, at the same time, do Canadians want an election? No. We have had plenty of them. The next election will be my fifth in eight years and I am not anxious to go on the hustings again. In fact, the $500 million that an election costs, which is the last number that I heard, I would much rather see it being invested in our children, our seniors or helping to lower the tax rates, a variety of things.

A far better idea for us is to keep the government going and move it forward for all of us.

As my colleague said, we are supportive of a variety of things in the bill but there are other issues that we are not. The economic policies of the current Conservative government are different in some ways from the policies of the Liberals. They are much more designed to be focused on the next election, which the Conservatives have been most anxious to have. I am not sure they are as anxious today to have it as they were previously, but they were quite anxious to have one. Our party and our leader were quite clear in not taking the bait and falling into that trap of going back into an election that, at this particular time, is unwarranted and could quite possibly bring us back into the same situation, except we could be on the other side of the House rather than on the opposition side.

However, I for one am not interested in going down that road at this particularly moment. I want to go down that road when we have clear, decisive issues on which the public can make a decision.

Even though we support some of the measures in Bill C-28, the idea of reinstating our Liberal personal income tax cuts was quite interesting. We had reduced it to 15% but in the Conservatives' very first budget, which, to me, indicates who they really care about, they increased the very lowest rate up to 15.5%. That rate is not one that the corporations or the rich worry about but it is certainly one that affects thousands of low income Canadians.

Again, that, as with many other issues, has indicated to me where the Conservatives' priorities lie and they do not lie with many people in Canada who need that helping hand up, which many of us support.

We also oppose the Conservatives' economic vision. I do not think they have one. I think they have a vision strictly on the next election and on how to get there and how to get a majority government, which is not why Canadians sent us here. They sent us here to effect a positive Parliament and to work on behalf of all Canadians, not to have an eye on how soon we can have an election campaign so we can get a majority. Our job is to come here every day and to work in the best interest of Canadians, period, for those who are rich and well off and for those who are not as wealthy as they might like to be.

The GST cut is ridiculous. I know it was a political move by the government but I look at all of the things in which we could be investing that $5 billion GST cut, whether we are talking about investing it in our seniors, in child care or in learning opportunities. We could be doing so much with that $5 billion.

I am sure the Canadian public could think of what we should do with the $5 billion rather than cutting the GST. We only need to look at our cities and the campaign in Toronto, which is the city I represent, for the 1¢ now out of the GST. We could take that $5 billion and reinvest it in our communities or even target it to our major cities.

This week, campaign 2000 released a huge report about how much poverty there is in Canada. A lot of people like to think that the poverty level is quite low. It has been a very difficult issue to deal with and as much as we try to move forward and reduce it, we are reducing it very slowly.

Far more investment needs to be made in education so we can ensure people get an education because, as far as I am concerned, education is the key to ending poverty. A good education reduces poverty because education opens the door to many opportunities. However, education for some people is way beyond their means. Refocusing some of the $5 billion on those opportunities would have been a good thing to do.

Early learning and child care would probably have been this century's newest and best social program. It would have provided help for a lot of struggling single parents. One area in my riding is quite affluent but I also have areas that are very high need areas. Many women in my riding who are single moms went back to school to get a job but now they cannot afford to put their children into child care where it is safe for their children or the waiting list for subsidies is huge.

As much as we say that we want to get people into a healthy economic stream, if we do not provide learning opportunities for them and safe environments for their children, then we are wasting our time. We can spin our wheels as much as we want talking about how we will end poverty, but if we are not providing the opportunities for those people who are at the minimal level, then we will never succeed.

The Liberal Party made a commitment to early learning and child care, although it did take us a while to get it because when we came into government in 1993 we had a $43 billion deficit. Canada was almost at the point of bankruptcy. It took six or seven years for us to deal with that issue and to get the country's finances in order. From that point, we were able to start reinvesting and working on achieving the goals that we all wanted to see go forward.

Unfortunately, that did not happen. We did not end up with the support of the NDP and the government was defeated. I expect that it will be a very long time before there will be a desire to have that new social program here in Canada again.

It took a long time to get the provinces on board and to do all of the work that is required for these kinds of agreements. They do not happen overnight. A lot of great work was done by my colleague and it is unfortunate that we were not able to see that program come to fruition. It was just one more casualty, but I do not think the people who voted thought that would happen.

Politics being what it is, governments come and governments go, as the Conservative government will. We will continue to ensure we move rapidly forward so that when an election does come, we will have plenty of opportunity to lay out our platform showing where we will go to ensure we have a richer, fairer, greener Canada.

If we want to have enough money to invest in our children, in low income seniors and so on and so forth, we need to ensure we also have a strong economy. Our manufacturing sector and our auto industry are suffering tremendously as a result of the rising loonie and we need to deal with that issue. We need to find a way to protect jobs.

When we talk about jobs we are not talking about $7 an hour jobs. For people to feed their family and pay the mortgage, they need to earn more than $7 an hour. The comment about how the number of jobs has increased is not a valid comment. As a result of various issues, we are losing the good quality jobs that Canadians had but we do not hear the Conservative government telling us how it will offset this problem.

An important issue for all of us is to ensure that Canadians are employed. We do not want our country to go into a recession. Many of us remember how difficult that was for many people. We want to have a strong Canada and we need to ensure we are moving forward in a positive way.

[Petitions, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise today to present a petition on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Lance Ryan, and many of his friends and neighbours in the riding of York West.

Mr. Ryan's petition calls on the government to formally include nicotine in the Hazardous Products Act. I am pleased to table it on his behalf.

[Tackling Violent Crime Act, November 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, let me say on that particular issue that it is our intention to support the things that are in the best interests of our country. We always have to make sure they are constitutionally sound.

However, I certainly share the comments he made in regard to legislation that was being put forward being written on the back of an envelope. Thank goodness we can send these bills off to committee where there can be some serious work done.

It is one thing to get a lot of great press because a party introduces tough on crime bills and all the rest of it. We did the process of being tough on crime and we did it in a way that still had a compassionate side to all of it.

As for suggesting that everything the Conservatives put forward was perfect, heaven help us if they had passed some of what they originally put forward. I am sure it would have been struck down by the courts at the very first opportunity.