Judy Sgro

[Sitting Resumed, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in the throne speech and in the mini-budget yesterday there was no investment specifically for women. What is most important to the government is its law and order agenda.

Let me add that the law and order agenda is important for all of us. I can say that we have done a lot of things on this side of the House to ensure that women in our communities are safe.

However, with all of that money, why did the government not invest more into the health and safety of Canadians and into our economy by investing some of that money into jobs, rather than just giving everybody tax cuts? We appreciate that as well, but I believe there should be a balance in how we spend taxpayer money. We want a little bit of both.

[Sitting Resumed, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, let me first address the issue of what I consider to be important for an opposition party.

One thing I have noticed in the eight years I have been here is how often people simply vote against something because it is the opposition or the government. The fact that we chose to take the road we did yesterday was, to me, acting in a responsible way as a responsible opposition.

Sure, there are issues that we agree with but there were issues in the mini-budget yesterday that we did not agree with. However, bringing the government down and spending $500 million for another election would likely bring us right back to the situation we are in today, except we would probably be on that side of the House and the Conservatives would be on this side.

Over and above that, I would rather invest that $500 million in seniors, in medicare and in housing programs that we do not have. There was nothing in the mini-budget that talked about the issues that really matter to Canadians.

[Sitting Resumed, November 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this very spirited debate today. I want to read for the benefit of Canadians watching at home and the constituents of York West the motion that we are dealing with today. It reads:

That, taking into account the reports produced by the Standing Committee on Status of Women on the need for pay equity and the lack of economic security for women, the House call upon the government to develop a strategy to improve the economic security of all women in Canada and present this strategy to the House by February 1, 2008.

That does not sound like a huge job for the government to do.

Last year I had the opportunity to chair the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. We heard from Canadians all across the country who reminded us time and time again that the issue of pay equity is crucial for the economic security of women in Canada. Unfortunately, women are still earning only 71¢ for every dollar that men earn.

Regardless of their educational achievements, women continue to have earnings well below those of men, for many reasons. This means a heightened risk of poverty for children and for women in their retirement years. In recent statistics, 47% of single parent families were poor and more than one-third of single women over 65 continue to live in poverty. This last is an issue that I continue to hear about in my constituency, as I am sure many members do. I continue to hear from women who are really struggling to live on a very minimal pension.

The current Prime Minister once said, as my colleague alluded to, that pay equity is a “rip-off”. Clearly, the Conservative government is not providing the leadership to help women improve their economic status. The Prime Minister clearly does not understand and does not respect pay equity when he can say it is a rip-off.

Sadly, that is clearly all we are going to be able to expect from the Conservatives. The Conservative minority government has yet to explain to the women of this country how Status of Women Canada will be able to continue to fulfill its mandate in light of its $5 million cut, almost half of its operating budget.

Liberal governments are known for their commitment to women's equality and to defending women's rights. Our former Liberal government did exactly that and took action in various areas, such as, in the year 2000, extending parental benefits for a full year, something many people are thoroughly enjoying. This is a legacy for Canadian families that we on this side of the House are very proud of.

In 2004 the Liberal government also established the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which was an important move forward for women in Canada.

In October 2005 we created an expert panel to provide advice and options to strengthen accountability mechanisms to advance gender based analysis and gender equality issues.

Other Liberal achievements that I am very proud to have been part of include creating the Centres of Excellence for Women's Health and the Institute of Gender and Health to work on health policies and issues that are unique to women.

We also committed $32 million every year to national crime prevention initiatives. We know that women continue to be the victims of a lot of the crime in our country and that $32 million in crime prevention initiatives is helping many women to feel safer.

The Liberals provided another $7 million to the family violence initiative to try to deal with issues of domestic violence.

Also, to help make post-secondary education more affordable for lower income and middle income Canadians, we committed over $2 billion over five years to improve student financial assistance.

For our valued seniors, Liberal budget 2005 ensured that senior women would benefit from a $2.7 billion increase over two years to the guaranteed income supplement. Seniors are and want to remain active members of our society. Our budget increased support for the hugely successful new horizons program, which promotes voluntary sector activities and supports seniors. Annual funding would have increased to $25 million by 2007-08.

But the Conservatives care very little about seniors. We just need to look at what they did a year ago. Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the Conservative government's decision to levy a 31% tax on income trusts.

Many of those Canadian investors included huge numbers of retired seniors who actually invested their savings in the income trust market as a result of the fact that the Prime Minister himself explicitly promised over and over not to tax them. He even wrote it directly into his election platform, which turned out to be completely false.

Ten months after being elected, the Prime Minister broke his promise, resulting in the loss of $25 billion of investors' money in a single day. The majority of these people were not slick, savvy investors, but ordinary citizens who relied on their income trust dividends for their day to day necessities and to supplement their retirement income.

I had the opportunity to meet some of these Canadians yesterday at a rally on Parliament Hill. My Liberal colleagues and I heard how these people felt betrayed by the Prime Minister and the Conservative government. It was tragic to hear their stories of such dramatic losses of their savings and what they were counting on for their futures.

Speaking of dramatic losses, another loss that we have clearly experienced is the loss of early learning and child care agreements that the Liberal government had negotiated. It was a disastrous loss for Canadians, for women and for our country. These early learning and child care opportunities would have been of huge benefit to working families and in helping to prepare our children for the future.

What happened to those agreements that took so many years to put together? The NDP, led by the member for Toronto—Danforth, plunged the country into an unnecessary election, which resulted in child care through the mailbox, a system of a taxable allowance to parents.

The NDP's crackerjack of a leader then stood by while the Conservatives proceeded to undo all the good work, other than a few Liberal programs that they have re-announced. I am sure the fourth party leader, when he goes to bed at night, cannot be very proud of that.

I will go back to the excellent motion that my colleague has tabled today. Pay inequity is a critical issue for women in this country. Pay inequity clearly hurts women and our children. It makes women and children more vulnerable to struggling on very low incomes. In Canada, more women than men live in such difficult situations and the majority of single parent households are headed by a woman living on a low income. We have over one million children who continue to be poor.

Almost half of single, widowed or divorced women over 65 live below appropriate income levels, and 51% of lone parent families headed by women are living on very low incomes. Economic security is at the heart of women's equality. Women continue to be economically disadvantaged and it is time for action.

We call on the government to develop a strategy to improve the economic security of all women in Canada and to present the strategy to the House by February 1, 2008. We must all work together to ensure a brighter future for our children and grandchildren.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I think we have already seen by the actions that the government has taken that it has no interest in municipalities at all.

Where the Liberal government was moving to have our cities and our municipalities as a partner and working together to ensure Canada was strong and healthy, the Conservative government has no interest in getting involved in cities.

We have clearly seen that in the conversations that the government has had. There is nothing in the throne speech nor anything in the government's vision that it cares about what is going on in municipalities.

Municipalities are the heart of this country. We need to be investing in them and working with them to ensure that we have a strong and successful Canada. That is the direction that I believe we need to be going in and we should be continuing to go in.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, let me set the record straight for the member. Evidently he does not know what the past history is all about. When the Liberals came into government in 1993, we found ourselves not with a $13 billion surplus as the government has now. What we found ourselves with was a $42 billion debt. That is what we had.

We did not have the opportunity to go scattering money all over the place and trying to buy people's votes. We had to turn around and make some very hard, serious cuts because Canada was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was a Conservative government that left us with a $42 billion deficit and no one else. We had to make the cuts that we had to make in order to--

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to discuss this motion. In fact, I want to read it into the record so that those who are watching are fully aware of exactly what it is that we are discussing today. We are discussing the following motion:

That, in the opinion of this House, while reducing personal taxes and significantly reducing corporate taxes to make the economy more competitive, and reducing debt, the government must also drive greater Canadian productivity by making investments in things such as:

physical infrastructure, new technologies, research and development, better access to post-secondary education, making it easier for immigrants to use their skills and increasing the number of skilled workers in Canada; and the government must avoid making mistakes such as breaking its promises not to tax income trusts, eliminating interest deductibility and proposing to end prudence from the federal budgeting process.

All of those are very important issues that we on this side of the House want to make sure we bring to the attention of the Canadian public.

My speech today is going to be twofold. First, I want to take the opportunity to remind the House and everyone watching at home, including my constituents in York West, of the outstanding progress that the Liberal government made on so many of those very files during the nearly 13 years that it was in office. Then, if I have any time left, I will attempt to summarize some of the many breaches of trust and broken promises to which the minority Conservative government has subjected Canadians.

The Liberal government struck a fantastic new deal for cities, which I was very much a part of and on which I worked very hard. Our cities across Canada were very much in need of that. We pledged $5 billion over five years in gas tax revenues to help cities and communities, something they are currently enjoying because of the Liberal government. This would have risen to $2 billion annually thereafter. We will have to wait to see if that is still on the agenda.

As part of the new deal, the Liberal government also committed to investing up to $800 million to improve public transit nationwide, something that we continue to hear about. We know how important it is when dealing with a variety of environmental issues.

We signed 12 provincial and territorial gas tax agreements. More than 95% of Canadians living in municipalities would have benefited from $600 million in funding in 2006 alone.

The Liberals' budget 2004 included a full GST rebate for cities and communities, freeing up $7 billion for municipal investments across Canada over the next 10 years, something they very much needed. Our budget 2005 also committed to renewing the $4 billion Canada strategic infrastructure fund to continue to give municipalities the funding they needed to improve local infrastructure and for local investments.

We know that the cities are the hearts of our communities and certainly need the ongoing support from all of us in the federal government. I have yet to hear any of that in the throne speech or in any of the intentions of the government today.

In fact, the Liberals designed infrastructure programs that delivered over $12 billion in funding from 1993 to 2005. The Conservatives have tried to reannounce our projects and all kinds of funding, but Canadians are not fooled. I asked the Minister of Transport last session how many buses and railcars we could buy with his empty promises. There is still no answer on that one and there are still no more buses or railcars.

We all know that research and development is critical to Canada's future. The Liberal government had committed more than $3 billion for research and regional development and pledged to invest $810 million over six years in ideas and enabling technology, which is Canada's future and its strength.

The Liberals' investments for the three federal granting councils, federally funded research universities and hospitals and genomics research are helping to position Canada as a world leader in research and development. These investments continue to be critical for our country to continue to be a leader in R and D and to attract and retain the best and the brightest.

The Liberal government pledged $200 million in sustainable energy, science and technology, and more than $2 billion to help strengthen Canada's ability to prosper in a global knowledge-based economy, with an increased emphasis on new funding for university-based research.

While we are speaking of universities, the Liberal government knew how important it was to invest in Canada's future through post-secondary education. Many of us have met with students who have their lobby week here on the Hill and they have stressed to us just how important it is for more investment.

We Liberals know that we must invest in our students and ensure that they have the tools they need to succeed in life. In fact, in our 2006 election platform we had proposed to expand Canada access grants to cover all four years of study.

We also had proposed to develop a fifty-fifty plan which would have paid for half of the tuition of all Canadian students for both first and last year of study, and to conduct a comprehensive review of student assistance in order to ensure that everyone has access to a university education to help build our great country. We also committed to provide additional funding for Canadian students studying abroad and to make a 50% increase in funding for graduate scholarships.

These Liberal initiatives were very popular in my riding of York West where I am proud to say I have the great York University, home to many students who are really leading the way here in Canada.

Just this week I had the opportunity to meet with students from York University through a meeting set up by the Canadian Federation of Students. They were clearly concerned about, “the lack of needed attention given to post-secondary education by the current government”. Two students from York University, Ben Keen and Fuad Abdi, also drew to my attention the need for a new grants program to replace the millennium scholarship foundation, which will expire in 2009.

What is the Conservative government currently doing to help post-secondary students? I went through the throne speech and it was shocking to find that the words “students” and “post-secondary” do not even appear in the government's document. I guess that was just another oversight on its part.

The Liberal government was acting to help students. Here are some additional examples. In 2004, my Liberal government established a new Canada learning bond to help lower income families save for post-secondary education.

In November 2005, we also committed $550 million to extend Canada access grants to 55,000 students from low income families in all years of undergraduate studies. For graduate students, we had committed $210 million to increase the number of available Canada graduate scholarships.

We had committed to investing $2.2 billion over five years for student financial assistance to address access, affordability, debt management, and service delivery. Members can tell where our priorities clearly were.

To support the capacity of Canada's universities and colleges and to provide high quality post-secondary education, we earmarked $1 billion for post-secondary infrastructure, another high pressure item that we were hearing about from all universities across Canada.

We were also investing more than $10 billion in programs to provide better opportunities for Canadians, including $4 billion more for post-secondary education. But the Conservatives have turned their backs on post-secondary education.

Students are not the only people the Conservatives have turned their backs on. Many seniors have also suffered at the hands of this government and the Prime Minister and his trusty sidekick the finance minister. The Prime Minister promised that his government would not tax income trusts, and that is exactly what he did, thereby costing seniors and other people $25 billion in lost income.

I am glad to have had an opportunity to get some points across on how important our productivity agenda is and how important it is to continue to build Canada and to invest in Canada.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by the hon. member. Given the fact that he is from Oshawa, I am sure he must be very concerned with what is going on in the auto industry and the challenges that the industry is facing.

When the Liberals were in government we put a fair amount of money into helping the auto sector reposition itself and tried to reach out and solve some of the ongoing issues that it has. I clearly do not see that kind of support coming from the government.

Where does the hon. member see that going and why is the government not putting money into the auto sector?

[Petitions, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition calls upon the government to create a tax benefit for households without a motor vehicle.

I am pleased to table these petitions on behalf of my constituents.

[Petitions, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present to the House today. The first calls upon the government to stop the spread of hate propaganda and raises serious concerns about nine Chinese state-run television services being available in Canada.

[Automobile Industry, October 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government should never sign a deal that fails to eliminate non-tariff barriers.

The South Korean government runs an ever changing tax regime with new regulations to keep foreigners out. It cherry picks between international standards to prevent others from meeting its regulations. It simply does not play fair.

Will the government commit to eliminating all Korean non-tariff barriers before any agreement is presented to Parliament, yes or no?