Libby Davies

[Privilege, May 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege concerning Parliament and members being kept in the dark about legislation that is about to be tabled when information is widely available in the media and the justice minister is running off to Washington, D.C. to talk to the U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Ashcroft about the marijuana bill.

Information about a bill is meant to be secret until it is released as a bill in the House. In this case everyone else seems to know about the bill, everyone but the House. I believe it is contemptuous of this place. It is an occurrence that has become all too common, that information is made widely available before anything has been tabled in the House.

Indeed, the justice minister could have tabled the bill, he could have made a ministerial statement and then he could have gone to the U.S. if its approval was so important to the Canadian government.

I believe every MP has a privilege to see legislation tabled in Parliament before the minister decides to blow smoke to his friends in Washington. I would ask the Speaker to review whether privilege has been breached in this case.

[Privilege, May 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on the same point, first I would like to thank the government House leader for raising this question of privilege. We agree with the general principle and the comments that have been put forward.

Clearly the court decision with which we are dealing has gone far beyond its jurisdiction in terms of now intruding into this arena and what has been a very long-standing tradition of parliamentary privilege, and in particular the issue where a member cannot be called as a witness for 40 days before or after a session and 40 days after dissolution.

However, I would note that this practice has been in effect, as the member noted, since 1867, so we are talking about something that happened more than 100 years ago. From the point of view of looking at the relevancy and the reality of what now is before us as members in terms of the business of the world and the courts and so on, it is something we should be looking at.

So while I agree with the principle and that a prima facie case exists for this to be sent to the procedure and House affairs committee, there is actually something worth examining here in terms of the 40 days and whether or not that is realistic. I think the minister is suggesting that if this were referred to the committee because you have decided that it is a prima facie case, Mr. Speaker, this is obviously something that could be examined.

In the NDP we have had other questions about parliamentary privilege. We have had instances of cases around the application of the Human Rights Act, for example, where we have had serious concerns about parliamentary privilege and the fact that the Human Rights Act does not apply to complaints.

There are some questions here, but on this specific issue of the ruling of the 40 days, we agree that it is important to allow this to go to committee to have some discussion and to consider what might follow as a result.

[The Economy, May 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry.

While the Liberals have no problem helping inns in Shawinigan, a truck plant in Chatham is set to close and move to Mexico. Thousands of jobs are at stake. The union and the company have reached an agreement to save these jobs, but they need the minister to wake up and take action.

What specifics can he offer to this community today to save these jobs, or should we just add Navistar to the long list of the minister's failures? What action will he take and will he make a commitment to those workers to save these jobs?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say I was speaking really fast. When I saw you give the one minute warning I felt as if I had only been speaking for about three minutes. Then I started to increase the speed, but I will now slow down a little to get in the rest of my comments.

I was addressing the increase in RRSP contributions the government will allow in Bill C-28 if it is approved. This will cost about $295 million. As I said earlier, it will be used by people who earn more than $75,000 a year, which is about 5% of Canadians. This has to concern us because if we looked at an overall assessment of taxation and income, we would see that there is a widening gap between people who are very wealthy and people who are very poor in Canadian society.

A study released by the Canadian Council on Social Development last November found that the wealth of the poorest 20% of couples with children under 18 went down by 51.4% between 1984 and 1999, whereas that of the wealthiest 20% of couples at the highest end increased by 42.7%. There are other studies by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that bear out those findings. They point out that between 1970 and 1999 the wealth of the richest 10% of family units in Canada rose by a whopping 122%.

I want to contrast that kind of statistic and the proposal in this budget to allow a fairly major increase in RRSP contributions to seniors who are locked into fixed income support programs after retirement. They are the people who feel the worst effect of rising costs in our society. Many of those retirees spent their whole lives in the workforce helping Canada to be a prosperous and productive nation. They are now being forced back to work after retirement just to survive from day to day.

This is unacceptable and is not something we should accept as the status quo. It is not something we should accept as inevitable because it brings us right back to the structures of the budget and our taxation system.

There is a very strong argument to be made that over the last few decades there has been a massive shift in taxation from corporations to individuals. There has been a massive shift in taxation to provide more and more breaks for people who are wealthy and placing a greater burden on people who are at the lower end of the economic scale. Again I would argue this is not something that is inevitable; it is a matter of public policy that is determined by the Liberal government.

In the case of the RRSPs and the increase that is being allowed, obviously a lot of lobbying was done by various organizations on that basis. Our feeling in the NDP is that the government should have resisted that kind of pressure and those kinds of rewards that will benefit people who are actually doing very well and are very well off.

About one-third of Canada's seniors have such low incomes that they actually receive the guaranteed income supplement. What is astounding about that fact which we raised in the House just the other day is that the seniors who get the GIS--and there are a few hundred thousand seniors who do not get the GIS because they do not even know about it even though they may qualify--but the astounding thing is if seniors on GIS receive a little extra income over and above that for whatever reason, they are taxed at a rate of 75%, which would be the highest tax bracket in this country.

When we contrast that with this issue of an increase in RRSP contributions and the cuts being made for businesses for the capital tax, we begin to see the very stark reality of a government that clearly is making decisions based upon rewards and favours for people who already have huge benefits, and that is to the detriment of and certainly will have an incredible impact on people who have disabilities, as my colleague from Dartmouth spoke about earlier. That is where the hurt will really be.

These amendments try to redress that problem by eliminating these clauses in Bill C-28. I hope that members will consider these amendments. If we believe in the principle of equity in our tax system, they should be approved.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to follow my colleague, the member for Dartmouth, in speaking to report stage of Bill C-28. The bill implements the last federal budget. It is a very important debate because the bill lays out the priorities of the government in terms of where it is spending money and where it is also giving tax cuts. That is the issue at hand today.

From the NDP's perspective I will be speaking to Motions Nos. 17, 18 and 19. Two of the motions have to do with the elimination of the capital tax as outlined in the budget. One of them has to do with clause 84 regarding an increase in allowable contributions to RRSPs.

Clauses 85 and 86 on the capital tax are amendments that were brought forward by the government in the budget which would allow a huge tax break under the capital tax to Canadian businesses and corporations. The elimination of this tax would cost $695 million over three years.

We have to look at this in the context of the rest of the budget. We have to recognize that $1.2 billion was spent in new tax cuts in this budget over and above the $100 billion that was announced in the 2000 budget. This is yet another massive tax cut that is being awarded by the government to the country's corporate elite.

What this means if we want to look at this in terms of priorities of where our real needs are, it will be low income and middle income Canadians who will really feel the brunt of this. They will not receive any benefits from the tax cuts in this budget.

On the other side of the coin, we can see that the Liberal government's budget bill will spend five times as much scrapping the capital tax for businesses than it invested, for example, in affordable housing. I am the housing critic for our party and I have been one person in this house with a few friends, but not very many, who have been championing the critical need for a national affordable housing strategy.

We have been talking about the 1% solution for housing. We need to invest a further 1% in the provision of affordable, not for profit social housing. The government has put a paltry few hundred million dollars into the so-called national housing strategy. There is always the suggestion that is all it can afford. When we stack up the housing need against the tax cut of $1.2 billion just in this budget coupled with a $100 million, we begin to see there is a very different priority emerging.

We also are not in support of the government's plans to increase the RRSP limit from $13,500 to $18,000 by 2005. This will clearly favour about 5% of Canadians who are wealthy. It will again be to the detriment of low and middle income Canadians, particularly seniors who, in receiving the GIS, if they earn anything over the GIS supplement are taxed at a rate of 75%. Again, we can compare that in terms of who this budget is helping and who it is not helping.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have left?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 12th, 2003]

moved:

Motion No. 17

That Bill C-28 be amended by deleting clause 84.

Motion No. 18

That Bill C-28 be amended by deleting clause 85.

Motion No. 19

That Bill C-28 be amended by deleting clause 86.

[Health, May 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, is it not ironic that all of a sudden the Canadian Alliance is interested in women's health? Is it not curious and interesting that all of a sudden it is concerned about upholding the Canada Health Act?

If we look back over the record in public debates that have taken place, the Alliance is the party that has consistently ignored issues and spoken out against equality, poverty concerns, charter rights and the status of women, in Canada, as well as globally. It has the worst record of any political party in Canada, and certainly in this House, of supporting women's rights, and now it is claiming that this is about supporting women's health.

I hope that a majority of members stand up in the House, particularly the women, and say that they see clearly what this is about. It is a thinly veiled attempt to use the hook, to use the smokescreen, of a health issue to drag us back into a debate that will undermine a woman's right to control her own body and health. That is what this motion is about and that is where it is leading us.

I am proud to say that the New Democratic Party is very clear on this issue. At our convention in September 2000 we updated our policies concerning reproductive rights and technologies. The NDP fully supports women's rights to control their own bodies and opposes the recriminalization of abortion. New Democrats are committed to protecting the interests of women in the development of new reproductive genetic technologies. We support a comprehensive reproductive health policy which would include a commitment to a woman's right to self-determination in every sense, including her right to decide whether or not to bear children.

We believe that a comprehensive reproductive health policy must include assurances that Canadians have equitable access to safe, effective, and publicly funded reproductive health services for women and their families. We believe that there should be a focus on family planning with adequate funding for educational programs and research into safe and effective contraception so that fewer women are faced with the painful decision arising from an unwanted pregnancy. We believe strongly that the establishment of non-profit women's community health clinics which provide a wide range of counselling and medical services, including abortion and accessibility to the full range of reproductive health services throughout Canada, must be implemented.

I was looking over some material for this debate today and one thing that struck me was how marginalized and alone the Canadian Alliance was on this issue. For example, a poll from November 2002 published in the National Post stated:

Support for a woman's right to an abortion has reached an all-time high in Canada, according to a National Post/Global National poll that found almost four of five Canadians, or 78%, believe women should have a completely free choice in the matter.

That was the Canadian public speaking and it certainly did not support the position that taken by the Alliance.

In 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada's abortion law, section 251, ruling that it was unconstitutional. The justices found that the law violated Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it infringed on a woman's right to life, liberty and security of person. That decision came 20 years after Dr. Morgentaler first performed an abortion in Canada.

I know Dr. Morgentaler is vilified by members across the way, but he has been a person who has shown his commitment to women's health and women's rights consistently, experiencing personal abuse and imprisonment. He has sacrificed much to bring this forward and I think he is a real hero to a lot of women.

It was in November 1989 that the government introduced Bill C-43, a Criminal Code amendment, which would have prohibited an abortion unless a physician found the pregnancy a threat to the woman's physical, mental or psychological health. Fortunately, it was defeated by the Senate. It actually passed in the House by a narrow vote, but was defeated in the Senate. Abortion is now treated like any other medical procedure governed by provincial and medical regulations, as it should be.

There are issues about services being accessible and available to women. In fact, there was a recent 75 page report from the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, CARAL, which documented some of the issues and concerns regarding accessible services for women. It stated:

Despite being legal and covered under the Canada Health Act, abortion has been marginalized in Canada because of persistent attempts by anti-choice groups to politicize the procedure. Women have become victims of the bureaucratic “do-nothing” approach of medical associations and governments when they are discriminated against by “gate keepers” at hospitals who deny them medical services, anti-choice doctors who refuse to refer and politicians who place restrictions on access.

The member for Yorkton—Melville said earlier that his was a simple motion. It was about doing no harm and preserving the integrity of the Canada Health Act. I fundamentally disagree with what his motion is about in terms of where it would lead us. While there are issues clearly relating to the services that are needed for women, it is a very far stretch to have it come from this party in terms of its credibility in defending women's rights and women's health in this country.

I hope that all members will vote against this motion and focus instead on protecting women's health and women's rights. We should be focusing on issues to ensure that this medical procedure is available to all women in Canada should they need it and that they have the proper support and counselling. We should be focusing on issues of equality and dealing with poverty. That is what we should be doing. Approval of this motion will take us in a direction that is supported by the Campaign Life Coalition. It is clearly saying that the motion is the first parliamentary pro-life vote in 12 years. This is how it sees it. I say we should reject that.

We should see this motion for what it is in terms of where it is leading us. I am proud of the fact that our party and the member for Winnipeg North Centre, who is our women's equality critic, have done a lot of work in committee in terms of reproductive technologies in trying to protect women's rights and women's health. That is where the work has been done by our member and other members who are truly, genuinely interested in women's health and the protection of women's rights. That is where we should focus our attention, not on this Canadian Alliance motion that will drag us back into the dark ages and will create the kind of debate that is now long gone in this country.

As we see from the polls, Canadians have spoken out and said that they support a woman's right to choose. That is something that all members should support in the House.

[Privilege, May 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your comments.

The comments that were made by the member for Saint John where she suggested that people should shut up and go hide themselves are something I take personally in terms of my ability to speak in this House. That is why I believe that my privileges have been violated and abused by the member in the comments that she made. They impact upon my ability and the ability of other members of the House to speak out in a way that we know will be respected such as we expect to see in the House. I think it is a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, and I would ask you to consider it from the point of view that we do expect a certain level of respect among members.

I have basically been told to shut up and go hide myself, as well as other members, such as the member for Burnaby--Douglas or the member for Kings--Hants or the member for Hochelaga--Maisonneuve. Is this what we are being told by a member of the House? I find it completely unacceptable. I find it is infringing on my rights as a member in the House to speak freely about same sex marriage and about my situation. I find it intolerable.

I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider it on that basis.

[Privilege, May 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege because of the comments that were made yesterday in the House by the member for Saint John during the debate on the opposition day motion.

There were some fairly contentious issues in the debate that took place yesterday. In looking at the comments that were made by the member for Saint John in her reference to gays and lesbians in this country, I found that her comments were very disrespectful. They were offensive, they were hurtful and frankly, I think they were very homophobic. Her comments were offensive to me personally and offensive to other members of the House. Is she saying to the member for Burnaby--Douglas and the member--

[Foreign Affairs, May 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, that was a nice try, but we are really trying to find out where the provisional government is at on this question.

In fact the same provisional government leader has said that he wants star wars. One day later, the defence minister says he does too. Now he says we have 99 days to make up our minds. Clearly the minister is not taking his orders from Parliament because he will not let us debate the issue. Could he tell us who put him up to putting star wars on the fast track and why? Why the 99 days?