Libby Davies

[Transportation Amendment Act, March 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, as we can see there is a lot of interest in what happens in particular rail lines across the country. We think of Canada as being a place that, in the last hundred years or so, was drawn together by rail service. I think many of us in the House look with a sense of dismay to what has happened over many decades with our rail and passenger service, which connected many communities.

The member from Esquimalt has mentioned one such route from Esquimalt to Nanaimo. Even though I am in Vancouver, I have seen some of the stories about how people have campaigned to save these lines and to maintain this vital service that they have connecting very important communities.

On principle, we very much support the need to maintain and improve and increase these service levels. The NDP does not support the privatization of these services, however, and I think the hon. member knows that. We want to see the public infrastructure. We want to see VIA Rail do a better job of providing these services.

I am not aware of the private company to which the member the refers. However on the principle of the issue, which is to keep these services operating, to strengthen them, improve them and make them more accessible for people, I would say absolutely we have to do that. We have to pressure the government.

Over the years the service we have seen in these passenger lines has been abysmal. We have seen a complete undermining and eroding of these services. Canadians have a very strong view that we should be looking to Europe or even the U.S. where there is a much better passenger rail service. I am familiar with that line. I do not know the details of it. The NDP would not support a privatization but we do support an improvement and an increased capacity for passenger rail.

[Transportation Amendment Act, March 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate and welcome the questions from the hon. member from the Canadian Alliance.

On the timing issue, as we get to committee we will have to get into this issue in a lot more detail. We will want to ensure that there are, hopefully, deadlines and that the government will agree that deadlines should be established so that the proposal does not just sit on the books, so to speak, and nothing happens.

However, what I am particularly interested in, is the proposal includes a proposed mediation process that the CTA would be able to engage in with respect to matters affecting noise, or maybe other matters as well. I think from a resident's point of view, this would be a much more effective way of dealing with this kind of issue than having to hire lawyers. This happened in one case and maybe in the member's case as well. In many communities local residents do not have those resources.

I would certainly agree that we should be pushing as much as we can so that the government is held to account to set out some clear timelines and deadlines for when this will be implemented.

On the second question, I am little familiar with the situation that the member raises. In speaking to the corridors that are no longer being used, I was referencing mostly the situation in urban communities and what opportunities there were for public transit.

However in other situations where a contract has been established and then all of a sudden VIA Rail decides to yank it back because something has become profitable, maybe that needs to be looked at by the committee. There has to be a fair process. We cannot allow a decision to be made and then have it unilaterally changed at some point because the company has decided there is some profit there and maybe it had better take another look at it. Maybe can look at that issue in committee.

Overall some of the proposals in this bill, not all of them but many of them, are good proposals. I am being optimistic but I hope that they will address some longstanding grievances that people have had.

[Transportation Amendment Act, March 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-26.

I have been waiting for this day for a long time because I represent a community that for many years has been affected by the noise from trains in shunting yards close to a residential area. Other communities across Canada have also been very negatively affected by this issue. From the experience of my own community in east Vancouver in the Burrardview area, up until now there has been virtually no recourse or process to allow local communities to resolve these longstanding grievances against various rail companies around noise and the impact of that noise in adjacent residential neighbourhoods.

I was very pleased to see that Bill C-26 finally addresses some of these issues. To be specific, my understanding of the bill, if it is approved, is it would give the Canadian Transportation Agency authority to review railway noise complaints and require that the railways keep any adverse noise to a minimum when constructing or operating a railway, taking into consideration the requirements of railway operations and services and the interests of local communities.

The bill also develops a mediation process through the Canadian Transportation Agency. Public guidelines for the resolution of noise complaints will be developed. This is a huge relief for people who every single night have been experiencing sleep deprivation as a result of enduring excessive noise levels from the operation of trains, engines, coupling, decoupling and shunting, and so on.

As one constituent in this Vancouver neighbourhood said, “As always, we have no complaint with the railway in general, we just want to sleep”. I would wholeheartedly support that sentiment. For residents in communities such as the one I am describing in Burrardview, there is a recognition that railways, and of course the services they provide, are hugely important in our country.

However, there also has to be a recognition that when these services operate in very close proximity to urban areas and residential neighbourhoods, there has to be very careful consideration and we have to be sensitive and ensure that the processes are in place to deal with problems effectively and quickly. I would emphasize doing it quickly because I know that Burrardview residents have had to resort to phoning at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the morning because they have not been able to go to sleep because of the noise just a few hundred feet from them.

In our situation in east Vancouver we have worked with the local health department. We have had noise testing done. Residents have gone to city council to try to apply the noise bylaw. Residents have tried every single thing they could to generate some relief so that they could go about their daily lives and not be completely disrupted. This has been to no avail so this bill is very important.

I recognize the outstanding efforts of a key group of residents in east Vancouver in the Burrardview neighbourhood. Jim Campbell and Barbara Fousek, Shane Simpson, John Lynn, Terry Bulwer and Torsten Kehler have acted as leaders on this issue. They have informed other residents about what they could do. They have monitored the situation and have stayed on top of it.

In our case it involves CPR. I want to congratulate those people for being so diligent in not only keeping me informed of what is taking place but in staying on top of the railroad company itself. We have actually gone out on the tracks. We did a tour on the tracks. We went to visit the various locations along the lines that were causing all of the problems.

I am sure some members of the House will remember my predecessor, Margaret Mitchell, very well, the wonderful member of Parliament for Vancouver East from 1979 to 1993. She too was dealing with this issue. That is how far back it goes.

I hope very much that the provision in Bill C-26 will strengthen what the CTA can accomplish in providing relief to local residents and ensuring that there is an environment of peace and quiet at critical times. People need to sleep and they want to enjoy their homes and neighbourhoods.

I want to speak to another aspect of the bill which is also very important. This is an omnibus bill, so there are many provisions. There is another part that interests me particularly as a member of Parliament who represents an urban community.

The bill will also modify the current provisions governing how rail companies can dispose of railway lines that are no longer required for freight service. The changes would allow urban transit authorities to receive offers where they would be able to acquire corridors that could be used for urban transit. This is something that is very pertinent to urban communities.

Certainly in Vancouver there is an ongoing debate about the critical need for rapid transit. It could be light rapid transit but certainly what is needed is a public transit system and structure that will allow people easy access to rapid transit that is affordable and which will also take account of our environment. This is critical as we face rising rates of asthma and as we see the smog hanging over our cities. As we try to meet the implementation agreements around Kyoto, this is a very key piece.

The rail lines and corridors exist. They sit there for years and years unused and they could be used for public transit. It seems to me we are missing a fabulous opportunity.

I was very pleased to see the provision in the bill that will allow urban transit authorities to look at specific corridors that may be suitable for public urban transit. I hope this will happen in Vancouver because we are surely suffering from congestion and smog and a complete overload of mostly single occupant vehicles on Vancouver streets.

Those are my comments on the bill. The NDP is supporting the bill in principle. We are happy to see it go to the committee where it will have thorough debate and review.

I hope that residents from east Vancouver will be among the witnesses who will be heard so they can put on the record firsthand some of the terrible situations they have had to endure in dealing with train noise. It is hoped that their issues can be addressed in the bill and finally the Canadian Transportation Agency can deal with the issue in a way that is fair, equitable and efficient to ensure that people can enjoy living in peace in their neighbourhoods.

[Employment Insurance Act, March 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House tonight to support this private member's bill.

I congratulate my hon. colleague, the member for Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore. Having read his bill and having been present in earlier hours of debate, I want to say that this is one of the most important pieces of private members' business that has come before the House. It deals with an issue that affects Canadians right across the country, no matter where they live, no matter what their background, no matter what socio-economic class they come from. It is a private member's bill that deals with a very grave and important issue.

To refresh people's memories, Bill C-206 would provide employment insurance benefits to people who leave employment to be caregivers to family members who are seriously ill or undergoing severe rehabilitation. It is modelled on the EI parental benefits program. The bill simply and straightforwardly would enable Canadians to leave their workplace to care for a family member, knowing that their job and income would be protected for the designated period.

I cannot think of an issue that is more important to so many people across the country. That is one reason the bill has received tremendous support.

In my own province the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities is probably the major organization that deals with issues around disabilities and deals with this issue of caregiving. This is a major issue that faces that organization and their members. I am very glad that the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities is supporting my colleague on this bill, as are many other organizations across the country. These include the Alzheimer's Society of Sudbury-Manitoulin, the Alzheimer Society of Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma District, the Alzheimer Association of Saskatchewan, the Alzheimer Society of Ontario, Muskoka and Kingston, VON Canada, Hospice Huronia, the Canadian Mental Health Association in Ottawa, the Canadian Caregiver Coalition in Ottawa, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the list goes on. It is a very strong indication that people understand the importance of this bill and why it needs to be supported.

In speaking to the bill today, like many people, I have had personal experience about what it means to be a caregiver when a family member is sick, or in my case, in palliative care. In my situation, my partner of 24 years, Bruce, was dying of cancer. Like many family members in other situations, I faced very difficult choices about what to do. One struggles to keep commitments at work and at home to care for the family member. There are very difficult choices. My colleague has outlined many stories from Canadians and the struggles they faced.

In my own situation, in 1997 I was very lucky that I worked for the Hospital Employees' Union in British Columbia, which was very sensitive and understanding of its employees. It was willing to give me time away from work so that I could participate in the care of my partner when he needed it, in the most critical time when he left the hospital and came home, basically to die. If I had been in a work situation where I had not had an employer that was willing to provide that kind of compassion and support to me as an employee of that union, I would have been in a very difficult situation.

I did not have savings that I could have used to stay home. I did not have family members who could provide income support. I recognize that in my situation I was able to cope, as difficult as it was.

We have to recognize that in most situations across Canada, when one member of a family unit is working but is also placed in the position of trying to care for another member of the family unit, and it might be a child, a sister, a spouse or partner, or a parent, employers often are not able to make arrangements. People may not work in a situation where there is a collective agreement that has some sort of provision. They may actually be in a situation where their employer just does not give a damn about the situation.

The bill says that under the employment insurance program we should be entitled to receive the kind of benefits, just as we would when our employment is terminated. We can use EI now for parental leave. It seems to me that this would be the most logical expansion of the program, especially when we consider that the EI fund has now accumulated a huge surplus. It is over $40 billion. This is money that is paid into the fund by employers and employees. Government money is not involved in the fund. It is a very legitimate use of the insurance program, to extend it for caregiving purposes.

I have had a lot of feedback in my riding about this bill. One person in particular, a member of an aboriginal family, described to me the circumstances they found themselves in of having to care for family members not just once but on several occasions, where family members were terminally ill.

As a result of losing employment, one of the real tragedies of the status quo is that people lose their pension benefits. They actually lose pensionable earnings because they have to quit work.

The bill is important. I want to address some of the concerns and myths the government has put forward in debating the bill. It has suggested that it would be very expensive, that it would cost a huge amount of money to do this, yet there is no evidence to suggest that.

What the government fails to take into account is that not having this kind of provision through EI actually costs our health care system a huge amount of money. For every dollar that would be spent on this kind of caregiver program, we would actually save $4 to $6 in health care costs. We would be creating a supportive environment, with support programs, palliative care programs and programs for sick children. This would actually save dollars in the health care system. I would also note that Mr. Romanow in his report strongly recommended that a caregiver program be approved.

One of the other myths the government puts forward is that somehow if a program did exist, a person would only need about six weeks. In my own situation a minimum of 10 weeks was what I required to be at home in order to care for my partner. To suggest that the period could be limited to six weeks, I do not think is any kind of representation in terms of the realities that are out there.

In closing, I congratulate my colleague from Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore. He has produced a fine piece of legislation that is not only worthy of debate, but is worthy of support. I hope very much that members from all sides of the House will agree that the bill should now go to committee where we can get into detailed examination of it and debate the issues in it. It is very worthy of that support. I urge members to agree to support it and to send it to committee.

[Border Security, March 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the minister did not reply at all to the member's question.

Not only are border communities facing enormous difficulties, but individual Canadians are facing harassment, racial profiling registration, and now the new visa requirements by the U.S. Even Canadian citizens who cross the border daily to go to work in the U.S. are facing interrogation when they return by Canadian officials no less.

I want to ask the Prime Minister: Why is the Canadian government not standing up for the rights of these Canadians and making it clear that we will not tolerate state sanctioned racial profiling and harassment of Canadian citizens and residents?

[Situation in Iraq, March 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House tonight in the emergency debate on the grave situation in Iraq.

I would like to first thank our colleagues from the Bloc who sought to have the emergency debate tonight. It seems that all we are left with are take note debates and emergency debates. We have been looking for leadership from the government to hold a proper debate and a vote in the House for months and months. Nevertheless, we are having the debate tonight, although there will not be any vote, and I am pleased to participate in it.

Today we heard the Prime Minister finally enunciate a position that I think is shared by a vast majority of Canadians, and that is that Canada must not participate in an illegal war led by President Bush on the people of Iraq. In congratulating the government on finally taking that position, I too, similar to the member for Halifax, want to call on the government to do more than make that position clear. It now needs to be acted upon. To enunciate that position and then to stand silently by and not follow up on it would, I think, ring hollow and false. We call on the government tonight to use every means possible, diplomatic and political persuasion, at the UN with our American allies to avert the war that we are now on the brink of having.

In hearing what the Prime Minister had to say today in the House I have no doubt in my own mind that it was the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who took to the streets, lobbied their MPs and signed petitions that forced the Liberals to act. There has been a groundswell, a great momentum and mobilization across this country because people know what this terrible war is about. They know that President Bush's actions are illegal and not supportable.

We just have to look at the incredible turnouts in November, on January 15 and on February 15 where around the world something like 20 million people participated in the largest anti-war demonstration ever seen in our history. Last Saturday, March 15, people participated in Vancouver and across Canada. There were 200,000 people in Montreal. In Vancouver, www.stopwar.ca, made up of 145 organizations, assembled tens of thousands of people in Vancouver to call on our government and on the international community to avert this war.

One of the things I found interesting at the rally on Saturday was that a number of speakers, including Dr. David Suzuki who made quite a remarkable speech, talked about how the world's last remaining superpower, the U.S., seemed to be calling all the shots and how President Bush was undermining the United Nations and playing such a dangerous game. Speaker after speaker also said that there was an emergence of a second superpower and that was the superpower of the people who had mobilized around the world and who were holding their own governments to account, not only here in Canada but in Europe, in Mexico, in Central America, in the Middle East and all around the globe.

I find that very heartening. I am very proud of the fact that our leader, Jack Layton, participated in those rallies, was part of the solidarity to stop the war on the people of Iraq and that as NDP members we participated fully and stood in solidarity with Canadians in those mobilizations across the country. We did that because we know the war is illegal.

I would like to quote an article in The Guardian newspaper about a week ago. It states:

We are teachers of international law. On the basis of the information publicly available there is no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq. The UN charter outlaws the use of force with only two exceptions: individual or collective self defence in response to an armed attack, an action authorized by the security council as a collective response to a threat to the peace breech or active aggression. There are currently no grounds for a claim to use such force in self defence.

There are now all kinds of opinions from lawyers around the world who are expressing the same kinds of sentiments.

I want to congratulate organizations like Oxfam Canada which announced on March 10 that it would not accept direct funding from belligerent governments for humanitarian work in Iraq should there be a war in that country. The executive director of Oxfam Canada, Rieky Stuart, said:

We cannot be willing participants when governments attempt to use humanitarian agencies as instruments of a belligerent foreign policy.

That is a profound statement because it shows that civil society, that NGOs, that people are beginning to challenge what they see in the media; the notions of what we are led to believe are somehow the moments of truth as we hear from President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. People are challenging that because they know the war is illegal.

It was chilling to hear George W. Bush say tonight that what he is doing he believes is in the name of peace and democracy, and yet he said not a word about the untold misery, grief, death and civilian casualties that he will cause if he unleashes this awesome military might, the bombs that will be dropped and the potential weapons that will be used. He did not say a word about the devastating impact war will have on ordinary people, on families, on children, on seniors, on people who have no chance to escape.

We have seen a groundswell of opposition in this country and around the world because people know that not only is the war motivated by a political agenda based on U.S. foreign policy about a regime change that it wants to see for political and economic purposes in Iraq, but people also are concerned about the fact that Mr. Bush's agenda undermines the United Nations itself.

Time and time again the member for Halifax as well as other members of our party have risen in the House to point out that the UN process of weapons inspection has indeed been working and it needs to be given a chance to work. Even Mr. Blix, the chief weapons inspector, has pointed out repeatedly in his progress reports that he is making progress. It is all the more disturbing and grievous now that we are at the 11th hour and we hear the address from Mr. Bush tonight.

It was because of the UN process of weapons inspection that I went to the Edgewood Chemical Biological Centre just outside Washington, D.C. on February 22 with a number of citizens and parliamentarians from five different countries on a mission organized by the Centre for Social Justice in Toronto. We wanted to point out that all weapons of mass destruction needed to be inspected and eliminated. The greatest stockpile of these weapons of mass destruction that are not subject to verification or inspection were actually in the United States. We cannot stand by and see a double standard emerge in what President Bush is demanding of Iraq.

Yes, we do support the weapons inspection process but we need to ensure that kind of process is available and is working in all locations, whether it is in the Middle East or in the United States of America. We need to ensure that weapons of mass destruction are eliminated.

The action in which I participated was successful in raising awareness of the contradictions that exist in the kinds of policies that we see coming from the United States. We had a lot of support from civil society organizations in the United States that have also been mobilizing in terms of opposing what their president has been doing.

Today in Parliament we heard some good news from our government but we implore our government, on behalf of the Canadian people, to let us do our job in the House. Let us debate and have a vote in terms of what other measures can now be taken, to call on our American allies and the United Nations to forestall where we are now, which is on the brink of war.

That is why we are in this place. We exercise those democratic rights. That is what we are here to do. That is what we want to do.

On behalf of my constituents from Vancouver East and all the representations that I have received, I call on the government to allow that vote to take place in this House so that we can exercise our democratic rights.

[Petitions, February 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to present a petition from thousands of people who live in the Ottawa and Montreal areas who are concerned about the desperate situation of Algerian refugees.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to immediately end the deportation of non-status Algerians, to re-establish the moratorium on deportations to Algeria, and to regularize the status of all non-status Algerians.

[Firearms Registry, February 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it interesting to see that the minister has appeared in the House I think on three occasion on the firearm program. It is a clear indication that the government is struggling to put a brave new face on this program. We listened with interest today about yet another plan which tries to convince Canadians that everything is fine with this program, that it will work and that there will be no problems.

The government likes to refer to this program as the gun control program. It does not like to use registry. Maybe we should rename it the damage control program because clearly that is what it has now become.

Clearly questions arise from the minister's statement, where we now have a whole new action plan and a transfer to the Solicitor General's office. By shuffling the deck or shuffling the responsibility to a new department, what assurance do we have that the fundamental concerns and recommendations of the Auditor General will be met?

There are two issues here. One is that the government has not yet been able to demonstrate clearly the link between the registry, the administration and the management of that registry to its overall objective of gun control and, as it says, that is public safety, which is an honourable goal and is something we all support. At the very best, there is scepticism about whether it has been able to demonstrate that link. Of course the worst case scenario is that there is outright opposition to the registry on whether it fulfils those objectives of public safety and gun control.

While there are those who clearly oppose the registry, as long as it exists, there is a second issue. How is it being managed, how is it being administered and how is it being accounted for? That is at the very heart of the Auditor General's recommendations.

One of the basic problems that got us into this terrible mess in the first place is the complete lack of absence of controls, through the House, to review all estimates. In the past a department would be grilled. At committee, members of the House could go through line by line for more than just a couple of hours and bring the government to account on any particular item. That has now all been lost. If that were in place, I do not think we would be in this situation today.

The government has made the decision over the years to basically bypass Parliament, to bypass the mechanisms of checks and balances that allow us to do our job in holding the government to account.

We have this action plan that talks about accountability and transparency, improving service and reducing costs. We need to have the mechanisms in place, mechanisms that are more than a program advisory committee or an annual report to Parliament. We need a full accounting of those estimates. That is what it will take for this place to determine whether the objectives of this program are being met. The onus is on the government to do that. It has not yet demonstrated that nor has it made the clear link between the benefits of this registry and what it will accomplish or has accomplished, and the overall objective of public safety.

[Foreign Affairs, February 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the use of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons marks the darkest moments of human civilization. Abolition of these weapons must be the highest priority, whether they are in Iraq or the U.S. That is why volunteer citizens are heading to the U.S., to stop their stockpile and use by any nation.

U.S. war planners have refused to rule out the possible use of nuclear weapons on Iraq. Will the Prime Minister make it clear that the government is opposed to the use of these weapons by any nation, including the U.S., and that these weapons must be abolished?

[The Budget, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister prides himself that this is a people's budget. Let us be clear, the people who have been hurt the most by 10 years of Liberal damage are still hurting after the budget.

I was desperately hoping for good news on the housing front, but we are barely closer to the 1% solution for affordable housing that is needed to produce 20,000 to 30,000 units a year. What we will get is maybe 2,500.

If Canadians are waiting for affordable quality child care, wait on. Take a number and hope to get one of the only 3,000 spaces over two years, when 82% of kids do not have access to quality child care.

Then there is the child tax benefit. What did the federal Liberals say to poor families? “You are a priority. Well, not until 2007”.

With accumulated surpluses of $80 billion, one would think that eliminating poverty in this country would be an affordable priority. However, the Liberals have shown yet again that their priorities are with tax cuts and helping well off Canadians get more.

So much for the people's budget.