Libby Davies

[Petitions, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to present three petitions.

The first petition has a number of signatories from across Vancouver who are very concerned about the state of our health care system and are particularly interested in calling on parliament to stop for profit hospitals and restore full federal funding for health care.

[Housing, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, if the government believes that is a national housing strategy then that is pathetic.

Everyone is calling for a national housing strategy: the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, the Toronto Board of Trade, national housing groups and even 85% of Canadians in a recent Maclean's poll.

People are really sick to death of the piecemeal announcements that we have been hearing. It is really an insult to the gravity of the problem.

I ask again: When will the government get the picture, move beyond crisis management and implement a national housing supply program and a national program that will actually build affordable housing for Canadians?

[Housing, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in the past week the finance minister's office has been flooded with thousands of letters and e-mails from Canadians who want to know when the minister will develop a national housing strategy based on the recommendations that he produced in his own report 10 years ago when he was in opposition.

Has the minister taken heed of those letters, and especially the fact that Canadians are calling on him and the government to go beyond crisis management and to implement recommendations that will bring us a national housing strategy? Does the minister even believe in his own report that he wrote 10 years ago? When will he develop a national housing strategy?

[Health, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, a recent poll in the Vancouver Sun is yet more evidence that Vancouverites are ready to embrace significant change in drug policy reform. It is long overdue.

When I first rose in the House in 1997, I spoke to the Minister of Health and told him about the devastation, pain and impact on crime and safety that are the result of Canada's drug laws. I also spoke about the health crisis in my riding in Vancouver East.

After nearly four years of stalling and wrangling, it is time to take the volumes of studies and expert opinions and reform Canada's drug policies. The Vancouver agreement and the mayor's framework for action are a start, but I believe we need to go further if we are to save lives, reduce crime and improve the health of the community.

In August 1998, I introduced a motion in the House of Commons calling on the government to set up clinical trials for a heroin prescription program. I implore the Minister of Health and the Minister of Justice to listen to the people of Vancouver and take the lead in changing Canada's drug strategy by bringing in heroin trials, safe injection sites and decriminalization for possession.

[Poverty, February 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, let us be very clear. It is this government that has created a society of haves and have nots. If that is all the government can come up with then clearly it is socially bankrupt.

What is of even deeper concern is that in the throne speech we now hear reference to a national project on poverty, which is nothing more than a new guise for a workfare program to drive low income parents into low wage employment.

Is that her government's vision of the new economy? Is that what parents can look forward to?

[Poverty, February 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, following on the heels of the Vanier Institute report, how much more evidence does the government need to understand what Canadians already know, that a decade of failed Liberal policies has resulted in Canadians working harder and longer with deepening poverty for millions?

How could the Prime Minister feel content, sitting on a massive surplus while millions of Canadian families lag behind and are living in poverty? How could he tolerate that?

[Speech From The Throne, January 31st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Halifax for her very thoughtful comments in response to the throne speech. She covered the whole gamut of what was lacking in the throne speech and what, from the perspective of New Democrats, we need to be putting forward.

I agree with the hon. member when she says that what this parliament and the Government of Canada need to do is address the bread and butter issues facing Canadians. She laid that out very well.

I would like the hon. member to comment on one aspect of the throne speech, which is that we somehow will have a new national project to address child poverty. Could the hon. member comment on this based on the performance we have seen from the government over the last three and a half years? I am sure she remembers the time 11 years ago when the Hon. Ed Broadbent put forward a resolution in the House of Commons to eliminate child poverty. What happened to that national project? Why is the Liberal government only talking about it today as though somehow this will be addressed? The record on this issue is important. I would like the hon. member to give us her thoughts on the matter.

[The Economy, January 31st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in yesterday's throne speech we heard about the so-called Liberal vision of a prosperous nation ready to embrace globalization, but who really gets to be included in the new high tech Canada of the future? It is not the 200,000 homeless people sleeping on the streets tonight, not the 14% of Canadian families who continue to live in poverty, not the students facing crushing debt loads and not the thousands of aboriginal peoples dealing with the hardships of life in our urban cores.

If the throne speech signals the return to Liberal roots of social justice, then a heck of a lot of people got left behind.

Social justice is not about vague promises or hollow platitudes. It is not about the Liberal tradition of announcing the same old patchwork programs over and over. Social justice is about real inclusion. It is about a national housing strategy, universal day care, a national grants program and acknowledging the responsibility to off reserve aboriginal peoples. That is what the throne speech should have been about.

[Poverty, October 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, a few minutes ago the Prime Minister said the Alliance did not care about poverty. I want to say that the Prime Minister has nothing to crow about. The public records clearly show that poverty and homelessness have become tragic growth industries under this Liberal watch. There is a very clear choice here. Is it shovelling out huge tax cuts to the corporate elite or is it funding our basic human needs to shelter?

I would like to ask the Prime Minister how does he defend his government's shameless choice of billions for the few and crumbs for the many? How does he defend that?

[Proportional Representation, October 17th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak in support of my colleague's Motion No. 155 which states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should work towards incorporating a measure of proportional representation in the federal electoral system, making use of a framework which includes: (a) a report on proportional representation prepared by an all-party committee after extensive public hearings; (b) a referendum to be held on this issue where the question shall be whether electors favour replacing the present system with a system proposed by the committee as concurred in by the House; and (c) the referendum may be held either before or at the same time as the next general election.

I would like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, for bringing this issue forward. The member has been a champion both of reforming democracy and of bringing a measure of democracy before the House ever since he first became a member I believe more than 20 years ago. I want to say that it is this kind of outstanding work by one member of parliament that is a measure of what a person can do in the House and what can be accomplished.

I think it sometimes has been rather a lonely battle to take on this issue. I congratulate the member for having the strength and motivation to keep plugging away at the issue of making sure our democratic system is more representative and fair. It is an issue that perhaps Canadians do not fully understand, but when I talk to my constituents in East Vancouver and to other electors, I really understand that people feel alienated and very far removed from the political system. We only have to look at federal election results and voter turnout to see what happens in terms of people's alienation.

It used to be that when a federal election was called, 80% of those eligible to vote would actually go out and vote. That number has dropped. I believe in the last federal election it was down to about 67% or 69%. In my own constituency of Vancouver East it went even slightly below the national average.

Here we are today, in the House, poised to deal with the issue of proportional representation and days away from an expected federal election call on whatever issue the Prime Minister has dreamed up he wants to campaign on, when the very issue of democracy and fair representation has not been taken up by the government. I welcome the opportunity, days before what we expect to be an election call, to actually debate this issue. Hats off to the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle for having the strength to bring forward and never give up on the issue.

It is important to explain to Canadian voters what proportional representation is all about. Basically it is making sure representation in the House of Commons is proportional to the number of votes a party actually wins. That is the basic premise and that is the principle on which we are advancing this motion.

What it really means is that if a political party wins, say, 38% of the vote, which in actual fact is what the governing party did win, it would get only about 38% of the seats in the House of Commons. That is not what our experience is today. When we see what our system really does produce it is really quite astounding. I think it reinforces people's cynicism about the political system.

I would like hon. members to look at the numbers. In the last federal election the Reform Party got 19% of the vote and so did the Conservative Party. However, because of our system of basically first past the post, the Conservative Party got 19 seats and became the fifth party. The Reform Party, still based on the same kind of support within the Canadian electorate, got 60 seats and became the official opposition.

In terms of the other two political parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP each got approximately 11% of the vote in the last federal election. What was produced in the House was astoundingly different. The Bloc Quebecois got 44 seats in the House and the NDP got 21 seats.

I think Canadians understand but they may not have thought it through in terms of the actual formula used. It begs the question is this what democracy is about? Is this what representation means? To the hon. member who said yes, that is what it is about, I say he is dead wrong.

If we look at every other developed country in the western world there is some proportional representation. Judy Rebick, a well-known commentator on CBC, wrote in her column in May 2000, when this motion was first introduced, that Canada is probably the least democratic country in the developed world when it comes to elections. Democracy is defined in the dictionary as majority rule, and yet in all of Canadian history only two federal governments have actually won a majority of votes. I agree with her view. We are way overdue for a political debate on this issue. Astoundingly it has not been debated for over 75 years.

When I came to the House as a newly elected member of parliament I had strong ideals, which I still have, about working for my constituents and making a difference in this place. I am sure all 301 members of parliament feel that way. However, when we look at the system under which we operate and see how it is systemically designed to reinforce establishment party rule, I really think we have to challenge that status quo. We have to say to ourselves and to Canadians that if we believe in democracy and true representation of what people are actually voting, we must have the courage to stand and change that system and move to a system of proportional representation where people can ensure that every vote counts.

That is precisely what the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has designed this motion to do, to ensure that the voices of Canadians, no matter where they are in the country, are actually reflected in the House of Commons representation.

The motion actually talks about establishing an all party committee. I suggest that this is a very important element. My entire last community householder addressed the idea in “It's About Democracy”. I talked about voting, the importance of the right to vote, and how in many places people have died for the right to vote. I actually included a whole section on proportional representation to get people's feedback. I have been amazed by the interest and the feedback from people who say they want to know more about it and how they can make sure it happens.

We are days away from an election based on the old established rules. As a consequence most people will be silent. Their votes will not be counted in a truly representational way.

As members of the House we have the opportunity to say we are willing to look at this issue, to make our parliament democratic and to make our voting system democratic. The 75 years of silence on this issue, other than the work our hon. member has done, is far too long to wait for true democracy.

I call on all members of the House to support the motion. At least let us have a good debate on it to see what kind of support there is from the public, because I think it is there.