Malcolm Allen

[Business of Supply, April 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in a nutshell, we are seeing increasing poverty in my community. Poverty in my region is higher than the average in Ontario, and it is going up not down.

With the crisis before us, we know the poverty rate will simply go higher. The type of debt load that those folks have to carry just means they will be in poverty that much sooner, that much longer, which will be that much more of a hardship for them.

[Business of Supply, April 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I remember the onion skin paper. In some stores in small towns in Ontario, especially where I come from, we still see that onion skin paper.

There was a list of defaulted cards at one time and there was a fee. I suggest that the fee the credit card companies charge small businesses is overblown. If we let them creep into the debit card market, that fee will go even higher. Owners of small businesses in my riding tell me not to let this happen. They tell me that we need to talk to the credit card companies to ensure the fees are kept down, and we need to continue do that.

My hon. colleague is also right about the fact that at one time if people paid $10 or $20 in cash, they would receive a discount. Back then they were asked by the retailer if they wanted to pay cash or use credit. It was a phrase often heard at retailers and a discount was given for cash because retailers knew the cost to them.

That really is the hook. Not only have consumers been hooked, but so have businesses, to the point where people really do not want to deal with cash or cheque. They want to deal with plastic because it is easier to do transactions that way, yet we do not see a reduction in the cost to us because of the ease of the transaction.

It is all done electronically. As my colleague said, the onion skin paper is not seen any more except in a few places that I happen to visit. It is amazing technology. People can go here or there and yet they do not get the benefit of the reduced cost that the big financial institutions receive. That is a shame and it should be reversed.

[Business of Supply, April 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Sudbury for his leadership on this issue. He has been front and centre on this issue for quite some time. If my memory serves me correctly, he has asked quite a number of questions of the Minister of Finance about this very issue and the minister's response has been that he would write a letter. The Conservatives' action plan probably contains a copy of that letter. Clearly we want to see action on this critical issue of credit cards and the usurious fees and interest rates that Canadians are suffering under, not just this year when there is a huge economic downturn in the economy, but in the years leading up to it.

Credit card interest rates pushing 20% are painful at the best of times, but they are simply outrageous when people are losing their jobs and facing real hardship. People in my riding of Welland are being hard hit by this recession. Soaring interest rate charges are trapping more and more families into a cycle of poverty. In times like these, hard-working families can quickly find themselves running credit card balances just to make ends meet. Unfair interest rates can blow that balance into a major financial burden that is extremely difficult for families to crawl back from, especially when people are losing their jobs or having the door to employment insurance slammed shut by the government's refusal to make the changes necessary for them to access the money they paid into that insurance program which was originally set up for that exact purpose.

Today Canadian households owe a staggering $300 billion on credit cards and other high interest debts. That kind of debt can entrap the most hard-working families. One alarming result is that the average savings rate has dropped from 20% in the mid-1980s to barely 2% today. That is not nearly enough to retire on. The NDP is committed to renewing our call to cap credit card rates at five points over the prime rate in good times and indeed in bad. That is fair and affordable for the average family.

As has been touched upon, in the U.S. the new Obama administration has announced plans to protect consumers from unfair credit card practices. It is time for the Conservative government to be committed to protecting Canadians also.

I say that in the context of my region, which has the second highest unemployment rate in this country. Folks are using their credit cards to buy food. Quite a number of years ago we could not use a credit card at the grocery store. In fact, the best we could do was write a cheque, but in this day and age of plastic, most places do not want a cheque; they want a credit card. Folks are actually going to grocery stores to buy the essentials and necessities of life and they are using a credit card that they know has a balance with an interest rate that is simply driving them further and further into debt. They end up potentially being trapped in a cycle of poverty.

When I think about that, I have never used a credit card in the grocery store, but I have used it numerous times at major retailers. I have had that credit card for some 20 years. Like many other Canadians, I received a notification out of the blue that told me my credit card interest rate was going to be increased by 2.5%. There was no reason given. It was not that I had not paid my bill on time, or was late, or carried a balance forward for too many months. In fact, I do not carry a balance on that card and never have. Before that, I had been told by that company that I was one of its preferred customers because indeed I paid my bill on time. Now I am about to be penalized because I pay on time. It seems that when it comes to credit cards, we get penalized when we do not pay on time and we get penalized if we do pay on time.

In yesterday's press, Bank of Canada Governor Mr. Carney talked about where he thought he would see the Bank of Canada interest rate in the foreseeable future. I believe that the inter-bank rate is less than 1.5%, and the prime rate is somewhere around 4.5% depending on whether one is a preferred customer. Yet we see credit card rates at all-time highs of 19.5% to 20%. We understand there has to be a spread between the prime rate and the retail rate, but clearly when there is a spread close to 15% or 16% and in some cases 19% or 20% for a retail credit card, that really is usury. It used to be in this country that those types of rates could not be charged, that it would be loansharking.

It seems to me that if we do not rein them in, we may want to call credit cards something else. They should be called debt cards, because that is what they trap folks in. They trap them into a cycle of debt. It is not about extending credit to people; it is about hooking them.

The credit card companies, through the banks and the other major financial institutions, have done a great job of ensuring that people get a card. The hon. member for Sudbury talked about how they trap young people. I have kids who are young adults now. They have grown up and have gone to university. They got their first credit card in the mail, unsolicited, just as they were about to leave high school. The cards showed up at our address, one after the other, for the three of them. I have twins who were born only three minutes apart. They got their cards on the same day. They did not ask for one. The cards did not come from the financial institution where they had their meagre savings accounts. It was not even their financial institution that sent them the credit cards thinking they might like to have a credit card. It was an altogether different institution that did not know them, but knew they were young people. The note that came with the cards indicated that as they head off to post-secondary education they may need a credit card. I would say that they did not need a credit card. What they needed was a good summer job to pay for that education.

Clearly, these companies have hooked young people, and they have hooked old people, in the sense of mature people like me, into using credit cards for their everyday existence. People are building up balances on their cards which at one time would be unthinkable. At one time, most folks had meagre amounts owing on their credit cards. Purchases were for $50, $60 and $70 at a time. Now they are in the hundreds of dollars. This convenience card, as it started out to be, is now portrayed as a need, that we need to have one in our lives because if we did not have one, we would not be able to do the things we should be doing and purchasing the things that we need to have in the lives we lead in this society. Financial institutions have been given that ability to continue to hook consumers, to have them believe that the cards are absolutely are essential.

For a long time my mother never had a credit card. She was in her fifties before she had one because she did not think she needed one. She thought she should just pay cash. She came from an era in which people paid cash for everything. She actually went to a store where she was encouraged not to pay with cash, but to pay with a credit card. When she said she did not have one, the store said it could get one for her, and the cycle begins.

In my estimation, there is not a real need to see that cycle continue in that form. We need to ensure that we limit the ability of the financial institutions to dangle that bait of convenience that really becomes the trap of high interest rates, and poverty for some, and a debt load that is now unmanageable for a great many Canadians across the country.

I am sure the banks are going to argue that these are really tough times and there are a lot of folks defaulting on the balances of their credit cards. Of course they are. If the banks had not driven the interest rate up to 19.5%, but had kept it at a reasonable rate, which would be somewhere around 9% to 10%, in fact people may have been able to handle the debt load, and perhaps eventually paid it off. What is going to happen is that debt is certainly going to accumulate.

As my colleague mentioned, yes, interest is paid on the $1,000 even if a payment of $800 has been made. It is in the fine print, and I defy anyone to try to read that fine print without a magnifying glass. Mr. Speaker, I know I am not supposed to demonstrate, but they are my glasses, and what I do with mine is that I actually move the bad lens over the good eye so that I actually can read that fine print because it is that difficult, even for me.

Ultimately this is about the protection of consumers who are saying to us that they are stuck, that they need our help. They have tried to negotiate. They have tried to argue. They have tried to get out from underneath the interest rate trap they are in with the credit card companies and financial institutions and the institutions will not let them out. We need to help those Canadians. I sincerely hope the members of this House will support this motion and make sure that Canadians, consumers, families, young people across this country, can get out from underneath the trap of credit card debt.

[Petitions, April 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of signatories from across this country who are opposed to the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. They want it to be put in abeyance until such time as human rights impacts and assessments are carried out and the agreement is renegotiated around the principles of fair trade, which would take environmental and social impacts fully into account while generally respecting labour rights.

As we know, Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world for trade unionists and human rights activists. In fact, since 1991, 2,200 of those people have been murdered.

At this time, the petitioners are seeking that the government not continue with the free trade deal with Colombia, that it put it aside until such time as we can guarantee the safety of those workers, leaders and human rights activists, and that it negotiate a fair trade deal, not a free trade deal.

[Organ Donor Registry Act, April 23rd, 2009]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-369, An Act to establish the National Organ Donor Registry and to coordinate and promote organ donation throughout Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I think all members of the House understand the severe nature of the lack of organ donation in this country. We really need a national registry to ensure that folks who are waiting for an organ transplant will actually receive it and not lose that opportunity based on the fact that they did not know a donor was available for them because of the lack of a registry.

It is very difficult, obviously, for those families affected to make those decisions, especially the parents of young children. However, when they finally make the decision to do it, it is extremely troubling to know, at the end of all that process, that the transplant did not take place because no one knew the organ was available. That organ could have been used by another young person at that time, perhaps to continue living.

We need a national registry to ensure that all organs being willingly donated will actually find recipients and that both parties, the party that has made the sacrifice and the recipient, will be matched up and we will have a fruitful conclusion to a sad situation in one family's life and a positive one for the other.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Health, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the government is robbing Peter to pay Paul. At the end of the day, our food is just as unsafe for our kids as it was last year.

New Democrats are calling for further investment so that we will be prepared for an emergency and have enough inspectors on the front line to do the job.

A high-quality emergency outbreak fund already exists, so why should its creation come at the expense of food inspectors? This does not make sense. How many more crises will Canadians need to endure before the government learns its lesson?

[Health, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the listeriosis crisis claimed 21 lives almost a year ago and the government is still scrambling for answers.

Instead of fixing the problems of an underfunded Food Inspection Agency, the government is stretching it even further. At a time when its own agency reports that there are not enough inspectors, the government is cutting up to 15% of the CFIA budget for inspectors.

Will the government commit to the necessary funding to ensure that the CFIA fulfills its mandate to protect the food that Canadian families put on their tables?

[Health, March 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the only horse that was being ridden yesterday was by their filibuster. If the government wanted to protect Canadians, it would not have filibustered for over an hour in committee last night.

New Democrats proposed that we examine the outbreak to find real solutions and the minister stalled all the action. What is he afraid we will find out? The government is up to the same old tricks, but this time it is playing with the lives of Canadians.

Can the minister explain, and I do not mean run out the clock, why he will not allow the committee to do the work that Canadians want it to do?

[Health, March 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve to know that the food they are putting on their families' table is safe.

During the deadly listeriosis outbreak last summer, the government assured Canadians that 2,000 new meat inspectors would be put on the job. They were not. Now we hear that it has suspended the listeria testing program and that it does not know how many inspectors it really has. It is no wonder Canadians do not trust the government with the safety of their food.

How can Canadians feel safe when the minister's department cannot even tell the country how many meat inspectors it has?

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 13th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it reminds one of the old adage about the barn door and trying to catch the horses after the barn door is closed. To be honest, the dry dock doors are about to shut and the last ship is about to sail away.

I commend my hon. colleague, who has fought vociferously and passionately and courageously to save shipyards across the country. Could I ask him what he thinks will happen to those communities where those shipyard workers are?