Michael Savage

[Post-Secondary Education, March 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, budget 2010 increases taxes on post-doctoral students with scholarships. This means that while last year's students who earned an average of $32,000 in scholarships did not pay tax, this year's students, like Isabelle Thiffault, will now be taxed to the tune of $4,000.

Would the minister agree that not paying a tax last year but paying a tax this year on the same thing is a tax increase?

[Don Valardo, March 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, many great people are called unique, but few actually are.

Don Valardo was unique. He was a great man, big in every sense, and a Canadian patriot. He passed away on Tuesday.

Don was from Saint John, but he made Dartmouth his home. He was the quintessential self-made man who started as a brewery worker, became the youngest-ever president of the brewery workers union, and then entered business, eventually owning a number of licensed establishments and rental properties. He served two terms as alderman in Dartmouth and was involved in innumerable community activities. He was a longtime chair of the Dartmouth Sportsplex and a proud Kiwanian. He received many awards and honours.

However, for all of his success, the essence of Don was his family. His wife of 56 years, the other Dawn, was his partner in every sense. She smoothed his edges; she made him stronger. His children, Debra, Patti, Nancy and Tony, were his life and along with his grandchildren they will honour and keep alive the life and legend of Don Valardo.

He was one of the very best. May he rest in peace.

[Business of Supply, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question about that. I received an email on Friday about this very issue. The woman stated that she had received a flyer, she hated it and it was wrong. She wanted to know who was paying for it, but she assumed the public was. She was right. She said that at the very least it should be paid for by political parties.

It should not be funded from the budget of Parliament. It is totally and completely political. The information is quite often wrong, and we heard that from the member for Mount Royal, but, at the very least, it should not be used to subsidize political operations. That is what happens with these flyers.

[Business of Supply, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the NDP proves my very point. Canadians do not like these things and they do not react well to them. However, we cannot say that because people still vote for somebody who is targeted that this is a good use of money. That is a ridiculous use of money.

If anybody wants to see if these are political, find out where the parties send the mailings. I do not think they come into my riding from the Conservative Party, which will not win in Dartmouth—Cole Harbour for some time to come. I do get them from the NDP. I am sure all parties target these to the areas that they want to win. That is partisan political abuse of public money and it has to stop sometime, and it will stop. This may not pass today or tomorrow, but it will stop, just like in Nova Scotia. As soon as the light was shone on some of this stuff, it stopped. It will stop eventually here because it is the wrong thing to do.

[Business of Supply, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments, but he is talking about wasting money. That is what we are talking about. It is not just the ten percenters. We could also fix a lot of the other party's problems, in terms of wasteful spending on contracts, on travel and on everything else that is done.

However, I do not think Canadians would this was a good use of taxpayer money if they knew about this and knew the cost. I do not think people in my riding or in Burlington would say this was good use of money if they knew what was being spent. If he had a town hall meeting in his riding asked if we should we send this crap out to the people of Canada on their ticket, on their dime, I do not think they would say this was a good use of taxpayer money. If he wants to save taxpayer money, start today. Stand up and vote tomorrow night for this motion.

[Business of Supply, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the opposition day motion. I will be splitting my time with the brilliant member for Ajax—Pickering.

I am very happy to see this motion come before the House as it addresses some needs that Parliament has not addressed for a number of years.

First, it does go to government restraint. We are at a difficult time. We are $56 billion in deficit. However, even when we are not in deficit, government should not be spending money wastefully. I think anybody would agree with that. In a difficult time like this, with a Conservative deficit of $56 billion, wasteful spending is even more inappropriate than ever before.

I will preface my comments, as a Nova Scotian, speaking about what has happened in Nova Scotia over the past month or so. The auditor general of Nova Scotia did an investigation into spending by members of the Legislative Assembly, an audit of MLAs' expenses.

What was uncovered was egregious spending that nobody could justify. Generators were installed in the houses of MLAs. Multiple computers, laptops and printers were purchased. Big screen TVs were purchased, just what every politician wants in their office when a constituent comes in to talk about their day-to-day problems, just trying to raise their family. Other things that were bought were espresso makers, GPS units, briefcases, digital cameras, camcorders and duplicate expenses, payments, et cetera. The premier indicated that his bar fees were being paid by the government.

People are angry, rightfully, about this abuse of taxpayer money. There have already been resignations and there may be more to come. The people of Nova Scotia feel no differently from the rest of the people in Canada, which is that politicians, their governments and parliamentarians should spend money that is theirs the same way they would spend their own. People do not accept that it is okay for government to waste money. Drastic changes have resulted.

There is no doubt that our system in Ottawa is a better system but there is a lesson to all of us: treat the people's money as if it were our own.

The message, however, has not reached the government and it has not reached all members of this House. A $13 million increase for the Prime Minister's own departments, spending on research and management consultants that nobody could defend. To avoid tendering contracts, money is let just under the legal limit of $25,000 without a tender, and it seems to happen all the time. There is outrageous spending on advertising of government initiatives. Over $100 million were spent to advertise Canada's economic action plan.

We have an enlarged cabinet. Ministers who underperform do not get moved out of cabinet. They get moved to lesser responsibilities, more in keeping with their capabilities, I suppose, but they stay in cabinet with all of the perks that go with being in cabinet.

There are a lot of examples of how the government has not been spending money wisely but I want to speak specifically to the issue of ten percenters. If there is a rotten, perverted, scandalous, ridiculously bloated, wasteful symbol of how low politics in Canada has fallen, it is ten percenters which allow members of Parliament to send virtually unlimited mailings of the most partisan nature across Canada.

As we heard from the member for Scarborough—Guildwood, perhaps the preeminent expert in this House on the history of Parliament and its procedures, there probably was an noble purpose for ten percenters. Originally, I think the idea was that members could send them to people in their constituency. As MPs we are supposed to, it is incumbent upon us to communicate with our constituents.

We are allowed to do four householders a year and most of us do all four. Those are legitimate and reasonable. When I do householders, I do not put the Liberal message all over it. , I represent all of the people in my constituency. I would challenge anybody to look at the householders I have sent out or, on occasion, the ten percenters that I sent out in my own constituency. They deal with things like the Boys and Girls Club, a local theatre group called Eastern Front Theatre, the Public Good Society, Circle of Care furniture banks and things like that. To me that is a legitimate and reasonable purpose of ten percenters.

However, in the last number of years things have changed and I understand. People say that as an MP we have a responsibility to communicate around the country, but these have become absolutely and completely political. It has gotten totally out of hand. The mailings today are largely controlled out of various leaders' officers or party offices and the messages are negative and brutally partisan. MPs often do not even know what is going out under their own names.

It is very costly, as the Taxpayers Federation singled them out last week for special attention. All parties do it. It is true, though, that the government has raised it to a high art form, or perhaps a low art form.

We heard today the members from Mount Royal and Sackville—Eastern Shore indicating how these mailings had been abused and turned into virtual hate mail, sent out at government expense, carrying a partisan message, peppering the country with vicious propaganda.

At the same time, parties are building up their mailing lists for their own political purposes. Parties all do it. I do not condone anybody using ten percenters. I do not like the fact that Liberals use ten percenters. I like the fact that we do it less than anybody else on a per capita basis.

People in my riding ask me all the time why they are getting mail from the leader of the New Democratic Party the time. Some say that their wives communicate more with the leader of the New Democratic party than they do with them. They ask me who is paying for the mail, who is paying for the stuff that goes into their mailboxes, which they do not want. People do not like it and they are at the point of saying enough is enough.

If we took all of the offensive spending of the MLAs in Nova Scotia, which has rightly enraged Nova Scotians, it would be a tiny fraction of the cost just of the ten percenters. The cost in printing is estimated at $10 million. The cost in postage is more than twice that, $30 million. What could we do with $30 million?

In the Speech from the Throne last week, we heard about how the government would enhance the universal child care benefit for single-parent families. The next day in the budget we found out the total cost of that program, when it is fully implemented, would be $5 million a year. There are $5 million a year for Canadians most in need and $30 million so this garbage can be sent across the country that spreads lies and hate about other parties and individuals. If there is a juxtaposition to politics today that shows how rotten this has become, it is that. There are $5 million for those who need help and $30 million for ten percenters.

At the same time, the Canadian Council on Learning, CCSD and KAIROS were cut. The value of that cut was $7 million over five years from an organization that focuses on justice and peace. Yet there are $30 million dollars a year to sustain this ridiculous policy of sending out ten percenters that every member of the House knows in his or her heart has become completely out of hand and is a total waste of money. We could save tens of millions of dollars every year just by saying enough is enough.

I heard the members of the New Democratic Party say that they did legitimate mailings and as MPs they had to communicate with other people on specific issues. The NDP member for Vancouver East spoke sincerely about the need to deal with stakeholders.

There is not a member of Parliament in the House whose stakeholder is 10% of somebody else's riding. We have mailing lists. We already have free mailing. We have bulk mailing. We have the frank. In my case, if I want to send information to people in child care or people who deal with poverty, I do not send it to 10% of the people who live in Sackville—Eastern Shore or in Cape Breton—Canso. These are political mailings.

I have one from a New Democratic member, who I will not mention. It ticks off to send back information, “I would like to receive the NDP's email newsletter”. This is for political purposes. This is taxpayers subsidizing politicians to send this stuff out.

If we want to improve Parliament and politics in Canada and have members work together the way they should, the way it was designed to be, it does not help when we come in here on Monday when the Friday before we received calls from people in our association telling us that they received hate mail about us.

It is time to stop the abuse, to save the money, to put $30 million to a better purpose and improve the atmosphere in Parliament. Let us get rid of the ten percenters. Let us do the right thing once and for all.

[2010 Paralympic Winter Games, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, on March 3, many of us were honoured to be present on Parliament Hill when the Paralympic flame was ignited and blessed by aboriginal fire keepers.

It was a brisk but glorious morning, a morning of hope and a fitting start to the 10-day torch relay of the 2010 Paralympic Games, which brings together over 1,300 athletes from 44 countries in the spirit of Olympic competition. Canada will again be the centre of international sport and Canadians will be watching and cheering our athletes as they reach for gold in all five sports, including our hunt to finish off the golden hockey trifecta by winning the sledge hockey tournament.

It was in 1948 when Sir Ludwig Guttman organized a sports competition involving World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries in Stoke Mandeville, England. Four years later, competitors from the Netherlands joined the games and an international movement was born. Olympic style games for athletes with a disability were organized for the first time in Rome in 1960.

In 1976 other disability groups were added and the idea of merging together different disability groups for international sport competitions was born. In the same year, the first Paralympic Winter Games took place in Sweden. In the wake of the Toronto 1976 Paralympic Games, the Canadian government granted funds to be spent in developing sport opportunities for people with a disability.

Since then, Canada has been internationally renowned as a leader of the Paralympic movement. Canada has participated in every summer and winter Paralympic Games since Tel Aviv in 1968 and has always done very well.

The Paralympics showcase the strength and determination of our athletes and further illustrate that if we focus on ability, not disability, anything is indeed possible and that incredible human potential can be reached, thereby improving the individual lives of Canadians with disabilities and our collective betterment as a nation.

I am pleased we have now ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. There is much more to be done. Let us allow the courage, strength and grace of our world-class Paralympians to inspire us and ensure that all Canadians with disabilities are given the chance to achieve their own gold medals.

Congratulations and best wishes to all athletes, coaches and organizers. They make us proud.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, March 11th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, a number of times in the last few years we have seen disasters happen in countries that do not have the wealth that we do and the government on occasion has said it would match the dollars. I certainly support that, as long as it comes from new dollars. We cannot just recycle money that is already in a budget and say that we are going to match donations because that money would come out of some other project that is equally worthy.

After the budget last week we heard Gerry Barr, the president and CEO of CCIC say:

What we got was a turning of our backs on the poorest and most vulnerable in developing countries.

Dennis Howlett from Make Poverty History said:

Now is not the time to cap aid when the economic crisis and climate change are reversing global progress on poverty reduction.

What always happens in Canada and around the world is that when things get tough, the people who are hurt the most are those who are already suffering the most. Those are the people that we need to help the most.

Our development aid has to be consistent. It has to be going on, increasing over a period of time as began under the Liberal government of which I am proud. We should do more. We have a responsibility to developing nations because every crisis that comes along, such as the environment and what is happening in the world, hits the poor a lot more than it hits those who are well off. We have a responsibility to help them.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, March 11th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I do not think the cost of UCCB is $4 billion to $5 billion. I think it is the realm of $2.5 billion, of which, I think, somewhere in the range of half to three-quarters of a billion dollars are taxed back, so the net cost is $2 billion or less.

On housing, what we need is a national housing strategy. There was some stimulus money for it in the budget last year, which some people said was a good first step, but then the minister could not get out of the way fast enough and come running out to say, “Wait a second, this is not a strategy. This is not a long-term policy. This is a one-time thing”.

What we need is not just one-time investments in the physical infrastructure of the country, but long-term investment in the human infrastructure of Canada. Housing could be one of the things that bridges both of those areas, but we need a national strategy for housing, which I think could be part of a national strategy to combat poverty in Canada. We need a long-term strategy that commits money over a long period of time so people can plan and develop initiatives to take advantage of it.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, March 11th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Speech from the Throne.

I want to acknowledge the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation who just spoke. In the time I have been a member of Parliament since 2004, he has been a distinguished and productive member of Parliament for his constituents. I wish him well as he moves along.

I am going to split my time with the very distinguished and capable hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl. In a second I am going to address a question she just asked, but first, I hope members will indulge me.

We are all very proud of the Olympics. First of all, in my province of Nova Scotia, we have two winter Olympians who are both from my riding. Members may have heard of one of them, Mr. Sidney Crosby, the world's greatest hockey player.

I would suggest that if anyone is looking for role models, we have some great young athletes from Nova Scotia, people like the young Brad Cuzner, who played last night for the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, who won in overtime against the Saint John Sea Dogs. Brad Cuzner stood up for his teammates.

It is guys like him who look up to someone like Sidney Crosby. People could not pick a better role model than Sidney Crosby. Last year he brought the Stanley Cup to Cole Harbour. Tens of thousands of people lined up to see him, and he took so much time with them.

I also want to mention our other Olympian from Dartmouth, Sarah Conrad, a freestyle snowboarder. The people in Dartmouth are so proud of Sarah. They have followed her progress. The night she competed, which I think was February 19, a crowd gathered at Dave Doolittle's pub in Dartmouth, people like Andrew Younger, the MLA for Dartmouth East; and Darren Fisher, the councillor and a big supporter of Sarah; and many of her friends.

Sarah did not win a medal that day, but she did exemplify the spirit of the Olympics. She blogged that night, and I am going to read a little of what she wrote. After competing in the Olympics and not doing as well as she had wanted, she wrote:

It just wasn't my night, sorry folks. I wasn't quite comfortable in practice and it showed in my runs. Luckily I squeaked through to semis, but fell both runs so no finals for me. I'm disappointed in my riding, but overall we had great night.

She went on to write:

It didn't really matter to me who made it through, I was just relieved that the amazing crowd had a Canadian to cheer for in the finals.

She added:

The support from across the country has been amazing, it means so much. I hope you enjoyed the show, I know I did.

I can say on behalf of the people of Dartmouth and Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, and across the country, that Sarah did great and we are all very proud of her. She came first last year at the Canadian nationals in Mont-Tremblant.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the Speech from the Throne in the time I have left. I want to talk about a few things that in my view were missing from the Speech from the Throne.

The hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl has mentioned the issue of poverty. This is an issue that matters deeply to many Canadians. We in Canada are coming out of a very difficult time. We have been in a recession. Perhaps the biggest problem and one of the great paradoxes of coming out of this recession is that the stimulus program the government put forward did not, by and large, benefit people who needed help the most. The real problem is that the cuts being made to pay for the stimulus program may target the people who need help the most. I think that is a real problem.

The human resources committee of the House of Commons is undertaking a poverty study now. It had been under the distinguished chairmanship of the hon. member for Niagara West—Glanbrook, and is now being chaired by the hon. member for Portage—Lisgar. I am sure she will be a fine chair.

The committee has looked at the issue of poverty for some time now, for close to two years. We have a housing crisis in Canada. It is not solved by a little burst of money coming from infrastructure; it needs a long-term, sustained national housing policy. We have not seen that yet.

There is child poverty in Canada. As I am sure members would know that last year, on the 20th anniversary of the pledge of parliamentarians to eliminate child poverty by 2000, Campaign 2000 put out some information that should be a real wake-up call and challenge to Canadians that we need to do something about child poverty and poverty in general.

Yes, we have made strides, and some areas have improved. The guaranteed income supplement, the OAS, and the previous Liberal government's successful focus on and success in ensuring the Canada pension plan have done a lot to reduce seniors' poverty, but there is still seniors' poverty that is really very problematic.

Single people in poverty, particularly women, is a huge issue. We should be putting more into the guaranteed income supplement. We should be doing more to secure pensions. We need to focus on health care, palliative care, home care, and all those things that would help with seniors' poverty. Moreover, children's poverty is still a huge problem for a country as wealthy as Canada. We need to do more.

As a country, we need to embrace an anti-poverty strategy. Six provinces have now committed to an anti-poverty strategy, with varying degrees of robustness. In my province of Nova Scotia, the strategy is not very strong, but I am hoping it will become stronger. The provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba all have a strategy. However, they all say the same thing: they need the feds to step up.

The issue of child care continues to be one on which Canada does embarrassingly poorly. Just over a year ago, the United Nations published a report on the OECD nations that measured how different countries fared on 10 different benchmarks of early childhood services. Those included subsidies for regulated child care services and subsidies for accredited early education services and the training of child care staff. In that survey, Canada came last out of 25 nations.

As one would expect, we were well behind the Scandinavian countries who have invested in early learning and child care in a variety of ways. However, we were also behind Hungary, Slovenia, the U.K., the U.S., Korea, Portugal and many other countries. For a country of Canada's relative wealth and one that I would suggest is going be more dependent than ever on educating our children, we have been a very fortunate nation.

We have been very wealthy. We are a large country with a population strewn largely across our southern border. We are a country that is rich in natural resources. We have not had world wars fought on our land. We do not have the kinds of natural disasters that some other countries do, as seen recently in Haiti and Chile. We have done well, in some cases more by accident than design.

However, we are now facing competition. Countries that used to send their students to us are now educating their own children. Countries that did not invest in innovation and research or child care are doing better than we are. That is a real danger to this country, because the most important resources we have are not the natural resources of our land, but the resources in our classrooms. It is the kids, and it is the adults who need help with literacy.

Our literacy rates in Canada are not good at all. We have some nine million adult Canadians who do not have the literacy skills they need. Four out of ten adult Canadians, representing nine million Canadians, struggle with low literacy. They fall below level three on the literacy scale. These figures are from ABC Canada. We need to invest in literacy for adults who do not have the skills they need to upgrade their own jobs.

A gentleman came to see me a while back. We all meet with people in our constituencies whose stories quite often touch us. This man came to see me and told me that he had worked really hard to get where he was. He did not have a great job, but he could raise his children. He now had an opportunity to improve himself and apply for another job. The problem was that he had to do a test. He could not pass the test and he was worried that he would lose the job he had.

It is people like that, Canadians who want to make themselves better and stronger and more able to provide for their families, who are the kind of people the Government of Canada should be working with. Yet when the government was elected, we saw cuts to our literacy programs. That just does not make any sense. That is not in keeping with a country that is looking forward and saying that it wants to invest in its people. If we are going to invest in our people, it means investing in early learning and child care.

I would suggest as a parent, and I think everybody in the House knows, that children do not start learning at the age of six. Children start learning as soon as they are born, and perhaps even before that. They start learning right away and those first years are really important. Yet there are people across the country who do not have access to child care. The universal child care benefit is not enough; it does not pay for early learning and child care and it does not produce child care spaces.

I would suggest that if any one of us heard of a child in second grade who could not find a public school to go to, who was turned away from a public school and told there were no spaces, there would be an outcry. Any one of us would be offended by that, yet every day in every part of this country kids under the age of six are turned away or put on long waiting lists and do not get the early learning and child care they need.

If we are going to invest in our children, we have to invest in early learning and child care. It is so important. That does not diminish the role of parents in any way, shape or form. I think all of us would say that the best teachers of our children are ourselves, our wives and perhaps a grandparent, an aunt or an uncle. However, many people simply do not have that. We are saying to them that there is nothing for them. In many parts of this country, there are no spaces and if there are spaces, people cannot afford them. We have to do better if we are going to make a serious difference.

I will quote part of the Speech from the Throne that I thought was interesting. It spoke about Canadian families balancing work and family life and said:

our Government introduced the Universal Child Care Benefit....

It went on to say:

Our government will strengthen this benefit for sole-support, single-parent families.

I thought last week when I saw that in the Speech from the Throne that the UCCB was not the right way to look at child care in the country. However, no one thinks there are no parents who need the money, so I thought, okay, maybe the government is going to look at the universal child care benefit and strengthen it, and maybe go to $200, $300, $400, or $500 a month for those parents who actually need help the most. The very next day in the budget the government talked about changing the taxation part of the UCCB. I want to read what it said:

It is estimated that this change will reduce federal revenues by a small amount in 2009-10, $5 million in 2010-11 and $5 million in 2011-12.

Hence, $5 million dollars is the total contribution and the maximum anybody can get is $168 a year. That is hardly anything. We just have $5 million for single parent families versus $100 million for the government's advertising expenses for its economic action plan. There are many other things that we could juxtapose with that $5 million. By any measure, $5 million is a very small amount, particularly when one looks at the need across this country. We need to address those issues.

I also want to speak to international development. Canada has made commitments in international development. I would personally like to see us get to 0.7%, which has been the target that some countries have achieved for international development assistance. In the last number of years, we have seen the government change the way that international development is done. It has pretty much completely moved away from the continent of Africa, where many people need help the most. In this budget it is proposing a freeze on international development.

It is no surprise that when people were asked about that, their response was that it was a real shame, that it is a real problem for the people who need our help the most. Our aid should not be tied directly and only to trade; our aid should be tied to poverty.

In 2007-08, we had Bill C-293 proposed by the member for Scarborough—Guildwood. The purpose of that bill was to make poverty the focus of our international aid. It seems very self-evident and obvious. The bill was passed, I believe by all parties, in this House, and yet we have seen no indication that it is the focus the government is adopting for its international aid.

Like other members of this House, I have had the opportunity to travel internationally. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Kenya with Results Canada, and we saw amazing poverty. This does not diminish the fact we have poverty in Canada in our own communities, and certainly on reserves among our aboriginal populations, and both need to be attacked.

When somebody says to me to think globally and act locally, we can do both. We can make the world better here and around the world.