Michael Savage

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the budget. I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Cape Breton—Canso in the hope that one day he will split a dinner bill with me, but I live in hope.

There are a number of things I would like to talk about today on the budget. My colleagues and other members have spoken about a number of important issues. I want to talk about four things: the impact in my province of Nova Scotia; post-secondary education; literacy; and poverty, in particular women and children in poverty.

I do not believe that the government understands Atlantic Canada. I do not believe that the government addresses Atlantic Canada very much. I do not think the government particularly cares for Atlantic Canada. We saw that a year ago when last year's budget torched the Atlantic accord.

The immediate reaction of Atlantic Canada, and I would generally agree, is that this is a pretty non-event budget.

The Nova Scotia minister of finance, a Conservative, said his initial reaction was disappointment that there was not more in the way of direct funding for infrastructure projects, especially for the province's universities. He said that it is likely revenues flowing from Ottawa to the province, from equalization and the Canada health and social transfer will be flat, creating a “huge pressure” on his spring budget.

This is a headline in today's The ChronicleHerald: “$21 million less expected from Ottawa. Premier: Federal budget lowers the projected offshore windfall”.

We lost the Atlantic accord. The premier of Nova Scotia, Rodney MacDonald, scrambled around to try to save face and cut a deal with the federal government and now we find, as a result of this budget, that $21 million less is going to Nova Scotia. It is not a very attractive start. There is not much in the budget for Nova Scotia.

I certainly have talked about post-secondary education in this House on a number of occasions. On many of those occasions I have talked about the millennium scholarship foundation. We have asked questions in this House about the government's plan on the millennium scholarship foundation.

The millennium scholarship foundation was set up some years ago by the Liberal government. It has kicked out a lot of money for students, almost exclusively students in need. This year, for example, the amount was $350 million for students in need.

In this budget, not surprisingly, considering what we saw with the summer jobs program last year, the government got rid of the millennium scholarship foundation and replaced it with its own needs based granting system. It is the government's right to do what it wants, but the reason the government used, the direct quote from the budget was that the millennium scholarship foundation was an intrusion into provincial affairs.

Yet the millennium scholarship foundation worked with every province and territory, unlike the student loans program, including Quebec, where its office was based. It worked with every province and territory to provide grants for students. Every province and territory wanted the millennium scholarship foundation renewed. They wanted it replenished, because of the fact that it was working for students, but the government has chosen to take that $350 million and put it into a student grant system. There is no more money for students. It has changed the programs and has decided to put that money into a new system through HRSDC.

I would like to read a comment from the Educational Policy Institute, which is a very good think tank on post-secondary issues. It has some issues with this, not the least of which is, why would the government kill a program that was working and then create a new system when there already was a platform for one that worked?

The institute also has concerns that the new granting system will apply to more students, but not based on need as much. It suggests this will be good news for students from middle income families but bad news for low income families who will now be receiving less aid because the average grant amount is going to go down.

To have a granting system targeted at those most in need, one would think the money should go to those most in need. Middle income families all have pressures; there is no question about that. But if the purpose of the program is to assist students most in need, why would the government give it to more students but less to those who need the money the most and reduce the amount at a time of increasing tuitions? I do not think it is a very sensible proposition.

We have been asking about student loans. The minister has been telling us not to worry, that there is all kinds of good news about student loans, that a review is being done on the student loans program and there is going to be some great stuff. It turns out not to have been quite so great. There are some initiatives in there that should help students who have student loans navigate the system, which has been outdated, and I think we would all agree with that.

However, the biggest issue with student loans is the rate of interest charged. One of the champions of that issue in the last number of months, and perhaps even years, has been a group called the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness. I want to report what coalition members had to say about the budget. They gave it a D. The reason they gave the budget a D was that there is no reduction in the rate for students.

Right now we charge students over 8% for their student loans. The cost of government borrowing is probably about half that, if that. So why, at a time when we had the opportunity to review the program, to make it better, would we not reduce the rate? That is the big burden that students are bearing.

There is no promise to create anything like an ombudsman or commissioner of student loan fairness, somebody who could actually help students navigate the problems they have with the system.

However, there are some improvements in the student loan program, or at least we think there are, because it is very difficult to tell with the government, which cobbles together little bits and pieces and chunks of money from here and there. Some of it may be new, some of it old, some may be borrowed and some may be blue. We never know. We cannot tell when we first see what is coming out of the government. With student loans, it is the same problem.

The Coalition for Student Loan Fairness gave the government a big fat D on what it did. The coalition had big hopes that there might be something significant for students in the budget, but it did not come.

On research and innovation, there was again some money for the granting councils and CIHR, but CIHR needs hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain the momentum that came out of the incredible investments of the Liberal government of six, seven or eight years ago for the granting councils, for NSERC, SSHRC, CFI and CIHR. Alan Bernstein has now left CIHR. That is another great scientist that Canada has lost.

On SSHRC, the social sciences and humanities funding body, there is so much to say. We had a breakfast this morning on the Hill that highlighted the work and research done by the social sciences and humanities. An increase of $12 million a year is simply not enough for an organization like that.

Other nations in the world, the OECD nations, the European nations and even the emerging nations of China and India, are starting to put a lot of money into research. If one travels Canada, and I recommend all MPs should, one can talk to some of the researchers. The brain drain is not an issue like it was 10 years ago, but if we take the foot off the accelerator on research, we are going to lose an awful lot of those researchers. We simply cannot do that.

What I really want to talk about is what bothers me most, not specifically just with this budget but as a small continuation of what we have seen, and that is the issue of poverty. Much was made of the fact that because it is tough times the Minister of Finance went to have his shoes re-soled instead of buying new shoes. I think he should ask for a refund because there is absolutely no “soul” in this budget. It offers nothing for those who need the very most.

The National Anti-Poverty Organization, which has the Canada Without Poverty campaign, said:

The budget shows that individuals earning $15,000 per year can expect $215 in reduced taxes in 2008-09, while those earning $150,000 will pay $3,265 less in taxes.

It stated:

--the budget is virtually silent in helping to address poverty in Canada. There is zero, for example, for affordable housing and for child care spaces, two of the most pressing needs of low- to middle-income families.

The Canadian Association of Social Workers said:

After so many years of scrimping, eliminating the deficit, and paying off debt, the time has come to give back to Canadians. This latest Conservative budget fails to do so.

Pamela Cross, director of advocacy and public policy with YWCA Canada, said:

This budget continues to help those who need it least. The Tax-Free Savings Account--

The much vaunted tax-free savings account, I might add.

--introduced in the budget will be of little interest to most of Canada's women who earn just 60 cents for every dollar earned by men and who do not have $5,000 burning a hole in their pockets to put into a savings account. Most of us are much more interested in social programs such as housing and child care.

On employment insurance, the government talks about creating a separate arm's length commission. I am sure that my colleague from Cape Breton—Canso will talk to that, but there is not a mention about the workers on the whole page of the budget that talks about the new commission.

This is not a budget that moves Canada forward. At best we stand still while other nations rush past.

This budget, though, is not the turning point. It is obviously not the reason to have an election. The turning point was the election of the government in January 2006. Since then we have seen a government with a record surplus turn its back on the vulnerable, mismanage the economy with initiatives that generally help the fortunate, and bring us to a point where we face a faltering economy with a government incompetent to manage that crisis and uncaring for those who will be hurt the most. Canadians deserve better.

The budget treads water, enshrines inequity and cements unfairness. It is not the time for an election, I agree with that, but that time is coming, and when it does I will campaign to make things better for those in need and against this budget.

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite an honour to beat the member for Yukon to the punch on a question. It does not happen very often.

I have a great deal of admiration for the member for Sault Ste. Marie. Aside from his obvious problem of being a New Democrat, he is actually a pretty good fellow. I understand that in the not too distant past we might be related and that is something to be discussed over a pint of Guinness sometime.

I have a serious question for the member. We are members of the human resources committee. Poverty is an issue that matters to him and it is an issue that matters to me. There are many things that we could do. He has talked about poverty and some of the different organizations that have indicated that once again the poor have gotten pretty scant attention in the government's budget.

The human resources committee is looking at doing a study on poverty. The member is aware of some international and provincial jurisdictions that have actually been able to do some good things on poverty. What can we accomplish in that poverty study whenever we get to it in the HUMA committee?

[Afghanistan, February 26th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, in the time my colleague has been in the House he has earned the reputation that he brought with him, but within the House he has earned a reputation as somebody who cares about and understands the common humanity that is this planet. I appreciate his point of view. I am very comfortable with the position that our party and the government have come to on this issue.

At this point in time, when we have troops abroad, it is important that we come to a consensus on how we go forward. I commend the leaders of both parties, the ministers and the leaders on our side who have been involved in that.

When we had to make the difficult decision on the extension of this mission a couple of years ago, one of the questions a number of us had concerned the implications for Canada's ability to assist in other parts of the world, notably, at that point in time, Darfur. My colleague has had more experience in Darfur than any other member of the House and almost any other Canadian. I want to ask him his answer to that question. With our extension in Afghanistan, does this mean that Canada will still have the ability to do good work in places like Darfur?

[Post-Secondary Education, February 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to take the government seriously on post-secondary education. After it cleaned up the mess of the last Conservative government, the Liberal government invested in students through millennium scholarships, Canada access grants, learning bonds, graduate scholarships and more.

The Conservative government throws some money to the provinces and then gives an $80 tax credit to students. Wow.

How about Canada student loans? The minister says he has something in the budget. He should look at the recommendations of Julian Benedict and the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness. He should reduce the rate of interest, make the system more open and accessible, and better meet the needs both of our students and the productivity of the nation. And he should stop collecting loans from the families of the dead.

What is the minister hiding on income contingent loans? Why did he block an ATIP for 11 months and then refuse to release the information? What could he be hiding?

The government does not listen to students, does not understand students and does not seem to care much about them either. The government promises everything and delivers nothing and students are not hopeful that will change any time soon.

[Post-Secondary Education, February 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that minister's smiling face should be in the dictionary beside the word “hypocrisy”. He himself called for deeper cuts back in the 1990s. Now he talks about increased funding and students know it is a hoax.

Specifically, will he renew the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation? Or will he gut this great Liberal initiative? Worse, will he try to rebrand it in a shade of blue, reduce the funding and hack it to pieces like he did with the summer jobs program?

[Post-Secondary Education, February 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, students across Canada do not know whether to laugh or cry when they hear the government claim to support education. An $80 tax credit is not support.

The Conservatives have not renewed the millennium scholarship. They collect student loans from families of the dead and they ignore the needs of the most vulnerable Canadians. They promise everything but deliver nothing.

When will the minister finally commit to reinvesting in needs based grants like the millennium scholarship? When will the government stand up for our students?

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, there may be a better way of appointing senators, but we do not see it here. Maybe he thinks that Gwynne Dyer should appoint all the senators.

He talks about us making political appointments. The Prime Minister has no problem putting his political hacks in all kinds of appointments in this very day and age. We see them going into ACOA. Regional development agencies are now being filled at the top level with the former chief of staff to the Premier of New Brunswick and a former senior adviser in the province of P.E.I.

That is unbelievable. That is taking politics to a whole new level. That is putting them in the civil service, so they have no problem with using politics and being partisan about the appointments process.

If the government wants to reform the Senate, let us talk about that, but it should go talk to the premiers. It should talk to Rodney MacDonald and Jean Charest, and the other premiers and come up with something better.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry you interrupted him. I think there was probably a good point coming that we missed.

I agree that there are good senators and there are bad senators, just like there are good members of Parliament on this side and bad members on that side. I do not deny that fact. That is clearly the way it is.

However, let us look at those issues he mentioned. Let us look at conflict of interest. I am open to that. Let us have a discussion about conflict of interest.

Let us look at the terms. Let us look at the allocation by province of what the Senate does. Let us even look at what the work plan is. Let us even look at whether it needs to have its own separate buses. I will look at all that stuff. I have no problem with that, but this bill addresses none of it.

I assume the NDP will vote against it because these things are not mentioned in this bill. This bill is simply a piece of political red meat thrown at the base of the old reformers who just say “Senate bad, everything else good”.

This is not a comprehensive bill in the sense of bringing forward meaningful change for Canadians. It does not address the things that we need to change in the Senate. It does not take into account the fact that our senators do some very good and valuable work in Canada, and it is unfair that they often get targeted. Let us change the Senate, but let us do it right.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss Bill C-20, a bill that, by any definition, is purely political, even by Ottawa standards. Like everything we see from the government, the facts play little relevance in what it crafts as legislation or policy. This is all about politics.

Even the name, an act to provide for consultations, shows us what qualifies as consultations in the eyes of the government. It has not had discussions with the provinces and it did not take very long for provinces to speak out against this in its earlier incarnation and again now. As as my colleague from Newfoundland and Labrador mentioned, Conservatives in my province of Nova Scotia very recently spoke out about it.

The bill has little to do with reforming the Senate, but much to do about fulfilling an election promise made by the other side in order to appease their narrow base. Does the leader of the government in the House really believe a discussion, at this moment, on this topic is in tune with the needs and the realities of most Canadians?

In my riding of Dartmouth—Cole Harbour people are worried about the coming economic downturn. Is the government, which squandered away a lot of money it inherited, ready for that economic downturn? Is it ready to provide the support and the stimulus that Canadians will need to get through this difficult time?

Are students interested in this? None who I have talked to have raised this as an issue in the schools I go to on a regular basis. I always ask kids what is on their minds. They talk about the environment, Afghanistan, the high cost of tuition, literacy, social services and infrastructure that provides the social supports for which Canadian is known. They do not talk about the Senate.

It indicates that the government is either trying to waste the time of the House as we go toward an election, or it is using this as a political wedge, or both. The bill and others like it are props to be used to distort or to create the impression that the Conservatives champion change when in fact they do not.

The bill does nothing to address the issue, for example, of Senate representation. I will have that discussion. We should have a discussion about the House of Commons and about the Senate.

When we go back to the original Senate, when we had Confederation, the design of it was not bad. It was a good design. It was such that regionally there was representation in Canada. Lower Canada, Quebec, had 24 members. Upper Canada, Ontario, had 24 members. The Maritimes had 24 members. Then as the west joined Confederation, it had 24 members. Then the north and Newfoundland and Labrador joined and they were accorded seats in the Senate to represent the important regional issues that mattered to the people in those areas.

Yes, the House of Commons has a largely proportional say in voting on all the important measures of the day. The elected members of Parliament made those decisions.

The Senate is designed, not only as a chamber of sober second thought, but to provide that regional balance, and we saw that. My colleague from Timmins—James Bay, for example, suggested that Atlantic senators did nothing on the Atlantic accord. That is entirely untrue. After it passed in the House, the Senate had further hearings on the Atlantic accord. All senators from Atlantic Canada on the Liberal side voted against the budget. They did continue that fight. Probably at the end of the day, they played their role, which was to bring more attention to it. For example, the Premier of Nova Scotia came up for hearings. However, at the end of the day, the will of the elected House prevailed, but that did not make redundant the role of the Senate.

My colleague from B.C. talked about representation. I agree that my province of Nova Scotia, with 10 seats, and B.C. and Alberta with six seats, need to have that discussion. The bill does not talk about that. We need to have those discussions in a serious and positive way throughout the country.

We need to look at Senate terms as well. Let us talk about the Senate terms. Should they be lifetime to 75? I do not know. I suspect probably there is a better way of doing that, but it is not by coming forward and suggesting that we are going to have consultations, ignoring a lot of the important issues that matter across the country.

I would be very open to some kind of Senate reform package that would allow Canadians to feel they were more connected to the Senate, just as I would support some reforms in the House of Commons that would allow them to feel more connected to this chamber as well.

I want to read the May 2007 resolution from the National Assembly of Quebec, when this bill came back in its original incarnation, Bill C-56. It states:

THAT the National Assembly ask the Parliament of Canada to withdraw Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, introduced in the House of Commons last 11 May;

THAT the National Assembly also ask the Parliament of Canada to withdraw Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, whose primary purpose is to change the method of selection of senators without the consent of Québec.

Most recently, in the province of Nova Scotia at the Conservative annual general meeting of the struggling Conservative government of Rodney MacDonald, this proposal for elected senators was put forward to Progressive Conservatives in Nova Scotia. The report in the now defunct Daily News of Halifax the next day headlined “Tories reject Harper's plan for elected Senate”. It lead off:

[The] Prime Minister's dream of an elected Senate suffered a set back yesterday when Nova Scotia Tories defeated a resolution that asked the province's Progressive Conservative government to organize a vote this October. Delegates at the party's annual convention in Halifax voted overwhelmingly against the idea.

And a number of reasons were given.

It is not particularly creative or imaginative to run around the country and bash the Senate. It has been done for years. The language we hear of the unelected and unaccountable Senate, filled with party hacks and all that sort of stuff does not add a lot to the debate.

In fact, if we look at what the Senate has done for Canada and the work that it has done for Canada, it has actually served this country very well, not only as a chamber of sober second thought but also through its committees.

At around the same time that Mr. Romanow prepared his national commission on health care, Senator Michael Kirby produced his. They were both excellent reports and a good synopsis of the current situation.

I would suggest that the Kirby report from the Senate was every bit as good or perhaps even better in some areas than the Romanow commission report. He went on to do work on mental health which has now become sort of the hope of mental health advocates and people who suffer from mental health illness in this country. That came out of the Senate as well as Joyce Fairburn on literacy, Colin Kenny's work on military issues and a whole host of studies, some of which I individually would agree with and some of which I would not, but which no one could deny was important work.

I may be a little bit biased coming from Nova Scotia. We happen to have some pretty good senators. There is the senator from my own riding, Senator Jane Cordy, who is an outstanding senator. On the work I do on post-secondary education, Senator Willie Moore is the champion of post-secondary education.

If we talk to the AUCC, the CFS, the CASA, and the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and talk to the granting councils, they can tell us that they can always get a good understanding of what is happening when they talk to many of these senators who are particularly focused on this issue. Senator Terry Mercer from Halifax has done some championing work for post-secondary education.

Again, I want to go to the regional aspect of what they have done. When we talk about post-secondary education, we can talk about tuitions and the unique nature of Nova Scotia where we have the highest tuitions in the country.

We can talk about research and development. If it was not for the work, I would suggest, on the part of senators as well as Atlantic Liberal caucus members, some of the important investments through ACOA in research and development would not have happened. We need to build up the research capacity of our universities in Atlantic Canada which are very good, but they need a certain amount of attention.

I think that is a regional issue that is very important. I mentioned the accord. Even the Progressive Conservatives have nominated good senators. Senator Lowell Murray is actually a senator from Ontario but he is a Nova Scotian and he has been a champion of a lot of issues including the duplicity of this government on the Atlantic accord.

I think it is easy to bash the Senate. In fact, the Senate has done some very important work across this country. We can make changes. There is no question about that. We all want to see changes in how Parliament works. We want to see changes in this House and in the Senate, but here we are talking about this issue, when Canadians are worried about the economy, poverty, the environment, jobs, education, literacy, and the list goes on.

I cannot support this bill. I am open to discussions about Senate reform. This is not the answer. It has not been brought in with consultation. It does not meet the needs of Canadians and I will not be supporting this bill.

[Petitions, February 11th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present this income trust broken promise petition from a number of people in Ontario and Alberta, people who remember the Prime Minister boasting about his commitment to transparency and accountability when he said “The greatest fraud is a promise not kept”.

The petitioners remind the Prime Minister that he never indicated that he would tax income trusts. In fact, he said he would not. However, he recklessly broke that promise, imposing a 31.5% punitive tax, which wiped out $25 billion from hard-earned retirement savings, hurting particularly Canadian seniors.

They therefore call upon the government to admit that the decision to tax income trusts was based on flawed methodology and incorrect assumptions. They call for the Prime Minister and the government to apologize to those who were unfairly harmed and to repeal the punitive 31.5% tax on income trusts.