Mylène Freeman

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the motion before us today is urgently necessary. Children have a right to culturally appropriate education. Children have a right to the same level of education as every other child. Shannen's Dream should be obvious and yet it is shamefully unrealized.

The motion before us says that first nations children have a fundamental right to culturally-relevant education. Seeing oneself reflected in one's studies fosters pride and a deep sense of belonging inside a pluralistic society. The members of the House who belong to minority cultures will understand how crucial this pride and belonging is for healthy personal development. Aboriginal peoples have every right and reason to see themselves centrally located in the history, science, maths, arts and languages that are taught both in their schools on reserve and off reserve and in every school in Canada no matter where it is located and who the students are because it is the true story of our country.

The rest of the motion is about equality. The fact that we still need a motion to state that first nations children are deserving of the same level of education funding as average Canadian children is embarrassing. However, decades of talk and patchwork unevaluated initiatives attempting to bring the standard of education for first nations to the same level as provincial schools have not succeeded.

To quote the Auditor General's report from 2011, it stated, “Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has failed to maintain a consistent approach to education on reserves and failed to make progress in closing the educational gap”.

I will reiterate that this failure is due to a lack of political will. If the government wanted to, it could prioritize aboriginal education and commit its ministry to immediately create a first nations education act that would effectively coordinate a collaborative plan that would define the responsibility of each partner in the education system and would ensure that every aspect of the act would be accountable and consistent in its actualization.

In June 2008 the Prime Minister of Canada made a formal apology to the first peoples of Canada for the residential school system. In 2010 the Prime Minister signed on to the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples. Implicit in the apology was a promise to future generations of first nations children to succeed where we had failed in the past. Implicit in signing the UN declaration was an obligation to take action to make good on that promise.

Sadly, I believe that in the hands of the government the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples has no real weight in Canada. The fact that we are continuing to fail in redressing the damage done by the residential school system is a blight on the government and a source of shame for all Canadians. Unfortunately, it is absolutely relevant to speak of residential schools when we talk about the failings of first nations education today because aboriginal peoples are still experiencing the consequences.

It is shocking to learn that three times as many first nations children are in state care today than were ever sent to residential schools. The Indian Act of 1876 is an outdated and racist document which is a template for colonization, not for restitution and revitalization. We need to put it aside and give our first nations a collaborative and comprehensive education act.

Ellen Gabriel is an advocate for education in Kanesatake. She asked me to remind the House that Statistics Canada expects only three of Canada's 53 aboriginal languages to survive to the end of the century. These three languages will be Inuktitut, Cree and Anishnabe. Her own language, Mohawk, one of the aboriginal languages spoken in Quebec, will disappear if we do not do something.

Ellen asked me to read in the House a letter she wrote to me. She writes, in part:

Dear Ms. Freeman;

I am pleased to hear that the NDP will be introducing a motion to help First Nations children and their communities have the opportunity to have better quality education in their schools.

While Aboriginal children and youth are the fastest growing demographic in Canada, comments from the Prime Minister of Canada and certain Aboriginal leaders regarding Aboriginal youths' contribution to society have been somewhat disturbing. They seem to relegate Aboriginal youths' contribution to mere vocational level work to strengthen Canada's economy through resource extraction or the construction industry.... But Aboriginal youth should be provided with the options, to be provided with the tools to obtain their dreams. They should not be seen solely as labourers but we should help them exceed their own expectations.

Aboriginal youth must be given the opportunity to excel academically with a strong sense of their own identity, language and culture. To do so requires sincere political will in achieving reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples, including decolonizing methodologies, and concrete support in language and culture revitalization. To wait any longer will continue the cycle of colonization which has been the root cause of Aboriginal peoples' social, political, economical and cultural problems. It is time to nurture the richness of Aboriginal peoples' culture, language and identity with real action and sincere political will. It is time to respect Aboriginal peoples' right to self-determination as expressed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which states in article 13.1 that: “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retains their own names for communities, places and persons”.

We can no longer allow politics to dispossess Aboriginal children and youth of their inherent rights as the Indian Residential School System did for over a century and which the Indian Act continues to do.

So thank you...for your passion and support in defending the rights of Aboriginal children and youth to a quality education based upon their right to their own culture and languages.

Skén:nen

Ellen Gabriel

I would like to thank my colleague for introducing this motion. I would remind all members that we must act, and not just to silence critics.

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the value of a good education is immeasurable. A poor or inadequate education, on the other hand, can have serious repercussions on the rest of one's life and for future generations.

Unfortunately, first nations communities are all too familiar with the difference between a good education and a bad one. As a society, we must recognize that education is more than simply acquiring knowledge and academic skills. Education plays a major role in socialization. The teacher is a role model for students, inspiring and supporting them. Receiving positive socialization tools early on in life allows people to enjoy not only economic prosperity, but also physical, psychological and social health.

However, even after the Prime Minister's official apology regarding residential schools, first nations education remains insubstantial and inadequate. This is due to the lack of funding and coordination between the various federal, provincial, territorial and other partners. The direct result of this is that education is too often harmful for young aboriginals, their parents and future generations.

Despite the government's commitments, which may seem plentiful, the political will to take concrete action is simply missing.

Recommendations like those in Shannen's dream deserve immediate action by this government. Aboriginal people are fed up with studies conducted by a government that does not walk the walk. The Standing Committee on the Status of Women has witnessed just how fed up aboriginal women are with this government's inaction.

I have seen the same discontent in my riding, among the Mohawks of Kanesatake. There are too many delays, too many broken promises. The government knows what the problems are in relation to first nations education. The government knows exactly why 59% of aboriginal people aged 15 and over who live on reserves have not finished high school.

As stated by the report of the national panel on first nation elementary and secondary education for students on reserve:

First Nation students are not failing. Rather, we are failing students through the impact of legislative provisions that are more than one hundred years old and linked to a period that we now accept as deeply harmful and destructive—the residential school era.

I see my time is about to expire. I will therefore continue after question period.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, February 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today unfortunately threatens the preservation of our flourishing pluralistic society. I say this because we can only truly have freedom when every individual of every community is able to participate in the public sphere without fear of confronting violence. This is the purpose of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It does not impose unreasonable limits on the freedom of expression. Rather, it is a balance of each individual's freedom to live in society without fear.

Hate speech insidiously reinforces prejudices. It is a practice of inequality that is inconsistent with freedom. That is, it inhibits individuals from reaching their own full potential, and therefore, I argue, inhibits our society from reaching its potential.

Disseminating messages of hate via telecommunications technology is dehumanizing. It reinforces prejudice, encourages hate, and may even prompt or be perceived to justify physical violence. Not just that, but messages of hate are themselves a sort of violence, a communication of widespread violence that causes harm to us all by dividing us through the act of dehumanizing others.

This is why it is necessary that we maintain section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The commission deals with hatred, not with criminal acts of violence, and gives society's most vulnerable minority groups access to a mechanism of defending their rights as equal human beings.

Religious minorities, women, queer folk, visible minorities, persons with disabilities, recent immigrants, they are the ones who are most often targeted by the dissemination of hate, and are often the people who suffer from multiple forms of systemic inequality, including poverty and exclusion from the legal justice system. They may lack the financial and legal supports to persist in a legal case, and in the meantime, without section 13, their victimization would be allowed to continue unhindered.

This is why we have the Canadian Human Rights Act. It provides precipitous protection from dangerous violations of human rights abuses. It would not exist if those who needed protection were already being effectively protected.

Section 13 protects against images, words and opinions of hate, which is to say racism, targeted discrimination, homophobia, and grotesque and misleading imagery or information. This is a kind of violence and we need to be able to say as a society that we cannot accept this.

There needs to be a balance struck between the principles of free speech and protection from hate speech and propaganda. This is why we have a tribunal to inquire into reported incidents.

The law is specifically structured to account for the moral grey zone that can occur in cases of hate. When weighing the rights and freedoms of one person or group against another's, there must be room for variance and for each case to be adjudicated in its specificity. The Canadian Human Rights Act, including section 13, is a vehicle for exactly that process. If we allowed it to be disabled by Bill C-304, in cases where violence is being perpetrated victims would be unable to protect themselves using the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

Freedom of speech is not an unlimited freedom. The pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization requires the balancing and limiting of other freedoms, in this case, that of speech.

This debate is about the balance of freedoms and duties that we have as citizens. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act represents a duty that we have to other citizens to not limit their freedoms. That is, it allows for people to not be discriminated against and therefore to realize their own purposes.

This is a form of liberty, and it is precisely the act of balancing this liberty with the freedom of speech that gives us the opportunity to live as a truly free and pluralistic society.

Yes, the Constitution protects freedom of expression, but it also protects the safety and liberty for all. Hate groups terrorize, threaten, stifle public participation and target the most vulnerable members of society.

I urge members of the House to consider the needs and rights of their constituents who are targeted by hate crimes before voting in favour of this legislation.

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives' no strings attached corporate income tax cuts should be cancelled immediately and the rate returned to 19.5%. Meanwhile, small businesses should have a tax rate of 9% instead of 11%.

The NDP prefers tax breaks in return for performance, not just throwing them at companies that are not even creating jobs. Small businesses create jobs. We should be rewarding the businesses that are creating jobs in Canada and not those that are pushing unions and workers into a corner, forcing them to take a cut in their salaries or move to the United States. That is not the kind of behaviour we should be rewarding.

I can assure the House that New Democrats would do things differently and in a way that would create jobs in this country.

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats would strengthen the Investment Canada Act by reducing the threshold for investments subject to review to $100 million, and providing explicit and transparent criteria for the net benefit to Canada test, with an emphasis on the impact of foreign investment on communities, jobs, pensions and new capital investments.

More than just improving the Investment Canada Act, New Democrats would govern in a much fairer way. We would take care of our small and medium-sized businesses that create about half the jobs in Canada. The Investment Canada Act is only one lever among many available to the government to help protect and create jobs. However, the government is failing to use them.

We need to take immediate action to address the job crisis in Canada.

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Sudbury.

I am proud to speak today to support the motion moved by the hon. member for London—Fanshawe. If the House were to adopt this motion, the government would finally be taking a significant step toward ensuring that the interests of corporations and the interests of our constituents are not in conflict. This motion might be the first long-awaited step toward enabling the Canadian economy to work as it should. This would create wealth for all Canadians, not just for the owners of foreign corporations. Imagine an economy that all Canadians could count on for their future and their family's future. What a pleasure it would be to visit the workers in my riding to tell them that the government is doing something to protect jobs and strengthen the local economy.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the opposite. Canadians are being told that the unemployment rate is going up and that the economy is recovering too slowly from the crisis. We learn that economic inequalities are increasing and forcing seniors and children to use food banks. We learn that housing is becoming less and less affordable, which is forcing honest workers, often parents, into homelessness.

When we learned that the unemployment rate had reached 7.6%, the highest it has been since the May 2 election, the people of Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel began feeling really and truly afraid. The average annual household income in my riding is about $20,000. This motion would force the government to take action to protect manufacturing jobs and other jobs. This would give my constituents greater financial security, strengthen the local economy and, basically, ensure the economic survival of the region.

Here is what we need to do. We should begin by strengthening the Investment Canada Act. We need to keep in mind that the purpose of that legislation is to ensure that foreign investments deliver a net benefit to Canadians. This legislation must ensure that the businesses that come to Canada give more than they take. This legislation was implemented in 1985 under the Brian Mulroney government to protect our collective interests. Although the intentions behind the legislation were extremely noble, it lacks the teeth, strength and leverage needed to achieve the desired results.

It is time to amend the Investment Canada Act to enable it to do what it was meant to do. We have lost 400,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada since this government came to power. This year alone, we have lost 40,000 of those jobs. Economists and several studies tell us that if the Conservatives continue on the same path, Canada could lose another 68,000 full-time jobs because of the reckless cuts this government plans to make.

Offering tax cuts to business with no strings attached is the main way in which this government has responded to the crisis. Our corporate tax rate is already very low. It was 21% in 2008 under the Liberals and is now 15%. This is much lower than the tax rate in the United States, which is approximately 40%. Companies enjoy extremely low tax rates, but they have no obligation to create jobs.

Over 12,000 takeovers by foreign companies were not even reviewed under the act because they came below the very high investment threshold stipulated in the act. The NDP would reduce this threshold to a responsible level of $100 million. This would ensure that foreign companies take us seriously when we say that Canada's natural resources and extremely low tax rates do not come without strings attached. Investments must truly provide a net benefit for Canadians. This legislation does not even define the net benefit for Canadians. This omission, I fear, will result in the legislation being ineffectual. The New Democrats are working on addressing this serious shortcoming.

We want to describe in detail what a net benefit means. The key elements of this definition will be that workers are guaranteed a job and a pension and that communities benefit from investments.

The Conservatives want us to believe that the only thing that creates jobs is ill-considered tax cuts. This is quite simply not true. The vast majority of my constituents work in small and medium-sized businesses. Their employers are often fathers and mothers, just like them, who work hard to keep their businesses afloat.

As I said earlier, the Conservatives have lowered the tax rate for big companies to 15%. Unfortunately, more often than not, these big companies have disregarded the welfare of workers and surrounding communities, which is quite the opposite of small businesses, which have solid roots in their communities. The tax rate for these small and medium-sized businesses remains at 11%, which is very high for the businesses in my riding. The New Democrats are calling for this tax rate to be lowered to 9%. Helping small and medium-sized businesses must be a priority in order to keep our communities vital.

My riding of Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel is the perfect example of a place where small businesses, SMEs, create jobs that families can count on.

[Transport, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it has been over five years since the Conservatives promised to give back the surplus land that was expropriated by Transport Canada to build Mirabel airport. This was supposed to be resolved back in December. Several files are still dragging on and the farmers fear that not all 11,000 acres of land will be given back.

Will the government act quickly to give back all 11,000 acres to the farmers of Mirabel?

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 7th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, our amendments are working to decriminalize law-abiding citizens, but we need to restrict guns overall.

If we look at the statistics, a study by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec estimates that 2,100 lives have been saved since the implementation of the Firearms Act. One average, one in three women killed by their husbands is shot, and 88% of those murders are done with legally owned rifles and shotguns. Moreover, long guns killed 10 out of 13 police officers in the past--

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 7th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan for her excellent question. The Conservatives keep saying that Canadians gave them a strong mandate. In fact, Quebeckers did not give them any mandate. The majority of Quebeckers voted for the NDP. We want to find solutions. Quebec is asking the government to transfer the data from the registry to Quebec. Why do the Conservatives not listen to Quebec and the New Democrats, who truly represent that province, and just transfer the data?

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 7th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, as I said during my speech, I come from a rural riding as well. There were not many constituents who were concerned or unsure about the current long gun registry, but I talked with them about the amendments that we had brought forward and they were convinced that a solution was possible.

I am going to quickly mention the amendments New Democrats have been asking for that would reconcile rural and urban Canada: decriminalize first-time non-registration of long guns, making a one-time offence a non-criminal ticket; enshrine in legislation that gun owners will never be charged for registration; prevent the release of identifying information about gun owners, except to protect public safety by court order or law; and create a legal guarantee for aboriginal treaty rights. Talking about these things with my constituents who were concerned about the long gun registry convinced them that there was a solution possible.

Why are the Conservatives not being reasonable and trying to work with all members of the House for all Canadians?