Nicole Demers

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, March 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your generosity and for waiting until I got over my coughing spell.

It is obvious that I am pleased to rise in this House to again debate Bill C-291. But I feel a bit like I am acting in the film Groundhog Day. This is about the 300th time I have spoken about the same things in this House in connection with the same bill, even though its number was different last year.

This bill, which my colleague has totally reworked with the recommendations of the previous Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, responds to all the minister's requirements. I cannot understand why the government does not want to pass it, after it has been passed by the Senate. That is absolutely incomprehensible.

I am absolutely dumbfounded, so I do not see what more I could say to convince the hon. members.

[Criminal Code, March 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his usual eloquence. He delights us with his comments, which are always relevant.

I would like him to give us some more information about the fact that in Quebec we lean more towards social reintegration and transforming people than towards repression. Could he enlighten us a bit more on that?

[Guaranteed Income Supplement, March 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today about the motion that my colleague was generous enough to move. I am here in this House this afternoon and I have been listening to the debate from both sides. People are talking about money, values, costs. I have a bit of difficulty with that. I would like, for one moment, maybe for the 10 minutes that I have, to talk about the seniors we represent, who are probably the most vulnerable people in this country. We have an aging population and 38% of seniors are over 75.

People who are over 75 sometimes have difficulty knowing how to organize their affairs, and more importantly, they are often too proud or too ashamed to ask for help from anyone at all. In the case of people over 75, the husband was probably employed somewhere that did not have a pension plan. Perhaps their children have even passed away before them, since their children's lives were very different from their own, and they have probably been left to take care of themselves. They are very proud and have learned to get by their entire lives. Indeed, in the case of people over 75, they survived the first great depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1940. So, for someone who has lived through that and managed to feed their family, feed their children, send them to school, clothe them, and so on, those people might think they do not need much to survive. So they are content with very little and they often manage to make do without asking for the things they do not have.

I was listening earlier as the hon. member for York West and the hon. member for Souris—Moose Mountain were talking about the votes that took place previously in this House. It is true that three years ago—I hope the hon. members will recall—when the Liberals were still in power, a unanimous vote was passed in this House on a similar motion granting seniors the guaranteed income supplement, that is, what was owing to them, with full retroactivity, which was to be followed by automatic registration. At that time, we did not even fully understand just how disadvantaged our seniors have become and we had not yet asked for the additional $110 a month. I am pleased we are doing so now. This came as a result of our visits with seniors, when we began to understand their needs and what we could do to help them.

They are talking big bucks but how much, exactly? In the morning papers there was a reference to $525 million for a project having to do with a defence communication system and they were not even certain of the results. The amount of $291 million had already been spent and according to the reports the results were not convincing so far. That means $816 millions have been spent for nothing, yet they are getting upset about a few billions for people who have given everything for their country, many of whom went off to war between 1939 and 1945, and some of whom now have children or grandchildren off fighting in Afghanistan, people who have helped build the economy of this country and make it strong, even though they earned very little.

I have trouble understanding how they can confuse the issue and say that the Bloc Québécois can ask for things but will never do anything. I would point out to my colleagues that every time the Bloc Québécois has asked for something, every time it has invested efforts in finances, it always got answers. I can assure the House that it is not because the Bloc Québécois will never be in government that it does not know how to make decisions relating to finances and to the people it represents.

We have always been extremely painstaking in ensuring that the money was there to do what we were asking for. For our colleagues over the way, it is a big deal to give $1.5 billion to deserving seniors, but no big deal at all to allow companies to put money into tax havens and never see a cent of tax from it. There is a big difference between allowing the oil companies to not pay billions in taxes and giving, or not giving, $1.5 billion to deserving seniors.

What kind of a society do we live in if we think like that? We are in a recession and so it would not be possible to provide our parents with food, to give them what they need? The government has decided it needed to provide tax credits. When people do not have to pay income tax, they get no tax credits. Is that clear? Seniors receiving the guaranteed income supplement will never get tax credits, unless they go back to work, as the government seems to want them to. At age 75, they might have a few more years of work left in them, mightn't they? At $7 an hour, I am sure our seniors could make a lot of money.

It is inconceivable that this government should want to spend so much money on defence, deprive itself of so much money from the oil companies and allow companies to use tax havens when we need this money to help the most vulnerable members of our society.

During the most recent election campaign, I visited seniors' residences, as I always do. I will always remember one evening. When I left after dinner, a very stoic woman was waiting for me at the door to the building. She was clean and well dressed and was standing waiting to hand me an envelope. Naturally, I did not want to read the letter in front of this person, so I went to my car, where I opened the envelope and read the letter.

This person was asking what I, as a member of Parliament, could do for her. She had had nothing to eat in her refrigerator for two weeks. She was eating only bread and peanut butter. She was asking what I could do for her. She does not get enough money from the guaranteed income supplement. Her pension cheque, which usually goes up every July, had not gone up. It usually increases every three months, but it had not increased. Her rent, like all rent, had gone up. The extra $16 she was getting did not even cover her rent increase.

What do we do in this case? Do we take money out of our own pockets and give it to her? I am sure that there are at least 25, 50 or 100 people in my riding who are in the same situation. Of course, I directed this woman to agencies that could help her, but it still took several days before she got any help.

Is it right to leave people 80 or older broke like that, without anything to eat? Is it right to leave them to commit suicide? At present, 40% of suicides are committed by people over 50. In 2006 alone, 453 out of 1,136 suicides were committed by seniors. We need to think about that.

The motion my colleague has put forward today would enable seniors to live better, with respect and dignity. It would not make them wealthy. We live much better than that ourselves. I hope my colleagues will think about that when they vote on the motion.

[Petitions, March 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is again with great pleasure, along with my NDP colleague, that I am rising in this House to present a part of the petition from Grandmothers for Africa. As a grandmother myself, I know how much our love for our grandchildren guides us and leads us to do things we might not otherwise have the courage to do.

I thank Grandmothers for Africa for their courage in presenting this petition, which contains more than 32,000 names, to support African grandmothers in taking care of their grandchildren who have AIDS or are AIDS orphans.

[Pay Equity, March 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I was fighting against men like him in order to defend women.

Does this mean that the Conservative Party is adopting the approach proposed by Tom Flanagan, the Prime Minister's guru, an approach—as we saw yesterday on the news—that says pay equity should not get in the way of prosperity for oil companies in the west? Are we really to believe that this is behind their approach? What is their answer?

[Pay Equity, March 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, some 40 women's groups in Quebec and Canada have announced that they will go to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women to denounce the measures put in place by the Conservatives concerning pay equity, a non-negotiable right for women.

Is the government aware that this complaint will broadcast Canada's backwards approach to the entire world?

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the woman who appeared before our committee this morning told us that she made $4.38 an hour on employment insurance. I do not know whether this is lucrative or too generous. This may be too generous for some, but I am sure it is not generous enough for others. You cannot pay all your bills on $4.38 an hour when you work 15 hours a week.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, despite his good faith, the hon. member confused the employment insurance program and the training programs. Of course, employment insurance programs are managed by the federal government, but training programs are managed by the Government of Quebec.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would have a hard time answering that question without mentioning what is happening today at the United Nations. Women's groups from across Canada and throughout Quebec have come together to denounce the Conservative government and its attitude towards women, as well as the cuts it has made in connection with pay equity and in other areas. If there is one area in which women suffer the most, it is employment insurance. Thus, I truly believe that these cuts and measures are based on ideology. Those decisions were not made out of concern for the people, but rather with their own ideology in mind.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, who gave a wonderful speech on the relevance of the motion moved here today by my colleague from Hamilton Mountain. I am pleased to rise to also respond to it.

The biggest problem with employment insurance is that people look only at the numbers and forget about the faces of the people who are unemployed in Quebec and in Canada. This morning at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women meeting, we heard witnesses from the Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses who explained the problems they are facing in relation to employment insurance. They came to convey the message that, first and foremost, unemployment affects human beings. They came to convey the message that, when we talk about people who lose their jobs, contrary to what our Conservative colleagues would have us believe, we are not talking about people who want to stay home doing nothing and therefore claim EI benefits.

There was even a lady 50 years of age who lost her job. She was terribly traumatized as a result. At 50 years old, when you lose your job, it’s like losing your life. So this lady lost her job at age 50. She found herself dealing with post-traumatic shock: diabetes and fibromyalgia. She cannot work regularly any more and is having difficulty finding another job. She found something at 15 hours a week. At first it was 25 hours a week, but it is in a school in the Saint-Hyacinthe region, and unfortunately she is unable to work more hours because when the students are not there, the hours are cut. She has had to leave her home and go to live with her mother. At 50, she leaves her home, says her goodbyes, sells her furniture and has to go live with her mother. It is not normal, when you have worked all your life, when you have done your part as a citizen up to age 50 and paid your contributions, to find yourself in a situation where you are forced to give up your home and your things, and go off like an beggar back to mother, at age 50.

I know that numbers are important because of course, numbers talk. Last week, we learned from Statistics Canada that about 47% or 48% of women were eligible to receive employment insurance benefits when they lost their jobs. However, this depends on the way the numbers are calculated, they way they are devised, and where and how they are collected.

Never mind what they tell us on the other side. When they tell us that most people who have paid into employment insurance are entitled to money when they lose their jobs, it is not true: it is a shameful lie. As a parliamentarian, it makes me very angry to hear things like that. That is just telling stories about the victims and pulling the wool over our eyes, when they know full well that when people lose their jobs, they have no other option than to go to the office of the Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses, because they have no other means of defence.

When one hears such things, one wonders what can be done to fix the system, to heal it. Is there not enough money in the system? Did people not pay enough in years past? Is that it? I believe there is a $55 billion surplus now, and that is quite a sum. It seems to me there is no lack of money to give back to the people who lose their jobs.

Is it because of opposition members who are opposed to changing the employment insurance system because they have no vision, because they do not realize that losing your job is something terrible?

Is it because the Bloc Québécois has never tabled a bill to reform the employment insurance system? I can say that the answer to all these questions is no. The answer I can give is that the only obstacles we have are the ones the government has created. And that is not normal. The government is supposed to look after its citizens. It has the duty to look after its citizens, the duty to ensure that every citizen is properly represented and has what he or she needs.

That is covered by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. How can we allow a government that represents the people to contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? It makes no sense. I am convinced that if all members in this House were to take five minutes and think about their duty as parliamentarians, they would realize fully what needs to be done to represent those who elected us and who make it possible for us to be here.

When my colleague introduced this motion, she demonstrated a passion that we, in the Bloc Québécois, have felt for a long time. We want justice for the most disadvantaged and the most vulnerable; we want justice for all those who are struggling without adequate representation because they are represented by Conservatives. We will definitely be supporting this motion.

However, I have the same reservations as my colleague. That is normal. We need only look at what is currently happening in Canada. Women are being denied pay equity. Their rights are being taken away. In terms of what Quebec is doing, we hope that it will continue to make decisions for the people it represents. I guarantee that Quebec is different. We do not have the same values or the same ideas and when we talk about social values, we mean protecting the most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged.

We are in the midst of an economic crisis. If we had no money, I might be able to understand that the government would considering trimming the fat. But it is not trimming the fat in Afghanistan. We have seen all the money it has invested in deadly weapons and the tools of war. We have seen all the money invested in tax havens that has not been recovered. With this money alone we could have helped thousands of unemployed people who need help, not help to sit around and do nothing at home, but support to help them pay their rent, buy food for their children, live decently and so on. With only 55% of what they once earned, they would not live like kings.

I think that my colleague was absolutely correct when she spoke about the way we should be reviewing the employment insurance system. The bills that the Bloc Québécois has introduced are entirely relevant and take into account the reality and needs of the people. Contrary to our Conservative colleagues, when we say we have visited and consulted the people, we really did consult them. These were not phony consultations. We did not meet with a few people one night, and then turn around and say that we had met with everyone concerned about that issue.

We are meeting people out in the field, and the groups and people that represent them, and we have a much better idea of what these people need, what they want and what they are asking us to demand on their behalf.

We will definitely be supporting this motion, but we will definitely also be making sure that the motion respects Quebec's jurisdiction.