Nicole Demers

[HIV-AIDS among Aboriginal People, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, as long as members of this government and this Parliament fail to grasp the importance of the role of the Bloc Québécois in this House, there is very little chance of them making any further progress.

They have a unique opportunity. We are a unique party among all the world's democracies, a party that has no financial connections to anyone. Our only goal, our only objective, is to defend the rights and interests of the people we represent. We did not endorse placing COLD-fX on the shelves the day after Don Cherry visited the House.

No lobbyist can buy our support and we will never be in power. I would like them to understand why the Bloc Québécois has a role to play in this House. Although the government may not understand it, Quebeckers certainly understand. That is why they have been giving us their support and putting their trust in us for the past 15 years.

[HIV-AIDS among Aboriginal People, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, while I wish to make a point of speaking to the motion tabled by our colleague for Vancouver East, I have doubts and I wonder whether it is worthwhile debating the issue. Since the debate began, I have not heard any real concern from the government. I have heard many partisan comments, much pettiness and many things that have nothing to do with the problems of aboriginal people suffering from HIV-AIDS.

I find it unfortunate, in this illustrious place with 308 elected members, that elected individuals, with specific positions such as that of the parliamentary secretary, use the debate to engage in petty politics. I find it most unfortunate that this is being done at the expense of individuals suffering from a fatal disease and the disadvantaged, who can ask nothing else of life except to wonder when will the government realize the impact of their illness. I find that very sad.

Nonetheless, in her motion, the hon. member made a realistic and factual plea. I find it unfortunate that the Minister of Health did not come up with anything else either. Instead of decrying the situation and providing evidence of concrete solutions to the problem, he talks about the fight against drugs. We are not just talking about the fight against drugs. I know there are drugs in Canada and in Quebec and I know it is a problem. We are talking about people who are dying every day from a disease they did not ask for, regardless of which part of the population they come from and regardless of whether “Men who have sex with men are the group most affected by the epidemic, accounting for 51%”, as the Minister of Health pointed out. What a statement. When we hear that we wonder whether in his view the government would be better off letting people die instead of taking concrete action to help them overcome this problem. I find it unfortunate to hear things like that.

I am ashamed to be here in the House this evening with people who take part in the debate and say such things. This is no laughing matter and it is no time for getting sidetracked and bantering about Quebec's separation. We are talking about people dying and people getting infected every day. Every two hours of every day someone gets infected with the HIV-AIDS virus. And it is not the gays, the lesbians and the aboriginals who are getting infected; people are getting infected. Let us not forget that.

Instead of trying to lay blame, I would like everyone to remember that we are talking about a disease. This disease appeared 25 years ago and since then we have been trying to find a reason, some medication, a vaccine. Twenty-five years later and some are still looking for reasons. The primary reason is poverty. The primary reason is indifference toward aboriginal people who have been put on so-called reserves. Reserves are for animals. When you travel to Africa you go on a safari on a reserve. We are talking about aboriginal communities.

It is really very petty to not care any more than that about their well-being, to pass the buck back and forth as though it were a political game instead of a social issue. What has become of us that our politicians can do nothing but pass the buck without taking responsibility for their actions?

This party has been in power for two years now, and it can stop blaming the previous government and start thinking about what it has not done and what it should have done. If we want to talk about others' actions or lack thereof, I have a lot to say about the Conservative government.

This disease affects not only adult women, but also the young. There are children being orphaned. There is poverty in all aboriginal communities. It is not in one aboriginal community, it is not just in aboriginal communities in the west or in the north, it is in all aboriginal communities across Canada. There are people who are crammed into houses. There are people without access to clean water or medications. These are the terrible situations we see every day.

That is what we should be thinking about this evening. We should take this opportunity to focus on what we can do together—not against each other, but together—in order to eradicate this disease and give everyone a fair chance.

[Status of Women, February 7th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that I found the parliamentary secretary's speech rather amusing, even though I am very fond of her. I am surprised that they can claim to not agree with providing support for defending rights and claim to want to achieve equality for women. How can we achieve equality for women, men, children or human beings if we are not open to discussions and debates on our ideas and opinions? How can we achieve equality under those circumstances? It is not possible because equality comes only after long discussions on ideas and opinions. I found it quite amusing that she said the government does not provide support for defending rights.

It should not come as a surprise, from a party that firmly believes in equality among nations, from a party that firmly believes in the emancipation of peoples, from a party that firmly believes in democracy, that the Bloc Québécois will support the motion we are debating this evening.

No matter what the Conservatives say, there is not equality among men and women. We just need to look at this House, which is under-represented by women, and at what little consideration the members of the minority government have for more than 50% of the population, to understand how much further we have to go.

At present, this government does a disservice to women. It hurts the cause of equality and it is imperative that we limit its actions as much as possible so that it does no further damage, hence the pertinence of this motion.

I said that it does a disservice to women and I said that the Conservatives are hurting the cause of equality and these are not insults or rants made lightly. You can rest assured that much stronger words come to mind when I think of what they have done to the status of women.

In September 2006 this government eliminated the court challenges program. At the time, the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action was concerned that eliminating the program would slow down women's progress towards true equality. It said, “This program has provided Canadian women with their only access to the use of their constitutional equality rights.”

At the time, this government's fallacious argument was that it made good laws and it would not pay lawyers to challenge them. The decision to abolish the court challenges program did a disservice to women.

Subsequently, the Conservatives slashed the women's program to prevent human rights groups from gaining access to it. They muzzled women not just once but twice.

The World March of Women is an international feminist movement that brings together groups and organizations working to eliminate the causes of poverty and violence against women. They fight all forms of inequality and discrimination affecting women. Their actions are based on 21 demands falling under four broad themes.

The first is establishing programs to eliminate poverty and violence against women.

We are talking about violence against women. This law and order government boasts backwards and forwards that it has improved the security of women. If we tell them that they have done nothing for women, they reply, “security”.

Is that how women want violence against women to be eliminated. More tasers for the police, perhaps? We shall see.

They are demanding a comprehensive 10-year education and awareness campaign, managed by feminist groups and funded by the government, to eliminate violence against women; immediate and free access, for all women victims of violence, to resources providing assistance as well as to prevention, awareness and advocacy services; better financial support for women's shelters for victims of violence in aboriginal communities; access to operational funds for women's groups from cultural communities and visible minorities, enabling them to meet their needs and participate in Quebec society; better access to education for all women, particularly single mothers and women with no personal income; universal access to French courses, along with adequate allowances and access to childcare, without any exclusion based on immigrant status or years of residency in Quebec; a major social housing initiative, with 8,000 units of low-income, cooperative and non-profit housing per year.

This is not at all like the Conservatives' reactionary thinking. This is about awareness and education. This is about minimizing isolation and poverty and improving quality of life for women.

When it comes to the second theme, redistribution of wealth in order to improve the living conditions of women, things are not good. The Conservatives do not care about redistribution of wealth, and they do not care about the demands of the World March of Women. Women want progressive taxation of businesses and individuals based on the principles of justice, equity and redistribution of wealth. We do not have that. They also want a universal family allowance program with a supplementary allowance for poor families based on children's real needs. We do not have that either. One thousand dollars a year is not much help to many people.The Conservative government is not interested in these demands, particularly not if rich oil companies think they are a bad idea.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to elaborate on the other two themes—elimination of discrimination against all women and legislation to ensure the respect of women's rights. However, it is clear that the government is not particularly concerned about these demands.

To help achieve the goals of the International March of Women—and I assure the House that I trimmed the list in order to bring to light those that pertain exclusively to the provinces and Quebec—it is vital to have the support of women's rights and lobby groups, such as the Fédération des femmes du Québec, the National Association of Women and the Law, the Canadian Feminist Alliance and other feminist lobby groups that have watched this government's support disappear.

This government is in fact harmful to women and is making it very difficult to achieve equality between men and women.

Last December several major unions, disgusted with this government, took a preemptive strike by providing financial support to women's organizations “that have been punished under the Conservative government’s anti-equality agenda”. The announcement made by the unions coincided with the 26th anniversary of Canada's ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Furthermore, John Gordon, president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, stated:

This government’s decision to stop funding research and advocacy by women’s organizations was short sighted, and our unions will continue to push for its reversal.

We know where this government stands, and it is not in defence of women's rights, that is for sure.

This motion calls on the government to restore equality for women, by setting that as an objective of the women's program of Status of Women Canada. The motion also should have called on it to restore the eligibility criteria for women's rights groups and lobby groups, but we all know that, for those who care about equality, the only way to advance the cause of women is to send this government back to the opposition benches, where its yearning to fight wars, restrict the right to abortion and bring back the death penalty will no longer be a danger to us all.

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague. Any measure that could help make restitution to the victims either mentally, physically or financially, is welcome. Such measures could help them take charge of their own lives and to stay here as long as possible.

My colleague is absolutely right when she says that when victims go back to their home country something bad might happen to them or their family members there. Quite often the parents are the primary victims. They are led to believe that their children will be brought here for a better life and that they will be given money to help other children in the family, but that is not what happens.

Any measure that could help the victims of human trafficking is welcome.

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, until today, there has never been much awareness here in the House about human trafficking, including the trafficking of children. Until recently, it was estimated that 8,000 to 16,000 people, including children, were victims of human trafficking annually, but in reality we know that number is much higher. Quite often we bury our heads in the sand like ostriches; what we do not see does not exist.

Addressing this problem in committee has allowed its members, including myself, to realize the extent and the horror of the situation. We therefore wanted to be sure that, even if the Winter Olympic Games organizing committee was not paying attention to this issue, someone was. It is the responsibility of everyone, every man and every woman, to ensure that those who come here will not be coming here as victims or slaves, but as visitors to attend the Winter Olympic Games.

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

We did consult various spokespersons, as well as a UN report, about human trafficking, the trafficking of women.

The report seemed to say that the measures put in place in May 2006 by Immigration Canada were good measures, but should be improved. These measures were not enough to ensure that victims would report the situation.

If they return home after 120 days because they have no choice but to go back where they came from, they find themselves in the same situation.

We must not forget that human trafficking is worth $7 billion to $10 billion annually. As a result, traffickers are not necessarily going to stop because we decide to send these people home after protecting them for 120 days. The situation in their home country has not changed; we have not eradicated the problem at its source.

We have to give these people assurances that we will protect them and keep them safe, that they will be entitled and able to live here if they choose, that they will have the ability to make choices about their lives and that they will not be pressured to make up their minds within 120 days. For a woman or a child, 120 days is not much time to recover after being beaten, tortured and subjected to all sorts of sexual abuse.

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it does not give me much pleasure to speak to this issue because such issues are never fun to talk about. Nor am I very enthusiastic about it, despite the enthusiasm I typically exhibit, as our Conservative opponents have often pointed out. However, we do have to talk about this issue, and time is of the essence.

The Olympic Games to be held in Vancouver in 2010 will offer many people an opportunity to visit a very beautiful part of Canada for the first time. British Columbia is certainly a beautiful place. However, we know there have been a number of cases of human trafficking all over Canada and Quebec. Human trafficking, which also victimizes children, happens on every continent, whether it is in Thailand, the Dominican Republic or even Tanga, a small kingdom that I had the opportunity to visit recently.

Elected officials in various countries are worried about this issue because the number of human trafficking cases is growing. Children and women are being treated like livestock and stripped of their rights. They are often taken under vile conditions to countries they do not know and from which they will probably never return.

It is easy to see how this can lead to a sense of paranoia. As parents, as fathers and mothers, we all worry about our children. I am sure that this goes for parents in the countries that victims of human trafficking come from too. All parents want their children to take advantage of the freedom and rights they enjoy so that they can explore their childhood and develop their personalities with no fear for their safety.

Unfortunately, that is not what is happening. When a child is taken from its parents or a woman from her family under false pretenses, and that person is then taken to another country to be subjected to the base instincts of another, that is a very serious crime. We have to put a stop to this criminal activity. We have to put an end to the sad fate of the more than 2.5 million victims who are taken from one country to another every year to be used for sexual purposes and menial work—in short, for slavery. We have to put an end to this.

The staging of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver provides an excellent opportunity to establish measures to eradicate this scourge. I would remind the House that the World Cup in Germany was the setting of a number of incidents involving human trafficking. We do not want the same thing to happen in Vancouver, British Columbia, just as we would not want it to happen in Quebec.

We have already heard reports of certain municipal bodies in British Columbia that would like to develop areas where people who practice non traditional professions, such as prostitution, can ply their trade in relative security. We can already detect an undercurrent of sexuality associated with the games. This undercurrent must be inhibited in order to prevent any undue influence on the practice of human trafficking any more than in other situations.

Any time a large number of people travel to a specific location, naturally, the temptation for human traffickers is even greater.

Certainly, people who engage in human trafficking, those who benefit and make money from it, are more tempted to go to places like Vancouver during the Olympic Games because they know there is a great deal of money to be made there. There can be no victims without a victimizer. Unfortunately, that is another problem that needs to be addressed.

As my colleague was saying earlier, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration already implemented some measures in 2006, when we joined the Palermo protocol. The Government of Canada, through the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, promised that victims of human trafficking would benefit from the protocol and that they would be taken care of. That constitutes the most important aspect of our action. In fact, if we really want to be able to eliminate human trafficking, we must ensure that the women and children who are victims, the ones who are found and who denounce their aggressor and the people who exploited them for trafficking purposes, are adequately protected.

I know that at present, these victims are allowed to stay here for 120 days to decide what they are going to do with their lives. I know that they can have their case reviewed to determine whether they qualify for political asylum. I know that all that is done and that the victims receive medical care as well.

But we must not forget that women and children who are used for months or even years are in a very fragile mental state. I hope that the medical care they receive includes psychological and psychiatric treatment.

I also hope that when these people have to face Canadian citizenship and immigration officials, they can take advantage of the refugee appeal division. But this poses a problem, however: the refugee appeal division is not yet in place in Canada. It is all well and good to say that people can claim refugee status, but that does not mean much if there is no one to rule on refugee claims.

I am also aware that the problem of human trafficking has existed for a number of years. In Quebec, however, we were not as aware of this problem, even though there were cases of child abduction and rape, because we knew that there were people who willingly worked as exotic or erotic entertainers, for example, without being forced. It is not the same situation when children are abducted.

We did not really know that human trafficking was so widespread. The advent of the Internet has opened our eyes to the fact that now, crime and organized crime have no borders or boundaries. This means that from now on, we must be increasingly aware of these situations and concern ourselves with the fate of women and children in other countries.

In recent months, two Canadians have been arrested in Thailand for purchasing the sexual services of children. We cannot escape this reality. We can never escape this reality. Sexual abuse and human trafficking have no borders and so we have to educate anyone who may come into contact with the victims. This must be carried out not only at the local, municipal and provincial level, but also at the national and international level.

It is important to remember that awareness and information are the most important tools we have to put an end to this trafficking. If we do not take action now, if we do not immediately take steps to ensure that, in 2010, Vancouver will be a good place to be, a place that people will choose to go to and where they will have the necessary security to enjoy the Olympic Games, we will find ourselves in a situation where there will be many victims. It is best to take action now. It is best to ensure right now that we have taken all the necessary measures and that we have all the tools at our disposal to eradicate human trafficking.

I will have to stop, as I can no longer speak. I regret that very much.

[Status of Women, January 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this week marks the 20th anniversary of a very important ruling for women. In the Dr. Morgentaler case, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion.

After a tough 20-year battle led by doctors and women's groups, this ruling finally allowed women to take control of their bodies and their pregnancies and to have access to safe abortion. Since then, they have had the freedom to choose.

That is why any threat by this Conservative government to limit the right to abortion is a direct affront to women's rights. Bill C-484 by the hon. Conservative member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park opens the door to criminalizing abortion.

We are against taking any steps backward. Abortion is a vested right ensuring the well-being and equality of women.

[Court Challenges Program, December 3rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government eliminated the court challenges program over one year ago contrary to the advice of officials, women's groups, aboriginal peoples and language communities.

Bernard Lord's consultations will only tell us what we already know—that everyone wants the court challenges program to be brought back even though the Prime Minister has already rejected the idea. What credibility can we give to these consultations?

[Committees of the House, November 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have to wonder—although it does not surprise me—how the parliamentary secretary can try to avoid responding to the motion introduced by my colleague this morning, and instead try to respond to all kinds of things that have nothing to do with this motion.

But the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities agreed with the principle of this motion when he was a member of the Quebec government.

So I do not understand how the Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage can go against the wishes of a minister from his own cabinet.