Olivia Chow

[Canada Marine Act, May 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the waterfront in Toronto includes lands that are much bigger than my riding. I wish I represented all of it. However, there are neighbourhoods all along the waterfront that have said no to this port authority. They have said no together with the mayor, the councillors and city council. No twisting of facts occurred here.

If members of Parliament are convinced that they are right, why would they be afraid of actually going to some local municipalities like the city of Toronto and conducting hearings to see what kind of witnesses would appear? They are too afraid to listen to citizens. They want to do it in a very quick manner, rush the bill through, not listen to citizens all across the waterfront, and not hear from citizens at all. That is why this bill is being fast tracked and it is a disgrace.

[Canada Marine Act, May 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, speaking about misleading, the Conservative government consults but it does not listen.

The City of Toronto actually has put forward two motions that have said very clearly that the Toronto Port Authority must be returned to the citizens of Toronto, that it should be disbanded. That motion was very clear. It was supported. It was voted on democratically. It was submitted as evidence to the transport committee.

The Conservative and Liberal members of Parliament choose not to look at facts and the black and white motions from the city of Toronto. Then they say they have consulted everybody. A lot of municipalities say they want to see local councillors on these port authorities, but no, port authorities cannot have local councillors. Perhaps they are not very accountable. That is why they do not want elected representatives on these bodies that have a say over how funds are used and how lands are used, lands that are supposed to be for all Canadians, not for the chosen few, the big corporations, the elite and the most powerful. These lands are supposed to be for all Canadians, but they have no say.

No city councillors are allowed to be on any of the port authorities. However, if one is a friend of the Conservative government, if one used to work for a former finance minister in the Harris government or a few of the Conservative MPs, one can be appointed to the Toronto Port Authority, for example. They have control over these lands. They have control. What kind of accountability are we talking about? What kind of democracy are we talking about? What kind of consultation are we talking about? How is the Conservative government listening to the people of Toronto?

No wonder there are no Conservative MPs from the city of Toronto. Over and over again, it has not been listened to. A local councillor, Mr. Adam Vaughan, was a witness for Bill C-23 and said he was very opposed to this bill. Guess what? He was shouted down. He was told that perhaps he did not really represent the City of Toronto and that perhaps he did not really represent the citizens of Toronto. I am sorry, but Mr. Vaughan was elected and there is absolutely no reason to say that the citizens have not--

[Canada Marine Act, May 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government is misleading the public about the impacts of changes to the Marine Act through Bill C-23.

If anyone opposite wonders why cities are so upset with the Conservative government, they need to look no further than this bill which will further reduce infrastructure funding for cities. Moreover, it changes the governance regulations for port authorities, like the unaccountable, unelected and undemocratic Toronto port authority.

Currently, port authorities are legislated to be self-sustaining. They are not supposed to depend on the federal government for handouts or subsidies.

The government is ramming through a bill and has opposed all of the NDP amendments which would allow the Toronto port authority, and other port authorities, to apply for federal infrastructure funds desperately needed by cities like Toronto and others across Canada. It also would extend the terms of the board of directors, decrease the size of the board, and make the port authorities even less accountable.

The Liberals do not even bat an eyelash. They simply roll over and are letting the Conservatives pass the bill to avoid public scrutiny. They together in fact oppose hearings at committee, hearings that Parliament could conduct across Canada so that we could hear from municipalities and citizens about the bill. That was opposed even though the NDP proposed it during the debate at committee.

It is too bad that the 20 members of the House elected from Toronto in the Liberal Toronto caucus will not listen to the city councillors, the mayor and advocates for our city. They have said that the bill is bad for our ridings, bad for our economy, and will not do anything to fix Toronto or any other city's crumbling infrastructure. It is too bad these MPs are afraid to face the good citizens of Toronto.

The bill is a clear signal that the Conservatives cannot be trusted to give cities what they need to grow and prosper in the 21st century. On the weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday, across Canada and especially in Toronto there were Jane Jacobs walks. Of course, people know that Jane Jacobs is a renowned urban philosopher, a planner, and it is her version of cities that are world renowned.

She urges Canadians and Parliament to close a dangerous Trojan horse down. What she is talking about is of course the Toronto port authority. Why? Because the port authority was imposed by the former government, the Liberals, against the wishes of Torontonians. It was formed through changes in the Marine Act in 2001.

In downtown Toronto we have 100,000 people living at the Toronto waterfront and another 100,000 who will work there when all the developments are finished. The Toronto official website says:

Toronto's waterfront is our front porch to the world. With the right kind of investment, the waterfront will become a necklace of green, with pearls of activity; people living, working and enjoying it with pride and passion.

The Toronto port authority vision, on the other hand, is to create an industrial strip dominated by an airport. These two visions are obviously incompatible. Instead of a strip of green with 215 acres of land, we now have an airport and planes flying out creating about 2,865 kilograms of CO₂ pollution in the air. It certainly is not the vision of a clean, green waterfront.

Jane Jacobs is not alone. Another very famous Torontonian was Allan Sparrow, who unfortunately passed away from cancer last week. Mr. Sparrow was the founder of a group called Community AIR, with 2,000 members in Toronto. It has been pushing the federal government to put the port authorities back into the hands of the citizens.

As a former Toronto city councillor, Allan Sparrow inspired a generation of reform-minded progressives with his ahead of his time thinking about our environment. He dreamed of a clean and livable city that all could enjoy. His role in shaping the Toronto we know and love today should not be forgotten. His legacy will live on in the movements that he inspired, such as closing the Toronto Island Airport and, of course, promoting a clean and livable waterfront community.

I want to talk about the contrast between the Toronto Port Authority and Allan Sparrow's vision. He said:

As for the ongoing battle over the future of the Island Airport lands, some things never change. The privileged and civically disengaged will continue to pollute and degrade Toronto's waterfront with their “save a few minutes at all costs” life style...at the end of the day, the larger community will prevail, but not without struggle.

Why is the Toronto downtown waterfront important? I want to talk about the neighbourhood that surrounds the waterfront. The waterfront communities, through Allan Sparrow, designed the beautiful St. Lawrence neighbourhood as a new, model downtown community at that time. It embraced a mix of affordable and market priced housing, centred on a park and community recreation centre. There were non-profit projects. Whether people are young or old, they enjoy living there. It is the same thing in the Harbourfront area with the Harbourfront Community Centre. This has happened all along the waterfront.

What Mr. Sparrow was particularly good at was that as a businessman he looked at the business case of the Toronto Port Authority and at its financial statements. He was very clear that in 2006, for example, the financial statements of the Toronto Port Authority showed that it made $5 million in revenue but spent $5.2 million to operate. It was obviously a money losing operation.

Mr. Sparrow was a very good business person. He founded a consulting company, Domicity, which in fact helped the federal government quite a few years ago in regard to attracting IT investment to Canada. He led missions to Japan, Korea and the Silicon Valley. We know that he was a person who knew a lot about businesses and a lot about large private and government organizations.

Allan Sparrow very clearly said that the port authority was unsustainable and that the business case it presented would forever lose money. Because of that, he knew that the expansion of the island airport by the port authority would be a disaster for the City of Toronto and its plans to create a clean and green waterfront.

He was also very concerned about the increase in air traffic bringing water and noise pollution to one of the most densely populated parts of the city. In his very focused and deliberate way, Allan Sparrow decided he would do everything in his power to stop it. In 2002 he founded Community AIR and was the group's spokesperson in the formative years of the fight.

As the number of people involved in fighting the port authority grew, more people went to the annual general meetings of the port authority. It became more obvious that these port authorities were not at all accountable. It was noticed that when the port authorities conducted their environmental assessment process, it really was not a clear and open process. This very strong organization, which represented the City of Toronto and the citizens of Toronto, was not given a voice.

I wish that the Toronto Port Authority had people like Jane Jacobs and Allan Sparrow on its board of directors so that the people's voices would actually be heard in these port authorities. What do we have instead under Bill C-23? We have a smaller board of directors whose terms can be extended not just once but twice.

The former Liberal government appointed a lot of its friends to the port authorities, and in the last two or three years the Conservatives have been appointing lobbyists and a former Conservative staffer of the finance minister to the port authority, whereas citizens and the people who represent the users and who really know something about running ports are not appointed. The Jane Jacobses and Allan Sparrows never have a chance to have a say in how the Toronto Port Authority is being run.

It is a disgrace. This bill is a step in the wrong direction. We know that every political movement is built on the shoulders of those who came before, whether it is the Jane Jacobses and the Allan Sparrows of the world or someone else. Their leadership, their personal style and their vision of what great cities and countries are all about have been missed completely in the bill.

We note that if lobbyists or political friends can have a contract or a term renewed twice, we are looking at nine years of them being in a port authority that has absolutely no say from the local cities or citizens or the elected councillors.

We have also noted that the bill has no accountability. Many municipalities are speaking against it. We oppose access to federal funds for the Toronto Port Authority and other port authorities because it would drain the funds from a central pot and the crumbling infrastructure of municipalities would continue to crumble.

We also note that the bill will give the minister authority to expand the borrowing limits of port authorities. If they go bankrupt, guess what? It will be taxpayers who will be left holding the bag or trying to pay off those debts. Or maybe the Toronto Port Authority, as it has done before, will sue everyone. It sued the city of Toronto and the federal government and made off with a lot of money, with millions, in fact.

Another change in Bill C-23 that is a dangerous area is that it licenses landholdings. It would allow port authorities to license landholdings to third parties with absolutely no input and no comment from local municipalities.

In yet another area, Bill C-23 gives no standards for security measures. For the port authority in downtown Toronto, right by the CN Tower and hundreds of thousands of residents of that highly dense area, there are really no standards for security measures.

Bill C-23 also does not give the Auditor General any power to investigate port authorities' financial practices, so the port authority is not accountable financially, and neither is it accountable to local citizens.

For those reasons, the NDP and residents of Toronto will continue to fight and will strive to return the port authorities to the people of Toronto and the citizens of Canada. Bill C-23 concerning Marine Act changes is certainly a step in the wrong direction.

[Petitions, April 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by hundreds of students in my riding. They are quite worried about their tuition fees. They note that as a share of a typical family's income, tuition fees are higher today than at any point in the last 60 years, that more than 345,000 students are forced to borrow from the Canada student loans program, and that the average student debt for an undergraduate degree ranges from $21,000 to $28,000, depending on the province. They also note that Canada's student loan debt is increasing by more than $1.5 million each year and has ballooned to more than $12 billion, which is more than the debt of some of the provincial governments.

The petitioners are asking the Government of Canada to invest heavily in a needs based grant through the Canada student loans program for students at public universities and colleges.

[Immigration, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, there is a global food crisis. Rice, wheat, gasoline and oil are too expensive for ordinary families, leaving many worried about their future.

Canada used to be a land of hope for those fleeing hunger, oppression and poverty.

In 1847 the Irish potato famine was at its worst. People starved and over a million died, and Canada opened its doors. Toronto welcomed over 40,000 Irish in those years. Many were sick and starving, but they helped build a great city, a great country, as did other waves of immigrants, over the years from every part of the globe, seeking a better life.

Under the proposed new immigration rules, the Irish would not have been welcomed in Canada. Nor would others fleeing famine and despair. The Conservatives would have branded them as losers, not winners.

Today we face the impact of climate change and a severe food crisis. We need to open our doors, not close them. We must not give the minister the key to lock families out. Let us open Canada--

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008--Bill C-50, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the Conservative government allows this motion to be voted on so that we can have a thorough debate about this immigration bill. The budget in front of the finance committee is complex. Certainly there will be a lot of discussion on the complex financial issues. As for having the immigration piece pulled in, given there are so many clauses in it, there really needs to be a detailed analysis.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008--Bill C-50, April 17th, 2008]

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the member for his support.

I am a member of the immigration committee. We will certainly study the bill and make recommendations. It is very important that we pull clause 6 out of the finance bill, the immigration portion, and study it very carefully.

Bill C-50 was introduced without any consultations or studies. That is why immigrant groups, lawyers, people who work with potential immigrants collectively are saying from coast to coast to coast that the bill needs serious study. It should be done in the immigration committee.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008--Bill C-50, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had even read Bill C-50, he would have noticed that the bill does not mention student visas.

We would not be talking about splitting the bill had the Liberal Party of Canada had the courage to stand up for immigrants and vote against Bill C-50 at second reading. Instead, we saw most of those members get up and walk out of the chamber. Where is their backbone? Where is their courage?

For two weeks nonstop we heard negative comments about the bill, which is fine, but those members are all about talk. Where is the action? What happened to standing up for their principles? We would not have to talk about splitting Bill C-50 had the Liberals actually stood and voted against it at second reading last Thursday.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008--Bill C-50, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering why the hon. member is so negative toward the NDP.

We have said that there should not be any landing fees. We call it a head tax. We opposed it when the Liberals introduced it. Why did we oppose it? Because the Conservative government only reduced it to half. We believe it should be reduced entirely. There should be no head tax for any immigrants.

On foreign credentials, in January 2007, we had a seven point plan saying that there should be a comprehensive, one stop shop for immigrants before they come into the country, or even when they are in the country, so that they can get all the information about foreign credentials. Lo and behold, the Conservatives adopted a part of the seven point plan. They established some pilot projects in four visa offices overseas, but there are two key areas on which they have done nothing on the foreign credentials. They did not speed up the recognition of foreign credentials.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008--Bill C-50, April 17th, 2008]

I could not resist either.

Mr. Speaker, I was talking about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We note that the charter does not really apply to potential immigrants trying to come into Canada. If the minister's instruction is to fast track foreign worker applicants from Mexico as opposed to parents coming from India, the charter cannot prevent the minister from doing so. If Tim Hortons decides that it wants workers from the Philippines instead of, say, Pakistan, there is nothing in the charter that would prevent that.

Further, the Conservative government said that the minister's instructions will be transparent as they will be published in the Canada Gazette and on the immigration department's website. The reality is that the publication of these damaging instructions is not subject to debate or approval in the House of Commons. Elected members of Parliament would have no say over the minister's instructions. That is not what democracy is about.

A large number of immigrant groups have said that they came to Canada because of democracy. They want each member of Parliament to have a say over what kind of immigration policies are established across Canada. They do not want the minister to have the power to say yes or no to individual applications, even retroactively. There is just not enough trust for that to happen.

They also say that if the minister is so sure about these recommendations, why not allow the bill to be split? The immigration portion which is clause 6 of the budget bill, should be taken out of the bill and considered at the citizenship and immigration committee, rather than jamming it into the House of Commons finance committee.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that these immigration changes are in a finance bill and at the finance committee. Perhaps the Conservative government sees immigrants as economic units rather than human beings and people who bring families together and people who establish communities. To the government they are just economic units. They are here to work, to give more profit to the employers, to the big corporations so that they could pay less. Those people have less power. They probably would not dare to complain because the minute they got fired they would be deported. They would be asked to leave. They have very little power.

The immigrant groups are saying that if immigrants are good enough to work here, they are good enough to stay here. That is why the immigrant groups across the country find that Bill C-50 is blatantly anti-democratic, secretive and dangerous.

The Conservative government in its PowerPoint presentation said that ministerial instructions will not allow the minister to intervene in individual cases. The reality is that in clause 6 of the bill, by changing the word “shall” to “may”, applicants who meet all immigration requirements, who receive sufficient points and follow all the rules can still be rejected. The more dangerous part is that because of the change in wording, their rejection cannot be appealed to the courts. The immigrants and lawyers have no access to the Federal Court as a last appeal. In fact, according to the Canadian Bar Association and lawyers who are familiar with this change, that is putting the minister above the law, which again is very dangerous.

The Conservatives also say that families would still be united under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. What they failed to say and the reality is that the minister and her officials would no longer have to consider humanitarian and compassionate grounds if the family member is outside Canada.

A few days ago a lawyer with Parkdale Community Legal Services presented the case of a father of a little child. The father is still in Kenya, which is a very dangerous place. The mother of the little child is trying desperately to get the father to Canada. They have applied for the father to come to Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. If Bill C-50 is approved, this case would probably not be considered again.

The Conservatives said that reforms would bring flexibility to visa offices to bring in steelworkers to meet labour needs. The reality is that much of the labour shortage is also occurring in the lower skills sector and these potential immigrants would never have enough points to come to Canada as permanent residents, even though they may have relatives in Canada. Instead, they are being rushed in as temporary foreign workers, cheap labour, and they will never qualify as citizens or be able to bring their families to Canada.

In conclusion, the immigration changes embedded in Bill C-50, a budget implementation bill, are bad for immigrants, bad for working families and certainly bad for Canada, which is why we certainly have to split the bill so we can defeat the immigration portion of the budget implementation bill.