Olivia Chow

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

Mr. Speaker, I did not know I was that hot.

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

moved:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Finance that it have the power to divide Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, into two or more pieces of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the NDP is determined to take every possible step to stop the Conservatives' irreversibly damaging immigration reforms.

This is the NDP's second attempt to stop the damaging reforms from passing in Parliament and I am proud to stand here again today in the spirit of cooperation to split this bill, and give it the study and amendments it so desperately needs.

A country's immigration policy can build strong communities, an educated and skilled labour force, and a vibrant and sustainable economy. A failed policy, however, can lead to division, resentment and transient communities of single labourers who have no prospects for citizenship, family or community.

Immigration policy that does not integrate immigrants into Canadian society, into our cities, our schools and our economy, undoubtedly leads to division in our society. When kids do not get to play together, the families are not connected and as a result the community is divided.

Canada's immigration policy needs to be much more than just about bringing cheap and skilled labour to Canada. Right now there are two streams. Skilled labour comes into Canada, but then Canadian government wastes their talents by not recognizing their degrees and certificates. As a result they cannot practise the kind of trade or jobs they are trained for. Another stream deals with temporary foreign workers which is basically cheap labour and this is what the bill is designed to do.

The Conservative immigration reforms would: first, give the immigration minister arbitrary powers to move people up or off waiting lists; second, limit immigrants the ability to reunite with overseas family members based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds; and third, let officials prioritize temporary foreign labour over family class and economic class immigrants.

What does this mean for Canada? It means lower wages for working families and it means that we will have divided communities.

It also means that tens of thousands of migrants come to work our land, our farms, wash our dishes, cook our food and pay taxes, but have no prospects of building a life in Canada. They have no prospects for citizenship, no prospect for building a family, a life and prosperous future in Canada.

There are 900,000 prospective immigrants facing really long waits, but the Conservatives' so-called solutions are just wrong. Their solution is to kick people off the waiting list and bring in temporary foreign cheap labour for their friends, especially in the oil sands. After all, the federal government approved over 40,000 temporary foreign workers in Alberta last year alone. That is a 300% jump from only three years ago.

What kind of Canada are we building if we are encouraging the growth of a program that brings to Alberta over 40,000 temporary workers with no rights, no families, and no future here in Canada? I just heard that Tim Hortons in Alberta brought in 100 workers from the Philippines, for example.

While the Conservative government ignores Ontario and Quebec's manufacturing crisis and does nothing to retrain the unemployed across Canada, it is in fact lowering wages and stalling economic prosperity for thousands of families. In manufacturing towns they are facing unemployment, whether they are in northern Ontario, southern Ontario, Quebec, and all across Canada.

Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour said recently:

This is essentially a program that has been allowed to grow exponentially without addressing any of the very legitimate concerns that have been raised and without putting any of the necessary safeguards in place.

In an article in the Calgary Herald earlier this month, McGowan said:

The foreign workers program artificially allows employers to keep wages lower when employees are scarce, creates a lower class of worker, and will cause tensions between the temporary workers and local, permanent staff.

We are already seeing it.

Rick Clarke of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour said yesterday in the citizenship and immigration committee that it is not fair to the workers being brought in, it is not fair for our economy, and it is not fair for those being by-passed because access to this program by employers is far too open. He called the program flawed because it allows employers to hire cheap labour without offering any long term benefits to the employee.

New Canadians make this country strong. Immigrants can either help to build thriving and diverse communities, and a 21st century workforce to compete with the world's best or we can use them, abuse them, and then send them home when we are done with them as the Conservatives' and the Liberals' policy will do.

The NDP said no to Conservatives' backdoor sweeping offensive changes and no to the massive expansion of temporary foreign cheap labour.

Instead, we want to ease backlogs by investing to increase overseas staffing in visa offices, increase immigration levels to 1% of our population, and change the point system, so people of all skills can come to Canada with their families and build inclusive, vibrant, healthy communities and neighbourhoods.

It is time for fairness in our immigration policy. It is time for living wages and family reunification. It is time for strong communities instead of weak, transient, and migrant ones.

However, instead of fairness, we get half truths, spin and a public relations advertising campaign at the taxpayer's expense.

The Conservative government said it is welcoming a record number of newcomers to Canada, but the reality is permanent landed immigrants to Canada dropped by 10,587 people. More shocking still is that while the numbers fell the Liberal and Conservative governments increased their admissions to an extra 24,000 more temporary workers between 2003 and 2006. Of course, we know they do provide cheap labour and drive down wages.

The Conservative government said that there are 925,000 people in the backlog and sweeping immigration reforms in Bill C-50 are designed to ease that. However, the reality is that the legislative changes will not come into effect until after February 28 of this year and will have no impact on the backlog of that said 925,000 applicants.

The Conservative government said that sweeping changes are needed to speed up the processing of applications. The reality is that giving the minister the power to discard applications that meet all immigration requirements is unfair, it is arbitrary, and it is open to abuse.

The Conservative government said that measures are designed to attract and retain foreign students. That is in its PowerPoint presentation, taking it on the road and giving it to everyone who would listen. The reality is that there is no clause in Bill C-50 that addresses foreign students applications.

The Conservative government said that there will be no discrimination as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms will be respected. The reality is that the charter does not help potential immigrants trying to come to Canada.

The minister's instruction is to fast track foreign workers, skilled workers from Mexico as opposed to parents coming from India, the charter cannot prevent--

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, April 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, there really is a complete lack of funding, whether it is a drug prevention program or a drug treatment program or an enhancement for the community so that it has the capacity to come up with innovative solutions.

We know the answer lies in strengthening a family, strengthening a community, strengthening a neighbourhood, but they often find the funding is short term.

It goes from project to project; it is project-based. Once the project is finished, even though it is tremendously effective, creates a lot of goodwill in the community, brings lots of hope and excitement and is in the community, maybe after a year, perhaps after two years, all of that goodwill, all of those effective strategies completely go to waste. Five years later maybe the community is offered yet another pilot project funding.

There is absolutely no opportunity for administrative support, to learn from successes, and to take the best practices of all these wonderful neighbourhood and community-based successful programs. They are not used collectively to create a permanent long term strategy. That is not done because of a complete lack of leadership in drug prevention programs and strategies here in Ottawa.

There are also many other things, even something as simple as a 24-hour crisis hotline for people who are abusing drugs. If I notice that my teenage daughter or my teenage son may be abusing something and getting into dangerous territory, what do I do as a parent? Am I able to call a 24-hour hotline? Is there a crisis intervention strategy across the country? No. So parents are often left alone, struggling to figure out what to do.

If there were mandatory minimum sentences, we would see some teenagers, because they just got caught up with the wrong groups of people, gangs or whatever, facing huge criminal charges, and these could be first-time young offenders. They need an opportunity for a second chance. Once they go to jail, they learn to become hardcore criminals. They have a criminal record. They graduate from jail and become completely trapped in that cycle of poverty, drug use and violence. That is a completely wrong approach.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, April 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I too have seen from small towns to big cities the fact that we need to believe in our young people because they are our best allies against illegal drug use in order to keep our streets safe. I have seen very effective holistic approaches that deal with drug addictions.

I have seen young people living on the streets who are trapped in a cycle of addictions and violence, yet their lives completely turn around when they discover self-confidence, when they discover, in the case of the hon. member's riding, being able to carve.

In downtown Toronto there are programs to teach young people art, whether it is mural painting, making music, or sketching or even small things like making jewellery so they can sell it. It gives them a sense of self-confidence.

Once they have that sense of self-confidence and a feeling of pride of who they are and that they are no longer living in a cycle of poverty, that they have some means of employment or some hope so that they can go back to school or return to their families, then we see their lives turning around.

They feel they no longer need drugs in order to feel that they are important. I have seen young people who abused themselves and abused drugs because they did not feel important. They did not feel loved but once they found the power within themselves it liberated them to have the confidence to say no to drugs, to say no to that cycle of living on the streets and living in violence.

However, these kinds of programs are very holistic. They are not cheap because they deal with the people as individuals, as human beings rather than as criminals to be removed from society, thrown away in jail or locked up so we will never have to look at them again. This approach of locking them up and throwing away the key, and these young people do come back out on the street and they become hardened criminals, makes the entire matter far worse.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, April 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak about this issue of drugs.

Just yesterday we heard a mother pleading for her two teenaged daughters who have been having a really hard time trying to find drug treatment programs. The mother ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars to send her daughters to a drug treatment program in the U.S. that is comprehensive and long term.

She is speaking out about and lobbying for a drug prevention program and also a treatment program within Canada. Everywhere she goes she hears about thousands of middle class Canadian families who have been told that there is just not enough funding to support drug treatment programs, yet somehow the Conservative government seems to have a lot of money to put people in jail.

I want to talk about what Bill C-26 is all about. This bill ignores the root causes of drug use and the problems relating to drug use in Canada. It would give mandatory minimum sentences, but science and studies have shown many times that these kinds of mandatory minimums just do not work on drug crimes.

Many statistics in the U.S. have shown that it has failed in the many years of its war on drugs. More people are in jail and many are trapped in a cycle of violence in their neighbourhoods. The majority of this violence is caused by drug use and drug dealing.

In 2004 the American Bar Association's Justice Kennedy commission called on the U.S. Congress to repeal mandatory minimum sentences, particularly with respect to drug crimes. Interestingly, the report said, “Mandatory minimum sentences tend to be tough on the wrong people”.

We want to jail the kingpins, but the kingpins and the drug lords are most likely to get off. The people who are going to be jailed and who are most likely to get harmed by mandatory minimum sentences are the folks who are the small fry, which is what they are called on the street.

We also notice that the U.S. Sentencing Commission concluded that mandatory minimums fail to deter crime and reported that only 11% of federal drug defendants are high level drug dealers, the kingpins I was talking about. It also reported that 59% of crack defendants are street level dealers compared to 5% of defendants who are high level crack dealers. Yes, we need to crack down on all crack dealers, but why are we not going after the high level ones? These are the people we really need to go after.

Just nabbing the small folks on the street will be a recipe for exploding prisons, courtroom backlogs, and millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Research has shown that it costs at least $100,000-plus per person for a year in jail, whereas if we used that money for a prevention program, an effective counselling program and effective drug treatment programs, we would actually see results.

That is not where the Conservative government is going. The Conservative government is ignoring what works and is of course going forward with the failed, George Bush, Republican style war on drugs that has been waged for many years. We have not seen many results.

In fact, we have seen a lot of handguns illegally imported into Canada from the United States. These illegal handguns are making the drug situation in big cities such as Toronto even more dangerous, as these folks who are on the streets protecting their turf are buying these illegal guns and causing havoc in our communities. We believe this legislation will actually make it a win for organized crime, because we are going to take the small players off the street, push up the price of drugs and leave the door open for organized crime, making the situation worse.

However, I want to spend more time talking about the four pillars approach, about what actually will work. I have noticed that even this House of Commons in 2002 had the Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs.

The House special committee, the Office of the Auditor General and the Senate committee have brought forward four areas, including, first, strengthened leadership, coordination and accountability, with dedicated resources.

Second is enhanced data collection to set measurable objectives, evaluate programs, and report on progress. We do want to know what we are doing and how we are spending taxpayers' money in trying to be effective. Without evaluation programs, we do not know whether these programs are effective or not.

Third, we need a balance of supply and demand activities across government.

The fourth one, which is the most important, is that we absolutely need to increase our emphasis on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.

We know this balanced approach is not happening right now. How do we know? We can just follow the money trail. I have noticed that for every $100 Canada spends on the war on drugs, $73 goes to enforcement, i.e. catching the people doing the drugs. Only 14%, which is $14 out of every $100, is spent on treatment programs. Research gets a tiny amount. Researching whether any of these approaches will be effective gets only $7 out of $100. That is hardly anything.

To see what is even more outrageous in terms of our approach, let us look at the figures for prevention, which is the most important. We know it is the most important because it deals with the root problems of drug addiction. For prevention, we spend $2.60 out of every $100. Of the money that we spend on the war on drugs, 2.6% is spent on prevention. That is really quite shameful. For harm reduction is the same thing, at 2.6%, so for every $100 we spend, only $2.60 goes to harm reduction.

It is no wonder that this war on drugs is not working.

Let me point out, however, that in other parts of our country people are taking leadership. In Toronto alone, there are the drug strategy recommendations. Many of the recommendations actually deal with the federal government. It calls on the federal government to establish a national framework for action and take leadership. Of course it is not doing that. The Conservative government is actually going the other way right now.

The Toronto drug strategy report calls for a holistic family approach. It says that we absolutely have to support funding for “family-based support services” to help families that are dealing with substance use, because often it is not just one person doing it.

That one person doing the drugs and who is addicted actually has an impact on all the family members. The report says that we need to provide a support and counselling strategy for family members as to how they will deal with that one family member who is addicted. By and large, the approach is one of health. When one is addicted, one needs to have the tools to be able to get out of the addiction.

The report also calls for support for parents who want treatment programs and the provision of “on site childcare at treatment facilities”. That is a very common sense approach, because one cannot take one's young child to many of the treatment facilities. As a result, because they do not have child care support, some of the folks who are addicted end up not going to these treatment programs.

For young people, says the report, we absolutely must have “comprehensive prevention programming” for young people on how they can avoid getting addicted to drugs. It states, in fact, that this should be a comprehensive mandatory drug prevention program for young people. Often they are missed. We are beginning to do this with regard to tobacco. I have seen it. It has been effective. By the way, tobacco is also a drug. We have seen that the prevention program is effective. We are noticing, for example, that fewer young teenagers are smoking. We know that if we put our minds to it, we can do it. We have seen programs that work.

The recommendations also say that it is important to train people on the front lines, whether they are teachers or front line workers, so that they can detect a person who is addicted to drugs and so there would be “early intervention, counselling and other supports in place” to assist these young people.

Of course, we need to deal with the root problems. Many young people in particular do drugs because they need to have drugs to mask the pain they are experiencing. Some of the pain could be physical abuse, sexual abuse or mental abuse that they experienced as children. Unless we provide the kind of counselling support they need, it is very difficult for them to get out of the cycle of addiction: being addicted, going to treatment, and then getting trapped again.

There are also other recommendations, which state that we have to work with the people who are abusing substances in order to come up with some kind of comprehensive approach. This is not what is happening in many places.

There are also service barriers. We have seen drug addicts who want to get out of street life and a life of violence. They want to escape that cycle, but because they cannot find affordable housing they cannot get their lives back in order. That is the result. They are trapped with people around them who are doing drugs.

We have seen programs where there is supportive housing. We might ask what supportive housing has to do with drug use and the war on drugs. Actually, having decent, stabilized, affordable housing, with some kind of supportive network around the person, is very effective. We have seen it work in downtown Toronto. Former drug addicts will say that they have turned their lives around, not because they went to jail, which may in fact make the situation worse, but because they found stable housing. They were able to feel that they could begin to contribute and participate in society in a meaningful manner.

That is a way to deal with our young people or with people who are addicted and have been on the street for many years. That is the way to crack through this, because drug users occasionally have mental health problems, and until there are programs to deal with that, they will continue to use drugs.

We have also noticed that many of the drug users are more involved in the cycle of violence and we need to enhance neighbourhoods, whether it is working with the community to provide alternatives or with the police to target high level drug traffickers, importers and producers of illegal substances. We need to work with the police in a holistic way. Having minimum sentencing is not going to do it.

The city of Toronto has said that there are parents, unfortunately, who occasionally use their children as runners for drugs, which is quite unfortunate. One way to deal with it is to work with the police and find ways to protect these children, possibly to pull them out and have their parents punished properly.

All in all, the NDP is proud to say that it does not want a very simplistic approach to control drugs and substances and that we have to have the four pillar approach. Sending people to jail for extensive periods of time for marijuana use, for example, will just not be effective. The U.S. has failed in its war on drugs. It has, for example, spent tens of billions of dollars a year on enforcement and jailing folks while crime rates and drug use have soared.

I hope the other parties will not send this bill for second reading. If that happens, there will be a tremendous amount of amendments at committee, so that the bill does not return to the House of Commons in its present form because we certainly cannot see any reason to support it.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, April 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about the importance of the four pillars approach: treatment, prevention, harm reduction and enforcement.

In many of the big city caucus meetings, attended by mayors from across the country, they have talked about how the four pillars approach would be comprehensive and how it would be effective. In Toronto, for example, there have been many studies and consultations. Whether it is between the families, the chiefs of police, the people who are working with young people who have drug addiction problems or the many doctors and scientists, their four pillars approach has proven to be effective.

The bill in front of us only deals, by and large, with enforcement but we know that enforcement alone would not assist in the situation at all. In fact, it would just put more people in jail and they would come out as hardened criminals.

Perhaps the hon. member has some opinions on how treatment, prevention and harm reduction would work coast to coast to coast.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, April 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the U.S.-style war on drugs has failed in the U.S. and it is failing in Canada. I notice that in Canada we spent 73% of our drug policy budget on enforcement, whereas we spent only 14% on treatment, 7% on research, even less, 2.6% on prevention, and 2.6% on harm reduction.

We have seen many Canadian families whose teenagers are trapped in a cycle of addiction. It really should be seen as a health issue not one of morality. We know there are many parents who are desperately trying to seek drug treatment programs for their teenagers and their children, but they have not been able to find them in Canada.

There are hardly any long term drug treatment programs. There are very few community-based treatment programs. Those that are available are private and very expensive. There are some treatment programs in the U.S. where parents end up having to send their kids but of course the travel costs, et cetera, are not covered.

We know that drug treatment programs work very well as they deal with young persons in a holistic manner. We know that many of them who are taking drugs use them to mask the pain that they have experienced when they were young, whether it was physical or mental abuse.

I do not understand how this bill would actually work because it would end up throwing more people in jail and as a result we would end up with more hardened criminals and certainly we would end up spending more money dealing with them on the enforcement side. We know that to put a young person in jail, for example, would cost at least $100,000 a year, whereas a drug treatment program would be a lot cheaper.

My question for the hon. member is, how could one even begin to support this kind of very wrong-headed, ineffective, non-science-based approach war on drugs that has proven to be a complete failure in the past?

[Citizenship and Immigration, April 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should stop giving herself sweeping powers to end run the existing system.

She said that the system was crumbling. She is trying to destroy it. We have seen this kind of discretionary power turn into discrimination, and I wonder whether my family will be able to come into this country if her immigration policies pass this House.

These changes are cold, callous and damaging. Will the minister change and fix the immigration system properly instead of crumbling and killing the entire system?

[Citizenship and Immigration, April 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Immigration is so worried about the damaging, offensive and sweeping changes. I am astounded that she will not tell the truth. No, the charter will not apply to those who are trying to come into Canada. No, humanitarian or compassionate grounds will not apply to those who are outside of Canada, and no, families will not be able to come to Canada faster and easier.

Will the minister drop her half-truths and really fix the immigration system?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, in his speech the member talked about wait times and the backlog.

If it is only about the backlog, then why are there two more changes in this bill right now? Why are there changes as to who can be sponsored into Canada under humanitarian and compassionate grounds? Why is that clause in there? What does it have to do with the backlog?

Right now if a visitor meets all the criteria, a visa shall be given to the visitor. Another change in this bill says that the visitor may get the visa. It gives the minister and CIC enormous power and puts them above the law.

If it is only about the backlog, as the member said, then what do these two changes have anything to do with the close to 900,000 applications that are in the backlog? It does not make sense. Why make those two changes? They are not connected to anything with the application process.