Olivia Chow

[Canada Elections Act, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am looking at the changes here in Bill C-18.

Let us assume the voter is a senior who does not drive. Right off, he or she does not have a driver's licence with a photo. Perhaps the person has a very old health card. If that person happens to live in Ontario, the health card does not have the person's photo, so that does not work. Perhaps the person would then pull out a credit card. There is no address on the credit card. Perhaps the person belongs to a local art gallery or museum, but there is no address on those. Maybe they have a credit card from a local store like The Bay, Sears or Shopper's Drug Mart. However, there is no address on those cards either. What about the citizenship card? There is no address on the citizenship card either.

In those cases, how does this bill actually help these poor seniors who have been in Canada for maybe 30 years, 40 years or even longer? They might even have been born here. They do not have ID with an address because they do not drive. We do know that 20% of Canadians do not drive. If those people happen to have moved not too long ago, their names are not even on the voter's list.

How would this bill help someone with a problem of that nature? Yes, the bill does fix the rural problem. The one million voters that were left off the list are now back on it, but how would it actually help those seniors who do not have an ID with an address on it?

[Canada Elections Act, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we all agree that we want to raise the level of voter turnout. One practice would raise the voter turnout, and that is door to door enumeration. We used to do that for many years. When the Liberal Party was in government, it got rid of door to door enumeration. Now tenants, students, young people who just turned age 18 and new immigrants who have just become citizens are no longer on the list. They have not been enumerated. Because they are not on the list, often they scramble to try to get to the polling station if they even know where their polling station is.

The key element that would help to increase the voter turnout is not in this bill, not in Bill C-18 and not in Bill C-31.

I remember a few months ago, in the spring, the Liberal Party said that there was all kinds of voter fraud and they suggested we ask Elections Canada to examine a few ridings in Toronto, for example. Therefore, a lot of money and time was spent to check whether there was fraud. Elections Canada said that there was no massive voter fraud. There was no fraud at all. A few people had made mistakes.

If we all agree there is no voter fraud, then why did the different parties pass Bill C-31? We said that it would not fix anything and it created other problems. Now we have another bill. I have no confidence it will fix all the problems or that voter turnout rate will go up. I know people will be disenfranchised because of the problems that are still inherent in this whole debate, which is the lack of door to door enumeration in the first place.

I cannot see how, after a lot of time, energy and money spent on these papers to study this bill and that bill causing embarrassment, the bill will fix these problems. It will fix the problem for those people from rural Canada who have been left off the list, but I guarantee we will encounter other problems.

I hope we return to door to door enumeration so people who need to be on the list will be on it and they can then have a chance to vote.

[Petitions, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition from a good number of my constituents in Trinity—Spadina to the House of Commons that would allow trades persons and indentured apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income, so they can secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres from their homes.

We know that Canada is facing a labour shortage. There is no reason why people and working families, especially those that are in the construction trade could not be allowed this deduction. Many Mexican and Portuguese immigrants in my riding, for example, would love to have the kind of tax deduction that some of the employers can have, so that they can travel a bit of a distance to find work. Whether it is travel or hotel costs, they should be tax deductible, and this is what the petition is all about.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, October 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about American regulations and laws. Is one of the objectives of the bill to encourage American companies to operate and invest in Canada's nuclear industry?

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I note that the member talked a lot about seniors. In my latest research I have found that almost three out of every 10 Canadian families have no pension savings, which means that they have no company plan and no RRSPs. Almost two-thirds of families with incomes below $30,000 have no pension savings. Let us imagine that. In a few years' time these folks are going to be retiring and they have no pension backup plan.

Given that we have not really increased either the GIS or the OAS in a way that would lift some seniors out of poverty, what plan do we have to assist these seniors, especially when nursing care, home care, and nursing homes are so unaffordable and when a lot of that care is not high quality? It is something that we as a country have to deal with. What kind of plan do we have in front of us that would assist these families?

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the minister talked about the importance of investing in young people. I cannot agree with him more. However, right now in his department the only way that a young person could get employment is for the young person to be out of school full time or out of work full time. Ordinary young teenagers, for example, who want to find a decent job after school will not benefit at all from the minister's department.

What I want to know is whether there could be any consideration for a year round program that is sort of like the ones that we had in the summer that to my mind were very successful and created thousands of jobs in every small and large community. Young people were able to find meaningful jobs in their own communities. Not only does it benefit young people, but it benefits a lot of the non-profit organizations. It also benefits the communities tremendously. It is a good investment.

I wonder whether the minister has any plan or is giving consideration to such an employment program.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I wish the Liberal members of Parliament would just get over the fact that Canadians voted them out of power.

On the question of child care, what kind of national program is the Liberal member of Parliament talking about? We do not have a national program, because the Liberals never brought in legislation to create--

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we know that 70% of mothers work. As a result, their kids, the children of working families, need to be taken care of by someone. Yes, there are some grandparents who can take care of the kids. My mother, for example, still lives in the house and when our kids were young, she occasionally assisted.

However, not every family is blessed with grandparents. Grandparents also from time to time have other needs. Grandparents also need support, which is why part of the child care program that we have been talking about is not just about child care from 9 to 5; it is also about a drop-in centre, a resource centre, so that the grandparents can meet with other grandparents with their grandkids in a school setting, for example. There would be a toy library, a place where they could share some ideas, where the kids could sing songs together and grandparents could talk to each other.

That kind of community based support is critically important, but it requires funding. Funding is needed to buy toys, funding to have a coordinated effort, funding for the grandfathers and grandmothers, for example, when they need to do something else so there would be some other kind of support.

Right now that choice is not available. There are thousands of families waiting for high quality, affordable child care. Your party recognized that because you said that you wanted 125,000 spaces created.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want you to imagine what you could do with $60 billion.

Canada is a relatively large country with a very small population. We need more children in Canada. We need a vibrant economy. Yesterday was child care workers appreciation day. We do know that it takes a village to raise a child. We also know that early learning and child care is critically important. The first six years of a child's life is the time when the child is learning and the child's brain is developing the most. We need to invest to help young people, our children, to learn.

One would think that Canada would be investing in early childhood education and yet that is not what I see. On a day that is supposed to appreciate child care workers, I note that those very dedicated workers have an average income of $23,000. There are child care workers in my riding in Toronto who say that $23,000 is not enough money to take care of their own kids and still be able to pay the rent. Imagine earning $23,000 today. Child care workers have two years of early childhood education training. They have a college diploma. Yet still they make $23,000 a year. That is a very low wage.

As a result there is a large turnover in child care workers. The quality of early learning and child care is not improving. Here in Canada we are at the bottom of the heap. We have the lowest dollar amount of investment in all of the OECD countries. It is a shame that we are at the bottom of the heap. Not only is that a problem but there is a very huge multinational corporation involved in child care, called ABC Learning Centres, from Australia. It is organized and owned by a person nicknamed Fast Eddie.

The corporation has seen an opportune moment. It has a different name in Canada, 1,2,3 Busy Beaver, or something like that. That corporation is beginning to take over a lot of the child care operations in Canada. It is trying to buy them up. We are beginning to see big box child care in Canada. Why is that a problem? In Australia, for example, since the big box child care operation has come onto the scene, non-profit child care centres, mom and pop operations are being taken over by the company ABC Learning Centres. As a result, the wages and quality of service have gone down.

In Canada we need to invest in early childhood education from the funding from taxes. We need to have a legislative framework in the form of Bill C-303 to say that the kind of services we are developing in Canada have to be non-profit. The 10 years of corporate tax cuts represent at least $60 billion. Each year we are losing $13 billion that could be invested in early childhood education.

Not only should we invest in early childhood education, but we absolutely need to invest in young people. It is correct to say that in the last 10 years a lot of cuts have been made to post-secondary education. Tuition fees are putting tremendous pressure on many families. Young people in universities are struggling.

We need a new grants program in order to make post-secondary education more affordable. We need to expand the eligibility criteria for the debt reduction in repayment program. We have to increase federal transfers to the provinces to reduce tuition fees. We have to increase funding to support aboriginal students. We need to look at what kind of grant program we can offer to young people.

If we are looking at productivity and investing in our future, we also have to look at investing in immigrants. We have to bring more immigrants to this country.

I note the motion says that we have to deal with the foreign credential problem. This problem has been around for many years. We bring in new immigrants and yet we do not recognize their degrees. As a result, a lot of talent and skill is being wasted in this country. The Conference Board of Canada has said that we are losing at least $1 billion in earnings because new immigrants are not able to practise the profession they had in their home country. On the one hand we do not have enough nurses and doctors especially in our rural areas, and on the other hand, we are saying to these nurses and doctors that they cannot practise their profession in Canada. That is a waste of talent in this country. No wonder our productivity is slipping.

There has been a lot of debate today about how more corporate tax cuts by some magical means would increase our productivity. A graph would show that for the last 10 years our corporate tax rates have declined from 28% to 21%. Those rates will go down to 18.5% by 2011. That is a huge amount of money.

One would think that our productivity would be rising based on the kind of theory that is being thrown out by the Liberals and the Conservatives, but it is not. It has not increased because we are not investing in our young people, we are not investing in our children, and we are not investing in average Canadian families. We are not even investing in research and development. Those are the reasons that our productivity is dropping.

We are also not bringing enough immigrants into this country. One per cent of our population is supposed to be made up of immigrants, and yet over the last 10 years we have never brought anywhere close to 320,000 immigrants into this country. At most, we have brought in 260,000 or 265,000 immigrants. Canada needs more people. We need more young families. We need to invest in them and yet we are not doing so.

We are having this very artificial debate today about the GST, about the corporate tax cuts. What is the difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives? Both parties are saying they will cut the corporate tax rate by 2% each year. There has been no change. That direction was started by the former Liberal government in 2000, and the Conservative government is just continuing with that trend.

With that $60 billion, not only could we invest in children, in new immigrants, and in young people, but we could also invest in our cities, in our crumbling infrastructure, the environment, in energy, to retrofit homes, in farmers, and in artists. There is so much we could do. This is a missed opportunity.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member has said that she wants to stand up for women, for children, especially up in the north. I wish the member had the courage last night to stand up against the wrong agenda of the Conservative government.

I wish the member could say to the government that instead of more corporate tax cuts, money should be invested in northern areas, especially for aboriginal children. A lot of them are living in poverty. Money should be invested in housing so there would be a good standard of living and in clean water so one-third of the children would not have difficulty getting clean water in their reserves.

In the future I wish the member would vote against a budget that cuts the GST by 1¢. That $5 billion can be invested in the community that she talked about.