Olivia Chow

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the budget actually does not help a single mother on welfare. For example, because she earns less than $20,000, this means that she does not qualify for the new child tax benefit. Because she is not working, since there is no child care for her, she does not qualify for the program that the hon. member talked about, the working tax credit. She loses out on both of these new programs. The parents of the poorest children are not able to benefit from this new budget.

Furthermore, on the investment that various governments have made on child care, and the hon. member talked about child care funding, in Ontario, for example, close to $1 billion has been transferred to Ontario and guess what? The provincial government has not invested this money, close to $1 billion from 2005, 2006 and 2007 in child care. Most of this money has gone somewhere, but we do not know where. The funding has not gone to the child care providers. It has not gone to create affordable child care. There is really no accountability on the funding that is transferred to provinces on child care. What good is it to transfer funding to provinces without any strings attached, with no standards whatsoever?

Many of the provinces, whether it is B.C. or Ontario, do not invest this money in providing affordable child care. Thousands of parents across the country are desperately waiting for child care and who knows what happened to the funding? Who knows what the Ontario government has done with that money?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is national hunger awareness day. This budget could have done a lot to deal with child poverty, yet there is hardly any investment in it to reduce poverty.

In just over 15 years, there has been a 99.3% growth in food bank use by hungry Canadians, and yet we have the means to provide all Canadian adults and children with a fair share of food if we had the political will to do so.

The face of hunger will surprise all of us because it is the face of children. We need to recognize the reality and the depth of hunger that Canadian families face every day. Some 41% of them are children and 13.4% are people who have full time jobs, and 53% of households visiting food banks are families with children. Many of them of course are working several jobs, yet still cannot pay the rent and feed their kids. This is according to the hunger count of 2006.

In March 2006 more than 753,000 individuals in Canada used food banks because they were hungry. We know that there are many hungry people across Canada in our neighbourhoods and our communities, and that we all need to take action to make sure that all Canadians have their fair share of food and no one is going hungry.

To reduce the root causes of hunger in Canada, we absolutely have to invest in affordable housing and child care, and increase the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.

I want to speak a bit about building affordable housing. Yesterday, hundreds of women in my riding in Toronto and their allies walked through the streets of Toronto and went to a building in the riding at 4 Howard Street. It is one of the hundreds of buildings in Toronto that has been allowed to sit empty and deteriorate until it either falls down or must be torn down.

These young women are saying that we need to build affordable housing because many of these women are victims of domestic abuse, and their kids are stuck in shelters, in unsafe housing. They have to move every two or three months, sometimes even sooner because they cannot find affordable housing. They do not go to the same schools. Their kids cannot form any kind of friendships because they do not have permanent housing.

Some even go back to their abusive relationships because they have no place to live and they are desperate. Homeless women face violence every day on the streets, whether they are in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal or Halifax, in big cities or in small towns and communities.

These women yesterday said that we have to push the Canadian government to establish a decent affordable housing strategy and that there needs to be extra money in the federal budget to build affordable housing.

We know that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has a budget surplus of at least $5 billion in its reserve funds, and that while this money is sitting in the reserve funds, there are hundreds and hundreds of Canadians who are homeless. This really was a complete missed opportunity in the budget.

There are also people who live in affordable housing now but their buildings are falling apart. Just in Toronto alone, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation said that it is in need of at least $300 million to maintain these buildings because they are falling apart. The elevators do not work. Many of these building are heated by electricity, and a lot of the tenants end up paying a lot of money for heat or hydro. They have very little money left to buy food and pay for transportation. There is a huge backlog of maintenance and there is no money to support the existing affordable housing in this budget.

Even though the government announced a new program in the budget called ecoENERGY to help homeowners to renovate their homes to make them green and to retrofit their homes so that they can save energy and burn less energy, this new program does not cover affordable housing. The program does not cover condominiums, rental housing or high-rises.

In my riding, such as at 55 Prince Arthur, the condominium owners are saying that they would like to do a lot to fix their building. However, there is really no incentive and no funding to support their renovation needs. Whether they are condo owners or if they live in affordable housing in city homes in Toronto Community Housing Corporation's buildings, they do not have any funds to fix up their buildings.

The deterioration of affordable housing and the condition the housing is in sometimes create a terrible sense of alienation and despair among the people who live there. Recently, we heard of the shooting death of a young man named Jordan Manners in Toronto. In my riding, in Alexander Muir Park, last Friday I met with a mother whose only son was shot to death only two weeks ago. The despair in her eyes was phenomenal. She said that there is a need for decent programs for young people.

We know that after school or in the summertime young people when they do not have a lot to do they end up causing trouble. They end up joining the wrong crowd, joining gangs. We know that statistically the crime rate for young people spikes at around 3:30 p.m. or 4 p.m. when school is out.

If we are to reduce crime what we need to do is to invest in youth employment projects, child care, recreation activities, permanent funding for boys and girls clubs all across Canada, so that we do not end up having young people not having a whole lot to do, and feeling despair and joining the wrong crowd.

There is a cost benefit in investing in young people. Why? We know that putting a young person in jail costs at least $65,000 to $70,000 a year. Yet, creating decent and affordable recreation programs is a very small amount. Many of these programs help young people. They hire young people and some of them even rely on volunteers. It is really a good investment.

It was a missed opportunity by the budget in front of us. We should be investing in children and youth, in arts and housing, in the cities and our future. Unfortunately, this budget does not do so.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about the need for investment in tourism. One of the ways that cities can benefit is through investment in the arts.

We know that a lot of artists earn very little. Their earnings are below minimum wage and they live in poverty, yet they produce amazing and creative work that enlivens our cities and communities. It brings in tourists from all over the world. Yet there is very little investment in this budget for the Canada Arts Council, or to help filmmakers and documentary makers, or to help people involved in the arts, the playwrights and actors. They have to leave the country in order to find jobs. It is a very desperate situation.

Does the member think there should be more investment in the Canada Arts Council, in our film industry and in our artists so they can continue to create their very dynamic and vibrant materials for our country?

[Petitions, June 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition from many parents who are desperately waiting for child care.

The petitioners have a concern that funding designated for child care has in many provinces disappeared and there is no accountability and federal legislation governing child care funding. For example, close to a billion dollars has been sent to the province of Ontario from 2005 until now, yet most of the funding has not reached child care providers or been used to create new child care spaces.

The petitioners ask that we protect child care by enshrining it in legislation with a national child care act, Bill C-303, and that we achieve multi-year funding to ensure that publicly operated child care programs are sustainable over the long term.

[Committees of the House, May 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc member said he is tremendously anxious about water quality and the sale of water. Why, then, is the Bloc prepared to support the Conservatives' new fisheries act given that Bill C-45 gives corporate polluters a free hand to dump toxic substances in many of our lakes, rivers and oceans?

The St. Lawrence River, for example, is intimately connected with the Great Lakes, which are under tremendous stress and pressure. This Parliament should strengthen our laws to protect our water, so why is the Bloc supporting any bill that weakens the protection of our water? How can we talk about exporting water when our water might be further polluted or contaminated?

[Canada-Portugal Day Act, May 31st, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-449, An Act respecting a Canada-Portugal Day.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce this bill which seeks to declare June 10 as Canada-Portugal Day in appreciation of the Portuguese Canadians' contribution in Canada and in celebration of the friendship between Portugal and Canada.

On June 10, in Canada and throughout the world, persons of Portuguese origin remember their cultural roots by celebrating the life of Luis de Camoes, the author of Os Lusiadas, the epic poem about the history of Portugal prior to 1500.

Portuguese Canadians have a long history in Canada. Back in the 15th century, on the south and east shores of Newfoundland and the Strait of Belle Isle, Portuguese fishermen caught cod and dried them ashore. Names of Portuguese origin are found along the Atlantic coast of Canada. Canada and Portugal continue to work together and the first annual meeting of the Canada-Portugal committee on fisheries cooperation took place in Lisbon March 16-17, 2006.

In the 1950s, many Portuguese immigrants came to Canada to farm and helped construct railways. Since then, thousands continue to arrive to build our cities and towns. Today almost half a million people of Portuguese descent call Canada home.

With the declaration of June 10 as Canada-Portugal Day, Parliament will recognize and express gratitude for the contribution of the Portuguese Canadian community to Canada.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, May 30th, 2007]

With regard to the government's initiatives to support families: (a) how many Canadian families earning an annual income of less than $20,000 a year will not be eligible for the new Child Tax Credit; (b) what does the government plan to do to stop the clawback of the national child tax benefit by the provinces; and (c) what additional measures will the government initiate to help eliminate child poverty?

[Petitions, May 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from hundreds of Canadians across Canada. They are concerned that Canada has not publicly condemned the killings nor raised this critical human rights issue concerning the violation of people's rights in the Philippines in its annual report and statements at the United Nations.

Canadian mining companies operating in the Philippines risk becoming complicit in the political killings and other forms of human rights abuses.

The petitioners have noted that since 2001 there have been over 750 reported cases of politically motivated killings in the Philippines and to this day the killing continues.

The petitioners call on Parliament to send a joint delegation of parliamentarians and representatives of Canadian non-governmental organizations to the Philippines immediately and to ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of International Trade and the Canadian mission at the United Nations to call for an investigation into the political killings in the Philippines.

They also call on Parliament to conduct a hearing on the political killings in the Philippines by the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, including an investigation into the risk of Canadian mining companies operating in the Philippines, and Canada's cooperation with the Philippines government on trade, investment and the fight against terrorism and its impact on human rights. The killing must stop now and the now is the to take action.

[Fisheries Act, 2007, May 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us has not only not gone through any consultations prior to being tabled in the House but many environmental groups and people are concerned about clean water and about our various lakes and oceans. Whether it be Lake Ontario or Lake Superior, people are very concerned about the bill.

In Lake Superior, for example, there have been U.S. companies trying to mine the quarries all along the lake area. If the bill proceeds to second reading, there will be quite a few clauses that cannot be amended because they will probably be ruled out of order.

What are some of the concerns of the hon. member? If he wants to have an amendment at second reading, why would it not be possible? Why would corporate polluters not be fined and that could go toward an alternate mechanism? Is that a concern that he also has regarding the bill?

[Fisheries Act, 2007, May 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the bill contains the alternative measures agreement from clauses 130 to 143. It basically states that the government would give all corporate polluters a really excellent deal. If these alternative measures are used, then the court must dismiss the charge laid against the alleged offender in respect of that offence. Also, a corporate polluter could admit guilt, but no admission, confession or statement accepting responsibility for a given act or omission made by an alleged offender as a condition of being dealt with by alternate measures would be admissible in evidence against them in any civil or criminal proceedings. Basically, corporate polluters can walk away. A company or an environmental group that wants to sue a corporate polluter is unable to do so and whatever admission it makes cannot be taken into court.

That is grossly unfair because it allows corporate polluters a free hand. Is that fair?