Olivia Chow

[Business of Supply, November 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I hope the minister will respect the time.

I assume then that the funds come from the HRSD department. Yes or no?

[Business of Supply, November 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I plan to ask a series of questions and then make a statement close to the end of the 15 minutes.

I notice that $27 million has been spent to design and promote the universal child care benefit. How much of that is being spent on putting ads in newspapers and on radio stations, and from which department does the money come?

[Citizenship and Immigration, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, undocumented workers and their families live in fear today because the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has failed to act.

It seems the minister has three choices: he could follow the Liberal lead and just turn a blind eye to the exploitation of these workers, he could order a massive witch hunt and deport 200,000 hard-working tax paying people, or he could just do his job and find a solution.

What is the minister planning to do?

[Afghanistan, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow thousands of people will be joining New Democrats across Canada to show support for our troops in Afghanistan. We are showing support by rallying for peace. We are showing support by demanding the withdrawal of troops from this search and kill mission. There is no clear goal, no exit strategy, and no prospect of success in this Bush style war.

Canadian soldiers and innocent civilians are getting maimed and killed. The Conservative government followed the lead of the Liberals for this disastrous mission and has squandered $4 billion, with just a fraction of that for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. We need a new approach based on dialogue, rebuilding and peace development.

We urge all members of the House to support our troops by joining our call for peace.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we have talked about a lot. Since 2000, there have been billions of dollars of surplus, but 1.2 million children are living in poverty and no progress has been made in reducing it since that time. The child poverty rate is stuck at around 18% since 2000, which is no progress whatsoever.

The number of children living in poverty has risen by 20% since 1989. It has got worse. Low income couples with children are still $9,900 below the poverty line. The poverty rate is virtually unchanged at 12%, and 41% of the food bank users in 2004 were children. That is approximately 325,390 children.

There is absolutely no progress. Will the member of Parliament from the NDP acknowledge that those are the facts in front of us?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we have an environmental disaster in our midst. The World Wildlife Fund said that we are quickly running out of global resources. We are seeing an increase in forest fires and a pine beetle infestation killing off our pines and forests. We know that we have a serious problem.

In this budget there is no investment in fuel efficiency vehicles. There is no investment in green transportation or technology. There is no real investment in public transit or in retrofitting buildings. However, it does continue the former Liberal government's practice of heavily subsidizing the oil and gas industry to the tune of $1.5 billion.

I do not know whether that member of Parliament finds that troubling. If there is an opportunity, would that member of Parliament, or the Liberal Party, vote against subsidies so that we can in fact take the $1.5 billion and invest it in all of those matters, especially for homeowners, so that they could retrofit their homes and be able to save on electricity while being able to create some jobs? Would that be an area that he would definitely work on or agree with the NDP?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, why are the hon. member and the Bloc walking away from Quebec children by agreeing with this budget which clearly is taking about $800 million from the early childhood education agreement with Quebec? That was what was due. I have heard the leader of the Bloc say in this House that $800 million was needed. That was the agreement. By supporting this budget in fact the Bloc is walking away from the $800 million that was originally agreed to.

We know that a lot of Canadians care about making poverty history. Just this week over 5,000 Canadians made submissions to the Minister of Finance saying that we must deal with child poverty in Canada and child poverty elsewhere. There are 23 million people around the world who took action by standing up against poverty. In Canada alone, 50,000 Canadians want real action on poverty.

In this budget, there is really very little on foreign aid. There is very little on the child development fund. That $800 million is now no longer there because of this budget. How could the Bloc party agree to this kind of budget?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in 1989 in the House of Commons there was a unanimous vote to end child poverty in 2000. Perhaps the hon. member remembers that pledge, yet after years of surpluses we still have 1.5 million kids living in poverty. In her city of Toronto, approximately one out of three kids is living below the poverty line. The majority of people using food banks like the Daily Bread Food Bank and FoodShare are in fact children.

I heard a long speech about how we need to care about the people who are most vulnerable. I have a question. Why is it, given surplus after surplus during all these years, that there has been no significant investment to lower the rate of child poverty? In her mind, I wonder if this budget seems, like it does for me, to have continued the same tradition of taking all the surplus to pay down debt rather than invest in children.

How would the Liberals have done anything differently? It seems to me that it is the same pattern of taking all the surplus and dealing only with debt rather than investing in children.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, many seniors do not file income tax returns and many of them, through no fault of their own, do not receive the guaranteed income supplement even though they are entitled to it.

Would it not be a much better use of taxpayer money to help the poorest of our seniors by adding more funding to the guaranteed income supplement? Seniors would then have real money in their hands.

The member said that if seniors have filed their income tax returns then they should automatically receive the guaranteed income supplement. However, if seniors do not apply for it or if they do not know how to apply for it, they do not receive it. Even if they receive it, they end up getting a small amount of money.

Would increasing the guaranteed income supplement not be a better way to spend the budget surplus? This would give our seniors some income security and real money in their pocket. It would also help to have a national pharmacare program so seniors would not have to pay so much to buy the drugs they need.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what part of corruption that member of Parliament does not understand, and also the fundamental concept of democracy. I do not know whether that member of Parliament understands what democracy means. It was Canadians who voted the last Liberal government out of office. It was Canadians who voted. It was Canadians who were upset with the corruption, with the money that just disappeared into some Liberal coffers, the Liberal Party's coffers. That is why the Liberal Party has been thrown out.

Having said that, I will say that we have to come together rather than blaming each other and looking at the past. Why can we not say that? In order for us to move forward, why can we not join together and look at investing in children and making sure that a decent Canadian early learning and child care act is passed?

I want to remind folks that in 2003 there was a red book promise. There was a 2004 promise. I believe there was also a promise in 2000. There were so many promises on early childhood education that we cannot keep track of them.

Fundamentally it was Canadians who voted the last government out of office, not the New Democratic Party of Canada.