Olivia Chow

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

Mr. Speaker, I have Bill C-28 here. As I look through it over and over again, I really do not see how this bill actually deals with, for example, lowering tuition for students.

It does not increase pensions, whether it is the CPP, the GIS or the OAS for seniors.

I also do not see any real investment in public transit. We know that there is serious gridlock in a lot of cities. It has slowed down a lot of the small businesses. Their employees take a long time to go to work. They get stuck in traffic jams. People are crying out for investment in public transit so that we will be able to have better productivity and people will not be wasting their time sitting in traffic jams.

Those are the kinds of things that small businesses, seniors, students and a lot of working families are asking for.

Working families are saying that giving them a tax credit or a small deduction does not help, because, as we know, it takes a lot more than $100 a month to get affordable child care. There is not a chance that they even can get enough money for babysitting by April 2007. Also, this money for the so-called universal child care allowance is taxed back. When I tell working families that they had better put aside some money because the money they are receiving every month will be taxed by April, they say, “Oh, my goodness”.

This budget has nothing for working families that they can count on, especially as it relates to children.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish that this House, in the last Parliament, enshrined early childhood education in legislation. If we had done that, if this Parliament had done so under the former government, then this new minority government would not be able to just tear up those agreements with the provinces with the stroke of a pen. It would have to come back to this House to seek a vote to cancel the legislation for early childhood education. I know that this new minority government would not be able to get that kind of legislation through this House of Commons.

I urge members of Parliament, on November 22, to support a national Canadian early learning and child care act. All future governments would not be able to tear up this kind of legislation. We would have early childhood education and any funding that we set aside, whether it is the $650 million this year or, hopefully, the $1.2 billion next year on early childhood education, would not be cancelled by a stroke of a pen or without having a debate here in the House.

I think it is critically important to have legislation to back up these agreements because without legislation the agreements would not be able to be implemented easily. That is number one.

Number two, in the past--

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

Mr. Speaker, this morning we notice that there is yet another international report that speaks of the need for Canada to invest in children. It is very much connected with the budget that we are debating today.

The annual UNESCO report on education in developing nations finds that the majority of countries, especially Canada, need to focus their efforts on policies that address the needs of an age group that it says is often overlooked. The report urges Canada to ensure that early childhood education is a high priority.

We know that in this budget, that is proposed for April 2007, the money for early childhood education will be eliminated. This follows a report that comes from the OECD which says that Canada is in fact at the bottom of the heap. It says that Canada has a failing grade. The report said that it is Canada's dirty little secret that we have actually tumbled down all the way to the bottom in the ranking. The report said that Canada should be investing at least $10 billion, which is the OECD goal, and 1% of the GDP as the minimum government investment.

We are at this time a dismal .03%, which is a fraction of the OECD target. It is no wonder that Canadian productivity is slipping and that Canadian businesses and industries are worried about our competitiveness and the competitiveness of our workforce. The OECD has clearly made a link between the national investment in quality early childhood education and productivity and competitiveness and growth.

I want to speak a bit about some of the kids in this country. A few years I asked children in my riding of Trinity—Spadina what they would do to make the world a better place. A five-year old wrote back and drew a very cute picture. She said that she wished from God that there would be money to buy groceries.

If we think about it, Canada is a really rich county. We have children in Canada that are praying to God for enough money to buy groceries. This means that obviously in her house and in the houses of some of her neighbours and friends there is no money to buy groceries. This means that oftentimes this little girl would go to bed and wake up hungry and would not be able to concentrate at school.

We see this especially in aboriginal communities. There are boil water advisories. We know of kids that have to sleep in shifts because there is not enough room in the bed in their house for them to be able to sleep at the same time. There is often only one room and there are several children.

In this kind of situation it is inexcusable that the government in this budget would not invest in aboriginal housing and early childhood education. Any money that the government has put aside in trust is last year's budget surplus. That money came from Bill C-48. This was the NDP budget money. These are the only dollars that the government is in fact investing in aboriginal housing, foreign aid and many other critically important areas.

I particularly remember a young person from the Dene nation. She had tears in her eyes when she talked about the sense of hopelessness that she had in her area. Yet, there are so many young people with many talents and skills to offer if they were to receive the kind of support and training that they so desperately need. These are young people who want to lead their communities and set a good example. We have not given them the tools in the budget to contribute.

On the youth employment front, I have received many letters from people in Toronto who talk about the importance of investing in young people, especially in the summer time. We know that recently there was a budget cut of at least $55 million. At this time we should be investing more on youth employment rather than cutting it.

I have a letter from Jacob Blomme, a concerned student, who talks about the job he has during the summer and how essential it is for him to have the opportunity to work in his field of study, so that he can make connections and be job ready when he finishes school. He knows that he is going to graduate with a $25,000 debt, which scares him because he is going to have to pay it back himself. Without jobs and training in his field of work, it is going to be even harder for him to find a job in the future. These are the young people of our future.

I have other letters. I have one from Canadian Crossroads International, for example, that talks about hiring dozens of young interns in recent years during the busy summer months to train young people overseas as volunteers by creating and supporting networks, working with HIV Without Borders, helping to manage the international AIDS conference in 2006, and supporting fundraising and ongoing research for organizations.

There are other organizations that say they desperately need money to invest in young people. They talk about the youth employment program standing out as a bright light of hope and empowerment in their own communities.

There are youth organizations that, because of training in the arts, were able to create many jobs, like the Fringe Festival in Toronto. There is a ticketed attendance of 47,000 people and $340,000 was given back to artists in the neighbourhood. When we invest in young people and in the arts, as a country we actually get the money back in our budget.

There is really no excuse. We know there is a surplus of $13 billion and none of it is invested in people or the future of our youth. It is the same with the new surplus of $6.7 billion. There is nothing invested to help people break the cycle of poverty or to eradicate child poverty. With the surplus, somehow the government feels it can tell Canadians they are overtaxed. It slashes programs and calls for tax cuts and yet our children go to bed hungry. I do not know whether members of Parliament know what it is like to go to bed hungry, but there are certainly a lot of those kids in this country.

If we look outside this country, we know that foreign aid is desperately in need of getting a boost in terms of investment. We know that more than 800 million people go to bed hungry around the world and 50,000 people die everyday from poverty related causes. That is why we absolutely have to increase Canadian aid by 18% annually and commit to a plan to meet the internationally agreed target for aid spending of .7% of our GDP by 2015.

We must also raise the annual Canada child tax benefit to $4,900 per child and ensure that all low income kids receive the full benefit of this program because that is in fact the demand of Make Poverty History. Think of what we could do with $20 billion. There are so many lives we could touch, but I fear the government does not get it. Perhaps it is not surprising that the government has so few women in their caucus.

The government thinks that the war on poverty is really a war on the poor. It thinks poverty is a nasty little habit that should be punished, stopped and penalized. It punishes the poor and gives tax breaks to those who do not need it. It gives the biggest baby bonus allowance to the spouses of the wealthiest people and the least to single mothers. We have a war against the poor rather than a war against poverty.

When we asked the government why it continued this track, why we were here day after day, it said it was because the Liberals were just as bad in the last 13 years. Imagine that. We had 13 years of Liberal neglect of important programs and the government used that as an excuse to reward the wealthy and punish the poor. This government seems determined to behave just as badly as the Liberals and to be even meaner in the neglect of social programs.

What kind of dumb ambition is that? That is the kind of ambition that we do not need in this House of Commons. We want to compete to be the best, not compete to be the worst, which is what is happening right now. Imagine being worse than the Liberals. I cannot even imagine that, but it is happening in front of me.

This House should rise together and demand better for refugees, children, senior citizens, women, aboriginals, immigrants, and for all of us. This budget is a sham. The poverty is real and more children are going hungry during this Parliament.

[Petitions, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition that is about six or seven pages long, petitioning the government for a new automotive trade policy.

The petitioners say that whereas Canadian automotive assembly facilities are recognized by independent experts to demonstrate the best quality and productivity in the western hemisphere, the jobs of Canadian auto workers are being threatened as a result of expanding imports to the North American market and from Asia and Europe. North America imports over four million new vehicles per year from offshore jurisdictions and yet our exports to those same countries are strictly limited by the trade policies of those countries, such as Korea, which effectively protects their domestic markets.

The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to cancel negotiations for a free trade agreement with Korea, which would worsen the one-way flood of automotive products into our market, and develop a new automotive trade policy that would require Korea and other offshore markets to purchase equivalent volumes of finished vehicles and auto parts from North America as a condition of their continued access to our market.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the success of a nation is judged by how we treat our children. The success of a budget is really dependent on whether we invest in children.

The hon. members opposite talked about scandals. Let me tell them that it is scandalous when we have a country as rich as Canada and we have 1.2 million children living in poverty at a time when we have a surplus of almost $20 billion. We have children living in Canada who are going to bed hungry. That is a true scandal.

It is scandalous that we have parties here that are willing to support the budget. I understand why the Conservative government would support its own budget, but I do not understand why any other party in the House would support this kind of scandalous behaviour in a budget that treats our children in such a way.

It is a deliberate choice when we have a surplus but we do not invest in child care. It is a deliberate choice when we do not invest in affordable housing. It is a deliberate choice when we do not put more money into the child tax benefit so families will get more money and parents will not have to worry about having to pay the rent or feed their kids.

Today is child care appreciation day. The people who take care of our children earn very low incomes. They spend all day making sure that our kids are raised in a way that is healthy and productive. While we appreciate them, these workers are underpaid because we do not invest in child care.

This is a time when the government actually subsidizes the oil and gas industry to the tune of $1.5 billion. How could the government make such a choice? It is scandalous. Those dollars, whether it is $1.5 billion or the $20 billion surplus, really should be used to train young people so they can learn a skill, so that they will have employment, so that they could retrofit homes. By retrofitting homes and making them green, Canadians would save on their energy bills. By making them green, Canadians would have renovated houses and we would actually get less greenhouse gas pollution.

Because we have money, we can also increase the guaranteed income supplement so that the poorest seniors can live in dignity. The guaranteed income supplement, which supplements pensions and old age security, had not been increased for at least 12 years until last year, when there was a very small increase.

Unfortunately, a lot of seniors are isolated in their homes. They do not have the money to buy a transit pass to visit their friends or go to the library. I know that some of them do not even have enough money to pay the electricity bill because it is so expensive. These seniors live in our midst when Canada is awash with money, yet we subsidize and have more corporate tax cuts.

A few minutes ago I stood outside Parliament Hill, joining many refugees who are suffering in this country. Many poor and cold young children and their families were outside. These refugees have escaped persecution and seek refuge here. Many of these women have faced persecution and, in many cases, domestic violence.

They are all refugees. They have a heavy burden. They are poor. They have no resources. They are seeking the opportunity for a better life in Canada, yet they face the ultimate indignity. They are punished and penalized with refugee fees. That is a terrible burden. I believe the Liberals introduced these fees with the excuse that they were trying to balance the budget. It was a lame excuse for a terrible burden which amounts to a modern-day head tax.

Now the Conservatives are blindly continuing that with these fees. These fees are causing great suffering. They are causing despair because some families just cannot afford to pay them. The fees are driving some of the families underground. They are driving them to hunger. They are keeping people from making a contribution and building better lives. Really, these fees are a head tax, a tax on the most vulnerable and on those who cannot afford to pay them.

The government has a pattern of giving the most to those who need the least. It also has a habit of giving the least to those who need the most. We have seen it as--

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, may I ask for unanimous consent to split my time with the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, please?

[Refugees, October 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon refugees who are seeking shelter in Canada will be out in the cold on Parliament Hill. They are mostly women and children who are struggling to survive. They are vulnerable. They are hungry. Most are very poor. Many of the women are trying to escape domestic violence or the sex trade.

The previous Liberal government and now the Conservative government is exploiting and punishing them further by applying a modern-day head tax with the refugee landing fee of $550 per refugee and $150 per child.

I have tabled a motion in this House to drop these fees, this head tax, this blood money on the heads of the most vulnerable. If the government does not act, then it is saying to the world and the 10,000 Canadians who signed a petition that children should be made to suffer and women should indeed be treated like dogs. We must end this cruel practice now.

[Petitions, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to present a nine page petition on the question of child care.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to provide the provinces and territories with annual funding of at least $1.2 billion to build a high quality, accessible, affordable and community based child care system and to ensure fair and effective income support programs for Canadian families.

They note in the petition that there is an absence of secure and stable funding and child care services are greatly in demand across Canada.

The petition was signed by citizens of Toronto and British Columbia.

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will not refer to my own name. Museums allow us to understand our past and to redefine our future. Canada is a relatively young country and we absolutely need to understand our past, and that is the role of museums.

We need to engage our young people to understand the past. Many of the immigrants who come into the country need to understand what has defined us in the past and how we could, together, reshape our future.

For example, the Art Gallery of Ontario is in my riding of Trinity—Spadina, and I have been on the board for many years. We have other small museums and big ones like the Royal Ontario Museum. We understand that museums are vital to our heritage and understanding of ourselves. They are vital to Toronto, to Canada, to education, to a civilized society, to our culture, to our different ethnic communities, to understanding multiculturalism and the arts and to a civilized life.

Therefore, I do not quite understand what possible justification could there be to savaging our own heritage and then trashing the past by slashing funding for such vital institutions like museums.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Ottawa is a far away place from the very farms we are dealing with at this point.

I know the Reform and the Alliance movement started by promising to give democratic rights to the grassroots. One of the key elements was the right of farmers to vote for their own future, not politicians somewhere in Ottawa. I do not understand why farmers are not given the choice to decide the future of their farms and the future of the Wheat Board.

The government continues to undermine public institutions. Then it says that we are attacking its integrity when we point out its anti-democratic practices. I thought I heard the Prime Minister say, in the past, that gag orders were unconstitutional.

Does the hon. member agree that it is our duty to defend the Constitution and ensure that the farmers have the right to decide on the future of the Wheat Board?