Pat Martin

[Criminal Code, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, coming from the province of Manitoba, we are anxiously awaiting Bill C-26 to pass. We see it as the enabling legislation so we can start to rein in this burgeoning industry, the payday lenders that are sprouting up like mushrooms in the inner city riding that I represent. They are an absolute scourge on the poor.

It is not any wonder that they are burgeoning and popping up in virtually every vacancy and every strip mall one can imagine. They are not just charging 60%, or 100%, or 1000% interest, some are charging 10,000% interest, according to independent studies done by the University of Winnipeg. Even the old leg-breaking loan sharks could not make money like that. There is no single thing one could do in the country to make 10,000% interest. I am told that selling cocaine does not get one 10,000% interest.

We are anxiously awaiting the implementation of the bill.

However, why were they not prosecuting these people all along? Why did successive governments ignore the fact that these guys were charging usurious rates, clearly against the Criminal Code of Canada and clearly undermining the financial stability of the inner city of Winnipeg and other cities. What possible reason could they have for not busting these guys? Why were these underworld figures, who run these payday lending outfits, not locked up before we had to even take this measure to provide a regulatory framework?

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the very moving words of my colleague, the hon. member for Western Arctic. I was particularly interested in the story about how his grandmother had strongly held views and personal reasons why she did not want her birth date publicized widely. I assume he meant that if she knew the government was planning on putting dates of birth on the permanent voters list for all the world to see, she and many others like her would object strongly for any number of good reasons. That is only one example.

I would like my colleague's views on the fact that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics is current engaged in a five year review of the new PIPEDA legislation, Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which is the obligation of governments and the private sector to protect the privacy of personal information that they might hold.

From my colleague's experience in election campaigns, does he believe that we, as a political party, could effectively protect that very personal information in the context of an election campaign, with 500 volunteers coming and going? All people need to steal somebody's identity is a name, address and date of birth and they get a credit card in another person's name. That is how easy it is in this day and age.

Could he expand, from his personal experience, how he might see abuse of this very private personal information in the context of the comings and goings of volunteers in an election campaign?

[Canada Elections Act, January 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will do my best to speak to the bill and talk about the issues related to the Canada Elections Act.

We are here to talk about Bill C-31, in case anyone who has tuned in may be mixed up given the debate we just heard. The object of Bill C-31, as I understand it in my reading, is to amend the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud. At least that is one of the elements of Bill C-31.

To start from that basis we must be of the view that there is widespread fraud that justifies the introduction of this bill and justifies our being preoccupied with it today. When I used to negotiate collective agreements for the carpenters union I would sit down at the bargaining table and say that we wanted to change a clause in our agreement. The first question the employer would always ask was, “What has the experience been? Has this clause been a problem that warrants amending it?”

My colleague from Timmins—James Bay pointed out that the actual empirical evidence, the incidence of electoral fraud, at least the convicted cases, is so insignificant and minuscule that it makes me wonder why we would burn up our political energy, our political capital and House of Commons resources to address this particular issue. In the context of all of the things we could be talking about in terms of elections, how we conduct them and electoral reform, we have seized on this issue of fraud.

I would argue, as my colleague from Ottawa Centre has pointed out, that voter turnout is a far more compelling problem in this country than the almost insignificant incidence of convicted fraud. About 60% of all registered voters in the last election voted, but only 50% of all eligible people voted. I would think that would be a cause of grave concern to anyone who embraces democracy and espouses to want to use our time to enhance the process.

Even the Chief Electoral Officer when he testified before the committee testified that on electoral fraud he did not see the need for these measures, if I can paraphrase him.

My colleague from Timmins--James Bay went through the actual incidents. In the last federal election, of the 10 million people who voted, only one person was actually convicted of fraud. It turned out he was not yet a Canadian citizen. Perhaps he misunderstood the rules. He was a landed immigrant, but he did not have his citizenship. Somehow he did manage to cast a ballot. The system caught him. He was given an absolute discharge. I guess the Chief Electoral Officer determined this was not malicious. It was in fact erroneous. It was more in error. We are glad that the system was working such that the person got tripped up. I believe he received 30 days of community service and then it ultimately wound up in an absolute discharge.

The NDP is passionate about this issue for a number of good reasons. Anyone who heard the speech by the member for Vancouver East would have been moved. My colleague from Vancouver East has tried to address the issue of disenfranchisement and to enable more low income people to vote who otherwise may fall through the cracks. She has gone to enormous lengths. She has even set up voter registration tables with lawyers working pro bono to help people who may not have their requisite pieces of ID, or may for whatever reason not have been enumerated.

I could point out that one of the things that does deserve our attention is the appalling condition of the permanent voters list and the lack of enumeration that goes on in the current regime. As the member representing the riding of Winnipeg Centre where there is a high incidence of low income people and a transient population, the permanent voters list is of almost no value to us in certain neighbourhoods. When the door to door enumeration stopped, we lost track of tens of thousands of people. I say that with no fear of exaggeration or being accused of any contradiction.

The permanent voters list and the full door to door enumeration, those are areas we should be debating in the House of Commons today. I am not sure we should be debating this non-issue, this notion that there is widespread fraud.

As my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas pointed out, if we did want to write a new law about electoral fraud, we should have pulled together a committee of failed Conservative and Liberal candidates who may be authorities on the subject. Given the way some nominations we know of are run in this country, maybe there are people who have had personally frustrating experiences within their own parties but do not extrapolate that on to the population as a whole.

I am the spokesperson for my party for ethics, privacy and access to information. Under the privacy category, I am appalled that we are considering putting the date of birth on the voter's list. We will now have a voter's list with a name, address, phone number and date of birth. That is a recipe for identity theft. We might as well hand somebody a kit stating that this is all they need to steal somebody's identity and get credit cards, et cetera. This is appalling.

We are in the process at our committee of reviewing PIPA, the Personal Information Protecting Act. It is all about the obligation, the duty, to protect personal identities that we have in our possession. I know how voter's lists end up getting distributed within election campaigns. Sometimes a page gets torn out and given to a canvasser who is told to go canvass a couple of blocks. It gets circulated widely and freely. That alone would make this particular bill subject to a number of legal challenges.

I believe the stricter requirements about identification will have the net effect of disenfranchising people to the point where those barriers will be deemed to be in violation of the charter and the right to cast one's ballot. I believe there is enough in the bill that it will be challenged and probably will not survive that challenge.

The privacy issue alone is enough reason to condemn the bill. The idea is that we are throwing up barriers for low income people, marginalized people, and people with unstable addresses and a lack of ID to vote, which I believe could constitute a charter issue.

The third thing, the most frustrating thing, perhaps, is that in the context of this 39th Parliament it is unlikely that electoral reform will come back to us, although there is a private--

[Sales Tax Amendments Act, 2006, January 30th, 2007]

Relevance. Relevance.

[Canada Pension Plan, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed much of the speech by the member for Oak Ridges—Markham, but to do justice to the debate on Bill C-36, we need to start from the same base level of historical accuracy and information.

I noted that the member for Oak Ridges—Markham said it was the Liberal Party that created the old age security system as we know it today. In actual fact, I would point out that in 1926 it was the member for Winnipeg Centre at the time, the founder and first leader of the CCF, J.S. Woodsworth, who went to the minority Liberal prime minister of the day, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and cut a deal with him that the CCF would support the Liberal government if it finally yielded to its demands and introduced some measure of old age security.

The member for Winnipeg Centre at the time was smart enough to get that in writing. A letter exists today in the archives of the New Democratic Party. Kicking and screaming, the Liberals were forced to introduce some measure of old age security for seniors back in 1926. My colleague, the member for Saint Boniface, remembers that; apparently, he is older than I thought he was.

In actual fact, something that he might remember is that in 1942 the hon. Stanley Knowles took the place of J.S. Woodsworth as the member for Winnipeg Centre. Stanley Knowles was widely agreed to be the father of the Canadian pension system because he dedicated his career from 1942 to 1966 fighting and struggling to get the old age security Canada pension plan that we know today introduced by a Liberal minority government under Lester Pearson at that time.

It was Stanley Knowles who finally levered the Liberals into acting like Liberals in introducing the Canada pension plan. Then he spent the rest of his career, from 1966 to 1984 when he suffered a stroke, trying to get the pension plan indexed to inflation, another huge victory for Stanley Knowles and the party that I represent.

It is disingenuous, if not revisionist, to say that the Liberal Party was responsible for the introduction of the old age security system, the guaranteed income supplement or the Canada pension plan. It was those two great men who represented the riding that I am honoured to represent now whom we can thank for that.

I believe my colleague, the member for Oak Ridges—Markham, is too good a member of Parliament to believe the speech he was given to read in the House today. I honestly believe, at least now that he has been enlightened as to the history and origins of our old age security system, that he may want to revise his comments.

[Canada Pension Plan, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am interested in my colleague's views about an issue that has been raised many times by the Bloc Québécois and something that I know was of great interest particularly to a former member who is no longer with us in the House of Commons. It deals with the guaranteed income supplement, and the fact that 300,000 Canadians were eligible for this guaranteed income supplement. The government knew they were eligible, but chose not to tell them and never did pay them.

In cooperation with the Bloc and NDP, when we finally forced the Liberal government to reinstate the guaranteed income supplement to Canadians, it only agreed to retroactivity for 11 months instead of the full reinstatement. Can the member explain or help enlighten us by what cruel logic the Liberals would decide they would only reimburse people for 11 months of what they owned them whereas if people owed taxes from five years ago, the government would go back retroactively until time began to get back taxes? Could she enlighten us, please?

[Canada Pension Plan, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, if I could take just one more moment of time, I would like my colleague to explain to me by what convoluted pretzel logic the Liberals thought they were protecting the privacy of low income seniors in not giving them their guaranteed income supplement. How did they rationalize that?

My question finds its origins in the fact that the government knew there were 300,000 seniors who were eligible for the guaranteed income supplement--it knew this by their tax returns--but who had never applied. The onus to apply was on them. When we complained to the government, it said it could not just tell them that they were eligible as it would violate their privacy to use their tax returns for any reason other than taxes.

Now, did it rationalize that kind of pretzel logic in that it was doing people a favour by not giving them the income supplement to which they were entitled, especially when we consider that they are the lowest income people in the country? People do not even qualify for a guaranteed income supplement until there are earnings of $12,000 a year, and up to, I believe, $22,000 total, or in that range.

I am not satisfied with the answers I have received so far regarding the guaranteed income supplement and what the thought process of the Liberals would be in denying worthy and deserving seniors the income supplement they are entitled to and then only going retroactive for 11 months even when they are guilted into it.

[Canada Pension Plan, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my colleague would agree with me that the plight of women pensioners living in poverty was exacerbated terribly when the former President of the Treasury Board used the entire surplus of the public service pension plan to pay down the debt and to give tax breaks to wealthier Canadians in the year 2000.

My colleague was not here then, but we remember it very well. Statistically, most of the public service pensioners are women and their average income is $9,000 per year, but when the Liberals froze the wages of public servants for seven years straight, the actuarial impact was to create a $30 billion surplus in the plan. Rather than saying that they would improve the plight of these people making $9,000 a year, largely women, and distribute it among the beneficiaries, they said, “Hey, we found $30 billion. Let us use it to give $100 billion worth of tax breaks to our wealthy friends and corporations”.

Would the hon. member agree with me that this mindset dramatically affected in a negative way the standard of living of some of Canada's poorest Canadians, the women who were in fact pensioners from Canada's public service, many of whom are in Ottawa, many of whom are living in my riding, and many of whom, I am sure, live in her own riding?

If I could just add to and qualify this, at the same time, Bell Canada had a pension plan surplus. Bell decided that it would take one-third for the company, have one-third for future use and give one-third to the beneficiaries of the plan. In fact, one-third was a credit, I suppose, a contribution holiday. Would the hon. member not agree that this would have been the humane and decent thing to do for the pensioners with the $30 billion surplus instead of the government taking it all and not one penny going to the beneficiaries of the plan?

[Canada Pension Plan, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Hamilton is probably aware that the NDP was horrified to learn recently that as many as 300,000 Canadians who are eligible for guaranteed income supplement were not getting it even though the government knew who they were by virtue of their tax returns.

When we finally addressed the issue, the Liberal government grudgingly agreed but only with retroactivity for 11 months. The Bloc was very concerned with this issue as well. Is there any movement within the parameters of Bill C-36 or possibility to lift that ridiculous freeze and give the money to those people who were deserving of it and eligible for it all that time for the whole period they were eligible?

[Canada Pension Plan, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my NDP colleague from Hamilton for the tireless work that she has been doing on behalf of seniors, being, if I may say, a lone voice, in many cases, in the House of Commons reminding us of the need to be true and to keep faith with the seniors of our country and to represent their needs in times like this when we are debating a bill such as this.

She raised the alarming figure regarding the incidence of poverty among seniors in spite of genuine efforts in the last couple of decades to address and eradicate the embarrassingly high incidence of poverty among seniors.

There is one mitigating factor that I would raise and ask her to comment on. In the first Conservatives' budget, they did not reduce taxes for low income seniors. They actually raised taxes to low income seniors in two ways. First, the lowest tax rate went from 15% to 15.5%, a seemingly small amount but significant when one is living hand to mouth. The second thing they did was to lower the basic personal exemption for everyone by $400 a year.

If a person is collecting another pension from another source, which may have been offset by a break they gave to pensioners of $1,000, but if one's sole source of income is OAS and guaranteed income supplement and the basic personal exemption was reduced by $400, it means one is paying taxes on $400 more per year. When I work that out at 15.5% it amounts to about $62.50. That does not sound like much per year but that is $5 a month and, because it happened July 1, the Conservatives doubled it for the six months of the year, which makes it $10 a month. That is half of a week's groceries for a person living on GIS and OAS.

Would the member comment on the double whammy that actually affected seniors when the Conservatives put their hands in their pockets and raised the taxes of our lowest income Canadians?