Pat Martin

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member give his point of view on how the budget affected him personally in his riding. I would like to share with him how the most recent budget impacted the riding of Winnipeg Centre and ask for his comments on whether he still maintains the same point of view in light of what I am about to tell him.

Winnipeg Centre is the third poorest riding in all of Canada by whatever measurement. Nothing in the most recent budget did anything to alleviate the growing gap between rich and poor in this country. The most recent budget concentrated on many of the things that the hon. member quite rightly cited, but it did nothing to alleviate or ameliorate the urgent social deficit as exemplified by a riding such as mine that is going through such hardship.

This budget failed to reach the objective on many levels. I understood that one objective was for equality. Equality in this country used to be the basic premise of the very reason that we came here. It was to make the country a better place to live, to elevate the standards of wages and living conditions of the people who needed it most and to narrow the gap between rich and poor. In that light this current budget has failed dismally.

I will deal with one specific area, the EI program, and I will ask the hon. member to comment on that. In 1990, 63% of unemployed people in my riding qualified for EI benefits. In 1999, 23% of unemployed people were eligible for EI benefits. The changes brought in by the Liberal government that were not altered in the current budget pulled $20.8 million per year out of my riding.

The current budget tinkered with minor little details but did nothing to deal with the eligibility issue and the reduction in benefits issue. Would the hon. member not agree, seeing as the EI program is showing a surplus of $750 million a month, making up a great deal of the surplus that the government enjoys, that the time was right to restore the former EI program which allowed better eligibility and qualification for people who desperately needed it in ridings like mine?

[Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, January 29th, 2002]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-423, an act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (unpaid wages to rank first in priority in distribution).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today. I thank the member for South Shore for seconding this important bill.

The bill seeks to amend the Bankruptcy Act so that in the event of a company going bankrupt, unpaid wages to workers would have first priority in the distribution of the assets of the bankrupt company.

It is a timely and topical issue. There are 10,000 bankruptcies every year in Canada. In many cases back wages, back contributions to pension plans, severance pay, et cetera, are only left to workers when other more secured creditors divide the assets of the company. The working people are left holding the bag and left wanting.

We look forward to debating the issue and voting on it in the House of Commons on behalf of all workers who are negatively impacted by bankruptcies.

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

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I can safely say, with no hesitation whatsoever, that I approve fully of the idea put forward by the Bloc that $150 million a year is not a great deal of money given the complexity and scope of the problem we face. It would be much better spent exploring every avenue of recourse in green renewable energy sources rather than going further into an area of science that we believe was possibly a mistake from day one.

In his opening remarks, the hon. member from the Bloc mentioned that it was a cruel irony in a sense that the burning of fossil fuels was creating harmful greenhouse gas emissions that have caused climates to change and which have taken away our access to a cleaner form of energy which is hydroelectric energy. It is a vicious and unsustainable circle.

Still though to this date we are fortunate enough to have many opportunities to develop hydroelectric projects in most of the provinces. I look forward to being able to further open the north. As we get into the Northwest Territories we need to be able to get that power to market. One of the biggest problems with hydroelectric power is the line loss. When shipping hydroelectric power, many thousands of miles sometimes, a lot of the power is lost in the transmission. It is therefore necessary to convert the power to DC for transmission and then when it arrives at its destination it is reconverted back to AC power for marketing throughout households.

Many of those developments are fairly recent and as we get more sophisticated, new bipole lines will be built to add to our network and our grid. As an added benefit, we now have access to the American grids. We used to have to fight with every utility in the United States to get Canadian power onto its power grids. That is becoming a lot easier and the market opportunities are opening up for Canada to be a key producer of clean, efficient and economical hydroelectric energy.

I should point out that because it is a public utility, Manitoba enjoys the lowest hydroelectric costs in North America at 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour. This is something that would have been so disastrous if we had let the Tories stay in power for one more year because Manitoba Hydro would have been gone to the highest bidder. We would have killed the goose that laid the golden egg and that would have been tragic.

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to respond to the hon. member's question regarding hydroelectric power. I am an advocate and a big fan of hydroelectric power. The province of Manitoba has also done very well by developing its hydro energy possibilities on the Churchill and Nelson rivers, the Nelson-Burntwood system. I myself worked on a hydroelectric dam as a carpenter for many years and know quite a bit about the industry.

I believe this is the direction we should take. I note with interest that the Minister of Indian Affairs is in the House today listening to this debate. I am sure he is interested in an undertaking by the province of Manitoba wherein the next hydroelectric dam being developed in the province of Manitoba will have not only the guarantee of jobs for local aboriginal people but an equity share in the dam for them. All revenue generated from it will in fact be partly theirs. They are full partners in the development of this hydroelectric project, which I think is very innovative.

We believe a lot more development could take place in hydroelectric power within the country and we do not believe that any nuclear power generating stations should be developed until we have exhausted all other avenues, hydroelectric power being the best option currently.

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join in the debate on Bill C-27, an act respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste. I will begin by recognizing the substantial amount of work done by our critic in this area, the member for Windsor--St. Clair. It has been his recommendation to our caucus that we oppose Bill C-27.

The hon. member cites a number of compelling reasons why the NDP caucus will not be voting in favour of Bill C-27. In trying to render a complicated bill down to a brief summary he points out in as lean language as possible that the aim was to require owners of nuclear waste to assume full financial responsibility and implement a comprehensive, integrated and economically sound approach for management of the waste.

Bill C-27 is the government's response to the 1998 recommendations of the Seaborn panel. The bill has three main elements as the hon. member sees it. First, the main owners of nuclear fuel waste would be required to establish a separate legal entity, a management organization that would be responsible for financial and operational activities related to the long term management approach chosen by Canada.

Second, the same owners would need to establish a trust fund to finance waste management costs.

Third, the governor in council would be required to make a decision on the long term management approach to nuclear fuel waste which the management organization would be required to propose and then implement.

According to the Department of Natural Resources the bill reflects consultations undertaken by the federal government with the public, provinces, nuclear fuel waste owners and other stakeholders. This is the party line put forward by the federal government.

The NDP's concerns with Bill C-27 are lengthy and quite thorough. I again recognize the exhausting amount of work our member for Windsor--St. Clair did in researching the bill and citing its many fundamental flaws.

The hon. member pointed out the main objections of the NDP caucus to Bill C-27. First, it would make the power utilities and AECL, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the centrepiece of the management agency. This runs counter to the Seaborn report which recommended, after extensive public consultation and expert advice, that such an agency be at arm's length and independent from utilities, other vested interests and government. The reservation is that if power utilities are really part of the management agency it is a bit like the fox watching the henhouse.

Second, there is a risk that a lot of our publicly owned power utilities are under constant pressure or threat of being sold to the private sector. I believe firmly that had the Filmon government in Manitoba stayed in power one more year Manitoba Hydro would have been sold to the highest bidder, just like the Tories sold off our telephone system and wanted to privatize everything.

Objective oversight for the long ranging enterprise of managing nuclear fuel waste would be at risk if power utilities had too much say in the management agency. That is our first reservation. Bill C-27 calls for the board of directors of the agency to be made up of stakeholders, not independent people from the broader community as recommended by the Seaborn report.

Again, the board of directors of the management agency would be made up of stakeholders and practitioners rather than members of the community at large, citizen groups, environmental activists or experts in civil society who may have serious reservations about how nuclear fuel waste is treated.

The bill lacks the necessary checks and balances and provisions for regular parliamentary review. Instead it calls only for ministerial review. We are not comfortable with that. The trend toward ministerial rather than parliamentary review is something we have seen developing in a number of recent pieces of legislation put forward by the Liberal government.

An issue so important and critical to our health and well-being as the storage of nuclear fuel waste is surely a subject the House of Commons should be dealing with as a whole rather than there being a simple review by the minister in charge, in this case the Minister of Natural Resources.

We believe the fact that the agency would be made up of people with vested interests in the nuclear industry and not include the broader public and other interests would seriously undermine the legitimacy of the agency. It would jeopardize the public confidence in it which is absolutely critical.

There are few more thorny or frightening issues for the general public than dealing with nuclear waste. Some of this is perhaps because we do not trust that the science has matured and evolved to a point where we can have full confidence in its safety. There is a great deal of apprehension. We believe that public confidence in the management agency is critical. We owe it to the public to allow it to feel safe. It should feel the issue is being managed properly. If people with vested interests in the nuclear industry dominate the management agency and oversight committee that looks at the storage of nuclear fuel waste, where is the public confidence? Again it is the fox watching the henhouse.

The current vested interests have made it clear that their preference is for underground storage in the Canadian Shield, the massive rock outcroppings in northern Ontario and eastern Manitoba. The Seaborn panel reviewed the option of storing nuclear waste pellets in concrete deep in the Canadian Shield, in abandoned mines in some cases. It found the option unacceptable. It found it to be both unsatisfactory for the public and unsafe from a long term social perspective.

I took the trouble to tour AECL Pinawa where this method of storing nuclear fuel waste was being contemplated. As members may know, the tiny pellets are no bigger than the butt of a cigarette and they come stored in rods. The rods would be placed deep in the Canadian Shield which is the oldest rock outcropping in the world. It is very stable rock and is not prone to fissures or cracks. They contemplated going two miles down and one mile over where caves would be dug out of the side wall much like any mining operation. The pellets and fuel rods would be stored in the rooms which would then be filled with solid concrete.

If we do not have a better way to neutralize nuclear fuel waste rods this is about as far away from human touch and influencing humans as we can possibly get. However it was reviewed by the Seaborn commission and rejected as an option even though it was actively promoted by citizens of Pinawa anxious to find alternate employment given that AECL Pinawa was decommissioned and shut down.

We hoped to have an opportunity at the committee to hear from a broad sector of representatives from the scientific community. A lot of experts made representations but just as many had serious reservations about the bill as it stands.

Therefore the NDP critic, the member for Windsor--St. Clair, put forth two dozen substantive amendments that we believe would have made Bill C-27 an effective piece of legislation and given confidence to the Canadian public that the government is prepared to deal with the worrisome issue of storage of nuclear fuel waste. The amendments were rejected. None succeeded.

This frankly does not give us the message that the government was interested in doing the best job it could. The government could have been a lot more open to realistic recommendations from opposition members. This is too important an issue to play politics with. I know it has become a bit of a cliché for members to stand in the House of Commons and make this part of their speech.

In this case surely we have to rise above petty politics. It seems to be a rule on the government side to not allow opposition amendments in most cases simply because it does not want to show any kind of vulnerability in that sense. I believe that most Canadians still are very concerned about the issue of nuclear power in general. Certainly their main reservation is the storage of nuclear fuel waste although frankly even the operation of the plants is of some concern. The hon. member for Verchères--Les-Patriotes pointed out that Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are still fresh in people's minds. We are not fully comfortable that this science has matured to the degree that it should even be used in as widespread a manner as it is today. Also worrisome is the fact that Canada is actively promoting, selling and marketing nuclear power plants to developing nations in many cases, to parts of the world that are even less able to deal with the nuclear fuel waste problem than we are.

I would point out as well that it was the Canadian government that sold Pakistan its Candu and shortly after that Pakistan had nuclear military capability. We sold Candus to India and shortly after that India had nuclear weapons capability. We are selling Candus to Turkey, where the plan is to build them on fault lines of earthquake zones.

We are not really being very good global corporate citizens, in a sense, if we are selling these products to places where, first, we are unable to guarantee that they will be used safely and for the peaceful purpose of generating energy and, second, no management agency oversight committee will be able to enforce the safe storage of nuclear waste pellets, such as in Turkey, Pakistan, India or the other places where we are flogging, promoting and pushing these things. Many Canadians are uncomfortable with the entire nuclear industry strategy of our country.

The problem of course with the nuclear fuel pellets is NIMBY, not in my backyard. No one wants these things in their backyard. What on earth will we do when we have pools the size of olympic swimming pools all around the world full of these pellets? They are being stored and stockpiled in big olympic sized pools. No one has come up with a satisfactory way of dealing with them. I thought our approach toward generating energy had matured a little beyond that. At least we are starting to talk in terms of whole costing and will not undertake anything until we have factored in the whole cost of not only the development or the generating of the unit of energy but also the cleanup of the impact of that unit of energy.

Certainly in the fossil fuel energy sector most people now recognize that the cost of a barrel of oil is not $18 or $27 a barrel or whatever the OPEC cartel is selling oil for. The real cost of a barrel of oil is approximately $150 a barrel. When we factor in the costs of the American military keeping the Persian Gulf shipping lanes open and when we factor in environmental degradation, the real cost of a barrel of oil is really more in the nature of $150 a barrel, which actually renders all alternative sources of energy a bargain by comparison. When we look at what the real cost of a barrel of oil is, we see that developing solar or wind energy would be far cheaper. I should acknowledge that in the budget released on December 10 there is mention of money going to developing alternative energy in the area of wind generation and I am very pleased to see that.

The one area Canadians should really be looking at is not even the supply side of energy but the demand side. We, all the developed nations, should be curbing our insatiable appetite to burn energy, but especially Canada. Canada uses more energy per capita than any country in the world. A lot of people do not realize that. A lot of people think that Americans consume more than we do. It is actually Canadians who gobble up more energy per capita than any other country in the world, yet we do the least in terms of demand side management.

The state of California, through the Bonneville Power Administration, the power authority in the state of California, has precluded the need for eight nuclear power stations in the last five years by their demand side management measures. It goes beyond just turning off the light when one leaves a room. There are comprehensive, government sponsored programs in place for every private residence, commercial business and industrial factory in the state to take active measures to reduce their energy consumption.

The state of California has not ground to a halt. It has been no great inconvenience. What it has done is precluded the need for eight new nuclear power plants. That is smart. I wish our own government would show a little more leadership in that regard. This is a state sponsored initiative. The Tennessee Valley Hydro Authority has done similar things that have precluded the need for three nuclear power plants, again in that same period of time as our research shows us.

We believe that through demand side management we could take some of the pressure off the whole thorny issue of what to do with nuclear waste pellets. Even if we do not embrace demand side management as we should, the provinces of Manitoba and Quebec are concentrating on hydroelectricity, which is far preferable to nuclear power.

With some co-ordination and a national energy strategy we could be supplying parts of Ontario now relying on nuclear plants with clean, renewable, affordable and relatively cheap hydroelectric power, as we are doing in selling our products to the United States. Manitoba makes approximately $400 million per year in power sales to the United States. The grids are just starting to open up. It is an open ended enterprise.

Let me get back to the issue of demand side management because it really is where we should go. A unit of energy harvested from the existing system by demand side management measures is indistinguishable from a unit of energy developed at a nuclear power station except for a couple of important things. First, it is available at about one-third the cost. Second, generating it creates approximately seven times the number of person years of employment. In other words it creates more jobs. We are paying less for it but more of the money goes into jobs rather than infrastructure or the actual hardware associated with it.

A third important thing is that it is available and on line for resale immediately. As soon as I save a unit of energy by turning off a light, that unit can be sold to another customer, hopefully to export it and make money, making it a revenue generator. The fourth important thing to remember is that it reduces harmful greenhouse gas emissions and is in keeping with our obligations under the Kyoto protocol.

I understand I have only two minutes left, but I am glad I was able to point out some of those things. Let me wrap up by saying that if we did a poll we would see that the Canadian public by and large is not yet comfortable with nuclear energy. I believe that is healthy. There are many reasons for this. We simply do not accept everything we are being told by the nuclear industry, that everything is hunky-dory. Everything is not hunky-dory because we cannot even figure out how to store our nuclear waste fuel pellets.

This is where Bill C-27 is very much a necessary bill. The public needs the confidence that comes from knowing that the government is doing something about this, but the bill falls short of really giving confidence to the public because of the many things I have pointed out. The member for Windsor--St. Clair very conveniently itemized them for us and I went through them, but the fact that the board of directors as contemplated in Bill C-27 would be made up of the stakeholders in the nuclear industry is like the fox watching the henhouse. It does not give the Canadian public any confidence that this would be dealt with in an adequate way.

The privatization of utilities, the relentless pressure from the right wingers, from the Tories and the Alliance, which want to privatize everything, is of great concern to most Canadians, because once an industry is in the private sector and profit is the motive, the correct storage of nuclear fuel waste becomes a bottom line issue. There will be efforts to curb the expense. It becomes a cost factor that corporations resent.

We believe Bill C-27 should go back to the drawing board and some safeguards should be put in place so that there is an objective management committee made up of citizens, not stakeholders.

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Vancouver East is absolutely right. Aboriginal people have been dealt a real double whammy in recent weeks.

First there was great hope and optimism that the present budget would be the budget which would finally address some of the historical injustices they have been living with over the years. They were disappointed. Then they opened the National Post last weekend and learned that the Prime Minister had stated publicly that he is going to implement a fundamental policy shift in the whole relationship with aboriginal people.

In other words the Prime Minister said that we are not going to waste any more time on nuisances like rights and redress issues. In other words, all these 1,071 outstanding Indian land claims are too expensive, there are too many court cases, too much litigation and from now on we are spending money only on moving forward from this point on.

This is a slap in the face to the aboriginal community's leadership. It was done out of the blue, without any consultation. They opened their newspapers and saw that on the basis of one dinner with the aboriginal leadership and the newly struck committee of cabinet ministers reviewing aboriginal issues an announcement they are going to fundamentally change the whole relationship and the way of dealing with the basic claims issue.

It throws out the window the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the most comprehensive royal commission in the history of Canada, and $58 million worth of research and recommendations. Arbitrarily the Prime Minister said “No, I think we will change things”.

The Prime Minister is looking for a legacy. He was the architect of that disastrous white paper in 1969. He is still trying to implement those same things that were rejected so resoundingly in the white paper, which are assimilation, no more nuisance land claims, no more rights and redress issues, just basic economic development from this point on.

Aboriginal people have been dealt a double whammy and they are justifiably upset.

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

We called for spending to bring our military in line with our NATO colleagues so we could meet our obligations. I understand that our military spending is second only to that of Luxembourg. It is the lowest of all NATO nations. As one of the richest, most powerful and successful countries in the world, we can do better than that.

If we do fall short of buying into the whole military industrial complex, I do not apologize for that. However, we have been consistent in making sure that the men and women in our military have fair wages, decent living conditions and the right tools to do the job.

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think there has been any real mystery. If the hon. member is interested in our position on defence, the critic who sits on the standing committee has been quite open and clear on the position.

I represent an area that has the 17th wing air force base. I have met with the leadership of that base, Colonel Haig.

We are very concerned that there are people in the Canadian military who have to go to food banks every month. There are people in our armed forces who are actually living below the poverty line.

An entry level private with a family of four may earn $28,000 or $29,000 per year. The low income cutoff is $32,000 for a family with two children. We find this absolutely unacceptable. We have advocated since day one, and it is on the record quite clearly, that we want fair wages and working conditions for our men and women in the armed forces.

The same applies to the equipment we ask them to use. We do not want 40 year old tanks or helicopters. We want to give people state of the art, up to date--

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is bang on. When we did make inquiries to the Minister of HRDC about the guaranteed income supplement information, we were told that to share that information, for Revenue Canada to give it to HRDC, would be a breach of the individual's right to privacy. That was the only excuse that would come up. It is the law and that was the interpretation of the law, but why then is the inverse not true?

Just recently HRDC was informed by the Canada customs agency of EI recipients leaving the country while they were collecting EI. They were caught on their return to the country. When they checked in through customs a red light went off that the person was collecting EI. The person was supposed to be at home looking for work every day and how was it that he or she was in Europe? They were rooted out. Is that not a breach of a person's privacy under the act, having Canada Customs and Revenue Agency telling HRDC about EI recipients who travel?

We would argue that a better interpretation of the Privacy Act would be that if it is to the person's advantage and benefit, these things can be done. If it is to the person's disadvantage, then the person has the right to say that they do not have a right to that information. I do not know if that is possible.

However, the hon. member is right in that all of this stems from the conditions under the Privacy Act. We believe that in the interest of fairness, we should be either addressing and amending the act or at the very least taking a different interpretation of it.

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to join the debate on the report of the standing committee and their prebudget consultations.

It is useful for us to have a good look at this report, which was tabled on November 26, and compare it to what actually came out in the budget. I think we will find some glaring contrasts or at least some glaring omissions. I do not believe what came out in the budget accurately reflects what the standing committee heard. In other words, what Canadians told the committee did not find its way into the budget that was tabled on December 10.

It is true, as the report says in its executive summary, that this report jells down to five key priorities. However, those five key priorities are not the same five key priorities that the standing committee heard in its five weeks of prebudget consultations. It is disingenuous to try to say, for instance, that one of the key five points the standing committee claims it heard was an increased call for tax cuts and the need to maintain the $100 billion tax cut regime that was introduced last year.

In actual fact, when we looked at the representations made to the committee, we saw that virtually no one went there asking for tax cuts and deficit reduction. This was not the top issue on the minds of most Canadians who made presentations to that committee. To list the $100 billion tax cut program as one of the five key top of the mind issues of all Canadians on the very opening page of the report from the committee is simply not true or accurate as to what actually was heard.

Points were raised over and over again, by groups of Canadians who came to the prebudget consultations. There was an almost unanimous theme across the country. Those issues are not addressed in the budget. A key and paramount issue that I would like to raise first among those is the EI program.

Today, speakers from the opposition benches at least have pointed out the shortcomings of the EI program as it exists today. I would like to bring it down to the context of the riding that I represent, which is a very low income riding. In fact, it is the third poorest riding in Canada by whatever measurement is used.

The impact of the changes to EI, when the government switched to the hourly basis rather than the weekly basis to qualify, has been nothing short of devastating. By dollar figure, $20.8 million per year less in benefits now comes into my riding than under the old eligibility rules. This may not seem like an overwhelming amount of money to some people who are used to dealing with large figures, but it is a visible and tangible difference in the riding I represent.

Perhaps it would be easier to put it in the context of what a $20.8 million payroll would do to a riding. For instance, if we were trying to lure some new company into the riding that had a $20 million a year payroll, we would pave the streets with gold to bring that company in. It would employ a lot of people and it would be an injection of a lot of capital into the small area of the downtown core of Winnipeg.

Taking $20 million from my riding, where people are already living on fairly modest means, some who are very marginalized and are unemployed, has a very tangible social and economic impact on the riding. We are very critical that nothing has been said in this budget about lightening up the eligibility rules so that more people will qualify and it will become an unemployment insurance program again as it was designed to be.

The member for Drummond pointed out a very real fact of which we should be very aware. The federal government does not put one cent into the EI fund. It stopped doing that in 1986. Formerly it was funded roughly one-third, one-third, one-third; employer, employee and the federal government. The federal government pulled out its share. Now that entire fund and the surplus therein is contributions from employers and employees and no one else.

We have used this analogy before, but to deduct money from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and then to use the money for something completely different is at the very least a breach of trust. In the worst light it is out and out fraud.

A worker has a reasonable expectation. There is a trust relationship that develops. When the government is holding my money to give me a benefit it has promised me and then I am unlucky enough to find myself unemployed, I have a less than 40% chance of receiving any benefit whatsoever. The government has clearly misled workers in the EI program.

This one thing would have made a huge difference in the riding I represent. Let us keep in mind that the $40 billion surplus in the EI fund represents a surplus of $750 million a month. That is what this cash cow is generating for the Liberal government. The modest increases in spending in the budget are really the EI surplus. Without it the government would not have the discretionary spending it has. It would not have been able to give tax cuts.

It is unbelievably perverse to take money from people who need it the most, unemployed Canadians, and give a tax cut to people lucky enough to have a job and an income. It is a reverse form of Robin Hood. It is robbing the poor to give to the rich.

That is my first observation when looking at the report of the standing committee in its prebudget consultations. It failed to listen to the almost unanimous view it must have heard in every community it visited that we must do something to fix the EI fund.

I have a second point that I will bring into the context of my own riding. It is helpful to break down a large abstract document such as the federal budget into the ramifications of how it affects ordinary Canadians.

My riding is in a low income neighbourhood. Persons with disabilities are often low income people. A disproportionate number of disabled people live in my riding in the core area of Winnipeg, given the population of Winnipeg overall. It has come to our attention recently that every disabled person who gets the disability tax credit received a letter in the mail demanding that they requalify for the tax credit.

No matter what their disability is or how permanently disabled they are these people are being forced to go to a doctor. They must pay for the exam because doctors do not do this type of exam under the Canada health plan. The exam costs as much as $135 and they must pay upfront. They must get a written letter which says that the person is disabled to the degree that he or she should qualify for the disability tax credit.

How meanspirited can the government be? In an era of budget surpluses it chooses 90,000 or 100,000 disabled Canadians across the country and forces them to requalify to prove they are disabled. The status of many of them such as people who are legally blind will not change. It is something they must live with. They deserve the disability tax credit.

I find this offensive. On behalf of the many disabled people in my community who have brought the issue to my attention I condemn the practice. I want that on the record.

There is another thing that could have been addressed in the budget and which upsets those of us who represent low income areas. The point was raised very capably by my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois that a great number of seniors who collect old age security pensions are at income levels low enough that they also qualify for the guaranteed income supplement. However, literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians who qualify for the guaranteed income supplement have never applied for it and are not getting it.

It is their money. They are arguably the poorest of the poor. To be eligible for the guaranteed income supplement one must be a very low income person on literally the lowest socioeconomic rung of the ladder. The federal government knows who these people are because they are identified when they file their income tax.

In other words, Revenue Canada knows who they are and HRDC is the department that could and should be issuing their guaranteed income supplement cheques. Why do the two agencies not talk to each other? Why does Revenue Canada not tell HRDC there are 100,000 to 200,000 Canadians who deserve the guaranteed income supplement but are not getting it? Why does it not tell HRDC to give it to them?

We should not put the onus on these people to apply. For many reasons they sometimes do not. Some elderly people may not fill out the forms correctly or even know the benefit is available to them. I understand there are as many as 270,000 Canadians in this situation.

Let us look at the number of reasons. It could be an issue of basic literacy. It could be a lack of command of either of the official languages if they are new Canadians. It could be mental competency. There could be any number of reasons elderly seniors either do not know about the program or do not know how to fill out the forms and fail to qualify. It could make a difference of $5,000 per year.

That is 270,000 Canadians times $5,000 per year. Being a low income riding, my riding has a disproportionate number of low income seniors because they seek the lower rents in the area. I estimate that as many as 8,000 or 9,000 of those 270,000 people from around the country are living in the riding of Winnipeg Centre in the downtown core of Winnipeg. If I do a bit of quick mathematics and multiply 9,000 times $5,000 per year, that is $45 million worth of federal money that would be injected into my low income riding of Winnipeg Centre overnight.

Let us imagine the difference this would make to the social and cultural fabric of the community I live in. Yet it is being withheld. This is the kind of thing that makes me absolutely furious. It is along the same lines as the miserliness that has been demonstrated by the disability letters and making people requalify. It is an issue we will not let relax.

My mathematics were wrong. It would be more than a $45 million injection of capital into my riding. It would be an injection of $54 million per year into my riding to help the poorest of the poor. People who make maybe $12,000 or $14,000 a year from their OAS or from all other sources of income would get another $5,000 per year. It might make the difference between abject poverty and a reasonable quality of life for those people.

I have church groups in my riding. I compliment the Home Street Mennonite Church in my riding of Winnipeg Centre which is conducting a mass letter writing campaign to do two things: first, remind the minister how fundamentally wrong the path is that she is taking; and, second, seek out and find seniors in the community who may be eligible for the guaranteed income supplement and have not taken active steps.

It will be like the old voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, in the sixties. Bands of well meaning people will be going through low income apartment blocks to find seniors, let them know they may qualify for the program and help them fill out the forms. If the seniors do not have a family member to fill out the forms the fine people from the Home Street Mennonite Church will. It is to their credit.

Another thing that came up during prebudget consultations, more as a lobby or to register dissatisfaction, was that the public service unions were still furious that in the last parliament the government passed legislation which gave it the legal right to take the $30 billion surplus in the public service pension plan.

Of the $100 billion tax cut which shows up in prebudget consultations as one of the five priorities and shows up in the budget as a continuation of the five year $100 billion tax break, $30 billion was taken out of the public service employee pension plan. Incredibly the government got away with this. It was Marcel Massé's last move. It was the task he was given on his way out. I think I can use the name of the former president of the treasury board now that he is no longer a member of the House of Commons.

This was atrocious. It is an indication of where the government found the surplus it is bragging about and giving back in the form of tax cuts to the wealthy.

Employment insurance has a $40 billion surplus. The government happened to find $30 billion laying around in the public service pension plan. Rather than share it with employees the government took 100% of it. It did not even sit down to negotiate a fair split or offer to increase the monthly income of beneficiaries. There was none of that. The government took every penny of it.

The guaranteed income supplement that should be going to seniors is still sitting in the coffers of the federal government. It should be put into circulation. Then we would see some economic stimulus. Then we would see the riding of Winnipeg Centre with the two things I outlined: first, changes to EI to restore the $20 million a year we used to get in EI benefits; and, second, the $54 million we have forfeited or do not enjoy because of the government's deliberate and wilful blindness to the fact that senior citizens who qualify for the guaranteed income supplement are not getting it.

Being from the prairies it would be negligent of me not to raise another shortfall in the budget: the absolute dearth of anything concrete to deal with the agricultural crisis on the prairies. There was a lot of hope and optimism on the part of people in the prairie agriculture community that the budget would be the time to do something about the emergency prairie farmers are facing.

Some 11,000 prairie farmers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta left the family farm last year alone. They finally gave up. They kept farming until it was all gone and they could not farm any more. They have had to leave the family farm.

When the east coast fishery was in crisis years ago I was one of those who wondered if we really had to pour billions of dollars into it. We had our own problems on the prairies. However people came to me from the Atlantic provinces and asked how I would feel if the bottom fell out of our key industry, the whole family farm agricultural industry on the prairies. Would I not want the federal government to do something to help the basic economic fabric?

In that context they were right. I would expect the government to intervene on a sectoral basis and do something about it. I can therefore see why it was so devastating to lose the east coast fishery. It justified all the programs, TAGS, et cetera, that went into it.

The same is now happening on the prairies. It has happened. It is an emergency, just as it was an emergency with the east coast fishery. We are coming to the federal government looking for real support to save the agricultural economy on the prairies.

I am trying to keep my remarks pointed to my own riding because, as I say, it is helpful to render down such an abstract concept to practical implications. I will do so.

In my riding of Winnipeg Centre the largest growing demographic group is the aboriginal community. People are flocking into downtown Winnipeg looking for a better life. They are coming in from reserves with a great sense of hope and optimism that there will be a better quality of life for them.

To this point it has been a tragic story. Even as the Indian Act is 130 years of social tragedy there is a new social tragedy emerging among the urban aboriginal population in cities like Vancouver, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton and elsewhere across the west. I do not know a lot about eastern Canada but it may apply there too.

The Speech from the Throne gave hope and optimism to the aboriginal community that this would be the era in which we finally redress some of the historic injustices that have resulted in the tragic statistics we see today. By statistics I mean the ridiculous overrepresentation of aboriginal people in our jails, a social indicator that something is horribly and fundamentally wrong with our relationship and dealings with aboriginal communities.

Another startling figure is that although Canada ranks number three on the human development index of the United Nations, aboriginal people are number 63 on the same index. To have that kind of range within one country shows we are not trying hard enough.

We were disappointed again. The aboriginal community was looking forward with great optimism to the budget. The aboriginal leadership and on reserve and off reserve peoples thought this would be the year they would finally be welcomed into the mainstream of the Canadian economy. What we saw was a small gesture toward specific problems. Fetal alcohol syndrome is important, but $185 million over two years is not enough. It falls way short of the work that needs to be done.

I need only point out the water conditions in northern aboriginal communities in Manitoba. Fully one-third of them has no source of potable freshwater. When people died in Walkerton it was a national emergency and a national tragedy. This goes on every day in communities all over northern Manitoba. Yet we do not have the money to address the issue.

The last thing I will mention is the $2 billion fund for the strategic infrastructure foundation. The premier of Manitoba was quoted in the newspaper today as saying he had never seen an infrastructure program, supposed to stimulate the economy, which kicks in only when the economy is in surplus.

What a contradiction. Exactly when we do not need an economic stimulus package is when we are in economic surplus. The only time we are going to be able to access the $2 billion for the rapid transit we need or for the Red River floodway work we need is when the government shows a surplus. It is not projecting a surplus next year adequate enough for the infrastructure program to be accessible to my home province of Manitoba.

It is a real illusion, a shell game, to say that there is a $2 billion foundation which will be reinvested in infrastructure across the country but only when times are so good that we do not need it. We do not need economic stimulation when we are in a surplus situation. We need it now when we are looking at a slow economic period.