Pat Martin

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the comments which are very much in keeping with my speech.

Going back to the member's first point, it does remind us of the Mulroney years and we should be reminded of what the Prime Minister said during those Mulroney years when he talked about the corruption that was so rampant in that cabinet. This is a quote from the Prime Minister in 1991. He said, “When we form the government every minister in the cabinet that I will be presiding over will have to take full responsibility for what is going on in his department. If there is any bungling in the department, no one will be singled out. It will be the minister that will have to take the full responsibility”. Those are very strong words and it was a zero tolerance attitude maintained by the current Prime Minister as the opposition leader in 1991.

We would like to see the same sort of swift action, take no prisoners. If we are going to restore the public's confidence, swift action must be taken. Frankly the minister is going to have to go. We are going to hold the current Prime Minister to his word and the comments he made in 1991. The same should still apply today.

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East for agreeing to share her time with me. As she has correctly pointed out in her speech, our two ridings share a great deal of common items, most of which are not very enviable. The very things we share are things people would probably not want to share. One of them is that both our ridings suffer from chronic long term poverty and all the predictable consequences that come with it.

As the member pointed out, she represents what is the poorest postal code region in the country, downtown Vancouver East. My riding is the third poorest riding in the country when measured by the incidence of poverty and average family income. However, the point I would like to make is that neither of us qualify for any transitional jobs fund money. Although we are suffering from crime, violence and all issues surrounding chronic long term poverty, we do not qualify for the help these funds were presumably set up to assist ridings in dire straits. Frankly there has not been one red cent for the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

That really irks us. It is galling, as we see the onion being peeled back layer by layer and the truth starting to come out, that the ridings benefiting from these funds are fairly affluent and well to do ridings. More often than not there has been some political influence in how these grants were allocated to various ridings.

The most glaring and best example we could use is the riding represented by the current minister of HRDC. With an unemployment rate of 6.6% and an incidence of poverty of 10.7% in her riding, how does she justify pouring job creation money into the particular riding? Most of us in poor inner city ridings look to statistics such as these and are envious of them.

Another glaring example came to light when we looked at the Edmonton East riding of the current Minister of Justice. Most of the country is flocking to Edmonton because there are jobs and opportunity and prosperity. I am not sure what the unemployment rate is in Edmonton West but I am sure it is not the 12% that we were told was necessary to qualify for these funds.

A $1.3 million grant went to banding trees to prevent Dutch elm disease in the riding of Edmonton West. This is a laudable concept. I am all in favour of saving elm trees, but why do we not qualify for anything with an unemployment rate that is staggering in the inner city of Winnipeg and an incidence of poverty that is 31.1%? Some 31.1% of all people living in my riding are poor and we do not get anything, zero, zippo. We were told that we do not qualify.

The rules keep changing. First there had to be 12% unemployment to qualify. Now we learn that maybe in the riding of Edmonton West it is not under 12% but that there are pockets of unemployment. That is the term they are using. Aboriginal people in her riding are disproportionately unemployed. That is a legitimate point but she did not tell that to us.

We have the same argument in Vancouver East or Winnipeg Centre. I could point to and illustrate pockets of unemployment all over my riding, but we were told that we do not get anything. This is what is really galling and grating to people who are representing areas in genuine need.

The hon. member for Vancouver East pointed out two flaws in the current system. One is the glaring errors in the administration of the fund. That is really what came to light first. Nobody can deny there is a serious problem. Even the minister is recognizing that there is a serious problem. I can indicate why we have this serious problem. It is because when one-third of the public sector is cut, hacked and slashed and everybody is laid off, how could we expect the same amount of work to be done?

It is unreasonable to think the same kind of scrutiny can be applied to these projects when everybody has been fired. In the federal public sector 50,000 people have been laid off. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. We are starting to see the predictable outcome of laying off all those people.

The next glaring point about the TJF is the allocation. It was a mystery to all of us how some ridings got these grants and some did not. Now it seems pretty clear. It is political influence. The Liberals are using it as a Liberal slush fund to further their own interests in their own ridings.

Obviously on a personal level I can point out that it is tragic we did not get any of it in my riding, but the real tragedy is that it makes members of the general public even more cynical than they already were about the political process and about what we do in this place as politicians.

If they were not jaded enough already, as the real horror of this disastrous story unfolds more and more Canadians will be even more cynical about their government. That is the tragic point I would like to make. It is tough enough to do our job and try to maintain some semblance of dignity without this kind of thing tarnishing the image of every person who stands in the House of Commons.

In the Prime Minister's riding there were 17 of these TJF grants. Let us imagine the millions and millions and millions of dollars. Actually we have a total list of all grants that went into the riding of the Minister of Human Resource Development. Over three years there were $30 million in grants or $10 million a year. It is a booklet as thick as the Manhattan phone book. Virtually every little business in the whole riding has had something shovelled toward them from these many, many, many programs. Not all of them were TJF grants. I think there were only three transitional jobs fund grants in her riding, but in an area with 6.6% unemployment, not even half the minimum standard which the rules say have to be met before a riding qualifies for anything, it makes one wonder how that money was directed to that riding.

Most of us on the prairies look to Ontario as a land of opportunity and prosperity. How do towns like Brant qualify for these grants? I am sure that there are problems all over the country and everybody deserves equal access to these types of training funds and subsidies, but it seems it is disproportionately going to areas that cannot really argue they need it.

The average family income in the riding represented by the Minister of Human Resources Development is $45,000 a year. The people in the core area of Winnipeg can only dream about aspiring to that level of income. The average family income where I live is $28,000 a year. We are talking about a disparity. It may just be a different standard of poverty, but it is certainly a lack of understanding of what it means to be locked into the inner city core area without opportunity. These programs should be there to assist on a broader level.

We talked about the Prime Minister's riding with 17 of these grants worth $7,296,000. Is this justifiable when other ridings are being given absolutely nothing?

I echo the comments of my colleague that frankly the NDP is not against job creation programs. If the transitional jobs fund did not exist the NDP would probably be calling for such a program to be created. We are in favour of this kind of thing, but we make the argument that everybody should have equal access to those opportunities. They should not be spread out in as disproportionate a way as they are currently.

It really does make me wonder how the minister of HRDC with 6.6% unemployment can qualify for any kind of grant at all. Then of course there is Edmonton West with $1.3 million to band trees to prevent Dutch elm disease. There is a Dutch elm disease problem in Winnipeg too, but I do not think anybody would be so presumptuous as to apply for a transitional jobs fund grant for it.

I close by saying that the NDP will be voting in favour of the Reform Party's opposition day motion. We think we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg here as has been pointed out over and over again. As we get deeper into this scandal, and that is the only word we can use as it is going to be the scandal of the spring, I regret as well that we are being diverted from the many other pressing issues of the day. Frankly, it is a bit of a diversion that we are concentrating on this subject instead of all the important work that we could be doing, but it is necessary. To restore the confidence of the general public it is a process we are going to have to go through as painful as it is.

The real tragedy is not seeing one minister toppled, if that is to be. The real tragedy is that the general public is so disillusioned as they watch this unfold that we are doing permanent damage to the reputation of the whole political system. This should be dealt with swiftly. If the government were honourable it would not be dallying around. It would not be trying to build barricades and fences around the issue. It should treat this issue honestly and admit that something terrible is taking place. A very transparent process must take place to heal the wounds because some cuts do not heal.

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Mississauga West for a very entertaining presentation. It is always good theatre when he speaks. I think he has the toughest job in the country, trying to gloss over what absolutely has to be the worst public relations disaster imaginable. I admire that he has the courage to stand there and spout that kind of thing.

It was gracious of him to concede that there is definitely a problem with the administration of the programs. What he failed to comment on is that there is a huge problem in the allocation of the programs and who gets the benefits from the particular funds. The transitional jobs fund is the one that most comes to mind.

Statistically I have the third poorest riding in the country. Does the hon. member know how many transitional jobs funds grants we got in our riding? I can tell him. None. Zero, not one red cent, because we were told we did not qualify. With an incidence of poverty of 32% or 33% in the whole riding we did not qualify because of some magic formula that they cooked up so they could allocate it all to their own ridings.

The riding of Edmonton West is where most of the country goes to get a job because there is so much prosperity there. The Minister of Justice is pulling in transitional jobs fund grants: $1.3 million to band trees to prevent Dutch elm disease. There is a meaningful and significant project. We did not get any, not one red cent.

Regarding the administration of the fund, would the member agree that one of the biggest problems is that one cannot hack, cut and slash 30% of the public service and still expect to get the same amount of work done? Would he agree that maybe the Liberals cut too deep when they laid off a third of the public sector? Now they have lost track of the administration of their programs. Could the member explain just what the rules are to qualify for a TJF grant? I would like to know. It just seems to change from day to day. Could he answer those questions?

[Minimum Sentences, December 14th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate on an issue which I feel very strongly about. I want to thank the hon. member for Lakeland for putting forward Motion No. 20. He has hit the nail on the head. It is something which many Canadians are very interested in and concerned with.

My only regret is that the motion was not deemed votable. I wish we had the opportunity to debate this for three hours, not one hour, and ultimately to vote on the motion because I feel it is that strong an issue.

I feel strongly as well, though, that one of the reasons this motion was not deemed to be votable was that it is so incredibly flawed and poorly crafted. Without being rude, it honestly seems as if the hon. member wrote it on the back of a napkin in a doughnut shop because it is clearly one of the shoddiest pieces of work I have seen introduced in the House of Commons.

It is no surprise to me that the committee would not allow this motion to be votable because it is so fundamentally flawed at almost every level. It is simply so casual that no wonder the committee would not deal with it that way.

One thing we all can agree on is that there is nothing more reprehensible in the world than the trade or traffic in human beings, the buying, selling, trading, transporting or smuggling of them as a marketable commodity. We all agree that it is fundamentally wrong. Although many governments are, this government and all governments around the world should be cracking down on the trafficking of human beings and driving a stake through the heart of that horrible occupation.

Most Canadians shudder when they think of how awful the conditions must have been in the most recent example of the four desperate ships which drifted up on the west coast of British Columbia. I venture to say that we would not be having this debate had those four sorry looking vessels not drifted up on the west coast of British Columbia. It raised this whole issue in the minds of people.

Some chose to overstate the issue and made far more of it than it really was. Let us bring it down to perspective right now. There were 599 people in four boats over the course of six or seven weeks. Canada allows 23,000 to 25,000 refugees into the country every year. Almost 100 refugees a day come to Canada. The fact that 500 or 600 drifted up on the west coast over the course of five or six weeks is not a matter of national security or an emergency.

Our borders are not a sieve. The Reform Party and all the fearmongers on the west coast can calm down. We are not being invaded. The yellow peril is not upon us. They should chill out a bit. This is not an emergency. I hope that the rest of this debate can take on a tone that is a little more realistic about what is happening.

We were so concerned about the overstating of this case that we started to do a little more research into what motivated this group of migrants and what motivates migrants all over the world. Let me back up a little by saying that over 100 million people the world over are moving usually for economic reasons to places of better opportunity. That has happened throughout history. People have followed capital and opportunity to build better lives for themselves.

At this point in time we are seeing an escalation of that movement. Transportation is more readily available than it might have been hundreds of years ago. Also, the third world, the underdeveloped nations, know how we live. How do they know? They watch TV. They watch Dallas reruns and stuff like that on television. They know how the west works, lives, operates and the wonderful opportunities we have here, and guess what? They want a piece of it because they love their children too. They are willing to do anything to provide a better opportunity for their families and drag them out of the despair they live in to the wonderful opportunities that we enjoy.

It is no mystery to me, but it is a fact of life. I predict that we will be facing a day of reckoning very soon as many more hundreds of millions of people make that realization, decide to pull up roots and do anything to get to the first world where they and their families might have an opportunity. Frankly, that is why the world is seized of this issue. That is why the member for Lakeland should be complimented for raising it.

I just came back from Washington, D.C. On Saturday we were at an international conference on this very issue, the mass movement of people around the world and what to do about it as developed nations. Norway, Germany, the United States, everyone was represented. Canada was very proudly represented by our minister who spoke very eloquently to the group. These are some of the things that come to mind.

Again, the research we did was to try to understand the current boatloads of people who drifted up on the coast of B.C. We started to scratch the surface of where these people came from. They were from the Fujian province in China.

The Fujian province is the first place in China that had free economic trade zones, something that anybody who deals with international trade is very familiar with. They are fenced compounds where western corporations can go and act free of any of the labour laws in that country. Manufacturers can find cheap labour and manufacture the products for the west in these free economic trade zones.

The Fujian province was the first. Now there are 200 of those free economic trade zones making The Gap jeans, Wal-Mart products, Liz Claiborne and J. Crew clothes. Maybe the clothes I am wearing right now were made in a free economic trade zone sweatshop in the Fujian province.

The research that we did indicated that the International Labour Organization said it cost 85 cents an hour. A living wage in that part of China would be 85 cents an hour. These free economic trade zones pay their people 18 cents an hour to build the western products that we enjoy here.

These people have made the natural connection. They are earning 18 cents an hour, or one-fifth of what it costs to be a Chinese peasant, making Gap blue jeans that will sell for $50 or $75 to the western world, and they want a piece of that. People are not stupid. Those are some of the things that came to light as we researched this subject.

I recommend that we should not dwell on the crime and punishment side of trying to build higher and higher walls around our country to keep these people out. That is the same thing we were accused of with free trade. If we have the globalization of trade and the globalization of capital we should also have the globalization of human rights, the globalization of improving wages, labour standards and standards of living. All those things should be part and parcel of globalization.

We do not want to build walls around the country like the hon. member for Lakeland is suggesting. He says that we should build higher walls to keep these people out because it is our stuff and they are not going to get any of it. His recommendation is bigger and better penalties.

I suggest the inverse is true. We should be working to elevate the standards of wages and working conditions of the Chinese peasant who lives in a free economic trade zone in the Fujian province and makes 18 cents an hour. That is what the real shame is and that is where we should be putting our energies. In other words, we should stop criminalizing the victims.

The Reform Party was screaming, when these people drifted on to the coast of B.C., to lock them up. There were photographs in the paper of children in shackles, 12 year old children who just came off a harrowing six week journey on the open seas, because members of the Reform Party demanded it. They did not feel safe if these people were in their midst.

We should not criminalize the victims; we should go after the criminals. We should go after the snakeheads, the smugglers and the people who exploit the human condition and the human misery that the free economic trade zone, our western world, has created in the Fujian province in China. It is about time we started taking some responsibility for what our standard of living costs.

If we are to take the route of elevating their standard of living to something that is a little more decent, let us look at the practicality of that. David Suzuki says that for all of us on the planet to enjoy the same standard of living Canadians enjoy we would need six more planets. There are not enough resources to go around so we cannot simply hope that every person in China has two cars and all our western consumer products. That will not happen either. There is an environmental factor as well.

I would hope that some reason, sensitivity, research and intelligence would prevail in the whole debate about the mass migration of people. Maybe even some quality bills and quality motions could be put before the House so we could have a proper debate and a proper vote instead of something that was clearly written on a paper napkin in a doughnut shop.

The solution is not to build higher walls. The solution is not to criminalize the victims. The solution is to bust the criminals and get them out of our country like we have been doing. We have been busting the smugglers and sending them back where they came from. Let us look at the larger global picture of why there is mass migration. It has to do with our western standard of living and we have to get sensitive to it or it will be at our peril.

[Division No. 61, December 6th, 1999]

One of the members is saying that everybody in B.C.is against this deal. They are obviously wrong. This went to 46 communities in British Columbia. They toured the province. There was broad consultation. It was the longest debate ever in the history of the provincial legislature. It was ratified and passed and approved in its current form.

I heard the Reform Party say that this deal somehow denies women's rights. There is absolutely no basis for this claim. It is a myth. It is trying to do anything to undermine the legitimacy of the Nisga'a deal.

Does this treaty protect property rights? Reformers were trying to say that property rights were at risk. The treaty transfers ownership of the land back to the Nisga'a people collectively. The treaty allows for various ways for people to then privately own the land that they live on.

All these things were brought up during the 100 years of negotiation. They were carefully contemplated. They were debated and the issues are addressed within the text of the actual deal.

I have raised this in the House before. What is really galling is to see the Reformers trying to sell themselves as the champions of aboriginal people. If we scratch the surface just a little, go back a year or so, we can see in Hansard what Reformers were saying about aboriginal issues; things like “Just because we did not kill the Indians and have Indian wars, that does not mean we did not conquer these people. Is that not why they allowed themselves to be herded into little reserves in the most isolated, desolate, worthless parts of the country?” This is a Reform MP's comments on aboriginal people.

There is another which I like even better. I am talking about a man by the name of Herb Grubel who now works for the Fraser Institute. When he was a member of parliament he likened Indians on reserves to people living on a south sea island courtesy of their rich uncle. This is the attitude of a man like Herb Grubel. If he is teaching school or university somewhere, he should be muzzled. He should have a muzzle on with attitudes like this. It is absolutely scandalous.

One of the advisers to the aboriginal task force of the Reform Party is a man named Mel Smith, a self-professed pundit. Mr. Smith wrote a book called Our Home or Native Land , a clever play on words, criticizing any concept of aboriginal self-government. Obviously this is the true attitude of the Reform Party toward aboriginal people. Look at the company it keeps, look at things the party says, look at quotes like I have mentioned which would make any decent person in this day and age shudder.

One of Reform's past advisers, Tom Flanagan, whom I think at the present time is a college professor at the University of Calgary, wrote a paper asking why Indians do not drive taxis? He proceeded to go on a diatribe about every other group of immigrants who come to Canada start at low paying jobs such as driving taxis and eventually work their way up the economic ladder. He was making the point that he felt these lazy people would not take low paying jobs and get into the workforce. This was from Tom Flanagan, another Reform adviser. This is truly horrifying and I could circulate copies of the article to members for their own information.

In the next day or so we will see the last little bit of political mischief on the part of the Reform Party. We will see those members go to the wall to do all they can to stop the Nisga'a deal. They are forcing 450 and some odd votes tomorrow night and will make us stand up for every vote. I liken it to Custer's last stand. These great Indian fighters are going to have one last stand. But let us look at history and what happened at Custer's last stand. The Indian people won and they will win tomorrow even if we have to stand up 500 times. I will stand up 500 times. I do not care.

It has been very hard for me to sit in such close physical proximity to the Reform Party members and hear them and their outrageous comments for these past many months. As a member of parliament from a riding with a huge aboriginal population, I for one am sick of hearing it. The sooner this deal gets ratified, voted on and implemented the better it will be for Canada and the better it will be for all of us.

There is the myth that this particular deal will form the template for all other subsequent land claim settlements. Again, this is absolutely untrue. The Government of Canada has the mandate under the constitution to enter into treaties of this nature. The government is charged with that mandate. It negotiates each individual contract based on the merits of the claim.

The only thing I would criticize about the Nisga'a process is that it took 100 years. There was nothing wrong with the process. It was just spread out over too great a length of time. If we could somehow compress that to a reasonable length of time and keep that model of true negotiation and reaching a settlement in an amicable, that is the most civilized way of doing business. When we compare it to the alternative, which is violent struggle, the most civilized way for resolving issues of this nature is at the table, through collective bargaining and negotiation which is really what occurred in this matter.

It is now up to us. We in the House have the privilege to vote on this deal. I am very glad that I have the opportunity to vote on this deal. This is the most significant thing I have been asked to do since becoming an elected member of parliament. I will be proud to stand up tomorrow and vote in favour of the Nisga'a treaty.

[Division No. 61, December 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have an opportunity one last time to put out points of view regarding what I think is history in the making. I believe the passing of the Nisga'a deal is a monumental, pivotal point in Canadian history as we watch this group of aboriginal people take its first courageous steps toward true self-government. I hope we are seeing the beginning of the end of 130 years of absolute social tragedy: the Indian Act.

Like the member who just spoke, I too am shocked and appalled at some of the tone and the content of the arguments I have heard in the House of Commons as the bill is debated. I have watched as the Reform Party has systematically tried to discredit aboriginal people and tried to make the argument that somehow the Nisga'a are not ready for this move. It keeps threading together isolated incidents of misuse of funds from reserves across the country. It tries to thread that together into some argument that self-government is a bad thing or that aboriginal people are not ready or mature or competent enough.

I have even heard Reformers stoop so low as to compare the Nisga'a deal to apartheid. That is an injustice on many levels because it trivializes the struggle of black South Africans. Frankly, I do not think the people who said that even know what true apartheid is. It is shocking to me that they would make that kind of comparison.

For their benefit I did some research on what the apartheid regime really was. I went to the Library of Parliament and obtained the legislation that actually made up the apartheid system in South Africa.

I would like the House to hear some of what is in the legislation, compare it to what we know about the Nisga'a deal and if we think there is any comparison or relationship whatsoever.

One element of the apartheid regime was the Masters and Servants Act which made it a criminal offence to breach any contract of employment. Insolence, drunkenness, negligence and strikes would be considered criminal offences under the Masters and Servants Act.

Extra-marital intercourse between whites and blacks was outlawed by law. That became a crime.

The Native (Black) Affairs Administrative Act contained the pass laws. A black person had to carry a permit to enter a white neighbourhood. One could be charged with promoting feelings of hostility. In other words, if anything was said to anybody that may have promoted hostility, one could be arrested.

This is what black South African people went through under the apartheid regime. For the Reform Party to even compare the Nisga'a deal to apartheid, someone had to blow the whistle on that kind of ridiculous statement. In trying to stop the Nisga'a deal the Reform Party has also stooped so low during the debate as to spread myths that simply are not true. Reformers have said things about the Nisga'a deal that they know in their heart if they had ever read the deal are simply not true.

One of the things the Reform Party talks about is whether there should be a referendum on the agreement in the province of British Columbia. It knows full well that there is no precedence for a referendum. We did not have a referendum on NAFTA, or on the GST. We do not have referendums on these matters. We have a government that can decide these issues in the House of Commons or in the provincial legislatures. The reason there had to be a referendum vote among the Nisga'a people is that they did not have a structure of government which was binding on all of the people there or they would have been able to do that by a more conventional means, as well.

Should parliament not be able to change the treaty or alter it at this point to be able to make amendments to the deal? This is a three party agreement. Should any one party be able to impose their points of view on the other two?

[Supply, November 30th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member answered his own question. No one pays it up front. No one from that area has that kind of money. They sign a chit or whatever that they owe that money when they get here.

My brother is a lawyer in Toronto and has one of these people as a client. This person was chained to a bed in the basement of a home and forced to work 16 to 18 hour days in servitude, in bondage. This is bonded labour. This is a return to the bad old days of slavery. People are desperate enough to undertake the obligation of owing $40,000. If they do not pay it back, they are under great threat of coercion or of having damage done to their families back home. Many of them probably still have loved ones back in the Fujian province.

This is the kind of coercion and manipulation that goes on in the minds of desperate people. Can anyone imagine how desperate people would have to be? The 18 cents an hour is not my figure. It was the International Labour Organization that just recently did the study of the free economic trade zones in the Fujian province where a lot of our products are made, such as children's toys, furniture and electronics. Maybe the clothes that I am wearing right now were stitched together in that particular area of China. There are 200 free economic trade zones in China now, many of them in the Fujian province, where western goods are made. I did not invent that figure. The International Labour Organization's estimate was that 85 cents an hour would be a reasonable living wage for a person in that area of China. They make 18 cents an hour. Beijing is a heck of a long way from the Fujian province. I do not know how they would even get there to file an application for a visa. I do not think it can be done. Legally, they cannot get here from there.

[Supply, November 30th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I think they are a matter of public record. The member from Kamloops stood up and made not only statements on that issue but questioned the government on that issue. He quoted chapter and verse, and the name of a senior RCMP officer from British Columbia who wrote letters to us in response to a white collar scam that was going on in the riding of Kamloops.

Seniors were being cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by some kind of a scam. The RCMP knew it was going on, knew the details, the amount and the people involved, but they wrote back saying, “We're sorry, but at this time we can't possibly investigate this. We don't have the resources, the staff or the manpower to investigate”. In other words, they said that there was no money to protect the interests of the victims.

We would be happy to give those letters to the member because we want this publicized as much as the member obviously does.

[Supply, November 30th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to take part in this debate. I want to start by expressing appreciation to members of the Bloc Quebecois who brought forward this very timely, topical and relevant subject for us to debate today. Special thanks go to the member for Berthier—Montcalm for bringing forward the particular motion.

I come from the riding of Winnipeg Centre, the core area of Winnipeg. In that neighbourhood, I am not proud to say, we are no strangers to the problems of organized crime albeit on a small scale. I am speaking specifically of urban street gangs, often wrongly called aboriginal youth gangs. It is a misnomer to call our problem an aboriginal youth problem. These urban street gangs are run and orchestrated by adults, often using young people or abusing young people, to bring about their own goals. I want to make perfectly clear that when I talk about the gang problem in Winnipeg it is an urban street gang problem and not an aboriginal youth problem.

Much of our problem in the inner city of Winnipeg is a very predictable consequence of a disastrous social policy or the absence of any social policy. This is a predictable consequence that anybody could have told us would be the outcome of years of neglect. Years and years and years of letting the inner city of Winnipeg rot has had a very predictable outcome and consequence in the form of a permanent underclass. Quelle surprise. Starve people for a couple of decades and we will develop an underclass which will become organized. When we shut people out of the mainstream economy where do they go to find a standard of living?

When we talk about organized crime everybody thinks of the Mafia. It is almost a cliché. Where do we think it came from? In the 1900s in New York City people were shut out of the mainstream economy. People would not hire a swarthy Mediterranean type. They were shut out of the economy and they created their own economy. Yes, it was illegal. Given the choice between my children starving and doing something a bit off colour, I have often said it is frankly an easy choice to make. They loved their children too and they were forced into the situation of doing something illegal in order to survive.

That is the situation with the urban street gangs we have in the city of Winnipeg. A whole generation of people were shut out of the mainstream economy and created its own illegal mini economy. Some people think that illegal is just a sick bird because frankly when it is survival or illegal they choose survival.

The whole social problem faced in the core area of the city of Winnipeg recently manifested itself in arson. There is an epidemic of arson. It is like Watts in 1965. It is burn baby burn. People are expressing their frustration by torching the miserable neighbourhood they live in. They are levelling it. They are taking the law into their own hands. They are expressing themselves and their frustration by burning down the neighbourhood they live in, maybe in the hopes that something will rise from the ashes that will be a better world.

It is very predictable. Any student of the human experience could have told us that this would happen. We are playing with fire here and now we are experiencing fire. It boils down to year after year after year of fundamental neglect in the inner city.

Thankfully we have now elected a progressive mayor and a progressive provincial government. Maybe those two could actually work together and start to turn the issue around. Let us call it what it is. Organized crime and street crime are predictable consequences of chronic long term poverty that we should have known about.

My colleague talked about an issue in which I am very interested: human bondage, human slavery, the advent of slavery again.

I see the member from the Tories gets a kick out of that. I agree that human bondage can have many meanings. The particular meaning I am dealing with now is the terrible spectacle of desperate people, looking for a better life, who are washing up on the shores of British Columbia's west coast. They are getting put into a pipeline that is in fact organized crime. The whole network of people who are taking advantage of these desperate individuals is organized crime in its truest sense. They are very well connected. They have a network all over North America that takes these people from the ships and puts them into illegal and abusive situations where they have to pay off the debt they owe for getting themselves smuggled into the country.

More sensitive people are looking at this issue and trying to understand how it comes about. People from the Fujian province in China, desperate enough to leave their situation, are willing to get on some death trap of a boat and owe some criminal $40,000 to come here to build a better life for themselves and their children. Let us try and understand their motivation. What kind of circumstances are they leaving that they would risk life and limb to undertake a journey like that?

In doing a bit of research, I have learned a bit about the Fujian province where these desperate people come from. That is the first place in China where they had these free economic trade zones, that great bastion of capitalism called free economic trade zones. It is a fenced compound where labour legislation does not apply and no laws apply. People work making Barbie dolls, The Gap jeans and Liz Claiborne sweaters. A lot of our western products are developed in these trade zones in the Fujian province of China.

The ILO, the International Labour Organization, did some research. It found that they need to make about 85 cents an hour to make a reasonable standard of living in China. To live like a Chinese peasant, they need to make 85 cents an hour. This is $6 or $7 a day. The wage in these free economic trade zones is 18 cents an hour, one-fifth of what it costs to survive as peasant. The Gap jeans, Liz Claiborne and all these outfits are paying these people 18 cents an hour for making western goods. These people are not stupid. They put two and two together. They know there is another world out there that lives a hell of a lot better than they do. To better themselves and their families, they will do anything to get here and maybe have some hope and optimism that they will enjoy a better standard of living.

I believe we have only seen the tip of iceberg in this situation. I think we will face a day of reckoning. As a western developed nation, we cannot keep those people down forever. They know that we are here enjoying the good life and they are there living a life of misery and desperation. We have this bizarre spectacle of people living in a grass hut with a mud floor watching Mary Tyler Moore reruns on a colour TV and wondering why it is not them and why they cannot have a piece of that good life. So they become desperate.

A lot of less sensitive people or people who have not thought this through are saying “Why should these people be able to jump the queue and wind up on the shores of Canada and become landed immigrants in this country? What about all those good people who are waiting patiently in line?”

Let me tell the House something. There is no way to get here from there. China has 1.2 billion people and we have one Canadian immigration officer in China who is in Beijing, which is a heck of a long way from the Fujian province. How does a person making 18 cents an hour save up enough money to get themselves to Beijing, to then stand in line for months sometimes and literally sleep outside the door of the embassy to get a visa to come to Canada?

I asked the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration why we could not set up a little satellite office. If there is such a great demand from the Fujian province to come to Canada, we could set up a little office in the Fujian province for 18 months. There would be no market for snakeheads. We would pull the rug out from underneath them if we gave people conventional access to this country. Well, the minister said that there was no budget for promoting Canada, et cetera. It is all a budgetary issue. Now we are facing the consequences of these people who are desperate enough to come to our shores and become victims of this terrible criminal pipeline.

The last thing I will say about this is that I am very critical of the way the government is handling the issue. We know some of the problem people in that criminal pipeline. We know some individuals, and I know some by name, in Vancouver, Toronto and New York City. However, for some reason the government is hoping to wait until it can do one big sting, like a TV cop show where in the last five minutes of the show they will round everybody up and bust them so they can look like heroes.

Why are the police not harassing the people that it knows already? By the word harass, I mean within the context of the law. Why are the police not picking these people up and questioning them? Why are they not doing everything they can to stop this and send a message back to the Fujian province that Canada will not tolerate the smuggling of human cargo and human bondage in our community. That is one issue I am very critical of.

The other thing that my colleague from Sydney—Victoria raised is the RCMP's inability to enforce the laws and put an end to some of the terrible organized crime we have in the country.

Our party gets letters from RCMP officers telling us that they are unable to investigate crimes they know are being committed because they do not have the budget or personnel to do it. It is sending a green light to organized crime, especially on complicated issues of white collar crime, et cetera. It is a terrible thing when we do not have the money to bust criminals who we know are operating in our community and exploiting Canadians. It is all budgetary. It is strictly a matter of finance. Balancing the budget seems to have priority over protecting Canadians from organized criminals, and I think that is scandalous.

[Housing, November 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows that Canada continues to be the only developed nation in the world that does not have a national housing policy or a national housing strategy. Here is what the current Minister of Finance said when he was the chair of the Liberal task force on housing: “This government just sits there and does nothing. The lack of affordable housing contributes to and accelerates the cycle of poverty which is reprehensible in a society as rich as ours”.

The minister is now in a position to do something about this reprehensible situation. In fact he has had six years to fix this reprehensible situation. Will he or will he not answer the call from around the country and announce that he will reinvest in social housing in this coming budget?