Peter Stoffer

[Budget Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was very proud a couple of years ago to stand with the NDP caucus and amend the budget at that time to eliminate the corporate tax cuts and put that forward for the reinvestment of $4 billion in things such as public transit and housing. I will never forget the current Minister of Human Resources and the current Minister of National Defence ripping up Bill C-48, saying that this was fiscally irresponsible and was going to do damage to our nation.

And what did they do when they formed the government? The Minister of National Defence, as the Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, was in Halifax giving out a cheque for public transit, money that the NDP fought for in the budget. The Conservatives can howl all they want, but the reality is that when banks and petroleum companies are making record profits under the current tax regime, giving them tax breaks is not the answer.

If we really want to give people a tax break, we can eliminate taxes on funerals and crematorium services. We can eliminate taxes on over the counter drugs. We can eliminate taxes, for example, on home heating essentials, as we are advocating in Nova Scotia. That is a good tax break. We also can help the poorest of the poor and stop taxing their disability pensions, for example. That is where good tax relief should go.

I have always believed in a one-third, one-third and one-third approach: one-third of the budget on debt relief, one-third on strategic tax incentives and one-third on social reinvestment. But those folks over there put the vast majority of it to the most profitable corporations.

What do we tell veterans and their widows? We cannot help them. What do we tell fishermen and their communities? We cannot help them. What do we tell the Inuit in the far north who are trying to get housing? We cannot help them. What do we tell students who are struggling under massive debts? We cannot help them. What do we tell parents with autistic children who are struggling to pay for the treatment the children require? We cannot help them.

It goes on and on. I remind the government about the children at Base Petawawa. When some of those kids whose fathers died in Afghanistan were having psychological problems, we asked a question in this House and the Minister of Health's response was that mental health issues are “a provincial responsibility”. What nonsense. They were kids from a military base who required assistance. Thank goodness for the report of Ontario ombudsman André Marin, who slammed both the Ontario government and the federal government. We are glad to see that there was an arrangement after that.

However, we should not have had to have a report. We should not need to have media influence in order to do the right thing. If the government has this kind of surplus, when is it going to invest in the people and communities of this country? My colleague from Toronto is absolutely correct, but it is not just Toronto that is struggling under a massive infrastructure debt. Halifax and others are as well. I will continue this right after question period, Mr. Speaker.

[Budget Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to narrow this down to a couple of people in my riding who are having great difficulty. This is about people who served their country with valour and honour and now are veterans. One of these people is the widow of a veteran.

Here is what happens. When we speak to officials at DVA privately over a glass of beer and with no microphones or anyone looking over their shoulder, they will tell you that the reason why they say no and deny so many people their proper rights and pensions is because they simply do not have the money. They would love to go public with that, but they cannot because we do not have proper whistleblower protection

I will give two examples. Chris Beattie is the widow of a veteran who served at Chalk River. Just before he died, DVA said to him that he was entitled to the veterans independence program. However, two days before the program was actually delivered, before DVA came to his house to deliver and assist with the VI program, he died. Because he died and because he did not actually receive the program, his spouse is not entitled to VIP.

Another example, which is reported in today's Chronicle-Herald, is that of a veteran firefighter with the Department of National Defence, 73 years old, who has been denied repeatedly for cancer and heart problems because of the smoke inhalation he suffered in his career.

The province recognizes that pension disability, but DVA says no. With a $14 billion surplus, does the member not think that for their service to their country the government can assist people to have some semblance of a decent life ?

[Budget Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the other day at a reception I had discussions with a group of military personnel. Someone who had just returned from Afghanistan said that the mission in Afghanistan is not over until the last Canadian who participated in the mission dies. He was saying that some of the men and women who come back from Afghanistan may have mental or physical disabilities and may require care and treatment for the rest of their natural lives. What he was referring to is that the mission is not just when people go in and come out, but it encompasses whatever requirements they may have for the rest of their lives.

When the government is asked what contingency funds are in place for the future concerns of people who come back with mental or physical disabilities and their families, the answer is that there are none. We can spend $4 billion on the operation of a mission, and I certainly will not argue what is required to operate the mission, but would it not be prudent for the government to ensure that certain funds are put aside so that the men and women who served in that conflict will have their needs met in future years? That could be done in a budget. Those funds could be allocated to make sure the money will be there to ensure their needs are always met.

The government says it supports the troops, but I always ask what happens to that support when the uniform comes off. Why would the government not do something of that nature on a specific point with respect to the budgetary funds?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, December 10th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the House to know that my hon. colleague from Cape Breton and his family have done a tremendous amount of work over the years, not only with his three sons but with literally every other kid who is in Cape Breton. I think he has run across them on either a hockey rink or a baseball field. The Glace Bay Colonels are some of the best little players on the entire North American continent.

The advantage we have as grown-ups is being able to work with kids and being able to share our experiences with them in order to guide them on the right path.

My hon. colleague from Hamilton, who was from the great province of New Brunswick originally, tells some wonderful stories about growing up. It would have been very easy in those days to make a wrong turn.

Many kids in the country grow up impoverished; have various disabilities, either mental or physical; or come from a broken home. They come from all kinds of backgrounds. It is very easy as a youth, either as an individual or collectively, as my hon. colleague said, to make the wrong choice at a particular time.

What do we then do with them? The initial outrage would be to hang them from the highest tree and make sure they pay for their mistakes. However, there also is a compassionate side to it. Forgiveness in the Bible means that one turns the other cheek. When we look at the child we see a human being and we must try to make a productive person out of the individual. I believe that is how justice must work. However, there is no question that a deterrent is needed. People need to know that if they do something wrong there is a price to pay.

Sometimes the people who do those wrongs or injustices simply may not know what they are doing or they are in a collective group with a lot of peer pressure. However, after sober second thought, in a day or two they realize they should never have done that. It does not necessarily mean that we should throw the baby out with bathwater.

I grew up in Richmond, B.C. My parents ran a group home for well over 23 years. We had over 400 kids come through our doors, sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes for a weekend and sometimes they stayed with us for several months. The one common theme between each kid was that they all lacked love. Either their parents did not love them or society rejected them and, for whatever reason, they did not feel that they fit into the normal structure of our society.

One of the biggest problems I felt growing up surrounded by that was the lack of attention and the lack of resources paid by governments to assist these children. It was almost like a babysitting mentality. If they were off the streets and within four walls that was good enough.

Many social workers back in those days tried to do the very best they could. I remember quite clearly that my parents would be with a child 24-7, day in day out. A social worker would come in once a month, do a half hour analysis on the kid and write a report. The social workers would not spend much time with my parents because they were too rushed. They often had to go to another home to talk to another kid. There certainly were not enough of them around, even back then, 40 years ago, to actually ascertain what the kid was thinking, what the environment was and all kinds of other parameters in their lifestyle.

We just simply shuffled kids off as numbers. We have heard story after story throughout the years about the challenges and difficulties people have had with the Children's Aid Societies in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and in the west.

My youngest sister right now looks after three first nations babies. Two of them have fetal alcohol syndrome, which goes back to the bill on labelling of alcohol bottles for fetal alcohol syndrome. My sister loves those kids as if they were her own. She has only cared for them for a few weeks and one she has had for a few months but she knows eventually she must give them up. All she is asking for is that when those children are returned to their families who wish to have them, she wants to ensure the families have the opportunity and the resources to care for these children like their very own.

When the government introduces legislation to toughen up the laws and increase the penalties or jail sentences for various crimes, one of the questions I keep asking, and to which I have not received an answer yet is whether the government will transfer the needed resources to the provinces. It is the provinces that end up picking up the slack on this one. It is easy to say we are going to extend a sentence for another five years, but that costs money and who pays for it? In many cases when it comes to incarceration, policing services and social services, it falls upon the provinces or territories to pick up that slack.

As much as we support this legislation and the previous bills that have come forward and the many more that may come down the pike in the years to come, I would encourage the Conservatives to ensure that for every new piece of legislation that comes forward in terms of criminal justice, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, whatever it is, that they incorporate with those increased sentences or deterrents the fiscal capacity for the provinces and municipalities to do their jobs effectively.

It is no good just to download that responsibility. Civic authorities throughout the country are scrambling for police officers. Provinces are scrambling for child care workers, hospital workers, teachers' aides. All of that falls on the backs of the provinces and municipalities. If the federal government wants to show leadership by introducing legislation of this kind, it is incumbent upon the government to back it up with the dollars.

I am hoping when the bill gets to committee there can be a financial analysis of the bill to determine exactly how much would be required to assist the provinces and territories in moving these issues forward. Then and only then will there be true results. It is one thing to say we passed a bill in the House of Commons and the Senate, but then comes the follow-up. Where is the follow-up three, four, five years down the road? What advantages has it had? What deterrent effect has it had? What benefits has it had? Without a careful analysis of that legislation down the road, we simply would not know. The person who sponsors the bill can say, “Look what I have done”, but the reality is someone down the road will have to pick that up. We would encourage better cooperation between the federal government and the provinces and territories.

I used to live in Yukon Territory. First nations children are some of the greatest kids we could ever meet, but an awful lot of them were behind the eight ball right from conception onward. They did not have proper housing. They did not have proper education. Their parents may have suffered the abuse at residential schools and all of those things. That kind of trauma goes from generation to generation. All we do is attempt to put a band-aid on these problems.

There are first nations people from northern Quebec who were sent to Resolute Bay, Arctic Bay and Grise Fiord, so-called settlement communities in 1953 and 1955. A whole bunch of families were moved up into the bitter cold of the high Arctic. They were given a few supplies and told to have fun. They were uprooted from their communities and off they went, in order to improve our Arctic sovereignty at the time. In the mid-1990s a cash settlement was made for compensation.

I made a recent trip there. They have not yet received an apology from any government. The government has not said to the last surviving people there that the government is sorry for what was done. All they are asking for is an apology. Many first nations groups are asking for an apology for what happened before and when that happens, the healing can start. Once the healing starts, the children of the people who were affected by those traumatic events will be able to move on. If not, we will have these same concerns over and over again.

It is our generation, this Parliament, that should start the healing process. My hon. colleague who spoke earlier is a very serious Christian fellow. I went on a trip with him to Israel recently and we learned a lot. He would know that in the book of Revelation there is a passage about the healing leaves. An Inuit refugee who had been sent up there from northern Quebec said a Catholic priest once read to him the passage about the healing leaves from the book of Revelation. He looked at the Canadian flag and saw the leaf on the Canadian flag. He told me that is what Canada should be, a healing nation.

If we accept the words of that elder about the Inuit tradition, then maybe this legislation can make the laws that can heal the nation and cause a lot of these concerns to go--

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the accountability aspect is the problem, the assurances that when the Auditor General comes looking years later that we do not need to revisit these issues because of a tremendous waste of money.

We in the NDP believe that it is okay for the government to own a lot of what is considered public services now, public transport, public water systems, public sewer systems, public libraries and so on. We think that is a good thing to do so the taxpayer has a continuous investment in those particular items.

We just want to ensure that any companies, anyone involved in these so-called P3s, is open, accountable, transparent and that all the facts are laid on the table for the people of a particular area before a contract is ever signed. Accountability is the key to this and we must be assured that it happens.

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Premier Rodney MacDonald in the past tense because he will be gone in the next election. He is the same premier who encouraged Nova Scotia MPs to vote against their own Conservative budget. I would not quite use his quotes in future references.

The hon. member also talked about accountability with the Canadian taxpayers. In the paper it says that the government spent $31 million on polling for themselves. I wonder if the member would consider that a wise investment of taxpayer money?

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Halifax explosion, when over 2,000 people were killed when two munitions ships collided in Halifax Harbour. On that 90th anniversary today, we will all be saying a prayer tonight and thinking of all those people who unfortunately were taken from us far too soon in the great city of Halifax.

I want to thank my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles. He has been a historian of this event in Halifax. I also want to thank him for the Bloc Québécois commemoration of this event.

We are talking today about a motion brought forward by the Liberal Party regarding infrastructure and transfer of funds, et cetera. It can all get muddy in terms of who is responsible for what. In reality, I do not think anyone can clarify 100% the different responsibilities for what is going on.

The reality is that most citizens really do not care. If they cannot drink their water, if they cannot ride on their roads, if there is congestion in and out of their cities, and if they cannot have adequate services in terms of transportation, housing and so on, then they are going to look at all politicians at all levels and get really upset with all of us.

The hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca stood and made it sound like life was just great, so where do I sign up for this program? It is wonderful, he said, and we will not have a problem in the world. Let me remind my Conservative colleagues of what Mayor Pat Fiacco said. He is the mayor of Regina. An article states that he “blasted” the Ottawa government for “the estimated $123-billion deficit in rebuilding the country's roads, bridges, water and sewer systems” in his annual year in review address.

Mayor Fiacco is the chair of the Big City Mayors Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. He blasts the federal government. It is simply not doing anywhere near enough. He is from Regina and I do not know his political persuasion, although he is probably a Saskatchewan Roughrider fan, as I am. Again, we congratulate the Riders on their great Grey Cup victory recently.

However, Mayor Fiacco is not the only person saying this. We had a protest on the Hill the other day by local Ottawa politicians. We have had big city mayors from across the country express their point of view regarding this. What response did they get from the finance minister? He said to quit “whining”. They got condescending remarks.

One would think that the finance minister of Canada would be a little more judicious in his comments. Instead of complaining about the comments made by the Big City Mayors Caucus and the FCM, he should actually sit down and meet with them to discuss these various serious issues.

Lately I have noticed a trend not just in this Parliament but in other governments across Canada. The government starts to relinquish some of its tax ability, its revenue ability, and then of course when services are required the government says it does not have the money to do that, but it will go to the private sector to get it done. In other words, that means the P3 system. We have seen, as I have stated, certain examples of how P3 systems have been simply fiscally irresponsible.

I am not here to say that all P3 systems are bad or wrong. For example, I think the Confederation Bridge is a very good example of a P3 system that works well. However, the reason it works so well is the accountability of that project. Other projects had no accountability, at least none as far as we can see, and the taxpayers, municipal, provincial or federal, were on the hook for a long, long time. Sometimes the projects cost three or four times more than if they had stayed in public hands.

Another concern is from CUPE, the Council of Canadians and many other organizations. They are very worried about water systems and water management going to the private sector, as we have seen in England and in other countries. The cost for water services has skyrocketed in England, because the corporations or the private entities must make a certain return on their investment in order to satisfy their shareholders.

In cases of that nature, where water services are really a mandatory item for a community, we think it should remain in public hands.

I remind my colleagues that the federal government does not own construction companies, as far as I know. It does not have water treatment experts in that particular regard. The government works with various companies in order to get the work done. If the federal government needs a certain project done, it generally puts it out for tender. Usually the best bid will come in, hopefully for the best value, the job gets done and hopefully everything is satisfactory, not just for the contractor who does the job but also for the taxpayer at the end of the day.

The reality is that there is nothing wrong with governments owning infrastructure in terms of municipalities, provincial or federal, as long as it is responsible, accountable and reasonable. In many cases, as I stated before, sometimes things go off the rails and we as taxpayers end up paying a lot more further down the road.

We have seen evidence before where the federal government sells a building and then leases it back. Even within its own departments as we heard over the last months evidence of where that was the wrong way to go.

I heard my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, say that it was not a question of his integrity, that it was a question of the previous government's integrity and the present government's integrity in ensuring that taxpayers will be absolutely protected and get the best value for their money.

There is just not that much trust happening. I would recommend to the parliamentary secretary that he talk to his government, because it has a long way to go in order to enshrine that trust in the hearts and minds of many Canadians.

On the aspect of surpluses, I would remind Canadians that a large part of these surpluses came from the employment insurance fund. I remember the Conservatives when they were in opposition lambasting the Liberals for using EI funds for purposes other than for what they were intended. Now they have been in power for roughly 22 months and they are doing the exact same thing. They are taking the surpluses in the EI fund and putting them into consolidated revenues, something they said that they would not do. However, that is a side bar issue and one for discussion on another day.

I have said before that it is the government's responsibility to pay down debt and to look at strategic tax incentives and relief in order to help Canadians and small and medium size businesses. What I think is irresponsible is to take $14 billion and apply it on one thing, the debt. I would never advocate spending $14 billion on social services, if that was the entire amount of the surplus.

However, what I do advocate is a one-third, one-third, one-third approach. One-third of that $14 billion would have been applied to debt relief; one-third would have been applied to strategic tax relief, for example, removing the GST on home heating essentials across the country or over the counter drugs or something of that nature; and the other one-third would go to reinvestment into programs such as: national housing; student debt relief; a pharmaceutical plan; increasing a promise the government made on the VIP program for all veterans and widows of World War II and Korea, something it promised to do immediately, which has not quite happened yet; and for infrastructure. Some of that money could have gone to help those areas that are most desperate.

I want to remind the government and the Liberal opposition that I just did a tour of Resolute Bay, Arctic Bay and Iqaluit. They are in desperate need of housing and infrastructure. If we invested in hydroelectricity for Iqaluit and got it off the 13 million litres of diesel fuel that it burns for heat and energy, it would be Kyoto compliant tomorrow.

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, would the Liberal Party not agree that because of the fact that there are such cutbacks in the municipal-provincial transfers from the federal government in terms of infrastructure, that companies are coming out of the woodwork saying that they will look after our water systems, our sewage systems and our sanitation systems but that there will be a major fee?

In the case of Halifax, for example, and in other countries like England and France where water systems are now going to the private sector, we are finding that a lot of people cannot afford water services and are being cut off from basic water rights.The cost to the taxpayer in the end, in those examples, is much more than if the water systems had stayed under a public regime. Would the member not agree with that?

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I gave my hon. colleague from Alberta one example of a very poor system, the P3 system. I would like to give him another one called the Joe Howe Building in Halifax. This will not sound true, but it did happen.

Years ago the provincial government under the Conservatives had a building that it owned and it sold it to a real estate company. It leased it from the company for a period of time. When the lease expired, the provincial government was going to leave, but the realtor who owned the building said that if the government left, he would get into serious trouble because of his finances.

The provincial government was going to leave. The assessment on the building dropped. The realtor was going to lose a lot of money. He sold it to another real estate firm. That other real estate firm convinced the then government that it should stick around.

Usually when I rent a place, I pay the rent, but the taxes and all the other things are paid for by the landlord. That is part of what I pay. However, the then provincial government, which was going to leave the building, stuck around and signed a 25 year lease with the new owners of the building it was going to leave.

It did not just pay for the rental of the building. It paid for all the heat, all the maintenance, all the taxes, all the insurance, everything. The provincial Conservative government signed on to all the costs associated with the building.

At the end of the day, the building still does not belong to the taxpayer, and the cost of renting and leasing those things out was phenomenal. It is a huge scandal in Nova Scotia. Conservatives did that. They did it with the schools and now with this program. Then we have our sanitation, which is picked up by a private contractor who has to make a certain profit at the end of the year, which costs the taxpayer even more money.

Those are just three examples that I have given this fine gentleman of the P3 system. What guarantees will he put in place of any P3 system that, first of all, before it goes to that, there will be wide public consultation before that happens? What assurances can he give the House, to the people of Nova Scotia and others, that if the federal government does this--

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, about 23 schools were built in Nova Scotia under the P3 system. If my colleague from Fort McMurray were to check with his counterparts in Nova Scotia, he would find that a Conservative premier got rid of that because of the huge additional financial costs to taxpayers. It was one that did not work.

Provinces continually ask for federal funding of some sort, either for health care, education or infrastructure. Roy Romanow's health care report talked about accountability. If the federal government, regardless of the party in power, transfers X number of billions of dollars to a particular province, would he not agree that the province would have some obligation to at least be accountable for that federal money, explain where it went, what projects were built, so Canadians across the country, including Quebeckers, could have a clear understanding of where it went?