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Crucial Fact

  • Her favourite word was actually.

Last in Parliament October 2015, as NDP MP for Scarborough—Rouge River (Ontario)

Lost her last election, in 2015, with 22% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Children's Rights November 20th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, today marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every year on November 20, Canadians celebrate National Child Day to honour our children.

This day is for more than just celebrating, though. We must also reflect on our values as Canadians and reaffirm our commitments in light of the promises we made 25 years ago in the House and to the world.

We owe it to our children to keep the promises we made 25 years ago. Canada has ratified the convention and therefore we have an obligation to act on its mandates to eliminate child poverty in Canada and to invest in early childhood education, employment, housing, nutrition, and child care.

Support for the NDP keeps growing because Canadians know that the NDP is the only party that has comprehensive, national, affordable plans that meet the needs of families and their children.

It is time to honour and respect our commitment by taking action and delivering on our promises.

Petitions November 20th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I stand today with the signatures of hundreds of people within the Greater Toronto Area who are calling for the creation of a Rouge national park that respects and protects the irreplaceable 100 square kilometres of public land assembly within a healthy and sustainable Rouge national park.

They want to ensure that the creation of the Rouge national park strengthens and implements the ecological vision, policies, and integrity of the approved and pre-existing legislation, policies, and memoranda of understanding that already exist in the province of Ontario and the municipalities in the area.

The current Rouge park is home to the endangered Carolinian and mixed woodland life zones in Canada, as well as the ancestral home of the Mississauga, Huron-Wendat, and Seneca first nations peoples and their sacred burial grounds.

Poverty November 19th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, giving a huge tax break to the wealthiest families, while completely ignoring the poorest families, is not an answer to poverty.

That same UNICEF report is the one that is saying that one in five Canadian children lives in poverty today. Those children deserve better. Poverty impacts their ability to learn, to develop, to be healthy, to be fully integrated in their communities, and they need real action.

Will the government support NDP Motion No. 534 to create a national plan to eliminate child poverty?

Poverty November 19th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, 25 years ago the House unanimously adopted Ed Broadbent's motion to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000, yet child poverty levels have remained tragically high. That is an entire generation of children who have needlessly grown up in poverty. One in five Canadian children lives in poverty today. There is no excuse for such a wealthy country like ours not to look after our most vulnerable members, our children.

Will the government commit to taking immediate action to eliminate poverty in Canada?

Citizenship and Immigration November 17th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, the question was about refugees.

This minister took away health care for refugees. He is taking away social assistance. Conservatives are doing everything they can to make it more and more difficult for Canada to help vulnerable refugees.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the tragic conflict in Syria. Helping them is a core Canadian value. The government promised to help 1,300 refugees.

Why did the Conservatives only accept and help 200 government-assisted refugees?

Citizenship and Immigration November 17th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, Canada's response to the crisis in Syria has been completely embarrassing.

With millions of Syrian refugees displaced, Canada agreed to take in a mere 1,300. Now we are learning that in June the minister knew full well that there was no way Canada would meet this goal. The minister fudged the numbers, and reached all the way back to 2011 to make his numbers seem bigger and pretend that Canada was on track.

Why did the minister mislead Canadians?

Child Poverty November 17th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her very clear and direct question, because it was exactly the same question that I asked children ranging from grades three to eight when I visited last week when I was in my constituency. The children were very intelligent and had pretty simple answers, which, if we as legislators would listen to them, would actually solve the problem. They said they want to make sure that all children have somewhere to live and have roofs over their heads, meaning that they are protected from the environment and have shelter. That would mean investing in housing.

They said they want to make sure that all children can eat. I represent Scarborough—Rouge River, where there were children in classrooms that I visited who went to school that day without having breakfast. There were children who said they need to make sure they can all focus in class and have access to universal education at the primary and secondary levels and, in order to ensure that they are getting the best out of their education system and are learning, have food in their bellies. That means making sure they have a good nutrition program.

Third, they said that after school, when they and their baby brothers or sisters in grade one have to go home and their parents are not there, they have to walk around the community or wait around wherever they can, such as with their neighbours, before they can go home, and they do not feel safe and secure. I talked to them about having access to regulated child care facilities and investing in child care, and they said that would make life so much better for them.

I know there are adults here who value the opinions of our children. The three things that children know are housing, nutrition, and child care programs.

Child Poverty November 17th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comments and his question on municipal issues in the city of Toronto. I want to remind him that my motion calls for the creation of a national poverty elimination strategy that includes investing in affordable housing. It would ensure that we are looking into all options of affordable housing, not just in Scarborough or Toronto, and making sure that we are investing in affordable housing across the country.

Child Poverty November 17th, 2014

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should work in collaboration with the provinces, territories and First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities to eradicate child poverty in Canada by developing a national poverty reduction plan that includes: (a) making housing more affordable for lower income Canadians; (b) ensuring accessible and affordable child care; (c) addressing childhood nutrition; (d) improving economic security of families; (e) measures that specifically address the unique needs of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities; and (f) measurable targets and timelines.

Mr. Speaker, today on the eve of the 25th anniversary, I am honoured and privileged to stand and present my Motion No. 534, to reiterate our commitment to eradicating child poverty in Canada.

A quarter of a century ago, in 1989, a similar motion was introduced by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent to eradicate child poverty by 2000. That motion received unanimous consent in the House. Here we are 25 years later, and not much has changed.

I do not want to make accusations to any of the successive Liberal or Conservative governments for not taking proper actions to eliminate child poverty since the House made the promise and commitment to do so. However, I also cannot keep quiet and pretend that poverty rates among children have improved compared to 25 years ago, or that Canada is poverty-free.

For 25 consecutive years, Canadian children and their families who live in poverty have been left behind and marginalized on the agendas of successive governments. Twenty-five years is a long time. It makes me wonder why almost one million Canadian children are living in poverty today and why successive governments have allowed the rate of poverty to increase compared to 25 years ago. It makes me wonder whether the Liberal and Conservative governments over the last 25 years have felt that the opinions of the impoverished do not matter.

What went wrong? Why was a promise to our country's children broken? If we did not keep the promise to our children, then that is fine; it is perhaps that the governments of the day felt that children do not vote and so they are not a huge priority.

However, how about the promise that Canada made to the rest of the world when we ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1991? We agreed to uphold international principles, values, and standards. According to article 27.1:

States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.

The section then continues and holds states more responsible by obliging them to do the following:

[...] take appropriate measures to assist parents and others responsible for the child to implement this right and shall in case of need provide material assistance and support programmes, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing.

My motion deals with all of those, but specifically nutrition, housing, and child care.

As a state that is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Canada is not meeting its commitment globally today.

This past week, I spent a lot of time with children in our schools in Scarborough, and many of them found it difficult to imagine that there are children and families who go hungry and cannot afford to have their daily meals. The reality is that it is happening right here, in one of the world's richest countries, our great Canada.

In its November 7, 2013 report, Campaign 2000 stated:

Food security among families is highly critical with 1.1 million children experiencing food insecurity, a situation of inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints, and children represent 36% of food bank users in Canada.

According to another recent article by Huffington Post, on November 4, 2014, there are 375,000 people in Ontario who use food banks, of whom 36% are children.

Health Canada's report entitled “Household Food Insecurity in Select Provinces and Territories 2009-2010” showed that Nunavut, in Canada's north, has the highest number of households in Canada that are food insecure, which is 28.8%. That is more than double the number in the Yukon, which holds second place at 11%.

Another question that one might think to ask is what the current government has done to lower the levels of poverty in Canada. When we pose questions in question period, the government says that it has lowered the levels. Let us look at some details.

The reality is that not much has been done. Some cabinet ministers have even demonstrated quite embarrassing hospitality when the UN special rapporteur on the right to food was in Canada. It was quite a shame.

The United Nations has also described housing and homelessness in Canada as a national emergency. An estimated 250,000 people are homeless, with another 1.1 million living in inadequate housing, and more than 500,000 are facing a serious financial burden which threatens their housing security. Over 10% of those identified as homeless are youth aged 16 to 18.

In its first universal periodic review, a number of members of the human rights council expressed significant concerns about poverty and housing in Canada. A number of recommendations were made to enhance the catastrophic situations of housing, for which we as a nation were heavily criticized. Despite the original denial from the government, it involuntarily, and under pressure, accepted some of the recommendations from the member states.

Canada agreed to consider taking on board the recommendation of the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, specifically to extend and enhance the national homelessness program and the residential rehabilitation assistance program. Canada also committed to double its efforts to better ensure the right to adequate housing, especially for vulnerable groups and low-income families.

However, just when we thought there might be improvements, the current Conservative government voted against Bill C-400, an act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians. It did not stop there. In the June 2012 budget, it also defunded and closed down the former national council of welfare, the NCW, which was an organization that highlighted poverty and warned policy-makers of the consequences of neglecting those in need. By eliminating the role of the NCW, the government officially shut down the source of reports and information that depicted the depth and breadth of poverty in Canada. Instead of eliminating the problem of poverty, it eliminated the messenger, the NCW.

It is something like the metaphor where the cat thinks that if it closes its eyes and drinks milk that nobody around can see it.

We have heard the parliamentary secretary stating that we do not have much of a poverty problem in Canada. The truth is that we do not have a national information centre, the NCW, to do the research and present any reports to us. The government does not understand that affordable and adequate housing does not only offer shelter but also offers individuals and families a sense of stability, security, and motivation. The children I met with last week knew that. They know that ensuring that they have a roof over their houses means safety and security for them.

We need a comprehensive plan to tackle this issue and save more money for Canadians and the national revenue. According to a study conducted by homelessness Canada, each year it costs the system approximately $55,000 to leave a homeless person on the street, while providing adequate housing and support services would cost only $37,000.

Another report by the Canadian Medical Association, in 2013, concluded that child poverty is at the core of socio-economic problems. Over 20% of health-care related expenditure is derived from inadequate housing and the consequences of low-income conditions.

By implementing what is being introduced today through my private member's motion, Canadians will benefit on many levels. First, we will do the right thing; that is, removing homeless Canadians from the streets. Second, that will save Canadians more than $15 billion dollars annually—that is five from removing the homeless, and ten from savings on health care from inadequate housing—which could be used in other areas that could benefit Canadians in various tax benefits and could finance a national child care program, which is the third piece of the motion.

On many occasions when the government was asked about child poverty rates in Canada, there were no clear reasons as to why the rate of child poverty had increased over the last 25 years. On October 28, UNICEF issued its annual report card, and on November 3, it had a symposium entitled “Children in the Wake of the Great Recession”, which was dedicated to child poverty. Neither in the report nor during the seminar was anything positive said about the current and previous federal governments' serious engagement and commitment to eradicating child poverty. Even though the current government and ministers may avoid the facts, poverty is a reality for far too many of Canada's children. If these irresponsible policies continue, that will continue to be the reality for even more of our children.

The government likes to acknowledge that 180,000 children were pulled out of poverty due to its great efforts, which it likes to celebrate. However, it is in denial of the truth, that poverty exists and Canada has a high percentage of child poverty.

On several occasions, the Minister of State for Social Development and the Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism have referred to the UNICEF report and quoted only the favourable parts from it.

I would like to bring to their attention that on November 3, I was present at UNICEF Canada's annual symposium to hear from other experts about report card 12. The government did not even bother to send a representative there to hear from experts on the ground.

The conclusion from the day was that children are worse off today than when the crisis began in 2008, and much worse off than they were 25 years ago. Here is some of what the spokespeople of UNICEF Canada had to say on the day that report card 12 was released:

...what disturbs us is that the relative poverty rate hasn't budged for many years. As a wealthy country we are not doing well enough for our children.

That was from Lisa Wolff, the director of UNICEF Canada.

I have another quote from Tiffany Baggetta, the spokesperson for UNICEF Canada at the symposium. She said:

Overall, child poverty in Canada has decreased but children who were the most poor to begin with have slipped further into poverty.

This means we are not really helping the most vulnerable people in our country: our children.

We can see that the government has a trend of doing things in its own way. We know that it does not like to have much consultation and it does not like to listen to experts or people in the field. It is true that during the recession years, Canada's child poverty rate did decrease from a shameful 23% to 21%. However, 25 years ago, when Parliament made the commitment to end poverty among our children, the rate was only 13%. Successive governments have contributed to the child poverty rate increasing from 13% to 23%. The Conservative government is celebrating that it is now at 21%, which is a significant increase from the 13% it was at when we committed to eradicating poverty in this country.

Let us compare our country with Scandinavian countries and the U.K. These countries have actually done a great job in reducing their child poverty rates. The child poverty rate in Nordic countries is below 6%. It is not 21%, as it is in Canada.

What have we done in the past 25 years in this regard? We can go in circles and have the Liberals and the Conservatives blame and accuse each other for irresponsible governing, but those excuses and accusations will not feed the poor or the children in our country, nor will they provide them with adequate housing, security, or child care.

Again, let me return to parts of the UNICEF report. The government quotes frequently from this report. The quotes lead the government into believing that it has accomplished the mission of eradicating child poverty by pulling 180,000 children out of poverty. According to Statistics Canada, in every year since 1989, on average, 180,000 to 250,000 children are removed from the category of being poor children. Regardless of these numbers, the child poverty rate has continued to increase, despite the fact that the fertility rate has not increased in the same time period. Therefore, it is not that we are having more children: the number of children being removed from poverty remains the same because they are aging out, and our poverty rates continue to grow.

None of the previous governments has done enough. Many factors have contributed in removing these 180,000 children from poverty. Around 12% to 15% of those children who were 17 years of age became 18 years of age and were removed from the count of child poverty. Basically, we removed them statistically from child poverty to make them adults living in poverty, and more than 23,000 of them are now homeless.

Over 70% of those children and their families were lifted above the poverty line through the efforts of provincial governments, private corporations, NGOs, charities, and other social agencies, such as food banks and shelters.

Mr. Speaker, you are giving me the one-minute warning, and I have so much more to say.

Poverty is also racialized in our country, and I will give members some statistics from the GTA before I conclude. Among the broad ethno-racial groups in the GTA, the rates of child poverty were about one in ten in global European groups; one in five for east Asian groups; one in four for aboriginal, south Asian, and Caribbean groups; one in three for children of Arab and west Asian groups; and one in two for children of African groups. Today the GTA has 79% of Ontario's immigrants and 81% of Ontario's visible minorities. This means that far too many of our racialized people living in the GTA are living in poverty.

I would like to conclude by saying that implementing a national strategy to eradicate poverty would have a positive impact on our Canadian economy in both the short and long run. High levels of child poverty generate very significant and growing human and fiscal costs to society and to the economy in the long run.

This motion calls for the eradication of child poverty by investing in affordable and accessible housing, child care, and child nutrition programs. Those are the three social determinants of poverty among our children, and it is our responsibility as the lawmakers of this country to ensure that we are investing in the most vulnerable people in society, our country's children.

Social Development October 30th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, this week, UNICEF reported that child poverty in Canada is at 21%. That is one in five Canadian children growing up with the stress and deprivation of poverty, struggling to learn without adequate nutrition and facing the likelihood of poorer health.

When is the current government going to stop leaving so many children behind and get serious about eradicating child poverty?