Raymonde Folco

[Status of Women, November 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the first of 16 days of solidarity.

The sexual health and safety of women are key components of the prevention of violence against women. Recently in Ethiopia I witnessed the good work that organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation are doing to educate women, young girls and young boys about relationships and respect for themselves.

In 1994, and again in 2009, Canada joined the fight to eliminate violence against women. But 15 years later, 500,000 women still die every year around the world because of inaction at the international level.

As chair of the Canadian Association of Parliamentarians for Population and Development, I invite all members of the House to honour this commitment by financially supporting organizations in Canada and around the world working to educate this generation and the next one about the importance of respect and preventing violence against their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters.

[Committees of the House, November 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to second the motion made by my colleague, calling for concurrence in the sixth report on poverty reduction in Canada.

Twenty years ago today, Parliament, led by a Conservative government, promised to eliminate child poverty in Canada by the year 2000.

Was it an empty pledge? Today one in 10 Canadian children live in poverty, often with many of them going to bed with hungry bellies. Their parents live in poverty and many of those parents are single working women.

The figures are even worse for first nations and Inuit families living on reserves or in the territories, where one child in four and his or her parents live in poverty.

According to our committee's research and hearings, every month, 770,000 people in Canada use food banks. That is nearly two-thirds of a million Canadians, and 40% of them are children. That is nearly half a million children in Canada.

In 2007, in a speech he gave in Toronto, the Conservative Prime Minister stated, no doubt with some measure of pride, that the poverty rate had decreased from 16% in 1996 to 11% in 2005.

Four years later the HungerCount survey released on November 17 showed that in March of this year almost 800,000 individuals used food banks across this country.

This is a 17.6% increase. The percentages speak volumes, but the real numbers are even more telling. We are talking about an additional 120,000 people using food banks.

Of the 794,738 people helped in March of this year, 72,321 or 9.1% of the total, stepped through the front door of a food bank for the first time according to the survey. In other words, more families need the food banks today than ever before. This is not good enough in a society of plenty such as Canada.

Witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities explained that Canada had succeeded in drastically reducing poverty among seniors.

The time has come for this government to use this model for reducing poverty among seniors and put in place an action-oriented strategic framework to reduce poverty, including monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Since 1989, Liberals have acted on several fronts to eradicate poverty while supporting Canada's commitment to the millennium development goals. The 2002 throne speech allocated long-term funding for increases to the national child benefit as well as investments in affordable housing. Continued actions of the Liberal government removed over one million low-income people from the tax rolls.

The Canada child tax benefit proposed significant investments to the tune of $13 billion per year. It provided $9 billion in income support to help more than three million low- and middle-income families. We also committed $5 billion to work with the provinces and territories to improve and expand early learning and child care across this country, including the 2003 multilateral framework on early learning and child care.

A number of these agreements have been cancelled by the current government.

Witnesses who testified before the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities said that the $100 a month that the Conservative government allocates to families is not enough to achieve real poverty reduction goals.

Liberals have been clear in their commitment to reducing poverty. In 2007, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville spoke for all members on this side of the House when he said that, “Housing and universal child care are critical foundations of opportunity for low-income Canadians”.

Part of that commitment included honouring the promises of the Kelowna accord, a $5 billion program dismantled by the Conservative government.

The committee's sixth report, which marks the anniversary of the 1989 unanimous resolution to eradicate poverty by the year 2000—a goal that has not been achieved—calls on the government to develop an immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada.

Canadians need answers from the current government now. As legislators, we must put food back in Canadians' budgets. Civil society demands it.

[Canadian Navy Members, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, today I wish to thank the Canadian sailors who recently welcomed me and shared their lives and their work with me.

The Canadian Forces Parliamentary Program gave me the opportunity to learn about the activities of the Maritime Forces Pacific during a four-day voyage on the frigate HMCS Regina. I have participated in the program before and each time it has proven to be a useful and rewarding experience. Discovering the day-to-day life of Canadians in the armed forces, whether in the navy or other corps, has enabled me to better understand the living conditions in which they train and to appreciate their professionalism and deep commitment to Canada.

I thank the sailors and in particular the commander of HMCS Regina, Derek Moss, and his crew. They have my full support for the extraordinary work they do in protecting our country and conducting peace missions throughout the world.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, November 6th, 2009]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-481, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canada Labour Code (mandatory retirement age).

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today in this House to introduce my bill on human rights and the Canada Labour Code to prohibit federally regulated employers from setting a mandatory retirement age. This would include private-sector employers subject to federal acts and regulations, as well as the federal public administration.

I would like to thank the member for Vancouver Quadra for her support on the bill.

The purpose of my bill goes one step beyond the decision of April 9 by the Federal Court of Canada, which found that age discrimination violated the charter following complaints by two Air Canada pilots. This was followed by a Human Rights Tribunal decision on August 28, which said, in part, that mandatory retirement was an affront to the right to equality and found that the infringement of equality rights through mandatory retirement could no longer be justified.

My bill would remove the offending provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Code and other federal acts and regulations.

These changes would affect more than 840,000 Canadians, or 10% of the country's labour force, at a time when our birth rate is on the decline. I hope that members on both sides of this house will support the swift passage of this bill.

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

[Laval Newspaper, November 6th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to announce the arrival of Mon Laval, a new French-language newspaper in Laval. It is the French counterpart to Laval News, an English-language publication that has been an excellent source of news for several years.

As the Liberal critic for la Francophonie, I fully appreciate the importance of this new newspaper, which will bring greater visibility to the French fact. It also exemplifies the linguistic diversity of Laval, a city where French and English coexist in a multicultural context.

I would like to congratulate the Mon Laval team for the important contribution it will surely make to the world of news, and I wish the newspaper every success.

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I should put the question back to my colleague opposite. That is the major flaw in this bill. Who will benefit from it? Will it be businesspeople, people who work from home? Who are they? The member's party has not identified the groups who will benefit from this bill. That still needs to be done.

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the compliments.

My colleague is our party's critic for seniors' issues. The issue of pensions is a very important topic these days in Canada. It is something that we must definitely examine carefully in connection with how much a person earns.

For self-employed workers, the amount of money they earn one year will not necessarily be the same as the amount they may earn another year. Even within the year, there are ups and downs. They work hard some months, and other months, they do absolutely nothing and have no income.

I would say that it is like a roller coaster, and we must have a close look to determine the minimum threshold that would allow self-employed workers to receive pension benefits.

I thank my colleague for bringing up this issue, because this will enable us to study it in committee.

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I was a member of the committee of women entrepreneurs which came to my riding at the time and we met a large number of women entrepreneurs in Laval—Les Îles. Along with the other groups, we made those recommendations. I was for that recommendation then. I discussed it with my party. We discussed it in the Liberal women's caucus. This was important for us because, as everyone agrees, women in the workforce form a large part of the independent, autonomous workers.

I am sorry to say that when we in the Liberal Party were in government, we did not push this sufficiently. What is past is past. What is now before us is a bill which I think means well but is definitely incomplete and must be ameliorated.

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to hear the member for Kelowna—Lake Country. I totally agree with him that there is a great need. I said so myself in the brief remarks I just made in the House.

However, it is clear that some basic elements are missing from the bill before us. The bill must go to committee. The member for Kelowna—Lake Country sits on that committee, as I do. It depends on us, as members of the committee, and on how fast we want to work.

I suggest that we work as fast as possible to correct the flaws in this bill so that it can come back to the House as quickly as possible and so that all these people, these women and men, can benefit from it as soon as possible.

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

These amendments will mainly affect self-employed Canadians who have been lobbying for changes to employment insurance legislation for a number of years.

In principle, Liberals will support this legislation because the intent is good. We would like to see the bill sent to committee for an in-depth study.

What my colleagues and I on this side of the House find surprising is the fact that the government has drafted such an important bill without even defining the expression “self-employed worker”.

As a legislative body, it is our responsibility as parliamentarians, when laws are written and codified, to provide advice to whose who will apply the law in the legislative framework.

At the outset of any piece of legislation, it is important to say what we mean by the terms. Who are these independent workers? When we talk about the self-employed, who are we speaking about? Are we speaking about people who work as individual consultants, or those who work within a consulting firm where there are several independent consultants but only share office space, phone lines, a receptionist and other administrative services? Are we speaking about contractors, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who work in teams yet have no financial responsibility towards each other?

Surely the definitions of the people affected by any legislation, and particularly such a major piece as we are discussing today, should be included and clarified in the actual legislation and not left to regulations. These regulations, which come after the legislation has passed this House and the other House, can be amended by order in council, at the government's will, without any debate in Parliament. It is therefore imperative that there be substantial amendments to the bill as it stands today, and the very first one that I would suggest to this House would be a definition of who are the people who will be affected by this bill.

Who are these self-employed workers? What we do know, based on socio-demographic characteristics, is that the number of self-employed workers has increased.

Throughout Canada, one worker in six is now self-employed.

According to the surveys, self-employment has grown more quickly than employment in general in the past 25 years.

According to Statistics Canada, between August 2008 and August 2009, self-employment rose by 3.5% on average. That is in one year. That is over 92,000 more people.

Concurrently, the paid work force has decreased by 2.7%.

There are now more than 2.7 million self-employed people in Canada, as compared to 2.5 million in 2005. This is despite the downturn in the economy. It is obvious that this bill comes at a very important time for these 2.7 million self-employed people in Canada, but we have to know, within this 2.7 million, who is going to be affected by the bill.

In the case of women who are self-employed, 35.9% have their spouses as business partners compared to 28% for men. That means that both workers in the family are self-employed.

We also know that around 88% of the self-employed work full time.

We know that people have chosen self-employment either after retirement, or in many cases, when they have grown frustrated with their inability to find full-time work that suits their qualifications and skills.

We also know that stress in the workplace, especially within the public service sector, has forced people to choose the uncertainties of self-employment, and I could talk about the uncertainties of self-employment, because for 10 years I was self-employed. It was really an up-and-down ladder. There were months when nothing would come in and I would do no work, and there were months when I would be trying to do two or three things at the same time. One could never tell a few months ahead whether there was going to be any money coming into the house.

We know that among the self-employed, 17% are newcomers to Canada. We know one of the reasons is that they have degrees they have earned outside Canada and they are not able to have a comparable degree here in Canada. These people have no choice but to become self-employed, because barriers to employment are more prevalent.

The opposition has been waiting a long time to discuss changes to employment insurance. We spent the summer trying to work with the Conservative government.

In the end, we have a bill that has no flexibility within the employment insurance program, does not take into consideration the variety of legislation in the provinces and territories, and does not provide a clear definition of self-employment. If there is one, it is not good enough.

This is as a result of a summer of discontent, of a lack of goodwill on the part of the government to be open and willing to discuss public policies that matter to Canadians.

While we are pleased that many of those self-employed women, and I am only speaking of women here, will now be able to access maternity benefits and parental, sick and even compassionate benefits, what calculations did the government use to assure Canadians that the EI fund will be able to withstand the added cost? If it has done calculations, these calculations are still unknown to Canadians and are definitely unknown to parliamentarians.

What models did the government look at before coming up with this framework? Obviously not very many.

For instance, had the government made an effort to look at what the provinces and territories had in terms of programs, it would have realized that the Quebec model is a very good one, and it would be important that it be used as a basis for developing a fairer and more equitable system for the self-employed. I would like to take a moment to outline this Quebec model.

The Government of Quebec currently provides parental and maternity benefits to the self-employed, but it uses a different model. All Quebeckers who are in business for themselves have to pay, out of their income, premiums to Quebec's parental insurance plan, QPIP. Self-employed workers with at least $2,000 in insurable income may qualify for benefits under this plan and receive up to 70% of their income in QPIP benefits. That is a more generous plan than the one proposed in the bill before us today.

As long as the QPIP is in place, the new federal maternity and parental benefits plan will not apply to Quebec, but the self-employed in Quebec will be able to contribute to the plan for the caregiver and sick leave benefits that are not currently provided under QPIP. Consequently, in Quebec, the self-employed will pay premiums corresponding to 37% less of their income. It goes without saying that this sounds like a more equitable arrangement than the one proposed in this federal bill, which corresponds to 55% of an individual's average income.

Another questionable aspect of what is being presented in this legislation is the threshold of $6,000 in pre-tax earnings before the self-employed can qualify.

Again, what calculations did the government use to come up with this figure?

This is one aspect that we, on this side, would like to see discussed in detail at committee in the interest of those who will be affected by the proposed regulations.

At committee, we would also like the hear the Government of Quebec on the best practices and lessons learned in providing services to the self-employed in that province.

While we are pleased that many of those self-employed women will now be able to access maternity benefits, we still ask, again, what calculations has the Conservative government made? How has it come to these calculations? Will it make them public to members of Parliament, as well as to the Canadian public?

The labour force must become flexible. Working full time for a single employer is no longer the norm. We must therefore have a system that meets and responds to the needs of this new labour force, one that is flexible, mobile and even seasonal.

This is what fairness and equity is all about in the 21st century.