Raymonde Folco

[Aboriginal Communities, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, on this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I would like to commemorate the 1960 massacre in Sharpsville, South Africa, where 69 people were slain while participating in an anti-apartheid demonstration.

Today, the Liberals remember the Kelowna accords signed between aboriginal chiefs and provincial and territorial premiers on November 24, 2005.

Today, I call on the Conservative government to put an end to apartheid and to eliminate discrimination against aboriginals by honouring the Kelowna accords and contributing the $5.1 billion promised for health care, housing, economic development and education.

Today, a new chapter in Canadian history must begin with the elimination of all forms of racism and discrimination and the recognition of the new face of multiculturalism in Canada.

[The Budget, March 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the citizens of Laval—Les Îles, whom I am honoured to have represented in Parliament for 10 years now, I rise today to discuss the budget presented by the Conservative government.

After a year and two months, this government is still calling itself Canada's new government. This government is no longer new.

It is a government that has tried to walk and even run before it could properly crawl into the hearts, minds and pockets of Canadians.

This government has preached responsibility. This government has preached fiscal responsibility and a competitive and efficient economic union. However, in this budget the government forgot about women, retirees and seniors. It forgot about our humanitarian commitments to the most underprivileged. This government did not present a clear vision for immigration and the role of newcomers to Canada in the building of our society, whose population is rapidly aging. This government has a hidden agenda.

The hidden agenda is the government's eagerness to please everyone while trying to steal a little here and there from the wallets of Canadians, without any thought to the real impact of these last-minute attempts to please.

This government has no vision of Canada's future, because it has not stopped to think about it. It is short-sighted. This budget does not unite Canada; it divides it.

In the newspaper headlines this morning I saw:

“Families frown on measures”.

It was in the Ottawa Citizen.

This not so new government tells us it is investing in Canadians, preserving and protecting our environment and improving the quality of our health care system for all. Yet it ignores the plight of seniors who are falling through the cracks of Canada's medical system without proper home care for the elderly.

I congratulate the government in seeing the values of the new horizons program, which was established by the former Liberal government, and for expanding it. Let us not forget, and sometimes corporate memory is lacking in this chamber, it was the former Conservative government that attempted to deindex the pensions of seniors. If it had succeeded, that measure would have worsened the plight of seniors. This is a piecemeal budget that lacks direction, sound policy and practical options.

Missing from the budget is a more thoughtful and cohesive plan to ensure that the system responds to the needs of seniors, seniors as caregivers, seniors who are less and less able to provide for their daily needs.

In my riding of Laval—Les Îles, over 27,995 seniors, 15,000 of whom are women, are between 65 and 74 years of age. Thirteen thousand people are over 75 years old, and slightly over 3,000 people are more than 85. Only 920 of them are men.

Seniors have told me that they have to choose between eating and paying their electricity bills. Furthermore statistics show that 16% of women, compared to 13% of men, live in food insecurity, this difference being related to household expenses and family structure.

The majority of senior citizens are women, we all know that, women whom this government deems to be equal, as the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said. The Minister of Finance should read the Ottawa Citizen to see just how equal senior citizens are in this fine country of ours.

Budget 2007 is certainly based on the Conservative government's unreal idea of equality by the creation of a partnership fund with a miserly $20 million so there could be real action in key areas such as the economic status of women and combating violence against women and girls.

Where has the government been? Out of one side of her mouth the Minister of Status of Women says that women are equal, and the budget says that something is wrong with our economic status. So the government said to take $20 million and go and partner, in other words beg other federal departments for top ups, to improve women's economic status and reduce partner violence. None of this makes any sense, not to me anyway, and I am sure not to the 52% of women who live and work in this country.

This budget further compounds insult and injury to women of this country. The government ignored the recommendations of the federal task force on pay equity created by our Liberal government. The task force recommended the expansion of employment insurance parental leave coverage. On September 18 last year the Conservative government said no.

The government in its last budget saw fit to cut $45 million from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation budget. Various studies emphasize the link between stable, affordable housing and women's personal safety and economic participation, yet the Conservative government went so far as to reduce by $200 million in federal contributions those moneys over the previous year that would have helped to create new affordable housing.

According to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, abuse in the home can drive women and girls into the streets. The lack of housing puts women and girls at even further serious risk of physical and sexual violence and early death. That is Canada's not so new government. The Conservative not so new government wants women, single women, self-employed women, isolated women, women and girls who are sexually exploited, immigrant women, women who are seniors, to no doubt thank it for these handouts.

Minority linguistic communities also lose out in this budget. As the Liberal critic for la Francophonie and official languages, I feel that this government has constantly ignored Canadians in minority linguistic communities in this bilingual country.

By getting rid of the early childhood day care programs set up by the previous Liberal government the Conservatives have at the same time swept aside the principle of increasing the number of day care spaces in these communities, which was at the heart of our agreement.

This government does not see Canada as a bilingual country. These measures, even though they sound praiseworthy, do not go far enough to achieve language development results. And certainly not in two years.

As the studies show us, it takes a minimum of seven years for a language to be properly developed in a child. I am talking about language development in environments conducive to such learning. Does the government really intend to fulfil its obligations under the Action Plan for Official Languages?

In committee I heard complaints from minority linguistic communities that are worried about not being able to offer services to parents and their children in their mother tongue.

We have heard about children whose mother tongue is that of the minority—French obviously—who have to go to an English-language high school because either the provinces are not fulfilling their obligations under federal-provincial-territorial agreements, or they are not allocating the funding necessary to ensure that the programs are maintained.

Budget 2007 allocates $52 million over the next two years in preparation for the 12th Francophonie Summit, taking place in 2008. This budget is actually offering very little, indeed no incentive, for francophones in Canada who wish to move to minority linguistic communities or even to encourage newcomers from francophone countries to settle in areas of the country where French is the language of the minority community.

Thirty million dollars will not change the situation. Canada needs a strategy planned by its government that shows Canadians the importance of maintaining, promoting and developing pride in Canada, whose distinguishing characteristic as a nation is bilingualism.

That means that services and the possibility of learning both official languages should be accessible and available where Canadians are living and where newcomers choose to settle in this fine country of ours.

While there are some good initiatives in the budget, this is indeed a piecemeal approach to governing Canada. I was going to mention several of the good initiatives, but I see that my time is running out. I will just say that I will wait to see if the government does what it said it will do in the budget and clarifies the roles and responsibilities of the provinces under the labour market bilateral agreements. This cannot be underestimated.

I hope that part of the Conservative government's discussions, which I hope will also take place with business, will ensure that organizations proactively plan--

[Immigration and Refugee Board, February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I think the minister made a mistake in her speech.

It is clear that the consultative committee makes suggestions to the chair. Nevertheless, we are not the only ones asking why the board is hemorrhaging.

The Canadian Council for Refugees, the Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario and the Ontario Bar Association, among others, are also asking that question.

They want to know when the minister will fill the board's 52 vacant positions.

[Immigration and Refugee Board, February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, first the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board suddenly resigned. Then members of the advisory panel followed him. Now the IRB is raising the alarm about the government's interference, which is damaging its “hard won reputation”.

Why is the government manipulating the IRB to the point that qualified individuals are suddenly jumping ship? The IRB is hemorrhaging.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I also was an immigrant. I am not an immigrant anymore because I am now a Canadian citizen, and I am very proud of it.

The member said that we had not done enough for immigration, and I agree that we have not done enough for immigration. I agree there is a lot more to be done.

I would like to have his response to a couple of quotes from a gentleman called Stephen Harper who wrote for Report Newsmagazine--

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my honourable colleague that we brought significant reforms to the system. For a number of years now, people wanting to enter Canada as tourists have had to show a return ticket, not a one-way ticket, when they check in with the airline. They must also show a passport to prove where they come from. We also placed significant restrictions on granting tourist visas—

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to hear my hon. colleague, a member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, mention this $975 fee. This reform did not pop out of a hat. It emerged from a caucus I created around 1997. With a number of my Liberal colleagues on this side of the House, we worked as members of an immigration caucus. We were busy looking, studying and making recommendations to the Minister of Immigration—a Liberal minister at the time—to get this fee that immigrants had to pay if they wanted to come to Canada reduced. So the idea was ours, and if we did not succeed in implementing it, here too it was because the axe fell and we were cut off.

This reform did not come out of thin air or fall from the sky. It emerged because we were going in that direction in the immigration caucus that I created and chaired for several years. I would like to thank the Conservative government, therefore, for doing this. It was about time. I say thanks. But I think too that the Conservative government should thank us for having the idea in the first place.

In regard to what is called the head tax, I have met many descendants of Chinese immigrants from the last century and the beginning of this century. Heaven knows how these immigrants suffered, not just because of the tax they had to pay but also because of the consequences of that tax, namely that there were unable to bring their families here to Canada. These were mostly single men who lived here for decades.

Once again, we were working on this head tax issue. I myself was deeply and very personally involved. We saw how divided the Chinese community was—not about the merits of the case because everybody agreed on that, and we did too, but about how this head tax should be paid. I would like to point out to my hon. colleague across the aisle that the head tax still has not been paid and the Chinese communities across Canada still do not agree on how the Conservative government should compensate them for this tragedy. So despite what my colleague says, their system still has not reimbursed the descendants of these Chinese immigrants.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am always the first to congratulate the government, whichever government, when it makes life easier for the people who come here to Canada.

As far as citizenship legislation is concerned, it is true that the Liberals have worked on it a great deal. I arrived in this House in 1997 and we worked on a new bill on citizenship. Our thoughts in the Liberal Party were that this legislation needed a complete overhaul.

However, every time—I know this from experience—we wanted to move forward, there was an election and we had to start the legislative process all over again.

If the parliamentary secretary truly thinks that this bill will move forward, then I will be the first to congratulate him. I am waiting with bated breath. I hope that his government will not trigger an election any time soon or otherwise we will be faced yet again with the possibility of having citizenship legislation that goes nowhere. That has been our experience for 13 years.

As far as the points system is concerned, the needs are changing. I have dealt with this points system with the Government of Quebec, and I have been working with the Government of Canada as well. The system has to change to meet the needs not just of each province, but of each region. We started this system, as I clearly indicated in my speech, with the Government of Quebec. It continued and ensured that Quebec could have access to a bank of francophone candidates to help the francophone majority continue its work in that province.

I would like very much—but I am not seeing this—for this system to help francophone minorities outside Quebec, whether in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia or in the Atlantic provinces. This system has to be able to help them increase the number of immigrants and help their communities continue to preserve their language and culture.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to participate in a debate that has been going on for a long time about a subject that is critical to this country's social and economic well-being. Although it is an honour, it is sad that it has come to this.

I support the motion tabled by my colleague from Mississauga—Erindale:

That, in the opinion of the House, immigrants to Canada and persons seeking Canadian citizenship are poorly served by this government.

Over the next 20 minutes, I will show just how poorly the Conservative government is treating immigrants. The fact is that the government talks a lot, but since it was elected to run this country, it has not done a thing to improve the difficult situation immigrants to Canada and persons seeking Canadian citizenship are experiencing. That was over a year ago. Actually, it has been a year and a half.

We have only heard talk, but seen no action. Immigration is a subject to which the Conservatives have paid lip service and which they believe they can sweep under the rug. They still think Canadians will be satisfied with the non-results.

I speak about the accusations the government has made against its own citizens living abroad in a time of their need, the promises for the recognition of their foreign credentials, the inability to deal effectively with the plight of foreign trained workers, in a holistic way, who are underemployed and unemployed.

The Conservative government has made promises that have not been kept. It has made non-announcements for the sake of making non-announcements. For example, it has offered a mere $18 million over a two year period to the provincial governments to support programs for the recognition of foreign trained professionals, and yet nothing is happening.

I will also speak about the lack of services to francophone minority groups living across the country, which the Conservative government has ignored under its own immigration agreement.

I will also briefly discuss the impact on small and medium-sized businesses who are not given any incentives to recruit and train new arrivals.

These concerns have been raised by the business leaders, unions, community groups and even the mothers I met during my travels across Canada over the past two years.

Small businesses cannot afford to bring in people for a year like big businesses can. Small and medium sized businesses need the training dollars because their businesses cannot afford to absorb these costs on their own.

Also, this includes the negative impact on these businesses if the Conservative government does not adjust the entry system to deal with the pressing need for semi-skilled workers and workers in trades that do not require university degrees. I am talking of the point system for prospective immigrants.

These skills that are needed to keep our economy thriving do not figure on the list of skills on the point system. How is the government then serving the underemployed and unemployed newcomers? As I travel across the country, the same story is told to me over and over again: the need for skilled workers upon which the Canadian economy depends. Yet the Conservative government, since it came to power, has refused to regularize the status of construction workers and has in fact deported many of them, even though there is a shortage of workers in many places.

I remember, for example, the Portuguese immigrants in Ontario, in Toronto specifically, who were deported by the government because they did not have the right papers. Yet their employers needed them to continue constructing houses in Toronto.

According to reports, at the point where the shortages are so acute, construction companies have been luring away workers from one site to another by offering them higher wage incentives.

We already know, according to Statistics Canada, that immigration is the cause of 70% of our labour market growth and if the trend continues, it will account for 100% of our growth. We also already know that all sectors in the Canadian economy rely on the immigration population. Topping the list is the manufacturing sector, which represents 57%. In that sector, 27% of the employed workforce is foreign born, while nearly one out of ten, specifically 9.4%, is a recent immigrant.

Within subsectors of manufacturing, such as clothing manufacturing, computer and electric products represents 39%, manufacturing plastics represents 33% and in rubber manufacturing, the share of employment held by immigrants is even more pronounced.

I am not inventing these numbers. I quote from the Canadian Labour and Business Centre, CLBC Handbook, “Immigration and Skills Shortages, 2004”, specifically page 13.

In the health and social services sector, immigrants account for 24% of net labour force growth.

Regardless of impressive qualifications, two major obstacles to the full participation of new Canadians in the labour market continue. First, many foreign credentials are not recognized nor valued by Canadian employers. Second, the governing boards of key trade and professional licensing boards have not been flexible in developing or ensuring there are the proper tools to access the equivalency of trained professionals within their respective disciplines from other countries.

Instead, what are these people doing? We have all heard these horror stories about doctors and engineers driving taxis in Saskatoon, for example. The accountants can probably be found sweeping the floors of big business. Instead they should be working in these businesses to the level of their own competencies. Where are some of the doctors? They are working in beauty salons as hairdressers and as estheticians. It seems as if I am exaggerating, but these are real cases that exist, and everybody knows about them.

It is ironic that while the credentials are part of the grid being used to allow access to Canada, that famous point system, these credentials also act as barriers to enter into the workforce. Therefore, what are the intentions of the government to balance the scales?

To the credit of the Ontario provincial Liberal government, under the Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act, passed December 2006, we see some improvement through internships, more focused language training, et cetera, all as a result of the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement signed in November 2005 by the previous Liberal federal government. We had reached a comprehensive immigration agreement with Ontario for the first time. The Liberals have also been responsible for signing an agreement, the very first of its kind, with my own province, Quebec.

With it, immigration agreements were firmly established between the federal government and each of the provinces. The planned investment of $920 million in Ontario over five years was designed to: increase the funding for services to help newcomers settle, integrate and receive language training; maximize the economic benefits of immigration and ensure that policies and programs respond to Ontario's social economic development and labour market priorities; develop the first ever Ontario provincial nominee program, which will allow Ontario to better match immigrants to its own labour market needs; and formalize the two levels of government, provincial and federal, to work together on immigration matters.

Where does the Conservative Government of Canada stand on this issue? I have heard from people in Saskatchewan, in British Columbia and in Alberta. These people who live in western Canada want to have more workers from other countries because they need the population. The Conservative government does not seem to be doing very much. Let us wait to see what the next budget will give us, but in its 2006 budget the Conservative government, in its attempt to reinvent the wheel, pledged $18 million to deal with the foreign credential dilemma, yet we have seen nothing so far. This was over a year ago. This is how poorly the new Conservative government works in serving immigrants to Canada and persons seeking Canadian citizenship.

What plans does the government have to systematically tap into the underutilization of our immigrant workforce? Instead of offering tax incentives to businesses to become more involved in training and retention of this workforce, the Conservative government continues to do short term fixes for short term gain but long term pain.

Businesses were astounded last November when the Conservative government went ahead and further expanded the foreign temporary worker's program. Even minimum wage jobs are included. According to reports at that time, and I quote the Winnipeg Free Press on November 15, 2006, the CEO of Winnipeg Airport Authority and other Canadian chamber board members, echoing each other, said that Canada “needs to build a plan that includes immigration and using under-utilized members of the workforce. We need to scour the country for people who will relocate”.

Again, I am asking the Conservative government what plans it has to systematically tap into the underutilization of our immigrant workforce. A recruitment strategy is needed for the entire country. The government has no real strategy to meet the needs of, for example, the Atlantic provinces or the west.

This is evident in the government's foreign temporary worker plan which I mentioned earlier. I checked the list. The Conservative government is offering a one year permit to businesses to bring in sales, marketing and advertising managers; retail trade managers; correspondence, publication and related clerks; loans officers; hairstylists and barbers. Surely, there are skilled and well-educated immigrants who are being ignored. Could they not be recruited?

What happens after the one year is up? Will these foreign temporary workers have to start the immigration process all over again? Businesses will no doubt have to start their recruiting process themselves. How much sense does that make? In the meantime, where are the training incentives for small and medium size businesses to train and retain people? We need a balanced approach to employment across this country and not one that would hurt one province and benefit another.

There is no end to the number of studies about the burden that will be put on the Canada pension plan by the small number of children of baby boomers who will not be able to contribute enough to ensure the longevity of the plan.

At the same time, the Conference Board of Canada study on the contribution of visible minorities released on April 4, 2004 noted that between 1992 to 2016, it is estimated that Canada's total real gross domestic product, the GDP, will increase to $794.7 billion in 1997 dollars. Visible minorities alone will account for $80.9 billion, or approximately 10% of that growth. If we attempt to extrapolate anything at all from these insights it is that new Canadians represent a consumer base worth at least $1 billion.

Several benefits will no doubt ensue that might have a positive impact within the local consumer markets, for example, housing. And yet, as I mentioned previously, the Conservative government has refused to listen to employers in the construction industry who say that the cost of housing has increased because of the ongoing shortages in this industry. Once again, what is the Conservative government doing about this?

If we pay attention at all to the 2001 census figures, they reveal that the number of household units developed between 1996 and 2001 grew by 7%. Further, almost one-third of the growth was due to an increase in households where the primary worker, that is, the person who pays most of the bills, is foreign born. In addition, over 40% of the households with immigrants who had arrived over the previous five years lived in a home owned by a family member. This shows that these people work hard and want to stay here.

We have known for a long time that Canada's baby boomers are now reaching retirement age, that our birth rate is below the replacement level at 1.2 children per family, and that young people cannot assume the costs of child care themselves and often choose not to have children at all.

This Conservative government thinks that $100 a month is enough to take care of a child. That is why it got rid of the plan devised by the Liberal government, which understood the principle of access to child care for minority linguistic communities outside Quebec, including francophone newcomers to various provinces. Is this any way to serve our citizens?

The Standing Committee on Official Languages recently heard witnesses from Yukon and Nunavut talking about the lack of services. They worry that the agreements signed under the action plan for official languages will not be renewed by this government after 2008. They are waiting for the government to offer explanations regarding the difficulties faced by the programs now in place and the measures that will be taken to ensure that services such as health are available to francophone minorities in these regions.

These linguistic minorities are not just minority communities; they continue to be, to a large extent, growing minorities in relation to the majority. These francophone minorities from across Canada want francophone immigrants to come to them. Francophones who immigrate to Canada will not go to these regions to help the minorities grow in numbers if services do not exist or are inadequate.

We have heard about the way in which the new government—as it continues to call itself despite the fact that it has been in power for more than a year—plans to serve people by remaining silent about the subject that counts most. Language is at the heart of our society. I represent a population that is mostly francophone, and in Quebec we know how not just important, but fundamental and essential an element it is. Without this language, our culture and our identity cannot be preserved. Language builds pride and self-confidence.

How does this Conservative government intend to preserve and integrate francophone minorities in this country? More specifically, how does this Conservative government plan to encourage the settlement of francophone newcomers in the provinces and territories if services in the minority language remain inaccessible, even to those who have moved from Quebec to other provinces? Is Canada really a bilingual country?

Although we are glad that the Conservatives used our action plan for official languages, which the Liberal government introduced in 2003, as the basis for a plan it unveiled in September 2006 to encourage francophone immigrants to settle in Manitoba, this government is continuing to do things in piecemeal fashion.

We are asking for a plan. I would like to believe that Canada has moved beyond the point where linguistic minorities were marginalized. We must not forget that the legislation in effect prohibited the use of French in the legal and legislative systems in the Northwest Territories in 1891 and prohibited French in Saskatchewan and Alberta when these provinces were created in 1905.

I would like to know why it is taking so long to put in place integrated services for minority language groups that want to move within Canada or come to Canada as immigrants.

I could talk all day about this issue—I know the members opposite may think so—and about how poorly this government is serving immigrants to Canada and people applying for Canadian citizenship, but I am almost out of time.

Before I conclude, I want to talk for a moment about a recent meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that I attended. The minister appeared before the committee. When a committee member asked her why $20 million had been cut from the budget to implement the Citizenship Act—the act my colleagues referred to—the minister answered that they had made choices. The Conservative government chose to focus on Bill C-14, which pertains to automatic citizenship for children adopted abroad by Canadian citizens.

This is a bill that we ourselves introduced.

I do not believe that the government has invested this $20 million in granting automatic citizenship to these children. The question is: whose interests are this government serving? In my opinion, this government is serving the interests of the majority and forgetting about immigrants and francophone minorities.

[International Mother Language Day, February 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, today marks the sixth celebration of International Mother Language Day. More than 6,000 languages are spoken around the world. In addition to our two official languages, French and English, Canadians speak more than 100 languages altogether.

In my riding of Laval—Les Îles, 60% of the population speaks French as their mother language, for 10% it is English, and 30% speak another language.

To my constituents and to all citizens of this wonderful country, let us join together to celebrate our diversity and our culture. I hope, with globalization, that Canada will take full advantage of its diversity, which will enhance its ability to communicate and be more competitive in the global economy.