Rob Oliphant

[Canada Labour Code, March 18th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I commend the hon. member for Compton—Stanstead for presenting the bill. I thank her for her hard work and for her bringing this discussion to the chamber.

I think it is unfair, as the parliamentary secretary has suggested, that we wait for a government bill, which we have not seen. We have intent from the government, but I want to commend the member for going beyond intent and actually bringing something, a hard piece of work for us to discuss and to consider.

I am still working out my own personal thought about the member's bill, but I sense it is important legislation that would benefit discussion at committee. Therefore, I expect I will support it going to committee for a thoughtful response.

The members from the opposition side of the House have suggested there are some amendments that we might like to see. I understand the hon. member has indicated that she and her party would be open to listening to some of those thoughtful exchanges.

I come to this bill less as a member of Parliament, but more from my experience as a United Church minister. I have worked with families that have gone through great loss and some of those losses have been as a result of crime. I have worked with victims of crime and members of families of victims of crime. I very much appreciate the intent of the bill and its understanding that in those times of great loss, in those times of grief, in those times of wonder, it is important we recognize that an injury to one is indeed an injury to all and that we, as a society, have to help the individual, which do through our government.

I am very much of the understanding that when I pay my taxes, it is my opportunity to share. When I pay my EI premiums, it is my opportunity to share in a collective opportunity, where we together recognize that each one of us could be a victim, and by the grace of God most of us are not. Therefore, we pool our resources together to help those who have been victims of crime or who are less fortunate in a variety of ways.

There is a long history in the way we have understood victims and offenders in crime. Originally, in most of common law, we understood that there were two parties in the crime, the victim and the offender. Over time, we changed our opinion to understand that the crime was not so much a crime against just the victim, it was a crime against Her Majesty, against the state.

Over recent years, we have seen a shift in that understanding to recognize there are many partners in that moment. There is an offender, the state and a victim. There has been a growing movement of victims' rights and an understanding that victims need care. They need to be supported, they need understanding and they also need financial resources.

It is very important to understand that at various times, various parts of the law need to change to adapt to a new understanding of what it is.

The government is proud to say that it stands with victims of crime. It has put some rhetoric in its throne speech. We will await that law. However, at the same time, this legislation is worthy of our support to take it to the next stage, to committee.

There is also something else besides simply that. The bill recognizes some of the changing demographics going on in the workplace and in society. It understands that when a child, for instance, has been the victim of a crime, the caregiver is probably not a homemaker at home. In 70% of Canadian families, the caregiver is a parent, mother and/or father, who is actively engaged in the workforce. Therefore, there needs to be protection, both under the labour laws and also under employment insurance provisions, to ensure the person can maintain his or her part of the livelihood that is necessary to support the family.

The hon. member has brought forth thoughtful legislation that recognizes the changing demographics of our labour force. We are behind the times in that. We still, especially on the other side of the House, tend to think of women being at home and men in the workforce. Therefore, when there is a family tragedy, that woman will still be able to help. That is not the case in most families. If it is a woman's choice, that is fine. However, most families need two incomes to maintain the family's standards of living.

The changes addressed both in labour law and in EI reflect our need to be part of that. We need to open our eyes to the fact that those demographics have changed.

This piece of legislation indicates that our EI system is not working. There is something disjointed. Opportunities that exist in one part of our country do not exist in other parts of our country.

It is interesting, maybe a little ironic, that the member from the Bloc Québécois is offering a Quebec solution to a national problem. I thank her for doing that, for offering the Quebec model in labour law to the rest of us in Canada who could benefit by putting that in national standards. For a long time the Liberal Party has argued that national standards are absolutely essential, that we maintain those across ten provinces and three territories and we celebrate them. I thank the hon. member for recognizing that for the rest of Canada, the federal legislation with respect to labour is falling short of the Quebec standard. We are being asked to raise the standards, especially with respect to federally regulated bodies, industries and agencies.

I want this bill to go to committee. We will be able to understand that EI is income replacement that needs to be understood as an insurance system. We pay premiums into that system. At various times in our lives, we need to take money out of the system. It is an employment insurance system, but it is not fairly understood.

I hope that as we open up the discussion on employment insurance, we might understand also that workers in Ontario are generally disadvantaged in this system. If we open up the discussion on EI, we can go a bit broader on this. We might start to look at the number of hours for EI qualification in Ontario, which is significantly higher than in other parts of the country. That means welfare demands, for example in British Columbia, Ontario or Quebec, are rising because people's EI benefits are running out.

This indicates that the government is failing to open up a grander discussion about EI, to recognize that employment insurance is not only used to help people in grand economic cycles, but also to help individuals and families who are struggling with real problems such as putting food on the table and putting a roof over their heads.

Getting back to this piece of legislation, it is important to recognize that there are still some difficulties in some of the definitions of family leave that would be offered. There has been some discussion about whether or not a parent is as important as a child as a victim of crime. Those who find themselves in the sandwich generation may have to take care of children and also elderly parents, and may be required to leave their place of work. They would want a guarantee that they would get their job back, but also would have income replacement during that time of grief or of loss.

I hope that the hon. member is open to consideration of the definitions and that they may need to be expanded and fine-tuned. We would welcome that kind of discussion with her at committee.

As we go through this, we end where I began, and that is to recognize that the Liberal Party is a party that stands with victims of crime. We are concerned about the incidence of crime. We recognize that the best way to address that is to prevent crime in the first place. We do not want to sweep up after a crime, which sometimes we need to do because the government has failed to prevent crime.

We need constantly to look at the continuum of this problem and recognize that we need to increase spending on the prevention of those things which could lead to an economic crisis for a family later. Our aim is to ensure that the government actually spends its full budget on the prevention of crime so that we can help people and stand with them in solidarity.

I look forward to a further debate on this issue.

[March 15th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his comments, none of which I disagree with. I think this citizenship guide is a massive improvement and I have no need to defend the record of a previous Liberal government. I was not here.

What I am doing is looking to the future, and what I would hope is that the government could simply acknowledge that a group of people was left out. It was a hurtful action and it was not a just action; it was not a good action or a right action.

I do not actually even want to score political points on this. We need to lift ourselves beyond that and simply address the fact that every citizenship guide needs to be better than the previous one, and that in any new edition we have to recognize that this country is an evolving one with new people, new understandings and new ideas.

There is great fanfare that, yes, there is an Olympic gold medal winner, Mark Tewksbury, who is in it as an openly gay person, a champion; but it is simply not enough. He has said that he does not represent the broad diversity. We want a commitment that all will be included.

[March 15th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise and probe a little further the question I asked on March 5 of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. To remind the House, the question was with respect to the new citizenship guide and some omissions and deletions in the preparation of it.

I will begin by saying that for me citizenship is much more than just about voting. It is actually about full participation in the life and fabric of our society. It is the way people choose to exercise that participation economically, socially and culturally that we celebrate when people become citizens.

Every month I sign anywhere between 80 and 200 certificates for new Canadians who have taken an oath, pledged their allegiance and decided to become part of Canada as citizens and take up those responsibilities. To help them in that process, the government has come up with a new citizenship guide. I want to applaud the government for some of the new inclusions in this fuller and quite beautiful guide about Canada.

The guide has included a military history, which was not there previously, and a greater focus on Canada's first nations and other aboriginal peoples, but there is a glaring omission or perhaps exclusion. That has to do with the history of gay and lesbian people in the fabric of our society and in full inclusion. That is quite a disappointment for me because I think there are two reasons that becomes important.

One of those reasons is that new Canadians can celebrate the advancements made by gay and lesbian people as part of their history when they become citizens. They could actually celebrate the human rights agenda, equal marriage rights and those things that perhaps they did not have in the country they left and this new country has. Part of the embrace of Canada is the embrace of gay and lesbian people.

We cannot be naive about this because that document is also an educational tool. It reminds people of the things they might not know about this country. It also tells us that some of our rights are fragile. The minister's own actions, with the exclusion of gay and lesbian history, is part of that fragility. It is incumbent upon the government to stand up for all people and reflect the goodness of this country and the greatness of its people.

The public record is pretty clear. Documents received under access to information have clearly indicated that the department requested that the minister include gay and lesbian history. Unfortunately, he made the decision to exclude it, which is his right. The government has the right to exclude anybody from history it would like to exclude, but it does not have the right to not explain fully how that happened and while I was not party to the meeting with the director of Egale, it is clear on the public record that the minister denied his responsibility on this and said that it was a mere omission.

It is time for the minister to own up to his responsibility. He said that he was responsible for the guide. I hope he can now take this as an opportunity to assure the House, as the government needs to and which the parliamentary secretary hopefully will, that gay and lesbian history will be included in an update to the guide, that there will be no exclusion by a minister or his or her office and that there will be no attempt to rewrite Canadian history but to give every new Canadian citizen the opportunity to know he or she is written into our history the day of arrival and will never be written out of history. That is the goal and I hope the government can make that pledge and commitment today.

[Petitions, March 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition today, as certified by the clerk of petitions, regarding the key role that post offices play in the social and economic life of Canadians and Canada by providing the infrastructure that healthy communities need to thrive and businesses need to grow.

The petition calls upon the Government of Canada to instruct Canada Post to maintain and improve its network of public post offices, and to consult with the public, their elected representatives, postal unions and other stakeholders in any reform or change to the post office system.

[Canadian Navy, March 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for this motion. As the critic for Veterans Affairs, and I think I also speak on behalf of the critic for National Defence in our caucus, we will be recommending to our caucus full and complete support of this motion.

I want to take this opportunity to talk about the motion and the kind of groundwork that I think should go into the motion and some of the ways it is being represented here today.

Executive curl is, of course, a distinguishing mark for navy officers. It is not absent, however, from navy uniforms. It is on their dress uniform or dress kit. When the naval dress was reinstated after the disunification of the Canadian Forces, so to speak, the executive curl was reinstated on the dress kit. So this motion is referring to the service uniform, which is actually a less significant issue to some of the veterans I have talked to than it is perhaps being made out to be today.

I have some concerns, however. At some point, the hon. member might want to comment on why, with all the issues in Cornwall and the surrounding area, this one has grabbed his attention when that particular community is facing some very significant economic, tourism and other development issues that could the subject of a very serious members' business procedure. I say that because I am somewhat jealous of the hon. member actually getting precedence to be able to present a piece of business. It is rare, because members can often wait six, eight or ten years to have a bill or a motion come to full debate.

The issues in Cornwall and the surrounding area are significant. I am wondering why the member did not take on the issue of contraband cigarettes, perhaps, and the effect they are having on children and youth across the country and very directly in his community on relations with first nations communities. That is of concern to me. Also, I wonder whether or not he had thought about asking his government to appoint a mediator to work on the longstanding dispute between the Canada Border Services Agency and the Akwesasne Nation. Perhaps it is time that the member steps up to the plate to work for his constituents on that very important issue of the reputation of his community, which has been tarnished over these last several months.

The motion the member has presented is rather weak tea. It simply requests that the government consider reinstating a piece of embroidery on a uniform, which is not to denigrate whatsoever the support we give to our troops and our veterans, which is unanimous in this caucus. What we are pushing for, instead, is for the hon. member to address the other important economic social and cultural issues that he has responsibility to stand up and talk about in the House.

I did follow the letters to the editor that were critical of this motion and the response of the member. In the response, he was able to quote verbatim, and without attribution, Matthew Worth. The member might want to listen to this, because he took a page right out of the Facebook page of Mr. Worth and printed it in his own letter. The response by the hon. member seem to represent a lot of work by Matthew Worth, and I am not sure the member has fairly represented what the people of his area want.

When it comes to the navy, we also recognize on this side of the House that we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Canadian navy this year, and it is with great pride that we will celebrate this anniversary. However, there are some other issues that the navy has brought forward, including the need for adequate resources to do its work and whether or not it actually has the equipment to keep members of the armed forces safe and secure, whether navy personnel, for example, have gloves to keep themselves warm while they are doing important aid work, and whether or not we have the necessary number of frigates and ships to do the kind of work the navy needs to do.

I want to applaud the government for its work over the last number of years, which began, frankly, under the previous Liberal government, to re-establish a well supported, well trained and well outfitted military. I give the government credit for taking that issue very seriously. Congratulations to it, but the work is not over.

The men and women in our military service need more than simple gestures. They need real resources, real ideas, real imagination and real creativity on getting the work done needed for Canada to take its place in the world.

Canada has a proud military history. Its army, navy and air force have been partners in securing a world of democracy, freedom and peace.

The hon. member mentioned the battle of the Atlantic. The Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian naval reserve, the air force and the merchant marine were all partners in that very important part of Canadian history, and we will take time to celebrate it this year at the 100th anniversary of the navy.

I reiterate that we support the reinstatement of the executive curl on the service uniform. It is a good gesture, but it is a simple gesture.

We need more from the government. We need it to stand up and talk about the real issues among veterans today. Where are the resources being dedicated for post-traumatic stress disorder and other operational stress injuries? Where is there something beyond monuments? Where does the government talk about the real economic struggles faced by modern vets?

This past December, I was in Calgary at the Drop-In, the largest homeless shelter in Alberta. Every night it has between 30 and 40 homeless veterans there. Where are the resources for homeless veterans?

We have to go beyond window dressing in this chamber. We have to go into the real nature of who we are as Canadians and what it is that the men and women in our military service are doing to support our quest to establish the place of Canada in the world and ensure that we have a place that is safe, secure, democratic and full of hope.

We are proud to support this motion, but we will use the motion to push the government further, to push that side of the House further, to honour that sacrifice, to honour those lives, to honour that tradition and to keep it moving.

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, documents obtained under access to information clearly reveal that the Minister of Citizenship made a decision to explicitly exclude gay and lesbian people and our history from the new citizenship guide. However, he told a respected human rights group that it was merely an oversight.

Both this decision and duplicity about it go to the character of the government. Is the minister proud of either of these actions?

[The Economy, March 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills. When I look at that side of the House, I find the member with the most integrity is actually sitting in that seat, so I take his comments seriously.

I would like to give a little lesson about pensions.

Pensions have the ability to actually stabilize the economy and help us through the troughs. Pensioners add to the economy and hold up the bottom part of society to ensure the troughs of an economic recession are not too deep. They are the people who spend the money on food, shelter, the necessities to keep society going. This is not money that is simply spent and then becomes a burden on the backs of future generations. This is money that is spent, invested and used. It creates jobs, keeps people employed and will help people in the future.

This is something we can work on together. Pension funding is something we have to improve as a House of Commons.

[The Economy, March 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I have no need or any desire to take lessons from members of the New Democratic Party on economics, on social justice or on people.

Very frankly, the discussions that happened in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s may still occupy the minds and imagination of New Democrats, but we have moved on.

The Liberal Party of Canada, the Liberal caucus, is looking at the 21st century. We are planning for a new world. We understand the role of government and business and community groups in partnership with each other, creating the economy, creating a vibrant society, and we will work together for that.

We are not going to take lessons from those who can talk about anything but never have to pay the price of government, never have to make decisions in the real world and never have to actually stand up for what they believe in and make things happen.

[The Economy, March 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

I have appreciated the comments raised in the House today in this take note debate. As we gather as members of Parliament, we all bring certain wisdom and knowledge to this discussion. Some of that wisdom comes from past experience, which some members have a great deal of and have offered. A lot of our knowledge comes from the experiences in our own constituencies as people visit us to talk about the effects of this economy on their personal lives.

I do not think there is a member in the House who does not have someone attend his or her office every day to talk about the effects of this recession and the economy on their lives. It may be a young person facing unemployment at a structural level rarely seen in Canadian history. It may be a senior citizen whose savings have been so dramatically reduced due to falls in the market and he or she is no longer able to take a taxi to go to a funeral of a friend. That happened last week.

We may talk to people whose employment insurance benefits have run out and do not see any other opportunities. They are waiting for the so-called infrastructure spending stimulus to kick in so jobs may actually be created. Every one of us brings that experience to the House.

The particular spotlight I would like to shine on the debate today has to do with the experience of our veterans and their experience of this economy. That is an unusual spotlight to shine on an economic issue, but we are talking about real people with real issues facing real struggles in this economy and beyond.

As the critic for Veterans Affairs, those stories have been coming to me and they take on two different kinds of aspects. One group, of course, is traditional veterans, senior citizens, men and women who served in World War II and the Korean War. They bring the issues that many seniors are facing, sometimes magnified.

At the same time, we have another group of Canadians, modern veterans, young men and women, who have served our country in uniform and have come back to our country ill-prepared at times but often deeply affected and sometimes injured from their experiences in the theatre of war or in other operations that our Canadian armed forces serve in now, even as we speak.

With those two lenses, I would like the House to reflect for a moment on what it means to be economically involved in the lives of Canadians who have particularly or voluntarily served to protect our freedom, democracy, human rights and dignity in our world. The first part of that has to do with the experience of traditional veterans who are senior citizens.

I was interested as the throne speech yesterday addressed some of the profound issues faced by senior citizens. There was mention made of a seniors day. That sounds noble. It sounds a little like Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart. I am somewhat concerned that we are not going a little more deeply into the lives of seniors and how they are facing this economic recession. The reality is deep and meaningful pension reform is necessary for all seniors. Veterans bring their particular experience of that to us for us to share, debate and try to understand.

I am particularly speaking of veterans in small communities on very fixed incomes, with limited services provided by Veterans Affairs Canada for their particular needs. That may be part of the veterans independence program, or it may be access to the long-term care facilities known as pavilions or other care facilities in our country simply because there is no room and waiting lists are keeping them out. This will also affect modern veterans and I will talk about that in a moment.

Some veterans are coming to us in dire need and extreme experiences of poverty. That is simply not good enough for Canada.

Recently I had the opportunity to go to Calgary to visit the Calgary Drop-In, which is the largest homeless shelter in Alberta. It is a significant facility that deals with people on the streets facing homelessness. Every night there are between 30 and 40 homeless Canadian veterans in that homeless shelter, which is a national disgrace.

From reading the newspapers, we know that the largest and fastest growing population of homeless in the United States is American veterans. Canada has a chance to address that issue immediately and make some changes before we catch up to our American brothers and sisters. Those homeless veterans range in age between 26 and 85 years old. This means we are dealing with both traditional veterans and modern veterans who are on the streets seeking shelter

This implies that we need a national strategy to combat homelessness and to provide affordable housing for all. I want to put at the front of that queue veterans in Canada who need to be housed in safe, adequate housing. It is a shame and a disgrace that the government does not come up with a national housing strategy to improve the lives of all Canadians but also very specifically our veterans.

Some of the other issues that our veterans face have to do with the experience of younger and modern veterans. They face the job crisis that many are, unprepared for a world that does not know how to transfer the skills and the knowledge they have brought out of the military service and to put them to use creatively in the productivity of a Canadian economy.

We need to invest money in education, job training, skills improvement and even language skills for our veterans so they are part of a mobile workforce ready to address the problems of Canada. They want to build our country in their peaceful activities as much as they built it in their war efforts.

We have a responsibility to invest very specifically in our veterans at this economic juncture. Some of these are young people who joined the services very quickly and have now served in the theatre in Afghanistan for longer periods of time than the whole of World War II. They are coming back to Canada, some of them with shock, with post-traumatic stress disorder, some of them with other injuries, some of them with latent injuries that begin to appear later.

To deal with this, to reflect on this is going to cost money. This is not an expense however. This is an investment, an investment in human resources that are richly trained, experienced, noble and courageous men and women who have served in the armed forces. We need to do that to ensure this economy, this recession does not create more victims, particularly from that group of people.

I am not trying to exclude others who are affected by the recession. Obviously each one of us when we are in our constituencies hear these stories. We know the stories of people being left out.

We are waiting. We hear from the government side about this tremendous infrastructure spending. We also know about jobs money that has been left on the table and unspent. That is money is meant to not only generate one-time jobs, but create a multiplier effect through the economy to create jobs for more and more people.

We are not talking about expenditure money. We are talking about investment in key sectors so people can find work and make work. We will then be a complex society of doing the kind of work we need to do as a Parliament.

We have some very particular issues with which we will need to wrestle. When the Conservatives took office, they had a $13 billion surplus, and I am glad my hon. colleague mentioned that. That surplus has been squandered unreasonably with no sense of planning for an economic downturn, which was known to every economist in our country. Denial reigned on that side of the House and now we are paying for it. With the largest deficit in Canadian history looming, the heads are still buried in the sand. We need to lift the heads and care for Canadians. That means the most vulnerable Canadians. That means the Canadians who have been on the edges of society. That means those who are homeless, those who have faced addiction problems, those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, our seniors, those who have been left out of the job market for too long, youth and women.

Today I hope the government members are listening and hearing the constructive criticism on this side of the House. We are willing to work with them to offer new opportunities to all Canadians.

[Veterans Affairs, March 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honour John Henry Foster Babcock who died last week at the remarkable age of 109. Canadians from coast to coast to coast were not only touched by his death, but have been, and will continue to be, inspired by his life.

Today, we recognize the passing of the last Canadian first world war veteran and pledge to keep alive the spirit of freedom, courage, democracy and dignity that marked his generation and left an indelible mark on Canada and the world.

We know the story but we revel in its telling again.

Just prior to his 16th birthday, Jack Babcock joined the 146th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force out of Sydenham, Ontario. The young soldier was dispatched to England, but when his true age was discovered, he was assigned to the young soldiers' battalion where he trained and worked in support services until a birthday would allow him to be deployed to the battlefields of France.

The signing of the armistice, while celebrated by millions craving peace, denied the young Mr. Babcock the opportunity to see battle with fellow soldiers.

A Canadian at heart, but one with a continuing sense of adventure and a restless spirit and in need of employment, Mr. Babcock settled in Washington State where he lived, raised a family and contributed to that community. The restoration of his Canadian citizenship in 2008, however, brought to full circle his love of this country and our country's love of this soldier.

On behalf of colleagues in the Liberal Party of Canada, I offer my condolences to the Babcock family on their loss. We will remember him.

We will remember him.

As the minister has acknowledged, over 650,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in the first world war. Tragically, more than 68,000 of them would never return to Canadian soil. Another 170,000 were wounded in service. Every one of them paid the price of peace on our behalf.

That is why we on this side of the House heartily welcome the government's intention to hold a commemorative ceremony in April honouring the Canadian heroes of the first world war, soldiers who defined our country and established a tradition of excellence that continues to this day in the women and men of our armed forces serving in Canada, in Haiti, in Afghanistan and around the world, proudly bearing the maple leaf in our name.

We will remember them.