Ruby Dhalla

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we are here in this House today to discuss an important motion, a motion which impacts thousands of aboriginal Canadians across this country.

The motion asks for the House to apologize to the survivors of Indian residential schools for the trauma that they have suffered as a result of policies intended to assimilate first nations, Inuit and Métis children causing the loss of aboriginal culture, heritage and language while also leaving a very sad legacy of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. An apology is the right thing to do.

We must ask ourselves as parliamentarians, why are we here today discussing this motion brought forward by the Liberal Party? We are here in this House discussing this Liberal opposition day motion because the Conservative government has refused to apologize to the thousands of survivors who were affected from the trauma, suffering and embarrassment when they attended residential schools. These survivors deserve an apology.

It is unfortunate that since taking office the Conservative government has actually turned its back on aboriginal Canadians across this country. The Conservatives did it when they cancelled the Kelowna accord. They did it by refusing to apologize as a government to the survivors of those who attended residential schools.

We all know the facts. The residential schools were places of disease. They were places of hunger. They were places where there was overcrowding and there was despair. Many children died as a result of the suffering, the trauma and the embarrassment that they had endured.

It is unfortunate that the government has refused to step up to the plate. Since forming the government, the Conservatives have refused to show any leadership. They have refused to take action and actually do the right thing and apologize to the survivors.

During the Liberals' time in government a new era of cooperation began between the first nations and the government with the establishment of a new aboriginal affairs cabinet committee and a secretariat, as well as a Canada aboriginal peoples round table process. The process was actually based on overarching principles of partnership and of respect, of working in collaboration and in conjunction with each other to address some of the issues. All of those concepts seem very foreign to the Conservative government.

In May 2005 the previous Liberal government and the Assembly of First nations, the AFN, took an important step in recognizing the need for reconciliation and healing. They signed an accord that outlined their joint commitment to compensate for abuses in the Indian residential schools.

We have seen the leadership that was provided by former prime minister Paul Martin. There was leadership provided by Phil Fontaine---

[Afghanistan, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government must realize that it is in complete chaos. It is a disgrace.

The Conservatives do not know how many detainees have been turned over to the Afghans. They do not know where they are. They do not know who is holding them. They do not even know what prisons they are in. How can they claim that these detainees were not abused?

When will the Prime Minister show some leadership, take some action, and fire Canada's version of Donald Rumsfeld?

[Afghanistan, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, this has been a week of chaos, confusion and cover-up for the Conservatives, a political gong show at the expense of our international reputation and the Canadian military.

The Prime Minister and his ministers have all stated that Afghan detainees were not abused. The international community has stated otherwise. Evidence of torture is undeniable.

The government is in utter disarray. When will the Prime Minister stop misleading Canadians, tell the truth, do the right thing, and fire his Minister of National Defence?

[The Budget, March 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government continues to fail Canadians and my constituents of Brampton—Springdale. It has shown absolutely no leadership and no vision in moving Canada forward.

The government is failing one of Canada's fastest growing cities. Its broken promises have resulted in Bramptonians having to wait for important health care services. Bramptonian families are having to struggle to find good quality child care programs because the government has not created a single child care space. Its broken promise on income tax trusts has resulted in Brampton seniors losing their hard-earned life savings.

The Conservative government has turned its back on students by failing to invest in post-secondary education. It has failed new Canadians with its failure to create a foreign credential recognition agency.

The people of Brampton deserve a federal government that is caring and compassionate. They deserve a government that is dedicated and committed to working on behalf of all Canadians for a richer, fairer and greener Canada.

[The Budget, March 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, having talked to Canadian families and Canadian parents and mothers, giving them $100 a month that is taxable, which at the end of the day probably results in about $50 to $60 a month, is not a child care plan. That is not an investment in early learning and child care development. The government is acting as an ATM machine, because what choice is it really giving parents when there are absolutely no spaces in the country?

Whether families live--

[The Budget, March 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, what we as Liberals disagree with is that this particular budget will not help the hard-working Canadian families that actually need it most. When the Conservatives talk about the $2,000 tax credit and they talk about the fact that some families will get back $310, when we do the math it is about 80¢ a day. We cannot even buy a cup of coffee for 80¢. The families that really need it most, the lower income families, are not going to benefit from this.

If the Conservatives really wanted to help lower income families, they would have ensured that they invested in the areas that are important to those low income families. They would have invested in the creation of child care spaces which would have ensured the empowerment of Canadian parents who want to be part of the workforce and also provide high quality child care.

I must also say it was a Liberal government that actually ensured that Canada had one of the best financial records in the G-8. It was a Liberal government that delivered a $42 billion investment in health care to ensure that we would have a wait times reduction. It was a Liberal government in consultation with the provinces and territories that invested $5 billion in early learning and childhood development to ensure that we would invest in our future: our children.

[The Budget, March 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence.

The Conservative budget has failed Canada's most vulnerable people. Those who need government most have once again been ignored by the Conservative government. Instead of reaching out to ordinary, hard-working Canadians, the government has only reached out to the CEOs sitting around boardroom tables.

Instead of reaching out to those who are homeless, or instead of investing in affordable housing or post-secondary education, or ensuring that poverty among first nations would be eliminated, the Conservatives chose to ignore and sideline them.

This was supposed to be a budget, from what I recollect of what the Prime Minister said, that would be discussed around kitchen tables. After reading the budget, one really wonders what kitchen table this Prime Minister was sitting at, because this is a budget in which there seem to be more losers than winners. It is a budget in which the rich will only get richer and the poor only poorer.

Perhaps the chief economist at RBC Financial, Craig Wright, best summed up this budget when he said:

It's a minority government budget. It's about politics more than it's about policy: a little bit for everyone, not enough for anyone.

It is evident from this quote that this budget was not looking at Canada's future. This is a budget that is a step backward, a step backward for the children of Canada, for the most vulnerable of Canada, for our first nations communities, for the homeless, and for those who really needed the government most.

Let me talk about child care. The Conservatives have spoken quite often about choice in child care, but what choice has a Conservative government really given hard-working Canadian parents when they have failed to deliver a single child care space?

The $250 million that has been given to the provinces and territories is really a mere drop in the bucket compared to the $1.2 billion that would have been invested by the previous Liberal government. One needs to ask oneself, does this Conservative government really believe in early learning and childhood development?

We have seen over the last 24 hours that child care advocacy groups across the country are saying that the Conservative plan has offered little money or absolutely no money and no accountability to ensure that child care spaces are going to be created.

We all recollect the 2006 campaign when the Conservatives promised the creation of 125,000 child care spaces over five years. Now, as we take a look 14 months later, we see that not one child care space has been created.

Canadian families have very quickly realized that this was yet another Conservative promise made and another Conservative promise broken. Unfortunately, this time, that broken promise has impacted thousands and thousands of Canadian children across the country.

If we take a look at this particular budget, we see that the government talks about creating 25,000 new child care spaces. Twenty-five thousand actually sounds like a large number, but one only has to take a look at a few examples.

We can take a look at the city of Ottawa, which actually has a centralized child care waiting list. Parents across the country and parents living in Ottawa can actually add their child's name to one particular city list to ensure that it appears on a central list. As for this list, in Ottawa alone, the number of children waiting for a child care space is 10,000. There are 10,000 children in Ottawa waiting for a child care space. This is for only one city in Canada.

What about some of the other cities that are even more populated than Ottawa? What about Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary or Winnipeg? I know that in my own riding of Brampton—Springdale, which has one of the fastest growing cities in the country, the list of child care spaces is growing longer and longer. Children in my riding of Brampton--Springdale are waiting.

The government has simply acted as an ATM machine. It has thrown money at families by giving them $100 a month and now it is throwing money at the provinces and territories. The only thing that is evident while the government acts as an ATM machine is that there has not been an action plan. There has been no leadership to ensure that we deliver the child care spaces that children and Canadian families so desperately need.

Many child care advocacy groups and many Canadian families talk about the fact that when the Liberals were in government they actually sat down with the provinces and territories and came up with a $5 billion investment in an early learning and childhood development plan to ensure there would be quality, universality, accessibility and a developmental component so that our children, the future leaders of our country, would get the very best.

What did the Conservatives promise? They gave $100 a month that is actually taxable. Now that Canadian parents and families are filling out their tax forms, they realize they actually have to give money back to the government. The $100 a month was really about $66 a month for some families. This is absolutely no choice because where can any Canadian family or parent find child care at $66 a month?

The only choice that Canadian parents and families have been left with is that they can either stay at home or pay for child care out of their pocket, but the problem and the dilemma there is that there are no child care spaces. It is quite clear from this budget that the promise to Canadian families and parents for child care and the delivery of child care spaces was actually a smokescreen.

A senior economist from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said:

You can easily spend in the billions creating a genuine national child-care program for kids younger than six. Splitting $250 million among all those provinces...is not going to do it.

We're missing the boat on this in a big way. Research connects early learning with all kinds of education and production benefits that spin off later on. And it allows people to show up for work if they know their children are well cared for.

It is clear throughout this Conservative budget that the government has failed Canada's most vulnerable.

We can talk about the issue of foreign credential recognition. The Conservatives promised that they would create an agency, but in this budget they have not provided the resources or the infrastructure to actually implement this agency. They have not talked about establishing this agency.

The member for Eglinton—Lawrence spent many years to ensure that when new immigrants came to our country with hopes, dreams and aspirations that their qualifications would be recognized, that they would be able to be accredited and integrated into the labour market workforce. But the Conservative government has failed to get the job done and those new Canadians still continue to wait.

We can talk about health care. The Conservatives talked about the implementation of a wait time guarantee, but it is quite unfortunate in reading the budget that health care was not one of their top priorities. Instead the Conservative government is trying to blackmail the provinces and territories into signing on by waving $612 million, but if they decline, that $612 million will go out the window.

Canadians want to ensure that they have the most effective and efficient health care system, but the government must believe in that type of system. It must invest in health care to ensure that the wait times guarantee is actually implemented. Once again the Conservative budget failed in ensuring that they would deliver quality health care for Canadians across the country.

In conclusion, it is clear that the Conservative government's budget was only good for one table around the country and that was for the CEOs who sit at the boardroom table, not for the average hard-working Canadian. The Conservatives have once again sidelined those who need the government most.

The finance minister and the Prime Minister had a real opportunity to help Canada and to ensure Canada's success in the coming years, but unfortunately they failed on all accounts. On behalf of the hard-working families in my riding of Brampton—Springdale, on behalf of students, seniors, aboriginal people and first nations, on behalf of those who are homeless in this country, there is no way that this budget deserves their full support.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not going to agree with the member. Since he has stated the track record of the Liberal government, I will remind him that the Liberals took over from the Mulroney government in 1993 when the government was left in an absolute mess. It was due to proper fiscal management and investment in important social programs for this country that we were able to deliver eight consecutive balanced budgets.

Let me tell the House about some of the investments that the Liberal government made for the--

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to sit with the member on the human resources and social development committee. I know that he is very passionately committed to ensuring that all Canadians, regardless of their socio-economic status, have the best opportunities available to them.

To answer the hon. member's question, I can say that when the Conservatives spoke to the motion, I found it quite ironic that they did not address the motion itself in terms of having a comprehensive approach to dealing with the creation of a national anti-poverty strategy.

I think the hon. member would like me to read for him what was written in 1997 by our Prime Minister at the moment, who hopefully will be the former prime minister:

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

That was written by the Prime Minister in a speech for the Council for National Policy in 1997.

We also can take a look at some other quotes from what he has written. Again in 1997, he said:

Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.

Is this a Prime Minister and a government that really believe in the most vulnerable of our society? We have seen this at first hand since the Conservatives have been elected in all the cuts they have made to important social programs in this country.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as Canadians watch this debate on television, they are looking to us as parliamentarians to give them a sense of hope. They are looking to us as parliamentarians to give them a chance and an opportunity to live their dreams. They are looking to us as parliamentarians to ensure they have the tools and the resources they need to get out of poverty.

Canadians want a government and they want politicians who do not have a “me” approach but practise a “we” approach so that, together, as Canadians, we can continue to be the envy of the world.

It is unfortunate that since being elected the Conservative government has betrayed and ignored the voices of many Canadian families and the most vulnerable in our society. With its ideological, right wing approach, the Conservatives have single-handedly created a situation that will contribute to the rise of poverty in our country.

In my own riding of Brampton—Springdale, I have heard from women, seniors, children, people from cultural groups and youth organizations who have been impacted by the cuts that the government has made to important social programs.

The anti-poverty strategy put forward by the NDP is needed because the Conservative minority government has adopted a “fend for yourself” policy in respect to Canadians.

Let us talk about child care. Whether a senior, a youth or family is in need of child care, they need to be one of the lucky ones to benefit from the government's policy. If both parents can afford to stay at home, they will be the lucky ones under the Conservative government. However, like the 70% of children under six years of age whose mothers are working, those parents do not actually luck out under the government's policy because its plan only ensures benefits for those who are well off.

The neo-Conservative government does not understand the needs of Canadian families. The families who will benefit the least from this so-called universal child care benefit are those who really need it most.

Let us take a look at an example. A couple earning $40,000 each will lose about one-third of their monthly benefit, winding up with only $60 a month per child for child care. If we look at the cost of child care, this by no means will help them to ensure their children have the very best start in life.

I would like to compare this to what the former minister of human resources and social development has spent on limousines in the last three days. It was more than $1,800. This is money that could have been utilized by many Canadian parents and families who are living in poverty.

Child care advocacy groups and Canadian parents and families have issued a report card in this regard giving the Prime Minister and the new Conservative government a failing grade when it comes to delivering programs for children who are living in poverty in this country.

The situation is about to get worse because the funding that was implemented under the former Liberal government, with the early learning and child care initiatives, will run out next month and we will have an additional crisis in this country. We will have an additional crisis because the Conservative government failed to deliver on its promise to create 125,000 spaces. It has created zero of those spaces.

It has also failed Canadians and contributed to poverty by cancelling programs that are impacting the most vulnerable in our society, by cutting funding and ignoring priorities that are important to Canadians. It seems as if the Conservative government is ripping at the seams of our social fabric.

Some of the other Conservative policy initiatives have hit low income Canadians particularly hard. They have increased the bottom income tax rate from 15% to 15.5%. Instead of reducing income taxes for those who need it most, they have actually increased taxes. By lowering the basic personal exemption by $400, they have put 200,000 low income Canadians back on the tax rolls. They have eliminated the young child supplement to the child tax benefit. They have cancelled the Kelowna accord, which would have addressed poverty among aboriginal Canadians.

Another demographic hit by the Conservative Party's policy is youth. Students who have relied on summer jobs to ensure they can pay for their tuition, and perhaps get out of poverty, are going to suffer under this government, because the Conservatives have cut $55 million from the summer career placement program.

I spoke about the aboriginal community. Poverty among aboriginals is another significant challenge. Even though during the election campaign the Conservatives promised they would uphold the Government of Canada's commitment to first nations and aboriginal communities, the first thing they did in office was cut the $5 billion Kelowna accord, an accord that would have invested in children, health care and educational programs for our aboriginal communities.

Not only did the Conservatives cut the Kelowna accord, they have made more budget cuts to programs that are vital to the aboriginal community. They have cut child care funding for first nations, the first nations stop smoking program, and funding for aboriginal languages. It is unfortunate that due to these program cuts the Conservatives have made it very clear to aboriginal Canadians that they are not one of their priorities.

I will read for members a quote from Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who was left to conclude, “We're the only community that's been targeted this way”. He said, “We ask ourselves if this government really does care about the First Nations communities”. Now, under the leadership of Phil Fontaine, the Assembly of First Nations has had to launch its own campaign to address the issue of poverty in first nations communities.

We can talk about homelessness. We can talk about the fact that the government has not provided transitional funding to ensure those who are the most vulnerable in our society can get access to funding from SCPI, the supporting communities partnership initiative, to have the resources and tools they need to live in affordable housing.

What is worse is the fact that the government has taken away needed transitional funding when it cancelled the SCPI program. That has resulted in hundreds of shelters and the homeless being left in limbo, with shelters facing the fact that they might have to close and the homeless being left out in the cold due to the Conservative government's new philosophy.

If the government truly valued our nation's social programs, it would have made sure that a transition program for the homeless in this country was in place. Let us take a look at the Conservatives' 2006 platform. I was quite surprised when I took a look at their platform. There is nothing, not one initiative outlined in their election platform, that talks about poverty reduction or the minimum wage.

Let us take a look at the Liberal Party's track record. We are committed to social justice, to ensuring fair justice in terms of income distribution. The policies and the programs established under the Liberal government have ensured that Canada's social safety net is the best in the world. We ensured that by working together with the provinces and territories to make our country even stronger.

That is why we support today's motion for creating a national anti-poverty strategy and for ensuring that as the federal government there is an opportunity to increase the minimum wage to $10.

In conclusion, I find it slightly hypocritical that the NDP members are actually putting forward this motion, because it is due to their alliance with the Conservatives that the Liberal government was forced to go to an election and was not able to deliver on behalf of children, in ensuring that there were child care spaces, and on behalf of seniors, women and the most vulnerable in this country.

We on this side of the House are committed to a national anti-poverty strategy. We are committed as a party to standing up for the most vulnerable in our society. We are committed to addressing the root causes of poverty in a comprehensive approach, an approach that champions social justice and economic prosperity.

We have a dynamic team that is passionate, committed and driven to ensure that our approach, the Liberal approach, is one that creates acceptance of tolerance, equality and opportunity, because those are core values that so many Canadians across the country cherish. I am sure that with all parliamentarians working together we will be able to create a national anti-poverty strategy. We must all believe in this in our hearts.