Shelly Glover

[Petitions, May 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege to rise today to present a petition from the people in my riding of Saint Boniface.

This petition calls upon the House of Commons to confirm that every human being is recognized by Canadian law as human by amending section 223 of our Criminal Code.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I found my colleague's presentation somewhat entertaining because there seemed to be a lack of understanding of what exactly is in the budget implementation act. I would suggest that my hon. colleague perhaps take a second look at it because there are many measures that help to deal with things like inequality. In fact, the best way to fight poverty and o deal with inequality is to ensure that Canadians have jobs, which is the main focus of this budget. It is the main focus because we are addressing jobs, long-term prosperity and, of course, economic growth.

I have before me pages and pages of good quotes from economists across the country and elsewhere who suggest that this budget implementation act is in fact the direction that this government ought to have taken. They applaud the fact that we have taken this direction and they suggest that if we deter from this path it would put our country at significant risk.

Could the member opposite address the fact that there are so many economists who agree with our position? How does he explain the fact that there are literally dozens of them who agree with the direction this government has taken?

[Housing, May 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the member can play politics all he wants. That is his choice. We on this side remain focused on building a better Canada, and that includes the Toronto area.

Only recently we introduced economic action plan 2012. Our plan includes incredibly positive developments for Canada, and especially Toronto.

Furthermore, the action plan announces the creation of Canada's first national near-urban park in the Rouge Valley in Toronto, something that has been incredibly welcomed. Listen to what Toronto city councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker had to say about it:

...to see the prime minister and [finance minister]...saying loudly and clearly that they'll protect this land is a dream come true for us.

What did the NDP and the member for Davenport do? Unfortunately, they voted against the Rouge Valley national park and against Toronto. That is unfortunate.

[Housing, May 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand here today to answer the hon. NDP member's question. However, I have to indicate right off the bat that I am somewhat disappointed in the member for Davenport.

As he began his speech, he was very clear about reading a response from the Minister of Finance, but what he neglected to do is read his personal attack on the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, a personal attack that does not meet the standard that the Leader of the Opposition has set for the NDP.

Nevertheless, I intend to answer the question about housing because I and this government take this serious issue to heart. Unfortunately, that member is displaying how he takes this issue and attempts to attack other politicians with it and neglects to admit that when he does it.

I would like to first tell Torontonians that the affordable housing situation is one that has been addressed by this government in a number of ways. As I talk about the ways that housing has been addressed, I would like to reflect on the record of the NDP.

Let us think back to the economic action plan and to the historic investments that our Conservative government made in social housing that totalled roughly $2 billion. Combined with provincial and territorial support, this joint investment in social housing allowed for the construction and renovation of 16,500 housing units for low-income families across Canada. This included over 400 construction projects for low-income seniors and persons with disabilities and over 11,000 existing social housing renovation projects. However, there is more.

Our Conservative government also invested $150 million to renovate and retrofit federally administered social housing, supporting over 1,310 projects that helped some of the most vulnerable in our communities: single-parent families, recent immigrants and aboriginal people living off reserve. We also invested $400 million to build and renovate housing in over 500 first nations communities. Let us not forget the $200 million in the north to address the territories' housing needs, supporting over 200 projects.

Those are real investments, real projects helping real people and doing so right across Canada, including in Toronto. They are not empty rhetoric or theoretical strategies as suggested by the member opposite. These are real efforts, real commitments, real investments.

The Canadian Housing and Renewal Association states that Canada's economic action plan:

—addresses important needs facing people living in run-down social housing and certain groups--seniors, on-reserve aboriginals and people with disabilities--waiting for decent, affordable housing.

Amazingly, the NDP stood and voted against all of these investments. That seems rather shocking, given all of the statements that get made about supporting social housing. However, Torontonians need to know that when it comes to supporting and putting our words into action, it is this Conservative government that actually gets the job done. The NDP members stand, but they only stand to vote against social housing measures, against investments for those who are most vulnerable.

I stand here proudly, supporting the government because of the actions it has taken. I ask the NDP to start to show some compassion and some effort here. Support the measures we are putting forward. It is for the sake of Torontonians after all.

[Criminal Code, May 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin by reading some of the speech that I have prepared for today. Then I want to take a moment to give some practical examples of how this would affect youth not only in my community and in the province of Manitoba but in many communities across this country.

Bill C-394 would create a new offence that addresses the practice of recruiting or encouraging persons to join a criminal organization. The person who is recruiting must be doing so in order to enhance the ability of the criminal organization to commit or facilitate the commission of an indictable offence.

Organized crime, to be successful, requires a constant stream of new recruits. These individuals replace others who have either been incarcerated or have perhaps experienced worse outcomes. New members join the ranks of an existing organization so that the group can maintain or expand its criminal enterprises into new territories or new activities.

It is particularly disturbing when young people are targeted. In many instances the job of recruiters is very easy, because they target our most vulnerable young people. This leads me to some examples.

As members know, I have been a police officer for some 19 years with the Winnipeg Police Service, and I intend to go back to the police service. What brought me here to this House was the failure of the previous Liberal government to address the recruitment of our youth by criminal organizations, our youth being exploited into the criminal element.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act was created by the previous Liberal government. It was supposed to address this exploitation of our youth. It was supposed to address the fact that our kids were being dragged into gangs. It did none of that. In fact, it removed denunciation and deterrence from the act itself. It created an environment in which criminal organizations could easily target our kids into gangs. As a result, I as a police officer, and many police officers across this country, experienced direct recruitment of our youth through gangs providing them with incentives.

I know that the Liberal member for Winnipeg North is in the House right now. I really want him to pay attention, because it was in his area that I experienced this kind of recruitment. It was fairly common in Winnipeg following the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which was put forward by the previous Liberal government.

First, what the criminal element will do is target a vulnerable youth who perhaps does not have parental supervision, perhaps is in a low-income family, perhaps has not been able to eat, or perhaps is not going to school. The recruiters target these kids and convince them by incentives to become gang members. They would give them $50 to go into Safeway to steal a tube of toothpaste. They would give them $50 after that to go into a house that an adult had broken into and ask them to steal a tube of toothpaste for $50. Then they would start to ask them to deliver packages for $50. What is in the package? Drugs. Now the child, without knowing it, is a drug dealer. The gang member then discloses that they have this information and threatens the young person to stay in the gang and work for the gang. It is despicable.

This is what the Youth Criminal Justice Act did to the children in my community, and this bill will help us to stop that kind of behaviour. I applaud it 100%. I know police officers across the country will applaud it.

I encourage the members of both opposition parties to please consider supporting this bill. It is absolutely necessary. It will do such wonders for our youth in our communities. It is high time that we address these victims who are unnecessarily being put at risk.

[Recognition of Service, April 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, today I want to acknowledge some exceptional volunteers from my riding of Saint Boniface.

During the Easter break week, I attended three volunteer appreciation banquets at local community centres. Many incredible teams contribute to the success of these organizations, and community centres could not survive without dedicated volunteers.

Each club had countless people to thank, but awards were given out at each event to highlight those who have gone above and beyond.

I would personally like to congratulate special award recipients Morris Deveson, Neil Denyer and Terry Moon, from the St. Vital Curling Club; Ken Hiebert, Brian Pedden, James Sansom, Richard Balog, Alain Laurencelle and Ken Murdoch, from the Heather Curling Club; and Joyce Webinger, Sam Tascona, Eugene Fillion and Gail Adolphe, from Notre Dame Recreation Centre.

I ask the House to join me in congratulating these recipients and thank them for their hard work.

[Study on Income Inequality, April 25th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I truly appreciate the opportunity to discuss today's motion introduced by the member for Kings—Hants, although I must express my sincere disappointment.

The member for Kings—Hants, not too long ago, would have mocked these types of grand but ultimately empty proclamations on income inequality. Indeed, in recent memory he told the House what truly drives economic growth and improves the fortunes of all Canadians. I will remind him of his own words. He stated, “Government does not create jobs. The economy does. The appropriate role of government in managing the economy is to set the conditions for investment opportunity, growth and job creation. Redistributing incomes is a poor substitute for ensuring that opportunities to participate in the economy are shared throughout all regions of the country and all sectors of society”.

I do not mind admitting that he was actually right then but he has really drifted away from that position now.

He ended up in the Liberal Party, which endorsed the lamentable and outdated policies of the 1970s, policies that created outsized government bureaucracies and endless social programs and imposed ever-increasing, damaging tax rates on businesses and individuals.

We know that during the last election, the Liberal Party, which was relying on the hon. member for Kings—Hants as its finance critic, made raising corporate taxes a key plank in its election platform.

Against all the empirical and theoretical evidence to the contrary, the Liberal Party wanted—and still wants—to deprive entrepreneurs and businesses across the country of billions of dollars annually in order to “invest” in a “fairer” Canada. But, it does not work that way and the hon. member for Kings—Hants knows it.

Increasing corporate taxes, the cornerstone of the Liberal Party's economic policies, deters investors, kills jobs and takes money out of the pockets of Canadian families.

As respected economist, Jack Mintz, from the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, recently explained in the Financial Post:

...corporations do not pay taxes—people do. People work for businesses, owners provide financing and consumers buy goods and services. Corporate taxes are either shifted forward to consumers as higher prices or shifted back onto shareholders through lower dividends and capital gains and/or workers by reduced negotiated salaries and benefits.

If Canada reduces corporate taxes.... Businesses will invest in more machines and structures, often with the most advanced technologies. The demand for workers consequently increases—businesses bid up wages to attract workers or take on more workers.

Mintz also referenced a recent independent Oxford University study that concluded that business tax increases, like those advocated by the Liberal Party, are passed onto workers by over 50% in the short run and more than 100% in the long run due to lower worker productivity. If the Liberal Party were really interested in improving prosperity for all Canadians, why would it publish the very businesses and entrepreneurs who make it happen?

Only a few short years ago, the member for Kings—Hants understood the folly of the left's reflexive demands for higher taxes on businesses. In this very House he said:

Innovative, forward-thinking governments globally have proven that we can build a competitive economy with dramatic reductions to corporate taxes....

We only need to look at the Netherlands, Sweden.... Australia and New Zealand....

The Scandinavian example is particularly important to help guide us because Scandinavian countries value investments in social policy...and, at the same time, they saw the need to reduce their corporate tax levels to some of the lowest corporate taxes in the world.

The old globaphobic, socialist, Luddite nonsense that somehow innovative and forward-thinking economic policy is contrary to good social policy is wrong.

We have tried to work with that Liberal member and hoped that the Liberal Party would listen to evidence presented at committee to disprove its flawed thinking but I am not overly hopeful. When it comes to waiting for some rational thinking from the Liberal Party, to quote Benjamin Franklin, “He that lives upon hope will die fasting”.

Let us be clear. Since coming to power, the Conservative government has brought in strong economic policies that have allowed us to offer more opportunities to more Canadians, and especially to low- and middle-income Canadians.

Furthermore, these economic policies are achieving results. Since 2006, some 1.1 million net new jobs have been created, which represents the strongest growth in the G7. This means that 1.1 million more Canadians are working than under the previous Liberal government.

What has contributed to this job growth? As I just said, the Conservative government has taken major steps to reduce the tax burden on businesses that create jobs. The result? Canada has the lowest overall tax rate on new business investments in the G7 and can finally compete with all major OECD countries regarding corporate tax rates. This has allowed Canadian job creators to offer better salaries and to invest in training, equipment and technology, so they can compete more effectively on the global market, thereby protecting jobs in Canada and creating new ones.

As Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters president, Jayson Myers, recently declared that without the Conservative government's aggressive tax reduction agenda “the recession would have been deeper and unemployment would have certainly been higher. Now, however, we have a business sector...better poised to take advantage of new market opportunities, which will, in turn, continue to generate job growth”.

However, we have done much more than that. Since 2006, and especially through Canada's economic action plan, we have made key investments in infrastructure, science, research and development and much more. We have also kept transfers to provinces and territories for health care and schools at record high levels, unlike the previous Liberal government that gutted them. It was a shameful Liberal legacy that hurt the most vulnerable Canadians.

Furthermore, we have taken targeted action to help low income Canadians. This includes removing more than one million low income Canadians from the tax rolls completely and one-third of the personal income tax relief provided by our Conservative government is going to Canadians with incomes under $42,000 even though they pay about 13% of taxes. Additionally, we introduced the working income tax benefit to reduce barriers for low income Canadians to enter the workforce, something that nearly everyone agrees has been tremendously positive, except for the Liberal Party that voted against its creation.

In the words of McMaster University professor, Bill Scarth, “[WITB] stimulates employment rather than subsidizes people not to work. ...it's a fundamental and beneficial change”.

While our Conservative government has been pursuing smart economic policies to encourage job creation, today's motion from the member for Kings—Hants, and more important, the Liberal Party's embrace of far left economic thinking of higher taxes, is not what Canada needs.

We have committee work to do. It is a charged agenda in the finance committee. We have tried to work with that member in the finance committee. I am not sure why he refuses to work with the rest of us. We tend to get along very well with the NDP members in committee. That lone member just does not seem to get that the economy is a priority of Canadians and we will work toward ensuring that Canadians' priorities are addressed with or without him.

[Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act, April 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise during this discussion with great disappointment in my colleagues in the NDP. Many of the things that they have said today are absolutely not factual, not based on any kind of a study that has been done.

Having almost 19 years of police experience tells me that victims across this country are screaming for governments across the country to do the right thing and to support them in their efforts to find justice. This is another example of where the NDP has it wrong. Those members continually support judicial discretion for offenders.

I stand today to ask a simple question of my hon. colleague from the NDP. Will he stand and simply tell Canadian victims that he will support victims over offenders and join the government in its efforts to do so through its legislation? Will he support victims here and now? Will he state that to Canadians so that they know clearly that the government and opposition members are trying very hard to do what is right for all victims across the country?

[Questions on the Order Paper, April 23rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, Canada provided the International Finance Corporation, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, with $285.7 million to be used as concessional financing for a broad portfolio of clean energy projects in developing countries as part of Canada’s commitment to support mitigation efforts.

In addition, $5.8 million in grant financing was provided to support IFC’s advisory services to help remove barriers to private clean energy investment and build technical expertise. For example, this grant financing will support advice to financial institutions to strengthen their capacity to identify, assess and structure loans to energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

Canada’s investments will support greenhouse gas abatement opportunities and will be deployed to catalyze private sector financing for clean energy projects. Canada will work with the IFC to track the amount of private investment directly mobilized by Canada’s public finance contribution to the IFC, as well as the emissions reductions achieved. This type of innovative approach will be key to achieving long-term financing and mitigation goals.

Canada’s contributions are being managed by IFC’s financial mechanisms for sustainability group, which deploys donor funds on concessional terms alongside IFC investments, as well as providing grant financing for technical assistance and capacity-building.

To be eligible to receive concessional or grant financing from Canada’s contributions to IFC, a project must satisfy IFC’s standard criteria and due diligence. For more information, the investment and advisory services page on www.ifc.org should be consulted.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, April 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member from the NDP for bringing this bill forward. I intend to support anything that will allow Canadians to feel more at home here in Canada and more protected.

However, having said that, and I am a person who has been blessed with friends and family members who support this as well, I am concerned about the lack of a definition. I was very vocal in the last Parliament about wanting a definition, because I truly believe if a definition were provided, more people would likely support the bill.

I would encourage my friend and my colleague to please consider amending the bill so that we can have a wide variety of support for transsexual and transgendered people. I think it is warranted and I think it is prudent.