Tony Martin

[The Economy, December 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, today the much respected Wellesley and Caledon Institutes released reports that say social spending is an effective and affordable way to stimulate the economy. The poor and those of modest income spend their money in their communities. Programs that support communities are good for local economies. This creates economic stimulus.

The experts get it. The Conservatives do not. How can Canadians have confidence in the government?

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, November 26th, 2008]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-236, An Act to change the name of the electoral district of Sault Ste. Marie.

Mr. Speaker, this comes from my community. There is an interest in having the district Algoma recognized in the name of my riding. Historically we have had Algoma attached to many of our major industries, Algoma Steel, Algoma Central Railroad and other important institutions in Sault Ste. Marie, the Algoma District School Board, for example.

A poll of my constituents has been done across the riding, giving them three options. They think this one would be appropriate to the cause.

My riding of Sault Ste. Marie is situated between three of the major Great Lakes. It is a wonderful place in the country, and I am very pleased to be its representative. Today ask the House for its support in this effort to change its name so it would more adequately reflect the nature and breadth of that wonderful riding.

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

[Canada Labour Code, November 26th, 2008]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-235, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (occupational disease registry).

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present this bill for the consideration of the House and I thank the member for Hamilton Mountain for seconding this important legislation. She would understand, as the labour critic for our caucus, that the steelworkers in Sault Ste. Marie at Local 2251 are in the midst of a very aggressive and active campaign to bring forward people who have been hurt or became sick and can trace that back to the workplace.

The registry would make it a lot easier for them to gather that information. It would make it a lot easier for workers across the country to gather the information they would need to go before insurance boards and other kinds of compensation boards to get recompense for their sickness or their injury. It would also give workers information that they sometimes would want in terms of industries and their record for occupational health and diseases concern. This is really important in the world we now live in where labour is so mobile.

I am happy today to table this and I hope that at some point the House will deem to pass it into law.

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

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 25th, 2008]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member on his re-election to this place. I did not speak about culture and I will not provide him with an answer this morning because it would take too long.

We want to talk about a lot of things over the next while in this place, and culture will be one of them. I am certain our member for Timmins—James Bay, who is our critic, will speak very eloquently and adequately to that when he gets an opportunity in the House.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 25th, 2008]

Madam Speaker, let me first congratulate you, as the member for Victoria, for the wonderful appointment you have been given. You look very comfortable in that chair, and I think you will do a great job.

I thank the member for his kind remarks and offer him my congratulations. We do not have to reinvent the wheel where poverty is concerned. We can look at jurisdictions like Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia for all kinds of examples and ways that we could be effective in dealing with poverty. Even in our own country, some provinces have begun anti-poverty strategies. They are waiting for us as a national government to become a partner and participate.

I look forward to working with the member on committee to make some of these things happen.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate you on your re-appointment to the Speaker's chair. I thought you did a good job in the last Parliament and I am looking forward to working under your guidance in this Parliament.

I want to thank my colleague, the member for Edmonton—Strathcona, for sharing her time with me this morning. It is a real honour to do that. I am really excited by the fact that she is with us in this place and will bring her wealth of knowledge and experience to the debates that we will have and contribute in a very positive and exciting way to the development of this new economy that I know we have the potential to put in place in Canada.

She reflects, in very wonderful ways, the great wealth of talent that we as New Democrats have welcomed to our caucus after the last election. There are 11 new members from across the country with experience and knowledge that will only benefit this place and the country in some important ways.

I would like to mention a couple of items. I googled the member for Edmonton—Strathcona before I came to deliver my speech this morning and she is a powerhouse. She has an unbelievable background of experience in her own province of Alberta, nationally and internationally. I will share with the House a couple of things she has done.

She held a senior portfolio as the chief of enforcement for Environment Canada. She founded Alberta's Environmental Law Centre. She served at the international level as head of law and enforcement for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. She spent four years working with Canadian, American and Mexican officials. She served as a senior legal advisor to Indonesia, Bangladesh and Jamaica in instituting programs for effective environmental enforcement for CIDA, Asian Development Bank and World Bank funded projects. This is just the tip of the iceberg to indicate the contribution that the member will make in this place as she fulfills her role as environment critic for the NDP caucus and on behalf of our leader.

I also want to say how pleased I am to be back in this place after the election. It was a tough and hard-fought election. We all worked hard. I dare say that the candidates who ran against me ran good campaigns. It was a clean election and one that we all came out of feeling better about the politics and democracy in this country.

I am just happy that I was the one who came first past the post and that I am able to be here today to speak on behalf of my wonderful city of Sault Ste. Marie in the district of Algoma. It is a riding that is diverse in the ways people make a living and how they take care of each other as a community. It is very important. It is an industrial city with steel, paper and wood. To the east of the city, we have communities that are served by agriculture and farming, and to the north of the city we have the wonderful forestry which is in so much difficulty these days. It is an industry that we have taken advantage of, enjoy and love so much. Lake Superior is in our back yard.

I want to take a few minutes this morning to share a few thoughts that were indicated in the Speech from the Throne, however so briefly, when the government indicated that it understood that it was elected as part of a minority Parliament. I present my thoughts in the spirit of co-operation, which is what I have heard from the government members across the way as they have given their speeches in response to the Speech from the Throne.

In fact, I give my thoughts in the spirit of co-operation because the minister is here today. I will be the critic of that minister's department over the next however number of years that we get to be in this Parliament. When I approached her a couple of days ago to tell her that I would be her critic, she offered to work co-operatively with me and I thank her for that. I say very publicly this morning in this place that I offered to do the same in the interests of the people we all serve. My thoughts will reflect that in just a couple of minutes.

I think I would be remiss if I did not put on the record how disappointed I was with the vision presented in the Speech from the Throne and how disappointed collectively we as New Democrats were with that vision.

No bold picture has been painted as to where we might go as a country over the next couple of years, as we deal with this very difficult economic situation and global meltdown coming at us. We were disappointed with the stay-the-course, steady-as-she-goes, more tax breaks, less government approach to which the government seems so attached. We hope we can help it see some different approaches over the next while as we work together.

Personally, because my critic area is poverty and social policy, I was very disappointed that there was absolutely no mention of poverty in the Speech from the Throne. As everybody knows, in a difficult economy and even in good times, when government makes a shift in a direction that reduces services, reduces government and gives tax breaks to people who are more wealthy, the people who are hit hardest and first are the poor in our communities.

I say that in a spirit of hopefulness. Over the last few days, the Prime Minister has recognized that we might be heading into a recession. It is good that he is willing to say that very publicly, because he has not said that up until now. We hope, in recognizing we have a recession coming at us and the impact that will have particularly on those who are most risk and vulnerable, he will work with his treasurer, his Minister of Finance, and his Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to bring forward programs that will help those who need them most.

I present a few strategies that could be adopted if the government is serious about working co-operatively with us on this side of the House. I invite the government to work with all of us in opposition to fix a few things that could immediately affect the lives of a number of our fellow citizens, neighbours, family members who are losing their jobs as we speak this morning because of the downturn in the economy.

The government, the Prime Minister and his ministers need to poverty-proof our communities. We need to stabilize our communities. We need to move away from the notion that somehow more tax cuts is the answer to everything.

It is very easy because we have all studied it. We actually have studied it to death. The member from Nova Scotia who sits with me on the Standing Committee on Human Resources and Social Development will agree to this as well. We could do it today. We could move expeditiously to reform the employment insurance system, which, as we speak, only now serves to help less than 25% of those who lose their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of people who pay into employment insurance through their employment and work hard expect that fund will be there for them. However, when they apply for it, they find out that they do not qualify or if they do qualify, there is really very little there compared to what was there 10 or 15 years ago and what is there lasts such a short period of time. We need to move quickly. We are all committed to that on this side of the House. We invite the government to work with us to reform the EI system.

I believe the money is there. If we are to be going into deficit spending anyway, we need to be spending money in those areas. Government has a no more fundamental responsibility than to look after those citizens in its jurisdiction who are most at risk and vulnerable. We could move, if we wanted, to use the money we have at our disposal to put in place a more generous child tax credit so families with children do not have to make those very difficult decisions of whether to pay the rent, feed the kids or put fuel in their tanks to heat their homes.

I would ask the government to consider, again in keeping with the need to invest in infrastructure, a national housing program. When we talk to people who deal with poverty and look at poverty, the first thing they say is that we have a lack of affordable housing right now for people.

I hope I have put on the table a few simple things on which the government could work with us. We on this side of the House are committed to making these happen. If it does, it will reflect the co-operation, good spirit and seriousness needed to deal with this very difficult time coming at us. We need to do something significant about it.

[Address in Reply, November 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to offer congratulations to the member for Portage—Lisgar on her election to this House and on her first speech in this House.

I speak in the interest of the cooperative notion that was presented in the Speech from the Throne this afternoon and say to the government that anybody who understands the impact of a downturn in the economy and the seriousness of the one we are in now and what is coming at us will be wondering why the government does not realize that the biggest impact will be felt by those who are most at risk and marginalized, and they are the poor in our communities across the country

I ask the member, after all of the input the government received particularly from this side of the House and others in this place, why did her government not take this opportunity to reform the employment insurance system? That system is in desperate need of reform so that more people who qualify can count on it, the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs in the manufacturing and the forestry sectors and in other sectors across this country. Why did the government not take this opportunity to reform that very important insurance system that was put together to protect people in difficult times, especially at this time with the very serious difficult economic downturn that is coming at us?

[Canada Labour Code, June 10th, 2008]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-561, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (occupational disease registry).

Mr. Speaker, this enactment would require employers to report information about all accidents, occupational disease, and other hazardous occurrences known to the employer to the Minister of Labour. It would also require the minister to maintain a registry containing all of that information and to make the information available to employees and potential employees for examination.

This would be very important going forward for workers who have contracted a disease that started perhaps a few years ago. It would be important for workers looking at a workplace to know what might be there that they should be concerned about.

I am very happy that I am able to table this on behalf of, particularly, the steelworkers of Local 2251 in Sault Ste. Marie, along with my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre.

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

[National Hunger Awareness Day, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, today is the third annual National Hunger Awareness Day. Each month more than 720,000 Canadians visit one of almost 700 community food banks for assistance. About two of every five users are children. For every person coming, the Canadian Association of Food Banks estimates there are another four or five struggling to get the food they need. This is wrong in a land of plenty.

We salute the agencies and volunteers in those food banks, but we know hunger exists because of a deep and persistent poverty. We lack a national plan to end poverty. The government thinks a job is the only answer, yet Canada has three-quarters of a million working poor who need help because they work at jobs that pay too little with few benefits and are part time or temporary. Poor paying jobs and hunger are an injustice, an indictment of wrong priorities by a government.

We in this party say food, clothing, shelter and a decent job are necessities of life. We call on the government to adopt a national poverty plan. We can eliminate hunger.

[Health, May 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow I will be in Sault Ste. Marie to hear Sault resident Jonathan DellaVedova speak as the newly elected president of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students. Jonathan will speak on protecting public medicare and why it is a Canadian imperative to defend it.

Jonathan studies at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. He is the first student board representative with Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

His speech is timely. A local crisis continues because of too few beds and doctors. Emergency room physicians are threatening to withdraw services citing unsafe patient conditions.

The answers are clear. The NDP is calling for long term, home care and nurse practitioner programs within public health care. As Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the students say:

A public system is better for everyone because it means health care dollars are spent on patient care rather than private clinic profits, and services are provided in accountable facilities rather than ones that are not nationally regulated.

From Tommy Douglas decades ago to Jonathan DellaVedova in 2008, we vow to protect public medicare.