Tony Martin

[Old Age Security Act, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words about this very important initiative targeted at our seniors across the country. I think, right off the bat, it really is a no-brainer. It is something we should have done a long time ago.

I know that it has been brought forward on a number of occasions. Members of this House from different parties have brought forward similar bills before the House only to be defeated by the government of the day. That was at one point the Liberals and now we have the Conservatives. Although it is good today to hear from the Liberal member who just spoke, from the wonderful Welland area of Ontario, saying that he thinks this bill should be supported. I definitely think so as well.

One of the things that we as members of Parliament run into, when we go back to our constituencies on weekends from this place, are seniors who come to our office to share with us how difficult it is for them to gather the few pennies that they have and make ends meet. It is a tough problem to have to deal with because there really is not much out there by way of support above and beyond the very modest amounts of money that seniors in this country receive through the CPP, OAS and GIS.

I suspect that as we move forward in the economy that we are now looking at, and we are talking about it in some great detail here today, that there will be fewer private pensions available for people because that is just not what corporations are interested in doing these days, never mind indexing those pensions.

When looking at the CPP, GIS and OAS, we should do everything that we can to make absolutely certain that anyone who is entitled to a pension under the Canada pension plan actually gets it. I remember the first time I was presented with this by a senior. Richard Shillington has championed this cause for a number of years. He has done the math and understands this better than anyone I know. He has spent some significant time trying to educate me about it. He tells me that there are over an estimated 130,000 individuals in Canada who still are not applying for and getting their GIS.

That does not make any sense. We pay into Canada pension during our working life and would expect that it would be automatic once we reach 60 or 65. We would assume that we would get that and everything we are entitled to, that we would not have to fill out an extra form to qualify further for the supplement that is entitled to the really low income seniors.

I believe that in Quebec it is automatic and that once people apply for Canada pension, if they qualify for the extra GIS, it comes and they do not have to continue to reapply. I want to commend the government for actually making that small change just recently where people do not have to reapply every year for this benefit.

However, the fact that we have to apply in the first place means that there are literally hundreds of thousands of seniors out there who do not get it because they do not know it is available to them or they do not know enough to apply. We as parliamentarians and people who have been given responsibility for leadership in this place should be doing everything possible to make sure in the first place that people who qualify are entitled and get what is coming to them.

I want to move on to another piece of the bill which is the retroactivity of the GIS when people do not get it in the first place. I was astounded when I was first told that if seniors discovered later in life that they were entitled to this benefit that in some instances, the CPP itself but the GIS particularly, they could apply to receive retroacticity, but they could only get retroactive money for 11 months even though they may have qualified for 5, 10 or even 15 years in some instances. That is all they would get.

So here we have folks who, if they had applied, would have been getting this money, money that they were entitled to, but because they had not applied and because of the rules that we have in place governing this fund, they do not get a lump sum to reflect that which they in my view are owed.

I think that is criminal and I stack that up against somebody who is found to owe the government money over a number of years and all of a sudden it is discovered. There is no limit to the retroactivity there. Every penny plus interest is collected in that instance, and if one does not pay it, one could end up doing time. Why the government thinks it can get away with continuing to perpetrate this behaviour on seniors, on the people who actually built this country, at a time when they need it most, when they are most at risk of falling into poverty, is beyond me.

Therefore, I certainly would be in support, aggressively in support, of making sure that any money that is owed is given retroactively to the time when the person first qualified for it and was entitled, and that there be interest on top of that so that they are made whole, so that they are not left in a position where they in fact are now less well off as they would be if they had been getting this in the first place over those years. This only makes sense.

Having a provision to also provide some small support to a widow or a widower once their partner or spouse passes on is also a very good idea. Anybody who has been through a funeral with a family member, a parent or a spouse, will know that that whole experience is very expensive and getting more expensive with every day that goes by. A little bit of money, based on what was owed a spouse through the CPP and the GIS so that the spouse might find himself or herself in a position of not falling into poverty even further because of losing a spouse, makes a lot of sense to me as well.

I am trying to understand why the government would not see this as a no-brainer, why the government would not be automatically inclined to say, “Okay, let us do this because it makes sense. It is the right thing to do”. In my view it is the legal thing to do because people are owed this money. Why would the government not do that? Why would the previous Liberal government choose not to do it and why would now the Conservative government not see this as within the program? I am thinking that it is probably because it thinks it is going to be too expensive.

We again had that conversation here today about the priorities and choices that we make as government. We have seen, over the last two years, the government make a decision to spend literally $200 billion in a tax relief package that is going to go primarily to big corporations, financial institutions and the oil industry.

What would be wrong with taking a small percentage of that and making sure that our seniors are looked after out in our communities across the country? Those seniors would take every penny of that and spend it in the communities in which they live, on food, on clothing, on paying their rent. It would stimulate the economy of those communities.

It is not like we are putting money into a big black hole someplace. This would be an investment, an investment in our seniors, an investment in the communities in which they live, an investment in the lives of all of us as we watch these people who built this country trying to do better than they are at the moment.

Certainly, we commit our caucus to being behind this bill and voting for it, and we encourage the Conservatives to support the Liberals and the Bloc in doing the same.

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member on her speech this afternoon and her understanding of this issue, particularly as it affects those whom she represents and speaks for here in the House.

On my travels over the last two years I was in Halifax and met with people and listened to them about income security. One of the faces of poverty that I heard about very clearly and directly was women and poverty, the number of women affected by poverty and living in poverty. Perhaps the member would like to elaborate on that in terms of the agenda of the government and the massive tax cuts that we are seeing mostly accruing to big corporations.

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am always disappointed when I hear the arrogance of the Liberals and some other members in the House when they suggest that we do not know anything about the economy and that we should not actually have any thoughts about the public life of this country because we will never be government one day. It is disappointing because it reduces the level of respect and dialogue in this place to one of not being very productive and helpful.

The member talked about the Liberal anti-poverty strategy that was rolled out. The criticism of that, not just by us but by others out there, the Toronto Star included, was that there was no substance. It was a lot like other Liberal programs that have been rolled out. We saw the programs that were trotted out just before the election of 2006 that, when the veil was lifted, there was nothing there. There was no reference to Treasury Board for the money to support Kelowna, Kyoto or any of the programs that the Liberals, at that time, said that they were running on.

This morning I heard the member say, and I guess he was being honest here, that he supports the tax cutting agenda of the Conservatives. The Liberals did that when they were in government for 13 years, and it is the reason that we do not have the money any more to transfer to the provinces to take care of things like health care, education and infrastructure. The province of Ontario is in big trouble right now with its health care system because Mike Harris, who also had a tax cutting agenda from 1995 to 2003, depleted that treasury.

So, you depleted the treasury from 1993 to 2005. The Conservatives are now doing the same thing. If you get back into office, I guess from what I--

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate and disappointing that the parliamentary secretary is not willing to listen to the evidence that has been presented to him. The Statistics Canada report, which is supported by economists who have looked at it, very clearly indicates that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is stuck. As I crossed the country and looked at the anecdotal evidence, Calgary is probably the most obvious example of this separation now between the rich and the poor. Between 3,500 or 4,000 homeless people live at the base of large buildings built in the honour of big oil.

I suggest the member spends too much time around the board tables and not enough around the kitchen table of families in places like Hamilton, Welland, Windsor and communities in northern Ontario or B.C., which has been ravaged in the downturn of the forestry sector. Would he take some time, go out there with some of his colleagues and sit at a kitchen table and hear what those families and those folks have to say?

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, as the member will know, I have been trying to get this poverty study on the road for some four years now. It is finally there and yet we do not see anything in the government's agenda that reflects it will be interested in the findings and, hopefully, the comprehensive anti-poverty strategy that we recommend after the study is done.

Perhaps all of us who are on that committee might want to commit, once the government is brought down and the people of Canada have a chance to make a judgment on its performance, to getting back to the table after the election is over, if we get re-elected, and continue this very important and helpful work.

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member's analysis of the EI system as it has unfolded and the damage that has been done where hardly 40% of people qualify any more and, in Toronto, that is as low as 25%. The people who pay into that fund expect it to be there when they need it but it is no longer there.

This damage has been done over 15 years of both Liberal and Conservative rule. It is an agenda that is unbalanced and unstable, and it is failing working families. Working families are scraping by and the government does not care.

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the member that I read those very same articles. If we read the whole article correctly, it is obvious that people are working harder at more jobs. More people are trying to bring income into the family and are certainly adding to the productivity of this country but, at the end of the day, they do not have much to show for it. They are barely holding their own.

This unbalanced economic agenda set by the Prime Minister and the Conservatives means that the damage being done to working families is irreversible.

We have a moral imperative to act now. Therefore, I call on the Liberals and the Bloc to support us in this motion of non-confidence, bring the government down and let us get this agenda changed.

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

Each day the Prime Minister and his Conservatives are allowed to set Canada's economic agenda, the country takes another step in the wrong direction. The unbalanced economic agenda set by Harper and the Conservatives--

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2008]

moved:

That the House recognize the harmful effects on working and middle-income Canadians of the growing income gap fostered by this government's unbalanced economic agenda, including its failure to reform employment insurance to ensure that people who lose their jobs during economic downturns are protected and trained, and therefore the House has lost confidence in this government.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Burnaby—Douglas.

Over the last couple of years, I have travelled across this country meeting with and listening to people struggling with income security and poverty. I of course saw many things that I expected to see, including the growing difficulty that many of our most at risk and marginalized citizens are having in keeping their lives together, putting food on the table, finding decent homes and participating in the communities to which they belong.

Their circumstances seem to be getting worse instead of better. They know that a lot of this is due to the damage that has been done to the social safety net that we have woven underneath all of us over a number of years but which over the last 15 years has been literally torn apart and destroyed and is tattered.

However, I have also seen some things that have surprised me, particularly in a time when the economy is good. I went to Calgary, Alberta, where oil is king and where the new economy is obvious from the rising skyscrapers that pop up almost daily in that city of great wealth, only to discover at the foot of those buildings some 3,500 to 4,000 people living on the streets and homeless.

Many of them, as we would expect, are suffering because of the difficulty they are having in accessing government programs. There is mental illness and there is suffering from addictions of various sorts. Even more startling is the reality of young people in particular, who went to Calgary attracted by the new economy, by the new work that was supposedly out there. In fact, they found work, but at jobs that do not pay enough for them to be able to afford the very expensive housing that is available, if they can find it at all.

In my travels, I also went to Toronto, where a report had just been released that studied the effect of income security on working age adults, only to find that in that city, the financial heartland of this country, there were hundreds of thousands of young people, including young men, immigrants, single mothers and single parents, working full time all year long but still living in poverty. Some of them are working at two and three jobs but are still not able to make enough money to pay the rent, feed their children and keep themselves at the standard of life they expected to have if they did that, if they worked hard like that, put in the time and made the effort.

I moved from there to meetings with people in places such as Hamilton and Welland. I also spoke to my colleagues from Windsor, who told me of the terrible impact of the downturn in the manufacturing sector, of the literally thousands of people who, having worked hard all their lives, having brought their skill and knowledge to the table each day as they showed up at the plant, now find themselves without work.

The alternative is to go on EI, which many of them do not qualify for because of the changes to that program. Or if they do qualify, it is for too short a time to bridge the gap between the good jobs they had, which provided a decent income with benefits for them and their families, and looking around but finding that what is left are jobs in the service sector that pay barely minimum wage or a little bit more. However, these jobs do not pay benefits, so there is no way to make sure their families have the dental care, eye care and the different benefits that were available to them when they had those good jobs in the manufacturing sector. Some 55,000 jobs have disappeared in that sector since January.

Then I travelled for some time in my own backyard, in northern Ontario, where community after community is dependent for its livelihood on the forestry sector, on the work in the forests and in the plants and mills. Those plants and mills, which existed for years, were very profitable and provided to the Canadian economy a great stimulus, are now shutting down. We have community after community barely hanging on. People are losing their jobs. Again, some qualify for EI but many do not. For those who do, it is not for very long. They are having to move on.

Those people have spent a large part of their lives working in those industries and it is all they know. They brought their best game to the table every day. They invested in homes, built cottages on the lakes nearby and some built up small businesses. Now they are having to turn their backs on those investments and head out to lands unknown. Some may go to Calgary where they may get a job but they will not have the support to access the kind of housing they will need to support their families.

The same thing goes for a lot of communities in British Columbia where forestry is under attack as well. All this is happening at a time when we are experiencing a good economy, so they say, in this country. Last week Statistics Canada issued a census report that told us yet again, because we have heard it before but this time very definitively, that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class are stuck or disappearing.

We have a government here in Ottawa obsessed with the notion that a good economy will lift all the boats. Well, the evidence is in. Many of these boats are taking on water. Many of them, in fact, have gone under and other people are paddling without any boats at all.

Even the government, in its human resources development committee performance report of 2007, has recognized that the gap between the lowest and highest income families and between ones with the lowest and highest net worth, is wider. What the census report of last week told us was that most Canadians are stuck in neutral income while the richest 5% in Canada are dramatically accumulating more wealth.

Canada's rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer and the middle class stagnates. Between 1980 and 2005, median earnings among Canada's top earners rose more than 16% while those in the bottom fifth saw their wages dip by 20%. Those in the middle are making about a buck a week more than in 1980. Almost 900,000 Canadian children are still poor and more than one-third of these deprived children are in the care of single mothers.

We have a government here in Ottawa supported by the Liberals because they will not stand up to the agenda that the Conservatives keep rolling out in front of us, with substantial tax breaks to people who really do not need it. They are convinced that all we need to do is to cut more taxes and that will fix everything that ails us.

The Conservatives gave a $2 billion tax relief package to the well-off, to corporate financial institutions and oil companies, not understanding that this simply depletes the treasury and reduces government's capacity to deal with some of these alarming realities affecting communities across the country.

This is unsustainable and causing irreversible damage to Canadian families. I detect an uneasiness as I cross the country. People are beginning to realize that they are no more than a paycheque or two away from poverty.

People used to look ahead, to look for the next wrong and understood that if they worked hard, got the training and made investments that they would get ahead. Today, however, more and more people are looking over their shoulder to see what might be there if they should lose their jobs. What they are discovering is that there is not much.

Each day Stephen Harper's Conservatives are allowed--

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, May 1st, 2008]

What is the total amount of government funding in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 to Batchewana First Nation and to Garden River First Nation in the constituency of Sault Ste. Marie, with each initiative and amount?