Wayne Marston

[Criminal Code, June 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in listening to the member for Mississauga South, he reminded me of the recent election campaign when I went door to door, as did everyone in the House. I listened to many Canadians who did want change to mandatory sentencing with regard to firearms related crimes.

Considering the member's view on long arms and his discussion of fetal alcohol syndrome, I am a little surprised and perhaps he could explain to the House why he would not be prepared to send Bill C-10 to committee to review it and consider amendments.

[Commonwealth Youth, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise on behalf of the New Democratic Party to speak on the sixth Commonwealth Youth Ministers' meeting that was recently held in the Bahamas.

The ministers undertook several days of meetings that centred around the themes of youth empowerment for the eradication of poverty, crime and HIV-AIDS.

Youth, the 15 to 29 year old age group, make up over half the population of the Commonwealth. At the meeting, Canada's minister reaffirmed our commitment to youth development through a rights-based approach. In their communiqué to next year's Commonwealth heads of government meeting, the ministers at the Bahamas meeting committed to promoting the role of young people in national development, democracy and good governance.

These commitments toward youth provide Canada with a unique opportunity that I sincerely hope the government will take seriously in the years to come. This strategy of empowerment is intended to improve the mainstreaming of youth development and empowerment in all policy-making, planning and program delivery in the political, legal, economic and social spheres.

Today the minister also spoke, in his role as minister for sport, to the energy he has devoted to the promotion of the Halifax bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

There are many benefits to sport development among youth and other groups with events like these, and there are significant social and cultural benefits. As a country that will see the 2010 Olympics on one coast and the bidding for the 2014 Commonwealth Games on the other, the Halifax bid does present an opportunity for developing new centres of excellence in sports. However, there is a cost to hosting these games.

I will take this opportunity to remind the minister and his colleagues in the government that if successful, both games should be viewed equally important. Recently, the minister created a working group of parliamentarians from the province of Nova Scotia and other interested members to prepare a strategy around the Halifax bid. I commend the minister for taking this important step toward increasing participation and transparency in the Halifax bid strategy.

I look forward to the opportunities to create a strategy that fits into Canada's commitments to youth and amateur sport as well as the needs of the community of Halifax.

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, hearing the government whip speak about the high levels of aboriginal incarcerations across Canada, it has a ring of insincerity that we have not heard in the House from the government side through much of this debate. I am pleased to hear that.

In fact, I am very pleased that it shows a glimmer of understanding that also has been missing from the government side both throughout the election campaign and more recently in the House. That understanding of the aboriginal situation is a very important piece, but I must say that it rings a bit hollow when we see that it does not carry to the rest of Canadians who run afoul of our justice system.

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, last week I met with the chief of police in Hamilton and he was very pleased to tell me that major crime in Hamilton was down. In fact, the chief's major concern was about the tinkering with the gun registry and the damage that could potentially have on the community.

Does the member not agree that there must be a better way of addressing the situation than to just go out and set mandatory sentences that will put us in a position where we are second guessing our judges at every turn? The court system in Canada is well respected around the world. Our magistrates and justices are well respected. It seems very strange that the government does not respect our justice system.

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for sharing with us the enlightened approach being used in Quebec. We, in the rest of Canada, seem to forget that sometimes that is a very progressive way of viewing young people, in particular, who get involved with crime.

I am concerned with the government's cookie-cutter approach which it has proposed with this change. One thing people do not seem to take into account is if a young person winds up before the courts. The working poor or the working families who cannot afford the $1,200, $1,500 or even $2,000 a day for a lawyer may face the same kind of situation that the young blacks do in the U.S. Two-thirds of the people who are in prisons there are of colour. Of that number, it is figured that almost three-quarters of them may be totally innocent of the crime of which they have been charged and convicted.

I am very fearful, and I would suspect the member opposite would share this concern, that we are heading down an Americanization road with our system where people want quick solutions to very serious situations.

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, back in the 1960s, a neighbour of mine, a young man who came from an abusive home, stole seven cars in one evening. He hot-wired them and drove them three miles out of town into a snowbank. He then returned to the police station and made it clear that he had done this. He went before a magistrate who allowed him to repay the damages. The young man went on to complete his high school education. He is now a very productive and valued member of our community.

Do you see measures contained in the bill that would prevent a magistrate or a justice from applying that kind of good common sense?

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that through Bill C-9 and Bill C-10 we are going to have increased jail times and our prison population will increase. Considering the fact that in the province of Ontario the experiment in privatized jails has just been ended, can you reassure the House that the federal government will not go the way of privatizing our prison system?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, when we look at the population in the manufacturing sector the one thing that will strike us very quickly is that the shade of the hair is very much like my own. It is an aging population. Many of the people who have seen their manufacturing jobs collapse on them, and there have been many in the area of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, are lost. The Levi plant left recently and hundreds of people lost their jobs. Other plants have also moved on.

There has to be training and retraining with a particular emphasis on the older worker who sometimes has a harder time readjusting to the new technologies and the new work of today.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that the Conservatives have, without a doubt, done what they said they would do, but they have done it for 30% of the people who voted for them, excluding the 60% who did not. When one does not earn enough income to qualify for the tax breaks that are being offered, they are no good. The average students have been abandoned by the government because they will not even qualify for those tax breaks.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the apology.

Drug costs have doubled since 1985 and, after hospitals, are the second biggest category of health related costs in our country.

Almost four years ago, Roy Romanow in his commission recommended catastrophic drug coverage as a start. Not only does Bill C-13 not make preparations for pharmacare generally, the government cannot even act on a four year old recommendation for catastrophic drug coverage.

In the budget there is no funding for home care, something many seniors and their families rely upon. There is no funding for the training of health professionals so that people at the Henderson, St. Josephs' and General Hospitals in Hamilton do not have to wait as long to see a doctor.

The Conservative government could also have taken the opportunity to introduce measures to adjust seniors' pensions to help those seniors who have expressed concern to me about having to decide what to buy: hydro or food. However the government did not take that opportunity to invest.

For the many seniors living on fixed incomes and in poverty in my community and across Canada, a 1% GST tax cut or an income tax cut that only applies to a higher tax bracket means very little. It likely will not even cover the increase in home heating oil or hydro costs this year.

Not only will oil and gas companies get big tax cuts, they also continue to get the estimated $1.4 billion in subsidies; $1.4 billion for gas companies, but only $500 million in the budget to fight pollution. That is the same amount that the NDP put in its budget last year for low income housing energy retrofits, money for people with lower incomes to do renovations that would help green their homes, help them fight pollution and do their part.

The budget cancels that NDP investment. The budget not only does not fight pollution, it is taking away the help the NDP wanted to provide to low income families for retrofit.

By opting out of Kyoto, the Conservatives think they can do better than the years of consensus building in the international community. They will make their own plan but they do not have a plan yet. It is not in the bill we are debating today. The government tells us that it is under development. Canadians have heard that story before. The Liberals promised a Kyoto plan for years. When they finally did introduce something, it did not even try to meet targets set at Kyoto in all areas.

The budget means pollution will go up. Just like the Liberals, the government has no plan to invest in what we need to do to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce pollution.

We often hear governments, businesses and people talking about economic innovation, greening the economy or products. We do not have to be political scientists to know that the world is changing around us, and with those changes, particularly in the economic arena, come many new challenges. However it is worth stating that with those new challenges, challenges like those faced by steelworkers in my riding and people working in manufacturing industries across the country, come new opportunities.

Manufacturing as a sector was mentioned at least 10 times in the preamble of the budget when it was presented in the House, mentioned because of the huge losses expected in the sector. Yet, in the Conservative budget plan, the only mention of the manufacturing sector is that it will be getting some of the proposed corporate income tax cuts that we see presented here in the bill.

If we can get in on the ground floor, we can become world leaders in these technologies, manufacturing processes and knowledge.

The Conservative budget does nothing for the manufacturing sector, even though the dollar is now hovering around the 90¢ mark.

However, these changes do not just happen overnight. We need more training and retraining opportunities. Training is the clearest example of how we can invest in working families to improve real life opportunities and to boost our dropping productivity rate. While there are some positive changes for training here in the bill, they are very limited and specific to apprentices and a small tax credit for trades people who buy their own tools. There is nothing for training and immigrant settlement programs even while more and more people are facing underemployment and lower paying jobs.

Instead of a vision for an integrated training role in the 21st century and a strategy to get us there, the Conservative budget gave us a few ad hoc fragments but no strategy.

The budget also did not broaden the EI program. Even though all workers pay into EI, fewer than 40% of them qualify for support. The greatest percentage of those who do not qualify are women who are most often in the part time, lowest paying and least secure jobs.

In the 1990s, 75% of workers qualified for EI benefits. Now, only 38% of workers qualify for EI. This bill, this Conservative budget, does not change eligibility requirements or benefits, which is another lost opportunity.

I was pleased, however, to second a bill that was proposed to make some changes in the EI program. It was put forward by my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst a few weeks ago in the House and I commend him on his work in this area.

Bill C-265 would modify the employment insurance program so that benefits can be calculated on the basis of the best 12 out of 52 weeks. The private member's bill will also see the eligibility requirement at 360 hours for all benefit recipients in Canada. With a $49 billion surplus in this program, it is long past the time for these changes.

This bill is equally disappointing when we look at post-secondary education. Instead of keeping the tuition lowering oriented funding of the NDP budget at $1 billion, this bill proposes to convert that funding into one time education infrastructure funding. When four out of ten university students are unable to graduate on time because they dropped courses to work, we all lose. When 70% of high school graduates want to go to college but cannot, and list finances as the main reason for not getting a further education, we are all losing. We are losing out on the increased contributions that these graduates could be providing communities like my home town of Hamilton and others across the country.

This Conservative budget does nothing to address the most pressing financial issue related to students: the need to reduce debt loads. This budget does provide a few positive changes, such as removing the income tax on bursaries and scholarships and textbook credits. If the government will not invest when it has billions in surplus and corporations are not reinvesting the breaks they get through tax cuts and subsidies, who will invest?

That is why I stand with my NDP colleagues in opposition to this budget. It is a lost opportunity to invest and I do not believe it reflects what Canadians have asked us all to do in the House.