Yasmin Ratansi

[April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to move concurrence in the 16th report of the Standing Committee on Status of Women which reads:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on the Status of Women recommend to the government that it restore the Court Challenges Program, and that adoption of this motion be reported to the House.

What is the history behind this? As the chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, I have been listening to many women's groups and they have been absolutely dismayed at the wilful way in which the Conservative government treats women and minorities.

If we look at the history behind these cuts, in budget 2005-06, with $13.2 billion in surplus, the Conservative government saw fit to, as we say, stick it to women. Why?

The $1 billion funding cuts the Conservatives brought about were cuts for social programs for the most vulnerable. These funding cuts directly targeted women, aboriginals, those in need of affordable housing, and other groups for which the Conservatives have traditionally shown very little concern.

While the Conservatives continually claim to be standing up for Canada, the truth is they are only interested in standing up for those who already agree with their narrow policies: their core constituency of voters. Witness after witness has come before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women and advised us that they feel the Conservatives are governing on behalf of a very narrow base and if people do not fit their profile, then they are out of luck.

How can the majority of women, 52% of the voters of Canada, feel this way? What has led them to feel this way?

If we look at the cuts that came about in the 2005-06 budget there were $5 million to Status of Women Canada and $10 million eliminating the support to the Canadian voluntarism initiative. How could anyone cut $10 million from a voluntarism initiative when volunteers contribute approximately $6 billion to the economy and without them we would not be able to function?

The Conservatives eliminated $6 million from the court challenges program. If one looks at the court challenges program to figure out why that program is important and what it does, it provides a vehicle for marginalized individuals who want assistance. With the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we should not forget that the charter belongs to the people.

Within our system there are many archaic laws that do not comply with the charter and continue to deny citizens their justice. It is a travesty that the government refuses to eliminate such legislation. Hence, the court challenges program is a vehicle that can assist Canadians in this very urgent and important matter.

Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin stated that many men and women find themselves unable, mainly for financial reasons, to access the Canadian justice system. The court challenges program provides Canadians with this access.

The fact is that $6 million is not a lot of money when we look at the whole scheme of things in a budget of $200 billion. Therefore, we look at what the purpose is for the Conservatives wanting to eliminate it.

Leading Canadian non-government organizations are calling on the Prime Minister to restore funding to this program immediately because the court challenges program, which was created in 1978, provides funds to support test cases of national significance to clarify the constitutional rights of official language minorities and the right of everyone in Canada to live free from discrimination based on sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation and other similar grounds.

It has provided the only access to the use of constitutional rights for most Canadians. What do the Conservatives have against official language minorities? What do they have against equality? What do they have against gender? What do they have against women?

Bonnie Morton of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues said:

The cancellation of the court challenges program is an attack on the charter itself and the human rights of everyone in Canada. When a country such as Canada enacts constitutional rights, it takes for granted that residents, when they believe the government is violating their rights, can and will challenge any offending law or policy. If residents cannot ensure respect of their rights because of financial barriers, Canada's constitutional democracy is hollow. We turn the charter into a paper guarantee, with no real meaning.

That is a very important statement because if people do not have the financial means to support themselves, then they cannot be in a position to challenge any of those laws that violate their democracy. Hence, if we claim to be a democratic country, it is important that we restore the court challenges program.

Yvonne Peters of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities said:

Without the court challenges program, Canada's constitutional rights are really only for the wealthy. This offends basic fairness. And it does not comply with the rule of law, which is a fundamental principle of our Constitution.

Avvy Go of the Metro Toronto Chinese and South Asian Legal Clinic said:

Commitment to the protection of the Charter rights of disadvantaged individuals and groups is one of Canada's core values. [The Prime Minister] recognized this during the last election campaign, and he said then that if elected a Conservative government would “articulate Canada's core values on the world stage”, including “the rule of law”, “human rights” and “compassion for the less fortunate”. The cancellation of the court challenges program belies this promise.

Jean-Guy Rioux of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada said:

Cancelling the program shows profound disrespect for the French-speaking Canadians who live outside of Quebec, the English-speaking Canadians who live in Quebec, and for all Canadian residents who may need the protection of equality rights. The CCP has notably given means to French-speaking minorities to ensure that their rights to education in their language are respected.

The beneficiaries of the courts challenges program are many, and we on this side of the House cannot understand why the government has chosen such a very narrow focus and has stuck to its neo-con ideology of not supporting the very marginalized who need support.

The beneficiaries of the CCP are individuals and groups who believe that laws and policies discriminate against them or deny them their language rights. They cannot go forward without lawyers to represent them, since constitutional challenges are legally complex.

Second, when a country like Canada enacts constitutional rights, it takes for granted that residents, when they believe the government is violating their rights, can and will challenge the offending law or policy.

If Canadians cannot use these rights because of financial barriers, then Canada's constitutional democracy is hollow. Governments must care that the rights they embrace are not meaningless and that the court challenges program has provided a simple and modest way of ensuring they are not. I am sure the government could afford the $6 million that it would take. With a $13.2 billion surplus, why would it choose to cancel a program that helps the official language minorities, people who are financially not well off and people who need to address these laws and exercise their rights.

We should emphasize that what the court challenges program provides is far from universal access to exercises of constitutional equality and language rights. It provides only limited funds for selected test cases.

We know the Conservative government, as a critic of the CPP, dislikes some of the cases that the court challenges program has supported: cases related to same sex marriage; cases related to the voting rights for federal prisoners; and cases related to the criminal law provision regarding hitting children.

The fact that some individuals or groups do not agree with some of the test cases funded by the program is not a reason to cancel it. No one among us is likely to agree with every test case that appears.

The point of a constitutional human rights regime is to ensure that diverse claims, perspectives and life experiences are respected and taken into account in the design of laws and policies. The equality guarantee and the language rights in the Constitution were designed to help minorities, whose views and needs may not be reflected by governments, to be heard on issues that affect them closely. Cancelling the court challenges program mutes their voices further and makes Canada a meaner, less tolerant society.

Many organizations have called on the government to restore funding because they believe that the court challenges program is an effective and accountable institution. The court challenges program of Canada has established a track record. It has been an effective and accountable institution which promotes access to justice.

The CCP, as it is called, has existed in a number of different institutions and has made remarkable contributions to the development of constitutional law and to the rights of Canadians over the last 28 years but there is more work that remains to be done.

Since 1994, when the court challenges program was established as an independent,not for profit corporation, it has done a lot of good work. To date, it has been funded solely through a contribution agreement between the Government of Canada and CCP. The CPP is fully accountable to the Government of Canada. It provides quarterly reports on its activities to the government and publishes an annual report with statistics on the number and types of cases that it has funded.

I would like to ask the government which of these cases that it did not like? When there is so much transparency and accountability in this program, why did it cancel it?

The CCP is also subject to some legal restrictions on reporting on funding in cases that are before the courts. This information is protected by solicitor-client privilege and cannot be released by CCP, in the same way that legal aid organizations cannot divulge information about their clients. The CCP's responsibility to protect this information was affirmed by a federal court ruling in 2000.

The court challenges program, which is subject to a full independent evaluation of its activities every five years, has been there for 28 years and has been evaluated three times. On each occasion, independent evaluators found that it was meeting the objectives set by the government as a cost effective and very accountable institution and they made unqualified recommendations that the court challenges program should continue to carry out its mandate.

Our justice system sometimes fails radically when individuals and groups whose constitutional rights are violated and are denied access to justice and the court challenges program plays a very important role in ensuring it.

We on this side of the House are seeking concurrence on this very important matter. We would like the government to reinstate the funding to the court challenges program.

[Afghanistan, April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that was not my question but let us look at what other people are saying about the detainee situation. The member for Mississauga—Streetsville, the Prime Minister's Middle East adviser, said, “Torture a fact of life in war-torn Afghanistan”. A Correctional Service officer in Afghanistan said, “There hasn't been any significant work done with the prisons”.

When will the Minister of National Defence take responsibility for this farce and resign? When will the Prime Minister take responsibility and fire him?

[Afghanistan, April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Minister of Public Safety told the House that officials from Correctional Service Canada had access all along to monitor detainees in Afghan jails. However, his ministerial spokeswoman contradicted him, as did our Correctional Service officer, Ms. Garwood-Filbert, who is one of the two officials in Afghanistan. Even the Afghan ambassador denied what the minister was saying.

Why can the government not just tell the truth for a change?

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member is very concerned about the confusion that the NDP is creating by supporting the Conservatives. When the Liberal government sent troops, we sent them to Camp Julian. Our mission was development, defence and diplomacy, and we have stuck to it.

The NDP motion asks for immediate withdrawal which is a very irresponsible motion. The NDP could have voted for the motion that was put before the House a day or so ago which talked about the fact that an exit strategy should be there by February 2009. That would give an opportunity for NATO to find a replacement. The NDP is being irresponsible and it can keep on being irresponsible because it will never be government.

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the first thing that the member should remember is that it is the defence minister of the Conservative government who has been flip-flopping. We made a decision to stay until 2009. The defence minister kept saying it might be 15 years. It would be better if the government would remove an incompetent defence minister from the House.

Second, in terms of the successes that we want from Afghanistan, when a people do not have the ability to feed themselves, if they do not have economic security, then they must have economic security. We need to be able to help them feed themselves and find alternatives, which is what the government has not done.

In fact, the previous Liberal government put in money for diplomacy and development. It is through those developmental efforts that Canada went in with the NGOs to build schools, build infrastructure, but we need to do more to help the Afghan people. We have to ensure that the Afghan people understand that we are there with them to develop sustainability and transfer knowledge. We have to be there in a diplomatic and a development role.

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for West Nova.

It is pleasure to rise in the House and represent my constituents of Don Valley East on an issue that is of great concern to every Canadian, namely Canada's participation in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.

As this is the second major debate on this issue in as many days, it is no wonder why more and more Canadians are expressing interest in the courageous services being provided by men and women of the Canadian armed forces currently serving in Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that all Canadians fully support our armed forces, but lately people across the country are beginning to harbour certain doubts about the Minister of National Defence and the Conservative government's future plans for Afghanistan.

Earlier this week the Liberal caucus introduced a motion in the House, which would have provided Canadians with a definite conclusion to Canada's combat mission as scheduled in February 2009. The motion would have given our NATO allies sufficient time to find a replacement country and still permit Canada to continue its diplomatic and reconstruction efforts throughout Afghanistan.

No one is under the allusion that Afghanistan will become a fully self-sufficient state when are troops are scheduled to depart in February 2009. It will take a concerted effort by the entire international community to a solid foundation upon which Afghanistan can provide the basic needs of its people.

When Canadian Forces first arrived in the country after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Afghanistan was already a failed state, wracked by over 30 years of civil war and the disastrous occupation by the former Soviet Union. After the anti-communist mujahdeen forced the USSR to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989, the country descended into a series of civil wars and was divided up among warlords.

When the Taliban assumed control of Afghanistan in 1996, they did not inherit a country but rather a land locked region that featured few natural resources and a mountainous terrain that made control of its borders extremely difficult to secure.

Indeed, the diverse population of Afghanistan is a reflection of many of its neighbours and its cultural mosaic of Pashtun, Tajik, Hazaras, Uzbek, Aimaks, Turkmen and many other minorities make it difficult for a population to assume a single national Afghan identity.

So far the road to political reconstruction has been a hard journey. Damaging earthquakes, limited fresh water resources, inadequate supplies of potable water, soil degradation, overgrazing, deforestation, air and water pollution and a crumbling infrastructure have all combined to make civil reconstruction a daunting task in the midst of continuous attacks by suicide bombers launched by the Taliban.

That is why the Liberal Party does not support the NDP motion before us. It is an irresponsible motion. To immediately withdraw Canadian combat troops from the area, as the NDP proposes today, would not only send a disturbing message to our NATO allies, it would send a confusing and ambiguous message to the people of Afghanistan.

Canadian armed forces are in Afghanistan for a purpose. I can assure the House that no Liberal government would ever shirk our obligation to NATO. Nor would we break our promise to the Afghan people.

A Liberal government would engage in real diplomatic efforts with our NATO allies to share the burden in southern Afghanistan and press Washington and Islamabad to do more to stop the infiltration of foreign fighters from outside the border.

To win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, perhaps the first major step forward would be to end the chronic water shortage. Poppies, which fuel the illegal heroin trade and fund the Taliban, are one of the few crops in Afghanistan that can survive the arid climate without proper irrigation. With a rebuilt water reservoir and canals, farmers would no longer be forced into the poppy trade by the Taliban and they could begin to branch off into different crops to feed the domestic market and perhaps develop foreign markets.

By February 2009, when Canada is scheduled to end its combat role, our forces will have served for seven straight years, three of those in the most dangerous part in southern Afghanistan.

Canadians are fully aware that success in Afghanistan cannot be achieved by military means alone. Furthermore, the Afghan people should not be led to believe that the battle against the Taliban, the protection of villages, the construction of schools and roads are the responsibility of foreigners. We need to help Afghan people build capacity.

Canada should provide much more training and assistance to the Afghan army, police, and doing more to improve its justice system. We should not be building prisons as the public safety minister recently suggested.

Earlier this week the NDP had an opportunity to join the Liberals and provide Canadians with a clear military mandate for Canadian troops in Afghanistan. They chose instead to side with the Conservatives to continue the military mission for an undeclared period.

Today the NDP has suddenly changed its mind and is now trying to cover its tracks by insisting on an immediate withdrawal. This is not the leadership that our armed forces overseas deserve.

For the good of Canadians and for the good of our armed forces, the Liberals call on the Prime Minister to fulfill our mandate until February 2009 and immediately inform our allies that Canada will end its combat role in Afghanistan on schedule.

[April 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I asked a very simple question, which would have been of interest to the business community in Canada and to all Canadians. I simply asked if the Conservative government had a plan that would meet the Kyoto targets in conjunction and with the cooperation of the companies belonging to the Toronto Stock Exchange. All I heard was nothing but the repetition of the minister's diatribe.

Yesterday, the Conservative voted on the absolute reduction as provided by the Kyoto protocol. How can Canadians take them seriously when they keep on flip-flopping every time?

The fact is the Liberal Party is way ahead of the government and has already published a plan. Let me ask the question another way.

After pledging to work with the opposition parties to make this minority government work for Canadians, when will the Conservative government reintroduce the newly amended clean air and climate change act?

[April 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this House this evening on behalf of my constituents of Don Valley East and debate on one of the most pressing issues facing the planet today, global warming and climate change.

A short time ago during question period I asked the environment minister if the federal government had a plan to develop a competitive and truly global marketplace for carbon emissions. I asked this question because Canadians and Canada committed to such a trading system when it signed the Kyoto protocol in order to reduce our country's greenhouse gas emissions.

Canadians are well aware, however, that when the current Prime Minister was the leader of the Canadian Alliance party, he publicly scoffed at the Kyoto agreement by calling it “a socialist plot to suck money out of developed countries”. It is therefore difficult to accept the Prime Minister's sudden conversion to the environment, especially when his clean air act was soundly rejected by Canadians when it was first introduced last fall and he was eventually forced to fire his environment minister.

Since that time, the clean air act was sent to a special all-party committee to develop a bill that would at least partially meet our international obligations under the Kyoto protocol.

Although all members in this minority Parliament have committed to work together for the benefit of Canadians, the Conservatives have thus far refused to reintroduce the bill as amended by opposition parties. In fact we are hearing rumblings from the environment minister that the bill aimed at reducing greenhouse gases is dead in the water. If so, the Conservatives risk being caught on the wrong side of history, science, and most of all, the wrong side of Canadian businesses.

Despite the doomsday prediction by the environment minister, many businesses see a great deal of profit in going green. In fact the head of the Toronto Stock Exchange, Mr. Richard Nesbitt, recently informed the government that the TSX would welcome a competitive global marketplace environment for emissions trading. According to Mr. Nesbitt:

TSX is in a unique position to work with Canadian companies to offer trading solutions for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

He went on to say:

TSX believes that the market-based mechanisms can significantly help society achieve its emissions reduction goals through more efficient resource allocation....TSX can support absolute caps or intensity-based caps, with or without sector-based adjustments....TSX can support markets that are domestic-only or those that are linked within North America or globally.

Certainly with that kind of support from the private sector, plus the overwhelming support from the general public, why on earth is the Conservative government not taking action on global warming?

I am aware that the parliamentary secretary will have some notes prepared after the minister's speech was accidentally leaked last night, but aside from spin control, perhaps the hon. member could answer one simple question. Will the government take up the offer from the head of the Toronto Stock Exchange to create a truly global marketplace for emissions trading?

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 17th report of the Standing Committee on Status of Women entitled “Spending Orientations for Status of Women Canada and other agencies”.

[Committees of the House, April 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 15th report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women entitled, “Publication of policy reports at Status of Women Canada”.

I also have the pleasure to present, in both official languages, the 16th report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women entitled, “Restoration of Court Challenges Program”.