44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/14/23 4:58:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a number of petitions today, starting with one signed by Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the unsanctioned detention of people around the world, particularly by Turkish, Pakistani and Bahraini officials who have committed gross violations of human rights against Turks, with eight Turkish Canadians being detained at this point.
Turkish officials are responsible for causing hundreds of deaths, including the torture of Gokhan Acikkollu. Turkish officials have wrongfully detained over 300,000 people.
The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada and the House of Commons to closely monitor the human rights situation in Turkey and to place sanctions on 12 Turkish officials who are responsible for these gross violations against eight Canadians and the death of their friend Gokhan Acikkollu. They are calling on the Turkish, Pakistani and Bahraini governments to end all violations of human rights in their countries.
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- Jun/14/23 4:59:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from across the country who are concerned around the comments made by Louis Roy of the Quebec college of physicians, recommending the expansion of euthanasia to babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and serious syndromes.
This proposed legalization of the killing of infants is deeply offensive to the folks who have signed this petition, and they want to state emphatically that infanticide is always wrong. They call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to allow for the euthanasia of children.
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- Jun/14/23 5:00:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition comes from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about a report from the national defence advisory panel that calls for the clergy from religions that have views on gender and sexuality that differ from the views of the Department of National Defence to be banned as chaplains in the Canadian Armed Forces.
This report slanders mainstream Canadian religious communities, and the petitioners are calling on the Canadian government to ensure that the freedom of expression of chaplains and the freedom of religion of chaplains be maintained without discrimination.
Discrimination on the basis of religion is wrong and is offensive to Canadians. The Canadians who have signed this petition are calling on the Government of Canada to ensure that the chaplaincy of the Canadian Armed Forces remains the way it is and that the final report of the Minister of National Defence's advisory panel not—
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- Jun/14/23 5:01:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, they recommend that the House of Commons and the Government of Canada reject the recommendations on chaplaincy in the Canadian Armed Forces' final report and that they affirm the right of Canadians, including Canadian Armed Forces chaplains, to their freedom of religion.
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- Jun/14/23 5:02:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I have is from Canadians across the country who are concerned with an item in the 2021 platform of Liberal Party that would deny charitable status to organizations that have convictions about abortion that differ from the Liberal Party's position. This may jeopardize the charitable status of hospitals, houses of worship, schools, homeless shelters and other charitable organizations that do not agree with the Liberal Party on this matter for reasons of conscience.
Many Canadians depend on the benefits of these charitable organizations, which include food banks and summer camps, and the government has previously added a values test and discriminated against worthy applicants for the Canada summer jobs program, denying funding to any organization whose officials were not willing to check a box endorsing the political position of the governing party.
Charities and other organizations should not be discriminated against on the basis of their political views or religious values and should not be subject to a politicization of charitable status. Under the charter, all Canadians have the right to freedom of expression without discrimination.
Therefore, the folks who signed this petition, residents of Canada, call on the House of Commons to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis, without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without imposing another values test, and to affirm the rights of Canadians to freedom of expression.
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Madam Speaker, it was interesting that the hon. member who just gave his speech set up this binary situation where either children are taken care of at home or they are in a publicly funded day care. The reality is that folks do a whole gamut. Whether it is family members who take care of their children while they work, it is a neighbour or a it is church community, who knows how it all is? This system would fund just one of those possible options to the exclusion of the others.
That is what we are talking about as Conservatives when we say that this would not allow for the choice that happens. Whether it is a grandmother who comes in to take care of the children or the kids go to the grandmother's house, those kinds of situations are not recognized by this program. That is what we are dealing with. Does the member not recognize that?
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Madam Speaker, I want to say right off the top that I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge.
I note that this has been a long debate and that we are here late at night. I want to note that as well.
I think that this bill is one in which the issues that we are discussing today are being framed in the wrong way. The issues are being framed as what the government is proposing. This is the prerogative of the government, and this is often the challenge that we find ourselves with as the opposition. The government frames the issue, and we as the opposition must then respond. We end up with an issue that is already framed and we end up debating inside that issue.
The government is identifying a problem, and I would generally say that it is narrowcasting the issue. The issue is that Canadian families are struggling, and they are struggling in a whole host of ways, but then that also is borne out in the fact that they cannot afford child care.
That is a narrowcast. One of the band-aid solutions that the government comes up with is to just say that it will pay for the child care situation directly. It will just hand out money to child care operators, and that will reduce the cost of the child care.
That is a solution, but it does not bear on the broader issues that we are seeing in Canadian society. We are seeing that everything in Canada feels broken and that Canadians cannot afford to live their lives right here in Canada.
That is one of the things. The other thing is around the whole idea of family policy. In doing some research on this, I ran across an organization called Cardus and a gentleman named Peter Jon Mitchell, who has written a lot about this idea.
I would like to quote extensively from an article that he wrote called “Canada Needs a Family-Formation Policy Framework”.
He had some very interesting things to say about this. He says:
The promotion of $10-a-day child care as economic policy illustrates the problem with Canadian family policy, which is that we don’t have one. Yes, we have substantial direct cash benefits to parents, generous parental leave, and plenty of funded services. Yet we still lack any coherent strategy for encouraging strong, stable family life. As University of Windsor political scientist Lydia Miljan writes:
“Generally speaking, family policy in Canada may be characterized as an uncoordinated hodgepodge of policies, based on assumptions that are not always clearly recognized or even consistent, and delivered by an assortment of institutions including not only agencies of all three levels of government but also privately-run organizations like provincial Children’s Aid Societies, Big Brothers Big Sisters, family planning clinics, and so on.”
A new Cardus report, Envisioning a Federal Family-Formation Policy Framework for Canada, argues for a clear-eyed vision for Canadian family policy. Canadians value family life, but for complex reasons are partnering and marrying later and having fewer children than they say they would like. While all stages of family life are important, Canada needs to pay [particular] attention to the transition into partnership and marriage, and to having children.
These are Peter's words, not mine.
The federal government is only one actor among state and civil society institutions that can help families. Even as one of the most distant actors from daily family life, by reforming current programs and pursuing innovative policy options, the federal government can increase opportunity for family formation by removing barriers.
The hodgepodge collection of policies affecting families are often directed toward individual family members rather than respecting that families make decisions as a unit. For example, an expressed intent behind national child care is to increase the number of mothers in the workforce, while paternity leave in Quebec is intended to nudge fathers toward a larger share of caregiving. These may be laudable policy objectives, but families make these decisions as a unit, not as individuals. Families are social institutions that form their members, and they act in the collective interest of those members. Individuals negotiate their interests within families, but do so with consideration for the family as a unit.
Individuals negotiate their interests within families, but do so with consideration for the family as a unit.
The tension around the role of the state in intra-family decision-making is most noticeable in how the state directs public policy towards children. Political scientist Jane Jenson and her co-author Caroline Beauvais describe two paradigms for Canadian public policy. The family responsibility paradigm identifies families as the primary authority in determining the well-being of children. Policy approaches under this paradigm maximize flexibility for family decision-making. Direct government involvement is reserved for situations where children’s well-being is in danger. The second model is the investing in children paradigm, focused on early intervention through services that come around children and their families. Parents are important, but the paradigm emphasizes the expertise of state and civil-society actors.
The preferred approach [for most Conservatives] is to empower families as the primary caregiving community around children, with the authority and obligation to ensure the well-being of children. Institutions can best help children by working in partnership with children’s caregivers. In most cases, public policy should maximize flexibility that allows families to make decisions best suited for the family.
That is an extensive quote from this article by Peter Jon Mitchell. It lays out what are probably the major discussion points or the differences that we see between what the Conservatives and everybody else in this place really feels, that the family model is what we need to note.
Even the CBC is noticing this as an issue across the country. A CBC headline coming out of British Columbia, posted in March of last year was, “Young B.C. families are having fewer children, opting out of parenthood as cost of living skyrockets.”
Once again, the bill we are debating today is only tackling one of the many issues that Canadian families are having. This is also having an effect on family formation. Again, what Peter Jon Mitchell was calling for in his article was a strategic and thoughtful family policy rather than a social policy or an economic policy.
It was very interesting to me when the member for Winnipeg North was up on his feet, talking about this bill. He noted that this also happened to be good tax policy in the fact that if we had more people participating in the workforce, there would be more taxes for the government.
This is what we have seen from the Liberal government, over and over again. It comes forward with a policy proposal that it says is one thing, and in reality it is another thing. On his part, the member for Winnipeg North actually said that quiet part out loud when he said that this is actually tax policy, that the government wants Canadians to be able to pay more taxes. It is precisely the opposite of what Conservatives are about.
Conservatives are about making sure that Canadians pay the least amount of taxes possible. Conservatives, particularly on tax policy, say that we have a country to run, what are the things we need to pay for in order to run the country? When we have the list of things we need to pay for, we ask how we are going to pay for them and how are we going to collect taxes.
The Liberals have a completely opposite theory or policy around taxation. Their policy is, how much tax money can we wring out of Canadians, and then where can we spend all this cool tax money that we have collected. That is the fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals. I think the member for Winnipeg North kind of said the quiet part out loud when he said that this policy would increase the tax revenue to the federal government.
That seems to me to be the focus of everything that the Liberal government does, it is to increase the tax revenue to the federal government. They also have a carbon tax, which does the same thing. It does not affect the environment at all, but it creates tax revenue for the federal government.
With that, I would like to thank folks for listening tonight, and look forward to questions and comments.
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Madam Speaker, the fundamental point of the first part of my speech was about Canadian families struggling, and because they are struggling, they are choosing to have fewer children than they wish they could have.
People are getting married later and having fewer children than they thought they would when they were younger. This has been well documented. Even the CBC recognizes this in the article I referenced.
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Madam Speaker, that is precisely the question we have been asking about this bill the whole way through. I would also note that this bill would not do a whole lot. The most substantial thing about this bill is that it would set in place a board or council, which would just be another group of people advising the government on this. I am not opposed to that per se, but that is about the extent of what the bill would tangibly do. All of the other things mentioned in the bill are already in place. The government has already signed deals with the provinces, put in place frameworks across the country and now it is asking for an endorsement of that in this bill, so it is more of a motion than a bill.
However, what Conservatives have been calling for is a child care system that respects the different choices families make.
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Madam Speaker, we have been fairly clear that we are opposed to the way the Liberals have outlined their child care system. We want one that is flexible for all Canadians, no matter the choices they make.
What I would also note is that the only tangible thing this bill would do is create a committee or council. We will be voting for this bill to recognize the creation of this council, and we will see how the rollout of this system goes, the impacts and unintended consequences this bill would have.
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Madam Speaker, that was a great response by the hon. member. I would note that at least in capitalism, the bread lines up for us. That is one of my favourite lines in the debate between socialism and capitalism.
I just want to recognize the hon. member and her work in this place. We were elected at the same time and I call her a friend. I want to thank her speech on this as well, and—
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- Jun/14/23 11:42:39 p.m.
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Let us just call it a comment, Madam Speaker.
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