Federal Budget

HANSARD DEBATES
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Arpil 15, 2010

Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill. I want to begin my remarks by commenting on the enormity of this bill. It is 872 pages long and has 24 different parts.

When one goes through the bill, whether one goes through the summary or starts looking at the bill in its totality, one can see immediately that the Conservative government has decided to use this bill as a cover for all kinds of very negative and bad public policy initiatives. We are certainly aware of that and this is one of the reasons it is very important that debate take place on Bill C-9.

I would add to the comments made by my colleagues that it is very ironic that Conservative members are choosing not to debate this bill, because it is simply enormous when one considers what is covered in it. We did hear the budget speech and we had the budget itself, but this budget implementation bill goes far beyond what was contained in the budget. It is using itself as a cover for all kinds of draconian measures. I will mention a couple.

The NDP called an emergency debate to reinstate funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation(AHF) before it runs out on March 31. The AHF delivers 135 projects across Canada to support tens of thousands of residential school survivors. Without alerting the AHF, the Conservative government did not include funding for the Foundation in the 2010 federal budget tabled on March 4th.

EMERGENCY DEBATE
Aboriginal Healing Foundation
HANSARD
MARCH 30, 2010

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):

I am very glad to be rising in the House tonight, even at this late hour, to participate in this emergency debate. The first thing I would like to do is to thank the member for Churchill who applied for this emergency debate, which was granted by the Speaker, and to thank her for bringing this forward so that we could actually participate in this really critical discussion tonight about what is going to happen to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

When the member for Churchill led off the debate at the beginning of the evening, I remember her speaking about the fact that she was not in the House when the historic apology took place on June 11, 2008. I am sure she, like others across the country, was probably in her community with many people who were witnessing that historic occasion.

HANSARD DEBATES
House of Commons
March 23, 2010

Motion on Maternal and Child Health

Libby Davies (Vancouver East NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this motion. It is a very important debate. It is important that members of the House be able to express their strong opinions about this issue. The government's G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world's poorest regions must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with previous governments that have stated that position, as well as all other G8 members last year in Italy. I certainly welcome this debate.

First and foremost, we have to insist that any initiative Canada takes forward must be based on scientific evidence as outlined in the motion before us today. That scientific evidence shows us that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths. That is a very significant statistic.

Members of Parliament are allotted specific dates to respond to the Speech from the Throne. Libby had the opportunity to respond on March 18th.

HANSARD
House of Commons
March 18, 2010

RESPONSE TO THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE

Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, For the second time in a year, the Conservatives shut down the work of Parliament. We know they did it to avoid the very important issues of Afghanistan and what happened to detainees.

I was very proud to attend the anti-prorogation rally that took place in Vancouver on January 23. It was wonderful to see the young people who came out to the rally. Some people had not been to a political protest before, but they came because they absolutely did not buy the very flimsy and transparent reasons the Prime Minister gave for proroguing the House.

Yesterday we debated the NDP motion to place limits on prorogation and prevent the abuses we have seen take place under the Conservative government. The NDP motion basically stated that if the House was to be prorogued for more than seven days, there had to be a resolution and vote in Parliament on the reasons for prorogation. I am very pleased the motion passed.