Members of Parliament Discuss CCCB Letter on Economic Exclusion

Wednesday, June 06 2001

(Ottawa – CCCB) For the second time in two months, Canadian members of Parliament have invited representatives from the CCCB to discuss a letter by the Episcopal Commission for Social Affairs entitled The Common Good or Exclusion: A Choice for Canadians. The letter was sent to members of the House of Commons as they began their new session last February, urging them “to work for the common good and toward ending economic exclusion.”

On June 5, Commission member Auxiliary Bishop Jean Gagnon of Quebec City and Social Affairs Director Joe Gunn met in Ottawa with members of the Bloc Quebecois caucus for more than an hour. They discussed the widening gap between “have” and “have-not” Canadians, the increasing number of children living in poverty in Canada, the need for fairer tax reform based on the common good, the expansion of priority social programs such as home care and pharmacare, using the fiscal surplus to substantially increase aid to debt ridden countries and looking at ways of forgiving their debt, incentives to reduce greenhouse emissions and support for a just means of settling the land claims of Aboriginal Peoples.

In April, Commission Chairmen Archbishop James Weisgerber of Winnipeg along with Commission member Bishop Donald Thériault of the Military Ordinariate held a similar meeting with members of the NDP caucus. The two meetings came about following the eight-page letter that had invited members of Parliament to an on-going dialogue with the bishops on these important matters.

The CCCB has spoken out many times over the years, asking the federal government to fight growing child poverty that affects one child in five in Canada. It has issued a statement in April, encouraging the 34 heads of government who attended the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City to adopt economic policies that promote and protect human dignity and the common good.