Leonard Preyra - MLA for Halifax Citadel – Sable Island

MR. SPEAKER: The honourable Deputy Government House Leader.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: Mr. Speaker, I move that you do now leave the Chair and that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole House on Supply unto Her Majesty.

MR. SPEAKER: The honourable member for Halifax Citadel.

MR. LEONARD PREYRA: Also soon to be known as Halifax Citadel and Sable Island I hope, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about my constituency of Halifax Citadel. Most of you know it. (Interruptions)

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Let’s hear the minister – I mean let’s hear the member.

Education:
MR. PREYRA: Not yet, Mr. Speaker, but thank you. Mr. Speaker, more specifically, I would like to draw the attention of this House to some of the issues and concerns raised by my constituents. Some of the suggestions that they’ve made of things that they would like us to see handling them. I would like to start by talking about education; the educational institutions lie at the heart of my constituency. In fact, I have six universities present in my constituency, and until very recently Nova Scotia Community College was here as well.

Post-secondary education is a several billion dollar industry if you include the teaching, the research, the scholarship, the innovation and productivity that occurs on those campuses, Mr. Speaker, and there’s a great deal of concern about that industry and the future of that industry in that there’s a sense that the government itself might not be looking at it as this very productive, very lucrative industry. It appears to be discouraging people from away from coming to take up study here or to conduct research here, and we need to make sure that we do not kill the goose that lays this golden egg for my constituency.

More directly, Mr. Speaker, the constituency has been preoccupied by school closures. As you know, for the past year we’ve been fighting to keep our elementary schools open and although it appears that we have succeeded in keeping most of them open, the proposal coming out of the school board suggests that one of those schools, St. Mary’s School, be closed. St. Mary’s School has been on the list now, I believe this is the fifth time they’ve been fighting a proposal to close that school down. I’ve had the pleasure of being at St. Mary’s School several times in the last couple of months, most recently at their multicultural festival.

To many, Mr. Speaker, St. Mary’s School is a model of what a school should be like. It is a small school. It is working at capacity. It’s directly integrated with the community. In fact, I was at the adjoining Spencer House that evening and I was told that St. Mary’s School and Spencer House have a very productive program of intergenerational learning where seniors go to St. Mary’s and talk about the things that they know and the students go to Spencer House and engage with the seniors there in all kinds of activities and music. It’s a very impressive site and it’s disappointing that this school, once again, is fighting closure. It serves the health care community, it serves single parents, immigrants, and in many ways it does lie at the heart of the community there.

It is a community centre, its gyms are used, and like small school communities everywhere in this province, Mr. Speaker, St. Mary’s, in particular, I believe, can make a strong case for staying open and certainly I would help them and I would like to believe that this House would help them in their fight to stay open.

Arts and Culture:
I would like to speak a little bit about the arts and culture as well, another billion dollar industry, Mr. Speaker. That’s really underappreciated in the province itself. The film industry was booming until very recently and as we’ve come under competition as we faced the rising Canadian dollar, with the loss of Electropolis, we do need in Nova Scotia and we do need in Halifax a sound stage so that we can develop this industry. Without the infrastructure and without the support of the government for building these essential services, the industry will go elsewhere and it’s one of those service industries that brings millions of dollars, real dollars, of valuable jobs to our community and it helps develop the other skills that make our community of Halifax Citadel such a wonderful place to live.

The film industry has talked about access to public buildings, something very similar to access to any other place for doing business. The film industry and the entertainment industry have argued that we have this infrastructure not being used very much, the schools in the summer, for example, HRM buildings. We need to make better use of our public buildings and we need to make them more accessible to the film industry. We need to provide incentives for them to train and develop local talent.

Speaking of talent, Mr. Speaker, most of our talent rests on the creation of incubation spaces for our young and emerging artists. Over the years, more of these spaces have closed down and not very far from here; we had the Khyber Arts Centre, which used to be a vibrant place where young artists could come and exhibit their art or play their music. Out of those spaces came talent like Ellen Page and Sarah McLachlan and Buck 65. We have essentially closed off these avenues to our young artists.

In the school system, we are discouraging art and music programs. We are shutting them down and they have become sort of an extra that you tag on to the school day rather than a core part of our curriculum. In my constituency, we have this wonderful school, Citadel High School. It is state of the art but it does not have an auditorium, Mr. Speaker, and the community is going about raising several million dollars so that we can have an art and music program.

So art and music are important for us, not just because of the quality of life they add to the constituency and the province, but this industry that we call art, culture, heritage and tourism, all rest on this essential need. We need to nurture this talent, we need to develop it, because without that talent we don’t have the higher and more financially rewarding economy that we develop here.

Public Transit:
I want to say something about transit, Mr. Speaker. In the last several months, we have seen proposals for expanding the rail cut and building a four- to six-lane thoroughfare through my constituency, which would bring trucks and emergency services and essentially lead to the expropriation of large tracts of land on either side of the rail cut. We have seen the Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission suggest that they want to build a similar size highway across the harbour, right through my constituency, or a tunnel.

Mr. Speaker, my constituents are telling me that they would like fewer cars on the Halifax peninsula and that should be the priority of this House, that we should find ways to reduce the number of cars coming onto the peninsula and make it available for people to use public transit. We have these fast-growing suburban areas that have been developed, apparently without very much planning, and those people have no alternative, in most cases, than to take their cars and bring them into Halifax Citadel. As a result, more and more downtown land is being devoted to the development of parking lots. Houses are being expropriated, streets are being widened, when really what we need to do is expand our transit system.

We should inquire into the feasibility of using the rail cut for developing a rail transit, for expanding it, even for moving container traffic, Mr. Speaker, from the port to points east. The first thing we need to do is look at alternatives to bringing cars and trucks into the downtown core. We can show some leadership in this area by creating incentives for employees downtown, for employers to encourage public transit. The Government of Nova Scotia, for example, in the health care system, could expand the bus pass system that has proven to be so successful at the universities, to take away the parking spaces, perhaps, that they give to their employees, and maybe give them bus passes instead so that they will make the transition to taking the bus. Public transit is a very important issue downtown if we want to create that kind of quality of life, if we want to preserve our neighbourhoods and we want to preserve our heritage districts.

Housing:
I’d like to say something about housing. My constituency of Halifax Citadel has become largely unaffordable to most families with young children. It’s become unaffordable for students who come to study here. It’s become unaffordable for many seniors. It’s become unaffordable to single income individuals and people with low income. We need to make sure we don’t create a gentrified constituency in downtown Halifax.

For those who own homes, home assessments have become a huge issue and a growing concern. Even though some people, many seniors, live in apparently large homes, they don’t have the income to pay for that – they don’t have the wherewithal to repair some of these houses, so assessments have to be fairly arrived at and we have to take into account the income of some of those people living in those homes.

The condo owners, in recent months, have talked to me. This is a fast-growing industry, most people who move now into downtown Halifax, move into condos. They’re saying the one year warranty program really doesn’t address the kinds of challenges they face now, where the problems that were not apparent in the construction of their units have become apparent. There is no warranty that covers them, especially when it comes to water leakage. The warranty program has to be expanded beyond one year, perhaps to five years so there can be some accountability for the builders, the people who sell those condo units.

The condo dwellers have told me . . .

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The chatter’s just growing too high and it’s very difficult to hear the member.

MR. PREYRA: The condo unit owners have told me that we need to license builders, that we license people for all kinds of things. If you’re building your home, you need a licence and you need to meet a number of regulatory hurdles, but you don’t in building a condo. Builders don’t need to be licensed and the tradespeople who work on those condos don’t need to be directly supervised. They’re suggesting that perhaps we should move to a system of better regulation and better licensing for the people who build condos and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Environment:
I’d like to speak about environment. My constituents feels that not enough is being done about climate change, that we seem to see climate change as something that happens very far away and it’s in the distant future. As the member for Sable Island, I feel particularly concerned about coastal zone management. I feel concerned about the fact that many of these valuable spaces, many of our shorelines, many of our beaches will be lost. We do need to invest in retrofitting, reduce our energy conservation. We need to invest in alternate energy and we need to create more green spaces.

I see my time is coming to an end. There are very many more things my constituents would like me to say here and that I will bring to the attention of this House in the coming days, but those issues, the question of education, what do we do about educating our young people and protecting the industry? How do we promote a vibrant arts and culture and heritage community in downtown Halifax? How do we go about reducing the number of cars that come onto the peninsula? How do we provide affordable housing for the many young people, seniors and families who want to come into our constituency? How do we protect the environment, to ensure the legacy we leave to future generations is sustainable, that it provides for a habitable and healthy lifestyle.

I want to say something about the economy overall. This is last, but certainly not the least of our concerns here. I’ve referred to some of our major industries – post-secondary education, universities, colleges, the film, arts and culture, but we haven’t done very much about the Port of Halifax. The Port of Halifax has been our flagship through generations. We talk about Lunenburg and the Bluenose and its domination of the waves. We brag about the Cunard Lines that plied the trade, the first shipping industry in globalization and we need to make sure we nurture that industry and that it continues to carry us into the next century.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I will thank you and I will speak to these other issues later. Thank you.