David Christopherson

[Amendments to Standing Orders, December 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, now, I see my colleague from Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale is advising me that it is a big love-in whenever the Conservatives meet, so I stand corrected. The Conservatives never fight. They always get along, and everything is fine. I can accept that political defiance and political gravity.

However, it is a real problem. It is a problem of a leader who cannot count 100% on the House leader and whip. The fact that they can be elected means that those who may have just finished a leadership race from other camps could have these big positions and may decide that the election is not over, so we can guess what happens. It is very problematic.

On the other hand, I would like to take the last couple of minutes to support the idea of electing caucus chairs. I have always believed in it very strongly. In my own experience, I was an elected caucus chair when we were in government at Queen's Park. If we think that leaders are omnipotent when they are in opposition, we should see what they are like when they are in government. To me, the one and only mandate that does not come from an appointment by the leader is an elected caucus chair. When we are at caucus meetings, the leader still has all of the power that a leader has, but the caucus chair owes that position and that position only, with a few minor exceptions, in the caucus by virtue of the independent caucus mandate.

That is an important counterbalance to the overwhelming power of the leader, rightly, in our system. It provides a good counterbalance. The rest of it I find somewhat problematic.

If I can get this in at the end, a lot of people want us all to be more independent in the same way that they see in the United States, where the members of Congress can go here and there. The problem is that under our system, we run on a platform. The leader has every right to be able to say to the people who elected them to form a government, regardless of the party, that this is their policy and this is what they are going to enact and that the leader expects everybody to uphold that.

If people do not have to follow party discipline, which can go too far, and say that party discipline is not on at all, how can a leader go about enforcing a platform when people cast some of their votes for us individually—we like to think it is all of them, but that is not true—while others vote for a platform? The leader needs the ability to enhance that platform.

[Amendments to Standing Orders, December 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the disappointment is far greater on my part than the rest of the House.

I appreciate the opportunity to add my comments to the motion before us. Let me just say at the outset, though, that the best kind of reform we could bring to this place is proportional representation. If we really want to change things and make it better, that is the big move.

I also want to acknowledge the enhancement of independent MPs because this place really is structured around two parties. I will go so far as to say that there are rights that the third, fourth and at times fifth parties do not have. I will give an example and these are things that should be changed.

I was shocked when I got here, having been a House leader at Queen's Park, when it came to ending a bell. Members will remember that the reason we ring the bell is to tell everybody that we are having a vote and they should get their rear ends over to the House and get ready to cast their votes.

We calculate our time because we are all spread out across the precinct and based on fewer green buses because the government has laid off all the drivers. It is interesting that the ones who are driving around in their warm limos are the ones who cut the budget for the green buses that the rest of us have to ride, but I will not go too far on that one at this point.

When those bells are ringing, it is to tell members that the vote is going to happen and they need to get to the House. The bells can be shortened if the whips agree. For instance, if we are all in the House and we have just done something ceremonial, the whips will say that we do not really need to run 30-minute bells, we are all here, we all agree, and we will cut it off after 15 minutes. That is when we see the whips march up to the front, we do the little applause, they do a little bowing, the bells end, and then we move to a vote.

The problem with the process that we have here in this place in terms of the rights of minority parties is that the whips of the parties other than the government and the official opposition are not considered. On at least two occasions, back when there was a minority, the government and the Liberals worked in cahoots to deny us the right to be here.

It was a minority government and those kinds of votes mattered. We did not always really know what the outcome would be. Ending those bells had the effect of denying us the right to vote. All of that would be eliminated if the whips of all the recognized parties were a party to any agreement to shorten the bells. Instead, two parties can do it. Those who are in the other parties, oh well, too sad, too bad; that is just the way it goes.

In terms of reinforcing the rights of independent members and the other recognized parties, we have a lot of work to do because this place really is geared to two parties. Everybody else is sort of a bit player, and I say that with great respect, having been in both the third and the fourth party in my time. No one should be treated as a bit player here. We certainly have some sympathies with that.

In terms of all the various changes that are suggested, I want to commend the member for thinking outside the box. I see our friend, the member from Wellington, has been working for years now on bringing about changes. I think we are getting close to that. Those could bring some refreshing reforms to this place, again, modest but significant in terms of the dynamic of this place. We look forward to hopefully seeing that bill in its final form pass this place.

I compliment the member on thinking outside the box and adding to the list of ideas about how to make this a better place that works better for everyone. However, it is very problematic, certainly from my point of view. Next year, it will be 25 years that I have been in parliamentary places, both here and Queen's Park, and city council before that. It is not the same.

I see some real problems with the idea of electing all those positions. First of all, it has always been my personal position that the leaders of any party need to be able to count on their House leader and whip. If they cannot count on their House leader and whip, they are in big trouble.

There was a time in one caucus, when I was at Queen's Park, when we elected not just the caucus chair, but the House leader and the whip, and that is just a recipe for disaster. If we set aside our partisanship and just go with our personal experience, colleagues will agree with me that caucus meetings are not always Kumbaya, hearts, flowers, and pixie dust. Sometimes there are divisions and fractures—

[Veterans Affairs, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives' claim about only targeting backroom bureaucrats has already been proven false. The government's own documents show that only 10% of the cuts were to internal services. Instead, Conservatives focused their cuts on regional veterans offices, caseworkers, and front-line staff.

To add insult to injury, while they were firing front-line workers, they were handing out generous bonuses to senior managers to do it.

Why is this minister still a minister?

[Veterans Affairs, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives misled Canadians about the $200 million in spending. They failed to provide proper mental health services.

Now we learn that the Prime Minister's claim about only backroom bureaucrats being laid off was false. A third of the layoffs were of people working on pensions and disability benefits.

For vets, it has been a decade of darkness under the Conservatives. When will Conservatives stop misleading Canadians and finally live up to their obligations to our nation's veterans?

[Takeover of Stelco, December 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member underscores the fact that, as I have said, there are those of us from all across Canada who can point to examples of where this has happened.

We can look at other economies in the world and see that they are trying to create steel industries. They are trying to make sure they have the ability to do that.

Under the government, we are slowly but surely letting go of whatever little bit is left of the steel industry in Canada. As a wealth-generating country, having the state-of-the-art, world-leading steel industries was to our benefit. The government allowing that to change and be watered down is a harm to our future.

The hon. member is absolutely correct. If we continue down this road, it is going to do more and more harm. We need to change the ways, change the laws, and change the government.

[Takeover of Stelco, December 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the government would like to change the channel and talk about something else.

The member is talking about the social contract. The social contract was wrong and should not have happened. That is a given. I would like to hear the government stand up and say that it has done something wrong, and fix it.

[Takeover of Stelco, December 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. I know that there are members from all across Canada who can tell stories of exactly the same thing that in one degree or another has happened to their constituents. That is why New Democrats have always taken the position that this legislation needs to be amended, because at the time of crisis it is too late. The legislation needs to be in place at the time that these things happen so that workers have the security that right now banks and bond holders have.

They have that security. They get whatever amount of money. It may not be all of the money, but it is whatever amount is available. They are at the top of the list, the front of the line. We are saying that those workers should be at the front of the line, because we cannot repair the damage that is done to them when their pensions are cut in half or there is not enough money to even pay out a pension. New Democrats have always felt that this is the kind of legislative change that needs to be made.

As an aside, interestingly enough, when I was doing an interview with Mr. Steve Arnold, a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator, he asked me, “Hasn't this been put forward for about 30 years now? Why does it never happen?” My answer to him was it is because we have not had an NDP government yet. If we get an NDP government in place, we will get the kind of protections that workers need.

[Takeover of Stelco, December 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, you are very fair-minded and always have been.

There was heckling. It was juvenile. I did use his name as a retort, and I apologize and withdraw the comment.

[Takeover of Stelco, December 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, if anybody wonders, it is Butt.

—the government dropped this suit in exchange for new commitments that have not been kept.

Now that U.S. Steel aims to sell its Hamilton operations and pull out of Canada, the agreement should be made public. There may be legitimate reasons to redact some portions, but not at the expense of the truth.

U.S. Steel workers, pensioners and the citizens of Hamilton deserve to know what our government agreed to, and why it never enforced the agreement, not to mention what it plans to do now.

They sign their editorials, and that one was signed by Mr. Howard Elliott.

I read that to point out that this is not, again, just the opposition raising an issue and trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. This is already a mountain. This is huge.

So far, I have addressed the fact that it calls for an apology, because in our view, the Conservative federal government has let Hamilton down and let the workers and pensioners at U.S. Steel-Stelco down completely, and we demand and deserve an apology for that incredibly bad decision.

Next, the government owes it to the people of Hamilton, the pensioners, the workers, and the rest of this country to make public the deal that got U.S. Steel out of court. Remember, it was in court. The government was winning, holding U.S. Steel to account on its first round of promises. What got U.S. Steel out of court and out of trouble was this deal, but what is in the deal? It is at the heart of everything. What commitments were made, and are those commitments being honoured? In the event of a breach, what happens? We do not know.

That is why we local MPs are raising the issue. That is why I am putting forward the motion here in front of us. That is why Hamilton City Council has time and time again called for the government to release this information. Now the provincial government has also said that it believes that this information needs to be made public.

That deals with the first two issue. The last one strikes at the human level. It calls for amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, so that in cases of bankruptcy, unlike right now, workers' pensions will not be at the bottom of the list of things to be paid out from whatever assets remain. That is wrong. It is wrong, and here is why.

Corporations and companies can withstand the financial hit of one of their suppliers or clients going bust a lot more than the steelworkers can, who have worked 30, 40 or 45 years and then find out at the end of that grinding life that the pensions they were guaranteed are gone. Anyone who has ever worked in a factory will know and can imagine what decades in that plant are like. Those workers said that they would not take every hour of their wages in pay, but wanted some of it going into a fund that would accumulate over the pay periods, months, years and decades, so that they would have a little bit of a retirement, live in dignity and enjoy whatever remaining years they had in a decent retirement.

This is not to mention those pensioners who have already been retired for 10 and 20 years and now face the prospect of their income being cut by 20%, 30%, or 50% or more. I know what would happen in this place if someone said that MPs should get 50% less than they get right now.

Can members imagine what it is like and how frightening it is for people in Hamilton who worked at Stelco all those years and are about to draw their pensions or are already drawing on them, but which are now in jeopardy? They cannot go and re-live the 30 years. They cannot fix that problem. A company has some means to plan for the future, but what does a working person do when they have put their whole life into a company and are told that the pension money has gone? It is terrifying.

This motion draws attention to what needs to be done. It draws attention to how wrongly and shamefully the people in Hamilton have been treated, and it calls on the government to do the right thing. The government needs to apologize for what has happened to our community and our citizens. It should make the information public; the government does not own it.

Lastly, we need to change the legislation, to protect our pensioners. If we do not step in and protect them, we can see pretty clearly that U.S. Steel and others will not do it. If we do not do it, who will? The people in Hamilton, those steelworkers, are looking to this place to help them.

Approving this motion and following what it asks for would go a long way to bringing dignity, respect, and fairness to the people of Hamilton and the workers and pensioners of Stelco and U.S. Steel, who deserve to be treated better than how they have been treated at the hands of the Conservative government.

[Takeover of Stelco, December 4th, 2014]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) apologize to the people of Hamilton for approving the 2007 foreign takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel, on the grounds that it has failed to provide a net benefit to Hamilton and Canada; (b) make public the commitments U.S. Steel agreed to under the Investment Canada Act in respect of the acquisition of Stelco Inc. in 2007, and the 2011 out-of-court settlement, concerning employment and production guarantees and maintenance of the employee pension system; and (c) take immediate action to ensure pension benefits for the 15,000 employees and pensioners remain fully funded and protected, including amending the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act to protect worker pensions in the event of bankruptcy.

He said, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to bring my motion before the House. This will be the first hour of discussion on the motion. If plans go accordingly, early in the New Year there should be an opportunity for the second hour and then hopefully not long after that an actual vote.

My reason for bringing the motion forward is not because I have suddenly become delusional and believe that we can muster a majority on our side to make what we want happen, although I wish we could. With optimism, I look forward to the next election when we may have the opportunity to do that, but it will not be just motions, it will be bills that would make a difference for the people of my community of Hamilton and the rest of Canada.

However, we will do everything we can in this struggle to ensure that, at the very least, the government is not allowed to let this item just quietly slip away, because what is at stake is just too important.

Canadians know that Hamilton is Steeltown. It is changing now if we look at employment and where most of the jobs are, but nonetheless for the time being and in our proud history, we are Steeltown. It was known as the home of Stelco and Defasco. For the most part, things went along fairly good for the community, with some give and take. Then all of a sudden in 2007, the government approved the takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel and it has been darkness ever since.

I want to read into the record an extract from the Investment Canada Act, so we understand exactly the government's responsibility in this regard. The Investment Canada Act says in part the following:

—the purposes of this Act are to provide for the review of significant investments in Canada by non-Canadians in a manner that encourages investment, economic growth and employment opportunities in Canada...

The takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel has been anything but a net benefit to my community and the citizens who are there, and the smaller businesses that support that corporation. There is no net benefit, not when one of the corporation's earliest acts was to lock out the workers. This was not a strike but a lockout. Why did it lock them out? So the corporation could attack the pension plan of workers. That alone, in my view, warrants an apology to the people of Hamilton by the current government.

I see my friend over there wants me to quiet down. It is not his constituents and their pensions. The last thing the people at home in my community want is for me to be quiet on this issue. They want noise. They want attention. They want action. That is why the motion is here. The importance of this issue is not going to be lost. Whether we win or not ultimately remains to be seen, but we are not going to lose this.

That is why I put in the motion that its the government's responsibility, its sacred responsibility, to review potential foreign takeovers to ensure that exactly what happened in Hamilton with U.S. Steel does not happen again. It is not supposed to happen. Under the legislation, it is the responsibility of the federal government, when it reviews these kinds of buyouts, to ensure that does not happen. The government let Canada down. It let the workers and the pensioners of Stelco and U.S. Steel down completely, not to mention the city of Hamilton, and I will get to that in a moment.

The other thing my motion asks for is that the secret deal that got U.S. Steel out of court for not honouring its first set of commitments needs to be made public, unless the government thinks that it can just brush that off as just being the opposition, or that it is just Rolf Gerstenberger, the president of Local 1005, who says those kinds of things, that it is those kinds of folks. It is not the case.

Let me put on the record a letter dated September 24, this year, to the federal Minister of Industry from the provincial Minister of Economic Development, Mr. Brad Duguid, and he said:

As the CCAA process continues, it would be helpful for all parties to better understand the details of the 2011 settlement between the Government of Canada and US Steel Corporation related to the company's Investment Canada Act obligations and potential implications for Ontario and Hamilton. We fully recognize that there may be legal challenges to releasing commercially sensitive information, however, it would be helpful for all parties if the federal government could share this information with all levels of government to ensure that we are all well informed. Anything you can do to assist in this matter would be most appreciated.

I am doing what I can to try to assist. I sure hope the minister is listening.

I said it was more than just a few voices in Hamilton or in Ontario. Hamilton City Council has a special committee on this issue, on the steel industry, and it is very seized of this issue. Up until now, Councillor Scott Duvall has been the chair of this, and by the way, he is a steelworker himself and certainly understands the issues.

The council has been calling for this information, because the impact on Hamilton's revenue is huge. Millions and millions of dollars stand to be lost if this corporation closes and those jobs are lost. The city is quite worried, because like every other older city, it has all kinds of challenges already without suddenly having millions of dollars of tax revenue being taken away.

In terms of the broader community, The Hamilton Spectator, on September 26, 2014, just within the last couple of months, under the heading “The Spectator's View: Ottawa should come clean on U.S. steel deal”, said:

Is it possible the federal government will heed the growing calls for it to lift the veil of secrecy covering the deal it struck with U.S. Steel back in 2011? The most recent demand for that comes from Ontario's Economic Development Minister, Brad Duguid, who wants the secrecy to end in order to protect provincial interests.

It's a reasonable demand. The chronology is as follows: U.S. Steel bought Stelco in 2007 and, amid foreign-ownership concerns, made promises around minimum employment and production. Not long after, it idled production in spite of its commitments. The federal government sued to enforce the promises and won a preliminary round. But suddenly, in 2011—