Nathan Cullen

[Natural Resources, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to see this guy at an auction. He just keeps bidding against himself.

The Liberals paid $4.5 billion for a 65-year-old pipeline, $700 million more lost every year because of their own failed review, and these clowns want to go out and spend another $15 billion building more pipelines and they do not even have a permit. What could possibly go wrong?

It is like the Prime Minister went out to buy a house, overpaid for it, did not insist on a home inspection and now the roof is leaking. The Liberals panicked. They were fleeced by a Texas oil company and now we are on the hook for their failure.

How many boil water advisories could be lifted? How many green jobs could be created? When are these guys—

[Natural Resources, January 31st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals keep telling us how the environment and the economy must go hand in hand, but on the Trans Mountain disaster, the Liberals on the one hand are hammering the environment and on the other hand are hammering our finances. The PBO reports that the Prime Minister panicked, overpaid a Texas oil company by $1 billion and it is now costing Canadians an extra $700 million every year because the Liberals' flawed environmental assessment was tossed out of court.

Will the Liberals just stop this nightmare, stop throwing good money after bad and finally start investing in the green economy, like they actually promised Canadians they would?

[Privilege, January 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, there have been many interventions, as you know, regarding the now former member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel. I wish to point out two brief but important facts after having read through the Hansard records of our former colleague's intervention.

The first point is that the former member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel made many accusations during that speech, many of the ad hominem nature, against my personal character. Those I will leave aside, but very importantly he accused me of having relied upon the interpretation of a speech he had made previously. He said I relied upon that interpretation to present my facts before the House.

It is fine to go after members of Parliament for different points of view on the topics of the day, even sometimes character assassination, as in this case, but we must leave aside at all times the excellent, non-partisan and highest-quality nature of the interpretation services that happen for all of us here. We must not suggest there is any defence made available to members of Parliament because those interpreters do not do an excellent job on behalf of us all in what are oftentimes very difficult circumstances.

The second point is that despite the insinuations that were made by our now former colleague against me, this was never a personal issue for me. I have no actual personal interactions with the former MP.

This was personal for me, though, with respect to the House of Commons and the reputations of members of Parliament, which we must jealously guard because they are constantly under siege. Raising the issue of members of Parliament who claimed to be leaving their office and then did not for a number of months is an attempt to hold up and try to maintain what we can of the esteem of Canadians, on whose behalf we seek to speak.

Now that the former member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel has resigned his seat, I can do nothing but wish him health in his future. The people in Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel will finally have representation again because they, like all Canadians, deserve no less.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on an important question of privilege pursuant to Standing Order 48(1). I very much appreciate that members are keen to return to their constituencies and families. However, I think this question of privilege will be of interest to some members.

Recently, of course, you will well know that the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel stood in this place to defend his previous absences from Parliament, and you gave us a ruling earlier this week.

We were looking over the member's comments, which were at times passing strange. However, importantly, in the midst of those comments, he likely misled Parliament. If the member were found to be in a prima facie breach of privilege, it would lead to the very serious charge of contempt of Parliament if the members of the procedure and House affairs committee were indeed to find so.

In response to the question of his long absence from Parliament, the member gave a speech in which he, in defending his behaviour, declared something. He said, “I am not collecting a salary from the House of Commons.” He repeated this assertion many times in his speech. You referred to it, actually, in your own ruling.

Just by circumstance, a fellow colleague, another member of Parliament, had written to your office about the possibilities of such a procedure when a member of Parliament who is still occupying a seat foregoes salary, as the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel claims he has done. The good officials who work on behalf of all of us wrote her back and, in quoting the Parliament of Canada Act, said, “The Parliament of Canada Act is clear in our obligation to make payment until a member retires or resigns.”

Therefore, what the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel said as part of his justification in defending his eight-month absence from the House of Commons, that he has not been receiving a salary, is factually impossible, as you will now know.

One is either a member of Parliament or not. If one is a member of Parliament, one will receive a salary. If that is true, as the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel spoke in this place, I assume he is still a member of Parliament and has been for some months. He did not retire. He did not resign. He is still receiving a salary.

I am very happy to submit for your consideration the documentation I have in hand.

We also know that the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, states:

Misleading a Minister or a Member has also been considered a form of obstruction and thus a prima facie breach of privilege.

Also, at page 141 of the 19th edition of Erskine May, Parliamentary Practice, it states:

Conspiracy to deceive either House or any committees of either House will also be treated as a breach of privilege.

It is of some historical moment and some sense of irony that as this place begins to shut down, a Liberal member stood in this place and said what he did. There is much that divides us here, there are a few things that unite us, and one of the things that unite us is to try our level best, regardless of partisan interests, to maintain the respect and dignity of this place. When members come before us, when members take their place, and knowingly mislead the House, it is the obligation of all members to call that member of Parliament to account.

We listened very carefully to the words of the member from Montreal, who told us last spring he was resigning, then did not. He then returned the same day of your ruling to give an impassioned, and sometimes somewhat coherent speech, as to why he could not have been here, that other work took him away, and yet he still received his pay. He still received the benefits of being a member of Parliament, despite the fact he never showed up for a day of work.

Most Canadians who were watching that were offended. They will be further offended if they find out that in the argument for and justification of that absence, the member then misled the House by suggesting that he had not received his pay, and yet we found from the House of Commons administration itself that that is not a possibility. He is entitled to his own opinions and his own so-called work ethic, but he is not entitled to his own facts. The facts of this matter are clear.

We present this to you humbly, on the last day this House convenes, so that you may in fact find a prima facie case, in which case we will move the privilege motion, accordingly, with great enthusiasm.

[Elections Modernization Act, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to wish my friend a merry Christmas, and the best to his family as well.

Here is the strange irony of what we are going through in the final hours of this House of Commons in this place. Of course, the House of Commons will continue, but 400 metres that way.

If we think about all the debates that have happened across this floor, where wars have been debated, Canadians have been interned, terrible things have been discussed and hard debates have happened, at the foundation of all that is our democracy, the way we vote and the way we elect people. As the member said, there are all these laudable pieces of this bill that help people vote and allow for better reporting as to what happens.

However, during his speech, part of me was wondering this. If it is such a wonderful bill, why did it take three years for it to get here, and why did it blow right by Elections Canada's deadline to implement many of the things he talked about? That was entirely the Liberals' own choice. In fact, we were banging on the door after they introduced the first version of this bill two years ago, asking them to bring it to the House so we could debate it and get on with it, so that Elections Canada could do its job.

Therefore, that lack of urgency from the Liberals is weird and troubling, and has caused them a whole bunch of problems. We now have this bill passing through the House under time allocation, which means they are shutting down debate and the ability of this House to do what it was built for.

Here is my question. Come the next election, which is less than a year away, will there be reports coming out that there has been a hack of one of the parties' databases? Will there be some sort of foreign interference in our democratic process, where Canadians will rightly be asking their elected representatives what they have done about it to protect them, to make sure they do not have a Donald Trump-style election or a Brexit-style vote? Will there be interference during the election and then, after the fact, once the votes have all been cast, will it be pulled back so we realize that millions of dollars were spent trying to influence Canadians and how they feel about their country with false information and lies, as that is how it is usually done?

As members know, a lie makes its way around the world many times before the truth is up in the morning, and is very difficult to correct with the social media environment we are in. We know all these things because the privacy and ethics committee, which the Liberals sit on, reported more than a year ago that parties should exist under some kind of privacy laws. With all the evidence we now have, does my friend at least agree that that omission from this bill was more than an oversight, and that it was in fact a grave error made by the government?

[Elections Modernization Act, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed something the hon. member just did. At the beginning of her answer she said “foreign interference” and then corrected herself to say that Bill C-76 deals with “foreign funding”. However, then she went back and repeated the inference that Bill C-76 stops foreign interference. The reason I want to challenge her on this is that we proposed amendments to the bill that would actually help stop foreign interference. We heard testimony from the Chief Electoral Officer, whose proposed changes the Liberals accept when they agree with him, but which they just ignore when they disagree with him.

We heard this from the Privacy Commissioner and from the minister's own study, which she had requested that the Canadian spy agency do, asking the very important question of how vulnerable our political system is to foreign interference, particularly through the back door that has been used in the United States and England of hacking into political parties' databases. Why is that so important? It is because those databases are huge and contain enormous amounts of personal information about Canadians. What rules would apply to political parties right now under this bill? The parties would have to put a policy statement on their website somewhere. Is it enforceable? No, it is not. Are there any requirements for what that policy must have in it? No, there are not. Therefore, can parties have vulnerable databases that can be hacked into, and if so, why does this happen? It is because a foreign entity trying to interfere with our elections will then use that data, millions of points of data about how Canadians feel about issues, their gender, age, income and all these important things, to sway them one way or another.

Could the member imagine a foreign government, let us say China to pick one, having a problem with the government of the day, say this government, and then hacking into a political party's database, let us say the Liberals' database, to find all of that rich information about Canadians and those voters who might be inclined to vote Liberal—I do not know why, but let us just say they are so inclined for some reason, because they believe the lies—and then target them not to vote Liberal but Conservative, let us say. That is exactly what happened in the United States and in England. We have these real, living examples of threats to our democracy, which the spy agency of Canada confirmed, and yet Bill C-76 does nothing to prevent these and to protect our democracy. Why not?

[Elections Modernization Act, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my friend to the debate around this bill. It is very important, of course, and we have all recognized that its passage is likely one of the last bills, if not the last bill, passed out of Parliament.

We were just discussing with some of the committee members on the privacy and ethics committee that they have completed a large study that supplemented the study that the democratic institutions minister herself asked for from our Canadian spy agency, about the threats to our elections. The minister knows this but for Canadians watching, the parties all collect an enormous amount of information about individual Canadians: voting preference, gender, income and all sorts of things to best understand the voter. Parties pursue voters to try to get them to vote a certain way and we can understand why parties want to do that. That is the name of the game. The member's party, after the last election, congratulated itself about how good it was at collecting that data.

Here is the problem. That data is not falling under any restrictions or laws in terms of its protection from foreign actors or from individuals trying to hack that data, as was done with the Democrats and probably the Republicans and as was done in the Brexit scenario with Cambridge Analytica and all the rest.

This bill would do nothing to protect that privacy of Canadians or protect our democracy from that foreign influence from bad actors, domestically or internationally. Is that protection not something we should put in, if we have the research and the study and information available that there is a real and present threat to our democracy? Why do a democracy bill and omit that important piece, if not for partisan interests?

[Elections Modernization Act, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, how we got here is the problem. The Liberals sat on the bill for hundreds of days and sat on the previous version of the bill for hundreds more days, having wasted almost three years in the process. Elections Canada gave a deadline over 200 days ago for the legislation to pass, so now not all of this bill will be incorporated. That was the problem.

One would think, after the Liberals betrayed their promise on electoral reform, the very next thing they would do to undo the unfair elections act by the Harper government would have been to get on with it, the urgency of now, but they did not.

Now we have the Senate fixing a democratic bill for the House that was passed. It is a shame, unfortunate and entirely due to the lack of any sense of responsibility or urgency on the part of the government.

[Elections Modernization Act, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, there is some history being made, an ironic sense of history, because the Liberals have put the bill under time allocation. When my friend sat in opposition, he said that it was a horrible thing for the then Harper government to do. Yes, it is historical, but it is also ironic.

I said to the government consistently that we needed to put all political parties under privacy laws. That was a recommendation from the Chief Electoral Officer, the Privacy Commissioner and the study that was commissioned by the minister herself of our spy agencies to prevent the threat of foreign hacks into our elections, as happened in the Brexit vote and the recent U.S. federal election. The Liberals ignored all of that and said they wanted to study that threat some more. What a great thing to do with a threat.

This place is historic and it does deserve our respect. Passing a bill this way, with this major flaw missing in the bill's entire composition, is an unfortunate way to commend this place to the renovation nigh for some number of years.

[Bill C-76—Time Allocation Motion, December 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this bill includes hundreds of amendments because it was so deeply flawed. It was all put under time allocation, not just here in the House but also at committee, which the Liberals previously argued vociferously against.

This is not just a historic day as this place begins its final hours before undergoing renovations, but also a day of irony that the last bill passing this chamber is about the foundations of our democracy, how we vote and how our votes are counted.

It also must be somewhat ironic for the minister, because her first act as minister was to fall on her sword for the Prime Minister and break the electoral reform promise. That was the first thing. The last thing the minister will be doing is passing a democratic bill through the House while restricting debate on the bill, which the Liberals said no one should ever do. It is unfortunate. However, the reason for that happening is that there was so much delay. The minister knows that as well as I.

My one question is this. As we look ahead, the Liberals put very little in the bill to protect Canadians against hacking by foreign governments. As we are seeing what is happening with China, Russia and all of these foreign nations right now, does the minister not believe, as her own members at the ethics and information committee believe, that political parties must be subject to privacy laws, not just suggestions or posting something on their websites, but under privacy laws as the Liberals at their own committee agreed just yesterday?