Bill C-38 (Historical)

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures

Part 1 of this enactment implements certain income tax measures and related measures proposed in the March 29, 2012 budget. Most notably, it
(a) expands the list of eligible expenses under the Medical Expense Tax Credit to include blood coagulation monitors and their disposable peripherals;
(b) introduces a temporary measure to allow certain family members to open a Registered Disability Savings Plan for an adult individual who might not be able to enter into a contract;
(c) extends, for one year, the temporary Mineral Exploration Tax Credit for flow-through share investors;
(d) allows corporations to make split and late eligible dividend designations;
(e) makes the salary of the Governor General taxable and adjusts that salary;
(f) allows a designated partner of a partnership to provide a waiver on behalf of all partners to extend the time limit for issuing a determination in respect of the partnership;
(g) amends the penalty applicable to promoters of charitable donation tax shelters who file false registration information or who fail to register a tax shelter prior to selling interests in the tax shelter;
(h) introduces a new penalty applicable to tax shelter promoters who fail to respond to a demand to file an information return or who file an information return that contains false or misleading sales information;
(i) limits the period for which a tax shelter identification number is valid to one calendar year;
(j) modifies the rules for registering certain foreign charitable organizations as qualified donees;
(k) amends the rules for determining the extent to which a charity has engaged in political activities; and
(l) provides the Minister of National Revenue with the authority to suspend the privileges, with respect to issuing tax receipts, of a registered charity or a registered Canadian amateur athletic association if the charity or association fails to report information that is required to be filed annually in an information return or devotes resources to political activities in excess of the limits set out in the Income Tax Act.
Part 1 also implements other selected income tax measures and related measures. Most notably, it
(a) amends the Income Tax Act consequential on the implementation of the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, including the extension of the tax deferral allowed to farmers in a designated area who produce listed grains and receive deferred cash purchase tickets to all Canadian farmers who produce listed grains and receive deferred cash purchase tickets;
(b) provides authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue via online notice or regular mail demands to file a return; and
(c) introduces a requirement for commercial tax preparers to file income tax returns electronically.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act to implement certain excise tax and goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed in the March 29, 2012 Budget. It expands the list of GST/HST zero-rated medical and assistive devices as well as the list of GST/HST zero-rated non-prescription drugs that are used to treat life-threatening diseases. It also exempts certain pharmacists’ professional services from the GST/HST, other than prescription drug dispensing services that are already zero-rated. It further allows certain literacy organizations to claim a rebate of the GST and the federal component of the HST paid on the acquisition of books to be given away for free by those organizations. It also implements legislative requirements relating to the Government of British Columbia’s decision to exit the harmonized sales tax framework. Additional amendments to that Act and related regulations in respect of foreign-based rental vehicles temporarily imported by Canadian residents provide, in certain circumstances, relief from the GST/HST, the Green Levy on fuel-inefficient vehicles and the automobile air conditioner tax. This Part further amends that Act to ensure that changes to the standardized fuel consumption test method used for the EnerGuide, as announced on February 17, 2012 by the Minister of Natural Resources, do not affect the application of the Green Levy.
Finally, Part 2 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Excise Tax Act to provide authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue via online notice or regular mail demands to file a return.
Part 3 contains certain measures related to responsible resource development.
Division 1 of Part 3 enacts the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, which establishes a new federal environmental assessment regime. Assessments are conducted in relation to projects, designated by regulations or by the Minister of the Environment, to determine whether they are likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects that fall within the legislative authority of Parliament, or that are directly linked or necessarily incidental to a federal authority’s exercise of a power or performance of a duty or function that is required for the carrying out of the project.
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the National Energy Board or a review panel established by the Minister are to conduct assessments within applicable time limits. At the end of an assessment, a decision statement is to be issued to the project proponent who is required to comply with the conditions set out in it.
The enactment provides for cooperation between the federal government and other jurisdictions by enabling the delegation of an environmental assessment, the substitution of the process of another jurisdiction for an environmental assessment under the Act and the exclusion of a project from the application of the Act when there is an equivalent assessment by another jurisdiction. The enactment requires that there be opportunities for public participation during an environmental assessment, that participant funding programs and a public registry be established, and that there be follow-up programs in relation to all environmental assessments. It also provides for powers of inspection and fines.
Finally, the enactment specifies that federal authorities are not to take certain measures regarding the carrying out of projects on federal lands or outside Canada unless they determine that those projects are not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.
This Division also makes related amendments to the Environmental Violations Administrative Monetary Penalties Act and consequential amendments to other Acts, and repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
Division 2 of Part 3 amends the National Energy Board Act to allow the Governor in Council to make the decision about the issuance of certificates for major pipelines. It amends the Act to establish time limits for regulatory reviews under the Act and to enhance the powers of the National Energy Board Chairperson and the Minister responsible for the Act to ensure that those reviews are conducted in a timely manner. It also amends the Act to permit the National Energy Board to exercise federal jurisdiction over navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters and it establishes an administrative monetary penalty system.
Division 3 of Part 3 amends the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act to authorize the National Energy Board to exercise federal jurisdiction over navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters.
Division 4 of Part 3 amends the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to extend the maximum allowable term of temporary members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from six months to three years. It is also amended to allow for a licence to be transferred with the consent of that Commission and it puts in place an administrative monetary penalty system.
Division 5 of Part 3 amends the Fisheries Act to focus that Act on the protection of fish that support commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fisheries and to more effectively manage those activities that pose the greatest threats to these fisheries. The amendments provide additional clarity for the authorization of serious harm to fish and of deposits of deleterious substances. The amendments allow the Minister to enter into agreements with provinces and with other bodies, provide for the control and management of aquatic invasive species, clarify and expand the powers of inspectors, and permit the Governor in Council to designate another Minister as the Minister responsible for the administration and enforcement of subsections 36(3) to (6) of the Fisheries Act for the purposes of, and in relation to, subject matters set out by order.
Division 6 of Part 3 amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to provide the Minister of the Environment with the authority to renew disposal at sea permits in prescribed circumstances. It is also amended to change the publication requirements for disposal at sea permits and to provide authority to make regulations respecting time limits for their issuance and renewal.
Division 7 of Part 3 amends the Species at Risk Act to allow for the issuance of authorizations with a longer term, to clarify the authority to renew the authorizations and to make compliance with conditions of permits enforceable. The Act is also amended to provide authority to make regulations respecting time limits for the issuance and renewal of permits under the Act. Furthermore, section 77 is amended to ensure that the National Energy Board will be able to issue a certificate when required to do so by the Governor in Council under subsection 54(1) of the National Energy Board Act.
Part 4 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Division 1 of Part 4 amends a number of Acts to eliminate the requirement for the Auditor General of Canada to undertake annual financial audits of certain entities and to assess the performance reports of two agencies. This Division also eliminates other related obligations.
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act to prohibit the issuance of life annuity-like products.
Division 3 of Part 4 provides that PPP Canada Inc. is an agent of Her Majesty for purposes limited to its mandated activities at the federal level, including the provision of advice to federal departments and Crown corporations on public-private partnership projects.
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Northwest Territories Act, the Nunavut Act and the Yukon Act to provide the authority for the Governor in Council to set, on the recommendation of the Minister of Finance, the maximum amount of territorial borrowings and to make regulations in relation to those maximum amounts, including what constitutes borrowing, the relevant entities and the valuation of the borrowings.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act to modify, for parent Crown corporations, the period to which their quarterly financial reports relate, so that it is aligned with their financial year, and to include in the place of certain annual tabling requirements related to the business and activities of parent Crown corporations a requirement to make public consolidated quarterly reports on their business and activities. It also amends the Alternative Fuels Act and the Public Service Employment Act to eliminate certain reporting requirements.
Division 6 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to establish the Social Security Tribunal and to add provisions authorizing the electronic administration or enforcement of programs, legislation, activities or policies. It also amends the Canada Pension Plan, the Old Age Security Act and the Employment Insurance Act so that appeals from decisions made under those Acts will be heard by the Social Security Tribunal. Finally, it provides for transitional provisions and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add provisions relating to the protection of personal information obtained in the course of administering or enforcing the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act and repeals provisions in the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act that are substantially the same as those that are added to the Human Resources and Skills Development Act.
Division 8 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add provisions relating to the social insurance registers and Social Insurance Numbers. It also amends the Canada Pension Plan in relation to Social Insurance Numbers and the Employment Insurance Act to repeal certain provisions relating to the social insurance registers and Social Insurance Numbers and to maintain the power to charge the costs of those registers to the Employment Insurance Operating Account.
Division 9 of Part 4 amends the Parks Canada Agency Act to provide that the Agency may enter into agreements with other ministers or bodies to assist in the administration and enforcement of legislation in places outside national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas and other protected heritage areas if considerations of geography make it impractical for the other minister or body to administer and enforce that legislation in those places. It also amends that Act to provide that the Chief Executive Officer is to report to the Minister of the Environment under section 31 of that Act every five years. It amends that Act to remove the requirements for annual corporate plans, annual reports and annual audits, and amends that Act, the Canada National Parks Act and the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act to provide that that Minister is to review management plans for national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas and other protected heritage areas at least every 10 years and is to have any amendments to a plan tabled in Parliament.
Division 10 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act in order to allow public sector investment pools that satisfy certain criteria, including pursuing commercial objectives, to directly invest in a Canadian financial institution, subject to approval by the Minister of Finance.
Division 11 of Part 4 amends the National Housing Act, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act and the Supporting Vulnerable Seniors and Strengthening Canada’s Economy Act to enhance the governance and oversight framework of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
This Division also amends the National Housing Act to establish a registry for institutions that issue covered bonds and for covered bond programs and to provide for the protection of covered bond contracts and covered bond collateral in the event of an issuer’s bankruptcy or insolvency. It also makes amendments to the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act, the Insurance Companies Act and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act to prohibit institutions from issuing covered bonds except within the framework established under the National Housing Act. Finally, it includes a coordinating amendment to the Supporting Vulnerable Seniors and Strengthening Canada’s Economy Act.
Division 12 of Part 4 implements the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America signed on May 26, 2009.
Division 13 of Part 4 amends the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act to reflect an increase in Canada’s quota subscription, as related to the ratification of the 2010 Quota and Governance reform resolution of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund, and to align the timing of the annual report under that Act to correspond to that of the annual report under the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act.
Division 14 of Part 4 amends the Canada Health Act so that members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are included in the definition of “insured person”.
Division 15 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to
(a) remove the office of the Inspector General;
(b) require the Security Intelligence Review Committee to submit to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness a certificate on the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s annual report; and
(c) increase the information on the Service’s activities to be provided by that Committee to that Minister.
Division 16 of Part 4 amends the Currency Act to clarify certain provisions that relate to the calling in and the redemption of coins.
Division 17 of Part 4 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act in order to implement the total transfer protection for the 2012-2013 fiscal year and to give effect to certain elements of major transfer renewal that were announced by the Minister of Finance on December 19, 2011. It also makes certain administrative amendments to that Act and to the Canada Health Act.
Division 18 of Part 4 amends the Fisheries Act to authorize the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to allocate fish for the purpose of financing scientific and fisheries management activities in the context of joint project agreements.
Division 19 of Part 4 amends the Food and Drugs Act to give the Minister of Health the power to establish a list that sets out prescription drugs or classes of prescription drugs and to provide that the list may be incorporated by reference. It also gives the Minister the power to issue marketing authorizations that exempt a food, or an advertisement with respect to a food, from certain provisions of the Act. The division also provides that a regulation with respect to a food and a marketing authorization may incorporate by reference any document. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 20 of Part 4 amends the Government Employees Compensation Act to allow prescribed entities to be subrogated to the rights of employees to make claims against third parties.
Division 21 of Part 4 amends the International Development Research Centre Act to reduce the maximum number of governors of the Centre to 14, and to consequently change other rules about the number of governors.
Division 22 of Part 4 amends Part I of the Canada Labour Code to require the parties to a collective agreement to file a copy of it with the Minister of Labour, subject to the regulations, as a condition for it to come into force. It amends Part III of that Act to require employers that provide benefits to their employees under long-term disability plans to insure those plans, subject to certain exceptions. The Division also amends that Part to create an offence and to increase maximum fines for offences under that Part.
Division 23 of Part 4 repeals the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
Division 24 of Part 4 amends the Old Age Security Act to provide the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development with the authority to waive the requirement for an application for Old Age Security benefits for many eligible seniors, to gradually increase the age of eligibility for the Old Age Security Pension, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Allowance and the Allowance for the Survivor and to allow individuals to voluntarily defer their Old Age Security Pension up to five years past the age of eligibility, in exchange for a higher, actuarially adjusted, pension.
Division 25 of Part 4 dissolves the Public Appointments Commission and its secretariat.
Division 26 of Part 4 amends the Seeds Act to give the President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency the power to issue licences to persons authorizing them to perform activities related to controlling or assuring the quality of seeds or seed crops.
Division 27 of Part 4 amends the Statutory Instruments Act to remove the distribution requirements for the Canada Gazette.
Division 28 of Part 4 amends the Investment Canada Act in order to authorize the Minister of Industry to communicate or disclose certain information relating to investments and to accept security in order to promote compliance with undertakings.
Division 29 of Part 4 amends the Customs Act to allow the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to designate a portion of a roadway or other access way that leads to a customs office and that is used by persons arriving in Canada and by persons travelling within Canada as a mixed-traffic corridor. All persons who are travelling in a mixed-traffic corridor must present themselves to a border services officer and state whether they are arriving from a location outside or within Canada.
Division 30 of Part 4 gives retroactive effect to subsections 39(2) and (3) of the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.
Division 31 of Part 4 amends the Railway Safety Act to limit the apportionment of costs to a road authority when a grant has been made under section 12 of that Act.
Division 32 of Part 4 amends the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act to replace the two Vice-chairperson positions with two permanent member positions.
Division 33 of Part 4 repeals the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development Act and authorizes the closing out of the affairs of the Centre established by that Act.
Division 34 of Part 4 amends the Health of Animals Act to allow the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to declare certain areas to be control zones in respect of a disease or toxic substance. The enactment also grants the Minister certain powers, including the power to make regulations prohibiting the movement of persons, animals or things in the control zones for the purpose of eliminating a disease or toxic substance or controlling its spread and the power to impose conditions on the movement of animals or things in those zones.
Division 35 of Part 4 amends the Canada School of Public Service Act to abolish the Board of Governors of the Canada School of Public Service and to place certain responsibilities on the Minister designated for the purposes of the Act and on the President of the School.
Division 36 of Part 4 amends the Bank Act by adding a preamble to it.
Division 37 of Part 4 amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to eliminate the requirement of a hearing for certain reviews.
Division 38 of Part 4 amends the Coasting Trade Act to add seismic activities to the list of exceptions to the prohibition against foreign ships and non-duty paid ships engaging in the coasting trade.
Division 39 of Part 4 amends the Status of the Artist Act to dissolve the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal and transfer its powers and duties to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
Division 40 of Part 4 amends the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act to give the Round Table the power to sell or otherwise dispose of its assets and satisfy its debts and liabilities and to give the Minister of the Environment the power to direct the Round Table in respect of the exercise of some of its powers. The Division provides for the repeal of the Act and makes consequential amendments to other acts.
Division 41 of Part 4 amends the Telecommunications Act to change the rules relating to foreign ownership of Canadian carriers eligible to operate as telecommunications common carriers and to permit the recovery of costs associated with the administration and enforcement of the national do not call list.
Division 42 of Part 4 amends the Employment Equity Act to remove the requirements that are specific to the Federal Contractors Program for Employment Equity.
Division 43 of Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act to permit a person’s benefits to be determined by reference to their highest earnings in a given number of weeks, to permit regulations to be made respecting what constitutes suitable employment, to remove the requirement that a consent to deduction be in writing, to provide a limitation period within which certain repayments of overpayments need to be deducted and paid and to clarify the provisions respecting the refund of premiums to self-employed persons. It also amends that Act to modify the Employment Insurance premium rate-setting mechanism, including requiring that the rate be set on a seven-year break-even basis once the Employment Insurance Operating Account returns to balance. The Division makes consequential amendments to the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act.
Division 44 of Part 4 amends the Customs Tariff to make certain imported fuels duty-free and to increase the travellers’ exemption thresholds.
Division 45 of Part 4 amends the Canada Marine Act to require provisions of a port authority’s letters patent relating to limits on the authority’s power to borrow money to be recommended by the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance before they are approved by the Governor in Council.
Division 46 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Land Management Act to implement changes made to the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management, including changes relating to the description of land that is to be subject to a land code, and to provide for the coming into force of land codes and the development by First Nations of environmental protection regimes.
Division 47 of Part 4 amends the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Act to increase the maximum indemnity in respect of individual travelling exhibitions, as well as the maximum indemnity in respect of all travelling exhibitions.
Division 48 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act to provide that the chief executive officer of the Authority is appointed by the Governor in Council and that an employee may not replace the chief executive officer for more than 90 days without the Governor in Council’s approval.
Division 49 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act to repeal provisions related to the First Nations Statistical Institute and amends that Act and other Acts to remove any reference to that Institute. It authorizes the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to close out the Institute’s affairs.
Division 50 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act to provide for the payment or reimbursement of fees for career transition services for veterans or their survivors.
Division 51 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add powers, duties and functions that are substantially the same as those conferred by the Department of Social Development Act. It repeals the Department of Social Development Act and, in doing so, eliminates the National Council of Welfare.
Division 52 of Part 4 amends the Wage Earner Protection Program Act in order to correct the English version of the definition “eligible wages”.
Division 53 of Part 4 repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
Division 54 of Part 4 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Budget Implementation Act, 2008 to provide for the termination of certain applications for permanent residence that were made before February 27, 2008. This Division also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things, authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions establishing and governing classes of permanent residents as part of the economic class and to provide that the User Fees Act does not apply in respect of fees set by those instructions. Furthermore, this Division amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow for the retrospective application of certain regulations and certain instructions given by the Minister, if those regulations and instructions so provide, and to authorize regulations to be made respecting requirements imposed on employers in relation to authorizations to work in Canada.
Division 55 of Part 4 enacts the Shared Services Canada Act to establish Shared Services Canada to provide certain administrative services specified by the Governor in Council. The Act provides for the Governor in Council to designate a minister to preside over Shared Services Canada.
Division 56 of Part 4 amends the Assisted Human Reproduction Act to respond to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act that was rendered in 2010, including by repealing the provisions that were found to be unconstitutional and abolishing the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today at the hour of adjournment to pursue a question I asked May 2, the day the Minister of Finance tabled Bill C-69. This is what is called, in the vernacular, an omnibus budget bill. Liberals will remember those words because it was in the platform of the Liberals that they would not introduce such things as omnibus budget bills.

Liberals also promised that they would make sure that the legislation brought forward would have full consultation with indigenous peoples as required under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; that did not happen either. We also had a promise to improve environmental assessment. What I did on May 2 was refer to this as something of a hat trick. There were three different platform promises broken in one omnibus budget bill.

The part that concerns me the most, although it is hard to say which is worse, is I think what we have had happen here is a gross violation of our responsibility as parliamentarians to respond to the challenges and the need to have environmental assessment legislation that works, to ensure that it is constitutionally valid and to ensure that it is studied in the appropriate committee.

Let me try to point out one of the major reasons it is so deeply offensive that the Minister of Finance brought forward the changes being made to the environmental impact bill. This is a huge omnibus bill. There are over 40 different divisions, not to mention there are over 300 sections to the bill. We get to the environmental assessment bits by the time we get to division 28, part 6 and then we start realizing something.

This is what I think as an environmental lawyer and I have consulted some friends who do constitutional law. The Liberals may not have fixed the problem that the Supreme Court had because the way they have defined when something is in federal jurisdiction is to get rid of language they think the court did not like, which was language around things like “adverse effect”. They said an adverse effect, and throughout the bill it is the same every time, within federal jurisdiction is a “non-negligible” adverse change. That is repeated multiple times.

My point is we cannot come up with a conclusion that an effect is non-negligible before studying the project and having some idea what the impact is going to be. We cannot decide, ahead of time, that it is non-negligible. It is a tautology. It is hastily drafted. The court ruled that the last version violated the Constitution by having federal intrusions into provincial jurisdiction.

Here is the problem: The bill continues with what Stephen Harper did in wrecking environmental assessment in, yes again, omnibus budget Bill C-38 in spring 2012. This was a chance to fix it. The Liberals blew it.

Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise tonight to participate in the debate on Bill C-69. The debate has been treated by some speakers as a debate on the whole budget. That is fair enough as it is the budget implementation bill. I certainly appreciated very much the remarks by my colleague, the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, moments ago, who focused on some aspects of Bill C-69 and the budget that I will not be able to address in my remarks.

In the time I have available, I want to dive deeply into one part of Bill C-69. For those who are observing tonight's debate, perhaps I can just back up and say that this is what is called an omnibus budget bill. It is exactly the kind of bill that, in the 2015 election platform by the Liberals, they said they would not be using. It is an omnibus budget bill in that it deals with many aspects of things that are in the budget, and particularly a reference in the budget to the court case on impact assessment legislation.

What is tucked into a bill that is over 400 pages is, from page 555 to page 581, a section I do not believe should be in there. I will be very clear from the start that it is a rewriting of substantial sections of the Impact Assessment Act. The irony is probably not lost on people who have tracked the debate on environmental assessment in this country that when the Liberals brought in repairs to the environmental assessment legislation that they had promised would be done in the election platform of 2015, that bill was also called Bill C-69.

I voted against that bill. I will be voting against this one too. This speech is my effort to try to persuade government members, and particularly the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Justice, to rethink things and to pull what is called part 4, division 28, of Bill C-69 and instead bring in what was promised in 2015, repairing what had happened to our impact assessment legislation, which is usually called environmental assessment legislation in this country.

I do not have much time to set this out, so forgive me for taking the time it takes to explain it. In 1975, this country held its first federal environmental assessment, ironically, of the Wreck Cove hydro project in my home province of Nova Scotia, on my home island of Cape Breton Island, and I attended those hearings. The federal government at that time was operating under something called the environmental assessment review process, a guidelines order by order in council to the federal cabinet. It set out basically that when the federal government did something, the federal government reviewed its own actions.

There is no question of constitutionality because the federal government was reviewing its own actions. The rule under the guidelines order was that if it was on federal land, involved federal money or permits given under certain kinds of acts, one had to have an environmental assessment. That general formulation went into the drafting in the late 1980s, under the government of the late Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, of an environmental assessment process that again started with the four corners of federal jurisdiction, including whether something is on federal land and involving federal money. It evolved into something called the law list permits, which were given under various acts.

The whole scheme worked very well. It evolved. There were many amendments over the years. It had a five-year review process. By the time 2012 rolled around, one could talk to almost anyone in the industry about it and hear the same thing. It was predictable. With the Mining Association of Canada, for instance, I remember the CEO, Pierre Gratton, asking why the Conservatives were trying to wreck the act now. He said that we had just finally made it right and liked the way it worked.

A federal environmental assessment act was brought in under Brian Mulroney and enacted under former prime minister Jean Chrétien. It had evolved over the years. In the spring of 2012, in an omnibus budget bill called Bill C-38, the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper set out to destroy the legislation. It was repealed in its entirety and was replaced with something called CEAA, 2012.

At the same time, it also went after the pieces of legislation that triggered environmental assessment, the law list sections, the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and so on.

To fast-forward, in the election of 2015, the Liberals promised in the platform to repair and fix what had been done by Harper to environmental assessment, to the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In 2016 and 2017, various ministers went to work. The current Minister of Public Safety, who was the then minister of fisheries, actually did fix the Fisheries Act. He got it back to what it had been before and even improved it. The former minister of transport, our former colleague, the Hon. Marc Garneau, really fixed the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Somehow or other, our former minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, was persuaded, I believe by officials in her department, not to fix it. The single biggest change that was made, besides repealing the Environmental Assessment Act, was to ditch the criteria that tethered environmental assessment to areas of federal jurisdiction if it was on federal land, involved federal money or under a permit given by the federal government.

Instead, Stephen Harper's government created something called the “designated projects” list, which could be anything the ministers thought they wanted to put on the list. It was project-based but not decision-based, and it could be anything, at the minister's discretion. That was CEAA 2012. It meant we went from having 5,000 to 6,000 federal projects a year reviewed, and they were mostly paper reviews that went quickly, to fewer than 100 reviewed every year. We can see perhaps the attraction for people in the civil service to not go back to actually reviewing the federal projects every single year and to keep it to fewer than 100.

Somehow, the federal government, under former minister Catherine McKenna, put forward Bill C-69 and decided to reject the advice of the expert environmental assessment panel, under the former chair of BAPE Johanne Gélinas. It kept the key elements Stephen Harper had put in place, which was that the Environmental Assessment Agency was no longer responsible for many assessments, and regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, now the Canada Energy Regulator, the offshore petroleum boards or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would do their environmental assessments separately. It also got rid of the idea that we are tethered strongly to federal jurisdiction. It remained discretionary. That is why I voted against Bill C-69..

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney said that this was the anti-pipeline act. I said that it was completely discretionary to the minister in a different government and that it was the pro-pipeline act. Where is the rooting to federal jurisdiction? Where is the commitment to review everything the federal government does to make sure we have considered its environmental impacts? Those were all thrown out the window. I may have been the only one in the pro-environmental assessment community, although I do not think I was the only one, who actually cheered on October 13, 2023, when the Supreme Court of Canada said that the designated projects list was actually ultra vires the federal government. It would just ask a minister to say what project they want on a list, but it was not rooted in federal jurisdiction the way it had been from 1975, under a guidelines order, to 1993, when it became law, right up until 2012 and Bill C-38 when Harper repealed it.

Then, for some crazy reason, and I use the word “crazy” advisedly because I do not know the reason and I am not referring to anyone in particular, the Liberals decided to keep the designated project list, which is the part that the reference in the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada said was ultra vires the federal government and now stuffed in an omnibus budget bill that we were told we would never see. We get amendments to the Environmental Assessment Act that keep the designated projects list.

I do not think this new version in Bill C-69 is going to get Supreme Court of Canada approval. I know it will not get environmental assessments for projects across this country that need to be assessed. It will not get environmental assessment for Highway 413. It will not get environmental assessment for things that are squarely within federal jurisdiction. What it will do is be a quick and dirty fix that only goes to the finance committee for study.

With that, I will close my opening remarks with what I can only describe as disgust.

Natural Resources

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am returning to a question I asked in question period on October 18, 2023, just last fall. The question was asked five days after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down sections of the government's bill on environmental assessment, which it redubbed “impact assessment” and which came forward through Bill C-69.

I practised environmental law. I will briefly share with the chamber that I actually worked in the Mulroney government and took a draft environmental assessment law through to the Privy Council to get permission for the government of the day to bring forward the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which ultimately entered into force around 1993. It went through several changes. It was an excellent piece of legislation; it worked well. It was repealed under an omnibus budget bill under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government and was struck down and eliminated by Bill C-38 in spring 2012. That was more than lamentable.

When the new government came in, in 2015, the current Prime Minister gave a mandate letter to the former minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, to fix this. Tragically, she ignored the advice of environmental experts, even those she had empanelled.

What I asked on October 18 was whether the new Minister of Environment and the Minister of Justice would follow the excellent advice of the expert panel on environmental assessment law that was chaired by former Chair of the BAPE, Johanne Gélinas, and many environmental experts, and which was thoroughly supported, certainly by the Green Party and by me. I asked whether we would follow the advice that the essence of environmental assessment law is to evaluate the projects of the federal government itself: at a minimum, the panel said, federal land, federal money or where federal permits are issued. There was an additional list of concerns.

Tragically, the government ignored the advice. It took the advice of the Impact Assessment Agency itself. What I asked the minister on October 18 was whether the government would now commit to reviewing and putting in place the recommendations. An excellent opportunity was created by the court's striking down, as I completely predicted it would, the sections that were based on the designated project list itself, a creation of Harper's Bill C-38, which was a terrible way of weakening environmental law while at the same time failing to honour federal jurisdiction.

The minister missed the point of my question and merely said that they were going to fix it. I am desperately worried they are going to do a quick fix, and that in the quick fix, they will once again listen to the advice of the wrong people.

I beg the parliamentary secretary to tell us tonight that the government will follow the advice of the expert panel that gave them the right road to fixing the environmental assessment law in this country.

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today, as always, here on the territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation. To them I say meegwetch.

We are here tonight to debate Bill C-47. Bill C-47 is not the budget. The budget is a different document. It is related, of course, but Bill C-47 contains those legislative changes that are necessary in order to have the measures in the budget, not all of them but some of them, move ahead.

The measures in the budget that are simply allocations of funds that do not require legislative changes will not be found in Bill C-47, and so I find myself strangely in the position, having studied Bill C-47, of thinking I might vote for it, even though I could not possibly vote for the government's budget. The budget has much in it that I could not support, such as increased subsidies for fossil fuels disguised as carbon capture and storage, and the use of fossil fuels to create hydrogen, thus taking what should be a green fuel and making it a fossil-fuel source again. However, the budget implementation act is not that. Let me go over what it is.

The budget implementation act is 429 pages in four parts. The longest part, part 4, has 39 different divisions. They are wide-ranging and cover many different things. In that, let me confirm that this is an omnibus bill, but it is not an illegitimate omnibus bill. It is nothing like Bill C-38 of spring 2012 when the previous administration under Stephen Harper destroyed 70 different acts in one bill with changes that had not been forecast in the budget. That was an illegitimate omnibus bill. This one is a reasonable omnibus bill, because in order to implement the budget, multiple things need to be changed.

For instance, part 1 of this very long bill deals with the Income Tax Act and such things as creating a deduction for tradesmen's tools and going on to divorce and that separated parents can open up a joint registered educational savings plan for their children. There are such things, as we have heard about, related to the new program to cover dental care and changing the tax rules so that CRA can disclose personal information about Canadians so that they can get their dental care. Part 3 deals with air traveller security changes. I could go on and on, because it is 429 pages. By division 39, at the end of the bill, we have changes to the Canada Elections Act to deal with the protection of personal information. This is a wide-ranging bill. It even touches on foreign policy. This next one is good, and I think Conservatives would want to vote for it too. At division 5 of part 4, we remove Russia and Belarus from the most favoured nation tariff treatment.

I want to devote the time I have remaining to talk about one of the longer sections, which relates to issues I have been working on for years and some of which I was ecstatic to see. This deals with division 21, the oceans protection plan.

The budget itself has two references to our oceans. They are both found on page 135, and they are remarkably brief. One says that we are going to protect Canada's whales. Now, this is basically a dressed up repackaging of new money to such departments as Fisheries and Oceans, Transport Canada, Environment Canada and Parks Canada for what the budget claims will be continuing to protect endangered whales and their habitats. That is just fine and dandy, but that is not in the budget implementation act, which is just as well, because I have rarely been as furious, disillusioned or angry.

I am absolutely distraught by the government's April 20 decision to approve this terrible project that goes against the interests of endangered species.

On April 20, what did the government do just in time for Earth Day? It approved a disastrous project that likely spells the extinction of the southern resident killer whale, our Fraser River chinook salmon and numerous other species, including the western sandpiper. It is a project called Roberts Bank on the Fraser River estuary. It will result in basically covering in concrete over 70% of that flood plain habitat. It is an outrage. It is not in the budget implementation act, but it puts the lie to the budget is going to have a section that protects whales. Right. It is hypocrisy writ large. I see other friends from British Columbia nodding. We know. This is an outrage.

The next part of the budget that deals with oceans is, I think, where we see most of the over 60 pages in the budget implementation act, for what is called the division that deals with the oceans protection plan. That probably relates to this one line item of cleaner and healthier ports. Budget 2023 proposes to provide $165.4 million over seven years to establish a green shipping corridor program to reduce the impact of marine shipping on surrounding ecosystems, and there is more to it.

What do we find in the budget implementation act and how is it relevant to what I just read? I have to say there is a lot in here that is just playing catch up with time passing. This bill deals with things such as oil-sourced pollution. Where there is pollution caused by a vessel, we are increasing how much the shipper, the owner of the ship, might have to pay. I do not think it is enough, by the way. It has changed from what was said in the Marine Liability Act, which is already on the books. Believe it or not, in respect of claims for loss of life or personal injury, it was a $1-million limit. This budget implementation act moves it to a $1.5-million limit and so on. That is one specific area.

There is another specific area that I want to mention briefly because I really think it is important. At page 241 of the budget implementation act is a section which says that under the Marine Liability Act, in terms of costs that the vessel owner and company must be responsible for, under the Hazardous and Noxious Substances Convention, they will now be required to compensate indigenous peoples for economic loss in relation to hunting, fishing, trapping or harvesting rights under section 35 of the Constitution. It is a better recognition of indigenous rights.

There is much here but I do want to concentrate on what was, for me, what I have been hoping for, for some years. Ironically, about a week before the budget implementation act came out, I wrote to the Minister of Finance, Minister of Transport, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister of Environment to ask if we are ever going to see any measures to implement the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act. Are we ever going to see the promised vessel remediation fund? Is it going to be in the budget implementation act? Surprise, it is. It is found at section 430, page 277 for anyone reading the budget implementation act at home. I have to wonder about their lives if they are reading the budget implementation act at home, especially if they are reading it out loud to their children. It will certainly put anyone to sleep.

It is very exciting because we passed the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act four years ago, in March 2019. We were excited on that day that we got it done. Most people here who do not live in coastal areas would not know what a hazard it is to have an abandoned vessel, somebody's old sailboat. They are fibreglass. If somebody owns them and they are moored in the harbour, moored in navigational lanes, getting rid of them is really hard.

In Atlantic Canada, it is not so hard, because over the course of the winter any abandoned boat will be smashed to bits and gone by spring, but if someone lives along the coast of the Salish Sea or along British Columbia's coast, the boats are there almost forever. In a time when we have the horror of people who are inadequately housed, many people who are homeless will move onto these vessels and live there. They are unsafe.

Once we got the act passed, we thought we had solved the problem, but then the government refused to act. I have constituents who say there is an abandoned vessel and ask if we will do something. The Coast Guard, DFO and Transport Canada all pass the buck and do not move the vessel. The problem is they do not have the money, they say.

Now we have this new fund. Details will come out on how it is going to work in regulations, but I could not be more pleased that we now have a vessel remediation fund and additional powers for the Minister of Transport. There are other related measures in Bill C-33 which we have not yet debated in this place but maybe, just maybe, the budget implementation act, at long last, will allow us to implement the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act.

With that I will close.

Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for opening her speech with a condemnation of the loss of women's rights that appears to be imminent in the United States.

I want to address the issue of the budget implementation act by starting with a fair statement. I have gone through the bill, and of course it is very long. I do not find any hidden, sneaky things that should not be in a budget implementation bill, as we experienced in 2012 with two budget implementation bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, that were disastrous. Then we had, in 2018, one sneaky thing that I lament, which was putting deferred prosecution agreements in the Criminal Code. That should not have been in a budget implementation act. It is hard to prove a negative, but right now it looks like there is nothing sneaky in this bill.

The main thing I want to ask the minister about is her reference to the climate crisis as an existential threat, which is defined as a threat to existence. It is a threat to the existence of a habitable planet. If we read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's April 4 report, we are currently on a trajectory to an unlivable world. This budget is not taking us away from that trajectory; it doubles down on it.

Would the hon. minister consider re-examining this bill and all bills in relation to the IPCC report?

Resuming Debate on the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will not comment on the individuals involved. Many of them are colleagues or friends. It does not matter, the structure is wrong. This is not a time for a multi-stakeholder group. I strongly recommend, and I have done so to the minister, that the government bring back the national round table on the environment and the economy, which was killed by Stephen Harper in the omnibus budget, Bill C-38. We do like multi-stakeholder advice, and we like multi-stakeholders at committees, but this is not a place for a multi-stakeholder committee. This is a place for a panel of experts to make sure the government understands the science, because so far it does not seem to.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, in Adjournment Proceedings this evening, I am pursuing a question for which I did not receive an adequate answer on November 20.

I asked about the new legislation before us, Bill C-12, which proclaims itself as a net-zero climate accountability act. It fails on almost every point. The Green caucus is struggling with how to handle it. We want so very much to support climate accountability, but we struggle with whether we can even vote for this legislation at second reading to send it to committee.

Here is what the legislation must do as the bottom line requirement to be called accountability on net zero for climate action: We have to get the science right, we have to get the process right and we have to get the accountability right. Right now, it has three strikes and this legislation is out.

Getting the science right means that in the preamble, one does not cite one aspect of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science, that to hold to 1.5°C we must have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, all the while ignoring the closer-term reality of the emergency and the urgency. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says that to have any hope of holding to 1.5°C, we need massive reductions in greenhouse gases in the next decade.

It is not an even pace of having three decades so we take our time and do it in even bits every 10 years. No, we cannot do that. Most of the heavy lifting has to be done before 2030. That is not clear in the legislation. As a matter of fact, it is denied by the way the legislation is structured with a first milestone year in 2030.

Next is getting the process right. I am honestly baffled that the Liberal government appears to have ignored the experience garnered in other countries with climate accountability legislation. The U.K. has had its legislation since 2008. There are lessons to be learned there. Similarly, New Zealand, which brought in its legislation, learned from the U.K.'s experience, as did Denmark. All of the climate accountability legislation in countries where it is working has relied on expert advice. To the extent they have an advisory group, they are experts.

This legislation wants to have an advisory body that seems to be another version of a multistakeholder group without expertise. That is a very significant error. I like multistakeholder groups. I used to be vice-chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which was destroyed and repealed. It was originally put in place by the Mulroney government, by the way, and it was repealed under Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012. We should bring a national round table or something like that back, but not through the back door of Bill C-12, where we need expertise, not multistakeholder advice.

The third area of accountability that fails is having the mechanisms to hold the government to account and getting them right. This bill does not use mandatory language around the minister meeting a target. It is interesting. I have been conferring with colleagues in New Zealand and they are looking at saying, if the target is missed, that means the government will have to make up what it missed by buying credits and paying for them. Their finance department is getting ready to book the costs of missing the target. Therefore, there is a financial penalty and the government will then be keeping its eye on the ball to avoid that penalty.

The bottom line here is that the Paris Agreement now has the support of the United States, President-elect Joe Biden has appointed a high-level special envoy in John Kerry. Canada should be jumping up right now to be bold and ambitious.

This bill is not what we need. I hope we can see changes before it comes back at third stage and report stage.

Fisheries Act

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act and other acts in consequence. Today, we are debating the Senate amendments to the bill, as was just mentioned. I initially spoke to this bill at report stage almost exactly one year ago today. I will be covering some of the same ground as I did then, but today I want to spend a little more time speaking in general terms about fisheries conservation.

Although I grew up in the Okanagan Valley far from the coast, my family has a deep history in coastal fisheries. My mother's family, the Munns, once controlled the cod fishery of Labrador. My great-uncle William Azariah Munn was what one might call a cod liver oil baron. He was also an amateur fisheries biologist and historian. W.A. Munn not only researched the Viking sagas but was the first to suggest that Vineland was located on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, which was subsequently vindicated by the findings at L'Anse aux Meadows. He wrote the first detailed account of the annual migration of codfish in the Newfoundland waters in 1922. I found that out when I was reading the assessment report on northern cod when it was declared endangered. It was cited in the report.

I will mention in passing that I am wearing my Memorial University tie this morning to honour that part of my heritage and history. I thank Bill Kavanagh for that.

Although I grew up in the interior, like most kids of that era, I grew up fishing, in my case, catching small rainbow trout in a small creek near our house. I knew the importance of cool waters and deep pools in a stream shaded from the summer sun, good fish habitat in my part of the country.

The Fisheries Act has long been the strongest piece of legislation that protected habitat, terrestrial or aquatic, in Canada. I used to be a biologist in my past life. I spent a lot of time working on ecosystem health, endangered species recovery and time and again my colleagues would point out that the only legislation, federal or provincial, that effectively protected habitat outside parks was the federal Fisheries Act. This habitat protection was at the core of earlier versions of the Fisheries Act. Conservatives took out that protection in 2012 with Bill C-38, one of their omnibus budget bills.

The action resulted in a public outcry. Four former fisheries ministers, including one of my constituents, Tom Siddon, wrote an open letter to the government urging it to keep habitat protections in the act. I saw Tom last weekend at an event in my riding and I am happy to say that he is still standing up for the environment.

This act still is deficient in a few ways regarding habitat. For instance, while it talks about water in the rivers and lakes as fish habitat, it does not discuss the amount of that water, the flow. That is clearly a problem as water is obviously the most important ingredient in fish habitat. Those deep, cool pools I fished in are becoming shallower and warmer. Bill C-68 would empower the fisheries and oceans minister to make management orders prohibiting or limiting fishing to address a threat to the conservation and protection of fish. I am fully in favour of that power, but I wonder how often it would be used despite the fact that it would likely be recommended on a regular basis by scientists.

Fish are consistently treated differently from terrestrial species in conservation actions. As an example, of all the fish species assessed as threatened or endangered in recent years by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, less than half have been placed on the Species at Risk Act schedules. A bird or mammal in trouble is generally added to those schedules as a matter of course, but fish are out of luck. This attitude must change.

I am happy to see the Senate amendment that includes shark-finning laws proposed by my colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam over the years and Senator Mike MacDonald in the other place. I am very happy to see those private members' bills rolled into this new act in the Senate amendments.

I am also happy to see there is a provision in this act that would give the DFO more resources for enforcement. I hope that some of these resources can be used to rebuild the DFO staff that used to be found throughout the interior of B.C. to promote fish habitat restoration, rebuild fish stocks and watch what is happening on the ground. There are no DFO staff left at all in my riding in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions, despite the fact that there are numerous aquatic stewardship societies across the riding that used to have a great relationship with the DFO. Volunteer groups that are devoted to aquatic habitats in the Arrow Lakes, the Slocan Valley, Christina Lake, the Kettle River watershed, Osoyoos Lake and Vaseux Lake could all benefit through a renewal of those staffing levels.

I would like to close with a good-news story that shows what can happen when Canadians take fish conservation into their own hands, identify problems and solutions and then work hard to make good things happen. That is the story of restoring salmon populations in the Okanagan. This story involves many players from both the United States and Canada but it is mainly a story of the Syilx people, the indigenous peoples of the Okanagan, who came together to bring salmon back to the valley.

Salmon, n’titxw, is one of the four food chiefs of the Syilx and central to their culture and trade traditions. In fact, that is true for many other first nations in the B.C. interior and Yukon, indigenous communities hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the ocean that rely on salmon, that have always relied on salmon and whose cultures are inextricably tied to salmon.

When I was a kid in the Okanagan, very few salmon came up the river from the Pacific. The Okanagan is part of the Columbia system, and those fish had to climb over 11 dams to get to the Okanagan River and back to their spawning grounds. Most of the Columbia salmon runs died out after huge dams like Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph were built and blocked its free flow. The Okanagan flows into the Columbia below Grand Coulee, so a handful of sockeye came back to the Okanagan every year.

However, after years of work by the Okanagan Nation Alliance and other groups, we often see runs of over 100,000 fish, occasionally 400,000 or more. The Okanagan River is once again red with sockeye in the autumn. In most years there is a successful sports fishery for sockeye in Osoyoos Lake.

The ONA has spearheaded significant restoration projects on the Okanagan River, restoring natural flows to small parts of the river and creating ideal spawning beds in others. They organize cultural ceremonies and salmon feasts that bring the broader communities together to celebrate the cycle of the salmon.

The ONA has grown to be one of the largest inland fisheries organizations in Canada with 45 full-time staff. Compare that to zero for the DFO in my area. It has its own state-of-the-art hatchery and fish virology lab.

To make a difference, to change our country and our communities for the better, we must have a vision for a better future. The Syilx vision includes healthy lakes and rivers filled with salmon, salmon that enrich the entire ecosystem and enrich the lives of everyone in the region. I share that vision. The vision includes restoring salmon not just to the entire Okanagan system, but to the upper Columbia River as well, reviving the salmon culture in the Kootenays.

That small creek I used to fish in as a kid now has more than rainbow trout. Every year a few chinook salmon, the big guys, make it into that creek after their epic trip up from the Pacific. That is beyond my wildest dreams.

If we take care of our lakes, our rivers and even the smallest creeks, we can keep this country healthy and beautiful. As the Syilx Okanagan song says, “We are beautiful because our land is beautiful.”

The bill before us could have been bolder and more effective, but it is a chance to take a small step towards that end, towards that vision.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am able to answer a question from my hon. colleague from Cariboo—Prince George.

Yes, Bill C-38, in the spring of 2012, gutted the Fisheries Act. Yes, it was an appalling decision to take away protections for habitat. On the ground, the effect was that habitat officers for DFO were laid off. I got calls all the time. My hon. colleague knows I tell the truth on these things. People would call me to say they called DFO about a beach where a clam licence was allowed that was being over-harvested, and DFO would tell them that officials could not get there and there was nothing they could do. There were times when habitat was being destroyed and people working on stream restoration who lost funding would call DFO to say that habitat was being lost for cutthroat trout and for getting salmon back, and the answer would be that DFO could not help, because there was no law and DFO did not have any manpower.

We need Bill C-68 to be passed. I lament that it was a bit weakened when my amendment that was accepted at committee was removed, but this bill needs to pass. Every single fisheries organization, the economic backbone of my community, wants this legislation passed before we leave this place.

Report stage

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, the good news is that despite this “man cold”, as my wife calls it, my voice seems to be back. I hope it will stick around for the next 15 minutes so that I can speak to budget implementation act, 2018, No. 2. Before getting to what is in the bill or, more to the point, what is not, which might make up the bulk of my comments, I want to talk about the process.

After all, this is an omnibus bill, like the ones we saw so often under the previous government. The current government actually campaigned on a pledge to end the use of omnibus bills. The Liberals not only broke that promise, but they are constantly introducing omnibus bills. They use them not just for budgets, but also for other areas like public safety, transport and justice. We keep getting bills that are harder and harder for parliamentarians to study in any meaningful way.

I may be mistaken about the numbers, which we can check, but the mere fact that we can evoke this type of image says a lot. The Conservatives' first omnibus bill, Bill C-38, which was introduced in 2012 in the last Parliament, showed how abusive this practice had become. The bill was the nadir of this anti-democratic tendency, seeking to undermine the employment insurance program and eliminate the already inadequate environmental assessment process. The bill was hundreds of pages long.

If we were to combine the Conservatives' first omnibus bill from 2012 with the Liberals' first omnibus bill—not the one we are currently debating—we would have a bill the same size as the one before us, which is over 800 pages long.

That is completely ridiculous. I gather some of us are burning the midnight oil in our offices to read the bill. Some members say that they are sick of looking at the four walls of their offices, so they go read it at home. However, let us be honest. The idea that we have the time to consult our constituents, speak to stakeholders on the various files that critics are responsible for, read up on subjects of interest to MPs, and also read Bill C-86, including all the acts it amends, is simply unrealistic.

Some might say that this violates our parliamentary privileges. I am not looking to start a debate on privilege, but I do think it is important to point out how hard this makes it for us to do our jobs.

Even setting aside the size of the bill, the weight of it, and the rule against using props during debate in the House, I would advise my constituents not to print it out. It would be a waste of paper. The thing is massive.

On top of introducing a massive bill, the government has moved time allocation. Not only is it limiting debate in the wider sense by introducing a bill that is extremely difficult to study and therefore to debate, but it is also limiting the time for debate. In 10 or 20 minutes, the normal length of a speech in the House, it is impossible to address every issue. Plus, the government wants to limit the time for debate. This means that we, as the second opposition party, get to put up about eight speakers at most, out of about 40 or so MPs.

Some might say that the budget process, and therefore the budget implementation bill, are among the most important duties of the federal government. The fact that less than one-third of the members of a recognized opposition party get a chance to speak is a real problem.

Let us put the procedural issue aside, since we could talk for ages about this broken promise. I also want to talk about what is missing from this bill and, by extension, from the Liberals' budget. Unfortunately, the Liberals have neglected these elements too often over these past few years, since they came to power.

I would like to focus on a few aspects in particular. First, the government is still not charging web giants sales tax, even though that is a relatively simple matter. It is a matter of fairness and common sense.

When I was in my riding during the last parliamentary recess, I spoke with a constituent who told me that that is today's reality. We now get services via the Internet. That is how we download music, movies and television shows.

We are not asking the government to reinvent the wheel or to go against an existing trend. We are asking it to do two things. First, we are asking it to put all businesses on a level playing field. If Canadians order goods or services online, then they should have to pay sales tax the same way they would in a regular store. That may seem obvious to those watching at home, but the Liberal government has failed to do anything about this for far too long.

The Government of Quebec has led the way, and we hope that the other provinces and territories will follow its lead. However, with all due respect for our National Assembly colleagues, I have to say that it is not enough. The federal government has economic levers that it must use to level the playing field for businesses so that Canadians can benefit from the revenue generated under the law. That is what is lacking right now. However, it is not only the web giants, such as Netflix, Google, and Facebook, that must be required to charge sales tax. All the other digital platforms on which people can purchase goods must be, as well. The government is currently relying on the good faith of some stakeholders who have chosen to proactively charge sales tax.

Second, an agreement needs to be made regarding the future of our culture, specifically with regard to Netflix. I am not as familiar with this topic as my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, who I am sure would have a lot to say about music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. For now, I want focus on Netflix because I do not have much time.

I will not discuss the sales tax for now. I have no doubt the former heritage minister had a rough time in Quebec. Pretty much everyone unanimously agreed that her Netflix deal fell short, not only because of the percentage of francophone and Quebec content, which is nil, but also because the government asked so little of Netflix. The government is counting on the company to operate on the honour system and obey the law proactively.

Madam Speaker, I see your signal that I have just two minutes left. What better proof that it is impossible to study an omnibus bill in the time provided.

France and other countries offer examples of different ways to do this. We can also come up with our own model to acknowledge that this is the new normal without letting Internet giants rake in the profits while crushing our culture. We need to promote our cultural sector so that it can continue to make all of its unique offerings available to us with content that is our very own. This is about quality content and our duty to remember and share.

I will now move on to something else that is missing from the Liberals' budget.

The Minister of National Revenue keeps talking about a $1-billion investment. The only thing that investment did was rub salt in the wound by uncovering the billions of dollars that are lost to tax evasion and tax avoidance. We see that cronyism is alive and well in the Liberal Party. The issue of the Panama papers and the paradise papers has not been resolved. Nothing has been done to recover those billions of dollars. Again, it is a matter of fairness.

In closing, I would say that the omnibus bill does very little to address the problems that the supposedly progressive Liberals promised to fix and this is their third attempt at it. That is three attempts and three failures.

Natural Resources

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, is there something funny about what I am saying? I do not know why this is so funny. People in my province are desperate. They are looking for jobs and opportunities. We have so many problems right now in central Alberta as a result of the current energy policies, which I guess is a source of humour to my colleagues across the way, one of whom is from Newfoundland and ought to understand the value of the energy sector. However, I will not digress.

Fossil fuels are so ingrained in every aspect of our lives, and when we say that a carbon tax is a tax on everything, it is absolutely true. Take a look around this room. Nothing in this room could be brought to us today without the use of fossil fuels. The wood would have to be harvested by fossil-fuel-powered equipment in the forestry sector. It would be cut in a sawmill and then refined and finished in a shop that relied heavily on electricity or other fossil fuels. The stone would not be quarried by hand. This would be done by heavy equipment. The food on the table out there came from a farm or was shipped here from another country. I am pretty sure that the pineapple on the plate in the government's lobby did not come from Newfoundland and Labrador or Alberta. It likely came from Hawaii.

How did it get here? It got here on an airplane. It was not a solar-powered one. It got here on an airplane or a ship that was powered by fossil fuels. Everything we have, the medical advancements and all the technology we have, is because we have cheap, reliable, affordable fossil fuels. It is absolutely critical that we do not get disconnected from that.

Should we be as energy efficient as possible? Absolutely. If the government was proposing energy efficient ideas, I would support them on a one-off basis if they had merit and were sustainable.

I do not know why in this country we have to hate oil and gas in order to like solar power and wind power and all these other things. Energy, and the taxes and the benefits it provides to our economy, pays for schools, infrastructure, health care and medicine. If our economy was doing so well, it would not be nearly impossible to balance a budget. However, the government seems to be either ideologically opposed to, or is actually misleading Canadians about, the economic success it has. It should be very easy to balance a budget in a good economy.

Notwithstanding that, let us have a short history lesson, because the government likes to basically blame everyone before it for everything it is failing at right now.

The Prime Minister inherited a balanced budget and three tidewater applications from one mandate of a Conservative government that had a majority in this House. I chaired the subcommittee on finance for Bill C-38. The industry had asked us to streamline and harmonize all the environmental regulations, which resulted in the pipeline applications the government across the way has botched so badly. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that a balanced budget is gone until 2045, 2050, or 2055.

We had three tidewater pipeline projects in the hopper. We did not inherit any of those from a previous Liberal government. None of those were applied for during the five years we were a minority parliament, because, of course, the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois would block basically any legislative attempts we had in the House to harmonize or streamline the regulatory process and bring certainty so that the investment sector would actually want to do this. We had four and a half years. Bill C-38 was passed, and the three pipelines were applied for.

The government of the day inherited three tidewater pipeline applications. Each one of them, if we look at the total kilometres, would add up to about 7,000 kilometres of tidewater pipelines. The Prime Minister of today has presided over the demise of energy east, which was over 4,000 kilometres of pipeline to tidewater, and northern gateway, which was 1,100 kilometres of pipeline to tidewater. Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain is hanging on by a thread. It is not because Kinder Morgan wants to build it. It would like to flee this marketplace as well. Therefore, the government of the day now has to use taxpayer dollars to rescue the only project, for political reasons. It has nothing to do with science. It has nothing to do with technology or the capabilities and competencies of the energy sector. The energy sector knows how to build pipelines. It is the only one that actually does. I have a lot more faith in Kinder Morgan building the pipeline than the Government of Canada building the pipeline, because it knows how to do it. It has been doing it for 60 or 70 years through British Columbia without major incident.

Here is where we are today. We are sitting at a crossroads in this country, where we have the third-largest reserves of oil in the world and we cannot get our pipelines to tidewater. Some members over there are saying that the oil that goes through the Kinder Morgan pipeline already ends up in the United States. That is actually quite true. All the gas exported from Canada, 100%, goes to the United States. According to this report, 97% of the oil in the export market from Canada goes to the United States. That is because Vancouver is a shallow port, and large tankers will not come in to the port, which is why northern gateway was so important. It went to a deepwater port a little further north on the coast of British Columbia, where a supertanker or any large vessel could actually go in and fill up the ship. That was the one that was going to diversify the market. Saudi, Nigerian and Venezuelan oil comes in by the boatload along the Atlantic coast, which I guess does not deserve the same protection with a tanker ban as the west coast.

Why? Why would our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada not want to use oil that was sourced in Canada?

I have been here for a long time. I noticed who was on the plane going back and forth to Alberta when times were good, when there was certainty in the industry. It was people from Quebec. The planes that stopped in Ottawa to pick me up and take me back to Alberta came from Halifax, came from St. John's, Newfoundland. They were full of people wearing Shell Albian jackets, Pearl oil sands project jackets, Firebag project jackets. These people were providing for their families. They could have just stayed home if they wanted to and worked at thousands of jobs that would have been created at the other end of the pipeline.

It is not just the pipeline. It is not just the jobs in the creation of the pipeline. It is jobs at each end. It is jobs in Alberta, Saskatchewan, northern B.C. It is jobs for western Canadians. It is jobs in Atlantic Canada, processing, refining, upgrading, shipping and exporting Canadian products rather than watching the ships roll in from kingdoms like Saudi Arabia. The current Liberal government does not even have a relationship with Saudi Arabia anymore, even though we are still buying its oil, as well as oil from other despots and dictators who do not have anywhere close to the same environmental and human rights standards that Canada has.

The NDP, the Bloc, the Green Party and the Liberals all want to argue about how important environmental regulations are, and I would agree. I am an outdoorsman. I want clean water. I want clean air. I want clean land. I want to fish in a clean river. I want to hunt for moose where it is nice and I can trust that there is no environmental pollution.

I live in Alberta. I am not worried about any of those things. The air that I breathe is clean. The rivers that flow through my community are clear and blue. The land and resources in Alberta are wonderful.

I do not understand. Who are we comparing ourselves to when it comes to our environmental regulations? What is the problem? Could somebody point out to me the last major oil spill that we were not able to handle or clean up? Where is the problem, or is it actually a problem?

It is all about money. It is not about the environment. The carbon tax is not about the environment either. It is just about money. It is all a wealth transfer. It is all about people who want to be part of the process because they want the money, and that is fine. Let us just call it what it is.

Here is where we are. We are at the crossroads right now. We cannot say that Canada is a laggard when it comes to environmental stewardship or human rights, because no other oil-producing and exporting country in the world is better than we are. We are probably on par with Norway and the United States. There might be a few pluses and minuses in a few categories but we are on par with those guys. We are well ahead of Saudi Arabia.

The Liberal government cannot even keep our borders secure. There is no line-up of people from Canada fleeing to Iran or Iraq, both oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Could it be because Canada actually has it right and that all of the problems that we have here are manufactured political problems?

I have been to downtown Vancouver, where I have seen people driving cars. I have been to downtown Montreal, where I have seen people driving cars. I have been to downtown Toronto, where I have seen people driving cars. Why do we want to make that more expensive? Why do we want to make the cost of shipping goods to and from these people more expensive? Why do we want to make travel for Canadians to a warm climate in the wintertime more expensive?

Energy is the lifeblood of everything that is good in this country. I will go back to that point one more time.

All of the things that we have in our life that are good right now are brought to us by the advancement of fossil fuels. Until we refined kerosene several hundred years ago, we were burning wood and coal, which was messy and dirty. We were using basically 80% to 90% of all of the crops that we grew just to feed our horses and our cows. Now 3% of the population can grow the world's food, because of fossil fuels.

Now we have opportunities to be researchers, lawyers, musicians, artists. We do not have to worry about where our next meal is coming from. We do not have to worry about subsistence living here in Canada, because we have fossil fuels.

Today, the leader of my party, the Conservative Party of Canada, said that after the next election, when he became the prime minister of Canada, he would exercise the powers available to the government to do nation-building projects. That does not mean we will run roughshod over everyone. It just means we cannot have these stalemates go on for ever, because it drives investment out of our economy.

Should first nations be involved? Absolutely. Should we do everything we can to ensure, from an environmental perspective, that we can mitigate almost all the risks? Of course. No one will argue about that.

Why can the government not get this pipeline built? Let us take a look.

The Northern gateway project was approved. It had 209 conditions. Enbridge was moving ahead with it. It had spent about $1.5 billion of shareholders' money on that project to get it built. Over 30 of the 42 first nations along the route publicly supported it. Two were publicly opposed. The remaining 10 or so would not declare publicly whether they would support it or not.

Enbridge had the task then, through the National Energy Board, to go and resolve those 209 conditions set out by the board. It was on its way to do it. As a private sector company, it needed to get the buy-in from the first nations along the route. It had already been tested through our Constitution, through our courts. All of that process could be played out. The government did not need to get involved in that. That was Enbridge's job, and it was doing it.

Then the election happened and the pipeline was killed. It was a political decision, because the science and technical expertise at the National Energy Board said that pipeline was perfectly valid to go ahead. With 30 of 42 first nations publicly supporting it, or 75% of the first nations publicly supporting it along the route, I guess that was not enough. I am not sure we will ever get consensus on anything, which I think suits the Liberal Party just fine.

Anyway, the project is killed, the tanker ban is in place and there is no new investment coming for northern British Columbia at all, zero. The folks in northern British Columbia want the pipeline built. They want those jobs.

Energy east was another pipeline. One of the first things that happened after the government was elected in 2015 was it changed the regulatory review process by adding a six month and a three month process on to energy east and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipelines, kicking the can down the road. According to the government of the day, it needed to do this because it would ensure these projects would have the social license, whatever that is, to get the pipeline built.

Then when it looked like Trans Canada was actually going to proceed and get Energy east built, the mayor of Montreal at the time, Denis Coderre, who was a former Liberal cabinet minister and member of Parliament in the House, said that he did not want the pipeline there. I did not realize that mayors of towns were responsible for telling the National Energy Board what to do, but apparently the Prime Minister of Canada today listens to them, rather than the technical experts at the National Energy Board.

It does not matter that pipelines are already going all the way through the community. People who have natural gas in their houses have a pipeline right to their houses. However, I digress.

Trans Canada was trying to get that pipeline built and what happened? The government said “It looks like we're going to have a success here. Let's put some more regulatory obstacles in by putting upstream and downstream emission standards on a pipeline”. Guess what. Trans Canada shelved the project. Why would it not^ Why would it expose more of its shareholders' money to that risk? Just like Enbridge had to walk away from, I am guessing, over a billion dollars worth of investment, Trans Canada did the same thing. It shelved the project.

That was two out of three gone. Now we have one pipeline left and it stands alone. All the social justice warriors, all the environmental activists and everyone could focus on this one pipeline. Guess what. All they did was get in front of the right judge and they got the ruling. The government could not even follow its own rules to build a pipeline that it had to buy from the private sector. That money is now going to projects elsewhere to compete against us. It now wants to sell this pipeline that it cannot build to a future investor. The Liberals are in charge. There is no doubt about it.

Impact Assessment Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, in the past I practised environmental law for a while and I have worked in the environmental field for a long time and I am quite familiar with laws in other countries. It is unlikely that the hon. member will take my word for it, but Canada does not have the best environmental assessment process, the toughest regulations, and the best endangered species law at all. That was the case even before Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012. After the changes to environmental assessment by the Harper government in Bill C-38, we had one of the worst, weakest, and most inconsistent and incoherent environmental assessment processes in the industrialized world. Sadly, tragically, Bill C-69 would not restore the consistent, predictable process we had that ensured that anything within federal jurisdiction would be reviewed.

Just so the hon. member knows what countries to which I refer, anything in the European Union is stronger, the United States is much stronger, and New Zealand is much stronger in their anticipatory environmental assessments, which is why it is such a tragedy that Canada, which knows how to do this better, is failing to do so now.

Report Stage

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I always welcome young women to this place, and especially young women with grit and determination, like the young member for Lethbridge. I regret that I disagree with everything she said this evening about Bill C-68.

I do not know if she is aware, but in 2012, the national organization representing municipalities in this country, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, urged the Harper government to remove the sections from Bill C-38 that would weaken the protection of fish habitat. By the way, the motion that was brought forward on the floor of the FCM convention came from none other than a former Conservative fisheries minister, the hon. Tom Siddon, who also joined in an open letter denouncing the weakening of fish habitat protection, which was also signed by another former Conservative fisheries minister, the hon. John Fraser. Bill C-38 was an egregious attack on the fisheries resource.

The fisheries resource and agriculture resource need not be in conflict, and in Bill C-68 they are not.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak tonight to Bill C-68, the new Fisheries Act. Although I grew up, and still live, far from the coast, my family has deep history in coastal fisheries. My mother's family, the Munns, once controlled the cod fishery of Labrador. My great uncle William Azariah Munn was what one might call a cod liver oil baron. Luckily, my mother hated the stuff so much that she did not force it on me and my siblings.

Getting back to the bill, the bill comes from a Liberal promise in the last election campaign when both the NDP and Liberals ran on platforms that included the repealing of Conservative legislation that gutted all of the environmental protections of federal legislation. We are very happy the Liberals have finally acted on this, although I am not sure why it took so long.

The bill would finally restore protection for all fish across Canada. When I say all fish, I would like to point out that under the previous Conservative legislation, all fish were not created equal. Only those fish that were part of a commercial or indigenous fishery were protected, and they were not protected as strongly as they were in the past. I am happy that some of our rarest and most vulnerable fish species, like the speckled dace of the Kettle River, are now protected in this manner once again.

In the past, the Fisheries Act was the strongest piece of legislation that actually protected habitat in Canada. As many here know, I was a biologist in my past life, and I spent a long time working on ecosystem recovery plans and species at risk. Time and again, my colleagues would point out that the only legislation, federal or provincial, that effectively protected habitat, was the Fisheries Act. As a biologist who worked on land, I was always a bit jealous of my fisheries colleagues since there was little or nothing that had the same power of protection for terrestrial habitats.

This habitat protection was at the core of earlier versions of the Fisheries Act. The Conservatives took this habitat protection out in 2012 through Bill C-38, one of their omnibus budget bills. This action resulted in a huge public outcry, and among the voices were four former fisheries ministers, including one of my constituents, Tom Siddon, a former Conservative fisheries minister. He wrote an open letter to the government, urging it to keep habitat protections in the act.

This new act is still deficient in a few ways regarding habitat. For instance, while it talks about the water in rivers and lakes as fish habitat, it does not discuss the amount of that water. That is clearly important. Increasingly, low water levels in our rivers and lakes are causing difficulties for fish. Many of our fish require good quantities of clean, cool water, and more and more often they are faced in late summer with low levels of warm water that can be lethal to fish, especially to salmonids.

This act also does not address the habitat conflict between wild salmon stocks and the practice of open-net salmon farms. We should be moving in an orderly fashion toward closed containment farms to isolate fish health issues caused by the farms that impact wild salmon stocks under the open-net regime.

Bill C-68 empowers the fisheries and oceans minister to make management orders prohibiting or limiting fishing to address a threat to the conservation and protection of fish. Of course, I am fully in favour of this power, but I wonder how often it would be used, despite the fact that it would likely be recommended on a regular basis by scientists.

Fish are consistently treated differently from terrestrial species in conservation actions. As an example, of all the fish species assessed as threatened or endangered in recent years by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, less than half have actually been placed on the Species at Risk Act schedules. If a terrestrial species is in trouble, it is generally added to the list as a matter of course. However, but if a fish is in trouble, it is out of luck. This attitude has to change.

As well, the bill would give a lot of discretion to the minister to make decisions based on opinion rather than on scientific evidence. This practice must be limited and only used in exceptional circumstances. I am always concerned when it is enshrined in legislation and seemingly encouraged, as it is here and in other recent legislation, such as Bill C-69 on environmental impact assessments.

I am happy there is a provision in this act to give the DFO more resources for enforcement. I hope some of those resources can be used to rebuild the DFO staff that used to be found throughout the British Columbia interior to promote fish habitat restoration and rebuilding fish stocks.

There are no DFO staff left at all in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions now, despite the fact that there are numerous aquatic stewardship societies across my riding that used to have a great relationship with DFO and its work, and which benefited from that work. Volunteer groups that are devoted to aquatic habitats on the Arrow Lakes, the Slocan Valley, Christina Lake, the Kettle River watershed, Osoyoos Lake, and Vaseux Lake would all benefit through a renewal of those staffing levels. They talk to me regularly about that, and that they miss that help.

I would like to close with a good-news story that shows what can happen when Canadians take fish conservation into their own hands, identify the problems and solutions, and then work hard to make good things happen. That story is the restoration of salmon populations in the Okanagan. This story involves many players and funding from the United States as well as Canada, but it is mainly a story of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, ONA, the first nations of the Okanagan, who came together to bring salmon back to the valley.

Salmon, or n’titxw, is one of the four food chiefs of the Okanagan peoples, and is central to their cultural and trade traditions. When I was a kid in the Okanagan, salmon were in very low numbers. The Okanagan is part of the Columbia system, and those fish had to climb over 11 dams to get back to the spawning grounds. Most of the Columbia River salmon runs died out, but a few sockeye came back to the Okanagan every year, though maybe a only a couple of thousand in some years. However, after years of work by the ONA and other groups, we often see runs of over 100,000 fish. The Okanagan River is once again red with sockeye in the autumn. The ONA has taken an ecosystem-collaborative restoration approach that combines cultural ceremonies and salmon feasts with technical restoration. They work collaboratively with provincial and federal authorities, and everyone in the region has benefited, with recreational fishery openings, an increase in licence revenues, and local salmon to the public. I enjoy the sockeye out of Osoyoos Lake every year now.

This approach has enabled the ONA to grow to one of the largest inland first nations fisheries organizations in Canada. It has 45 full-time staff, which is probably 10 times the staffing level of DFO in the interior of B.C. It has its own hatchery, biology lab, habitat restoration course, and courses that are even taken by DFO staff.

However, even though they have been working collaboratively with DFO, they have still identified some serious issues to me.

First, there is a need for a harvest sharing agreement between Canada and the U.S. There is no agreement in place to ensure minimum food fishery requirements for first nations, and there is no other place in the Pacific region where there is up to 150,000 salmon harvested between Canada and the U.S. that does not have such an agreement in place.

Second, ONA has asked for support for the Columbia River Treaty renewal and the importance of Canadian salmon. Okanagan salmon are the only Columbia River salmon returning to Canada, and they are directly affected by how Canada stores water in its treaty dams.

Third, it points out the need for support for ONA's salmon restoration in the upper Columbia, which is in the Kootenay region. There are no salmon there now. ONA submitted a proposal to DFO and asked the minister back in September 2017, but it has received no response.

Fourth, the ONA regrets to see the overall exclusion of first nations at the Columbia River Treaty table, which is something that is very important to them.

To conclude, we will be supporting Bill C-68, but there is clearly still a lot of work to be done to protect our fish and our fisheries.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I can put this to the hon. member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.

Is he aware that we had the Fisheries Act from 1868 until 2012 protecting fish wherever they were found? Is he aware that the protection of fish habitat was put in place under the former Trudeau administration by the right hon. Romeo LeBlanc? All the economic development that happened in Canada was never thwarted by protecting our fish.

The destruction of the Fisheries Act by Bill C-38 in 2012 was a scandal, and this repairs it.

Impact Assessment Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in fairness, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis was quoting the National Post in reference to Jamie Mean of Mining Watch Canada, who is not the usual go-to sources for the National Post.

I happen to be struggling with this legislation because it is, without question, marginally better than Bill C-38 in 2012. The Liberals promised in their platform to restore what we had been in place before, that it would restore public trust and repair the damage done when the original Canadian Environmental Assessment Act brought in by Brian Mulroney was repealed by Bill C-38. This has not been restored. This has not been repaired. This has largely been entrenched.

Does my friend from Elmwood—Transcona have any theories as to why the Liberal government spent over $1 million on a National Energy Board expert panel and over $1 million on a separate environmental assessment expert panel that held hearings across the country? The expert panel on EA by the way went to 21 cities, heard from over 1,000 witnesses, produced a terrific report, and its recommendations were thrown under the proverbial bus.

What on earth was going on? I really cannot answer the question, but maybe my friend from Elmwood—Transcona could speculate.

Motions in Amendment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise this morning to speak of a really terrible tragedy, which is the destruction of environmental law in this country, how it was done in 2012, and how the current government, despite promises, has failed to repair the damage. I do not enjoy watching a government make mistakes, even if they cost them it in the next election. I do not enjoy saying that the Prime Minister made a promise and now has broken another promise.

It is tragic because we could do better and we used to do better. I will briefly cover the history of environmental assessment in this country and why this bill is not acceptable as it currently stands. It could be made acceptable by accepting a lot of the amendments, particularly those put forward by the member for Edmonton Strathcona and by me. This bill is an omnibus bill that attempts to repair the damage, but first let us look at what was damaged.

Starting back in the early 1970s, the federal Government of Canada embarked on a commitment to environmental assessment. We were late, later than the U.S. government under Richard Nixon, which brought in something called the National Environmental Policy Act, which remains to this day far superior to Canadian law on environmental review.

By fluke, I actually participated in the very first panel review of environmental assessment in Canada in 1976. When I walked into the high school gym in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, I had no idea that it was the first time there had been a public panel review of a project, but the Wreck Cove hydroelectric plant on Cape Breton Island was the first. I participated in environmental reviews thereafter as a senior policy adviser to the federal minister of environment from 1986 to 1988.

I worked with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and its then head, the late Ray Robinson, on getting permission to take the guidelines order, which was a cabinet order for environmental review, and to strengthen it by creating an environmental law, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which was brought in under former prime minister Brian Mulroney and received royal assent under former prime minister Jean Chrétien.

That bill made it very clear, as did the previous guidelines order from 1973 onwards, that any time federal jurisdiction was affected, the government had an obligation to do an environmental review. Since the early guidelines order of the 1970s, federal jurisdiction was described as federal money, federal land. Any time federal jurisdiction, which over time was narrowed down to decisions made by federal ministers under certain bills, or any of those triggers were set off, there had to be at least a cursory screening of the projects. That was the state of environmental law, with many improvements, from the early 1970s until 2012.

The previous government, under Stephen Harper, brought in amendments in 2010. I certainly know that the committee heard from industry witnesses, the Mining Association of Canada in particular, that it thought everything was just about perfect in 2010. There was an attempt to avoid duplication, there was one project one assessment, early screening, and comprehensive study. Everybody knew what was happening.

Then in the spring of 2012, the previous government brought in Bill C-38. It was an omnibus bill. It changed 70 different laws in over 430 pages. When the Conservatives complain of lack of consultation on this one, they are right. However, they are in a glass house, and anyone who fought Bill C-38 has a huge pile of stones, because there was no consultation. We did not have briefings and the government did not accept a single amendment between first reading and royal assent. That bill repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act brought in under former prime minister Brian Mulroney, and it devastated the prospect of any environmental review in this country when federal jurisdiction was impacted, unless it was a big project on a short list. That is the easiest way for me to explain what happened.

The Conservatives changed the triggers by eliminating federal land, federal money, and federal jurisdiction. They just said that if it were a big project, and this is their short list, then they would do a review, but would exclude most of the public and keep the review fast. This was a Harper invention, and it was really diabolical to say that when it were an environmental assessment of a pipeline, the Environmental Assessment Agency would not run it, but the National Energy Board; that when it were an environmental assessment of a nuclear project, it would be run by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; and that if it were an environmental assessment of drilling on the offshore in Atlantic Canada and off Newfoundland, it would be the Canada-Newfoundland Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, and if it were off Nova Scotia, it would be the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board. This collective, which I will now refer to as the “energy regulators”, had never played a role in environmental assessment before. They are part of what was broken in Bill C-38.

My hon. friend from Lakeland wants to know why the Kinder Morgan mess is such a mess. It goes back to that assessment being handed to an agency not competent to do it, and giving it very short timelines, which forced Kinder Morgan to say that it could no longer respect procedural fairness even for the few intervenors it let in the door because of the timeline. The attitude was that we have cut out cross-examination of expert witnesses; we have to move this thing fast; we are just going to barrel through and ignore most of the evidence because of the short timeline. The mess that this country is in right now over Kinder Morgan can be layed directly at the door of Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012.

This legislation should have repaired all of that damage. That was a promise in the Liberal platform and the commitment in the mandate letter to ministers. What do we have now? We have an omnibus bill that deals with the impact assessment piece, that deals with the National Energy Board, to be renamed the Canadian energy regulator, and deals with the disaster that happened in Bill C-45 in the fall of 2012 when the government of the day gutted the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

These three pieces of legislation are fundamental to environmental law in this country and to energy policy, and they all need fixing, but should not be fixed in one omnibus bill.

I completely agree with the member for Lakeland that this legislation was forced through committee, but it was forced through the wrong committee. The environmental assessment piece should have gone to the environment committee. The NEB/Canadian energy regulator piece should have gone to natural resources committee. The Navigable Waters Protection Act piece should have gone to transport committee.

The omnibus bill in front of us, Bill C-69, has been inadequately studied despite heroic efforts by the chair of the environment and sustainable development committee. She did a great job. The government committee members worked really hard to improve the bill, but no members had enough time. We had a deadline. A hammer fell at 9 o'clock at night on the last chance to look at it. By 12:30 in the morning, most of the amendments that were accepted were never debated at committee, much less adequately studied. It is a tragedy.

Here is how “Harper-think” has survived and owns Bill C-69 in terms of environmental assessment. We have not restored the triggers. Federal funding of a project no longer triggers an environmental review, full stop. Federal lands still do, but federal jurisdiction decisions made by the Minister of Fisheries on the Fisheries Act do not trigger an environmental assessment. Decisions made by the Minister of Transport under the Navigable Waters Act do not trigger an environmental assessment. It will again be on the short list of big projects that we have still not seen because it is under consultation. The triggers are inadequate.

The scope of the reviews will move from there being about 4,000 to 5,000 projects a year being at least given a cursory review in the pre-2012 period to the current situation bequeathed to us by former prime minister Stephen Harper of a couple of dozen a year.

I should mention that there were two expert panels, one on the NEB and one on environmental assessment. Huge consultations were carried out. The speeches by the Liberals will probably reference the enormous level of consultation that took place before this legislation came out. It needs to be said on the record that the advice of the expert panels was ignored in both cases.

In terms of environmental assessment, what was ignored was the call to go back to the same triggers we have had since 1974: federal land, federal money, federal jurisdiction. The Liberals did not pay attention to that recommendation. They claim to have taken into account the recommendation that it be a single agency, but the bill says that when the impact assessment agency sets out a panel review in the case of a pipeline, the members of the Canadian energy regulator, which was the NEB, have to be on that panel.

More egregiously, despite the amendments accepted in committee, the government has rejected the one that says if it is the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board or the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum, board member of the panel can also sit as chairs. Only in those two instances were the amendments accepted at committee rejected by the government, and those boards were created by statute with the mandate to expand offshore oil and gas.

This bill is so bad that after decades of fighting for environmental assessment, I have to vote against it. That is why it is tragic. I would like to break down right now and weep for the loss of decades of experience. We know better than this.

Motions in amendment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Edmonton Strathcona for her tireless work on environment and climate issues.

I want to ask my colleague about the potential to find something positive in the bill.

I have been just appalled by the lack of advisory bodies for the Liberal government. Let me give a quick review. We used to have in Canada the Economic Council of Canada, which existed from 1963 until the 1990s. The Science Council of Canada existed from the 1960s until the early 1990s. The Canadian Environmental Advisory Council existed from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. All three were abolished in the early 1990s, because the government created the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. We were told that we did not need the Economic Council, the Science Council, or the Environmental Advisory Council anymore, because we had the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which, in the spring of 2012, was killed in the Conservative omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38.

Nobody seems to be aware of the paucity of basic research and the combining of themes around sustainable development that we used to take for granted.

This is a pretty weak instrument we have in proposed subsection 8(1) of this legislation. We have a Sustainable Development Advisory Council, which I think has potential, but it has to be properly funded. The Liberal government needs to see the potential to replace all those bodies we used to have that gave us good advice.

I wonder if my friend from Edmonton Strathcona thinks that is something we should push ahead with in Bill C-57.

Fisheries Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by acknowledging we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people, and express gratitude to them for their generosity and patience. Meegwetch.

I also want to thank the hon. member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook for sharing his time with me, and acknowledge this shows a spirit of respect toward opposition benches from the current Liberal government. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, although I still must object to the use of time allocation and reducing time for debate in this place. However, the respect shown in shortening time but still allowing a member such as me to have at least one crack in second reading to this very important legislation is appreciated. It is particularly appreciated when I stand to speak, with shared time from a Liberal member, with the intention of attacking Liberal legislation, which I have done recently with shared time.

Today is a different occasion. Bill C-68 would repair the damage done to the Fisheries Act under former budget implementation omnibus bill, Bill C-38, in the spring of 2012, as the hon. member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook was just referencing. This bill goes a long way. Within the ambit of what the Minister of Fisheries can do, it would repair the damage done by omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38, in relation to the Fisheries Act. I want to speak to that, as well as the one aspect where it would not fully repair the damage.

This is definitely a historic piece of legislation. The Fisheries Act was brought in under Sir John A. Macdonald. Canada has had a fisheries act for 150 years. That act traditionally dealt with what is constitutionally enshrined as federal jurisdiction over fish, and some people may wonder where the environment landed in the Constitution of Canada and the British North America Act. Where was the environment? The fish are federal. The water is provincial if it is fresh water, and federal if it is ocean water, so there has always been a mixed jurisdiction over the environment.

Over fish, there has been no question. Fish are federal. In the early 1980s, this act received a significant improvement, which was to recognize that fish move around and they cannot be protected without protecting their habitat. The Fisheries Act was modernized with a real degree of environmental protection. It had always been a strong piece of environmental legislation, because if we protect fish then we tend to protect everything around them.

In this case, the Fisheries Act was improved in the early eighties by a former minister of fisheries, who by accident of history, happened to be the father of the current Minister of Fisheries. It was the Right. Hon. Roméo LeBlanc. We use the term “right honourable” because he went on to be our Governor General. He amended the Fisheries Act in the 1980s to include protection of fish habitat, requiring a permit from the federal Minister of Fisheries if that habitat was either temporarily or permanently harmed or damaged. This piece of legislation is the significant pillar upon which much of Canada's environmental regulation rested.

What happened in Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012 was a travesty that remains in the annals of parliamentary history as the single worst offence against environmental legislation and protection by any government ever. It was followed up with a second omnibus budget bill in the fall of 2012, Bill C-45, which took an axe to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In the spring, Bill C-38 repealed the Environmental Assessment Act and replaced it with a bogus act, which I will return to and discuss. Bill C-38 also repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, the National Roundtable on Environment and the Economy, and gutted the Fisheries Act.

Rather than go on about that, the hon. member who was just speaking referenced the changes made. I can tell people some of the changes that were made, and I was so pleased to see them repealed. When one opens a copy of Bill C-68, the first thing one sees is subclause 1(1), “The definitions commercial, Indigenous and recreational in subsection 2(1) of the Fisheries Act are repealed.” This is not a scientific thing. This is what Bill C-38 did to our Fisheries Act. Fish were no longer fish. They were only fish if they were commercial, indigenous, or recreational. That language came straight from a brief from industry. It did not come from civil servants within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It came from the Canadian Electricity Association. That is repealed.

This bill would bring back protections for habitat. It goes back to looking at some of the foundational pieces of how the Fisheries Act is supposed to work, and then it goes farther.

I have to say I was really surprised and pleased to find in the bill, for the first time ever, that the Fisheries Act will now prohibit the taking into captivity of whales. That was a very nice surprise. It is proposed section 23.1. I asked the minister the other day in debate if he would be prepared to expand this section with amendments, because over on the Senate side, the bill that was introduced by retired Senator Wilfred Moore and is currently sponsored by Senator Murray Sinclair, and I would be the sponsor of this bill if it ever makes it to the House, Bill S-203, would not only ban the taking of whales into captivity but the keeping of whales in captivity. I am hoping when this bill gets to the fisheries committee. We might be able to expand that section and amend it so that we can move ahead with the protection of whales.

This bill is also forward-looking by introducing more biodiversity provisions and the designation of areas as ecologically sensitive, work that can continue to expand the protection of our fisheries.

I will turn to where there are gaps. Because I completely support this bill, while I do hope for a few amendments, they come down to being tweaks.

Where does this bill fail to repair the damage of Bill C-38? It is in a part that is beyond the ability of the Minister of Fisheries to fix. That is the part about why Harper aimed at the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and the Environmental Assessment Act.

There was not random violence in this vandalism; it was quite focused. It was focused on destroying the environmental assessment process so that we would no longer be reviewing 4,000 projects a year. Of those 4,000 projects a year that were reviewed under our former Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, most of them, about 95% of them, were reviewed through screenings that were paper exercises, that did not engage hearings, and so forth. However, it did mean that, at a very preliminary level, if there was a problem with a project, a red flag could go up, and it could be booted up for further study.

There is a reason that the Fisheries Act habitat provisions were repealed. They were one of the sections listed in our former Environmental Assessment Act under what was called the “law list”, where a minister giving a permit under section 35 of our former Fisheries Act automatically triggered that the decision was subject to an environmental assessment.

Similarly, why did the former government take a hatchet to the Navigable Waters Protection Act? Like the Fisheries Act, it is an act we have had around for a long time, since 1881. It was not an act that had impeded the development of Canada or we would never have had a railroad. Since 1881, we have had the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The previous government took a real axe to it. The current Minister of Transport has gone a long way toward fixing it under one portion of Bill C-69.

This is why. Navigable waters permits also were a trigger under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Do members see where I am going here? This was synchronized action. It was not random.

The current government has pledged to fix all of the damage done by the previous government to environmental laws. Where the failure to fix things is evident is in what is called the “impact assessment act” in Bill C-69. It has abandoned the concept of a law list altogether. It has abandoned the concept of having permits and environmental assessments required whenever federal money is engaged. In other words, the Harper imprint of going from 4,000 projects reviewed a year to a couple of dozen will remain the law of the land without significant improvement to Bill C-69. In particular, the decisions the Minister of Fisheries makes should be subject to an EA, just as the decisions of the Minister of Transport should be subject.

In my last minute, I want to turn our attention to something I hope the Minister of Fisheries will take up next, because he is doing a great job. I hope he will take up looking at open-pen salmon aquaculture. It must end. It is a threat to our wild salmon fishery on the Pacific coast. It is a threat to the depleted wild Atlantic salmon stocks on the Atlantic coast, where I am originally from. There is no Atlantic salmon fishery because it has been destroyed. However, there are still Atlantic salmon, which could restore themselves if they did not have to compete with the escapement of Atlantic salmon from fish farms in Atlantic Canada, and the destruction of habitat by those farms. On the west coast, these are not even indigenous species that are escaping and threatening our wild salmon.

Let us close down open-pen fisheries, give aquaculture to the Minister of Agriculture, have fish in swimming pools on land, and let the Minister of Fisheries protect our coastal ecosystems.

Impact Assessment Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people, and thank them for their generosity. Meegwetch.

I also want to thank the hon. member for Davenport for splitting time with me. The circumstances are not those that led me to feel particularly relieved or happy, but I am grateful for the civility of giving me 10 minutes. Otherwise, I would not be able to speak at all, because of the egregious use of time allocation on an omnibus bill. I never expected to see omnibus bills with time allocation after the change in government.

This is three bills put together: the National Energy Board Act changed, the Navigation Protection Act changed, and the Environmental Assessment Act overhauled. The fourth piece that had been running along in tandem, through the great judgment of the Minister of Fisheries, is Bill C-68. It stands on its own, and it is an excellent piece of legislation.

However, with the time available to me, I am going to be able to speak only to the impact assessment piece of this omnibus bill, which I am afraid falls below any standard of acceptability and should trouble deeply any Liberal who stood in this place and voted against Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012. We stood together with every single Liberal MP and every single New Democrat against the destruction of decades of environmental law. How that process has been captured by the same mentality, values, and principles that led to Harper destroying these acts, so we now have a repackaged version of those same principles of eroding environmental assessment, is something that the Liberal caucus should try to figure out. I hope it will lead to changes in committee.

With the time available to me, I will quickly review my background in environmental law. I happen to be an environmental lawyer. It is an even weirder fluke that when I was 22 years old and a waitress and cook, I participated in the very first environmental assessment panel hearing in Canadian history, in 1976. It was in Cape Breton. It was about the Wreck Cove hydroelectric plant. I have participated in dozens since.

Ten years after that, I was in the office of the Minister of the Environment. I was actually a senior policy adviser, the person who took the quest from Environment Canada from a wonderful senior civil servant named Ray Robinson, who headed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency in those days, and we took to the Privy Council Office the request to legislate. Up until then, we had been operating under a guidelines order that required environmental reviews, but it was a bit uncertain in its full rubric. Some people thought it was a guideline and therefore was not binding. We got permission to legislate. Subsequently, I resigned from my job with the Minister of the Environment when the minister violated the environmental assessment review process guidelines in approving dams without permits.

This is just to say that I did not only recently come upon my commitment to proper and thorough environmental assessment in Canada. It is non-partisan and goes back decades.

Now, what happened under Bill C-38 was the repeal of our environmental assessment process and its replacement with a rather bogus process. We can compare Bill C-69 to the bogus process in Bill C-38 in 2012, or we can compare it to what is needed. It is all well and good for the federal Liberals to say to us today that they did a lot of consultation. It is true. There were 21 cities with public hearings, and over 1,000 people showed up to a superb expert panel on environmental assessment. The question before us today is why their recommendations were ignored.

I am going to read, one at a time, the recommendations that were ignored. There are many. In previous debate in this place, when the bill was first put forward, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment claimed I was wrong in my assertion, which I think is fact, that the environmental assessment expert panel was ignored. It is really important to understand the point of environmental assessment. I will just go back a bit and say that this is one of the pieces of Harper-think that have survived into Liberal-think.

Environmental assessment has never been about a green light or a red light, yes or no, or whether the project goes ahead or not. It is primarily a tool for good planning. In the entire history from 1976 to 2012, when Harper repealed the act, only two projects were ever given a red light. I will say that again. From 1976 to 2012, with the thousands of environmental reviews that were done, only twice did a federal-provincial environmental review panel say that a project was so damaging that it could not be mitigated and the panel had to say no.

It has primarily been about studying a process thoroughly, studying a project thoroughly, and deciding that we can mitigate the damage if only the proponent would agree to better scrubbers or change the location slightly. In the course of the review process, many projects were improved, the damages mitigated and reduced, and in the end a much better project was accepted. This has never been primarily about how to get to yes or no faster. That is what Harper thought, and apparently that thought process has somehow infested some ongoing decision-making process within government. An environmental assessment is about good planning.

Until 2012, the Environmental Assessment Act said that the purpose was to get in and review a project “as early as is practicable in the planning stages of the project and before irrevocable decisions are made”.

Let me quote what we heard from the expert panel on what an environmental assessment should contain. It did agree that it should be called “impact assessment”. That is one piece they could claim.

Page 5 states that the impact assessment authority “should be established as a quasi-judicial tribunal empowered to undertake a full range of facilitation and dispute-resolution processes.” This has been ignored. Members have heard about the expert panel the government sent around the country, with a thousand people participating and with 800 submissions. Their recommendation was not to have ad hoc panels where people are pulled in, with different projects always having different panels, but to develop expertise through a quasi-judicial tribunal. Ironically, this was also the advice from the red book Liberal platform of 1993.

The second point is to have time limits and cost controls that reflect the specific circumstances of each project, not the current one-size-fits-all approach, which was an innovation under Bill C-38. This is a key point. Projects need to be reviewed whether they are big or small. The effect of Bill C-38, which Harper brought in, is this. The previous era had seen approximately 4,000 projects a year reviewed, most of them with paper-screening exercises that did not take much time. After Bill C-38, the number shrank from 4,000 a year to fewer than 100 a year. The Liberals have gone with perpetuating the fewer than 100 a year. This is how they have done it, by ignoring this advice.

The panel stated that there should be a review when there are federal interests, and that “federal interests include, at a minimum, federal lands, federal funding and federal government as proponent, as well as”, and then there is a list: species at risk, fish, marine plants, migratory birds, indigenous issues, and so on.

This piece of legislation ignores anything except the project list. That was an innovation of Bill C-38. There are no law list reviews requiring that if the navigable waters act or the Fisheries Act requires a permit from the minister there be a review, and no requirement that when federal money is spent there be a review. That is the advice the government got from its expert panel, which it ignored.

The expert panel also said clearly that there should be no role at all for the National Energy Board, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, or the offshore petroleum boards. It pointed out that “the federal system prior to 2012 had decades of experience with delegating final decision-making to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission...and the [NEB]” without those agencies meddling in the environmental assessment.

What is happening under Bill C-69 is like a shell game. We are told it is one independent agency, except that when it is reviewing pipelines the panel must be comprised of people who are sitting members of the NEB, now called the Canadian energy regulator. If they are reviewing offshore petroleum operations in Atlantic Canada, the panel members must come from the offshore petroleum boards, which by legislation are required to expand offshore oil. It is an embedded conflict of interest in the legislation.

The atrocities continue, with respect to indigenous rights. How is it that the Minister of Fisheries can put before us Bill C-68, which has strong language to protect indigenous rights? Bill C-68, in section 2.3, “Rights of Indigenous peoples of Canada”, makes it clear that the act cannot derogate from indigenous rights. Section 2.4 states that it is the duty of the minister when making a decision to “consider any adverse effects” on the rights of indigenous peoples.

This piece of over-discretionary political masquerading of environmental assessment in Bill C-69 merely states that “the impact that the designated project may have on any Indigenous group” is a factor to be considered. As a former litigator, I can tell members that the courts do not regard indigenous rights as a factor to be considered as protecting indigenous rights.

This bill gets an F. At committee, let us please get it to a C+.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a habit of the Liberals, I have discovered, to reference the abundant consultation that has taken place as though that directed or influenced their decisions.

I consulted on this particular piece of legislation, which is three bills in one. Bill C-69 is an omnibus bill. I submitted every time a window opened for consultation, and I have looked at the submissions of others. Overwhelmingly, the government was told to repair the environmental assessment process and not to allow it to continue as it had been destroyed under Bill C-38 back in 2012.

In my question for the parliamentary secretary, I want to reference in particular the expert panel on environmental assessment, among many important pieces of advice received by the government. When it empanelled a group of experts and paid for them to travel the country and listen to people, I do not see how anyone could doubt that their recommendations should have had some influence. We have never even seen a report or a response from the minister to the expert panel report on EA, nor the expert panel report on the NEB, both of which one would think would have some reference in this omnibus bill, which deals with both.

Specifically to the parliamentary secretary, I would say that the expert panel on environmental assessment said clearly that whenever federal money was used, there should be a federal review. The expert panel on EA said there should be no role for the National Energy Board, the offshore petroleum boards, or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

However, the legislation before us today, Bill C-69, does not include a trigger when federal money is used. Although it pretends to have one agency, the impact assessment agency, whenever projects fall under the jurisdiction, for regulatory purposes, of what used to be the National Energy Board, the offshore petroleum boards, or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, members of the panel must be selected from those agencies, which hardly takes them out of the process.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask my hon. colleague from Abbotsford to withdraw the accusation of hypocrisy. I find it offensive. Everyone in this place knows that it is a requirement of our job to travel to our ridings to do our work and to be here in this place.

How can the hon. member for Abbotsford have such a short memory? Bill C-38, introduced in the spring of 2012, was the omnibus bill to end all omnibus bills. It was more than 400 pages long, and it changed 70 different bills. It repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. It repealed the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act. It repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and replaced it with an entirely inadequate piece of garbage. This bill is a bit better than that, better than what was left in 2012. It is not adequate, but it is much better. In the words of former Conservative fisheries ministers, it “gutted” the Fisheries Act.

Bill C-38 was never attached to a single technical briefing. I sat at this desk and read all 430 pages, and by the time I was done, I saw that a decade's worth of environmental laws were pledged to be destroyed by the previous government.

Does the hon. member recall a single technical briefing on that omnibus bill?

Fisheries Act

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to mention that I will share my time with my charming colleague from North Island—Powell River.

Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act and other acts in consequence, has been a long time coming. The NDP is very happy that this bill has finally been introduced. All of the environmental bills being introduced this week and those that were introduced last week should have been introduced and implemented much more quickly. The Liberals promised to do so, and then waited two years. I understand that they had to consult the public, but they could have implemented some of the provisions without taking all this time for consultations. We are a bit disappointed in this.

Nevertheless, this bill is extremely important, because it implements a number of the recommendations the NDP made in its dissenting opinion during the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans' review of the amendments made to the Fisheries Act in 2012. I remember that sad day in 2012 very well, when the Conservative government rammed the hundreds and hundreds of pages of its infamous Bill C-38 down our throats. This bill contained a number of amendments that weakened our environmental laws. As my colleague from Trois-Rivières pointed out, these amendments are unfortunately still in effect.

The Liberals endorsed Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline project even though the public does not support it. Furthermore, since the assessment was a total farce, two of our country's wonderful provinces are now in a dispute.

There are some good things in this bill, of course. The government will once again protect fish and their habitat from activities that could kill fish. With respect to this bill, many people have commented that we must not protect only fish used by humans. We must not forget that biodiversity is an ecosystem. Fish eat each other, and if we do not save the other fish, then those we eat will have nothing to feed on. That is why taking several fish species off the protected species list was so ridiculous. That protection will be restored, which is a good thing. The HADD provision on harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat will be restored.

In addition, the government will for the first time include recovery of depleted fish stocks in the Fisheries Act. That is a very good thing. There are some aspects of the bill we are concerned about, though. A number of my colleagues have mentioned that the bill gives the minister far too many discretionary powers. The Liberals have said they would make evidence-based decisions. However, if the minister is allowed to do whatever she wants regardless of science and ancestral indigenous knowledge, everything will depend on the minister's opinion rather than science. That is what we find so problematic about this aspect of the bill.

As I was saying, the Liberals should have reinstated fish habitat protections as soon as they took office, rather than waiting.

I must mention that many of these measures came from amendments proposed by the NDP.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on improving this bill. I commend the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam, who did excellent work on this. He worked to reinstate solid protections for fish habitat, to put forward suggestions on how to replenish fish stocks and ensure their viability, to advocate for establishing a public registry, which is very important, and to take into account indigenous knowledge.

Before I continue, I would like to talk about the very important report of the Cohen commission, which deals with Fraser River sockeye. The report recommended that the government, which is currently a Liberal one, act on the commission's recommendations to restore sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River. In the third recommendation of the report, Justice Cohen wrote:

The Government of Canada should remove from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate the promotion of salmon farming as an industry and farmed salmon as a product.

In that regard, I would like to come back to the excellent work done by the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam. We know that, unfortunately, the Liberals defeated Bill C-228, which was an excellent bill that sought to transition to the use of closed containment facilities and protect the jobs of workers in that sector so that nobody would lose out. It was a very good bill but, unfortunately, the Liberals voted against it.

Right now, many Canadians, including many of my constituents, are questioning the Liberals' intentions, since they also voted against the bill introduced by the member for Sherbrooke, who is another excellent MP. His bill had to do with the mandatory labelling of GMOs.

As the Liberals were voting against the mandatory labelling of GMOs, they secretly approved the farming and sale of genetically modified salmon in Canada. In fact, Canada remains the only country in the world whose citizens have eaten genetically modified salmon. We do not know who ate it. We do not know where it was purchased. We do not know the circumstances, since labelling is not mandatory, but there is absolutely no question that we unfortunately ate it.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, or ACOA, has invested over $3 million in the company that produces genetically modified salmon.

Once again in secret, genetically modified salmon is being produced in Prince Edward Island, even though there has been no environmental assessment on the potential dangers. Genetically modified salmon could escape from their enclosures during storms and other severe weather conditions that could occur. The potential impact of such an accident on Atlantic salmon populations has not been assessed. As we know, the wild Atlantic salmon stock is already threatened.

We will support this bill for all the reasons mentioned. However, we are very disappointed in the Liberal government's efforts relative to what could have been done to improve aquaculture on the Pacific coast, as well as the labelling, sale, and farming of genetically modified salmon. Canadians are angry. We need to take action on this, and we will.

Criminal Code

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to much of the debate around omnibus bills. One of the things I would like to clarify is that “omnibus”, in and of itself, should not be a swear word in this House. There are many times that a certain piece of legislation will seek to amend different laws that are somewhat related. In this case, the vast majority of the legislation before us seeks to update our laws to reflect either a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada or provisions that are obsolete in the social context in which we live.

Although a certain piece of legislation might change different laws, when there is a common theme that renders them not completely unique, I do not think it is inappropriate.

There is improper use of omnibus bills, and the weight of the irony is crushing me as I stand here taking the question from a member of the opposition on this subject.

I have heard speeches in this House within the last hour that have discussed how the committee process worked the way it should. Members were able to identify problems and propose useful amendments. However, I cannot let this question go by without pointing to Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 in the Parliament of 2012, where I saw a budget erode the Fisheries Act protections and the navigable waters protection act that were so important to my community.

Federal Sustainable Development Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a great honour for me to rise this afternoon to speak to the debate on the amendments to the Federal Sustainable Development Act.

The concept of sustainable development is not new in Canada. There have been a number of reports and bills on this topic. Sustainable development was first set as a goal in 1995 as part of the amendments to the Auditor General Act, which sought to create the position of commissioner of the environment within the Office of the Auditor General.

We have had laws on the books for some time that make sustainable development a goal of the Government of Canada. As I mentioned, since 1995 and the Auditor General Act, we have had a commissioner for environment and sustainable development to review government policies. We have also had federal sustainable development strategies. Since 2008, we have had this law, the Federal Sustainable Development Act.

Canada has a long engagement with the term “sustainable development”. I want to retrace those steps briefly.

The term “sustainable development” was first used in 1987 in the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. This report was generally referred to as the “Brundtland Report” because it was a world commission of primarily people who had some role in political life. Gro Harlem Brundtland was prime minister of Norway at the time, which gave this UN effort quite a lot of prestige. She started out as chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development as leader of the opposition party in Norway. Quite extraordinarily, she stayed committed to this process. When the government fell, she became prime minister of Norway and continued as chair of the process.

Two notable Canadians participated in this process. One was the Canadian member of the commission itself, Maurice Strong, who I met at the time in the late 1980s when I was working for the minister of environment. The federal Government of Canada, at that time, under the leadership of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, played a significant role in helping to fund the work of the work of the Brundtland commission.

More significant with respect to the creation of the term sustainable development, the man who held the pen in writing “Our Common Future”, the report of the Brundtland commission, became one of my very best friends, Jim MacNeill. He passed away a little more than a year ago. He was secretary-general to the World Commission on Environment and Development. He is the only person I know to have written a bestselling book without his name on the cover.

“Our Common Future” sold in many languages and sold around the world. It put in place the goal that in order to ensure countries and people, including Canada, who lived in poverty, could be raised out of poverty and at the same time limit the damage done by a consumerist industrialized society in destroying our environment, we needed to ensure that we developed to lift people out of poverty but do it in a way that did not destroy the life chances of peoples around the world, and particularly future generations.

The goals of the sustainable development strategies as put forward by the Brundtland commission rested on three legs, not two. It was not merely environment and development, but environment, development, and peace to which the Brundtland report directed its attention. It called for a limiting of military spending, attention to the need to end wars, and to end the environmental damage of the military industrial complex.

By the time the Brundtland commission report went to the United Nations General Assembly, the goals of peace and non-violence and ending military spending were set aside. It was the Brundtland commission report's recommendations around sustainability that led to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The acceptance of the framework convention on climate change and our entire agenda on fighting global warming by reducing greenhouse gases can all be traced back to this document from 1987 written by Jim MacNeill and endorsed by world leaders.

The term sustainable development in the Brundtland commission report is the one that more or less appears in Bill C-57. There were a number of definitions, in fairness, within the Brundtland commission report entitled “Our Common Future”. The one that seemed to achieve the most salience, which appears in somewhat changed form as a principle within a number of principles in this revised act is the following.

The principle of sustainable development is based on the ecologically efficient use of natural, social, and economic resources and the need for the Government of Canada to take environmental, economic, and social factors into consideration in every decision it makes.

That is a slight change, as we can see from the Brundtland definition, which was that sustainability and sustainable development required that the current generation develop in ways that did not jeopardize the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Therefore, the intergenerational equity piece was very strong.

Intergenerational equity then appears in the second part of principle 5 under this act, “that it is important to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In taking this forward, the act has broken apart in two pieces, but I do not think it has done damage to the concept.

The principle of sustainable development was taken forward by the Government of Canada and we became one of the leaders of the world in operationalizing the Brundtland commission report when we put in place the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. This was the primary mechanism of the Government of Canada in ensuring sustainability. It was brought in under former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The act on which it was based was repealed in Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012 in the omnibus budget bill bulldozed through by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I do not know how many people even remember that is how the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy was eliminated, because that bill touched over 70 different laws and ran to over 400 pages. People could be forgiven for forgetting the various pieces and how they bulldozed forward.

This piece of legislation comes at a good time.

On October 3, 2017, Julie Gelfand, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development in the Office of the Auditor General, released a very serious report. She said it is clear that this government, like its predecessors, has no chance of meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets. Here it is in her words:

Climate change is one of the defining issues of this century. It will require a whole of government approach. It's time to move from planning to action.

Clearly, time is of the essence. The Government of Canada and all of the people on this planet are in an emergency situation because climate change grows worse by the day and we are still without an action plan to reduce greenhouse gases. However, we do have targets, and I think we also have the will to meet them. I think this government's desire to reduce greenhouse gases is genuine, but the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development made it clear that there has been too much talk and not enough action.

If we had a sustainable development strategy that was working, that touched all aspects of government, we would have a response to the single greatest threat to our future in climate change.

This bill, which I support, creates an opportunity that perhaps is more significant than members in this place realize as we debate this bill and take it forward to committee. The opportunity is here. Again I want to thank the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development for its report in June of 2016. Most of the committee's recommendations were unanimous, and are coming forward in this bill. I will pause to note some that are not.

However, the committee did good work after having heard from many witnesses. One witness, who I am very proud to say is also my constituent, is one of Canada's leading experts in environment and sustainable development. Professor David Boyd described the current bill as a disaster.

I want to go back and say, as I did in earlier questions and comments, that the sustainable development bill that came forward in 2008 was based on a private member's bill from a member of the opposition, a Liberal member of Parliament, a former cabinet minister in the government of the former prime minister Paul Martin, a very dedicated parliamentarian who was very committed to climate action, and a dear friend of mine.

I mean no criticism of the Hon. John Godfrey when I say that the current bill is too weak. He had to get a private member's bill in 2007 in the time of a minority Parliament where the prime minister was Stephen Harper, the minister of environment was the Hon. John Baird, and there was tremendous co-operation to get this bill through before John Godfrey resigned from Parliament. It was a tremendous effort and success. We got a sustainable development act, but it did not call on the government to adopt a whole-of-government approach. The strategies around sustainable development were essentially environment strategies.

I also want to share this with the members of this place. We are told to get Christmas card designs in to the House of Commons print shop to receive free Christmas cards to send to all our constituents. However, I want to warn members that they will not be on recycled paper. Members might think that, having had a sustainable development strategy act since 2008, something as basic as the Parliament of Canada having Christmas cards on 100% post-consumer waste card stock would not be a current issue of concern. I hate to tell members this, but by ordering Christmas cards through the free available Christmas card stock, it is not from recycled paper.

It is virgin non-recycled paper.

I know that all of us would rather have our Christmas cards go out on recycled paper. That is a basic thing, as well as that the parliamentary dining room would serve seafood that does not come from an endangered species, and does not contaminate coastal waters because it is farmed salmon. I have written to the Board of Internal Economy and to the Speaker about this. I tried over the years to figure out how to control the decision-making by the wonderful staff in the terrific parliamentary dining room. The chef is wonderful and I do not mean to criticize. However, the staff does not have the scope to ensure that they can spend the money on ethical seafood for parliamentarians and their guests. Therefore, one has to be very careful when looking at the menu.

One would think these are basics for the Government of Canada, having had a sustainable development strategy since 2008. I do not think Canadians would be surprised to find that it had not radically reformed our attitude towards fossil fuels. Members might have hoped the strategy could do the little stuff, such as use recycled paper for Christmas cards, have ethical seafood in the parliamentary dining room, and not allow cars to idle outside Parliament Hill. That was a role, by the way, put in place by former speaker John Fraser when he was Speaker of the House in a document called “Greening the Hill” in which he required recycled paper, no idling of cars, and no use of pesticides on parliamentary lawns. That one is still in place. I hope what this bill does is to ensure the little stuff is done. More than that, it is my hope that some of the large goals can be achieved based on the changes in this act.

What are the places where we are looking at sustainable development now globally in 2017? Our biggest challenge is the sustainable development goals that were adopted by the United Nations in September 2015.

There are 17 sustainable development goals, and they have within them 169 specific targets to be achieved by 2030. They include such things as taking care of oceans, and a specific goal of stopping the dumping of plastics in our oceans. They include eliminating poverty. They include education for women and girls. These are broad and critical sustainable development goals, all 17 of them, and they apply domestically to industrialized countries, just as they apply globally, and create pressure for industrialized countries to do more in official development assistance to lift all people of this planet out of poverty. We can do it, we have the resources to do it, and that is a sustainable development goal.

I should also mention rights of indigenous peoples. In the Brundtland report, “Our Common Future”, it is very clear that an essential aspect of sustainable government are rights of self-determination for indigenous peoples. Therefore, I would submit to the House that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is part and parcel of the sustainable development goals, which are now called the SDGs of the United Nations system.

I will now return to Bill C-57 that we are debating.

I like the “Purpose” language under the act:

The purpose of this Act is to provide the legal framework for developing and implementing a Federal Sustainable Development Strategy that makes decision making...more transparent and subject to accountability to Parliament, promotes coordinated action across the Government of Canada to advance sustainable development and respects Canada’s domestic and international obligations relating to sustainable development, with a view to improving the quality of life of Canadians.

The international piece is important here as well.

I do not think there is a single department of the Government of Canada that will not find itself challenged to take these principles on board seriously, develop a strategy, and report to Parliament. These principles now include: openness and transparency; indigenous engagement; intergenerational equity; and social, economic, and environmental sustainability. These are all positive changes.

However, there is one change that I find problematic, and that is the deletion of the requirement under the previous act of performance-based contracts, which is found in section 12 of the act as it exists right now. It reads:

Performance-based contracts with the Government of Canada shall include [which is mandatory language] provisions for meeting the applicable targets referred to in the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy

The parliamentary committee makes a reference to the performance-based contracts but does not suggest that the section be deleted. It suggests that it be given more specificity and applied to more entities. Therefore, I find it a little disturbing that, having done such a good job overall in drafting amendments to Bill C-57, performance-based contracts are removed. One of my law professors used to refer to something like this as having a lot of “weasel words”. This is now replaced with proposed section 10.1 under “Power of Treasury Board”.

10.1 The Treasury Board may establish policies or issue directives applicable to one or more of the designated entities in relation to the environmental impact of their operations.

In other words, that proposed section is a big fat nothing compared to the performance-based contracts section that exists in the current act. Therefore, I certainly will be taking amendments forward to committee, when the bill goes to committee, in hopes of preserving the existing section 12 for performance-based contracts.

Overall, Bill C-57 cannot come too soon. Sustainable development has been on the lips of Canadian politicians, who did not have any idea what it really meant, for decades now. If we are serious about this, it is about equity between a wealthy, industrialized country like Canada, and people who are the poorest of the poor living on this planet right now with us: our human family.

It is also about equity in intergenerational terms. I am a grandmother, but I do not have the right, nor anyone in our baby boom generation that just had a great big party since the end of the Second World War, to leave the ecological damages and ecological debt on our kids' credit cards. We do not have the right to deprive children born today of their access to a healthy and sustainable biosphere to live out their lives without fear of annihilation.

We are on the cusp of the last moment we can save this place. Let us get this bill to committee, and let us get a climate change plan under way immediately.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise this evening in adjournment proceedings to address a question I asked on April 5. I am extremely pleased that this question is still on the Order Paper because the matter has never been more timely. Since Bill C-38, Canada has been labouring under a broken environmental assessment process.

The day I rose to ask the question was the day the landmark report from the expert panel, convened by the hon. Minister of Environment and Climate Change, was reported back. My question for the Prime Minister at that time said that the expert panel, “makes a bold recommendation: get rid of the NEB's Environmental Assessment Agency, have a single authority, give it quasi-judicial powers.” I then asked the Prime Minister when we could see this recommendation legislated. Unfortunately, that question was asked in April, and April, May, and June passed without an answer to when we would see this legislated.

To my horror, right after the House rose for the summer, a discussion paper was put forward by the federal government that combined the four different tracks of consultation that had been going on: the expert panel on environmental assessments, the one I just mentioned; the expert panel on the National Energy Board; a statutory process under the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans looking at fixing the Fisheries Act; and the transport committee looking at the Navigable Waters Protection Act. This cluster of acts had been wrecked under the two omnibus budget bills of 2012, Bill C-38 in the spring and Bill C-45 in the fall.

The discussion paper put forward by the government, which was a mere 23 pages, made a hash of all of the recommendations and substantive efforts to improve those acts. Let me refer to what was discussed on environmental assessment. While the expert panel said that sustainability must be central to impact assessments, the word “sustainability” did not appear once in the discussion paper, suggesting how the Liberals plan to legislate to fulfill their campaign promises.

While the expert panel stated that the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should not do environmental reviews, that there had been a lack of public trust in their work, and that there should be a single agency with quasi-judicial powers, in the discussion document we find that for energy, nuclear projects, and offshore oil and gas there will be joint assessments. I am horrified that the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will still be engaged, and worse, the offshore petroleum boards will now get a new mandate to participate in environmental assessment, for which they are completely unprepared and incompetent.

The expert panel also said we must ensure that there be federal jurisdictional triggers whenever a project was on federal land and involved federal money or where the federal government was a proponent; in other words, those things that were originally found back in the guideline orders in the 1970s. The first federal environmental assessment was in a guideline order put forward by cabinet. It was then replaced with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, brought forward under the Mulroney government and brought into law under Chrétien. This scheme of laws was substantively and substantially amended over the years to further improve the process, to avoid duplicative processes, to have joint processes, to ensure that there was one project, one review, and so on. All of that was trashed by Bill C-38 in 2012.

To my horror now, as I stand before this House, if the discussion document is what is legislated, the chief recommendations of the expert panel will be trashed, ignored, and we will not see the restoration of environmental assessment as it existed in 2006.

Natural Resources

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Natural Resources.

We know that since Bill C-38 in 2012, the National Energy Board, with no competence or experience in environmental assessment, is making a hash of the projects that it reviews. Two expert panels have now recommended taking the National Energy Board out of environmental assessment.

I think the National Energy Board may be nailing the nails in its own coffin with the recent approval of a Spectra natural gas pipeline against the advice of Environment Canada's concern for endangered species. A similar mining project in the same region is getting different treatment through the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

Can the minister confirm that we will get the National Energy Board out of environmental assessments once and for all?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is somewhat ironic to rise to speak to Bill C-44 just as a Speaker's ruling concludes, which cites the previous Speaker turning down an application for revisiting the treatment of members who belong to parties with fewer than 12 MPs. It remains a source of concern, and the more I dig into it, the more I discover we are the only Westminster democracy that has this system of two tiers of MPs from larger and smaller parties.

However, I do digress, because I have the opportunity now to speak on the report stage of Bill C-44. I appreciate that my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois and I share this distinction of being in an “all MPs are equal, but some are more equal than others” problem. We will continue to work on it.

I now have the honour of debating the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-44, at report stage. I find this so ironic, because I truly believed that the era of the omnibus budget bill would end when the new Liberal government took power. In fact, the new government promised that it would not use this strategy to cram several measures into one bill.

I want to start in this debate by setting out some of the background around the category of omnibus budget bills, because much has been said and only some of it, in my view, actually captures the problem that we have.

It needs to be said that omnibus budget bills were not offensive in the period of time before 2006. If we go back, we find that between 1994 and 2005, the average budget bill was 73.6 pages long. However, it is ironic—I am using the word “irony” a lot today and I apologize for that, but it does seem to be the appropriate word—that back in 1994, the then Reform Party MP and backbencher Stephen Harper objected vigorously to the 1994 omnibus budget bill put forward by former prime minister, the Right Hon. Jean Chrétien. The Reform MP, as he was then, said:

Mr. Speaker, I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

...there is a lack of relevancy of these issues. The omnibus bills we have before us attempt to amend several different existing laws.

...in the interest of democracy I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

Now, that was referring to the omnibus budget bill of 1994. I would love to ask members here if they could guess how many pages it was, but I am not sure it would be proper form to ask members to shout out answers. However, I doubt that on a pop quiz members here assembled would guess that it was 24 pages long. Yes, Stephen Harper was complaining in 1994 about an omnibus budget bill of 24 pages.

The longest omnibus budget bill we had in the history of Canada, until Mr. Harper became prime minister, was when the Right Hon. Paul Martin was prime minister in the spring of 2005. He put forward the longest omnibus budget bill in Canadian history to that point. It was 120 pages long. I remember Stephen Harper complaining about it, because one of the measures the government was going to take in that omnibus budget bill was to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to ensure that greenhouse gases could be regulated under CEPA.

The Liberals defended it as a budget measure by saying that so much of the budget was their plan to reduce greenhouse gases that therefore this measure to amend CEPA was all right. In fact, in response to the vigorous criticism from opposition parties, the government of the day backed down and took that section out of the budget bill of 2005.

We began to see the use of omnibus budget bills a significant way in 2009 and 2010. The 2009 omnibus bill topped 580 pages, and the 2010 omnibus bill topped 883 pages, leading professor of political science and professor emeritus at Queen's University Ned Franks to write that the use of omnibus budget bills “subvert and evade the normal principles of parliamentary review of legislation.”

The use of them in a minority Parliament made sense, because how else could a governing party that had the minority of the vote force Parliament to accept measures that it would clearly, if given the opportunity, defeat? Since budgetary measures are confidence measures, and parties for one reason or another did not want to have an election quite yet, there was always a sort of propping up of the Conservatives in minority, and big changes were made to the Navigable Waters Protection Act and to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. They were pushed through because it was a minority Parliament, and putting them in a budget bill was a very clever device.

The fact that Stephen Harper continued to use them in majority had a lot to do with the fact that when the Conservatives had the majority, they moved things through very rapidly and precluded proper study at committee. We had the double-barrelled omnibus budget bills Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 in 2012 that basically dismantled Canadian environmental law, from the Fisheries Act to the Navigable Waters Protection Act to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to the National Energy Board Act itself.

What makes omnibus budget bills offensive? It is not solely because there are many bills or many measures all in one bill. The point of an omnibus bill, which is not offensive in and of itself, is that every measure relates to the same purpose or to an overriding theme. There is much that has been written and decreed by Speakers, going back to former Speaker Lucien Lamoureux, who was the first to rule on this in the 1960s. He said that they were moving in a direction where a government could say here is our bill, and it is all the legislative work of an entire session, but it is omnibus.

We have to be careful about omnibus bills. This one has too many measures that should not be in it, although it is a far cry from the abuse we saw in the 41st Parliament.

These are the measures that should not have been included in an omnibus budget bill, because they are not receiving proper study. One is a change to the Board of Internal Economy. It is very welcome that the Board of Internal Economy meetings would be made public, but back to the position of members of Parliament and parties with fewer than 12 MPs, we would not be given any more access to the Board of Internal Economy than the public would get. In other words, the larger parties could still decide that this should not be open to the public and close the meeting of the Board of Internal Economy, and those of us who are members of Parliament would not get any new access to the Board of Internal Economy, any more than the public would get. I find that unacceptable.

Second are the sections relating to the parliamentary budget officer. I provided numerous amendments at committee. My amendments were defeated. There were government amendments to try to deal with what has become very controversial. The Liberals promised in the platform that the parliamentary budget officer would be made an officer of Parliament and given independence, although they promised no more omnibus budget bills either, which they described in the 2015 platform as “undemocratic practice”. Many of the sticky ropes put around the parliamentary budget office, particularly in the first draft of this bill at first reading, reduced the independence of the PBO. Some of those have been improved, but not enough. We still have work plans the PBO has to file. They can make changes as situations change, but it is certainly not the independent officer of Parliament we expected to see.

As my time is running out, I will now turn to the infrastructure bank. If ever there was a piece of legislation that should have been stand-alone to be properly studied, it is the Canadian infrastructure bank. Given the lack of detail and precision, it still might not be as dangerous as it appears to be in some aspects, but we do know that the Auditor General in Ontario found that using privatization schemes for projects, so-called P3 projects, actually boosts the cost. The Ontario Auditor General found an $8 billion increase for the 74 projects studied.

In my last 10 seconds, I will merely say that at third reading, Bill C-44 is moving through this place too quickly. It is not as damaging an omnibus budget bill as the ones we saw in the 41st Parliament, but I urge the Liberal government to be far more cautious and to set a better standard on budget bills.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by accepting the gracious apology from my friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa and move to some of the topics that were a focus of his speech.

The member suggested that Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill of spring 2012, merely amended the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It actually repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as crafted and passed under the previous administration of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and replaced it with an entirely new act, and that act did include timelines.

I am wondering if the member has read the recent expert assessment of the new act, which found that it completely failed to meet the objectives. The review committee was chaired by the former commissioner of the environment, Johanne Gélinas. The report was released last week, and tellingly, it said that Enbridge found that under the new act, the Harper-era environmental assessment act with timelines, the timelines worked against it and the process took longer.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker. I rise on a point of order. I have been wrestling with myself on this point of order, but now that there are just five minutes remaining I wonder if the member plans to address the bill we are debating today, Bill C-17, the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act. As nostalgic as we all are for the destruction of environmental laws under Bill C-38 back in 2012, I really wonder if the member has some views on the current bill.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, since Bill C-38 in 2012, we have been labouring under a broken environmental assessment process. Today we have a landmark report from the expert panel on EA, headed by our former commissioner for the environment. It makes a bold recommendation: get rid of the NEB's Environmental Assessment Agency, have a single authority, give it quasi-judicial powers.

For the Prime Minister, how quickly can we expect this great recommendation to be legislated?

National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, although I do not think I agreed with a single thing my friend from Cypress Hills—Grasslands said, we are friends.

I want to know if he can explain why the previous Conservative government in the 41st Parliament in omnibus budget Bill C-38 did not allow for any amendments or any discussion and used time allocation at every stage, eliminated the office of the inspector general for CSIS, the only internal oversight that used to exist for CSIS. I think we need to bring back that office, as well as have the parliamentary committee.

Motions in amendment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-22. I had not thought that we would see government amendments at report stage that undo a lot of the good work that has been done by the committee.

I approach this issue by first saying I support the creation of a national security committee of parliamentarians. I learned a great deal about the intelligence business, the security business, and where Canada stands within our Five Eyes partners, in the efforts to fight Bill C-51 in the last Parliament. I still hope that the review that is being undertaken right now by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Justice will lead to massive changes in the five different bills, and others, that were amended through that omnibus bill known as Bill C-51, which set up CSIS, for the first time since its creation, as a body that can “disrupt” thoughts, act as having a kinetic function, as the experts call it.

There is nothing right now within our security agencies that ensures that there is any oversight, unlike our other Five Eyes partners, as the hon. government House leader mentioned. We do not have any oversight for a number of the bodies at all. We have no oversight for CSIS. There had been oversight of CSIS up until the moment of omnibus Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012, which eliminated an adviser to the Minister of Public Safety to warn him or her if CSIS was going amok. That position was eliminated, so there is no oversight of CSIS; rather, there is review of CSIS. There is no oversight of the RCMP; rather, there is review of the RCMP. There is neither oversight nor review of the Canada Border Services Agency. For the Communications Security Establishment Canada, which is a very strange body that collects and downloads massive amounts of metadata, there is neither oversight nor review.

We have all of these different intelligence agencies, therefore, it is of critical importance that we do two things. We must rein in and undo the damage and the potential chaos created for security agencies by Bill C-51. I say this parenthetically. I want to get to Bill C-22. However, I need to say that my opposition to what was done in the 41st Parliament in what was known as Bill C-51 was not exclusively with respect to concerns about civil liberties. Those are concerns, but I have heard from security experts in the course of a review of that bill. It is clear to me that, failing to ensure coordination between and among all of these agencies, while giving CSIS the right to be active in kinetic operations, to be able to have CSIS offer people they are surveilling basically a get-out-of-jail-free card, a prospective guarantee that they will never be arrested or put into the judicial system, without any alert to the RCMP that this has happened, the one hand will not know what the other is doing. The creation of the national security committee of parliamentarians will not address that threat, although we will have to address this concern. It has been one that has been well known since the inquiry into the Air India disaster where if there had been coordination enforced between the different security agencies, that disaster, the single largest terrorist act on Canadian soil ever, could have been avoided. That was certainly the opinion of the Air India inquiry.

Coming back to Bill C-22, I support the creation of a committee of parliamentarians. However, I am baffled by the changes that have just taken place. I turn to the leading Canadian experts in this, Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, professors of law, both of whom played a role in the Air India inquiry. They are the authoritative experts to whom I turn. Certainly, Professor Craig Forcese is baffled by the limitation on what parliamentarians will be allowed to know. I mentioned in my question earlier to the government House leader that these restrictions do not apply to the people who serve on the Security Intelligence Review Committee, SIRC, to which civilian non-elected people are appointed. For the purpose of pointing out that the appointment process can have gaps with respect to security, let us not forget that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed the now late committed fraudster Arthur Porter as the chair of SIRC. Arthur Porter did not have the restrictions that Bill C-22 would now put on parliamentarians, who are elected, who take an oath, and who have an understanding of their responsibilities.

My amendment to the bill is to delete section 12, which is the section that limits the MPs' access to parliamentary privilege. It is what Craig Forcese has called the triple lock on what MPs and senators are allowed to know.

Parliamentarians sitting on this committee have already sworn allegiance to Canada. They will go through security checks. The way the bill is currently written, it is not as though there is no check on their access to information or risk of their revealing information. The Canada Evidence Act would apply, section 38. Even as these government amendments are rolling forward, Professor Forcese has noted that it would be probably better to rely on court and the Canada Evidence Act than on these very restrictive moves in terms of what parliamentarians can know, an overly generous discretion on the point of what ministers can withhold, as well as getting rid of what was a very good amendment achieved in committee of giving the committee subpoena powers.

I have to say that it is just simply baffling that the government has taken such a restrictive view on what parliamentarians can be allowed to know. I will just note that this is from an article by Professor Forcese titled, “Stronger Bill C-22 Goes Back to the House”. This was before the government amendments came forward. He noted that, “C-22 committee members will be surrendering parliamentary privileges and will be permanently bound by secrecy under the Security of Information Act (and therefore subject to criminal sanction for violating secrecy rules).”

I think the government, with all due respect, has overreacted to very good amendments that were passed by the committee, and this is a larger point as well. We are often told in this place that we should rush legislation through second reading so that it can go to committee where the committee will do the good work. We now have a fair litany of times where the Liberal government, with its majority, has decided to ignore the good work of committees.

The first was, of course, the committee that dealt with medically assisted death. That advice was completely overlooked in the drafting of Bill C-14. We have the committee work, on the committee on which I served, the Special Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform, and that is a very sad story because we need to get back to that, but very good work was done.

For the first time since 1867, when the British North America Act said Canada will use the voting system from Westminster until such time as its Parliament chooses its own voting system, we had Parliament recommend a voting system and a way forward, and that was rejected. Now this committee's work has been rejected and, I think, hastily.

There is a way forward here. There is an appropriate balance. I do believe that the parliamentary committee struck that balance, and it is really important to remember that what the committee is looking at is already protected in many ways.

The U.K. parliamentary committee has never had a problem with breaching secrecy. One of the experts who testified in Bill C-51, Joe Fogarty from U.K. MI5, testified that there just simply were not problems. Parliamentarians instructed with the duty to maintain confidentiality have done so.

I also point out the precedent that the New Zealand Parliament has a very similar committee, and the New Zealand members of Parliament who serve on that committee do not have to surrender parliamentary privilege. It is explicitly preserved under the New Zealand model.

It leaves one wondering why the government has chosen to undo the good work of committee, further undermining the proper role of legislated deliberation in committee coming back to this place at report stage, doing serious damage to the work that was done by the committee, leaving, I fear, greater uncertainty as to how the committee will function and still wondering why is it that in taking measures to restrict the information that parliamentarians have, the independent expert national security review bodies, SIRC and the CSE commissioner, are not given the same set of handcuffs.

I do not think it makes sense. I urge the government to reconsider and accept my amendment.

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise at report stage to speak to Bill C-15. In the seven minutes I have, I will try to be very economical and focus on a few points that have been mentioned by other members.

I have a very strong view about the improper use of omnibus budget bills, and I want to reflect briefly on the history of omnibus budget bills.

The mandate letter to the hon. government House leader makes it clear that he is directed to “end the improper use of omnibus bills”. Therefore, having fought very hard in the spring of 2012 against Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill, I want to canvass this because I think it is important for me to say out loud that this is not an improper use of an omnibus bill but it comes dangerously close.

Omnibus budget bills between 1993 and the 2000 were generally around 12 pages long. The biggest omnibus bill that I had seen was in the spring of 2005 under the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin, which topped 120 pages. People actually protested that the Martin government's 2005 budget bill, at 120 pages, was too long, including the leader of the official opposition at that time, who went on to become prime minister and became the champ of all inappropriate and improper uses of budget bills.

This budget bill, at 179 pages, is clearly the longest omnibus budget bill from a Liberal government. However, it is a piker compared to the abuse of democracy that we saw under the previous Conservative regime.

In the year 2010, we saw an omnibus budget bill that was 883 pages long. In the spring of 2012, we saw the first part of an omnibus budget bill that was 440 pages long, with a second part in the fall, which was another 400 pages long.

What makes an omnibus bill appropriate or inappropriate? If in one piece of legislation we are working toward a single purpose and all pieces of the legislation stem from that single purpose, it is an omnibus bill all right, but it is not improper. What happened in the spring of 2012 is that Bill C-38 destroyed our Environmental Assessment Act, which was not mentioned in the budget, destroyed the Fisheries Act, repealed the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, and changed the National Energy Board Act. No fewer than 70 laws were changed at that time.

Therefore, let us not muddy the waters. The warning to my friends in the Liberal government is that they should not tread too far. This one should have split out the commercialization of the Wheat Board. We needed to study that separately. However, overall, this one is not an improper use of omnibus bills; rather, it just flirts with the word “improper”.

What is good and what is not good about this? Obviously, there is much in this budget to like. I was disappointed because I thought there would be more to like, and there are two specific elements I must mention, before we move to Standing Order 31s, that are really unfortunate and, in fact, egregious.

In terms of the good things, there are changes to the employment insurance program that I welcome. However, as many groups have said, including those who testified before the finance committee, we need to go further and fix EI to get it back to the systems we had before the changes of the Conservative regime. Therefore, while it is certainly better to have the changes we just made, I tried in committee to make amendments to deal with the long-tenured worker, the idea that one has to work for seven years to qualify for those pieces. We have not yet seen the reversal of the changes to seasonal workers. We need to see that.

In the case of the child benefit program, I agree with the Canadian Teachers' Federation, which described it as a good first step to alleviate childhood poverty. However, I found this evidence from the Canadian Teachers' Federation really telling, and we should all take it on board as parliamentarians. It stated:

Each day in our classrooms, Canadian teachers engage with children and youth who are hungry, tired, and struggling due to poverty.

I talk to teachers all the time. We need to do much more for our children. This is just a very small first step.

With respect to veterans, I would say that the Liberals kept their promise to open the veterans offices across Canada that were wrongfully closed. They have done some things that will change the permanent impairment allowance and the grade determination. This is an improvement. However, we still need much more to be done for our veterans, just as we do for pensioners.

The National Pensioners Federation made the same point. The increase in GIS for pensioners is very welcome, but it is $2.60 a day. The maximum improvement for poor seniors in this budget is $2.60 a day. That is not enough.

There is more that I liked in the budget, such as cultural industries and better deals for students, although the money needs to be improved. However, there are two pieces that are completely egregious. One is found on page 221, where the fossil fuel subsidy to liquefied natural gas is left in place until 2024. This is a violation of the Liberal election promise to end subsidies to fossil fuels.

Also, at pages 166 and 167, we see a commitment to keep environment assessment in place under the Bill C-38 version, which as I just mentioned, destroyed our environmental assessment regime. Specific reference to continue to fund CEAA under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, is offensive to all of us who understand environmental law.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Northumberland—Peterborough South and it is my sad responsibility to tell her that what she has just read is not true. All major projects did not fall under the interim measures. Only pipeline projects do.

I hold the Minister of Environment and Climate Change in the highest regard. The advice from her officials, if that is where she got the bad advice, was that it was sufficient to add a few conditions to pipeline projects. This misses out entirely that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 puts entirely in the hands of offshore petroleum boards in Atlantic Canada the right to give permits for offshore drilling and none of the interim measures apply to that because it only applies to projects under the National Energy Board.

The extent to which Bill C-38 has destroyed our environmental assessment process is not fully understood by a new government. I am hoping that new government will look at this and decide that Bill C-38 must be removed much more quickly than current plans allow.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise tonight in adjournment proceedings to pursue a question that I originally asked on March 24. It pertains to something that is fundamental to the concept that Canada has any framework of environmental law, any regimen of review in advance before large projects proceed.

In a strange quirk of history, I was actually in the office of the Minister of the Environment in the Mulroney administration when I shepherded through the Privy Council Office permission to legislate the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It finally passed into law. It was passed under the Mulroney administration, received royal assent under the administration of the Right Hon. Jean Chrétien, and it has evolved since then.

It had as its cornerstone principles that the environmental assessment process must engage Canadians. Public participation and rights of public participation were fundamental to that act. So, too, was a broad understanding of what environment means, including the full environment, marine, terrestrial, all aspects of the environment, human health and the environment, even socio-economic impacts, and even local community values.

That environmental assessment process required that alternatives be reviewed. A project was not just approved; the question was actually asked as to whether there was a better way to do something which would cause less environmental damage.

All of that was destroyed. It was destroyed completely in omnibus budget Bill C-38 in spring 2012. Those of us in the opposition parties fought it as hard as we could. Liberals, New Democrats, Greens, and the Bloc, we tried to protect the cornerstone of environmental law, and we lost because might makes right and the Conservative government at the time forced through the acceptance of something called the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012.

It is not an environmental assessment act at all. It fails even in comparison to environmental assessments conducted by developing countries. It is a joke of an environmental assessment act. To make it worse, it took away the fundamental principle of public participation. That was a fundamental principle of our cornerstone of our environmental assessment law, and it is gone. The new CEAA 2012 says that only those parties who are directly affected, such as if one lives next door to a large quarry, next door to a large LNG facility, have a right to participate.

It took away the heart and soul and rigour of environmental assessment law. Worse than that, in the case of energy projects, it made up a whole new regime. It said that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 does not apply through its normal agency operations if it is a pipeline, a nuclear facility, or an offshore oil and gas facility. In those cases, the National Energy Board for the first time in Canadian history was mandated to do environmental assessments. So, too, were the offshore petroleum boards for Newfoundland and Labrador, for Nova Scotia, as was the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They were given the authority to do environmental assessments.

Now, we have lived through quite a few of these. I can say without a shadow of a doubt and without fear of contradiction from any person in the public interest or environmentalist who has gone through that process, they are a sham.

Here we are, it is June 1, 2016, and I ask the government opposite, why are we still operating under Bill C-38's destruction of our environmental law? I ask, as I did on March 24, when can we see the end of Bill C-38 and bring back real environmental assessment in Canada?

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Brampton Centre for sharing his time with me.

It is such an honour for me to speak to budget 2016 this afternoon.

I am going to divide the 10 minutes that I have into three general categories: first, the overall quality of the budgetary information; second, a quick review of those things that are pretty good, but not good enough; and third, concerns about the environmental content of the budget.

First, on the quality of the budget, there is something that I think parliamentarians need to spend a lot more time talking about and demanding of Finance Canada. It has been a number of years since I have been able to find in the budget of Canada something that I think most Canadians would expect us to find, something called a budget: a statement of revenues, a statement of expenses, a bottom line, clear information.

I started saying with the previous government that we should really stop calling it the budget and call it the annual spring thick brochure so we would know what we were talking about. I expected more clarity of information, frankly, from the new finance minister, but as we have seen in the information from the parliamentary budget office in its review of this document, we still do not have detailed tables to identify the impacts of changes. Budget 2016 has actually shortened the time horizon on cost estimates from five years to two years, and it is going to be increasingly difficult to reconcile the program information with the budgetary information with our main estimates and supplementary estimates. I urge the new government to make sure that 2016 is the last budget that is not really a budget.

In addition to the things that the PBO has asked for, I would like to see a return to budget documents that include a statement of the budgets that are comparable from the previous year to the next year, department by department. Quite often in the budgets over the last number of years, we can see an announcement that there is money for a department to do whatever, but we cannot figure out for months, if we ever can, whether that is new money, re-profiled money, or whether it is a real commitment. I would like to see that.

Another thing I would like the Minister of Finance to do before next year, and as a matter of fact as quickly as possible, is present legislation to enshrine the parliamentary budget office and the parliamentary budget officer as independent officers of Parliament, properly funded and not subsumed in the budget of the Library of Parliament. The PBO does an amazing job for us as parliamentarians. It should not have to fight tooth and claw for information from Finance Canada. It should be as available to them as it is to us, and we are not seeing that change yet.

This budget is clearly much more welcome to the Green Party of Canada than the ones over the last 10 years. I do not open it and cringe and fear weeping at every page. Therefore, let me go through those things that are good, but not good enough.

It is certainly welcome to see $8.4 billion allocated to first nations, Métis, and Inuit communities. It is good, but not good enough, because it neglected where we really need to see some increased spending, which is on the care of children in those communities. Specific child care dollars were missed. We need more attention on those key areas. It is certainly welcome, but falls a bit short there. Actually, it is more than a bit short. It completely omits, as Cindy Blackstock has pointed out, money for first nations children and to make sure we act on all the commitments under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I was pleased to see action to assist young Canadians or any students with student debt in making that more manageable, but when one reads very carefully, one finds that there is no new money for that. It is re-profiled in ways that will help students carry student debt and ensure they do not have to start paying student debt back until they are making more money. It is encouraging, but not good enough.

There is more money for international development for Global Affairs Canada, but not nearly enough to catch up to where Canada should be. I want to see a reinstatement of our goal as a nation to 0.7% of our GDP into international development assistance. We are far short of that, even with the modest increase to spending in this budget.

It was very welcome to see money for housing and the federal government being involved again in housing. It is very important that we do that, but I was very disappointed not to see money in this budget for energy retrofits. I will return to that.

It is also welcome to see a return to the funding of basic science and away from the notion that we will not fund anything unless it has an immediate commercial application. It is very welcome to see a return to basic science research and more money for hiring scientists, such as the $40 million that was recently announced for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to start rehiring scientists. Parks and marine protected areas also get funding.

One of Canada's greatest environmental thought leaders passed away earlier this year. I would like to take a moment to note that Jim MacNeill's passing is devastating to the whole policy community that has done any work on sustainable development. Jim MacNeill always said that the single most important environmental statement from any government is its budget. After analyzing this budget for the environmental promises, that is where we find the deepest disappointment.

First, on infrastructure, during the election campaign the Liberals promised to spend enough on infrastructure to stimulate our economy to hire a great deal more people to ensure that we have a strong and vibrant economy that could get us out of the deficit. That was the premise of the Liberals' election campaign. I have to say I do not quibble with that. The Green Party platform was a balanced budget, but I am easily persuaded that in a weak, stagnant economy, when the cost of borrowing is as low as it is today, it is not a bad idea to go into deficit to kick-start the economy. It is a good idea. However, the Liberals fell far short of what needs to be done to create the investments that we need in infrastructure and green infrastructure to create that vibrant economy.

In a nutshell, we read in this budget that over the next 10 years there will be $120 billion invested in infrastructure. That is a big number and it sounds great, until we realize that part one is the next five years, past the next election, in which less than 10% of that money, $11.9 billion, will be spent. The 90% of $120 billion will come to us in the second five-year period. That is important to note, because it means that for public transit money, which is desperately needed, there is only $3.4 billion over three years. It is not enough to significantly reduce greenhouse gases by moving us to public transit. A key piece of stimulus spending that would have put tens of thousands of Canadians to work quickly is to fund eco-energy projects.

With the previous Liberal government, under former prime minister Paul Martin who created the program, it was wildly successful. It delivered on greenhouse gas reductions. Homeowners loved it. Contractors loved it. Building supply companies loved it. It worked. It should have come back in this budget and it should have been expanded to include institutions like universities, schools, and hospitals, to replace inefficient furnaces, to bring in heat pumps, and to employ an army of carpenters, electricians, and plumbers who could go to work to deliver. It is missing and that is a shame. I hope it will get serious consideration before the 2017 budget so that we can actually attack the 30% of greenhouse gases that come from leaky buildings in Canada.

However, I have to say the most despairing part in reading the budget was when I came to a section which has the heading, “Restoring trust in environmental assessment”. This is at page 165 in the budget. Restoring trust in environmental assessment requires fixing the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, brought in originally in 1993, was repealed in 2012 in the spring omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38.

This section of the budget suggests we are going to keep the broken, bogus, useless Environmental Assessment Act that was brought in under Bill C-38, and that we are going to keep it for four more years. There is a specific reference to it getting funded for four more years. This is an enormous mistake, and it must be reversed. Similarly, we must get rid of what Bill C-38 did to our Fisheries Act, to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which was in the fall omnibus budget bill, Bill C-45.

We need to fix our environmental laws if we are going to have a hope of restoring public trust in the environmental assessment process. This must be fixed and it is a budgetary issue. However, it is an urgent parliamentary concern that we undo the damage that every single member of the opposition fought against in 2012. Every New Democrat, every Liberal, and every Green MP fought that. We need to pay attention to the mistakes in this budget and fix them immediately.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking on the federal budget today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Etobicoke North.

This budget has no real plan for jobs or growth. It gives the most to people who need it the least, and it keeps Canada in a deficit situation.

The Prime Minister's claim of a balanced budget is about as credible as George W. Bush's claim, in 2003, when he declared “mission accomplished” on the Iraq war. History proved the president wrong; the U.S. remained in Iraq for another seven years.

I think history will prove that this Prime Minister is wrong to declare victory on deficits. It is a cautionary tale about premature declarations of victory. This lesson is lost on the Conservative government. Instead of learning from history, the Conservatives are using this budget to declare mission accomplished in a fiscal year that will not even end until March 31, 2016.

The budget shows that after seven consecutive deficits, the federal Conservatives have yet to balance the budget. Canada has not been in a recession since May 2009. In fact, the Conservatives have been breaking the principle of their proposed balanced budget legislation since then.

Now the Conservatives have fabricated an illusory surplus on the eve of an election. How did they do that? First, they cut the contingency reserve. That is right. In the past, they kept intact the contingency reserve put in place by finance minister Paul Martin. If the Conservatives had actually done that this year, the budget would have shown that the Conservatives would be in deficit until at least 2017.

Slashing the rainy day reserve is just plain reckless. Last year, then-finance minister Jim Flaherty agreed. He said it would be “imprudent” to cut the contingency reserve. Earlier this year, the then-employment minister, now the defence minister, promised that the government would not touch the contingency fund. He said, “We won't be using a contingency fund”, to balance the budget. “A contingency fund is there for unforeseen circumstances, like natural disasters”.

This finance minister and the Prime Minister did not listen to either. Instead, he has recklessly cut the contingency reserve, leaving the government with no room for any unforeseen events.

The finance minister's reckless streak does not end there. His budget also depends on a 50% increase in oil prices. The Bank of Canada knows better than to build its forecasts around the hope that oil prices are going to go up in the mid-term. The Conservatives should be similarly cautious. It is reckless to build a budget around rosy assumptions.

The cut to the contingency reserve, in fact, is not the only item in this budget that is larger than the illusory surplus. There is also the one-time asset sale of GM shares, a $2.2 billion sale of GM shares that is actually bigger than this illusory surplus.

That confirms the reason the finance minister sat on his hands and delayed the budget until April, after the fiscal year had already begun.

Since 2010, job growth in Canada has been stagnant, and with the fall of oil prices, Canadians have been losing their jobs. The Bank of Canada has called the economy in 2015 “atrocious”. The Governor of the Bank of Canada actually took action in January. He stepped in with a historic interest rate cut to strengthen the economy. Meanwhile, the finance minister was nowhere to be found. He went into hiding, avoiding questions in Parliament for months. Now we know the real reason he did this. The finance minister was putting politics ahead of the economy and the Conservatives' political fortunes ahead of the Canadian priority of having a real plan, in a timely manner, to create jobs and growth for Canadians who need them.

He delayed the budget so that the sale of GM shares would count toward this fiscal year instead of last. That is not a plan. That is a gimmick. It is not just unsustainable, it is pathetic. It is playing politics with the livelihoods of Canadians.

The Canadian economy desperately needs a plan for jobs and growth. Instead, the Conservatives remain committed to their fiscally irresponsible plan for income splitting and the doubling of the TFSA contribution limit. They spent the surplus even before it arrived, and they are spending it on those who need the help the least.

Neither income splitting nor the increase to the TFSA limit would do anything for job creation. Neither of these measures would create the jobs and growth Canadians need or help young Canadians find work. Both of these measures would skew benefits toward the rich, doing little for the middle class and those Canadians working hard to join the middle class.

Doubling the TFSA limit would be particularly reckless, because the cost of the measure would ramp up dramatically over time and would gut the capacity of future governments by tens of billions of dollars every year. According to the PBO, a third of that cost would be borne by provincial governments, and because TFSAs would not count toward income-tested benefits, it would also result, perversely, in billions of dollars each year in additional old age security payments for wealthier seniors.

At some level, the Minister of Finance seems to understand that doubling the TFSA would create a problem for the next generation. When asked about that problem, he acknowledged that there would be a problem and said “why don't we leave that to [the Prime Minister's] granddaughter to solve”.

Canadian parents believe in building a better country for our kids and our grandkids. We do not believe in burdening the next generation with today's tax breaks for the rich. We do not believe in gutting our social safety net to pay for those tax breaks.

The Conservatives do not get this. They have grown out of touch with the challenges faced by middle-class Canadian families. Instead of building for the future, the Conservatives have engineered, effectively, a reverse mortgage on Canada's fiscal house to help them pay for giveaways to the rich. Doubling the TFSA limit would dramatically reduce the government's capacity in the future to invest in what matters.

All of this is bad enough, but it was only three years ago, just shortly after the last election, that these same Conservatives falsely claimed that they had to raise the age of OAS from 65 to 67 because of financial pressures. They falsely claimed that the OAS program was not financially sustainable. They passed these measures in Bill C-38, the spring 2012 omnibus budget bill, which resulted in cutting OAS and GIS to Canada's most vulnerable seniors for two years.

When fully implemented, Bill C-38's cuts to OAS and GIS will take $32,000 away from each of Canada's poorest and most vulnerable seniors. The Conservatives will be taking that money from low-income seniors at precisely the time when doubling the TFSA limit will start to get really expensive for the government and when the extra OAS payments for wealthier Canadians kick in.

The Conservatives are playing anti-Robin Hood. There is an adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Under this Conservative budget, it is now official government policy.

Raising the age of OAS and doubling the TFSA limit would take money away from the poorest, most vulnerable seniors and would give it to the rich. It would give that money to the select few who have an extra $10,000 burning a hole in their pockets every year. We need to keep in mind that some families are wealthy enough that there would in fact be two adults who could each contribute, so that is $20,000. I do not know a lot of families like that in Kings—Hants. People are working hard. They are struggling. Middle-class families are barely getting by.

The Conservative decision to take from the poor and give to the rich is unfair and un-Canadian. It is another example of how out of touch with the priorities of Canadians and the challenges of middle-class families the Conservatives have become.

The budget has no plan for jobs and growth. It would do next to nothing to help Canada's struggling middle class. It would do the most for the people who need it the least, the rich, and it would keep Canada in deficit.

A Liberal government will have a real plan for jobs and growth and support for Canada's middle class, and we will balance the books.

Opposition Motion—Environmental impacts of microbeads

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to once again speak about the environment.

I am very pleased to support the motion that was moved by my colleague from Halifax, the NDP environment critic. She puts her heart and soul into protecting our environment. Again yesterday, she wanted to propose an emergency debate on the excessive melting of Arctic ice. The ice in the Arctic is melting very rapidly because of climate change. Unfortunately, the Conservatives denied the request for this debate. The member continues to speak out against a number of measures that affect the environment, measures passed by the Conservatives that undermine our environment, whether it be the elimination of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy or the gutting of all or almost all of our environmental protections. There is 1% left. The Conservatives did away with environmental assessments so that a number of projects could move forward without public consultation or oversight.

The member is an outstanding environment critic, and my colleague from Drummond, who is the deputy critic, also does a wonderful job. He works hard to protect our environment for future generations and to show the world that sustainable development and the economy go hand in hand and that companies are prepared to get on board. All that is missing is some political leadership from the Conservatives.

Today we are debating the following motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, microbeads in consumer products entering the environment could have serious harmful effects, and therefore the government should take immediate measures to add microbeads to the list of toxic substances managed by the government under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999.

Microbeads are toxic substances that are polluting our environment. They were patented to replace natural ingredients in beauty products, including face and body washes and toothpaste.

It is really troubling to think that these plastic substances are found in products that we put on our skin, in our toothpaste and in some other products. Multinational cosmetic companies should not play with our health, nor should they play with our environment. They should replace microbeads with the natural ingredients that were used prior to the 1990s.

Microbeads pose a real threat to the environment, and I will explain why during my speech, as many of my colleagues on all sides of the House have done. These microplastics are ingested by aquatic animals, including fish that are intended for human consumption. They therefore wind up in the food chain. They are toxic to our health, as well as to flora and fauna, but they allow companies to save a few pennies in the manufacturing of consumer products. That is completely unacceptable.

The worst part is that these tiny plastic fragments are not biodegradable. They accumulate and are transferred to animals that ingest them, and then we consume them.

Microbeads are the product of an industrial manufacturing philosophy that focuses only on profits, with no regard whatsoever for the environmental footprint. Cosmetic companies should take into account the impact that these ingredients have on the environment when they manufacture beauty products and other consumer products. Moreover, 21 countries around the world have already chosen to gradually eliminate microbeads from their products because they are aware of the negative effects those substances have. They need help from the government and legislation to ensure fair competition among all companies.

Many large corporations that care about the environment now employ life cycle analysis. What is life cycle analysis? It looks at the resources needed to manufacture a product and quantifies its potential impact on the environment. This standard is accepted by a vast network of companies and even has an ISO code. Companies that make cosmetics should use this analysis in manufacturing their products.

To encourage companies to adopt best practices, my colleague, the member for Halifax, suggested that this substance be included on the toxic substances list in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Why do we need to do that? We want Canadian companies to compete on a level playing field, as I said earlier. All companies, not just some of them, should follow the rules for respecting the environment. By banning microbeads in consumer products, we will ensure that all companies respect human health and the environment.

Passing this motion will enable companies to follow the example set by companies like The Body Shop that have pledged to eliminate microbeads from all of their products by the end of the year.

Also participating are Johnson & Johnson, Lush and Colgate-Palmolive. Microbeads are threatening the ecological health of the St. Lawrence. That is clear. Wastewater treatment plants cannot filter out microbeads because of their small size and buoyancy. This is affecting the river's plants and wildlife. Let us not forget that many sources of pollution are already affecting the health of the St. Lawrence. People in my riding, Beauharnois—Salaberry, are well aware of that.

Every year, the river becomes more acidic. Seaway navigation brings in dangerous invasive marine species, and fish fertility rates are being affected by pollution. Moreover, global warming is exacerbating the effects of pollution and acidification of the river, not to mention that water levels in the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes are falling year by year.

All these sources of pollution are affecting the flora and fauna of the St. Lawrence River and cost millions of dollars in water filtration and purification. We should not forget that the St. Lawrence River is a drinking water reservoir for an entire region of Canada. In Beauharnois, which is in my riding, an old cargo ship has been rusting since 2011 in Lac St-Louis, which feeds into the St. Lawrence. Our lax environmental legislation, which the government weakens with every budget, leave us powerless to do anything about these sources of pollution.

If these large vessels do not pose an immediate risk to the environment, they are left to deteriorate in public waters. However, their long-term presence has serious repercussions for the environment. There is also the economic impact of all this pollution. Sport fishermen are no longer catching trophy fish. This is the result of the gutting of environmental legislation by this Conservative government, which nonetheless calls itself the champion of sport fishing and hunting. However, the Conservatives do not see the contradiction.

In my region, ecotourism is one of the economic drivers threatened by pollution. Waterways are threatened by blue-green algae, another source of pollution created by products such as detergents and industrial soaps. Swimming, fishing and camping are all activities affected by the pollution of our environment.

Les Amis et riverains de la rivière Châteauguay, the Société du vieux canal de Beauharnois, and Les Amis de la réserve nationale de faune du Lac-Saint-François, which is in Dundee in my riding, are just a few of the organizations that work with the public to raise awareness about the importance of protecting our waters, lakes, rivers and oceans. They run water-based activities to ensure that our economy is based on more than just the fossil fuel industry.

A number of environmental organizations are also raising public awareness so that we can better protect our waters. These include SCABRIC, Ambioterra, Nostra-Terra, Crivert, the Comité ZIP du Haut-Saint-Laurent, the Comité de l'environnement — Ste-Martine, the Comité consultatif en développement durable et en environnement de la Ville de Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and the Comité Environnement de la MRC de Beauharnois—Salaberry, just to name a few. All of these local organizations are very aware of the fact that we need to protect our waters.

The motion moved to eliminate the use of microbeads is one of the measures put forward by the NDP to protect our waters. All of these sources of pollution show that things are not looking good for our waterways. As I was saying, in my riding, the Lac Saint-François National Wildlife Area has been fighting for years to preserve plants and wildlife that are unique to the region. The wildlife area is home to approximately 20 rare or threatened species, including the yellow flag; the osprey, which is a bird of prey; and the snapping turtle, a wonderful species of turtle.

What has the Conservative government done to protect our wildlife areas? It cut the budget of the Lac Saint-François National Wildlife Area, threatening its very survival. It also amended the legislation protecting our lakes and rivers with Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, mammoth bills that were introduced in 2012 and gutted protections for our waterways.

Châteauguay River protection groups strongly condemned the Conservatives' direct attacks on our environment. In addition to all of these efforts, many members banded together to introduce bills to protect the environment and our waterways.

I hope that all members of the House will vote in favour of this motion to ensure that we can make the consumer products that enter our homes safe and leave a healthy planet to future generations by developing a sustainable economy.

Opposition Motion—Gros-Cacouna Oil Terminal

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.

I would like to begin by commenting on what our esteemed Conservative Party colleague, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, said. Frankly, I do not think that he gets the NDP point of view at all.

He is trying to convince us that DFO is doing its job and being perfectly transparent about the situation. However, the recent ruling regarding the port of Cacouna gives us good reason to doubt that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is stepping up.

This is an excerpt from paragraph 106 of that ruling:

They completely hid the fact that nobody from TransCanada or DFO's science branch answered their perfectly legitimate questions about whether carrying out the work on the dates proposed by the proponent could cause a significant disturbance or have a significant impact on marine mammals, and if so, what additional mitigation measures would help to reduce the disturbance or limit the impact to acceptable levels.

That is from the court's ruling, and I put a lot more faith in that than in the Conservative government.

Let us go on to paragraph 108:

On the contrary:

...the evidence shows that Mr. de Lafontaine's letter does not constitute scientific advice from DFO's science branch; even the Attorney General of Canada said so;

Their own lawyers are telling us that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not do its job.

I hope the Conservatives will begin to understand that transparency is needed, because we cannot live with a government as secretive as this one. They would have us believe that they will do everything, that everything will be fine and that there is nothing to worry about. They will hide the project and perhaps reveal it one day, much like they did with the text of the European free trade agreement. They want us to wait months and months, while they try to hide everything that could be done, and once they have their talking points ready, they present us with a project as a done deal.

I am sorry, but the laws of Canada require the right of oversight. According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada criteria, we must proceed based on the precautionary principle. That is not the case here. Once again, the government is going ahead at all costs, regardless of the consequences.

I would like to come back to something that is put very well in the motion, and that is that the Port of Gros-Cacouna project must be rejected. This is clear when we look at the court ruling and what the experts have said. Those experts unfortunately do not work for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans; the DFO experts were muzzled. Nevertheless, people find other ways to have their say.

I want to acknowledge the very fine work done by the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup and his commitment. He worked tirelessly for months to highlight the bill's shortcomings and to find out what the people in his region were thinking. Consulting Canadians is absolutely crucial. We need to take the time to ensure that projects comply with the rules. That is not the case here.

Let us look at some figures to understand the scope of this project. At this time, in eastern Canada, approximately 585 million barrels of petroleum products are transported by sea on the Atlantic Ocean every year. For the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence estuary, it is about 178 million barrels a year, and those numbers are from 2011. The Port of Gros-Cacouna project could easily add another one million barrels a day.

What is more, another project is being proposed for the Belledune region, not far from my riding. In that case, we are talking about another 400 million barrels a day. The amount of oil that will transit through the Gulf of St. Lawrence is expected to triple in the next three years, but no real studies have been done to determine whether this can be done without harming the environment and the existing natural resources.

In my region, the two major industries are fishing and tourism.

By all accounts, if ever there is a spill involving all these millions of barrels of oil in my region, we can forget about developing our natural resources.

I would like the Conservatives to understand that oil is not the only natural resource. Back home, we depend on the forestry industry and the fishery. I would also like to point out that even the belugas are a natural resource. Indeed, thanks to them, the tourism industry generates roughly $160 million a year.

There are so many industries in the region that we must proceed with caution. I do not understand why the Conservatives fail to see that we must take this one step at a time and respect all the regions and all the industries.

People back home are very worried. They are talking about the oil that will be shipped by the seaway, which will jeopardize the fishery and tourism, and they are talking about the vast quantities of oil that will be shipped by railway. Unfortunately, the Conservatives do not want to invest in that railway, but that is another story.

If we talk about railways and rail safety, we should start by examining all exports flowing through eastern Canada, because the Conservatives want oil to flow through the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline is a very important project that the Americans have very little appetite for, to the point that the U.S. president seems to want to block it. However, the energy east pipeline is even more important than Keystone XL. We must therefore take the time to get the facts right about all aspects of these projects. We should not accept the first proposed port, such as Cacouna. Why is an oil project of this magnitude not subject to a real study and real due diligence? That was not the case for the project proposed by the Conservatives, the project that TransCanada proposed. The time has come for the Conservatives to be more transparent.

The Conservatives say that we cannot debate today a project that has not been submitted to the National Energy Board. Quite frankly, they should perhaps equip themselves with better tools. Members will recall that, two years ago, with Bill C-38, the Conservatives thought it was a good idea to ignore many of the precautionary principles that apply to the fishing industry and the oil industry. We should have left the triggers in the law. Today, the Conservatives are saying that there was no trigger and the study was not carried out. Had Bill C-38 not changed environmental laws, I suspect that today there would have to be a study done by the appropriate bodies. Today, that is the responsibility of the National Energy Board. This is rather illogical given that this board is responsible for the smooth transportation of energy. On the one hand, it will promote energy transportation and, on the other, it is supposed to be our watchdog in that regard.

The Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board is very uncomfortable with this mandate, which consists of being both watchdog and proponent. It is very difficult to wear both hats at the same time.

I hope the Conservatives will take the opportunity to examine Canada's energy industry as a whole to consider new ways of investing in other types of energy. It is about time they invested in green energy. I would like this government to study that option. In my region, we have invested a great deal in wind energy. It is very cost-effective and very green. It is a sustainable and renewable form of energy that contributes very little to greenhouse gas emissions.

I hope the Conservative government will take note of today's motion, take a step back and take the time to reflect on the kind of Canada we all want. Its proposal is not consistent with the Canada I want to live in.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to acknowledge the work of my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway. It was very interesting watching him confront the current government with the very bad decisions it has made in recent years.

I am honoured to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures.

Canada has a poor record on key files. We accumulated a $61-billion trade deficit in 2013. Canada has had a trade deficit in excess of $45 billion for five years in a row. Canadians' debt reached record levels in 2013. People owe $1.64 for every dollar of disposable income they earn in one year. We are facing some truly worrisome situations that must absolutely be addressed. However, we feel that what the current government calls an economic action plan does not tackle the major challenges that are going to catch up to us and hurt Canadians and the economy, if we do not do something about them immediately.

The NDP's position will be to oppose the bill at every stage because there is nothing in Bill C-31 that indicates that the Conservatives are actually addressing these real problems.

This bill has 360 pages and amends 60 laws. Once again, it is an omnibus bill. It brings back bad memories of Bill C-38 in 2012.

At the time, Le Devoir ran the following headline: “A mammoth bill to change the rules without debate—The 431-page bill amends more than 60 current laws”. It seems that we are living in groundhog year. Everyone knows the movie Groundhog Day. Under the current government, we have been living groundhog day since 2011.

I would like to take a few minutes to explain the implications of an omnibus bill to the people at home. It reduces how much time the opposition parties, and the official opposition party in particular, have to analyze the issues. We do not have enough time to address the flaws in the bill. For example, this bill does not propose anything for SMEs. There is nothing solid, as far as we can tell. The bill eliminates the job creation tax credit for small businesses at a time when the unemployment rate might be up to 14% for people 25 and younger in a number of regions. It is absurd. How can the government attack a program that received support from all the regional chambers of commerce in the country? It is unbelievable and unacceptable.

We also do not have enough time with these omnibus bills to address any abuses that are hidden in these hundreds of pages. For example, this bill raises a lot of concerns over privacy protection with respect to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. This is an American tax law on foreign accounts. The government is trying to deal with this in an omnibus budget bill.

However, the sharing of Canadians' information between financial institutions and the Internal Revenue Agency under this agreement, FATCA, would invade the privacy of roughly 1 million American citizens. This is hidden somewhere in the hundreds of pages of yet another omnibus bill.

That is not insignificant. There is another difficult aspect that the people at home need to understand. It is not their cup of tea to try to understand how this works in Parliament in Ottawa. The fact that the government stuffs everything in there makes it hard for the committees to do a decent job. There are decisions involving veterans and the environment hidden among these hundreds of pages.

These are important decisions that should have been and should be dealt with in separate bills that would allow the various all-party committees to invite all kinds of experts to examine the government's decisions. We could then find some better solutions, if it turns out that these are very bad decisions, as often happens. The decisions can sometimes be excellent if there is good co-operation.

We cannot do this kind of work when every single time this government tables a budget in this House, we have to deal with hundreds of pages and dozens of amendments to our laws.

One example that hits close to home for my constituents is rail safety, which once again is in a budget bill. This is a very important issue for my constituents. In the past 30 or 40 years, there have been three major train derailments in downtown Montmagny alone. These are recent events in Quebec, and dozens of people burned alive after trains carrying explosive products derailed. This is a priority for us.

Now, cabinet decisions about changing the security standards for the transportation of dangerous goods will be kept secret. Cabinet decisions on this issue will remain secret. With these changes, the public will not be informed when the Conservatives weaken safety measures, and experts will not be able to advise the minister before the changes are implemented. There are clauses in this bill to allow that.

Where were the Conservatives last summer when we witnessed the worst rail tragedy in our country's history? How can the government then hide a few lines in an omnibus bill saying that from now on, cabinet decisions on rail safety will not be transparent and public? How can the government do such a thing? It is clear that it does not have even the slightest interest in public safety.

Temporary foreign workers are a more recent problem. The bill gives the Minister of Employment and Social Development the power to impose fines on employers who break the rules of the temporary foreign worker program. This program has been in complete chaos for the past three months as a result of the government's serious mismanagement. Recently, in Rivière-du-Loup, we had a visit from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Local television stations were there and recorded the whole thing. The minister promised that the moratorium would be lifted once the new procedures were put in place. The current moratorium is a cause of great concern for many small business owners who sometimes need to seek help from the temporary foreign worker program. As a result of the government's terrible mismanagement of this program, there is a moratorium in place. The abuses that led to this moratorium did not take place in Quebec City, Montmagny or Rivière-du-Loup, but elsewhere in the country.

It is now June 12. The minister obviously did not keep the formal commitment that he made in Rivière-du-Loup when he said that this problem would be resolved when the new procedures were implemented during the first week of June. The summer season, tourist season, is now upon us, and restaurants will have difficulty finding staff. They are wondering how they will find people to clean, wait tables and do dishes. We still have not received an answer.

It seems that the only solution the Conservatives are putting forward for the moment to improve the state of this program is a blacklist of employers who abuse the program. Believe it or not, there are only four companies on that list and they were all added since April 2014. They were added in a panic when the administrative nightmare began, as though the Conservatives were trying to save face at the last minute. It is unbelievable.

What intelligent and constructive measures could the Conservatives have included in this budget? They could have done away with the cuts to tax credits for credit union and labour-sponsored funds. These are extremely useful tools for the economic development of our regions. The Conservatives are attacking our regions with these cuts. They could have simplified the process whereby rural communities request and receive funding for infrastructure projects. Municipal officials have been waiting for nearly two years now to find out what the terms and conditions are for receiving funding under the new Building Canada fund. The government announced $14 billion two years ago, but municipal officials still do not know what it takes to receive funding for their municipalities. They do not know anything about the documentation, the terms or the standards. It has been nearly two years. This is an absolute farce. These issues should have been resolved immediately after the budget was tabled. The list goes on and on.

The NDP will not support this budget because it does not address the real problems and it contains no real solutions.

Report Stage

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his comments and his question.

True, it is not just the size of the bill that is problematic. In 2012, the government introduced Bill C-38 and a number of other omnibus bills totalling thousands of pages. The following year, the government was practically boasting about how the omnibus bill was smaller and contained only a few hundred pages.

It is not so much the size of the bill that we are concerned about, but rather its content. It is absurd that I should be making a 10-minute speech about transportation in my riding as part of our consideration of a budget implementation bill. There is a major problem here.

The members of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities discussed the Champlain Bridge, among other issues. Even though the various elements of the bill are considered by the committees responsible for them, the process will not be as comprehensive as it would be if they were studied as separate bills. This is very unfortunate.

Motions in Amendment

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I always take great pleasure in being able to rise and speak in Canada's Parliament, in our House of Commons.

It is an incredible privilege and honour, certainly to do so on behalf of the people of Skeena—Bulkley Valley, in the northwest of British Columbia. This is a region of the country that is incredibly proud, with its diverse and important history. Also, it has struggled, particularly with regard to creating jobs, and it has watched many of the major sectors suffer.

One of the great abuses that has been heaped on that challenge by successive governments is the inattentiveness to what actual Canadians are concerned about, the proper way to create jobs and wealth in this country.

We have struggled, particularly when we watch governments that grow so arrogant over time that they choose a form of governing that is disrespectful and disregarding of some of our most primary and fundamental democratic instincts.

I have some quotations, because it is not just me saying this about the process we are engaged in here today on this particular bill. Let me quote from somebody sitting in cabinet right now.

Mr. Speaker, here we go again. This is a very important public policy question that is very complex and we have the arrogance of the government in invoking closure again. When we look at the Liberal Party on arrogance it is like looking at the Grand Canyon. It is this big fact of nature that we cannot help but stare at.

That is what the Minister of Industry said when the previous Liberal government used an omnibus bill, this technique of ramming all sorts of pieces of legislation into one. That omnibus bill was one-third the size of the one the Conservatives have just introduced. This must be three times the size of the Grand Canyon with respect to arrogance.

This happens to governments, especially ones that age badly over time, as the government has done. We can look at the list of omnibus legislation over the last number of years. Bill C-13 was 644 pages; Bill C-38, which was often called the pipelines enabling act, gutting environmental and safeguards we have within the Fisheries Act, was 425 pages; Bill C-45, further gutting protections for Canadians, was 400 pages. There was Bill C-4, Bill C-60, and now this one, Bill C-31, at almost 300 pages affecting 60 pieces of law.

I have a stack of quotes from Conservatives, from the Prime Minister to many ministers in his cabinet, decrying the abuse of Parliament that had been done under Liberal majority governments. It seems that they paid too close attention, but took all of the wrong lessons from the previous government. In fact, they took that and somehow tried to normalize it.

We do not think it is normal. We do not think it is proper and good for a government to try to ram these pieces of legislation through, invoking what is called time allocation or closure, shutting down the debate at every stage. In this case, the government shut it down after 20 minutes of debate. It brought in time allocation and said, “That is enough of this whole debate thing, this whole democracy thing. Let us allocate the time and shut down opportunities”.

I remember the Prime Minister, when he was in opposition, decrying the fact that he might only get 10 minutes and that many members of Parliament would not get any time at all. That is exactly what the same Prime Minister is now doing.

That is on the process. It is an absolute farce when the government pretends that any sort of proper oversight was given to this bill. I have sat on the committee, and my Conservative colleagues know full well that as the shutting down of witnesses and debate at committee happens, the government starts racing through pages and pages of legislation. In fact, it had to amend its own bill before it even left the committee stage, because it had made so many fundamental errors. It was going to deprive seniors of some of their pensions, inadvertently.

Constitutional experts that the Conservatives say are the best, like Mr. Hogg, who the Conservatives rely on for advice, have come forward and said there are whole sections of this bill that will not only be challenged in our courts for charter infringement, but those challenges will succeed.

The government is going to introduce legislation that it knows full well is likely to fail a charter challenge, which is going to cost Canadians millions through our tax dollars for all the lawyers that it takes to go through all the series of courts up to the Supreme Court, but it will also cause all the pain and aggravation for those who suffer under a law that is not constitutional in the first place.

This is a movie we have seen before from the government. Time and time again, when we get references for bills that are unconstitutional from all the advice we can gather, the government chooses playing politics over good policy and brings them in anyway.

Let us look at aspects of this 360-page monster.

Let me start with something that is not in here, which the small businesses in Canada were calling for. It was a proposal first put forward by New Democrats in the last election: a small-business hiring tax credit.

Here is the fundamental idea in this very good idea. This was a small-business initiative that Jack Layton and the NDP proposed that said, “Let us help out small businesses in hiring those people, but in giving that tax credit we want to connect it to an actual job being created”. I know this is radical economics over here, where we suggest that if we give a tax credit to the private sector from the public, there should be something in return, like a job created.

The tax credits and the tax breaks that the Conservatives prefer and, to be fair, so did the Liberals before them, in the order of tens of billions of dollars, had no strings attached. I remember Mr. Flaherty, our dear friend, criticizing the private sector for sitting on half a trillion dollars of what is called “dead money”. This is money that had been accumulating in the private sector in the private enterprises in Canada that they were not reinvesting. It was just a hope from the Conservatives: here are the tax breaks to the banks and the oil sector; here is a hope that they will actually do something with the money rather than sit on it or just do stock dividends. They hope that they are going to reinvest it back into research and development, reinvest it back into hiring more Canadians and expanding their business, but there are no strings attached to that deal. The Conservatives were very happy to let that go.

Also, many of those tax breaks were done when the government was running a deficit, so it was borrowed money. As all Canadians know, because they have borrowed money at some point, borrowed money always costs more. It was borrowed money that was then sent to the private sector in Canada with no strings attached.

This was one good idea that over half a million Canadian small business owners applied for and used, this small-business hiring tax credit. We would think that, somewhere in the 360 pages, the Conservatives would have found a way to include that one measure in this budget implementation act. It is one measure that worked, that was being applied for, that Canadian business owners enjoyed, and that had helped create more than half a million jobs in small and medium-sized businesses. However, it is not here.

What is in the bill is interesting. There is the Hazardous Products Act. There are all sorts of changes to how we would handle hazardous products. There are changes to the Supreme Court. There are changes to our privacy rights in this bill.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I saw the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley rising. I am sure he would have pointed out that, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, in 2013, of the jobs the current government managed to cobble together, 95% were actually part-time, and we have 300,000 more unemployed than we did the year before. Therefore, the Conservative government, I guess in keeping with not showing up to evening sessions, is a part-time government. The Conservatives are only able to stimulate the economy with part-time jobs, and that is not even going. I know my colleague for Skeena—Bulkley Valley would also mention the fact that tens of thousands of jobs were lost last month.

We are talking about a government that right now does not seem to be doing much right.

It is rather sad that the government is again moving this motion that it is imposing with its majority. The NDP is always willing to work evenings. There is no doubt about that and we have proven it many times. Every June since 2011, NDP members were always in the House ready to debate bills and provide advice. The problem is that this government does not listen and is not prepared to listen to good advice. I will come back to that in a moment.

We are very familiar with the results. We know that bill after bill has been rejected by the court. The government is then often required to make amendments to the botched parts of the previous bill. The government seems to want to bungle everything, not just services to Canadians, but also the legislative process that leads to the introduction of appropriate bills and proposed amendments to improve bills in order to help Canadians. This process does not seem all that complicated, but it is unfortunately often botched by this government.

I am referring to the Conservatives' use of closure and time allocation motions, which is on par with their use by the Liberals when they were in power. It is appalling that this government systematically wants to shut down debate and deprive members of their right to speak. Each time, 280 members, on average, are deprived of their right to speak. The Conservatives vote for these closure motions. That is ridiculous.

In ridings where a Conservative member was elected—I am not so sure they will be re-elected the next time—that member takes away his own opportunity to speak on behalf of his constituents. The Conservatives say they want to shut down debate and therefore they do not want their constituents in Calgary, Red Deer, Lévis or any other riding to be represented in the House of Commons. They want to shut down debate. Thus, the vast majority of Conservative members seldom talk about the needs of the people in their riding or bills introduced in Parliament.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has just stood up and said that the Conservatives are going to work harder, but that also happened last year. My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley knows what I am talking about. Last year, the Conservatives were not in the House to speak. One evening, there was six hours of debate and only a single Conservative member was in the House to speak. Only one Conservative member spoke in six hours. The government moves time allocation and closure motions, and the Conservative members remain silent instead of speaking.

Members of the NDP, on the other hand, are always in attendance when the sitting hours of the House are extended. We are always there to fight, to improve bills and to solicit comments about bills. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are nowhere to be found. They do not come to the House, or perhaps one of them will show up over the course of the evening. As we said earlier, during the debate on S-12, no Conservative members came to speak about the bill. Not one, and we were there for six hours. What were they doing?

I do not know. It is not as though they were out consulting their constituents. The Conservatives are not here. They are not speaking.

I am going to come back to this momentarily, but the result is that we end up with botched legislation because the government does not listen and the Conservative members do not even speak on behalf of their constituents. Honestly.

We receive a generous salary from our constituents, the taxpayers. We are here to work to help our ridings move forward. I represent the riding of Burnaby—New Westminster. It is my duty to be in the House to stand up for the interests of the people of Burnaby—New Westminster.

If members decide to stop speaking, to systematically go along with the government's time allocation and closure motions and therefore deprive their ridings of the right to speak and if, on top of that, members do not even show up for the evening sessions in the House of Commons to contribute to the debate and the legislative process, then this approach becomes a complete sham.

I am fairly certain—and I would take a bet with any Conservative member—that this year, we will have the same problem as we did last year and the year before: 90% to 95% of the time, the NDP, or sometimes other opposition members, will be speaking and the Conservatives will not even be here.

The reasoning behind this motion does not make sense. The Conservatives are not the ones who will be here working. The Conservatives will not be here representing their constituents. The Conservatives will not be here giving passionate speeches about their ridings. They will not be here.

The proof, as we will soon see, is the way this motion is structured. The way the government decided to structure the motion is evidence of how much it will once again diminish the democratic rights all Canadians value so strongly. Canadians across the country want us to be in the House. They want us to represent them, regardless of where we are from.

For example, my colleague from Sherbrooke is an extraordinary young man, and he does a good job representing his riding. He is always in the House and speaks often. He is here; he represents his riding. He understands how important it is to represent Sherbrooke in the House of Commons. The same goes for my colleague from Hochelaga. Her riding is not the wealthiest riding in Canada. The average family income in her riding is below the average. She is always here representing the people of Hochelaga and talking on their behalf. She gives speeches on the importance of affordable housing. That is because she understands her role as member of Parliament.

Members on the Conservative side, on the other hand, refuse to speak at second reading or at report stage because there is a time allocation motion, and they refuse to show up on evenings when we have extended debates. How can the government expand the scope of its activities when it does not listen and when government members refuse to speak on behalf of their constituents? They refuse to defend government bills, they refuse to take action, they refuse to present amendments and they refuse to offer anything at all when it comes to legislation.

In such circumstances, voting Conservative does not mean a great deal. When people voted for the Conservatives, they voted for members who are controlled by the Prime Minister's Office, not members who rise in the House, defend their constituents' rights and speak on their behalf.

I want to speak to the motion now because I know that many of my colleagues are reading it. We want this to be a useful study of an important motion. For those who are watching, I will go step by step.

To begin, the majority government, as usual, wants to force a decision on the House. Unfortunately, debate and democracy are foreign concepts for the Conservatives.

They are proposing that commencing upon the adoption of this order and concluding on Friday, June 20, 2014, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the ordinary hour of daily adjournment shall be midnight, except that it shall be 10 p.m. on a day when a debate, pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1, is to take place.

As I said, we do not object to working until midnight. However, what actually happens is that the members opposite rarely show up to speak in the House. Opposition members are the ones who really contribute to the debates, and that is a major problem. If the government listened to us, it would not be problem, but that is not the case.

This has caused many problems with bills in the past. More than once we had to make amendments to botched bills with subsequent legislation, or, again, the Supreme Court clearly indicated that the bills were not in order.

Today, the Conservatives are proposing that we adjourn at midnight, or 10 p.m. if a debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1 is to take place. That refers to emergency debates.

My colleagues in the House, including the hon. member for Laval—who works very hard for the people in his riding—and the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, are always listening to their constituents and are always ready to raise questions that often result in an emergency debate.

A few weeks ago, in fact, an emergency debate was held in accordance with Standing Orders 52 and 53.1. That debate on the kidnapping of young Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram was proposed by the member for Ottawa Centre. Many people from across the country came here to attend the debate, and people were still talking about it when I returned to my riding, Burnaby—New Westminster, last week.

Now the government wants to prevent us from holding emergency debates before 10 p.m. If the Chair decides that there is to be an emergency debate, that debate cannot begin before 10 p.m. For working people in eastern Canada, who have families and work hard, that is late. They will be denied their right to tune in.

It will not be so bad in my riding because of the three-hour time difference. For example, 10 p.m. here is 7 p.m. back home. That is a reasonable time. However, for the vast majority of Canadians, this government motion deprives them of their right to tune in to the emergency debates that will take place in the coming weeks.

Second, when we look at the second clause of this motion, which deals with recorded divisions, we see that what the Conservatives would now do is put in place a voting system that would have votes occur at the conclusion of oral questions, in the middle of the afternoon. This proposal reveals the whole intent of the government.

The Conservatives say that they want to work harder. We have already ripped up that argument by showing that when they said they wanted to work harder that last year, over 90% of the time it was not Conservatives but New Democrats doing the work. Only one Conservative member would show up every night to speak in the House of Commons, so this idea that somehow the government wants to work harder is simply not true.

Paragraph (b) deals with recorded divisions demanded in respect of any debatable motion before 2 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. In this case the vote would stand deferred until the conclusion of oral questions on that day, while if a division is demanded after 2 p.m., it would stand deferred until the conclusion of oral questions on the next sitting day.

What the Conservatives would do is basically do away with those evening votes. Not only do they not show up to speak, but they also do not even want to show up to vote. This could be perhaps the laziest motion ever put forward in the House of Commons by the government. It is far from wanting to work harder, as we have shown quite clearly when 90% to 95% of the time it is the New Democrats carrying the heavy load.

We are fine with carrying the heavy load. We come from humble roots and we are hard workers. Everybody acknowledges that, and that is why 90% to 95% of the time it is we who do the hard work in the House.

However, now the Conservatives want to even do away with evening votes. They are saying, “No, that is too hard. It is too hard voting at 6:00 or 7:00 at night. We do not want to show up to speak”.

This is a licence for laziness. That is what the government has brought forward. The Conservatives want to make sure that motions are voted on around question period time so that folks can show up around question period and then do whatever it is that Conservative MPs do in the evening. I have no idea of that.

I should also point out that, in this motion, the same goes for private members' business. Where this motion mentions Wednesdays governed by this order, it says that recorded divisions will be deferred until the conclusion of oral questions on the same Wednesday. As for other private members' business, the motion says that this too will be deferred until the conclusion of oral questions on the same Wednesday. That is the same thing.

This is really a licence for laziness. As we have shown, 90% to 95% of the time, the Conservatives are not the ones showing up to speak in the House. They do not want to vote in the evening, not even on private members' business. They want to curtail all of these activities and make sure that no votes happen in the evening.

What difference will that make? The NDP will still be here working. We work hard. We have a reputation for working hard. We come from humble roots and we represent our ridings well. I know that the members here this afternoon are very hard-working, and we will continue to work hard. Votes, including votes on private members' business, will now be held in the afternoon. That means the Conservative members will have their evenings free.

That is really the problem. As we move through this motion, we see time and time again that this is like a giant recess for the Conservatives. They have structured this so that they do not have to have votes in the evening anymore. They do not show up to speak in the evening 90% of the time, depending on the evening. It is New Democrats who actually put in the representation of their ridings. What we are seeing again is the Conservatives, through this motion, giving themselves an evening off.

The real clue to what the Conservatives are doing, this licence for laziness, is that they will not show up to speak or to vote, but they are telling the NDP that we can do our stuff and speak on behalf of our constituents. They have also proved that they are not willing to listen to the good advice we offer them, which is why they got into so much trouble having to amend legislation they brought forward previously and having pieces of legislation rejected by the Supreme Court. If they had listened to us and to Canadians, they would not be in so much trouble.

The key to this is paragraph (h): “No dilatory motion may be proposed, except by a Minister of the Crown after 6:30 p.m.” The essence of the motion is that Conservatives will not show up to speak in the House of Commons. They will not show up to participate, because they do not do that; they let harder-working members do that. They will also not show up to vote in the evening. They will not show up to vote on private members' legislation, and they will not show up to vote on public legislation. That is why they want the votes after question period, when it is convenient.

That means that the Conservatives are shutting down the rules of the House so that only they can use them. It is incredible. If we had not been through Bill C-23, in which they were trying to cook the next election campaign, it would be unbelievable that after all the decades, a century and a half and more of Canadian parliamentary democracy, a government would say that the rules will exist, but the government members will be the only ones who can use them. Only Conservatives can use these rules. Only a minister of the crown can use these rules.

We will have this period. I know it, because we went through it. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley knows it full well, because I think he probably spent more time in this House than any other member. Night after night, there will be no Conservatives here wanting to speak, or maybe one member of Parliament from the Conservative Party will want to speak. However, the Conservatives will not show up to vote, because they are having all the votes deferred to question period, when it is convenient for them, and they are now saying that all the rules of the House apply only to them. Only they can use them. They are basically putting handcuffs on every single member of the opposition. They are saying that only a Conservative can use the rules that normally function that make this democratic place a democracy. Only the Conservatives can use them. It is unbelievable.

If we had not been through the unfair elections act, where the Conservatives were trying to subvert the next election campaign, we would actually think this could not be Canada. These are not Canadian values. That is what they are doing. They are putting in, and writing it out so that any Canadian can see, “No dilatory motion may be proposed, except by a Minister of the Crown after 6:30 p.m.”

This is not an approach to try to work harder. The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons was trying to slide that by us a little while ago, and we simply do not believe it. The evidence simply shows that this is not the case. Conservatives will not be showing up to speak in the House. They did not last year. They did not the year before, and 90% to 95% of the time they let the heavy lifting be carried by New Democrats. We are strong, we are tough, and we do not mind doing it. We will do an even better job in 2015 once we are the government. That is when we will really see changes, when the heavy lifting actually benefits people directly through good governance.

I can tell members something else we will not be doing. It is what I mentioned half an hour ago.

I am enjoying this. I am not sure when I am going to sit down, actually. I think my colleagues from the NDP are appreciating it too.

I just want to mention what happens when due diligence is not done. Conservative members should know this, but they are muzzled. They vote for time allocation and muzzle themselves, so they do not actually speak on legislation in the House. There are 280 MPs, on average, who have their right to speak on legislation ripped away every single time, the dozens and dozens of times, the government has used closure techniques. Sometimes it calls it time allocation, but it amounts to the same thing; it is closure. Every time the government does it, 280 MPs, on average, are denied their right to speak. They do not show up to the evening session to speak. One does, and that is normally it. Then 90% to 95% of the heavy lifting is done by the NDP.

What is the result of this? I will give three examples. I could give tons of examples. I could probably speak for 14 hours on bad, botched Conservative legislation. I could do that, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure you and the public would find it interesting, but eventually we are going to have to go to question period. I am going to mention only three examples.

The Conservatives rammed Bill C-38 through the House without due care and attention and without showing up for evening sessions. Bill C-38 was one of the omnibus bills. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley raised major concerns about it at the time. The Conservatives botched the bill. They botched it so badly that the next bill they introduced had to fix the mistakes they made in the first bill. They rammed Bill C-38 through the House with time allocation. It was omnibus legislation, which was quite all right, except it was wrong. It was badly botched in a way only the Conservative government could do it.

It was so badly botched, the government had to introduce another piece of legislation, Bill C-45. Bill C-45 had to fix all the problems in the previous bill. Was that a good use of taxpayers' money? Was it a good, use of this legislative process? The government rammed through Bill C-38 but botched it so badly that it had to bring another piece of legislation in to fix it. That is like bringing one's car in to get fixed and driving off without the wheels. It is incredible. We went through another process, with Bill C-45, to fix what was wrong with Bill C-38.

That is just a snapshot of how the government handles legislation. It is like the guy who has a hammer and thinks everything is a nail. Conservatives think everything is pavement and they can steamroll over all of it, except that when legislation is badly botched, there are consequences.

That brings me to another piece of legislation, Bill C-4. It is the same kind of thing. The Conservatives tried to throw a whole bunch of things in the bill, a laundry list, except that the Supreme Court rejected part of that legislation. As we know, the Leader of the Opposition has been raising this repeatedly in the House.

We have a problem whereby botched legislation leads to more time wasted, because the Conservatives have to introduce other legislation to fix the bad legislation they forced through in the first place without listening to the NDP. If they had listened to the NDP, they would not have had the badly botched legislation in the first place. If they do get it through the House, then, as we saw with Bill C-4, the Supreme Court says, “Sorry, you badly botched this legislation and it is not constitutional”. As a result of that, we have to reject part of this legislation.

This is the real problem. It is not that the government, as it likes to say, does its job and produces a quantity of legislation, so everyone should give it a pat on the back. It is bad legislation in so many cases. It is legislation that has to be fixed. New Democrats always offer the amendments and the fixes. We are always there to try to direct the government. We often feel as if we are trying to direct a puppy, because it seems to get distracted often.

The reality is that the work the government does should be very important. The legislation the government presents in the House should be very important. There should be a proper legislative process. There should be amendments that are considered. There should be a process people can actually respect. That is not what happens under the government.

The government just throws legislation out without due respect for parliamentary traditions. It refuses to listen to the opposition to develop the legislation so that it can actually accomplish what it purports to set out to do when it puts the legislation on the floor of the House. The government will not take amendments, will not listen to debate, actually shuts down the debate, and rams legislation through. This costs Canadians enormously.

Every time the government has to provide new legislation to fix the old legislation, and as has happened a number of times in the past few weeks, every time the Supreme Court says that what the government is doing is simply not constitutional, it costs Canadians.

We have this motion that is a licence for laziness. It dismisses Conservatives from voting in the evening. It dismisses Conservatives from having to participate in debates that are actually quite important, because that is how we get legislation fixed, particularly the shoddy legislation the government tends to present in the House.

Now we have a government that has such profound arrogance that it says, quite clearly, “No dilatory motion may be proposed, except by a Minister of the Crown”, which means that no dilatory motion may be proposed except by a Conservative, except by a minister of the crown, after 6:30 p.m.

What the government is doing, at the height of its arrogance, is saying to Canadians, “Hey, we are just going to run this government, this country, exactly how we want, and we do not care about the consequences”.

We care about the consequences. We care when we see shoddy legislation that has to be corrected, and it takes months of work, because the government did not get it right in the first place. We care when the Supreme Court says that what the government is doing is unconstitutional.

We care when we see, right across this country, growing concern about the government's arrogance and its attacks on a whole host of institutions, not just in the elections act but in the attack on the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Sheila Fraser. How could anyone attack Sheila Fraser? The Conservatives have been doing just that.

When we see all those attacks, we see a government that has simply done its time. It no longer has any sort of legitimate agenda but just wants to lash out at its perceived enemies and wants to set a perception that is simply not true.

With this motion, this licence for laziness, Conservatives get off scot-free. They do not have to vote in the evening. They do not have to show up in the evening. The government has said it is going to handcuff every single member of the opposition to their desks and not let them use any proper parliamentary procedure after 6:30 p.m. Only the government can.

That arrogance is something Canadians are becoming increasingly aware of. That arrogance is something Canadians are saying they have had enough of. In the most recent poll, the Prime Minister had an approval rating of one-third of Canadians. Two-thirds of Canadians disapprove of the work he is doing.

The leader of the Liberal Party has falling approval levels, but he did better. It was 50/50.

The top approval level in the country is for the Leader of the Opposition. Two-thirds of Canadians see his work in the House of Commons and approve of it. They see him as strong and as defending Canadian democracy.

That is what we are going to continue to do. We are going to ensure that legislation is effective. We are going to continue to speak out and work hard on behalf of our constituents. We are looking forward to that day, October 19, 2015, when we can get rid of the government and start having an NDP government that is going to fully respect our democratic traditions here in the House of Commons and right across the country.

First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to stand in the House to speak to a bill that is extremely important to the people who sent me to Parliament, first nations and indigenous people in northern Manitoba, and of course, first nations people across our country.

I want to begin by speaking about the reality that first nations youth face in communities in our part of the country. Some weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Little Grand Rapids. Little Grand Rapids is a small first nation on the southeast side of Lake Winnipeg. It is isolated. There are no roads that go there; it is in the middle of the forest, or the bush, as we call it. People work hard at what they do, hunting, trapping, fishing, and they hope for the best for the future of their kids, as anybody does.

What I hear from them when I visit from house to house is their concern for their kids, the concern that their kids are not going to have the same opportunities as other kids. It is not because of where Little Grand Rapids is, how far it is from the city or where it is positioned geographically. It is because it is a first nation, and they know their kids face some of the most unequal opportunities in terms of education in this country. Because they are first nations, going to school on reserve, they are guaranteed to be going to a school that is funded to a lesser extent than other schools.

What does that mean? It means that their kids go to a school that some people describe as a fire trap. It is a school where the doors do not lock properly. In order to lock them in -40° weather, so the cold does not come in, they have to a use a chain and a lock. It means the fire alarm system does not work. In fact, when Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development built the school, it hooked up those little fire alarm contraptions that we see everywhere else. It put them on the walls throughout the school and never hooked up the wiring to a fire alarm system. Guess what? There is no fire alarm system. Not only is there no fire alarm system, but as a result there is no sprinkler system, and due to the underfunding, there are no fire extinguishers.

My question in the House for the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development is whether he would be okay with his kids going to a school like that. Why should the youth of Little Grand Rapids and first nations across this country go to schools that are dangerous, underfunded, falling apart, and full of mould, that do not have enough books, do not have enough teachers, and do not have enough resources, and that are setting them up to fail?

When we talk about the history of colonialism and paternalism that first nations have faced in this country, we cannot just talk about history, because it is happening today. It is happening in the way first nations people face unequal standards across the board, whether it be education, health, employment, housing, or infrastructure. The list goes on.

To see what is most fundamentally clear in the response to the needs of first nations youth and the kind of paternalism we see, one has to go no further than the approach the government has taken on Bill C-33, the first nations education act. The reason I say that is that a fundamental obligation of the federal government to consult with first nations people has not been adhered to in the development of this critical bill.

First nations across the country, certainly those in Manitoba, have been clear that, without consultation, the bill cannot be supported. It is not because they have not made clear the importance of consultation. They have made it clear and have been consistent over the last number of years.

In December 2012, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada began consultations on an education act. In July 2013 the department released a document called “Developing a First Nation Education Act: A Blueprint for Legislation”. With few amendments, that blueprint became a draft legislative proposal for a first nations education act in October 2013. I am sure all too many members of the government will remember that the draft proposal was condemned by first nations educators, leaders, and activists overwhelmingly.

On the very issue we are discussing today, on the critical issue of education for first nations, first nations have told us the direction they want to take and their priorities.

In 2013 a special assembly the Assembly of First Nations highlighted five priorities: first, respect and recognition of inherent rights and title, treaty rights, and first nations control of first nations education jurisdiction; second, statutory guarantee of funding; third, funding to support first nations education systems that are grounded in indigenous languages and cultures; fourth, mechanisms to ensure reciprocal accountability and no unilateral federal oversight or authority; and fifth, ongoing dialogue and co-development of options. Those five priorities were laid out clearly in a very public manner by first nations themselves, and sadly, the federal government failed to adhere to those priorities.

What we hear from the federal government is rhetoric that is at first premised on having spoken with first nations and of having heard real concerns. Then when I and my colleagues raise the concern that first nations across the country have not been consulted on this legislation, when they need to be consulted, we hear threats, intimidation, and the same old colonial attitudes that first nations have put up with for centuries.

It is clear that first nations across this country are saying no to the first nations education act. I and my colleagues in the NDP are proud to stand with them. I am proud to stand with first nations educators who are speaking out against the first nations education act.

I would like to share the words of Janice Mokokis, an educator and lawyer from Alberta, who has been involved with the Idle No More movement. She has been clear in her opposition to the first nations education act. Janice tells us:

There have been rallies and teach-in's held across the country to inform the Canadian public and First Nations about the implications of this Bill. People who have attended the rallies include children, mothers, fathers, teachers, professionals, leaders and those that would be directly affected by this...[government's actions]. There has been consistent opposition about the Conservative's agenda what they deem to be good for First Nations on Education. The Conservative's idea of 'consultation' needs to be closely questioned and critically examined. For example: In the Saskatoon consultation, people were...pushed out of the 'education consultation'.

It was made clear that they were not welcome to have their voices heard.

I also stand in solidarity with people in the blue dot campaign, who made clear their opposition to the government's desire for them not to be welcome at the announcement on the Kainai first nation in Alberta. Members of that nation and first nations people from across the country were there to hear an announcement of legislation that has everything to do with their future, and yet they were not even welcome to stay in the room.

It is clear that there is opposition from coast to coast to coast. First nations people are saying that their inherent rights are not being respected, that their treaty right to education is not being respected, and that the right to consultation that they have under the Canadian Constitution and that is recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is not being respected. The necessity of consultation is not being respected.

The reality is that first nations youth sit by and suffer as a result of the way the Conservative government is approaching a fundamental part of their development and future. We know the statistics are grim. Secondary school data over the last number of years identify the rate of first nations graduation at approximately 36%, compared to the Canadian graduation rate of 72%. Some 61% of first nations young adults have not completed high school, compared with 13% of non-aboriginal people in Canada.

In 2010, there were more than 515 first nations elementary and secondary schools available to approximately 109,000 first nations students resident on reserve. Over 64% of these students attended 515 on-reserve schools operated by first nations. The majority, 75%, were enrolled in either kindergarten or elementary school.

First nations youth is the largest young population in our country. I am so privileged to have had a chance to visit first nations across our region and look into the bright faces of these little kids, who want to be doctors, lawyers, teachers, and carpenters and who want to do great things. All I can think of is the way I come to work every day to look at a government, a Prime Minister, and a Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development that do everything in their power to ignore the voices of their communities, educators, and leaders. They say they are doing the right thing and they say they are going to do the right thing, but after the next election, maybe in a few years, or maybe if they get re-elected. Maybe. All the while, these young people are left in limbo.

I am also fortunate to have learned from elders. They are elders who fought as part of the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, fought against the white paper, and fought against the control that the federal government had on their education. They fought back, and they fought for first nations control of first nations education. Many of these elders are not with us today, owing to the challenging life situations in our communities and the shorter life spans that first nations people have. However, in my conversations with them and in my journey to Parliament, they taught me a very clear lesson, that first nations control over first nations education is fundamental to the success of the education system. It is fundamental to the success of first nations youth as they go forward. This is because first nations know what their nations need.

We know about education in first nations language; youth who learn their first nations language succeed at great rates. We know that when they have the resources in their schools to learn their mother tongue, the historic language of their people, they will have opportunities that other youth do not have. We know that when first nations have control over the kind of curriculum, priorities, and lessons that are shared with their youth, their students succeed.

I think of first nations like Roseau River, Peguis, Fisher River, and others that have had very successful models when it comes to education. It is not because the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development told them how to do it. In fact, it is the absolute opposite. It is these first nations that have stood up and sometimes, with the few resources they have, pulled together extraordinary people. They have supported the education of their youth, who have gone on to become experts and specialists in education and have come back to their communities and invested in the resource that is most important to them: their youth.

One would think that, in seeing the successes and knowing the way graduation rates in first nations increase when there is proper funding and proper support, when there is a focus on first nations language, the Department of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs would celebrate, that it would say that first nations control over first nations education is critical.

Consulting with first nations on further steps, on a first nations education program, is not only critical but first nations need to be leading that direction. Instead, what we have is a slap in the face from the federal government, which has a fiduciary obligation to first nations that makes it very clear that it does not matter what success these students have, it does not matter what success these leaders have had in fighting for education in their communities, with its response to promise action and change and to do that with a father-knows-best mentality, that what it knows best is what is going to go.

Some years ago I had the honour of sitting with leaders and grassroots people in Thompson at the office of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, where we saw live the apology the Prime Minister made to first nations people about the tragedy of the residential school system. I remember it moved all of us. I am proud that our leader Jack Layton was integral in that important historic day. There were tears. There was sobbing. There were people who were very emotional about that apology, people who had been very clear about the abuse, the oppression, and the racism they had faced. However, there was also an overwhelming sense of hope, hope that things can change, that a new spirit of reconciliation was guiding our country.

Over the last six or seven years, I cannot say how many people I have met across northern Manitoba, how many first nations people, who have said obviously that apology meant nothing to the Prime Minister. People took the time to believe and to enter into that spirit of reconciliation. Unfortunately, through the actions of Prime Minister, not just in looking at Bill C-33 but also Bills S-2, S-6 and S-8, as well as omnibus bills like Bills C-45 and C-38, we can look at the long list of legislative actions that the government has taken that fly in the face of that apology, of that spirit of reconciliation, of that commitment that the relationship with first nations would be different.

At the end of the day, is there anything more important than investing in the future of our young people? In the one area of education, the federal government had the chance to change course and maybe remember the statement that the Prime Minister had made in terms of that apology and act in the spirit of that apology. Instead, he and his government have chosen to take a very different approach, an approach that is clearly not only supported by first nations but is extremely deeply problematic in terms of the future of first nations education in our country.

In closing, I am proud to stand with first nations in Manitoba who oppose the first nations education act and who are very clear in demanding far better from the government, from Canada, and from the crown when it comes to the future of education for first nations.

Opposition Motion—Time allocation and closure

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be splitting my time today with the opposition House leader, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster. He has done an incredible job of standing up to the government in the short time he has been in the position, holding them to account and pushing back on what has been a continual and constant abuse of Parliament and our democratic and fundamental principles which we all share as Canadians. I believe that Conservatives share them as well, when they are able to unleash themselves for that split second and realize what their jobs are meant to be here.

We see a motion today that we welcome from the Liberal Party, although we find it passing strange, on two fronts. We welcome the opportunity to talk about free and fair debate in Canada's Parliament, to talk about the abuses that the Conservatives have unleashed more than 55 times on Canada's Parliament.

There are two considerations and concerns that we have with what the Liberals have put forward. I am sure my hon. colleague the opposition House leader will elaborate on these, so I will pass over them briefly. The first issue is that the motion as it is presented today is too limited. It only seeks to curtail the government's power to use time allocation and the extraordinary power of shutting down debate in too narrow a way. We would seek to perhaps expand it, and my friend from Burnaby—New Westminster will elaborate on that.

The second piece is that this may be a new-found love for accountability and transparency from the Liberal Party. As we have seen, when it held the same position as the Conservatives currently do, it too used this same extraordinary power.

Canadians can tolerate a lot from their political representatives, and we know that we ask them to do that. They tolerate the various assortment of scandals and unfortunate choices, and the bad choices, made by the current government. However, they will not tolerate hypocrisy. They do not appreciate hypocrisy from any party, in this case, the Liberals, who used time allocation on certain bills that it should never have been used on.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, it was you, in 2011, who moved a motion to limit the powers of shutting down debate by the government, which was rejected. It was the NDP who also sought most recently to give increased powers to the Speaker. That was to discern between when the government was using time allocation as it was designed, for when a debate has gone extensively beyond what would be considered a normal parameter for discussion, and limiting it to that instance rather than what we see from the government.

As my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster said, it was on a massive omnibus bill, or ominous bill as some people call them now. They are Trojan Horse bills. We have seen Bills C-38 and C-45, and the most recent budget implementation act, Bill C-31, that are incredibly expansive in their nature. They are hundreds of pages long, and in this case affects more than 40 Canadian laws. It would change 40 Canadian laws in this one case.

The extent of these massive bills would be enough that most people would consider a full and extensive debate to be proper. However, after a short 25 minutes, the Conservatives said that is enough. They said that we need to shut down the debate on this most recent ominous bill; we need to shut off any conversation about all of these laws that are being affected.

When we look through the debates of the past when the Liberals used the same tactics that the Conservatives are using, it is passing strange that it was the Conservatives, who were then in opposition, who had so many problems with that abuse of power.

Let me read one quote. This is one of my favourites. It is good. It is someone being prescient and intelligent, and doing their job as a parliamentarian. Let me quote the following from a debate on November 26, 1996, which took place right here:

In my view, the procedure of using time allocation for electoral law, doing it quickly and without the consent of the other political parties, is the kind of dangerous application of electoral practices that we are more likely to find in third world countries.

Who would say something like that? Who would say that the abuse of power that the Liberal government of the day was using to shut down debate on changing our electoral laws was representative of something “that we are more likely to find in third world countries”? It was the current Prime Minister who said that. It is true.

The current Prime Minister, when he was in opposition, was faced with a Liberal majority that was unilaterally changing electoral laws—not nearly as extensively as the Conservatives are now doing, by the way—and sought to shut down debate in the House of Commons, having achieved no consensus or agreement from the other opposition parties. It was the current Prime Minister who said that this was an abuse of power; this was wrong.

Lo and behold, we now have Bill C-23, the unfair elections act, which the Conservatives have designed in its very DNA to be unfair, to be undemocratic, and to allow an advantage to Conservative candidates in the next election rather than winning fairly. They have put that into their election bill with no agreement from any other political party.

Then, to add insult to that abuse, to that injury, they have shut down debate prematurely and rushed it to committee. They are now in the Senate doing the same thing—the unaccountable, unelected Senate that this same Prime Minister appointed. The hypocrisies and irony in this instance are so rich that they approach the level of appalling.

To my Liberal friends, I hope this new found love of democratic principles is sincere and will be sustained, regardless of which side of the House they are sitting on. New Democrats have a long and proud record of standing up against the abuses of time allocation, of shutting down debate, of allowing members to freely express themselves on behalf of constituents. That is what we are here for. It is not to advance one political party or the other. The very structure of the House of Commons is simple, yet beautiful in its nature: to hold the government of the day to account.

As I said to my Conservative colleague across the way, that is a responsibility, not only of the opposition parties but of those who sit in the so-called government backbenches. That is their job. Unchecked power eventually becomes corrupted, as we saw from the Conservatives as soon as they gained their majority.

It was a very slight majority. If we look at the design and the build of the seats in the House of Commons, it is what we call the rump, the little section of extra flow over the Conservative seats in the corner that we see during voting time. It is called the rump, by all parties; I do not mean to pass any judgment on the quality of those members. However, it is that tiny group over there who represent the majority that the government has, having achieved just 38% of the vote in the last election. When we break it down, it was only 25% of all eligible voters in the country, and they ended up with 100% of the power.

What do the Conservatives do with that power? Do they act responsibly? Heavens, no. They introduce these massive omnibus bills and then slap on time allocation, shutting down debate on legislation that is so incredibly complex that nobody on the government benches actually understands what they are voting for. That is a shame.

This motion is about a democratic principle that is essential for Parliament to work properly for Canadians. I fully understand that Canadians are quite cynical about the current state of our politics, and for good reason. It is only natural, what with this corrupt, anti-democratic, and by all accounts very weak government. What is more, this government is short on ideas. The budget implementation bill is short on tools for rebuilding our economy.

There is a shortfall of some 300,000 jobs in the industrial sector and for young Canadians who are still trying to find work. They are coping with an unemployment rate that is twice that of the rest of Canada. What are we seeing in the government? We are seeing an extremely corrupt system, a shortage of ideas, and a problem, namely that of disliking democracy.

What is that terrible expression that I have seen in a comic strip somewhere: “that the beatings will continue until morale improves”. The Conservatives heap abuse upon abuse on Parliament and ask why it is that the opposition parties are so resistant to their mandate and to their practices?

Well, with what we have seen, time and time again, whether it is the unfair elections act, these massive omnibus bills, the way it approaches trade negotiations with other countries, or the general approach that the government has to democracy, I look back, almost fondly, to those days of the Reform Party. It seemed to at least have stood for something. I did not agree with it, but it seemed to have stood for something. Now we see what these guys have become. Power seems to have corrupted them and left them without those principles. It is a shame.

We will be supporting the motion. I look forward to the continued debate.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-31, the Conservatives' first bill to implement budget 2014. Yet again, it is another massive omnibus budget bill of over 350 pages and 500 separate clauses.

I will not be supporting this bill, because it fails to address the very real challenges faced by the middle class. Moreover, it does little to help Canadian youth find jobs at a time when there is persistently high youth unemployment and underemployment. Today, there are still 264,000 fewer jobs for young Canadians than before the economic downturn.

The bill does little to help middle class parents and grandparents make ends meet and tackle record high levels of personal debt. Today, the average household owes a record $1.66 for every dollar of disposable income.

A few weeks ago, we had two weeks in our constituency offices, and 80% of my meetings were with people who are unemployed and looking for work. These were skilled people, engineers, lawyers, and Ph.D.s. There was one young man who had just graduated in nursing. Unfortunately, he could not afford the $500 for the exam. As a result, he could not work in the field for which he had studied so hard.

I cannot be clearer: people in my community have education, are skilled, and are desperate to work, but they cannot find jobs. Instead of the government putting new programs in place, support services are being cut in my Etobicoke North community. I have gone to the minister several times on this issue, for both settlement programs and job programs.

During those past two constituency weeks, we needed to get weekly food programs for five families. They did not ask for the help, but I realized the need when I reviewed their resumés and saw the last time they had worked and the number of family members they needed to feed.

Four individuals asked for counselling to deal with their depression as a result of not having a job, and one talked of suicide.

I will bring up one more case. A refugee woman, 18 weeks pregnant, bled through the night. She was afraid to go to the hospital because she could not afford the health care. Now she is afraid of getting an ultrasound because she cannot afford to pay for it.

The Conservatives' changes to Canadian society do not happen in a vacuum. They impact real Canadians who are hurting. The government needs to learn to see the hurt and to respond.

Our community is seeing real economic challenges. The government seems out of touch when it talks about this recovery as if it were a uniform recovery that is affecting and helping people in all regions of the country. The reality is that there are groups that are simply being left behind. A lot of families are struggling just to get by.

University graduates have come in to get help after being out of school and out of work for two years. Grandparents have come on behalf of their grandchildren—the first in the family to graduate from university and college—asking why they had fled their country of origin to come to Canada, the land of promise, so their children could have an education, but now that they have an education, they still do not have a job.

The people in my constituency need jobs. I have worked hard to get them jobs. In fact, I obtained funding for a completing the circle program, a $500,000 job program in our community. I personally review and edit resumés late into the night, sometimes doing two and three drafts. We get our people into jobs programs. We follow up with them to make sure their job searches are going in the right direction.

While they search, we help them with food, clothing, and whatever other supports they might need. We should all remember that we have seen a 31% increase in food bank usage since 2008.

At critical times, I have personally bought bedding, food, furniture, and medicine to help hurting Etobicoke North families. We had one lady come looking for help. She was in agony due to an ear infection that had raged for three weeks. She had pus and blood running down her face. The sad reality is that she could not afford antibiotics because she could not find a job.

I have MS patients who cannot take their drugs because they cannot work. How many more stories are there like theirs?

What I was looking for in the budget implementation bill, first and foremost, was real help for the people of Etobicoke North for jobs. Instead, we have over 350 pages with 500 separate clauses. Once again, my constituents are saddened by the fact that this is an omnibus bill with multiple sections that deserve full and proper hearings in committee and full parliamentary scrutiny.

Bill C-31 includes numerous measures that do not belong in a budget implementation bill; for example, rules about food safety, hazardous products, rail safety, and even the number of federal judges. The bill continues the Conservatives' battle against openness and transparency by weakening requirements to consult and inform Canadians about safety regulations and user fees. These changes have nothing to do with the implementation bill and are meant only to limit debate on important issues to Canadians. The Conservatives chose this anti-democratic route in order to adopt the bill's measures quickly and to avoid having them reviewed by Parliament.

The Conservatives have repeatedly abused Parliament by ramming through outrageous omnibus bills. For example, a few years ago the government introduced an 880-page omnibus bill, a grab bag of bills the government wanted to pass quickly. In fact, it was half the entire workload of Parliament from the previous year. As a result, the government was severely condemned for turning the legislative process into a farce.

More recently, the government introduced Bill C-38, the 400-plus page omnibus budget implementation bill. Through the bill, the government sprung sweeping changes on our country, affecting everything from employment insurance, to environmental protection, to immigration, to old age security. None of these changes were in the Conservative platform. They were rushed into law by “an arrogant majority government that’s in a hurry to impose its agenda on the country”.

The government's actions reek of hypocrisy. In the 1990s, the right hon. member for Calgary Southwest criticized omnibus legislation, suggesting that the subject matter of such bills is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles and that dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent the views of their constituents on each part of the bill. The right hon. member is now using the very tactics he once denounced. It is a shame that he changed his tune when he was elected to the highest office in the land.

One newspaper previously stated that omnibus bills are:

...political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government.

In this omnibus budget implementation bill, Bill C-31, parliamentarians are being asked to consider measures including compassionate leave, expansion of the adoption expense tax credit, medical expense tax credits, and sickness benefits. We would actually be supportive of these measures as individual measures, but unfortunately these positive measures are being lumped together with some very unreasonable, harmful, and regressive measures that we cannot support.

Like the omnibus bills before it, Bill C-31 includes corrections to mistakes in previous budget bills.

For the people of Etobicoke North and for young people across Canada, Bill C-31 offers very little. My constituents and Canadians need better and deserve better.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy the debate we are having here today. It would be nice to have more of these. I thank the hon. member for intervening. Our party, the New Democratic Party, has also registered as an intervener.

It gives me an opportunity to bring up how the National Energy Board selected which of the 2,200 people would be acceptable to this process. Literally, at my office, I had two gentlemen who live along the route. Both made fairly identical applications, and one was kicked out and one was allowed to participate in the process.

It really has been a botched job by the National Energy Board, brought about by the Bill C-38 changes that the government brought in two years ago.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak on this bill. First, I would like to thank our shadow minister for finance, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, for all his work in preparing us for this bill and defending Canadians within and outside of the House. I am really proud to have him as a colleague, and he serves British Columbia very well.

I have to say that I am opposed to this bill for much of its substance, as well as for the process by which these laws are being passed. I will elaborate at length about my procedural objections to Bill C-31.

Bill C-31 would fail to take adequate action to create jobs or reverse cuts to infrastructure funding, which is apparent from the speeches we have heard. That is why I would like to focus mostly on the process by which these omnibus bills are passed through Parliament.

Bill C-31 would fail to create jobs, it would cut infrastructure funding, and it would also continue the sorry tradition set by previous omnibus budget bills of forcing hundreds of changes through Parliament without proper oversight. This is an all too common Conservative practice, and it is disturbing as it undermines the work we do here in Parliament. The tabling of such a wide-ranging bill in such a short timeframe undermines our ability to properly scrutinize the bill and denies MPs the ability to thoroughly study the bill and its implications.

The bill has over 350 pages, almost 500 clauses, and would amend dozens of bills, including a variety of measures never mentioned in the budget speech. This is the Conservatives' fifth attempt to evade parliamentary scrutiny of their economic agenda.

In the remainder of my time, I would like to use an example from a previous omnibus budget, Bill C-38, to show the damage these omnibus budget bills can cause and why it is important that we break these bills apart and debate them piece by piece.

Among other things, Bill C-38 rammed through changes to the National Energy Board Act regarding the approval of new oil pipelines. In addition to shortening the length of time the NEB has to review new projects to just 15 months, whereas previous reviews had no time limits, the NEB is now only a mere advisory body, with the cabinet now having the final say on any project.

Now, the changes that were rammed through the House in Bill C-38 with little consideration or debate are hitting the road in my riding of Burnaby—Douglas. Again, we had a large package of bills bundled up in Bill C-38 and passed through with little debate, and now the effects of those bills are impacting my riding in a negative way.

I would like to use the example of Kinder Morgan's proposal to build a new pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby to illustrate why the current omnibus bill should not be rammed through the House.

Last December, the Kinder Morgan company filed an application with the National Energy Board to build a new export-only bitumen based crude oil pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby. This application includes a request for permission for a 150 metre-wide right of way to dig a trench as large as one that would be required for a subway or SkyTrain. The project would bring 400 new oil tankers to Burrard Inlet. The project will likely be built using temporary foreign workers. It will not use Canadian steel, limiting the economic benefits to B.C. However, the benefit to Kinder Morgan is obvious, with the company standing to make as much as $5 million per day if the project is approved.

Before the changes brought in by Bill C-38, any company proposing to build a new pipeline of this size would have filed an application with the National Energy Board. The NEB would have reviewed the application to determine that it were complete, and if complete, the NEB would have issued a hearing order and called for public participation. Any Canadians interested in speaking to the project could have either sent a letter of comment, given a short oral presentation, or applied to be a full intervenor. This was the case for the Enbridge northern gateway project, which, incidentally, is about the same size as Kinder Morgan's proposal.

After the changes in Bill C-38, the process has been completely changed and, I submit, undermined. First, due to a new 15-month time limit, the NEB has had to cut the public almost completely out of this approval process. To do so, the NEB has cancelled scheduled public information meetings; issued a call for participation without as much as a press release; reduced the possible participation routes from letters, oral presentations, or full interventions to just letters or a full intervention; and ruled that if the potential participant fails to register, he or she cannot even send a letter to the National Energy Board. The NEB has also issued a hearing order for this project, even though the company has filed an incomplete application. For example, Kinder Morgan has not even determined the final pipeline route.

This is serious, because if this project is approved, the company would have the right to expropriate homes and land along the proposed route through the NEB Act right of entry clauses, and we could find ourselves in the absurd position that those who might lose their homes would not even be allowed to send a letter of objection to the board. These changes were all brought about because Bill C-38 was rammed through the House without proper debate.

Although the NEB wanted this whole process to proceed without public input in order to meet the conditions prescribed in Bill C-38, 2,200 people still registered to participate in the process. However, last week we learned that all but 400 of these applicants had been kicked out of the process, including many homeowners. That means they will not even be able to make an oral submission or appear before the National Energy Board. Whereas companies were almost universally accepted, including one that filed after the deadline had closed for participation, the vast majority of those now excluded from the process are residents and landowners whose lives could be turned upside down by this project.

Not everyone is upset by how this project is being rammed through my community in British Columbia. The Conservatives are certainly pleased and have referred to these pipelines as “a national dream” and label anyone who asks questions about the logic of these pipelines—they do not even have to be opposed—as “radicals”.

However, the support for this pipeline and a process by which it is being approved does not stop there. In the January 22 edition of Metro News in Calgary, the leader of the Liberal Party said:

I am...very interested in the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the Trans Mountain pipeline that is making its way through. I certainly hope that we are going to be able to get that pipeline approved.

To reiterate, the leader of the Liberal Party said he certainly hopes we would be able to get this pipeline approved. This quote was again confirmed in an article published on February 26 in the Vancouver Observer.

While others in the House may view the Bill C-38 omnibus bill as a dream, my constituents, especially those who might be negatively impacted by this project, see this process and project as a nightmare.

I too am worried. This pipeline is not only slated to run through the communities I represent, but is also slated to run through 15 first nations reserves and 80 territories, and 130 nations have signed a declaration against this pipeline.

My nightmare scenario is that bulldozers show up in B.C. neighbourhoods or reserves, start digging trenches without consent, and then we have conflict. This is a real possibility. Because of the way Bill C-38 was rammed through the House, because of the way the NEB process was undermined and shortened, now the National Energy Board really has had no choice but to limit public participation. This means excluding residents, people who own homes and land and businesses along the route, but also first nations.

Many first nations did not register to appear before the National Energy Board, thus they will be cut out of the process. They will not even be able to send a letter to say that they do not want the pipeline to go through their community.

This is unacceptable, and I think the changes to the National Energy Board Act and the negative impacts on my community are a direct result of these omnibus bills. They are cobbled together so that the government can force its agenda through and perhaps facilitate these very large projects like energy pipelines.

It is important to realize that now that we are here discussing a new omnibus budget bill, an implementation act, we should take the time to break it apart to make sure that we have an adequate discussion of these different clauses.

Perhaps I have not stressed enough how this project and these changes have affected my community. I have literally had hundreds of constituents call or come into my office to express their concerns, completely oblivious to the fact there will basically be something as large as a subway going through their backyard and that they will not even be able to send a letter to say that they do not want this to happen.

I think it is a disgrace, and I apologize to my constituents. We fought against Bill C-38 as much as we could. We will fight against this current budget implementation act until the government sees fit to make sure that Canadian voices are heard when we are debating this important legislation.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would not have a problem with examining a bill quickly if the Conservative government had even a tiny bit of respect for democracy and if it stopped laughing at people and trying to shove bills down our throats with their time allocation motions. We often try to be accommodating, even at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

I think the smart thing to do would be to separate each of the parts, as I mentioned in my speech, and to send each of those parts to their respective committees. I do not think they should do what they did last year with Bill C-38. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights received some clauses and we were told that we could make recommendations but that we would not be making any decisions about the bill.

I am starting to get fed up with being part of the Conservative government's anti-democratic process, and I think Canadians are too. We are hearing that more and more in our communities. Maybe I should not wake up the Conservatives. They should continue with their anti-democratic ways. People are getting sick of it. They tell us about it, and I cannot believe that the members opposite do not hear about it in their ridings. Either they are not listening to anyone or they are not getting out.

National Energy Board

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Kinder Morgan has applied to the National Energy Board to build a new 590,000 barrel per day, bitumen-based, export-only, crude oil pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby.

The Conservative government radically overhauled the NEB pipeline approval process and made a real mess of things with Bill C-38.

Under the old regulations, a company applied to the NEB and then the NEB issued a public hearing order if the application was deemed complete. Under the new regulations, the NEB now calls for participation before the application is judged complete.

It turns out that Kinder Morgan's application is incomplete, as it does not include a final pipeline route, but because the NEB has now closed the window for the public to apply to participate, Kinder Morgan may wind up expropriating property with affected landowners having no opportunity to raise objections.

This is unacceptable to my constituents of Burnaby—Douglas, and I ask the government to support my request for the NEB to restart this pipeline hearing process.

Fair Elections Act

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is on a separate matter but connected also to this very troubled piece of legislation, which has probably had one of the most rocky starts of any government Conservative bill. That is saying something, because it has had some terrible bills, bills it has had to fix, bills it has had to correct. Allow me to address specifically the point, which follows in suit to some rulings you have made in the past about the form of the bill.

Upon reading the legislation as it was tabled by the government yesterday, we found a significant error in the tabling and the drafting of the bill between the French and English. In fact, each says the opposite thing to the other in an important section of the bill. I would think that the government, when trying to get at something as important as reforming our election laws and trying to keep the scandalous robocalls and corrupt practices that we have seen from some parties across the way, would actually write the legislation properly. It may not be in the correct form, and this is a serious consequence. Speakers in the past have drawn to the attention of the government that when that is the case, the bill cannot be read at second reading.

Let me reference a point of order that was brought to the House previously by the member for Kings—Hants when debating a previous piece of legislation. This was Bill C-38. We remember that old gem, where the government in the production of the bill to Parliament made mistakes in how the bill was actually drafted, so that members following in French had a different version from the one members were following in English. I will point out the section that my colleague from Kings--Hants pointed out. On page 728 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, it states:

In the past, the Speaker has directed that the order for second reading of certain bills be discharged, when it was discovered that they were not in their final form and were therefore not ready to be introduced.

Let me be specific with the problems that the government has created with its terrible design of the bill. I will not speak to the actual flaws in the ideas that the minister has presented, but rather, just in the actual text as he has given it to Canadians in the official form introduced to Parliament yesterday. The Conservatives did not take long to screw it up. It is on the very second page, in the summary, in (k). I will read the English first, Mr. Speaker, and you will see the significance of why it is different when you move over to the French. It says in (k):

exempts from what constitutes an election expense the commercial value of services provided to a registered party for the purpose of soliciting monetary contributions only from individuals who have made at least one contribution of $20 or more to the registered party or to one of its registered associations, nomination contestants or candidates in the last five years.

The key to focus in on here is the very beginning, because it says it “exempts from what constitutes an election expense...”. That is key. That is what (k) is for and that is what the government is seeking to introduce to Canadian law to change our electoral act, the act that we govern ourselves by in seeking election to this place.

In French, section (k) states:

k) que la valeur commerciale des services fournis à un parti enregistré pour permettre à ce dernier de solliciter des contributions monétaires uniquement auprès de particuliers qui ont apporté au parti ou aux associations enregistrées, aux candidats à l’investiture ou aux candidats du parti au moins une contribution monétaire de 20 $ ou plus au cours des cinq dernières années.

That is it.

The whole point of (k) is—I assume, but I do not know—to exempt those contributions, which is what I believe it says in the English. I do not know if the drafters or the minister, if he was involved in this section of the summary, meant it to read to exempt these following things, which it then delineates. In the French there is no exemption. It says this seems fine, which is the opposite, which is the point to why legislation must be drafted properly, thoughtfully, and maybe, dare I suggest, in consultation with those who know what they are talking about like, let us say, Elections Canada and maybe even a committee.

We suggested that to the government just this week as a good way to proceed, because reforming the Elections Act should be a non-partisan activity. It is in the interests of all political parties. We suggested that we move this forward before second reading, so it would allow the committee to make corrections like this, to get at the fundamentals, the DNA, of this piece of legislation and correct what is wrong, both philosophically and technically.

The minister did not provide a briefing in both official languages of any coherence to anybody involved and now suggests that, since the bill has been introduced, anyone who wants to organize information can start now. Not only are we likely to see the government move to shut down debate on a bill that is to allow us, supposedly, to improve our democracy—and it is rich with irony to watch the government do this—but the form tabled officially in the House of Commons was an imperfect form.

Previous Speakers, when faced with this predicament not of the opposition's making and certainly not of the Speaker's making, have not allowed bills to go ahead because they are not correct. I found this on page 2. There are 240-odd pages in this bill. Who knows what else is wrong? This is not a typo. This is a fundamental piece of the bill that the government got wrong. There is a way Parliament guides itself. I have in my hand the official copy, as tabled yesterday, which all parliamentarians have read. If members go to the second page and go back and forth between the two versions, they will see that the government has made a fundamental error in the design of this bill.

We have rules that guide us in this place for public bills, in Chapter IX of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. I will quote Standing Order 68(3), which states, “No bill may be introduced either in blank or in an imperfect shape”. The guidance of that is very important. That asks the government, when tabling public bills, to take them seriously.

This bill, as introduced to parliamentarians, is not in its perfect form, is not in its perfect shape, and is not to be understood by parliamentarians one way or the other. It depends on which version one reads. If francophone members were to read the French version, they would think this is what is being debated and what is going to be voted on, but if only the English version is read, one thinks the exact opposite on an important section of the bill, which I assume is important to the minister and the government because they put it in there, but not important enough to get right.

The Standing Orders that guide us are absolutely clear. The precedent that was raised by the member for Kings—Hants was a different situation, which we all acknowledged and debated. I would seek your direction in this, Mr. Speaker, because the government has had too many mulligans. A mulligan is when someone is playing golf, screws up, and takes another shot. Some call it cheating, but we are all sympathetic figures here. This is a fundamental mistake. It is a mistake that has made this bill incorrect. We would think the government thought this was important, but obviously not so much.

We seek your direction on this, Mr. Speaker. We have been quite clear on where the problem is. What a start for a bill that is so important to the health of our democracy and this important institution.

Northwest Territories Devolution Act

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley, a member who represents a northern riding. He will certainly bring an interesting perspective to this debate.

I think it is important to commend my colleague from Western Arctic, the member for the Northwest Territories, who works very hard and does an extraordinary job. It is a huge territory and a big riding. When I compare the size to my own riding to his, I realize how impressive it is to represent such a vast territory and to do it so well. I wanted to say that, because this is a very important bill for him and for all of us.

Before I get into the details, I want to take a step back and look at the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

A number of my colleagues, both Conservatives and members of my own party, have spoken about the constitutional nature of this situation.

In Canada, natural resources are an interesting issue. Powers are shared, but provinces also have power over their resources. This has created an interesting situation, since over the years—and now in 2013—energy and natural resources have become very important issues, not just for us, but for the entire world.

There is a lot of talk about pipelines and developing different resources. Quebec is having some important, interesting and essential debates on issues such as shale gas and pipelines.

We are very concerned about the division of powers for natural resource management. Although the constitutional powers were divided a certain way at the time, I think it is very important to move in this direction and devolve more powers to the Northwest Territories. That is something we support, obviously.

This is the first time since 1980, if I remember correctly, that the federal government has devolved additional powers to the Northwest Territories. We are very happy to see that.

That being said, I think that there are some major concerns to keep in mind. I talked about energy-related concerns. Bill C-38 made a lot of changes to environmental assessments for various projects.

Under the circumstances, I think it will be important to arrive at a better understanding of the bill during the committee's study and to know which powers will belong to the Northwest Territories and which to the federal government, directly and indirectly.

At first blush, this bill seems to have some tricky parts, but it is not quite clear. That is why the committee work will be so important. I feel optimistic; I think that the government has good intentions with this bill.

When the bill goes to committee, there will be questions about exactly how powers will be divided and how to ensure that there are no loopholes enabling the federal government to retain control over matters related to selection of projects, specifically regarding natural resource development and royalties.

These are very complicated issues. Many of my colleagues are better equipped to discuss them than I. My colleague, the parliamentary secretary, talked about how it is important for people in Toronto and Montreal not to impose their way of doing things on the Northwest Territories. Even though I am an MP from suburban Montreal, I completely agree with him. As an MP from Quebec, I have a pretty good understanding of the relationship between the federal government and our communities, the division of powers, the importance of a respectful relationship and the desire to be in a position where we are not being told what to do.

That being said, I can understand the concern. I think it is important that each one of us talks about managing natural resources, no matter where we come from, because there are fewer and fewer borders when it comes to this issue.

However, that does not mean that we should set aside the principle that the provinces—or territories in this case—must have some input and are responsible for managing natural resources. We understand that the federal government has a role to play because these issues affect everyone.

Take pipelines, for example. In my riding, the Portland-Montreal pipeline goes under the Richelieu River. This issue is of great concern to the people of my riding, but we all know that it extends beyond the boundaries of my riding.

With that in mind, we need to rigorously debate this issue in order to fully understand the bill. We also need to have a rigorous, in-depth review of the bill in committee, one that takes into account the concerns of the witnesses. They will likely have an interesting perspective to share.

Speaking of interesting perspectives, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the work being done by our caucus with regard to northern development and protecting the rights of the people in those communities.

For example, yesterday, I listened to the speech given by the hon. member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou during the debate on Bill C-15. His views are extremely relevant and interesting, given the role he played in the negotiations between the Cree government, the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada on the treaties that have been signed over the past few decades.

At home in Quebec, we set aside political differences and accomplished an historic work in James Bay. When we think about the work that the Government of Quebec accomplished in the early 2000s, we understand the importance of a nation-to-nation dialogue or even a dialogue among three nations, if we count the Quebec nation as a third player.

There is hope for this bill. The government has made a good start by engaging in a dialogue with the first nations and with the people of the Northwest Territories. In my opinion, that is extremely important. This is a complex, worthwhile and important constitutional issue.

Earlier, I mentioned my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, but the NDP also has other members. I am thinking of the members for Sudbury, Nickel Belt and Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing in northern Ontario and all my other colleagues from that area. They know the importance of these issues, and I know that they will bring an extremely relevant and interesting perspective to this debate.

We have a great deal of respect for the people who live in these areas. My colleague from Western Arctic does an outstanding job when it comes to these issues. Out of respect for these people, it is important that we all participate in this debate, because issues related to energy and natural resources are of the utmost importance to all Canadians and Quebeckers. I am also thinking about the people who live in my riding. It is essential that we participate in this debate.

I hope that the government will take into account what is said in committee. To date, the debate seems very healthy. I hope that this will continue in committee and that we can make amendments, if such is deemed necessary by the witnesses, who will conduct an assessment of the bill that will no doubt be very interesting.

I look forward questions from my colleagues and I thank them for their attention.

Report Stage

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak at third reading of Bill C-4, an act to implement measures contained in budget 2013. The bill fails to address the very real challenges faced by the middle class in Canada and those wanting to join the middle class.

For the past 30 years, governments of all stripes have been elected and re-elected in Canada on a similar economic platform: fiscal discipline; investment in infrastructure, research and skills; openness to trade; and tax competitiveness. Middle-class Canadians and those wanting to become part of it supported this agenda because they were promised it would create shared prosperity; but this has not happened. While the economy has more than doubled in size in the past 30 years, middle-class incomes have increased by only 13%. If we do not solve this problem, Canadians will eventually withdraw their support and we will all be worse off as a result.

Canadians who have lower incomes have an even greater stake in the well-being of the middle class. Today, Canadians feel it is more likely that they will fall from the middle class into poverty, rather than rise out of poverty into the middle class. The bill does little to help the economy and to create jobs. In fact, the so-called job measures in the bill are just a continuation of the status quo, which simply is not good enough. My riding needs jobs, and our young people need jobs.

Previously the government introduced a jobs training program, shortly after the last budget, but the program is still not running because the government forgot to talk to the provinces. Therefore, there is no jobs training program. While the government spent millions of dollars advertising the program, I repeat, there is no program. This is a government that invests money in self-promotion, but does not “get the job done” when it comes to putting in place the kinds of measures to create jobs and good training to help close the job skills gap.

The only indicator that has grown apace with GDP for the middle class is household debt. Middle-class Canadians are rightly worried about their finances as they face record levels of personal debt, amounting to $1.66 for every dollar of disposable income. They are struggling to make ends meet while interest rates are low and are rightly concerned about what will happen in the future if interest rates start to rise.

One of the driving forces behind this accumulation of household debt is the financial subsidization of adult children who cannot yet make it on their own. These young people are unable to pay rent and are forced to live at home. In fact, 43% of Canadian families have financially subsidized young people who have lived for extended periods of time at home with them because they cannot make ends meet. Sadly, young Canadians have been left behind during this so-called economic recovery. That is, they still have 225,000 fewer jobs than before the downturn.

I saw the lack of jobs for young people first-hand, day after day this summer. I had university graduates who came in to get help after being out of school and out of work for two years. I had grandparents who came on behalf of their grandchildren, the first in the family to graduate from university and college, asking why they had fled their country of origin to come to Canada, the land of promise, so their children could have an education. Now they have education and they still do not have a job.

The people in my constituency need jobs, and I have worked hard to get them jobs. In fact, I obtained funding for a completing the circle program, a $500,000 jobs program in our community. I personally review and edit resumés late into the night, sometimes doing two and three drafts. We get our people into jobs programs. We follow up with them to make sure their job searches are going in the right direction, and while they search, we help them with food, clothing and whatever other supports they might need. We should all remember that we have seen a 31% increase in food bank usage since 2008. At critical times, I have personally bought bedding, food, furniture and medicine.

Therefore, it was particularly hard to hear from service providers that federal funding was being cut for job and training programs in our Etobicoke North community. My community depends on these jobs programs. We cannot afford to have them shut down. That is why I contacted the minister's office. I hope this will be rectified.

What I was looking for in the budget, first and foremost, was real help for the people of Etobicoke North for jobs. Instead, we have 308 pages, with 472 separate clauses amending dozens of different pieces of legislation. It is another anti-democratic omnibus bill meant to limit debate and ram through as much unrelated legislation as the government can get through Parliament.

Once again my constituents are saddened by the fact that this is an omnibus bill with multiple sections that were deserving of full and proper hearings in committee and full parliamentary scrutiny.

While Conservative members claim, based on their talking points, that omnibus bills are nothing new, it is only under the current Prime Minister that we have seen omnibus budget bills that top 200 pages. The 2010 omnibus budget bill was almost 900 pages. In 2012, the Conservative government started a new practice of putting forward two omnibus budget bills. Canadians will remember Bill C-38, the 400-plus page omnibus budget implementation bill, which sprung sweeping changes on our country, affecting everything from employment insurance, environmental protection, immigration, old age security to even the oversight that charities receive. None of these changes were in the Conservative platform. They were rushed into law by “an arrogant majority government that's in a hurry to impose its agenda on the country”.

One newspaper stated that omnibus bills are:

...political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can't absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government.

Canadians should remember that in 1994, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest, today's Prime Minister, criticized omnibus legislation, suggesting that the subject matter of such bills is so diverse that a single vote to the content would put members in conflict with their own principles and that dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent the views of their constituents on each part of the bill. The right hon. member is now using the very tactics he once denounced. It is a shame that he changed his tune when he was elected to the highest office in the land.

There are similarities among the government's omnibus bills. Over and over we see, for example, increasing ministerial discretion, reducing objective criteria, and removing agencies and boards. Canadians should be deeply concerned by these similarities in different omnibus bills and by yet another of the government's end runs around the democratic process.

For the people of Etobicoke North and for young people across Canada, Bill C-4 offers very little. My constituents and Canadians need better and deserve better.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to rise. I would have asked a question, except I have some issues I can pose to the entire Conservative caucus as opposed to any one individual member.

I want to start off by addressing the comments of the previous speaker about reaching a balanced budget by 2015. That is going to be much easier for the Conservatives because last year, as we understand it, there were $10 billion allocated in the budget they did not spend. There were people who were expecting monies, heritage and other places that was not spent. In other words, the Conservatives broke promises to people, which does not come as a great surprise. Therefore, hallelujah, they are going to announce that we have this money to put toward the deficit, so it is more important to meet this one target than it is to follow through on their commitments to Canadians and Canadian organizations.

I sat on the finance committee for a period of time through the last omnibus bills and all of the what I would call nothing short of craziness happened at committee as a result of the fact that so many things had been piled on top of the other that actually belonged, in our opinion, in other committees. With Bill C-4, the Conservatives are doing it again.

Of the last bills that came before that committee, Bill C-38, was the biggest one with which I was involved. It changed the Navigable Waters Act, the Environmental Assessment Act and all kinds of things that a person outside this place would ask what it had to do with the budget. The fact was it did not. It was just a tactic on the part of the government to jam things together to get it through as fast as it could, to keep it from being at committees where it could receive the proper scrutiny by members and the witnesses who could bring the expertise before the committee to fortify the situation.

Before the prorogation, we were dealing with Bill C-54 about the not criminally responsible. Some of the witnesses who came from the health community said that nobody in the psychiatric community was asked about that bill. All of this is symptomatic of what is happening with the government in the sense of not wanting to hear from anyone, MPs or anyone else.

My view and the view of the New Democratic Party is that committees are there to make bills better. We are there to help the government. The government brings forward a bill and we have a critique of it and recommendations, which are called amendments, never see the light of day because they are voted down at committee or motions are passed at committee to limit the time we have. If we do not meet that time allocation, anything that has not been voted on is deemed to have failed. Therefore, we could have a list of 25 good quality amendments and Conservatives will not even listen to them.

That anti-democratic aspect limits the ability of the sincere efforts of the House to try to improve legislation in a way that is just baffling. How in the world can Conservatives justify shutting out information, even if it is not from us? Information from the public or from experts in any given field relative to the budget or relative to those things that have been piled into the budget, how can they shut that down without giving it any consideration?

It makes us wonder what is behind the agenda. This is not new. As I said, it happened with Bills C-38, C-45, C-60. Other speakers today talked about the fact that all of those bills had some blatant mistakes that successive bills had to correct.

I am troubled again by the fact the Canadian Federation of Municipalities warned the current government and the previous government about a deficit in infrastructure to the tune of somewhere between $175 billion and $200 billion that needed to be taken care of now. Look at the situation with the bridge in Montreal, and we understand how desperate it can get really quickly.

It looks like some interim work has been done to repair the bridge and get the traffic flowing, but stepping back from that, we have almost $200 billion elsewhere in our country that deserves support. I believe the Minister of Finance has said that there is $800 billion of dead capital that businesses are holding onto for a couple of reasons. There is some sensibility to what they are doing because in 2008 they had trouble getting money from the banks. We had the lowest interest rates practically in the history of our country, so why was the government not taking 10-year bonds and partnering with the business community to start addressing some of the infrastructure needs?

In my community of Hamilton, we are near desperate on sewage. I hear of figures somewhere close to $200 billion of a deficit on Hamilton sewage. Basements of houses on certain streets in Hamilton flood every time there is a serious rainfall. They cannot even get insurance anymore. It is very clear for us.

The previous speaker made reference to temporary foreign workers. The figures I have may not be precise but they are certainly close. Two or three years ago we had roughly 240,000 new immigrants to Canada. They have support here. They have a sponsor who is responsible for all of their costs for 10 years, so there is no liability to us for them. However, in that period there were 241,000 temporary workers.

The temporary worker program was initially put in as support for the farmers. There was lots of work Canadians did not want to do and farmers needed help, and that program was originally set up to bring them in. Then all of a sudden, certain aspects of the business community woke up to the fact that they could pay temporary foreign workers less money and they would not have obligations to them. By the way, because they are here on a temporary permit, if they do not do exactly what they want, they get to go home really quickly. People from other countries come here. They are very dependent on money to help their families back home. It is a very insecure situation and they are being abused by the government and employers in Canada. That is shameful. There is no other word for it.

From my perspective, to hear the Conservatives talk about some modest change, I would love to have seen that at the immigration committee, to talk about temporary foreign workers and to look at that program in-depth, to step back from it and make some suggestions to help with that, but that opportunity was not afforded to us.

Going a little further on this, Bill C-4, as previous omnibus bills, piled together amendments to over 70 laws. One of them is the Public Service labour relations employment board act. That is a new addition. Another one is the Mackenzie gas project impacts fund act.

Why do we need a new act for labour relations when we have had labour relations in the country between the public service workers and the government for many decades? Why do the Conservatives suddenly need to change that? If we do need to change it, why is it not done through the appropriate department and the appropriate committee rather than a budget bill? It sounds like somebody is up to something. If I were a worker, with the number of cuts there has been to the public service workers already, I would be a little nervous just about the title of that bill.

Contained in Bill C-4 are very vicious anti-worker and anti-veteran measures. I never thought I would stand in the House of Commons in our country and say our government has anti-veteran policies.

The Conservatives have made changes to health and safety protection for workers. My time is running out and I have not even started my speech, but this is part of the give and take in this place. The last speaker spoke about some things that drew my attention to it, but if I have to close, I am certainly proud to close on defending veterans.

There is a Veterans Review and Appeal Board. We have seen day in and day out in the media of late where the ombudsman has spoken out in defence of veterans saying that they are not getting the health care or the protection they deserve and there are numerous budget cuts to that department. That is shameful. One thing Parliament must stand for is the veterans of our country.

This is an anti-worker, anti-veteran bill and it is absolutely shameful.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I am pleased to rise and speak on behalf of my constituents.

What is less pleasant is the fact that in just two and a half years, this is the third time I have spoken to an omnibus bill. It has been a different bill each time, unfortunately. I think this situation illustrates the recurring problem that keeps resurfacing with this government.

It is also difficult, as the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre said earlier this afternoon, to choose a topic to discuss. I will try my best because my constituents have concerns about many of the provisions in the bill.

The first, and the most interesting, is the issue of Supreme Court justices. Of all the things that have nothing to do with a budget implementation bill, I think that the easiest one to focus on is the proposed changes to the process for selecting Supreme Court justices.

It is even more problematic in this case because it seems to be a response to a process that the government bungled from the outset. We saw how difficult this process was, particularly after Justice Nadon appeared before the committee. Then we have the Minister of Justice saying that he wants to propose these changes.

I think that it is important to take this opportunity to point out that the hon. member for Gatineau sought the unanimous consent of the House—which was obviously refused—to move a motion outlining the federal government's legal and constitutional requirements regarding the selection of Supreme Court judges and, in this case in particular, justices from Quebec. The process must be followed and the criteria must be met, but it does not seem that that was the case.

Not only did the Conservatives fail to abide by these criteria, but now they are proposing changes to them. What is more, the Conservatives decided to include these changes in a budget implementation bill, which is completely ridiculous and absurd.

All of the points I just made show a blatant lack of respect for Quebeckers, particularly the people in my riding. This is something that we strongly disagree with. It is one of the main problems with the bill. It is an issue that many of my constituents have raised since Bill C-4 was introduced in this House.

Another problem that affects Quebec in particular, since it is something unique to Quebec, is the labour-sponsored funds and the elimination of the labour-sponsored funds tax credit. The Conservatives plan to do away with the tax credit in this budget implementation bill.

Let me be clear. Although these funds are called workers' funds, they are an important economic driver not just for workers but also for businesses and the community.

I would like to speak about a very relevant example in my riding of Chambly—Borduas. This summer, as usual, I attended the launch of entrepreneurial projects by young people from the Maison des jeunes des quatre fenêtres youth centre in Mont-Saint-Hilaire.

Throughout the summer, these young people start and run a business. They sign contracts, manage budgets and look for work within the community, whether it be mowing lawns, working in seniors' residences or painting fences. These young people do all sorts of work for the community and clearly all of that costs money.

I was intrigued—if that is the right term—to see labour-sponsored funds listed as sponsors. I told the chair of the youth centre's board of directors that this was a good example of how labour-sponsored funds give back to our communities and to Quebec society.

This is another example that shows that the Conservative government is not taking into account Quebec realities and does not understand how important these measures are to Quebec communities.

They make a positive and important contribution.

We must therefore condemn this budget measure and the budget implementation bill. That is very important for Quebeckers. We sent postcards to the people in my riding inviting them to comment on and express their opposition to this measure. We received hundreds of responses, maybe even a thousand. In the last budget bill, people also opposed the botched EI reform. Again, the people of Quebec protested to express their opposition to this measure. This is a misguided measure that has been imposed on Quebeckers. Obviously, Quebec is not the only province that has been harmed, but I am focusing first and foremost on my community, which was also affected.

There are many other measures, but we also have to address the question of process. A number of my colleagues have also raised this issue. I spoke about the procedure for appointing judges to the Supreme Court. This shows how this bill includes everything but the kitchen sink. The same thing happened with Bill C-38 and the omnibus bill introduced last fall. All these elements are extremely problematic. Instead of having a healthy debate and addressing all the items in the bill, we can only speak for 10 minutes—20 minutes, if we are lucky . We can debate the bill at the second reading and third reading stages. Obviously, there is also an issue with the committees. The time available for committees to study bills has been severely restricted. We are starting to get used to this, although we certainly do not want to. The members' speaking time is rather limited, which makes it rather difficult to address every item.

I would like to talk about something else along the same lines. In fact, I am running out of time—which illustrates my point—and that is exactly what we take issue with. Before I run out of time, I would like to criticize the changes made to the Canada Labour Code. It is absolutely unacceptable that the government is making changes to the working conditions of so many people, including in the public sector, through a budget implementation bill. This is an unhealthy way to operate, and workers have been critical of this approach. Last week, I met with several young people from the Canadian Labour Congress who were representing a number of different labour bodies. Those young representatives commented on the measures. The omnibus nature of the bill limits our ability in committee to hear testimony from people like these young representatives. It is tough for legislators. Unfortunately, things do not change. The members across the way say they want to focus on the economy, but when we read the bill, it is clear that it is not just about the economy. In fact, there is little mention of the economy. The bill is mainly about changing the foundation of our social systems. I think it is important to speak out against this. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the debate, the government has been turning a deaf ear.

In closing, I would like to say that even when it comes to the economy, the government clearly lacks judgment. It is making cuts and reducing services. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that even though the government is cutting services, including services to Canadians, it is still spending just as much money. I think that says it all when it comes to how this government is managing the economy. Instead of talking about the economy, the government has chosen to talk about other things.

Unfortunately, we will not be supporting Bill C-4.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could speak to the fact that we now have what appears to be a new practice that did not exist under previous administrations, being two omnibus budget bills a year.

That is what happened in 2012, with Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, and that is what is happening this year with Bill C-60 and Bill C-4. It means that every single budget is followed by a omnibus bill, which in the last two years has comprised 800 to 900 pages each time, of multiple separate acts. The Canadian Bar Association made the point on Bill C-4 that this reduces the ability to have proper hearings and scrutiny on each of the component parts of the legislation, and it violates parliamentary practice.

I wonder if my colleague from Winnipeg North would agree.

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the member's speech. It is as though we are living in a parallel universe. The people I have talked to are worried about the fact that funds for social housing are disappearing, that child and family poverty in parts of our country have not gone down, that people are working two and three jobs just to feed their children and that student loan debt is increasing. Municipalities have been calling on the government to invest in infrastructure, whether it is sewer, water or roads.

With respect to the environment, over the last couple of weeks we saw Canada being castigated on the world stage for its grim record on greenhouse gas emission reductions, plus any of the other initiatives we might be taking around prevention and mitigation. Our former leader, the late Jack Layton, used to say that we needed to talk about the fact that it was fine to fix the roof, but it did not do us any good if the foundation was crumbling. I would argue that the foundation in Canada is crumbling under the government's watch.

With regard to Bill C-4, the NDP is opposing it both on process and content. This is just like the three previous omnibus budget bills, C-38, C-45 and C-60.

Bill C-4 would amend 70 pieces of legislation. It contains two entirely new acts, the Mackenzie gas project impacts fund act and the public service labour relations and employment board. In talking about this, I want to refer to the process for one moment. It is our responsibility as parliamentarians to thoroughly review legislation that comes before us, to call witnesses and propose amendments. We are not able to do that in this current democratic deficit climate.

I want to quote a couple of people who have commented on the government process with regard to omnibus bills.

In iPolitics, former finance officials Scott Clark and Peter DeVries stated:

Budget vagueness is a troubling trend. Vagueness and obtuseness have featured in successive budgets, with details provided in the omnibus budget bills. The real budget has now become the budget omnibus bill. This undermines the credibility and transparency of the budget and requires much more diligence in assessing budget proposals.

Andrew Coyne stated:

Not only does this make a mockery of the confidence convention—shielding bills that would otherwise be defeatable within a money bill, which is not—it makes it impossible to know what Parliament really intended by any of it. We've no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch, only that they voted for the legislation that contained them. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet....But there is something quite alarming about Parliament being obliged to rubber-stamp the government's whole legislative agenda at one go.

I could not agree more with Mr. Coyne.

The challenge here is that time after time we have heard the government get up and say that the NDP has voted against X. What it does not say is that it was an omnibus budget bill that would change several different pieces of acts and regulations. Perhaps there were pieces of the legislation that we agreed with but also pieces we could not agree with. Therefore, we do a balancing act. We take a look at the overall public good, then we determine whether we will vote for or against. Unfortunately, with the way the government acts, we largely end up voting against its omnibus budget bills because we do not see them as being in the public good overall.

I want to highlight some of the changes proposed by this legislation. As I mentioned, it will amend or repeal 70 pieces of legislation in over 300 pages. It strips health and safety officers of their powers and puts nearly all of these powers into the hands of the minister. It significantly weakens the ability of employees to refuse work in unsafe conditions. It moves to eliminate binding arbitration as a method to resolve disputes in the public service. It guts Canada's most venerable scientific research institution, the National Research Council. It reduces the number of permanent members on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and repeals the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board. It pushes ahead with the Conservatives' ill-advised $350 million tax hike on labour-sponsored ventured capital funds and allows for three directors of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to be non-Canadian residents.

Many of the changes that proposed deserved separate legislation so we could have had that kind of thorough review. Instead, we have a bill that was rammed through and presented to three different committees in very limited time frames. Any amendments that were proposed by the official opposition or the opposition parties were rejected out of hand.

That is not good governance. That is what the Conservatives claim they stand for in this country: good governance, accountability, and transparency. None of those three are true.

I just want to touch on the Parliamentary Budget Officer for just one moment, another officer of Parliament who has been under attack by the government. He has been forced to go to court to try to get documents to demonstrate what kinds of savings are being proposed by the government.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the overall impact of budget 2012, fiscal update 2012, and budget 2013 would be a loss of 67,000 jobs by 2017 and a 0.57% reduction in GDP. This is a significant decline in economic growth.

That leads me to the smoke and mirrors games played by the Conservatives. An article from November 13, on Global News, indicated that the government had“sat on more than $10 billion in funds Parliament approved and Canadians were told they could expect in 2012-13 through a slew of programs in dozens of departments”.

The federal government held on to more than $10 billion it was expected to spend in 2012-13, with almost half coming from two departments, according to recently published financial documents. These were funds Parliament approved and Canadians were told they could expect...including the Senate Ethics Officer, disability and death compensation at Veterans Affairs, and weather and environmental services for Canadians at Environment Canada.

I want to touch on one particular part of this fund, and that is Transport Canada. I do not know where most members live and whether the municipalities where they live are suffering the kinds of infrastructure deficits many of our communities are suffering from. Many of our communities have aging infrastructure, and this is a deficit that is being passed on to future generations, because we have refused consistently over decades to provide the federal contribution to updating and upgrading the infrastructure.

Interestingly, Transport Canada, with Infrastructure Canada, had the most trouble spending its budget.

In 2012-13, that department was responsible for almost $1.6 billion of Transport's overall $2.5 billion lapse, according to the Public Accounts....

Within Infrastructure Canada, a large chunk of the lapse in 2012-13 came from the Building Canada Fund, an $8.8 billion project announced in 2007. The project was set up to support national, regional, and municipal projects related to public transit, green energy and drinking water, among other priorities.

Last year, the two components of the funds—the “major infrastructure” and “community” components—were together slated to spend more than $2.2 billion. Only $1.1 billion made it out the door.

That is shameful. If that is the way the government is going to move toward balancing the budget, it is balancing the budget on the backs of our communities.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer suggested, in a review of the supplementary estimates, that the government has been unable to spend approximately $10 billion of the budgetary authorities provided by Parliament over each of the past three years. As such,

Parliamentarians may wish to seek clarification regarding why this level of unspent money remains so high, what measures will be undertaken by departments and agencies to ensure that spending directed by Parliament occurs, and whether all of the $5.4 billion sought in these supplementary estimates is actually required.

That is just one example. I just want to close by saying that child poverty is not even being tackled in this budget. I want to point to the grim record in British Columbia, where child and family poverty has simply not been tackled. There is absolutely a federal government role in this, and I would actually encourage members in this House to support my Bill C-233, which proposes a poverty reduction plan. The federal government can take some leadership.

I have just a couple of numbers here. B.C. had a child poverty rate of 18.6%, the worst rate of any province in Canada using the before-tax, low-income cutoffs of Statistics Canada as the measure of poverty.

By any measure, I think each and every one of us in this House would agree that children should come first and that it is time for the government to actually demonstrate leadership by putting in place programs and services that support our families and our communities.

Motions in Amendment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was not sure if my hon. colleague had given the member for Parkdale—High Park a promotion or demotion by making her leader of the Green Party.

However, on this particular debate, the Green Party and the NDP are on the same page. We completely lament the fact that this is an omnibus bill once again, with multiple sections that were very much deserving of a full parliamentary review and full and proper hearings in committee.

I want to begin my analysis of Bill C-4 in presenting the various amendments I have made for deletions with two fairly brief points to the substance of the abuse of Parliament that omnibus budget bills represent.

We have heard it said by Conservative members in their talking points that this is nothing new. In every debate we have on budget omnibus bills, we are told this is normal. However, although I have only been a member of Parliament since 2011, I have been around a long time, and I know that we have never had budget omnibus bills of the staggering length of these bills until the current administration. It is only under the current Prime Minister that we have seen an omnibus budget bill top 200 pages.

Between 1994 and 2005, there were occasions of omnibus budget bills, and they were averaging 73 pages. The first big whopper of an omnibus budget bill occurred under the current Prime Minister in 2009. The 2010 budget omnibus bill was almost 900 pages.

Then, by 2012, the Conservatives started a new process. Ironically, my very first question in the House once I was elected was on the 2011 budget. I asked the Minister of Finance if he was planning the abuse of process constituted by an omnibus budget bill. He said he was not. Well, 2011 was indeed the last year in which we did not see omnibus budget bills. By 2012, the Conservative administration had started this new practice of putting forward two omnibus budget bills. It now refers to it as a tradition, almost like having Easter in the spring and Christmas in December. It is a tradition, apparently, that we are now going to see a 300- to 400-page spring omnibus budget bill, followed by 200-, 300-, or 400-page fall omnibus budget bill. The government has done this now for 2012 and 2013.

What this does is make a mockery of Parliament. I cannot put it more strongly than that. The idea that we would have disparate, unconnected bills, many of them never mentioned in the budget, that do substantial damage—this one in particular to labour relations, previous ones to environmental concerns—is an offence to Parliament. There is no excuse for it.

Second, I know there has been a lot of public interest in the fate of members of Parliament like myself and my party. I quite clearly represent a party with fewer than 12 MPs; I represent a party with one MP. However, I am a party in the House. So are my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois, and so are four independent members of Parliament. We were treated differently, since there were multiple motions carried through multiple committees to require that substantive amendments be submitted at committee, where we are not members and do not have equal and full rights of participation.

I will set that aside for now. That is why all of my amendments presented today are deletions. I did have substantive amendments I would have liked to present at report stage. I had 26 substantive amendments that I did present to the finance committee, and they went through a very quick ritual slaughter. I would have liked for the people of Canada to know about those amendments. I would have liked to have brought them forward at report stage.

Before I move to the specific parts of the bill that Canadians need to know about, I want to make an overarching comment.

As the only member of Parliament for the Green Party, one of the great advantages of having to watch everything while also doing due diligence on behalf of my constituents is that I am able to see everything in a comprehensive overview, not just in silos. There are themes here. There are disparate bills, but the manoeuvres are the same. The manoeuvres go in the direction of increasing ministerial discretion, reducing objective criteria, removing boards and agencies that have independent expertise, and putting bills forward instead to systems of political whim.

That certainly was the case in budget omnibus Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. They reduced criteria, letting the minister of environment or the minister of natural resources make decisions without guidance.

In this particular omnibus budget bill, we see it happening quite a lot again. I will mention just a few of the areas.

Under the Canada Labour Code changes, which my friend from the official opposition already referred to, the changes go in the direction of removing health and safety officers and leaving decisions about health and safety up to the minister.

The same kinds of changes have happened in immigration. In Bill C-4, we see substantial changes in part 3, division 16, to the expression of interest system, basically for immigrants who are coming by way of economic advantage. The decision-making would now increasingly be by ministerial discretion.

Another area where we see ministerial discretion replacing an objective system is in division 14, in which we would repeal the Mackenzie Gas Project Impacts Act and replace it with a very similar Mackenzie gas project impacts funds act. In this change the one big difference between the two acts would be to replace an objective corporation, a regional organization that would make decisions about where the funds go, entirely with ministerial discretion.

My friend and colleague from the NDP, the member for Western Arctic, had this to say about it, because he has a lot of expertise in this area. He said:

There was an independent body set up by the Conservative government through an act of Parliament to manage this money and ensure that it was managed in a correct and careful fashion, following the procedures that had been set up and the planning that had taken place in these communities over a period of two years, from 2006 to 2008.

Then I have another excerpt from his quote:

What we have now is a move to a system that would have a Conservative minister handing out cheques for particular projects as he or she deems appropriate.

Before diving into the specifics of Bill C-4, I wanted to raise into higher profile a consistent ideological theme: moving more and more decision-making in our system of government, which is a parliamentary democracy, away from Parliament, and at the same time moving decision-making of ministers into more and more discretion with less and less guidance.

Those of us who have practised law at any time know that administrative law provides a certain amount of accountability whereby a minister has to follow certain prescribed considerations or in fact delegates authority to expert boards. Less and less will we see this. More and more will we see ministerial discretion. As well, we know that ministers do not really exercise discretion, not in this administration. They do what they are told by the people at PMO, who I think one Conservative described brilliantly as a series of Stepford wives who insist on certain decisions being made a certain way.

To raise my concerns in brief, this bill would do serious damage to the health and safety provisions of the Canada Labour Code. It would change the definition of danger and the ability to refuse dangerous work. It would remove the health and safety officers.

As well, a different section of this bill would change the Public Service Labour Relations Act, again for more ministerial discretion about which aspects of public service work would be considered to be essential and therefore not open to the usual recourse that trade unions have in negotiations.

We see changes to the Immigration Act to increase ministerial discretion. I would like to cite concerns from the Canadian Bar Association on the immigration law section. They wrote to the committee:

The CBA Section has concerns about the limited consultation on this important change to Canadian immigration law and policy. Bill C-4 would substantially change the way in which economic immigrants are selected to come to Canada. The Bill would remove these changes from Parliamentary scrutiny and approval and give what appears to be unilateral authority to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to change selection rules and procedures.

Another section of the bill that has gotten very limited public attention is the section that appears in part 3, division 7, which is in aid of getting rid of our deficit by selling off assets. This is the sale of 20,000 hectares described as the Dominion Coal Blocks land.

My amendments at committee, had they been approved, would have provided some conservation protection. These lands are among the most ecologically significant in Canada. They are the blocks in the Flathead Valley and Elk Valley. They are an integral part of what is called the Crown of the Continent, right near the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which is an international peace park on both sides of the border.

The Flathead has been protected by the strange reality of its ownership by the federal government over these years, but it is now to be sold for coal mining. We need to ensure that careful concern is applied to the conveyance of these lands and to ensure that we do not contaminate adjacent park areas. This is a concern already expressed by the United Nations.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me thank my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques for seconding all of these changes.

Let us let Canadians know what all these amendments are in aid of. We are now debating Bill C-4, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget, except that we are dealing with another attempt by the Conservatives to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadians. We want to slow the process down so that Canadians are not blindsided again with this omnibus legislation.

This is the fourth omnibus budget bill the government has brought in. Bill C-4 amends over 70 different pieces of legislation in over 300 pages. It follows on the heels of previous omnibus budget Bills C-38, C-45, and C-60. The bill contains entirely new laws: the Mackenzie gas project impacts fund act and the public service labour relations and employment board act. There are brand new acts within the bill.

Like its predecessor omnibus budget bills, this bill contains a wide variety of measures, many of which are not even in the budget and do not have any relationship to the budget. They are changes such as gutting health and safety protections for federal jurisdiction workers; cuts to reductions at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board; repealing the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board; and changes to how we select Supreme Court judges.

These are not budget items, yet they are crammed into an omnibus bill, within a very short timeframe, to evade the scrutiny of Parliament. Canadians will not really have a full appreciation of the changes being made. It negates the opportunity of parliamentarians to hear a full range of witnesses, to engage in thorough examination, discussion, and debate about a bill, and to then propose reasoned amendments for improvements that would help make these laws better.

As we have seen in the past, because of the short timeframe, bills have been rushed through Parliament and passed, and then the government has had to go back and correct them after the fact because of mistakes it had made.

With this bill, as with all the other omnibus bills, Conservatives accepted not one amendment. They would not change even one comma. No one else has any good ideas. They would change nothing. In our discussions at committee, there were several amendments proposed. The NDP proposed 24. Other opposition parties proposed amendments. Not one change was accepted, as in the previous omnibus budget bills.

There was a time limit imposed on our study at committee. We had only two days of witnesses, including an hour with the minister, and there was a deadline of midnight. Everything we had not voted on in the bill was deemed passed, and if it was an amendment, it was deemed rejected. That certainly did not allow us much latitude for making changes or even for trying to slow down the parliamentary process and review.

Canadians are offended by this. We have heard from many Canadians who are getting the message about the lack of democracy in these omnibus budget bills. However, we also heard expert testimony.

The Canadian Bar Association testified at our committee during the two days of study. It said that “eschewing consultation and employing omnibus bills diminish the quality of our laws and the democratic process. We urge you to reconsider these practices”.

We completely agree.

We heard a variety of witnesses oppose the process of omnibus budget bills. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation agreed with us that this is a bad way to bring in legislation.

What it does is attach unpopular measures to popular measures and does not allow the separation of issues so that there can be good and thorough debate. It prevents separate votes on issues by lumping them all together. Obviously, it is less transparent and fundamentally less democratic. We believe that this evasion of parliamentary scrutiny is not worthy of the House.

Let me deal with the notion that this bill is in any way aiding the priorities of Canadians in terms of creating jobs and a stronger economy. In this bill, the Conservatives have failed to put forward significant job creation measures at a time when we are seeing stagnating incomes, stagnating wages, insecurity in the workplace, job insecurity, and all-time high household debt. This is at a time when we have a current account trade deficit of over $60 billion, which is a record for our country.

We believe that what the Conservative government ought to do is deal with the real challenges the economy is facing. Let me quote a couple of sources. The Conservatives may feel that they know better, but let us hear what the International Monetary Fund had to say:

...the IMF no longer views Canada as the growth engine of the G7 economies. While bettering the European members, Canadian growth is projected to play second fiddle to the U.S. in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Growth in “other advanced countries” not in the G7 club, such as the Scandinavian nations and Australia and New Zealand, are also projected to outperform Canada. Going forward, it predicts the Canadian economy will continue to be held back by high household debt levels and a cooling housing market.

That is the International Monetary Fund.

Business columnist David Olive wrote:

We know from the recent American and British experience with austerity chic that you cannot cut your way to prosperity. Indeed, sucking demand, or cash, out of an economy with cutbacks to government spending—including essential services and infrastructure upgrading—merely adds to the jobless lines and cuts household incomes. That, in turn, drives up social-spending costs related to mounting unemployment.

Clearly, the Conservative government is failing on the economy.

Let us hear from Paul Wells, from Maclean's, in his recent article, “Stephen Harper and the knowledge economy: perfect strangers”. He wrote:

...by the broadest measure of expenditure on research and development, Canada has fallen from 16th out of 41 comparable countries [since] the year Stephen Harper became prime minister...

The Conservative government is failing on so many counts to do the job on the economy, yet it has an omnibus budget bill that would cram in over 60 amendments to the Canada Labour Code. Anyone working anywhere in the federal jurisdiction, not just for the federal government but perhaps in the transportation sector, banking, telecommunications, interprovincial trucking, rail, ships, trains, or airlines, would be affected by this.

It would strip the powers of health and safety inspectors. They could inspect a workplace with a phone call. However, it would not be a qualified inspector; it would just be someone the minister appointed, who would not even have to be qualified.

There are so many regressive changes in this bill that attack the basic rights of people in the workplace. It is a colossal step backward. All Canadian workers should be very concerned about this legislation. It is a colossal step backward for Canadians.

New Democrats will not support the Conservatives' attempt to evade scrutiny by Parliament and Canadians. We oppose this budget and its implementation bills, unless it is revised to reflect the real priorities of Canadian families: creating quality, well-paid jobs; ensuring retirement security; fostering opportunities for young people; and making life for families more affordable.

I see that my time is up. I thank the House for the opportunity, and I welcome questions from my parliamentary colleagues.

An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act (duty to examine)

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by congratulating and thanking my friend and colleague from Brome—Missisquoi. His work on this bill shows that he is an ardent defender of his constituents' interests. As an educator and an MP, he is in regular contact with the members of his community and he understands that the people he represents are concerned about our environment.

The hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi also stands up for the interests of all Canadians. This initiative not only benefits his constituents, but all of us.

I would like to congratulate him on taking this initiative and introducing a well-thought-out and carefully crafted bill in the House of Commons. He began an important debate in the House on the type of government that we want and what we expect from our government.

We must always take into account the impact that our decisions could have on future generations. Bill C-481 serves to remind us that we cannot be shortsighted when it comes to environmental issues. We are responsible for ensuring that any bill introduced in the House meets the needs of today without compromising those of the future.

As my colleague explained, this bill will ensure that we remain committed to the Federal Sustainable Development Act, which was passed unanimously by the House in 2008.

It is a very simple idea and something that all Canadians expect from their government. If we pass a law that says that we support sustainable development, then all of our laws will be in line with those principles.

My colleague from Brome—Missisquoi's idea is beautiful in its simplicity.

Not only would the bill put sustainable development at the forefront of all federal government decision-making, it would integrate sustainable development principles with the policy-making process itself. It would guarantee that all government decisions were in line with the principles of sustainable development that we all seemed so committed to just five years ago.

Bill C-481 does this by reinforcing legislation that already exists. It turns our current strategy for sustainable development into an effective strategy. Unfortunately, the Conservative government does not share my priorities on the environment or, I think, the priorities of a majority of Canadians, for that matter.

The Conservatives have spoken several times about the importance they give to the Federal Sustainable Development Act. Past ministers of the environment, and by now there is quite a roster, have said that the act ensures that the federal decision-making process on matters of the environment is done in a transparent and coherent manner. However, while Conservatives like to mention the Federal Sustainable Development Act, they are all talk and no action.

The government has not been interested in the principles of the act, but it does like to use it as a talking point to distract Canadians from its dismal record in promoting sustainable development and from its failure to act on the environment. Much like Conservatives like to use the word “conservation” without acting or to talk about their missing-in-action oil and gas regulations, it is all about drawing attention away from their failure on these issues. As I have said in the House before, what we need is less rhetoric and more meaningful, forward-looking action.

In the past few years, because of this inaction, we have seen a regression. We are actually moving backward. The Conservative government has been systematically dismantling environmental protection laws and has been using the least transparent methods available. For proof of that, we do not have to go back too far, just to 2012, when the government's infamous omnibus budget bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, were passed, two of the most destructive pieces of legislation I have ever encountered.

The government has consistently disregarded the principles of sustainable development by using omnibus legislation to weaken environmental protections and by passing that legislation without proper examination or debate. Gutting the Fisheries Act, ransacking the Navigable Waters Protection Act, muzzling scientists, completely obliterating the national round table on the environment and the economy, and continuing to subsidize the oil and gas industry with $1.3 billion a year does not sound like sustainable development to me. Neither does denying the science behind climate change, wilfully ignoring the effects of global warming, or failing miserably to meet low emissions targets that we committed to in international climate negotiations.

What else does not sound sustainable? Since coming into power in 2006, the Conservatives have cut Canada's targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 90%. That is not sustainable; it is actually irresponsible. Our actions now mean we are burdening Canadians who will come after us.

The Federal Sustainable Development Act was supposed to signal a change in how the government makes responsible and environmentally conscious decisions on behalf of Canadians. However, it has been five years since this legislation came into effect, and the government has failed to make this crucial transformation.

Implementing an effective sustainable development strategy is an attainable and necessary goal. It is about time that we respect the commitments we made to Canadians in 2008 by passing Bill C-481. We already agreed unanimously to the principles of the bill, so let us give it some teeth.

The bill offers an efficient strategy to achieve this by giving the Department of Justice the responsibility for reviewing bills and ensuring that all proposed legislation responds to the criteria laid out in the Federal Sustainable Development Act, which we all passed. We are not asking for a complete overhaul here. This is not about red tape or another level of bureaucracy; it is a change we can actually implement now.

Bill C-481 should be implemented. The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development noted that the integration of sustainable development in decision-making is an incomplete process. Enabling Bill C-481 would help us to bridge that gap. Operationalizing an effective approach to sustainable development has worked well in Canada, and it has already been done at the provincial level in Quebec.

My leader, the leader of the NDP, in his role as Quebec's minister of the environment, sustainable development and parks, wrote North America's first sustainable development law and amended Quebec's human rights charter to create the right to live in a clean environment. That is not a privilege but a right. That is the attitude we should have in this chamber when we talk about legislation and debate ideas and think about how to work together to create a better Canada. It is a right that we need to work toward. It is a right we need to work hard to protect.

In my last few moments, I would like to turn our attention to the people who live in our ridings, whom we as members of Parliament, represent. These are families in every riding across the country in Victoria, Yellowknife, Winnipeg, Toronto, and my own riding of Halifax. As legislators, we have accepted the responsibility to represent the hopes and dreams of our constituents. For many of those people, their hopes and dreams are better lives and brighter futures for their kids and their families.

However, as it stands now, our children and grandchildren are set to inherit the worst environmental, social, and economic debt the country has ever seen. This is not intergenerational equity. It is not a future that is bright or shining with promise; it is a future that I am afraid of. It is an injustice to leave this legacy behind to the generations that follow ours.

The reality of the situation is that if we do not go forward sustainably and we do not legislate for the future instead of just thinking about the short-term gains, then we are not working to defend the hopes and dreams of our constituents or the people they care about most. We are not doing our jobs as legislators.

We owe it to future generations of Canadians to pass this bill. For them, sustainable development should not be an afterthought, window dressing, or a buzzword. An effective sustainable development policy demands that the principles of sustainability be a part of the policy-making process from the start.

Offshore Health and Safety Act

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her excellent question. I would also like to thank her for the work she is doing in her riding and her fondness for the people of Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine. I know that she cares about them.

The long wait has made people very concerned about the offshore oil and gas industry. Had the government introduced regulations and laws to protect the health and safety not only of workers, but also of the environment much sooner, people in our region would have had an opportunity to share their ideas long before now. They would have had a chance to air their concerns, and they might have found their way to a consensus about how to develop marine resources.

Unfortunately, the government did not do that, and that is why people are hesitating now. They are very scared. They are worried about the fact that this could endanger all of the region's other industries, including tourism and fishing. Now, people are just not ready to give the go-ahead to offshore oil and gas development, and they have good reason to be concerned. The government could have implemented regulations and laws to ensure safe and sustainable development, but it did not. It did the exact opposite.

Because the government eliminated all kinds of environmental protections in Bill C-38, and because of the shortcomings of Bill C-5, which is before us now, people are not at all keen to give the go-ahead to offshore oil and gas development. The government should have been more reassuring. The government is supposed to protect the people, but it seems more inclined to do the opposite and endanger them. That is absolutely unacceptable.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. Our constituencies share the same sea. The constituencies may be in two different provinces, but the Atlantic brings them together.

In terms of collaboration, it is interesting to note that the Conservative government really is the crime-and-punishment party in the House. The government does not consult people on the ground at all.

For example, on Bill C-2, safe injection sites, I do not recall any collaboration or any consultation happening with the people who were on the front lines who would actually understand how this kind of legislation would play out.

In the last session of Parliament, we saw more crime and punishment legislation that purported to be standing up for victims, but with no consultations with groups that represented victims and offenders and with groups that worked to try to achieve justice in our communities. It is the heavy hammer of the law. Conservatives are not being collaborative.

It did take 14 years for this bill to come forward, but as I said, the ideas and the solutions were there. When we collaborate, we are stronger because we can take those ideas, those solutions that other people may have, and work on them together. However, the government refuses to do that kind of collaboration.

In the last budget bill, Bill C-38, in spring 2012, we actually tried to make amendments correcting spelling. It is not that hard to admit that maybe something was spelled wrong and accept an amendment. We are all better for it when we collaborate. Conservatives do not have exclusive jurisdiction on good ideas. In fact, it would be the opposite. Let us correct the spelling, but that is not their modus operandi. They do not want to work with people.

Fisheries and Oceans

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his efforts. We work together on the fisheries committee and I know that he is a very diligent and effective speaker in the House.

When it comes to the modifications to the Fisheries Act that were introduced in Bill C-38, I would posit that the government went way too far. We saw it when we did our study for invasive species in the Great Lakes, as he mentioned.

We do not know what the consequences are of changing environmental conditions. We do not know which species are going to be best placed to survive in the future. We know that there is change. We know that we lose species all the time and we know that nature tries its best to compensate. It needs all the tools that can be had, and that includes protection of fisheries habitat.

I do not have a crystal ball. I do not know what the commercial fishery is going to be in 20, 50, or 100 years. However, I know that if we destroy the fisheries habitat today without any form of compensation, those fish that might be replacing today's commercial fish might not exist in the future. We are putting our future at risk.

Opposition Motion--Keystone XL Pipeline

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate. As a Liberal participating in the debate, it is kind of amusing to listen to my NDP colleague, who does not seem to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The issue is that Keystone starts out as a no-brainer. The Prime Minister rightly describes the project as a no-brainer. It has huge economic significance. It is a significant economic driver for both Alberta and the Canadian economy, yet at this point, it has gone from no-brainer to cliffhanger. How did we get from no-brainer to cliffhanger? It was by not paying attention to the environmental impact of oil sands development.

The world has noticed. We did not win those Kyoto fossil awards for nothing. The government worked at it. The world has noticed. The United States, the anti-Keystone folks, and President Obama have noticed. Because Canada, for the last six or seven years, has done nothing about getting control over the ever-escalating emissions from oil sands development out in Alberta, both in intensity and in quantity, we now have a significant issue on our hands.

My colleague has reminded me that I am splitting my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands. I apologize to my friend.

The issue here is gross mismanagement of a fundamental economic issue. Now we have moved it from no-brainer to cliffhanger. Now we see the Prime Minister going down to New York saying that he will not take no for an answer. Well, I am sure President Obama woke up in the middle of the night and said, “Michelle, the Prime Minister will not take no for an answer. My goodness gracious me, what am I going to do?” I am sure Michelle said, “Just go back to sleep, Barak, and stop snoring”.

For goodness' sake, one does not go down to the most powerful country in the world and say to the President of the United States of America, who controls whether or not Keystone proceeds, that we are not going to take no for an answer, then line up with the nutters in the Tea Party, President Obama's most difficult constituency, who brought the United States' government to a situation of near paralysis.

It is quite bizarre that the Prime Minister should actually be flummoxed as to why Keystone has become a cliffhanger. He is flummoxed that this no-brainer is apparently not going to proceed without some pretty significant intervention. It has an enormous economic cost for our country. Not only is it economic mismanagement, it is environmental mismanagement and political mismanagement. We are talking about potentially one of the most significant economic developments this country has seen, yet we are in a situation now where we have no regulatory environment for those who create GHG emissions, except for the Government of Alberta, which is doing all the heavy lifting in terms of emissions into both the air and the water.

The chickens are coming home to roost. We ignore the environment at our peril, and the Prime Minister has ignored the environment. It is quite clear from actions such as limiting the budget of the ministry of the environment and Bill C-38, which basically gutted many of the environmental protections.

For goodness' sake, all of the new development in the oil sands is in situ.

There are two ways in which they can take the bitumen out of the ground. They either do it in open-pit mining or in situ. The Conservatives, last week, said that the federal government will no longer do environmental reviews on in situ mining. What message did that send to President Obama? Does that reinforce the notion that Canada could do potentially more to mitigate carbon release, or that he has not seen any specific ideas or plans from Canada that would help offset concerns? Or is it just that the Prime Minister has, through his actions and his inept handling of this file, handed a huge two-by-four to those who wish to oppose this pipeline issue so they can whack him over the head with it, but also whack President Obama over the head? President Obama does not appreciate it when a significant ally, an important economic partner, makes it very difficult for him to approve this particular initiative.

Shipping bitumen is not the issue here. Bitumen gets shipped by pipelines and creates no more and no less GHGs than shipping by truck or by rail. In fact, it is arguably safer. The issue is in the production. It is not in the tailpipe, not in getting there, but in the production. In the number of years that the current government has been in office, it has not been able to or willing to regulate emissions. As a consequence, industry has a cheerleader. It does not have a regulator, it has a cheerleader. Therefore, anything that the oil sands industry does is good and anything that a regulator does is bad. The government has absented itself from the regulation of the oil sands, and as I say, left the heavy lifting to the Government of Alberta and to a lesser extent the Government of Saskatchewan.

Hence, we have Premier Redford making regular trips down to Washington to sell the idea of Keystone because it is extremely important to her province. That has led to other issues. When they do not pay attention to environmental issues and legitimate concerns that come up in the shipping of bitumen or “dilbit”, as it is known, they create difficulties for themselves.

A little example is in the neighbourhood where the Speaker and I live, namely Line 9. The City of Toronto submitted some pretty important concerns to the NEB a few weeks ago. Many of them are very reasonable, but people have lost trust in the current government to stand up for them in terms of protecting their environment. Many of the concerns are simple things such as more valves, where the line is located, et cetera. The Government of Canada can issue permits, but it is only the people who can give the social licence to allow these kinds of projects to go ahead.

Hence, my leader is down in Washington. He does not trash-talk what happens in Canada. He tries to promote important projects. When he does that, we are all better off. Indeed we have to recognize that this industry is important.

There is no government, whether Green, NDP, Conservative or Liberal, that is going to leave that multi-trillion-dollar asset in the ground, nobody. The only question here is this. How do we get it out of the ground, minimize GHG emissions and be a leader in regulating this kind of activity, as opposed to a laggard? That is what gets us from here to there. That is what gets us from no-brainer to cliffhanger.

Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to address Bill C-3. It is an interesting bill, to say the least.

I have some opening remarks that I would like to get on the record regarding what I think are some interesting points.

First, it is important to note that here we are in day two of debate, and I give credit to the government as it has not yet introduced time allocation. I think that is an encouraging thing. I hope that I do not precipitate the government bringing in time allocation, but I think it is important to recognize that it has not.

The other interesting thought I want to share with the House is in regard to the name of the bill. It is an interesting name, the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act. If one has listened to a lot of the debate that has taken place today, there has been a great deal of discussion about our environment and oil, and the importance of those two issues. I plan on adding some comment on that.

Suffice it to say that I believe there is someone somewhere within the Prime Minister's Office, who I suspect gets paid quite well with tax dollars, whose job it is to come up with creative names for the legislation that comes before the House of Commons. I have had the opportunity to briefly go through the bill and I never would have thought of it as being the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act. To me, that is not necessarily the most appropriate name.

When I think of the bill, after having gone through it somewhat briefly, a lot of the changes are of a very technical nature. In fact, members will find more substantial changes to legislation affecting our waterways or our environment in budget legislation. We have had three huge budget bills that contained, for example, changes for our waterways. Hundreds, if not thousands, of waterways were profoundly affected by using the back door of a budget bill to make significant changes to our waterway and environmental legislation.

Of course, we had a bill within the budget bill, Bill C-38, which was passed, that I thought was quite an interesting change. I think very few people picked up on it, but it was a fairly significant change. In essence, it allowed the cabinet to get more politically involved in pipeline projects by getting the final say. As opposed to allowing our National Energy Board to review and base decisions on science and the best interests of the environment, we had legislation, again brought through under the pretense of a budget implementation bill, that made quite a significant change in allowing the cabinet to make the decision. The bill took the decision out of the regulatory regime and ultimately it now rests with the cabinet. Again, this was something that was done in a budget bill.

Having said that, I want to respond to a lot of the comments made by members of the New Democratic Party particularly, and to a certain extent members from the Conservative Party, that I found quite interesting on the whole issue of oil and the impact oil has on our environment. This has been widely covered in the discussions. The transportation of oil is of national interest. It is not something that Canadians take lightly. Indeed, it is a very serious issue that deserves a great deal of debate inside the House.

It has been interesting to follow some of the debate on this very important issue. Oil is a natural resource from which all of us have benefited immensely. Every Canadian from coast to coast to coast has benefited from Canada's ability to export oil. It is what has enabled us to pay for much of what we have today. It has improved the quality of every Canadian's lifestyle. It is encouraging when we see developments where we have capitalized on this wonderful natural resource, whether in Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, or Saskatchewan.

It is also important that we behave responsibly with respect to our environment and the way we transport that oil, whether by train, pipeline, or ship. There are areas we can improve upon.

I have been following the debate on the Keystone issue, as have many Canadians. What I like about Keystone is that it has shown the different types of leadership for each political party. All three leaders have gone to the United States to deal with the transportation of oil via pipelines.

On the one hand, the leader of the New Democratic Party, a while back, went to the U.S. and dumped all over Canada, and to a certain degree, our natural resources. I do not think it went well.

The leader of the Liberal Party went to Washington and talked about the benefits of Keystone for both Canada and the U.S., with an emphasis on the benefits to Canada and how important it is that we also pay attention to our environment.

The Prime Minister, bypassed Washington and flew to New York. In New York, his statement was that the government would not accept no for an answer. I suspect that this profound statement by the Prime Minister in New York did not keep President Obama up late at night. Given the importance of Keystone to all the stakeholders, I believe that the Prime Minister should have gone to Washington, discussed it in a conciliatory fashion, negotiated in good faith, lobbied, and shown concern for the environment.

Pipelines are important for transporting oil. If it were not for the pipelines, the amount of train traffic would increase substantially. We are all aware of the rail lines and the number of accidents that have occurred.

We need to do a lot more in terms of rail line safety and ensuring that communities, where there is a high density of population, or even a low-density population, or a pristine environment, whether it is lakes or rivers, are being protected. We could do a whole lot more in ensuring a secure environment in the transportation of oil in our pipelines and on our trains.

When we look at the specifics of Bill C-3 in terms of what it would do, and when we reflect on what I have stated, I am suggesting that once it is all said and done, we could have done a whole lot more in taking that—and I often use these words—holistic approach. I do believe that it is an applicable term for this piece of legislation. I believe we could have taken a larger holistic approach in dealing with these issues, as opposed to it being done in a piecemeal fashion.

In order to illustrate that, I thought I would highlight specifically what is inside the legislation. This way the House will get a better understanding of why I am suggesting it should have been a stronger holistic approach.

In essence, the bill is broken into four different parts. Part one deals with the minister undertaking to indemnify all aviation industry participants. This gets back to the whole issue of terrorism and war risks. The issue of insurance has become a very hot issue in what role the government should and could be playing. This is something that has been deemed necessary. From what I understand, the government in the past has attempted to bring it in, and it has incorporated it into this bill. I suspect the genesis of the idea might be the whole 9/11 issue and the cost that followed 9/11 in terms of insurance. There is some benefit in acknowledging that part one is an important part of the legislation.

We would go on then to part two. I thought part two was interesting. It mentions that new powers, comparable to the powers exercised by the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board, are being given to the Canadian Forces air worthiness investigation authority to enable it to investigate military-civilian occurrences. Again, this is something that is hard to argue against. Based on my understanding and what has been provided to me, this is a movement in the right direction.

I was a member of the Canadian Forces for a few years. The area I was posted to was squad 435 search and rescue, in air traffic control in Edmonton. I had the opportunity to meet with a number of pilots, navigating officers, radar officers and aircraft professionals, and I can tell the House that there is a high degree of incredible individuals who have a level of expertise that should and could be tapped into. I would think there is some merit in what is being proposed here, and to that extent, there is merit for part two.

We then get into an area in which there has been a great deal of discussion today. That is the area I was referring to on the Canada Marine Act. In relation to the effective date of the appointment of a director of a port authority, we need to recognize we have 18 Canadian port authorities that are operating in Canada.

We are seeing a little more clarity in the appointment process in relation to the effective date of an appointment for the director. There is some merit there. When I say “merit”, it does not necessarily mean it absolutely, definitely should happen; I mean that there is benefit in allowing the bill to go to committee, and in principle I am supporting that aspect of it.

Part 4 is a very important aspect of the bill, and I suspect it is one of the reasons we are getting so much discussion on it. Hopefully I will be able to get through reading this part, because it is important.

Part 4 amends the Marine Liability Act to implement the International Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Hazardous and Noxious Substances by Sea, 2010, in particular a couple of clauses.

The MLA provides for the liability of ships' owners and operators for damage caused by pollutants. In particular, it implements in Canada the liability scheme established by the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage; the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage of 2001, which is known as the bunker convention; and the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage, 1992, and in 2003, the protocol to that convention, the acronym being the IOPCF convention, creating the international compensation fund and a supplementary fund to compensate for oil pollution damage covered by the CCL and the bunker convention.

That, in my mind, emphasizes just how important it is for us to look at the whole issue of oil transportation. That is the reason I spent some time talking about the ways in which we transport oil. We have a lot of control here in Canada through our rail lines. We have control through our pipelines to properly regulate and protect. Where it becomes more challenging is once we get to our oceans and our ports.

It can be very difficult to ensure that we are providing the type of diligence that is important and providing the resources that are necessary for enforcement. We talk about what takes place within the line of responsibility, I believe 200 miles from our coastline, and we anticipate that it will be extended. We have to have an insurance scheme in place, which could lead to a wide variety of revenue sources to support it, but we have to have compensation sufficient to clean up the oil spills that will take place.

There are vast amounts of oil in our oceans today, and the question is what is actually being done to clean up that oil. Not only do we have a responsibility for Canada and our shorelines in that 200-mile zone, but I would argue that we can go beyond that. That is why it is important as a nation that we should be leading some dialogue on how we can have an impact on cleaning up oil spills throughout the world, whether it is the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, or any other international body of water where the restrictions are not as strong. The need is still there, and the Canadian public want and desire strong leadership on this issue.

That is one of the reasons I believe the government could have come up with more substantial legislation to deal with the many concerns that Canadians have on this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts and words.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I entirely agree with my colleague.

This government definitely has enormous trouble complying with international agreements. At least we can congratulate it for complying with the agreement it signed four years ago. It took way too long to put it into the form of a bill, but I congratulate it for having done so. That is a start.

However, it contains a lot of deficiencies, and I entirely agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands on that. The bill can definitely be vastly improved. However, this government does not appear to be concerned about environmental protection.

Its concern seems to be how we can transport hydrocarbons as efficiently as possible without being troubled by environmental regulations. Bill C-38 reduces them to a very large degree.

We no longer protect more than 90% of Canada's rivers and lakes. We no longer protect fish habitat. Now it appears we may be content merely to establish a compensation fund to provide protection in the event of an oil spill, but we do not yet have the capacity to clean it up. In short, there are a lot of deficiencies, and I thank the member for emphasizing that point.

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in order for politicians to get through their very long days and heavy schedules, they have to take some pleasure in what they are doing. I must admit, however, that I did not enjoy reading Bill C-4 at all.

I therefore took a few minutes before writing these words to escape into my own mind a bit, and my thoughts turned to movies. I really had the feeling as I read through Bill C-4 that I was being shown an old movie—I am trying to refrain from saying a really bad one—in which I had played a role. I began to imagine the titles I could give to it.

If it were a French film, we could call it Rebelote. If it were an American film, we could call it The Empire Strikes Back. I must admit I spent a few moments imagining certain members of the party across the way wearing the emperor's costume or dressed as Darth Vader. I will not name them, but I will leave it up to my colleagues to picture them, given that Halloween is this week.

After these few amusing moments I allowed myself, I came back to more serious things and thought I would perhaps begin my speech with a reference to the words of the anti-slavery Republican President Abraham Lincoln, who defined democracy in the following way:

Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people.

That is quite simple, but quite concrete. I will not analyze this wonderful definition in detail, but the more time goes by under the Conservative regime, the more certain I become that our country is straying dangerously far from that democratic ideal.

When day after day I see how the members of this government, the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister himself seem mired in expense scandals, questionable deals made behind Canadians' backs, the silencing of dissident voices and the introduction of measures that are so complex that people feel their basic rights are being breached, I sincerely worry about the very future of our parliamentary system.

For the fourth time in two and a half years, this government is trying to circumvent parliamentary and public oversight. As the saying goes, just the once will not hurt, but four times in two and a half years means it is becoming a habit for this government.

Canadians deserve better than a Conservative omnibus bill that again hurts Canadian families by increasing the cost of living and that creates very few or no jobs when all is said and done. This bill is very big. Its 300-odd pages cover 70 acts, and we have only a few days or a few weeks, to study such a bill. The entire package will very likely be studied by the Standing Committee on Finance, which must really have significant expertise in appointing Supreme Court justices, employment insurance and immigration. The committee members are exceedingly multi-talented.

I often wonder what I am doing in the House, if not fighting for democracy. These bills are so huge that it becomes very difficult to properly analyze and fully understand them. They usually contain an alarming number of wide-ranging measures intended to hide other controversial ones, such as the measures attacking Canada's public service.

For months now, the government's methods and attitude when it comes to employment insurance matters have been symptomatic of the Conservative ministers' inability to implement a policy and measures to move the country forward. These same ministers are being given more and more power with each omnibus bill.

The democratic process that is based on dialogue and collaboration was so violated that the reform turned into a hatchet job. Everywhere I go, Canadians feel attacked, deeply hurt and, worse than anything, poorer. When people feel poorer, it is because they can see it when they manage their weekly budget.

This is why we as NDP members are categorically opposed to this bill. The reasons are many, but I am going to focus on several points that deal specifically with employment insurance.

The NDP has opposed this reform from the outset. After months of consultation in the field, we came to the obvious conclusion that employment insurance reform is an economic failure and it has to be stopped as quickly as possible.

Curiously, in the provinces most affected by the reform, it is the provincial governments that now have to work to assess the disastrous consequences it brings. That is co-operation for you.

It does not make any sense. It is disrespectful for a federal government to refuse to work with its partners in other levels of government, or with practically all the members of this House. Even inside the federal government, voices are being raised to decry the way in which the government is imposing its ideology on such a sensitive issue.

I have given up counting the times when federal officials, who have always worked to serve their fellow Canadians, have shown their distress and their incomprehension at the authoritarian and brutal methods with which they are required to process claimants' files.

Unfortunately, these are not just files that have to be processed with profit-making quotas, probably. These are families that need help. That is the approach that the public service used to have. It is about supporting communities and stimulating the economy.

Bill C-4 follows the same path as the three previous omnibus bills. I am talking about Bills C-38, C-45 and C-60. Now Bill C-4 is amending 70 pieces of legislation and adding two completely new acts. I hope for the next time that this is enough. It also includes such measures as the one to abolish the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board.

To be specific, Bill C-4 abolishes the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board and gives the Minister of Finance the power to manipulate rate-setting. Yet another power gathered unto the bosom of a minister. What does the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board do, or what is it supposed to do? Well, surprise, surprise, the answers in the bill are quite vague. We might say that there are none.

When the Conservatives set up the Employment Insurance Financing Board in 2008, we might have thought that they were headed in the right direction. We heard it said repeatedly in the House that this was probably a step in the right direction. However, one step forward, two steps back—that is what we have become used to with them. We thought that it might be the very tool to prevent successive governments from stealing employment insurance funds to eliminate other deficits. We expected the board to really prevent another misappropriation of that fund such as we saw under the Chrétien and Martin governments.

At that time, tens of billions of dollars in worker and employer premiums were simply stolen by the government. However, when it comes to the Conservatives, appearances can be deceiving and should never be trusted. The board remained a good intention, but in actual fact it is an empty shell, an institution without a soul, without powers and without purpose.

Let us go a bit further. The Employment Insurance Financing Board seems to bother the Conservative government. Why is this organization so bothersome? Why does it want to abolish it?

By eliminating the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board, once again the government is toying dangerously with morality. However, we feel it is essential to guarantee the protection of the premiums paid by employers and workers throughout Canada. It is a matter of social justice and fairness for all. Who among us can be sure that he or she will have a job for life and will never have to turn to employment insurance? The answer is simple—no one can.

Why continually attack those who are looking for work? Why does the government constantly attack those who are having trouble finding long-term, stable, permanent employment?

In conclusion, unemployment is of course a major concern for NDP members. We will introduce reforms to create jobs and curtail employment uncertainty everywhere in Canada as early as 2015, and even earlier.

In 2015, when we replace this tired government that is mired in scandals, we will restore a mechanism to protect the employment insurance fund so that the money that is put into it is used in the way it was intended.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the same issue over and over again in my constituency office, families who have been seeking reunification, patiently waiting. I am horrified by the change in policy and the moving of the goalposts for so many families that have been doing all the right things, filing all the right papers; they find they have to start all over again.

My question is on the member's last point, on finding omnibus budget bills. In the last number of years the Conservatives have done two omnibus bills per budget. In 2012-2013 we had a spring omnibus budget bill, C-38, and then a fall omnibus budget bill, C-45, then Bill C-60 and now Bill C-4. Each of these monstrous bills has included many aspects that had nothing at all to do with the budget, but were mere expedients for pushing things through the House that much faster.

I wonder if the hon. member knows what the official opposition would do? Could we have House rules to restrict when omnibus bills are legitimate? How would the official opposition deal with this problem?

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-4 is a sad new piece of legislative art from the Conservatives. What a masterpiece.

Much like the three omnibus bills before it—Bill C-38, Bill C-45 and Bill C-60—this fourth bill includes some 70 legislative measures—why not—most of which have very little to do with the budget. The bill even creates two brand-new laws: the Mackenzie Gas Project Impacts Act and the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board Act.

With this bill, the Conservatives are trying once again to force major changes through Parliament, without letting us do our job.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has already pointed out numerous times that members of Parliament do not have access to the information they need to fulfill their critical role and improve our laws. He had to threaten to take the government to court for the Conservatives to finally bother to reveal their budget cut plan. However, here we are again with another omnibus bill.

The Minister of Finance tabled budget 2013 in Parliament on March 21. The budget cuts thousands of public service jobs and makes cuts to program spending. The budget proposes a host of unwarranted economic austerity measures that do not help Canadians.

Bill C-4 to implement certain provisions of the budget undermines the health and safety protections in place for workers. It is a direct attack on public servants and labour unions. It causes irreparable damage to our research system and puts employment insurance firmly under the minister's control.

I am particularly concerned for the Canadian public and especially for the constituents in my riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine and Dorval.

This bill removes from our health and safety officers the authority granted to them under the Canada Labour Code. It significantly weakens the ability of employees to refuse to work in dangerous conditions. It grants virtually all health and safety powers to the minister. This concentration of power in the hands of a minister is very dangerous, especially when we are dealing with a Conservative minister.

When the Conservatives attack the Canada Labour Code, they are attacking something that Canadians worked hard to build over the years to make their working conditions healthier and safer. This is the opposite of progress. This is a step backwards, just like everything else the Conservatives do. They should instead be seeking ways to protect Canadians from having to work in situations that expose them to unacceptable risks. They should protect workers.

I had the opportunity to study occupational health and safety in my university program. I took a course that required students to conduct workplace risk assessments. Therefore, I can say that centralizing everything is exactly the opposite of what companies do to identify risks in order to provide appropriate solutions concerning occupational health and safety.

For all these reasons, the NDP will certainly oppose this proposal, which affects the fundamental rights of workers in terms of occupational health and safety.

Bill C-4 would also make changes that would allow the minister to determine which services are essential in the public service, in such a way that he could well undermine collective bargaining rights.

We know that the Conservatives do not like unions. This is another attack. This is a direct violation of the social dialogue in the public service. By destabilizing the relationship between the negotiating parties, the government is giving itself the means to gag workers in the public service. It is restricting their right to challenge the deterioration of working conditions due to the unjustified cuts imposed by the Conservatives themselves. By slashing jobs, they are creating the conditions for conflict. They now want to ignore the consequences by preventing workers from expressing their frustration and their complaints.

However, some services seem to be less essential than others, particularly when objective scientific results contradict the Conservatives' vision and plans. They fired hundreds of scientists without considering the medium- or long-term consequences of their decision.

Now, Bill C-4 is taking aim at National Research Council Canada and dealing a final blow to our public research system. Well done.

As a final step in their attempt to systematically bleed the labour market dry on the pretense of flexibility, the Conservatives are using Bill C-4 to eliminate the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board and give the Minister of Finance the power to manipulate rates.

Do the Conservatives want to turn their backs on federal responsibility in this area by dumping it onto the provinces or directly onto the public?

Bill C-4 also extends the $1,000 hiring tax credit for small business. I acknowledge that that is a step in the right direction, but it is nowhere near enough. The NDP is looking further ahead and proposing a $2,000 hiring tax credit that would not come out of the employment insurance fund and would help businesses hire and train young workers.

I want to keep talking about small businesses. The Conservatives are going ahead with their $350 million tax hike on labour-sponsored venture capital funds. However, it is well known that venture capital is essential for creating and developing businesses. Just listen to our entrepreneurs. Alain-Jacques Simard, CEO of TeraXion, a Quebec company that specializes in fibre optics, said that the Fonds de solidarité FTQ acted as a catalyst and that since its January 2010 investment, his company's sales have doubled. That is important to remember.

The Conservatives like to remind everybody that they were elected to lower taxes, but not for unions, apparently. That is very strange. Attacking a financing system does not make sense unless it is part of an agenda to do whatever it takes to undermine the economic influence of Canadian workers and unions.

Still on the subject of small businesses, Bill C-4 increases the lifetime capital gains exemption and indexes it. The NDP supports increasing the lifetime capital gains exemption because that will help small business owners. The NDP knows that small businesses create a lot of jobs. However, they create those jobs only in a climate of better economic and regulatory conditions. That is why the NDP would like to see tax incentives to help these businesses hire Canadians.

We can only have a productive debate on these proposals if the Conservatives allow it. The omnibus bill will not make that possible and suggests that the Conservatives are, sadly, not willing to debate. The Conservatives are showing their true colours by attacking workers, public servants, employment insurance and unions. They are not working for Canadian families.

Household debt has reached record levels and is now at 166% of household income. This means that people are spending five months' income every three months, putting them two more months in the hole every five months. The Conservatives have no plan to address the alarming youth unemployment rate.

Bill C-4 is out of touch with what is important to Canadian families. It is a dangerous step backward. This policy is designed to destroy gains made by the middle class. It will force workers and families to pay for services that they have already paid for through their taxes.

This bill, like all of its omnibus predecessors, is a policy instrument designed to systematically destroy the social relationships that Canadians have worked hard to build over the past few decades. It is an intolerable attack on the rights of Canadian workers and Canadian families. The NDP will not stand for it.

The NDP will not support the Conservatives' latest attempt to circumvent parliamentary democracy. We should have the opportunity to debate the many subjects covered in Bill C-4 separately and refer them for study by the relevant committee. The NDP is also opposed to budget 2013 and its implementation bills, including Bill C-4, because they disregard the true priorities of Canadian families: creating good, well-paid jobs, ensuring retirement security, creating job opportunities for youth and creating more affordable living conditions for families.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, to my hon. colleague, perhaps he would go to my website. We did two very detailed analyses on Bill C-45 and Bill C-38, which are available on my website. They deal with how this government is changing the nature of doing business here, and talk to the long-term strategy that the Conservative government has to change the nature of Canada.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member has drawn our attention to changes in Bill C-4 that were necessitated by the rush in passing the previous budget implementation bill, the changes that were unintended that caused further tax damage to credit unions.

I am also aware of changes in this new bill, Bill C-4, that will be required because of mistakes made in treating income for fishermen by failing to properly deal with the income for fishermen versus highest weeks, versus their total take for the season.

It seems to me that we can make a very good case as members of the opposition that the Conservative Party mania for refusing amendments and for pushing bills through quickly is forcing Parliament over and over again to go back and pass new legislation months later to fix mistakes. Bill C-45 fixed mistakes that were in Bill C-38. Now Bill C-4 is fixing mistakes that were in Bill C-60.

Could my hon. friend give me any of her thoughts on the problems of holding up the House through passing bills too quickly?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-4, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures. It was interesting to hear the Conservative House leader talk about the planned deficit reduction and how the Conservatives were ahead by $7 billion. A good question that would be welcomed at some point for the government to answer is exactly how much of that deficit reduction was as a result of money that did not flow to approved programs and services. We have certainly heard from communities that money they expected to see or proposals they had submitted had not been funded, despite the government announcements. Therefore, it would be good for the House to know that.

This bill is the second act to implement budget 2013. It is another budget implementation bill that is about 300 pages. This legislation amends or repeals 70 pieces of legislation. Some of what it tackles is: it strips health and safety officers of their powers and puts nearly all of these powers in the hands of the minister; it significantly weakens the ability of employees to refuse to work in unsafe conditions; it moves to eliminate binding arbitration as a method to resolve disputes in the public service; and it guts Canada's most venerable scientific research institution, the National Research Council.

I want to thank our House leader, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, for raising the fact that once again the government has limited debate. This is the fourth attempt by the Conservatives to evade scrutiny by parliamentarians and the public. In the past we had Bill C-38, Bill C-45 and Bill C-60. Canadians deserve an opportunity to hear a detailed, thorough, in-depth study of such wide-ranging pieces of legislation, yet we have the limiting of the ability of the House to scrutinize the legislation. Why should we care about that?

In the past we saw the government bring forward legislation that had errors in it. Because of the complexity of the legislation and the length of time we had to review it, the government had to bring forward subsequent legislation to correct that.

This legislation is fixing something that happened due to a technical mistake in Bill C-60, which would have doubled the taxation level of credit unions and caisse populaires. In September, tax experts discovered that the changes made in Bill C-60 would result in Quebec taxpayers being overburdened on dividends compared to taxpayers in other provinces.

Because I only have 10 minutes, I will focus on three particular aspects of the legislation.

First, the legislation would reduce the number of permanent members on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board.

Second, it would fix the mistakes with respect to the tax hike on credit unions.

Third, it would push ahead the Conservative plan on the $350 million tax hike on labour sponsored venture capital funds.

With respect to veterans, Bill C-4 would reduce the number of permanent members on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board from 28 to 25. What is disappointing is that it was an opportunity for the Conservatives to bring forward separate legislation that looked to improve the Conservative record on veterans affairs. We know the NDP has not always been happy with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, but simply changing numbers will not improve the situation.

In my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan, the veterans office has closed and veterans are now forced to go further afield in order to get the services they require.

Just so Canadians understand a bit about the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, of the 76,446 Canadian Forces' clients of Veterans Affairs Canada, 1,400 are totally and permanently disabled and 406 of them will not receive a pension or allowance from the Canadian Forces.

The plan proposed by the ombudsman is based on an actuarial analysis to accurately determine for the first time how current benefits neglect certain veterans and will continue to neglect them unless changes are made quickly. Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent has said that more than 400 of the most severely disabled veterans in Canada are not eligible for the Canadian Forces pension plan, while hundreds of other permanently disabled veterans could suffer the same fate and risk spending their retirement years at a lower standard of living than they had before the age of 65 due to sufficient income.

Certainly in my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan we hear regularly from veterans and their families about their difficulties in accessing services, that they cannot get access to some services that they expected and that the money that is available simply does not respect and honour the service to our country that many veterans made.

I have spoken in the House previously about my father being a long-serving member of the Canadian Armed Forces and I am proud to say that I grew up on army bases from coast to coast.

I have a letter from a former member of the RCMP that talks about the assault on health care benefits for members of the armed forces and the RCMP. I will read a brief note from that because I think this is part of what the Veterans Appeal Board hears about the discrepancy and the difficulties in funding and whether a member is entitled to funding. The member said:

I have written...expressing my concern and profound disappointment with the fact that the government has arbitrarily decided to claw back so many necessary treatments after we risked our health and indeed our lives...I was assured that my health and the welfare of my family would be looked after. That sacred trust has been unabashedly broken.

While that in and of itself is repugnant, my greater fear is that once the members begin to see that their efforts in ensuring the safety of Canadians may actually result in huge costs to them, they will necessarily become more hesitant to engage in actions that risk their health and well being. This policy is short-sighted, unfair and contrary to Canadian values.

When we ask members of the armed forces or members of the RCMP to risk life and limb, we need to respect that when they come back to Canada or when they retire from the forces, they are treated in a fair and respectful manner. It would be incumbent upon the government to actually work with veterans and their families to ensure the services provided are adequate.

The second piece I will touch on is fixing the mistake on the credit unions' tax hike.

The bill introduces changes to fix a legislative error the Conservatives made by rushing the last omnibus budget bill through. Their mistake hiked taxes on credit unions to 28%, instead of the intended 15%.

I will read from the Credit Union Central of Manitoba remarks to a House of Commons standing committee on Bill C-60. The reason I quote from that previous presentation is because it highlights the importance of credit unions in our communities. In my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan we have a couple of different credit unions and they are very important in all of our communities, but in particular, in some of our smaller communities. The Credit Union Central of Manitoba said:

Many credit union branches are in communities that other financial institutions vacated because they were not deemed profitable enough. Our business model, paired with fair tax policy like the additional deduction, has made it both possible and attractive for credit unions to grow in places where our competitors have retreated.

It goes on to say that the removal in Bill C-60 of the additional deductions of credit unions would simply compound the impact of regulatory demands by requiring credit unions to pay a higher portion of their net income in federal tax and further reduce their ability to build capital, invest in new technology and stay competitive.

This was a brief that was presented when Bill C-60 was in the House for a reading and because we had limited time to debate that, there was not enough attention paid to that and other presentations on the impact of Bill C-60, so now we are amending that mistake.

It concludes its presentation by saying:

I would argue that this tax deduction has proven to be good public policy. If it were to remain in place it would continue to be good public policy because it will help credit unions provide effective competition in the financial services sector and assist with the federal government's stated desire to increase competition in this sector. It would also represent good public policy by helping maintain strong financial services in as many communities as possible and contribute to the sustainability of the many communities in rural Canada where credit unions are the only financial institution.

On the venture capital program, this has been a very successful program in British Columbia. There was an evaluation of the venture capital program and it indicated that not only did it contribute to job creation, but it also contributed to the fact that it helped grow companies which then went on to expand and become more successful companies.

Removing the supports for that program is unfortunate, particularly when the government continues to talk about the importance of job creation and supporting small business. Therefore, we would like to see the government reverse its decision on that.

Business of the House and its Committees

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to emphasize that these are not mere procedural issues. Opposition members clearly do not agree with all the bills the government would like to restore to the stage of debate where they were prior to prorogation.

Prorogation by the government is not a procedural tactic. It is a tool enabling Parliament to restart debate and to resume consideration of the bills the government wants to introduce. It is a process that is normally available to the government to enable it really to resume debate when it has reached the point where a new start is necessary once it has achieved the objectives set out in the previous throne speech. The tool is there, it is available, and it can be used by the government.

Unfortunately, this government always uses this tool as a hammer to hit opposition members. We have a lot of debates, we have a lot of ideas about the bills we have before us, and we should have the opportunity to present them. The fact that the government merely wants the benefits of prorogation and does not at all want to suffer its harmful effects clearly shows it does not understand the procedural process of the House of Commons. It wants to reinvent it and reinterpret it in its own way. This is not the first time it has done so. Members will recall, for example, that this government used prorogation to prevent a coalition of members of this House from forming a government.

The government used this tool as a hammer. However, this tool should only be used with considerable reservation. This government has shown itself incapable of reservation. Although we agree with some bills, it wants us to accept the bills with which we do not agree. This is not a negotiation. This is not an effective way to conduct the business of the House. It is a method of legislating that the majority of Canadians probably do not support. However, the Conservatives want to have these bills passed without the debate necessary to expose their deficiencies. The members here present must have the opportunity to state their opinions.

We want to state our opinions about the striking of a committee to study violence against aboriginal women in Canada. We definitely want to do that. We want to let the Conservatives hold their convention at what they consider the appropriate time. In exchange, however, we are not prepared to allow all the bad bills they introduced in the last session of Parliament to be reintroduced in the House without debate or to resume consideration at the stage where they were without members having the opportunity to debate them.

The problem we have here is that the government insists on having the benefits for itself alone. This is not a mere procedural issue here. This is an opportunity for the representatives of the people to state their opinions on the bills and to assert the views of all Canadians in this House.

The government would have us believe that this is just about failed negotiations and that the opposition is delaying proceedings in this House. This is not just about procedure. It is about democracy and being able to speak our minds, as we are supposed to do. We are the representatives of the people. We are not here to rubber-stamp the Conservative government’s bills. Even Conservative members should be able to speak to their own bills. Unfortunately, even they will not have the opportunity to do so. Every member of this House, regardless of political party, should have the right to speak out.

The motion the government has set before us today was presented following negotiations over a matter of weeks. Unfortunately, the negotiations went nowhere. It was absolutely necessary to request that the Speaker intervene to look for House customs and precedents.

The government seems to believe that its motion should be adopted merely because it has set it before the House and that it automatically falls within the procedures and traditions of the House.

Time and again, these days, the government has been unable to proceed with its motions, because the Speaker has had the simple common sense to look at House customs and precedents and take into consideration the very foundation of Canadian democracy as represented by House procedures. However, the government seems to be trying to set them aside, to the detriment of both opposition members and those on the government side.

Members must have an opportunity to debate bills in order to express themselves with regard to those they agree with and those they disagree with. In response to the motions the government proposes, it is not possible to express oneself clearly. That is the danger with omnibus bills. Sadly, this is not the first time the government has offered us doorstop-sized omnibus bills. Now it is moving omnibus motions. We know what the result is: they are poorly constructed. This often leads to harmful consequences that impact the Canadian people.

For example, omnibus Bill C-38, which was imposed on the people, is spreading suffering across Canada. Unfortunately, it was passed. Members will recall that it amended 70 statutes at one stroke. We are unable to debate efficiently in the House when a single bill amends 70 statutes. It is downright inefficient.

When the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons tells us that the opposition is generating inefficiencies in the House, we really have to wonder what sort of inefficiency he is referring to.

In my view, the inefficiency is to be found in bills and motions that are badly drafted and put together and require such devices as raising questions of privilege and points of order to the Speaker. That takes time. Normally, what is presented in the House should have been resolved and negotiated.

We wanted to negotiate in good faith on motions and bills that could benefit all Canadians in a full and comprehensive House of Commons debate, but unfortunately, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons insisted on an omnibus motion.

We are now debating that issue, whereas we should instead be debating issues that are of more interest to Canadians, such as a commission of inquiry on violence against aboriginal women or a request that the Standing Committee on Finance initiate a study on income inequality in Canada.

There are many bills we could genuinely begin to debate in full. To do that, however, the government insists that we accept its opinions and its interpretation of prorogation, whereby we should ignore the very outcome of prorogation.

Let me remind you that prorogation terminates government bills. The government knew this. It is not as though the effect of prorogation was something hidden. It was known. Then the government insisted on changing tack and saying that prorogation does not mean that but means an opportunity to spend millions of dollars on a new throne speech in the other chamber. It makes no sense! It is an absolute waste.

Generally speaking, the Senate is quite definitely a waste. We saw that well enough in the debates and in question period today. There is an absolute need for the government to stop trying to convince us that its interpretation is the only valid one. The traditions of the House have been formed precisely to enable full and comprehensive debate, a discussion that sheds light on shortcomings that may exist in the government’s bills and motions.

It is to the government's advantage to allow a debate. It is in no way detrimental to the government to allow Canadians to express their opinions on its bills and motions. That is precisely why we have a parliament rather than a dictatorship.

There is an absolute need for the government to consider enacting legislation with some flexibility and working with those other Canadians who are not represented by members who are also ministers. I would also like Conservative members to have an opportunity to express themselves on the government’s bills and motions.

We have seen the result of a lack of transparency on the part of this government: it is losing its own members, who have to sit as independents, because they are not able to express themselves fully and completely. It is difficult for people who voted for someone who no longer represents the banner under which they were elected. We are ashamed of this procedure, and these problems in the House of Commons. I do not understand why the government cannot see that a full and comprehensive debate benefits all Canadians.

From the start, we told the government that we were prepared to allow this debate without opposition, provided that the motions were split. We suggested it yesterday, as soon as Parliament reopened after the prorogation that was forced upon us. We suggested that by unanimous consent of the House, the members concerned be allowed to attend the Conservative party convention.

I do not understand why Conservative members did not find this a realistic offer. Unfortunately, since the government refused to negotiate with the opposition parties, we had to waste an entire day just to see whether the motion for consideration could be split. It is now split—or at least, the vote is split.

This shows that the opposition is frequently right. Opposition members looked into the matter and genuinely considered the consequences of the motions the government proposed, whereas the government seemed to want to act like a bulldozer and break down walls, completely ignoring the will of Canadians, as represented here by the members. It is a fairly dire problem for the government. Its members are unable to let the light of House debate illuminate their bills and motions.

I hope the Conservatives will start seeing this House more positively and will start debating in good faith, or at least in better faith. The Conservatives seem to find this very hard to do. The Conservatives say they are here to protect Canadians, but it is the opposition, frankly, that plays this role. In fact, Canadians unfortunately have no voice in this House, given the way the government treats us. The Conservatives cannot have a clear idea of what Canadians want if they do not allow their representatives to express themselves at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place. The appropriate time and place is here, now, in this House.

We should have been able to resolve this during the negotiations held before the House resumed. Concurrence in some of the motions that were put forward yesterday would have allowed for full discussion and debate. Now we are still having debates on omnibus motions. We are still trying to deal with this problem.

In view of recent history with bills C-38 and C-45 and the 2008 prorogation, after such a close call, the Conservatives were afraid of what Canadians wanted. They hid behind prorogation. For the Conservatives, prorogation is not an opportunity to start the parliamentary cycle over again and allow for full debate on new bills and a new vision for Canada.

For the Conservatives, prorogation is a hammer with which to beat Canadians and force them to accept its will and its view of government. The Conservatives really should have held a lot more consultations than they did. Obviously, they do not want to consult the House of Commons. The Conservatives are trying as hard as they can to subvert the will of Parliament. They are trying as hard as they can to sabotage parliamentary procedure, which exists specifically in order to safeguard our democracy. The Conservatives do not want to have full and broad consultations with Canadians.

I will give some recent examples. The government wants to reform Canada Post services and may get rid of home delivery. For two months, there was only one website where people could express their opinions. There was no publicity about it. If people stumbled upon the website by chance, they could click a button and give their opinion, but unfortunately no one was informed that this consultation was going on. Now the consultation has ended. There was no notice. All of a sudden the website disappeared. I called Canada Post, while the consultation was going on, and I asked how long proposals could be submitted. I was told that the website would always be up and would never be closed. Nonetheless, about three weeks later, the website no longer existed.

The government seems to be afraid of consulting people. It avoids consulting with Canadians. When consultations are to be held, there is no publicity. The government does not want to consult members of Parliament.

I want to know where the Conservatives get their ideas from. How can they think that their bills are going to be worthwhile if they do not listen to ideas that come up during debates or to expressions of the will of the people?

There are other situations. The Commissioner of Official Languages recently issued reports that said that the Maurice Lamontagne Institute library should not have been closed because there was no consultation about it. Take the employment insurance reform. In the House, the Conservative government admitted that it had conducted no studies and had not consulted Canadians. Then it put forward a huge reform package that coincidentally created a surplus of a few billion dollars in the employment insurance fund. Coincidentally, that money, taken from the least fortunate Canadians, will help pay down the deficit, a problem the Conservatives are bragging about solving. Congratulations to the Conservative government for taking money from the Canadians who are least able to afford it to pay down the deficit. In my view, it is a disgrace.

Once again, if the Conservatives had consulted Canadians, Canadians would have been able to tell them that the way to get rid of the deficit is to increase taxes on the wealthiest companies in Canada. They did not consult Canadians. There is no consultation. The Conservatives do not want to consult Canadians or their representatives in the House. We have seen this time and time again, and the motion before us today is proof of that fact.

I want to see a government that is able to conduct consultations and that is not afraid of its own people. This is not true of the Conservative government, nor was it true of the Liberal government. The Liberals also had fun proroguing whenever they wanted to.

It is about time we had a government that was prepared to accept the will of the people, prepared to consult with others and prepared to pass bills that address the needs of ordinary Canadians, less fortunate Canadians. It is about time we had a government whose work in the House of Commons would benefit Canadians, who should not be afraid and always wondering what other surprise the government is going to bring in without any consultation.

The government has to trust the Canadian people. This government does not want to consult Canadians because it is afraid of what Canadians want.

We know what happens to governments that are afraid of the will of the people. Usually they do not last very long. This is what I hope to see in two years’ time, the next time Canadians are consulted.

I would remind the House that the Constitution does not allow the Conservatives to govern after 2016, because they only have five years, under the Constitution. I would not be surprised if they wanted to stay in power longer. Luckily, the Constitution has fixed the maximum life of a government. At that point they will not have any choice and will have to consult the people. I think perhaps they are probably right to be afraid of consulting the people. The next election will show that the people no longer support this government.

If the people were consulted today about the bills and the motions before us, we would see that Canadians also have a great deal of difficulty with what we are being asked to do.

In the throne speech, instead of finding out that they would be allowed to take beer and spirits across provincial boundaries, Canadians would rather have learned that they could stay in their home region and be supported by a government that would bring wealth to their communities. Instead of this, the government creates situations where the remote communities in Canada are not consulted. The government does not know how to help these places. Unfortunately, that can lead to a situation where remote communities will have no choice but to disappear. The people will have to move to other areas of Canada. This is no way to treat people. This is no way to ensure that families in this country are healthy and people can reach their full potential.

The government did not consult communities and imposed rather substantial changes with regard to wealth in Canada.

Then we saw the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans telling people not to worry, if they were in difficulty during the winter because, for example, their employment insurance was cut off, all they had to do was move to Alberta.

It is truly shameful to say this sort of thing without having consulted Canadians about the type of reform there should be to employment insurance. The Conservatives pushed through a radical reform without consulting, without considering the consequences and without doing any studies. Now they are telling people it is too bad for them and they can always move.

Canadians deserve better than this. The Canadian government should have more confidence in the Canadian people and should consult them.

I return to today’s motion. This is not consultation of the Canadian people; it is the imposition of Conservative tactics to force the passage of government bills and the adoption of the government’s vision of Canada.

If we had had the chance, we would have wanted to get a resolution passed fairly quickly to have the standing finance committee conduct a study on income inequality in Canada and the growth of that inequality. Unfortunately, such a resolution cannot be passed quickly because the government has put a price on it. We will have to allow all bills that did not get to third reading and were not passed in the House to be picked up where they were left off prior to prorogation.

It was not possible to quickly strike a committee to study the violence being done to aboriginal women in Canada.

It was not possible to allow the Conservatives to go ahead with their plan to hold a convention. It is fine to move forward and consult their members, but this might have been an opportunity to consult Canadians at the same time on the issues of real concern to them, including financial issues: how are they going to pay their rent? What kind of job will they get?

We heard in the House today that half the people in Toronto do not have permanent full-time employment. That is truly shameful. One can understand the stress that can affect a person who does not know whether he will have a job next year. That is the situation of half the population of Toronto. Clearly, they are going through a very difficult time.

I am hearing this sort of thing from many parts of Canada. People feel abandoned by this government, which is afraid of Canadians, which is afraid of consulting the people. Perhaps it is right to be afraid.

In recent months and years I have met with many Canadians who have lost a great deal of confidence in both the Conservative Party and the Conservative government. The Conservative government might have been able to keep that confidence if it had consulted them. It would be good if it could prove here, in the House, that it is prepared to consult the people’s representatives. Unfortunately, once again, the government seems to be incapable of this.

Today we are debating an immense omnibus motion.

We have seen it so many times: omnibus bills and motions can only lead to disaster. Often they are poorly drafted and they do not get the benefit of thorough debate.

I also want to point out that in this bill the government also wanted to allow the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to proceed with its study on the Standing Orders. That way the government will have the opportunity to closely examine the Standing Orders, to explore House practices, and to see why and how the rules are in place. This might give the government occasion to read with attention the practices and procedure in O'Brien and Bosc.

I sometimes wonder whether the Conservatives know their way around the Standing Orders. Not everyone does. Sometimes even a good parliamentarian will not be fully knowledgeable about the rules of this House. That is a fact. That is why we have to consult the clerks of the House, the experts and their assistants. Do the Conservatives do this? It seems to me they do not.

The result tells me that they have not had the benefit of consulting their own employees. If they did, we would have seen the evidence. The motion would have been divided right from the outset today. After the good-faith negotiations we had with the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, one would have thought that common sense would pay off and win the day.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the government seems incapable of seeing common sense when it confronts it. It is capable only of going on with its wrong-headed way of proceeding; this has been proven in the House of Commons. That way of proceeding runs counter to the Standing Orders of this place. Has this been done deliberately? One dare not think so. However, I think that the government sometimes considers itself shrewder than other people. It believes itself capable of going ahead and creating new practices and procedures in the House, without ever thinking that other people may realize that something is not quite right.

Unfortunately, we could have had this debate here a month ago, but the government decided, once again without consultation, that prorogation was the way to go and that it was more important to avoid question period for a month.

As the Senate scandal continued to simmer, boil, then overflow, the government decided that Parliament should not sit while it was negotiating a free trade agreement with Europe, failing to consider the fact that Canadian farmers would suffer rather extreme and adverse consequences under that agreement.

If the government had taken the time to explain to the House, and thus to Canadians, the scope of this free trade agreement with Europe, people might not be stressed and worried today at the thought of possibly losing their farm. Would it not have been possible for Canadian farmers to unite to assert that there is a big problem with the fact that the government wants to proceed with a free trade agreement with Europe without adequately consulting them?

All of this might have taken place had there been no prorogation. We would have had a month for debate and a month for the government to explain its intentions and the direction it wants to take. We have not had that opportunity, which is most unfortunate.

The government is running around in all directions. During prorogation, before the Speech from the Throne, it announced that it would put forward a bill to allow people to select the television channels they want through the cable companies.

I want to point out that back home, in the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands, we were forced to get cable services. Until last year, we had free access to CBC television, like all other Canadians.

That is no longer the case. CBC television is no longer available in the Gaspé or on the islands. The only way to get it is through cable packages. Now the government is saying that it is helping us save money by allowing us to get pick-and-pay channels. I want to make it clear that before we did not have to pay anything. Should we thank the government for saving us money after imposing a fee on us? This really shows a lack of common sense and, once again, it is the result of a lack of consultation.

This summer we heard that the government wanted to increase civil liability for companies engaged in offshore oil development. Currently, these companies are liable up to $30 million. The government arbitrarily decided to raise that limit to $1 billion. This bill would have been a worthwhile piece of legislation if the government had taken the time to table it. If Parliament had not been prorogued for a month, we might have soon been debating this legislation.

People living in eastern Canada, on the Atlantic coast or the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in the Arctic or even on the west coast of British Columbia would really like to know the ins and outs of this bill. Unfortunately, this will not happen for a while because Parliament was prorogued for a month. We lost all this time and we still cannot figure out the government's vision.

Those who listened to the Speech from the Throne yesterday did not get a better understanding of the direction taken by the government. The speech had many words but very little content. The government said it will allow the movement of wine and beer for people living in various regions. That is fine, but these people are concerned about the fact that they and their families must move to other areas to find jobs—and the government is bragging about creating jobs.

If we look at immigration levels in Canada, we realize there is nothing to brag about when it comes to employment, the percentage of the population and job creation. Despite what we hear repeatedly from the other side of the House, we are far from being the best among the G7 or G8 countries. We may in fact be one of the worst.

The government simply did not explain its vision. This government failed to show up and even face Canadians to explain its vision. It is afraid of its people and of Parliament. It is afraid to follow Parliament's procedures in a manner respectful of all parties in the House. It wants to impose its will, but that is why we have rules.

When the government brags about being the law and order party, it should remember that it is also subject to law and order, which also ensures equality among all Canadians. It is a reminder that everyone enjoys the same rights and that the government is not above the law. The government cannot think that it will simply do what it wants and that Canadians will say that it did a good job, even though their income is lower than it was in the previous year, they no longer know whether they will have a job, or whether they are paying for scientists who have been muzzled and whose views they can no longer know because they cannot have access to their reports. That is all true.

However, the government seems unable to face its own population and allow a full and comprehensive debate. Whether it is in the House or anywhere in Canada, the government is simply not there. It does consult, but on the Internet and it is quiet about it. No one knows about it. If one happens to stumble on the appropriate website, that is fine. Otherwise, it is too bad for those who were not consulted. This is no way to hold consultations.

Allowing debates in the House is another way to consult. Unfortunately, there are closures and gag orders. The government does not allow full and comprehensive debates. It does not give all committee members the right to propose motions without going in camera. Parliamentary committees are the ideal place to debate the details of bills and to allow Canadians to come and express their views on federal legislation.

All committee proceedings now happen in camera. It is very unfortunate. Once again, committees should be able to express themselves fully and completely.

What is happening in the House of Commons is also happening in parliamentary committees. Everything is done by stealth, under the watchful eye of the office of a Prime Minister who thinks he is omnipotent. The evidence shows, of course, that he is not. A government should be able to debate fully and completely, both with its allies and with the opposition. This government seems to have a very hard time understanding that.

Omnibus motions have no place in Parliament. Omnibus bills do not allow for a full and thorough debate. The government should allow such debates, as almost all other parliaments do. Here, unfortunately, it is really hard to get the time needed for a proper debate. When members have something to say, they often do not get the time needed to express themselves. The debate is already over, because the government has imposed a gag order.

Today we could have easily gone through three-quarters of this motion very quickly if the government had had a bit more common sense. It could have allowed the parliamentary housekeeping matters to pass unanimously and the committees to be formed quickly and easily, since everyone agrees on that. Unfortunately, in order to do so, we absolutely had to swallow the government's pill and allow all the bad bills that did not pass last time to be reinstated in this new session, without debate, without the opportunity to clarify the bills and without a full and thorough debate.

I find it very difficult to acknowledge that a government seems incapable of taking the time to listen and believing that it does not necessarily have all the answers. A government must have a certain sense of humility. It cannot be better than the people it represents. The people's humility is often impressive. First of all, the people are always right. They should have the opportunity to express their opinions about all bills put before them. They must be able to make suggestions that could improve the bills and motions. Unfortunately, the government does not seem to want the people to have a say. Consultation every five years is fine, but bills brought forward one at a time benefit from evidence, the viewpoint of experts and the representation afforded by members of Parliament.

Unfortunately, bills do not seem to benefit from being sent to the Senate where the people's will is often not well represented. We know that senators are appointed by the Prime Minister's Office and are not given a direct mandate by the people. However, senators take the liberty of slowing down and even destroying bills from this House with a nod from the government.

Where was the government when the bill on transgendered rights was slowed down and killed in the Senate? If the bill was passed by the House of Commons, why did the government not criticize the Senate for defeating it? The Conservative government is now saying that it is very green and that it is controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Where was the government when the bill to control greenhouse gases introduced by the NDP and passed by this House went to the Senate and was defeated? The will of the people was not represented. I repeat, the government seems to have a great deal of difficulty understanding the will of the people.

The government may even be very pleased to manipulate the people's will.

However, I do not think the government would be prepared to accept the will of the people if there were a real consultation on employment insurance reform, on not moving forward with Kyoto, or on the issues that concern people the most. People are generally concerned about jobs, being able to feed their families, being able to pay their rent and being able to send their children to school the following year. That is what people are really concerned about.

I do not see anything in yesterday's throne speech that tells me everything is fine. The government said that it would establish a job creation program. This is the same program that all the provinces have already rejected. I do not see how the government will be able to move forward with this idea.

If the Conservatives are consulting the provinces, perhaps they could give the House an idea of how the consultations are going.

In the throne speech the Conservatives said that they wanted to move forward with a job creation program. However, the negotiations with the provinces show that things are not going well, and it seems as though the program will not happen. If that is the case, why not say so? Why would the government announce in the throne speech that it will move forward with a proposal when it knows very well that it will not be able to? If that is the case, it should be honest and explain to the House where things stand.

Today we learned that, once again, the government is moving forward with European free trade negotiations. It appears to be a done deal, if we are to believe what has been said in the House.

There is a lack of consultation. How is that possible? The Conservatives claim that the agreement will create jobs and stimulate investment. They say that farmers should not be afraid because they will have a huge market in which to sell their products. Did it ever occur to anyone that it might not be possible for a farmer from the Lower St. Lawrence, in Quebec, to take his goods and send them to Europe?

The Conservatives are saying that is what will happen. How will they do it? What makes the government think this will happen? How will it happen? I do not want to be pessimistic. I think it would be wonderful if it happened. However, farmers also want to know how it will happen. The government wants to make them believe that everything is fine, that there is no cause for concern and that their products will find a market.

I am quite happy. I think that farmers would be quite happy to know that their products will be sold at a good price on a foreign market. Everyone would be happy. However, the question is how that will happen.

That is where consultation yields results. Consultations give Canadians the opportunity to understand that the government is there to help them and how it will do so; to understand how they can use the tools that the government offers them; and to understand how they can use those tools to make money, to be able to pay their rent and to send their children to school.

How is the government proposing to do that? We have no idea. It is not saying. The government is not saying anything in the House about the actual details of its bills and its intentions during the free trade negotiations. The Conservatives do not consult. Canadians have not been consulted. It is disgraceful.

Something as important as free trade with Europe cannot be negotiated without Canadians knowing the ins and outs. The Conservatives cannot scrap agreements with the Americans that affect jobs in the automobile industry without consulting Canadians.

They cannot move forward with major changes to employment insurance rules without consulting Canadians. Canadians are the ones who pay employment insurance premiums in their entirety. How can the government think it is so smart, changing employment insurance rules without paying a cent into the employment insurance fund? The government is going ahead with a major reform that will benefit the government, so that at the end of the year, it can say that it did well, that it balanced the budget and that everything is fine.

Unfortunately, the government is doing so at the expense of the poor. For me, that is what it always comes down to when the Conservatives say the government is there to help consumers. That is great, but let us not forget that consumers are ordinary Canadians. Nobody consults them. They are poor.

Canadians are getting poorer and deeper into debt. If the government consulted Canadians, it would realize that the latest tools it has given them are not good enough to help them get out of debt, nor are they good enough to make people believe they will still have a job a year from now. It is just not good enough.

The government has a golden opportunity here in the House to clarify and justify its actions to Quebeckers, Maritimers, Acadians and all Canadians, but it is not taking that opportunity. I wonder why. What is it afraid of here in the House? Why is it afraid of Canadians? It is afraid to trust them.

It is high time Canadians had a federal government that can show them a long-term vision, a government they can trust, a government that says it will help them and that is there for them. It is more than a promise; it is a fact: Parliament exists for the people. We are here for them.

We are not here to make the rich companies richer. We are here to ensure that Canadians have faith in their future. They need to know that they will have the money they need to pay their bills and send their children to school, and that Canada will continue to be rich and develop our natural resources in a sound fashion.

However, Canadians are concerned right now, because they have not been consulted. They do not get the vision, because the Conservatives seem unable to explain their vision that keeps changing from day to day. Canadians need a government that can clearly express its vision and demonstrate that its goal is to help the people and stand up for the less fortunate.

For decades, the Conservatives and the Liberals formed successive governments. At this point in time, Canadians are carrying more debt than ever before and today's generation is poorer than the preceding generation. We are going the wrong way. A country as rich as Canada is unable to build up the wealth of its people. Where is all the wealth going? What happened to the wealth of Canada? Who does it belong to these days?

It seems that wealth has not been distributed very equally these last 20 years under the Conservative and Liberal governments. We keep losing track of the Canadian vision that we are here to help each other and to help people abroad. Canada is a peaceful country whose vision is to provide assistance and to help people achieve their full potential.

For instance, the Interparliamentary Union provides a great opportunity for parliamentarians to travel abroad and share ideas in order to discover what is working or not working elsewhere and to understand what we have done right or wrong. We no longer have as many opportunities to connect with people at the international level to share ideas. The Conservative government wants to get rid of the Interparliamentary Union once and for all. Why? They seem to be afraid to talk about issues and to have people abroad figure out where things stand right now in Canada. They are afraid we are going to tell people things that will make them wonder what is going on in Canada.

We should be able to feel proud of what we have done and be certain that the next generation will be in a better position than the one before it. That was the case for many years. In general, since Confederation, things have steadily improved. Recently, in the past 20 years, we have changed course, and things are getting worse. I blame this government and the previous government. It is under their governance that so much has been lost and that tactics like prorogation have been used repeatedly.

The Conservative government went as far as using prorogation as a political tool rather than a procedural tool, as it is supposed to be used. It was afraid of the will of the people and of losing control. Therefore, it decided to prorogue.

Again today, the Conservatives are afraid of the Senate scandal. They are afraid that people will see that the police are investigating Nigel Wright and that things will come out in the House. They do not want us to talk about it. They do not want us to talk about the Senate scandal, even though Senator Brazeau has messed up so many times that I do not even know where to begin. They are afraid that the misdeeds of senators will be discovered by the House and that people will find out what happened. This does not just apply to the Conservatives. The Liberals do not want to talk about it either, considering Senator Harb's situation.

The government appointed senators to the Upper Chamber without any debate and without consulting Canadians about what they expect of the Senate. Want kind of Senate would they like? Do they even want a Senate? That debate has not happened yet. We should have a debate but it is not happening. Why? Because Parliament was on leave for an extra month. Or it could be because this government is simply scared of debate. Some will say prorogation is just a procedural tactic meant to get a fresh start and a new Speech from the Throne.

It that were true, the government would not be restoring all the bills that remained unfinished during the last session. Prorogation is supposed to mean a fresh start, but that is not what the government wants; it is just a strategy to keep the House from finding out what wicked tricks its friends have been up to. Conservatives have no interest in the discussions and consultations that would occur if Parliament were sitting.

We lost one month, and it is unacceptable. We are supposed to represent our constituents. Members were elected to represent citizens here, in the House. Every time someone shuts down the House of commons, that keeps us from doing our work. The government does not want members to do their work. It just wants to act freely. That is unacceptable. The government cannot act as it pleases. It is accountable to the House, which means it is supposed to respect the House's rules and will. How is that possible when the government does not consult the House? Of course, no consultation occurs when Parliament is shut down.

Thankfully, Parliament is now sitting again, but only until early December. We will have a very short session. As I said before, I think that the Conservatives want the session to be as short as possible, mainly because they fear the Senate scandal.

Serious mistakes have been made in Ottawa in recent years. Ottawa functions very poorly, and this has happened under this government’s administration. Canadians have increasingly lost confidence in the federal government since this government came to power. Canadians, Quebeckers and all peoples of Canada must be able to look at Parliament and say they are proud of it. They must know that Parliament is there to protect and help them with the powerful, invaluable tools it uses to help people. Unfortunately, the government is managing during a time when people are falling into indebtedness and poverty. It seems to disregard these problems rather than address them directly. It spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. It sets up websites without telling people they are there to permit consultation.

It has really mismanaged the Canadian people’s involvement in government, and it is time the Conservative government went back to square one. It should take some time to reflect. I would have liked this government to take time this past summer to look at what it has done right and wrong. I do not believe it did that.

I believe it simply wondered how it could make sure Parliament stayed shut down for as long as possible and how long it would be possible to keep it shut down without people really starting to complain. Matters had gotten to that point.

We see that people are not happy with what goes on here in the Commons or in the other house. It is time the government addressed the problem, allowed debate and allowed people to speak their minds and tell Parliament what they like and what they do not like. People want to make themselves heard.

The consultation conducted on Canada Post is an example that perfectly illustrates the extent to which the government does not want to consult people. A website is set up, but how does anyone know that, by osmosis or clairvoyance? I do not know. A website is simply available, and people are apparently supposed to know that the public consultation is being conducted there.

Even if people do not speak out, we already know the outcome. The government has already announced it conducted a study indicating that home delivery should be eliminated in Canada. That is a very big change. It may be the right decision. It may also be the wrong one. We would have known if we had had the opportunity to debate it. However, we did not have that opportunity; we only had a website.

I also want to emphasize that this happened at the same time the government cancelled the community access program. Two years ago, the poorest people in the regional communities were provided with reliable Internet access that was unavailable except as part of that program. That service has been cancelled.

However, the government says it wants to consult those people and has created a website for that purpose. I do not know how people are supposed to take part in those consultations if they do not even have access to a website. They do not know the website is available, for two reasons: first, there is no advertising stating the fact, and second, they have no Internet access. How will they take part in the consultations?

No, instead of announcing an online consultation, the government spends millions of dollars announcing a job creation program which does not exist. The government claims it is creating jobs, but all provinces are saying they do not accept its program. It is a waste of money.

The program is so inefficient that one wonders if the government is competent at all. When the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons tells us that we are the ones creating inefficiencies, I say to myself that he should take a look in the mirror and let good old common sense guide him. If he had consulted anyone, he would know that the program does not make sense. He would know that money is being wasted and that people do not like being treated like a bunch of idiots.

It is time for the government to have an open mind, to quit making decisions based on ideology and to start thinking about ways to really serve the Canadian people and to use its powerful resources.

This is the most powerful institution in Canada. What do we see? The government acts as if it did not have a duty to represent the people. The Speech from the Throne is very wordy but very short on content. The reasoning looks good at first, but the government never really explains how it will proceed. Job creation programs are announced, but the government knows full well that the programs it wants to put forward have already been rejected by provinces and other partners in this process.

It seems like consulting is awfully difficult for the government, not only to find out the views of the Parliament, but also to listen to its provincial partners. When did the Prime Minister last meet his provincial counterparts? When? It has been such a long time since the Prime Minister took the time to consult his provincial counterparts that he cannot even remember when. However, we can all remember the last time the government prorogued Parliament. It happened just a few months ago. We also remember the way it was done the time before that.

The government was close to its last breath, and then it tried to revive itself using prorogation. The Liberal government used that same strategy in the past. It also tried to avoid consultations and to bring back bills without consulting or negotiating with members of Parliament. This institution is fraught with problems. There is only one party willing to improve the House of Commons so that Canadians are really represented here. That party is the NDP.

The time is right for a government focused on meeting Canadians' needs. The time is right for a government focused on listening, a government that will introduce legislation and be open to discussions and improvements. The time is right for a New Democratic government.

The Environment

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions today. The first one is from my constituents of Kingston and the Islands, and it concerns Bills C-38 and C-45, which gutted protection for ecosystems, especially around bodies of water.

The petitioners call on the government to recognize the importance of ecosystems to our well-being and prosperity, and they call on the federal government to restore federal statutory protections for fish and other natural habitats.

Employment Insurance

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I have the pleasure of presenting three petitions.

The first petition is signed by hundreds of people who oppose the employment insurance reform. They are asking the government to scrap all of the changes announced since Bill C-38 was introduced.

The Environment

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government has developed a bad habit of gutting environmental protection in my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and across Canada. Last year, in Bill C-38, it eliminated protection for all streams, rivers and lakes on Vancouver Island under the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

In response to the concerns of my constituents, I have introduced Bill C-509 to restore federal environmental protection to the Goldstream River. It is the Goldstream River where local salmon begin their life and return to spawn. Thousands of visitors come to Goldstream Provincial Park each year to watch the spawning and to learn about salmon in the many outdoor education programs that take place in the park.

A tragic accident on April 18, 2011, demonstrated how fragile the river is and the extent of the impact that accidents such as oil spills impose on iconic rivers like the Goldstream.

I am asking the Conservative government to reconsider its short-sighted plan to cut federal protection to our rivers and lakes on Vancouver Island and to support my bill to protect the Goldstream River and the salmon and other wildlife that rely on the river.

Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present three petitions calling on the Canadian government to reverse the devastating changes to employment insurance introduced through omnibus Bill C-38 in spring 2012.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is strong opposition to EI reform in my region, in eastern Quebec.

Accordingly, I would like to present to the House a petition signed by nearly 400 people who oppose not only Bill C-38 and the provisions that changed the EI program in a particularly devastating way for the economy of eastern Quebec, but also all the measures implemented by the government since the introduction of Bill C-38.

I am pleased to present this petition signed by nearly 400 people opposed to employment insurance reform who are calling on the government to go back to the drawing board and consult with the entire population to study the impact of this reform.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I am pleased to present a petition signed by several thousand people from my riding, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, who oppose the employment insurance reforms in Bill C-38.

The petition condemns the reform and calls on the Conservatives to cancel it and undertake consultations if they ever want to start another employment insurance reform process. They should start by talking to people. Then their reforms should be based on the needs of people in the regions, not faulty reasoning.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions calling on the Government of Canada to reverse its decision about Bill C-38 and the devastating changes to employment insurance made in the spring of 2012.

Expansion and Conservation of Canada’s National Parks Act

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to speak to Bill S-15, which would amend the Canada National Parks Act to create the Sable Island national park reserve of Canada, the conclusion of 50 years of work to protect Sable Island's distinctive nature.

The BBC describes Sable Island as being:

...for the Canadians what the Galapagos are for the people of Ecuador, or Easter Island for Chileans. It is important scientifically and historically, but more than this it is important culturally, as part of their identity...

Sable Island is world-renowned both for its biodiversity and its shipwrecks. It is home to tremendous biodiversity, including 375 wild horses, 350 species of birds, 190 plant species and the largest colony of grey seals in the world.

Since 1583, there have been more than 350 recorded shipwrecks on or near the island, earning it the title "Graveyard of the Atlantic".

Let me briefly describe the history of the creation of Sable Island national park reserve.

Given the exceptional ecosystems found on the island, the federal and Nova Scotia governments concluded in 2004:

...that it would be in the public interest to use a federal protected area designation to achieve conservation objectives for Sable Island.

Eventually the consultations recommended that Sable Island be designated a national park, and on October 17, 2011, the Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a national park on Sable Island.

The island would be designated as a national park reserve in recognition of the fact that it is subject to the claim of the Mi'kmaq. The Mi'kmaq and the Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia are currently negotiating this claim. The designation as a national park reserve allows the governments to continue these land claim negotiations.

Conserving Sable Island poses a challenge owing to the wealth of resources in and around the island and the legislative framework under which the reserve was developed, which was that there can be no adverse impacts on petroleum activities.

Parks Canada has explained to me that this is the first time a reserve has ever been created in an area of oil and gas activities. Over the last 50 years, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board has made 23 significant discovery declarations in offshore Nova Scotia.

Bill S-15 would put into law an existing prohibition against drilling on Sable Island. Importantly, five oil companies that have been granted exploration licenses for on-island drilling have voluntarily agreed to relinquish these rights.

The Liberal Party strongly supports the establishment of Sable Island national park reserve. However, we would like this legislation to proceed to committee for a thorough review to ensure that this national treasure is properly protected. We want to ensure that rigorous environmental protections and safeguards are maintained for this national park reserve, for all our national parks and for future parks. As well, we must ensure that any concerns by the Mi'kmaq with regard to the legislation have the opportunity to be addressed.

One concern is with regard to the extent and oversight of natural resource development that Bill S-15 would authorize. These include petroleum exploration activities, which might include seismic, geological or geophysical programs on Sable Island. Additionally, what other activities might fall under the term “low impact” petroleum exploration? What does the government define as “low impact”?

At a departmental briefing, officials explained to me that "There are no exact details, no discussion of when low impact becomes high impact". In fact, when I asked about the availability of studies looking at possible impacts, I was told Parks Canada had only one.

Moreover, the official repeatedly used the words “as presented to us” to describe the evidence they did have, which is evidence from only industry. The lack of definition requires further clarification.

Parks Canada explained that if it was developing a marine protected area the department might have taken a different approach. Should a reserve have less protection? This is an issue that should be examined at committee. Low-impact activities must be defined for parliamentarians when this is reviewed at committee.

The Liberal Party is in favour of responsible and sustainable resource development. However, we believe that development projects must adhere to the most stringent environmental assessments. We must ensure that Sable Island is environmentally protected and that the ecosystems are not detrimentally affected. We understand the economic value that developing the oil and gas resources in and around Sable Island would provide Nova Scotia and that it is legislatively protected. However, Sable Island is a particularly sensitive ecosystem.

We would like a review of Clause 3 and an exception to the application of the Canada National Parks Act with regard to existing leases, easements and licences of occupation and work on Sable Island.

Regarding clause 7, what would be the new mechanism for coordination and co-operation between Parks Canada and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board? This is key, as in the amendments to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act it states, “before deciding whether to issue the authorization, the Board shall consider any advice”. In other words, the offshore board is not bound by the recommendations of Parks Canada. Who is looking after the interests of the environment and Sable Island if the offshore board is not bound by the decision? I understand from Parks Canada that the MOU defining the rules of this relationship would be put in place after the park is established. The act contains changes to land borders in Jasper National Park. Would the exchange of land between Parks Canada and the operators of Marmot Basin have a detrimental impact on the species in the area?

Regarding clause 15, with respect to Jasper National Park, with the exchange of land and the new development, are there any areas of concern with regard to the environment and species at risk in this new area that would be developed?

Last week I had a conference call with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, which focuses on protecting many important areas of Canada's wilderness. The call was to find out whether it was indeed comfortable with the fast-tracking of this bill and the fact that even if the bill went to committee, amendments may not be accepted. I was informed that it wants Sable Island protected and that this bill is an important first step.

I ask that the government not use this bill as a precedent to allow exploration in other national parks. I am assured by officials that future parks are legislatively protected from this. Having said that, I have asked the parliamentary secretary and the minister and have still not been given that assurance on the record tonight. I would like the government's word that the integrity of Canada's national parks would not be undermined but instead protected, and that creating a national park among oil and gas exploration is not a foot in the door, an opening or setting a precedent to allow development in our treasured national parks.

I look forward to these issues being addressed at committee.

In closing, I would like to say that the government says it is a conservation government, but its actions paint a different picture.

Both with proposed national parks and protected areas such as the Rouge, as well as Sable Island, there are concerns regarding ecological integrity of the parks that cannot be overlooked, yet government members continually brush aside.

Moreover, I am concerned about the government's environmental track record that we have seen play out again and again over the past year, whether it be through Bill C-38 that gutted environmental legislation, that repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, that repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, or Bill C-45 that dramatically reduced environmental protection of our waterways.

These are not the actions of a conservationist government. These are not the actions of a government that seeks to protect our national habitat.

Standing Committee on Finance--Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am now prepared to rule on a point of order raised on May 29 by the hon. House leader of the official opposition regarding the process followed by the Standing Committee on Finance with respect to its consideration of Bill C-60, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures.

I would like to thank the hon. House leader of the official opposition for having raised this issue, and the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the members for Winnipeg North, Richmond—Arthabaska and Saanich—Gulf Islands for their interventions.

In raising this point of order, the opposition House leader claimed that the order adopted by the Standing Committee on Finance on May 7, respecting its consideration of Bill C-60, went beyond the committee's authority as conferred by the House. Specifically, he explained that the committee order invited certain other standing committees to study different parts of the bill and, along with independent members, to submit amendments to the Standing Committee on Finance.

He explained further that the committee order also provided that such amendments would be deemed moved so that the committee could consider and vote on them. This, he argued, was an instance of a committee exceeding its prescribed authority, since the House had determined that the bill was sent to the finance committee only and since House rules dictate that committee membership is determined solely by the House and cannot include members of non-recognized parties. In addition, he noted that it contravened the rule that only committee members can move motions and that even they must, in fact, be present at the committee to do so.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons contended that it was an established practice that one standing committee could invite other standing committees to consider the subject matter of relevant sections of a bill it is studying with a view to submitting amendments. Furthermore, he suggested that the inclusion of independent members in the committee’s proceedings was part of an evolutionary process, one that was in no way discriminatory since the deadline for submitting amendments was the same for all concerned: independent members, other committees and even members of the committee itself. He explained that, in effect, this process was simply an effort by the committee to respond directly to the suggestion that I had made in a ruling on December 12, 2012, on a similar matter.

For her part, the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands questioned whether the committee process was in procedural conformity with my ruling, as well as whether, as a result of the committee order, her rights as a member had somehow been restricted, even put aside. The hon. member for Richmond—Arthabaska made similar arguments, highlighting what he perceived to have been an erosion of his rights with regard to the submission of amendments at report stage.

In the case before us, in many respects, is a logical evolution of procedural events that have unfolded in the last year, and indeed of events of over 10 years ago. In fact, to place the matter in its proper context, it is necessary to refer to the March 21, 2001, statement by Speaker Milliken, found at page 1991 of the Debates, which set us on a path to where we are today with respect to the committee and report stages of the legislative process. That statement clearly established the guidelines that the Chair now uses to discharge its responsibility with respect to the selection of amendments at report stage. Indeed, the very process of selection was born out of a need to return report stage to its original purpose, that is, the consideration of only those amendments that could not have been moved in committee.

Speaker Milliken was clear in his intent when he urged:

...all members and all parties to avail themselves fully of the opportunity to propose amendments during committee stage so that the report stage can return to the purpose for which it was created, namely for the House to consider the committee report and the work the committee has done...

These guiding principles are embodied in the interpretive notes attached to Standing Orders 76(5) and 76.1(5), which have allowed committees to a large extent to remain the central focus for the detailed study of bills, thereby ensuring that report stage not become a repetition of committee stage.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, explains, at pages 783 and 784:

As a general principle, the Speaker seeks to forestall debate on the floor of the House which is simply a repetition of the debate in committee…Furthermore, the Speaker will normally only select motions in amendment that could not have been presented in committee. A motion previously defeated in committee will only be selected if the Speaker judges it to be of such significance to Members as to warrant further consideration at report stage.

However, the strength of these guidelines has been tested in the recent past as the House faced voluminous report stage proceedings, first in June 2012 with Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, and then in November 2012 with C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures.

These two cases brought into sharp relief the difficulties faced by independent members with respect to committee proceedings on bills, specifically in reference to the provisions of Standing Order 119, which do not permit a member who is not a member of the committee to move any motion, nor to vote, nor to be part of any quorum. These circumstances cause some members to call into question the ability of the House's rules and practices to safeguard the intended purpose of report stage.

They also gave rise to a ruling on December 12, 2012, in which I addressed the issue of the participation of independent members in the process of amending bills, particularly in committee. In that ruling, I suggested that, until committees found a way to enable independent members to have their amendments considered at the committee stage, the Chair would continue to allow them to do so at report stage. I stated at that time, at page 13224 of the House of Commons Debates:

The Standing Orders currently in place offer committees wide latitude to deal with bills in an inclusive and thorough manner that would balance the rights of all members.

and

…there is no doubt that any number of procedural arrangements could be developed that would ensure that the amendments that independent members wish to propose to legislation could be put in committee.

To answer this fully would be to ask the Chair to reach into and adjudicate upon committee matters, a practice the House has long resisted, given that committees are masters of their own proceedings, as we are apt to say.

In my ruling of November 29, 2012, on a similar case, consistent with these long-standing practices of the House, I informed members that in the absence of a report from the committee, the Chair would not delve further into committee matters. In doing so, I quoted Speaker Milliken, who on November 27, 2002, stated:

As Speaker, I appreciate the responsibility that I have to defend the rights of all members and especially those of members who represent minority views in the House. At the same time, it is a long tradition in this place that committees are masters of their own proceedings. Ordinarily the House is only seized of a committee matter when the committee reports to the House outlining the situation that must be addressed.

He then added:

That being said, it is true as well that committees are permitted a greater latitude in the conduct of their proceedings than might be allowed in the House. It may not always be clear in a particular set of circumstances how best to proceed and so the ultimate decision is left to the committee itself.

At the same time, the Chair is also cognizant of its responsibility for the selection of report stage motions and the fact that what happened in the finance committee in this instance has had a direct bearing on my selection decisions in the case of the report stage of Bill C-60 and on independent members. Accordingly, the Chair feels compelled to address some of the issues raised, particularly as they relate to their impact on independent members.

As I understand it, the principal concern raised about the committee process was the committee's decision to deem moved any amendments submitted by independent members and certain other committees during the committee's clause-by-clause consideration. The main concern expressed by the opposition House leader with this manner of proceeding is that in his view it exceeded the committee's mandate. He argued that to deem motions to be moved is a clear violation of Standing Order 119, which stipulates that only permanent members of a standing committee can move motions. The opposition House leader stated that as a result, the process adopted by the finance committee was fundamentally flawed.

It should come as no surprise to members that the House and its committees frequently resort to procedural motions to facilitate the flow of business. Procedure in committee is particularly fluid and varied, and many committees routinely use a wide array of processes to organize their work. Deeming things to have taken place is part of that body of precedent.

In the House, this is often achieved by deciding to forgo the usual procedural steps and to assume that certain procedural transactions have taken place even if they have not. For example, it happens from time to time that the House will see fit to adopt a bill at all stages, deeming that each stage has been agreed to. No movers' names are attached to the motions for second reading, concurrence at report stage or third reading.

Similarly, practically on a weekly basis, recorded divisions are deemed demanded and deferred. Again, no members' names are attached to the motions that make this possible. In fact, the House has even been known to tinker with the time-space continuum by deeming it to be a certain time, even when it is not, and by making, say, a Tuesday to be a Monday, as was done a few weeks ago on May 21. Again, no names of members are attached to the motions that make this possible.

Our House and committee annals are rife with examples of this kind. These commonly used procedural instruments are even provided for in some of our Standing Orders. What may be causing difficulty in this case is that while the practice of “deeming” is most often achieved through unanimous consent, it can also occur by majority decision, but of course at greater cost in House or committee time.

In the case before us, it appears that this is the approach that was used by the finance committee. A motion setting out the process to be followed was proposed, debated and ultimately agreed to. As far as the Chair can see, in the absence of a report from the committee to the contrary, Standing Order 119 was not flouted in the process. Instead, it appears rather that a procedural instrument was devised to provide for the manner in which the committee would conduct its business.

Turning to the issue of the rights of independent members, the Chair can only observe that the decision of the finance committee permitted them to do something they could not do before: namely, to have their amendments considered in the committee and, indeed, to be granted, pursuant to Standing Order 119, an opportunity to speak in committee. This is something that was not open to them before. In that sense, they succeeded in obtaining a form of participation in committee proceedings, as imperfect as it may have been in their eyes.

As Speaker, I can only speculate on whether other committees will emulate or, dare I say, perhaps even expand on the spirit of inclusion witnessed in the Standing Committee on Finance.

In summary then, while I am entirely sympathetic to the procedural consequence of this development for independent members at report stage, I must remind the House again of my obligation to ensure that report stage not become a repeat of the committee stage.

As a guardian of the rights and privileges of all members, it is also my duty in this case to ensure that the rules, practices and expectations of the House are upheld and, in so doing, ensure that members are afforded an opportunity to participate in the legislative process. To protect the integrity of report stage, the Chair would have to know that there was no mechanism at all, not just an unsatisfactory one, for a member to move motions in committee.

It is true that the rules of the House may result in varying degrees of participation for members, depending on the proceeding and depending on the status of that member for that proceeding. For instance, members of committees enjoy opportunities that non-committee members do not, and even committee members have varying opportunities to participate.

What the Chair must protect is members' rights to have some mechanism to put forward their ideas.

It is for these reasons that the Chair did not select any motions at report stage that could have been considered, or were considered, in committee.

Accordingly, for all these reasons, I cannot conclude that the rights of independent members have been diminished as a result of the proceedings in the Standing Committee on Finance, particularly when scores of members who were not members of the finance committee, and thus not in a position to propose amendments there, are likewise subjected to the very same report stage restrictions.

In addition, noting that this is a departure from the Chair's long-established practice of not commenting on committee proceedings, again in the absence of a report to the contrary on which to base its interventions, the Chair concludes that Bill C-60 is properly before the House and that it cannot find that a procedurally improper proceeding has taken place in the Standing Committee on Finance.

I would like to thank all hon. members for their attention on this matter.

Environmental Stewardship

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate an exceptional citizen from my riding who shows great leadership, dedication and community spirit in her care for the environment. Every spring for the past three years, Maja Vodanovic leads a team of families, students, teachers and local residents to clean out the Bouchard Creek. This year, more than 100 students from 10 schools participated.

This is a noble effort to reclaim a piece of land that belongs to all of us and to pass on the importance of environmental stewardship to our kids.

I commend Maja and all the volunteers on their good work. The Conservative government is jeopardizing the water quality of our lakes and rivers with Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. An NDP government will protect and respect the environment, and it is precisely this optimism, this hope and these actions that we will bring to Canadians every day.

By coming together to clean riverbanks and waterways across Canada, Canadians are showing the Conservative government the right way to go.

Report Stage

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my turn to speak to Bill C-60. I would like to begin by saying that the people of Louis-Saint-Laurent are clearly not well served by the Conservatives' latest attempt to perform what the party seems to think are miracles.

Our riding is economically diverse, and I can say with certainty that none of us are happy with Bill C-60. I believe that is a significant indicator. I would like to thank all of the people in my riding who took the time to express their thoughts on this bill.

Here we are once again dealing with an omnibus bill, as heavy as an Incan inscription and just as impenetrable. The message behind Bill C-60 comes at an opportune moment in Canadian political history. The Conservatives are bound and determined to pass omnibus bills because they come to power only once every 35 years and have to focus on forcing these massive bills through. Clearly, that is their only hope.

The Reform Party can be proud of the fact that it managed to make itself a part of actual history. It became more than just a regional party. Good job, guys. Bill C-60 is the third omnibus bill that the Conservative government has thrust into the court of public opinion. At this point in time, I think there is one question we should be asking ourselves. Why did the government not bundle all of these measures into its first budget, Bill C-38? The Conservatives would have won the dubious honour of having created the biggest bill ever introduced. They could have given us a super-omnibus bill to solve all of Canada's problems in one fell swoop.

No matter what the Conservatives say, this budget will stall Canada's economy, not revive it. Budget 2013 will eliminate thousands of jobs, cut direct program spending and slow GDP growth considerably.

The government is putting positive spin on its measures so that it can spread devastation. This trademark Conservative lack of nuance, its black-or-white mentality, has plagued us for eight years. The Conservatives use the word “growth” to hide basic corporate interests.

The only thing that will grow with Bill C-60 is the Conservatives' ego, as well as the size of the attendant ethics scandals.

Although some of my colleagues have mentioned it, it bears repeating that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated that these cuts are completely unnecessary to restore the structural budget surplus.

I am not in the habit of accusing the Conservative government of indulge in demagoguery in my speeches, but this time, as I said before, the ruling party has been overtaken by its own folly. Given that wages are stagnating, jobs are unstable and average households and individuals are heavily in debt, why is this cutthroat dollars and cents approach overriding everything?

Canada is not just a collection of economic indicators to be manipulated. It is first and foremost the sum of its people. When it comes to the economy, the Conservative message is clear: economic survival or economic weakness. To them, all Canadians owe their living to the economy.

Depriving people of the means to achieve economic success is a misguided approach. People are the basis of the economy, not the reverse. Economic indicators that now seem so meaningful and crucial will not be voting in 2015. It is the very people the government has abandoned who will undo legislation like Bill C-60.

Since we are on the topic, Bill C-60 obviously meddles in a wide range of separate and unrelated issues, each time with the government's pervasive iron fist.

For example, and this did not go unnoticed by the public, a number of crown corporations will have their ability to bargain collectively eroded, practically stripped away. From now on, during negotiations, our crown corporations will have to deal with unavoidable advice from the President of the Treasury Board, who will sit at the head of the table, as proud as Bashar al-Assad. There will be no getting away from this oh-so-valuable government input. Is that supposedly august presence really necessary?

No, but while we are at it, we might as well follow through with that logic. We should create a department to oversee union negotiations. After all, Canada's future depends on it. Talk about ridiculous.

The Conservatives are keeping up their attacks on Canadian workers, believing they will win over an undetermined social class to which no one belongs. It is like the Arabian Nights, but without the magic, because the magic has run out.

In the last budget, the Minister of Finance, gleaming like Prosecco, used a very effective diversion tactic. When he was announcing the convoluted content of Bill C-38, he announced that he would eliminate the penny. That was the price they had to pay for getting Canadians to accept the enormity of the bill. Just like that, it all came down to getting rid of the penny. The Conservatives took on a modern look for a very low price.

This year they are coming back with a budget bill every bit as big and callous, but without the handy distraction the penny provided. However, the metaphor lives on: Bill C-60 will not grow the economy by a single penny.

Bill C-60 is just a litany of punitive measures against workers and crown corporations and a series of tariff adjustments that, at the end of the day, will have no major impact on people's budgets in this country.

The figures quoted by the Parliamentary Budget Officer amaze me. In total, budgets 2012 and 2013 will slash 67,000 jobs, which in turn will trigger a 0.57% drop in the GDP, as one might expect. If we compare those figures with the rhetoric the Conservative government has been spewing ad nauseam about creating hundreds of thousands of jobs since the recession, we see that this is total madness.

My impression is that the 900,000 jobs that the government has created—because I believe that is the new number members are using these days—are in China, not here. That is wonderful for China, but when the manufacturing sector in Ontario completely disappears, like the Etruscans, what then? Does Bill C-60 try to remedy this situation? The question remains, but I believe that the bill speaks for itself, and it is quite sad.

As we have already said, the NDP strongly opposes the idea of omnibus bills like this one, legislative measures that, frankly, are offensive because of their size and how underhanded they are. The government wants to quickly pass legislation on very complex issues that are not even connected to one another, for the sole purpose of being able to boast about having done it. It is irresponsible and childish.

The NDP would never do that to Canadian voters. However, I am afraid the precedent has been firmly set and the Liberals will be thrilled to take their turn if they ever regain a shred of power.

As we have heard over and over, the Conservative government wants to sneak things through right under our noses by ordering the drafting of these kinds of omnibus bills. However, it will not work. We sit down and dissect them for hours on end. We find all their flaws, large and small. The Conservatives cannot fool us. Everyone knows what they are trying to do. Perhaps the government thinks that it has managed to completely mislead voters with its cryptic manoeuvres. Perhaps it thinks that it will have its cake and eat it too, and then sell it back again at a profit. However, that is not what is going on. The official opposition sees right through the government's game, and the people are fully aware that the Conservatives are trying to trick them.

In Brazil, the word “omnibus” means “public transit”. In this case, that is quite appropriate, because I have a feeling that in 2015, many members across the floor will have to use public transit to get to work. However, the members opposite need not worry, since I am sure they will be able to find something among the 900,000 jobs they supposedly created. I find it appalling that this government has so little regard for workers, people who can never take advantage of the measures in the budget.

The government does not seem to understand that there is an emerging middle class in this country. Even thought these people make up the majority of Canadians, the government continues to ignore their interests, while claiming to defend them. That is deplorable.

Bill C-60 shows little respect for the average Canadian and the provinces fare no better, as was to be expected. The bill hits too close to home.

Without any excuse or explanation, the Conservatives are attacking a program that all of Quebec is extremely fond of. The Fonds de solidarité FTQ is a national resource for all Quebeckers, and it cannot be attacked with impunity.

Our province has developed its economy in a competitive, imaginative and sustainable way through the use of the FTQ fund. By attacking this fund, the Conservative government is attacking Quebec itself. I would really like the five Quebec Conservative MPs to have the courage to rise and defend this deplorable decision while they still have the opportunity to represent Quebeckers in the House of Commons. I know my people, and this is the final nail in the coffin for Quebeckers' dalliance with the Conservative Party.

I cannot refrain from using an accusatory tone in my speech because I am speaking on behalf of my generation, young people between the ages of 18 and 35, who are not fooled by the monumental fast one that the government is pulling on our society for mercenary interests. It is my duty to speak for those who do not have the opportunity to sit in the House. The young people of this society, who the Conservative government tries so hard to control, has such drive that all the C-38s, C-45s and C-60s are so ridiculous as to be offensive.

Young Canadians must not be underestimated. The government would not believe what our young people are capable of. Look at what Turkish youth are doing right now. What will the Prime Minister do if the tenor of the Quebec protests convinces the rest of the country? Is he, too, waiting for his Taksim square?

[The member spoke in another language.]

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, before being so rudely interrupted by the weekend, I was saying that the Conservatives' latest budget would raise taxes by a whopping $3.3 billion over four years, and a number of these tax measures are included in this budget implementation act.

Bill C-60 would attack Canada's rural economy, with tax increases on credit unions. It would take more money out of small communities that are already struggling, and it would make it harder for small businesses in rural and small-town Canada to get the credit they need to grow and create jobs.

This is what David Phillips, president and CEO of Credit Union Central of Canada had to say:

The income tax increase on credit unions...is growth limiting. It deprives credit unions of income that might otherwise be used to support the growth of the credit union by building its capital base. The credit union will...have less capacity to make loans to small business, fund community economic development, and meet member needs.

It disregards the federal government's desire to support small business in local communities...

...it's really a tax on growth.

It is a tax on growth in rural and small-town Canada.

Garth Manness, the CEO of Credit Union Central of Manitoba, said:

...it is no exaggeration to say that some...may begin to question the future viability of credit unions in many communities in rural Canada. Not only could people be left without access to a nearby financial institution, [but] valuable and stable jobs at the credit unions could be lost.

Many of Canada's smaller rural communities face persistently higher unemployment rates and a rapidly aging population as younger workers move to cities for stable jobs. It is illogical for the Conservatives to go ahead with this tax hike on credit unions and diminish an already-limited source of investment in these rural and small-town communities.

On top of hurting small businesses that rely on credit unions, Bill C-60 would attack 750,000 Canadian small-business owners with a new tax hike on dividends. This legislation would even raise taxes on safety depot boxes. Perhaps what is most offensive is that Bill C-60 would actually punish victims of crime by adding GST or HST to health care services they need to establish their case in court.

The Canadian Psychological Association remains concerned that Bill C-60 would add GST and HST to mental health services, including psychological assessments. This is what Karen Cohen, the CEO of the Canadian Psychological Association, said when she appeared before the finance committee: “If passed without clarification or amendment, Canadians will now have to pay taxes on certain psychological services that were once exempt”. She provided a number of examples of Canadian patients who would now have to pay GST on mental health services, and went on to say:

It's important to note that this isn't a pocketbook issue for psychologists. It's not the psychologists who have to pay this tax. It's going to be hard-working Canadians who have a health need that is not met by Canada's publicly funded health care system.

A psychological assessment can cost thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket fees. The amount of money at stake for Canadian patients is not trivial.

While it may be true that the Conservatives' latest omnibus budget bill is less omni-busive than either Bill C-38 or Bill C-45, it is still deeply flawed, and we see the government now moving closure to ram this through the House of Commons without respect for Parliament and without proper scrutiny. This bill would threaten the independence of the CBC; it would raise taxes on hard-working Canadian families.

We proposed at committee some constructive amendments to address the very legitimate objections raised by Canadians during the committee's studies, but the Conservatives would not listen to reason. They have been deaf to the concerns of Canadians on this, and I expect Canadians will return the favour to the Conservatives in the next federal election.

Employment Insurance

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present several petitions on the same subject. The petitions come from people in Quebec. They are calling on the government to cancel the changes made to employment insurance by the former Bill C-38, which have to do with the power to define the terms “suitable employment” and “reasonable and customary efforts to obtain suitable employment” and with the creation of a Social Security Tribunal.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present several petitions concerning the employment insurance reforms that are buried in Bill C-38. The public is still opposed to these reforms.

Standing Committee on Finance

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the hon. House leader of the official opposition for raising this point of order yesterday, objecting to the unusual procedures that were accepted within the Standing Committee on Finance, in relation to the clause-by-clause treatment of Bill C-60, the 2013 omnibus budget bill.

Prior to his point of order, I was struggling with a dilemma: I was certain there was an effort to undermine my rights as an individual member of Parliament and yet there had been no formal challenge. I was not sure how to approach this, Mr. Speaker, and to put before you the ways in which I found that procedure unacceptable. I really very much appreciate that the official opposition saw fit to raise its concerns that those procedures and the procedures adopted--novel procedures, mind you--before the Standing Committee on Finance did not comport to parliamentary rules and practice and went beyond the mandate of the committee.

I agree with all the points made by the hon. House leader of the official opposition and by the member for Winnipeg North, on behalf of the Liberal Party.

Before getting down to the particulars of the current situation, I wish to review some fundamental principles related to the matter before you, Mr. Speaker.

In essence, what you are asked to adjudicate here is an effort by a powerful government party with the majority of seats in this place to eliminate what few rights exist to influence legislation in the hands of only eight members of Parliament belonging to two recognized national parties, myself, on behalf of the Green Party, and members here for the Bloc Québécois, plus two members currently sitting as independents.

Within this group, the government party's efforts are aimed only at the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. We are the only members to have submitted amendments at report stage in the 41st Parliament.

The appropriate balance between the majority and the minority in proceedings of the House is, as Speaker Milliken noted, a fundamental issue.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be providing the written copy of this presentation to you so that I will not have to read out loud all the citations.

The following passage is very apt. Although Speaker Milliken was dealing with a situation with a minority Parliament, the issues before him of balancing the rights of the minority and the majority are the same. I quote from Speaker Milliken's ruling of March 29, 2007:

At the present time, the chair occupants, like our counterparts in House committees, daily face the challenge of dealing with the pressures of a minority government, but neither the political realities of the moment nor the sheer force of numbers should force us to set aside the values inherent in the parliamentary conventions and procedures by which we govern our deliberations.

Continuing:

Unlike the situation faced by committee chairs, a Speaker's decision is not subject to appeal. All the more reason then for the Chair to exercise its awesome responsibility carefully and to ensure that the House does not, in the heat of the moment, veer dangerously off course.

The Speaker must remain ever mindful of the first principles of our great parliamentary tradition, principles best described by John George Bourinot, Clerk of this House from 1890 to 1902, who described these principles thus:

To protect the minority and restrain the improvidence and tyranny of the majority, to secure the transaction of public business in a decent and orderly manner, to enable every member to express his opinions within those limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time, to give full opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken heedlessly and upon sudden impulse.

As I noted yesterday, in particular, in your ruling related to the member for Langley's question of privilege, you said:

...[an] unquestionable duty of the Speaker [is] to act as the guardian of the rights and privileges of members and of the House as an institution.

And you cited, with approval, these words from former speaker Fraser:

...we are a parliamentary democracy, not a so-called executive democracy, nor a so-called administrative democracy.

The last quote is from your ruling of December 12, 2012, which bears directly on the matter at hand. In that ruling, Mr. Speaker, you dealt with an objection raised by the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to, inter alia, my presentation of amendments at report stage. The hon. government House leader presented a proposal that all my amendments at report stage should be grouped and one motion selected as a “test motion”, and only if the test motion was adopted would any of the other amendments be put to the House.

Your ruling was clear, Mr. Speaker. You cited House of Commons Procedure and Practice at page 250, which states:

[I]t remains true that parliamentary procedure is intended to ensure that there is a balance between the government's need to get its business through the House, and the opposition's responsibility to debate that business without completely immobilizing the proceedings of the House.

And you added:

The underlying principles these citations express are the cornerstones of our parliamentary system. They enshrine the ancient democratic tradition of allowing the minority to voice its views and opinions in the public square and, in counterpoint, of allowing the majority to put its legislative program before Parliament and have it voted upon.

You ruled then, Mr. Speaker, that my amendments at report stage on Bill C-45 could stand and be put to a vote in the House. You also set out some circumstances that would provide a potential procedure to provide me and other members in my position with a fair and satisfactory alternative to amendments at report stage.

In my view, the government House leader is now attempting to do indirectly that which he could not do directly. It puts me in mind of the finding of Mr. Justice Dickson in that landmark Supreme Court case of Amax Potash, in which Mr. Dickson said:

To allow moneys collected under compulsion, pursuant to an ultra vires statute, to be retained would be tantamount to allowing the provincial Legislature to do indirectly what it could not do directly, and by covert means to impose illegal burdens.

I again underline that as the hon. House leader of the official opposition has put before us, the actions of the finance committee were ultra vires, and the whole effort here is to do indirectly what it could not do directly. I am speaking of the Conservative Party's efforts to suppress the rights of minority members.

It offends principles of fairness to use the superior clout and power of a majority government to crush the few procedures found within our rules and traditions to which I, as an individual member, have a right to recourse. It is clear that the effort being made by the finance committee on Bill C-60 is a continuation of the strategy-by-stealth of the government House leader's to foreclose the democratic rights of members, which was attempted in November of last year.

For the remainder of my argument, I would like to canvass two areas of facts that are relevant to the specifics of the question before you, Mr. Speaker. First, was the procedure adopted by the finance committee in conformity with your ruling of December 12, 2012? Second, have the amendments I have put forward in the 41st Parliament offended the rules by failing the tests of “repetition, frivolity, vexatiousness and unnecessary prolongation of report stage”?

Dealing with the second point first, I have moved amendments at report stage on the following bills, and I will state how many amendments per bill: Bill C-10, 36 amendments; Bill C-11, 11 amendments; Bill C-13, one amendment; Bill C-18, three amendments; Bill C-19, three amendments; Bill C-31, 23 amendments; Bill C-316, five amendments; Bill C-38, 320 amendments; Bill C-37, one amendment; Bill C-43, 21 amendments; and Bill C-45, 82 amendments.

What is immediately obvious is that the number of my amendments was directly proportionate to the legislation proposed by the government. Only on the two omnibus budget bills, Bill C-45 and Bill C-38, and the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, did I propose a relatively large number of amendments. There were many amendments, because the omnibus bills involved changes to multiple laws in a dramatic and transformative fashion. The amendments I proposed were all serious; none were frivolous. They were not of the kind, for example, put forward by the opposition of the day on the Nisga'a treaty, in which multiple amendments were mere changes of punctuation with the goal being slowing passage of the Nisga'a treaty.

The amendments I have put forward have even gained favourable commentary from some government members. On Bill C-31, the hon. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism said, “I appreciate the member's evident concern”, speaking of me as the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, “and the fact that she takes the deliberative legislative process very seriously”.

On Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act, the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages said, “I compliment her for her substantive approach to this legislation”.

On Bill C-43, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism stated:

I commend the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her constant due diligence. I know it is a particular challenge to effectively be an independent member and yet participate in an informed way in debates on virtually all bills in the House. We all admire her for that even if I do not agree with the substance of her intervention here.

In summary, the amendments I have put forward in the 41st Parliament have never been frivolous. Were they designed to slow passage? Not at all. Even on the day we began the marathon session of votes on the amendments to Bill C-38, I approached the Prime Minister personally and asked if any compromise were possible. I told him I would be at his disposal, that if one or two amendments might pass, perhaps the rest could be withdrawn, and that I was open to suggestion.

My goal throughout was serious and grounded in principle. My constituents care about these issues and these bills. I am working tirelessly in their interest. I have never engaged in preparing and presenting amendments for the sake of, as the government House leader has suggested, political games or delay for the sake of delay.

Having worked in the Mulroney government and in public policy work in Ottawa dealing with federal governments, federal ministers and federal laws since 1978, I have personal experience with what used to be the normal approach to legislating in the Parliament of Canada. This particular administration is the only one in our history to enforce rigid discipline on its members in legislative committees. It is the first administration in Canadian history to resist any changes in its legislative proposals from first reading to royal assent. Even the errors that are discovered prior to passage are protected from amendment until subsequent bills correct earlier drafting errors.

Worsening this abuse of democratic process, virtually every bill in the 41st Parliament has been subject to time allocation. If time allocation were not applied, in the normal round of debates, eventually members in my situation, who are seen as independent for my rights and privileges, although I sit here as a Green Party member, would be recognized and would participate in the debates. However, due to time allocation, there is never an opportunity to speak at second reading, report stage or third reading. With time allocation, there is never an opportunity for members in my position to make a speech unless another party cedes a speaking slot.

As a matter of practical reality, the only way to have a speaking opportunity in such time-constrained circumstances is to have amendments tabled at report stage. This approach of the current Conservative administration of rejecting any and all amendments, while simultaneously abbreviating debate opportunities, is a perversion of Westminster parliamentary tradition. It is a new and hyper-partisan approach to the legislative process.

As a member of Parliament, I believe it is my duty to work to resist this new, contemptuous approach to legislating. The ability to table amendments at report stage and to offer the entire House an opportunity to improve bills before third reading is even more critical when the legislative committee process has ceased to function as it did in all the time of all the speakers before you.

Now I turn to the question, Mr. Speaker, of how the finance committee applied the suggestions contained in your ruling of December 12, 2012. I note that the chair of the finance committee is never anything but personally fair, and I mean nothing personal against all members of the finance committee. I assume that this entire stratagem emerged elsewhere than from the members of the finance committee themselves.

I note that you suggested, Mr. Speaker, that there are “opportunities and mechanisms that are at the House's disposal to resolve these issues to the satisfaction of all members” in a “manner that would balance the rights of all members” and that “...members need only to remember that there are several precedents where independent members were made members of standing committees”. Those are all quotes from your ruling in December.

Finally, you suggested this:

Were a satisfactory mechanism found that would afford independent members an opportunity to move motions to move bills in committee, the Chair has no doubt that its report stage selection process would adapt to the new reality.

From these comments it is clear that your direction suggests that an effort might be made to engage members with rights of independents to enter into a discussion about how arrangements could be reached that would be, in fact, satisfactory. To be “to the satisfaction of all members”, your ruling implicitly requires that the suggested opportunities and mechanisms be discussed and accepted by all concerned. Further, you suggested that temporary membership was possible and that members should be able to “move motions”.

None of that occurred. I am attaching a written copy of all the correspondence between me and the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, which I will provide to the table. As you will see, there was no discussion or offer of co-operation. The “invitation” contained in a letter of May 7, 2013 left no room for discussion. The attached motion of the committee was supported only by the Conservative members of the finance committee but not by the official opposition or the Liberal Party members.

The letter, and particularly the motion itself, had the tone of a unilateral ultimatum. My response was to ask for temporary committee membership for the duration of clause-by-clause review. This request was rejected in the letter of May 24, 2013.

As the various sections of Bill C-60 had been distributed among several committees, I attempted to attend all the hearings relative to my amendments. However, committees were meeting at the same time in different locations throughout the parliamentary precinct making it impossible to get to each one of them. I did attend meetings of the industry, finance and the foreign affairs committees prior to clause-by-clause study. I asked for permission to ask witnesses questions and was denied in the finance and foreign affairs committees. I was allowed a three-minute opportunity to pose questions in the industry committee. To be blunt, my opportunities were not close to equivalent to the members of those committees.

On Monday, May 27, 2013 as requested by the finance committee, I complied with the committee and attempted to co-operate. I submitted my amendments and attended clause-by-clause study throughout the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, May 28. I asked for time to present my amendments. There were 11 in total. I was given half as much time as my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. I was allowed one minute per amendment. He was allowed two minutes per amendment. I have attached copies of the Hansard from all of these discussions to abbreviate the recitation of the facts.

I prefaced my presentation of amendments with a statement that I had not asked for this opportunity nor invitation and that while I was attempting to co-operate, it was without prejudice to my rights to submit amendments at report stage. Each time I was given the floor for 60 seconds, I repeated that my participation was without prejudice to my rights to present amendments at report stage, when I had the right to move my own amendments, speak to my own amendments, and answer questions about my amendments. At report stage, I have the right to vote on my amendments.

I also supported the point made by the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park that inviting independent members to committee, in her words, “does not conform with parliamentary procedure in that only the House of Commons can appoint committee members”.

I noted that I did not have an equal opportunity to present my amendments. This observation was compounded as we went through clause-by-clause study.

On two occasions, members of the committee suggested amendments to my amendments. I was not allowed to comment on those suggestions. On one occasion, a member of the government benches disagreed with a point I made, but I was not allowed to reply. On another occasion, the NDP members misunderstood the impact of my amendment, but I was not allowed to explain. I was not allowed to move my amendments. The motions were deemed moved. I was not allowed to vote on my amendments. As noted, I was not allowed even the ability to participate in discussions about my amendments.

There is no way the word “satisfactory” can be so twisted of meaning as to apply to the set of circumstances to which I was required to submit. It is a principle of fairness and natural justice that an opportunity that cannot be used is no opportunity at all.

When one considers the circumstances in which speakers have ruled that members did not have an adequate opportunity to submit their amendments, it is clear that this imposed process before the Standing Committee on Finance falls far short of the mark.

For example, in 2001, Speaker Milliken ruled that where a member was on two committees and had difficulty getting to the meeting, he could move amendments at report stage. Speaker Milliken wrote that:

...because...the member maintains that he sits on two committees, both of which were seized with bills at the same time, and therefore had difficulty in moving his amendments, the Chair will give the benefit of the doubt to the member on this occasion.

In a situation where a member of a recognized parliamentary party attended the clause-by-clause consideration at the committee but was not an official member of the committee, Speaker Milliken allowed that member's amendments to be presented at report stage. He noted:

Of course, the Chair recognizes that our parliamentary system is party driven and the positions of the parties are brought forward to committees through its officially designated members. The Chair also recognizes that some members may want to act on their own.

Underscoring this, what an example: a member of a recognized party with rights to participate in standing committees chose to be in the meetings, in clause-by-clause study, and could have handed that member's amendments to another member of his party and ask that they be submitted, but the Speaker of the House supported the right of that member to amendments at report stage because he was not a committee member. I was a long, long way from the rights of that member of a recognized political party sitting in that committee back in 2003 when Speaker Milliken allowed that member's amendments at report stage.

The right of a member to actually move the amendments at committee cannot be perverted through the expedient measure, imposed by a majority party, of demanding all amendments of an independent member be submitted, denying that member the right to move the amendment, speak to the amendment, other than in an inadequate perfunctory fashion, debate or defend the amendment, giving that member no opportunity to speak to other amendments and denying the member any chance to vote on his or her motion.

There may well be some way to accommodate members of Parliament in my position, but clearly, this experiment on Bill C-60 at clause-by-clause consideration in the finance committee was not acceptable. To accept it now, and disallow rights of members of Parliament in the position of independents to submit amendments at report stage, will be to create a precedent that fundamentally abuses our foundational principles of Westminster parliamentary democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge you to find in favour of the point of order put forward by the hon. House leader for the official opposition and to set aside the treatment of me and the member from the Bloc Québécois and allow us to submit amendments, move amendments, debate our amendments and vote on them on Bill C-60 at report stage.

Fair Rail Freight Service Act

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

This is actually quite insulting, and most of all, undemocratic. The Conservatives are forcing us to sit until midnight from Monday to Thursday, and yet this makes the 37th time we have a time allocation motion. Talk about mixed messages.

We want to discuss the issues, but the government limits the time for debate again and again. In addition, these are badly thought-out bills riddled with flaws. I will list them a little later in my speech.

This has been an ongoing trend with the Conservatives since they came into office. I am specifically thinking of omnibus Bills C-38, C-45 and C-60.

I speak of the Conservatives' incompetence because they are bringing forward bills full of flaws and weaknesses. They are not holding proper consultations. In committee, recommendations from many of the witnesses are rejected out of hand, as are the amendments proposed by the NDP, or anyone else for that matter.

They realized that Bill C-38 was flawed. Then they made hasty additions to Bill C-45 to rectify the other bill they had just introduced.

This makes no sense at all. It lacks credibility. It shows a lack of respect for the democratic process, for the people who were consulted and for those who were not. It shows contempt for the elected officials who serve the people who rely on them to make decisions. We cannot make good decisions because we cannot have a debate and carefully examine everything that should be considered. So yes, it is insulting and an outrage.

The official opposition will support Bill C-52 because it is, finally, a first attempt at establishing the right to service agreements between rail companies and shippers.

This is the first step that shippers have been waiting for for decades. It also establishes an arbitration process, led by the Canadian Transportation Agency, to impose penalties in the event negotiations fail and for violations of arbitration decisions. There are therefore constructive, positive elements, but there are also a number of elements that shippers and the official opposition were calling for but that were rejected.

Four NDP members proposed amendments, based on recommendations from shippers. Those members were the transport critic, the member for Trinity—Spadina; the deputy critic, the member for Trois-Rivières; the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine and the member for York South—Weston.

What were those amendments and recommendations? I will explain them. They were not that complicated, and they would have really helped shippers.

We recommended including details about the service agreements. It seems to me that service agreements should, at the very least, be signed and contain details. I do not understand why that was rejected. We asked that the term “operational” be deleted because it would limit the ability to negotiate and arbitrate service agreements. Again, that seems to go without saying. It does not make much sense to limit the measure we are trying to implement. We wanted to include a dispute resolution mechanism in service agreements for breach of contract. We also asked to limit the ability of railway companies to levy penalties and charges that are not in the service agreement.

The rates are already exorbitant and the railway companies are abusing their power. Since there are only two main companies, there is a quasi-monopoly when it comes to shipping freight. The rates being charged to the shippers are too high. They prevent the entrepreneurs and the shippers from being competitive on the international market. We cannot even limit the capacity of the rail carriers to charge penalties that are not included in the service agreement. Nothing good will come of that either.

We proposed limiting arbitration when service agreement negotiations break off and issues are raised by the shipper. The last amendment sought to limit the capacity of rail carriers to raise network-related problems during arbitration.

All these amendments could have improved Bill C-52, but they were not considered. They were completely rejected.

Again, we are here to let the House know that people are not happy about this.The bill has other flaws. What about lost revenue. The Conservatives claim they want to strengthen the economy, but they are diminishing the capacity of the regions to prop up their regional economy, given that the affected sectors are the farming, forestry, mining, manufacturing and natural resources sectors. Most of these sectors are in remote regions.

The Conservatives are contradicting themselves again. They would have us believe that their position and their bills are best, but then they sabotage everything they are trying to do by not taking the time to do proper research. They do not take the time to consult the experts in the areas affected by their bills. That is part of the incompetence that we are talking about here.

Shippers are currently paying the price of service disruptions, damage to their crops and service delays by railways. What is more, they have no other option. As many of my colleagues have said, 70% of surface goods are moved by rail in Canada, and 80% of these shippers are not satisfied with the service they received. That is serious. That means that service is considered to be poor in four out of five cases.

That is why these types of agreements needed to be made after all these years. However, now that they are finally being made, they are more negative than positive. The money from the $100,000 penalties imposed on railway companies under this bill is not used to compensate shippers. Instead, it goes to the federal government. It really should be given to shippers who create jobs and who have to pay late fees and fees for services that the railways failed to provide.

This money is being sent to the wrong place. What is more, these penalties do not really act as a deterrent since we know that companies such as CN are making $2.7 billion in profit a year.

In short, we are going to allow this bill to move forward, but it has many shortcomings. We must listen to experts on this.

Standing Committee on Finance

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a very specific point of order with regard to Bill C-60, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, and the work that was done by the committees that were studying this bill, particularly the finance committee, which invoked some measures we believe are not in order and fell well outside of its mandate.

As some context for those Canadians who are not familiar with Bill C-60, this is another piece of omnibus legislation. We rose earlier on similar points of order with respect to how the bill was handled.

In its nature, being an omnibus bill under the current government's watch, with the expansion of omnibus legislation to include so many different matters, the government has faced a difficulty of its own making in that it is not purely a financial bill and it is not simply a bill to implement the budget; it would do much more. While it has an anti-democratic nature and tone for us, in various ways we have struggled with the ability for members of Parliament to properly study and amend legislation that is so broad.

I wish that you would review the motion adopted by the standing committee on May 7, as well as the proceedings that resulted from this specific motion, and that you rule to determine whether these proceedings were in order or not and whether the committee overstepped its authority when adopting this particular motion. I will refer in detail to what the motion accomplished and how it fell outside of the mandate of the committee.

We raised a very similar point of order, if you will remember, around Bill C-45. That was the second omnibus bill that followed on Bill C-38. We had deep concerns about the fact that the Standing Committee on Finance, during its consideration of that massive omnibus bill, went beyond its mandate and usurped the authority of the House when it invited other standing committees to study particular sections of Bill C-45. On their own mandate they started to carve the bill up and send it out. It then allowed these committees that were studying the bill to move amendments and then saw it as if those amendments had been moved by members of the finance committee.

We argued at the time that this went beyond the mandate and the reference from the House, from you as the Speaker.

A similar argument could be made about Bill C-60. It was introduced on April 29.

On May 7, after the government used time allocation to shut down the debate once again on discussions at second reading, it ended with the passage of the following motion, which stated:

...that Bill C-60, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to [the Standing Committee on Finance].

Hansard on that day of May 7 specifically quotes you as saying:

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.

It is pro forma and it is how bills are referred to the committee.

The committee acted outside of its powers and authority, those powers conferred on it by this House, when it adopted a motion on that very same day asking other committees to study sections of the bill, namely the standing committees on industry, science and technology; veterans affairs; human resources, skills and development; the status of persons with disabilities; citizenship and immigration; as well as foreign affairs and international development. That is where the government sought to parse out the bill.

It is very difficult to deal with omnibus legislation that is so obviously varied that it implicates so many different committees. The government has pushed, and I would argue broken the democratic limits of our legislature, by packing so much into these individual bills. In essence it is hiding from Canadians what its agenda is as these bills then come back to the House for one single vote on so many matters. This was something that the Conservatives concerned themselves with greatly when they were in opposition. You have heard me mention many of the quotes from the Prime Minister and various ministers in his cabinet on how much they disliked this tactic when the Liberals used it. It is now a tactic that the Conservatives seem to enjoy using with much relish.

Although I believe the Standing Committee on Finance went beyond its mandate to ask these five other committees to study the bill, this is not the principal concern that I want to raise with you today.

The committee went even further this time in going beyond its mandate, by adopting a motion to allow members of Parliament who are not members of a caucus represented on the committee to file amendments to the bill. It went further by directing that any amendments suggested to the committee would be deemed to be proposed during the clause-by-clause consideration on Bill C-60, even if the member who presented the amendment was not present.

Let us take a moment with this. Out of some seeking of convenience, the committee members passed the motion at their own discretion, not by any power given to them by the House, to allow amendments that came from people who do not sit on the committee, who are not recognized parties in the House. They allowed amendments to suddenly appear and be presented as if they came from somebody on committee. This goes against three fundamental principles that we hold dear in the House.

Only the House can appoint committee members. This is well known. It is done at the beginning of every session when we constitute our committees. No committee can self-appoint members. It has to come from an order in the House.

Only committee members who have been appointed by the House can move a motion. In order to move a motion, a member must be present at the time the motion is moved. We just dealt with a piece of private member's legislation before my point of order. A seconder was missing from her particular seat. The House properly waited until that member took her seat so that she was present. Motions cannot be moved if people are not here.

The rules of committee as established by the House specifically prescribe that members of a committee are designated by the House and cannot include members of a non-recognized party. This is a practice and a procedure we have used for many years. The rules established by the House also specifically prescribe that only a member of a committee can move a motion.

According to O'Brien and Bosc's House of Commons Procedure and Practice:

Only a member of the committee, or his or her designated substitute, may move an amendment or vote on an amendment.

Standing Order No. 119 stipulates that:

Any member of the House who is not a member of a standing, special or legislative committee, may, unless the House or the committee concerned otherwise orders, take part in the public proceedings of the committee, but may not vote or move any motion, nor be part of any quorum.

The O'Brien and Bosc text, on page 1019, states:

It is the House, and the House alone, that appoints the members and associate members of its committees, as well as the members who will represent it on joint committees.

The status of member of a committee is accorded to Members of the House of Commons who belong officially to that committee. This status allows them to participate fully in their committee's proceedings: members may move motions, vote and be counted for purposes of a quorum.

The Speaker has ruled that this is a fundamental right of the House. It cannot be taken away. A committee simply cannot move a motion to take such a power away from the House. I am quoting now:

The committees themselves have no powers at all in this regard.

I would like at this point to mention your ruling, Mr. Speaker, from last December. You will recall that at the time, we moved our point of order regarding the last omnibus bill, Bill C-45, specifically with respect to the role and rights of independent members in the context of report stage.

The government House leader argued that the current process by which independent members are not allowed to present motions at committee means that at report stage of bills, a single independent member has the ability, in his words, “to hold the House hostage in a voting marathon”, as if voting were somehow connected to a hostage-taking, by submitting numerous report stage amendments.

In response, Mr. Speaker, you suggested that members may try to find ways to accommodate independent members at committee in order to allow them to present motions. You said the following:

Were a satisfactory mechanism found that would afford independent members an opportunity to move motions to move bills in committee, the Chair has no doubt that its report stage selection process would adapt to the new reality.

I understand that the motion adopted for Bill C-60 at committee was somehow a response to this ruling and an attempt by the Conservative Party to cut short the proceedings at report stage. However, I believe that the Conservatives fundamentally misinterpreted your ruling to in fact allow independent members to move motions to amend bills at committees. The Conservatives should have, and must have, sought agreement of the House to allow the members to sit on that committee. That is a power they cannot take away simply by a motion at committee. Indeed, it is from the House that committees derive this power. Committees on their own do not have absolute powers.

While committees are often quoted as being masters of their own fate, I will cite from O'Brien and Bosc at page 1047:

The concept refers to the freedom committees normally have to organize their work as they see fit and the option they have of defining, on their own, certain rules of procedure that facilitate their proceedings.

A second quote, on page 1048 of O'Brien and Bosc, states:

These freedoms are not, however, total or absolute.... committees are creatures of the House. This means that they have no independent existence and are not permitted to take action unless they have been authorized/empowered to do so by the House.

A second quote on that same page states:

...committees are free to organize their proceedings as they see fit.... committees may adopt procedural rules to govern...but only to the extent the House does not prescribe anything specific.

Members of a committee, and only members of a committee, as well as associate members when they replace those members, are able to attend the committee and thus move a motion at committee.

O'Brien and Bosc further tells us that:

Standing Orders specifically exclude a non-member from voting, moving motions or being counted for purposes of quorum.

The rules also clearly state that a member must be present for the motion. This is a fact. We have never moved away from this fact or this rule or procedure. To suddenly invent a process by which a motion can be moved but the member may be absent contravenes the basic tenets of democracy and representation. We could suddenly have votes where people just call in and speak their intentions rather than be here themselves.

Where a notice of motion has been given, the Speaker will first ensure that the Member wishes to proceed with the moving of the motion. If the sponsor of a motion chooses not to proceed (either by not being present or by being present but declining to move the motion), then the motion is not proceeded with....

This has happened many times in the House. We have seen private member's bills that members chose not to move. They either made themselves absent from the House or they remained in their seats and the motion was not moved forward. Nobody else can do it on their behalf. No one can simply come in and say, “The member intended to be here, but is not. Please allow the member's private member's bill or motion to be considered”.

There is a precedent for a Speaker overruling a committee matter, because sometimes Speakers, often, and I think for good reason, have been loath to involve themselves in committee business.

I quote from O'Brien and Bosc, page 775:

Since a committee may appeal the decision of its Chair and reverse that decision, it may happen that a committee will report a bill with amendments that were initially ruled out of order by the Chair. The admissibility of those amendments, and of any other amendments made by a committee, may therefore be challenged on procedural grounds when the House resumes its consideration of the bill at report stage. The admissibility of the amendments is then determined by the Speaker of the House, whether in response to a point of order or on his or her own initiative.

Amendments were moved with no member present who was actually intent on moving that motion. People were made members of the committee, one assumes, by a motion the committee did not have the power to designate.

For the House to now consider, at report stage, Bill C-60, with these amendments in place, is strictly out of order. It is the proper role of the Speaker of the House to intervene to say that things were done improperly and have to be done right.

In 2007, a point of order was raised in the House dealing with the admissibility of three amendments contained in a bill at report stage from the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Speaker Milliken ruled two of the amendments out of order, finding that they imported into the bill concepts and terms not present in the bill and were therefore beyond the scope of the bill.

I quote from Speaker Milliken's ruling on February 27, 2007:

...the Speaker does not intervene on matters upon which committees are competent to take decisions. However, in cases where a committee has exceeded its authority, particularly in relation to bills, the Speaker has been called upon to deal with such matters after a report has been presented to the House.

That has happened here today.

In terms of amendments adopted by committees on bills, if they were judged to be inadmissible by the Speaker, those amendments would be struck from the bill as amended because the committee did not have the authority to adopt such provisions.

This means there exists a precedent for the Speaker rejecting amendments to a bill and the process by which it was there.

Mr. Speaker, I ask you to rule and review the motion adopted by the standing committee on May 7, 2013, as well as the proceedings that resulted from that motion, and that you rule to determine whether these proceedings were in order and whether the committee overstepped its authority when it adopted the motion.

The House of Commons and Parliament, and democracy in general, have suffered much abuse under this tactic and use of omnibus legislation. We have presented ourselves many times in defence of the institution and the right of members to speak and the people we represent to clearly understand the legislation the government is attempting to move.

The abuse of omnibus legislation has been a decision by the government. The difficulty it is having in the way amendments are moved and the process by which a bill goes through are of its own making, and it has only itself to blame.

A committee cannot take powers the House did not give it. Simply accepting motions from members who are not part of a committee and are not present to move the motion, contravenes the basic tenets of this place. The presence and acknowledged presence of a standing member of any of these committees is required—it is a basic, fundamental requirement—for a motion to proceed. These motions were considered improperly. We ask that you rule in this matter.

Bill C-49—Time Allocation Motion

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome everyone to this, the 36^th time allocation motion. This is a record. It makes you wonder how the government justifies once again invoking time allocation.

In October 2002, when referring to the number of times that the Liberals had invoked time allocation, the Prime Minister said the following:

“The government has used closure and time allocation more frequently than any previous government.”

The government has beaten this record, a record that the current Prime Minister denounced approximately 10 years ago.

Professor Ned Franks, an expert in constitutional matters, stated a little earlier this year that no government in Canada's history had invoked time allocation as frequently as this government. It is a record. It is thoroughly undemocratic.

I would once again like to quote the Prime Minister. On December 9, 2002, in reference to the then-Liberal government, he said the following:

He said that the government invoked closure because “...there are no plans”. He added “...the government is simply increasingly embarrassed by the state of the debate and it needs to move on”.

We are faced with a similar situation today. The Conservatives are so ashamed of what is occurring in the Senate that they want to cut short debate as quickly as possible, and prorogue the House, once and for all. It is, quite simply, undemocratic. When a time allocation motion is invoked, there is no opportunity to properly and fully discuss prospective legislation. Bill C-38 is a prime example of this.

The government has amended so many bills that it is now trying to fill in the gaps left by the dearth of debate. For example, the Fisheries Act was amended to change the definition of fish habitat protection. Last month, Fisheries and Oceans Canada called on stakeholders across Canada to help it define fish habitat protection because it was unable to do so itself. Had we debated Bill C-38 last year, we would have found a solution.

Invoking a time allocation motion is undemocratic and leads to second-rate legislation that will end up before the Supreme Court. It really is a waste.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in the House in support of Bill C-48 at third reading.

This is a rather large bill that is more than 1,000 pages long. I just want to point out that Bill C-48 looks like a mammoth omnibus bill. It is a two- or three-inch-thick brick with more than 1,000 pages.

Last year, we had the mammoth Bill C-38. Then we had the mammoth Bill C-45. Now we have Bill C-48, which is extremely large and complex. What is more, the font is quite small. It is very hard to read and very complicated.

It makes many technical changes to the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, and other legislation. This topic may seem very technical and unappealing to many people, but these changes are often necessary and can have a significant impact on the Canadian economy. The majority of the measures proposed in this bill have already been in place for many years, but the bill makes them law.

Unfortunately, the massive size of this bill shows that there is still work to be done to convert similar technical changes into legislative measures in a timely fashion. Failure to update our tax code on a regular basis makes it hard for Canadians, business people in particular, to find any clarity in our tax system. We must also look at the growing complexity of tax law and focus on the need to simplify it over time.

The more complicated the system, the more flaws it contains, and the more room there is for loopholes. When that happens, then there are bound to people who will take advantage. That is why it is important to simplify everything.

On that subject, I would like to quote the 2012 pre-budget submission from the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada:

[We] strongly believe that the key to sustained economic recovery and enhanced economic growth lies in the government’s commitment to tax reform and red tape reduction.

CGA-Canada went on to make two recommendations. First, it recommended modernizing Canada's tax system to make it simple, transparent and more efficient. Second, it proposed implementing a “sunset provision” to prevent future legislative backlogs.

The government has been very slow to legislate technical amendments. In a report tabled about four years ago, in 2009, the Auditor General at the time, Sheila Fraser, pointed out that the Department of Finance Canada had a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that had not been enacted. Here is what her report said:

No income tax technical bill has been passed since 2001.

It is now 2013. That means that two previous governments have been asleep at the switch, and for a considerable amount of time. Today's majority government has been in power for nearly a decade, yet an income tax technical bill has not been passed. What is it doing? We do not know.

Sheila Fraser's report goes on to say:

...the government has said that an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments to the Act is desirable...

Yet we know that nothing has been introduced since 2001. They are not doing what the Auditor General suggested:

...an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments...has not happened. As a result, the Department of Finance Canada has a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that have not been enacted.... If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

At one point, people said that Beta videocassettes were the future. We no longer use videocassettes. We are making technological advances. The same thing applies to taxes. It is time for us to get up to date.

Obviously, the size of this bill and the long period of time that passed between the introduction of the previous technical bill and this one show that this process still needs improvement.

On another topic, the NDP thinks that we need to combat tax avoidance and tax evasion, while preserving the integrity of our tax system. That is why we support the changes that this bill makes, particularly those aimed at reducing tax avoidance.

However, we also believe that much more needs to be done to truly address the problem of tax evasion.

According to some estimates, the Canadian tax system is losing between $5.3 billion and $7.8 billion in revenue a year to tax evasion alone. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists recently acquired a long list of individuals from all over the world who are holding billions of dollars in tax havens. According to the consortium, approximately 450 Canadians are on that list. We are not just making this up. We need to find out where all of this money is going.

What is more, according to the information that was recently published by Statistics Canada on foreign direct investments, Canadian investments in the top 12 tax havens worldwide exceeded $170 billion, which is equivalent to 10% of Canada's GDP.

It is true that the majority Conservative government is capable of losing track of $3 billion earmarked for public safety. As a result, it may have difficulty understanding what I am saying about tax evasion. I understand since the government has trouble implementing its own budget.

One of the main reasons why wealthy Canadians and large corporations want to put their money in tax havens is to simply avoid paying their fair share of taxes. That means billions of dollars in lost tax revenue for the federal government and fewer new jobs in Canada.

The government boasts that it has announced new investments to combat tax evasion, but unfortunately, this new money totals just one-quarter of the $113 million that this government has spent since 2009 to advertise its budgets.

Furthermore, the government has made some $250 million in cuts to the Canada Revenue Agency. These cuts led to the loss of about 3,000 jobs within that department.

The government is cutting the jobs of the people who are supposed to be working on combatting tax evasion. The Conservatives want to reduce the size of government—cut the red tape, as they say—but at what cost? They do not realize that sometimes we have to rely on the people who are able to help us. I do not think the Conservatives truly understand how important it is to combat tax evasion.

In spite of the government's lack of conviction, we believe that Bill C-48 will have a positive impact and will help discourage tax evasion.

In conclusion, the sheer size of this bill shows that the government must be more responsible in managing the tax system. More specifically, the government must ensure that it periodically passes legislation on proposed tax measures. Failure to do so creates uncertainty for business people, jurists and tax experts, and makes it nearly impossible for parliamentarians to do their jobs when they are faced with bills as big as the one we have today.

I must point out how important it is to focus on compliance to guarantee the integrity of the tax system.

The NDP believes that we must eliminate tax loopholes and work harder to combat tax havens. This government is tired and it is time for a change.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Chambly—Borduas for agreeing to share his time with me. I am very grateful.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-48, which is a step any government would need to take in order to update our Income Tax Act. It is a relatively complex law. To begin, I would like to point out that I am not a tax expert or an accountant. I did study the bill, which is about 950 pages long. I did not read the whole thing because, unfortunately, I ran out of time this morning. I do understand the broad strokes of the bill, however.

As a parliamentarian, I must say that it is always disappointing to be faced with bills of such scope. I would be surprised if a single one of my colleagues has read the entire 950 pages, one by one, and knows exactly what is in this bill, unless they happen to be one of the public servants who wrote it. It is always disappointing to see such massive bills, which no average person has the time to read or reflect on. We are asked to vote on these kinds of bills, as was the case for budget implementation Bills C-38 and C-45, which were 400 pages each.

They were mammoth bills, like today's. I must say that these are important and useful measures. They have their purpose, but it is important to mention that more frequent updating could have at least made things easier for MPs. We would not have had to read 950 pages today if tax laws had been updated more frequently over the past 10 years.

The most recent technical bill of this nature dates back to 2001, and it is now 2013. As a result, some things have been dragging on for over a decade and need to be changed for the better. This bill is not flawed, but before going into details, I wanted to point out that a bill of this size is problematic for MPs and prevents them from doing their job properly.

With a 950-page bill, we need to wonder whether the government has done a good job. Why did the government wait so many years to introduce it? Why not introduce it earlier? More frequent updates would have helped. That point was raised several times in committee. I did not have the opportunity to be there, but I read the transcript.

As the member for Sherbrooke, I agree with the principle of having a clearer system and more frequent updates to allow for more effective management, particularly for businesses and individuals who do their taxes each year and must comply with fairly complicated legislation. The Income Tax Act must be one of Canada's largest pieces of legislation at hundreds of pages long.

Of course, the NDP believes that we must fight tax avoidance and tax evasion while preserving the integrity of our tax system. That is why we support the changes proposed in this bill, for they are meant to address issues that allow tax avoidance. This is not a mammoth bill like the budget implementation bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, but still, it is nearly 1,000 pages long. There is a difference though. This time, these are very technical measures that we supported and that we will support again at third reading.

These changes are important. I would like to talk about the major changes, so that the viewing public can understand what they mean.

Part 1 of the bill deals with offshore investment fund property and non-resident trusts in accordance with proposals announced in budget 2010 and August 2010. These measures will ensure the taxation of Canadian residents' worldwide income from all sources.

Part 1 will therefore update the legislation in order to guarantee the integrity of the tax system and prevent tax avoidance. Of course, the NDP supports this change in order to try to keep our tax system as clear as possible. The NDP also wants to make tax avoidance impossible in any way, shape or form.

We realize that the existing legislation has some loopholes that people can use to avoid paying part of their taxes or to evade taxes in other countries. This fight will never end. People will always try to find ways to get around the law. Unfortunately, that is just how society is; some people will always try to abuse the system. As legislators, we must ensure that these people are punished or amend the legislation so that these things never happen again.

Parts 2 and 3 of the bill deal with taxation of corporations with foreign affiliates.

Part 4 deals with something important that I wanted to address as well, and that is bijuralism, an important aspect of our Canadian legal system. In Quebec we have civil law and the rest of Canada has common law. These are two different types of law. Part 4 deals with this situation that can sometimes be unclear and cause confusion.

It is therefore important in the Canadian context that these legal systems be respected in our federal laws, laws that apply to the entire country. There are differences between civil law and common law when it comes to real property, personal property and joint and several liability. The bill addresses these issues and clarifies them for individuals and businesses that have to deal with these differences.

Most of the changes are based on the specific circumstances of people in industry. In their testimony, they made their case to the legislators and the government to have the changes made. As the member for Sherbrooke, I pay taxes every year like everyone else, but I cannot put myself in the shoes of those whose tax circumstances are different or who are part of a business, for example. It is therefore important to have their comments so that we, as legislators, can change things that are flawed. Obviously, nothing is perfect.

In closing, I take issue with the size of the bill and the fact that the government waited so long to introduce such a technical bill. I am in favour of having a clearer, more precise process that is used more frequently so that the necessary changes can be made more quickly with smaller bills that are easier for parliamentarians to understand.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Sherbrooke.

Contrary to what we just heard, while the government is trying to make up stories about a non-existent carbon tax, Bill C-48 has to do with actual tax-related issues.

This is not a platform for Conservative members to invent stories. No, this is a very important process. We are looking at how the system will change, as well as at the implementation of certain procedures and recommendations that came out of letters sent by the Minister of Finance, communications with accountants, for example, and pre-budget consultations.

We certainly support the various measures in the bill. As a result, we will be supporting the bill today at third reading.

However, a number of aspects of the overall process are problematic, and some issues have to be given due consideration. We were given 1,000 pages all at once. People will wonder how we can support what is basically a 1,000-page omnibus bill after we opposed the omnibus budget bills introduced in the past year. The answer is simple. The difference today is that we are discussing a bill that deals with the same subject, namely, various related acts. This is not like what happened last year. For example, Bill C-38 covered employment insurance reform, environmental protection and so on. For that reason, we do not have a problem with this bill.

What does bother us about the omnibus nature of this bill is that many of these measures have been dragging on for over a decade. We are not the only ones saying so. The former Auditor General also commented on the situation in her 2009 report. At that time, she pointed out that there were 400 measures that had not yet been enacted. These measures were proposed in comfort letters from the Minister of Finance or previous finance ministers in recent years, but none of them had been legislated.

I will explain how this works for the benefit of our viewers. Unlike with other bills, tax-related measures such as these are initially implemented through comfort letters in order to expedite their application. However, the House of Commons must later pass a bill to truly finalize these measures.

What the former Auditor General meant was that 400 measures had been proposed but that the House had not yet passed legislation on them. Bill C-48 contains only 200 of these 400 measures, so there is still a great deal of work to be done.

I mention this because the former Auditor General is not the only one who raised this problem. Various members of the business and accounting communities have also done so. They have testified before the Standing Committee on Finance and written letters to the Minister of Finance and the various MPs who have held that position in the past 10, 12 or 13 years, while these measures have sat on the shelf.

These people have said that it is not good for the business community, small businesses or people who have to deal with the tax code or the tax system. There is a great deal of uncertainty. The finance minister tells them that certain measures are going to be implemented but then the government waits 5, 10, 13 or 15 years before it passes legislation on these measures.

This creates a certain amount of uncertainty, which is not good for the economy, or for business people and individuals who are trying their best to understand issues that are already quite complex. Very few people outside the accounting community can really stand up and say that they truly understand the entire tax code. It is extremely complex. Fortunately, we have accountants who can help us to understand it. However, they are the ones who are saying that this somewhat haphazard approach is causing them problems.

Although we support these measures and therefore the bill, I believe that this process and this debate highlight the fact that the process needs to be reviewed and made faster.

If the minister is going to promise measures to business people, accountants and everyone concerned, those measures need to be passed in a timely manner, which has not happened in the past. Another issue that was raised is the fact that a number of measures are being passed at the same time. We need to avoid that.

As I explained, this omnibus bill is less problematic than the budget implementation bills. However, to wake up one morning to all these measures and so many related tasks will create a lot of work for accountants, business people and the public, who want to understand how the government manages the taxes they pay. It is important to make the process easier, and that is what the government should be focusing on.

As I already mentioned, we need to look at how the world is currently evolving. Tax season brings with it television ads encouraging people to buy tax software. People are making money off that, which is fine. I am not out to attack or criticize them. However, let us put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is not a tax expert. In my opinion, if the government simplified the process and made it more efficient and easier to comprehend, the public would be in a better position to understand how the system works. People would be more inclined to trust the government and how it spends taxpayers' money.

Just look at the current climate: people do not have a lot of faith in how their elected representatives are spending their tax dollars. This would be a step in the right direction and a good way to regain the public trust. Of course, this is not the ultimate solution. However, the government should have a closer look at this issue, and that is what the bill before us proposes.

I am not a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, but I had a chance to read the testimony given at that committee. It is quite interesting, because it shows just how out of touch past Liberal governments and the current Conservative government have been with reality as expressed by various accountants' associations during pre-budget consultations. They stated repeatedly that the government really needs to re-evaluate the situation.

The bill contains measures that have been under discussion since 1998. The time frame is completely absurd. If I were a small business owner who had to pay taxes and was trying to understand these measures, I would see that some of these measures were supposed to have been incorporated into our tax law in 1998 or 2001. It is 2013, and they have not yet been incorporated.

These measures are not yet part of the legislation. I see that as a serious problem. The process really needs to be re-evaluated. Every political party in the House would agree to that. Furthermore, members of the Standing Committee on Finance could examine it.

I will close on that point, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to speak to the process, because although we support the bill, this has really highlighted some of its flaws. I think we need to use this debate as an opportunity to address these flaws and find ways to improve the system. We should not have to do this every 15 years, nor should we have to add hundreds of tax measures at the same time. A more appropriate approach would be better for taxpayers, entrepreneurs and accountants, to name a few.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I now invite questions and comments from my colleagues.

The Environment

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleague opposite that using rhetoric to avoid the issue or distract people from the issue will not help protect our parks, much like making investments does not create long-term jobs.

I would remind her that her Minister of the Environment recently won a fossil award.

Why not invest in our future instead of wasting money on advertising campaigns filled with lies or spreading propaganda to try to enhance the Conservatives' image?

The government spent $500,000 on training to brainwash scientists so they could then brainwash the public.

The Conservatives want to sell pipeline and oil sands projects without any real environmental assessments, which they did away with in Bill C-38.

This government also plans to spend another $16 million on advertising in the coming year to try to enhance its image. Why?

Why not spend that money where it is needed? Why not spend that money on parks or measures to stimulate the economy? Why not invest the money in environmental technology or in sustainable infrastructure? That is how you look after the economy and the environment.

I will repeat the question to my colleague. What is this government's priority? Its own image or the well-being of Canadians? Does it care more about statistics or about looking at studies and facts to ensure it is making positive changes?

Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Peace River eventually got around Bill S-12. However, I would like to ask him a question.

I am thinking about small business as well in the context of this act. Some commentators have noted that will be difficult for people who are affected by regulations to stay on top of those regulations with the ease with which things can be incorporated by reference. There will be less scrutiny and, while things may be in legislation described as “accessible”, we have seen the Conservative government take labels off cans and say that they are now accessible on a website. We have already seen that under Bill C-38 pharmaceutical drugs will be maintained on a list as opposed to posted in the Canada Gazette for full regulation.

Is the member not just a little troubled that some of the people in business with whom he empathizes, and rightly so, could find themselves on the wrong side of a regulation about which they had much less notice because of Bill S-12?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the member opposite if that is what Bill C-38 said. However, it does not say that we are to harmonize our regulations with the provinces. It does not say that at all. It says that the minister may make regulations that can be amended at any time and those regulations can reference other jurisdictions, not just the provinces. It could be anywhere. Bob's towing company could be the one setting the regulations for our environment. That is not acceptable.

If it specifically mentioned the provinces, I would not have a problem with it.

In my speech, I actually referred to some specific things that could be done to make this a better bill, but maybe he was not listening.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member across the aisle for his speech. I would like just to go through a few points in it.

He did mention some of the changes that happened to Bill C-38 to amalgamate 41 different agencies into 3. Obviously, there were some changes there, and so I think some answers need to be forthcoming.

For example, he said the minister would be able to delegate authority to certain processes that had not been yet named. That is simply because we work with our provincial partners that have equivalency or may want to substitute certain environmental processes to ensure it gets done on a timely basis. Whoever has the most expertise, I think, should be in charge of that process, whether it be the federal government or the province. That is to be worked out.

However, if we look at labour and environmental health and safety, we work with the provinces all the time, and so when we harmonize these things, it would be better for business, better for Canadians—one set of rules.

Again, I have heard multiple references to amendments. People have said that we say we welcome amendments. I say we do.

However, here is the problem. The member for Kings—Hants, in Bill C-45, put 300 amendments forward, each one like 101 bottles of beer on the wall, such as asking for one day to be changed as to when the bill would then take effect.

I would like to hear from the member one amendment that is—

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, l want to thank my other colleagues for having raised the level of debate on the bill before us.

When I was asked to speak on the bill earlier today, it looked like one of those dry and incomprehensible things that would be very difficult to get one's teeth into. However, upon reading it, I discovered there is actually a huge change being proposed in the powers of Parliament and the ability of Parliament to do its job, which is to make laws that affect the lives of Canadians. It is such a huge change because the bill proposes to make legal what the government has apparently already done 170 times since it has been in office without some check and balance on that ability.

The bill proposes to make legal the ability of the Governor in Council, which is the 60 men and women who make up the Privy Council, I suppose, to make regulations that are open-ended, to make regulations that are determined by third parties and to make regulations that are actually put in place by some other agency, maybe even a foreign government.

That is huge. It is very difficult for me, as a parliamentarian, to accept.

That said, there may in fact be rare occasions when it is appropriate to incorporate by reference a regulation that is created by an agency that everybody understands, trusts and accepts as the agency that is the world's leading expert on X, Y or Z. With that in mind, the NDP is determined that the bill go off to committee to see if we can whittle down this power to something that is acceptable.

I will read the summary of the bill, which is:

This enactment amends the Statutory Instruments Act to provide for the express power

—a power the government has actually already taken—

to incorporate by reference in regulations. It imposes an obligation on regulation-making authorities to ensure that a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference is accessible. It also provides that a person is not liable to be found guilty of an offence or subjected to an administrative sanction for a contravention relating to a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference unless certain requirements in relation to accessibility are met. Finally, it makes consequential amendments to the Statutory Instruments Regulations.

On the issue of accessibility, it says “unless certain requirements in relation to accessibility are met”, and those are not defined. Is that going to be a regulation to the Statutory Instruments Regulations? I ask because the definition of “accessibility” is not here.

I could not get a straight answer from any of the Conservatives I was able to ask questions of as to what exactly “accessibility” means in the context of the bill. It is not provided by the bill itself, yet the summary suggests that there are certain requirements in relation to accessibility. However, they are just not here. Does that mean we are regulating the regulations? It is very confusing.

The bill would put extreme amounts of power into the hands of the executive. As we have already experienced in this House, there have been complaints by certain members of the government party about too much power being in the hands of the executive. Those complaints led to a series of interventions before the Speaker of the House to ask that the Speaker actually rule to limit the power of the executive in controlling its ability to speak in this chamber. I would think that those same members of Parliament would be concerned that the bill before us would put even more power into the hands of the executive without any checks or balances or any way for the Parliament of Canada to determine in advance whether or not it is appropriate to incorporate by reference, which is what the bill suggests we should give the executive the power to do.

There is a Latin phrase, delegatus non potest delegare, which means that a delegate cannot give his power to another delegate. One cannot transfer one's ability to somebody else and say, “Here, you do it for me.”

That is essentially what this bill is suggesting should happen to the laws of this land, that we will make the law, as Parliament, but we will let somebody else determine how that law is actually written. That kind of rubs the wrong way. That is not something that I signed on for, to give somebody else the power to make the laws that we have been sent here to make.

I understand there is a majority position in the House, and so I do not get a whole lot of say. The government rejects any say we try to have in legislation 99.3% of the time, but at least we have that opportunity. This would actually give that power to a third party, to someone outside of this chamber, to change the laws of Canada. The government has already done it on 170 occasions, but until now it has been on a case-by-case basis. This act would actually make it legitimate every time. I have some difficulty with that.

Other legislatures have looked at this problem and come up with rules around how this delegation of authority should be used. Perhaps that is something we should be talking about in committee, because we are not going to have any amendments here. Maybe there are places and times when delegating a regulation is an appropriate thing, but we need to know when those times are and what those regulations would be.

I would suggest, as was suggested by some other legislatures on this planet, that one of the things would be only if it is impractical to do otherwise than to transfer that authority. It should be expressly authorized. It should be clearly quantified. The rules regarding subsequent amendment to that regulation should be clearly stated, so that we cannot just have some third party deciding how to change those regulations.

There should be consultation before those regulations are incorporated. There should be access, and we have talked about access. There ought to be accountability in the hands of the minister. If a minister is going to actually delegate his or her authority to a third party, that minister then has to be accountable for whatever that third party does.

None of that is spelled out in this bill. I worry, too, that we open the door to creating regulations that are in another jurisdiction, in another country, in another part of the planet. As an example, we have privacy regulations in this country that determine that our personal information should be kept private, should be kept in a way that is not disclosed to third parties. However, as we have discovered over the past few years, many of our banking institutions, our utility companies and our telephone companies routinely put that information in other countries.

Does that mean that the government could then legitimize that practice by making those other countries' privacy laws apply to those transactions? That would bother me. I would not want to have that happen. I do not want some other country determining the privacy of my personal information. It then encourages the harmonization of our laws with other perhaps less democratic jurisdictions or perhaps less forward-thinking jurisdictions or perhaps less effective jurisdictions. I do not want to encourage the government to get lazy.

On the issue of accessibility, I have asked the question several times, “Is this accessible in terms that a person with a disability would understand?” I have not gotten a clear answer from the government.

It appears that the word “accessible” is just the word “accessible”. There is no definition of what accessible means anywhere in this act. There is no definition of what is not accessible. It just says it must be accessible. Does that mean that if I have $250 to get a copy of the regulation, I have to pay $250 to get a copy of the regulation from some third party, if that is what that third party wants to charge? Does that mean it is then therefore accessible, because somebody with money can get it?

That is not what our normal level of accessibility is. Accessibility means that all of our laws are published in such a way that libraries across the country have them, and all of the regulations are available to anybody in this country who can walk into a library and get them for free.

Does the word “accessible” mean that we can have costs now for the regulations that are part of the laws that govern this country and, therefore, if a person does not have the money it is no excuse?

The other concern I have, and some my colleagues have already mentioned it, is the origin of this legislation. It is ironic that we are discussing a Senate originating bill when we are in the midst of quite an all-consuming controversy about the Senate.

Many Canadians have phoned me and have emailed me to say they no longer have any confidence or trust in the Senate and that they no longer have any use for the Senate. We are dealing with a government bill originating in the Senate that gives the government huge, sweeping powers and originates from an organization, the chamber down the hall, in which many Canadians have lost complete confidence. Many Canadians have lost complete confidence in the Conservative government's ability to use the Senate. They are calling upon the Government of Canada and us as parliamentarians to do away with the anachronistic and unrepresentative organization down the hall.

That then lends me to have some difficulty dealing with a bill that came from there when Canadians are saying they do not trust it. I am not certain that will not colour how we deal with future bills from the Senate, or even this bill. If this bill from the Senate, where I am told to not trust what they are doing, because the place is rife with difficulties, should this bill not have originated there? Should this bill, and any bill that were are dealing with, originate here in the House for it to be trusted and accountable to the people?

In terms of the actual specifics of what the government has done over the past few years, the example that jumps immediately to mind is Bill C-38 from last year, which was the first bill of the big 450-page omnibus bill that eliminated the old Environmental Assessment Act and replaced it with a new, more tepid, Environmental Assessment Act. "More tepid" is probably the best thing I could say about it. Buried in that act is exactly what this bill intends to make law:

(1) A regulation made under this Act may incorporate by reference documents that are produced by a person or body other than the Agency, including a federal authority referred to in any other paragraphs (a) to (d) of the definition “federal authority” in subsection 2(1).

(2) A document may be incorporated by reference either as it exists on a particular date or as amended from time to time.

(3) The Minister must ensure that any document incorporated by reference in a regulation is accessible.

(4) For greater certainty, a document that is incorporated by reference into a regulation is not required to be transmitted for registration or published in the Canada Gazette by reason only that it is incorporated by reference.

Therein is the most telling example of what is intended by the government. This is not something that is benign or innocuous because some other agency does a better job of determining health and safety regulations. We now have given over to an agency and we have no idea who it is because the regulation has not yet been made.

Schedule 2 of that act said that the components of the environment that can be studied in an environmental assessment will be determined by regulation. Until that regulation is published, we cannot really study the environment. Now, we learn that the government can also incorporate by reference some other agency's determination of what the environment is. It can determine whether or not human health, the socio-economic well-being of Canadians and the physical, cultural, architectural and historical heritage are part of the environment. All of these things are no longer defined. They are incorporated by reference. That regulation now can be determined by some other body or agency.

Maybe that “some other body or agency” is a provincial government. Maybe it is a territorial government. Maybe it is the Government of Venezuela. It does not say.

There is nothing specific in this regulation whatsoever. It says we can do whatever we want. The minister can also enter into an agreement with a foreign state or a subdivision of a foreign state or any institution of any such government or an international organization of states or any institution of such an organization with respect to Canada's environment. This is part of what bothers me with this huge law. We are walking down a road that lends itself to letting other people decide what is good for Canadians and I want to know exactly what is in here. We have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of what the government intends to do by suggesting that regulations defining the environment can be determined by some other body and can be amended from time to time by some other body. That body is not defined. There is no justification for doing that.

We have had an Environmental Assessment Act for many years that had a good definition of the environment. Why the government chose to change it, we can probably guess. This is a classic example of what we are afraid of. By making this legal, the government will take really key things that are important to Canadians and make the regulations governing them amendable by some third party and we have no idea who they are.

I am trying to be helpful here. I will give an example of something that might actually be a good way to incorporate a regulation by reference. If, for example, the Minister of Health were to determine that there needed to be a regulation governing diesel exhaust and its effect on humans adjacent to a rail corridor, something that is near and dear to the people in my riding, she might decide to make that regulation accord with the World Health Organization's standards, which most people agree are by far the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate standards. The World Health Organization would then be, by reference, the standard by which Canada would measure carcinogens and particulate matters as a way of regulating them. That may be an example of something where incorporation by reference is actually not a bad thing. We would not have to duplicate the effort of the World Health Organization. We could feed into the World Health Organization rather than creating our own system of measurements and standards. That is not all this bill says.

Another possibility is the Labour Code has health and safety regulations that include references to elements of the environment to which a worker in a federally regulated workplace might be exposed. There might be an organization out there that actually publishes good standards that all in the House could agree that, as amended from time to time, are not a bad way to go. However, we do not have any limit that says we should agree on them first.

In conclusion, we do not necessarily disagree with the premise, in some limited circumstances, of ambulatory references, references that can be changed from time to time without reference back to the House, but we need some strict controls on when and how they are used. That is not in this bill. We need the agreement of all in Parliament on the specific reference. That is not in this bill. We also need at least some guidelines and controls for the government to actually utilize when it is drafting legislation so that it knows that this is not something that will run afoul of the general agreement that we might be able to give if we can put some guidelines, controls and strictures around this regulation-setting power by the government.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the motion before us is rather bizarre. As many members have said before me, it is quite surprising that the government is using the excuse of urgency.

The government has imposed closure a record 33 times, as well as restrictions on the time allowed to study bills in committee. With Bill C-60, this same government gave notice of a time allocation motion after only one hour of debate. I did say only one hour of debate. This is the same government that introduced monster omnibus bills because it did not want the committees and parliamentarians to properly study their legislative proposals in good faith.

I am not afraid of hard work. I am a doctor by training and I am used to 12-hour and even 24-hour shifts. It is not pleasant, but you get used to it.

My colleagues and I have not hesitated to stand up to the government and to do our jobs, as was the case with legislation to force Canada Post employees back to work and regarding their working conditions. We stood our ground when necessary.

It is obvious that the Conservatives do not have any respect for democratic institutions. I just mentioned the 33 time allocation motions they have imposed since May 2, 2011. What a sorry record.

The omnibus bills, such as Bills C-38 and C-45, are perfect examples of this. The Conservatives have steamrolled their way through adopting measures that Canadians and parliamentarians did not have the chance to scrutinize.

As everyone knows, the appropriate committees were unable to properly study Bill C-38 because it was not split up. That is disrespectful. With Bill C-45, the Conservatives used a different approach in order to curry favour with the public.

However, I can speak from my experience with the Standing Committee on Health. What a joke. The committee's meeting on Bill C-45 started late because of yet another time allocation motion. We then heard from witnesses and had just one round of questions. It is clear to me that the government did not really want the committees to study the impact of the measures. It just wanted to look better without having to do better. That too shows a lack of respect for our democratic institutions.

I also think that what is happening in committee is not right. Many witnesses take the time to come here to speak to subjects or bills that are important to them. Most of the time, however, their contributions are ignored. It is as though the committees were a waste of time. In any event, the outcome is prepared in advance by the Prime Minister's Office and so are many of the Conservative members' statements.

Yesterday, the House Leader of the Official Opposition said that 99.3% of all amendments proposed by the opposition have been rejected by the government.

This implies that every single one of the bills the government introduces is practically perfect.

In 99.3% of the cases, the government outright rejected all of the testimony from witnesses and experts, all of the comments from the public and all of the amendments proposed during the study of the bill. That is simply impossible.

Based on what we heard from witnesses, and after studying some bills in the Standing Committee on Health, I know that some of these bills could have benefited from the proposed amendments.

The NDP is not afraid of work. The problem is that I am not sure the government wants to extend our hours in order to get more work done. It has not guaranteed that we will be here until the summer recess.

I belong to a party that has the word “democratic” in its name, and I take these issues very seriously. The people of Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert put their trust in me on May 2, 2011, and I am doing my best to represent them.

Canadians sent us here to ask the necessary questions and to implement the best policies and public practices. We think that the government should take action so that we can do our job properly. The Prime Minister is now playing the victim over what happened in the Senate with senators he himself appointed solely to raise money for the Conservative Party of Canada. The Prime Minister is now playing the victim and wondering how this could have happened.

How could his chief of staff give a $90,000 cheque to a senator the Prime Minister himself appointed? How could his chief of staff—who sat right next to him every single day, who knows the government's deepest, darkest secrets and who the Prime Minister put in charge of major trade files and negotiations with other countries—do that?

Of course, the Prime Minister's hands are clean, and he has nothing to say about this. He believes that his hands are so clean that he is not going to answer any questions about it. He is going to South America for trade talks with countries we already have trade deals with.

Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think it is wrong that it ever became irrelevant. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong and that it needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine. The government needs that more than anything.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history, shutting down debate more than any government in history and relying on the tactics it is using today, it is showing weakness, not strength.

The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my speaking time with my colleague, the member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert.

I have been given time to speak to this motion. Once again this week, the government is moving to extend our evening sitting hours significantly. It wants Parliament to sit until midnight.

We have to take a close look at this motion because similar motions in the past have often resulted in a shorter parliamentary calendar.

Since the beginning of this discussion, the Conservatives have continually surprised us with messages utterly at odds with what we are used to hearing.

Just like that, the government wants to extend the time we spend in the House. It claims this approach will enable members to debate bills on the order paper in detail and work hard for Canadians.

How ironic. After constantly curtailing debate ever since the last election, the government now says it wants to extend sitting hours to provide opportunities for debate.

Also ironic is the fact that the government has so much to say about democracy despite its unrelenting and unprecedented contempt for our parliamentary bodies.

Such principles were conspicuous by their absence when the government prorogued Parliament for purely partisan reasons, a move that was bad for Canadians.

Let us not forget that the Prime Minister had absolutely no compunction about letting dozens of bills die on the order paper when he wanted to save his government's hide. How can he say that he wants to let bills move through the normal legislative process when his political agenda has been given top priority in the current legislative cycle?

When a government constantly uses adjournment motions as a tactic to limit participation in and duration of debates, that is not democracy. It is exactly the opposite of what has been moved today.

May 8 was the 33rd time the government brought a vote on a time allocation motion that effectively limits the number of MPs who can speak to a given bill.

It sure looks like the Conservatives have been hell-bent on beating their own record for shutting down debate ever since the beginning of this Parliament.

How can the government say that it wants to promote free debate when it holds the record for cutting debate short? Are we supposed to believe that the government really wants to have it both ways?

Nor is it very democratic when the Prime Minister's Office muzzles its own members in their statements in the House.

Personally, neither I nor my colleagues in the official opposition have to get our speeches approved or adjusted to go with the soup of the day. We speak freely, without constraint from our party, but the government members cannot say the same.

How can the Conservatives stand here today and say that they defend democracy when they put gag orders on their own party's statements and speeches in the House?

Working for Canadians does not mean introducing three mammoth bills like Bills C-38, C-45 and C-60, and then watering down debate, limiting discussion and preventing parliamentarians from learning about what is happening in parliamentary committee, as is the case with a typical bill.

How can the Conservatives claim that they want to let the parliamentary process follow its course when they are the first to short-circuit it by forcing the vote on hundreds of measures without allowing representatives to do their work properly?

Never in the history of this country has a government shown such contempt for our institutions. That is why it is becoming difficult today to understand and believe the lines the Conservatives are trying to feed us.

You cannot on the one hand advocate for extending our sitting time to encourage debate, and on the other hand interfere constantly, as the Conservatives have done with complete impunity.

Therefore, we must question the motives behind the government's desire to extend the sitting hours.

If we look at what has happened in the past, we see that, in general, extending the sitting hours allows the party in power to make the parliamentary calendar shorter. Right now, the Conservatives clearly do not have enough credibility for us to believe their intentions and trust them.

We have to wonder whether the government simply wants to be forgotten as quickly as possible over the summer and to have people forget about all the problems that its wilful blindness caused with the temporary foreign worker program.

Yesterday, the government House leader said that he wanted to accelerate his government's economic measures. If he really cares about the economy, how could he let senators make such extravagant expenditures on the backs of taxpayers? The fact is that the government would rather shirk its responsibilities than face any challenges, answer the official opposition's questions and allow a real debate on issues that are of concern to Canadians. That is the real problem.

If the government wants to fully debate the bills on the order paper, then it should allow the House to sit until June 21, as set out on the calendar. The NDP is prepared to debate. The NDP is prepared to sit until June 21, as scheduled.

We have demonstrated our commitment and dedication to Parliament on numerous occasions. One of our members once even sat for 22 consecutive hours. When the government wanted to lock out Canada Post employees, we were there to debate and to stand up for Canadians.

Every day, we are here to stand up for the interests of Canadians. We routinely propose amendments in order move forward on bills that have sometimes been introduced over a year and a half ago, but these amendments are rejected by a government that wants to promote a political agenda rather than work for Canadians.

First and foremost, we oppose the government's motivations for wanting to impose extended sitting hours. Canadians will not be fooled. They understand the political game that the Conservatives are constantly playing. Canadians know that they cannot trust the Conservatives.

Natural Resources—Main Estimates, 2013-14

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Chair, I was hoping the minister would have that information, especially since the Conservatives made changes under Bill C-38 to the eligibility of witnesses to appear in front of the National Energy Board. Certainly it is a question that is on the minds of many people because it has such important repercussions.

The latest environmental commissioner's report gave a scathing review on the federal government's and the two offshore petroleum boards' readiness for a major oil spill. Is there any funding in the estimates to fix this negligence by the minister and his government?

Extention of Sitting Hours

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not very happy about being here. However, I am here because we need to stand up to this government, which believes that Parliament exists only for its benefit and that it is just a place concerned with the government's problems and accountability.

It is almost as if a new party came into the House today, as we listen to the Conservative House leader speak. It certainly is not the party that moved prorogation and killed legislation time and again. This new Conservative Party is suddenly interested in not defeating legislation. It could not be the same Conservative Party that has shut down debate in the House of Commons more than any party in Canadian history. It could not be a member of the same party who was speaking here today, talking about opening up debate. The Conservatives have invented a new world for themselves that is fascinating.

I am reflecting on my friend from Langley, who sought to speak in this House on what they call an S. O. 31 statement, which happens just before question period. It is a statement that lasts for about a minute. Usually members of Parliament get up and make a statement about their ridings about some issue that is important to them. My friend from Langley, who sits in the Conservative Party, was a parliamentary secretary, I remember, for the Minister of the Environment, a chair, a well-respected member of Parliament, and a friend. He sought to stand up and speak to something he thought was important to his constituents.

It was the old Conservative Party that shut down that member of Parliament and every other one who tried to get up and speak, because this new Conservative Party talks about wanting people to speak in the House and wanting to have debate.

While it is refreshing to hear it, I do not believe it, and I do not think Canadians are going to believe that suddenly accountability and democracy have broken out within the Prime Minister's Office. It is the office of this particular Prime Minister who, rather than face any uncomfortable questions from the media or the official opposition members today, or for the rest of this week, has decided that going to South America to sit with other trading partners from other countries we already have established trade deals with to talk about trade deals that already exist is much more important than asking questions about the Senate.

It must be a new Conservative Party that suddenly has on its agenda a legislative directive that the members need to sit longer hours and work hard on something that might be quite topical today, something such as the reform of Canada's Senate, which has been long overdue and long called for by Canadians and New Democrats who said that the place was fundamentally broken. There is no accountability. Unelected and under investigation is the new Senate.

I remember the old Reform Party. You probably do as well, Mr. Speaker. It came in riding from the west, from my part of the world.

I see a member across the way, who was one of the founding members of the Reform Party, calling it a beautiful thing. While I disagreed fundamentally with many of its positions, certainly its social positions, there was something on which I could see some common ground. That was to make Parliament more accountable and to reform the Senate.

The current government has now been in power almost seven long years. Is that right? The time goes slowly. In those six or seven years, the Prime Minister made a promise as one of his fundamental commitments to Canadians. Commitments should be treated sacredly, I believe.

We all get up at elections. We have party platforms and promises we make to Canadians. If we win, that platform and those promises become our agenda. That is what we would seek to do in office. It is simple. One of his promises, one of his agendas, one of his reforms was on the Senate. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they would see those Liberal senators down there taking their money, not really representing anybody, going on trips and maybe even defrauding taxpayers. Who knows? The Reform movement came in and said it was wrong and anti-democratic.

For a party that decided to put “democratic” right in the middle of our name, we take these questions seriously. We feel that it is accountability to the people we on the orange team represent. In a sense, we are watching this Prime Minister now play victim to what is going on in the Senate with senators he appointed exclusively and explicitly to raise money for the Conservative Party of Canada. Now this same Prime Minister claims victimhood and wonders how this happened. How did his chief of staff, who sits to his immediate left every day and knows his deepest, darkest secrets, whom he put in charge of major trade files and negotiations with other countries, cut a $90,000 cheque to a senator he appointed? However, obviously, the Prime Minister's hands are clean, and he has nothing to say about this. He believes that his hands are so clean that he is not going to answer any questions about it. He is going to go to South America to be in trade talks with countries we already have trade deals with. That is the new Conservative Party, which is the old one, the same one that has forgotten its roots.

Dear Mr. Manning is still with us, so he is not spinning in his grave, but he is definitely spinning. He was asked recently whether the Conservatives have lost their principles. He said, no, they have maintained their priorities. It is an interesting dodge of a question. Mr. Speaker, you have been around politics a bit. You know when a question is put directly and someone answers it indirectly.

I find it incredible that we have before us a motion that continues to abuse Parliament. This motion is designed simply to restrict debate and demonstrate to members of the House of Commons that the only reason Parliament exists is so that the government can do what it wants.

I remember a comment made by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. When we were debating a time allocation motion, he said that their intention was not to put an end to debate or to censure it, but just to control Parliament.

It is incredible that a minister is admitting that the Conservatives just want to control the Parliament of Canada. It also reflects the Conservatives' esprit de corps. They want to control everything, not just the opposition and Parliament, but their members, as well as the media and the public.

The current vision of the Prime Minister and the government leaves the public with no choice and no voice. It is all about the kind of country that the Prime Minister wants to build.

We see a government moving this extraordinary thing, which will see, big deal, members of Parliament sitting until midnight.

New Democrats have been known, sometimes to our detriment, to be willing to force the calendar to the very last minute and sit all night, such as when the government moved anti-worker legislation against a very profitable Canada Post, which, I might add, in a parenthetical way, then lost money.

After the lockout by Canada Post, the government imposed wage contracts on those workers that were less than what the company was willing to offer. Then it said that it needed to shut down Canada Post offices around the country, as Canada Post was losing money because of the lockout it allowed them to do. The logic is inherently twisted on that side.

Remember the omnibus debates and the voting we had. I remember my friend from the Green Party moving a certain number of amendments to the bill, which forced the House to sit all night and vote, hour after hour. I remember some of my friends from Surrey who stayed in their seats for 22 hours.

No one has ever accused New Democrats of not being willing to come to work and work on behalf of our constituents. We may do some things wrong. We may sometimes fall short in some areas, but hard work has not ever been one of those things.

There is such irony in hearing a Conservative House leader who, with his Prime Minister, has prorogued Parliament, shut it down, and killed their government's own legislation time and time again, say to the Speaker that the problem is that they cannot get their legislation through.

It had been there for 12 months. After eight months, they killed it themselves and prorogued the House.

One prorogation was quite notable. The government looked to be in a bit of trouble. It was in a minority position. The world was entering into a very deep recession. The Minister of Finance, who claims to be the best in the world, ignored the recession and introduced what the Conservatives called an austerity budget at the very moment when the rest of the world, realizing that the economy was coming to a virtual standstill, was introducing budgets that did the opposite.

The finance genius we have sitting in the chair said, “Never mind what the rest of the world thinks about what is going on in the global economy; we know that Canada is not going into recession”, even as we were in the midst of a recession. He introduced an austerity budget to cut back billions in job creation, in grants and in all the things the Conservatives take credit for, such as unemployment insurance for a bunch of Canadians who were just being thrown out of work.

The opposition said that it was not a very good budget and suggested that we vote against that budget. The government panicked and prorogued. Canadians got a civil lesson in how Parliament works. They had never heard the word “prorogation” before. Then we got to learn.

The Prime Minister had to go to the Governor General. He sat there for a number of hours, perhaps being lectured about how undemocratic it was, when facing a non-confidence vote, to head down the road to the Queen's representative to ask for permission to shut it all down before he was thrown out of office. He was more worried about his job that day than about Canadians. That is for sure.

That is a government that killed its legislation in order to save itself, and did it time and time again.

Here is the trend that we worry about with today's motion. For a government that has broken the record by shutting down debate more times than any government in Canadian history, it has refused 99.3% of all the amendments that the opposition has brought to its legislation.

Let us look at that for a moment. The way a bill is supposed to work is it comes into the House and gets debated. There is a pro and con and the real coming together or clash of ideas to improve the legislation because no one is perfect. The drafters of legislation do not get it right. They are sometimes hundreds of pages long and very complicated. The House is meant to debate that. Then we send it to committee and hear from experts, not just members of Parliament who are not often experts in these areas, but people who work in the field. They are the social workers, the financial experts, the crime experts and the police. We hear those suggestions and write amendments based on those ideas. That is the way this place is supposed to work.

However, the government is saying that in 99.3% of those cases those experts are wrong and the government is right. It will not change a period, a comma, not a word in any of the legislation. Then lo and behold, time and time again, the legislation is challenged in the courts successfully. The legislation does not fix the problems identified and costs Canada and Canadians billions.

We all remember well Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill that would allow the state to look in on the Internet searches and emails of Canadians without any warrant. The government decided in its vigour for its tough on crime agenda that it would pass a law that said that at any point, at any time, Canadians anywhere could have their BlackBerrys and iPhones tapped by the government, that web searches on home computers could be looked at by the government and the police. There is no country in the world, outside of Iran and North Korea, that would even consider doing this. The Conservative government thought it was a fantastic idea. In trying to argue the case, it said that if we were not into exposing our Internet searches and our emails then we must be in support of child pornography.

Has any more offensive or stupid an argument ever been made on the floor of the House of Commons? It is offensive to basic civil liberties and decency, to the role of members of Parliament trying to do our jobs and to the Canadians who said that they were not sure they wanted the government looking at their email?

I look at the member for Yukon right now. I do not know what he is searching and I do not want to know. It is his privacy to look on his computer and do as he sees fit. That is a civil liberty I am sure he defends as well, but not his government.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, was the flagship. The government rammed it all into one bill and said that it was such important legislation it would shut down debate on it too. Then whole sections of the bill were taken out. Why? It was because they were unconstitutional.

Now we know where that all comes from. Canadians actually pay for a service. Many members of Parliament may not know this, but when a government introduces a bill it goes to constitutional legal experts to determine if the new legislation goes against our constitution, our foundation as a country? If it does, it is a good idea to modify the law to ensure it does not get challenged in the courts, which costs upwards of $3 million to $5 million to taxpayers every time there is one of those challenges. The government did not check on Bill C-10. We know that because the people who work for the Government of Canada, who do this work, are no longer receiving references from the government.

The government is not even asking anymore. It is choosing ignorance. This is incredible. It is saying that it does not want to know whether the laws it writes are constitutional, whether the laws it writes as a government are for or against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is incredible. This is not a mistake. It is by intention. Therefore, we have these lawyers sitting in their offices, being paid every day, waiting for the government to refer the bills it introduces here to ensure they can survive a constitutional challenge. The government does not ask anymore.

Bill C-38, the first omnibus bill and Bill C-45, the second omnibus bill, were both challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. First nations are challenging it. I need to address this because the government House leader mentioned two bills that are being moved, so-called, on behalf of first nations. They are Bill S-2 and Bill S-8. One is matrimonial property rights. It sounds pretty innocuous. Most Canadians would say that matrimonial property rights for first nations women on reserve maybe protects their rights. Who is opposed to it? It is not just us in the opposition, but aboriginal women, every first nation women's group in the country. My friend across the way shakes his head, but I can show him the testimony that says the bill is no good for aboriginal women.

However, the Conservatives know better. With their shameful record on aboriginal rights and title in the country, suddenly they know better than aboriginal women, than first nations women. Bill S-8 is a bill to help first nations have clean drinking water because the record has been shameful.

Government after government has failed first nations communities. Thirty-five per cent of the people I represent in northern British Columbia are in first nations communities. The water conditions there are incredibly bad. We have to do something about it. There are fixes and there are ideas coming from those communities.

Instead the government moves the bill, handing all responsibility down to first nations in terms of cleaning up their own water mess, but none of the resources to do it. Are first nations supportive of it? No. Nor would any municipality or any province in Canada be supportive of legislation that rams down responsibility without any of the support, money or help to get that done.

Most of these first nations communities are living in abject poverty. Where does the government think they are going to get the money from? The government will not settle treaty with them in the west. First nations are having mining, oil and gas exploration and pipelines put everywhere and are receiving none of the royalties, none of the compensation and the government will not move treaty forward.

I was just in Gitxsan territory, speaking with the Gitxsan and the Wet'suwet'en, talking about basic child services, kids who are being abused in their homes and setting up a program that the federal government said that we should enact 20 years ago to allow first nations more rights and responsibilities to rescue those kids and help them kids integrate back into their communities.

Who is not coming to the table? The Conservative government. This is the government that on Bill S-2 and Bill S-8 suddenly said that it had first nations rights and title and priorities at heart, when it did not.

The place can work. Members can sense a certain amount of frustration in my voice, because Parliament can work. It is actually designed to work. I love our system. It is so superior to many other systems I have studied around the world, that have consistent congressional gridlock on legislation and on budgets. We can make things happen here.

However, with the power that is afforded a majority government, which is a lot, comes a certain amount of responsibility to use the power wisely and not abuse it. Yet time and again we have seen the government House leader and other ministers get up and say that they are not looking to limit the debate; they just want to control it. They reject virtually 100% of all the amendments and all the changes and suggestions they hear at committee because they know better and they have the votes to push it forward.

It is at such a point that the control has extended deeply into the government's caucus. Some of the more socially conservative members of the Conservative caucus are no longer free to speak, or are only free to speak on certain things, in certain ways, if the Prime Minister's Office allows for it.

In a small program that we run in northern B.C., initiated a number of years ago, I hold a conference call with all the detachment commanders from all the RCMP outposts that exist in my riding. It is a very large riding facing a lot of tough, difficult situations with policing. Once every two or three months I get on the phone with 12 detachment commanders and we talk about what is going on. We talk about what is happening in crime, what the drug use is like, what legislation is moving through the House that will help or hinder these hard-working, hard-serving officers.

I am not allowed to have that conversation with these RCMP officers anymore. I am not supposed to talk to them. As a sitting member of Parliament, I am not supposed to go to them. A number of them have come to me because they are friends and we have known each other for years. They offer good, on-the-ground advice about what is happening.

They say that they are sorry, that they cannot talk to me. They tell me that I have to phone the Prime Minister's Office in order for them to talk to me about what is going on in Prince Rupert, or what is going on in Dease Lake or Bella Coola.

It is insane. This is wrong. Government officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who I have known for years and who I phone just for an update to see what is going on with our fish on the west coast, tell me that I am a member of Parliament from the opposition and that I need to phone the people in the Prime Minister's Office and that they will give me permission as to whether they can tell me what is going on in Canada's fishery.

This is not their government. This is not a Conservative government. This is Canada's government. We pay for these civil servants. We pay their salaries to do work on behalf of Canadians. Whether it is silencing scientists, shutting down access for members of Parliament to basic conversations, or shutting down debate in Parliament, the consistent voice from the government is that it will not be held to account.

This is bad. This is not just about the privilege all members of the House need to do their job. The government says there is some urgency, but there is not. There is no urgency when it comes to the government's mandate or agenda.

It is very strange for the government to say it is very open, when we see what is going on in the Senate.

We have senators like Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau. All current senators have potentially stolen money from Canadians. These are the same senators that the Prime Minister says are very good people. These are the same senators using money from the Canadian people to travel during an election and raise money for the Conservative Party. That is the new Conservative Party. I do not understand.

I remember the Reform Party of Canada and some reforms that Mr. Manning wanted to make. With the current party, it is the same story as with the Liberal Party and the Gomery commission and all the rest. I am both angry and sad.

The majority of Canadians did not vote for this government, which has a majority, but does not have the majority support of Canadians. Close to 60% of Canadians voted against this agenda, against this sort of arrogance. They voted not to have the kind of government that now uses brutal tactics, not against the New Democratic Party, but against Parliament.

Lastly, I think we need to have a referendum, which may not happen until the next election.

It bears some comment, not only with respect to the Senate scandal but even the motion today.

I watched the government House leader and the Prime Minister on television earlier. He actually allowed the media into his caucus room for a second, which was bizarre. The bully turns into the victim, that somehow this is put upon them, that they are somehow being victimized here.

What frustrates me is not just the work that we have to do as parliamentarians that is constantly thwarted by the government at committee stage, and my friend laughs, but how can it be possible that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected? The evidence is clear.

My friend can shake his head and laugh and treat this with disdain or heckle out what seems to be a favourite tactic of some of my friends who cannot win the debate, but can simply sit in their seats and heckle, yell and try to put down a comment that hurts a little too much, that being that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected, that the witnesses were all wrong, that the government was always right and that the courts must be wrong too. Soon the Conservatives will call them activist courts like the Republicans do in the states. Members should watch for it because it is coming.

We believe this motion is fundamentally flawed in its abuse of this place and of all members. I do not speak just for the New Democrats or the folks down the way. I speak for the backbenchers who have been rubbing up against some of the limitations. What is sad about most of it and is most concerning is those who are not agitating against the Conservative government's control over its backbench and accepting it. I lament the most for those who are so comfortable reading the script from the Prime Minister's Office and repeating it like robots, feeling that is their work and whose expectations of what it is to be a member of Parliament are so diminished that they simply accept it, not those the media have called rebels who have stood up and stated that they want to have their own statement but the Prime Minister's Office has shut them down. They run under the blue banner, which is their choice.

I lament for those who seem so happy to get up and repeat the mindless dribble that is put to them by the Prime Minister's Office day after day. When they first ran for office, I wonder if they said that they wanted to be a member of Parliament to represent people and get to Parliament to speak with a strong voice of conviction on behalf of the people they represent and that in order to do they would read whatever was put in front of them by the Prime Minister's Office, written by a 24-year-old intern who types out some sort of nonsense and makes up policies that the NDP does not have, making personal attacks on a regular basis as a substitute for honest and sincere debate? Was that really their expectation?

I wish I had some video evidence from some of those early debates because I know that is not what those members ran on. I know their nomination meetings did not look like that, nor did any of the debates they attended during the campaign. That is not what they said. They said that they would speak on behalf of their constituents, fight for them and still raise their voice, even if that meant it was contrary to what their government suggested.

I am sure that is what my friends across the way said. They are very nice people. I know a lot of these folks, as we have spent some time together. I know some of their inner thoughts about the way Parliament ought to be, and some of them lament it. However, it is the ones who do not who worry me. They are the ones who so comfortably slip into that straitjacket day after day. Maybe they just get used to it, but they are able to rationalize that there is some larger agenda that is more important than their having an independent and free voice.

They can keep yelling and you can allow them to if you wish, Mr. Speaker, but the truth often hurts, and the truth of the matter is that with a majority government, this member and his colleagues have chosen to vote for closure more than any government in Canadian history. With a majority, the Conservative government has refused the evidence, has refused the science time and time again, and that government is bad government.

The Conservative government appointed senators, and I am sure some fundraising went on for some of my friends. Maybe Ms. Wallin, Mr. Duffy or Mr. Brazeau came by and raised a few dollars, shook a few hands and got a few votes for my friends. Maybe there is a little bit of a tarnish on my colleagues, which is why they are calling out and why they are worried. It is because their base hates this. They hate the idea of entitlement and of an insider's game that goes on in Ottawa all the time, and that friends of the Prime Minister's Office get some sort of special treatment.

Talking about special treatment, how about a $90,000 personal cheque just cut off the back and handed over to somebody who may have defrauded taxpayers? Where is the Reform Party now? Where are the original Conservative intentions now? They are gone, bit by bit, eroded piece by piece. That is where it has gone, and it has all been subjugated to some idea that there is a better and bigger cause, that this grand scheme they are involved in somehow makes all of it justifiable.

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, what these guys would sound like if the roles were reversed? If it were a Liberal government with senators getting cheques from the Prime Minister's chief of staff or a New Democratic government acting the way the Conservatives act, could you imagine the hue and cry and the calls for resignations every second minute? They would be losing their minds.

Now the Conservatives play the victim, saying that these senators were put upon them, that they didn't know what they were doing, that it is terrible. They only have a majority, both here and there. The Prime Minister has appointed more senators than any Prime Minister in Canadian history. How many did he say he would appoint? None, but he had to appoint some, and then it had to be justified. These are small and slow slippages, and this motion is a continuation of that.

This motion says that Parliament matters less and that those Canadians who have grown cynical about the role of MPs are justified in their cynicism. We say that is wrong. How do we turn to the young voters coming up? How do we turn to people who come to us and say that they might want to run for office one day? How can we say that their voices will matter when the government moves motions like this time and time again, shutting down debate?

As my friend the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development said, the Conservatives do not want to shut down debate; they just want to control it. Is this is how one entices people into a life of politics? Is this how one encourages young people to vote? Do we say, “Welcome to Parliament, where we are going to control debate and shut it down time and time again”? This is the Conservatives' call to action.

It is not a call to action, but a call to inaction. It is a call to cynicism. It is calling to people, “Do not look over here; nothing is happening here in government. Go on with your lives and other things that are more important and distracting.” The government is counting on people to have an attention deficit rather than realize that the decisions we make here in Parliament every day affect Canadians in every way.

If members of Parliament cannot do their work, as this motion suggests, and hold the government to account, it is bad government. It is bad government when it cannot find $3 billion that may be under a mattress or in a banana stand or wherever it happens to be, and when senators rip off taxpayers with no consequence whatsoever. We think the RCMP might have a role to play here.

What would happen if any of the Canadians in our gallery today or watching on TV defrauded the Canadian government of $500? They would get charged. However, if it is a Conservative senator, what happens? Oh, they just recuse themselves from caucus. Wow. They still get paid, they still have all of their privileges, but they cannot go to caucus meetings on Wednesday mornings.

Mr. Speaker, do you think that maybe that punishment is a little severe? I mean, having to recuse oneself from a two-hour meeting on Wednesday morning for defrauding taxpayers—boy, that seems pretty harsh.

Why the double standard? We used to call that the culture of entitlement. I remember a colleague of mine in this place, Ed Broadbent, asking a former Liberal minister who became head of the mint and was claiming packets of gum and coffee on his receipts, “Are you entitled to your entitlements, sir?” This person took a moment of authenticity and said, “Yes, I am entitled to my entitlements.”

The Conservatives railed at the Liberal entitlement, the culture of entitlement, the Gomery inquiry and all those terrible things that went down.

History repeats itself if one is not a student of history, and it seems that the Conservative Party has not looked at the history of this place or of other parliaments.

The fact of the matter is that debate in and of itself is not a bad thing. The exchange of ideas is not in and of itself a bad thing. Being wrong from time to time is not of itself a bad thing; learning happens in those moments, and the government needs to learn, because I can read off the list of the bills it had so fundamentally wrong that it had to withdraw them. The Conservatives had to say that they got it so badly wrong because they listened to none of the amendments that they have to fix it now, at the very last minute, or wait until it gets to the Senate and let the unaccountable, unelected and under investigation senators deal with it. That is no form of democracy worth defending, and the Conservatives know it. They know it better than most.

I will move that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after “Fridays” and replacing them with the following: “(b) when oral questions are to be taken up pursuant”—

Points of Order

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for interrupting my colleague just at the beginning of his speech on the justification for the motion that he has just presented to the House, but we have a point of order that we need to raise because I think it establishes a couple of important things for you, as Speaker, to determine before we get into the context and the particulars of this motion.

Specifically, I will be citing Standing Order 13, which says:

Whenever the Speaker is of the opinion that a motion offered to the House is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament, the Speaker shall apprise the House thereof immediately, before putting the question thereon, and quote the Standing Order or authority applicable to the case.

This is the standing order that we cite, because we have looked at the motion the government has presented here today with some notice given last week.

This motion goes against the Standing Orders and certainly the spirit of Parliament. The government is not allowed to break the rules of Parliament that protect the rights of the minority, the opposition and all members of the House of Commons who have to do their jobs for the people they represent. This motion is very clearly contrary to the existing Standing Orders.

I have some good examples to illustrate this. In my opinion, there is no urgency that would justify the government's heavy-handed tactics to prevent members from holding a reasonable debate on its agenda. I say “agenda”, but for a long time now it has been difficult to pin down what this government's agenda is exactly. This is nothing new.

The motion comes to us today at a difficult time, but just because the government held a brief caucus meeting and is facing numerous problems and a few scandals, it is not justified in violating the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. No one would accept those excuses. There is no historical basis for the government to use the Standing Orders in this way. That does not work.

There are a few important things we need to point out. One is that it behooves us to have some explanation of what this motion actually does. For those of us who do not intimately follow the rules and history of Parliament, it can be quite confusing not in terms of the intention of what the government has read but certainly in the implications. It needs some translation, not French to English or English to French, but translation as to what it actually means for the House of Commons. That is why we believe a point of order exists for this motion.

The motion essentially would immediately begin something that would ordinarily begin in a couple of weeks, which is for the House to sit until midnight to review legislation. This is somewhat ironic from a government that has a bad history with respect to moving legislation correctly through the process and allowing us to do our work, which is what we are here to do on behalf of Canadians.

I am not alone in seeing that the government has shown the intention of having some urgency with respect to 23 bills, 14 of which have not even been introduced since the last election. Suddenly there is great urgency, when in fact it is the government that has set the agenda. The urgency is so great that it has to fundamentally change the rules of how we conduct ourselves in this place in response to an urgency that did not exist until this moment.

One has to question the need. Why the panic? Why now, and why over these pieces of legislation? Are they crucial to Canada's economic well-being? Is it to restore the social safety net that the government has brutalized over the last number of years? What is the panic and what is the urgency?

Context sets everything in politics, and the context that the government exists under right now is quite telling. Every time I have had to stand in this place raising points of order and countering the closure and time allocation motions that the government uses, I am often stating and citing that this is a new low standard for Parliament. I have thought at times that there was not much more it could do to this place to further erode the confidence of Canadians or further erode the opportunity for members of Parliament to speak, yet it has again invented something new, and here we are today debating that motion.

That is why we believe that Standing Order 13 needs to be called. It is because it is very clear that when a motion is moved that is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament—which is what I would underline, as it is the important part—the Speaker must involve himself or herself in the debate and ask that the debate no longer proceed.

The privileges of members of Parliament are not the privileges that are being talked about by our friends down the hall to falsely claim money that did not exist or privileges of limo rides and trips around the world. The privileges of Parliament that speak constitutionally to the need for Parliament are that members of Parliament have the opportunity to scrutinized and debate government bills.

Just before the riding week, we saw the government introduce another time allocation on a bill that had received exactly 60 minutes of debate. Somehow the Conservatives felt that had exhausted the conversation on a bill they had sat on for years, and suddenly the panic was on. We are seeing this pattern again and again with a government that is facing more scandal.

I was looking through the news today. Every morning I start my day with the news and we consider what we should ask the government in question period. There are some days when the focus can be difficult and one may not be sure what the most important issue of the day is. However, the challenge for us today as the official opposition is that, as there are so many scandals on so many fronts, how do we address them all within the short time we have during question period or in debate on bills.

I listened to my friend for Langley, who has been somewhat in the news of late on his attempt to speak on issues he felt were important to his constituents. We saw him move a new private member's bill today. He withdrew the former bill, and now he is moving one again. The New Democrats will support the bill going to committee for study because we think there are some options and availability for us to look at the legislation and do our job.

Whether it is muzzling of their own MPs and the Conservatives' attempt to muzzle all MPs in the House of Commons, or using private members' bills to avoid the scrutiny that is applied to government legislation, and one important piece of that scrutiny is the charter defence of the legislation and so, in a sense, the Conservatives are using the back door to get government legislation through and move their agenda in another way, or the omnibus legislation, which has received so much controversy in Canada as the government has increasingly abused the use of omnibus legislation, or the F-35 fiasco, or the recent Auditor General's report, or the former parliamentary budget officer who was under much abuse and the new Parliamentary Budget Officer who has asked for the same things he did, or infamously, prorogation, time and time again the pattern is the same. The government has complete disdain for the House.

Whether it be the scandals in the Senate, or the China FIPA accord, or the recent problems with the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, or the employment insurance scandals, or the $3 billion missing, or the 300,000 jobs that have not been replaced, the government keeps trying to avoid proper scrutiny out of embarrassment. However, the House of Commons exists for one thing and one thing alone, which is to hold the government to account.

The government will make some claims that the urgency right now is because there has not been enough progress on legislation. Therefore, the Conservatives have to hit the panic button and would have the House sit until midnight, which has consequences beyond just being a late night, and I will get into those consequences in a moment because they support our notion that it infringes upon the entitlements of members of Parliament to debate legislation properly.

The Conservatives' record shows, and this is not speculation or conspiracy, that when they ram legislation through, they more often than not get it wrong. That is not just expensive for the process of law making, but it is expensive for Canadians. These things often end up in court costing millions and millions of dollars and with victims of their own making. The scandal that exists in the Senate is absolutely one of their own making. The Prime Minister can point the finger where he likes, but he appointed those senators.

Specific to the point of order I am raising, this motion would lower the amount of scrutiny paid to legislation. It would allow the government extended sittings, which are coming in the second week of June anyway, as the Standing Orders currently exist, to allow the government to do that, but the Conservatives want to move the clock up and have more legislation rammed through the House.

Also, as you would know, Mr. Speaker, the order of our day includes concurrence reports from committee, which allow the House to debate something that happened in committee which can sometimes be very critical, and many are moved from all sides. However, they would not get started until midnight under the Conservatives' new rules. Therefore, we would study and give scrutiny on what happened at committee from midnight until two or three o'clock in the morning.

As well, emergency debates would not start until midnight. Just recently we had a debate, Mr. Speaker, that your office agreed to allow happen, which was quite important to those implicated. We were talking about peace and war and Canada's role in the world. It was a critical emergency debate that certainly went into the night. However, the idea is that we would take emergency debates that the Speaker's office and members of Parliament felt were important and start them at midnight and somehow they would be of the same quality as those started at seven o'clock in the evening.

The scrutiny of legislation has become much less important than the government moving its agenda through, which is an infringement on our privilege as members of Parliament. The Conservatives' so-called urgency, their panic, is not a justification for overriding the privileges that members of Parliament hold dear.

As for progress, just recently we moved the nuclear terrorism bill through, Bill S-9.

We also had much debate but an improvement on Bill C-15, the military justice bill, to better serve our men and women in the forces. The original drafting was bad. The Conservatives wanted to force it forward and we resisted. My friend from St. John's worked hard and got an amendment through that would help those in the military who found themselves in front of a tribunal.

We have the divorce in civil marriages act, which has been sitting and sitting. It would allow people in same-sex marriages to file for and seek divorce. All we have offered to the government is one vote and one speaker each. The government refuses to bring the bill forward and I suspect it is because it would require a vote. It is a shame when a government resists the idea that a vote would be a good thing for members of Parliament to declare their intentions on, certainly something as important as civil liberties and rights for gay men and women.

I mentioned earlier why, in the infringement of this privilege, it causes great harm and distress not just to Parliament but to the country.

I asked my team to pull up the list of bills that were so badly written that they had to be either withdrawn or completely rewritten at committee and even in the Senate which, God knows, is a terrible strategy for any legislation.

There was the infamous or famous Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, which the Minister of Public Safety said something to the effect that either people were with the government or they were with child pornographers, which may be an example of the worst framing in Canadian political history. There has probably been worse, but that was pretty bad. The Conservatives had to kill the bill.

We have also seen Bill C-10, Bill C-31, Bill C-38 and Bill C-42, all of these bills were so badly written that oftentimes the government had to amend them after having voted for them. After saying they were perfect and ramming them through, invoking closure and shutting down debate, the Conservatives got to committee and heard from people who actually understood the issue and realized the law they had written would be illegal and would not work or fix the problem that was identified, and so they had to rewrite it. That is the point of Parliament. That is the point of the work we do.

We have also seen bills that have been challenged at great expense before the courts. Former Bill C-2, the tackling violent crime act, with huge sections of the government's main anti-crime agenda, was challenged and defeated in court.

Bill C-38, arbitrarily eliminating backlog for skilled workers, was challenged and defeated.

Bill C-7, Senate term limits, was after years just now deferred to the Supreme Court. It is called “kicking it down the road”.

Also, there are Bill C-6, Bill C-33 and others, and there are those that are being crafted and debated right now that are going to have serious problems.

The essential thrust of our intention is in identifying the rules that govern us, and specifically Standing Order 13. The government has time and again talked about accountability before the Canadian people and talked about doing things better than its predecessors in the Liberal Party, the government that became so arrogant and so unaccountable to Canadians that the Conservatives threw it out of office. History repeats itself if one does not learn true lessons from history.

As I mentioned, Standing Order 27(1) already exists, and it allows the government to do exactly what we are talking about, but not starting until the last 10 sitting days. The Conservatives have said that there is so much on their so-called agenda that they have to do this early, allowing for less scrutiny, allowing for emergency debates to start at midnight, allowing for concurrence debates that come from committees to start at midnight and go until two, three or four o'clock in the morning.

This is contrary to the work of parliamentarians. If the Conservatives are in such a rush, why do they not negotiate? Why do they not actually come to the table and do what parliamentarians have done throughout time, which is offer the to and fro of any proper negotiation between reasonable people?

We have moved legislation forward. My friend across the way was moving an important motion commemorating war heroes. We worked with that member and other members to ensure the bill, which came from the Senate, made it through speedy passage.

Parliament can work if the Conservatives let it work, but it cannot work if they keep abusing it. Canadians continue to lose faith and trust in the vigour of our work and the ability to hold government to account. We see it time and again, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you have as well, in talking to constituents who say that they are not sure what goes on here anymore, that it just seems like government will not answer questions, that everyday they ask sincere and thoughtful questions and the Conservatives do not answer. Bills get shut down with motions of closure.

Let us look at the current government's record.

Thirty-three times, the Conservatives have moved time allocation on legislation, an all-time high for any government in Canadian history. Through war and peace, through good and bad, no government has shut down debate in Parliaments more than the current one.

Ninety-nine point three per cent of all amendments moved by the opposition have been rejected by the government. Let us take a look at that stat for a moment. That suggests that virtually 100% of the time, the government has been perfectly right on the legislation it moves. All the testimony from witnesses and experts, comments from average Canadians, when moving amendments to the legislation before us, 99.3% of the time the government rejects it out of hand. It ends up in court. It ends up not doing what it was meant to do.

Ten Conservative MPs have never spoken to legislation at all. I will note one in particular. The Minister of Finance, who has not bothered to speak to his own bills, including the omnibus legislation, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which caused so much controversy. He did not bother to stand and justify his actions. I find it deplorable and it is not just me, Canadians as well, increasingly so.

This is my final argument. We cannot allow this abuse to continue. This pattern has consequences, not just for what happens here today or tomorrow, but in the days, weeks, months and years to come and the Parliaments to come. If we keep allowing for and not standing up in opposition to bad ideas and draconian measures, we in a sense condone them.

We say that Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think that is wrong. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong. It is not right and left; it is right and wrong. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We built this place out of bricks and mortar to do one thing: to allow the voice of Canadians to be represented, to speak on behalf of those who did not have a voice and to hold the government of the day to account. Lord knows the government needs that more than anything. It needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history and shutting down debate more than any government in history and using what it is today, it speaks to weakness not strength. The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.

Navigable Waters Protection Act

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-509, An Act to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act (Goldstream River).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to introduce the bill entitled An Act to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act (Goldstream River).

It is with some sadness, actually, that I have to do this, because all the federal environmental protection for the Goldstream River was removed last year in Bill C-38. The bill, very simply, would re-add the Goldstream River to schedule 2 of the Navigable Waters Protection Act and would take this very significant river on Vancouver Island, which is enjoyed by the public every year, in terms of education, with the salmon runs returning, and give it the protection it deserves.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Bill C-60—Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member referred to the criticisms from this side of the House about what the current Conservative administration is doing to environmental laws. I want to put to him, as I did to the member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, that he must bear in mind that both John Fraser and Tom Siddon were Progressive Conservative ministers of fisheries who very strongly criticized the destruction of the Fisheries Act in Bill C-38. The changes in Bill C-38 will not create better fisheries management or protection of habitat, and although it is great to see a small amount of money going to small NGOs through conservation partnerships, it is woefully inadequate, given the cuts to science and habitat protection.

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of rising in the House today to speak to Bill C-60 on behalf of my constituents in Berthier—Maskinongé, who are opposed to this new omnibus bill.

In my opinion, the short title of this bill, Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, is not really appropriate.

After reading through this bill, I am once again disappointed to see that there is nothing in it that will bring about economic recovery or create jobs or make life more affordable for Canadians. On the contrary, the Conservatives have raised taxes on a number of consumer goods.

Budget 2013 is full of tax increases on hospital parking, safety deposit boxes, labour-sponsored investment funds, bicycles and baby buggies. These increases even affected hockey helmets, until my colleague from Sudbury pointed that out and the government had to cancel the increases on hockey helmets and sports equipment.

These tax increases will cost Canadians $8 billion over the next five years. This budget will not just raise the cost of living. It will also slow economic growth.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer analyzed the economic situation and the bills brought in by this government. She found that budget 2012, the 2012 update and budget 2013 will result in the loss of 67,000 jobs by 2017 and will cause a 0.57% decline in the GDP. I do not need to say that this is not a good thing for our country’s economic growth.

With wages stagnating, uncertain jobs and families heavily in debt, the Conservatives are proposing austerity measures that add to the cost of living for Canadian families and stifle economic growth.

This bill contains a number of complex measures that deserve to be considered and examined carefully. For the third time in their current term, however, the Conservatives are proposing to evade the oversight of parliamentarians and the public. I find this insulting on several levels. We are here to examine bills. When the government imposes gag orders, we cannot do our job.

This bill contains changes to the temporary foreign worker program. The Conservatives are proposing to close major loopholes by giving the department the last word when work permits or opinions about a permit application become a source of political embarrassment. That does not solve the main problem, which is the mismanagement of the temporary foreign worker program by the present government.

I have received many emails from the people of Berthier—Maskinongé criticizing the changes in Bill C-60 that enable the government to compel a crown corporation to have its negotiating mandate approved by the Treasury Board so that it can reach a collective agreement with a union, particularly in the case of the CBC.

The people of Berthier—Maskinongé do not want to see any politician exercise that kind of control over our national public broadcaster. The changes proposed in Bill C-60 constitute an all-out attack on the right to free collective bargaining in Canada.

The NDP opposes Bill C-60 based on its content, but also on the process used. With so little time to study of the bill, members cannot consider its consequences. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to keep Canadians in the dark, and it is Canadians who will ultimately pay the price.

Today I would like to focus on a few specific aspects of the bill. I have noticed a truly disturbing trend in this government's legislative program.

Several changes made recently show how little the Conservatives know about the need for a long-term strategy for our regions. I am thinking in particular of the elimination of the labour-sponsored funds tax credit, the employment insurance reform and the cuts to all services.

One important measure that has drawn my attention is the cancellation of the labour-sponsored funds tax credit in this last budget. The government has announced the phasing-out of the 15% tax credit it grants for shareholders of labour-sponsored funds.

This decision is a serious mistake and shows that the Conservatives understanding nothing about Quebec's economic model and the role these funds play in the province and, of course, in the economies of the rural regions.

Ninety per cent of the amounts that Ottawa wants to recover with this measure will come from Quebec savers and investors, since virtually all of these funds are in Quebec. This decision will mainly affect the middle class and its ability to save for retirement, in addition to depriving Quebec SMEs of significant support for their development.

Once again, the government has turned a deaf ear, just as it did on the employment insurance reform. On April 27, thousands of people from several Quebec regions demonstrated in downtown Montreal against the Conservative government's butchering of employment insurance.

This reform is a serious attack on the most vulnerable workers in our society, most of whom are women. It will also affect families and regions. Once again, despite the demonstration, the Conservatives are not listening to Canadians, and I find that truly sad and deplorable, particularly when I see families and workers trying hard to make ends meet.

This reform strikes a hard blow to the economic health of our regions. In my riding, thousands of people hold seasonal jobs. A large segment of the economy depends on seasonal work, including farming, tourism, construction and forestry. The list is long.

Employment insurance reform will have disastrous consequences for a number of regions. The Conservatives did not assess the impact of such a reform. They are refusing to listen to the protestors who are calling on the government to back down. I am also wondering what happened to their 2011 campaign slogan, “Our region in power”. I have the impression that their slogan should now be “The regions—who cares?”

Why not try to create real jobs and support local initiatives? In short, I am talking about this reform to remind the government that it is a real disaster. As if that were not enough, the government is adding insult to injury with the labour-supported funds.

Another important aspect of the bill is the elimination of the supplementary tax credit for credit unions. Our credit unions play a vital role in our rural communities. Last year, I had the honour of being on the Special Committee on Co-operatives, where my Conservative and Liberal colleagues and I heard testimony that shed light on the remarkable work co-operatives do in our communities.

Perhaps some members were more attentive than others, because I now see that the supplementary tax credit for co-operatives will be eliminated. That will seriously limit the ability of credit unions to compete with large banks, when what the banking sector needs is more competition.

Last year, the Conservatives put an end to the co-operative development initiative and made cuts to the rural secretariat. Now, it is the co-operatives' turn. Do the Conservatives not understand that these changes are going to hit our rural regions hard, both in Quebec and in the rest of the country?

Tabling a budget means making choices. The budget implementation bill shows that the Conservatives are choosing not to support families, workers or our young people. Last year, when we debated the budget 2012 implementation bills—Bills C-38 and C-45—many of my New Democrat colleagues, as well as economic analysts, warned us that we would not have time to understand everything the omnibus bills contained and that the long-term impact would be felt for years to come.

We are finding out the implications of those bills again today, and I am afraid the same thing will happen with Bill C-60. Our children will be the ones to feel the effects of the Conservatives' misguided policies, when they are longer be around to be accountable. I hope they will be willing to listen to our concerns and make the required changes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am also well acquainted with the superb environmental record of former Speaker John Fraser and his exemplary efforts to stop the destruction of environmental laws through Bill C-38. He signed a letter with three other former ministers of fisheries decrying that the current approach of this administration is to destroy environmental laws, pushing back the protection of fish habitat.

As much as I think the world of the member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, he could not be more wrong about what his administration and his party are doing to environmental laws in this country. It is absolutely abominable to see CEAA destroyed, the Fisheries Act weakened and, by the way, the measures that he has described as being positive are not included in the bill we are discussing today.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to what the member opposite was saying. I must say that I am upset by this government's approach to things.

We know that this bill is not unlike last year's omnibus bills, C-38 and C-45. We know that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance tabled a notice of motion at the Standing Committee on Finance in order to give committee members just five meetings to complete consideration of Bill C-60 and to ensure that clause-by-clause review of the bill is completed by May 27, which is just eight sitting days after the time allocation motion forces passage of the bill at second reading.

Does the hon. member think that five committee meetings will allow enough time to study this bill properly?

[Jean-François Fortin, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Bloc Québécois members to voice our views on the Conservatives' recent budget.

Although the federal government claimed it would negotiate pragmatic agreements with the Government of Quebec in good faith, instead it is directly attacking Quebec's unique approach with measures announced in budget 2013 and Bill C-60, the budget implementation bill.

I would like to ask the government what happened to negotiating in good faith. Where were the negotiations on the labour program that will deprive Quebec of millions of dollars? Where were the negotiations on abolishing the tax credit for labour-sponsored funds? Where were the negotiations on higher taxes for the Caisses populaires Desjardins, which will wipe out a portion of Quebec members' dividends? Where were the negotiations following the unanimous vote by the National Assembly to retain Quebec's jurisdiction over securities? Where were the negotiations after the National Assembly's unanimous vote to keep Quebec's approach to homelessness? Where were the negotiations following the unanimous vote by the National Assembly against changes to worker training? Where were negotiations following the unanimous vote by the National Assembly against changes to employment insurance? Where were negotiations when the federal government imposed, once again, the “Ottawa knows best” doctrine to the detriment of Quebec's organizations and Quebec's approach? Where were the negotiations with Quebec when the federal government decided to finance the Lower Churchill project? Where were the negotiations with Quebec following the recognition of the Quebec nation?

There are many eloquent examples of conflicts.

Let us talk about employment insurance. As hon. members will recall, previous budgets have chipped away at the very foundation of our social safety net: government services and the old age security program.

Budget implementation Bills C-38 and C-45 were also a direct attack on seasonal workers and the regional economy of some areas of Quebec.

To justify its employment insurance reform, which harshly penalizes the economy in regions like the Lower St. Lawrence and the Gaspé, the government claims that it is trying to connect unemployed workers to available jobs, but really, it is tearing up its labour market agreement with Quebec, which helps unemployed workers find jobs.

In the last couple of budgets, the federal government has been trying to centralize Canada's economic development at the expense of Quebec's land use strategies, the well-being of the people in the regions and regional economic development. The federal government is trying to gradually strip us of our dignity and our pride in our distinct identity.

With last year's budget, it was clear that the Prime Minister was continuing to build his version of Canada based on his values and interests. He proved that there was no room for Quebec to develop within that model. This year's budget is simply more of the same.

Budget 2013 is a direct attack on the way Quebec does things. As for labour market issues, Ottawa will take away millions of dollars from Quebec that helped the unemployed find jobs.

In its place, the federal government is pushing a program that will force employers and the Quebec government to provide more money if they want the federal government to contribute. In order to hand out cheques with the maple leaf on them, the federal government is ready to axe initiatives that are working well.

Ottawa also wants to bring in a new formula whereby the federal government, the provinces and employers would put in up to $5,000 each to train workers. Although worker training falls under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government is stubbornly forging ahead, to the detriment of our financial services industry. The Quebec Minister of Finance has also criticized this.

Now I would like to talk about labour-sponsored funds. The elimination of the labour-sponsored funds tax credit is another direct attack on Quebec and its workers.

In addition to impoverishing people who are trying to save for their retirement, the federal government is also going to deprive Quebec SMEs of a key economic lever. Labour-sponsored funds are an integral part of Quebec's economic organization, as demonstrated by the fact that $312 million of the $355 million Ottawa plans to take away from workers will be from Quebec.

The Chantier de l'économie sociale has strongly criticized the abolition of the federal tax credit for labour-sponsored venture capital corporations, such as the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Fondaction CSN. Quebeckers, including unionized workers, use these funds as savings vehicles and commit to helping develop Quebec businesses, such as social economy businesses.

Bill C-60 again includes provisions on securities, as mentioned in the latest budget. The federal government is extending the mandate of the Canadian Securities Transition Office and still insists on creating a Canada-wide securities commission, despite clear decisions from the Quebec Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

In response to the federal government's budget, the Government of Quebec said, “Allowing the federal government to insinuate itself in securities regulation, which is within Québec’s exclusive jurisdiction, is out of the question.”

We have long known that Canada's Minister of Finance dreams of getting his hands on Quebec securities. Even after he was turned down by the Quebec National Assembly and the Supreme Court of Canada, the minister has not concealed his intentions to interfere in Quebec's key financial sector.

I would like to talk about homelessness and how the government does not respect Quebec's way of doing things. In its latest budget, the federal government said it supports the housing first approach, which could threaten community-based, universal homelessness initiatives that currently respond to very real needs in Quebec.

According to the Réseau Solidarité itinérance du Québec, all of the support services for some 50,000 people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless are in jeopardy as a result of the federal government's new policy. The federal government's actions on homelessness are worrisome. In addition to reducing funding, Ottawa wants to impose its housing first approach, which will force Quebec to sacrifice its expertise and the programs tailored to its needs. The National Assembly unanimously denounced Ottawa's attitude and asked that the homelessness strategy be redesigned according to the existing model and in compliance with Quebec's policies.

The Bloc Québécois thinks that the federal government's approach is unacceptable. It could severely hamper the work that people have done over the years on this issue. It would disregard the expertise that has been developed over time to reach the people in need most effectively. This is a direct attack on Quebec's way of doing things.

I would now like to talk about health transfers and social programs. Budget 2013 is one step closer to a $36 billion reduction in federal health transfers. It will have devastating consequences on Quebec's finances because it imposes new agreements for equalization, health transfers and social programs and withdraws money transferred to Quebec for worker training. This is essentially a slap in the face for Quebec. To achieve a zero deficit, the Conservatives, like the Liberals before them, are lobbing the deficit into Quebec's court. Budget 2013 ushers in fiscal imbalance once again.

For all these reasons, and many others, the Bloc Québécois will not support the next federal budget, a budget that is unfair to Quebec, takes aim at Quebec and takes away some of its fundamental powers.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are going through a period in which the government appears to be circumventing the idea of building consensus in the country. It disregards the parliamentary tools at its disposal to assist it in building consensus. On the contrary, it constantly seeks to oppose. The government does not want to discuss. Once again, there is very little debate about a bill as important as Bill C-60, which will amend 59 laws. Previously, there was very little debate on Bills C-38 and C-45, which amended more than 70 laws.

The same thing happened to a number of bills introduced during the 41st Parliament, or ever since the Conservatives have held a majority. They do not want to take the time to listen to the public's concerns and needs. They disregard them. This is a highly ideological government, which does not listen to the people and has difficulty justifying itself.

We cannot continue this way. We absolutely need a government that listens, that responds to needs, that has a long-term vision and that can promote sustainable economic growth. The goal was not to introduce bills full of ad hoc measures, to turn back time in order to eliminate protections previously put in place or to deregulate industries to the point where the invisible hand of the market reigns supreme.

We have seen the consequences of this kind of thinking, which was at the root of the economic crisis of 2008. We do not want to see that happen again. We want something sustainable. We have no lessons to learn from the present government.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by asking a question.

Today in the House, the member for Westlock—St. Paul talked about renewable hydrocarbons. The Minister of Natural Resources has also talked about the same thing recently.

Frankly, I would like to know what this creature is, given that hydrocarbons come from dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago. It seems to me that this is not a renewable energy source, unless the Conservatives are telling me that there may be dinosaurs somewhere in the Caribbean islands. I am trying to understand what this is.

They may be talking about the corn and ethanol business. Recently, we saw that when ethanol derived from corn was on the market, it created an extreme crisis for the corn market, to the point that a lot of people in the world could no longer buy basic products such as corn because it was being converted into renewable energy.

I quite simply do not understand why the Conservatives are trying to make us believe this renewable hydrocarbons story. I am having a hard time seeing where this thing exists. I would certainly like to hear more about it though, because frankly, I sometimes think it is coming out of the mouths of dinosaurs.

Bill C-60 contains very few things that will benefit people in my riding. I will even go out on a limb and say that it could hurt them.

We will talk about a few measures that are in the budget, and other measures that are not. What worries me most is what is not in the budget.

I would first like to talk about the investment that needs to be made at Fisheries and Oceans. The budget says that over the next five years, Fisheries and Oceans will be cut by another $100 million. That department has already endured cuts, very recently, of over $70 million a year. Now the Conservatives are talking about more cuts. We do not know how big those cuts will be. The Conservatives have simply announced cuts. They have not said what is going to be cut. That is the real problem with the bill we have before us. It is supposed to be Bill C-60, Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, yet it is not a budget, or at least it is hard to believe that it is.

When I was a businessman, a budget had columns. It was a sheet with figures on it, with the money spent the previous year and the money spent during the current year. You saw how spending increased or decreased. To the Conservatives, budgets are no longer budgets; now, they are action plans. Frankly, they are works of fiction. They are books that tell a story, but do not in any way achieve the objective of managing a country in a sound and sustainable way.

I will come back to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which is going to lose $100 million over the next five years. Nowhere in the budget, or the Conservatives’ economic action plan 2013, do I see where they are going to cut. We know the impact of the cuts, though. So much has been cut from maintenance at Fisheries and Oceans Canada that our docks are in a pitiful state. The Percé dock is closed today. The lobster industry depends on that dock. My riding also depends heavily on the tourism industry, which in turn depends heavily on the dock. We are talking about 400,000 tourists a year who visit the dock.

Last year, Bill C-38 made changes to employment insurance. In today’s budget, nothing has been changed, even though every region of Canada where there is seasonal work and people make a living from seasonal industries has called for a moratorium or a return to the starting point, and for real consultations to be held. That has not been done. The result is the bill we have before us, which makes no changes to employment insurance.

As a result, people in my region have lost weeks of employment insurance benefits and they will therefore find it harder and harder to have an income to get through the seasons and make it through the whole year.

The minister says that the reason why the government made changes to employment insurance was to help people get jobs. At the same time, however, the Conservatives have cut so much from dock maintenance in my riding that they have put people out of work. In 2013, we risk losing the tourist season in the Gaspé region, because they have cut so much from the budgets that people depend on, without consultation and without doing the groundwork.

They are making so many cuts that people are losing their jobs. There will be no tourists to support merchants who depend on the tourist industry and so there is a risk that we will lose an entire year of tourism, simply because Fisheries and Oceans Canada has not been able to do its job. The department has been unable to do its job because the cuts have been so deep that it has had a great deal of difficulty meeting its obligations.

In today’s budget, Fisheries and Oceans Canada is being cut by $100 million. What is going to be cut? I have a hard time seeing where the remaining cuts at Fisheries and Oceans Canada could be made. I congratulate the department for demonstrating creativity by inventing cuts that could be made in future, without specifying what is left to cut. It seems to me that there are no cuts left to be made at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, apart from the minister’s salary maybe.

We absolutely have to think long-term. There is no long-term vision in Canada. The Conservatives are trying to cut all government spending, and they think that that is going to create the conditions upon which an economic recovery could be based. We saw this situation in the 1980s, in the Reagan era. It is called trickle-down economics. If the government cuts taxes and is less and less involved in the economy, the invisible hand of the market will take over and solve all of our problems. In my opinion, in 2008, when the serious crisis in the banking system happened, the invisible hand of the market simply did not work.

Frankly, credit does not go to the Conservatives for the regulations that were in place at the time and that helped us to get through that serious worldwide economic crisis and be in the condition we are in now.

The Conservatives boast about the fact that Canada has one of the best economies in the world. It is difficult to boast when we compare ourselves to Greece, for example, which is in free fall. Saying we are not in free fall is not all it takes to determine that everything is fine. That is not the case.

Certain conditions must prevail in order for Canada’s economy to grow. The budget now before us will not create these conditions. Furthermore, Canada has 240,000 more young people out of work than during the previous recession in 2008.

There needs to be an action plan in place to help these 240,000 unemployed youths find jobs. Instead, we have cuts to Service Canada’s summer jobs programs that encourage young people to return to the regions to work, settle down and create vibrant communities. Cuts are being made to the summer jobs program and a new internship program is being created. However, an internship is not a job. A job is paid, permanent employment. An internship usually involves unpaid work.

The government has just spent a considerable amount of money creating unpaid job opportunities without having in place an action plan to help young people find gainful employment.

Getting back to my riding, cuts to Fisheries and Oceans Canada programs means the future of the region’s children and economy are impacted. The Gaspé is not the only region affected. All of Eastern Canada will be facing problems as a result of the cutbacks recently announced. Today’s budget does nothing to alter the course this government has embarked on, one that is bad for the economy and for the regions in particular.

The government is simply unwilling to consult with people. It is unwilling to ask Canadians how they feel about Canada’s growth and what they think our priorities should be. With their parliamentary majority, the Conservatives seem to think they can do whatever they like.

Destroying laws that protect the environment is tantamount to mortgaging the future. Ultimately people will end up paying a great deal more to repair the damage wrought by the Conservatives.

This budget will cost us dearly. Therefore, I urge members to vote against it.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, drawing up a budget means making choices. In their 2013 budget, the Conservatives have chosen austerity. This government justifies its decision on the grounds that it wants to wipe out the deficit. All of us here in this House are in favour of wiping out the deficit. Nobody can argue with that, but it is all in the way you do it.

The Conservatives are proposing lean years for everyone in the hope that these cuts will return us to a balanced budget. We believe we must invest in our economy in order to wipe out the deficit. Our economy needs a little help. It needs investment to create jobs and growth. It definitely does not need utterly austere policies like those proposed by this government.

The IMF, the Parliamentary Budget Officer and many renowned economists have warned the government about the harmful effects of its strategy. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the 2013 budget will eliminate thousands of jobs, cut direct program spending and slow GDP growth. That is not very encouraging, especially for a government that claims to champion employment and the economy.

With Bill C-60, the government is giving us version 3.0 of its omnibus bills. Like Bills C-38 and C-45, Bill C-60 amends nearly 50 acts and contains hundreds of unrelated legislative amendments.

As a parliamentarian, but especially as a citizen, I am shocked to see that this government has not adopted a more co-operative and democratic approach. Its bill is full of inconsistencies and counterproductive measures. However, the government is determined to force it down Canadians' throats without us really having the time to study it or propose improvements.

A very specific example of a counterproductive measure that will harm the economy of my region, the Outaouais, is the elimination of the 15% tax credit for shareholders of labour-sponsored funds. Labour-sponsored funds are essential to the development of Outaouais businesses. On May 2, the Gatineau chamber of commerce organized a press conference to announce its request that the government reverse its decision. The FTQ's Fonds de solidarité alone has invested $125 million in 80 businesses in the region. Those investments have made it possible to create or maintain 6,700 jobs in the Outaouais alone.

The hardest thing to understand in the Conservatives' attitude is that the government will achieve no savings by eliminating the tax credit.

A study conducted by SECOR in 2010 clearly shows that the economic impact of the jobs created and maintained through the investments of these labour-sponsored funds enable the government to recover the tax credits in an average period of three years.

I ask myself the question and I put it to the government: what is the justification for this attack on labour-sponsored funds? These funds create and maintain employment in addition to playing a positive role in our economy.

Eliminating the tax credit will also have a direct impact on small investors. It has benefited some 23,000 people in the Outaouais alone.

By investing $5,000 in a labour-sponsored fund, a taxpayer can currently save up to $750 in federal income tax. Because of this government, 23,000 small investors in the Outaouais will lose a profitable savings vehicle for their retirement and for the economy. This government must open its eyes and reverse its decision.

I have looked through Bill C-60 at length and have found virtually nothing about the measures this government intends to take to combat poverty. In a developed country such as Canada, we would be wrong to believe that poverty is a marginal phenomenon. Poverty exists. It is very real. We see it on the ground, in our ridings. Many of us could describe numerous unfortunate examples of poverty.

Every month, 800,000 Canadians turn to food banks. A growing number of these 800,000 food bank users are working people. Despite earning an income, they cannot always afford to put food on the table. More and more workers are living in poverty, and this government’s policies are obviously to blame to some extent for this situation. This is unacceptable. Fighting poverty must be one of the government’s priorities.

In conclusion, I would like to comment briefly on this government’s repeated attacks on public servants. Last year, it announced that it was eliminating 19,200 jobs, while solemnly swearing that services would not be affected. We subsequently learned that in reality, 29,000 public servants would be losing their jobs and that services to the public would be directly affected.

The Conservatives enjoy depicting public servants as privileged, lazy individuals. That is part of their strategy. They want to pit private sector workers against public servants. We would all do well to close ranks in the face of this government’s attacks on workers in general.

The fact of the matter is that the average pension of a public servant upon retirement is $24,000 a year, or $18,500 for women and $28,000 for men. It is time to stop implying that public servants are rolling in money. Those who are doing very well are the Conservatives’ friends, those who are on the receiving end of favours and generous subsidies while they generate profits totalling millions and sometimes even billions of dollars.

I am thinking here, among other things, of oil companies that are still subsidized to tune of $1.3 billion a year and that often use our soil, our air and our water as a free dumping ground. Natural resource development is a major source of revenue, but development must be done properly. Right now, major polluters are enjoying a free lunch. Things could be done differently, but this government is failing when it comes to fighting for the middle class and for the environment.

As I said in my opening remarks, drawing up a budget means making choices. In budget 2013, the government clearly chose to turn its back on the middle class and on SMEs. Canadians will remember this when the time comes to elect a new government.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I mentioned that in budget 2013 the government offers a $1 million credit for a $1 trillion industry. Canada should be having a green economy strategy, so we lead in the new economy. We should have a national sustainable energy strategy. We need a comprehensive climate change plan.

Unfortunately, the environment and sustainable development are not government priorities. Recent rankings of environmental performance clearly demonstrate this fact. For example, the 2008 climate change performance index ranked Canada 56th out of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions. In 2009 and again in 2013, the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th out of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance.

Our world-renowned heritage was then further imperiled by the government's economic action plan 2012 and its draconian omnibus budget bills, Bill C-38 and C-45, which destroyed 50 years of environmental safeguards.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-60 on the budget implementation act.

I would like to focus my speech on the issues, concerns and priorities raised by my constituents during my annual pre-budget consultations. As a member of Parliament, I take seriously my job to represent my constituents' voices in Ottawa. In March of this year, I hosted four town hall meetings: one in Port Moody, one in Coquitlam, one in New Westminster, and a final one by telephone. I also meet with all three mayors and councils in my riding, as I believe it is important to also listen to their priorities and concerns. I also sent out a survey to every household in the riding, asking constituents for their input on spending priorities and economic concerns. In total, I engaged thousands of constituents on what they would like to see in this year's budget.

My constituents' number one priority is health care. I believe Canadians are proud of our health care system, which is the envy of countries around the world. However, we also recognize the importance of ensuring health care remains universally accessible and properly funded. I hear far too many stories from people who have to wait months on end to see a specialist or to receive a vital surgery. The government's hands-off approach to health care is unacceptable. Instead of working with the provinces and territories to address the challenges facing our health care system, the current government unilaterally imposed a funding scheme that actually sees federal health care transfers decrease in the long term.

The high cost of prescriptions is another issue of serious concern, particularly for seniors who must also balance the realities of shrinking pensions and the shortage of affordable housing options. The current government's track record on support for Canada's seniors is dismal. The Conservatives' scheme to raise the age of retirement for the old age security from 65 to 67 years of age is disgraceful.

I also heard from a number of constituents who are frustrated with trying to find quality, affordable child care. Canada's New Democrats understand that a comprehensive national solution is required. That is why we are proposing, with the provinces and the territories, to establish and fund a Canada-wide child care and early learning program.

Another troubling issue we are seeing across our country is youth unemployment rates, which remain stubbornly high, at 13.5% for those under 25, compared to 7% for those over 25. Let us not forget that many students coming out of post-secondary education are saddled with record-high levels of student debt. Where are the jobs of tomorrow? Where are the quality jobs that enable people to support a family or pay down student debt or save for a down payment or save for retirement? Quality full-time jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate, and we are not seeing this issue get the attention it deserves in this budget.

I will take a moment to credit some of the great small businesses operating in my riding, like Resonance Technology, an innovative company on the cutting edge of new technologies. Companies like this are at the forefront of our economy, driving growth and creating jobs. We need more of this. Unfortunately, the reality is that income levels for average Canadians have stagnated while the cost of living continues to increase. From food prices and housing costs to MSP premiums and bridge tolls, British Columbians have been feeling the pinch. However, their tax burden will soon be a bit lighter, thanks to the people's successful efforts to overturn the harmonized sales tax, which was unfairly imposed on B.C. by its provincial government in collaboration with the current federal Conservative government.

I would like to focus on the claim by the Conservatives that this budget would increase funding for infrastructure. In fact, when the numbers are adjusted for inflation, over the next four years federal infrastructure funding will be $4.7 billion lower than it was last year. City officials are asking for a long-term funding arrangement so they can plan for the needs of our growing regions.

Improved transit infrastructure is one of the greatest needs in the Lower Mainland. Residents in Coquitlam and Port Moody have waited well over a decade for the Evergreen Line, which was nicknamed the “nevergreen line”, after years of delays made many people question whether it would ever be built.

The case of the Evergreen Line demonstrates that our governments are not up to the task of working together to meet the transit needs of our growing communities. At every town hall meeting I held, people expressed concern over the government's agenda to degrade environmental protections.

Let us talk about its record. Through last year's massive omnibus budget bills, Bills C-38 and C-45, the Conservative government gutted environmental protections from every act it could think of: the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and many others. Canadians rallied to save the Experimental Lakes Area, which conducted world-class freshwater research. Unfortunately, the government chose to ignore these calls. A number of my constituents were particularly disturbed by the government's Orwellian attitude towards scientists, environmentalists and public servants. In March, the official opposition introduced a motion in Parliament calling on the government to defend basic scientific freedoms and evidence-based policy. I am sad to say that even the Prime Minister voted against that motion.

The government has been in power for seven years now and its arrogance is beginning to show no bounds. Its unilateral move to shut down the Kitsilano Coast Guard station flew in the face of expert opinion as well as the will of the public and municipal and provincial governments. Despite serious safety concerns raised over shutting down the only Coast Guard station in Vancouver, which is home to the busiest port in Canada, the government rammed through this closure. Consolidation of marine communication traffic services will put B.C.'s coast at greater risk. The government has also cut oil spill response centres. Given the number and scale of proposed resource development projects, this is the worst time to be cutting enforcement monitoring and emergency response.

This budget has announced $108 million in cuts to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. While the government claims that this will be found through efficiencies like travel and printing, we know this will have a serious impact on DFO front-line services, including its ability to carry out its mandate to protect wild fish. Last year's cuts left DFO with only five offices in B.C., and the smallest staff level since 1983.

It has been almost seven months since Cohen's recommendations were released and we have yet to hear a single word from the government on how it will respond. Following the $26 million Cohen report, the government should be responding to the 75 recommendations rather than turning its back on B.C. salmon and fish habitat.

All of the concerns I have highlighted speak to the serious feeling of neglect that has been brewing on the west coast. The Conservative government has been ignoring the priorities of British Columbians for far too long.

I would like to conclude my remarks on the budget by focusing on a theme that was frequently raised at pre-budget consultations. There is a feeling of restlessness and discontent among the electorate with the state of our democracy. I heard much criticism on the way the government has centralized power, limited debate and tried to marginalize the role of Parliament, not to mention the muzzling of scientists and quality information. Taxpayers are frustrated with being on the hook for the unelected, unaccountable and under-investigated Senate.

Principles anchored within the Senate's mission, such as the protection of minorities and balancing the executive and legislative branches of government, are important principles, but they must be addressed through accountable and democratic means. Abolishing the Senate is part of the NDP's broader and progressive vision for democratic reform. This means reforming our electoral system to ensure that Parliament reflects the political preferences of Canadians. New Democrats have long advocated for a system of proportional representation. A reformed electoral Senate would go a long way toward better representing Canadians in Parliament. It could reverse dismally low voter turnout rates and improve representation of women and minorities.

Canadians are hungry for change. Canadians are looking for leaders who are not afraid to tackle the issues facing our communities and our regions. This was an underwhelming budget. I believe Canadians want to see their federal government build healthy, sustainable communities.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-60, Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1. However, this piece of legislation does not address Canadians' real concerns.

Ever since the Conservatives’ 2013 budget was unveiled, my constituents have been calling me to say that they feel isolated and neglected by this government’s economic measures.

I have to say that I feel quite privileged to be able to speak to this bill, given that the Conservatives have imposed time allocation for the thirty-second time, which is surely a record for Canada. At least I have the opportunity to voice my opinion on the subject.

Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to Conservative bills that lack depth. Instead of actually being concerned about ensuring our economic recovery, creating stable jobs and tackling the growing debt levels of Canadian households, the Conservatives are proposing austerity measures that will kill jobs. These measures will mean a higher cost of living for Canadian families and will stifle economic growth.

For instance, there is nothing in Bill C-60 to deal with household debt in Canada, which is currently estimated at a record level of 167% of disposal income. That is a staggering number.

The Conservatives’ economic agenda does not address the needs of Canadians. Canadians need measures that are geared toward creating quality jobs. The NDP will be voting against budget 2013 and the budget implementation bill, unless they are reworked to take into account the real priorities of Canadian families.

While I do agree with some of the measures contained in this budget, I have to say that, since I have been a member of this House, the Conservatives have refused to split budget bills into components that we can vote on separately, and thus let Canadians know, through a transparent process, which measures we support and which ones we do not.

I would like to single out several measures in this budget that I think are worthwhile in order to let people know exactly which ones I consider to be important. I will then tell you which budgetary provisions I think completely miss the mark.

Budget 2013 provides for two tax credits that I endorse: one for adoption-related expenses and one for first-time claimants of the charitable donations tax credit. I believe that these are positive measures. Furthermore, the budget streamlines the process for approving tax relief for Canadian Forces members and police officers, which I strongly support. It extends the temporary accelerated capital cost allowance for the manufacturing sector. It includes measures to facilitate the collection of unpaid taxes and taxes sitting in tax havens and to streamline Tax Court of Canada procedures. It provides for changes to the GST and HST that are generally positive. Lastly, it calls for reducing the general preferential tariff, the GPT, on sporting equipment and baby clothing. These are sound measures, and I am not afraid to say so.

However, the Conservatives will not split up the budget and instead are forcing us to vote on a mammoth bill, as was the case in 2012 and 2011, which prevents me, as an MP, from voicing my true opinion of the budget to my constituents. I find it very troubling that I am unable to do so. However I do know that the Conservatives will seize the opportunity to say that we are voting against these measures when we ask any questions. Incredible.

I would now like to turn my attention to some of the important issues raised by Bill C-60 which is chock-full of various measures.

This budget contains tax increases for Canadians. It calls for changes to the bargaining mandate of the Treasury Board and 49 crown corporations. It proposes changes to the temporary foreign worker program, as well as changes related to citizenship and immigration. It announces the merger of the Canadian International Development Agency with Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. It highlights the Conservative government’s ongoing failure to address the challenges facing aboriginal peoples and the lack of viable, concrete job-creation measures for Canadian youth, the segment of the population hardest hit by the economic downturn.

Bill C-60 as tabled amends 49 laws and includes new legislation along with complex provisions containing myriad details and programs that will affect Canadians, the very people who elected us to establish a more just society and bring about wealth and prosperity for all Canadians.

For the sake of the public, we have a duty to weigh the major issues that this bill targets, but it will be very difficult to accomplish this in such a short period of time. The fact of the matter is that the Conservatives are giving us a mere four days to debate this mammoth bill.

On top of everything else, we have just learned that the Minister of Finance has asked the Standing Committee on Finance to set aside only five days to study the bill.

The committee that is supposed to conduct an in-depth review of the bill will have a mere five days to tackle this job. That is outrageous.

The NDP opposes Bill C-60, not only because of the measures it contains, but also because the process lacks transparency and is unethical from a parliamentary standpoint. Bill C-60 contains a broad range of measures that warrant careful consideration, but instead, the Conservatives have tabled another omnibus bill, much like Bills C-38 and C-45 that were brought in last year. Tabling such a wide-ranging bill and imposing such a tight deadline for review undermines the very nature of Parliament, as members do not have the opportunity to learn everything they need to know about the bill and its ramifications.

Unfortunately, it has become commonplace to say that such actions weaken the nature of Parliament. Yesterday, while I was knocking on doors in my riding, I talked for 20 or 25 minutes to a man in Dorval, whose name is John and who is 50 or 60 years old. He told me that he had always voted to do his duty as a citizen but that he had become cynical in the past two years. He told me that he was dismayed and that he no longer believed in the parliamentary process because of our government. I was astounded and did not know what to say to him. I am not cynical, but I had a hard time finding good arguments, because I, too, think that what is happening in Canada is not reasonable and not healthy.

Moreover, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has pointed out several times that members of Parliament do not have access to the information they need to exercise their role of oversight. For the third time, the Conservatives are undermining the democratic process inherent in Parliament and trying to escape the watchful eyes of parliamentarians and the public.

I would like to point out another important concern. The former Parliamentary Budget Officer clearly indicated that the cuts announced in the 2013 budget are not necessary in order to re-establish a structural surplus. In his opinion, the 2013 budget will eliminate thousands of jobs, reduce direct program spending and slow the growth of Canada's GDP.

There is evidence. According to estimates by the new Parliamentary Budget Officer, the 2012 budget, the 2012 budget update and the 2013 budget will lead to the loss of 67,000 jobs by 2017 and a 0.57% drop in the GDP. Based on these facts, the Conservatives' 2013 budget will raise the unemployment rate in Canada. It is unfortunate, because when unemployment rates are high, the economy runs slowly. I wonder what logic the government is using when it talks about the economy.

The Conservatives love to boast about their job creation record, yet 1.4 million Canadians are without work and 240,000 more young people are unemployed than before the recession. Despite that, the Conservatives' Bill C-60 offers no job creation measures.

As the official opposition's youth caucus president, I am particularly concerned with Canada's youth and young workers. As a result, the rest of my speech—which is not much longer—will focus on the younger generation that is ignored by the Conservative government.

In today's labour market, there is a desperate lack of jobs for young Canadians aged 15 to 24. A study by TD Economics revealed that a young person who is currently unemployed or under-employed will be financially scarred for 18 years. This young person, who wants to work and often has an extensive education, not only has a problem finding work, but will be affected in the future with reduced earning potential. Right now, this young person has no job and cannot invest in the economy. As I said, it will take this young person 18 years to overcome the economic deficit that is being created today. This is not the way to make the economy work.

For these young people in their 20s, this means putting off purchasing their own property, having children later, needing more time to pay off their debt and earning lower salaries. That is what the Conservative government is offering our young people at this time.

Combining the underemployment crisis and unemployment among young people with the tax hikes announced in budget 2013, with Bill C-60, the Conservative government is in fact reducing my generation's purchasing power.

Although the Conservatives promised not to raise taxes, their budget includes new tax hikes for Canadians on almost everything, from hospital parking to credit unions, safety deposit boxes and labour sponsored investment funds, not to mention bicycles and strollers. These tax hikes will cost Canadians $7.8 billion over the next five years.

Why did the Conservatives promise not to raise taxes if they knew for a fact they were going to raise them by several billion dollars? Budget 2013 is based on an ideology that is harmful to Canadians. Although economists agree that austerity measures undermine growth, the Conservatives are determined to impose these backward-thinking measures in order to achieve their political agenda of cutting the deficit by 2015.

I see my time is up. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to finish and giving me a chance to speak to this bill. I will now take questions. However, I would like to emphasize that, although there are some good measures here, it is unfortunate that we have to vote on everything at once.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to comment on this budget. I listened attentively to those who spoke before me. I believe that the debate will generate some passion, as we just heard in a few of the previous comments.

To begin with, I would like to point out that this is the 32nd time that the Conservative government has taken away our right to comment in the House. It is truly a scandal, and it must stop. It is essential that members be allowed to give their speeches, say what they have to say, and speak about their needs and the problems society will have to face if a budget like this one is adopted. Under this budget, the Conservatives are increasing taxes and reducing services.

I would like to comment on a number of things such as family, freedom and poverty. The budget cannot avoid addressing matters like these. I would also like to talk about job creation.

Even though the government quotes figures and tweaks them from one year to the next, they never give us a start date for how these figures were calculated, and the fact remains that jobs are being lost. Jobs have been lost at White Birch in Quebec. I could mention other companies, like Electrolux, where jobs have been lost. Work may be moving from one province to another, but we are after all living in a confederation and jobs need to be created everywhere. The youth unemployment rate has spiked significantly, and this should compel us to do something.

What the government gives with the right hand, it takes away with the left. I believe that many of my colleagues have been able to demonstrate this. On one hand, a fund is established to help young families, and tax credits are made available for artistic activities; but on the other, a surcharge is imposed on products that cross the border, which takes back the money that these families had saved from their reduced taxes. They are therefore disguised tax hikes.

Just now, the member for Ottawa—Orléans took the floor. I wonder whether he lives on the same planet as my colleagues and I. He said that cuts have been made in a compassionate manner.

Cutting jobs and employee salaries is not a very compassionate thing to do. I will explain how it was done. Those whose jobs were being cut received a letter telling them that jobs would be eliminated in their department.

They were told that X number of positions would be eliminated, but were not immediately told which jobs would be eliminated. Is that what the Conservatives mean by "being compassionate"? Sometimes, employees were asked to choose from among the duties and work being done, what positions were less useful than others. Is that what they call "being compassionate"? That is not what I would call it. There is one small restriction.

This budget is a direct attack on labour funds. In Quebec, the CSN and the FTQ have labour funds. Not so long ago, I sent my constituents a ten-percenter and the highest response rate I ever received had to do with labour funds and the FTQ. These funds allow people to deduct 15% extra from their taxes to make some savings. What the right hand gave away, the left took back, yet again. This additional deduction to which these people were entitled has been taken away.

Who contributed to these funds? They were often people whose wages were very low. It enabled them to save about $1000 a year. Year after year, they would try to save an extra $1,000. Then, by retirement, they would have saved a total of roughly $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000. They saved their entire lives.

Before being a member of Parliament, I worked in an organization. I met people who were earning $30,000 or less per year. In spite of this, they managed to put a little money aside to invest in this terrific fund.

The 15% tax break for the labour fund contributions encouraged them to save their pennies. These are the people who are being attacked. The labour funds, whether the CSN’s or the FTQ’s, are being attacked.

Labour force training is also being attacked. We succeeded in getting something into the budget that says that a company can now deduct $5,000 for training if it invests that much in training.

What companies are we talking about?

In Quebec, there is the 1% labour force training program. Now none of the small companies will be able to make that deduction because once again, this budget helps the big players, but not the small ones. Small businesses will not be able to invest $5,000 in labour force training to match what the government might give. This skews the debate. The companies lose out and labour force training will suffer. Workers, individuals and competitiveness, when all is said and done, will lose out.

I do not know whether the government thought about this aspect, but it is essential; the less training one has, the less competitive one is and the less competitive, the lower the sales, the lower demand for the product and you begin to go under. Our leader has pointed out that in Canada, small businesses and manufacturers have lost a great deal in recent years.

For 2013 and 2014, the budget forecast a deficit of approximately $16.5 billion. In reality, this will be $18.7 billion. Despite all these cuts, Canada's deficit is growing. People are being fooled when they tighten their belts and deprive themselves of everything. It might be worth asking which people are really depriving themselves.

Everything is really upside-down. They are going to pick the pockets of the smallest companies to pay for the majority, rather than the other way around. What are taxes for? Why were they created? Taxes are collected to redistribute wealth through infrastructure, worker training and various other mechanisms. When roads are built, a group of individuals pays and it is all redistributed.

Clearly, the company for which a four-lane road is built does not pay for it. Nor does it pay for the time its trucks spend on the road to deliver a product from point A to point B. People pay for it through taxes. They pay out of their pockets, and they are going to pay more and more. The sales tax was lowered, but the prices of products entering the country are going up.

I have been putting together a file for a year now. This bill follows on from two others, Bill C-38, which was introduced a year ago in the spring, and Bill C-45, which was next in line. In the latter, employment insurance was hard hit. The bill tried to define suitable employment and discarded the previous definition. What we have is the party in power deciding what is suitable for them.

Mr. Speaker, when you retire one day, we will decide for you what you are going to do. You will be able to do something other than what you are doing now. In fact, you will be able to do many things, because you are highly skilled in several areas. Others will therefore decide what is suitable for you.

Some extremely strange things have happened: people who worked in agriculture, for example, being offered jobs washing dishes in restaurants. I think everyone is aware of these strange goings-on.

I would like to talk about a letter I received from the elected representatives in the north shore region, who tell us that the employment insurance reform—and hence the consequences of these notorious mammoth budgets—runs counter to the interests of north shore workers. It will completely undermine the economy.

People remember what the government said during the last election: “power to the regions”, yet for now, the regions have been totally abandoned, and our elected representatives are saying so.

Next week, people from Prince Edward Island, including the minister, will be coming here to speak to us about employment insurance. The people of Prince Edward Island and the Atlantic provinces are being thoroughly swindled. Seventy percent of all seasonal workers are in the Atlantic provinces.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today, May 2, two years after the NDP was elected as the official opposition. It has bee two years, but this budget implementation bill still contains the worst of the Conservative policies, even though this legislation should only include budget measures. Therefore, I will oppose this bill because of its content and because of the process.

Bill C-60, which implements parts of budget 2013, increases the tax burden on Canadians with tax increases for credit unions and small businesses. It also includes higher tariffs on thousands of products. It gives Treasury Board very broad powers allowing it to intervene in the collective bargaining process and to impose terms and conditions of employment on non-unionized crown corporation employees. It also amends the Investment Canada Act to significantly reduce the number of takeovers that are subject to review. Finally, it proposes a symbolic but inadequate solution to the flawed approach to the temporary foreign worker program.

To fully understand the problems with Bill C-60, we must go back to its source, the 2013 budget. That budget did not include anything really new, nor did it propose anything satisfactory regarding employment. It continued to target services provided to Canadians by trying to shrink the size of government. In this budget, the government tried to pull a fast one with funds allocated to worker training, and by pretending that infrastructure funds were going to increase when in fact they have been reduced, as my NDP colleagues found out. It is very important to point out that what was announced as new money is in fact a budget cut.

This budget also targets workers' funds and all those who benefit from such funds, including small investors and businesses in our regions. Moreover, the budget does not take seriously the problems facing producers, such as the labour shortage. The changes made to the employment insurance program did not help at all, and many farmers and seasonal entrepreneurs in my riding are having a hard time hiring skilled labour this year. They worry about the impact that these changes will have on them. The budget also does not do anything to help them with risk management.

The budget also shows a lack of conviction regarding the implementation of the Emerson report recommendations. That report, commissioned by this Conservative government, was drafted by the industry. The fact that its recommendations were not fully implemented means the Conservatives are not clearly siding with the aerospace industry, even though that industry creates thousands of jobs in a riding like Mirabel.

Again, with this budget, the government missed an opportunity to reverse its decision to slash old age security and many other programs. It is really unfortunate that this budget does absolutely nothing for the citizens of Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

By amending close to 50 different acts, Bill C-60 follows the same pattern as omnibus Bills C-38 and C-45.

While it is smaller than similar bills we have seen from this government, it still amends 49 pieces of legislation, which is a lot. The mere fact that the bill has fewer pages does not mean it is no worse. In any case, what Canadians want is not something that is no worse. They want something better. To achieve that, measures should be proposed properly, separately, and they should be debated fairly, based on their merits. They should be proposed responsibly in this Parliament.

Omnibus bills like this one and all the other budget implementation bills are fundamentally bad for democracy and for our Parliament.

With Bill C-60, the Conservatives are trying, for the third time, to circumvent parliamentary and public oversight. Canadians deserve better than a Conservative omnibus bill that adds to their cost of living and does not create jobs.

I want to be clear. I will oppose this omnibus bill because it is altogether bad for the Canadian economy. Regardless of what the Conservatives are saying, budget 2013 and Bill C-60 are measures that will slow down the Canadian economy instead of boosting it.

Budget 2013 cuts thousands of jobs, cuts program spending and weakens GDP growth. The Conservatives' plan, starting with budget 2012, will lead to the loss of 67,000 jobs by 2017 and a 0.57% drop in GDP. That is far from the prosperity the Conservatives promised.

I want to talk about something other than figures, but I do want to say that I did not make them up. They came from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who was appointed by this government.

As if it were not enough that this budget does nothing for the economy, with this bill, the government continues to go after workers. The bill gives extensive powers to the Treasury Board to intervene in the collective bargaining process and impose terms and conditions of employment on crown corporations. This interference in the negotiating process is very disappointing. The Conservatives are continuing their direct attack on collective bargaining. What a perfect example of doublespeak. They talk about independence for crown corporations, but they want to impose their austerity ideology and they are crushing that independence by interfering in the management of crown corporations.

I also want to mention that workers are not the only ones who will be negatively affected by this bill. The Conservatives really seem to have it in for the regions. Their tax hikes for credit unions and small businesses represent a direct attack on my riding's economy. Credit unions and SMEs are an important part of our communities' economic and social fabric. The Conservatives are taxing them to benefit the major banks and big businesses.

They amended the Investment Canada Act to considerably reduce the number of takeovers subject to review. That means that businesses outside of major urban centres will no longer be reviewed and, without oversight from the government, could be taken over by foreign companies.

Furthermore, how can we forget their ill-advised EI reform, which targets seasonal workers, who are essential to rural economies, or their attack on labour-sponsored funds, which are supported by workers, investors, unions and businesses, especially in the regions?

It is clear that the budget does nothing for my riding.

In conclusion, the government is trying to say that it is doing a good job managing the economy. In this budget, there is nothing for workers and nothing for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel. People deserve much more, and I hope to have the opportunity to give them more in 2015.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as I rise today to speak to Bill C-60, the Conservatives' first bill to implement budget 2013, I find it sad to have to remind Canadians that the bill imposes significant, in fact massive, tax hikes on middle-class Canadian families, who are already struggling to make ends meet. This is on top of massive tax increases that were included in the Conservatives' last three budgets. The Conservatives are raising taxes, because they need the money to cover for their waste and mismanagement. Unfortunately, the bill will only increase that wasteful spending by actually increasing the number of bloated ministers' offices, while at the same time cutting vital services middle-class Canadian families need. Finally, the bill does nothing to help young Canadians, who are desperate to find paid work.

As the House has heard, Bill C-60 is an omnibus bill that lumps together a large number of unrelated measures. These measures are being combined into one single bill on which we can vote yes or no. With a bill of this size and scope, with 233 different clauses, after all, it is bound to include some measures that we, in fact, may support.

For example, we are broadly supportive of some of the following measures: removing the deduction on disability benefits from the war veterans allowance; expanding the adoption expense tax credit; introducing a tax credit for first-time donors, although it is ironic that this first-time donor tax credit is not going to be utilized by too many young Canadians, given the fact that most young Canadians are having difficulty even finding jobs and opportunities or making ends meet; combatting tax evasion; extending the capital cost allowance again this year, although we would recommend that the government, instead of extending it for two years, should follow the advice of Canadian manufacturers and extend it for five years; expanding the GST and HST exemption for home care services; reducing tariffs on baby clothing and sporting equipment; supporting organizations such as Indspire, Canada Youth Business Foundation, Genome Canada, Nature Conservancy of Canada, Pallium Foundation of Canada and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind; providing funding for Nunavut housing; increasing the gas tax by 2% per year; reversing the Conservatives' earlier policy on the temporary foreign worker programs; and correcting the Conservatives' mistakes in terms of earlier changes made to registered disability savings plans when they rammed Bill C-38 through Parliament last year.

Given a chance to vote on some of these measures individually, we might, in fact, vote yes on some of them. Unfortunately, due to the approach taken by the Conservatives with this omnibus legislation, they have lumped some of these more reasonable measures in with massive tax increases on middle-class Canadians.

One measure alone, the proposed change to the dividend tax credit, will raise taxes on small business owners by over $2.3 billion over the next five years. This massive tax hike will hurt 750,000 Canadians, who will watch their tax bills go up by an average of more than $3,000 each, and it will put Canadian jobs and small businesses at risk. We cannot take $2.3 billion out of the economy without it hurting small businesses and hurting job creation in Canada. Remember, this tax hike is on top of the Conservatives' annual increase of EI premiums. Each and every year, the Conservatives increase the amount of money they take out of the economy through EI payroll tax increases by more than $600 million.

Bill C-60 also raises taxes on credit unions by $75 million per year. This is a direct attack on rural and small-town Canada, because credit unions play a vital role in the economies of small towns and communities across Canada.

The Conservatives seem to have forgotten that the goal of tax breaks for credit unions is to ensure that they can compete with big banks.

The fact is, credit unions are smaller and they face challenges that the big banks do not. That is why the tax deduction for credit unions ensures that only smaller institutions can qualify for this credit.

If the Conservatives believe that the deduction was not being used properly they could have proposed changes to the qualifying rules. It is not fair to punish all credit unions and the Canadians who depend on them by getting rid of this tax deduction altogether.

Bill C-60 also increases other taxes, some that will mean significant price increases for Canadian families and others that would nickel and dime Canadians who are already struggling just to make ends meet. The legislation would add GST or HST to the costs of certain health care services that Canadians already pay out of pocket.

For example, victims of crime would now pay GST or HST on the medical work that they need to establish their case in court, such as X-rays and lab work, which are not cheap to begin with. Bill C-60 would punish these victims by raising the costs of their medical expenses by up to 15%. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Conservative members of Parliament would want to punish victims of crime.

Bill C-60 would not only raise GST and HST on these health care services, it would make these increases retroactive to March 22. Doctors would now need to collect HST from their patients, and they are not sure which of the services would be subject to sales tax. There is a lot of confusion because the government has said that the tax is going up on health care services for non-health care purposes. What exactly does that mean?

Would couples who are struggling with fertility issues now have to pay taxes for certain lab work? Would Canadians have to pay taxes on doctors' notes they need for school or work? Would parents who have a child with special needs now have to pay tax on medical assessments they need in order to get a decision from a school board? Are the Conservatives now placing a tax on mental health services? We do not know.

While the Conservatives were quick to introduce this tax hike on health care services, they have been slow to provide Canadian doctors and their patients with the information they need.

Earlier this week the Canadian Psychological Association wrote to finance committee members asking for clarification. They wrote:

This announcement has created some confusion for psychologists, many of whom are small business owners, regarding which services are and are not HST-exempt. There is some urgency to the need for clarity given that changes outlined in the budget are retroactive to March 21st, 2013. Many of our members have spoken with their accountants but, unfortunately, this has yielded contradictory information and direction.

This type of confusion is the direct result of poorly thought out and hasty decisions brought forward by a government that is desperate to raise taxes and has not done its homework. It is what happens when a government becomes arrogant and refuses to hold public consultations and ignores the very Canadians who are most impacted by government decisions.

There are more tax hikes. Bill C-60 would increase taxes on safety deposit boxes.

Now the Conservatives will want to focus this debate on a few tiny tax decreases in the bill. For instance, they want to focus on tariff reductions for sporting equipment, those tariff reductions that we incidentally would support. However, it was my Liberal colleague, the member for Cape Breton—Canso, who stood in the House last November and demanded that the government remove these tariffs.

While this budget would reduce a few tariffs, it would increase many more. There is a net increase by $250 million per year in tariff taxes on Canadians. For every $1 in tariff reductions in this budget, there are $4 in tariff increases.

It is the Conservatives' tax increases that we do not support. These tax increases, otherwise known as tariff increases, which are import taxes, are a hidden tax on just about everything. Taxes on almost 1,300 different types of products would go up, everything from basic toiletries like toothpaste to home furnishings. The Conservatives would raise taxes on everything, including the kitchen sink. The fact is the import tax on kitchen sinks would more than double as a result of this budget.

The Conservatives have claimed that they are increasing these taxes because they do not want to help Chinese companies. That argument is ridiculous. It is not the Chinese companies that would be paying these taxes. It is middle-class Canadian families who are already struggling to make ends meet.

Second, if the tariff increases were not just simply a naked attempt by the Conservatives to take more money out of hard-working Canadians, then we would also see tax decreases in the budget in order to compensate Canadians.

When we tally it up, budget 2013 includes much more in the way of punishing tax increases than the pittance of tax relief. In fact, we could say there is a thimblefull of tax relief in a sea of tax hikes in this Conservative budget.

If we add up all the tax changes listed on the back of the budget, we would see that there is a net tax increase in every one of the next five years. This year, budget 2013 would impose a net tax increase of $65 million. Next year it would be a net tax increase of $615 million.

Over the next five years, the Conservatives' budget 2013 would impose a net tax increase of more than $3.3 billion. That is $3.3 billion of money earned by hard-working Canadians that the Conservatives would now be taking out of the economy. It is $3.3 billion less for Canadian families to spend on food, transportation or mortgage payments. That is on top of the almost $6.5 billion net increase in taxes imposed in the previous three budgets.

Combined, it is almost $10 billion in net tax increases on Canadians since budget 2010. That is $10 billion more that the Conservatives are taking out of the Canadian economy. It is $10 billion less in the hands of Canadian families and investors.

The government can do two things to help create jobs: cut taxes and increase public spending.

In fact, the Conservatives are doing the opposite. They are raising taxes while cutting public investment. It is no wonder that they are not creating enough jobs for young Canadians.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has forecast that the last two Conservative budgets will kill far more jobs than they create. According to the interim PBO, tax increases and spending measures in budgets 2012 and 2013 would have a net effect of 12,000 fewer jobs this year, 33,000 fewer jobs next year and 67,000 fewer jobs by 2017.

It is little wonder that the Conservatives cannot match the job creation record of the previous Liberal government. Under Prime Ministers Chrétien and Martin, the Liberals consistently lowered taxes and helped create 3.5 million net new jobs in Canada.

Looking at just the last seven years of the Liberal administration, there were over two million net new jobs created. Compare this with the Conservatives. Only 1.3 million net new jobs have been created in the last seven years.

Many Canadians have dropped out of the workforce altogether. A lot of young Canadians are giving up. A lot of young Canadians are working in unpaid internships, and the Conservatives simply have not created the jobs young Canadians need at a time when we have lost a lot of good-paying manufacturing jobs and there have been a lot of Canadians who have gone from full-time jobs to part-time work. That is why Canadian families are falling behind.

Why are the Conservatives, during this time of economic uncertainty and challenge, raising taxes? It is to pay for the Conservatives' wasteful spending and mismanagement of public resources.

In this budget, we get more waste from the Conservatives. Budget 2013 does nothing to curb the Conservatives' addiction to partisan government advertising. Canadians are sick and tired of watching the Conservatives throw their money away on partisan economic action plan ads. We know that these ads are not a good use of taxpayers' money. The Conservatives know that they do not provide good value for the taxpayers.

Last year the government commissioned a poll to see if the economic action plans were working. These are the ads the government took out ostensibly to promote measures in the budget. Here is the result. While 23% of Canadians who saw the ad could remember the phrase, “economic action plan”, far fewer Canadians actually knew what the ads were about.

Half as many thought the ads were about Canada or the governing Conservative Party. They did not relate them to the budget at all. While almost 5% of Canadians could remember that the ads included arrows that pointed up, less than 1% of Canadians knew the ads were about the federal budget.

In fact, when the survey went further and asked whether or not it affected the behaviour of Canadians who watched them, 92% said the ads did not affect their behaviour whatsoever. There was no result for them whatsoever as a result of watching these ads. They said that the ads had not provided them with any useful information. Ninety-two per cent of Canadians said that.

Of the people who did something, more than one in five “expressed my disbelief”. I am quoting from the actual survey commissioned by the finance department. Apparently, expressing one's disbelief about the economic action plan ads was such a popular option in the survey that it actually got its own category in the results.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in this legislation that would help wean the Conservatives off this wasteful use of partisan advertising. There is another area of spending that is covered in Bill C-60 that reflects the disconnect between the Conservative priorities and those of Canadian families: the number of parliamentary secretaries and the size of the cabinet.

The bill would not only increase the number of parliamentary secretaries, it would actually add three more cabinet positions to the list of salaried ministers. This means the Prime Minister would continue to increase the size of his cabinet and that these cabinet ministers and their parliamentary secretaries could continue to give pay increases to their Conservative staffers. If we compare this to the plight that an awful lot of young Canadians face today, it would seem that the Conservatives are only interested, in terms of young Canadians, in helping young Conservative staffers, because it seems that they are leaving everyone else out of the equation totally.

In fact, only two measures would really will help young Canadians in this budget overall; well, I would say three.

First is the Canada Youth Business Foundation. I think, broadly, that investment is a positive investment. It is not nearly enough. There is so much more that needs to be done to foster entrepreneurialism in Canada.

Second, one could argue that expanding ministers' officers would create more jobs for young Conservative staffers. I guess we could say that is helping somebody out.

Third, at a time when young Canadians cannot find work, when the youth job numbers are five points worse than they were five years ago--last summer we had the worst summer jobs numbers since Statistics Canada started tracking these numbers--the Conservatives have come up with a new super donor credit for young Canadians who contribute. It is pretty hard for young Canadians to contribute when they are suffering under staggering consumer debt. Over 30% of them between the ages of 25 to 29 are living at home, with their parents, because they cannot pay for their own apartment, yet what do the Conservatives do? They say, “We're going to help these people. We're going to make them great philanthropists.”

There are not too many young Canadians I know who are going to have wings of hospitals named after them in the near future. The reality is unless the Conservatives are talking about kids with trust funds or something, I do not know too many young Canadians who are in a position to give significant donations to charities or who have tax planners telling them how to do that in a tax-efficient manner. That shows us how out of touch the Conservatives are with middle-class Canadian families.

The reality is young Canadians are suffering. We risk losing a generation of potential in Canada as a result of Conservative inaction.

Nothing speaks more to the degree to which the government is out of touch with the needs and the realities of young Canadians than the fact that one of the few measures it puts in the budget to help young Canadians would help them become philanthropists, at a time when they cannot even make ends meet or pay for their own apartment or get out of debt from their student loans.

In summary, the bill would do nothing significant to help young Canadians who are struggling, it would punish middle-class Canadians with massive tax increases, and it would continue with wasteful spending that reflects the Conservatives' interest in politics and not in the people of Canada. Therefore, we cannot support the budget implementation act.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, today we are dealing with Bill C-60, the first Conservative omnibus bill following its 2013 budget. It is a bit less abusive than Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 from last year, but it is still an omnibus measure, lumping together various unrelated matters. By my count, at least 18 different government portfolios are implicated.

At the end of the day, the government will force a single vote on all of that all at once. That renders the vote so meaningless, because it cuts across so many unrelated disciplines. Again, democracy is compromised in the process.

There are some items for sure in Bill C-60 which people could generally support: better allowances for veterans, for example; dealing with the adoption tax credit; more incentives for charitable giving; the extension of capital cost allowance; and additions to the gas tax transfer.

However, these positive things are intermingled, unfortunately, with many very negative measures, especially large tax increases that will hit and hurt middle-class Canadians in particular, and we cannot and we will not support those negative measures.

Budget 2013 is crafted to feed several false illusions. The first of those is the mythical notion that the Conservatives are the competent economic managers that they claim to be, but let us look at the facts.

When they took office in 2006, they inherited from their Liberal predecessors 10 straight years of balanced budgets, an annual surplus that was running at the rate of $13 billion every year, lower debt, lower taxes, low and stable interest rates, a sound and solid Canada pension plan, steadily dropping employment insurance premiums, annual economic growth rates of 3% or better, the best banking system in the world, the best ever transfer payments to provinces and territories, progressive investments in child care, skills and learning, science and innovation, environmental integrity, infrastructure, trade and three and a half million net new jobs. That is what the Conservatives inherited. That is what was handed to them as a starting point in 2006.

Just as an interesting historical sidebar, before the Conservatives inherited 10 years of Liberal balanced budgets and robust surpluses, the last time a Conservative government actually balanced a budget for Canada was 101 years ago in 1912. The prime minister at the time was Robert Borden, originally a school teacher, as a matter of historical fact. He, too, inherited his surplus from a Liberal predecessor, namely Sir Wilfrid Laurier, but sadly, he managed to maintain it for only one year before dropping into deficit.

The current Conservative government has behaved in a similar manner through excessive spending and reckless budgeting. Between 2006 and 2008, they put Canada back into the red again before, not because of, the recession, which hit in the latter part of 2008, and they have not balanced the books every since.

In budget 2013, the Conservatives claim they will eliminate the deficit hocus-pocus by 2015. Is that not convenient? Just on the eve of the next federal election they are projecting a balanced budget. A close look at their financial plans provides ample reason to be just a little bit suspicious. Here are some of the fiscal tricks.

First, they use rosy growth estimates. To puff up government revenues, the Conservatives have based their fiscal planning on optimistic projections about economic growth. They ignore the reality that in years just passed, their numbers have never ever been correct. Time and time again, their initial forecast has had to be downgraded, as both the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of Canada have just done once again in this last month.

Second, they use deficient reserves. To create the illusion of more financial flexibility and strength than they really have, the Conservatives have lowballed the reserves that should be in place to serve as fiscal shock absorbers for Canadians against unpleasant future economic surprises. The amounts set aside should grow in the outer years because the risk is larger in the outer years, but the Conservative government has foolishly flatlined its reserves going forward, meaning it is not protecting adequately against future risk.

Third, they use exaggerated lapses. When a government department does not use all the budget in any given year that is given to it, the excess money naturally lapses back to the central treasury. The Conservatives in their budget are counting on very large lapses over the next several years. In fact, that is worked right into their arithmetic. In other words, they are planning to make big announcements of big new spending plans but never actually investing the money.

Fourth, they use excessive optimism about catching those tax cheats. While cracking down on those who do not pay their rightful taxes is an absolute necessity, the Conservatives claim of a balanced budget depends heavily on quickly collecting billions in unpaid taxes, and that seems highly improbable at a time when they are chopping the resources needed in the revenue department to go after those tax cheaters.

Fifth, they use big program cuts. For big programs like infrastructure, the government claims to be increasing its investment, but any hypothetical increase would actually occur only years down the road, beyond the mandate of this Parliament, sometime in the latter part of this decade, conveniently well after 2015. It is a trick that is called multi-year bundling and back-end loading. When the government has nothing to announce, it rolls a bunch of years together and pretends it is going to spend money five or ten years down the road while it actually cuts in the short term. That is happening here. In reality, the build Canada infrastructure budget has been cut by $1.5 billion this year, $1.5 billion next year and $1 billion in the year after that. Any hypothetical increase is only well after 2015.

Sixth, they are claiming before proving. Using all of the tricks that I have just mentioned to concoct the false notion of a balanced budget by 2015, the Conservatives will claim that they have met their fiscal objective just before they call an election and, importantly, before proof to the contrary can become available. In the normal financial cycle, the audit report on the government's books for 2015 will not get published until much later, that is well into 2016, long after any election has come and gone. So much for the Conservative illusion of fiscal and economic competence.

Their second illusion is that they really care about jobs and job training and they boast about their proposed new jobs grant. The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development mentions it in the House almost every day, but again it is fiction. It is spin. It is make-believe. It does not exist.

What exists are labour market agreements, and they have existed since the late 1990s. They are job training agreements between the Government of Canada and all the provinces. The latest versions of these labour market agreements were negotiated about five years ago, and they are worth now about $2.5 billion all together. Federal money is regularly transferred every year by the Government of Canada to the provinces. The provinces use those funds to tailor job training and labour market programs and services that suit their local circumstances. The provinces are in charge of the design. That is what exists now.

The Conservative government wanted to appear to be doing something about skills and jobs in the 2013 budget. People without jobs and jobs without people is one of Canada's biggest economic problems at the present time. The government wanted to look as if it were aware of that and doing something about it.

However, the government was not prepared to invest any new money to try and make an actual difference in terms of job training. What it did do was create an illusion of action and the fiction it was doing something about jobs and training. What it is basically proposing to do is claw back the $2.5 billion per year labour market money that it now sends to the provinces and renegotiate it with provincial governments. That is all. It amounts to recycling existing money. There is nothing more. There is nothing new. There is no additional federal investment.

The provinces will need to contribute more and so will the private sector. That may actually serve to reduce the extent of job training in some sectors and some provinces, because some of those other partners, the provinces or the private sector, may not be able to match the federal dollars. Even the provincial treasurer in Alberta has made the comment that he does not know whether Alberta would want to participate in that kind of initiative.

The bottom line here is that there is no new money and no additional federal investment in training. It is an illusion to try to create the impression that something new is happening when it is not. That is tragic, especially for young Canadians looking for some hope and opportunity.

Here are the numbers. More than 212,000 fewer young Canadians are working today than just before the recession began in 2008. The youth unemployment rate is a very stubborn 14.2%. That is nearly twice the rate for other Canadians. The actual number is 404,000 jobless young people. Worse still, another 171,000 have simply given up and dropped out of the labour market altogether. The government and the budget do nothing but shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is simply not good enough.

Another fiction, the third one, is the government's bogus claim that is does not increase taxes. That assertion is completely false, and that is one of the key reasons we cannot support Bill C-60. It increases taxes, especially the tax burden of middle-class Canadians and all those who are working so hard to join the middle class. It happens in dozens of nefarious ways. New hidden Conservative taxes on safety deposit boxes total $40 million a year. On certain medical services, it is $2 million a year. New Conservative taxes on credit unions amount to $75 million a year. It goes on.

However, there are three hidden Conservative tax hikes that hit especially hard at the middle class. They are taxes on small business dividends, taxes on payrolls and taxes on imported consumer goods.

First, the Conservative small business tax, a new tax burden on small businesses, will absorb $550 million every year, taking it from small businesses and hurting the middle class.

The second new Conservative tax is the EI payroll tax, which will suck up $600 million every year in higher EI premiums, again hurting the middle class. By contrast, facing a job challenge in the 1990s, a Liberal government did not increase EI payroll taxes. We in fact cut them. We cut them 12 consecutive times and we cut them by 40%. Employers and employees saved billions of dollars and 3.5 million net new jobs were generated. The Conservative government's record is the opposite of that.

Finally, the third tax increase that we object to is the new Conservative increase of tariff taxes, taxes on imports, which will take about $333 million every year from middle-class Canadians.

The cost of vacuum cleaners will go up by 5%. Bicycles will go up by 4.5%. Baby carriages will go up by 3%. Plastic school supplies will go up by 3.5%. Scissors will go up by 11%. Ovens, cooking stoves and ranges will go up by 3%. For coffee makers, the cost will increase by 4%. On wigs, especially cosmetic wigs for cancer patients, the cost will go up by a whopping 15.5%. The cost of USB drives will go up by 6%. On blankets, the cost will go up by 5%. On toothbrushes, the cost will go up by 2%. On pillows, the cost will go up by 6%. On alarm clocks, the cost will go up by 6%. There are dozens and dozens of imported products.

The government's excuse for this is that it only wants to provide these higher tariffs in order to give a benefit to a lower-income country overseas. However, the reality is, when we put on these tariff increases, the country overseas does not levy the tax and does not pay the tax. The tax is levied in Canada and it is paid by Canadians. The burden is on average middle-income Canadian families. This is a self-inflicted cost burden in Canada, which is why we cannot support it.

When all of these measures I mentioned are fully implemented, as well as some other taxes that are buried in this legislation, the burden will add up to more than $2 billion per year in new Conservative taxes that are being levied on Canadians. The largest portion of that burden will fall squarely on the backs of middle-class families.

For substantive reasons of public policy today, we will not vote for these measures. Also, because the government is trying to hide these new taxes and deny them, we cannot sanction such deceit. Liberals oppose Bill C-60.

Therefore, I move, seconded by the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-60, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures (Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1), because it:

A) raises taxes on middle class Canadians in order to pay for the Conservatives' wasteful spending;

B) fails to reverse the government's decision to raise tariffs on items such as baby carriages, bicycles, household water heaters, space heaters, school supplies, ovens, coffee makers, wigs for cancer patients, and blankets;

C) raises taxes on small business owners by $2.3 billion over the next 5 years, directly hurting 750,000 Canadians and risking Canadian jobs;

D) raises taxes on credit unions by $75 million per year, which is an attack on rural Canadians and Canada's rural economy;

E) adds GST/HST to certain healthcare services, including medical work that victims of crime need to establish their case in court;

F) fails to provide a youth employment strategy to help struggling young Canadians find work; and

G) ignores the pressing requirements of aboriginal peoples.

Fisheries and Oceans

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

I am surprised, Mr. Speaker, that the member would be opposed to focusing DFO on the protection of Canada's commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries. That is exactly what we did in Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 and we are continuing to focus on that. As we put together the policy framework to support those changes, we are engaging and talking to our key stakeholders.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, that kind of attitude is not going to help us deal with global warming in this country.

The government is also walking away from its fisheries responsibilities. In the midst of the public outcry over Bill C-38, the government claimed it “consulted with fishermen”, but now we learn that the people it consulted with were the oil and gas, mining, and nuclear power companies. Not one fisheries organization did it consult with.

I want to ask the minister, will he come clean and admit to Canadians who he is really looking after?

Opposition Motion—Climate Change

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, climate change is the most pressing environmental issue facing the planet. Climate change is real. It is happening now. It is an issue of today and not of tomorrow. Serious impacts are associated with the two degrees Celsius stabilization target, including an increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and sea-level rise.

The World Economic Forum, or WEF, recently ranked climate change the third-biggest concern, overall, of 1,000 experts surveyed. Failure to adapt to climate change was listed as the biggest single environmental hazard facing the planet. Moreover, the WEF listed runaway climate change as its first serious x factor, an emerging concern with unknown consequences. It even raised the question of whether humans have already triggered a runaway chain reaction that is rapidly tipping earth's atmosphere into an inhospitable state.

Canada's 1998 ice storm cost $5.4 billion. The 1996 Saguenay flood cost $1.7 billion. A 2005 rain event in Toronto cost $625 million in insured losses. The now defunct National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy warned that climate change is expensive, with annual $21-billion to $43-billion adaptation costs for Canadians by 2015.

The countries most vulnerable to climate change understand that 2015, the date by which to adopt a universal climate change agreement, is already too late. The two degrees Celsius target will likely be missed. Some developed countries remain insensitive to their predicament. Some islands will likely become submerged. Their hopes for enhanced global support to aid their efforts have continually been disappointed.

At stake is the future of our children and grandchildren. In light of the financial burdens to the next generations, the impacts on Canada's agriculture, environment, fisheries, forest, water, et cetera and ultimately on Canadians and on international communities, such as Bangladesh, which might lose one-fifth of its land mass and suffer the displacement of 20 million people with a one-metre rise in sea level, it is extremely disappointing that instead of having a serious debate on what Canada should be doing to mitigate and adapt to climate change, the New Democrats have chosen to politicize a fundamentally human issue.

I am very surprised that the New Democrats would choose to attack the Liberal Party on this issue, given their party's less than stellar role in combatting climate change.

In 2005, it was the NDP's political antics that led to the fall of the Liberal government, thereby knowingly ending any chance that Canada would take real action on climate change. The Liberal government's project green would have, in fact, taken Canada 80% of the way to meeting its Kyoto targets. The Conservatives have since reduced the previous Liberal government's greenhouse gas emissions targets by an astonishing 90% and will not even meet their very weak target.

My friend and colleague for over two decades, the leader of the Green Party, blamed the NDP for putting politics ahead of the planet, risking the collapse of an urgent climate change conference in 2005 aimed at salvaging the Kyoto protocol. She begged the NDP to rethink the issue. A newspaper article stated, when the leader of the Green Party wrote her 2009 book,

“It was to no avail,” she wrote, highlighting the incident as proof that both [the NDP] and [the current Prime Minister] were willing to sacrifice the key Kyoto negotiations...

I have spent the last 25 years researching climate change, consulting for Environment Canada, serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, speaking around the world on climate change and its impacts, undertaking research 500 miles from the North Pole, and watching the glaciers recede and recede. I came to Ottawa to fight for real action on climate change, and I currently chair the all-party climate change caucus, which I founded. I also serve on two United Nations bodies, one regarding climate change and the second one regarding disaster preparedness.

It is, therefore, painful to say that the Liberal Party will not be supporting the NDP's motion as the motion is dishonest about my party's record on climate change. I ensure my speeches are accurate and scientifically rigorous, and that my arguments are fact-based and not hyperbole and rhetoric. The Liberal Party does agree with two of the three sections of the NDP motion, namely, that there is grave concern with the impacts of a 2° Celsius rise in global average temperature and the government should immediately table its federal climate change adaptation plan.

Let me set the record straight on the Liberal Party's action on climate change and then outline the wilfully blind position of the current Conservative government and what it should be doing to protect the future.

In 1998, Canada signed the Kyoto protocol, pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by the commitment period ending in 2012. In 2000, the Liberal government introduced its action plan 2000 on climate change and committed $500 million on measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or GHGs.

In 2002, Canada formally ratified the Kyoto protocol. The Liberal government called it “an important milestone in Canada's contribution to addressing climate change”. The government also released “Climate Change: Achieving our Commitments Together”, which proposed a three-stage strategy to achieve GHG reduction goals through incentives, regulations, and tax measures.

In 2003, the Liberal government pledged an additional $1 billion for its climate change plan and offered incentives to consumers and industry. Total federal spending on Kyoto reached $3.7 billion. In 2004, the Liberal government issued the one-tonne challenge, which called for every Canadian to cut GHG emissions through such activities as recycling, taking public transit, and using programmable thermostats. From the early 1990s, I have been challenging my own students at the university to reduce their personal and family GHGs.

In 2005, the Kyoto protocol officially came into force. Within three weeks of the date, the Liberal government and Canada's carmakers reached an agreement regarding emission standards. Car companies were to produce vehicles that would cut emissions by 5.3 megatonnes by 2010 as part of Ottawa's Kyoto plan. Within two months of Kyoto coming into force, the Liberal government announced details of its Kyoto implementation plan, project green, pledging $10 billion to cut greenhouse gases by 270 megatonnes a year by 2008 to 2012. However, in 2006, with the help of the NDP, the Conservative government came to power and immediately killed project green. Independent third-party stakeholders stated that the plan would have allowed Canada to come close to meeting its Kyoto targets.

Since coming to power the Conservative government has reduced the Liberal GHG targets by an astonishing 90%, spent $9.2 billion and claims it is half way to meeting its very weak GHG targets. The Conservative government's latter claim is particularly remarkable given that as recently as the fall of 2011, the government was on track to reach only 25% of its very weak target.

Weak target or not, how did the government manage to improve its performance by an astounding 100% in just over six months? First, the government used a higher start value, a projected value, rather than actual emissions. Second, it changed the accounting rules. Third, the government took credit for someone else's hard work. The June 2012 report from the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy made it clear that action taken by the provinces and territories is really responsible for three-quarters of Canada's GHG reductions. Moreover, the round table's report echoed that of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, which showed that in 2020 Canada's emissions would be 7% above the 2005 level rather than the promised 17% below.

Fourth, the government removed any climate accountability measures through its draconian omnibus bill, Bill C-38, which repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. Because of the repeal, the government will no longer have to publish the climate change plan each year, detailing the measures being taken to meet Canada's commitment. Moreover, the round table will no longer be required to assess each year's plan and offer expert feedback. In fact, the round table no longer even exists as it failed to comply with Conservative ideology. Moreover, the commissioner will no longer have to report regularly on Canada's progress in implementing its climate plan.

Because of the lack of climate accountability measures, Canadians will continue to suffer a Minister of Natural Resources who casts doubt on climate change science saying that, “People aren't as worried as they were before about global warming of 2° and scientists have recently told us that our fears on climate change are exaggerated.” Even flat earth proponents eventually came around. What will it take to convince the natural resources minister that climate change is real?

Because of the lack of climate accountability measures, Canadians will continue to suffer a government that repeats its mantra, namely, that its sector-by-sector approach to climate change is working. Sadly, the approach is just a delay tactic. The government has tackled only two sectors in six years and is yet to take action on the oil and gas sector. Perhaps instead of repeating tired lines, the government should actually review the evidence and experience first-hand what Canadians are living.

The reality is the world is getting hotter. The warmest 13 years of average global temperatures have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997. Increased global average temperatures are expected to increase droughts and floods, and other extreme weather patterns. Recent record-breaking temperatures for June 2012 are what we would expect from climate change. In fact, records for the contiguous United States that have been kept since 1895 show that July 2012 was the hottest month ever.

Whether the government accepts or minimizes the fact that record-breaking temperatures and extreme precipitation are likely changing on a global scale as a result of anthropogenic influences, many Canadians are feeling the economic impacts. In Canada, catastrophic events cost approximately $1.6 billion in 2011 and almost $1 billion in each of the two previous years. In 2012, in many regions across Canada, farmers struggled with hot, dry conditions that devastated their crops.

The Ontario provincial government asked for federal support to help farmers dealing with drought. Farmers were forced to sell their livestock at low prices because the drought had raised feed costs beyond what they could afford. Increasing evidence shows drought conditions will become the norm rather than the exception.

What needs to be done on climate change and done immediately? The NDP is calling for a climate adaptation plan and this is important. For many years, I consulted to Environment Canada's adaptation and impacts research group. Many of its members share the 2007 Nobel Prize on climate change, but it has since been dismantled by the Conservative government. The NDP fails to mention mitigation in its motion. We need both mitigation and adaptation. I will briefly describe omitted mitigation options.

We need sustainable development of our natural resources and all decisions must be based on scientific evidence, must safeguard our environment and natural habitats, and must respect the legal and historical rights of aboriginal people. The federal government must recognize that non-renewable high carbon energy sources are unsustainable. Canada must also have a plan for a transition to more sustainable energy sources and a pan-Canadian sustainable energy and economic growth strategy to succeed in the global economy and to make progress on this 2020 GHG reduction target.

The federal government should collaborate with relevant federal ministers and departments as well as with provincial, territorial, and municipal leaders in Canada to develop a pan-Canadian sustainable energy strategy.

It must also fully consult and accommodate aboriginal peoples when development projects affect their rights and traditional territories. Such a strategy should ensure fairness to all emitters and emitting sectors and regions. It should also include the creation of new markets and opportunities, and improve competitiveness for Canadian companies, particularly regarding low carbon technologies.

Both renewable energy and energy efficiency offer the promise of economic growth, job creation, energy security, and reductions in GHG emissions. The government should therefore develop an action plan to achieve identified targets for the deployment of low-impact renewable energy in Canada for the years 2020, 2030, 2040, and 2050.

The federal government should also develop an action plan to achieve energy efficiency targets for the same decades. The European Union is now on track to deliver a 15% energy saving below business-as-usual by 2020.

To address climate change effectively, we also need a strategy for sustainable transportation in Canada that sets targets for the coming decades and an action plan for phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies in order to achieve the G20 goal of a medium-term phase-out.

The government should develop an action plan and milestones for increasing energy literacy and research, development and deployment of low carbon technology in Canada. It should work in partnership with the provinces, territories, municipalities, labour organizations, industry sectors, aboriginal peoples, and others to develop a clean energy employment transition strategy.

The stakes are enormous. Leading countries are creating a new energy future and investing billions to be at the front of the curve in the new green economy. While the government invested only $3 billion in green stimulus spending, Germany invested $14 billion; the United States, $112 billion; and China, $221 billion in green infrastructure, and in the process created thousands of new green jobs.

Instead of reverting to 1950s thinking of development at any cost, the government should be mapping the best way forward to a prosperous, energy-secure, and healthy future. The government must understand that it is a choice between being a producer and a consumer in the old economy and being a leader in the new economy. It is a choice between decline and prosperity.

Finally, the government must stop embarrassing Canadians on the world stage. Canada's withdrawal from Kyoto sparked outrage in the global community. A spokesman for France's foreign ministry called the move “bad news for the fight against climate change”. Tuvalu's lead negotiator said, “For a vulnerable country like Tuvalu, it’s an act of sabotage on our future…Withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol is a reckless and totally irresponsible act.”

Try as the government might, through cutting climate programs and research, and muzzling its scientists, the science of climate change simply will not go away, nor will the recognition of the economic impacts of warming and the growing chorus of countries taking action to combat climate change and gain competitive advantage by transitioning to the green economy.

The NDP and the Conservative government must stop polarizing the climate change discussion and resorting to ideological extremes during debate on the issue. Sadly, while climate change is speeding up, Canada continues to slide backwards on the issue. The Conservative government's only response is to greenwash its deplorable record on the environment.

Canadians deserve better, and our children and grandchildren deserve better, and should not be held hostage to the government's short-sightedness, skepticism, and stonewalling on the greatest challenge facing our planet.

Opposition Motion--First Nations, Métis and Inuit

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, taking into account the scope and familiar nature of the motion before the House, it is my duty to support the explicit and underlying concepts it contains.

As a result, in my speech today, I will provide some perspective on the realities addressed by the motion by focusing on the confrontational approach that characterizes the modern relationship between the Canadian government and aboriginal people across the country. I would like to read from the motion before us, which states:

That this House call on the government to: (a) abandon its confrontational approach to First Nations, Métis and Inuit in favour of a nation-to-nation dialogue...

First, I will talk about the confrontational approach. At the risk of repeating myself, over the Christmas break, when I was deeply inspired by the Idle No More movement, I was asked to prepare a course and to travel throughout Canada and the United States. I had to do a detour through the United States to get to certain parts of Quebec. In short, I travelled to many aboriginal communities across the country to give a course on the modernization and amendment of the Indian Act, which is related to bills such as Bill C-27, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45.

In the course introduction, I made a point of indicating that the comments made by a number of ministers and stakeholders suggest that they see the affirmation of the identity of first nations in Canada as a barrier to economic expansion. This view is shared by many other stakeholders and is due, in part, to various speeches made in the House. Some ministers and others have been quoted on this issue.

If we look closer, it is true that there is some correlation between the assertive measures that have been taken by aboriginal communities across Canada in affirmation of their identity and the dramatic drop in the stock market value of some corporate entities.

One might assume that this is a fairly simple relationship when, in reality, it is very complex. If there has been a dramatic drop in the stock value, it is because the entity in question was lax and failed to shoulder its corporate social responsibility. That is why this affirmation of identity is undermining the stock market value of these entities. In a way, this premise is flawed because it is not the affirmation of aboriginal identity itself that is creating a barrier to economic expansion; rather, it is the lack of transparency and the financial wrongdoing observed in remote areas.

Successive Canadian governments and all of the other parties have tried over the years to put Indians in a box, if I may say so. In other words, they have tried to restrict the jurisdiction, the affirmation of identity, the social, cultural and economic affirmation of first nations, in order to give economic entities more peace of mind. This government has been even more obvious about it than its predecessors and is moving forward with a corporatist agenda, primarily promoting natural resources extraction as an economic engine and key component of economic development across the country.

I simply wanted to point that out. I should technically be talking about how shocked nationalists are in Quebec right now, because they are also dealing with a conflict situation that can lead to confrontation. However, that is a different story, and I will discuss the situation with the appropriate stakeholders in due course. There you go.

This situation reveals the selective and preferential nature of the relationships between aboriginal communities and the Canadian government in 2013. The motion before us refers to a comprehensive land claim that has not been addressed since 1991, and it is not the only one. I will give some concrete examples in a few seconds. Unfortunately, this lack of dialogue between stakeholders is a reflection of the reality of a number of contentious aboriginal cases across the country.

Successive governments, and this government in particular, could be criticized for cherry-picking. In other words, the Conservatives are choosing which stakeholders they want to talk to. In some respects, although this situation is not so widespread, I find it problematic enough to bring it to the attention of the House.

There are some community management organizations and band councils that are essentially puppet governments. The Conservatives hand-picked, cherry-picked some pawns. These people were put in place in strategic communities to speak out in favour of proposed policies. This is not necessarily widespread, but it is common enough that I wanted to mention it today.

The government is trying to interfere in tribal politics. It chooses representatives. That is why some communities have really spoken out. They have such strong social, economic and cultural foundations that federal transfers and support seem marginal. These people are more autonomous.

Strangely enough, as in the case of the situation that has been going on since 1991, the current government will simply choose to ignore remote communities because they are too strong and they have developed energy policies that the government is unhappy with.

What this government wants are good, servile, submissive, accommodating and easily manipulated Indians. It is as though the government is a puppeteer making its marionettes dance.

I say this because in recent years, I have found that I often end up out on the sidewalk, strangely enough, during big community meetings.

I would like to share an example that I will continue to come back to until the end of my term. A supposedly historic meeting was held in January 2012. A number of community representatives were invited. However, the invitation was not extended to all communities, even though the government claimed to be inclusive. The government wanted to develop a new relationship with first nations peoples. I was personally escorted by intelligence officers. I was essentially kicked to the curb. As I was on the sidewalk, I realized that I was in good company. There were other representatives from several nations who were deemed unwelcome.

So much for the inclusive aspect of this new relationship.

I think that is quite deplorable. Things like that should not be happening in 2013.

Cherry-picking and choosing pawns and representatives for community management organizations is highly objectionable. That is why, in 2013, the Conservatives are seeing a huge amount of opposition from the first nations. That is also why their economic development plan has stalled and is really struggling.

Our international reputation is plummeting, just like the stock market value of some companies that are ignoring their social, environmental and other responsibilities.

The Environment

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after the government received yet another embarrassing grade on the environment, I asked whether the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans would do the right thing and restore funding to the Experimental Lakes Area, or ELA.

Let me begin by discussing the government's dismal record on the environment, followed by why the government should fund the ELA.

The 2008 Climate Change Performance Index ranked Canada 56th of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions.

In 2009 and again in 2013, the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th of 17 wealthy industrial nations on environmental performance.

In 2010, Simon Fraser University and the David Suzuki Foundation ranked Canada 24th of 25 OECD nations on environmental performance.

Having received such failing grades, an accountable, responsible government would have taken meaningful action to protect our fragile environment and the health and safety of Canadians, while building a vibrant green economy.

Instead, the government gutted environmental legislation of the last 50 years through economic plans 2012 and 2013 and its draconian omnibus implementation bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, severely cut the budget to Environment Canada, cancelled the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, and continues to muzzle government scientists.

The government's appalling environmental policies have been rightly criticized by policy makers, scientists, Canadians, the international community and repeatedly by the prestigious international science journal Nature.

The Conservative government once again had the opportunity to improve its negative performance by changing its reckless decision to close the world-renowned ELA, with 58 lakes, and considered to be one of Canada's most important aquatic research facilities. Instead, the government began dismantling the station at the end of last month. In the space of a few weeks, 11,000 Canadians signed a public petition, sent hundreds of letters of support for the ELA to government officials and held rallies across the country.

Leading scientists from around the world and across Canada support the ELA's cause. Liberal MPs held briefings for all members of Parliament and senators and put forth motions to study the value of the ELA and the potential effects of transferring the facility to a third party.

Following the presentation of two Liberal motions regarding the ELA, in both the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development and the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans the issue was addressed in camera, without public explanation, and the motions are no longer before the committees.

Scientists suggest the Conservatives are trying to silence a source of inconvenient data regarding climate change with the closures of the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Lab, the ELA and with the Kluane Lake Research Station on the chopping block.

The government should know that, despite its denial and stonewalling, the science of climate change simply will not go away.

Motions in Amendment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I generally applaud efforts to make points in speeches in this place relevant.

I raised a point of order when my amendments on Bill C-38 were being completely ignored by virtually every set speech of the Conservative members of Parliament. At the point where one member was talking about the economy of Greece, I rose and asked for the relevance to the amendments before us. I was told that they were generally on point because the subject of the bill was economic growth and development.

Therefore, certainly the member for St. John's East was in the ballpark of discussing my amendments, and many previous speeches on other bills have been way out of left field.

The Environment

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before getting back to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, I want to point out that my hon. colleague was saying that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the fish habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act could apply. However, these two pieces of legislation were targeted in Bills C-38 and C-45. They were amended and the protections were reduced. In fact, the government is attacking environmental protection. Why is there a double standard in the Navigable Waters Protection Act?

If my hon. colleague is saying that we do not need to protect the environment, then why is it that the Treasury Board is protecting the lakes in one riding in particular? This supposedly does not protect the environment. However, those lakes are protected when tens of thousands of other lakes and rivers in Canada are not.

The question needs to be asked. Why this injustice? Why is it that the Treasury Board is protecting lakes in one riding full of rich and famous people? What are we doing for all the other Canadian lakes?

Opposition Motion--Science

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard.

Today's debate is vital. The current ecological and economic crisis is a reminder that Canada needs to invest in public science and basic research and freely distribute scientific data. Climate change is real, and we are already suffering from its effects. We are at a crossroads, and we need science now more than ever.

Need I remind hon. members that, just 40 years ago, our industries were polluting the St. Lawrence River, we were burning toxic waste and miners were dying of cancer because they did not have the information and protection they needed?

We have come a long way since then. We set up research institutes, cleaned up our lakes and rivers and decontaminated thousands of sites across the country, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Today, we are paying for the mistakes of the past.

Right now, the situation in Canada is of grave concern. This Conservative government is undoing all the progress that we have made over the past decades. By making cuts to scientific research, censoring scientists, abolishing our environmental laws and destroying world-renowned research institutes, such as the NRTEE, the government is setting us back 50 years.

The experimental lakes program is a very good example. For 40 years now, the research conducted on 58 lakes has allowed us to make extraordinary advances in the field of biology that are recognized throughout the world. For example, this research has helped us to better understand the blue-green algae phenomenon and the role of phosphates in the development of cyanobacteria. This research has helped to improve water quality in many of our lakes. And that is not all. The research on these lakes in their natural state has helped to advance scientific studies at the international level. This is the only laboratory of its kind in the world.

Yet the Conservatives do not really seem to understand the importance of this institution. Their decision to do away with the experimental lakes program is a monumental mistake. The government is saying that it will save $2 million by closing this site, yet it costs only $6,000 to operate and replacing it or getting a private institution to run it would cost several million dollars.

What is more, the Conservatives are not considering the cost of depriving our country of data that are essential to preserving the quality of our water. The Conservatives seem to think that this is no big deal, that we will stick future generations with the bill and that they will deal with the problem.

In addition, this week we learned that Fisheries and Oceans Canada had locked up the Experimental Lakes Area cabins and was preventing scientists from accessing the site. Yet Ottawa had announced that it would continue managing the site until next September, but that it would not be paying for any research after March 31.

For months the government has been saying that it is looking for a private sector organization to take over the program, but nothing has happened yet. Britt Hall, a biochemist at the University of Regina and the director of the Coalition to Save ELA, is worried that 44 years' worth of data will be lost and that experiments will be cancelled.

Researchers at Trent University in Peterborough had to stop their work. They were working on the use of microscopic amounts of silver to prevent bacteria. It will be impossible for them to finish their research.

Cuts at the PEARL atmospheric research station in Nunavut also demonstrate this government's lack of a long-term vision. This winter, researchers were not able to gather data. It is important to continue funding research in areas as vital as climate change.

The list of this government's strategic errors is long: cuts to experimental farms and Mont-Joli's Maurice Lamontagne Institute, abolishing Statistics Canada's long form census, cuts to fishery research, cuts at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada's major resources support program, and so on.

Thanks to documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, we recently learned that there is concern amongst Environment Canada scientists who are responsible for monitoring air quality. Many of them work in offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, ensuring that we are complying with laws limiting land and atmospheric pollution. Employees are saying that the government will eliminate positions and that monitoring will be compromised. There is cause for concern.

When the Minister of the Environment goes to Copenhagen, Rio or Durban and says that his government is protecting the environment, but we here in Canada see that cuts are being made to essential, basic scientific research, there is every reason to doubt the sincerity of his remarks.

Yet public research is essential for a developed economy such as ours. The three key players in scientific research—universities, the private sector and the government—all play a fundamental role. The government funds research through programs, institutions and tax credits. Therefore, why eliminate these incentives in science and continue to offer tax breaks to oil companies? That is a double standard.

Public research cannot always be replaced by the private sector. Take Statistics Canada's consumer price index, for instance. Only the government can measure it, and companies really need that information.

Yves Gingras, a professor who is the Canada Research Chair in history and sociology of science at UQAM, said:

People often say the Conservatives are opposed to science. I think instead that they are in favour of strategic ignorance, so they can justify their inaction in certain areas that could hurt industries. When fishers observe that there are fewer fish, the government will be able to tell them that it does not know why and that the government is not to blame if it could not predict the shortage.

It is troubling to see that these cuts to science are accompanied by drastic changes in environmental legislation. With Bill C-38, the Conservative government drastically modified the environmental assessment process for hydrocarbons. Consultations were reduced to a minimum, almost to nothing, in fact. With Bill C-45, it took away all protection for our lakes and rivers.

All of this is accompanied by a culture of secrecy and censorship that has been imposed by the Conservative government since 2006. The prestigious Royal Society of Canada, an institution that has been around for more than 100 years and whose members are scientists in all fields, wrote an open letter to condemn the Conservatives' attitude. The Royal Society of Canada made a very simple request, namely, that the government stop preventing scientists from announcing their discoveries to the Canadian public. It is a fairly basic request. In a democratic society, it is important to discuss what action to take based on fact rather than simply being guided by ideology.

For instance, the census is one of the tools that enabled Canada to become one of the most developed countries in the world. It is one way for the government to develop targeted, effective public policies. For instance, it tells us what the average age is in a given area, which helps public health authorities target their actions. It guides entrepreneurs who are looking for opportunities, by mapping out the average income in a given region. It also helps community organizations that want to reach out to a specific clientele.

Let us talk about the status of French, since today is the International Day of La Francophonie. The status of French in Canada is another example that proves how useful the census can be. The data collected made it possible to accurately follow major linguistic trends, thereby allowing governments to adapt their policies in order to ensure the vitality of the French language. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister could not care less. He has decided to put his own ideological interests ahead of the country's interests.

For a government that claims to care about important issues like economic development, public health, the environment and the status of French, its attitude—tossing aside all scientific data and muzzling scientists—is not very responsible.

In my opinion, good public policies should be based on proven, credible facts. We will continue to advocate for complete freedom for all Canadian researchers and an end to this censorship.

I hope the Conservatives will put their shoulders to the wheel and support this important motion, so that our scientists can restore their image, regain their zeal and continue to participate in the essential research that Canada so desperately needs. Above all, I hope that we can give new hope to young Canadians who are thinking about a future in innovation, research, science and technology.

Response to the Supreme Court of Canada decison in R. V. Tse Act

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, which has been introduced in response to the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Tse.

This bill is now at third reading and the NDP will support it. The bill finally corrects a number of previous errors. In response to the Supreme Court's decision in R. v. Tse, it amends the Criminal Code to provide for safeguards related to the authority to intercept private communications without prior judicial authorization under section 184.4 of the Code. The bill makes three provisions in particular.

First, it requires the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Attorney General of each province to report on the interceptions of private communications made under section 184.4. Second, it provides that a person who has been the object of such an interception must be notified of the interception within a specified period. Third, it narrows the class of individuals who may make such an interception and, lastly, limits those interceptions to offences listed in section 183 of the Criminal Code.

We are genuinely pleased that the Conservative government has finally introduced Bill C-55. I say "finally" because the government has dragged its feet on this matter.

This bill refers to the obligation set by the Supreme Court, which revealed a deficiency. There was an imbalance between the right to privacy under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the right to security. There was thus an intrusion of privacy. That is why this bill now strikes a balance between the right to privacy and the right to security.

We now have accountability. Now no one may engage in wiretapping at will, without being accountable. A person who has been wiretapped must be notified within 90 days. Why is this aspect important? Now if an individual who has been wiretapped believes that his or her right to privacy under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been violated, that individual may institute legal proceedings against the individuals in question and seek redress. That will help limit overzealous peace officers.

In addition, the number of individuals who may conduct wiretap will now be limited, a fact that also helps strike a balance.

However, the bill is also a response to a total failure by the Conservative government after it introduced its infamous Bill C-30. That bill constituted a direct attack on people's right to privacy and certainly violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was also drafted by the Conservatives in a wholly improvised manner.

It is very important that the NDP remind the Conservatives how crucially important and even essential it is for them to scrutinize all new bills they table in the House of Commons in future. Those bills will have to be well analyzed and checked, and reviewed by lawyers to be sure that they comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of Canada.

As a result, the Supreme Court will not be required to hear lengthy and costly cases that waste the precious time of all Canadians. That is essential, and I want to recall that point so that the Conservatives learn a good lesson from it.

It is very important to go through all the stages in a democratic process properly. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have a bad habit of wanting to do everything at lightning speed without due regard to the democratic process.

I need only recall its bad budget implementation legislation, Bills C-38 and C-45, omnibus bills of 400 pages each that prevent us from doing our democratic job and from getting to the bottom of things, just as the notorious Bill C-30 did.

In that case, the bill does not make it through the process to committee stage and is neither examined nor evaluated. If there are any deficiencies or aspects that do not comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or are unconstitutional, we wind up with a botched job and have to turn to the Supreme Court to assert our rights.

That is why the judgment in R. v. Tse is important. I hope it will finally teach the Conservative government a lesson so that it acts in a systematic and democratic manner in future in order to ensure compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of Canada.

I will go into slightly greater detail on the subject of Bill C-55. This bill requires that an individual whose private communications have been intercepted in situations of imminent harm be notified of the situation within 90 days, subject to any extension of that period granted by a judge. The bill would also require annual reports to be prepared.

The preparation of annual reports on interceptions of telephone surveillance is truly important in determining whether abusive wiretap has taken place and in being able to monitor such wiretaps. The requirement to prepare an annual report will help keep an eye on all that. The reports will also enable other authorities, such as the Office of the Auditor General, to monitor what is being done in that regard to ensure that the act and the spirit of the act are complied with, that there are no abuses of justice and that the privacy of Canadian citizens is respected. Annual reports must be prepared on the manner in which information intercepted under section 184.4 is used.

These amendments would also limit the authorization that police officers are granted to use this provision. As I mentioned, all peace officers currently have access to it. Its use would thus be limited to the offences set out in section 183 of the Criminal Code.

It is very important that there be accountability for this wiretapping. We know that there may be threats or moments when a security breach can suddenly call for warrantless wiretaps. At that point, however, there must be accountability because there must be no serious abuses or violations of citizens' privacy.

On that point, I consider it important to note again that the NDP believes it has a duty to ensure compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that public safety is not undermined.

To sum up, it is important to remember that this new bill is no more than an update of wiretapping provisions that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional. The court also set new parameters for the protection of privacy.

We believe that the bill meets the standards, and that Canadians have good reasons for apprehension about the Conservatives’ bill with respect to privacy. As I said, their track record in this area is not very impressive. Fortunately, this bill brings balance to the earlier imbalance. We must continue to be vigilant, however.

The NDP will continue to be vigilant with respect to the Conservatives’ bills. In the past, we have seen abuses. We saw abuse in the infamous Bill C-30. We have also seen the familiar dichotomy that the Conservatives love to present, whereby everything is either black or white, but there is no grey, so that is completely false. Bills must be referred to committee for study.

I am happy that my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou has returned to hear my comments, because he quite rightly mentioned just now the importance of committee work, and how essential committee work is to a sound democracy. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. Like my hon. colleague from Beauport—Limoilou, I know how very important this little-known work is. We meet with experts, and we propose amendments and additions to bills to ensure that they are as close to perfect as possible, that they respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution, and that they will be worthwhile and improve the well-being of Canadians in our wonderful country.

In closing, we find Bill C-55 well constructed. We appreciate it, because it finally brings balance between privacy and the need for security. That does not mean that we support all of the Conservatives’ bills. On the contrary, they have introduced abusive and infamous bills in the past. Bill C-30 was a horror—need I say again— because it was an absolute threat to people’s privacy. It was a purely conservative bill in the ideological sense of the term. It was an ideological vision.

I know that members who sit on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights criticized Bill C-30 repeatedly. I further believe that my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou was a member of the committee at the time. No, not quite. However, I know that other colleagues, for example my colleague from Gatineau, worked very hard to criticize the infamous Bill C-30, which was a genuine threat to privacy.

Bill C-30 regrettably demonstrated that the Conservatives can often say outrageous things. Truly outrageous things were said in the House when Bill C-30 was introduced. There were incredible dichotomous comments such as “either you are in favour of security and safety or you are on the side of the pedophiles”. It was a horrible speech with no room for grey areas or other comments. After all that, they backed down on Bill C-30 and introduced a bill that made sense—Bill C-55. I do not often congratulate the Conservatives. They should make the most of it today.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Beauport—Limoilou for his excellent speech, which was well researched and explained. He gave a good overview of this legislation and its origin. This was the result of an absolute mistake on the part of the Conservative government, which did not do its homework and brought in a bill that undermined our integrity and our right to privacy.

This bill finally achieves a balance between the right to privacy and the need for security. That was very important. He also mentioned that the government sometimes tended to get in the way of the democratic process and democracy. Bill C-38 and Bill C-45—two undemocratic omnibus bills—are examples of that. Another example is the work done in committee and the abuse of power, in committee, when the government chooses to hold in camera meetings.

I would like to hear what the member thinks about the fact that the government should act much more democratically and should respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution.

Motions in Amendment

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as we know, Bill C-55 is of great interest to me, particularly because it reveals and illustrates the extent of the Conservative government’s failure. The government always wants to move too quickly without showing any concern for our country’s most democratic and most important documents, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution.

On this topic, I would like my hon. colleague to explain how the failure of Bill C-30 and the recent introduction of Bill C-55 show that it is important, when drafting a bill, to take the time to ensure that it is consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada's Constitution.

The fact that the Conservative government wanted to do everything in its power to push through Bill C-30, even though it respected neither the substance nor the spirit of the charter, is indicative of the government's lack of interest in and sensitivity to the importance of Canadian institutions.

That is the question I would like to ask my hon. colleague, particularly in view of omnibus bills like C-38 and C-45, which were put together very quickly and did not comply with the prescribed time limits.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her excellent speech and the comments that she made about Bill C-55.

Throughout this early afternoon, I listened to what the other members had to say about the importance of this bill, which will remedy a flaw or close a loophole that the Conservatives left in Bill C-30, which is truly an aberration. The Conservatives ended up abandoning this bill because public pressure put them in their place.

The Conservatives are in the bad habit of doing things too quickly, without worrying about respecting the charter and the Constitution, for example. This is a problem that we do not mention often enough and a Conservative shortcoming.

I would like the hon. member to comment on omnibus bills such as Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, two bills that are nearly 800 pages long and that were examined very quickly. The government does not take the time to check whether it is abiding by Canada's key pieces of legislation, namely, the charter and the Constitution.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour today to take part in the debate on Bill C-48, the short title of which is the Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012. Its full title is An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act and related legislation.

This is obviously an enormous bill, comprising nearly 1,000 pages. More particularly, it is a very technical bill for the majority of members and myself, who are not tax specialists.

The purpose of Bill C-48 is to make amendments to the Canadian tax system that have been developed over more than a decade. Although we may wonder why the bill is long and voluminous, we can downplay that aspect because this bill nevertheless deals with a single subject, which was not the case with the mammoth bills the government previously introduced, Bills C-38 and C-45. Those bills concerned matters that were unrelated but that had nevertheless been grouped together based on an utterly debatable and debated logic.

Let us talk a little about the importance of taxation to Canadians, especially in this month of March when all our constituents are completing their tax returns. I do not believe our constituents are opposed to the idea of paying taxes, but they are appalled at times to see how their taxes are used at every level of government.

We are currently thinking of Quebec, in particular. In my riding, I hear a lot of talk about the Charbonneau commission and about the investigations that UPAC is conducting in Quebec on how taxes have been diverted from their primary purpose, the creation of infrastructure, at the provincial and municipal levels. Faced with misappropriation and corruption, Canadians—and I believe this is particularly true here in Quebec—are appalled at times by the wrongful manner in which their taxes are used; they are not being used properly.

When taxes are used properly, to expand infrastructure, for example, Canadians are quite happy to take part in this national effort. They are even asking us to do more, particularly with regard to infrastructure.

Although we can only be pleased that good measures are finally being included in Canada's tax legislation, we have reason to be concerned about the size of a bill that is nearly 1,000 pages long. Although it is true for all governments, this nevertheless shows that this government in particular should manage the tax code more effectively and work harder to ensure that statutory measures designed to enact tax proposals are regularly introduced.

With respect to the matter before us, the last technical tax bill was passed in 2001. In the update that she tabled in the fall of 2009, Sheila Fraser, then Auditor General of Canada, said she was concerned that at least 400 technical amendments had not yet been adopted. Although 200 of the amendments she referred to now appear in Bill C-48, hundreds of others have not yet been passed.

Bill C-48 includes some promising measures. Part 4, for example, provides for technical changes to the Excise Tax Act, repealing a measure that has not been used since 1999. Part 7 clarifies the minister's authority to amend tax administration agreement schedules, provided that does not make any substantial change to the terms and conditions of those agreements. Part 7 also enables the First Nations goods and services tax, imposed under a tax administration agreement between the federal government and an aboriginal government, whatever it might be, to be administered through a provincial administration system that also administers the federal goods and services tax.

This change will simplify administration of the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act. These are quite promising measures.

This bill also addresses an aspect that is very important for Canadians and, more generally, for people around the world, and that is the problem of tax evasion. My colleague who spoke earlier mentioned Greece. One of Greece's major problems was not necessarily mismanagement or living beyond its means, but rather its level of tax evasion, which was incompatible with the revenue inflows to be expected in a country that aims to be worthy of that name, a country that should have quite a high level of taxation to pay for the goods and services that every government should provide. Where tax evasion levels are too high, they have a direct impact on essential public services. We have seen this in Greece, for example, and it is indeed a serious problem. A number of social problems result directly from those taxation problems.

Any reasonable person would agree that any amendments that increase tax revenue, discourage tax evasion and, as a result, ensure the integrity of our tax system are positive. We therefore need to adopt them as quickly as possible. What is more, most of these measures have already been in place for several years since, tax measures often take effect as soon as they are proposed.

The NDP is of the opinion that cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance should be a priority for any honest and responsible government. That is what we will do when we take office in 2015. We will do even more to make combatting tax evasion a priority.

I must also say a few words about my NDP colleagues who are members of the Standing Committee on Finance and who, since the beginning of this new Parliament, have been continually pushing the committee to complete its study of tax evasion.

One of the questions we have been considering is this: how can we successfully combat tax evasion? We must use measures targeting certain rental properties and Canadian multinational corporations with foreign affiliates. We must impose limits on them with regard to the use of foreign tax credit generators.

I would like to add that the committee heard from a number of witnesses. I would particularly like to quote Denis St-Pierre, who testified during the pre-budget consultations held on October 15, 2012. Mr. St-Pierre, chair of the tax and fiscal policy advisory group of the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada, said:

First, the government must introduce a technical tax amendments bill. The last time a technical tax bill was passed by Parliament was over 11 years ago. Literally hundreds of unlegislated tax amendments to the Income Tax Act—which I showed this committee last year by bringing the Income Tax Act, if you recall—have been proposed, but not yet enacted, which brings uncertainty and unpredictability to the process.

This reminds us of just how much tax professionals, including chartered accountants, want to see a provision that would make their everyday work clearer.

So, for the reasons I have just mentioned, I will support Bill C-48 at second reading. The main reason is that the tax measures it contains are a step in the right direction, and it has already taken too long to incorporate them into our tax legislation.

Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am speaking today to go into further detail about an issue I raised in the House last November. I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development why access to employment insurance was being further restricted for those who need it most and who have paid into the program.

Just who are the people being denied employment insurance benefits? There are no records being kept. People have come to my constituency office. They are looking for work, and they start looking early in the morning and finish late at night. They want to work. They are not earning any money and are not part of any statistics. They are unfortunate enough to be looking for work either in a field where the government cut nearly 19,000 positions—the federal public service—or in seasonal industries. I am thinking about the man who shingles roofs or the woman who works on-call as a benefits clerk.

In November, I talked about new data from Statistics Canada that showed that only 40% of unemployed workers were collecting employment insurance benefits. In other words, over half of these people are not getting a service for which they pay. This is the lowest access rate in 10 years. It is outrageous.

I cannot accept the answer given by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, who said that around eight out of 10 individuals in Canada qualify for employment insurance. What the parliamentary secretary said completely contradicts the data from Statistics Canada.

Restricting access is part of the Conservative government's pseudo-solution to save money on the backs of the unemployed. This is the Conservative government's scheme to save money by taking it from the fund that belongs to workers, from the benefits they should receive when they are between jobs, until they find another job or return to their regular job when seasonal work starts up again.

Since the introduction of the employment insurance counter-reform, Bill C-38, thousands of Canadians have spoken out against the negative affects these changes will have on our economy, and have called this a direct attack on unemployed workers.

One of the direct consequences of reducing employment insurance is a lower unemployment rate. In turn, claimants will have to have more qualifying hours, and they will receive fewer weeks of benefits. When the unemployment rate goes down in a region, residents there receive fewer weeks of benefits. That is clear.

The government is once again limiting access to employment insurance by changing the appeal mechanisms for workers who are denied. We have proven that it will become increasingly difficult for claimants to appeal. It will have to be done in writing, and the wait times are increasing for responses. Not to mention the fact that there are fewer people to respond to claimants or to potential claimants hoping to receive benefits, since they are among those 19,000 people I mentioned earlier, who are unemployed and looking for work.

Northern Jobs and Growth Act

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I could talk to the member more about what is not perfect consultation, and that is the way the Conservative government has been conducting itself.

The government failed to consult with respect to Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. It failed to consult with respect to the changes to EI. It failed to consult with provincial premiers whose provinces are going to pick up after the people who are turfed off the EI roles because of ineligibility as a result of what the government is doing with its integrity police. Employers and unions were not consulted. There has been a real lack of consultation on the part of the government. The Conservatives have taken the attitude that something is either done now or later but it has to be done. Unfortunately, we are going to be doing more of it in the courts, and that could have been prevented had the government held consultations now.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the lack of environmental protection to deal with any development that will go forward.

As we know, under Bill C-38, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was completely repealed and rewritten. The Fisheries Act, and the ability or responsibility of the government to protect fish habitat, has been seriously constrained. The changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act have resulted in very significant changes, as have the changes to the responsibilities of Canada's offshore petroleum boards. There have been so many changes over the past year that have taken away much of the ability of the government to protect an environment as vulnerable as that in the north that it causes me, and a lot of other people, concern.

That is what exists now, let alone what is going to exist in the future. As I said, the ice melts and marine traffic increases, and the questions of oil spills, of invasive species, continue to rise. We are in no position at this point to protect the environment the way we should, with or without our partners.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is not unlike the way the government responded when we said, under Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, that it was not consulting where it was required to, and it said that it had consulted just fine and that everything was good to go. Subsequently we have seen the Idle No More movement. We have seen first nations groups from one end of the country to the other file suit in the Supreme Court of Canada to challenge the government on that very question of consultation and rights.

That is the point the government continues to miss. Even though there is not an agreement, it fails to recognize the inherent right of the first nations people, the Inuit and the Métis to these lands.

Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will start by talking about the implications when someone receives a verdict of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. I will focus on understanding the parameters for and applications of such measures in criminal proceedings.

It is an honour for me to be able to inform the public. Over the holidays and over the past few weeks, I toured a number of reserves in Quebec. I was informing people about the amendments set out in Bill C-45, Bill C-38 and Bill C-27. These amendments will affect both the traditional and contemporary ways of life of the aboriginal peoples.

I will do the same thing today. I will be informing the public. My background is in law. I was a litigator for almost six years. I worked primarily in criminal law, but I also worked in mental health. During my years as a lawyer, I was called upon to present a number of applications under subsections 672.11(a) and 672.11(b). Later on, I will talk more about how these two parts of the section are applied.

Based on how the media have covered certain cases over the years, it seems clear that the bottom line is popularity and ad revenue, and that the media will resort to flashy tactics, broad appeal and—to a certain extent—misinformation. This is why some people err in fact and in law. This is not a criticism, because not everyone has a legal background, but there are some misconceptions floating around. I think it is important to get back to the basics with this debate, to talk about the foundations, what it truly means and how these sections are applied.

Subsections 672.11(a) and 672.11(b) of the Criminal Code refer to applications that the defence lawyer and the prosecutor can submit to a judge in a specific case. When we meet our client for the first time in a criminal case—I will talk about my experience as a defence lawyer—we can determine fairly quickly whether the individual is in a fragile state of mind, as we say. When we visit a client in his cell or in the psychiatric wing and he is not in his right mind, the psychiatrists' reports will often say that he is in a fragile state of mind, disoriented and confused.

It is at that point that the lawyer goes to the judge and says that when he met with his client, the client was not able to give clear instructions and seemed to be in a fragile state of mind and somewhat confused. There is therefore reason to believe that he is not in his right mind and should undergo an assessment pursuant to paragraph 672.11(a) or 672.11(b). The crown prosecutor may also broach this subject.

I see this all the time in my practice in my riding. For example, in the past few days, journalists from Radio-Canada—not to name names—have said that drug-related crime in my riding increased by 38% in 2012.

Psychosis and toxic psychosis are recurring themes. That is why I have submitted dozens of requests pursuant to section 672.11 over the years. That is specific to my practice in my riding. There is a lot of violence. The psychiatric wing is very well equipped. There are a number of psychiatrists working in Sept-Îles. Some cases, not the majority, were so serious that clients were routinely transferred to the Philippe-Pinel Institute in Montreal for help.

It can take about a month for a client to leave and get assessed to determine if he is criminally responsible. The client is sent to Montreal or, sometimes, to Sept-Îles. The serious cases are usually sent to Montreal to be assessed. The client comes back with an assessment, and the findings go on for pages.

It is interesting reading material and I miss it very much. I will not hide the fact that I miss my practice. I often receive calls on my business cell phone asking me to represent someone. I have to refuse because I do not have the time.

When the client returns and we look at the case, we examine the assessment and the expert report, which provide information about the circumstances and the expert's opinion. To date, I have never seen the crown challenge the assessment or ask for a second one, but that can happen.

The judge relies on the findings of the expert in Montreal or Sept-Îles, as the case may be. The judge will refer the case of the individual in question to Quebec's administrative tribunal. He will rule that the individual is not responsible and simply transfer the file.

This is one aspect that we have not talked about much. I have not heard anything about this today. None of my colleagues has mentioned this. In Quebec, the administrative tribunal is responsible for the file and will determine the course of action to be taken for people who are not criminally responsible.

To put all of this into perspective, I will add that the hearings of Quebec's administrative tribunal are held by videoconference at the Sept-Îles hospital, in my experience. The tribunal members appear by video. The lawyer is present with his client, who must appear once or a few times a year, if I am not mistaken.

Ultimately, the members of the administrative tribunal will determine what course of action should be taken in a case. That is where the problem lies. I will provide more information on this subject in the next few minutes.

I worked for years with clients with mental health problems. Some but not all people with these types of disorders are stubborn about or opposed to being monitored and taking medication. Many of my clients were opposed to taking medication.

One of the criteria for determining whether people are mentally ill is that they are not aware of their own illness. As a result, as soon as they are not being so closely monitored, individuals who do not realize that they are sick tend to stop taking their medication because they do not believe that they are sick and they do not think that they need to take it. This is a fairly volatile client group. These people may simply stop going to their monthly appointments with their psychiatrist and may just vanish.

I have dealt with this type of situation in my practice. The extremely difficult cases I have had to deal with sometimes gave me the shivers. I will not give any identifying information because of privacy concerns. However, some files dealt with necrophilia, arson and extreme violence. Over the years, I was able to help some of these individuals get back on the right track.

Sometimes, once these individuals were released following their hearing before Quebec's administrative tribunal, they vanished because they were not being monitored closely enough.

I have sometimes received calls after a few months or years from the police or from the client himself who is in a fragile mental state but, in a moment of lucidity, called me to find out the status of his case. I would ask him if he was still taking his medication and where he was in Quebec. I wanted to know where he was because I knew he had high potential for violence. I will spare you the details, but they sometimes keep me awake at night.

In short, these individuals decided to run away, which is why I insisted that, at the very least, they be more closely monitored and that their location be tracked in order to prevent them from vanishing.

I also dealt with arson, which is a fairly common occurrence. Those working in the field of psychiatry see all kinds of people. Sometimes it can be interesting to read about these cases.

The cases could give you goosebumps.

Some recent highly publicized cases have called the existing approach into question. So we must refocus the debate on the best interests of victims, while ensuring that the rule of law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are respected.

I plan on returning to practising law sometime in the future. Perhaps I should not say this, but it comes naturally to me to represent these individuals and help them get back on the right track after they are assessed by the people in Montreal. The judge would simply refer the whole thing to Quebec's administrative tribunal.

As I have already said, decisions from this tribunal do not carry a lot of weight, at least not in Sept-Îles. It may be different in a metropolitan or urban area, where the hearings are conducted in person, but that is not the case where I come from. I remember one case in particular, with someone who took off after the hearing and attended only one hearing with the administrative tribunal. Perhaps this person was eventually caught. An arrest warrant may have been issued. The police eventually tracked him down to make sure that he was not in a fragile state of mind, that he was taking his medication properly and did not represent a danger to himself or others. I am thinking of cases of schizophrenia, since people with this illness can be dangerous to themselves and to the general public.

That is something that poses significant problems. I am thinking about a specific case, but I should mention that he was a martial arts expert and he assaulted anyone who tried to go into his cell or into his room in the psychiatric wing. He thought the Hells Angels were coming to the hospital to get him. That is why he punched people, including large men. The hospital uses “code 88” when a patient becomes violent. All of the large men are asked to help out. It may be “code 89”; I cannot remember anymore. There is an internal code at the hospital in Sept-Îles. Whatever the case may be, he punched out five people. He was in pretty good shape.

He was found not criminally responsible because he could not discern right from wrong. He was a victim of his own illusions. However, he was released and no one knew where he was for a while. A few months went by, maybe a year or two, and then he called me about his case. I knew then that he had stopped taking his medication and appearing at hearings.

That is my summary of the risks and implications, which I submit to you.

The Environment

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the navigable waters aspect of Bill C-45.

Pollution and climate change are an increasing threat to Canadian waters, yet the government is dismantling environmental safeguards one by one and is withholding essential water quality data from Canadians.

The government stopped protecting waters and enforcing laws years ago. This negligence has been documented time and time again by biologists and the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. In a 2009 report, the commissioner said:

The Department [of Fisheries and Oceans] does not have a systematic approach to monitoring proponents' compliance with the conditions of its project approvals. Nor does it evaluate whether its decisions on mitigating measures and compensation are effective in meeting the no-net-loss principle. As a result, projects may be causing damage to habitat beyond the amount authorized, and mitigating measures and compensation may not be effective.

Instead of changing course and improving the environmental assessment process, the government decided, on the contrary, to axe it. First, Bill C-38 repealed all habitat protection measures and eliminated 99% of environmental studies.

Then, with Bill C-45, waterways are no longer habitats but merely navigable waters. What planet is the government living on? Does it truly believe that rivers and lakes are flat surfaces on which ships simply glide? Is there nothing underneath? Does it think that lakes and rivers do not have water, plants and fish? Come on. The Fisheries and Oceans Canada website clearly says that:

[The Navigable Waters Protection] Act is administered by the Navigable Waters Protection Program (NWPP)/Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

In November, when I asked the government to explain why ministers keep saying that the Navigation Act only deals with navigation, the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities gave this reply:

When we talk about navigation, we are talking about the ships that are on the water, not the fish that are floating and swimming in the water.

That is totally absurd. I am not even sure he realizes the absurdity of his answer.

Before it was gutted by Bill C-45, the Navigable Waters Act ensured that bridge or dam construction projects, or any other project, did not interfere with navigation and did not cause environmental damage. This is a critical difference.

The Conservative government is treating our resources as if they were its private property. Worse still, the Conservatives are selling off our navigable waters by allowing anyone to build structures without any idea of the impact of these projects on fish habitat or water quality. This is a utilitarian and dangerous view of the economy and of our resources. It is true that once our waters become polluted and wasted we will not do anything but navigate, because there will no longer be any fish or drinkable water. The government imposed omnibus bills without consultation. The public is worried and aboriginal people are protesting.

Under the new act, only 97 lakes and 62 rivers will be protected. What will the government do when individuals or organizations take legal action to protect their lakes, since this will be the only means still available to them? Who will pay for this pollution? Is it going to be the taxpayers? Will people have to pay for their government's mistakes? And what will happen if projects impact on ecotourism and water quality? What will the government do about that?

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very difficult to follow a speech like the one given by the hon. member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

He spoke about his own personal experiences, and I think that, in so doing, he attacked the very heart of this bill. We are talking about the impact that this can have on individuals and what can happen to people who have problems in the workplace, particularly those involving sexual harassment.

When a debate is held on this type of issue, it is very important to point out that criticizing those who put their heart and soul into serving their community, for example police or RCMP officers, will not advance the debate.

When we talk about matters pertaining to National Defence, Veterans Affairs or the RCMP, our opinions are often criticized and simplistic arguments are often made. Some would say that it is only natural for us to say such things since we do not support our police officers or our armed forces. It is very important to point out that nothing could be further from the truth.

Contrary to what the Conservatives believe, when we engage in a debate and have the courage to take a stand and say that the bill does not go far enough, it is because we have a great deal of respect for the work that is done and we think that it is important to implement measures that will allow RCMP officers to operate in a healthy work environment and that will improve the working relationship between the police and the people they have the duty to serve and protect.

Of course, we will oppose the bill at third reading. As always, we optimistically tried to make amendments to the bill based on the testimony given in committee, but as always, our attempts were in vain.

I would particularly like to acknowledge the work done by the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, our public safety critic, and the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan, the deputy critic. They certainly worked very hard to put forward these amendments.

I want to point out that these amendments were not based on some radical ideology, as the government claims. They were based on testimony from experts in committee. These experts have been involved with this issue for a very long time. It is not a new thing.

The first version of this bill, Bill C-38, was introduced during the 40th Parliament. It is not to be confused with the omnibus Bill C-38, which was introduced last spring.

The amendments came out of the testimony, but they were unfortunately all rejected, as usual. I think that is very disappointing. When we hear the points raised by witnesses and propose changes that do not necessarily change the spirit of the bill, but instead help make the measures in it more precise, effective and transparent, I think that the government should be more receptive to the proposed amendments. However, true to form, the government rejected all of the amendments outright.

The member who spoke before me talked about his experience with unions. With respect to the harassment within the RCMP, it is the only police force in Canada that does not have a collective agreement.

People will say that other measures will be put in place to ensure that workers' rights are respected. They are workers, because they work for us. However, when there are no appropriate measures in place, it becomes hard to defend their rights in cases of harassment. This is not the only workplace where harassment is a problem, but as my colleague pointed out, harassment is quite prevalent.

RCMP members have to deal with certain cases and, as one may well imagine, with a very heavy psychological burden in some situations. Sometimes that means that relations between the various individuals involved may be tense and negative behaviour may result. When you take all that into consideration, you realize how important it is to establish ways to manage those problems more effectively.

Continuing on the subject of harassment, when we say sexual harassment, we are talking about an issue that mainly affects women. That may seem to be a prejudicial view, but it is unfortunately true. From the standpoint of gender equality, it is even more important to address the problem of harassment when you want to encourage women to consider taking on any role in our society.

Government members will no doubt tell us that this bill would put in place a system that will solve that problem. We do not believe that is the case, particularly given the structure that would be introduced to do so. That is really our biggest concern in relation to this bill.

To put the matter simply, the government wants the police to investigate the police and the commission to be accountable to the minister, not to Parliament. The lack of political will that this minister has shown for some time now is becoming a problem. After all, when discretionary or decision-making authority lies solely in the hands of one minister, we have to rely on his political will, and he seems to have no such will at the present time.

On the contrary, if we asked the commission to report directly to Parliament, there would be more transparency, more answers and a structure more accountable to the public, which the RCMP is supposed to serve. That would also be good for people on the force, RCMP members, particularly those who are victims of harassment.

To put it simply once again, when we talk about the police investigating the police, this is really the problem that emerged from Justice O'Connor's report in the Maher Arar case. I am very interested in that case. At the risk of making myself seem very young, I was just a student when that report was issued in 2006, but I was very much involved and very interested in politics and current affairs, and I supported various causes.

I remember seeing the report at the time. One of the issues of great interest to me was the way in which our police forces and our armed forces acted, even though we were still in the post-September 11 phase five years after the fact. People in Canada, the United States and Europe were trying to adjust to this new reality as a society and give our police forces powers while protecting citizens' rights.

That report was an attempt to balance those two realities. However, this bill does not take its recommendations into account. Justice O'Connor recommended establishing an independent commission that would actually have been able to go further in changing the RCMP's culture and solving the harassment problem in particular.

We in the NDP want to see more concrete measures. That is why we oppose this bill, which is far too flawed. We want something much more concrete, and these are precisely the kinds of measures we will put in place in 2015 if we have the opportunity to form the government, in order to change this culture, protect RCMP members and ensure there is a better relationship between them and our communities.

I await your questions and comments.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since the passage of the last technical tax bill in 2001, the government has made a number of tax-related changes through the use of comfort letters.

However, these new measures have become common practice and have never been incorporated into a technical tax bill.

Bill C-48, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act and other tax legislation, will incorporate more than 200 changes made to the tax code since 2001, over 12 years ago.

We support this bill because it will implement a series of technical amendments to the tax system that have been developed over the last decade. These technical changes are in fact largely beneficial and necessary. In the NDP, we believe that these changes will ultimately have a positive impact on revenues and are a good way of reducing tax avoidance, as has been discussed at length in this debate.

Tax evasion costs Canadians a lot of money. It is estimated that Canada foregoes revenue amounting to nearly $80 billion every year because of various forms of tax avoidance.

Numerous measures can be adopted to deal with tax avoidance, including the fair and uniform application of tax rules, as is done in this bill, and the automatic exchange of tax information and adoption of a protocol for publishing the taxes paid by corporations. It is in fact impossible to enact all these measures without leadership from the government.

I believe that this bill and the measures it includes are a step in the right direction, to help the government combat tax avoidance and deter these various practices.

Similarly, the bill talks about various measures to ensure that income received by residents of Canada from any source is taxed, and measures relating to the taxation of foreign affiliates of Canadian multinational corporations. The purpose of those measures is essentially to guarantee the integrity of the tax system and deter tax evasion.

The bill also contains provisions implementing various technical measures that have been developed since 2002. Among other things, that part contains anti-avoidance measures, which I will not list because this is very technical, measures limiting the use of foreign tax credit generators in order to avoid foreign tax, measures setting out the rules for taxable Canadian property of non-residents and immigrants, and the creation of a regime for information reporting of tax avoidance transactions so that people can be informed about how avoidance occurs and avoid falling into that trap or to make it easier to identify these forms of avoidance.

Any avoidance transaction that is for the purpose of obtaining a tax benefit will now have to be reported for greater transparency, even if it is not improper.

The bill also includes three new measures that we support and that had not been announced already.

First, a number of federal fiscal constraints will be rectified to solve transition problems.

Second, the formula for the attribution of taxable corporate income that applies to airline corporations is amended to ensure that the taxable income of one of these companies is entirely attributed to the provinces or territories where it has a permanent establishment. That is logical.

Third, a measure relating to the tax treatment of shares owned by short-term residents for departure tax purposes. Obviously, this is all very abstruse, but it is part of the 1,000 pages being added. This adds to the complexity, which we find unfortunate in view of the fact that there have already been 3,000 pages of tax measures in the last few decades.

All in all, by ensuring the integrity of the tax law in force and minimizing the potential loopholes, these measures will operate to increase government revenue. As my colleague said, when government revenue is increased, then we can invest in social programs, for example, and in programs for health care, the environment and greater fairness.

In its present form, however, the tax system is unendingly complex. That complexity affects individuals, for whom it is very difficult to plan their taxes with the vast menu of tax credits we now have.

The tax system also poses problems for Canadian businesses and undermines their competitiveness. If they have to dissect it all and invest in administrators or accountants who have to analyze each of the 200 amendments being made a decade later, for example, that is money that they cannot invest in local jobs or jobs in their small business. It therefore reduces their productivity and competitiveness.

The difficulty of planning their spending also limits investments in innovation and hiring. Clearer tax rules could improve the competitiveness of our businesses and create more jobs.

While we support the bill, the document is nearly 1,000 pages long and has all the makings of an omnibus bill, again. Obviously, the last technical tax bill, which was more than 12 years ago, incorporates certain legislative amendments, some of which go back to 1998. The enormous scope of this bill demonstrates that the government has to be a lot more responsible in its management of tax legislation and make sure that proposals relating to tax law are enacted more regularly.

Unlike the gigantic budget bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, the changes made do not affect a huge spectrum of legislation, and rather affect certain specific statutes. But this bill still does much to complicate the work that parliamentarians do in assessing bills, given that a lot of time is needed to process a bill and get through a thousand-page block, time that we do not have today.

As well, prioritizing the elimination of tax loopholes has to be done in a timely manner. Most of these measures have been adopted in current practice. The fact that they are not being enacted until years later brings an element of uncertainty and unforeseeability to the business world. Experience seems to tell us that it might be time to rethink how we do this. Tax bills should be much more modest—shorter, that is—and there should be more of them, introduced on a regular basis, to ensure that their provisions are implemented in a more timely manner.

In addition to legitimizing the work done by parliamentarians, that would operate to reassure the business world. It would also show that we are much more democratic and would mean we could avoid having unenacted tax measures accumulate, since this impedes progress, and at the same time allow us to improve and strengthen the Canadian tax system. It would also operate to facilitate financial planning and management for businesses, taxpayers and tax experts, who themselves have trouble making their way through all this jumble of rules.

As well, enacting tax measures speedily after they are announced would also enable the government to collect large sums of money that could be reinvested in programs for health care, education, food inspection and environmental assessment, for example.

This position is shared by many experts, including the former Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada, as well as Marlene Legare, former senior chief of the Sales Tax Division at the Department of Finance. They all agree that this will help improve the process and simplify our tax legislation, which is becoming increasingly complex.

We recently led a campaign against the excessive fees that credit card companies are charging small and medium-sized businesses and other merchants. Businesses are already overwhelmed by all the paperwork. With all that those companies contribute to Canada, the Conservatives—who claim to be the best advocates of local economies and small and medium-sized businesses—are blocking the growth of local economies and job creation. It is hard to believe the Conservatives when they introduce these kinds of bills.

In closing, in 2009, the former Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, was already concerned about the fact that at least 400 technical amendments still had not been enacted through legislation. Bill C-48 enacts more than 200 of these measures and changes. I wish to echo Ms. Fraser's concerns, given that another 200 changes still have not been applied and remain outstanding.

Can the government tell us when it plans to incorporate those measures into legislation and how? It would be a shame to have to wait another 10 years before those changes are adopted, especially since, much like this bill overall, they will have a positive impact on Canada's tax system. Just like the measures that will be added to the legislation thanks to Bill C-48, the purpose of these measures is to ensure the integrity of our existing tax legislation, close the loopholes to discourage tax avoidance, increase our revenues and therefore take part in positive economics.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I feel especially privileged to have the chance to speak twice on Bill C-48, which amends the Income Tax Act. Not everyone has an opportunity to address this highly charged issue.

As I mentioned the last time, this bill is nearly 1,000 pages long and makes a number of very technical changes to Canada’s tax system, changes that have accumulated over more than a decade. It seeks to obtain official approval for the various technical measures that have been put forward by the Minister of Finance over the years, over more than 10 years now, in fact.

We in the NDP believe that the technical changes proposed in Bill C-48 will be good for the Canadian tax system and will generally reduce tax avoidance. This is why the NDP will be supporting the bill at second reading.

The NDP believes that, as parliamentarians, as the elected representatives of Canadians, we have a duty to do whatever we can to minimize tax evasion and get rid of loopholes in our legislation, to ensure that the government has all the resources it needs to provide Canadians with the government services and institutions that they depend on and, more importantly, that they deserve.

Because of the Conservative government's budgets, we are facing drastic service cuts that will affect the Canadians who need those services the most. Money that is in the system could be invested in our social programs and in the institutions Canadians depend on, such as the universal public health insurance system. Ultimately, we could even set up other programs. Instead of being used to benefit the most privileged among us, this revenue should benefit the whole of Canadian society. It is important to do everything we can to bring the money back into the system so that the government can use it.

It is all well and good to cut a little bit here, there and everywhere, but we must be able to generate the revenue we need so that we can maintain what we have achieved, improve and enhance existing programs, and then come up with new programs that meet the needs of Canadians. I think that if a government is not able to do this, it is not doing its job. Unfortunately, this is true of the current Conservative government. This is what the NDP will be changing in 2015, when it forms the government, of course.

Since the Conservatives would have us believe that they are good managers of public funds, I find it really surprising and very disappointing that they waited so long before doing what was needed to get the technical amendments in Bill C-48 through Parliament.

In fact, the most recent technical tax bill was passed in 2001. That is more than 10 years ago. By 2009, at least 400 technical amendments had still not been enacted.

Bill C-48 is huge, nearly 1,000 pages, and it clearly shows that this government must be more responsible in managing tax legislation.

It is absolutely unacceptable to penalize taxpayers and the business sector by perpetuating so much uncertainty and unpredictability in Canada’s taxation amendment process.

Furthermore, because the Conservatives are so slow, we are once again dealing with a massive omnibus bill and we have very little time to really study it and to examine the implications of its legislative measures.

It really is a shame that the Conservatives persist in using this strategy, which, frankly, hinders the work that we in the House must do, that is, to study and consider bills and their impact on the Canadian public. The fact that we are prevented from conducting our parliamentary work properly has a direct impact on Canadian democracy and Canadians’ trust in their elected officials.

At least things are a little better this time around because the Conservatives had the decency to combine a series of bills dealing with the same subject in Bill C-48. It is actually quite refreshing compared to Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, bills that sought to hide a raft of drastic and socially harmful changes in areas such as environmental protection, immigration, employment insurance, old age security and many more.

Despite all that, although tax measures are involved and it is all one subject, in general we are in favour of the bill’s content. However, the fact remains that we are dealing with a document that is incredibly long. We do not have much time to study the amendments, which are technical and relatively complex and merit careful study. A number of them have already been implemented by tax professionals, accountants and businesses, but some things are still not clear and should perhaps be given further consideration. Once again, we do not have an opportunity to do so, because this is an omnibus bill.

Every week, my constituents come into my office in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier to tell me that they are tired of seeing these kinds of bills in the House, tired of seeing these huge documents and tired of seeing that their elected officials, whom they elected to represent them, are incapable of doing their job.

Canadians are fed up with the way this government operates. Things have to change and quickly. The government needs to stop dragging its feet and establish a truly efficient process for quickly and regularly enacting the technical amendments in the comfort letters issued several times a year by the Department of Finance.

I think the message is clear. I will repeat what a number of my colleagues have already said: we will be supporting the bill. However, we must ensure that a situation like the one we are faced with today will not occur again, and we must ensure that the government will present us with technical amendments on a regular basis so that we can do our job properly.

Opposition Motion—Federal Infrastructure Plan

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on this timely and appropriate motion from the member for Trinity—Spadina. I will be sharing my time with the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

First, I need to take umbrage with the comments from the member opposite just prior to mine, in that he suggested that somehow the NDP was voting against the gas tax. That could not be further from the truth.

Jack Layton was the champion of the gas tax, was the one who thought of the idea in the first place, and was the member of Parliament who brought it to fruition. Without Jack Layton, we would not have a gas tax for the other side to now crow about. Part of what goes on over there is that things get done by members on this side and then get adopted by members on that side as things that they thought of when they did not.

The other issue is in relation to the $2 billion the member pointed out as being the government's ongoing contribution to the infrastructure deficit in this country. It will take 80 years for that money to actually deal with the infrastructure deficit that this country now faces. If anyone thinks that the bridges, roadways, water systems and sewer systems are going to last 80 years, they have another think coming. It is not possible. That is way too little money, and it is not the cities of this country that are going to suffer, but the people who live in those cities.

The other part of the speech from the member opposite talked about how we voted against things. It is very interesting that none of the issues that they put forward as things they have done were ever separated out, were ever something that we could have voted for, because they were always buried with things we could not stand, such as the reductions in environmental protections in Bill C-38 and the removal of the Navigable Waters Protection Act from many of the waters in Canada in Bill C-45. Those are the kinds of things that we are forced to vote against.

If Conservatives throw a few crumbs in with that and then later say we voted against it, it is very erroneous thinking. It is not fair for the government to suggest that the NDP is not in favour of infrastructure when in fact we are pushing infrastructure everywhere we can.

The biggest infrastructure deficit facing this country will be the infrastructure deficit caused by our commitments to reduce greenhouse gases and our commitment to deal finally with the problem of global warming and climate change. That infrastructure deficit is something we all should pay attention to.

The situation now is that the previous government signed on to Kyoto and then did not really do anything about it, while the current government abandoned Kyoto and still has not really done anything about it. There have been some vague promises from the Prime Minister that we will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in this country by 2020 by 17%. Right now, by my best guess, we are actually going to increase our level of greenhouse gases by 2020 if we do not start doing things about it.

The other thing he promised was that we would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2050; 65% is a lot. It means that two-thirds of the activity in this country that is currently using fossil fuels must stop using fossil fuels.

There are basically five things that go on in this country. We heat and cool our buildings. We have industry, which requires energy. We have agriculture, which requires energy. We have goods transportation and we have personal transportation. Each of those five is roughly 20% of the use of energy in this country. Are we going to stop doing three of those five things? Are we going to stop moving people? Are we going to stop moving goods? Are we going to stop having industry? Are we going to stop having agriculture? Are we going to stop heating and cooling our houses? No, we are not going to stop doing all those things.

However, if we are to attain the goal of reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases, we have to stop using fossil fuels for all of those things. How do we do that? We do it with electricity. That is currently the only way. The only way we can actually have enough electricity to do those kinds of things is to start building the generating capacity of clean electric power now, through infrastructure programs that will allow it to be delivered across this country.

In my riding right now there is a giant infrastructure program going on to build new rail lines. Rail is good. It moves people more efficiently than cars and goods more efficiently than trucks. The trouble is that the Conservative government has not signed on to making that rail system electric. It would be a first huge step for the government to show its commitment to reducing greenhouse gases by electrifying our transportation networks across this country—by first building the transportation systems, but by building them electric.

The member for Davenport has suggested that we have $6 billion worth of gridlock in the city of Toronto every year. That means we are losing $6 billion, and these guys are throwing $2 billion at the problem.

We need to build public transit infrastructure and we need to build it quickly if we are to meet that 2050 target of a 65% reduction in greenhouse gases that the Prime Minister has set for himself. We need to have electric transportation across the country to deliver our goods and people safely, quickly and without using fossil fuels. It is the only way we are ever going to achieve that target.

We are not going to achieve that target by regulation. If we think about it, how would we regulate an industry like agriculture into not using fossil fuels? That is not going to happen. How are we going to regulate the movement of goods and people without providing a system whereby the movement of goods and people can done without using greenhouse gases? This is not something that a P3 is going to solve. It would take actual leadership from the government across Canada to take the bull by the horns to actually deliver on the promised reduction in greenhouse gases.

The way to do that is through the generation of clean electricity from the use of turbines, photocells and other forms of clean electric generation, such as tidal generation in the north and the east. That electricity could be provided across Canada for heating and cooling homes and for transporting people and goods in such a way that we could stop using fossil fuels for those activities.

We cannot meet that 2050 target any other way. If we do not start now with a real commitment to infrastructure in this country, a real commitment to transportation infrastructure, a real commitment to public transit and a real commitment to the kind of money that is necessary to do this, we are never going to meet the 2050 targets.

The Conservatives used to have a green infrastructure fund. However, what did they do in the last budget, which we voted against? They slashed the green infrastructure fund. The Conservative government used to have a home renovation credit, a renovation payment plan, so that individuals could make their homes use less greenhouse gas energy. What did the Conservatives do? They gutted it. They actually cut it off before all the money that was budgeted was spent. There was money in that budget to try to reduce greenhouse gases through infrastructure spending, but it was not spent. That was infrastructure money from the minister, but that money was never spent.

The government talks a big talk but does not actually deliver, and that is what is needed. It is what this motion is all about. It is to say to the government that we need to have a strategy to do this. It is not just because the cities need it, not just because the country needs it, not just because we say so, but because it is an absolute priority in order to create the kind of Canada that will allow our children and grandchildren to be able to breathe and to live in the kind of comfort that we now live in.

However, that is not going to happen without a significant new input in financial resources from the government. The $2 billion a year just to cover repairs of existing infrastructure is never going to do the kind of work that is necessary to build the infrastructure that this country needs to move forward into this century.

Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to say a few words on Bill C-55.

There are many thoughts I would like to share with members, albeit we are somewhat limited in terms of time.

I want to pick up on two or three themes. I always take great exception when the government does things in a fashion that ultimately is disrespectful to the functionality of the House.

It is a privilege to be a member of Parliament, and I value the role I get to play. I thank the constituents of Winnipeg North for allowing me to represent them. I am also very grateful for the Liberal Party allowing me to respond to the different bills and so forth.

When I look at what the government is doing here, I find it is once again somewhat disrespectful. We need to recognize that the Supreme Court of Canada made the decision that precipitated the legislation before us. This decision was not made a month ago or two months ago. This decision was made back in April 2012.

The government has known for months that it needed to change the legislation. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that could justify the delay it has taken in introducing Bill C-55.

What the government has done through procrastination is put the House of Commons in a position where, if we want to respect what our Supreme Court has ruled, there is pressure on its members to pass the legislation not only through second reading, but also committee, third reading and so forth, before April 13 of this year.

Today is the first opportunity to debate the bill. It is a significant issue. One has to question why the government—former Reformers and now Conservatives, as the members call themselves—has taken a different approach to dealing with legislation.

Members will recall the two massive budget bills in which the government, through the back door, made amendments to dozens of pieces of legislation. I am somewhat surprised that the government did not include this change. I guess the minister responsible did not think about it, or maybe he did not get the message from the PMO that the budget bill was coming forward. I am glad that at the very least the minister did not take advantage of the budget bill.

The government has been bringing in a record number of time allocation motions. I have a fairly lengthy list, and I will not go through the entire list. Some of these issues of time allocation were quite significant, whether it was on back-to-work type of legislation, the gun registry, a pension plan, the Canadian Wheat Board, Air Canada, Bill C-31, Bill C-27 or numerous other bills.

All of these deal with opportunities that members of Parliament have to provide due diligence and go through the legislation in a timely fashion to ensure the legislation is debated and that ideas will stem out from those debates, ultimately seeing it going to the committees and allowing them to do their jobs. Hopefully the government is then sympathetic to recognizing that its legislation quite often needs to be amended. Amendments come from many members on a wide variety of legislation.

Therefore, today we have a very short window. I suspect time allocation will be placed on this bill. However, there is a high sense of co-operation from opposition parties. On behalf of the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party critic was able to address the bill earlier today and indicated that we were very comfortable in seeing the bill go to committee. We recognize the importance of that.

That does not excuse the government of its irresponsible behaviour in not providing the House the respect that is necessary when dealing with legislation. It should be held accountable for taking so long in bringing this legislation before us.

However, the Liberal Party will behave responsibly and do what it can to get it to committee. We hope the government will be sensitive to possible amendments to the legislation. We recognize the bill does deserve attention at committee and understand that hopefully there will be some changes brought forward.

There are four things that Bill C-55 attempts to do.

It requires the ministers of public safety and emergency preparedness and the attorney generals of each province to report on the inception of private communications made under section 184.4. That is a positive request. It is something that the Supreme Court did not require. It is a reporting mechanism and there is great merit for it.

Bill C-55 provides that a person who is the subject of such an interception must be notified of the interception within a specified period of time. We must give thought to what the appropriate amount of time is. Hopefully that will come out in committee. We are very much aware of the importance of our charter and the protection of our privacy. There has to be a balancing of the public good and life-threatening situations and so forth. However, there also needs to be protection for individuals who ultimately might be subjected to a warrantless wiretap. I suggest the committee would do well to have some dialogue as to whether it should be 90 days or less than that and what the arguments and concerns are. It would be interesting to hear what the stakeholders would have to say on that point.

It would narrow the class of individuals who can intercept a wiretap. My understanding is that it is more general today. What the government wants to do is narrow it to include police officers. Hopefully, we will have some dialogue at committee stage regarding contracting out. Many municipalities hire private services related to security and policing. How will they be incorporated, or will they be incorporated?

Again, there is an opportunity with respect to the limits of those interceptions for offences listed in section 183 of the Criminal Code. We can appreciate that when that type of authority is issued, we should be very careful in terms of when and for what circumstances it would be utilized. Two things that come to mind are life-saving measures or kidnappings. These are the types of things where timing is of the essence. There might be a requirement for us to ensure that law enforcement officers are able to get the necessary information as quickly as possible.

The minister and others have talked a lot about section 184.4. That is really what we are talking about and that is what the Supreme Court made its ruling on. In going through some notes and, in particular, comments by judges, I thought I would share two that are really important to recognize and are related to section 184.4, which deals with the warrantless wiretapping provisions.

The first quote was said by one of our court judges:

—the privacy interests of some may have to yield temporarily for the greater good of society — here, the protection of lives and property from harm that is both serious and imminent.

I find that to be a most appropriate statement. This is why I raised this a few minutes ago. It is important for us to take a look at the most appropriate time frame. When someone's telephone conversation is being tapped into and the individual is not aware of it, what is an appropriate amount of time between the law officer making a recording of a conversation and the individual's right to know that recording was in fact made? From what I understand, the bill suggests 90 days.

The judge has correctly pointed out the importance of this to the public. We need to recognize that it outweighs the private interest. However, in the same breath, it is still important the private interest be protected in some fashion.

The second quote is as follows:

Section 184.4 contains a number of legislative conditions. Properly construed, these conditions are designed to ensure that the power to intercept private communications without judicial authorization is available only in exigent circumstances to prevent serious harm. To that extent, the section strikes an appropriate balance between an individual’s s. 8 charter rights and society’s interests in preventing serious harm.

I wanted to read those quotes because I believe very passionately in the charter. I believe the vast majority of Canadians over the years have recognized how important it is to protect and refer to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because we have taken ownership of that over the last 30 years. We need to do what we can to always reflect on that.

Earlier today, I had the opportunity to ask a number of members a very important question that many took for granted, and I want to use a couple of examples.

I am the critic for citizenship and immigration. I have been frustrated by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and some of the legislation he has brought forward. The question I posed to members earlier was related to the obligation of government ministers, with regard to the changes they are proposing at the draft stage, to get a better sense of whether these changes would meet the requirements of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or pass a constitutional challenge. This has been an important issue for me because it has been raised in committee on several occasions. In fact, there is a group of lawyers and doctors in Toronto that is going to the Federal Court questioning the constitutionality of the decision made by the minister to cut back health care services to some of the most vulnerable in our society.

We have challenged the minister on that and it is now going to a federal court. We are not confident that the minister knew what he was doing when he brought in that change. Through Bill C-38, the minister made changes that ultimately excluded hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. Again, we questioned that. Not only does it come across as a very cruel and inhumane policy change, but when the minister brought in the change it was, and is being, challenged by a federal court. In fact, there was a ruling made by one court in Ontario indicating that the minister was wrong. I am not sure where this is at within the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, but that is another issue.

Then we had the issue of detention, which is where committees really are of benefit. We had a minister who was going to put people in a detention centre without any real right of appeal for a year, but at committee stage we were able to make some serious changes to that proposal. However, it took a whole lot to do it. Again, we had presenters at committee who said that this would not meet a constitutional challenge. That is important.

In looking at the justice area, I always thought that Bill C-30 was an interesting bill when it was introduced. I understand that the government has now withdrawn Bill C-30, but one of the arguments in that regard was that it did not go far enough in its provisions to give police officers wiretapping power over Internet services. Now Bill C-30 has come to a standstill, with the government backing off from it for a wide variety of reasons. That said, I question whether or not the current section 184.4 is something that would have been able to deal with many of the measures suggested in Bill C-30. Is that one of the reasons the government is not moving forward with the legislation? If so, one could question why it brought forward the bill in the first place. What happened regarding the exploitation of children on the Internet? Is that issue addressed in section 184.4? I am interested in knowing the answer, as I do know there was an attempt to deal with that issue in Bill C-30.

When I look at Bill C-55 as a whole, I do see merit in it going to committee, where I am interested to see what will take place. Hopefully, there will be some discussion relating to Bill C-30 because there might have been possible amendments to it that would benefit Bill C-55. Canadians are concerned about the exploitation of children over the Internet. I do not know to what degree Bill C-55 could assist in extreme circumstances in dealing with that issue.

We look forward to the bill going to committee. I hope and trust that the government will look at bringing legislation in a more timely fashion to the House and allow members the necessary diligence, without being rushed to pass bills to meet a deadline such as the Supreme Court's decision.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to weigh in, for a few moments anyway, on Bill C-48. I commend the member for Brossard—La Prairie, not only for his speech but also for the incredibly valuable work he performed as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. Not to put too fine a point on it, he is a brilliant deputé and made an important contribution. I know that he will make a similar type of contribution on the justice committee, where he is now focusing his attention.

We are dealing with a bill that is nearly a thousand pages long. As others have said, it deals with a huge number of needed amendments that have been outstanding for nearly 15 years. They were announced but were not enacted in legislation, creating great confusion and problems for tax practitioners and individual Canadians.

The point made by one of the groups we spoke to, and that I am sure he heard from, Blakes, was that as a result of allowing this backlog of amendments to build up, the government has increased the complexity of the tax system. That flies in the face of everything the government has claimed it stands for as it relates to things such as reducing red tape and simplifying the tax system to make it easily accessible and understood by Canadians. That is another example of how the government tells Canadians one thing and goes ahead and does something else.

We heard from other members of this caucus that the Auditor General, in 2009, reported to the House that there were upwards of 400 tax amendments that had been proclaimed and were being carried forward but they had not been codified and enacted in legislation. That was creating a problem, a sense of confusion and an added level of complexity. He said it was simply bad practice and was not the way to run something as technical and important as the tax system under the finance acts.

Bill C-48, I understand, deals with about half of those. It does not deal with the additional ones that have been announced by the government since 2009. Therefore, even though we are dealing with a piece of legislation that is 1000 pages long and is extraordinarily complex, we will not have time to go through it in the kind of detail with which we probably should go through it. The government is still not dealing with all the changes in the tax system that have been enacted already but that have yet to be codified.

That is why the experts, such as the Certified General Accountants-Canada and the Auditor General, have said it is so important. We have comments from Thomas McDonnell, from Thorsteinssons LLP tax lawyers, and others who have said it is important to make sure that, for the tax changes that are proposed, announced and put in place by the Minister of Finance or the government, whether at budget time or at other times during the year, the government should be introducing legislation annually in the House to make sure that happens.

In 2007 the Conservatives introduced Bill C-10, which was an attempt to try to catch up to the backlog. Members will know that in 2008, they pulled the plug, because they felt that they might be able to get a majority government at the time. Even though they were flying in the face of fixed-term legislation that the Prime Minister himself lauded, they went to the polls in the fall of 2008. As a result, Bill C-10 died on the order paper.

The point is that they should not be waiting years to take care of business that should be looked after on an annual basis. It would give legislators here and experts across the country an opportunity to take a small chunk of legislation and amendments and to have a full discussion about their implications. That would be a sign of good governance.

If Parliament were up to date on those kinds of legislative changes, and the government of the day decided to prorogue the House or call an election or whatever, we would only be dealing with one year of changes next time around and would not be participating in a buildup of a backlog.

As everyone who knows about this system has said, it is extraordinarily complex. Allowing this backlog to build and bringing in amendments this way to an extraordinarily technical piece of legislation of almost 1,000 pages does not provide the clarity and opportunity for simplifying the tax system that we should be looking for. It is in the interest of all Canadians.

Since my time is winding down, I will make three points. I have said already that the bill is extremely technical. New Democrats think it does not need to be so technical.

In respect of good governance and legislative management, it should be done on an annual basis. Let me be clear that we on this side believe in cracking down on both tax avoidance and tax evasion while ensuring the integrity of our tax system. We support these changes, but we want to ensure that they happen on a more manageable basis.

This is an omnibus bill of sorts, but as opposed to Bills C-45 and C-38, it does not bring 60 pieces of legislation together with nothing that ties them together. It deals with changes to closely related pieces of legislation.

Finally, the massive size of this bill demonstrates that there is still work to be done in getting technical changes legislated in a timely fashion. As I have said and will reiterate, failing to do so hurts the business community. It makes it difficult for proper evaluation by Parliament. Ultimately, it impacts the economy of this country and individual Canadians who are trying to work with an increasingly complex tax system as they go about their business and their daily lives making sure they provide for themselves and their families and build stronger communities and a stronger country.

That is our goal. Those are the measures we would like to see the government move forward with.

We will be supporting the legislation. I urge the government to ensure that this is done on an annual basis from here on in.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

I heard my colleague from Alfred-Pellan say that her office had received a lot of correspondence about the previous omnibus bills. We are not talking about the current omnibus bill, which is nevertheless related to all that.

Has my colleague received any correspondence from her fellow citizens on the two previous omnibus bills, Bills C-45 and C-38?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Montcalm for her excellent speech on an extremely large bill. Quite frankly, the 1,000 pages is enough to make your head spin.

This morning, I raised my concerns regarding omnibus bills and the Conservatives' habit of introducing very large bills that affect a lot of legislation and take a long time to pass.

Often, my constituents in Alfred-Pellan, in Laval, voice this concern by mail or over the phone. They tell me that it is not logical to introduce omnibus bills because, often, they are duplicitous.

What feedback has my colleague had from her constituents regarding omnibus bills like this one, or the budget bills, such as C-38 and C-45, which were introduced in recent months?

How have the constituents in her riding reacted to the arrogance displayed by Conservative government in introducing this kind of omnibus bill?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to say that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord.

I am rising in this House today to speak to Bill C-48, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act and related legislation. This bill affects many pieces of legislation.

We in the NDP believe that this bill will have a positive impact on revenues and will generally discourage tax avoidance. Frankly, a technical tax bill was overdue. I am pleased to see that Parts 2 and 3 of Bill C-48 deal with the taxation of Canadian multinational corporations with foreign affiliates. These changes reflect the proposals made in the budgets of 2007, December 2009, February 2010, August 2010 and August 2011, and I am pleased to see that they seek to ensure the integrity of the tax system and discourage tax avoidance.

The NDP is in favour of cracking down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. That is why my colleagues at the Standing Committee on Finance have been pushing the committee to complete its study on this.

As an aside, I want to thank our official opposition finance critics: the senior critic, the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park, and the deputy critic, the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques. Over the past few months, they have done tremendous work on finance bills, including the omnibus budget bills and the current omnibus tax bill. I thank them. Their work is much appreciated, and it helps us to better understand the bills that are being introduced.

I am also pleased to see that this bill makes changes in order to reduce tax evasion. What is more, it seems that the committee will continue its study on the matter this year.

It is quite something to think that it has been 11 years since a bill like this has been passed. Tax practitioners have said time and again that Canada is very far behind because this government has taken too long to legislate these technical changes.

In a report released in 2009, Auditor General Sheila Fraser noted that:

If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

We could also see that the Department of Finance Canada had at least 400 technical amendments that, unfortunately, had not been enacted. I believe it is crucial that this type of delay does not happen again.

I also agree with the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada, which, during prebudget consultations, proposed to the Standing Committee on Finance that Canada's tax system be modernized to make it simpler, more transparent and more efficient. The association also proposed that a technical tax bill be introduced and passed to deal with unlegislated tax proposals. Finally it suggested that a sunset provision be implemented to prevent further legislative backlogs.

It is also true that the complexity of tax legislation makes this task extremely difficult. Our seniors, our youth and those who do not consider French or English as their first language would obviously prefer a simpler system that is easier to understand. Being a responsible, honest Canadian should not be so complicated.

This huge bill makes things even more complex. We know that this government is a great believer in omnibus bills, as it has demonstrated over the past year with Bills C-38 and C-45. Luckily, this time, I can see that the bill proposes technical amendments to a small number of closely related laws and not laws in other areas. The other two bills, on the other hand, amended laws related to environmental protection, government accountability, immigration, employment insurance and so on.

I still find it ironic that this government is introducing a bill that is so long when it did not hesitate to denounce such a practice before.

During the debate on Bill C-22, Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, in the 37th Parliament in 2001, my colleague from Calgary Southeast, who is now the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, had this to say:

Let me say at the outset that the bill before us is a classic example of what has gone wrong with parliamentary oversight of legislation, particularly with respect to taxation. The bill before us has some 513 pages of technical amendments. I can say with a fair degree certainty that not a single member of this place, let alone the parliamentary secretary who just spoke or the minister he represents, has read or will read. It is a bill that exercises enormous power over the lives of Canadians through the Income Tax Act which in itself has coercive powers delegated to it by this parliament. The some 500 pages of amendments in the bill are amendments to a tax act which runs over 1,300 pages long.

I think the same observations apply to Bill C-48, especially since it is twice as long as Bill C-22.

I believe that Canadians deserve to be represented by parliamentarians who make sensible decisions when it comes to taxes and spending. Canadians want accountability, and rightly so.

When we see things like the Parliamentary Budget Officer having to take the government to court to get information about how tax dollars are being spent and what cuts are being made to the services Canadians need, I think the public is entitled to ask some questions and to admit that they have lost confidence in this government.

Out of respect for Canadians, a government should be accountable and transparent. Frankly, that should be the very least they can expect.

Since I was first elected, not a day goes by without someone from my riding of Alfred-Pellan contacting me to share their concerns about this government. They are worried about how transparent it is, and if you ask me, they are right to be worried.

In closing, I am thrilled that this bill has been introduced, even though it took a while, because it implements over a decade's worth of highly technical changes to Canada's tax system.

Before I finish, I want to reiterate that the people of Alfred-Pellan contact me often about the omnibus bills. I recently received letters from some of them that I would like to share in the House so that everyone can understand that the public does follow what is going on in Parliament and that it is important to listen to them.

I will quote some of my constituents from Alfred-Pellan. First, Mr. Nadeau said that the Conservative Party is running the country with its own members in mind, and Mr. Nadeau is against the massive bills introduced by the Conservatives. According to him, they are using these bills to try to push through all of their ideas en masse, and it is very sad to see these bills being introduced.

Mr. Prejent said that it is impossible, or at least very difficult, to meaningfully challenge a particular issue. It is becoming clear that this approach allows the government to pull a fast one on the opposition, and by extension the Canadian public.

To Mr. Prejent, I would say that the Canadian public is not affected by extension. This affects the Canadian public directly and the opposition by extension. We see these kinds of things every day.

One of my other constituents, Mr. Jetté, is not happy about these omnibus bills. He said that the Conservatives should talk with the opposition before bringing in such bills, and that it is arrogant and a bit too self-serving not to. He apologized for saying such things, but it is what it is.

I also heard from Mr. Bergeron, who said it was unbelievable that in 2012, the government forgets and fails to listen to the Canadian people.

People are not happy that such bills are being introduced, and I understand. I know how important these amendments can be, especially when things have dragged on and on with this government and also with the Liberals in the past. So it is important to deal with these issues, but we must be cautious. We must also ensure that these laws are useful to the public, because it is extremely complicated to make so many changes in one fell swoop. We must be cautious about the complexity of the law, especially when it comes to taxes.

I think that everyone, in all ridings, just wants to be able to properly fill out their tax returns. We need to give them the right tools. We must make their lives easier and make things as simple as possible.

As parliamentarians, we have a duty to ensure that Canadians trust their government and trust that it is transparent when it manages taxpayer money. Unfortunately that is not always the case with the current government. But I am happy to be part of a team that, in 2015, will show that it is possible to have a government that works fairly, efficiently and transparently.

Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill we are considering today is very important and quite complex. My colleague from Hamilton Mountain mentioned that the debate may seem very dry, but it is still at the heart of issues that affect all Canadians in terms of respect for the regulations in place. This despite the apparent simplicity of its purpose: to make reference to material and incorporate it in a regulation without reproducing the text. The material will have the same authority and the same force as the rest of the regulation, without actually being there in full.

This debate is already a few years old, and the answer is not always clear even though this technique has been used in federal regulations for a long time already, according to the Chief Legislative Counsel at Justice Canada, Mr. John Mark Keyes. In an earlier speech, my colleague mentioned that this government has used this technique 170 times since 2006.

The bill does indeed appear to be complex, dealing as it does with issues of administrative law and regulations, but it is nevertheless very important and its passage may have a direct impact on the lives of Canadians. We will look into this aspect a little bit later on.

As I said, this bill is very important because it will set a precedent for deciding once and for all whether using this technique for drafting and formulating regulations is legitimate and legal.

The issue is that the bill would make it possible to use open or closed incorporation depending on the type of reference, but the difference between the two is crucial. The regulation-making authority in question will be able to make reference to material—such as a legislative text, a treaty, a standard or technical material—and its subsequent and earlier amendments will be incorporated in the regulations automatically. This is called open incorporation.

Needless to say, in certain cases, incorporation by reference appears to be a logical solution. In the case of interest rates, for instance, or other similar indices, such as the consumer price index or the unemployment rate, I think it is obvious that it should be possible to incorporate numbers, rates or indices in the regulation without having to take the legislative route every time. However, if we dig a little deeper, two issues come up. First, I will quote subsection 18.1(3) of the bill:

The power to make a regulation also includes the power to incorporate by reference an index, rate or number—as it exists on a particular date or as it is varied from time to time—[that is, as it may change in the future] established by Statistics Canada, the Bank of Canada or a person or body other than the regulation-making authority.

In other words, the government will be free to incorporate in regulations the definitions, rates and indices established by just about anyone, including civil society groups, foreign governments, NGOs, and so on. The bill does not define those two terms nor does it refer to any definitions in any other legislation. This is a serious problem that was discovered by the Senate committee.

Senator Fraser, asking for clarification about the definitions of these two terms and the ridiculously broad scope of this power, “Trust us' is what you are saying to me”.

The second problem has to do with the accessibility of the regulations, for both Canadians and for Parliament. Indeed, regulations are rather dry, often very complicated texts, and the addition of indices and figures without any direct reference could make the regulations and their objectives even more difficult to understand. It is important to ensure absolute clarity regarding the context in which these figures and indices are incorporated, and I am not convinced that this bill does that.

Furthermore, another kind of accessibility is at issue here: the power of parliamentary oversight. In that sense, this bill in no way responds to the joint committee's concerns regarding the use of incorporation by reference. In fact, the bill does the exact opposite. The joint committee worked very hard to respect the principle of the legislative power of Parliament.

These two problems are mentioned in the most recent edition of L'action gouvernementale -- Précis de droit des institutions administratives by Lemieux and Issalys. I quote:

The frequency of such references is making some people fear an erosion of state sovereignty in favour of power structures over which they have no influence. It is also raising more concrete concerns about citizens' access to texts detailing the standards that govern them.

That is at the heart of what we are debating here. The authors are essentially talking about altering the regulatory power, since the reference could prevent people from understanding the regulations, particularly in the case of a so-called ambulatory incorporation by reference, since a reference is being made not only to an external text, but also to the specific context in which the text was created or amended, to which the person subject to the regulations does not necessarily have access.

The use of references to regulations outside of the Canadian legal context poses an even bigger problem, and yet this use is becoming increasingly common.

I would like to read another clause from the bill, paragraph 18.3(1):

The regulation-making authority shall ensure that a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference is accessible.

If the idea behind the reference is to avoid having to publish the documents incorporated a second time, since the documents are usually published and accessible in another form, what does the word “accessible” mean? I have listened to the majority of the speeches here this afternoon. But the absence of this definition, or the vague definition, is yet another obstacle to having an exhaustive and effective bill to protect Canadians from being ignorant of the regulations or of the provisions in regulations that could affect them.

According to the legislative counsel of the Minister of Justice, a document can be considered accessible if the person subject to the regulations is able to obtain a copy of the document in question and then understand what needs to be understood. It is not mandatory to send a copy of the document to this person. The document simply has to be accessible if the person makes a reasonable effort.

And that is where section 18.7 takes on its full significance. If accessibility is not demonstrated, this clause paves the way for sanctions or convictions based on the incorporated document. So subsection 18.3(1) can be interpreted as requiring the regulation-making authority to be responsible for accessibility, not the people subject to the regulations.

But who will determine what constitutes reasonable effort? We can all agree that referring to a Canadian or Quebec law does not necessarily require much effort from one of our constituents. It will require Internet access, but that is another debate for another time.

However, if we are talking about a foreign government's specific phytosanitary standards, for example, the person must be able to find that information. In the event that Canada has not yet harmonized its standards with the country in question, the person must navigate a foreign government's website, hoping that the information will be posted in one of Canada's official languages.

I want to say that there are limits to that idea that no one can be ignorant of the law. As parliamentary legislators, we live in a legislative universe and we sometimes have trouble making sense of it. I cannot even imagine the average Canadian who is trying to understand an enabling statute and its many regulations, especially if the regulations are split between an existing text and references.

Mr. Keyes, who testified at the Senate committee, said this during his testimony:

...the bill is making a substantial improvement in that it is for the first time generally stating this obligation, and it is largely stating the obligation in the way that it exists right now in terms of the common law and in terms of the way the courts have dealt with these issues in the very limited number of cases that incorporated documents have ever come up in the courts.

But he forgot, perhaps, to mention that this improvement is the result of the bill and that debate is still raging over the best approach to take concerning regulation by reference.

This technique is controversial. Recommendations from the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations clearly state the following:

...incorporation by reference also gives rise to concerns relating to accessibility to the law, in that although incorporated material becomes part of the regulations, the actual text of that material must be found elsewhere.

The report continues:

Such concerns are heightened where material is incorporated “as amended from time to time”, in that members of the public may have difficulty ascertaining precisely what the current version is at a particular point in time.

The Liberal senators tried to amend the bill in order to establish guidelines to create standards related to the use of regulations by reference depending on whether it is static or ambulatory. This proposal was rejected, despite the fact that such provisions currently exist in many other countries, including Australia and New Zealand, as well as in certain provincial jurisdictions, including Ontario and Manitoba.

Furthermore, it is not always easy to distinguish between the two types of reference, which can lead to confusion during interpretation of the regulations. My hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands mentioned that Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, both massive bills, contained incorporation by reference provisions. In Bill C-38, it was clause 89. I will not read the clause, because it is six paragraphs long. In Bill C-45, it was clause 30.

This massive bill before us already has some very important elements leading to both a static and ambulatory incorporation by reference. But this measure is not yet entrenched in our regulations, and as we heard in many speeches, its legitimacy raises some questions, not only for us as parliamentarians, because we have to discuss and debate these pieces of legislation and perhaps pass them, but also for any Canadians who find themselves having to navigate this quagmire.

Again, Bills C-38 and C-45 added, amended or eliminated over 130 different acts. If, some day, we can include incorporation by reference, particularly ambulatory incorporation by reference, we may get totally confused, and even more so if that practice is generalized with the presence of terms whose definition is imprecise or non-existent.

The Senate refused to define terms like “accessibility” and “reasonable effort to get the document”. We, on this side of the House, hope to do this essential work at committee stage and to ensure that the legislation will be suited to all Canadians.

In the end, these elements of Bills C-38 and C-45 suggest that the minister is giving himself a fair amount of power. Do we really want to go in that direction with Canadian legislation? This process could well be used to make the legislation even less transparent and accessible to Canadians.

I do not think that this method should be completely avoided, since it also offers benefits in terms of the effectiveness of the legislation and the streamlining of statutory instruments which are often complex and cumbersome.

The hon. member for Hamilton Mountain gave a number of examples and she mentioned some numbers. I believe it was 30,000 pages of regulations and 13,000 pages of acts in Canada. Amending 30,000 pages of regulations is a very delicate exercise. If we want to ensure that these regulations are constantly up to date, it is going to require painstaking efforts.

In that sense, incorporation by reference may be an interesting option, but we must be able to define it and use it properly. That is why we will not oppose this bill at second reading, since it will be up to the committee to make this interpretation.

That is particularly important, because we have to be careful about possible abuse and we must limit such abuse by establishing clear benchmarks. Based on what we hear from the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, that aspect has not yet been taken seriously. The government must listen to the experts and to the opposition when it tries to improve this bill.

We still have some work to do to make this bill acceptable for this side of the House and for all Canadians. I hope that the government will co-operate with us in order to do so. It is in situations such as this that we need to set aside partisanship and work on behalf of the Canadians who elected us to represent them in this chamber.

I would like to come back to some specific examples that I have already mentioned several times, which could affect Canadians. Let us talk about employment insurance legislation, for example, the provisions relating to pilot-projects referred to the unemployment rate. Sometimes it is the national rate but usually, it is the regional rate. A database is needed in order to be able to quantify the rate. A lot of tables are used in the employment insurance regulations but, under this legislation, as things now stand, the minister could apply the regulations and their open incorporation by reference. The minister could also simply refer to tables or statistics from Statistics Canada.

Until just recently, until several months ago, people had to pay to get access to information from Statistics Canada. Unless they worked at a university or in a research facility that provided them with access, people had to pay out of their own pockets to get access to these statistics and data.

If the minister makes regulations in which there is open incorporation by reference to regional unemployment rates that are not accessible to Canadians free of charge, does that constitute reasonable access? Will people have to pay to show that they made a reasonable effort to obtain the information related to the section of the regulations that directly affects them?

Here is another question. How much will people have to pay to show that they made a reasonable effort? Will they have to pay $2.95, $10, $20, $100, $150? Right now, there is no way of knowing because accessibility and reasonable effort are not defined.

We have talked about different laws that can sometimes be linked to extraterritorial legislation or laws that apply outside the country. For example, this could be the case for laws affecting the Scott case, which pertained to a parent who took a child for whom he had joint custody out of the country.

A regulation that would affect legislation on this subject could refer to the laws in the country where that child is located. If the regulation makes an open reference, the person directly affected could have access, could consult the country's legislation to see whether the provisions are compatible with Canada's, and this could help the individual better understand the situation. In this case, the individual would have to access another country's website or legislation, which could be in another language.

This raises some questions. Does this prove accessibility? What kind of reasonable effort does the person have to show that they made to access these documents and this information? Will the person have to contact a foreign-language translator?

It is too vague for us as a party to decide whether we can support the bill. However, we think it is possible that closed—and even open—incorporation by reference helps improve accessibility.

Accessibility is at the heart of all of this. Notions such as reasonable effort must be better defined. We encourage the government to work with the official opposition and to work with all members of Parliament to ensure that we protect Canadians on this issue that affects them all. At the end of the day, we do not want them to end up in trouble or in a dangerous situation, in which they could end up being found guilty because they ignored the law or violated a specific regulation that they could not have reasonably had access to.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but it is difficult not to ignore a law if we do not know what the law is about.

I urge the government to define these very important notions. It is important to better define the elements in this bill. That is the message I want to send to the committee that will be examining this Senate bill.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, those are very good points. The analogy to what happened with the budget bill, especially Bill C-38, with 70-odd pieces of legislation incorporated into a much broader bill, what we called an omnibus bill at the time, is part of the same fabric, the same problem, which is a lack of concern for parliamentary scrutiny. It may happen because Parliament cannot hope to actually look at everything that went on in Bill C-38 in any way resembling a responsible fashion because it was all being piled in within a short timeframe and the wrong committees are looking at it in a highly dubious process. It also may be because we are incorporating by reference materials and the joint committee has a hard time figuring out how they fit exactly into the picture and whether they are appropriate. However, we are looking at something resembling the same issue.

I will end by saying that incorporation by reference, generally, really needs better rules and regulations about it than simply dealing with the problem of open incorporation by reference, for the same reasons given by my colleague.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would not mind picking up on that.

The leader of the Green Party made reference to Bill C-38, and we could talk about the two budget bills that were introduced last year. Because of their size the thought back then was that the government was taking serious legislation, incorporating it into budget bills and then passing them, thereby avoiding due diligence in terms of what we should be doing.

I cannot help but think of that in terms of the bill that we have here today. Most people might see it as somewhat of a boring bill. However, it is a very important bill. It ensures that there is accountability. One of the primary roles that we have within the House of Commons is to pass the laws of the land, and a regulation is a law.

Could the member provide some comment in terms of what would appear to be a lack of respect from the government benches toward opposition or all parliamentarians of all political parties, not only today but going into the future, through the actions that are being taken?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was not aware that when we voted on Bill C-38 that there was yet another problematic feature.

There is something in Bill S-12 that adds to that problem. There is a prohibition on incorporating by reference regulation materials from a minister who is making the regulations, or by any department or agency that he oversees. There is absolutely no prohibition on one minister turning to materials or documents from elsewhere in the government, another department or agency he or she has nothing to do with, and incorporating that by reference, even if those materials have not gone through the regulation process. That is quite a back door and it appears in this statute.

To add to what the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has said, we really have to begin to understand how we are becoming hollowed out as a democracy when the executive is given that kind of authority.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to join the debate on Bill S-12. I thank the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth and I say, in a non-partisan way because he does not belong to my party, that we are clearly fortunate in the House to have someone of his calibre, with experience teaching in law schools, who can bring to the House an assessment of something that may appear dry but which really cuts to the heart of dangerous changes to Westminster parliamentary democracy. In this place there is increasing power in the hands of the Prime Minister's Office and decreasing respect for Parliament as an institution and for our regulation-making authorities. The bill represents a threat because it becomes increasingly difficult to know if regulations are being made.

I also have this one concern. We accepted changes to pharmaceutical drug regulations in Bill C-38, which stated that pharmaceutical drugs were no longer added by regulation but could just be added by Health Canada through a list process, not through the Canada Gazette and not through routine regulations. We have to protect some of the more boring aspects of making laws in this place to protect the rights of Canadians.

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in the House to lend my voice to the debate on Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts. I would especially like to focus my comments on one of the issues raised in conjunction with the debate on this bill, namely women’s place in Canadian society in 2013.

A few years ago, several commissions were struck and some reports were released here in Canada and elsewhere around the world. The goal was to give women a bigger role in society. Four principles were embraced: providing equal opportunities, removing the barriers preventing women from entering the labour force, ensuring that the costs associated with having a family are shared by society as a whole, and taking concrete steps to facilitate and achieve the goal of equality.

It is interesting to note that in Canadian society in 2013, we are still talking about equality for women. It is a shame. In point of fact, over the last decade or so, women have actually lost ground in terms of achieving equality with men. We take this equality for granted today. We tell ourselves that there is no problem, that everyone is equal.

Yet, statistics show that today, women still earn on average less than half of what men earn. Furthermore, they are losing ground in various parts of Canada, especially if we look at the jobs in certain industries that are not easily accessible to women, the reason being that barriers to equal access to employment are still in place. Conditions in the workforce are such that women are penalized or forced into uncomfortable or unhealthy situations that are distressing.

In many industries, very few women have access to the jobs that are available, whether it be the natural resources sector or some other industry. Jobs in these sectors are well-paid, but conditions are such that women do not feel safe and able to thrive and be a productive member of society and, above all, to earn a wage comparable to that of men who work alongside them.

For years now, there have been serious problems within the RCMP, one of Canada’s most important symbols. Women who opt to work for the force cannot thrive and feel safe there and, if problems do arise, they do not have access to mechanisms that would help make their workplace acceptable.

We can all agree that this is not just for women, and that this bill addresses other forms of abuse that occur in the workplace.

There have recently been serious cases of sexual harassment. Women in the RCMP have spoken out. Standing up and reporting sexual harassment takes tremendous courage. The individuals who come forward and report the situation become the voices of other co-workers who did not feel they were able to do it.

The situation is quite serious. But there are ways to remedy the situation. There have been studies of this done for a very long time. Bill C-38 was introduced in the 40th parliament, but it died on the order paper, as we know. And now we have Bill C-42.

When a bill is introduced in the House, we have an opportunity to debate it, when a time limit is not imposed, obviously. We have an opportunity to exchange ideas and see how we could improve it and how we would go about doing that.

We have another truly excellent tool that the Canadian public is not very familiar with: committees. In a committee, we can again explore bills and improve them even more.

When I arrived in the House of Commons, I found committee work very interesting. It also takes us outside the House of Commons and gives us a chance to work together to improve bills.

What is even more valuable is the fact that we have a chance to invite witnesses from outside the House. These people are non-partisan and are simply there for the cause, to improve a bill, to explore a question that has been raised, to participate in a study, and so on.

After hearing testimony, the various members of the committee will put forward amendments, recommendations and ways of improving the bill.

In the case of Bill C-42, it is unfortunate that in spite of the work done by my colleague, the critic and member for Alfred-Pellan, who is the deputy critic, none of the amendments were accepted, even though they were supported by witnesses and experts. That is troubling.

In Parliament, we have mechanisms that enable us to fine-tune bills. They are not based solely on ideology. We have a chance to debate bills and make improvements to them.

When we heard the testimony of experts and witnesses in committee, it was obvious that the bill was flawed.

This can happen when people are in a hurry to do the right thing. Nevertheless, there was Bill C-38 and there was C-42. One would have thought that the government could have corrected these shortcomings. There was a realization, however, that there were shortcomings, and that the bill would not achieve the stated purpose: better machinery within the RCMP, so that a healthy work environment could be established whereby all members of the force, regardless of rank or responsibility, could express their grievances and obtain a hearing.

For example, some amendments targeted prevention. There was a desire to inform people about sexual harassment, and the ways in which it manifests itself, in order to create an environment in which respect would inform the values of RCMP members and their behaviour towards each other, with no issues arising between women and men, or among colleagues. In that sense, training seemed to me to make perfect sense.

In any workplace, it is always important to have access to an independent mechanism outside the organization, particularly when serious problems arise. It was proposed to put in place such a mechanism so that people from outside could hear the grievances of individual members, and make recommendations accordingly.

It is rather like what I was saying just now about committee work. Members are deeply involved in their work. Here on Parliament Hill, we often feel like we are in a bubble. I have to say that in committee work, what is always very interesting is to hear people from outside testify and let us have their point of view on a given situation. This independent committee will have to include people who have experience in this type of assessment.

Other recommendations and amendments were designed to produce more balanced human resources policies by withdrawing some of the draconian new powers proposed for the RCMP commissioner, and strengthening the RCMP External Review Committee in cases in which discharge from the force is possible. It is always important to have a division of powers. If too many powers are placed in the hands of one person, there is a risk of abuse.

The situation within the RCMP concerns me, but I am also concerned to see that in other workplaces, women do not have an opportunity to contribute fully to society, particularly in some areas of activity.

I would like to offer a thought as we discuss Bill C-42. As a society, we will have to remember these commitments to equality between men and women. We must think again about better ways of doing things, specifically in order finally to eliminate barriers so that all women have an opportunity for full access to the workplace, whatever the area of activity may be.

We, as a society, must also recognize our responsibility with respect to the important role women play in building a family, and help them perform the tasks that come with that role. I want to remind the House that there has been a real step backward on this matter over the past decade. In some parts of Canada, women cannot participate fully in the economy, because they do not have access to certain types of employment that would provide them with better economic conditions. They cannot get beyond the barriers that prevent them from getting those jobs.

In the matter before us, I repeat that we must create good working environments, especially in traditional workplaces. I said the RCMP is a symbol of Canada and that it is over 125 years old. Traditionally, the RCMP was almost exclusively a male preserve. I believe women have a considerable contribution to make within the RCMP and in other spheres of activity. In order for them to make this contribution, it is very important for us to rethink the way the RCMP operates and, together, come up with some sustainable solutions.

I am also basing my remarks in this House on the many recommendations and reports that have been presented since 2006. Hon. members will remember that we have been under Conservative rule for quite some time now. Recommendations were made by Justice O'Connor in 2006 and David Brown in 2007. It is now 2013 and the bill before us is not yet perfect, as we have heard. The Liberals admit it, and the government has said so, too. This has been going on too long.

We must make sure we have something that will last and will ensure that RCMP members and employees have access to a fair and equitable process. Even some members of the RCMP are worried that the bill may decrease members' job security, especially in jobs related to the exposure of harassment complaints.

In conclusion, I will say that the NDP believes we can do more to find answers to these questions. We believe that the RCMP needs a clear anti-harassment policy, one that sets out precise standards of conduct and precise criteria for all employee performance assessments. Such a policy is a necessary foundation for a fair disciplinary process.

I would like to add that bills have an important effect on Canadian society, because they demonstrate the government's orientation and commitment toward certain situations that Canadians think are unacceptable.

That is why I am disappointed that the government members did not accept the NDP's offer of co-operation through its amendments, and that they do not want to talk about the status or situation of women in certain workplaces.

I will stop there. I await the House's questions with impatience and some trepidation.

Opposition Motion—Parliamentary Budget Officer

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park for moving this very important motion today.

Like many of the world's democratic countries, in 2008, Canada created an entity to ensure government accountability, in the form of the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. This office, which was created by the Conservatives with the support of all parties, also ensures that parliamentarians are given accurate information about public finances.

The NDP is committed to ensuring that public funds are managed properly and is of the opinion that Canada needs a strong and independent Parliamentary Budget Officer. That is why it is imperative that hon. members support the motion moved by my colleague from Parkdale—High Park, which states:

That this House: (a) reaffirm the essential role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in providing independent analysis to Parliamentarians on the state of the nation's finances, trends in the Canadian economy, and the estimates process; and (b) call on the government to: (i) extend the mandate of current Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page until his replacement is named; and (ii) support legislation to make the Parliamentary Budget Officer a full, independent officer of Parliament.

Passed in 2006 and supported by all parties, Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, provides for the creation of the position of Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose role is to provide MPs and parliamentary committees with objective analyses concerning the state of the nation’s finances, trends in the national economy, and the financial cost of proposals under consideration by either House.

Under this legislation, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is also responsible for conducting research on the country's economy and finances, as well as on the government's estimates. On March 14, 2008, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons announced that Kevin Page would be the first person appointed to the position of Parliamentary Budget Officer of Canada for a term of five years. In my opinion, Mr. Page has done a remarkable job of fulfilling the mandate he was given with a team of only 14 people. In the United States, the team is made up of 200 people.

He shed light on some outrageous inaccuracies in government information presented to parliamentarians and Canadians, such as the real cost of the F-35s and the sustainability of the guaranteed income supplement and old age security programs. Mr. Page also proved that Canadians trusted him to carry out his duties and to inform the public about the state of the economy and the manner in which public funds are spent.

Over the course of his brief mandate, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has released over 150 analysis reports, with a budget of only $2.8 million. These reports include a few key reports that helped shed light on important financial details that were nowhere to be found in the government's publications.

One of these key reports was An Estimate of the Fiscal Impact of Canada’s Proposed Acquisition of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. This report revealed that no competitive bid process was held for the F-35s, and that acquiring these jets would not cost $16 billion U.S., but $29.3 billion U.S., nearly double the amount the Conservatives had announced. That is very shameful.

In 2012, the Parliamentary Budget Officer also released a report on old age security, in which he showed that the old age security system was perfectly sustainable, as our NDP colleagues have said time and again. This conclusion was echoed by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, which proved that there was no financial basis for the Conservative government's decision to increase the age of eligibility for old age security from 65 to 67.

In addition to these sporadic reports, the Parliamentary Budget Officer submits periodic reports to Parliament on the country's long-term financial viability. This is an important type of study that helps ensure that young Canadians, like me and other members in the House, do not inherit an economic mess.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer also pointed out that the Department of Finance was unable to specify the intergenerational impact of the budgetary changes, and God knows there have been many budgetary changes here, for example in Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. That is rather worrisome, since another budget will be tabled, and we have no idea what to expect.

These reports are just a few examples of the outstanding work that the Parliamentary Budget Officer and his team have done since the start of his term. In order to reinforce the exceptional work that he has done, we want to ensure that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer can continue its work uninterrupted.

To that end, we want to see Kevin Page's term extended until a replacement is found. We believe that interrupting his term could severely impact the government's obligation to be accountable. This obligation is all the more crucial given that the government will soon be tabling its annual budget.

For the sake of accountability, it is also crucial that parliamentarians continue to benefit from the financial expertise of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Under no circumstances can we support the elimination of this office. Can the Conservative government confirm in this House that the PBO will be replaced by the end of his term? If not, can the Conservative government assure us that Mr. Page's term will be extended? I have my doubts, because the Conservatives, it seems, have plenty to hide.

This motion also seeks the government's support for legislation to make the Parliamentary Budget Officer a full, independent officer of Parliament. The Conservatives have repeatedly attacked Mr. Page because he has constantly pointed out their fiscal mismanagement in various areas. This should come as no surprise, though, given that the Conservatives attack anyone who dares disagree with them.

For example, the Conservatives got rid of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy because its reports and recommendations were inconsistent with the government's objectives. It was a purely partisan decision, one that was incompetent and irresponsible.

These constant political attacks indicate the need for a strong, independent Parliamentary Budget Officer. The NDP also wants the selection process for the new PBO to be open and transparent. It may be difficult for the Conservatives to be transparent, but we can always hope.

Many Canadians are worried that the government will not fill the position or will appoint someone who is unable, or unwilling, to do the work as clearly, concisely and independently as Mr. Page has done.

It is therefore imperative to remove any ambiguity and inconsistency regarding this position, which is provided for in the Federal Accountability Act. In fact, according to David Good, a professor at the University of Victoria, the confusion resulting from legislation serves only to:

...increase partisanship and the scoring of political points rather than channelling substantive information to elevate the level of debate to assist parliamentarians in the scrutiny of the budget and the estimates.

As a member of the Library of Parliament staff, the Parliamentary Budget Officer does not have the same independence as officers of Parliament. As my colleague said earlier, the Conservatives have sometimes asked the PBO not to table certain reports, which meant that the information in question was not available to parliamentarians—we, the MPs—or to the general public.

Making the PBO an officer of Parliament would give Parliament access to an independent research capacity, thereby improving its access to important information.

The Conservatives claim that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is impartial, so then why are they opposed to the PBO becoming an independent officer of Parliament?

In closing, I urge all members of this House to vote in favour of the motion moved by the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park because Canada needs a strong and independent Parliamentary Budget Officer who will help to ensure the sound management of public funds.

It is important that taxpayers have confidence in the government and in all members of this House and that we assure them that expenditures and revenues are managed in a fair and responsible manner. Canada needs a Parliamentary Budget Officer who will let the facts speak for themselves so that they are not interpreted in one way or another.

The PBO successfully fulfilled his mandate. All parties supported the creation of the Parliamentary Budget Officer position and, if the current government votes against this motion, it will be admitting that it no longer considers fiscal accountability to be a priority. We in the NDP want transparency.

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst. He was here in the spring when representatives from Prince Edward Island came to our offices and asked to meet with the Prime Minister regarding this famous mammoth bill, Bill C-38, introduced last spring. Those people could foresee what was going to happen. So they wanted to propose some changes to the bill so they would not find themselves stuck in the quagmire that we are all in today, and I say “quagmire” to avoid using unparliamentary language.

I wonder if my colleague could share his thoughts and tell us why it is so important to revisit the famous five week spring gap.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP motion today very clearly calls on the Conservatives to throw their reform in the trash bin. That is what the people are calling for. The motion is calling for the five weeks pilot project to be reinstated, to avoid what is called the “black hole”. These are the two things set out in the NDP motion.

When we say throw the bill in the trash bin, we do not mean to come back with something else. And while we are on the subject—I have been here and I have been talking about employment insurance for a long time—I would like some attention to be paid to the employment insurance program, to seasonal jobs and to our regions. I would like the piecemeal cuts to employment insurance to stop, and I would like the government instead to find a way to make the program work for working people. It is an insurance policy.

In all honesty, it is called an insurance program that employees and employers pay into, but if there were a vote today on whether employers want to pay into the employment insurance fund, the answer would be no.

Employers are happy to profit from employees, but when they are done with them, they want to get rid of them. I say that with all due respect, even though I know it will make some people angry. In its employment insurance reform, the government is offering to allow companies not to pay up to $1,000 in employment insurance for each new employee. The government will even help companies collect $1,000 if they hire a new person, when the purpose of employment insurance is to help workers.

On the subject of Bill C-38, what the NDP is saying is that if the government wanted to make changes to employment insurance and it was just a matter of clarifications, why did it not bring them up at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities? Why did it not invite industry and workers? Why did it not sit down with those people to address the problem?

When the Liberals made their changes, it started with the Conservatives, in 1988. At that time, the Liberals said that if there were changes to employment insurance it would be disastrous for New Brunswick. I recall the former minister of human resources, who was not the minister at the time, Doug Young, who in 1993 replaced the minister who is still in the House today as the minister for ACOA, saying that was insulting.

The government has said that the NDP is scaring people, but the first thing the minister for ACOA from New Brunswick said was that people still like to get employment insurance so they can go hunting and fishing. That is insulting. It is the worst insult that can be thrown at working people. It means that it is not enough to have seasonal work and cut employment insurance, he is even going to criticize us if we go hunting and fishing. He is insulting people who want the benefit of employment insurance.

We live in regions where work is seasonal. We did not choose the place where we came into this world. That is not a choice. Mr. Speaker, you certainly did not choose the place where you came into this world. The people where I come from, whether on the Acadian Peninsula or in the Acadie—Bathurst region, or in the Gaspé or Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island, living along the coastlines, did not choose to come into the world in those places, but they did. And that is part of our country. So is the country united or divided?

There was a time when things were not going all that well in Alberta. It was a time when people were poor, but I am happy for them now that things are going better. When I asked the minister responsible for ACOA for assistance for the Bathurst Airport, for renovations and an extension to the runway for our workers who were going to work in the west, the first thing he said was that rather than work to promote economic development in our region, he would prefer to have an airport that would enable people to go and work elsewhere.

On the one hand, the government is saying that there are jobs across Canada and that people should be mobile and prepared to work elsewhere. On the other hand, when we want to help people go and work elsewhere, the government makes it impossible for us to do so. It is cannot even provide northeastern New Brunswick with an airport.

I do not want people to move elsewhere, but it would at least be useful to those who do so, for Canadians and people from our region who want to go.

Last Friday, I watched Le Téléjournal national with Céline Galipeau. I would like to comment on statements made by Toronto journalist Tasha Kheiriddin. I would like to invite her to come and see us. The people back home are not too fond of her at the moment.

What did Tasha say on TV? She said that people from the Atlantic provinces who worked seasonally ought to know that Canada is a country of immigrants and that since immigrants work anywhere, they should go and work out west.

I do not believe that this journalist understood what she was telling the women back home, the mothers who work in fish plants, because it is not just men. In fact most of the people who work in these plants are women. Should they all hop on a plane to work out west because that is where the jobs are, and leave their children at home? People like that are called 20/10s. They go and work for 20 days and return home for 10 days. Those are the kinds of jobs we have back home.

The NDP motion refers to a five-week black hole. What will the government do in March and April when the employment insurance benefits stop?

The journalist said that the Conservatives had created approximately 900,000 jobs. They did not create them where I live. There are no jobs there. Finding work is difficult. That is why a pilot project has been under way in the regions since 2004 for people with seasonal jobs in places like the Gaspé, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. The five weeks of benefits would see the workers through until the next season.

Paul Robichaud, New Brunswick's Deputy Premier, said that this would hurt the province and employees. He asked the government to backtrack; otherwise the people in question would end up on welfare. However, things can be even worse. If two people who live together work in a fish plant and one is receiving employment insurance benefits or returns to work and the other loses employment insurance benefits, then there is no entitlement to welfare. This will mean total poverty.

And that is why we are asking the minister to consider the harm that the Conservatives are causing to workers. We are asking the Prime Minister to think about what he is doing to our country.

I have already asked in the House what workers have done to the Prime Minister. What have the workers who have built this country done to the Prime Minister to make him hate them so much?

What have they done? They have contributed to an employment insurance fund that belongs to them.

I remember one of the minister's speeches. She said that she wanted Canadians to work 12 months a year. My goodness, if they want people to work 12 months a year, they should invest in our secondary and tertiary processing plants. The government has to help people work. People where I come from are not slackers, nor are they lazy. The Conservatives need to stop investing their money solely in the west. They need to come east.

When we ask for airport repairs, nothing happens. They are in the process of shutting down the rail line between Moncton and Bathurst. All of Atlantic Canada's economic development infrastructure is being shut down. And the Prime Minister is saying that people do not want to work.

ACOA lost $78 million in investment funding. That money could have helped small businesses. But quite the opposite is happening.

Benoît Bouchard, the former Conservative transport minister under Brian Mulroney, said last week on national television that they tried to change employment insurance but that it did not work. The Liberals tried and cut employment insurance benefits, but it did not work. The Conservatives are trying the same thing. They will soon see that it does not work.

Perhaps people were frustrated yesterday to hear me say in the House that the Acadians will not be deported again. But that is how people are feeling. They feel they have to leave home. It is not right that our people should be forced to leave when we have forestry, fishing and tourism industries.

I will finish on that point. Once again, we are asking the government to listen to the people. It should come see what is happening, scrap this reform and start over.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for my colleague, who is a member of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities and the employment insurance critic.

The government brought in Bill C-38, an omnibus bill, but it was never debated. In a democracy, if the government wants to reform employment insurance, it would usually consult the people, send the bill to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, call the stakeholders concerned to appear before the committee—especially those who pay into the employment insurance fund, that is the workers and employers—and sit down together to try to find solutions to the problem. The workers and employers should be encouraged to participate in this process because the employment insurance system does not belong to the government.

We should not take the “my way or the highway” approach to a bill, but that is how this government went about it.

Would it not have been truly democratic to have sent the bill to committee and propose that a national study be conducted?

The Environment

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today's debate about aboriginal rights reminds us that we need to respect the environment. First nations could teach us a lot about that respect. The natural resources we have today are not unlimited. If we blindly exploit them, what will be left for future generations? How will they feed themselves? Will they have access to potable water?

With Bills C-38 and C-45, the government is endangering the quality of the water in our lakes and rivers. The changes to the environmental assessment process are dismantling all of the mechanisms that allowed us to develop projects while ensuring that environmental risks were minimized. The amendments to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act are expediting project approval and depriving the government of insight from subject matter experts. By approving projects that could have serious consequences for the environment, we are saddling future generations with environmental, economic and social debt. What is more, these laws limit the participation of civil society and aboriginals. It is unacceptable that the first peoples of this country, with whom Canada has signed multiple treaties, are not consulted when oil, mining and gas projects are under consideration.

We are already starting to pay for this government's mistakes. Years of inaction on climate change, increasingly lax laws, the clear lack of political will to enforce standards—all of these things have an impact on our lakes and rivers.

For instance, water levels in the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes continue to drop. Lake Superior's water level has dropped 34 cm and Lake Huron's has dropped 71 cm. Michigan's governor has taken emergency action. What is the federal government doing? Nothing.

This situation has an impact on navigation, on tourism and on the economy in Quebec and Ontario. In the Arctic, studies have shown that pollution is contaminating the ocean, and therefore fish, seals and all marine mammals. This situation is having a serious impact on Inuit health and the Inuit way of life.

With Bill C-38, the government eliminated the protection of fish and other habitats. With Bill C-45, it did away with the environmental assessment of millions of rivers, not to mention that 95% of our environmental assessment process has disappeared.

What will happen to our fishery after all of our lakes and rivers have been polluted? We are fortunate to live in country that is rich in freshwater resources. Canada has nearly 18% of the world's freshwater supply. Are we really going to spoil it all?

My colleagues and I, and experts as well, have been sounding the alarm for months. In the past few weeks, aboriginal peoples have also expressed their concern. What is it going to take to spur the government to action? People want to be consulted before a project goes ahead, not after.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples stipulates that:

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

Canada should apply the principles of this declaration to all legislation it enacts. My colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou introduced a bill to that effect on Monday in the hope that the government will honour its commitments.

I am therefore asking the government if it intends to protect all of Canada's lakes and rivers.

Opposition Motion—Aboriginal Canadians

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, over the Christmas holidays our family went to see Les Misérables. It was almost impossible to watch that movie without feeling strongly the parallel situation taking place here in Canada.

In the song Do You Hear the People Sing?, the question is asked:

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

The drums have been beating strongly in Canada and around the world to draw attention to the greatest social injustice in this country. As a doctor, when I hear the drums I hear a heartbeat. It is the same sixty beats per minute that I heard through a stethoscope years and years ago. The sound is very familiar.

Over these past weeks, it has been very poignant to hear the drums. There was a time we worried that the heartbeat of Chief Theresa Spence was going to stop. I want to thank the Liberal leader for the leadership he gave to that life being saved. I also want everyone to know that the tipping point in the relationship between first nations and the government meant Chief Theresa Spence felt she had to take drastic action. This has to change.

On December 21, January 11, and Monday, as we returned here to Parliament Hill, hundreds of people gathered on the Hill as part of Idle No More, and in solidarity with them, across the country. These protests were about the government's sweeping changes to environmental oversight and to urge real action on aboriginal rights issues.

Again, it has been this feeling:

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

This is about young people, optimism and how things have to change.

Tomorrow begins today. This motion calls on the government to make the improvement of economic outcomes of first nations, Inuit and Métis a central focus of budget 2013.

I urge the government to support this motion from the hard-working hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.

The government caucus met yesterday. The Prime Minister did not say one word about the issues facing aboriginal people. It has not been a priority for the government. I hope that voting for this motion will be a signal that it will take this issue seriously.

It is time for government members to understand that building human capital is the key factor in improving economic success for aboriginal people and communities, but also for all Canadians. Urgent collaborative action is needed to unlock the human and economic potential in aboriginal communities across this country.

At a time of unprecedented skills shortages, an estimated 400,000 aboriginal Canadians will reach the age to enter the labour market over the next decade. Yet, the significant education gap that exists between Canadian first nations and non-first nations populations high school graduation rates remains a major obstacle to full participation of aboriginal people in the workforce.

Members know that education is the key to success. Appallingly, the high school graduation rate is getting worse under the Conservative government. The Conservatives promised to close the disgraceful education funding gaps. Yet, the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs followed that promise with confrontation and actually denied that the per student funding gap exists at all.

According to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the high school graduation rate for first nation students living on reserve is 35%. By comparison, 77% of non-aboriginal people in Canada have a high school diploma. Further, the number of aboriginal post-secondary graduates lags way behind the rest of Canada. For example, fewer than 10% of aboriginal people in Canada have a university degree compared to the national average of 23%.

The Conservatives goal for improving first nations on reserve high school graduation is an 8% increase over the next five years, as our leader pointed out today in question period. They have no targets for increasing first nations post-secondary education enrolment or graduation. As the Auditor General has noted, at the current rate it would take 28 years for first nations communities to close the high school education gap.

We have asked the government to address this gap in the next budget by working with first nations to bring graduation rates up to the national average on an urgent basis. This was the 10 year target of the Kelowna accord and should be our goal moving forward. Yet, after seven years we have seen zero progress on this from the Conservative government. Talking points cannot change the facts. Idle No More means talking points no more. We actually need action and the truth.

The Centre for the Study of Living Standards has noted that raising educational and labour market outcomes for aboriginal Canadians to the same level as non-aboriginal Canadians would increase the GDP by $36 billion, increase government revenues by $3.5 billion, and reduce government expenditures by $14.2 billion, by 2026.

As the Senate reported in its 2007 study on aboriginal economic development, there is a need to strengthen investments in aboriginal governing capacities that support economic success. However, the government has opted to make significant cuts to aboriginal governing capacities as part of the 2012 budget reductions. Even resources that directly contribute to economic success for aboriginal people are not above being cut from the government's strategy.

Shockingly, on February 12, 2013, the government plans to close the aboriginal Canada portal website, a single window to first nations, Métis and Inuit online resources for government programs and services. The portal includes links to government and non-governmental sources that pertain to employment and human resources. It links employment opportunities and jobs available for aboriginal job seekers across Canada. Employers can even post the job openings for free. The aboriginal Canada portal does not just provide one-stop shopping for employment; it also provides, at very little cost to taxpayers, essential information on topics ranging from claims and treaties to economic development, business, justice and policing. The closure will make it even more difficult for Canadians to navigate an already complicated federal bureaucracy.

This compilation of information on all matters aboriginal in government, currently maintained with a small expenditure, will now be scattered, making it even more difficult for all Canadians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike, to use. One need only look at the statement on the website, which shows all of the places an individual has to now go to find the information that was once there in one-stop shopping.

Clearly one cannot even think about economic development when people are living in third world conditions. The first nations, Inuit and Métis education gap has been widening, as we have said, in terms of both funding and outcomes. Housing shortages are becoming more acute. Water and waste water systems are in crisis, and tragic gaps in terms of first nations health outcomes are continuing unabated.

The Conservatives defend their refusal to deal with the on-reserve housing crisis by claiming they have built 10,000 homes over the past six years. The fact is that they are trying to take credit for falling short of what should have been 13,800 homes built under funding levels predating their government.The government also defends its appalling record on first nations water and waste water by noting that it conducted the largest assessment of safe waste water in this country so we can move forward with prioritization. Yet, almost two years after the federal assessment, 117 first nations communities across Canada are under drinking water advisories, which is an increase of over 23% since 2006. The government has no long-term plan to get a handle on this crisis.

The government study showed it would take $6 billion, over 10 years, to fix this problem. Right now, there is $1.2 billion in investment that is urgently needed. What did we see? We saw $330 million in the last budget, and then the minister had the audacity to re-announce that $330 million the day after the supposedly important January 11 meeting. Talk about hypocrisy. That is insulting.

What more is there? Too many resource development projects are moving forward without aboriginal people receiving a fair share of the economic benefits or being partners in their development.

This motion also calls on the government to commit to action on treaty implementation and to engage in full and meaningful consultation on legislation that affects the rights of aboriginal Canadians, as required by domestic law.

The Conservatives signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which requires free, prior and informed consent, and then in every piece of correspondence they refer to that pledge as “aspirational”. This was the whole basis of the Crown–first nations gathering in January 2012, where they stated that they would commit to work toward the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation. Absolutely no work has been done with the provinces to honour those treaties or to ensure that first nations are able to share in the prosperity that is Canada.

The failure of the government to even begin to deal with the imperative of sharing Canada's natural resource revenues fairly has resulted in relations with Canada's indigenous population reaching a dangerous tipping point. First nations are pursuing their rights and winning almost every time in the courts, as the leader pointed out in a recent speech. Thousands of aboriginal and non-aboriginal people are demonstrating, as we are seeing, across Canada through Idle No More and online. Almost every resource development activity in Canada, the Conservatives need to remind themselves, that is currently operating or planned is occurring within 200 kilometres of a first nation community or on traditional lands. Despite this, the settling of comprehensive claims agreements between aboriginal people and the government, which address the critical issues surrounding economic development including resource royalties sharing, has proceeded at an astonishingly slow pace.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives has said that aboriginal people must be true partners in resource and energy projects. Yet the President of the Treasury Board alienated first nations by dismissing their calls for a joint review panel on the Ring of Fire resource development, arguing it would only bring up “irrelevant issues”. Even the Prime Minister's own former senior cabinet minister, Jim Prentice, has chastised the government, saying, “The Crown obligation to engage first nations in a meaningful way has yet to be taken up”.

The number of comprehensive claims settled by the government has fallen steadily since 2005, despite the promise from the Conservatives to revolutionize the land claims process in 2007. As of today, more than half of the nearly 100 agreements under negotiation have been ongoing for at least 16 years. These delays are often the result of the government's negotiation strategy, which embraces a take it or leave it approach rather than flexibility and fairness, and it is quite clear that the negotiators do not have the mandate to compromise.

The frustration of aboriginal people is understandable, given the complete lack of progress on their issues and the refusal of the government to fulfill its legal obligation to consult them on matters that may impact their inherent and/or treaty rights and the fact that we find in government documents that the Conservatives actually see first nations, Inuit and Métis in this country as adversaries.

More recently, that frustration has manifested itself in the failure of consultation about the changes to environmental protection on aboriginal lands and navigable waterways contained in the two latest budget implementation acts.

This type of unilateral action has created a fracture in the relationship between the Conservative government and first nations. It has led to the formation of Idle No More, which precipitated the hastily organized January 11 meeting between the Prime Minister and aboriginal leaders. The fact that coming out of that meeting the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development indicated his belief the government had fulfilled its duty to consult on various controversial bills shows that the Conservatives still do not seem to grasp what true consultation means. There was no consultation with aboriginal people on Bill C-38 or Bill C-45. The minister admitted in committee that there had been no consultation on the aboriginal governance bill. There was consultation on the private member's bill but no consultation on the government bill and even the chief, previously supportive, viewed it as a kind of bait and switch opportunity.

We believe the government should work with aboriginal leaders to establish an arm's length legal advisory committee that would evaluate all draft legislation with the potential to affect aboriginal rights and provide an opinion on the federal government's duty to consult before the legislation is tabled. Given that the aboriginal population is the youngest and fastest growing in Canada and that almost every natural resource development is occurring on aboriginal territorial lands, we believe that if the government truly wants to put all its economic eggs in a natural resources basket, it had better just get with the program and turn this around.

The Prime Minister must understand the gravity of the situation and the potential impact on all Canadians. It is time for action. It is time for the government to work with aboriginal people in Canada toward a new nation-to-nation relationship based on the spirit of partnership, respect and the co-operation for mutual benefit that characterized our original relationship. We are all treaty people. There were two signatories to the document. The 96% of Canadians not from aboriginal backgrounds need to understand the gravity of the situation, and we need to go forward in the House and make sure that happens.

Idle No More will not go away. The young people can see what needs to be done to right past wrongs and to deal with the greatest social and economic injustice facing Canada.

In the week before Christmas I was at the native men's shelter in my riding. It was quite clear. These young men, who had been homeless the week before, were asking me what an omnibus bill is and if it affects their treaty rights. The next night in North Bay, at the Idle No More teach-in with the member from North Bay, we could not believe it. There were a hundred people in the friendship centre going through the PowerPoint presentation of every bill that has affected them that has not had consultation. They are now armed with information and they are ready to fight.

It is really important that we understand that this is difficult. However, the government ignores it at its peril. I ask the government: Can it hear the people sing? When the beating of their hearts echoes the beating of the drums, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes. That tomorrow is today, right now. The government could show some decent faith by voting for this motion.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to this motion, tabled by the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. I appreciate the working relationship that we have on the standing committee.

Our government's number one focus is on creating jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity for all Canadians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike. We are seeing the results of this work. As the Prime Minister said yesterday, the global economy remains fragile but Canada has produced more than 900,000 net new jobs in recent years. This is no small feat in the current economic climate.

As we move forward in 2013, our focus remains the economy. We know that in continuing to develop, provide our children with access to good education, train for the job skills of tomorrow, reduce red tape and equip our businesses to succeed worldwide, this includes expanding opportunities for aboriginal peoples to fully participate in the economy. We know there are tremendous opportunities to promote and encourage greater aboriginal participation in the economy and we remain committed to working with willing partners to do exactly that. We are focused on removing barriers to economic development on reserve, helping aboriginal people develop the skills they need to enter the workforce and providing first nation communities and the regions they are located in with greater autonomy to manage their own land and resources.

We can all agree that increasing aboriginal participation in the economy is one of the most effective ways to improve the well-being and quality of life of aboriginal peoples in Canada. It is also vital to Canada's future economic prosperity.

Since the economic action plan was implemented in response to the global economic crisis, Canada has recovered almost all of the output and jobs lost during the recession. The number of jobs has gone up by more than 750,000 since July 2009, and it is now 260,000 higher than the peak reached before the recession, which represents the highest job growth among the G7 countries. These figures are very reassuring to Canadians, in light of the continuing economic uncertainty around the world.

Key to our economic strength is the continued participation of aboriginal peoples in the economy. The natural resource sector is an important case in point. Canada's natural resource sector employs close to 800,000 Canadians. The mining sector is the largest private employer of aboriginal people, who make up some 7.5% of its workforce. Aboriginal people represent 4.3% of the energy sector's workforce and 10% of the oil sands' workforce. The resource sectors also generate billions of dollars' worth of tax royalties and revenues annually to help pay for government programs and services.

Our resource strength is set to continue to expand well into the future. We currently estimate that over the next decade there will potentially be as many as 600 new projects, representing more than $650 billion in investments, across the country in resource development. Some of these will be taking place in northwestern Ontario in the great Kenora riding. These projects will create jobs across our region and throughout Canada and will continue to substantially improve our country's economic prosperity. In fact, the numbers continue to climb as new opportunities are identified.

Resource development is vitally important to aboriginal communities across Canada. Take, for example, Fort McKay First Nation in Alberta. It has the largest business relationship with oil sands producers of any first nation community. Fort McKay has gone from having a single janitorial contract in 1986 to running corporations with reported earnings in 2008 of over $120 million. Unemployment in the community is under 5%. It has a youth centre, a health clinic, and a new housing complex with a hundred homes rented to community members.

Prior to the development of diamond mines in the Northwest Territories, the Tlicho First Nation had small, local businesses in traditional pursuits. Today, it has far more diversified economic activity ranging from retailing to multi-million dollar mining service companies.

There are many more examples of our government partnering with aboriginal communities on resource development projects through the aboriginal business development program. The Kitsaki mining limited partnership is a $3 million commercial mining extraction equipment project for use in the operations of the open-pit and underground La Ronge gold mine project of Golden Band Resources in Saskatchewan. Our government contributed $1.1 million to this project.

Just last week, the minister was in British Columbia to announce new regulations under the First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act that would allow for the Kitimat LNG liquefied natural gas facility on the Haisla First Nation's Bees Indian Reserve No. 6 to move forward. This natural gas facility will provide Canada's energy producers with a doorway to overseas markets, in addition to creating well-paying skilled jobs and economic opportunities for the Haisla First Nation and the entire northwestern region of British Columbia.

These economic development projects obviously have economic spinoffs for all sectors of the Canadian economy, and especially for first nations communities. That is why it is important for Canada to do what is necessary to attract international investments in the provinces and territories. This includes regulatory reform north and south of the 60th parallel.

Regulatory processes that are simplified and clearly laid out will give businesses the confidence they need to take advantage of economic opportunities and maximize the use of the resource sector to create jobs for Canadians across Canada, including aboriginal peoples, while still protecting the environment.

In 2009, the government fundamentally changed the way it does business with aboriginal peoples. Instead of promoting economic development using an outdated, ad hoc approach that we had seen used by prior governments, we are focused on forging strategic partnerships with willing partners and developing innovative ways to overcome the traditional structural barriers to economic opportunity in aboriginal communities.

This includes growing private sector partnerships and investment; strengthening aboriginal entrepreneurship; having small business centres on reserves, including isolated and remote first nation communities; developing the aboriginal labour force through skills and trade investments in HRSDC; and enhancing the value of aboriginal assets.

Through this approach, our government is working with its partners to ensure that aboriginal peoples benefit from the same job, income and wealth creation opportunities as other Canadians.

On average, we have created or contributed over $45 million annually to support aboriginal business development, aboriginal participation in large-scale energy and resource development projects and improved access to capital for aboriginal business development opportunities.

We are also working with aboriginal peoples to remove the structural barriers that are holding them back from fully participating in the economy. For example, just this past month the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development announced that eight more first nations will soon be operating or developing their land codes under the First Nations Land Management Act. These eight first nations joined the 18 first nations that were added last January, bringing the total number of first nations benefiting from this regime to 69 first nation communities. This regime gives first nations freedom from the 34 land-related sections under the Indian Act, and provides them with greater autonomy by taking the minister out of the equation and giving them back control over their reserve lands and its resources. More specifically, first nations can now determine how they want to develop, protect, and use their own land on reserve.

The benefits of this regime are clear. First nations operating with their own land codes are successfully taking advantage of more and more economic development opportunities because they are able to operate at the speed of business. Imagine that.

For example, Whitecap Dakota First Nation in Saskatchewan has been operating under the First Nations Land Management Act since 2004. Since that time, over 700 jobs have been created in the community and currently generate approximately $90 million in revenue annually. It is incredible.

Last spring, Bill C-38 amended the FNLMA to enable first nations operating under the act to further unlock the economic development potential of their reserve lands. These amendments simplified the process of developing their own land codes, further removing the legislative barriers that were preventing or delaying first nations from taking full advantage of the benefits of assuming full responsibility for their lands under FNLMA.

More recently, as part of Bill C-45, the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, our government introduced amendments to the land designation provisions of the Indian Act that will allow first nations to more quickly pursue economic development opportunities through leasing portions of the reserve land while retaining full ownership of their lands. These amendments respond to many first nations who have expressed frustration at the cumbersome and time-consuming process that existed previously and which had negatively impacted their ability to attract and retain investors at the speed of business.

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of misinformation spread in the media and in the first nation communities as to what these amendments involve. I want to reiterate that these amendments have nothing to do with land surrender. They have to do with the leasing of land for economic development purposes through a decision-making process that takes place in first nation communities by their citizens and their government. It really is as simple as that.

Our government is working with our aboriginal partners as well as with the provincial and territorial governments and the private sector to increase aboriginal participation in key sectors of the Canadian economy.

For example, in 2010, we launched the strategic partnerships initiative, which helps aboriginal Canadians take advantage of complex, market-driven opportunities for resource development, particularly in priority economic sectors such as forestry, fisheries, mining, energy and agriculture.

To this day the initiative has supported more than 60 aboriginal communities and some of the largest resource development opportunities across Canada, including the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario and the lower Churchill energy project in Atlantic Canada.

However, we are not only focused on resource projects south of 60. We also know that Canada's north is home to world-class natural resources, representing tremendous economic potential.

During his trip to the north this past August, the Prime Minister stated that our government is committed to ensuring that northerners benefit from the tremendous reserves of natural resource found in their region. For the benefits to flow, it is necessary to get resource projects up and running in an effective, responsible and sustainable way, to put agreements in place with territorial governments and first nations to ensure that revenues generated by these initiatives are to their direct benefit and stay where they belong, up in the north.

To this end, our government has taken significant steps to reduce red tape and streamline regulatory requirements in the north. We introduced Bill C-47, the northern jobs and growth act, in the House of Commons on November 6, 2012. This bill is currently before committee and if passed into law will increase certainty and help create a better climate for private sector investment and development across the territories. The bill includes the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and the Northwest Territories Surface Rights Board Act. It also includes amendments related to the Yukon Surface Rights Board Act.

These measures fulfill outstanding legislative obligations under the Nunavut land claim agreement, as well as the Gwich'in and Sahtu land claim agreements. They also respond to calls from aboriginal groups, government and the private sector for improvements to regulatory processes in the north.

Improving the regulatory regimes for the abundant natural resources in the north could help Canada prosper and could create billions of jobs for decades. The meaningful action we are taking in the Northern Jobs and Growth Act will help release this potential.

Our government will continue to develop Canada's abundant natural resources to benefit Canadians, including aboriginal peoples. We have a vision of a future in which the aboriginal peoples are autonomous and prosperous, manage their own activities and make a significant contribution to the well-being of the entire country.

Our government continues to take concrete steps to build the conditions necessary for aboriginal communities to participate more fully in Canada's economy.

In closing, we remain committed to working with willing partners to improve the long-term prosperity, health and sustainability of aboriginal people, their communities and all Canadians.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what we have is a fundamental difference on how to move forward. The government has invested in some things; there have been some investments in education, housing and infrastructure. However, it is always top-down. If the government were serious about moving forward, it would work in a spirit of true partnership and consultation to bring first nations, Inuit and Métis up to the standard of living that the rest of Canadians expect.

If it is going so well, why have we had the Tsilhqot'in obtain leave to appeal to the Supreme Court on issues around aboriginal rights and title to the land? This is directly tied to economic development because this is a court case that has been going on for, I believe, two decades, with regard to logging in British Columbia. If it is going so well, why have Frog Lake and Mikisew Cree filed a notice of application for judicial review with the Federal Court in Ottawa with regard to Bill C-38 and Bill C-45? It is because they do not feel the government consulted appropriately around developing environmental policies, their implementation, and their impact on first nations communities.

Therefore, there is a fundamental difference about how to proceed here.

Report Stage

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for the time I have been given.

I would like to take this opportunity to speak out against the direction that is being taken with Bill C-43 and the Conservatives' attitude when this bill was examined in committee.

The Conservatives are incorrectly implying that we have certain motives. We will never support those who commit serious crimes, but we are concerned about this bill, which once again gives the minister more arbitrary power.

I would also like to remind members of the importance of democratic debate. The use of the time allocation motion, which is once again muzzling us, is a shining example of this government's closed-mindedness. The Conservatives have adopted a completely uncompromising attitude, which we also noticed in committee.

The implementation of Bill C-43 will make significant changes to the way newcomers to Canada are treated. It is inconsistent with the Canadian justice system, our country's precepts of compassion and our humanitarian mission. Many of the measures in this bill will have a major impact on the current system.

First, the government is intensifying deportation procedures by limiting the barriers that act as a counterbalance. On one hand, any crime carrying a sentence of over six months in prison will result in automatic deportation. The government is therefore imposing a double penalty because the prison sentence will be combined with deportation. The Conservatives have also introduced a logic whereby people are not allowed to make mistakes. That is a shameful attitude.

On the other hand, Bill C-43 puts an end to appeals in cases involving sentences of over six months, which goes against the principles of our justice system. What the government is telling us is that people are not allowed to make mistakes and that they will be deported. And, under this bill, their families will be deported along with them.

This bill also gives the minister discretionary powers without requiring him to be accountable or transparent. He will now have the authority to declare somebody a threat because of public policy considerations. The minister will be the only counterbalance to himself because of the lack of appeal process, and the concept of public policy considerations is not defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

In addition, Bill C-43 indiscriminately lumps all of the consequences for misrepresentation together. As a result, whether the misrepresentation is intentional or not, the individual would be inadmissible for five years.

According to the Canadian Council for Refugees, not only is Bill C-43 inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it also deprives people of fair consideration of their applications. It denies them access to the principle of fairness before the law and to an independent legal process.

Furthermore, the organization is critical of these new measures whereby someone who fought against an undemocratic regime would be prohibited from entering Canada. Would people like Nelson Mandela constitute a threat to Canada's national security? I doubt it.

A number of issues in this bill that we wanted to fix with our amendments are problematic. We pointed them out to the government, and we were backed up by witnesses in committee. We wanted the government to use common sense and look at the potential impact of Bill C-43.

By agreeing to go to committee, our parliamentary wing showed a willingness to be open and to compromise. We wanted to work on improving the bill. What we were asking for was warranted and realistic and would have improved the bill. Unfortunately, the government refused to listen to our suggestions and improve the bill. Instead of being pragmatic, the government insisted on justifying an ideology and regressive measures and on promoting division.

The Conservatives' statements have done everything to paint refugees and permanent residents as dangerous people, potential terrorists or people who come here only to take advantage of the system. These days, anyone who is not a full-scale citizen will not be recognized and will be considered by the Conservatives to be a foreigner with no room for error.

All along, the Conservatives have used extraordinarily rare exceptions to justify their bill, forgetting the majority of applicants, forgetting the people who will be directly affected by Bill C-43. When we expressed concerns about the impact of the bill, the government accused us of being soft on fraudsters.

When a witness stated that because the police in the country engage in racial profiling, Bill C-43 would disproportionately affect visible minorities, the expert was accused of siding with criminals. Our work in committee was constantly marred by these kinds of demagogic and poisonous comments.

This attitude must be brought to light and condemned. We wanted to debate the bill and discuss it. We were proactive and submitted proposals. But the government wanted to advance its political agenda. The Conservative ideology, which is focused on security, is helping create a system that functions by exception. This system will severely limit the fundamental rights of certain categories of immigrants.

We tried to help improve Bill C-43 while it was being studied in committee. We proposed nine reasonable amendments that addressed previous criticisms. Unfortunately, all of the opposition's amendments were flatly rejected.

In keeping with the ethical principles that guide Canadian parliamentarians, we proposed that the minister act transparently and report any decisions made through the use of his new discretionary powers. This request was rejected by the Conservatives. In so doing, the government refused to make the minister accountable to the people. It objected to the idea that the minister should provide details about the discretionary decisions he makes.

In accordance with the overarching legal principles of the Canadian system, we proposed reinstating the right to appeal, which Bill C-43 does away with. The Conservatives rejected our proposal, thereby rejecting a fundamental principle of our justice system: judicial appeal.

The Conservatives seem proud of the fact that the minister will have the power to review cases, but they neglect to mention that, as a result, he will be judge and jury. To limit the scope of Bill C-43, we suggested that the government clarify the notion of public policy considerations, which is not defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. We wanted to clarify the factors involved in the minister's discretionary decisions. Once again, the Conservatives refused to listen to reason.

Lastly, we wanted to clarify the procedure for interviews requested by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. We suggested that the government allow individuals to be accompanied during these meetings. The government has done away with the right to legal advice and the presence of a lawyer. We wanted a fairer process for applicants, but the Conservatives rejected our amendment.

In conclusion, our party will not support Bill C-43 because of its impact on the immigration process, the government's unwillingness to consider our amendments and the fact that this measure is at odds with our legal system. Contrary to what the Conservatives would have everyone believe, we do not support criminals. We support immigrants and Canadians. The Conservatives' stubborn determination to go it alone, to decide unilaterally, to avoid debate and discussion, will have consequences. The first of these will be a defective policy whose flaws will soon become clear.

Like Bill C-31 and Bill C-38, Bill C-43 is yet another stain on the Conservatives' immigration record. Once again, the government's actions are out of touch with reality and it is failing to consider the consequences of its actions. Once again, this government has refused to improve its laws in the interests of immigrants and Canadians. Once again, this government has taken a backward approach that conflicts with the interests of Canadians.

Motions in amendment

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to this important bill on behalf of my constituents of Surrey North.

It is safe to say that dealing with those non-citizens who commit serious crimes in Canada is essential and something in which we as New Democrats strongly believe. Unfortunately, the bill leaves much to be desired. Bill C-43 misses the mark and fails to address any of the holes with regard to training, allocation of resources and monitoring within the public service agencies that deal with non-citizens. Moreover, the bill would not protect public safety as the Conservatives would like everyone to believe.

Not only is the bill flawed in its content, but it also paints newcomers in a negative light. The bill redefines serious criminality for the purpose of access to an appeal of termination of admissibility. The bill would place increased discretionary powers in the hands of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration by bluntly removing all necessary checks and balances that are in place.

Newcomers arrive on Canada's shores with the same goal as those who have been living here for generations. They want to build a better life for themselves and their families. The majority of newcomers never break the law, yet the Conservatives would paint with the same brush the few criminals and the many non-violent, non-criminal newcomers who arrive in Canada each year.

Let me be clear. We strongly support the quick removal of violent and dangerous non-citizen criminals.

Unfortunately, Bill C-43 would not succeed in its aims, but rather would give sweeping discretionary powers to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration while completely ignoring much needed training and resources.

A number of people who spoke at committee pointed out that law enforcement agencies and immigration services are severely lacking resources. Our public service employees are lacking the resources to deal with people who do not comply with the current citizenship and immigration regulations and laws. The Conservatives know it is unfair to ask these already overburdened agencies to do more with fewer resources.

The Conservatives also know it is inappropriate to relieve the immigration minister of the responsibility to examine humanitarian circumstances.

The fact of the matter is that the Conservatives do not care. What they do care about is ramming through their radical Conservative agenda while hiding from oversight and avoiding accountability. The government has avoided accountability before. We saw it with the F-35s. The Conservatives are not taking responsibility for that fiasco. We also saw it with the Minister of Agriculture with regard to the meat poisoning that happened in Alberta. The government has failed to take responsibility and has failed to account for those serious flaws.

Clearly, the Conservative government's objective is to introduce measures that would contribute to a less transparent and more arbitrary approach to immigration.

As a responsible opposition, we have attempted to restore some vital checks and balances to this bill. We New Democrats have asked the government to work with us. We asked Conservative members at committee stage. In that effort we introduced a number of amendments to work across party lines to make the system better, to deal with violent offenders. However, the Conservatives would not entertain any of the amendments that were offered to them. This has happened not only with respect to this bill but with other bills that have been introduced. The Conservatives continually fail to look at some amendments.

Surely, of the thousands of amendments we have introduced at committee stage and report stage some of them would make sense. The government has failed to take a reasonable approach to our immigration system and other measures that have been put forward in this House. The amendments that were introduced were all rejected in favour of an irresponsible approach with no checks and balances and no accountability.

This is a bill that does not help our communities, nor does it respect our judicial process. Instead, it removes any discretion for a judge to consider the nature of the crime and the context in which it was committed. This includes any potential mental illness of refugees from war-torn countries. One can imagine coming from a war-torn country. Clearly, this bill does not address that.

Safe communities have long been a priority in my constituency of Surrey North and across the country. The objectives in the preamble of this bill make sense. Members can all agree that non-citizens who commit serious crimes should be dealt with quickly. For those reasons the NDP supported the bill at second reading in the hope that the Conservative government would be reasonable and would look at some of the amendments we had to offer to look at ways to improve the system. Yet again, like all the other bills that have come through the House, it has failed to entertain any one of those amendments. Once again we see the Conservatives pushing through their agenda at the expense of new and existing Canadians. This has been pointed out. The so-called foreign criminals, while there are 1.5 million permanent residents, is how these individuals are classified.

It is difficult to understand why the government is paying lip-service to the problem of non-citizen criminals and not addressing the important issue of shortage of resources. It is continuing to make cuts to the Canada Border Services Agency, Correctional Service Canada and the RCMP. Basically, while the minister is given more power, those on the front lines are once again being asked to do more with less. Members saw the report from the PBO's office yesterday where more services, front line workers and officers are being cut than at the back end. Clearly, the priorities of the government are not aligned with what needs to be done.

When I talk about priorities, there are constituents of mine who have come into my office wanting to be reunited with their parents and loved ones. They are having to wait six to eight years. Members have seen the long lineups and wait lists in a number of categories. The government has failed to address the wait lists for reuniting families.

I am an immigrant. I came to this country 33 years ago. It was through family reunification that I was able to come to this wonderful country. Now the same system is in place but the wait time is eight years to reunite with loved ones. That is not acceptable.

We believe we can prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process. We also believe this can be achieved without undermining their rights. Once again, the Conservatives plan to do exactly what they want to do with no regard for the people of this country or the democratic processes by which it should be governed. There is the rule of law.

Members all know what Conservatives do when they do not like rules. They break them or they undermine Parliament to change them. This is exactly what is happening with Bill C-43. We have seen this with Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, and the omnibus crime bill. If they do not like the rules, they will change them in such a way to drive the Conservative agenda.

In summary, we agree that non-citizens who commit serious crimes in Canada should be dealt with quickly. However, we cannot ignore the fact that this bill would concentrate more arbitrary power in the hands of a minister without the appropriate checks and balances.

My sincere hope is that the Conservatives will take a step back and think about the consequences of painting law-abiding newcomers who arrive in Canada each year with the same tainted brush.

We know that the method by which we go about removing foreign criminals from Canadian soil is flawed. We know it needs to be fixed. Bill C-43 fails to do this and hurts both Canadians and newcomers.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wish you and all my colleagues and everyone on the Hill a very happy new year. I am very happy to be back after a good few weeks in my community and my constituency of Scarborough--Rouge River.

I am happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-48, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act and related legislation. Let us be straight. Bill C-48 is massive legislation that contains numerous technical changes. It is close to 1,000 pages long. This is definitely an omnibus bill, yet another omnibus from the government.

However, it is in stark contrast to the Conservatives' Trojan horse budget bills they presented as Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which made sweeping changes to everything from environmental protection and government accountability to immigration and employment insurance, everything but the kitchen sink or everything and the kitchen sink.

Bill C-48 at least makes technical changes to a few closely related pieces of legislation. That is the big difference. The changes in Bill C-48 are largely designed to ensure the integrity of the tax system and discourage tax avoidance. The New Democrats believe in cracking down on both tax avoidance and tax evasion, while ensuring the integrity of our tax system. We support the changes being made in this bill, especially those that aim to reduce tax avoidance.

Moreover, the majority of measures in Bill C-48 have been in practice for several years, since it is the standard practice for tax measures to take effect upon their proposal. Once they have been announced, people accept them as adopted. It is for these reasons that we are supporting the bill. However, as I will reiterate later, the government needs to be more diligent in legislating these technical changes in a more timely manner rather than once every decade or so to avoid these massive pieces of legislation.

Bill C-48 includes outstanding legislative proposals dating as far back as 1998. Consultations with tax specialists and lawyers have indicated that the measures in Bill C-48 are overwhelmingly positive and that the changes in the bill are necessary technical changes. We believe these changes will in total be revenue positive and they generally move toward discouraging tax avoidance. Given the size of the bill, it certainly covers a great deal and many of these changes make sense.

Bill C-48 deals with offshore investment fund property and non-resident trusts and includes proposals from budget 2010 and August 2010 that are aimed at taxing the worldwide income of Canadian residents. It also deals with the taxation of foreign affiliates of Canadian multinational corporations.

The proposed amendments also ensure that provisions that use certain private law concepts, for example real and personal property, joint and several liability, reflect both the common law and civil law in both linguistic versions. Industry feedback that we received since July 2010 is entirely in favour of these changes.

The bill also includes: anti-avoidance measures for specific leasing property; ensures income trusts and partnerships are subject to the same loss utilization restrictions between corporations; limits the use of foreign tax credit generators for international tax avoidance; clarifies rules on taxable Canadian property for non-residents and migrants; and it provides an information regime for tax avoidance. All avoidance transactions, for example, any transaction where the purpose is to get a tax benefit must now be reported, even if the transaction is not abusive. Additional reporting will be required in cases where the transaction raises red flags for abuse of course.

The proposed bill clarifies the minister's authority to amend schedules and annexes to tax administration agreements if doing so does not fundamentally change the terms of the agreement which is already the practice.

The proposed bill also now allows tax administration agreements for the first nations goods and services tax between the federal government and aboriginal governments to be administered through a provincial administration system if the province also administers the federal GST. This will have the effect of simplifying the administration of the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act.

However, these are all good things but I do have a few concerns that I would like to point out.

First and foremost is the timeliness and predictability. Given the complexities of this bill and its vast and massive scale, we believe the government needs to be more diligent and responsible when handling tax code. This bill seems way overdue. The government must ensure that tax proposals are legislated on a regular basis as failure to do so can create uncertainty in the business community, as well as among tax practitioners.

The chair of the tax and fiscal policy advisory group, in a prebudget consultation meeting on October 15, argued that implementing a sunset provision would ensure that tax amendments would be legislated and eliminate the growing backlog of unlegislated tax measures.

He stated that a sunset provision:

—would bring greater clarity and certainty to tax legislation, reduce the compliance and paperwork burden, and, perhaps most importantly, prevent any future legislative backlogs.

He also added that these:

—steps that would go some distance in improving and strengthening Canada's tax system. Canada needs a 21st century tax system that is simple, fair, efficient, and transparent with low, internationally competitive tax rates.

We agree. Efficiency, transparency and predictability in our tax code are important for Canadian businesses, fiscal planning and a healthy economy.

The Auditor General also agrees, and raised concerns a few years ago about the slow pace of the government in legislating these technical changes found in the Department of Finance comfort letters.

In 2009 it was raised at that time that there were at least 400 outstanding technical amendments that had not yet been put into legislation. Now, going on four years later, 200 of these outstanding amendments are finally being addressed in Bill C-48.

In the 2009 fall report, the Auditor General wrote:

No income tax technical bill has been passed since 2001. Although the government has said that an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments to the Act is desirable, this has not happened. As a result, the Department of Finance Canada has a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that have not been enacted, including 250 “comfort letters” dating back to 1998, recommending changes that have not been legislated.

While Bill C-48 aims to deal with more than 200 of these changes, it still leaves a good deal remaining. One has to wonder how long we, the business community and tax practitioners, will have to wait for the next update.

The second concern is with respect to transparency. Certainly the size of this bill, close to 1,000 pages, and the long lapse of time between Bill C-48 and the last technical tax bill indicate that this process clearly still needs improvement.

The government must work harder to ensure the integrity of our tax system. The size of this bill also says something about the government's concern for transparency. I hope this bill of approximately 1,000 pages receives thorough scrutiny by parliamentarians and full debate in the House and proper examination and consideration at all stages.

The large nature of the bill due to the infrequency of technical income tax bills has negative impacts on the business community and certainly makes it difficult for proper evaluation by Parliament.

As the Auditor General wrote:

If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

We need to do better and ensure that we are doing the necessary due diligence when we are responsible for the affairs of Canadians.

Finally, the third concern is compliance. While the measures in the bill are much needed and important, we also need to focus on compliance. While the vast majority of these measures in Bill C-48 have already been in practice for several years, as it is standard practice for tax measures to take effect upon their proposal, the aspects that have not yet taken effect typically involve direct reporting or compliance.

Compliance is extremely important to ensure the integrity of our tax system, as well as the need to close unexpected loopholes in a timely manner. While we agree that these changes are necessary, I wonder what efforts the government is going to take to ensure that people are complying with the ongoing technical changes?

Finally, ensuring the integrity of our tax system is essential. The last technical bill was passed in 2001 and the long lapse of time between Bill C-48 and the last technical bill indicates that this process still needs improvement.

The responsible management of tax code means that changes must be made on a regular and ongoing basis so those impacted are not left in a state of uncertainty. The Conservatives must ensure to further improve the process for getting these technical changes into legislation on a regular basis to create greater certainty, predictability and transparency in our tax system.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we saw this last year with Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. The government brought in these large bills without any consultation with communities and rammed them through the House. Now we have another omnibus bill which deals with similar acts. I have to give that to the Conservatives. This legislation does not deal with hundreds of acts like Bill C-38 or Bill C-45 changed, but it would change a number of acts.

The Auditor General has asked for technical changes on a yearly basis so businesses can get to know them on a regular basis. Certainty would be provided to businesses, accountants and Canadians so they could deal with these on an ongoing basis. The Conservatives have basically waited 11 years to bring in this bill, 7 and a half years of their government and 6 and a half of another. We are happy with that, but the issue still remains. They have only dealt with half of the technical amendments that need to be changed and businesses need certainty. The Conservatives are clearly not providing that.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River.

Before I begin I want to wish everyone a happy new year. Members are back from their constituencies after a break over the holidays. Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, I have talked to hundreds of my constituents. The priorities of the current government are not the priorities of the people of north Surrey.

People are very concerned about a number of bills that were introduced last year. Clearly Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 are not the priorities of my constituents from Surrey North. They are concerned about the degradation of our environment and the service cuts being put in place. Those are some of the things I heard. I am hoping that the government will go in the direction that Canadians want. Canadians' priorities are about getting jobs and providing services to Canadians. Clearly the government has not done that.

It is an honour to rise today on behalf of my constituents from Surrey North to speak to Bill C-48, which is an act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act and related legislation.

Bill C-48 is a massive, monster bill, with over 1,000 pages to it. Members have seen this before from the government. We have seen legislation, two omnibus bills introduced by the government in the last year. We had Bill C-38 and Bill C-45.

Members all know what was in those bills. Those bills dealt with hundreds of different laws. They amended different acts that made no sense whatsoever. Those bills should have been split into various different areas, which we then could have debated in the House. The Conservatives rammed them through without the proper oversight of Parliament and the parliamentary committees. We have seen that the Conservatives did not even listen to one amendment. There were thousands of amendments introduced in committee and in the House, but the Conservatives failed to take any of those amendments into consideration. They rammed those bills through and we are seeing the consequences of ramming those bills through the House.

This morning members saw a protest outside the House, when the Idle No More demonstrations took place. In fact, they took place across this country. One of their concerns is the government's lack of consultation with first nations. It is not only with first nations. The government failed to consult Canadians on legislation it was bringing in. It failed to consult the very people who should have been consulted, the very people whom Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 were going to impact.

Again, Bill C-48 is a large omnibus bill, but there is one difference from Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. The bill actually relates to income tax issues, but to put this together in a large bill is still an issue for the opposition. Basically a huge bill creates a huge burden for those trying to understand what is included and what is not included in the bill.

On top of that, members have not seen this sort of bill for the last 11 years. We heard from the Auditor General, through one of her recommendations, about the impact that doing this legislation every 11 years could have on our economy, on the services we deliver and on tax evasion and those sorts of things, which we are trying to prevent.

I am going to look at the concern that the Auditor General raised previously about the slow pace of government in legislating the technical changes found in the Department of Finance comfort letters. Certainly the size of the bill, which again is close to 1,000 pages, and the long lapse of time between Bill C-48 and the last technical tax bill indicate that this process still needs improvement.

It took 11 years to move on some of these technical income tax issues. We need to address this on a yearly basis so we can close the loopholes that people and corporations are taking advantage of. We should not be waiting 11 years to update our tax code and legislation and to crack down on tax avoidance and tax evasion. New Democrats believe in cracking down on tax evaders and tax avoiders while ensuring the integrity of our tax system. We support the changes being made in the bill, especially those aimed at reducing tax avoidance.

The bill is so massive that trying to decipher it, to look at what is included and what is not, is difficult. In fact there are 400 recommendations that were offered by the Auditor General. However, only about 200 are covered in the bill. Therefore, not only is this a slow pace but the government has still not addressed some of the loopholes that have been pointed out by the Auditor General.

This is a good bill. We should not be waiting 11 years to bring it forward to address some of the concerns that have been pointed out by not only the Auditor General but other Canadians and organizations that deal with tax evasion and tax issues on a daily basis. The CGA is one of the associations that has strongly criticized the government about the need to have the code updated on a regular, yearly basis so that it is up to date and our businesses have clarity as to what needs to be changed and what they are dealing with from the government side.

There are many parts to the bill. I am not going to go through all of them because I know I do not have a lot of time. Part 1 of the bill deals with the offshore investment fund property and non-resident trust and includes proposals from budget 2010. Also, some of the changes in Bill C-48 are largely designed to ensure the integrity of tax system remains in place and to discourage avoidance. They incorporate feedback on proposals previously in Bill C-10.

Part 2 deals with the taxation of foreign affiliates of Canadian multinationals. Some of these changes reflect proposals from way back in 2007 and 2006. It deals with a number of different areas, but the fact is that the government is failing to update our tax code so we can catch those avoiders and can provide certainty to businesses.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser's 2009 fall report states:

No income tax technical bill has been passed since 2001. Although the government has said that an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments to the Act is desirable, this has not happened. As a result, the Department of Finance Canada has a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that have not been enacted, including 250 “comfort letters” dating back to 1998, recommending changes that have not been legislated.

The Conservatives are failing to update some of the changes that are required. They are slow. Their priorities are not right. The priorities of Canadians are not the priorities of the government. We saw that with Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, where the government brought in omnibus bills and rammed them through the House without even consulting the very people they would impact.

In its pre-budget submission in 2012, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada stated:

CGA-Canada strongly believes that the key to sustained economic recovery and enhanced economic growth lies in the government’s commitment to tax reform and red tape reduction. Therefore, CGA-Canada makes the following two key recommendations: 1. Modernize Canada’s tax system--make it simple, transparent and more efficient • Introduce and pass a technical tax bill to deal with unlegislated tax proposals • Implement a “sunset provision” to prevent future legislative backlogs....

I want to summarize this. The Conservatives have been slow to get these technical changes legislated and they go as far back as 1998. Bill C-48 aims to deal with more than 200 of these changes, but there is still a large number of technical codes that need to be changed. The Conservatives have failed in that sense.

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question.

I am going to draw on my experience. Over the holidays—they were supposed to be holidays, but that was not the case—I was asked to develop a course on the amendments to the Indian Act and on bills C-27, C-38 and C-45.

For Bill C-27, I addressed certain concepts related to accountability, sharing and public disclosure of financial information on economic transactions and the financial information of private on-reserve businesses. The imposition of those measures is a first in Canada. It is likely that they will be fast-tracked and ultimately adopted. Well, with Bill C-27, it will be a first. Private and corporate entities will have to make their financial information available to the general public on the band councils' websites for a minimum of 10 years.

Once again, it is likely that there will be cherry-picking, that these measures will be imposed on certain communities and that the government in power will be quite accommodating and hands-off with other communities that support it more. I submit to you that there is a willingness to keep the communities at a certain level.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank my hon. colleague from Saint-Lambert for her excellent comment. Indeed, if there had been a time frame, we might not have had to deal with a doorstop of some 1,000 pages. It is almost impossible for the Standing Committee on Finance to consider all the changes in a reasonable and careful manner.

All members of this House were elected to work carefully and thoroughly. It is very important that we be given the tools to do so. When omnibus bills with hundreds of pages are introduced, like Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, we are prevented from doing our job. Yet it is very important that this work be done carefully.

I wish to thank my hon. colleague for pointing out that work to prevent tax evasion has unfortunately not been done on the other side. This is just one small step. It is not a serious one. We have to work much harder and make choices in order to carry out a tax reform that reflects our priorities. Instead of making old age security at age 67 a priority we should be focused on increasing the guaranteed income supplement, and on the environment, in order to offer a better tomorrow for future generations.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-48, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act and related legislation.

First of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Manicouagan.

As I mentioned earlier and as many of my colleagues in the House of Commons have said today, this bill is very big. The bill is huge, and with nearly 1,000 pages, it is the size of a very thick brick. It is a bill that dates from 2001 and to which no amendments of this scale have been made.

This bill is so big because previous governments had been dragging their feet, because they did not do their job and because they took too long to bring the bill to the table. Because they did not do their job properly, today we are faced with a huge bill, a bill that we might call an omnibus bill.

However, this bill does not compare to the horrible omnibus bills C-38 and C-45, which covered a range of different items such as the environment, the economy and old age security. Those were really bad bills. It was with good reason that they were called “Trojan horses”. Those omnibus bills were horrible, “monster” bills.

This omnibus bill is acceptable as it deals only with income tax legislation. However, the problem is that the bill is so huge that it is practically impossible to study it carefully within the timeframe we have been given. The Conservative government must be much more attentive and efficient in bringing forward their bills on a more regular basis, which would allow us to have time to study the amendments to these bills.

In this regard, Auditor General Sheila Fraser stated in the report she tabled in the fall of 2009:

No income tax technical bill has been passed since 2001. Although the government has said that an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments to the Act is desirable, this has not happened. As a result, the Department of Finance Canada has a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that have not been enacted, including 250 “comfort letters” dating back to 1998, recommending changes that have not been legislated.

This has been dragging on since 1998.

If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

As I mentioned, that is what happened. The Conservatives have wasted time since coming to power, and now we have a hefty, 1,000-page omnibus bill. Of course I am neither an expert or a tax practitioner. However, as parliamentarians, it is important that we study bills with as much rigour as possible and within a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, we will not have the opportunity to do so with this bill.

Another point I would like to address is tax avoidance. Bill C-48 is a first step towards fighting tax evasion. However, the Conservative government is talking out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, it is taking a small step to prevent tax avoidance; on the other hand, it is signing bilateral agreements with countries that flaunt basic tax rules and are even tax havens. This government is not taking this seriously.

A number of my NDP colleagues sit on the finance committee. They heard some very interesting things from Brigitte Alepin, a very well-known tax expert. She has written two books that are reference works for anyone interested in fighting tax evasion and tax havens.

The first book is called Ces riches qui ne paient pas d'impôt. I recommend that all members of the House read it, particularly the Conservatives, since the work on tax evasion in Bill C-48 was not done properly. This excellent book, which was published in 2003, describes all the pernicious ways people use on a regular basis to avoid paying taxes, whether it be by deferring their taxes for ever or by inventing a rather questionable foundation.There are bona fide foundations but others can be very questionable. Clearly, there are also all sorts of subsidies.

I am going to talk about various issues but these are the choices that have to be made with a bill such as Bill C-48. The environment is very important and, right now, the government is shamelessly providing billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas industries. They are even providing coal subsidies. I am not talking about tax evasion here but about subsidies that make the tax roll unfair and inequitable.

Ms. Alepin describes the three basic principles that are very important to a sound taxation system: the system must be simple, effective and fair. That is very important. However, right now, the Conservatives do not have a simple, effective and fair tax system, far from it. I mentioned a few aspects. I would like to read a short summary of Ms. Alepin's latest book, La crise fiscale qui vient, which is very interesting. If my colleagues have not read this wonderful book, I recommend that they all do so, particularly my Conservative colleagues since they did not do their work on the fight against tax evasion properly. This is what the book summary says:

The author identifies the signs of the impending fiscal crisis, which has already begun in most western economies. She provides a simple and enlightening description of the new conditions that exacerbate this crisis: the increased number of charitable foundations [I spoke about this earlier], the development of electronic commerce, the increasing use of tax havens [I also spoke about this], the competition between states to attract large corporations, etc. Although current governments seem to have given up on dealing with this crisis [and the Conservative government is a good example], Brigitte Alepin shows that there are solutions to this problem. She also shows how tax measures can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, among other things.

That is why I referred just now to tax measures and environmental measures. My colleagues also said that we could promote tax measures to favour, say, renovations. We had the ecoENERGY Retrofit--Homes program for energy efficient houses. Such programs are very good from the tax point of view. They are straightforward and keep the economy moving. It is the same thing here. When we have a government that stands up and earnestly tries to prevent tax evasion, and wants to invest in good things that benefit our economy and our planet and are good for our children and for future generations, we can make fairer and more enlightened choices.

To sum up, Brigitte Alepin is truly a tax expert. She has written other books, like Ces riches qui ne paient pas d'impôt about rich people who pay no taxes. The summary I have just read you is taken from La crise fiscale qui vient, about the looming fiscal crisis. I advise everyone to read these books, and of course to invite Ms. Alepin once again before the Standing Committee on Finance, because she has a lot of useful things to say.

In closing, it is very important when embarking on such reforms to do so quickly, so that there is not too much work to be done, so that it is not impossible to do it, and above all, to make enlightened choices that will be the right ones for future generations.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will indeed be very brief. I would first of all like to congratulate my colleague on her excellent speech.

I would like to ask her a question about some concerns already raised by the Auditor General with regard to the slow pace at which the government enacted technical changes.

As mentioned earlier, this bill is nearly 1,000 pages long. It is huge. It could be called an omnibus bill, even though it is very different from Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which were terrible, horrible omnibus bills because they tackled a range of issues. This bill is quite technical.

What does the member think of the Auditor General’s advice that the government should move faster in order to avoid ending up with a bill so huge it is impossible to adequately address all the issues? The government should be more efficient.

Aboriginal Affairs

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has proposed an emergency debate on the breakdown of first nations and Crown relationships as evidenced by the continuing peaceful protests across the country. In fact, today on Parliament Hill, Idle No More has gathered to continue to raise these issues.

In particular, concerns are being raised that omnibus bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which affect inherent aboriginal rights, were passed into law without the constitutionally required consultation and accommodation. Now the Mikisew Cree First Nation and the Frog Lake First Nation have filed a notice of application for a judicial review on the conduct of the responsible ministers in developing environmental policies and the proposed implementation of those policies through the omnibus statutes, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45.

This is the first time since nationwide rallies began on December 10 that the House has had the opportunity to consider this matter. In that time, the rallies have grown, both in size and in the number of their locations across the country. International attention has been brought to these matters, with support for the protests from six continents. The continued disregard for the concerns being expressed at the grassroots level puts at risk Canada's economic security and the constitutional rights of its citizens.

Therefore, the NDP is requesting this emergency debate and I thank the Speaker for his careful consideration.

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives and the Conservatives alone are responsible for the protests being organized by the Idle No More movement.

When the Conservatives imposed omnibus bills C-38 and C-45 without any consultation, they showed their arrogance towards all Canadians who support the aboriginal cause. The path to reconciliation begins with respecting the nation-to-nation relationship.

Will the Conservatives acknowledge what is happening outside or will they continue to pass legislation that does not respect treaties or the basic rights of aboriginal people?

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we are discussing Bill C-48. As you can see, it is rather thick. It is more than 950 pages long.

As my colleague from Parkdale—High Park mentioned, we will support this bill because it eliminates a number of tax loopholes and resolves several problems. Decisions about these issues have been made over time by agencies such as the Canada Revenue Agency, so this bill is needed. However, as I have mentioned in other speeches, this bill will amend the Income Tax Act as well as other acts: the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the First Nations Goods and Services Tax Act and other related legislation. It will make an already complicated system even more complicated.

I will give some background on this bill. In October 2012, we received a notice of ways and means from the Minister of Finance, which was more than 950 pages long and consolidated almost all of the outstanding tax measures. These measures date back to 2002 and even earlier. More than 400 decisions have been made by different agencies, including the Canada Revenue Agency, which receives inquiries from businesses and tax advisors asking whether they can interpret a specific condition in the Income Tax Act in a particular way. The Agency then sees that this was not foreseen by the legislator and proposes an amendment.

Over time, the Canada Revenue Agency has collected its interpretations of more than 400 issues. Now, over 10 years after the last tax bill was passed, we are discussing another bill.

Obviously, the department drafted this bill after consulting the private sector. The Standing Committee on Finance, on which I sit, has heard from private sector representatives. They spoke about several tax issues, including the technical issues we are discussing, as well as the complexity of the current legislation. I will get back to this a little later in my speech.

The impressive Bill C-48 has been before us since November 21, 2012. I doubt that more than a dozen of the 308 members of Parliament will read the whole thing before they have to vote on it. This is understandable, because these are of course extremely technical issues. It really is a shame, though, because it undermines our role as MPs, as representatives of our constituents. We cannot realistically vote with a full knowledge of all the elements in the bill. They just throw this at us in Parliament, at first reading. Yes, we will discuss it at Standing Committee on Finance meetings. It will eventually be passed at second and at third reading. However, for a matter as important as taxation, the Conservatives are being pretty casual by tabling this bill in the House of Commons and asking us to pass all of its recommendations, which will probably not be studied very carefully by the House. It is not that we are unwilling to do study the bill, but it will be really difficult to understand the scope of the measures being put forward because they are so complex and so highly technical. The Standing Committee on Finance will do the best it can, but still, the way the bill was introduced is a real concern.

Bill C-48 is an omnibus bill. We agree on this. However, unlike Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, otherwise known as mammoth bills or monster bills, this is a real omnibus bill. Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 contained a patchwork of measures and legislation. In those two bills, which are now law, more than 130 items were added, deleted or amended in two votes. Bill C-48 has a single basic principle that aims at amending the tax system consistently and making it fairer.

I would just like to quickly go back to the definition of an omnibus bill to confirm what I am saying. According to the Library of Parliament, an omnibus bill per se is a bill that, while it aims at creating or amending several different acts, has “one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders the Bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes”.

Bill C-48 is an omnibus bill. Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 were not really omnibus bills.

As I mentioned earlier, this bill is nearly 1,000 pages long. It updates the rules relating to many different tax measures that are still outstanding and brings them into harmony with the current system.

Regarding the tax changes, the implementation of the measures in this bill is unique. We have a majority government, and the rules in the bill will be adopted. As my colleague, the official opposition's finance critic, said in her speech, we are going to support this bill at second reading. In fact, the rules are practically in effect already, according to the International Financial Reporting Standards, as they have been ever since first reading when the bill was tabled on November 21, 2012.

They are also valid and in force according to the Canadian accounting standards for private businesses. Since November 21, our businesses have had a little more security and stability under Canadian and international standards, something that will be welcomed by these firms. The Standing Committee on Finance has heard this on a number of occasions.

For a number of years, in fact, there has been an effort to achieve some harmonization of accounting standards and tax rules at the international level. This is another set of issues that the government should at least look into. The reason is very simple: we see it as a way of facilitating the containment of tax evasion. Thanks to my colleague from Brossard—La Prairie, this is something that the Standing Committee on Finance will be addressing.

We are also facilitating trade and investment in a world that is increasingly integrated in economic terms, but in which standards still differ from country to country. Tax evasion is a major problem. It exists because of loopholes in the Income Tax Act and other tax legislation, including legislation on corporations.

With consistent rules and cohesive tax regulations, we can help companies to be much more competitive and to know what to expect. Regulatory predictability is a key factor in minimizing the risks our industries face. The OECD, in particular, has demonstrated leadership in arranging the coordination of rules internationally.

In Canada, it is the Accounting Standards Board that has handled the incorporation of international rules into the Canadian legal system and Canadian standards. According to the Canada Revenue Agency, the rules in this bill are currently in force for publicly accountable enterprises.

With the tabling of this bill today, we have an opportunity to discuss issues relating to Canada’s tax structure, given that action is already being taken by the various accounting bodies. Needless to say, most of the changes in Bill C-48 are in fact not only familiar to the main parties concerned, but more importantly, are already being applied in their operations. Hence, there should be no great surprises in the debate, or in the eventual passage of this bill.

There are no special innovations in Bill C-48, apart from two minor technical amendments that are included in the bill.

As I noted in my earlier questions to the parliamentary secretary and our official opposition finance critic, the Income Tax Act currently runs to 3,000 pages. The original act passed in 1917 had 10 or so pages. Now, it has 3,000. A bill like this one will add many more, in order once again to eliminate specific tax loopholes.

As the system grows in complexity, however, there are more and more opportunities to find loopholes in the legislation that companies and individuals, who in many cases have the resources to work with tax consultants, can use to try to introduce personal arrangements that will ultimately reduce the fairness of our tax system.

A well-known Quebec tax specialist, Brigitte Alepin, who testified last year before the Standing Committee on Finance, has written a book explaining that Canada’s tax system is headed for a brick wall and that the government should do something before it is too late. In her book, she explains that in order to be sustainable, taxation systems should generally follow three major principles: they should be simple, effective and equitable.

The Canadian system, unfortunately, is trying to distance itself to a dangerous degree from those principles, hence the urgency of reviewing the foundation on which it is built.

In her book, Ms. Alepin also points out that an ideal tax system should be cost-neutral; in other words, it should not be too expensive to administer.

She refers to a study conducted by the Fraser Institute, which I do not often quote here in the House. It is worth mentioning here today, however. The 2007 study evaluated the cost of administering the Canadian tax system.

In 2007, the Fraser Institute estimated the cost of the system to be between $19 billion and $31 billion, that is, about $950 per Canadian. Thus, the cost of administering the system is incredible. It is a huge and complex system, but we should not have to pay nearly $1,000 a year for every Canadian in order to administer it.

We need to debate the complexity of the tax system. Indeed, Bill C-48 allows us to do just that. We need to have this debate because the issue of simplifying the system, much like the issue of simplifying the Canadian justice system, is important for every Canadian, including the people we represent here in the House.

I would remind the House that the Supreme Court of Canada stated that tax laws should be certain, predictable and fair so that taxpayers can order their affairs intelligently. It also described some consequences of complex tax laws, and these were reiterated in 2009 in the Auditor General's fall report. She stated:

Taxpayers’ ability to comply with tax legislation depends on their understanding of how the rules apply to their own circumstances. When the intent of the legislation is not clearly conveyed by the words, taxpayers may find it difficult to assess the income taxes they owe and this could foster tax avoidance. Uncertainty about how the law should be applied can also add to the time taken and costs incurred by tax audits and tax administration.

This issue is so fundamental and so important that it was one of the central topics of all the recent prebudget consultations that the finance committee was pleased to have the opportunity to hold regarding previous budgets. During the consultations, several witnesses talked about the problems and difficulties that Canada will encounter if we do not begin to recognize the situation we are in and do something about it.

One of the people I would like to quote is Denis Saint-Pierre, chair of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Advisory Group of the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada. The Government of Canada quoted this organization to support what it was saying about the benefits of Bill C-38, but the organization said something else that the government failed to mention. Mr. Saint-Pierre said that, when the Standing Committee on Finance invited Canadians to share their priorities for the 2013 federal budget, the committee asked him five questions to which he could provide only one answer again this year and that is that the simplification of the tax system is vital. He said:

Canada's tax system is unduly complex. Entrepreneurs will tell you that. My clients tell me that. There is a growing consensus that the complexity of Canada's tax system must be addressed if Canada is to remain competitive, able to attract business and investment, and create jobs and economic growth.

For example, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce identifies Canada' s complex tax system as one of the top 10 barriers to competitiveness. Tax simplification is the number one public policy priority for CGA-Canada.

Robin Bobocel, vice-president of public affairs for the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, said exactly the same thing:

One of the significant costs that business bears with such a complex tax code is compliance with it. There's a significant cost borne on simply filing tax returns and trying to ensure that you're taking full advantage of the tax code as it sits.

This was mentioned in the study conducted by the Fraser Institute. Quite frankly, Canada's global competitiveness will suffer the consequences if we do not conduct a comprehensive review of the tax code.

Here is one last quote from someone who testified before the Standing Committee on Finance on the very important issue of the complexity of the tax system. Michael Conway, chief executive and national president of Financial Executives International Canada, had this to say before the committee:

We again recommend that the Minister of Finance establish a task force to undertake a comprehensive review of the federal Income Tax Act, with the objective of reducing complexities, because—to be clear—compliance has become unmanageable, and the costs are killing everyone.

That act is too cumbersome for the government to administer and it creates an excessive burden on business, especially small business, which is one of the engines that drive our economy.

In its final report on the pre-budget consultations, the committee unanimously recommended that the federal government undertake a comprehensive review of the tax system and ensure its fairness as well as neutrality by continuing to close tax loopholes that allow select taxpayers to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

The tax system's complex and cumbersome nature, in addition to being costly for the taxpayers, undermines the concept of fairness that would allow taxpayers to see it as legitimate.

The Standing Committee on Finance has already done some work on this. For some people the tax system is an exciting issue, while for others it seems more technical. It affects one of the essential elements for Canadians, that is, to contribute fairly to this society and this country in which we live.

Since 2011, when we became the official opposition, and even since the current government took office in 2006, the government has shrugged off all taxation issues in a most disingenuous way. During debates, the government regularly mentions the phantom carbon tax the NDP wants to impose, although there is no such thing. Moreover, in all their speeches, the Conservatives say that the NDP wants to tax and spend, which is also not the case.

If we look at the records of all the NDP governments in the country—provincial ones, since we have not governed the whole country—we find that NDP governments have achieved more balanced budgets than the other parties that have governed the provinces, territories and the country since 1987, or even 1982, if we want to go back that far.

Now we need to debate tax policy like grown-ups. The NDP is ready to do that and the other opposition parties are probably ready as well. We must stop treating the taxation system as a purely political issue and listen to the voters who are stuck in a system so complex that they cannot tell the true facts from the illusions the government has created.

When people talk about the complexity of the taxation system, the tax brackets are not the problem. The tax brackets are very simple for the individuals or businesses filing their tax returns.

We must consider three key elements, two of which are easy to analyze.

First, there are loopholes. Bill C-48 is supposed to deal with this problem. We certainly hope that some of these loopholes can be eliminated.

Then there are tax expenditures, and especially boutique tax credits, that is, a choose-your-own list of tax credits for various parts of Canadian society. They include tax credits to assist volunteer firefighters and those for families that want their children to have more training in the arts or sports activities. These are non-refundable tax credits. The people who use them are paying taxes. Thus, the people who need them most are not able to use these tax credits.

Finally, there is a lack of concerted effort and coordination internationally. This has to be addressed at the most basic level. It is necessary for Parliament as a whole and every member of Parliament to participate in seeking more fairness and exploring ways our tax system can adapt to the new reality, because the Income Tax Act has been around since 1917, and making sure than Canada remains competitive.

Adding the complexity of Bill C-48 to the already complex Income Tax Act is not the way to resolve this fundamental issue that will soon have to be addressed.

We will support Bill C-48 at second reading.

We hope to have a good debate on it in the Standing Committee on Finance. I will be pleased to take questions from the hon. members.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to welcome all my colleagues back to the House. I trust they had an enjoyable break over the holiday period, and that they are all energized and looking forward to getting back to what I am sure will be a very busy winter and spring session.

Today I am pleased to rise on Bill C-48. The bill implements over a decade of highly technical changes to Canada's tax code.

The way I feel about it is that one of the most if not the most important work for us, as elected members of Parliament, is to make decisions about taxation and spending. It is about respecting how hard Canadians work to earn the money they get. We make decisions about taxing that money so we can provide for public services, public infrastructure and democratic machinery.

Most Canadians accept the principle of paying taxes as something that keeps a healthy society. However, they want us to have a very careful eye on their tax dollars and on how that money is spent. I think most Canadians want, and I fear they do not feel they get enough of, is transparency and integrity in our system of tax collection and spending and in our government. They want accountability. They want respect for every dollar they send here.

When we have a situation, for example, like the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has to take the government to court to get information about how tax dollars are being spent or what cuts to services, which Canadians depend on, are being made, that decreases confidence in our system, in the accountability and transparency of government.

So too does the complicated nature of our tax legislation. Individuals who may not have English or French as their first language, or seniors or young people really struggle with the complicated nature of our tax legislation and certainly yearn for greater simplicity.

That brings me to this bill. Many of these changes seem like they make a lot of good sense. There are provisions in Bill C-48 to ensure that all of an airline corporation's taxable income will be attributed to the provinces and territories in which the corporation has a permanent establishment. There are provisions to discourage tax avoidance in the taxation of foreign affiliates of Canadian multinational corporations. There are anti-avoidance measures for specific leasing of property, limits on the use of foreign tax credit generators for international tax avoidance, as well as housekeeping changes to the Excise Tax Act such as repealing a provision that has not been in use since 1999.

We believe these changes in total will be revenue positive and that they generally move to discourage tax avoidance and therefore ensure the integrity of our existing tax law. Furthermore, the vast majority of these measures have already been in practice for several years, since it is standard practice for tax measures to take effect upon their proposal. Once they have been announced, people accept them as adopted. For these reasons the official opposition New Democrats will be supporting the bill.

Bill C-48 implements over a decade of highly technical changes to Canada's tax system.

In the end, we believe that these changes will be revenue positive. They generally move to discourage tax avoidance and ensure the integrity of the tax system.

The vast majority of these measures have been in place for several years, since it is standard practice for tax measures to take effect upon their proposal. For these reasons, the official opposition will be supporting this bill.

New Democrats believe in cracking down on tax avoidance and tax evasion, while ensuring the integrity of our tax system. That is why we have pushed, since the election in 2011, to have the finance committee complete its study of tax evasion. It looks like we will finally be doing that this year. However, that is why we support the changes being made in the bill, especially those that aim to reduce tax avoidance.

I do want to raise some concerns relating to the size of the bill, which comes to us at close to 1,000 pages.

First, the massive scale of the bill indicates that the government needs to be more responsible regarding its handling of the tax code. In particular, it must ensure that tax proposals are legislated on a regular basis. In fact, the last technical tax bill was passed in 2001. In her fall 2009 update, the former Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, raised concerns about the fact that there were at least 400 outstanding technical amendments to the tax code, which had not yet been put into legislation.

No technical income tax bill has been passed since 2001. Although the government has said that an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments to the Act is desirable, this has not happened. As a result, the Department of Finance Canada has a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that have not been enacted, including 250 “comfort letters” dating back to 1998, recommending changes that have not been legislated.

Over 200 of these outstanding changes are addressed in Bill C-48, but that still leaves hundreds of outstanding amendments.

I spoke recently in Calgary to a group of more than 1,000 tax practitioners, general accountants, certified general accountants and tax lawyers. They agreed that the comfort letter process works, but they wanted the clarity of having these laws fully in place. It would make their jobs so much easier and create greater clarity for Canadians. The Auditor General's 2009 fall report also expressed a need for these legislative changes so that the comfort letters identified could be enacted.

During this fall's pre-budget consultations, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada told the finance committee:

—the government must introduce a technical tax amendments bill. The last time a technical tax bill was passed by Parliament was over 11 years ago. Literally hundreds of unlegislated tax amendments to the Income Tax Act...have been proposed, but not yet enacted, which brings uncertainty and unpredictability to the process.

These are the experts speaking, the tax practitioners who deal with this work every day of the week. The quote continues:

—we strongly feel that implementing a sunset provision would ensure that tax amendments are legislated, which ultimately will eliminate the ever-growing backlog of unlegislated tax measures once and for all. With this provision, if a tax policy change is announced and not incorporated into legislation within a reasonable amount of time, the measure would lapse. This would bring greater clarity and certainty to tax legislation, reduce the compliance and paperwork burden, and, perhaps most importantly, prevent any future legislative backlogs.

What they are asking for is a sunset clause so that if government announces tax changes in one year, by the end of that year, it would bring those changes into law. It makes perfect sense. We should not be waiting 11 years to get clarity on tax changes the government has already made. We strongly support this recommendation from the CGA.

The Income Tax Act is a living document, perhaps more so than any other piece of legislation. Feedback from the lived experience of taxpayers and tax practitioners can help us make amendments in order to ensure the integrity of our tax system. The responsible management of the tax code means that these changes must be made on an ongoing basis. Failing to do so can lead to uncertainty for business and for tax practitioners.

One thing I have heard, while going across this country and talking to businesses from the east to the west coast and in many places in between, is that they find the government takes too much action on an ad hoc basis for political reasons and does not create enough certainty by laying out a plan and following that plan.

Anything we can do to create greater certainty for business leads to a better investment climate. It helps businesses make decisions about investing in machinery and equipment and creating more jobs, because they have greater certainty of what the future will look like. Clear tax legislation helps do that. Failing to do so leads to uncertainty. That is why we need the government to act so we do not have decisions being made on an ad hoc basis. People and business want predictability and reliability in our tax system. Without these basic building blocks of predictability and reliability, businesses cannot do effective fiscal planning.

Canadian families need the same certainty. These ad hoc, boutique tax credits, which undermine our tax base and take revenue out of our tax system, are also unpredictable for Canadian families. Their introduction on an ad hoc basis means that it is difficult for families to plan ahead for their tax obligations.

As the former Auditor General noted:

If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

Amen. That is what we have today, a bill of about 1,000 pages. Bringing more than a decade of tax changes into one bill does not create a situation of the greatest transparency. Yet we need transparency and accountability for our tax legislation, which is something that touches all Canadians and all businesses. It has become a pattern in this Parliament to create these massive omnibus budget bills with hundreds of pages of legislation and very little time to examine them. Furthermore, only a fraction of MPs, similar to the Canadian public in general, are tax specialists.

With regard to Bill C-48, tax lawyer Thomas McDonnell said that we should also remember the huge so-called technical tax bill introduced last fall. The hard copy of the amendments and explanatory notes was over 900 pages. He believes that this bill will also be passed without an informed debate in the House of Commons, and most parliamentarians who vote on the bill will admit that they did not read it or really try to understand the impact of their vote no matter which way they vote. He added that this is not the way Parliament is supposed to carry out one of its main duties, which is to generate revenue. It is sad to say, but he believes that most parliamentarians do not understand this aspect of Parliament's role or they do not have the courage to stand up and defend this role.

While we do not support the government's serial use of omnibus legislation, we recognize that it makes a big difference that Bill C-48 makes technical changes to a smaller number of closely related laws. The vast majority of these measures have already been in practice for several years and have incorporated feedback from tax practitioners. This is a stark contrast to the Conservatives' Trojan Horse budget bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which made sweeping changes to everything from environmental protection and government accountability to immigration and EI, all without thorough consultation, debate or scrutiny.

That being said, the bill still poses a definite challenge for most parliamentarians, who will not have the opportunity to thoroughly study it and will not be able to study it at committee.

Transparency must be at the heart of our work as publicly elected representatives. We must do everything in our power to ensure that legislation receives full and informed debate in the House. I therefore urge my colleagues to ensure that the legislation receives thorough debate and consideration at all stages, but we also need to go further.

It is our responsibility as MPs to be continually examining how we can most effectively represent the interests of our constituents, including in the tax system. People lose confidence when they see the government's ineptitudes, such as the financing of the F-35 procurement program or individual expenses such as $16 orange juice.

However, in the tax system, when a dishonest few refuse to live up to their responsibilities not only do the rest of us pay more to make up for it, but those who do seek to live up to their responsibilities are put at a competitive disadvantage, and I am thinking of businesses here. This places enormous pressure on corporations and business owners. Too many businesses find themselves in a race to match the tax avoidance measures of their competitors. Yet public budgets provide so much of what Canadians value most. Basic government services are the foundation of our economy: infrastructure, police, education, our legal system.

In testimony to the Senate banking committee Marlene Legare, the former chief of the sales tax division in the Department of Finance's tax policy branch, explained:

Until now, the choice has probably been more in favour of combining measures so as to put forward fewer bills. I think the lesson that we learned from this experience is that it may be preferable to change the balance somewhat.

She is speaking of the omnibus bills. She continues:

That may mean putting forward smaller bills which would contain measures that would be enacted on a more timely basis.

That is, going forward, let us make the changes within a year after they are announced so that there is clarity for taxpayers and for tax practitioners, and so that we are fully recouping the tax dollars for changes that have been announced. It is inexcusable that it has taken so long for the sitting government to take action on these changes.

The official opposition stands firmly in support of focusing on compliance and creating clear tax structures in a timely manner to ensure the integrity of our tax system. That is why we are supporting Bill C-48. However, the massive size of the legislation demonstrates that there is still a huge amount of work to do in getting such technical changes legislated in a timely fashion. Failing to do so hurts taxpayers and tax practitioners and makes it difficult for a proper evaluation by Parliament.

The official opposition stands firmly in support of focusing on compliance in order to ensure the integrity of our tax system. That is why we are supporting Bill C-48.

However, the massive size of this legislation demonstrates that there is still a huge amount of work to do in getting such technical changes legislated in a timely fashion. Failure to do so would hurt taxpayers and tax practitioners and make it difficult for a proper evaluation by Parliament.

I therefore urge my colleagues on all sides of the House to work to ensure that the bill receives thorough examination and discussion in Parliament. We will continue to work to ensure the integrity of our tax system with a more effective process when it comes to technical tax legislation. We need to continually demonstrate our respect for the hard work of Canadians and the taxes they send to Ottawa, and to reward that with transparency and predictability. New Democrats, when we get the opportunity in 2015, will do just that.

Opposition Motion--Investment Canada Act

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Don Valley West for detailing the historical basics, which are vital to understanding the important actions taken in terms of the Investment Canada Act the other evening.

The changes the government introduced have not just been tinkering, as some might suggest. We have taken a targeted approach and that is, quite honestly, the responsible way for us to remain effective in the face of evolving foreign investment trends, not only in this country but in others around the world. We know that Canada is a bit of a target because of its strong economic position over the last number of years that got us through the economic downturn.

In 2007, our government introduced guidelines on investments by state-owned enterprises. In 2009, we introduced national security provisions into the ICA, as well as amendments to increase the threshold for net benefit reviews and to remove sector-specific restrictions on investments. In the most recent federal budget, we introduced targeted measures intended to improve transparency and enhance enforcement.

In 2006, we recognized that investments by foreign state-owned enterprises represented a unique challenge to Canada as these investment opportunities seem to be growing, as I mentioned earlier. There is a concern that state-owned enterprises may not be commercially oriented, which could affect their operations in Canada. Guidelines on state-owned enterprises first enunciated in 2007 place significant focus on whether the Canadian businesses being acquired could operate with commercial orientation. Since that time, Canada has seen a significant increase in investment by state-owned enterprises.

As we see Canadian businesses and opportunities growing, state-owned enterprises are taking a large interest and that interest is growing. Hence, the need for the guidelines that were brought forward the other night. The Prime Minister did that on Friday evening. The revised guidelines will be applied to proposed transactions.

I will highlight the guidelines that have been mentioned time and again, and in fact, today in the House of Commons during question period. The Minister of Industry will consider among other factors: the degree of control or influence a state-owned enterprise would likely exert on the Canadian business that is being acquired; the degree of control or influence that a state-owned enterprise would likely exert on the industry in which the Canadian business operates; and the extent to which the foreign government in question is likely to exercise control or influence over the state-owned enterprise acquiring the Canadian business.

The national security provisions have also been raised a number of times. In 2008, the Competition Policy Review Panel, led by Mr. Wilson, in its final report called “Compete to Win”, recommended that the government introduce national security provisions in the ICA. It is amazing, quite honestly, that it was not until 2008 that Canada had a consideration for national security provisions within its ICA. In 2009, that recognition was given.

Under the national security review provisions, the Minister of Industry, in consultation with the Minister of Public Safety, is required to review all transactions, regardless of value, for national security concerns. In cases of concern, if it does show up at varying degrees of severity, a more in-depth review is undertaken and the minister may present the matter to cabinet for consideration. Cabinet is given broad powers to protect Canada's national security interests under the act, which are similar to protections in peer countries.

As we all know, the Prime Minister announced plans to permit the extension of national security reviews in the exceptional cases where it is necessary to do so. This will ensure that the government has the time it needs to thoroughly examine the complex cases that come before it. There is no more solemn duty of the government than protecting Canada's national security. In adding a national security review process, this government brought Canada's investment review regime into line with the practices of countries around the world.

We have heard a lot in the discussions in the House about net benefit review and those thresholds. The government also accepted another recommendation of the Competition Policy Review Panel. The government has taken steps to increase the net benefit review threshold from the existing $330 million to $1 billion. The purpose here is both to limit the role of the government in the private sector and to permit a focus on only the most significant transactions.

Additionally, the government accepted the panel's recommendation to shift the basis for calculating the review threshold from asset value to enterprise value. The government followed this recommendation in recognition of the fact that the business world has changed. Intellectual property, such as patents and trademarks, are of growing importance to business. Yet intellectual property is undervalued when considered on the basis of asset value. Enterprise value does a better job of more accurately capturing the value of a going concern business, including its intellectual property.

Members will recall that the Prime Minister announced that the increase in the net benefit review threshold will go forward for private businesses. However, and this is important, the higher threshold will not apply to transactions proposed by state-owned enterprises. Investments by state-owned enterprises will still be subject to a net benefit review at the lower threshold of $330 million. This will ensure these transactions are closely monitored.

When we look at transparency and enforcement, the Investment Canada Act contains strong confidentiality protections, which are necessary to ensure that investors willingly provide the sort of information that is required to conduct net benefit reviews. Under the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, the ICA was amended. These are changes that will address the concerns of the opposition. The changes permit the disclosure of more information about the review process while still preserving commercial confidences. Specifically, the minister may disclose the fact he has sent preliminary notice to an investor that he is not satisfied that the investment is likely to be of net benefit to Canada. He may also explain his reasons for sending the notice, so long as it would not prejudice the Canadian business or the investor. At the same time, the ICA was amended to assist the government in obtaining investor compliance with undertakings.

In conclusion, our government has demonstrated over and over again that it needs to act and has acted to ensure that Canada's investment regime protects Canada's interests and is relevant to the global economic reality, which is a moving target. The Prime Minister's announcement of changes to the foreign investment review framework on Friday night were welcomed, not only by our caucus but by people around the world.

Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary who will once again have the courage to reply to my intervention.

I rise again here today to further explore a question I asked in this House at the end of September. I had asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development why her government had so much contempt for unemployed workers and why it was introducing a new calculation for the working while on claim pilot project.

Ever since the employment insurance reforms were introduced in Bill C-38, thousands of Canadians have joined together to condemn the negative impact of those changes on our economy. Furthermore, those changes have proven to be an attack on the unemployed.

The changes to the calculation of the working while on claim pilot project were particularly troubling. Before the reform, a worker who had lost his job and was working part time while looking for another full-time job could still receive benefits. The rule was that those benefits were cut by 40%, with a non-deductible limit of $75.

The government is now proposing to eliminate the base amount, but to allow workers to keep 50% of their employment income. During question period in September, the minister even gave an example where the EI recipient would receive more money under the new system than under the old one.

In the weeks that followed, the opposition demonstrated many times in this House, that the new calculation penalized most of the program beneficiaries, especially low-income workers.

The minister had to admit that there were problems with the pilot project, and she was forced to make changes that gave some workers eligible for the program the choice of using the old calculation method or the new one.

Could the minister be honest and responsible towards Canadians? Was this change to the pilot project designed to make low-income workers receive less money, or was it just incompetence?

What will happen to other aspects of the reform that are currently making the headlines? Changes to the appeal mechanisms are being criticized by everyone, and many are predicting that unemployed workers will have to wait even longer than they already are.

What explanation does the minister have for the fact that the number of hours worked to settle first and second level appeals will decrease from approximately 18,200 hours a year with 700 part-time officials to 9,000 hours a year with 39 part-time officials, and that they will be doing the same job?

It is obvious that these reforms are being made haphazardly. Canadians deserve better because they have contributed to the social safety net. Will the Conservatives show some respect for the unemployed, and will they step back from their reforms?

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to, once again, express the official opposition's strong objection to Bill C-45, the second budget implementation bill that we have seen this year.

In the spring, Bill C-38 attacked old age security, forcing people to wait two more years to claim their benefits. It attacked employment insurance and health care transfers and turned back the clock on environmental regulation. Now, with Bill C-45, it shows the Conservatives have not learned their lesson. They did not listen to Canadians, who were outraged by that first Trojan horse budget bill.

Bill C-45 continues on the path set by this spring's budget bill, further weakening our ability to protect the environment and ensure sustainable development for future generations. It would completely gut the Navigable Waters Protection Act. We have heard about the loss of protection for 40,000 lakes and 2.5 million rivers. In addition, it would further erode the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

The disturbing Conservative trend toward the concentration of power also continues in Bill C-45. The bill would dismantle a series of commissions and give more power to ministers to make decisions without accountability.

However, there are new problems too. The combined effect of the Conservatives' proposed changes to the SR&ED tax credit, the research and development tax program, will be to reduce government support for business research and development at a time when Canadian businesses most need to increase innovation and productivity to succeed in an increasingly global economy. These changes are also likely to drive firms to move their R and D activities to other countries with better incentives.

The New Democrats are also concerned by the proposed changes to public service pensions that will create a two-tiered work force in which younger people will have to work longer for the same retirement benefit. These changes come in the context where the Conservative government is failing to take action on youth unemployment and crippling student debt, while also making young people, especially, work longer in the future to qualify for old age security benefits.

The bill talks about jobs, but let us be clear. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that this budget bill will cost 43,000 Canadians their jobs. When combined with previous rounds of cuts, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects a total of 102,000 jobs lost.

As a result of these job cuts, economic forecasters have been revising their projections for the Canadian economy downwards. In fact, on the day Bill C-45 was released, the Minister of Finance suggested a downgrade would be announced in the fall economic update. Sure enough, the minister announced, during the November fall break, that the government would fall short of its own deficit targets.

Worse still, Conservatives have failed to outline any contingency plan to deal with the slowing growth and increasingly negative fiscal indicators. In the third quarter, Canada's GDP grew only by 0.6%, even lower than the Bank of Canada projected rate of 1%. Ongoing volatility in the global economy poses a significant risk to Canada's future economic growth.

The official opposition New Democrats believe strongly that the federal government should take action now to safeguard the Canadian economy against outside risks, such as an escalation of the eurozone crisis, which is back in recession, or a worsening of the American economy.

There are internal risks as well. Ultra-low borrowing rates, which have remained unchanged for more than two years, are fuelling unprecedented household debt.

Increased inequality is one of Canada's greatest challenges.

Most Canadians' real wages have remained stagnant for several years now. In fact, the average income of Canadians has increased by only 5.5% over a period of 33 years.

According to the Conference Board of Canada, income inequality is growing faster in Canada than it is in the United States. Much of this growing inequality can be attributed to an increase in the revenues of the richest 1% of the population. Canadians who belong to that 1% have increased their share of the nation's total revenue from 8.1% in 1980 to 13.3% in 2007.

In fact, Canadians in that 1% are responsible for nearly one-third of total income growth between 1997 and 2007. This growth occurred at the expense of other income groups.

Youth unemployment is still a major crisis. Unemployment for youth is at 15%, up 1% from last year, and there are 70,000 fewer youth jobs than one year ago. Food bank use increased again last year and is up 31% compared to pre-recession levels for youths. Nearly one in five food bank users is currently or was recently employed. That is from the Food Bank of Canada.

In 2009 a report from the UN rapporteur for adequate housing found that Canada had been lagging in its commitments for social housing and to end homelessness. With three million Canadians living in housing insecurity, Canada remains the only G8 country in the world without a national housing strategy.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives are focused on austerity measures that will act as a further drag on our economy. Multiple witnesses confirmed at the finance committee that Bill C-45's proposed changes to the SR&ED program would kill jobs and hinder innovation, which is a key factor in economic growth. Even worse, innovation is the best solution to Canada's two decade long productivity slump and the cuts to SR&ED will only further weaken Canadian productivity growth.

That is not just New Democrats saying that. Let us hear from Warren Everson of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce who confirmed at the finance committee, “The budget 2012 decision to cut a quarter of the SR and ED tax credit was, in our opinion, a step in the wrong direction”.

Let us hear from Martin Lavoie of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters who raised similar concern at the industry committee this November. He said:

Thus far, $633 million will be withdrawn and $333 million reinjected annually. That is a ratio of two to one. Will other measures eventually be announced? I do not know and we cannot really rely on that. What we are also hearing from our members...is that we cannot base our future investments on what we do not know. What we do know is that SR&ED will be reduced. We do not know whether there will be new types of direct sectoral investment.

How can businesses plan for job creation and investment with the government's piecemeal approach?

The Conservatives have no comprehensive plan to create jobs. Instead, Bill C-45 is another one of these 400-page budget bills that lumps together a large number of unrelated measures. It modifies, amends or repeals over 60 other pieces of legislation and contains an entirely new act, the bridge to strengthen trade act, on the Detroit-Windsor bridge, which we would like to support, but it is lumped in with many other measures that we do not support, hence our opposition to this omnibus budget bill.

The NDP did everything it could to study the bill at depth at committee and improve it. However, on every occasion, the Conservatives refused to work with the official opposition. While New Democrats worked hard to ensure that the content of Bill C-45 received full examination and that substantive amendments were proposed to the bill, we saw our Liberal colleagues join with the Conservatives in order to support stricter time allocations for the finance committee. We did not agree with that.

The committee did vote on every substantive amendment, every submitted amendment to Bill C-45 during the clause-by-clause study. However, it was clear that the Conservatives would not consider any amendments to Bill C-45, even despite compelling witness testimony that some of the measures in the bill would have significant consequences for Canadians and the Canadian economy.

While the Liberals and Conservatives have used the committee process to play partisan games, New Democrats remain dedicated to giving Bill C-45 much needed scrutiny and debate on behalf of all Canadians.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives continue to show that they are more interested and invested in ramming through their agenda than in staying accountable to Canadians, and Canadians are taking notice. Let me just offer some other points of view.

Stuart Wuttke of the Assembly of First Nations noted at the fisheries and oceans committee:

—my appearance today does not qualify as consultation with first nations. The Assembly of First Nations is a political organization and the first nations themselves are the individual rights holders of aboriginal rights and treaty rights. A robust consultation will be required by the Government of Canada with first nations across Canada....

Clearly, that has not happened.

Tony Maas of the World Wildlife Fund Canada raised a similar point at the transport committee, in saying:

I am a believer in participatory democracy. While I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee today, I do not claim to be, and should not be considered, a representative voice for conservation organizations or for others whose navigation rights and waters may be negatively impacted by the changes in the proposed bill.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that Bill C-45 is yet another massive omnibus bill making amendments to a wide range of laws, and once again the Conservatives are trying to ram legislation through Parliament without allowing Canadians and their MPs to thoroughly examine it. Of course, we are seeing the sad spectacle of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose position was created by the current government, being forced to take the government to court to get basic information that he and, therefore, parliamentarians need to do our jobs. It is unbelievable that we are in this situation.

The NDP did everything in its power to have this bad bill split, but the Conservatives refused to do so. We then tried to thoroughly examine it in committee, but the Conservatives did not accept any of our amendments. Finally, we tried to delay the final vote because we still had hope that we could convince this short-sighted government to improve this monster bill.

Canadians deserve better. However, the Conservatives systematically refuse to listen to them and to work with the official opposition to pass laws that would make Canada a better place to live in instead of destroying our country little by little.

Our New Democrat team opposes budget 2012 and this implementation bill unless it is amended to focus on the priorities of Canadians, really creating good-quality jobs, not just putting the word “jobs” in the title of a bill; protecting our environment; strengthening our health care system; protecting retirement security for all; and ensuring open and transparent government. These are the priorities that Canadians tell us they care about. We have consulted throughout this process in our ridings, in our communities and across Canada and this is what Canadians have told us. They have serious concerns about both the process of this omnibus budget bill and the specific content contained therein.

With that, I therefore move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

this House decline to give third reading to Bill C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, because it:

(a) weakens Canadians' confidence in the work of Parliament, decreases transparency and erodes democratic process by concentrating changes to over 60 pieces of legislation in one omnibus 400 page bill under the guise of a budgetary bill;

(b) continues to roll back Canadian environmental protection measures by gutting the Navigable Waters Protection Act and further weakens the Fisheries and Canadian Environmental Assessment Acts;

(c) fails to provide substantive measures to create good Canadian jobs and stimulate meaningful long-term growth and recovery;

(d) reduces much needed job-creating tax credits for Scientific Research and Experimental Development; and

(e) creates a two-tiered workforce in the public sector that discriminates against new hires.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary has not dealt with some of the things in the budget that do not belong in a budget. I am talking about the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which strips environmental protection from some 30,000 lakes and rivers in the country. This follows hard on the heels of the government's elimination, or almost elimination, of any environmental assessments required by Bill C-38, which was also a budgetary bill.

Could the minister explain how a handful of small lakes in Muskoka, which do not have any navigation on them except for a few pleasure boats that belong to people with large and expensive cottages, are protected under the act, but other similarly large lakes in Quebec and other places in Canada lose their protection.

Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in September, when we returned from the summer break, Canadians were just beginning to discover the full scope of the Conservatives' famous mammoth budget bill.

The employment insurance counter-reforms imposed by the government would have all manner of negative consequences for our economy, but also for our workers and the unemployed.

Last May, because of pressure from the opposition, the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development was forced to clarify for Canadians the concepts of suitable employment and reasonable job search. We then discovered what the Conservatives deem to be suitable employment.

In Bill C-38, the government has done away with the concept of suitable employment, except in cases when employment arises in consequence of a work stoppage.

The minister also explained that the Canada Employment Insurance Commission would henceforth determine which jobs are suitable for workers based on personal circumstances, working conditions, hours of work, travel time, type of work and salary.

The government also announced the creation of three new categories of claimants: long-tenured workers, frequent claimants and occasional claimants. All of the categories of claimants will be under more pressure to find a job and, within a few weeks, will have to accept any old job at pay that can be just 70% of their previous salary.

As for the notion of reasonable job search, we know that claimants will have to prove that they are conducting daily job searches. We even learned that job seekers would have to prove that they are filling out five job applications a week in urban areas and three applications a week in rural areas.

Claimants will have to keep a journal in which they log all of their job search activities and will have to submit this evidence on request. There will also be a new electronic job alert system that claimants will have to consult, even though claimants do not all have easy access to a computer, let alone the Internet.

Lastly, job seekers will have to search for jobs within a 100 km radius of their home or the equivalent of one hour of commuting time.

I have to say that when I was in Montreal recently, it took me 20 minutes to go through three lights near the Palais des congrès. So the 100 km radius is not always clear.

A few months ago, a man from Carleton was offered a job in Gaspé, even though Gaspé is three and a half hours from Carleton. Someone else, a man from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, was offered a job in Bonaventure, on the Gaspé Peninsula. That is a twelve-hour trip, including a $50 ferry ride.

How can the minister call these job offers “suitable employment”, when accepting such an offer would cost the unemployed individual one way or another? It would involve either a costly move, uprooting that individual from his community, or a loss of income that could actually exceed the wages offered, after transportation costs.

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

It being 12:14 p.m., pursuant to an order made Monday, December 3, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the report stage of the bill now before the House.

Before completing debate at report stage of Bill C-45, I wish to explain the process to the House.

Since the motions in Group No. 1 have already been proposed, I will only refer to the motion number when putting the questions on the motions in that group.

With respect to the motions in Group No. 2, they will be put to the House in the usual manner. When the House is ready to proceed with the putting of the motions of said group, I will only refer to the motion number.

To this end, I have asked that copies of the report stage section of today's notice paper be placed on each member's desk for ease of reference.

I would like to point out that this is the same process that was used last June at report stage of Bill C-38.

We shall now proceed to the putting of the question on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak against Bill C-45 because, once again, we have before us another reiteration of an omnibus bill. Instead of respecting parliamentary democracy and dealing with issues and different aspects separately, whether it be the environment; changes to EI, labour laws or immigration; protecting our waterways; or pensions; the government has buried all of those issues into this omnibus bill, thus preventing us as parliamentarians from having an in-depth debate.

When MPs are elected, it is stressed how important it is for us to do our due diligence and provide oversight on the budget but the Conservatives keep moving time allocation. Here we are at report stage and once again my colleagues across the way, with an absolute lack of respect for parliamentary democracy and elected parliamentarians, have shut down debate, more or less saying that because they have a majority they can be the bullies that they are surely proving to be.

It is not only members of the NDP who think that way. If there were no time allocation, I could stand here for the whole day and there would be others who would speak and support the position we are taking.

With respect to Bill C-38, Andrew Coyne, who is not exactly a Liberal commentator, wrote the following, which also applies here:

Not only does this make a mockery of the confidence convention, shielding bills that would otherwise be defeatable within a money bill, which is not: It makes it impossible to know what Parliament really intended by any of it. We’ve no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch, only that they voted for the legislation that contained them. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet.

...there is something quite alarming about Parliament being obliged to rubber-stamp the government’s whole legislative agenda at one go.

From the emails received by many colleagues with whom I have spoken, we can see that this is of major concern, not only to members in the House but also to those who care and cherish our parliamentary democracy. Our citizens are wondering what the government has to hide and why it is not debating key issues in Parliament on their own merit instead of burying them in a new piece of legislation that is the size of a phone book and a phone book larger than those in many of the cities in Canada.

The mantra we also hear, which is a learned kind of refrain, is that the NDP voted against it. I am proud to be standing here speaking against the legislation because it would not do what the Conservatives purport it would do. They say that the bill is all about job creation but we know that is another misleading comment and a kind of mantra used to try to stop what I would call proper discourse on key issues.

The Conservatives claim that the budget is about job creation. However, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer appeared before committee he said that the budget would cost 43,000 Canadians their jobs. That does not seem like a job-creating budget. The budget would actually lead to a loss of jobs. I am not the world's best mathematician, nor will I pretend to be, but I understand what losing 43,000 jobs would mean. I also understand that it is not just the people who will lose their jobs but also the communities in which they live that will lose. When one person loses a decent paying full-time job, it has an impact on the whole community. It has an impact on the business community, on our health care and on all of our institutions. I predict that the job losses will be a lot larger.

The Conservatives claim that they have encouraged jobs by giving tax breaks to small businesses. That tax break will expire before the budget is passed. It is only a minimal $1,000 and it is only there for the year 2012. What a misleading piece of propaganda the Conservatives exude.

It will not be with pleasure, but I will be proud to stand in the House and speak against a budget that attacks the basic Canadian values of our environment, our pensions, our jobs and so on.

At this time I move that, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-45 in clause 321 be amended by adding after line 13 on page 291 the following: the addition of the navigable waters listed below is deemed to be in the public interest and the Governor-in-Council shall, by regulation, as soon as it is reasonably practicable after the day on which the act receives royal assent, add those navigable waters to the schedule, including with respect to lakes, their approximate location in latitude and longitude, and with respect to rivers and riverines, the approximate downstream and upstream points, as well as a description of each of those lakes, rivers and riverines, and where more than one lake, river or riverine exists with the same name indicated in the list below, the Governor-in-Council shall select one to be added, namely, Calder Lake, Rusty Lake, Drybones Lake, Contwoyto Lake, King Lake, Tukweye Lake, Sandy Lake, Dissension Lake, Mid Lake, Hook Lake, Crooked Lake, Tsu Lake, Duckfish Lake, Marion Lake and Cotterill Lake.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-45, which as anyone who is watching knows, is the Conservative government's second omnibus budget implementation bill. Judging by the bill's 414 pages and 516 clauses amending over 60 different pieces of legislation, it is clear that the Conservatives just do not get it and, I fear, never will.

Despite the recent Liberal motion condemning omnibus legislation and Canadians' overwhelming opposition to Bill C-38, the government's last omnibus budget implementation bill, the Conservative government introduced yet another undemocratic omnibus bill.

When Canadians worry about the way the government is writing legislation, ministers throw their hands up in the air and tell Canadians not to concern themselves with process. However, Canadians are concerned about process. They understand that the process of elections, the process of debate, the process of accountability, the process of parliamentary study and consultation are the roots of Canadian democracy and go hand in hand with the success and stability of our economy. When the Conservative government tells worried Canadians not to concern themselves with process, Canadians sit up and take note.

In the face of unyielding abuses of power by the Conservative government, Liberals continue to fight for democracy and our economy and, in doing so, for Canadians from coast to coast to coast. For example, Liberals introduced a successful motion to separate the changes to MPs' pensions from the budget implementation bill so that these important changes could be fast-tracked through Parliament. We were pleased that the government worked with us on this particular issue.

In an attempt to ensure proper debate and consultation on Bill C-45, we requested that many unrelated measures be presented in separate stand-alone legislation. While the Prime Minister rejected Liberal calls for a more democratic approach, we were nevertheless encouraged that at least he agreed to allow Bill C-45 to be studied by 11 separate standing committees. Unfortunately, it became clear that the government's permission for the bill to be studied by committees was nothing more than a public relations ploy.

Tragically the government's refusal to split this enormous bill meant that only the finance committee had the order of reference from the House, meaning that only that committee could amend this legislation. For instance, had the fisheries committee discovered an error in division 4, which amends consequential provisions relating to the destruction of fish habitat under the Fisheries Act, the fisheries committee would have been unable to correct the legislation.

Bill C-45 is flawed and that is why Liberals introduced over 3,000 amendments at committee. It was our hope that some of these amendments would find bipartisan support so that we could have the best legislation possible. Unfortunately, the Conservatives proved yet again that when it comes to working together, they have no interest in doing so.

Many Canadian families are still feeling the harsh effects of the economic downturn and are struggling to make ends meet. I know that in my riding of Random—Burin—St. George's people were hoping that the Conservative government would surprise them and show leadership for a change by introducing a budget implementation bill that would help to create jobs. Unfortunately, Bill C-45 does very little to help create jobs and does even less to help struggling families feeling the burden of the growing gap between the rich and low and middle income Canadians.

Under the Conservative government, the Canadian economy is struggling. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is predicting a slower rate of growth that will cost the Canadian economy $22 billion every year. Even the Minister of Finance is predicting a slower growth rate and has stopped being so bullish about his deficit targets, embarrassingly conceding yet again that he will not meet his own deficit targets.

While the bill is known as an implementation bill, it may be more accurately described as a budget correction bill. Bill C-45 is tasked with cleaning up Conservative legislative mistakes in Bill C-38. For example, some of the measures that it seeks to correct include errors in the amended Fisheries Act regarding the travel of fish species in or through bodies of water, as well as fixing poor drafting of the new environmental assessment law's transition provisions and the unclear ministerial approval process for specific investments by public investment pools.

Part of the problem with omnibus legislation is that its sheer size and scope prevents Parliament from properly scrutinizing it and making sure that it actually achieves the desired outcomes. That is what we have been asking for, an opportunity to work with the government and all parties in the House to make sure that we have the best piece of legislation we can possibly have for Canadians who elect us to do just that.

When we combine the more than 400 pages of Bill C-38 with the Conservatives' penchant for limiting debate and ignoring facts that do not fit their ideology, it is not hard to understand why Bill C-38 had so many mistakes. These mistakes now have to be corrected.

Instead of the government presenting Canadians with legislation focused on jobs and the economy, it is attempting to correct mistakes that it should not have made in the first place, mistakes that are now taking up the time of the House of Commons when we should be debating other important pieces of legislation. This should have been dealt with and not have come back here so that members of Parliament again have to stand and point out the errors of the Conservative government. Had the government split the bill, as the Liberals requested, the government would not have had so many sloppy mistakes.

Furthermore, many of the measures introduced in the most recent omnibus bill, Bill C-45, do not belong in a budget implementation bill because they have nothing to do with the process of implementing a budget. The Minister of Finance's claim that all measures introduced in Bill C-45 were in the budget is simply not the case. For example, changes to the definition of aboriginal fishery were not in the budget and do not impact acts under the finance department. Changes to land designations in the Indian Act were not in the budget. I note that both of these changes to legislation affecting first nations peoples were done unilaterally, without consultation, and in fact violate the constitutional responsibility to consult aboriginal peoples. That is a blatant failure of the government, the failure to consult with Canadians from coast to coast to coast on issues that impact every facet of their lives on a daily basis. Still, the government just goes straight ahead and does what it wants to do without consulting those who will be most directly impacted.

Another interesting example of a measure that was not in the budget but appears in the budget implementation bill is the suspension of the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board. Not only is the elimination of that board not in the budget, the budget actually promised the exact opposite. Page 146 of the budget states that “Over the next few years, the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board (CEIFB) will continue to set the rate...”. Bill C-45 eliminates this board and centralizes the rate setting responsibility in the hands of cabinet.

In addition, the board set the employment insurance rate and was supposed to invest employment insurance surpluses, but under the Conservative government, so many people had been without work that the board has never had a surplus to invest.

Instead of addressing the harsh fiscal realities of many Canadians, Bill C-45 continues the Conservatives' reckless abuse of power. Cutting important job creation tax credits, like the scientific research and experimental development tax credit, the Atlantic investment tax credit and the corporate mineral exploration and development tax credit will not help our economy thrive.

I cannot support a piece of legislation that does more to harm jobs than to create them.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if you would warn me one minute before the end of my speech.

What will history say about this government?

In the spring, the government already trashed numerous economic, social and environmental laws, by forcing the passage of Bill C-38, the budget bill, a 400-page brick we voted on for 26 hours. We presented a number of amazing amendments, but were unable to change so much as a comma. This government thinks it has the truth and the right line.

After the challenges resulting from Bill C-38 in the spring, we thought the government would make honourable amends, and this time it would allow for broader debate on the budget implementation bill. Unfortunately, that is not the case. They came back with the same kind of shenanigans: they introduced a bill that would significantly amend 62 statutes. This is again a 400-page bill that they want to have us pass as quickly as possible, and for which they have imposed a gag order. That is perhaps what this government will be remembered for the most in 10, 15 or 20 years. It will be the gag order government. Our colleagues across the way will have participated in this travesty of democracy for months.

We are talking here about a bill that amends 62 statutes. We have looked for the common thread among the statutes in the budget, but there is none. This is a way of forcing the machine to work, of putting us on the ropes, of cutting the work of Parliament down to size, and ultimately making a mockery of it.

If we look at the content, we quickly realize that the measures proposed by the Conservatives do not reflect the values of Canadians. Ironically, Bill C-45, called the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, contains no effective measures to create jobs or to stimulate economic growth in Canada.

In fact, the Conservatives claim that the 2012 budget is going to create jobs, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the best friend of people in Canada who exercise critical thinking, claims, rather, that it will result in the loss of 43,000 jobs, which will have a domino effect and have an impact on 102,000 jobs in Canada. That is the overall effect of this budget implementation bill.

In the meantime, the unemployment rate is going up, and instead of making the rules more flexible to allow working people to receive support when they are unemployed, the rules are unfortunately being toughened.

I should point out that Bill C-45 is a threat because the changes it proposes in relation to the environment show disrespect for Canadians and their awareness of environmental issues.

At a time when the world is becoming more aware of the importance of sustainable development, or in other words, our capacity to meet our needs while allowing future generations to meet theirs, the Conservative government does not understand this logic and stubbornly insists on weakening environmental regulations.

After withdrawing Canada from the Kyoto protocol, making cuts to research programs at Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and dismantling the round table on the environment and the economy, the Conservatives are continuing down the same path with Bill C-45, which once again weakens the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and guts the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

It is important to note Canada's place when it comes to environmental matters. Recently, Canada was ranked 57th of the 60 countries included in the Climate Change Performance Index. In order to find Canada, hon. members should start at the bottom of the list instead of the top. We have dropped quite far. On the international stage, many countries do not envy us when it comes to the environment.

The Conservatives will boast that they have eliminated two small fossil fuel subsidies in this budget and improved two tax credits for certain types of equipment for green energy production. Proportionately speaking, these two measures are minimal compared to the $1.3 billion in assistance that the Conservative government continues to give to the oil and gas industry each year.

Environmental protection seems to be a nuisance to the Conservatives. We have to wonder whether this is a Conservative government strategy to facilitate co-operation with big business.

We also see that power is becoming more and more concentrated in the Conservative cabinet. We saw it with the reform of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act reform, and we are seeing it with environmental reforms. We had panels of independent experts. Now, assessments will basically be subject to the minister's approval.

Bill C-45 guts the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The consequences are imminent since thousands of lakes and rivers will no longer be protected. Of the 37 designated Canadian heritage rivers, only 10 will now be protected. I checked the list for the rivers in my area—Rivière du Diable, Rivière Rouge and Rivière du Nord—but none of them are mentioned.

I hope I am going to be able to include them in that list. And I wonder when we will have a chance to put new rivers and new lakes on the list. I would like to preserve the rivers in my riding in their purest possible natural state, because they are an essential part of the beauty of the region that brings tourists there. Beautiful rivers and beautiful lakes: that is what tourists come to see.

The Minister of Transport said the objective of the act was to reduce obstacles to navigation on navigable waterways and added that navigable waterways that do not appear in the new list will be protected by other federal legislation, by the provinces and by cities. Have funds been set aside for the provinces in connection with the role they will have to play, given the additional workload they will have? We are divesting ourselves of our obligation to protect rivers and lakes. In fact, that is a responsibility that is set out in the Canadian Constitution.

I am going to quote Tony Maas, director of the national freshwater program of the World Wildlife Fund. The government is trying to make a distinction between navigation and navigable waters, for legislation to facilitate navigation.

Picking navigation apart from the waters that enable it is very much artificial [and I would say “absurd”]. The two are part of a bigger whole. Their separation is as artificial as thinking you can protect a fish without protecting its habitat....

The government puts everything in little boxes, as if things were no longer connected to one another.

Because I had prepared to make a 20-minute speech, my time is nearly up. Before beginning this last part, I am going to request the unanimous consent of the House to move the following motion:

I move that, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-45, in clause 321, be amended by adding after line 13 on page 291 the following: “The addition of the navigable waters listed below is deemed to be in the public interest and the governor in council shall, by regulation, as soon as is reasonably practicable after the day on which this act receives royal assent, add those navigable waters to the schedule”, and I would like the list to include the Rivière du Nord, the Rivière Rouge, the Rivière du Diable and the Rivière Pashby, all of which are rivers that run through my riding.

I request the unanimous consent of the House to move this motion.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to ask my colleague a question.

The government is constantly telling us that everything in the budget implementation bill was mentioned in the budget that was tabled last March. However, we are well aware that a number of things that now appear in Bill C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures—because there was also Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget—were not mentioned in the budget tabled in this House last March by the Minister of Finance.

The Conservatives are therefore tabling two 400-page bills proposing measures that were not even mentioned in their budget last March. Does my colleague have any comments to make about that?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak strongly against the government's omnibus budget bills and their repeated affronts to democracy, and, specifically, to the gutting of environment legislation in Bill C-45.

Previously, through economic action plan 2012 and Bill C-38, the government severely cut the budget to Environment Canada, gutted environmental legislation and cancelled the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. The Conservatives have also silenced dissent from environmental non-governmental organizations and have continued to muzzle government scientists. In so doing, they affect our economy and environment today and in the future.

Through Bill C-45, our world-renowned natural heritage is being further imperilled by a government that fails to understand that water is the foundation of life and that it is essential for socio-economic systems and healthy ecosystems.

The World Bank states that, “water is at the centre of economic and social development”, and is elemental across economic sectors including agriculture, energy and industry. Good management of water resources is fundamental to moving to a green economy.

In Canada, we depend on water for drinking, fishing, swimming. This precious resource further supports farming, recreation, tourism and economic growth.

Unfortunately, water management is becoming more challenging with climate change. Bob Sandford, lead author of Simon Fraser University's adaptation to climate change team, warned in 2011 that:

The days when Canadians take an endless abundance of fresh water for granted are numbered...Increasing average temperatures, climate change impacts on weather patterns and extensive changes in land use are seriously affecting the way water moves through the hydrological cycle in many parts of Canada, which is seriously impacting water quantity and quality.

As a result, the team called for a dramatic reform of Canada's water governance structures and made many recommendations: the recognition that water is a human right integral to the health and security of Canadians; the development of a new Canadian water ethic; the creation of a national water commission to advance policy reform; an improved understanding of the importance of water to Canadians' way of life; national water conservation guidelines and improved monitoring; and coordinated long-term national strategies for sustainably managing water in the face of climate change.

In stark contrast to those recommendations, the government would strip federal oversight from thousands of Canadian waterways through its latest anti-democratic and draconian omnibus legislation, Bill C-45. Specifically, the government would abolish the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which currently requires federal approval for development on the thousands of bodies of water across the country that are large enough to float a canoe.

The Navigable Waters Protection Act of 1882, considered Canada's first environmental law, would be changed to the navigation protection act. The focus of the law would no longer be to protect navigable waters but, rather, to protect navigation.

Canada has a huge number of lakes. The exact number is unknown. However, of the roughly 32,000 lakes previously protected under the old act, just 97 lakes would now be protected under the new act. Sixty-two rivers and three oceans would also be protected under the new act. Construction of bridges, dams and other projects would be permitted on most waterways without prior approval under the new act.

Needless to say, the original budget said nothing about restricting federal controls over lakes and rivers.

Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel, West Coast Environmental Law, stated:

The Bill C-45...is a wolf in sheep’s clothing that will have major implications for the environment and human health. So much for the federal government’s promise that the bill would focus on budget implementation and contain no surprises.

The rewritten law would strip environmental protection once provided by the mandatory federal review. Ecojustice's executive director, Devon Page, said:

Simply put, lakes, rivers and streams often stand in the path of large industrial development, particularly pipelines. This bill, combined with last spring’s changes, hands oil, gas and other natural resource extraction industries a free pass to degrade Canada’s rich natural legacy.

Astoundingly, 90% of the lakes that would still be designated as protected are in Conservative ridings, 20% are in NDP ridings and only 6% are in Liberal ridings. Unbelievably, pipelines would be directly exempted from this law. Under the new act, pipeline impacts on Canada's waterways would no longer be considered in environmental assessments.

Instead of killing the old Navigable Waters Protection Act, the government should reverse the changes that would strip previous environmental protection of lakes, work to protect Canada's coastline, establish a network of marine protected areas in Canada's waters, encourage the sustainable use of coastal and marine resources, prioritize clean water, restore our freshwater ecosystems, clean up contaminated sediment and protect and restore essential habitat.

The government must stop repeatedly abusing Parliament by ramming through massive omnibus bills and turning the legislative process into a farce.

Two years ago, the government introduced an 880-page omnibus bill, representing half the entire workload of Parliament from the previous year. This past spring, the government introduced Bill C-38, a 425-page omnibus budget implementation bill that made sweeping changes to employment insurance, immigration and old age security. An astonishing 150 pages were devoted to destroying 50 years of environmental oversight. None of these changes were in the Conservative platform. This time, Bill C-45 is a 443-page omnibus bill that would alter some 60 pieces of legislation, including the Canada Labour Code, the Fisheries Act, the Indian Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Canadians are tiring of the government's omnibus bills. Last spring there were demonstrations across the country to protest the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38. Five hundred organizations joined the BlackOutSpeakOut campaign to stand up for democracy and the environment. Three thousand two hundred pages of complaints flooded the office of the finance minister and there was extensive international criticism.

In 1994, the MP for Calgary Southwest, our current Prime Minister, criticized omnibus legislation suggesting that the subject matter of such bills was so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles. He said, “Dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent the views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill.”

The Conservative government's action reek of hypocrisy. The Prime Minister is now using the very tactics he once denounced. Bill C-45 hides large changes to environmental laws, subverts democracy and weakens the protection of ecosystems.

The government's record on the environment is appalling, as recognized repeatedly by its bottom of the barrel environment performances. The 2008 Climate Change Performance Index ranked Canada 56th out of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions. In 2009, the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th out of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance. In 2010, Simon Fraser University ranked Canada 24th out of 25 countries. This week we have been ranked 58th out of 61 countries on climate policy.

Under successive Conservative governments, the economy has been repeatedly pitted against the environment. Laws have been weakened and repealed to fast-track development with the environment and the health and safety of Canadians being put at risk. When did the debate change from protecting the environment in order to safeguard human health and well-being to gutting environmental protection in order to streamline expanding growth? Is it not time we made human health, particularly for our most vulnerable, our children, a consideration in the environmental debate?

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague carefully. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are once again presenting us with a monstrosity of a bill, like the one they presented last spring, Bill C-38, in which they attacked old age security, employment insurance and health transfers to the provinces.

Once again, Bill C-45 shows that the Conservatives have not learned their lesson; they still want to keep Canadians in the dark and they want to prevent the members here in the House from doing the job they were elected by Canadians to do.

I would like my colleague to expand on this question: why is the government acting this way?

Report Stage

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they may not like listening to me because I am telling the truth. I will continue my speech despite all of the noise in the House.

I was saying that this bill severely weakens environmental legislation. That was the case with Bill C-38, the first budget implementation bill. Today we are debating the second budget implementation bill, with which the Conservatives are unfortunately continuing to weaken environmental regulations, at the expense of future generations, who will have to live with the consequences of what they are doing.

The NDP thinks that Canadians deserve much better than what the Conservatives have put forward. We will therefore oppose the bill at third reading, just as we have opposed it at the other stages. We will continue to oppose it during the vote that will probably be held tomorrow, since the Conservatives are rushing us through things. We would have liked to have much more time to examine the bill. However, the vote will likely be held tomorrow. The Conservatives left us little time to examine these 450 pages, or, if we also include the budget, these 900 pages. We received the budget in March, and the two bills were then introduced. If we add them together, that makes 900 pages of bills, for a single budget. That is completely unacceptable. Furthermore, it is completely unacceptable that the government does not respect our institutions and is ramming through such massive documents.

As I said earlier, the Conservatives have laid off 19,000 government employees. In my opinion, this is contributing to poor public administration since services have been affected. It is possible to consider all the information available and make cuts in the right areas. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have decided to act blindly and make cuts to services. In Sherbrooke, many services have been cut. Positions have been cut at Service Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency office is no longer accessible to the public at all. No one can go there. The people of Sherbrooke have spoken out against these cuts.

We had hoped that the Conservatives would be more open-minded when we tried to move substantial amendments in committee. However, unfortunately, once again, they did not demonstrate any open-mindedness with regard to this bill. This is not the first time this has happened.

The Conservatives are also making clear cuts to scientific research and experimental development. The budget implementation bill makes changes to the tax credit program. These changes reduce the tax credit rate, particularly for big businesses, and eliminate eligible capital investments. The combined effect reduces government support for businesses that use the scientific research and experimental development program, just when Canadian businesses most need to promote innovation and productivity if they want to succeed in a very competitive global economy. This will particularly affect the manufacturing sector.

The NDP's vision involves making a place for innovation in the manufacturing sector so that it can remain competitive in relation to other emerging economic sectors that, unfortunately, have a workforce that is paid far less than ours. The government's role is to promote innovation in order to remain competitive in a globalized market, ensure the survival of our businesses, and keep our good jobs here in Canada. If the NDP were in office, things would be done much differently. We would use innovation to increase competitiveness and access other markets, thereby allowing us to keep our jobs. That is the NDP's vision.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives have done a terrible job of managing the Canadian economy. They have created the largest deficit in Canada's history. I am really surprised to hear them say that they are doing such a great job with the economy when they have created both the largest deficit and the largest trade deficit in Canadian history. Then the minister tells us that he is going to miss the deadline. That is further proof of bad management and bad public administration. I feel it is my duty to speak out against that here.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, there are other changes that affect environmental protection. It started with Bill C-38, three-quarters of which was about environmental protection, or rather, environmental deregulation. The Conservatives are chipping away at environmental protection. Bill C-45 is a continuation of the previous bill, particularly with its changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which will now be called the navigation protection act. This small change will mean big changes. The bill is no longer about water. The word “water” has been removed from the title of the bill.

The government is discarding the concept of protecting water and is focusing solely on navigation, even though we know the two go hand in hand. It should go without saying that protecting navigation means protecting the environment that makes navigation possible. Unfortunately, the Conservatives added schedule 2 to the bill, a list of all of the lakes and rivers that will still be protected under the new act, which will be called the navigation protection act. Only about 180 of Canada's tens of thousands of lakes and rivers will be protected. Most of our lakes and rivers will not be protected under the new act, which will be passed soon.

This means that the Saint-François and Magog rivers, which are in my riding, will no longer be protected by this legislation. People in Sherbrooke have reacted negatively to these changes. People want to know what the long-term effects will be.

In the old days, projects that could affect navigation and water bodies required the minister's approval. From now on, projects such as pipelines will not require approval. Maybe the Conservatives are trying to make sure that major pipeline projects can go ahead with no environmental restrictions whatsoever. Pipelines will be laid under, over or even along rivers.

We could also talk about major energy and power line projects that pass over rivers. In Sherbrooke, people were worried about the negative repercussions that such projects could have on lakes and rivers and the potential dangers they could pose. If a pipeline is allowed to pass over a river, needless to say, a leak would have a negative impact on the environment.

Lastly, I would like to quote someone who talked about the bill and whose name might ring a bell with the Conservatives. Warren Everson, senior vice-president of policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, had this to say: “The budget 2012 decision to cut a quarter of the SR and ED tax credit was, in our opinion, a step in the wrong direction.”

I talked about this earlier in my speech and I would like to emphasize the point: even the Canadian Chamber of Commerce opposes this decision. I therefore hope the Conservatives will come to their senses and support our proposals.

Unfortunately, I know that we are almost out of time, since the final vote will be held tomorrow. Perhaps the Senate will take a different approach and a more enlightened view in order to improve certain parts of the bill.

Bill C-45—Time Allocation

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I must say I was surprised to hear my friend, the Minister of State for Finance claim that everything in Bill C-45 and Bill C-38 was found in the budget. I think that has been pretty thoroughly disproven.

I would be interested to know on what page of the budget we can find the efforts in Bill C-45 to create barriers to tourism in Canada. That will hurt our economy and hurt our tourism sector. I can see no excuse whatsoever for bringing this forward without adequate consultation. The idea of having an international automated list for tourists from Europe, Australia or New Zealand who want to come to Canada is an added barrier in a sector that is currently struggling.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, people at home are truly worried. They are worried about what is in the budget and especially about the attitude of this government, which amended 70 acts with Bill C-38 and will amend 62 acts, without debate, with Bill C-45.

My question is for the minister. In light of the Conservatives' strategy, will they one day introduce a bill to automatically amend 200 or 300 laws, and then bid farewell to Parliament and parliamentarians for the rest of the year?

That is the kind of distortion of democracy we are seeing. People at home are worried about the Conservatives' brand of democracy.

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, another example of just how far the government is prepared to go to silence critics of its agenda occurred November 6 in the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly. At that point in time the legislative assembly members were debating a motion on whether they should review all the changes that were being made to environmental regulations in Canada and how they would affect the north. NWT MLA, Daryl Dolynny, described by Northern News Services as well known in Conservative Party circles, warned the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories that speaking out against gutting Canada's environmental laws by simply reviewing them would put in jeopardy projects such as devolution, the Inuvik-Tuk highway and the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic link.

Imagine, we had a person threatening the economic viability of our territory because of a review of environmental legislation. I am sure someone with close ties to the Conservative Party would not be making these kinds of allegations unless he had something to back it up. What is going on in this country? What is going on with our democracy?

Yesterday I spoke with the largest landowners in the NWT, the Dene, who expressed their disgust with the government's actions, which are all about making a quick buck from Canada's natural resources with no cares for the environmental damage that our children and grandchildren may have to deal with. We in the Northwest Territories have been there. We know what happens when proper environmental assessments are not done. We can see the damages. We see it in the mines and the failed projects that litter our territory from one end to the other. Those are things that could have been prevented, that could have been saved by proper environmental action.

The Prime Minister boasted that we would not be able to recognize Canada when he gets done with it. Unfortunately, with bills such as Bill C-45 and Bill C-38, this is going to be the case. We will not understand it today. We will not understand it tomorrow, but our children will understand what these people are doing today.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I have always considered it an honour and a privilege to rise in the House to speak to bills and to discuss matters of concern to Canadians.

Today, though, when I stand to speak to the Conservatives' latest mammoth omnibus bill, which is being jammed through the House of Commons in the fashion of the last one, I feel that I am speaking at a point when our democracy is changing and not for the better. Standing here, I feel very sad and a little angry.

The speed of the bill can only be due to one reason. The Conservatives want to move quickly so that the people of Canada do not have an opportunity to understand what the changes mean to our country. Very serious changes are being made to laws that will not be easily understood by Canadians until those laws are put in practice. I am speaking about the changes to the environmental system that have been made by the Conservatives over the past year.

I will speak for a while on the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. With the exception of three oceans, 97 lakes and 62 rivers, the law will no longer apply to projects affecting waterways. This is being done for the convenience of developers who want to move ahead. It is not being done for the convenience of farmers and fishermen. We could have had a different law that would have taken care of the little problems in the system. That would have been a law that we would have all stood up and supported.

Canadians are going to be outraged when their lakes and rivers, major waterways, are being damaged just so that a few quick bucks can be made. When we do not do a proper job on the environment, in the end all will pay, including industry and the Conservatives' friends.

In the Northwest Territories, the Conservatives removed navigable waters protection from rivers such as the Liard River, the Peel River, the Hay River and the Slave River, all of which are used today for navigation purposes. In fact, on the Hay River is the largest docking facility north of 60. The facility includes the Canadian Coast Guard base for the western Arctic region, Northern Transportation Company Limited's barging terminal and the float plane base anchorage.

Once the bill is passed, this particular river will no longer be under the protection of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. What is going on? Why did the Conservatives do this to a very important waterway for the people of the Northwest Territories?

There is oil exploration on the upper reaches of the Hay River. That is where we can go if we want to find the answer to why the Hay River was taken out of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. It is the same reason that there will be no navigation protection for the Peel and Liard rivers. I am sure when a barge runs aground on one of these rivers, the owners will be happy to acknowledge their suffering is justified because the oil companies are not inconvenienced.

With the Slave River, we know very well what that is about. We know that the Alberta business interests in Calgary, ATCO, are very interested in developing a 1,500 megawatt earth-fill dam across the Slave River. They have been after this for a long time.

Eight-two per cent of the outflow from Alberta is in the Slave River, at 3,000 metres a second. This is not a farmer's stream. This is a major waterway that has supported navigation and transportation for 100 years. It is not in the bill. Why is it not there? Whose friends are being rewarded here? Now that it is not in the bill, does that mean that Alberta is solely responsible for any environmental assessment of the project?

The changes to protecting Canada's natural beauty contained in Bill C-45 are part of a broader strategy to remove any wilderness protection. There were changes to the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in the Conservatives' first massive omnibus budget bill, which they jammed through Parliament last spring. They rushed that job so much that they had to bring in amendments in Bill C-45 to try to deal with some of the problems that they created with their reckless moves with Bill C-38.

Haste makes waste. When will Conservatives learn? I do not think they will learn because their agenda is not to protect Canada. Their agenda is to exploit Canada. Fair enough, just put it on the table and say it as it is.

This is going to create so much uncertainty in industry because the current government will not be around after 2015 and we will be putting back the regulations that are required for the protection of the environment in Canada. How is that going to give certainty to industries?

In Bill C-38, they removed the prohibition against the alteration, disruption—

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my opposition at all stages to the Conservatives' Bill C-45. Like most Canadians, the people in my riding are outraged by this undemocratic Conservative approach.

We are opposed to the content and to the undemocratic nature of this bill, which is very similar to Bill C-38, the other mammoth bill. Just as we opposed Bill C-38 then, we oppose Bill C-45 now. The contents of this bill will only increase social inequality in Canada. Moreover, the size of the bill, at over 400 pages, and the speed at which the Conservatives want it passed reveal the undemocratic nature of their methods.

Let us talk about the Conservatives' undemocratic methods. As I said, this bill is over 400 pages long and amends nearly 60 laws. That is why we asked the government to split the bill into a number of bills, so that each committee could deal with the amendments--some of them major—examine them carefully, hear from experts and make sure that reports on each act being amended were done in the proper form, with the necessary amendments.

It should have been done, but instead we had a pretense of consultation. A show, a masquerade. Ignoring the rules of the House of Commons itself, the Conservatives first refused to split the bill as we asked. Then the Standing Committee on Finance passed a motion to delegate its work. You heard correctly, Mr. Speaker. The Standing Committee on Finance delegated its work to a dozen committees so they could study--at top speed--the changes Bill C-45 proposes to various acts.

Personally, I was a witness to this pretense of a study, because I am a member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. I had to participate in this pseudo-study for just under three hours. Just imagine what the result was: all is well and perfect in the best of all possible worlds. What a surprise.

The same thing happened at other committees. Furthermore, in a November 8, 2012, article entitled Bill C-45: A total sham to save face, Manon Cornellier wrote:

Committees therefore had to scramble to find witnesses who could appear with just a few hours' notice. In the end, the committees had only a day or two to hold hearings. And once again, at almost all of the committees, the Conservatives used their majority to limit the matter to just one quick hour dedicated to hearing from public servants.

There is no doubt that if public servants had been drafting the amendments to the bills, they would not have proposed these amendments, based on the needs of the various groups in question. This was all just a sham, as indicated by the excerpt from Ms. Cornellier's article that I just quoted.

As I said, the people in my riding of Drummond are outraged and are wondering what the Conservatives' real motives are for ramming these changes through so quickly, without any analysis. What exactly are they trying to hide?

One of the many issues, as I mentioned earlier, is of course environmental protection. In my riding, people really care about protecting the environment. They want to develop the riding in such a way that makes Drummond a hub and a magnet for innovation in green technology.

Clearly, however, the Conservatives' changes in Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 are weakening Canada's environmental laws and regulations more and more. In fact, Bill C-45 simply follows the same path as the Trojan horse bill, Bill C-38, introduced in the spring, by weakening environmental protections even further. For instance, it shuts down the round table on the environment and makes changes to environmental assessments.

And of course there is the Navigable Waters Act. That act is being completely trashed, and in a subjective, partisan way, I should add. I will explain what I mean by that in a moment.

Along the same line, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity is urging the federal government to think about the consideration being given to fossil fuel, as I mentioned earlier in my question. He says there must be a debate in Canada about this society-wide issue, because the increase in greenhouse gas emissions has to be included in the equation so that informed decisions can be made for all Canadians.

On the subject of our great Canadian Environmental Protection Act, I would like to point out in passing that yesterday, Canada added another fossil award to its collection at the Doha conference. That is proof that our environmental measures are a failure.

The bill also proposes two minor items in subsidies for fossil fuels, as I mentioned just now. They are going to take away a mere $10 million of the $1.3 billion they hand out every year. This is money that the people in my riding, Drummond, are handing over to subsidize billionaire oil producers and gas and coal producers, in addition to the money from the ecoEnergy program that is being diverted.

That is over $1.3 billion, nearly $2 billion, of taxpayer money that the people of greater Drummond want to see come back to their city to fund ecoenergy measures, the university, for example, the future plans for the exhibition centre and the library. They could have solar walls and green roofs, and they could use geothermal heating.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives prefer to give $1.3 billion to the oil companies, as if this were something that would support our environment and create jobs. In fact, we know very well that money invested in the environment creates three times as many jobs. So we would have three times as many jobs from that money if we invested it in green energy and the measures I referred to earlier.

The Navigable Waters Act is going to be trashed. Of the 37 heritage rivers, only 10 will be protected now. The bill reverses the responsibility, which will now rest with the public and municipalities. Municipal councillors in my riding have come to see me; they were outraged, and wanted to know what was going to happen to the Saint-François River. That river runs through greater Drummond and is no longer protected. If a project damages the environment, the municipal council will have to bring legal action to exercise its rights. Rights are often exercised once the damage is done. It is often too late to protect our environment. People are truly angry.

As well, on that point, if my colleagues are not aware, I am going to tell them: 90% of the laws for lakes designated as protected are in Conservative ridings. That is truly insulting, partisan and clumsy. I do not know what polite words I can use to describe this situation. It makes no sense. The people of Drummond are truly outraged to see how protection for our environment is being cut back once again.

I will end on that note, although I could say much more about Bill C-45, which is truly appalling. This bill makes no sense. This is an anti-democratic process that is going to hurt the environment, and hurt our economy. We could create three times as many jobs by investing in the green economy.

That is why New Democrats will continue to work hard to bring solutions to the House of Commons and stand up for Canadians.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I could begin my speech by confidently making a statement about which I am now absolutely certain, to wit: parliamentary democracy is now a thing of the past in Canada's Parliament.

Omnibus bills, reflecting an almost obscene form of grandstanding, have become a habit in the House of Commons, like gag orders, I might add. That is why I am not all that happy about taking the floor in the House for a second time to speak about the second omnibus budget implementation bill, Bill C-45.

On the other hand, I am pleased to be able to stand up for my constituents, because I believe that it is important for them to be aware of the government's sabotage. It is sabotaging our social programs, our regions, our employment insurance, the quality of our food, our environment, and our international reputation. I could go on about its sabotage for the next 10 minutes of my speech. That is more or less what I will do, but in greater detail.

Just as Bill C-38 went beyond implementation of the 2012 budget by making many other previously unannounced changes, we find ourselves once again dealing with a bill that goes far beyond simply implementing a budget. Much too far. We said so in May when the Trojan horse bill was forced through, and we are saying it again today: this is not an acceptable way of doing things in this House, in a democratic system. I will always speak out in this House against such practices.

Bill C-45 is 450 pages long and contains clauses that concern a host of disparate measures. It amends more than 60 acts. Needless to say, the bill also assigns more power to ministers. This worrisome Conservative penchant for concentrating power is proceeding apace. Bill C-45 eliminates some commissions to allow ministers to make more decisions without consultation and without having to answer to anyone.

It is also important to speak out about the weakening of our environmental protection measures, and of our ability to ensure sustainable development for future generations. I am really concerned that they could not care less about the next generation.

Bill C-45 also destroys the Navigable Waterways Protection Act and takes the teeth out of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The Conservatives did not even allow the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to study these changes, even though they will have a major impact on our environment.

The Minister of Transport likes to repeat ad nauseam that navigable waterways and the environment are two different things, but the fact is that there are fish in the water! They need protection because they are part of our ecosystem. And while it may be true that they are two different things, in the end, they go together.

Bill C-45 also proposes major changes to the Canada Grain Act. These changes, made without consulting anyone, will have a major impact on Canadian grain producers.

I will not discuss the proposed amendments to avoid any slips of the tongue, but will say instead that the government's amendments, drawn up without any consultations, make it more difficult for producers to challenge grain classification or weight decisions made by private grain producers. It is clear that this will be very harmful to the grain trade and small producers.

The Conservatives had assured us that Bill C-45 would hold no surprises. And yet, the 2012 budget did not say a thing about this. After reducing the powers of the Canadian Wheat Board and making budget cuts to AgriStability payments, the Conservatives have made it clear that they do not want to help farmers.

My riding is considered the larder of Quebec, and farming is everywhere.

Farmers in my riding are worried about the extent to which the government is ignoring and refusing to help them. And yet, they are the people who feed us all. Could they not be given at least a little recognition? That is the least the government could do for them.

Yet again, the Conservatives are trying to rush legislative measures through Parliament, keeping Canadians in the dark and not allowing them to learn more about them. In this bill, they go so far as to considerably reduce their own responsibilities. But governments have responsibilities. It seems to me that my colleagues across the way still do not know that. We have been working with this government for a year and a half, and I have yet to see them shoulder any responsibility for anything.

The government is also saying that the bill will create jobs. However, I have something to tell the House: according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the budget will lead to the loss of 43,000 jobs. Some job creation! We might return to the topic when some jobs have actually been created.

In reality, the budget would lead to a major hike in the unemployment rate, with fewer and fewer workers eligible for employment insurance. The main job creation measure in the bill is the introduction of a temporary hiring tax credit for small businesses. This is a measure we could support, because it is like motherhood. However, it only gives employers a maximum tax credit of $1,000 on their new employment insurance payments. That is not a lot. Even funnier, or even more ironic, the tax credit is available to employers for the 2012 tax year, even though 2012 has already ended. The 2012 year is ending now.

We just spoke about jobs. We might now talk about how poverty, homelessness and perhaps even housing. According to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, 4 million Canadians, 750,000 of them children, are coping with pressing housing needs. By this we mean that their housing is too small, dirty and expensive, and that they cannot pay for it. Not only that, but between 150,000 and 300,000 Canadians currently live in the street.

Earlier, I spoke about the fact that the government must assume its responsibilities. The 2012 budget implementation bill does not contain any measures for housing or the fight against poverty. In my opinion, this is completely unacceptable. Yet, major institutions, such as the Wellesley Institute and the Canadian Federation of Municipalities have sounded the alarm several times. In the run up to the last budget, these organizations called on the federal government to invest money in housing. Obviously, nothing was done.

Housing is a crucial issue for families, people without families and seniors, a high-risk group. Seniors occupy one third of social housing units, and a third of them risked losing their housing as a result of the cutbacks the government has made over recent years. A lot of seniors and families are also at risk of losing their affordable housing because the long-term operating agreements between the federal government and housing co-operatives will not be renewed.

Once again, the government is not playing a leadership role. The NDP will focus its efforts on the real priorities of Canadian families: jobs, health care, pensions, environmental protection, the fight against poverty, agriculture, and the protection of workers. We have a plan to improve health care, to better reward those that create jobs, and to strengthen seniors' benefits. We also want to work in a transparent manner.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives are continuing to demonstrate that they are more interested in imposing their agenda than in being accountable to Canadians. Worse still, they have chosen to perpetuate an unsustainable situation. In our northern country, people are living in the streets and families must choose between paying their rent and feeding their children. The country is placing no importance on the environment and is jeopardizing the health of future generations with impunity. Canada is sabotaging assistance programs for people in need and is not at all concerned about the first nations.

It is high time that the government assume its responsibilities and play a leadership role in order to make our nation a land that welcomes people and a place where people want to live.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

—or a combination.

They opposed both measures in the bill as well as the amendments that would have delayed those measures in the bill. How incoherent could that be? Normally if we oppose a piece of legislation, then logically we would also support measures to delay that legislation. The New Democrats voted in favour of the Conservatives' time allocation motion at committee, but this week they have been rising on points of order to complain to the Speaker about the very time allocation motion they supported at the finance committee: go figure.

For the life of me I cannot understand why the NDP would ever join with the Conservatives in overruling the member for Edmonton—Leduc, a friend of mine, a great fellow and someone whose judgment is extremely good at committee. It is just a travesty.

In terms of Liberal amendments, Canadians have told us loud and clear that they oppose the Conservative omnibus budget bills. They want us to, as much as we can and within the rules, every legislative and parliamentary tool we have to fight this abuse of Parliament.

The Liberals listened. We introduced just over 3,000 amendments to Bill C-45 at the finance committee. These amendments would: stop the hidden Conservative tax grab on small businesses by expanding the hiring credit in Bill C-45; stop or delay the drastic cuts to SR and ED tax credits that support job creation in Canada and are key to Canada's international competitiveness; improve the definition of “aboriginal fisheries” to ensure that it includes the right to earn a moderate livelihood, as set out in the 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision R. v. Marshall; delay the foreign affiliate dumping provisions that risk Canada's global reputation in finance and mining; and add almost 1,000 lakes to the list of protected waterways under the new Navigations Protections Act in Bill C-45.

I want to speak to the dangerous precedent we saw at finance committee. The time allocation motion that the Conservatives and the NDP both supported to limit debate on Bill C-45 at committee prevented me from properly moving my amendments there. When the Conservatives realized that their time allocation motion would have allowed us to move most of these amendments in the House during report stage, they did the unthinkable. Instead of amending the time allocation motion, they overruled the committee chair, the member for Edmonton—Leduc, and used their majority to interpret the time allocation motion as meaning the opposite of what the motion actually stated. Bizarrely, the Conservatives were joined by the NDP in overturning the chair and throwing out the rules. It is a dangerous precedent that was set at finance committee. Essentially, the Conservatives can now use their majority to challenge any chair in any committee, say that the rules are black instead of white and have their way without any debate whatsoever.

As a result of this dangerous precedent at the finance committee, all the motions I put on notice were retroactively deemed to have been moved without my consent. We protested this dangerous precedent by insisting on recording votes for most of the motions. However, the NDP again helped speed up the passage of Bill C-45 at committee by giving up one of their votes at committee and agreeing with the Conservatives to a schedule to pass Bill C-45 as quickly and easily as possible.

It is really quite shocking how complicit the NDP members have been in helping the Conservatives pass this budget bill. They say that they oppose both the measures in the omnibus budget bill and the abuse of Parliament implicit in the omnibus budget bill. However, at the end of the day, when it comes down to brass tacks they have been supporting the Conservatives legislatively, ensuring passage of this bill as quickly as possible.

There are some very good reasons to oppose the bill. There are many serious flaws. The so-called hiring credit for SMEs is so badly designed that it will actually punish certain small businesses that hire new workers or give existing workers a wage increase. It includes a hidden 7¢ EI premium hike for small businesses that qualify this year and up to a 14¢ EI premium hike for small businesses that qualified last year but do not qualify this year.

We have tried to fix these design flaws with amendments that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business actually supports. However, the Conservatives refuse to do the right thing, which was to listen and fix the bill.

In terms of the foreign affiliate dumping issue and provisions, we have heard from the Toronto Stock Exchange and the mining industry, PDAC, about how foreign affiliate dumping provisions will put Canada's finance and mining sectors at risk. It is important to consider that 80% of mining transactions or financing in the world over the last five years were transacted in Toronto.

Both on the finance side and on the actual development of mines, Canada is a global leader. There are measures in the bill that will compromise our capacity to create jobs in the mining sector both in Canada and for Canadians around the world.

These are some of the concerns, along with SR and ED. Canada's innovators, manufacturers and exporters are telling us that these changes to SR and ED are going to imperil Canada's innovation and research and development. The Conservatives are not listening and they are going ahead with these changes.

In conclusion, Bill C-45 includes measures to correct the mistakes that were in the spring omnibus budget legislation in Bill C-38. The Conservatives should have learned from ramming that through that they made some mistakes. They should have listened to Canadians, listened to opposition members, respected Parliament and not introduced another egregious omnibus bill such as Bill C-45.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the Conservatives' latest omnibus budget legislation, Bill C-45, at report stage.

I will focus my remarks today on: one, how the New Democrats worked closely with and supported, helped, aided and abetted the Conservatives in their ramming of this omnibus bill through committee; two, a very dangerous precedent that was set at finance committee during the study of Bill C-45; and, three, some of the flaws in Bill C-45 that were identified by Canadians during the committee's study.

As members know, Bill C-45 is a mammoth bill. It is over 400 pages long and would amend over 60 different laws. It includes a large number of provisions that simply do not belong in a budget bill: rewriting the laws protecting Canada's waterways; redefining aboriginal fisheries, without even consulting first nations peoples; and eliminating the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission. These are just a few examples of what is in Bill C-45 and examples of measures that would really have nothing to do with the fiscal situation of the country.

Canadians overwhelmingly disapprove of the Conservatives' use of omnibus budget bills to ram a large number of unrelated measures through Parliament without sufficient study or debate. A recent poll by Forum Research shows that 64% of Canadians oppose the Conservatives' omnibus legislative approach. Even a majority of Conservative supporters oppose the Conservatives' use, overuse and abuse of omnibus bills.

The Prime Minister once opposed the use of omnibus bills, but under his watch we have seen a clear trend toward the use of omnibus legislation. In fact, Bill C-13 in 2006 was 198 pages; Bill C-28 in 2007 was 378 pages; Bill C-10 in 2009 was 552 pages; Bill C-9 in 2010 was 904 pages; Bill C-13 in 2011 was 658 pages; and Bill C-38 earlier this year was 452 pages.

To put this in context, the largest Liberal budget bill was Bill C-28 in 2003, which was 144 pages in length, and it focused on fiscal measures, not on unrelated measures.

I will also speak about the NDP in this case. The NDP actually helped the Conservatives in passing Bill C-45 as quickly as possible through committee. The New Democrats say that they oppose Bill C-45 and they say that they oppose closure. However, their actions speak louder than their words. While they talk the talk, they do not walk the walk when it comes to actually standing up to the Conservatives and their abuse of Parliament. Instead of standing up to the Conservatives and providing any real opposition to Bill C-45, the New Democrats have actually been helping the Conservatives.

Here are a few examples. The New Democrats voted with the Conservatives to impose time allocation to limit the debate on Bill C-45 at committee. The New Democrats voted with the Conservatives to overrule the finance committee chair, the member for Edmonton—Leduc, a chair who is respected by all members of the House for his judgment. To have him rebuked by his own colleagues was bad and it was terrible to see the New Democrats gang up with the Conservatives against the member for Edmonton—Leduc. The New Democrats voted with the Conservatives to throw out the rules at committee and to shut down opposition to Bill C-45. The New Democrats then gave up one of their votes at finance committee and worked out a schedule with the Conservatives so the finance committee could get through Bill C-45 as quickly as possible. The New Democrats voted with the Conservatives almost 2,000 times at the finance committee to oppose measures that could have delayed certain parts of Bill C-45.

Motions in amendment

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to correct what my friend just said, which is that it is an unprecedented measure. The precedent was Bill C-38 which also established a multitude of statutes. There were amendments to more than 70 pieces of legislation. Bill C-45 is the second bill of this kind. There was therefore a precedent.

In response to my colleague's question, we discussed various things in subcommittee. Amendments to the dates were proposed and there was a vote on referring various parts of the bill to different committees. This was all done in good faith and we could all see that the government was not being responsible and not acting in good faith when it proposed that committees should study the relevant items. For example, the Standing Committee on the Environment did not adequately study the Navigable Waters Protection Act. That is why the bill or parts thereof were referred to the committees. That is what we voted on.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know my friend from a Etobicoke—Lakeshore would want to be telling the truth in this place. However, he was a bit misinformed. He said that the NDP had put thousands of amendments forward at committee. I want to be clear that we put forward 72 very considered amendments at committee.

Not everything in this bill is bad. That will come as a shock to some members over there. However, I want to go a bit further and talk about what the NDP was looking for. We as a party are focused on what we think are the real priorities for families in Canada, which, obviously, are jobs, health care, pensions and protecting our environment. When we look at Bill C-45, we see aspects of those areas that are being infringed upon or even destroyed in some respects.

We only need to look at what happened with environmental assessment between Bill C-38 and Bill C-45. I have been told that in the past approximately 5,000 environmental assessments were conducted each year, whereas now there would be roughly 40. If the Conservatives had a legitimate concern with environmental assessments, maybe that would warrant an adjustment but not a hundredfold decrease. What is lacking here is common sense, which does not appear to be common here anymore.

The NDP believes in rewarding people who create jobs. In our last platform, we had rewards for people who employed new workers for a year. I know that sounds contrary to the rhetoric we have heard, particularly in the speech by the member for Winnipeg North.

The OECD's best practices for budget transparency states that draft budgets should be submitted to Parliament no less than three months prior to the start of the fiscal year. It also notes that budgets should include a detailed commentary on each revenue and expenditure program, the comparative information on actual revenue expenditure during the past year, and a forecast going forward. If some of that had been contained within the 400 to close to 1,000 pages that we have gone through with respect to Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, there might have been a different response.

We were troubled this past spring when Bill C-38 came before the House and then committee. We were troubled with its content and stated our problems we saw with respect to that, but we were also very troubled by the process. With Bill C-45, we see an extension of the process that is generated when there is an omnibus bill that addresses too many areas and tries to do too much, much of which, we would argue, is not related to budgetary matters. Bill C-38 amended 72 pieces of legislation. I understand that Bill C-45 addresses 70 pieces of legislation.

Let us picture the meetings we had with our six to eight expert witnesses, good souls who gave up their time to come and provide testimony at committee. Each member had five minutes to ask a question. From those six to eight people who spoke on different subject matters we had to select who we wanted to hear from. These were witnesses who could cross-converse and offer other testimony. They were witnesses from all over the place. I do not think that offers MPs of all parties the opportunity to proceed with the due diligence that is expected of us in this place by the people who sent us here.

I have argued that, due to the size of the bill and the amount of changes made in such a short period, it was nearly offensive to Parliament. I still stand by that comment. I have said numerous times in this place that committees should be in place to improve legislation. Members should think about that statement. The official opposition brought forward 72 amendments, none of which were frivolous. Other parties chose to bring in thousands, some of which were reasonable. However, the amendments we brought forward were intended to improve this legislation but not one was accepted by the government side.

The problem is the my-way-or-the-highway approach to the governance of our country and to the changing of legislation. The advice that came from many people on issues around the environment, in particular, raised grave concerns. Those concerns, in my opinion, were ignored by the government side. It is difficult when the government is not prepared to give due consideration to the opinions and amendments offered by the other side.

That brings us to a place where we need to face a hard reality. I listened to the member for Winnipeg North go on about how the NDP was hand in glove with the government, trying to politicize the situation. The hard reality is, whether we like it on this side of the House or not, that the government has a majority and in committee it has the ability to shut down the opposition. When we offered our 72 amendments, the Conservatives' decision was that they were not acceptable. No one can tell me that out of the 72 amendments not one amendment could have been accepted. I believe a majority of them were certainly worthy of being accepted.

I was going to say something about the member for Winnipeg North but I do not want to get too partisan. The one comment I will make is that the remarks in that member's speech earlier were vested purely and simply on political rhetoric. We should be past that point in this place.

In its content, Bill C-45 has a large variety of very complex issues. I alluded to that when I talked about expert witnesses. We need to consider, for example, the overhaul of the Canada Grain Act and the changes to the scientific research and experimental development or the SR and ED tax. I thought we had put forward a reasoned amendment. The proposal from the government moved, not necessarily in a bad way, but counter to the advice we were getting from people who testified, so we suggested that the government delay it for five years which would allow Canadian businesses time to plan.

One of the crucial things for businesses today is to plan their cash flow and research and do it in a very careful manner because we are inches away from a potential recession. They know that, they understand that and they realize the risks they face. To my mind, that was a reasonable suggestion on behalf of the official opposition and I am baffled as to why it was not received.

I will now switch to the content of the bill and we think in terms of the areas of responsibility that the committees are tasked with in this place. To my mind, an omnibus bill takes away a committee's ability to offer its opinions, due diligence and evaluation of the portion of this omnibus bill that really belongs in a specific committee, environment being the clearest example I can give, and then it is sent to a different committee, such as the finance committee.

I sit on the finance committee and I am far from an expert on the environment. I go to that committee thinking I can bring something to it. When there are changes to the Canada Grain Act, the Fisheries Act or the Environmental Protection Act, they should be sent to the committees that are tasked with hearing testimony from people with expertise so they can interpret the testimony to the benefit of the bill.

As a result of the fact that I feel this bill is blatantly undemocratic, I will not be supporting it.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my Bloc Québécois colleague who just spoke. Obviously, it is extremely important to speak on behalf of Quebeckers here in Ottawa. That is what we intend to do, that is what we have been doing for some time now, and that is what we will do with regard to this bill by introducing specific amendments that affect Quebec in particular.

These amendments also affect other regions. Employment insurance is not exclusive to Quebec. However, my colleague who just spoke gave examples of problems with regard to tourism and agriculture in his region. These types of problems exist throughout Quebec. They also exist in my riding. I will speak about them a little bit later in my speech.

We have presented substantive amendments to emphasize the importance of preserving Quebec's assets. The government wants to make cuts to those assets, by introducing an omnibus bill. We do not understand why the government does not agree to split up this omnibus bill, which the media refer to as a mammoth bill. This has now become the way to describe the Conservative Party's bills. First we had Bill C-38 and now we have Bill C-45.

The countless pages of the bill are flooded with a host of measures that, in the end, will have drastic effects on the everyday lives of Canadians, but people will not find about those effects until later because we do not have time to debate this bill. The government is imposing gag orders. The Conservatives have now imposed about 30 gag orders on bills. Unfortunately, I expect that there will be another one for Bill C-45, and we are lucky to have a chance to speak before that happens.

As a result of these gag orders, parliamentarians are not able to properly debate this type of bill and are being muzzled in committee. A little while ago, I learned from a Liberal colleague that the NDP had accepted or overlooked the time allocation motion. When that happens, the amendments proposed by the other parties are not debated in committee.

Clearly, there is a problem with regard to democracy in this Parliament. This problem is exacerbated by the attitude of the Conservatives, who refuse to present reforms one at a time so that members can debate them properly and vote on them. Whether we agree or disagree, I respect members' decisions because that is democracy. However, we have to be able to have a minimum amount of debate and make Canadians aware of what is happening.

Mr. Speaker, everyone here is an MP, including you. Many people are coming to my riding office to talk about the changes to employment insurance. We are learning more about these changes every day. Why? Because we did not have a proper debate about them in this place. The minister and the government simply refused to split the omnibus bill, in order to create a separate, proper bill that we could debate properly.

Therefore, we are proposing a series of amendments so that we can at least discuss some of the issues. I hope that the parties, and especially the government, will listen to reason and accept these amendments.

My colleague just spoke about research and development. Members are also talking about amendments that affect employment insurance, the environment and labour standards. I proposed an amendment concerning research and development because in Bill C-45 the government has decided to decrease its support from 65% to 55%. That is a substantial decrease in research and development tax credits. Naturally, this will affect investments in the manufacturing and forestry sectors by Quebec businesses.

We know what this Conservative government did to the forestry sector, even though the Minister of Transport is from Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, in the Roberval area, where forestry is vitally important. During the recession that began in 2008, this government favoured Ontario's automotive industry. I am not saying that it should not have. However, billions of dollars were poured into the auto industry while Quebec's forestry industry received peanuts.

Now, the government has introduced an omnibus bill that cuts research and development. We know just how important R&D is for the forestry industry. The government's initial response to the problems in the forestry industry was unfair. Now, it is compounding the problems.

My region, which covers a large part of central Quebec and the Eastern Townships, has a forestry industry and many small and medium-sized businesses. There are also big businesses such as Cascades, in Kingsey Falls, which employs more than 2,000 people in Quebec, the United States and Europe.

It has been in the recycling business since 1964. It makes cardboard, paper, and so on. Pretty much everyone has, at some point, used a Cascades product. Obviously, research and development are the lifeblood of this kind of manufacturing business. The government will probably say that this is not a very big cut, but tax credits are extremely important for the growth of businesses in the sustainable development sector, extraordinary job-creating businesses like Cascades. This is a harsh blow, particularly at a time when the Canadian dollar is so high.

Again, the government will probably say that this is not its responsibility, but when everyone is struggling with the effects of an economic crisis—such as the high-flying loonie—the government has no business trying to drown companies that are managing to keep their heads above water. I am not talking about Cascades. I am talking about all of the companies whose research and development over the years have made them what they are today.

That is especially true for Quebec, and that is why we proposed this amendment. I hope that everyone will consider this matter carefully before agreeing to these cuts. The government is being penny-wise and pound foolish when it should be doing the opposite. It still does not get that investing in research and development pays off. I do not understand how a government that claims to be so focused on the economy can propose measures as unfair as those in Bill C-45.

Some members talked about employment insurance. My Bloc Québécois colleague discussed it in some detail, but I would like to reiterate the importance of protecting what we have. I am not talking about wanting to collect employment insurance. I am talking about making sure that people working for businesses in the tourism and agricultural sectors can do what everyone wants to do, which is keep working close to home. Are the people making these decisions from major urban centres exclusively? It certainly seems that way. Employment insurance affects them too, but the new measures will primarily affect the regions.

I do not think this is what we should do, but in Switzerland, farmers are paid to leave sheep in the fields, not because they are raising sheep and producing wool, but because tourists like seeing sheep in the fields. I am not saying this is what we should do, but some places are aware of the importance of land use.

My colleague spoke about the Gaspé. My father comes from a municipality in his riding, Causapscal. He was born in agricultural area where there is a lot of tourism. As the member pointed out, winter comes every year and there is a period during which seasonal businesses unfortunately do not operate. But as soon as tourist season returns, people line up to take in the beautiful landscapes and all that these regions have to offer tourists.

We have a choice to make: do we want to shut down these regions and ensure that there are no skilled workers able to work there, or do we want to adjust the employment insurance program so that it is fairer to everyone and so that we can protect these jobs that are so important to keeping the regions going? If we shut down these regions, everyone will end up in big cities and major centres, and then we will definitely have a problem with employment insurance.

I wanted to talk about other amendments, but I urge my colleagues in the House of Commons to examine the important amendments very carefully. If we are stuck with Bill C-45 because this is a majority government, we could at least make amendments to improve it before it is passed.

[Jean-François Fortin, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to share my opinion on this omnibus bill. I am very happy to speak, but I am very unhappy that the Conservatives are once again trying to shove a bill down Quebeckers' throats that is going to be harmful not only for urban and rural areas but for all Quebeckers.

One of the amendments that I proposed, the one I am speaking about, deals specifically with the federal government's desire to reduce tax credits that are useful to research and development.

For companies and research centres in my area, in eastern Quebec, the Conservatives plan to make very harmful and risky cuts to investment tax credits by cutting the scientific research and experimental development program.

Economic diversification is essential for our region. The Conservatives' cuts to investment tax credits will harm a program that is used by companies that hope to develop new expertise through the college centres for technology transfer. This program allows Quebec companies to claim a tax credit when they sign a contract with the college centres for technology transfer. It therefore encourages these companies to try to diversify and find ways of developing new niches through research, development and creativity.

This program provides direct assistance to companies but also provides indirect assistance to all the centres in eastern Quebec. These centres, which are located throughout the province—and there are eight in my area—help companies to diversify their expertise in more traditional areas. For example, the Merinov technology transfer centre in the Gaspé works in the area of fisheries; the Innovation maritime centre in Rimouski works in the marine industry; the Service de recherche et d'expertise en transformation des produits forestiers de l'Est du Québec in Amqui, in my riding, and the Centre d'expérimentation et de développement en forêt boréale in Baie-Comeau on the north shore, work in the area of forestry; and the Bioproducts Development Center in La Pocatière works in the area of agrifood processing.

These centres play a vital role in strengthening our traditional economy, which is experiencing a downturn. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are lowering tax credits. Thus, the businesses that traditionally worked with the technology transfer centres will lose some of the incentive to diversify. Solutions Novika, in la Pocatière, works in industrial manufacturing and is a very pertinent example.

These cuts will also have an impact on sustainable development. For example, the Centre d'initiation à la recherche et d'aide au développement durable, which is based in Carleton-Sur-Mer, is a technology transfer centre that promoted its services to businesses with tax credits.

But let us rise above the ideological differences we sometimes have with the Conservatives. The Conservatives say that they promote the regions and, according to their slogan “Our Region in Power”, which they used extensively in the last election campaign, they were there to develop the regions.

The regions feel very misunderstood by the Conservatives. I urge them to remove this part of their omnibus bill, as it will be detrimental to innovation spurred by research and development.

I have to speak out about all the changes to the employment insurance program that will hurt the regions. The government laid the groundwork with the previous omnibus bill, Bill C-38. And now Bill C-45 will finish the job, as we say. At present, this program no longer meets the needs of workers who lose their jobs, especially in regions such as mine where seasonal employment is vital to the economy. I am speaking on behalf of workers who lose their jobs at a time of year when there are no more jobs to be had.

The Conservatives do not understand that winter comes around every year in some corners of our great region and that it is impossible for forestry and fishery workers to work during that time. They are trying to penalize these workers by telling them that if they do not try to find a job outside of their region, their benefits will be cut.

This directly targets the regions and drains their pool of skilled workers. This can put a strain on families and on our region's development, but also on the employers that need skilled workers when they are ready to hire again.

The Conservatives are being short-sighted with this very harmful reform. I urge the minister—as I have done many times—to reconsider the reforms she is currently making to the EI program. First and foremost, we can understand the need for a program to help workers get through a difficult time in their lives—one that they did not ask for. No one wants to be unemployed. Forestry, fishery and tourism workers are very important to the regions.

Tourism will be drastically affected by this reform. Not too long ago, I was speaking to a business owner in my region who runs an arts centre. He employs skilled workers, whom he trained. He has diversified his operations over the years. He told me that he had development projects that he invested a great deal of energy into, but that he was not sure if he was going to be able to make his business grow, develop and prosper, because he was not sure that his skilled workers—which represent the determining factor for him—would come back. We are talking about his customer service and his business's reputation.

In a very large region like ours, many representatives from municipalities, businesses, community groups and development agencies have spoken out about how they do not understand the Conservatives' plan. They are wondering—and I have asked the Conservatives this many times—if the Conservatives truly want to shut down the regions. I think we have the answer.

The omnibus bill targets many different things, including the environment. The federal government is once again lowering its environmental criteria. The leader of the Green Party made an eloquent speech about this just now.

The St. Lawrence River, which runs through my riding, is an extremely busy waterway, with rivers flowing into it and ships providing marine transportation. Relaxing the criteria and decreasing protections could cause changes to the quality of waterways, which would open the door to potential dangers. I am talking here about the St. Lawrence River, the sea.

On that note, I would like to talk about the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, a research centre that, since last spring, has been affected by cuts resulting from the Conservatives' desire to cut back on science, to reduce access to knowledge. This knowledge is embarrassing to the Conservatives. The research conducted by the scientists at the institute makes it possible to determine the causes and effects of dumping toxic substances into the river.

The Conservatives are directly attacking science under the pretext of wanting to make cuts. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans must do its part and cut its budget. As a result, organizations such as the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, the largest francophone research centre at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, are paying the price.

I will certainly have another opportunity to talk more about this, since I am going to ask a question today during question period about very specific techniques, extremely precise cuts that may sometimes appear to be innocuous, for example the elimination of two librarian positions and the closure of the Maurice Lamontagne Institute's library.

These cuts are planned and serve to directly promote the Conservative ideology of curbing access to knowledge.

My time has run out. I would like to thank my colleagues for listening to my comments about this omnibus bill. I hope that the Conservatives will accept the opposition's amendments.

The last time, they ignored all the amendments, so I urge them to accept my amendment.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question.

In my view, the motivation behind the huge changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act is to eliminate the protection of most of Canada's lakes, rivers and waterways. It is not meant only for pipelines, because before Bill C-38 was passed, developers had to obtain a permit issued by Transport Canada for any pipelines that went through navigable waters. Since Bill C-38 was passed, pipelines are no longer included in the groups known as works and undertakings.

Pipelines were specifically excluded in Bill C-38.

The decision in Bill C-45 to reduce the protection of navigable waters has to do with mines, dams and all other aspects that present a danger to Canada's waterways.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to yet another budget omnibus bill. I suppose I should not use the word “pleased”.

I want to first make a few comments on the subject of omnibus bills and what we have seen in this one year. We essentially have seen budget 2012 used as an excuse for the tabling of 900 pages of legislation largely unrelated to the budget itself. This exercise is both illegitimate and undemocratic in combining 70 different bills in Bill C-38, allegedly related to budget 2012, and now 60 different bills in Bill C-45.

I have fewer amendments today than I had tabled for Bill C-38 and Canadians might want to know the difference. Bill C-38, while a couple of pages shorter, did far more damage to the fabric of environmental laws in Canada. Bill C-38 took an axe to our Fisheries Act, destroying habitat protections; , repealed the Environmental Assessment Act; and put in place a substitute piece of legislation that would be an embarrassment to a developing country. It was absolutely abominable.

In Bill C-38, we also saw the explicit removal of pipelines as a category of obstruction under the Navigable Waters Protection Act. I would have thought that the Conservative agenda toward pipelines was satisfied with Bill C-38, but we go on to Bill C-45 and see that the attack on environmental laws includes the evisceration of the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

In Bill C-38, I made the case, as members may recall, to ask the Speaker for a ruling that the bill was out of order and not properly put together. I think we need to revisit the rules and to create some rules t around omnibus bills because this is clearly illegitimate.

In Bill C-45, we have proof of how appalling the process was in Bill C-38 in that some of what we are voting on this week are remedies for errors made in the drafting of Bill C-38. These were obvious errors that could have been caught if the normal legislative process had taken place.

Now we are asked, in Bill C-45, to correct drafting errors made in Bill C-38 where the English does not accord with the French, or where, under the Fisheries Act, they forgot to protect certain aspects of navigation through the fisheries corridors where there are weirs and other fishing apparatus. We also have changes to the Environmental Assessment Act because of poor drafting the last time around. Why was the drafting poor? It was because 70 different laws were put together in one piece of legislation and forced through the House without a willingness to accept, in 425 pages of legislation, a single amendment.

This is not proper parliamentary process. No previous Privy Council in the history of this country has ever equated an amendment to a bill between first reading and royal assent as some sort of political defeat that must be avoided at all costs. This is a level of parliamentary partisanship that takes leave of its senses. It is essentially a form of parliamentary insanity for the government to decide that it cannot possibly accept an amendment from first reading to royal assent and then to come back and give us this which finally provides some of the corrections.

I will speak to my amendments relatively quickly. I want to stress that neither Bill C-38 nor Bill C-45 are really about jobs, r growth or the budget. I will highlight the things in Bill C-45 that I hope to amend because they will hurt jobs.

Bill C-45, the omnibus budget bill, would hurt jobs in tourism through this quite extraordinary proposal, which is not a proposal but will be passed into law unless we are able to persuade Conservative members of Parliament that they should vote for what they think is right and not how they are told, ordered and instructed to vote.

When tourism in this country is such an important part of our economy, it makes no sense to pass into law a requirement that tourists from around the world, from countries that do not currently require a visa to come to Canada, regardless of whether they have any aspersions on their character, whether they are considered to be a risk, every tourist to Canada, except those from the United States because of our agreements over a shared border security process, would need to fill out a form to find out if they are allowed to come here for a vacation. This is a terrible change and it would significantly hurt tourism.

Another terrible change is reducing the tax credit, the SR and ED, the scientific research and experimental development tax credit. This is where Canada lags. If we listen to the economists, there is tremendous concern about our competitiveness and productivity, which is directly related to research and development, and to why we need to have the scientific research and experimental development tax credit available to Canadians. We think it would be a big mistake to reduce that.

I will now talk about what I like in Bill C-45. The assumption is that every opposition member hates everything in Bill C-45. That is one of the reasons I object to omnibus bills. There are measures here that I would vote for were they not coupled together with so much destruction. I would vote for the actual budgetary measures that one finds at the beginning of Bill C-45, the tax credits to encourage investment in clean energy and energy efficiency. They are too small but I am certainly not against them. Rather, I am for them.

I would vote for the closing of some of the tax credits to encourage oil and gas development, such as the Atlantic investment tax credit for oil, gas and mining, and for the corporate mineral exploration and development tax credit. I would also vote for the closing of the loopholes in transfer pricing and foreign affiliate dumping that have been used by corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Those are the measures I would vote for.

What deeply disturbs me in this bill, in addition to the measure that I had mentioned to create a new requirement for filling out a form to come to Canada under immigration, is the elimination of the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission. My amendments would keep that commission in place.

As well, we could do more with the hiring credit for small business.

The changes to the Fisheries Act are largely to repair mistakes made by the Conservatives to the Fisheries Act that had weakened it. They are now fixing some of what they did not need to weaken so desperately. However, we have suggested an amendment to allow for the definition of “aboriginal fisheries”, on the basis of first nations advice, to ensure that the definition is fully respected and takes into account the constitutional and treaty rights of first nations in any definition of “aboriginal fisheries”.

Before moving on to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, I wish to speak to the Canada Grain Act. My amendments oppose a move to take away the independent bond actors in terms of looking at Canadian grains. The third party inspection that is now being proposed would create a conflict of interest between the private sector and the grain companies. We think that would be a mistake. We have certainly learned from the XL Foods beef scandal that it is important to ensure that inspections are truly independent.

The bulk of my amendments deal with the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The Conservatives have taken three runs at it through three different omnibus bills, the first being in 2009. The objective definition of what is “navigable” was changed to a discretionary definition wherein “navigable” would mean whatever the Minister of Transport says that it means.

In Bill C-38, just this past spring, the Conservatives took another run at the Navigable Waters Protection Act with the specific exclusion of pipelines as works or undertakings. Pipelines are no longer in the Navigable Waters Protection Act. These new amendments are certainly not about pipelines because the Conservatives took care of that in Bill C-38.

What this does is it takes an act that we have had since 1882 that directly comes from the Constitution of this country, that being the federal responsibility for navigation. The Navigable Waters Protection Act, which was brought in by Sir John A. Macdonald, has protected the rights of Canadians to put a canoe or kayak in any body of water and paddle from there to wherever they want to go. As Canadians, we have a right to navigation. This is now being superseded with the false story that there is somehow a burdensome regulatory amount of red tape that offends people in municipalities. Therefore, we need to blow apart the Navigable Waters Protection Act to say that a body of water is only navigable if it can be found in the schedule at the back of the act. Ironically, the 99.5% of Canadian waters that are not listed there are not ones near municipalities, cottages and people who want to build wharfs, but are in our wilderness areas where, without the Navigable Waters Protection Act, nothing stands in the way of obstructions to navigations for Canadians.

The government will tell us that is all right because Canadians have a common law right. If people have a couple of hundred thousand dollars and are prepared to go to the Supreme Court of Canada to defend their right to use a waterway that is not listed, they can do that. However, this is an egregious abdication of responsibility for a federal head of power that no other level of government has the right to step up and fill the void.

I urge my colleagues on all sides of the House to give due consideration to these serious and important amendments.

Report Stage Motions—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Before delivering a ruling regarding the report stage of Bill C-45, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, the Chair would like to take a moment to respond briefly to certain arguments raised yesterday by the hon. House leaders of the government and the official opposition. A more comprehensive ruling, dealing with their points in detail, will be delivered at a later date. Today I will limit my comments to only a few key points.

Yesterday, the hon. opposition House leader raised a point of order about the manner in which votes were applied in June of this year at the report stage of Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures. He expressed concern that, as a result of the grouping of votes at report stage, members may, in essence, have had to cast a single vote that would apply to several motions, some of which they supported and some of which they opposed.

Let me say at the outset that analyzing report stage motions for purposes of selection, grouping for debate and voting is never an easy task and represents a significant challenge for the Chair, particularly in cases such as the present one where a very large number of motions have been placed on notice. As I stated in my ruling of June 11, 2012 in relation to Bill C-38:

In my selection of motions, in their grouping and in the organization of the votes, I have made every effort to respect both the wishes of the House and my responsibility to organize the consideration of report stage motions in a fair and balanced manner.

The Chair is being asked to consider the suggestion that every motion to delete a clause should be voted on separately. This would diverge from our practice where, for voting purposes where appropriate, a long series of motions to delete are grouped for a vote. Since the effect of deleting a clause at report stage is, for all practical purposes, the same as negativing a clause in committee, to change our practice to a one deletion, one vote approach could be seen as a repetition of the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill in committee, something which the House is specifically enjoined against in the notes to Standing Orders 76(5) and 76.1(5), which state that the report stage is not meant to be a reconsideration of the committee stage.

That said, though, it has been a long-standing practice for the Chair to select motions to delete clauses at report stage. I reminded the House of our practices in that regard in my ruling in relation to Bill C-38 when I stated, “motions to delete clauses have always been found to be in order and it must also be noted have been selected at report stage”.

To provide just two examples, I would refer members to a ruling by Speaker Milliken regarding the report stage of Bill C-50 on May 30, 2008, which can be found at page 6341 of the Debates of the House of Commons, as well as my own ruling regarding the report stage of Bill C-9, which can be found at page 2971 of the Debates for May 26, 2010.

In the absence of any specific guidance from the House with regard to motions to delete and other matters raised in the points of order, the Speaker cannot unilaterally modify the well-established current practice. Accordingly, with regard to the report stage of Bill C-45, the Chair will be guided by my past rulings and, in particular, by the ruling on Bill C-38.

Report Stage Motions

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of important points that will bear upon your ruling. I hope you did not take that too personally from the government House leader. It was a little bit of a procedural smack-down of your previous ruling on Bill C-38. I know that it was not meant personally, but boy, he did not appreciate your ruling before.

In terms of the disrepute of the House and using procedural games to do it, this comes from a government that prorogued Parliament to avoid a confidence vote and then lectures the House on how it holds Parliament in high regard.

The selection for debate my hon. friend spent so much of his time on was not our point at all. The point we were making was that, of course, you have the selection as to which motions come. Our entire premise, if he had been listening, was on the idea of what gets grouped together. I raised a very specific point with the member, with you and with the House to say that in the groupings last spring, many votes were put together that caused the members of Parliament to vote singly on multiple issues on which they may have had multiple opinions.

The example I used in my speech, which I know my hon. colleague would understand and agree with, was that a single vote cast on changing the language in the French text in the bill was also connected and became the same vote as the definition of a navigable water. Any member of Parliament from the government or the opposition who may have agreed with the first part of the vote and disagreed with the second was allowed to vote only once.

The point of the groupings is to allow members to vote freely and fairly. I know the government House leader has been very helpful, in his own eyes, in now grouping all the different amendments for you, Mr. Speaker. I know that he is often inconvenienced by the cost and the burdensome nature of democracy. However, I will remind him that receiving only 39% of the vote does not give the government somehow the mandate to run roughshod over our Parliament and our parliamentary procedure.

The evil the member talked about and quoted often, and this is important as you seek to group amendments, with respect to vexatious amendments, were the 471 amendments moved by the Reform Party against the Nisga'a treaty. This is now coming from many members who were in that movement and in that party who did not like the treaty and moved commas and semicolons and periods around to try to delay the work of the House.

There are many things Canadians can contemplate. However, the outright hypocrisy coming from Conservatives and former Reform members in saying that they do not like the rules that they themselves applied so vexatiously in the House of Commons in trying to deny the first modern-day treaty in Canadian history is passing strange.

I will end on this. Democracy is from time to time a complicated and difficult process. It can be a difficult system. That is hard for the Conservative government to contemplate, but it is a much better system than the other options available for governing ourselves.

It seems to me that when we gave examples that the groupings are important to allow members to vote freely and fairly, the government House leader chose to ignore all of those things. It is the Speaker's choice as to which ones are vexatious and inconvenient. I said that in my comments to the House. If they are vexatious, they should not be chosen and selected for votes. What I did say was that in a grouping of these amendments, it is important that members are able to vote freely.

It seems to me that the government helped make our point about the amendments, none of which have been moved. Many are serious and substantive amendments to improve, in this case, a 450-page piece of legislation. In the previous bill of some 425 pages, the government adopted none. Conservatives did not change a comma, a period or a semicolon or a single word of text. Somehow the government was able to create perfectly more than 900 pages of legislation without a single error or omission. It got it all right. We know that not to be true, because for Bill C-38, the first omnibus bill, which was moved in the spring, Conservatives are now having to make corrections in Bill C-45, some months later, before they have even had a chance to enact the legislation. Therefore, were they perfect? No.

Maybe from time to time the government may learn that slow and steady slide from feeling that they are somehow ordained with this perfection crosses into arrogance and is ultimately an allergy to Canadians. They want a government that is humble. They want a government that from time to time listens and does not believe that in all cases every piece of legislation it has written is perfect. It has already shown time and again that it writes bad legislation. Conservatives should use this process to make better their imperfect attempts at reforming Canadian law.

Mr. Speaker, this is a question about grouping, not a question about which motions you choose to select, on which my hon. colleague spent much of his time. If he had listened and understood this point of order, he would also agree that while messy and while cumbersome, as democracy can be, we must abide by this principle, whatever our political orientation, because that is what Canadians expect at the least.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the decision that you will have to make regarding the upcoming treatment of Bill C-45 at report stage is a particularly important one, because your determination will largely settle whether the opposition can effectively make a farce of the procedures of the House and shut down the legislative process, or whether you will give actual meaning to the intent of the Standing Orders and allow the business of the country to be done in a meaningful and democratic fashion.

I will refresh everyone's memory of what we are talking about. We are talking about the interpretation of Standing Order 76(5), which relates to amendments at report stage to any legislation. In particular, we are now talking about the budget implementation bill. This Standing Order sets out the Speaker's power to select and combine amendments at this stage. It states in part, “The Speaker shall have the power to select or combine amendments or clauses to be proposed at the report stage...”. The opposition House leader is advising you, Mr. Speaker, to amend unilaterally this Standing Order to render it ineffective. That should not be the case.

If there is any doubt as to how this should be interpreted, a note was added by previous governments, not a Conservative government but a Liberal government, that reads as follows:

The Speaker will not normally select for consideration any motion previously ruled out of order in committee.... The Speaker will normally only select motions that were not or could not be presented in committee. A motion, previously defeated in committee, will only be selected if the Speaker judges it to be of such exceptional significance as to warrant a further consideration at the report stage. The Speaker will not normally select for separate debate a repetitive series of motions which are interrelated and, in making the selection, shall consider whether individual Members will be able to express their concerns during the debate on another motion.

The most important recent addition states:

For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

We recall that there was some public comment after the ruling earlier this spring and the number of amendments allowed. Here I refer to comment by the actual individuals who were involved in the preparation of that section and the changes that were proposed to the Standing Orders. They expressed some disappointment at the ruling that was made and thought that the powers were there for the Speaker to prevent the abuse that we saw earlier this spring, when the House was tied up for many hours by hundreds of votes, none of which changed a single comma, all of which were clearly and evidently an abuse of the process and a massive cost to Canadians in terms of the operation of the House and an inconvenience to members who had other business to do for the purposes of this country.

I will point out that the Standing Orders and the powers in them have a history to them; they do not exist separately and apart. If we review O'Brien and Bosc, there is some reflection on this history at page 777, which states:

In 1955, the House amended its Standing Orders to reflect this practice.

That referred to a previous practice of concurrence in amendments from committee. As O'Brien and Bosc note:

It was agreed that amendments had to be presented to the House and that the motion for concurrence in the amendments had to be disposed of forthwith before the bill was ordered for debate at third reading at the next sitting of the House. The effect of these amendments to the Standing Orders was to eliminate what then constituted the equivalent of report stage. In 1968, the House undertook a thorough revision of its legislative process with the result that all bills, except for those based on supply or ways and means motions, were thenceforth to be referred to standing or special committees, and would not be reconsidered by a Committee of the Whole House. In addition, the House restored report stage [that was the trade-off] and empowered the Speaker to select and group amendments.

That was the management aspect of it.

Therefore, in restoring report stage, effectively, it was not done carte blanche, so that everything had to be considered. There was a recognition that there were some risks. That is why the Speaker was given powers to allow the House to continue to function, powers to limit an abuse through procedural measures and unnecessary, frivolous, vexatious or duplicative amendments.

O'Brien and Bosc go on to state:

In recommending that report stage be restored, the 1968 Special Committee on Procedure believed that stage essential in order to provide all Members of the House, and not merely members of the committee, with an opportunity to express their views on bills under consideration and to propose amendments, where appropriate. For all that, the intent of the Committee was not for this stage to become a repetition of committee stage.

I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that with the amendments we have seen on notice so far, nothing could be closer to an effort to replicate exactly what happened at committee, or could have happened at committee. That was clearly not the intent of establishing report stage.

Report stage was to allow for that rare, unique and relatively uncommon circumstance where an idea had not occurred to someone at committee but that here in the House some felt that an amendment was appropriate, novel and different and sought to bring it forward. However, there is nothing novel in the amendments that we see on notice. There is nothing innovative. There is nothing significantly different from what has been proposed or could have been proposed earlier.

Finally, I will go to the most recent change.

Most recently, in 2001, an additional paragraph was added to the above-mentioned note. This occurred in response to the flooding of the notice paper with hundreds of amendments to certain controversial bills. The new text emphasized that the Speaker would not select motions that were “repetitive, frivolous, vexatious or serve only to prolong debate unnecessarily”. Those are overwhelmingly the amendments that we see on the order paper today. The new provision was designed to respond to the evil that was already occurring and undermining the process of the House.

When changes are made, they are generally responding to a problem that exists. Those new powers exist to deal with that. Mr. Speaker, I submit that they should be exercised by you.

When we reflect on what has happened already in the committee proceedings on the budgetary policy of the government, including ways and means Motion No. 7, the first budget implementation bill, Bill C-38, as well as the present legislation, there have already been almost 4,600 votes on the government's budgetary policy.

How much has changed as a result of all of those votes and amendments to what has been proposed by the government? Not one comma, not one word. That is the clearest evidence that the current amendments represent an abuse of process only designed to try to delay and be vexatious and prolong matters.

My submissions are centred on five points.

First, the clause deletion motions are a repetition of committee proceedings and merely seek to prolong report stage proceedings and, therefore, should not be selected.

Second, in the alternative, if the clause deletion motions are selected, they should be grouped in a manner that recognizes the anticipated will of the House.

Third, the other amendments from the New Democrats and Liberals should not be selected because they were presented at committee, or could have been presented at committee.

Fourth, some of the motions by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands should not be selected on the grounds that they were presented at committee or are similar to amendments dealt with at committee, or that they infringe on the financial prerogative of the Crown.

Fifth, the other report stage amendments from the independent members of Parliament must be grouped in a way that prevents the entire House from being detained in a marathon of votes originated at the whim of, effectively, a single member of Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, as with any bill pending at report stage, you are required to make certain decisions under, among other provisions, Standing Order 76.1(5). Again, this is the one I read earlier about your having the power to select or combine amendments or clauses to be proposed at report stage.

It is in this spirit that I do tender this advice given that the government is scheduling that report stage of Bill C-45 will start tomorrow. Mr. Speaker, I can appreciate that you have a lot to consider today and this evening. I hope you do not have any plans.

Given the duplicated notices from multiple members of each of the two recognized caucuses, for ease of reference, I will refer to those from the members for Winnipeg North, Westmount—Ville-Marie, and Kings—Hants as the Liberal motions, and those from the members for Parkdale—High Park, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, Brossard—La Prairie and Hamilton East—Stoney Creek as the NDP motions.

I would say that the motions to delete clauses are not an effort to amend the bill, but merely repeat what we saw at committee stage. The effect of the adoption of all of the proposed motions to delete clauses would effectively be to eviscerate the bill.

On October 30, the House adopted Bill C-45 at second reading, thereby agreeing to its principle. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance reported the bill without amendment to the House on November 26, after consideration of each and every clause.

It may be justifiable in a minority Parliament for the Chair to accept any questions for the House to decide, because it is difficult to predict the intentions of the majority of members. This is not the case in a majority Parliament in general. There is no reason to substantiate an assumption that the House would use report stage to reverse itself in the decision it took at second reading of Bill C-45. In fact, the course of the almost 4,600 votes so far on the budgetary policy of the government established this quite clearly. I do not think anyone is in any suspense as to the outcome of the number of votes that we have. It is only a suspenseful question of how long the endurance test will be of the votes we will put to the House.

I submit that the report stage motions to delete the preponderance of the clauses in the bill effectively seek not only to reverse the outcome of the second reading vote on the bill, but also constitute a repetition of committee stage of the bill. As I said, that is particularly the case since each clause did carry separately in the clause-by-clause votes.

The second paragraph of the note that is in our Standing Orders accompanying Standing Order 76.1(5) with respect to the Speaker's power to select amendments states in part, “It is not meant to be a reconsideration of the committee stage of a bill”. I repeat that: report stage is not to be a repeat of the consideration that occurred at committee.

On February 27, 2001 the House added this paragraph to the note accompanying Standing Order 76.1(5):

For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings....

It then continues on about the British rules.

I read to the House the excerpt from O'Brien and Bosc about the circumstances where there was an abuse with the flooding of amendments. Therefore, we have seen it happen before. We have seen that Parliament has decided that the kind of abuse that occurred in the past should not be allowed to be repeated and, hence, it changed our Standing Orders to reflect that such abuse should not be permitted and that you, Mr. Speaker, have the power to prevent it and to prevent the undue delay.

In the present case we have again seen the notice paper flooded. Today's notice paper lists some 1,662 report stage motions respecting Bill C-45. I am not a betting man, but I am willing to bet anyone in the House that I do not foresee any of them passing.

We know that most of the motions have already been considered at committee. We know that the House has approved overwhelmingly the budget, the budgetary policy of the House and this particular legislation at second reading. By breaking these out into multiple deletion clauses and other frivolous and vexatious amendments, nothing is being achieved but a waste of time, resources and the discrediting of our parliamentary system.

I respectfully submit that the Liberal and NDP report stage motions taken as a whole simply constitute an attempt to reverse the decision of the House at second reading of the bill, but to do so in ultra-slow motion. These amendments would be a reconsideration of committee stage and are of a nature that will merely serve to prolong unnecessarily the proceedings at report stage. Ultimately, if a member seeks to oppose the entirety or the preponderance of a piece of legislation, that member's recourse should lie in voting against the motion on concurrence in the bill in report stage, not in detaining the House through round-the-clock voting.

While your ruling, Mr. Speaker, on June 11, 2012 on Bill C-38 held that clause deletion motions have always been found to be in order, and it must also be noted to have been selected at report stage, I argue that this case can be distinguished. In the present case we are dealing with a second bill to implement provisions of a budget tabled in Parliament. Therefore these clause deletion motions should not find favour under the vigorous exercise contemplated by Speaker Milliken.

I will point out that in the alternative, if selected, certainly these clause deletion motions need to be grouped in an efficient manner. Should you decline to accept my advice, Mr. Speaker, and choose to select those clause deletion motions, I would urge that you use your authority and combine and group them in a fashion that puts them to the House in a sensible and efficient fashion.

I propose that the clause deletions, should they be selected against my advice, be grouped for voting purposes into 10 subsets of economic policy. Under this approach the House would have 10 separate votes on the issue of whether to remove from Bill C-45 the government's proposals in these areas of economic policy:

First, taxation measures, those being any motions to delete clause 1 or clauses in part 1 of the bill.

Second, financial sector measures, those being any motions to delete clauses in divisions 1 and 3 of part 4.

Third, transportation and border measures, those being any motions to delete clauses in divisions 2, 5, 12, 16, 18 and 20 of part 4 of the bill.

Fourth, resource development provisions, those being any motions to delete clauses in divisions 4 and 21 of part 4.

Fifth, aboriginal land designation provisions, those being any motions to delete clauses in division 8 of part 4.

Sixth, labour items, those being any motions to delete clauses in divisions 10 and 11 of part 4.

Seventh, amendments to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act, those being any motions to delete clauses in division 13 of part 4.

Eighth, measures related to employment insurance, those being any motions to delete clauses in divisions 15 and 22 of part 4.

Ninth, agricultural items, those being any motions to delete clauses in division 19 of part 4.

Tenth, public sector pension reforms, those being any motions to delete clauses in division 23 of part 4.

This would allow for a broad range of votes on a broad range of topics where the opposition, clearly, is seeking to delete the proposals of the government. It would do so in a fashion that would allow that expression to be made. It would allow them to state, for the record, that they disagree with these proposals by the government. At the same time, they would not be establishing an excessive number of votes to get that point across here in the House.

The committee is, in fact, really the best venue for other NDP and Liberal motions. I understand that each of the report stage motions by the New Democrats and Liberals, which propose to make amendments to the clauses of Bill C-45, were put before the finance committee.

As for the 1,000 report stage motions from the Liberals seeking to add bodies of water to schedule 2 of the bill, I would observe that the committee dealt with a similar number of amendments at the committee level.

Since these motions were first published only this morning, I have not yet had an opportunity to determine whether they are exactly the same bodies of water proposed for inclusion at committee. On this point, I will leave my argument that generally, these motions were either dealt with at committee or could have been proposed there, as they are very similar to what was proposed there.

One additional point I would make about any motions to amend schedule 2 of the bill is on NDP amendment 72, which the finance committee considered and defeated, which I believe answers any further reference to adding bodies of water. That amendment sought to add:

All navigable waters situated in Canada and included in the Atlantic Ocean drainage basin, the Hudson Bay drainage basin, the Arctic Ocean drainage basin, the Pacific Ocean drainage basin or the Gulf of Mexico drainage basin.

In short, any water body not already listed in the schedule would have been addressed by that amendment.

Turning to the Green Party leader, I would suggest that some of her amendments should not be selected. Several of the motions by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands are the same, either in whole or in part, as those presented at committee.

Therefore, I submit that the following report stage motions proposed by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands should not be selected: Motion No. 28, which is the same as Liberal amendment 23; Motion No. 29, which is the same as Liberal amendment 24; Motion No. 74, which is the same as Liberal amendment 64; Motions Nos. 411 to 413 and 424 to 432, which are collectively the same as Liberal amendment 243; Motion No. 434, which is the same as Liberal amendment 249; Motion No. 436, which is the same as Liberal amendment 250; Motions Nos. 439 to 442 and 445, collectively, which are the same, in part, as Liberal amendment 252; and finally, Motion No. 463, which is the same as Liberal amendment 263.

Others are similar in nature to amendments considered at committee. I would argue that the issue was generally considered by the committee. Therefore, report stage motions should not be selected. This would apply to Motion No. 389, which covered ground similar to NDP amendment 21; Motion No. 409, which covered ground similar to Liberal amendment 240 and NDP amendment 223; Motion No. 440, which covered ground similar to Liberal amendment 253; Motion No. 441, which covered ground similar to Liberal amendment 252 and NDP amendment 31; and Motion No. 458, which covered ground similar to Liberal amendment 257 and NDP amendment 32.

There is also an additional concern raised by some amendments that require a royal recommendation. I have been advised that officials in the Privy Council Office note that at least two of the motions by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands would require a royal recommendation.

Motion No. 381 would increase the government's liabilities in respect of refunds for employment insurance premiums to small business for 2012-13, which expands the provisions in the bill for such refunds for 2011. By adding two additional years, this motion alters the terms and conditions of the original royal recommendation attached to Bill C-45 respecting the provision for such refunds for 2011.

Motion No. 382 also increases spending in a manner that is not currently authorized. The royal recommendation attached to Bill C-45 respecting this provision provides a limit of $1,000 on the refund of premiums, which this motion is proposing to increase to $2,000.

As a result, this would go beyond the terms and conditions of the original royal recommendation. Therefore, a new royal recommendation would be required.

Officials are reviewing the newest amendments published in this morning's notice. If I obtain further information on items that I believe will require a royal recommendation, I will be sure to send those submissions or provide them to you, Mr. Speaker, through this House.

The independent member's motions are an interesting question. They require some attention, because the independent member does not sit on committee. However, they should not be dealt with in such a manner that they represent, effectively, a harassment of the balance of the House. Compared to the several hundred amendments proposed by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands in June, on Bill C-38, her proposals as of today's date are slightly less unreasonable. However, the fact remains that the rights of individual members of Parliament must be balanced with the ability of the majority of the House to dispatch its business with some reasonable, practical speed. Allowing a single member of Parliament to hold the House hostage in a voting marathon is simply not reasonable.

I propose the following arrangement, which could, in future, extend to other government bills.

Report stage motions submitted by a member of Parliament who is not part of a recognized party shall be selected in the manner provided for by our rules. The selected motions may be grouped for debate in the usual fashion. Subject to the next point, the voting patterns for the motions would be set in the usual manner, as required by the ordinary practices of considering legislative amendments. However, one amendment per independent member of Parliament would be chosen to be a test vote. The voting pattern for the rest of that independent member's motions would only be implemented if the test motion were adopted. A rejection of the test motion would be inferred as a rejection of all that member's proposals. Therefore, the balance of the independent member's motions would not be put to the House.

In summary, any ordinary person familiar with parliamentary process, in even a passing way, would agree that more than 1,600 amendments are an abuse of process. Most should not be selected. In summary, this member's proposals are collectively a repetition of the committee stage and only seek to prolong report stage proceedings unnecessarily, particularly through the round-the-clock voting that would result.

There is no evidence that the House would willingly agree to be subjected to this. In fact, the history of how our rules have changed and the Speaker's rulings since 1968 confirm this. The Speaker's power to select amendments is clearly designed to prevent that abuse from happening. Mr. Speaker, the note that accompanies Standing Order 76.1(5) is a further clear articulation and reinforcement of the notion that part of one's obligation as Speaker is to protect not just the rights of the minority or an individual member; it is also to protect the rights of all members of Parliament not to see this place brought to discredit through procedures that are entirely frivolous, vexatious, repetitious, designed to delay and certainly designed to inconvenience all members of Parliament to an extraordinary extent.

I submit that the report stage motions, taken as a whole, run counter both to the spirit and the letter of the rules that govern our proceedings. Therefore, I recommend that most of the report stage motions on notice should not be selected and that the balance should be grouped in the manner I have proposed.

Finally, I point out, Mr. Speaker, your ruling in the spring, even though it was not seen as sufficiently aggressive in some fashion and was not seen as efficient as some would have liked in terms of respecting the ability of this House to continue to function. You clearly said, with respect to the 871 motions placed on the notice paper, the following:

[I]t is clearly not intended, nor do our rules and practices lend themselves to the taking of 871 consecutive votes. With respect to the voting table, substantive amendments have been grouped so as to allow for a clear expression of opinion on each of the subject areas contained in the bill. Motions to delete have been dealt with in conformity with the grouping scheme you outlined....

Mr. Speaker, I have certainly given you a proposal that I think falls squarely within the context of what you established in your spring ruling. Here we see that the effort to be frivolous and vexatious has come close to, and has perhaps by now more than doubled, the effort to do so in the spring. The result, I am quite confident, will be the same in terms of the substantive outcome of those amendments. I invite you to ensure that the processes of this House are managed in such a fashion that our proceedings are not brought into discredit and are not made into a farce. Rather, they can operate in a fashion that allows views to be expressed but that also allows the nation's business to be done.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order as to the fundamental nature of the way the House functions and the way that you, Mr. Speaker, allow that smooth processing function to go on. My point of order is specific to Bill C-45, which the House now has before it.

I am rising on a point of order that is indirectly related to Bill C-45 insofar as I am hoping to influence your decision-making on the so-called grouping of report stage motions, which the House will receive tomorrow morning as debate begins at that stage of the bill. I will be asking you to allow for a recorded division on each motion that you select for debate, rather than grouping many of them together and having a single vote applied to more than one distinct question moved by various members of the House. Essentially, I will be making the argument that it is not for the Speaker to limit the ability of MPs to make distinct choices on how to vote on distinct questions.

For Canadians watching at home who are not familiar with our somewhat antiquated and perhaps even arcane practices, it may seem odd that I even have to make this request. I suspect that most Canadians would intuitively think that the Speaker could not have the power, and should not have the power, to require MPs to choose a single vote on multiple distinct questions. I do not think so either and I am going to ask you, Mr. Speaker, to avoid doing so for the report stage of Bill C-45 as well as to set the precedent for how Speakers deal with this matter in the future.

As you well know, Mr. Speaker, you, like your predecessors, are in the habit of grouping motions in amendment at report stage for debate and voting when there is a large number of motions on the notice paper. That has often been the case with omnibus bills, such as C-45 and C-38, which the House studied last spring, by their very nature.

The government decided to put hundreds of clauses in a single bill, and the House and its members are being forced to study them as a single block. That is their choice, not ours, and I am sure it is not your choice either.

I will quote directly from your explanation, Mr. Speaker, of the report stage groupings of Bill C-38, which took place on June 11 of this year. Your explanation to the House was as follows:

—motions to delete clauses have always been found to be in order and it must also be noted have been selected at report stage. These motions are allowed at report stage because members may wish to express views on a clause without seeking to amend it. As is the case on such occasions, I have tried to minimize the amount of time spent in the House on this kind of motion by grouping them as tightly as possible and by applying the vote on one to as many others as possible.

While I am now raising an objection to this practice, Mr. Speaker, I know that you were simply following what has been done by the House and others on such occasions. However, when I looked into the written explanation for this practice, the practice that is written in our guidelines and practices for this place, I was somewhat surprised to find very little in the way of direct guidance for you as Speaker. In fact, what I found was very simply a passage in the Annotated Standing Orders of the House of Commons, on page 272 under Standing Order 76.1(5). To be clear, this is not the Standing Order itself, but rather, the explanation of it. All that is said is the following:

The Speaker determines the order in which the motions will be called and the effect of one vote on the others (for example, if the vote on one motion can be applied to another motion). The purpose of the voting scheme is to avoid the House having to vote twice on the same issue.

That is very clear. Even in this annotation to our Standing Orders, the intention of those groupings is to avoid having the House vote twice on the same issue.

There is also a similar explanation in the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, which I will, from this point on, refer to as O'Brien and Bosc. On page 784, it states:

—the Speaker...also decides on how they will be grouped for voting, that is, the Speaker determines the order in which the motions in amendment will be called and the effect of one vote on the others. The purpose of the voting scheme is to obviate any requirement for two or more votes on the same issue.

It is pretty clear in its intention and its practice. To avoid voting more than once on the same thing is essential for the House.

Here is the problem. The groupings that you, Mr. Speaker, created for the government's last large omnibus bill were not, in my view, limited to preventing multiple votes on the same issues. Groupings were made to have only one vote applied to completely different clauses in the bill, each of which constituted a separate and distinct issue for the House to address, which is in fact our guideline in our practices, not a suggestion but an actual strict rule and guideline.

It is the government, with the help of its lawyers in the Department of Justice, that has told the House that it deemed each of the clauses to be distinct issues, not us in the opposition. If they were the same issue, they would be in the same clause.

I submit that in the ongoing effort to review and improve the living tree of our procedures and practices, saving MPs from voting on the same issue is not what Speakers have been doing during the report stage groupings. It seems to me that they have been treating motions at report stage as a nuisance and one that should be severely limited, rather than as what they are, as was referenced in the practices before.

I find this somewhat disturbing. If these motions are legitimate questions that the House is meant to deal with at report stage, the final stage, surely MPs should have a choice on how to vote on them. As it stands, MPs are forced to make one single vote on a multitude, sometimes dozens, of individual questions, which are separate in their concepts and ideas.

A clear example of this practice comes again from your report stage ruling on Bill C-38 from June 11 of this year. Motion No. 143 is a motion I know you, Mr. Speaker, remember well. It read that Bill C-38 would be amended by defeating clause 68, good old clause 68. In your ruling, Mr. Speaker, MPs were told that with regard to Motion No. 143, the choice to vote yea or nay on that question would apply to 47 other individual questions, which MPs had moved and you, as Speaker, had selected for debate in the House.

Those questions were: clauses 144 to 146, 149, 151 to 153, 156, 158, 170, 172, 174, 175, 177, 179, 194, 208, 201, 211, 213, 215 and 217, 222 to 224, 226, and 228 to 230, and 232 to 249.

It is impossible for one person, even a person as wise as the Speaker of the House of Commons, to be sure that all MPs share the same opinion on each of these 48 motions. The Speaker may be reasonably sure with respect to the members who moved the motions, and perhaps, by extension, the other members of their party, but in the case of members of other parties or independent members, that assumption cannot be made with the same degree of certainty.

The people watching these debates at home or in the gallery may get the impression that we are entering a dark maze known to some as the Ottawa bubble. In the interest of clarity, I will refer to the example given previously and provide a useful example of the possible repercussions of vote grouping.

In your grouping, Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 143 moved to delete a clause that makes a correction to the simple heading in the French version of an existing law. That is all it did. It seems to me that some members may not want to oppose that change and would therefore tend to vote against the motion. However, that choice applies automatically to Motion No. 144, a completely different idea and concept. It asked to delete clause 69 of Bill C-38. Clause 69 changed the definition of a navigable water and penalty under the act in question, which the same member could easily wish to support.

Just to be clear, we voted once in the groupings that were made by your Chair. One motion on changing the heading in a French version of the bill was also connected to the very definition of a navigable water. It is clear and obvious that a member of Parliament may have two different opinions on those ideas, yet was only being permitted to vote once. That goes against the rules and practices of the House.

As a result of those groupings and nothing else, I am afraid to say, MPs were forced to make a single choice, yea or nay, despite the fact that they would be voting against their conscience no matter which way they voted. It puts members of Parliament who try to represent their constituents into an impossible bind. Whichever way they vote, they end up voting against their conscience. That is not and should not be permissible.

I believe, and I hope you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that the man or woman in your chair should not make a decision that puts any member in a position where they are forced to make such an impossible choice.

In that way, the question of MPs voting against their conscience is one that has been raised before. In fact, the House recently spent a day debating an opposition motion that reminded us all of what the current Prime Minister had to say on a similar matter when he was the one rallying against the anti-democratic agenda of the then Liberal Canadian government, rather than driving the agenda as he does today.

In the Prime Minister's point of order of March 25, 1994, and this quote has become quite familiar in this hall, he said:

—in the interest of democracy...How can members represent their constituents on these various [ideas] when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?...We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others.

The Prime Minister was right then. He is in fact wrong now to create these omnibus bills. However, you, as the Speaker, are obligated to maintain the ability of members to vote their conscience.

You will know, Mr. Speaker, that at the time the Prime Minister was objecting to the very existence of omnibus bills, an objection he no longer seems to hold because he has created many and some of which are large.

Speaker Parent then ruled against the point of order, as many others have in similar circumstances, because the objection was being made to the vote at second reading or another vote on the general progress of the bill.

I will quote from Speaker Parent's ruling from April 11, 1994, which was in direct response to the current Prime Minister. He stated:

However, it is the view of the Chair that in the adoption of a second reading motion the House gives approval in principle to a bill...then moves on to the consideration of its specific provisions in subsequent stages.

This is the stage we are at right now.

He continues “Hence, while I cannot accept the hon. member's request to divide or set aside Bill C-17”, which was an omnibus bill by the Liberal government, “I can suggest to him and to other members that should they so wish they may propose amendments to the bill in committee or at report stage and in so doing have an opportunity to express their views and vote on the specific sections of the bill”.

Therefore, in Speaker Parent's ruling, when ruling against the current Prime Minister in his effort to throw out the omnibus bill altogether, because it represented an effort to have MPs vote at cross-purposes to their conscience, he said that there was an opportunity that would come later, at report stage, in which amendments could be moved with respect to those specific sections of the bill and then not be encumbered by it anymore.

This stiff rejection of our current Prime Minister's concern is explained in Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules & Forms, sixth edition, at page 194, citation 634, which states:

—the practice of using one bill to demand one decision on a number of quite different, although related subjects, while a matter of concern, is an issue on which the Speaker will not intervene....

That is correct. That is the ruling on omnibus bills and the nature of omnibus bills. We are talking about something quite different now and much more nefarious.

Mr. Speaker, at this point in my speech, I would like to emphasize a fact that may seem obvious to you. I am not arguing for or against the validity or even the value of omnibus bills. That is not my point.

You and your predecessors have clearly decided that we would have to deal with such bills, for better or worse. The issue I am raising today is simply the individual right of a member of Parliament to vote according to his or her conscience on issues before the House.

Given the Prime Minister's previous objection to a single vote on a bill that covers a number of issues, I hope that he will support my position on the fact that a single vote on several distinct elements of a bill forces members to vote against their conscience.

Even if the Prime Minister does not agree with my submission, and no longer agrees with himself on this point, there have been many rulings that point out the importance of the rights of members to vote on diverse components of a bill, which are its individual clauses at committee and now report stage.

In his ruling of May 11, 1977, Speaker Jerome stated:

I think that an hon. member of this House ought to have the right to compel the House to vote on each separate question.

He went on in the same ruling of that year to say:

—a member ought to be able, if he wishes to attempt through motions to delete under Standing Order 75(5) to isolate those sections which he feels ought not to be amended or that ought to be voted upon separately, without offending the principle of the bill.

That is exactly what will happen at report stage on this bill.

Finally, in that same ruling:

I think that would give the hon. member and other hon. members an opportunity that they should enjoy, to put their position on the record, which I think ought to be known, and also to require others in the House to vote in respect of that position....where a bill is presented...which contains amendments to several different areas of the law although all connected to criminal law, a member ought to be able to use some procedure at some stage of the bill to cause the House to make separate decisions on those very subject matters.

In his decision of June 8, 1988, Speaker Fraser stated that members have the ancient privilege of voting on each separate proposition before the House. It is indeed an ancient privilege and one that we, all the other members of this institution and myself, must jealously guard.

The problem is that the grouping of report stage motions presumes that one can predict the intentions of members with respect to specific matters that have already been identified as being legitimate and substantive. Perhaps this may seem intuitive, but I would like to say that only in exceptional and extraordinary circumstances should someone be authorized to presume how members will vote on a motion before the House.

Given that omnibus bills have been routinely introduced by this government, these are not exceptional circumstances.

Speaker Milliken, your predecessor, Mr. Speaker, made this point clear when he was addressing the use of Standing Order 56.1 to presume the outcome of a vote in the House, and he said:

The effect of the motion adopted pursuant to Standing Order 56.1 was to predetermine the results of all the votes following the first recorded division. It is clear to the Chair that this application of the standing order goes well beyond the original intent, that is, for the presentation of routine motions as defined in Standing Order 56.1.(1)(b).

The standing order has never been used as a substitute for decisions which the House ought itself to make on substantive matters.

It cannot be replaced. There is no rule in the House that allows us to circumvent the right of any hon. member to have a clear and concise vote on individual subject matters. I will continue with the quote:

In the meantime, based on close examination of past precedents and the most recent use of Standing Order 56.1 as a tool to bypass the decision making functions of the House, I must advise the House that the motion adopted on June 12, 2001, will not be regarded as a precedent. I would urge all hon. members to be vigilant about the use of this mechanism for the Chair certainly intends to be watchful.

The regrouping of report stage amendments for the purpose of voting presumes the very same thing: how MPs will wish to vote on a question before the House. This is a right that the Speaker made very clear should be protected with vigilance.

The introduction to chapter 12 of O'Brien and Bosc sums up very well the current reality of majority governments. On page 527, there is a quote from Parliaments in the Modern World, by parliamentary expert Philip Laundy: “The principle underlying parliamentary procedure is that the minority should have its say and the majority should have its way.”

In my opinion, this means that, in a majority Parliament, the government has the right to get through its legislative agenda, and the opposition has the right to slow passage of legislation in a reasonable manner.

Having a distinct vote on each question put forward by MPs that is clear, distinct and admissible, surely falls under the umbrella of what should be considered reasonable.

In fact, the truth is that the government is directly responsible for any delay that it perceives to be unnecessary in this regard. In this and all pieces of legislation, the government decides how many clauses it wishes to include. This was not a choice by the opposition. This was not a choice by you as Speaker.

The government drafted this massive bill with so many clauses contained. In all this, in all pieces of legislation, the government chose which to include. In Bill C-45 there are now 516 separate clauses, each of which contains a separate legislative change, either to amend or eliminate entirely an existing law or to create a new one. Each is a distinct issue that must be dealt with on a distinct and individual basis.

When MPs move to delete that clause, it is an altogether different question than moving to delete another clause entirely. If it were not, they would be the same clause in the first place.

For the record, I am in full support of the Speaker's right to not select particular motions for the House to deal with at report stage. Motions that are vexatious or clearly dilatory, such as moving to turn a comma into a semicolon, should not be selected because it is a waste of Parliament's time. However, deleting individual clauses of a bill is a right that MPs can, and must be able to, exercise. To speak plainly, they are not a waste of time. Casting a distinct vote on each one is an ancient right of which all MPs should be able to avail themselves and it must be protected by your office, Mr. Speaker.

Deleting a clause of the bill is debatable and therefore a substantive motion. O'Brien and Bosc remind us, on page 782:

Since motions in amendment at report stage are open to debate, they fall into the category of substantive motions...

There is no question there. The effort to delete a clause is a substantive motion. Surely, MPs should be making a decision on these substantive motions individually, rather than as a group.

In conclusion, I wish to present my arguments. Although I may be giving the impression of wanting to ascribe to you the responsibility for this very serious problem, I am keenly aware of the fact that you are following what has been done by previous speakers in such matters. I do not want Canadians who are watching to believe that this is a problem specific to your tenure as Speaker of the House of Commons.

In fact, I know that you believe that the Speaker should not influence the manner in which the House of Commons deals with an omnibus bill such as Bill C-45.

On June 11, in a ruling on a point of order questioning the legitimacy of this type of bill, Mr. Speaker, you cited Speaker Fraser's ruling of June 8, 1988, on page 16257 of Debates, saying:

Until the House adopts specific rules relating to omnibus Bills, the Chair's role is very limited and the Speaker should remain on the sidelines as debate proceeds and the House resolves the issue.

I submit that the practice of forcing MPs to make a single vote on multiple individual questions is not written in the rules of the House, by which you as Speaker are bound. Rather it is a practice followed simply because that is the way it has been done before. However, this clearly is not a justification for the ruling.

In my view, the government's use of omnibus bills, with many hundreds of clauses, sets the table for these groupings. However, given the government, and only the government is responsible, I believe that the Speaker should allow the omnibus nature of their initiative manifest itself in all aspects of the process, including the opposition's right to use the tools of the House to delay, however temporarily, the passage of the bill.

You, Mr. Speaker, have the power to right this wrong and to unburden members of this chamber from making a single choice on multiple questions. I am asking you to exercise that power when you rule on the process for the House to follow at report stage on Bill C-45.

First Nations Financial Transparency Act

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I have stated in the House before, transparency and proactive disclosure are important goals for all governments, including first nations governments, and goals that the Liberal opposition supports. However, the Conservatives have a duty to work with first nations to improve mutual accountability, not just impose made-in-Ottawa legislation.

First nations are willing partners on the issues of governance. However, the government must stop treating them as adversaries; it must stop the paternalism; it must stop the raining down of legislation on first nations without any prior consultation; it must stop treating first nations as though they are children in need of discipline or adult supervision. The government must go back to the original understanding of a government-to-government relationship, as was stated in the Royal Proclamation, which will be 250 years ago next year.

The total lack of consultation on this bill is an insult. The government signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which insists upon free, prior and informed consent. The government now sees that as aspirational in nature and has put in absolutely no mechanisms to implement this declaration across government departments or even within the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. It is very sad that again we stand in the House having to fight back against the kind of paternalistic approaches that do nothing to enhance the capacity of first nations in the country. Yet again, this is a tremendous example of insulting behaviour.

We are very concerned about the genesis of this legislation and its predecessor, which seems to be linked to the controversial report published by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation detailing salary figures of first nations chiefs. We say “misleading” salary figures of first nations chiefs. Then again, as we came to understand in the amendments, linking salary, expenses and the remuneration for band-owned businesses is actually a purposeful sticker shock that has fed into the stereotypes and is extremely damaging to the reputations of all first nations. It is particularly insulting to the first nations who are moving out and leading in terms of successful business enterprises.

The sensationalist report was shown to have contained inflated numbers and misleading calculations of remuneration for first nations elected officials. It reminds me, as a physician in Ontario, of the time when people were listing the fees taken by physicians, not bringing into account that we had to pay our rent, pay our staff, pay the costs of doing business out of that remuneration. It was misleading, as though it was income going directly to physicians.

The Canadian Bar Association has expressed concern that:

...debates that focus on such matters make an informed discussion about the realities of first nations governments difficult.

It has also stated that:

Rather than focusing on legislation that diverts attention from more pressing challenges facing First Nations governments, we encourage a nation to nation dialogue held in the light of constitutional principles.

The AFN has expressed concern that the federal government seems increasingly focused on designing first nations governance from Ottawa despite the fundamental need for first nations to undertake this work for themselves for it to be legitimate. As the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan articulated, this was beautifully done in the Assembly of First Nations discussion on governance and accountability in January 2006. We share those concerns about Bill C-27.

Unfortunately, the government's decision to cut the National Centre for First Nations Governance and to slash the funding for tribal councils and other institutions, which are focused on building first nations capacity, is further undermining the ability of first nations to develop and implement accountability measures. The NCFNG will now be closing its doors early next year. It is hypocrisy to legislate accountability and transparency while cutting funding to the organizations, like the NCFNG, whose mandate is to support the process of nation rebuilding and self-government. How can the government justify imposing additional reporting duties, while at the same time cutting the resources first nations have to comply with these requirements?

While Bill C-27 is intended to improve the accountability and transparency of first nations governments to first nations citizens, the government failed to carry out its constitutional duty to consult with first nations on the drafting of this legislation or regarding government amendments during the committee stage. Unfortunately, this lack of consultation has resulted in a number of fundamental problems with this bill. The government must work with, not simply on behalf of, aboriginal peoples, as we promised to do in our original treaty relationship and as expressed to us by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Beyond its legal duties to consult, the government also has a moral duty to ensure that first nations are a part of the process to develop good policy that will work for them. However, with this bill the Conservative government would impose major changes to first nations financial reporting requirements with no significant prior consultation with those who would have to implement these proposed changes. One of the most shocking things we heard during the committee testimony was the fact that when the government went to the Whitecap Dakota First Nation to announce this bill, Chief Darcy Bear and his council were not permitted to see the bill in its final form. Chief Darcy Bear even wrote to his local Conservative MP and minister, expressing his concerns on December 11, 2011, stating:

I do wish to point out that when we were asked to endorse the new Bill we were only provided with the backgrounder on November 22, 2011. We did not receive a copy of the actual draft Bill until it was introduced in Parliament on November 23, 2011, which was after our press conference of that same day. We did not have the opportunity to review and analyze Bill C-27....

The chief went on to say:

I do wish to emphasize that we provided our endorsement of the new Bill C-27 based on our support for the former Bill C-575, for the reasons stated above.

The Whitecap Dakota First Nation went on to raise serious concerns about the scope and application of Bill C-27. How does this kind of bait and switch approach, on an accountability bill of all things, facilitate trust and partnership with first nations?

The government has used the same flawed approach to manage the issues of drinking water and matrimonial real property. It does not consult the stakeholders, let alone the opposition, about the details of these bills before introducing them.

The government's approach violates its constitutional duty to consult first nations before making any changes to legislation and policies that affect first nations peoples, institutions and rights.

The government continued this pattern at committee, rejecting all opposition amendments out of hand and refusing to consult broadly on the few government amendments brought forward.

The previous Liberal government worked with first nations to develop a broad-based and comprehensive mutual accountability framework. This framework was included in the Kelowna accord, which Conservatives tore up in 2006. It was creative. It was built on collaboration and it was the way forward in terms of building accountability and transparency.

First nations funding arrangements are currently subject to annual allocations, changing program parameters and reporting obligations as well as unilateral realignment, reductions and adjustments. Any effort to improve accountability and transparency must be mutual and should include a commitment by the federal government to be accountable for its spending on first nations programs.

As I have indicated, Liberals fully support the principle of proactive disclosure of financial information from first nation chiefs and councils to band members. Clearly, cases of first nation citizens being denied access to this information are unacceptable. However, we must look at the appropriate accountability relationship for the disclosure of this information.

First nation governments must be accountable to the members of that first nation, the people who elect them. Reporting requirements should be focused on making sure the members of a first nation have access to the appropriate information to hold their elected leaders accountable. Therefore, the proactive disclosure provisions in the legislation should apply to first nations alone. There are existing models from first nations that already have strong governance models, which can be adopted. For instance, there are examples of bands that already proactively disclose financial statements on password-protected websites. These are the types of creative solutions that result from thorough two-way consultation.

The bill also applies to first nations with financial administration laws made under the First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act and this could lead to conflicting reporting requirements. The reporting of salaries and expenses, which the government admitted would have created confusion, was amended but still requires first nation leaders to include compensation in their personal capacity. This not only creates serious privacy concerns but also the possibility of misleading information being disclosed regarding first nation leaders' compensation.

Again, the government refused to listen to the expert testimony at committee and rejected opposition amendments on these issues out of hand.

Bill C-27 does nothing to reduce the current overwhelming reporting burden, especially for small first nations with limited administrative capacity.

The Auditor General has repeatedly called for meaningful action to reduce unnecessary first nation reporting requirements that shift limited capacity from community programs. In her 2002 report, the Auditor General recommended that:

The federal government should consult with First Nations to review reporting requirements on a regular basis and to determine reporting needs when new programs are set up.

As recently as June 2011, the Auditor General reported government progress toward achieving this needed rationalization as unsatisfactory. The government has failed to make meaningful progress on this issue.

First nations provide a minimum of 168 different financial reports to the four major funding departments: INAC, Health Canada, HRSDC and CMHC. That is three per week. The majority of these communities have less than 500 people. AANDC alone receives over 60,000 reports from first nations annually as a requirement under existing funding agreements.

Legislation that adds additional reporting requirements for first nations must also deal with the overwhelming and often outdated and unnecessary burden of existing reporting requirements. The practical requirements of the legislation have the potential to be unduly burdensome to first nations. For example, many communities are in remote areas, which impacts both their service delivery and operating expenses. Most communities do not have funding to build the infrastructure necessary for Internet access or the resource to create and maintain their own websites. Again, the government rejected opposition amendments to provide for alternative reporting options to band members.

I would also like to point out that paternalistic lectures about accountability are particularly insulting coming from the Conservative government. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister is facing a serious investigation by Canada's independent election authority for spending irregularities and the Minister of Intergovernmental is under a cloud regarding questionable election expenses during the last election. Both still have their jobs and so much for accountability.

What about transparency? Bill C-38, a 425-page omnibus bill that amended over 70 different acts was rammed through Parliament last spring with no amendments and minimal debate. This fall, the government introduced yet another massive 443-page omnibus bill, tucking in changes to everything from exempting the Detroit-Windsor bridge from environmental laws, to changing the list of navigable waters, to changing the definition of aboriginal fisheries and rules for aboriginal land ownership. All indications are that the government will ram this mammoth bill through completely unchanged as well.

First nations have little to learn about accountability and transparency from the government when the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who the government enshrined in the 2006 Federal Accountability Act, now has to go to court to get the information he needs in order to do his job of reporting back to Canadians, members of Parliament and senators on what is going on with the government's spending.

The bill is inconsistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Prime Minister's commitment at the Crown-first nations gathering to reset the relationship.

It is inconsistent with the new approach to managing relations between the Government of Canada and first nations that was supposed to have resulted from the residential schools apology in 2008.

As I have stated, Liberals support the underlying goal of the legislation, but we are very concerned about how it was brought to the House and how the lack of consultation and collaboration in its development has resulted in a fatally, fundamentally, flawed legislation.

Standing Committee on Finance

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to the point of order raised by the member for Kings—Hants.

As I understand his complaint, he is concerned about the meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance on Wednesday evening, particularly that all of the amendments he tabled for the committee's consideration were voted on. He says that the greatest abuse he has ever seen in the House of Commons was that the House of Commons actually considered his amendments. That is what he considers the greatest abuse that has ever happened here in his lengthy career in the past 15 years. His point of order flows from a motion adopted by the finance committee on October 31 respecting proceedings on Bill C-45 and the implementation of that motion last week at committee.

It is a foundational principle around here that committees are masters of their own proceedings. That is articulated in our procedural literature such as can be found at page 1047 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice second edition, and citation 760(3) of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms sixth edition.

While citation 822 of Beauchesne's says, “Procedural difficulties which arise in committees ought to be settled in the committee and not in the House”, I do want to give a quick recap of events as I understand them since you, Mr. Speaker, have now been asked to make a ruling, even though I do believe the hon. member is in the wrong place when he asks for a ruling to be made.

The committee's meeting Wednesday was convened with a notice of meeting which said that the committee would give the bill “clause-by-clause consideration”.

The October 31 motion, adopted by the committee in a nine to one vote, said that, if clause by clause consideration had not concluded by 11:15 p.m. on November 21, the chair was to put “each and every question necessary to dispose of clause-by-clause consideration” of the bill.

I understand that the chair of finance committee found himself, during the committee's proceedings that day, explaining what would happen to the balance of the 3,072, or so, amendments that were tabled if the clock struck midnight before the committee's work was done. I further understand that he ruled that after midnight no amendments would be voted on by the committee.

Arising from that, I am told that the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca challenged that viewpoint. These were his arguments, as I understand them.

First, that the committee meeting was convened to deal with “clause-by-clause consideration”, which nonetheless allowed for amendments to be considered. Yet, apparently at midnight, the words “clause-by-clause consideration” excluded the consideration of amendments, which seemed to be a logical inconsistency.

I will add here a quotation from page 761 of O'Brien and Bosc:

Once the witnesses have been heard, the committee proceeds to clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. It is during this phase of the committee's deliberations that members may propose amendments to the bill.

We see similar advice at page 997.

The member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca argued that the words “each and every question” included every one of the amendments that had been duly filed with the committee clerk. This is sensible. These are questions that need to be dealt with for the bill to be dealt with. Then he observed that when the House adopts a time allocation motion, it uses similar phrasing about “every question necessary for the disposal of the stage” being “put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment”.

Mr. Speaker, when the time allotted ends on those House proceedings, you, as the Speaker, still put every selected report stage motion to the House. Bill C-38 was offered as an example when 15 motions had been moved at the time report stage debate was interrupted and yet the House voted on all of the selected report stage motions, not just the 15 that had already been dealt with at that point. The member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca argued that the same logic should apply to committee proceedings. I certainly agree.

In summary, he argued that the committee's motion of October 31 should not be interpreted in a manner more restrictive than how the same words would be interpreted here in the House.

Committees are indeed different than the House but those differences are generally geared in the other direction, toward allowing greater participation in the committee's business not less, and that is the point that the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca argued. For example, motions at committee do not require seconders. The previous question cannot be moved. And, unless a committee orders, there are no limits on the length or number of speeches that one can make.

In any event, I gather that the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca appealed the chair's ruling and by a vote of nine to one, with only the hon. member for Kings—Hants disagreeing, the committee overturned the chair's ruling.

I want to pause briefly here to describe the bizarre turn of events where the Liberal finance critic tabled approximately 3,000 amendments at committee and then sought to create a procedural environment where the vast majority of those amendments might never have been considered at committee. I have heard that the finance committee chair pointed out this perplexing position on Wednesday evening. It is little wonder to me that the Liberals find that Canadians sent them to that corner over there if they pursue cynical political stunts like that. It is indeed Kafkaesque where an injustice is actually having the amendments one has proposed considered. That is the Kafkaesque world of the member for Kings—Hants.

I want to turn to what O'Brien and Bosc has to say about committees' freedom to be masters of their own proceedings. On page 1047 it says:

The concept refers to the freedom committees normally have to organize their work as they see fit and the option they have of defining, on their own, certain rules of procedure that facilitate their proceedings.

That quote actually applies appropriately to the earlier point of order we also argued.

On the next page we see that:

...committees may adopt procedural rules to govern their proceedings, but only to the extent the House does not prescribe anything specific.

I do not believe that the hon. member for Kings--Hants has cited any such order of the House in support of his case. It should also be noted that the member has also failed to present any evidence of procedural impropriety at the committee level.

The finance committee did adopt procedural rules on October 31 when it adopted a comprehensive motion related to proceedings on Bill C-45, including time spent on clause by clause consideration, as well as invitations to 10 other standing committees to study the subject matter of parts of the bill.

Pages 997 and 998 of O'Brien and Bosc speak to this. It says:

The period of time devoted to the consideration of the bill is determined by the committee but it can be circumscribed or restricted by various factors: the obligation to report the bill within a prescribed time, pursuant to a special order of the House or to a time allocation motion, or due to limits the committee has placed upon itself by adopting motions to that effect. In the latter case, it may be a question of limiting the overall time the committee will spend on the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, the time allocated for debate on each clause and amendment, the time allocated for each intervention by members on the matters broached by the committee, or a combination of any of these.

The motion adopted by the committee accords with the scope of what the committee is entirely able to do.

Then, of course, we have the appeal of the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca. Page 1049 of O'Brien and Bosc advises that, “Decisions by the Chair are not debatable. They can, however, be appealed to the full committee”. That is worth repeating. Appeals lie with the committee, not with the House. Therefore, I put it to you simply, Mr. Speaker, that the member for Kings--Hants is in the wrong place today asking you to rule on this.

O'Brien and Bosc does go on to add that, ”The overturning of a ruling is not considered a matter of confidence in the Chair”.

In this case, we have a committee, which by a nine to one majority voted for an interpretation of the October 31 motion, which is perfectly intelligible and sensible, and, I would argue, correct, from the words and the intent of that motion.

Not only was it a perfectly intelligible interpretation but it was the one that expanded democratic participation in committee by allowing every proposal to be brought to a vote, by not preventing matters from being voted upon. Therefore, it makes all the more sense to me that the broader interpretation of the October 31 motion would naturally suit the committee environment.

Meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, you are being asked by the Liberals to tell the committees how to conduct their business. The Liberals are actually asking that you tell those committees to have less democracy in how they carry on their business. On the other hand, there is the long and admirable tradition of leaving committees on their own, with Speakers very rarely intervening.

The nature of the complaint here is that the amendments from the member for Kings--Hants were voted on.

Mr. Speaker, what is the evil that you are being asked to address here? The evil is that the member's amendments got voted on. I can understand that some people might consider that an injustice, a difficult burden to bear, but he is complaining that his amendments got voted on. He says that is the biggest injustice he has seen in a decade and a half in the House of Commons. As I say, perhaps it is something other people can complain of but it is certainly not something that he is in a place to complain of.

He says that his rights have been denied. None of his rights have been denied. His rights have actually been protected by the committee. He has a right to propose an amendment and have it considered by a committee. The committee took steps to ensure all amendments were considered. Regardless of the fact that others might not have liked it, it was certainly what he had asked the committee in writing to do. He had asked it to consider the amendments. He had put them forward, I presume, in good faith. Though the number of 3,000 makes me wonder about the good faith nature of them, that is what he did. The committee considered the amendments the member asked it to is hardly an evil that the Speaker needs to address.

Reflecting upon these facts and our procedural guidelines and long-standing tradition with respect to the treatment of committee proceedings, I believe this case is clear cut and, in fact, actually kind of funny. The proceedings at the Standing Committee on Finance last week were perfectly in order and its report on Bill C-45 following its meeting was also perfectly in order.

Committees of the House

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to wait through much of our procedural moment because I have a significant point of order to raise today. It is of some duration and I wanted to allow members who have to go on to other business to do so.

This point of order is in reference to Bill C-45, specifically with the work that was done by the committees, the powers that committee have and the power that the House retains as the place that created our committees.

It is often said that committees are the masters of their own domain. It is an important concept and it makes an important point about a committee's autonomy. Perhaps you will agree with me when I say that this concept gets exaggerated from time to time by committees.

It means that each of our standing committees is in charge of its own affairs. When it is formed by order of the House and when work is assigned to it by the House, it is largely up to the committee to decide how and when to tackle it. However, it is not true, as some suggest, that this means committees can do whatever they want, whenever they want and however they want. There are rules set out in procedural text, Standing Orders and precedents of our legislature and committees cannot simply throw these rules out whenever it pleases them. Each committee may be the master of its domain in many respects but there are clear and distinct limits on those domains that committees must respect, even if it does not suit some members of the majority governing body.

In the case of Bill C-45, the second massive omnibus bill introduced by the government, the government has been stretching the limits of what can and should be tolerated from a majority government in this Parliament. Parliamentary procedural rules are clear that, notwithstanding the opposition's right to delay things that are unacceptable to them, the government must have the right to make progress on its legislative agenda in a reasonable manner.

However, the government has already tested, and we would argue, broken, the democratic limits of our legislature by packing a legislative agenda of an entire parliamentary session into one or two bills and then cynically adding the words “budget implementation” to the front cover.

In the previous incarnation of this tactic on Bill C-38, Mr. Speaker, you heard multiple submissions from opposition members who felt that the government had simply gone well beyond the reasonable limits of what might be honestly included in its budget bill. You disagreed with the interventions of the opposition at that time, but I hope you will conclude, after this submission, that the government has simply played too fast and loose with the rules that must govern the passage of all legislation, whatever its form or title and that such action undermines Parliament's essential ability to do its work on behalf of Canadians; namely, to be able to hold government to account.

Today, I will not discuss the legitimacy or the value of omnibus bills. It is ironic that this government, in its great wisdom, is single-handedly teaching Canadians words and phrases that they would never have come to know without the Conservatives' help.

A few years ago, the government plucked the word “prorogation” from the pages of procedural texts, making it the topic of discussion around the nation's dinner tables and the impetus behind many demonstrations across the country. Thanks to the Conservatives, Canadians have had to learn a new definition of “ministerial accountability” because, unfortunately, under this Prime Minister, ministers seem to have no accountability. And they have turned the word “omnibus” into a bad word. They have systematically avoided Parliament's oversight by using this legislative tool and abusing the power of their government, which barely won a majority.

During the committee process on its most recent monstrosity of a budget omnibus bill, I believe the government has simply gone too far in its casual relationship with the parliamentary rules that govern this place and Canadian democracy, and that the legislation should be thrown out and made to start over again as a result.

I would remind you, Mr. Speaker, along with this House and the Canadians hoping for better from their Parliament, of what has transpired with respect to Bill C-45, the government's second omnibus budget implementation bill for the 2012-13 year.

On October 18 of this year, following the adoption of the way and means Motion No. 13, the Minister of Foreign Affairs moved, on behalf of the Minister of Finance, that Bill C-45 be read a first time and printed. On October 24, the Minister of Public Safety moved that Bill C-45 be read a second time and referred to committee.

After using time allocation to shut down debate again, second reading of Bill C-45 ended with the passage of the following motion on October 30 of this year:

...that Bill C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures be now read a second time and referred to [the Standing Committee on Finance].

As a matter of record, Hansard on October 30 specifically quotes the Speaker saying, “I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance”.

The reference of this bill to the committee, as set out in the motion the House adopted, was always to the finance committee and only to the finance committee.

That is an important point. Because the House is master of its own activities, and in order to protect its rights, it must be certain that its orders of reference are complied with. As you know, Mr. Speaker, in accordance with the legislative process adopted by the House, a bill can only be referred to one committee, and this committee must be the one designated by the House itself.

Committees derive their existence and authority from the House of Commons. The House creates committees specifically through Standing Order 104, which further regulates how they are constituted and governed under Standing Order 106. The House also sets out the specific mandate of each of the standing committees under Standing Order 108.

An excellent summary of this regime can be found in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, which I will refer to as O'Brien and Bosc, on pages 960 and 962, which says the following about standing committees:

They are empowered to study and report to the House on all matters relating to the mandate, management, organization and operation of the departments assigned to them. More specifically, they can review:

the statute law relating to the departments assigned to them;

the program and policy objectives of those departments, and the effectiveness of their implementation thereof;

the immediate, medium and long-term expenditure plans of those departments and the effectiveness of the implementation thereof;

and an analysis of the relative success of those departments in meeting their objectives.

In addition to this general mandate, other matters are routinely referred by the House to its standing committees: bills, estimates, Order-in-Council appointments, documents tabled in the House pursuant to statute, and specific matters which the House wishes to have studied. In each case, the House chooses the most appropriate committee on the basis of its mandate.

I make particular note that all abilities cited in this passage flow from the House, not from another committee. It is the House of Commons that authorizes these powers. I emphasize the fact that the reference on Bill C-45 to committee was only ever to the finance committee. The motion passed in the House only referred to that committee.

In other words, this does not prevent other committees from studying the content of different parts of an omnibus bill. The committees always have that right, but this study must be separate from the study carried out pursuant to the order of reference the House gave the committee responsible for the official study of the bill in question.

The only way for other committees to legitimately study parts of an omnibus bill is to divide it into several pieces of legislation and ask the House to issue an order of reference for the new bill or bills to these committees.

The official opposition has been calling all along for this bill to be divided and studied properly by the different committees. Members will recall that the official opposition moved a series of motions in the House to divide this bill, using the same method that was used to divide the budget bill and create and pass Bill C-46 on MPs' pension plan, even though we got Bill C-46 only after the NDP rejected the Liberals' original ill-advised proposal to circumvent the legislative process, not only for the pensions of MPs, but also for the pensions of public sector workers and RCMP members.

We have done this in that exact circumstance. The House of Commons took Bill C-45 and, by the powers of the House, divided out the section that was related to the pensions of members and senators.

There was a mistake made in the original proposition by the third party, I must say supported somewhat happily by the government, which would have brushed through changes that would have impacted more than 450,000 public employees, RCMP members and their families without a minute of study or debate in the House of Commons or at any committee.

The official opposition was actually paying attention to what the Liberals had proposed, while the Liberals themselves may not have, and were resistant to the idea of throwing 450,000 public servants and RCMP members under the bus for political expediency.

We divided out that section of the bill and made a counter proposal to just deal with the pensions of MPs and senators. The government was fine with that as well because that was what was actually called for by all members of the House, as opposed to what the third party suggested.

Here we arrive at the essential problem with the approach of the Conservatives to Parliament and making law. They think the rules do not apply to them and their majority means they can cook up any scheme they want just to meet the communication goals of the Prime Minister's office.

In the Standing Committee on Finance, in response to intense pressure from the official opposition and Canadians from coast to coast to coast, in order to give the “appearance” of due diligence on Bill C-45 at committee stage, here is what the Conservatives cooked up.

I will read from the minutes and will emphasize the part that is important to the future ruling of the Speaker. On October 31, the Standing Committee on Finance adopted the following. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance moved:

That, in relation to the Order of Reference of Tuesday, October 30, 2012, respecting Bill C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures,

(a) the Chair of the Standing Committee write, as promptly as possible, to the Chairs of the following Standing Committees inviting those Standing Committees to consider the subject-matter of the following provisions of the said Bill...

A number of the committees are laid out in this relation from the parliamentary secretary: the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development; the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food; the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration; the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development; the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans; The Standing Committee on Health; the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities; the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights; the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security; and the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

This also shows how wide a net the government cast in this bill.

Here are the important parts in the instruction coming out of the finance committee.

This is the part that we argue the finance committee never had the power to do because only the House of Commons can do such a thing.

With respect to section (b) it states, “each of the Standing Committees, listed in paragraph (a)”, all of those which I just recounted:

be requested to convey recommendations, including any suggested amendments, in both official languages, in relation to the provisions considered by them, in a letter to the Chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, in both official languages not later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, November 20, 2012;

(c) any amendments suggested by the other Standing Committees, in the recommendations conveyed pursuant to paragraph (b), shall be deemed to be proposed during the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45, provided that the recommendations are received prior to the relevant clauses being considered, and further provided that the members of the Standing Committee...may propose amendments—

Section (d) states:

the Committee shall proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45 no later than Wednesday, November 21...provided that the Chair may limit debate on each clause to a maximum of five minutes...

Therefore, this is a further time allocation, now at the committee stage, and a further shutting down of debate. Section (e) states:

amendments to Bill C-45, other than the amendments deemed to be proposed pursuant...be submitted to the Clerk...

As well, there are other instructions in sections (e) and (f).

Some important facts immediately stand out. The committee did not present its report on the bill to the House by Thursday, November 22 at the earliest. In fact, it presented the report this afternoon. Why? Because the committee violated its own procedural rules when the government ended up in a new mess as a result of communication issues.

I also note that this study, carried out by committees other than the finance committee, is the tactic the third party used to try to improve parliamentary oversight of this bill, from what I understand.

The Liberals got what they wanted, but only because the government was all set to say it was co-operating, when in fact, the entire process was nothing more than a procedural play orchestrated by the government and its unwitting allies in the Liberal Party, who forgot the old saying: be careful what you wish for.

On the other end of this procedural spectrum, the legitimate end, the motions that the official opposition proposed to split the bill in a real and legitimate fashion, which were quickly rejected by the government almost out of hand, would have referred the separate policy areas in Bill C-45 to the appropriate committees for an actual study. Then each committee could held hearings, called a variety of witnesses with critical expertise and then having hearing points of view on the bill, could have create reasonable amendments for debate and decision in a clause-by-clause meeting in each of those committee hearings.

Finally, each committee could then have reported its bill back to the House in due course. This would have dramatically improved a flawed bill, corrected the twisting of the rules from the government and reconfirmed our collective commitment to respect taxpayer money and their Parliament. This bill has massive implications not only in what it sets out to do but its implications on this place and the legitimacy that we hold as parliamentarians to hold government to account.

In the sham of a process that the Conservatives then used, various committees were asked by the finance committee, not the House of Commons, to study and propose amendments to a bill for which it had no order of reference at all. Not only was this a procedural disaster, but because of the impossibly short timelines, there was no opportunity for reasoned debate at the other committees regardless. That last point is a matter of some debate I realize, but it further emphasizes that a process set up by the government was a true disregard for our legislative process. Committees were hearing entire sections of the bill with one or two witnesses and no cross-examination ability and moving through clause-by-clause in minutes with no discussion.

We have been left with an illegitimate process that flies in the face of our procedures and practices, the implication of which is summed up best by O'Brien and Bosc's passage on committee reports, at page 985, where it says:

In the past, when a committee has gone beyond its order of reference or addressed issues not included in the order, the Speaker of the House has ruled the report or a specific part of the report to be ruled out of order.

When committees have gone beyond their mandate in the past, the Speaker saw fit to either reject sections of that committee's report or the entire report.

Mr. Speaker, you yourself referred this bill to a specific committee. I think the Standing Committee on Finance simply did not have the authority to refer sections of Bill C-45 to another standing committee. The committee had the right and duty to examine this bill and report it back to the House, with or without amendments.

Let me review quickly, for those following at home this procedural nightmare that the government has created, a government that seems reluctant or unable to follow the rules that have been set out by this place for many decades, how a committee is supposed to deal with a complex bill referred to it by the House after second reading.

Normally, after passage of a bill at second reading, the committee which received the bill would organize its time, call for a variety of witnesses based on the lists provided by the recognized parties in proportion to their representation at the committee, hear the witnesses, formulate amendments, schedule a clause-by-clause meeting, call each clause, hear the amendments to the clause, vote on the amendments and the clauses and then, finally, vote on the bill. Mr. Speaker, you and I both know this process well. That is not what happened here.

The results of these decisions would then be reported back to the House, where the legitimacy was derived for the committee's studies. This has been a time-honoured practice and, regardless of the bill, the intensity of the debate or the divisions, it has been a process practised by governments of all political stripes.

The House, in its wisdom, has even provided a mechanism to allow for a variation on the normal progress of a bill through committee, which is called a motion of instruction. I will call once again upon the sage guidance of O'Brien and Bosc, this time in the chapter on the legislative process, at page 752, where it states:

Once a bill has been referred to committee, the House may instruct the committee by way of a motion authorizing what would otherwise be beyond its power, such as, for example, examining a portion of a bill and reporting it separately, examining certain items in particular, dividing a bill into more than one bill, consolidating two or more bills into a single bill, or expanding or narrowing the scope or application of a bill. A committee that so wishes may also seek an instruction from the House.

This is the power of the House of Commons. The House of Commons can send this motion of instruction to any committee to divide a bill, to bring a bill together, to study it in its most logical and proper way. That power rests solely with the House of Commons. No committee can take upon any of those actions themselves. They are not the masters of that fate.

If the government were interested in following the rules of this place and wanted to have a variety of committees study the bill, then it could have moved to instruct the committee to do so, what it should have otherwise been powerless to do. In this case, that is to have other committees conduct a review of the portions of the bill that dealt with their policy areas, transportation, Indian affairs, the environment and fisheries and oceans, and to allow amendments to those portions and to report them separately. The committee, if it felt incapable to deal with the sections of the bill that had so little to do with finance and the budget, could equally have asked the House for instruction.

However, the power to authorize this variance in the legislative process rests only with the House of Commons and not with the finance committee.

In your final judgment and assessment on this point of order, Mr. Speaker, one has to not only look at the case in front of us on Bill C-45, how the process has gone completely off the rails, but project forward that if we allow committees to start to make these types of decisions without any authority whatsoever derived from the House, masters of their own fate takes on a more perverse nature, a more politically inspired nature and one that governments of all political stripes would abhor.

I am going to begin to wrap up in a minute.

Because no other committee was given an order of reference by the House to examine Bill C-45 and because the House did not pass a motion of instruction to complement the order of reference, I find it unacceptable that a committee other than the Standing Committee on Finance held votes on the amendments to Bill C-45, which is exactly what the Standing Committee on Finance allowed. Votes therefore took place and, as the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance's motion clearly indicates, the decision of these other committees had a binding effect on the work of the Standing Committee on Finance. Yet, this is a right that only the House lawfully possesses.

To be clear, any committee has the right to initiate a study on the subject matter that applies to their policy area, including on the elements of Bill C-45, that the government should have included in a separate bill. Though, even then, those committees cannot report back to another committee. Mr. Speaker, you know this well. One committee cannot just choose to report their amendments and clauses back to another, but rather back to the House of Commons from which the committee derives its power and to which it is accountable, not to another committee but to this place.

Committees also have the power to meet jointly with other committees, but there again a report from a joint committee can only come back to the House of Commons not to another committee. This point is addressed by O'Brien and Bosc, on page 983, where it is referring to a joint committee. It says the following:

If a report is adopted during a joint meeting, each committee may present to the House a separate report, even though the two reports will be identical.

I will also refer to the same chapter, on pages 984 and 985, where a committee report to the House is covered. It says the following:

In order to carry out their roles effectively, committees must be able to convey their findings to the House. The Standing Orders provide standing committees with the power to report to the House from to time, which is generally interpreted as being as often as they wish. A standing committee exercises that prerogative when its members agree on the subject and wording of a report and it directs the Chair to report to the House, which the Chair then does.

Like all other powers of standing committees, the power to report is limited to issues that fall within their mandate or that have been specifically assigned to them by the House. Every report must identify the authority under which it is presented. In the past, when a committee has gone beyond its order of reference or addressed issues not included in the order, the Speaker of the House has ruled the report or a specific part of the report to be out of order.

We have rules for committee which show that they receive their authority from the House and which also say the committees report their work back to the House and only to the House.

In conclusion, the other committees of the House should never have accepted the request of the Standing Committee on Finance, which made them a type of subcontractor to what can only be described as the sloppy work of the Minister of Finance and his parliamentary secretary.

I think that other committees could have easily examined certain parts of Bill C-45.

These committees could have heard from witnesses and reported their findings to the House.

However, because the House referred the issue only to the Standing Committee on Finance and the government minimized the importance of our rules of procedure in order to serve its own communications purposes and appear democratic even while introducing an omnibus bill, I think, Mr. Speaker, that as the guardian of the rules that protect the integrity of this venerable institution, you should reject the committee's report and remove it from the order paper.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to your ruling on this.

On one final note, I realize without a doubt that a ruling in favour of this submission would be a strong indictment of the government. However, after all of the legislative and procedural corners the Conservatives have cut since getting their much-coveted and very slim majority in the last federal election, perhaps this would be a healthy reminder to all concerned that their power is still limited by the rules of our parliamentary democracy. Perhaps they could use this as a wake-up call. They are not the kings that lord over this country, but just servants to its people.

Employment Insurance

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Mattawin adventure centre located in Trois-Rives, in the Mauricie region, is asking us whether qualified seasonal employees will be required to leave the centre to accept other jobs now that Bill C-38 has passed. We are still waiting for answers to give to these tourism stakeholders.

Can the minister responsible rise today and reassure the seasonal employers targeted by this change to employment insurance?

Northern Jobs and Growth Act

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to contract some work the other day looking at the impact of Bill C-38 on northern Canada. Under environmental assessment, it is clearly just a terrible disgrace what is happening in the north. What is happening across Canada is only magnified in the north, because northerners do not have the strength of being provincial governments that hold the cards. In so many respects, we are reliant on the federal government to do the heavy lifting when it comes to environmental issues, and the Conservative government is not interested in heavy lifting on environmental issues and quite obviously is setting us up for some very difficult times.

This is something that the government is going against. The development of environmental legislation was all-encompassing through the government. The Department of Transport website always used to talk about the environment until the Conservative government removed those words. We have within Canada an understanding that environmental concerns are holistic, covering all aspects of life. The government is trying to push these aspects down into one little spot and take them away. That is not the direction to go.

What the Conservatives are doing will hurt in the end because they are not going to be here forever. When we get a decent government that understands Canadians' values, it will go back to more environmental protection. How is that going to leave the certainty of what is going on in this country? You are disturbing the certainty of our country.

Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I sincerely appreciated the speech from the member for Manicouagan and his direct experience with the first nations' life and living conditions. It adds a lot to this debate.

I also want to take time to acknowledge our critic for Indian and northern affairs, the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, who has done excellent work in the past and also adds a lot to this debate and this discussion.

Today we are talking here about Bill S-2, an act concerning matrimonial real property on first nations reserve lands. It makes changes to the Indian Act to allow for provincial family law to apply on reserves in the event of a matrimonial breakdown or the death of a spouse or common-law partner.

There is a legal vacuum concerning real property on reserves due to the jurisdictional divide, wherein provinces and territories have jurisdiction over property and civil rights within the provinces, and the federal government has jurisdiction to legislate “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians” under section 91.24.

The Indian Act does not provide for a division of MRP upon marriage breakdown, and first nations jurisdiction is not explicitly recognized by Canada. This has led to major legal cases, such as Derrickson v. Derrickson, 1986, and Paul v. Paul, also 1986, which were dismissed by provincial courts because the provincial laws cannot apply to lands on an Indian reserve. Thus, there is this legislative gap.

Bill S-2 is the fourth iteration of similar legislation that the Conservatives have tried to pass since 2008, and the NDP has opposed every time it has come forward for debate.

There have been five parliamentary studies that have been conducted on MRP: A Hard Bed to Lie In by the Senate in 2003; Still Waiting by the Senate in 2004; Arm-in-Arm by the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee in 2005; the report by the status of women committee in 2006; and a ministerial report by Wendy Grant-John in 2006.

I just want to mention the latter, which stated that no consensus has been found regarding legislation that could apply to MRP. Among other things, it recommended that concurrent jurisdictional models be used where first nation law was paramount and that the government needed to identify the real costs of implementing provincial legislation on reserves.

All previous bills, and now Bill S-2, neglect almost all of the recommendations made by all of the aforementioned reports.

The Conservatives are trying to say that the recommendations from the 2006 ministerial report by Wendy Grant-John are being implemented, but that is absolutely not the case.

There is no question that this issue needs to be addressed. However, the Conservatives are trying to pass a law that appears to be in favour of first nations women's rights while ignoring the voices of first nations women themselves. They are fast-tracking legislation without addressing all the relevant non-legislative problems that first nations women and families have identified.

The Conservatives are not interested in a fulsome discussion of the bill or any first nations issues. They want to hastily enact a bad law just so they can say they have done something.

The problem requires a comprehensive response led by first nations. This approach must address family support services; more on-reserve housing and shelters; police support services; building first nations capacity to resolve disputes; solutions to land management issues; and resolutions of matters relating to citizenship, residency and Indian status.

Bill S-2 is an insincere and overly simplistic attempt to rectify a complex problem that was brought about by the Indian Act.

The Assembly of First Nations facilitated a dialogue, which identified three broad principles that are key to addressing matrimonial rights and interests on reserve. I will identify those: recognition of first nation jurisdiction; access to justice, dispute resolution and remedies; and finally, addressing underlying issues such as access to housing and economic security.

Based on these principles, I would like to take a closer look at two important themes that underpin the position of the New Democrats on Bill S-2: the absence of meaningful consultation with first nations; and the need to address the non-legislative problems surrounding the issue of matrimonial property rights.

I will turn to what others had to say on this in elaborating on meaningful consultation and non-legislative problems.

Ellen Gabriel, the former president of the Quebec Native Women's Association and AFN grand chief candidate, said:

It is reprehensible that the Government of Canada is so eager to pass legislation [that seriously impacts the collective human rights of Indigenous peoples] without adequate consultations which requires the free, prior and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples.

This is a growing trend of the Conservatives thrusting legislation upon Canadians without first consulting.

For example, the fisheries and oceans committee studied several clauses of Bill C-45, including a clause relating to the definition of what constituted an aboriginal fishery. There was an absence of consultation with first nations. It was only a one-way dialogue.

I will offer another quote from Stuart Wuttke from the Assembly of First Nations. He said at the fisheries and oceans committee:

—we feel if there's consultation and accommodation with respect to first nation interests, there may be a balanced approach. We would definitely prefer that, and we would recommend that consultation and accommodation take place in order to alleviate any potential problems that may exist in the future.

Consultation allows a legislative to find a balanced approach that serves the best interests of all stakeholders and to alleviate any potential problems that may exist in the future. For example, if the government had properly consulted on Bill C-38, it probably would not have found itself making so many amendments now in bill C-45.

According to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which Canada is a signatory, consultation requires consent. While Canada has conducted limited consultation, no consent was given by rights holders. Therefore, if we endorse Bill S-2, we will be in violation of article 32 of the UNDRIP, which ensures free, prior and informed consent of any matter relating to the lands or welfare of the rights holders.

I will further add what other first nation women are saying. The Native Women's Association of Canada says:

NWAC is being told by its members that the MRP legislation is too prescriptive and does not adequately support Indigenous legal systems. As well, no financial resources will be allotted to support First Nations Governments to actually implement the legislation, if it were to get passed.

The NWAC testified at the Senate hearings on Bill S-2 and said the following:

—our women and population and constituents have repeatedly told us 12 months is not a sufficient transition period if this bill were to go ahead. First Nations are dealing with governments that are already overloaded with many socio-economic issues.

We are looking at a longer-term plan: two years, five years and ten years. Those are the types of plans that need to be developed in cooperation with First Nations, not government designing it and having patchwork input from First Nations. You will have a holey quilt, if you will. Too many resources will also be spent, and it will not be a satisfactory result for anyone.

We would rather take the time, do it right and stop pushing ahead in a rush to have a quick resolution that might not be a good one for anyone.

The image of a holey quilt is a good one and identifies the need for co-operation with first nations that the government should have.

About Bill S-4, which was a previous incarnation of Bill S-2, Pam Palmater, a professor of aboriginal law at Ryerson, said:

The Minister also said that Aboriginal women are in need of “immediate protection”. If the Minister actually listened to the voices of Aboriginal women, he would have heard that Aboriginal women do not want Bill S-4 as it is currently drafted. He would also have heard that what they do want is gender equality addressed in all of Canada's legislative initiatives....

Employment

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-38, new employment insurance measures were implemented and we had to deal with the definition of "real job search".

The Conservative government lacked transparency by failing to inform the public of the real effect that these new rules would have. It is disrespectful to inform people of new requirements as they receive their cheques—that is, when they get one. This government takes people for dishonest slackers when it asks them for actual proof of interviews with potential employers. The Conservatives discredit workers, treat them like children and humiliate them. They must prove they are looking for work, not to mention that someone from Forestville must now report for an interview in Baie-Comeau, an hour's drive away.

There is no real job creation solution. At the end of the race in the regions, we will be seeing an exodus of skilled workers. The Conservatives are jeopardizing the efforts of the economic players in those regions. The minister can see that for herself if she comes to Haute-Côte-Nord or Charlevoix. For the seasonal industry back home, winter is winter.

Motions in Amendment

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise on behalf of my constituents in Surrey North to speak on Bill C-27, an act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of first nations.

I will speak to accountability and transparency in a moment, but I would first point out that the bill is fundamentally flawed in failing to address the real issues that we should be talking about in this House, the real issues affecting our first nation communities, including in northern British Columbia, Alberta and across the Prairies to Ontario and the rest of the country. Those real issues are housing, jobs, education and running water for our first nation young people.

It is a fundamental flaw in the bill that we are not discussing these issues that have affected our first nations for many years. We should be discussing these issues in the House to improve the lives of our first nation people. Yet, the Conservative government has failed to address any of these issues that need to be addressed.

Before starting out with a bill, it would make sense to consult the very people it would affect. We have heard in this House and at committee that the government has failed to address the concerns of first nations by listening to them, the very people the bill would affect.

It is not just about listening, but also about making changes to the bill to improve accountability and transparency. As we heard in committee, New Democrats produced a number of amendments that would have improved the bill, yet the Conservatives did not want to listen to them or make the changes.

From the Conservatives we have seen no accountability and transparency. There was no accountability by the Minister of Agriculture when it came to the XL Foods debacle. We saw no transparency or accountability from the Minister of National Defence or the Associate Minister of National Defence when it came to the F-35s. My colleague from northern Ontario talked about the lack of accountability in Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada in his speech, referring to a “black hole of accountability” there.

I think that accountability and transparency has to start with the government being accountable to the taxpayers of this country. However, the current Conservative government has failed to be accountable and transparent.

Despite hearing about transparency and accountability from the other side of the House, we have Bill C-38 and now Bill C-45, the omnibus budget bills. The Conservatives failed to properly consult on these bills and to put them into the right committees to look at the issues affecting Canadians. I am taken aback when Conservatives talk about accountability and transparency, because the current government has not shown any of that when it comes to a number of issues that have been raised in the House.

There are a number of so-called transparency and accountability issues the government brings up in the bill. I want to highlight them and look at whether there really is transparency and accountability and if things are in place already addressing some of those concerns.

The bill would require every first nation, except those with self-government regimes, to produce an audited annual consolidated financial statement; a separate annual schedule of remuneration covering the salaries, commissions, bonuses, fees, et cetera, paid by the first nation and any entity controlled by the first nation through its chief and each of its councillors in their professional and personal capacities; an auditor's written report respecting the consolidated financial statement; and an auditor's report respecting the schedule of remuneration.

For each of these four documents, the bill requires each first nation to provide it within four months upon request of any of its members, and to publish the document on its website and retain it there for over 10 years. Here is the kicker: the minister must also publish the document on the website of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. Failure of the first nation to comply with these requirements of the bill enables the minister to withhold any funds to first nations, and the minister can also terminate any funding agreement with first nations.

We heard from the previous speaker about the minister arbitrarily having these powers and the ability to withhold money for the very issues that we need to address. We saw him last winter withholding money for three months from first nation schools in northern Ontario communities.

There is a whole bunch of requirements now being put on first nations to report this stuff. I think these onerous requirements are already in place, because we can get that information already. However, I do know that the Conservatives have to play to their ideological base and interest groups to make it look like they are actually addressing the issues of first nations.

Again, if they were really concerned about addressing the real issues in our first nation communities, we would be discussing housing for first nations. We would be discussing education for every child and adult in first nations. We would be addressing water issues in first nation communities.

I have listed a number of requirements of the bill that will put an onerous burden on first nations. I also want to let the House and the people who are listening know that there are certain mechanisms in place that already incorporate some of these things. The current policy based requirements include the fact that the majority of the funding arrangements between Canada and first nations are in the form of fixed term contribution agreements under which first nations must satisfy certain conditions to ensure continued federal contribution payments. The requirements for financial reporting are also set out in AANDC's year-end financial reporting handbook. Under the year-end financial reporting handbook, first nations must submit to AANDC annual audited consolidated financial statements for which public funds are provided to them. These include the salary, honoraria, and travel expenses of all elected, appointed and senior unelected band officials. The latter basically include unelected positions, such as those of executive director and band manager.

Therefore, we already have in place arrangements where first nations provide this information when they sign agreements with the government for the funds available to them.

New Democrats are opposed to this legislation, as it will be imposed on first nations. We need to work in collaboration with first nations to come up with a framework to address the real issues that are of concern to them and Canadians. This has been going on for many years. We need to take a look at these issues. We should be discussing first nations' housing, education and running water. These are the real issues affecting our first nations, yet the government has consistently failed to address them.

Safe Food for Canadians Act

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about Bill S-11, but before doing so, I would like to provide a bit of background.

A few months ago, I rose in this House to speak out against the disastrous consequences of Bill C-38 to implement certain provisions of the budget. Among other things, I pointed out that the bill far exceeded its mandate. The Conservatives have brandished this bill like a magic wand to implement their ideological austerity agenda.

I also spoke out against cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that would allow private companies to carry out inspections. After repeated attempts by the NDP to convince the government to provide more information about this bill, the Conservatives proceeded. I sat for 22 hours straight in protest. It was in vain. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency budget was cut by $46 million, and 314 full-time jobs will be eliminated by 2015.

While it is true that the number of inspectors at the CFIA has declined steadily on the Conservatives' watch, I would be lying if I said that I do not support Bill S-11. Like my NDP colleagues, I immediately saw this as a step in the right direction that would give Canadians greater food safety.

I must say that the NDP did not expect any less: we have been demanding that the agency be modernized since Sheila Weatherill's report was released in 2009. Now that the bill has reached third reading, I still support it. Nevertheless, the Conservatives' attitude is unfortunate.

It is unfortunate because the witnesses we heard at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food confirmed our fears: Bill S-11 would not have been enough to contain the crisis that recently struck XL Foods in Alberta. The government did not bother to listen to the NDP's recommendations, and our amendments were rejected without any discussion. The Conservatives missed an excellent opportunity to shed their reputation as an autocratic government and demonstrate a little co-operation.

The important thing to remember is that the government's reckless cuts are putting Canadians' lives at risk. In many areas, cuts are irrevocably affecting people's lives across the country. When it comes to food safety, it is a matter of life and death.

And if life is not important enough to the Conservatives—except, of course, the lives of the unborn—we must recognize that there is also an economic benefit to food safety. How many E. coli crises like the one that struck the community of Brooks, Alberta, can our economy withstand?

The NDP supported XL Foods from the very beginning. What did the minister do during the crisis? He took days to respond, burying his head so deep in the sand that he probably found new oil reserves.

The Conservatives' reaction to the XL Foods crisis shows that they do not hesitate to mislead Canadians by saying things in the House that are not true. On October 2, the minister himself assured us that the CFIA had added 700 new inspectors since 2006. The minister included in that calculation hundreds of people who have nothing to do with protecting Canadians from unsafe food products. What is more, the facts show that there was no new meat hygiene inspector position at the CFIA. How do they come up with it?

The only time the Conservatives added inspectors to the meat processing program was following the listeriosis crisis, another crisis that Canadians could have done without. The government added 170 inspectors to calm things down, but cut 314 a few years later.

Let me put this into words the members opposite will understand: do the math.

Looking at these sorry past decisions makes us wonder, and rightly so, whether Bill S-11 is just a smokescreen.

Among the amendments unilaterally rejected by the Conservatives was one that guaranteed anonymity to an employee who blows the whistle on a practice that contravenes CFIA rules. At XL Foods, some employees who saw that standards were not being met chose not to say anything out of fear of losing their jobs. That is why the CFIA should have guaranteed this necessary anonymity, but the Conservatives refused.

Another amendment seemed necessary to me, and it called for the immediate audit of the Canadian food system with the coming into force of the bill. We then proposed that an identical audit be done every five years to verify whether all the objectives set out in the legislation had been met. If not, the government could have made the necessary changes, but the Conservatives refused.

In closing, I would add that Canadians will not be fooled by the dramatic increase in food safety-related penalties. They have been multiplied by 20 for the sake of appearances, but historically at the CFIA, the maximum fines have never been applied at current levels. In 2011, for example, the average fine was just 5% of the maximum fine and none exceeded 20%. Instead of being tougher, such increases might put a damper on the regulatory environment and decrease the number of penalties.

I could continue for some time listing the problems with this bill. That being said, I can only commend this initiative and confirm my support for it, for the welfare of the community.

Even though it is a step in the right direction, unfortunately it looks more like a dance step.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend raises a good point, something that this Parliament was victimized with the moment the Conservatives gained power in 2011, that they we will do things their way or no way. They are not interested in reasoned amendments, not on omnibus Bill C-38 or Bill C-45, and not on this food legislation Bill S-11.

There were many thoughtful amendments brought forward, not for the purpose of stage playing or any purpose than to make a good bill better, as my friend from Welland said. However, the Conservatives are not interested. As I said earlier, even at committee when I was moving my amendments, there was no response from the governing party. The Conservatives just asked the chair to call the question because they were not interested in discussing it.

Helping Families in Need Act

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak about Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code and the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations. Hon. members will recall that some aspects of this bill are very beneficial. I am very happy to say that we, on this side of the House, are prepared to support this bill.

For example, this bill will allow parents to extend their maternity and parental leave by the number of weeks that their child was hospitalized, which is an improvement over the existing provisions of the Employment Insurance Act. This will make it possible for parents to extend their parental leave by the number of sick days taken during that period. The same goes for time spent serving in the Canadian Forces Reserves. This and many other aspects of the bill are quite worthwhile.

We have heard many times, particularly from the government side, that 6,000 claimants will benefit from this amendment to the Employment Insurance Act. There are well over a million unemployed workers in Canada, 870,000 of whom are not eligible for employment insurance benefits. Only 4 out of 10 unemployed workers are eligible for employment insurance benefits; 6 out of 10 ten are not eligible.

I am very pleased that the government is giving benefits to 6,000 claimants in Canada for very worthwhile reasons, and we certainly support that. However, this helps only 0.27% of all unemployed workers in Canada: those who are eligible for employment insurance benefits. There is a great deal of work to be done with regard to employment insurance. We are far from meeting the real needs of Canadians.

Allowing families to collect employment insurance benefits in difficult situations, particularly those involving their children, is certainly a good thing. We completely agree. We must help these people. The health of a child is at risk, as is the mental health of parents, children and the community in a broader sense. For all of these reasons, it is important to support this bill.

However, what is missing here is support for communities that depend on employment insurance benefits. We have not really talked about the terrible hardship that will be created by the other employment insurance bills proposed by the Conservatives. For example, let us remember that, under Bill C-38, which was passed in the spring, thousands of unemployed workers will not be eligible for employment insurance benefits next year and even this fall because of changes that the Conservatives made to the Employment Insurance Act and the pilot projects that they did away with by amending the act.

It is very troubling. I definitely want to help families in situations where they need more support. However, I also want to help communities, especially those in the regions that depend on a seasonal economy. They depend on employment insurance. In order for the economy to keep going during the summer, these people need to be compensated during the winter months.

I encourage the Conservatives not only to help families who are having difficulties because they have a child with health problems, but also to start treating other claimants and unemployed workers with the same respect. The 6,000 claimants who will benefit from this change include parents of abducted children who will qualify for employment insurance.

The Canadian Police Information Centre reported that, in 2011, 25 kidnappings were committed by strangers and 145 were committed by parents. That is very troubling. Clearly, that is 170 too many abducted children.

Once again, I would like to point out that there are many other needs in Canada. I would remind the House that 870,000 unemployed workers are not eligible for employment insurance. Are we also going to abandon the women who lost their jobs when they went back to work after their parental leave?

The bill does not go far enough. It does not permit special and regular benefits to be combined. It gives the impression of helping people, but if we look at this bill more carefully, we quickly see that many parents will not be able to benefit from the bill's generosity.

The Conservatives ignored the promises they made in their 2011 platform. Indeed, during the 2011 election campaign, they said that they would offer enhanced EI benefits to the parents of murdered or missing children and to the parents of critically ill children. However, they said the funding for this measure would come from general revenues. They seem to have ignored their promises. Most of the funding for this will not come from general revenues, but rather from the EI fund.

Governments have a hard time resisting dipping into the employment insurance fund to pay for their bills. I can see why, since it is a healthy fund, but still, the government has to be consistent. If it promises money from general revenues, then it should come from general revenues.

I would like the Conservatives to note that with this bill, they are finally agreeing with the official opposition on changes to employment insurance. During the 40th Parliament, Bill C-343 would have provided employment insurance benefits to allow parents of missing children to take leave. The Conservatives twice voted against that bill. Then there was an election. We never found out what would have happened at third reading, but we can assume that the Conservatives would have continued to categorically say no. What made them change their minds?

I am very glad that they changed their minds in 2011 and that they made a promise. The bill before us is not exactly what they promised, but at least it is a step in the right direction. Nonetheless, some good opportunities were missed in the past to address some of the problems in our society. Once again, and probably mostly for lack of consultation, the Conservatives have not really identified the other problems faced by our communities. If they had held real consultations, they would have understood that allowing extensions and access to benefits for dependent children under 18 might not be enough.

We should be discussing a bill that meets the needs of parents with dependant children or simply dependants. Often, adults have to look after people older than 18 who have mental health problems. Canada also has an aging population. More and more people have to work in addition to caring for their parents. In situations where dependants have health problems or in potentially more serious situations such as kidnappings, why not give them more benefits and support as well?

In Canada, one in 30 people who are 45 or older look after people who are 65 or older. It is estimated that by 2056, one in 10 will have that responsibility. Thus, more and more people will need more and more help. And yet, it seems that it is difficult getting them this help. The bill before us is a step in the right direction. But, quite frankly, the government could have done much more to lend a helping hand to people in need. It is about time that the Conservatives learned that when you consult people you have to take their needs into account. The Conservatives must listen and get out into our communities. I hope that the other bills they introduce will provide more support than the one we are debating.

Employment Insurance

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the concerns of the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. She asked whether we consulted with Canadians on the various initiatives set out in Bill C-38, including changes to employment insurance and old age security.

I would like to assure the honourable member that our government is listening to Canadians.

The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, the Minister of State for Seniors and myself consulted widely in the lead up to Canada's economic action plan 2012. We regularly travelled across the country to meet stakeholders, including individual citizens, employers, employer associations, labour groups and academics to talk about the training skills, OAS, seniors and, of course, employment insurance.

Our government’s top priority is the economy, and we are proud that over 820,000 jobs have been created since the end of the economic recession.

Such economic growth is only possible by working in partnership with Canadians. In the summer and fall of last year, I was part of extensive consultations in all regions of the country related to employment insurance and how we set EI rates. This was in addition to the prebudget consultations conducted by the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, the Minister of State for Seniors and myself in the lead up to the budget. We heard about EI, the skills gap and the need for better connecting Canadians with available jobs from businesses, labour organizations and Canadians. Consultations are an integral part of our business and provide valuable input for our decision-making process.

Input from Canadians allows us to develop programs and policies for all our citizens.

We have invested heavily in skills and training to ensure that Canadians have the skills and training they need to gain employment in the marketplace. However, it is unfortunate that with all of these initiatives that we move forward with, the opposition continues to vote against them again and again.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, during question period on June 6, 2012, we were in the middle of a debate on the Conservatives' notorious mammoth Bill C-38 and its measures regarding employment insurance reforms.

I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development that day why her government clearly did not consult workers before bringing in its reform. In a democratic society, where elected representatives work for the people, it goes without saying that decisions regarding major changes to social programs should involve anyone who could be directly or indirectly affected by those changes.

It also goes without saying that MPs can and should call upon experts in each field—employment insurance, in this case—since they are the ones who have the specialized skills needed to help MPs make informed decisions. We consult experts when it comes time to introduce bills and when we are examining certain issues in committee that will affect the lives of Canadians.

When it introduced mammoth Bill C-38, the government did not even want to divide the bill, which amended some sixty laws of all sorts, so that the content could be properly examined by the appropriate committees.

The NDP was quick to work with all stakeholders who wanted to be heard on areas affected by Bill C-38 but had to do so outside the regular parliamentary process because the Conservatives did not place any importance on the consultation process, which is nonetheless fundamental to our democracy's health.

Unlike the Conservatives, the NDP always listens carefully to Canadians, experts, stakeholders, businesses, scholars and others. We already know that the Conservatives never consulted unemployed workers, employers in seasonal industries, advocacy groups for the unemployed, unions or workers on a reform that will affect them. And, it is important to note that just going around the table at cabinet does not qualify as a consultation process.

I would also like to once again remind members that the government does not contribute to the employment insurance fund and that the money in that fund belongs to workers and employers.

I would thus like the minister to explain to Canadians why her government is not consulting the people affected by her employment insurance reform, and why her government thinks it has the legitimacy to interfere in the management of a fund that does not belong to it.

If the minister is so convinced that what she is saying is true, then she should provide evidence to back it up. Who was consulted and how many times? How many stakeholders are there? Did she merely consult her Conservative colleagues? What consultation mechanisms were put in place? How much time did the consultations take? What needs of employers and workers were identified during the consultations?

Canadians have the right to know.

The Environment

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I am going to talk about the government's decision to eliminate the experimental lakes program, or to do away with it. I think that decision is catastrophic.

Research on the quality of our water is critical to Canada. The development of the oil sands and the resulting pollution and contamination due to mining operations, not to mention acid rain and so on, are increasingly important stressors for our lakes and rivers. And we are not even talking about the risk of environmental accidents caused by offshore oil and gas development. It is hard to understand why this government has decided to axe a program that was contributing to Canada's reputation abroad.

The program includes research on blue-green algae, on the impact of climate change on our lakes and fish habitat, and on the impact of contaminants on the lakes' biodiversity. The studies being done by scientists in 58 lakes in their natural state are unique and cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world.

Why? Because it is the only place where research is done directly in the lakes, in constantly evolving complex ecosystems rather than in laboratories. Scientists around the world know this very well. That is why they criticized the cuts from the very outset. In Canada, more than 20,000 people signed the petition to continue the existing public experimental lakes.

Why eliminate this program? The government's answer is that it wants to save money. And yet the Conservatives estimate the savings generated by this decision at only $2 million, when closing the lakes will cost $50 million.

This irresponsible decision by the Conservatives will cost us $48 million and threaten the quality of our waterways.

Canada recently announced that it had signed an agreement with the United States on monitoring water quality in the Great Lakes. Will the government be able to meet its international commitments if it cuts all research programs like the experimental lakes program?

The cuts at Fisheries and Oceans Canada will affect hundreds of scientific jobs all across Canada. In Bill C-38, the first mammoth budget implementation bill, the government took the axe to the environmental assessment process. There were over 3,000 fewer environmental assessments this summer. Bill C-45 goes after lakes and rivers. There are now only 97 lakes and 62 rivers in all of Canada that will continue to be protected. All the water quality monitoring mechanisms are being ditched, one after another.

And then the government goes and tells our neighbours to the south that we will monitor the water quality of the Great Lakes. It is completely absurd.

In addition to axing water quality monitoring programs, the Conservatives are gagging scientists. Scientists working on the experimental lakes program cannot talk publicly about what is going on or explain the impact of the cuts on their research program. Tom Muir, who was formerly a biologist with Environment Canada and who is now an independent researcher, found that there was politicization of research within the department.

Scientists can no longer explain their research findings. They have to refer all questions from the media to the department’s communications branch, staffed by employees who are trained to dish out propaganda rather than scientific facts.

Today we learned that Environment Canada research conducted on the oil sands was censored once again. Scientists at the University of Alberta discovered that contamination levels in snow and rain near the oil sands extraction sites were much higher than average.

Here the department made the researchers use a series of canned responses when speaking to the media. In most cases, the scientists were not allowed to answer media questions and had to refer all interview requests to the departmental communications people. We can no longer ask questions, and the public has no right to know whether our lakes and rivers are being polluted.

I have a question for the minister or the parliamentary secretary. What will happen to our Experimental Lakes? Will the program be privatized?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, through economic action plan 2012 and Bill C-38, the government severely cut the budget to Environment Canada, gutted environmental legislation, cancelled the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy. The Conservatives have also silenced dissent from environmental non-governmental organizations and continue to muzzle government scientists, threatening our economy and environment.

Our world-renowned natural heritage is now being further imperilled by a government that fails to understand that water is the foundation of life, is at the centre of economic and social development and is fundamental across economic sectors, including agriculture and energy.

Through its latest anti-democratic omnibus legislation, Bill C-45, the government is stripping federal oversight from thousands of Canadian waterways. Of the roughly 32,000 lakes in Canada, just 97 lakes and 62 rivers will now be protected.

Instead of killing the Navigable Waters Protection Act, will the government prioritize clean water and restore our freshwater ecosystems?

Fisheries and Oceans

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to remind the hon. member that the Conservatives collected fossil awards at the Rio+20 conference. The Minister of the Environment's shelf holds a collection of environmental fossil awards. It is thus difficult to say that the Conservatives have done what is necessary for the environment.

The most recent budget cuts found in the two mammoth budget bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, show that they have not. These bills make radical cuts to the environment and there is nothing in these bills to protect our marine areas. On the contrary, the Navigable Waters Protection Act has been completely gutted. Canada has also take a major step backward in terms of environmental science. As I mentioned, the Conservatives are making serious cuts in this area. This will do nothing to help protect our oceans. Oceans cover a large portion of our planet. They are the very essence of life. Water is the essence of life, and that is why we must protect it.

According to the hon. member, if the government has done everything it can, why was it given so many fossil awards?

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to talk about a question that I asked on June 19 about the Rio+20 conference and the Conservatives' catastrophic record.

May 22 was the International Day for Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, issued this appeal: “Rio+20 must galvanize action to improve the management and conservation of oceans.”

Rio+20 was held in June 2012, the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit. Two very important environmental proposals were on the table, but unfortunately, the Conservatives fiercely opposed them, which angered Canadians and the people in my riding of Drummond.

The first environmental proposal on the table at Rio+20 was to eliminate over $1 billion in subsidies that the Conservatives give every year to fossil fuel companies—both oil and gas companies. The people in my riding are sick and tired of seeing their tax dollars subsidize billion-dollar oil and gas companies. Unfortunately, at Rio+20, the Conservatives opposed that proposal.

The second environmental proposal was to better protect marine biodiversity in extraterritorial waters, as called for by Ban Ki-moon. Instead of protecting our environment and our health, the Conservatives have another agenda. They are continuing the destruction that they began with Bill C-38. Let me remind the House what that bill included: the Conservatives withdrew Canada from the Kyoto protocol; they eliminated the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy; and they abolished the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

With Bill C-45, they can do more of the same by attacking the Navigable Waters Protection Act this time. For instance, only 97 lakes and 62 rivers in all of Canada will now be protected. That is unbelievable. This means that 99.7% of lakes and 99.9% of rivers in Canada will not have any protection whatsoever. On top of all that, of the only 97 protected lakes, 89% are located in Conservative ridings, which is even more shocking. Of the remaining rivers, the one that runs through Drummond, the Saint-François River, is not protected. People from Drummond are calling me and asking me what the repercussions of this will be. They are shocked to learn that the river will no longer be protected.

Furthermore, I would like to come back to Fisheries and Oceans Canada and more specifically the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, located in Mont-Joli in the Lower St. Lawrence, which has experienced some cuts. This is another example of the vague budget cuts imposed on Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Near Rimouski, more than 120 scientist jobs are affected, including about 30 that will be eliminated altogether. This important institute is one of the main francophone marine science research centres in the world. As I was saying, it plays a very important role, not only here in Canada, but also around the world.

My question is the following: how can the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans claim that the federal government oversees the sustainable development of the oceans, when it is shamelessly cutting anything to do with the environment, whether it is with Bill C-38 or Bill C-45? Can he show us that he truly cares about protecting the oceans?

Jobs and Growth, 2012

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, last spring, the Conservatives invoked closure to have the House vote on Bill C-38. The bill contained 425 pages and amended approximately 70 laws and regulations.

Many Canadians and media outlets decried this way of doing things. Even the National Post, generally considered a right-wing newspaper, called into question the Conservatives' approach. This fall, just a couple of months after Bill C-38 was passed, the Conservatives are at it again and have introduced yet another mammoth bill, Bill C-45.

Bill C–45 contains 445 pages and amends 60 Canadian laws. Together, these two bills contain approximately 870 pages and thousands of measures that are, in many instances, unrelated to each other.

I have an important question to ask my colleagues opposite: at what point does all this become undemocratic? Where will it all end? While they are at it, the Conservatives could very well convene Parliament only once per session and invoke closure to introduce and pass one single gigantic bill, and then shut down Parliament. Why not? This is a relevant question, if you look at it in the cold, hard light of day.

Canadians are wondering in whose name the Conservative party is acting when it garnered fewer than 40% of the vote. The Conservatives seem to forget that our parliamentary system is democratic, and should remain so, and that it attributes importance to public debate on proposed legislation, policies of public interest, and the conduct of the executive branch. This notion is crucial, and is part and parcel of democracy.

Democracy is not simply about the electoral process, it is an ongoing process. Once elections have been held, members have the duty and obligation to monitor the government's activities on behalf of all Canadians. They are duty bound and obliged to closely review all legislation that is introduced in Parliament and express varying points of view that must be voiced and defended in the public sphere.

If this is not possible, then I wonder what purpose the members we elect serve. What kind of democracy is it when the majority prevents elected opposition members of Parliament from doing their job? It is completely unacceptable that things would work this way in this Parliament. It is truly unacceptable.

If the government wants to govern autocratically, it should say so openly. The government should tell Canadians that it thinks that winning fewer than 40% of the popular vote entitles it to flout our democratic traditions. We will see how Canadians react to this. That is exactly what this government is doing.

The Conservatives are governing as if the most elementary rules of the democratic process did not exist. They are behaving like there is no need to be accountable to Canadians, and like they have no duty and obligation to be transparent. I believe—and I am choosing my words carefully—that the way the Conservatives are behaving is scandalous.

The Conservatives' actions demonstrate a flagrant lack of respect for our institutions and a democratic tradition that has existed in this country since its founding.

If Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 only made minor technical changes, it would be a different story. We could perhaps live with that. We are not necessarily against omnibus bills. It is possible to conceive of certain situations where they may be useful. For example, when it comes time to make minor technical amendments to certain pieces of legislation. But that is not what the Conservatives are proposing.

Bill C-38 was an attack on old age security, employment insurance, and federal health transfers, and plunged us back into the stone age in terms of environmental regulation.

Bill C-45 does the same thing. We completely oppose this bill at second reading. We believe that the bill further weakens environmental protections, guts the Navigable Waters Protection Act, amends the Canada Labour Code, and takes aim at public service pension plans.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I have been listening for the last few minutes. I think the member is debating Bill C-38 and not Bill C-45 at this particular moment. I would ask you to ask him to be relevant to Bill C-45.

Employment Insurance

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois, along with thousands of other individuals, demonstrated last weekend in Thetford Mines, in front of the office of the Minister of Industry, the member for Mégantic—L'Érable, to condemn employment insurance reforms.

The government is ravaging the employment insurance system, and we must stand in solidarity with workers and the unemployed. This is not the government's money; this money belongs to workers and employers.

During this demonstration organized by Mouvement autonome et solidaire des sans-emploi, the participants condemned the passage of Bill C-38, which amended the employment insurance rules. These changes will affect not only workers—especially seasonal workers—but also employers, who could lose their experienced employees. These changes tighten the eligibility rules and force claimants to accept jobs further from home and at lower pay.

The government cannot ignore the thousands of people who spoke out not only in Thetford Mines, but also in the Gaspé and elsewhere. And this is only the beginning.

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I proudly rise today to oppose Bill C-45, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012, and other measures.

We oppose budget 2012 and its implementation bill unless it is amended to focus on the priorities of Canadians: creating good quality jobs; protecting our environment; strengthening our health care system; protecting retirement security for all; and ensuring open and transparent government.

On March 29, the Minister of Finance presented Bill C-38, budget 2012, that recklessly cut services Canadians rely on, including old age security, health care transfers to the provinces and environmental assessment.

Despite the government's claims of job creation, it is also suggested that these cuts would lead to 19,200 job losses in the public sector.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that the budget would cost 43,000 Canadians their jobs. Combined with the previous rounds of cuts, the PBO projects a total job loss of 102,000 jobs.

Not only did the budget gut services to Canadians, its omnibus nature was an attack on transparency and democracy. The Trojan Horse budget bill outraged Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

I personally received large numbers of emails from constituents of Scarborough—Rouge River who were angry about the undemocratic processes and the concealed method the government used to spend their tax dollars. By introducing yet another massive omnibus bill, the Conservative government continues to keep Canadians in the dark by ramming it through Parliament without allowing a transparent, open process of consultation.

By avoiding a thorough study of their second 400-plus page budget implementation bill and its implications, the Conservatives certainly have not learned their lesson. The official opposition, the New Democrats, will not let them quietly pass their new omnibus legislation. Canadians deserve better.

The massive omnibus bill makes amendments to a wide range of acts. Over 70 different pieces of legislation are being changed. It further erodes government transparency and accountability by dismantling a series of commissions and giving more power to the ministers, another recurring theme from the government.

Ironically titled the “jobs and growth act”, Bill C-45 completely lacks measures to create jobs and stimulate growth in the long term for Canadians. Actually, we are seeing more and more cuts to jobs. As I mentioned earlier, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that over 102,000 jobs will be lost because of this budget—

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak against yet another omnibus budget bill brought forth by the Conservative government, as with its spring's Trojan horse budget bill. New Democrats oppose Bill C-45 both on content and process grounds.

Bill C-45 is over 400 pages long and contains a huge number of disparate measures. Despite what the minister says, not all of these measures were in the 2012 budget.

Bill C-45 would amend over 60 laws and even contains a totally new law. With this bill, the government is pursuing the same agenda it put forward in its Trojan Horse budget bill: it is giving the minister more power and weakening environmental protection legislation.

Once again, the Conservatives are trying to rush their legislative measures through Parliament without giving Canadians and their MPs a chance to examine those measures closely.

Writing about the Trojan Horse budget bill, conservative commentator Andrew Coyne said that there was something quite alarming about Parliament being obliged to rubber-stamp the government's whole legislative agenda at one go.

Alarming is right. This bill is reprehensible, and the NDP will not support it.

The Conservatives continue to claim that their budget is about job creation. However, like Bill C-38, Bill C-45 is lacking in significant measures to create jobs and stimulate growth in the long term.

Contrary to what my colleagues across the way have just said, tax credits to small business are short term, small in size and will only be available to employers for the 2012 taxation year, meaning they will almost be over by the time Bill C-45 is passed.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has stated, “In total, federal spending cuts could lead to the elimination of over 70,000 full-time equivalent positions”. These are both public and private sector losses. Therefore, where is the Canada-wide strategy to create good jobs, while 1.4 million Canadians are still unemployed? It is clear that the austerity plan of the Conservatives is not working. Instead it is a drag on our economy.

In fact, on the very day that this bill was released, the minister suggested a downgrade would be announced in the fall economic update, but despite the growing evidence that their plan is not working, the Conservatives are stubbornly refusing to change the course.

At a time when most Canadian businesses need to increase innovation and productivity to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy, support to small business research and development, a driving force in innovation and productivity, has been cut.

In its prebudget consultation brief, BIOTECanada wrote:

Leading industrialized countries including Australia and France have recognized the spin-off benefits of investing in R&D tax credits and have recently made significant improvements to their respective programs. In order to ensure Canada retains a competitive edge in attracting foreign direct investment and growing domestic research and development capacity, the SR&ED program should be examined with an eye to ensuring that it remains a global leader.

Where is the minister's plan to make the SR&ED program a global leader? We are not seeing it.

At a time when countries around the world are recognizing that environmental sustainability and economic growth must go together, the Conservatives continue to barrel down the path of environmental deregulation without consultation.

In response to this spring's budget bill, Jessica Clogg of West Coast Environmental Law wrote:

By gutting Canada’s long-standing environmental laws, the budget bill gives big oil and gas companies what they've been asking for--fewer environmental safeguards so they can push through resource megaprojects with little regard to environmental damage...It is Canadians and our children who will pay the cost.

The Conservatives have clearly not learned their lesson on the environment and, instead, are further weakening our ability to protect the environment and ensure sustainable development for future generations. Bill C-45 completely guts the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Thousands of waterways will be left without protection, which will mean fewer environmental reviews by Transport Canada. In fact, Bill C-45 removes the words “water protection” from the name of the bill. It is now about “navigation protection”.

Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation has said:

This is unacceptable. They have made a unilateral decision to remove the protection of waterways without adequate consultation with First Nations and communities that rely on river systems for navigation and cultural practices protected under treaty.

Where is the plan to build a sustainable economy that will keep Canada competitive in the 21st century? This bill shows just how out of touch Conservatives are with the needs and goals of Canadians. Unfortunately for Canadians, the Conservatives want to convince us that massive omnibus budget bills and an increasing lack of consultation and decreasing government transparency are apparently the new normal.

I just returned from monitoring the elections in Ukraine. Ukrainians have faced numerous challenges and roadblocks when it comes to democracy and yet they keep fighting hard to exercise their democratic rights. In our country, we have a proud democratic tradition and yet we have a government that continues to undermine Parliament and the rights of Canadians with undemocratic bills. I find it particularly striking that I am standing in the House today debating an omnibus budget bill that continues on the disturbing Conservative trend of increasing the concentration of power and reducing government accountability.

Bill C-45 would eliminate a number of commissions, giving the ministers more power to make decisions without consultation or accountability.

Last spring, the NDP organized public consultations on the implementation of the Trojan Horse budget bill. During one of those consultations, Matthew Carroll of Leadnow said that Canadians want effective participatory democracy.

New Democrats will always be proud to stand up for transparency and accountability. They will always stand up for environmental protection. Canadians deserve a government that listens to the concerns of its people.

Last spring, the Conservatives used their Trojan Horse budget implementation bill to attack old age security, employment insurance and provincial health transfers. The Conservatives are transporting us back to the stone age in terms of environmental regulation.

This bill shows that the Conservatives did not listen to Canadians who were outraged by Bill C-38.

While Canadians want us to take action to protect our environment and grow a sustainable economy for the future, the Conservatives are focused on gutting environmental protection. While Canadians want increased transparency from their government, Conservatives are continuing to keep Canadians in the dark and make changes to laws without consultation.

New Democrats will oppose budget 2012 and its implementation bills unless amended to focus on the priorities of Canadians: creating good quality jobs, protecting our environment, strengthening our health care system, protecting retirement security for all and ensuring open and transparent government. Canadians deserve better.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a challenge to approach a bill of over 400 pages covering 40 different laws and have 10 minutes to try to make my way through it. I appreciate this chance to speak to the bill at second reading. I will of course be watching closely for work at committee and hope that some of the concerns I have about the bill now can be repaired at committee so that I will not have to put forward hundreds of amendments at report stage, which at this point appears likely.

The increasing use of omnibus bills is an affront to democracy. It is not appropriate and while other governments have perhaps trespassed close to the line before and created howls from the members of the opposition of the day, certainly the current Privy Council holds the Olympic world record for monster omnibus bills. No other government has come close.

Here I would like to commend all sides of the House for the fact we were able to split out and deal separately with MP pension reform. Many Canadians were happy to see that work. Perhaps we can do more by co-operating in the future to separate out pieces of bills that do not belong.

What things in this bill do not seem to belong at all in a proper budget bill? I will go quickly through some examples and then delve more deeply into two in particular. I do not think that removing the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission properly belongs in an omnibus bill. Why are we getting rid of it? It helps provide critical information to business on hazardous materials.

I lament the current government's further deep cuts to research and development credits, specifically the scientific research and experimental development tax credit. If we look at our economy, it is quite true that we have weathered the economic storm better than most nations around the world. We have a better regulated banking system quite frankly, and the current government can take no credit for that. Nonetheless, we did weather the storm better.

Nonetheless, if we look at the indicators of where we are falling behind, one area is productivity and productivity, which relates to R and D. Cutting R and D does not make sense. I am concerned about significant cuts in this omnibus bill to research and experimental development tax credits.

The Windsor-Detroit bridge is highlighted in the bill and many people have waited a long time to see improvements there. We know we have some private sector opposition to it from the other side of the border. It is an extremely bad precedent that the act specifies there will be no environmental assessment and that the following acts will be exempt from the procedures for the Windsor-Detroit bridge: There will be no Fisheries Act review, no involvement of the Species at Risk Act and there will be nothing from the Navigable Waters Protection Act. This precedent, by the way, is opposed by the member of Parliament from Windsor, who himself is a great proponent of getting this project done.

The assumption implicit in discarding legislative review under those acts is that somehow those acts are irrelevant to any project the Conservatives really care about. I am afraid that is the truth about how the government operates, but that does not make it any less lamentable to find this in the legislation.

One piece that I want to take more time to delve into may surprise the House. The bill is supposed to be about jobs and growth. We hear about that all the time. In this connection, I would mention a key economic sector in Canada that we do not hear very much about: tourism. Tourism represents more of Canada's GDP than agriculture, forestry and fisheries combined. It employs nearly 600,000 Canadians, generating nearly $80 billion in economic activity. However, we are losing ground in tourism.

In the year 2002, Canada was rated seventh in the world as a tourist destination among all nations. Guess what? In 2011, we dropped to eighteenth place. We dropped from seventh to eighteenth in just in 9 years. What happened? For one, there are the policies of the current government. One of the first things the Prime Minister did once forming government was to remove the GST credit that foreign visitors used to get. That credit was basically a goodwill gesture. It cost this country almost nothing, because so few people applied for it. However, the Conservatives got rid of it.

Then of course there was the move by the United States to require visitors to Canada and visitors to the U.S. who travel across our borders to have passports. We cannot blame any government for what the United States decides to do, but I think we should have pushed more forcefully against it. That measure has hurt tourism a lot, just as the general climate after 9/11 hurt tourism from the United States. However, we hurt the tourism sector even more in Bill C-38 by changing the rules around seasonal workers to make it harder for seasonal workers to leave employment in an industry such as tourism and be considered reliably available to the employer when the tourist season begins again.

However, now we have this, found on page 270 in division 16 under “immigration and refugee protection”, a whole new regime for tourists. It is little mentioned in debate on the omnibus bill but is for travellers to Canada. Any foreign national coming to Canada would now have to clear an application process in which they would have to answer questions before they planned their vacation. It would create what they call “an electronic travel authorization”, although that is not the language of the act but the language of the technical briefing. In short, there would be an electronic travel authorization.

I have a couple of concerns about this. One is that it would hurt tourism. There is no question about that. When we put in place visa requirements for countries like Mexico and the old Soviet bloc nations, it had an effect on tourism, as anything would that creates a barrier in a competitive tourist market where tourists can decide whether they want to take the train across Canada or a tour down the Rhine by boat. They have choices. If one government says, “We'll see if we'll let you in, fill out this form”, tourists will choose to go somewhere else. This would be a terrible mistake. It would be part of our over-security conscious agenda, that even if people want to visit Canada as tourists, we have the right to put them on a no-fly list to prevent their coming here. I am very concerned about that.

I will turn to the most egregious elements of Bill C-45, the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. I hear my friends on the other side of the House refer to the many complaints about the act because only seasonally navigable water falls under the act. Surely, if that were the nature of the problem, they could deal with it by using a fly swatter. They did not need to bring in the wrecking ball. If that is the problem, get out the fly swatter. What the Conservatives would do under Bill C-45 would be to take on, I think, in the order of 99.5% of all the bodies of water within Canada, excluding our oceans, and remove them from the Navigable Waters Protection Act. They say that the act was never intended to be about navigable waters, that it was only supposed to be about navigation.

Just to go back to some constitutional law for purposes of setting the context, we cannot say with any sense or meaning that this bill was only intended to do thus and such when a bill was passed in 1882 or since 1867, since navigation is a head of power for the federal government. They cannot say that in 1867 the legislators never intended it to apply to the environmental assessment of a massive hydro dam. Of course, they did not. Neither did they intend, as Professor Peter Hogg has pointed out, that undertakings connecting the provinces would include an interprovincial telephone system. It had not been invented yet. Moreover, as Professor Hogg pointed out in one of his constitutional law texts, “[I]t is well established that the general language used to describe the classes of subjects (or heads of power) is not frozen in the sense in which it would have been understood in 1867”. Then he goes on to say, “On the contrary, the words of the Act are to be given a "progressive interpretation", so that they are continuously adapted to new conditions and new ideas”. Or, as a member of the high court, Lord Sankey, ruled in 1930, “The British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits”.

Therefore, it is entirely absurd to hear the government members continually tell us that the Fisheries Act was only supposed to be about fisheries for all time, not fish; and that the Navigable Waters Protection Act was never about waters, but only about navigation. That is bad in law, it is bad in theory and it is bad public policy. It is also false. These laws have been fundamental to environmental law in Canada.

However, I ask the question: If it is about navigation, why would the Conservatives take a wrecking ball to navigation? In the bill, they have protected lakes in precious cottage country, close to where people live, where they claim there are all the complaints, and eliminated the law for the vast tens of thousands or millions of hectares of Canada where the lakes are not cottage country. They would eliminate the protection on all but 62 rivers and 97 lakes. Who would step up to protect our rights of navigation?

Under constitutional law, no province is allowed to step up and fill the void when the federal government runs from its responsibilities under the Constitution. It is unprecedented in the history of Canada that the federal government would willingly and deliberately remove itself from a field in which it is empowered under our Constitution. It would leave no protection for navigation, no protection for recreational use, no protection for rafting or kayaking and, in the process, would eliminate environmental law for most of Canada's waters.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I, along with my NDP colleagues, oppose this monster budget bill. I oppose it on both content and process. First I will talk about the process.

The Conservatives talk about the unprecedented level of debate and hours of debate on this bill and the previous budget bill. Even the member for Crowfoot, who spoke before me, talked about unprecedented debate in the House. Let us review that to see if they are right.

Bill C-20, which was what the budget bill was called in 1991, was six pages long and between first and third reading in the House of Commons, there were 192 days of debate. In 1995, it was Bill C-76 and it was 48 pages long. There were 78 days of debate in the chamber. Bill C-32 in 2000 was 29 pages long, it went down a bit in size, and there were 60 days of debate. Bill C-33 in 2004 was 76 pages long and it received 79 days of debate in this chamber.

What happened this year? This spring the omnibus budget bill touched or outright repealed over 70 laws. A third of that budget bill was about gutting environmental legislation. Most pieces of the budget had not been debated in the House before and most of those pieces were not campaigned on.

I do not remember the Conservatives campaigning in the 2011 election saying that they were going to increase OAS eligibility from the age of 65 to 67. I do not remember them campaigning on the fact that they were going to diminish health care transfers. In fact, during that election, I was the health critic for the NDP and I remember the opposite. The Conservatives campaigned on maintaining and increasing health care transfers.

We also cannot find any of these pieces in Conservative Party policy. If we turn to its policy, we will not find the Conservatives saying that they believe they should raise the age that people can collect their OAS.

The member for Crowfoot said that we had this budget. that this stuff had existed for so long and we should have read it. I would love for any member on that side of the House to tell me anything, even one word, about what the changes were to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act in the last omnibus budget bill, never mind what that had to do with the budget. I think most Conservatives would be hard pressed to even repeat the phrase “assisted human reproduction”.

We had Bill C-38 in the spring that was 425 pages long and there were 54 days of debate. Here we are again this fall with the second omnibus budget, the son of omnibus. I do not know how long this debate will go, but the government has already moved time allocation. I cannot imagine it will be very long. I cannot imagine it will be the heady days of 1991 when there were 192 days of debate, I highly doubt that, and we have a bill that is over 440 pages long.

The length of debate is important. Maybe the Conservatives do not think it is important because they do not like to listen when the NDP brings forward reasonable ideas. They just want to sit with their eyes closed and their hands over their ears. However, the length of debate is important for democracy because it allows entry points for civil society to engage with the legislative process. Think about it. How does civil society actually engage with this process? People cannot come here to vote or give speeches in the House, but there are entry points for them. They write letters to their MPs. They write letters to the editor. They testify at committee. They come up with good ideas and send them to us via social media. They phone us and have meetings with us in our communities. They have brown bag luncheon seminars in their workplaces to talk about how this will impact them. Sometimes they even take to the streets. The length of debate allows that process, that moment for civil society to engage with the legislative process.

The NDP brought forward amendments to the bill at committee based on what the community and civil society had told us. The opposition brought forward over 800 amendments in the House based on what civil society said, but we had 54 days of debate where that entry point for civil society was eliminated because not one amendment was made. What is the result because the government did not listen? In this omnibus monster budget, there are amendments to amendments that were made in the last budget bill.

Can members imagine amendments to amendments in the same year, as if we needed more evidence that the Conservatives are bad managers?

The process is undemocratic. Bill C-45 is a massive omnibus budget bill that makes amendments to a wide range of acts. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to ram the legislation through Parliament without allowing Canadians and their MPs to thoroughly examine it. They need to remember that we are their members of Parliament. It is our job to look at the bill properly, make amendments and suggest ideas. New Democrats are proud to stand in the House and actually do their job.

I fear that I am quickly running out of time, and I wanted to share some words from Canadians. I know the Conservatives will not listen to the NDP, because they do not like reasonable, good, sound ideas, but maybe they will listen to Canadians.

I have some letters I received from constituents.

The first is from Rebekah Hutten, who wrote:

My name is Rebekah Hutten, and I am a university student deeply concerned about [the budget].

I am writing to let you know how disturbed I am by this furtive endeavour to use an omnibus budget bill to completely wipe out years of progress Canada has made on environmental protection.... For the sake of the environment, I implore you to demand the non-budget matters—all environmental changes—be removed from C-38 [the last budget bill] and put forward as stand-alone legislation.

We took that advice and tried to do that, but the Conservatives refused to listen. We are trying to do that with this budget bill as well. We will see if they come around to their senses.

I received another letter from Bill Davidson, who wrote:

I am one of your constituents in Halifax, and I wanted to write to you to express my displeasure, or rather horror, about bill C-38, the conservatives' omnibus “budget” bill. This is not a budget, it is one of the most anti-democratic pieces of legislation ever tabled in a Canadian parliament, complete with wholesale destruction of anything resembling environmental policy. It is anti-environment, anti-science, anti-common sense, and insulting to Canadians from coast to coast to coast.... Please [member of Parliament for Halifax], don't let these guys get away with this without putting up a fight.

Leagh and Diane Colins wrote:

Our fathers and grandfathers fought for Democracy—many giving the ultimate sacrifice of their lives against tyranny and government control. Censorship against free speech and the right to protest against that which we deem to be detrimental to our society is what they fought against. This current government disrespects their memory.

Our children and grandchildren will not have much of a world to grow up in when we allow the short-sighted goals of profit to overwhelm Canada's proud legacy of its environment and wildlife.

We most emphatically urge you to speak out against this bill and these measures to still the voice of opposition to environmental destruction.

In closing, I would like to seek unanimous consent to move the following motion: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, clauses 316 to 350 and Schedule 2 related to changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and clauses 425 to 432 related to the changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 be removed from Bill C-45, a second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures and do compose Bill C-47; that Bill C-47 be entitled “an act to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012”; that Bill C-47 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for referral to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development; that Bill C-45 retain the status on the order paper it had prior to the adoption of this order; that Bill C-45 be reprinted as amended; and that the law clerk and parliamentary counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary to give effect to this motion.

We are proposing this motion to ensure that the bill is split for proper study at the correct committee, and specifically to ensure that the Navigable Waters Protection Act is reviewed at the environment committee, where it belongs, and which government websites would have supported until about seven days ago.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to be able to stand in the House today and to speak on behalf of my constituents in support of this budget bill. We are debating the implementation phase of our budget, our jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act. The good news is that this government is steadfast in our commitment to help create jobs for Canadians.

The other good news is that our plan is working. The plan is showing a great deal of success. September, last month, again showed strong job growth. We have heard it in the House before, that more than 820,000 new jobs have been created. Out of those 820,000 new jobs, 90% are full-time. All the time, we hear from the opposition that they are part-time jobs, but 90% of these jobs are full-time. Eighty per cent of the jobs are within the private sector. This is not a government that is saying we are going to create jobs by hiring more people for the public service, hiring more people so they can work for the government. This is the private sector people saying they believe that, as bad as this global downturn is, they have confidence that they can create jobs and build an economy here in Canada.

Jobs are what Canadians want. Canadians elected our government with a strong mandate to do what we can to help families grow and prosper. Canadian families know that when Mom or Dad or even some of the young people in that family have a job, everything is better at home.

Canadians also know that this global economy remains fragile. Especially when we look at the news and see what is going on in Europe with just one country after another in turmoil and also in our closest trading partner, the United States, Canadians realize that this is a global economy that is very fragile. We know our largest trading partners are having a difficult time, so that means Canada is not immune to the challenges coming from outside our borders.

That is why Canadians elected the Conservative Party of Canada and not the New Democratic Party or the Liberal Party. They know we had a plan that would work.

Our Conservative government is working hard to support local economies with positive pro-growth measures in this economic action plan 2012. It is not just talk. On this side of the House, we are offering the job-creating hiring credit for small businesses, among other measures. In my riding of Crowfoot, there are many small communities that are taking advantage of this, small communities where there are small and medium-sized businesses that can take a look at our plan. Even when I put out my householder with the tax guide for 2011, we talked about the job-hiring credit. Many people in my riding are picking up on this, and people are taking advantage of it in rural Canada as well.

Budget 2012 is full of measures not just for the big corporations and big business. It is full of measures for families and for small and medium-sized business. Our government is committed to increasing Canada's exports to the Asia Pacific. It is not all about only finding tax measures and hiring credits and measures for here at home; we are also recognizing that we need to look abroad. This is critical to industries in Canada to help create jobs and to level the playing field to allow Canadian companies to be competitive.

Canadians can clearly see that our government is promoting trade. However, every time we come forward with a new trade agreement or negotiations toward a new trade agreement, we know even before we table the thing that it will always be opposed by the official opposition. The New Democrats vote against it. That is another reason why Canadians gave this government a strong majority here in the House of Commons; they realize we have a proactive agenda for building trade and building our economy around the world.

In my riding, we need a government to help us export our products around the world. Our Minister of International Trade, our Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and our Prime Minister have done a remarkable job in this area. They are garnering markets for our products all around the world, not only agricultural products, not only in places like Jordan and others that are taking our pulse crops or Colombia and other places. Around the world, for many different sectors in our economy, our government is getting the job done.

Some 60% of the people in Canada's workforce do not have a pension. We have spoken of this before in the House of Commons. In my constituency, small businesses are having a hard time attracting people to work because some of the benefits of being able to buy into a pension plan are not available. Therefore, when our government comes with a pension plan, a smaller pension plan, small business appreciates it. It is very simple. When people go from one job to another, they can take their pension with them. It is a positive that a lot of people are looking forward to and are using.

We are doing other things. Pooled registered pension plans are working. There are a lot of other things in this budget that are good.

The House has been debating this bill for close to three months. We have talked about this budget for over three months. The finance committee created a special subcommittee, as per the request of the opposition. Together, these committees have held over 70 hours of meetings and have heard from over 100 witnesses who came in front of the committee to testify.

I really believe the finance committee chair is probably one of the hardest-working people in the House. That committee has had over 70 hours of meetings. I know our public safety committee is on its 55th meeting and we are busy. The finance committee has had 82 meetings. The finance chair is up and working before Uncle Charlie in Wainright is milking the cows, so the committee is getting the job done.

Bill C-38 has had more debate in the House than any other legislation over the last 20 years. The opposition tries to delay. It tries to implement and deny hard-working Canadians and taxpayers the benefits of the budget, which this implementation act would help implement. The opposition has always done that.

There is a lot more I could speak about in the implementation bill. I want to quickly move to some examples of things that are very positive in the bill.

The first is streamlining the process for the approval of energy projects. This is one of the things, over a period of time, to which our government has committed to ensure that our economy can grow, to ensure that if there is one project there is one review and to ensure that there will not be an endless degree of delay. All those things hinder our economy. We want to, in many different ways, move the economy forward. We want to, as I have already said, help Canadians find jobs. We want to remove redundant and extra layers of bureaucracy.

A press release was issued a number of months ago. In one case, the bureaucracy was diminished by the CFIA having a building and Agriculture Canada having a building a block away. In the CFIA building there was a whole section of IT, mail systems and computer systems and, again, a duplication of those services in the building just a block away.

We are able to combine streamline some of these things to reduce the number of bureaucrats and the levels of bureaucracy in Ottawa and around Canada, for example, taking the Department of Fisheries and Oceans out of the creeks and watersheds of the Prairies and focusing its work on fish habitats on our coastlines.

It is important to ensure that the fish stocks grow, but they will not grow in east central Alberta because there is a lack of lakes. However, we still have a lot of people who come and give their opinion on some of those issues of growth.

This summer I received an email from my daughter. After some time in education she received her nursing degree and was able to get a job. This is the email she sent me after receiving her first paycheque, “Okay, Dad, something needs to change. I made $4,158 this month and only take home $2,842. Do something, this is so stupid”.

I told her the opposition, according to the Broadbent Institution, believed that she was not spending enough on her taxes, that it wanted to see higher taxes. We are committed to seeing this economy grow and we are committed to lowering taxes.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House to speak to Bill C-45.

As a number of members who spoke before me have mentioned, it is absolutely ridiculous for the government to include all kinds of measures that have nothing to do with the budget. There are all kinds of clauses in the bill that have nothing to do with the budget. Content aside, anyone can see that the Conservatives are going about things the wrong way and that they do not take this seriously.

It is unrealistic for a single committee to study a bill in so little time, and this shows the Conservatives' bad faith. The government itself is unable to assess the true impact of its budget on job losses or even job creation, or the effects it will have on Canadians. Yet the Conservatives did nothing to allow the Standing Committee on Finance to properly study the bill.

The Standing Committee on Finance is working on other matters, such as pre-budget consultations. It has been allocated little time to study this more than 400-page bill, which contains measures that have nothing to do with finance or the budget.

Canadians are not fools and know that the government has tried on several occasions to quietly pass measures that will be disastrous for Canada. I do not have much time, but I will attempt nevertheless to highlight some of the main elements of this budget.

In my opinion, one of the few positive measures in the budget is the elimination of the penny. That is good news for Canada. As a result of inflation, today this coin has practically no value and costs more to make than what it is worth. The Government of Canada will save $11 million a year with this measure, and businesses and consumers will save a lot of time when making cash transactions. This measure is not in the bill, but I wanted to mention it because I had not had the opportunity to do so previously.

Returning to a balanced budget is also a good point and necessary for Canada's economic well-being. There again, it all depends on what you cut and how you do it. Although I agree with the government that we should cut the fat, we must make a distinction between what is and what is not useful.

The government constantly tells us that services will not be affected, but no one has provided any studies or reports confirming that items cut are actually optional. The government has decided to cut 10% from one service and 5% from another without having any idea of the impact.

The Liberal Party wants facts, expert reports and studies. However, as we have seen for a number of years now, the majority Conservative government is improvising and still refusing to accept reality, preferring to blindly trust its ideology. The Prime Minister himself recently confirmed that any organization that is in conflict with the Conservative ideology will no longer receive public funding.

Bill C-45 continues the reckless Conservative abuse of power. The omnibus budget bill is another example of the Conservatives steamrolling of democracy, as we have said again and again, forcing unpopular, non-budgetary measures through Parliament and trying to do it with as much speed and little debate and scrutiny as possible.

Bill C-45 is a 414 page document with 516 clauses, amending over 60 different pieces of legislation. The measures that do not belong in this finance bill, as my other colleagues have spoken about, include the rewriting of laws protecting Canada's waterways, the redefinition of aboriginal fisheries without consulting first nations and the elimination of the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission.

By rushing these massive omnibus bills through Parliament, the Conservatives deny Parliament and Canadians the opportunity to carefully consider the proposed laws to identify flaws and propose solutions.

Bill C-45 actually includes a number of measures to fix mistakes in the last bill, Bill C-38, its predecessor, including omissions in the amended Fisheries Act regarding the passage of fish, and the poor drafting of transitional provisions in the new environmental assessment law.

There is ambiguity around the ministerial approval process for certain investments by public investment pools as well.

Today, a majority of Canadians are worried about growing income inequality, between both individuals and regions. The Liberal Party has put forward motions and discussed it in Parliament. Again, we do not see anything in the budget that addresses this income inequality that Canadians are worried about.

An area where the budget bill could actually create jobs, and in turn does not, is an area where it actually slashes investment tax credits that encourage economic growth and job creation, like the scientific research and experimental development tax credit, the Atlantic investment tax credit and the corporate mineral exploration and development tax credit.

The Conservatives are using Bill C-45 to avoid lawsuits, like exempting the Detroit-Windsor bridge from environmental laws and regulations such as the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. If the Conservatives want to avoid lawsuits, they should just follow the laws that are in place instead of weakening the ones that are meant to protect our environment.

One example I would like to cite where there has been a little back and forth is on the cuts to research and development. The Liberals oppose the government's plan to cut the SR&ED program. The SR&ED program is a federal tax incentive program that encourages Canadian businesses of all sizes and in all sectors to conduct research and development in Canada. It is the largest single source of federal government support for industrial R and D. The R and D program gives claimants tax credits for their expenditures on eligible R and D work done in Canada. The government has opted to decrease these credits, promising to reinvest the savings into direct grants. The grants mean that the government would pick which companies would benefit from government support, rather than providing an across the board tax credit available to any business undertaking R and D. A company may not know anyone in the government and have a great idea.

Instead of making the R and D program much better, the government decided to make four changes: reducing the general SR&ED tax credit from 20% to 15%; reducing the prescribed proxy amount, which taxpayers use to claim the R and D amount from overhead expenditures, from 65% to 55% of salaries and wages of employees who are engaged in R and D activities; removing the profit element from arm's length third-party contracts for the purpose of the calculation of R and D credits, by allowing only 80% of the value to be counted toward eligible expenditures; and removing capital from the base of eligible expenditures for the purpose of the calculation of R and D.

I could go on. I have about three pages of notes on this subject.

My point on R and D is that, as a former member of the finance committee—I chaired it and I was vice-chair—I heard numerous groups, whether accounting groups, business groups or tax groups. They all said to make the program easier. The government has done what it has done for other programs, slightly tweaked it, made it more complicated, reduced percentages and increased certain percentages. It decided to just cut things and has taken a whole lot of money out of there, and politicized it by saying it would now give out grants.

I understand my time is coming to an end. I will be taking questions. I will not be supporting the bill in the form it is in.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take up where I left off yesterday.

Like Bill C-38, Bill C-45 is another massive omnibus bill that makes changes to many laws. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to ram their legislative measures through Parliament without allowing Canadians or their representatives, the MPs, to carefully examine them. The 400 pages of this bill contain many areas of concern. I would like to focus on a few specific points since, if I wanted to get into any detail, I would barely have time to address the table of contents of this mammoth bill in the 10 minutes that I have to speak.

The first point that I would like to speak about is health, particularly the decision to eliminate the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, which falls under division 13 of part 4 of the bill. The commission was an organization that helped to regulate hazardous materials protected by business confidentiality by ensuring that employers and workers had the information they needed to safely handle hazardous materials in the workplace.

I would like to know what prompted this change at this time. Was the organization, in its existing form, not doing its job properly? I doubt it. Why is it necessary to give the mandate that is currently being carried out by the commission to a group of people who will be appointed by the minister? These are the questions that we should be examining. The government did not provide much in the way of justification for this change. It keeps hiding significant changes in giant, complex bills to prevent MPs from discussing and thoroughly examining the impact of these changes.

Unfortunately for the government, it has clearly not yet learned its lesson. The official opposition will not let the government impose new omnibus bills without resistance. Canadians deserve better. We will do our job and we will expose the bad decisions that this Conservative government is making.

The other point that I would like to address is the impact of the cuts to research and development. My riding, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, is lucky enough to have in it a number of specialized aerospace companies through the Saint-Hubert airport. The North American head office of Bombardier Transportation is also in my riding, in Saint-Bruno.

The changes to research and development proposed by the Conservative government will affect all these businesses and their workers. Various measures in the bill eliminate $500 million for entrepreneurs at a time when Canada already lags behind in investment in research and development. In my riding many people depend on the aerospace industry, and this situation is creating instability at a bad time.

Canada's aerospace industry is ranked fifth in the world. It employs over 150,000 Canadians directly and indirectly. It generates $22 billion in revenue annually and invests approximately $2 billion in research and development. That is significant.

These cuts are being made at a most unfortunate time because the sector is growing internationally and competition is increasingly fierce. In this context, I cannot understand and I deplore the decision made by the government to slash funding for an important tool that can spur innovation and productivity and maintain existing jobs. Technology and innovation have given Canada a comparative advantage in these leading-edge industries. Strategic investments in research and development as a whole are vital in order for Canada's industrial sector to compete with emerging countries and for Canada to retain its competitive edge internationally and its well-paid jobs.

I am not making this up. In its pre-budget consultation brief, the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada said that these measures to boost research and development are important for the future. The association said the following in the brief it submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance:

These measures will foster competitiveness and productivity, ensuring our industry is positioned to take advantage of the outstanding growth in demand for aircraft and thus create long-term, high-quality jobs for Canadians.

The NDP has called for a better balance between tax credits and direct support to businesses, which is what countries such as Israel, Sweden and Finland do, and they are ranked the most innovative countries according to OECD. But the budget only decreases the government's support for research and innovation.

And the Conservatives are proclaiming loud and clear that the 2012 budget creates jobs. We know that that is not true. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer believes that the budget will lead to the loss of 43,000 Canadian jobs. This budget would increase the unemployment rate. I have to say that they are not walking the talk.

This bill is proof that the government says one thing but does another. It claims to want to support job creation, but there are no concrete measures to strengthen existing jobs, let alone create new ones. The Conservatives got elected in 2006 by promising Canadians that they would be transparent and accountable. But the government is hiding major reforms from Canadians by putting them into omnibus bills like this one and the earlier Bill C-38, and it does not want to give the Parliamentary Budget Officer the figures related to cuts to federal departments and agencies.

The NDP will always stand up proudly for transparency and accountability.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I get the impression that today is Groundhog Day, and I am not talking about the day in February where we check to see whether the groundhog has seen his shadow to determine when spring will arrive. Rather, I am talking about the 1993 movie, where the main character keeps reliving the same day over and over again. I have the vague impression that I have already lived this moment where I rise in the House to speak out against a bill that is over 400 pages long and contains many elements that were not part of the budget tabled by the Minister of Finance in March.

This is likely because this is not the first time this has happened. I promise to do my best not to repeat myself even if the speech I gave last June is still valid and relevant today.

Like Bill C-38, Bill C-45 is another massive omnibus bill that makes changes to many laws. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to ram their legislative measures through Parliament without allowing Canadians or their representatives, the MPs, to carefully examine them. The 400 pages of this bill once again contain many areas of concern.

I would have liked to focus on a few points, particularly health, but unfortunately, I have only one minute left.

What I can say is that this is truly an undemocratic practice designed to prevent the representatives of the people of Canada from examining the bill and doing their jobs properly. We are opposed to this way of doing business in Parliament. We want Canadians to know exactly what the current government is doing. We must speak out against all the bad things in this bill.

I would like Canadians to be aware of the fact that this is the same story all over again. This is the second time this has happened. It is the same 400-page bill to do nothing, apparently.

I hope that Canadians will learn their lesson about this government.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it always confounds me, and I think Canadians as a whole, that whenever the Conservative government talks about prosperity, it is always at the expense of the environment. It has gutted environmental legislation under Bill C-38 and it will do it again in Bill C-45. It is getting rid of legislation that protects our lakes and rivers, reducing it to a mere less than 100 lakes and less than 100 rivers that will remain protected. It is getting rid of its investment in the Environmental Lakes Area. This is a pristine area, used for study. There is nowhere like it in the world, except Canada. It costs a mere $2 million a year to maintain the area.

Why does the government feel it necessary to emasculate environmental legislation in the hope of thinking that it is somehow going to generate prosperity?

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my constituents are wondering where all those jobs are. My constituents are asking why it is that the government has decided it is going to beat up on them. It is a shame that the government again shows such lack of faith in Canadians. It is a shame that the government feels it is a waste of time to engage Canadians in the discussion as to what is good for them and what they feel they need. It is a shame the government is so afraid of dissenting opinion, dissenting voices that say they might have a different way of doing things or maybe even a better way.

Is it not the function of this place to offer that dissenting opinion, to offer an objective opinion that differs, maybe, from the government's? My opinion, which I think I share with the rest of my colleagues in this House, is it is not a situation of “it is my ball so you play by my rules”. In this House, the government, the official opposition and the other opposition parties are elected to represent Canadians, to represent their voices, not to rubber-stamp what the government members feel is the ideal way to do things.

As far as Bill C-45 is concerned, this budget implementation bill, the Conservatives seem to want to make Canadians believe that everything they are talking about in this bill was in the budget, while it was not. The budget is a series of numbers and calculations. However, what the government is missing is that it is not only what one achieves but how one achieves it. This is what I will focus on today.

I remember, upon first entering this House, one of the first questions asked after the throne speech was how the Conservatives were going to achieve these goals that they had set for themselves; how they were going to balance the budget by 2014; how they were going to make these cuts; who was going to be affected by these cuts. The response we got was silence.

We kept asking those questions and kept getting silence, until we came across Bill C-38, the Trojan horse bill that, under the guise of a budget bill, included over 200 changes that gutted the Environmental Protection Act. How is that a budget? It went on to horrify Canadians with the sweeping changes that the Conservatives made in Bill C-38, with nary a word of consultation, at least not with the other side. Maybe there was consultation with friends, consultation about how this bill would help friends of the Conservatives, but again, not with the people of my riding.

We saw changes to the EI Act, which hurt more than they helped. We saw changes to health care. We saw changes, as I said, to the Environmental Protection Act. I would venture a guess that not a whole lot of people sat there and said it would be a good idea to just destroy the Environmental Protection Act.

So now we have Bill C-38's evil little brother, Bill C-45, which continues the work that the government proudly stands up and says is a good thing.

As I said earlier, there are some good things in this bill, and members have heard many of my colleagues stand to request unanimous consent on motions to separate out some of these good things in the bill, which have all been refused. Why?

If they are good things, why not set those aside and move them forward? Instead, we get the party line, that “If you fight me, you fight my gang”, as they say in Montreal.

We are here to do a job for Canadians and it is important that we listen to Canadians. On this side of the House we are also the voice of Canadians. Yet we have another time allocation motion limiting the discussion of the bill and all the very intricate aspects of this monster bill to just a few days.

We have been told that the Conservatives have graciously agreed to allow some of these things to go off to committee, but we all know what happens in committee. Not a lot gets through as far as amendments are concerned. To us, it seems to be more of a publicity stunt when the Conservatives say they will let things go to committee, because Canadians want to know that their interests are being held to a high standard. That is not happening with the bill.

How we do things is extremely important to Canadians. There is a lack of transparency, a lack of letting Canadians know what is going on before it happens. What is the point of saying what is going on after the fact? Why are we voting on a bill that has serious problems rather than addressing those problems through consultation before it becomes a bill and by tweaking it in committee in an open and transparent way?

It does seem that the government is afraid of dissenting opinions, dissenting opinions that help balance out what we are giving to Canadians. Is it not our obligation to make sure that when a bill gets to the point of ascension, it is done knowing that it has been vetted in a proper way and the best way for Canadians?

We NDP members have been accused of using tactics to slow down the process. We have been told that we do not vote for good things for Canadians. I would like to clear that up. We do vote for good things for Canadians when we are given the opportunity, but when we are thrown an omnibus bill that has serious issues, wrapping up those little jewels, for lack of a better way of putting it, is problematic.

It is a shame that the government decides that it wants to play politics with Canadians' lives rather than putting forward legislation that helps Canadians, and putting forward legislation in a positive way, in a way that is fitting for this House, and not using tactics like time allocation and overpowering our committees, but letting the voice of all Canadians and this whole House, which represents the voice of all Canadians, have an opportunity to be heard and to put forth an idea that might make this bill a little more palatable.

We have heard many times about the Prime Minister, who spoke out against omnibus bills, but when asked he has no answer for us as to why he has used these multiple times.

I ask this House, the government, to think about the how this is being done--

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned gutting the Fisheries Act, changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act and numerous other environmental protection measures that were significantly impacted, both in Bill C-38, and again in this budget implementation act. She also speculates that the government wants to fast track its major industrial agenda, such as, the Enbridge pipeline project in British Columbia.

Could my hon. colleague comment on that?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to represent and serve the good people of Etobicoke North, where I was born and raised, and to fight the shameful cuts to the environment to be found in Bill C-45.

The government's record on the environment is atrocious, as recognized by its bottom of the barrel environmental performances. The 2008 climate change performance index ranked Canada 56th of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions. In 2009 the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance. In 2010 Simon Fraser University and the David Suzuki Foundation ranked Canada 24th of 25 OECD nations on environmental performance.

The government learned nothing from last spring's hue and cry against the omnibus budget implementation bill, Bill C-38: concerned Canadians, demonstrations across the country, the 500 organizations that joined the Blackout Speak Out campaign to stand up for democracy and the environment, 3,200 pages of correspondence and extensive international criticism.

The voices of Canadians concerned about democracy, the environment and the health of our children and grandchildren has once again fallen on deaf ears.

This past week the government tabled the anti-democratic and draconian Bill C-45, its second omnibus budget implementation bill. The bill would alter the Indian Act and reduce protections contained in the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act, foundational Canadian laws to steward a sustainable environment, clean water and health oceans. It would also weaken the Canada Labour Code in ways that were not even hinted at in the budget. In total, the bill takes aim at some 60 pieces of legislation.

Bill C-45 hides big changes to environmental laws, subverts democracy and weakens protection of water and ecosystems. West Coast Environmental Law describes the lowlights of Bill C-45 as follows.

The Navigable Waters Protection Act of 1882, considered Canada's first environmental law, has been changed to the Navigation Protection Act and dramatically limits the number of waterways protected. Of the roughly 32,000 lakes in Canada, just 97 lakes and 62 rivers will now be protected.

This means the construction of bridges, dams and other projects would be permitted on most waterways without prior approval under the act. It is important to note that the original budget says nothing about restricting federal controls over lakes and rivers. Astoundingly, however, pipelines are directly exempted from this law. Under the act, pipeline impacts on Canada's waterways will no longer be considered in environmental assessments.

According to Ecojustice's executive director Devon Page:

Simply put, lakes, rivers and streams often stand in the path of large industrial development, particularly pipelines. This bill, combined with last spring’s changes, hands oil, gas and other natural resource extraction industries a free pass to degrade Canada’s rich natural legacy....

It is important to remember that when the government came to power it inherited a legacy of balanced budgets but soon plunged the country into deficit before the recession ever hit. It is absolutely negligent and shameful that the government would now gut environmental safeguards in order to fast-track development and balance its books.

Other lowlights of Bill C-45 include giving industry the option to request that its existing commitments to protect fish habitat be amended or cancelled, or that it be let off the hook for promised compensation for lost or damaged habitat. It would also eliminate the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, an independent body charged with making science-based decisions to protect Canadians from toxic chemicals and hazardous materials in the workplace.

Bill C-45 needlessly tinkers with the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 to correct obvious drafting mistakes made during the ramming through of Bill C-38. Changing the same bill twice in one year underlines the value of debating specific bills through appropriate committees.

Jessica Clogg, the executive director and senior counsel for West Coast Environmental Law, stated:

So much for the federal government’s promise that the bill would focus on budget implementation and contain no surprises.

The Bill C-45 ‘budget bill’ is a wolf in sheep’s clothing that will have major implications for the environment and human health.

John Bennett, executive director, Sierra Club Canada, said:

Today’s killing of the Navigable Waters Act, along with further gutting of what’s left of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and Fisheries Act, will inhibit the ability of Canadians to protect their natural environment for their children, grandchildren and future generations.

He went on to state:

This assault on the environment is deeply offensive and undemocratic. I don’t remember the Prime Minster campaigning in the last election on a platform of laying waste to the Canadian landscape.

Many of Canada's leading environmental organizations, including the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, Greenpeace, Nature Canada, Pembina Institute, Sierra Club Canada, West Coast Environmental Law and WWF Canada, issued a joint statement decrying the fact that, once again, the federal government is proposing to make significant changes to environmental legislation without proper democratic debate.

The government has repeatedly abused Parliament by ramming through outrageous omnibus bills. For example, two years ago the government introduced the 880-page omnibus bill, a grab bag of bills that the government wanted to pass quickly. In fact, it was half of the entire workload of Parliament from the previous year. As a result, the government was severely condemned for turning the legislative process into a farce.

Most recently the government introduced Bill C-38, the 400-plus page omnibus budget implementation bill. Through the bill, the government sprung sweeping changes on our country, affecting everything from employment insurance, environmental protection, immigration and old age security, to even the oversight that charities receive. None of these changes were in the Conservative platform. They were rushed into law by “an arrogant majority government that's in a hurry to impose its agenda on the country”.

According to one newspaper, omnibus bills are “political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government.”

The government's actions reek of hypocrisy. In 1994, the right hon. member for Calgary Southwest and today's Prime Minister criticized omnibus legislation, suggesting that the subject matter of such bills is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles, and that dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent the views of their constituents on each part of the bill. The right hon. member is now using the very tactics he once denounced. It is a shame that he changed his tune when he was elected to the highest office in the land.

Canadians should be deeply concerned by yet another of the government's end runs around the democratic process and the potential for even more destruction of critical habitat and greater pollution. The government did not campaign in the last election on gutting environmental protection. Canadians should therefore rise up, have their voices heard, and stop the Prime Minister's destruction of laws that protect the environment and the health and safety of Canadians, our communities, economy and livelihoods. Canadians are entitled to expect much more than they are witnessing today in the protection of our environment and democratic values, which our beautiful country was built on.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand and speak today to Bill C-45, the second omnibus budget implementation act. As with Bill C-38 this past spring, New Democrats oppose Bill C-45 on both content and process. This bill continues on the path set by Bill C-38, which puts more power in the hands of cabinet ministers and guts environmental protections.

As the official opposition critic for science and technology, I will focus my comments on the aspects of the bill concerning my area of focus, especially those concerning the scientific research and experimental development tax credit. However, I will start with a few general comments.

As we have heard in the House today, Bill C-45 is another massive omnibus bill. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to ram legislation through Parliament without allowing Canadians and their MPs to thoroughly examine it. What is disturbing is the PBO has said that the budget will actually cost 43,000 Canadians their jobs, but we hear otherwise from the Conservatives. In fact, this budget actually plans for unemployment to rise from the cuts that are being made to government, especially the scientific and research community. New Democrats oppose budget 2012 and its implementation, unless it is amended to focus on the priorities of Canadians, which is creating good quality and strengthening our health care system.

Turning to science and technology, I have been meeting with scientists, engineers, technologists and members of industry since appointed as the science and technology critic. I have done a lot of face-to-face meetings, I have spoken with people electronically and I have had the opportunity to visit a number of public and private facilities. The scientific community, and I mean this very broadly, not just natural scientists but also social scientists, engineers and technologists, is very concerned, and so am I, about the government's approach to science and technology. I will provide a few details especially as they concern this budget.

We have seen in report after report that one of our main strengths in terms of productivity in our country concerns the world-leading research done at our universities and government institutions, like the National Research Council. Many people may not know this, but almost 3% of the peer-reviewed papers published in Canada are produced by researchers at the National Research Council. This is a good fraction of what is produced worldwide. Peer-reviewed research is produced at universities but also at the NRC.

One of our strengths is our research output, but one of our main weaknesses is that Canadian companies are not investing in R and D at the same rate as companies located elsewhere in the world. This point was hammered home in the Jenkins report that we hear quoted in the House very often. Lack of investment in research and development has led to plummeting productivity levels as compared to the U.S. Our productivity is around 70% of U.S. productivity.

The Conservatives are right to view this is as a problem, but the solution to this problem of declining productivity is mind boggling. The Conservatives are trying to fix productivity rates that are really caused by low levels of private investment by Canadian firms and are planning to attack the part of the innovation supply chain that is performing well. The scientific community working in universities and government research organizations is really punching above its weight internationally. The government is shifting funding from these well-operating parts of our economy over to business, and that is a mistake.

The Conservatives are cutting hundreds of scientists from government rolls, they are closing world-class facilities, one of which I visited just the other day, they are radically changing the funding structures for scientists, both within government and without, and they are muzzling the government scientists who remain.

I have talked to researchers both in industry and outside of industry and in universities. I sat down with a panel of physicists the other day. The physicists said that what was developing in Canada was poisoning the culture, that scientists were afraid of speaking out because they were worried about having their funding cut or, worse, getting fired. This is a really dangerous thing to do. The Conservatives are attacking a scientific culture that has taken almost a hundred years to build. For example, the National Research Council came in place in 1916. We were almost going to celebrate a centenary, but now we find this is under attack.

The National Research Council was considered the jewel of the Canadian research crown for many years. It is headed by Nobel Prize winners. It has brought us all kinds of inventions that started as just ideas and made it all the way to the factory floor and onto the shelves of consumers

The Minister of State for Science and Technology has said that he wants to take this venerable and well-respected research institution and turn it into a 1-800 concierge service for industry. Therefore, instead of winning Nobel Prizes, Nobel scientists will now hold the door open for industry and carry its bags. If I were a research scientist looking at where I would take my top level research, going to the National Research Council in its past glory would be great, I would get the funding and atmosphere that I need to work, but becoming a concierge or a bellhop is not really what I would be looking for.

Let us talk about the 124 NRC researchers who received their pink slips this year, 90 of them last week. If we think about the progress of a researcher, they get a BA after four years, a Masters in Science for two years, a Ph.D., a post-doctorate, to have to go and set up labs. We are talking about 15 to 20 years someone has invested in becoming a researcher. It is a portable skill, but it has to be located at an institution. What concerns me is people at the NRC who have come out of university and set up these labs, when they are given a pink slip, it is not like they go next door and start up another career. It is a major loss of investment. This really needs to be thought through before we go too much further down this line.

This fear of the change in culture has been expressed to me in many letters. The Minister of State for Science and Technology is familiar with this because I am copied on most of the letters he receives. They express fear and really want the government to slow down in terms of how it is hacking away at these various institutions.

I want to change now to a more specific matter, and that is the scientific research and experimental development tax credit. The government proposes to reduce the tax credit rate from 20% to 15% and this will particularly affect large businesses. It will eliminate the eligibility of capital expenses. Although it would save up to $500 million a year by making these changes, it has not made it over to any new program, or not all of it anyway. It is really just straight savings for the government and attacks businesses right where they live in the innovation field. This will hit the manufacturing sector hard and it is likely to drive firms to move their R and D activities to other countries that have better incentives.

Conservatives have done nothing to fix the complexity of the SR&ED tax credit, which I agree needs some adjustment but it is more in the administration of this tax credit rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of reducing the credit for industry, it should be looking at administrative changes instead. The government has done nothing to reduce the complexity and overhead costs of applying for and administering the SR&ED tax credit.

The member for Burlington said earlier today that he was getting positive feedback from industry, but I have had a number of different comments and he should be aware because they came at the industry committee. For example, Declan Hamill, vice-president, Legal Affairs, Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., said when asked about the SR&ED tax credit:

From our perspective there are changes to the SHRED tax credits that have some potential negative impacts on our member companies.

Probably most serious, were the comments from RIM. Morgan Elliott, director of Government Relations for Research in Motion, which makes the Blackberry, said when I asked him directly what this change in the SR&ED tax credit would mean. “It cuts our support by one-third”. Here is the jewel in the private industry crown of technology in Canada that has been struggling lately, seems to be getting back on its feet, and what does the government do? It cuts one-third of its support with these changes.

It is hardly a ringing endorsement for these changes. I submit there are problems with the bill and the government should, at the very least, split out the SR&ED tax credit changes and refer them to the industry committee for further study.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to point out how ironic it is that, on the one hand, the Minister of Finance is telling us in this House that we should have done our jobs over the summer and read the budget and memorized every aspect of it, while on the other hand, when we ask our Conservative colleagues to tell us a little more about certain measures that can be found on specific pages of the budget, they are completely incapable of doing so.

Let us move on to something else and get back to a more crucial matter: my speech.

I am extremely proud to rise here today in the House to oppose Bill C-45, the Conservatives' latest omnibus bill. Despite harsh criticisms from hundreds if not thousands of Canadians when the Conservatives introduced Bill C-38, here they are again introducing another gigantic bill that addresses pretty much anything and everything but the 2012 budget.

Bill C-45, the second mammoth budget bill, amends over 60 different laws and is over 400 pages long, and the government drafted it without consulting anyone at all. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to ram their legislation through Parliament without giving Canadians and their elected representatives an opportunity to examine it in detail, which is what should happen in any good democracy.

Over the past few days, I have heard far too many Conservative members state that the parliamentary process and procedural matters are trivial details and that Canadians do not care about things like that. They have said that omnibus bills and other tactics to undermine democracy have been used for decades, that it is no big deal, that it has always been this way and that our democracy is in great shape.

As an example of this, I would like to share parts of a speech given on October 24 by the member for Saint Boniface. She made some rather disturbing statements to that effect. I will read them in English because the original version is so eloquent and delightful that it is worth reading in the original language.

From the opposition members, we will hear a lot of talk about process and procedure, or what some would call “inside baseball”, that appeals to a small number of Canadians, mostly located in Ottawa. They talk about process to dictate the exact length of the debate, procedure for the formatted legislation, process for a timeline for a committee study, and on and on.

A little later in the same speech, she added:

In other words, it is really meaningless to the everyday lives of the vast majority of Canadians...

I must admit that I was quite surprised and disappointed to hear a government member say such things. I spoke to many constituents in my riding, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, whose reaction to such statements was exactly the same as mine. Having a majority does not absolve the government of its obligation to be transparent, open and accountable, nor does it give the government the right to abuse the public trust by introducing omnibus bills like this one, which MPs cannot examine properly and carefully. The government is breaking parliamentary rules every day and abusing those rules in order to hide its true agenda from the people. Then it has the nerve to say that Canadians do not really care. That is shameful.

Just like Bill C-38, Bill C-45 eviscerates current environmental protection measures and concentrates even more power in the hands of Conservative ministers. Quite honestly, I find that prospect less than thrilling.

First of all, Bill C-45 guts the Navigable Waters Protection Act by eliminating the concept of water protection from the name of the act and from the legislation, and focusing solely on the issue of protecting navigation. With the exception of three oceans, 97 lakes and 62 rivers in all of Canada, the act will no longer apply automatically to projects that have a direct impact on waterways. Of the 37 rivers in the Canadian heritage rivers system, only 10 will be protected by the law that has been newly gutted by the government. As a result of the Conservatives' bullheaded ideology, thousands of waterways will no longer be protected automatically and even fewer environmental impact assessments will be carried out by Transport Canada. The provinces will have to fill the void, without any compensation, of course.

These major changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act are particularly worrisome for people who live in ridings such as mine, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, which has several hundred wetlands, streams and rivers, as well as extensive access to the St. Lawrence River.

Waterways are at the heart of many economic activities vital to the riding of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, especially tourism. Their protection is of the utmost importance to my constituents. Therefore, the amendments proposed by the Conservatives to the Navigable Waters Protection Act are some of the most troubling for the people in my riding.

In addition to these changes, Bill C-45 also amends the Canadian environmental assessment act 2012, in part to deal with problems noted in the last budget implementation bill, but primarily to further weaken environmental impact assessments.

These are two major issues that affect the environment, but I could go on about others for hours and hours. There are all the amendments to the public service pension plan and to the Canada Grain Act, which are being proposed without any consultation. Once again, these changes will have a great impact on my riding and the many farmers who live there. There are also amendments to the Canada Labour Code, which will affect women and young people in particular, because they often must work part time for lack of other opportunities.

As they have so often done in the past, the Conservatives are doing everything they can to bypass Parliament so that they do not have to be accountable to Canadians.

Every time the government introduces a new bill, it violates the underlying principles of our democracy by restricting parliamentary debate and in-depth study of its bills. Bill C-45 is just the latest in a long line of autocratic Conservative tactics. Unfortunately, this is becoming an extremely regrettable tradition in Canada's Parliament.

As a new member, this is not how I wanted to work. The NDP has tried very hard to work with the other parties. However, every time we try to work with the Conservatives, they shut the door and do as they please, even if it means introducing other bills later and wasting MPs' and Canadians' time. For example, they introduce new legislation to fix problems with a previous bill that the opposition pointed out before the bill was passed. That is a huge waste of time. They are completely uncompromising and do not want to work with the opposition.

As we have heard over and over, the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated that members do not have enough information to reasonably exercise their power of oversight. In fact, the PBO had to threaten to put the matter before the courts to gain access to even a little information about the Conservatives' budget cuts. The Conservatives say that the PBO is overstepping his mandate, and they do not want to provide the information.

How are we supposed to analyze the budget if we do not know what the government is spending and where it is making cuts? This new way of keeping everyone in the dark is highly dangerous and worrisome. I hope that the PBO will not have to go to court to get the information that all members of the House need. The Conservative members need it too. I am sure that they are just as much in the dark as the opposition members. They do not have the information they need to do their work, yet they are making decisions to block the democratic work of Parliament and, as such, they are not living up to the trust that their constituents have placed in them.

The government has agreed to have 10 parliamentary committees study this second omnibus bill. At first glance, that gesture may seem like a sign of goodwill on the government's part, but, make no mistake, that is not the case. Those committees will not be able to amend Bill C-45. We are not yet sure of the answer, but it is obvious. Members of Parliament will be asked to sit in committee and witnesses across the country to travel and discuss the bill, its impact on the public, its potentially disastrous consequences or legislative gaps that we have not yet identified, but this work will be in vain. People will be asked to come and waste their time, and the Conservatives will still do exactly what they want without taking into account what anyone has to say.

Clearly, with their bill that is several hundred pages long, the Conservatives want to prevent the opposition members from doing their job by trying to cover up major ideological changes to more than 60 bills.

The Conservatives are proud to spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising propaganda, but then they tell Canadians that there is not much money for services that are essential to them.

We in the NDP have always proudly defended the concepts of transparency and accountability, and we are going to continue to do so every day. We have always defended environmental protection, old age security and health care, and we are going to continue to do so.

We are proud to fight each and every day for Canadian families. That is why my colleagues and I will oppose Bill C-45.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it has become clear that omnibus bills will now be the norm in the House of Commons. It gives me no pleasure to rise today at second reading of Bill C-45, the second omnibus budget bill.

In addition to implementing the 2012 budget, the Trojan Horse bill included a number of other changes that had not been announced beforehand. This is yet another budget implementation bill that goes well beyond implementing the budget.

We said it when the Trojan Horse bill was forced through the House in May, and we are saying it now: this is not an acceptable way of doing things in a so-called democratic country like Canada. The monster Bill C-45 is over 440 pages long and contains a huge number of disparate measures. It would amend over 60 laws, giving the minister more power and weakening environmental protection legislation.

It also sets out a vast number of complicated measures, including a reworking of the Canada Grain Act and changes to subsidies for scientific research and experimental development, elements that are essential to the nation's development. In addition, it sets out major changes to the public service pension plan and the Canada Labour Code.

Here are the facts. The Conservatives have introduced a bill encompassing dozens of disparate measures, and they want to have it passed as quickly as possible so that we do not have time to talk about it. That is because they do not want Canadians to know what really goes on here in the House of Commons. MPs do not have enough time to study the bill closely and analyze its repercussions. Who will pay the price for that? Canadians—the very people whose interests the government is supposed to protect. As elected representatives, Conservative MPs are also supposed to work for Canadians.

On the one hand, MPs are being prevented from doing the work they were elected to do, and on the other, Canadians are being kept in the dark. Fortunately, Canadians can count on the NDP, which strongly opposes the undemocratic nature of Bill C-45.

We have defended and will always proudly defend the concepts of transparency and accountability. We will always stand up for environmental protection. We will always stand up for old age security and health care. If we do not, who will? Certainly not the government, which is showing us once again that democracy is not its priority.

Canadians are not blind. They know that the government is not doing so and that it is preventing the official opposition from doing its job by imposing a gag order once again. Actually, how many gag orders have we had so far? I think it is a record number. I am not sure what the exact figure is, but I know there have been more than 20. In short, that is preventing us from doing our job.

As a result of the strong offensive launched by our party, the government is finally going to allow various committees to study this bill. What a privilege. However, we do not know whether we will be able to propose amendments during those consultations. Needless to say, that will greatly hinder the process.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, has once again said that members of Parliament are not receiving the information they need to be able to reasonably exercise their power of oversight. Well, yes, power of oversight, but also responsibility of oversight.

The PBO recently even had to threaten to take the Conservative government to court if it did not forward the information about the budget cuts that were announced. The government has to stop trying to obstruct the work of Parliament and must allow a real study of this bill.

Canadians will agree that the amendments and their impact on Canadian families need to be studied in particular. It is appalling to see that, once again, Canadian families are being completely ignored. The government is continuing to ignore the real needs of Canadians.

According to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, 4 million Canadians, including 750,000 children, have core housing needs at this time. However, once again, the 2012 budget implementation bill does not contain any measures related to housing or any measures to fight poverty or homelessness. Yet major institutions like the Wellesley Institute and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities have sounded the alarm several times. These national organizations asked the federal government to invest in housing in the most recent budget. Clearly, nothing has been done.

Housing is an important issue not only for families, but also for seniors, a very high-risk group. The current government reduced old age security benefits, which means that some seniors will have even more difficulty paying their rent. Approximately one-third of social housing is occupied by seniors, and one-third of that group is at risk of losing their housing because long-term operating agreements between the federal government and housing co-operatives are not being renewed.

A survey conducted by the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association found that the number of seniors waiting for housing has been increasing steadily since 2004. That number is increasing, yet this government does nothing. Seniors represented one-quarter of all households waiting for housing in 2011.

Since we are talking about poverty, let us also talk about the changes to employment insurance. These measures will also have an impact on a claimants' ability to find housing, particularly since the federal operating agreements are about to expire. As a result of the loss of employment insurance benefits, more households may have core housing needs. Core housing needs are no joke. I am talking about substandard, overpriced homes that are difficult to heat and that are too small for families. These are not trivial matters.

Since the federal government did not introduce any housing measures in its budget, it could at least help all Canadians by supporting my national housing strategy. It will not do so under the pretext that housing falls under provincial jurisdiction.

And yet, the purpose of Bill C-400 is to provide secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians, while respecting provincial jurisdictions. The government's inaction is a mystery.

Once again, the government is not demonstrating leadership. The omnibus bill contains another attack on agriculture, which provides even more evidence that the government is not demonstrating leadership.

Bill C-38 already hit my riding hard—really hard—by interfering with the CFIA's ability to conduct proper inspections to ensure the food security of all Canadians.

Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot is one of the biggest agricultural regions in Quebec. The CFIA's services are thus very important to this region, which largely depends on agriculture-related economic activity.

Unfortunately, we still do not know what impact the cuts will have on the CFIA's regional centre, which is located in my riding. Many people are concerned about their jobs, and for good reason.

However, that is not my riding's only concern. Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot is made up of 25 municipalities and more or less all of the farmers there grow grains. Thus, many of these farmers will be affected by the elimination of the grain appeal tribunals, which are independent committees set up by the region that provide a great deal of support to farmers. Who will farmers deal with if they do not have anyone to represent their region?

If Bill C-45 is passed, any recourse will automatically have to go through the chief grain inspector. Will the chief grain inspector be able to consider the unique characteristics of my riding as well as the local committees can? I seriously doubt it and so do my constituents.

In fact, all Canadians doubt the Conservatives' approach. The 443-page omnibus bill proves that they have reason to doubt.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real privilege to ask a question to the member. The constitutional questions have not had enough attention in this debate at second reading on Bill C-45. When I look back at Bill C-38, I think we also missed some of the key ones. However, in the Fisheries Act changes in Bill C-38, as egregious as they were, they did not, with a sweep of the pen, say that 98% of the waterways in this country are no longer going to be covered under the navigation head of power found in the Constitution.

Has my friend considered that this act is actually unconstitutional in retreating from 98% of the responsibilities to ensure that Canadians have the right to navigate? This was enshrined as a federal head of power. How can the Conservatives unilaterally walk away from it, knowing that under the exclusivity principles of the constitutional law it would be illegal for another level of government to step in to fill the void?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to have a chance to ask the hon. member for Lethbridge a question related to the constitutionality of what the government is doing. It is particularly fascinating to hear the Conservative benches railing on socialism while they embrace communism. I find it fascinating.

Meanwhile, I have a constitutional law textbook here that points out that the idea of what the Navigable Waters Protection Act was intended to do in 1882 is entirely irrelevant and fanciful. Professor Peter Hogg writes that it is well established “that the general language used to describe the classes of subjects is not frozen in the sense in which it would have been understood in 1867”.

However, the Conservatives' approach to Bill C-45, as with Bill C-38, is to slash back the evolution of our Constitution and to insist that if it were not in the minds of people in 1882, the idea that the Navigable Waters Protection Act should protect the environment more generally is somehow erroneous.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's comments in which he also mentioned environmental legislation. I would like to ask him a question about that with regard to Bill C-45. This is a continued theme in the current bill, as it was in Bill C-38, where there were significant cuts to the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

In Bill C-45, there are changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In fact, the term “water” is dropped from the title of the act. In my riding, for instance, waterways, rivers, creeks and lakes, are held in high regard and people expect them to be managed properly. This requires protective measures, like the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In fact, my riding is nestled between the world-famous Fraser River, known for its history and salmon, and Burrard Inlet in Port Moody. There are many other important waterways I could talk about, like the Coquitlam River, the Burnett River and Comeau Creek.

Does the member honestly think that the Navigable Waters Protection Act is not assisting in the protection of our great country and, in fact, is—

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her very relevant question.

It is incredible to see that the government is so irresponsible that it ignores the devastating impact of this bill and of Bill C-38 on my generation.

The hon. member made a connection with young people's lack of confidence in politicians. It is true that they already do not have much trust. Fortunately, our caucus represents the youth of Canada, given its many young members of Parliament and the issues that they bring forward.

However, the fact remains that this government is shirking its major responsibility for our country's future.

We see that an entire generation will not have good pension plans, will not be able to afford the soaring costs of housing, for example, will not be able to pay off student debts and will not have access to good jobs in the public service or in general. This reality is scary, showing us an absolutely incredible side of the Government of Canada. Yet this government is supporting this reality instead of demonstrating a leadership role in building a better future for Canadians.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I join with my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, the official opposition, to oppose yet another omnibus bill put forward by the government. It is a travesty when it comes to respecting not only the priorities of Canadians, but the kind of value that Canadians give to democracy, democratic debate and the roles of members of Parliament in the House. It is though the government had not learned from what we saw in the spring, the kind of opposition we saw from coast to coast to coast from Canadians on Bill C-38, the first omnibus bill in recent months that the government put forward.

We saw historic opposition on the kind of deregulation put forward in the environment, the damaging portions to do with pensions, specifically with respect to the OAS, the damage made by changes to employment insurance and the list goes on. Overall it was a budget bill that raised the ire of Canadians who did not send their members of Parliament, certainly the government members of Parliament in the House, to shove through legislation that would essentially decrease our standard of living. Yet, here we are again seeing the same kind of tricks being played by a government that truly is prepared to show contempt for democratic debate and the role we have been sent here to do.

I am proud to be part of the NDP, a party that not only has the word “democratic” in its name, but a party that believes debate and representing Canadians, which is what we have been sent here to do, rather than telling people stories of what they are supposedly doing in the House. The real story is one that is rather devastating.

Bill C-45 is another massive omnibus bill that makes amendments to a wide range of acts. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to ram legislation through Parliament, without allowing Canadians and members of Parliament to thoroughly examine it. The Conservatives claim that budget 2012 is about job creation, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that this budget will cost 43,000 Canadian jobs. That is not job creation; that is a massive bleeding of good, solid Canadian jobs that the government is enforcing through this budget bill.

The budget plans for unemployment to rise. As we know, the National Capital Region has been hit disproportionately hard given the massive cuts to the public sector. However, the region in the part of the country that I come from, Manitoba and the Prairies, has been the single most effected region, outside of the National Capital Region, when it comes to cuts to the public service, whether it is the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, which has been hit hard, or it is a number of other departments that have been affected. The domino effect is the lose of good, solid jobs for our communities.

While Canadians want us to take action to protect our environment and grow a sustainable economy for the future, the Conservatives are focused on gutting environmental protection regulation. We saw that in Bill C-38. We very clearly see it again in Bill C-45 through the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act and a massive disconnect on the part of the government.

Canadians view environmental sustainability as being key to the way we move forward. We used to be recognized as leaders and a country that sought to find a balance between economic development and environmental sustainability. Now we are seen as a global shame because of the kind of policies the Prime Minister and his government have put forward. Not only have they gone as far as failing to move forward on environmental stewardship inaction, but they have also gutted legislation that is absolutely key to ensuring that the kind of development that takes place across our country is done within parameters that support environmental sustainability.

Churchill, in northern Manitoba, is part of a province that depends a great deal on the wealth that comes from waterways, whether it is rivers or lakes. Seeing the changes in the Navigable Waters Protection Act is damaging to the kind of development that Manitobans want, one that respect waterways, first nations and communities that are on or close to the water. Unfortunately, once again, the federal government will not stand up for the province of Manitoba and the many Canadians that want economic development to be done with a sustainable lens.

The Conservatives have clearly not learned their lesson and the official opposition will not let them quietly pass their new omnibus legislation. We believe Canadians deserve better. We in the NDP will always be proud to stand up for transparency and accountability. We will always stand up for environmental protection, retirement security and health care, which were key points that were attacked in Bill C-38 and continue to be attacked in the latest reincarnation of the Conservative government's sham representation of the interests of Canadians.

Let us look at Bill C-45 more closely. A key damaging point is the area of public pensions. New Democrats are concerned by the creation of a two-tiered workforce in which younger people have to work longer for the same retirement benefits. Those younger people are from my generation, a generation of people who go into workplaces. Hopefully a number of them will be able to work in the public service supporting the kinds of services and sectors we need in our country. Unfortunately, the bar has been raised for them in many ways and they will not have access to the same quality of life as their parents. That is what it is really about. A two-tiered system means that the people of my generation will be set up to live a life with greater job insecurity and a higher cost of living knowing that their retirement benefits will have been gutted, and that is not fair.

When Conservative members go back to their ridings, how do they make this kind of two-tiered workforce palatable to the young people who live in their constituencies, the next generation of Canadians who want to contribute to society, our communities and our economy? The reality is they will be unable to make the same kinds of long-term plans that they or certainly their parents have made because the odds have been stacked against them. It is particularly shameful that the odds have been stacked against them in large part due to the government's desire to make the playing field more difficult for us.

The changes in the public service pension system come in a context where the Conservative government is failing to take action on youth unemployment and crippling student debt, while also making young people work longer before qualifying for OAS benefits. We have a good idea what the actions the government is taking today will mean in terms of a reduced ability by Canadian young people to contribute to the economy, whether it is in the tax base, or purchasing homes and taking part in the homebuyers' market or consumption in the economy, which is something in which the government seems to be interested. We are going to see a marked reduction in the ability of future generations of Canadians to contribute to the economy.

A final point that I would like to make is with respect to my particular region and the devastating impact Bill C-45 will have when it comes to the Canadian Grain Commission. I am proud to represent the community of Churchill where hard-working people have worked for the CGC for decades and have ensured that Canadian wheat is the best in the world. Unfortunately, Bill C-45 weakens the Canada Grain Act, which means we will lose inward inspections, farmers will be faced with a reduced profit margin because of the fact that we will not have rigorous inspection of the wheat we export, as well as domestic consumption, and that is not okay.

Canada is proud of the kind of wheat products we have sold around the world. This means losing solid jobs from communities like Churchill, Thunder Bay and Vancouver, and it is certainly in line with the government's failure to realize it is here to show leadership. Thankfully, we in the NDP will continue to do that and fight against Bill C-45.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-45, the second budget implementation act. This is yet another massive omnibus budget bill, which is 414 pages in length with 516 separate clauses amending more than 60 different laws. It is simply too big for Parliament to consider properly in just a short period of time. The Conservatives are counting on us rushing this through at record speed and they are trying to avoid real scrutiny in this Parliament.

The Conservatives are continuing their reckless abuse of power by using these huge omnibus bills and underhanded procedural manoeuvres to force unpopular policies through. They are doing this despite public outcry from coast to coast to coast. They are using this so-called budget bill to gut the Navigable Waters Protection Act, redefine aboriginal fisheries and amend the Indian Act without consulting first nation communities, despite the government's constitutional responsibility and duty to consult. They are using this so-called budget act to shield the government from lawsuits by creating loopholes in Canada's environmental laws and retroactively changing the Customs Act. They are eliminating the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission and implementing an overhaul of the Canadian Grain Commission.

These are just a few examples of elements of the bill that are significant and have nothing to do with the fiscal policy of the government, which is actually what a budget and a budget implementation act ought to be focused on. The Conservatives are rushing through these changes so that Canadians will not realize what has happened until it is too late. They have established a pattern of overwhelming our democratic system with overloaded budget bills that have nothing or little to do with the actual budgets themselves.

Buried in these massive bills are a number of mistakes. In fact, the Conservatives are already using Bill C-45 to correct mistakes they made in Bill C-38 last spring. The mistakes range from poorly written transition provisions in the new environmental assessment law to reinserting protections in the Fisheries Act that were mistakenly or inadvertently erased, to clarifying rules for approving foreign investments in our banks. These were mistakes in Bill C-38 in the spring. They slipped through the cracks because they were in a huge omnibus bill that denied Parliament the opportunity to thoroughly study and more importantly, not just to study but ultimately to vote on these changes individually.

Now the Conservatives want to fix some of these mistakes with measures in yet another omnibus budget bill that they want to rush into law. In this budget implementation bill the Conservatives are breaking promises made in budget 2012. The Conservatives want to use Bill C-45 to take public policy decisions that are contrary to what was in the budget in 2012. It is a farce when the Conservatives say that everything in Bill C-45 can be found in the budget. The reality is that some of what is in the legislation is completely opposite to what was promised in the budget of 2012.

Page 146 of the budget states that “[O]ver the next few years, the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board...will continue to set the rate” for EI premiums. However, Bill C-45 explicitly gets rid of the board's authority to set EI rates.

Here is another example. Page 268 of the budget keeps the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, but Bill C-45 actually eliminates the commission altogether. We all remember how earlier this year the Conservatives broke their promise not to cut old age security.

It is also important to realize what is not in Bill C-45. Despite the size and breadth of this omnibus budget bill and the promises it breaks, Bill C-45 is remarkable as well for what it does not address. There is nothing in the bill to address some of the most serious challenges facing Canada. Canadians have identified growing income inequality as one of the biggest challenges facing the country, but there is nothing in Bill C-45 to address growing income gaps. There is nothing in Bill C-45 to address growing gaps between the provinces.

Canada's resource-driven recovery has increased, in fact, inequality among the regions in many ways. While it is positive that we have all of these natural resources, they are largely concentrated in a couple of provinces and the gap between those provinces in a resource-driven recovery and the other provinces is growing. I will give an example.

A province like Alberta is increasing education spending dramatically and I commend it for doing that. Investing in education is a good thing. At the same time, Nova Scotia's provincial government is cutting funding for public education by 30%. Therefore, it is not just a question of income inequality, it is a question of equality of opportunity. This is where we need a robust federal government that is working with the provinces, meeting with the provinces and ensuring that we do not see today's income inequality become tomorrow's inequality of opportunity.

This growing divide between the provinces is a major issue in Canada. In the last 12 months, over 40% of Canada's new full-time jobs were in just three provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador. These are the provinces with the greatest wealth of natural resources. It is where we can find 40% of the new jobs, but only 15% of the population. Provinces without resources are losing workers and being forced to slash funding for social programs. These are the programs that ensure equality of opportunity for the next generation.

There was a time when the Prime Minister said he would meet regularly with the premiers to discuss these types of issues. There was a time that ministers of intergovernmental affairs were senior members of the cabinet. People like the right hon. Joe Clark served as an intergovernmental affairs minister in the Mulroney government. Lucienne Robillard was a former minister in the provincial government in Quebec. The member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, a very senior expert on intergovernmental and constitutional affairs, was a minister of intergovernmental affairs.

Under the Conservatives, the minister of intergovernmental affairs is, effectively, a minister without portfolio. The minister of intergovernmental affairs does not have any standing in the Conservative government. That is not purely a reflection of the current minister, it is a reflection of an attitude toward the provinces that pervades the government.

The Prime Minister's refusal to meet with the premiers, his my way or the highway approach, has created a vacuum of federal leadership on these issues. Now we have a budget bill with no serious plan to work with the provinces on programs that would deal with issues such as income inequality and the growing inequality of opportunity, programs like a national early learning strategy or a national lifelong skills development strategy or federal leadership in working with the provinces to restore the honour of skilled trades, which is something that is incredibly important in Canada at a time when we have people without jobs and jobs without people.

Despite the uncertainty of the economy and the enormity of the challenges we face as a nation, there is precious little in Bill C-45 to help create jobs for today and jobs for the future. In fact, the spring budget bill actually made income inequality worse with cuts to OAS and EI. Bill C-45 would actually cut the very programs that encourage job creation and help our economy grow. It would cut SR&ED tax credits.

We have heard from industry, the science community, the biotech community and the manufacturers that the SR&ED program is important. The government would actually cut it. It would kill the corporate mineral exploration and development tax credits, which is dangerously short-sighted at a time when it is difficult for the mining and junior mining industries to raise money.

It also would kill the Atlantic investment tax credit for oil, gas and mining at a time when the Atlantic Canadian economy is still facing significant challenges. It would do nothing to address Canada's dangerously high levels of household debt. The fact is that for every $1 of annual income, Canadian families have $1.63 of household debt.

There is nothing to address these major and important issues that are actually related to the fiscal priorities of Canadians in the budget bill. Instead, the Conservatives are addressing a lot of other issues that have nothing to do with the fiscal reality of the country or the fiscal priorities of the government.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the hon. member for Brossard—La Prairie. He will speak for 10 minutes after I finish the eight minutes I have remaining from yesterday.

I started yesterday's speech by pointing out that this bill is completely undemocratic. We are debating more than 400 pages under a time allocation motion, so we will not have a chance to discuss the bill thoroughly. It is all well and good to say that we will have the chance to study the bill in committee, except we will not be able to make amendments. When I came to the House, I thought that we were supposed to debate ideas to find compromises that reflect the values, ideas and wishes of the Canadian public. But that is not the case and I am very disappointed.

The bill is called the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012. This title is a bit misleading, since the bill does not propose any concrete measures to create the 1.4 million jobs needed in this country. As we know, the budget actually led to the loss of 43,000 jobs. It is not creating jobs; it is causing them to be lost.

The government tells us that the $500 million in cuts to research and development can help stimulate innovation, except that we have not yet been told how it will bridge that gap. We do not know the new criteria for research and development, and those would be very useful to know. It would stimulate our economy and motivate people to innovate.

This week I attended a conference that addressed the importance of innovation, particularly in the technology and computer industry. If the government does not invest and does not compensate for the $500 million shortfall in research and development, I do not understand how it will ensure economic growth.

The bill includes a $1,000 tax credit that will help create jobs in small- and medium-sized businesses. This is a measure that we support. We have always supported these types of measures. However, I would have liked to see a longer-term commitment, since $1,000 is great now, but if an employer is considering hiring workers in one or two years, he would probably like to know that this tax credit will still be available.

What is really crucial when it comes to economic growth is ensuring that we invest in our environment. We must create a green economy and invest in it. With all of the restrictions and the changes made to our environmental protection laws, I have a hard time imaging how my generation will see any economic growth in 20 years. The protection of natural resources and natural resources themselves are an incredible source of wealth for this country.

Instead of creating jobs, Bill C-45 completely destroys the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Thousands of waterways will no longer be protected. The changes are huge. The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, which will examine this, will not even be able to propose amendments. It is truly shameful.

Furthermore, the bill removes the notion of “water protection” and replaces it with “navigation protection”. There is a huge difference between the two definitions. Once again, this will not be examined. The bill also reduces the number of environmental assessments indicated in the Environmental Protection Act.

However, the bill does have one good measure for the environment, but the amount allocated is very small. The bill includes a tax credit for certain kinds of green energy equipment and products. It is a good measure and I congratulate the government on this, but $3 million to $5 million is peanuts; it is not enough. This does not demonstrate any real desire on the government's part to invest in the green economy, which would help create jobs. Everyone knows this; studies have proven it. I think this is really a missed opportunity.

The bill also eliminates the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission and puts more powers in the hands of ministers. We saw the same thing with Bill C-38, which unfortunately also passed and was just as undemocratic as this one. That bill also eliminated several commissions and gave more powers to ministers.

What is the point of conducting studies and hearing from informed and educated people who are experts in their field, if the government does not want to listen to them? They betray their ignorance by saying that, because they are ministers, they know everything and there is no need for experts or their advice. Our country is vast and the population is growing. We have to take into consideration what the majority of people want, and this advice could help us do that.

The plight of our young workers is of particular concern to me because, before I was elected, I was a labour relations officer with a union that represents young workers. Last year, in a discussion group, I spoke to young workers who said that they were very worried about the fact that a two-tiered pension system is being proposed.

Young workers are going to enter the workforce, and their pension benefits will be less than those of people who entered the workforce before them. That creates two categories of employees: those who were there first and young workers. Young workers begin their careers saddled with huge debt they have accumulated to finance their post-secondary studies. They have a hard time finding work, because the youth unemployment rate is very high. Furthermore, once they enter the workforce, the public service pension plan will change. They will be told that they are entering too late unfortunately. This will create two classes of workers, which is not good for our young people.

And this is all happening without any real debate. I support some of the measures in the bill, but because everything is lumped together, I cannot support this completely undemocratic bill.

Every time that the government asks why I ask a question when I will be voting against a measure, I will answer that I am proud to oppose it because the NDP will always oppose undemocratic measures. We will always be proud to support transparency and accountability. We will always defend environmental protection, retirement security and health care.

Second reading

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am in the habit of beginning my speeches by saying I am extremely happy to speak to a bill. In this case, however, with a time allocation motion having been moved, I have to say I am extremely disappointed for my colleagues who would also have liked to make the voices of their constituents heard in this House and who will be unable to do so. It is extremely disappointing to see that for at least the 20th time, time is being limited, and for a bill as gargantuan as this. It is simply scandalous. I am therefore extremely disappointed to be debating a bill that I would also describe as antidemocratic for the two reasons I have just mentioned.

Bill C-45 is the second omnibus bill introduced by the government this year—the second bill of this kind in less than seven months. This is certainly a record. At nearly 450 pages long, this is their second titanic bill. We have to ask ourselves whether the government has an iota of respect for democracy and parliamentary procedure. The answer is self-evident: no, it does not.

Why do I say this bill is antidemocratic? Because Bill C-45 is again going to amend over 40 different statutes, in addition to creating a new one. As was the case for Bill C-38, the various pieces of legislation this bill contains have nothing to do with one another. The bill will amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Pension Act, the Employment Insurance Act, the Canada Grain Act, and more.

That is why, since the beginning, we have been calling for this bill to be split into several parts, as the leader of the official opposition proposed. The government quite simply has an obligation to agree to that proposal and refer the bill to 13 different committees, so that each of the parts that relate to each committee can be examined effectively and the committees can be allowed to hear the appropriate experts. This an obligation to which the government should be held, in view of that suggestion. The parliamentarians on those committees must also be allowed to present the amendments that are needed to make this bill acceptable.

The government prefers to bundle all these legislative changes into a single bill that will be examined by a single committee and ultimately submitted to a single vote. This is a farce; it is contempt for parliamentary democracy. This is the same thing that happened when the government forced its elephantine bill through Parliament: it is allowing us no opportunity for a thorough examination. The government is preventing the opposition from doing its job, which is to oversee the work on government bills. Instead of showing Canadians that a Conservative government has to be transparent and accountable, the Conservatives have decided to do the exact opposite. What they are proving, as I said, is the extent to which they hold parliamentary democracy in total contempt.

The Conservatives moved a time allocation motion this morning. I do not know how many they have now made since the beginning of this Parliament; I have simply stopped counting. If it were up to them, they would fax the bills to our offices and we would show up here two or three times a year to vote two or three times on a few bills, without examining them adequately. This is quite simply scandalous. Transparency and accountability, to this government, simply do not exist. They seem to be allergic to those concepts. They simply do not want to hear about it.

The Conservatives are introducing a bill like this to have hundreds of changes enacted, changes that I would describe as completely radical, without consulting Canadians—and yet consultation with voters and accountability of the government to the House that represents them are two of the fundamental principles of our parliamentary democracy.

We are not the only ones who think the government is lacking in transparency and accountability. We need only look at what the Parliamentary Budget Officer is having to do to get the information he needs. His job is to assess the budget measures that are in Bill C-38 and their impact. I wager that it will be exactly the same situation for Bill C-45. The government will do everything it can to throw obstacles in the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s way.

The Conservatives are big on giving bills grand titles that mean absolutely nothing, to my mind, while at the same time spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising for propaganda purposes. They have called this bill the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012. The title they have come up with may be a punchy one, but there is nothing in this gigantic bill that will create jobs or stimulate long-term economic growth.

Working people and their families are still going through hard times because of the 2008 recession and the current economic slowdown. They need the government to do something to help them get through these hard times.

The government’s response to their problems is a wonderful “economic action plan” that is eliminating more jobs than it creates. At the end of the day, the only people who are benefiting from the Conservatives' action plan are their friends in the oil companies. With this bill, the million and a half jobless Canadians are being left completely to their own devices by the government.

Bill C-45 will create no jobs, and we are not the only ones saying that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer contends that the budget will result in the loss of 43,000 Canadian jobs. In reality, the budget will cause the unemployment rate to rise. Canadians deserve a government that can create jobs, not raise the unemployment rate.

The measures in the budget are going to affect millions of Canadians. The Conservative government is imposing those measures at the same time as it is doing nothing to combat youth unemployment. As well, it is asking people to work longer in order to be eligible for old age security benefits.

According to the Conservative government, Canadians do not work enough. It is therefore going to cut paid holidays by changing the method of calculating how they are paid. Employees will no longer be entitled to holiday pay for a holiday that falls within the first 30 days after they are hired. As well, employees who are paid on commission will have to work for at least 12 weeks before they are entitled to holiday pay. Government employees are also affected significantly by this bill—as if they had not been affected enough already by the current and upcoming job cuts.

The Conservatives have poisoned the atmosphere in the public service because of how they have managed these changes. This is very serious, but it does not seem to bother our colleagues opposite. They keep hammering away, raising employees’ contribution rates to 50%, regardless of when they were hired. The retirement age will be pushed back from 60 to 65 for any employee hired after January 1, 2013. At present, public servants can take early retirement with no penalty after 30 years of continuous service. However, with this bill, employees hired after January 1, 2013, will be eligible for early retirement after 30 years’ service only if they are over the age of 60. Employees aged 55 and over with 25 years’ service or more will be eligible for a reduced pension.

We are very concerned about this. One group of workers will have to work longer in order to be entitled to the same pension plan as other employees, which is simply unfair.

The main job creation measure in Bill C-45 is the implementation of a temporary hiring tax credit for small businesses. In my opinion, this measure is insufficient because it gives employers a maximum credit of only $1,000, which is available only for 2012. In other words, once the bill has been passed, the year will be almost over and the measures will have a very limited application. Despite its flaws, we support this provision.

All these measures, which will be of no help to Canada's labour market, come on top of the major cuts the government is making to employment insurance. We questioned the Minister of Human Resources to try to make her listen to reason. She did an about-face and changed her approach, but the new approach is not much better.

The cuts to old age security will cost people up to $34,000 in benefits. Health transfers to the provinces will also be reduced by $31 billion.

It is important to remember that 100 inspectors lost their jobs and 300 positions at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency were cut, which led to the biggest tainted beef crisis in Canadian history. Why? It is because the Conservatives did not listen to Canadians when making these many changes. This is no longer the Canada that Canadians believe in.

We will not let the government change the laws, policies and programs that Canadians believe in and that they are entitled to. We are going to stand in the government's way. The NDP has an economic plan to improve the health care system and services for Canadians. We are therefore going to oppose many measures in this bill.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to rise in the House and speak to Bill C-45, Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, even though, clearly, it does not come close to meeting the targeted objectives.

I know the government members do not like talking about procedure. We cannot avoid talking about it, because that is how we can evaluate this government's good governance.

We are opposition members; of course we examine the government's initiatives, particularly those like Bill C-45. We look at the elements that we do agree with, as well as the elements that we oppose. And we suggest ideas that we think could help the government get back on track regarding certain elements that we believe are headed in the wrong direction.

We have a majority government that can decide whether to accept or reject the proposed recommendations. However, based on what happened when the previous mammoth budget bill was introduced in June 2012, we know that this government has no respect for this process, which is absolutely crucial to the good governance of Canada, and particularly of our economy, which is having difficulty right now and needs our attention.

We are dealing with a 450-page budget implementation bill, which is not to be confused with the budget itself. This bill amends, adds or repeals 64 different laws. Thus, this one bill affects 64 different pieces of legislation.

I heard my colleague from Edmonton—Leduc say that this is a completely normal process. I imagine that is why the Conservatives did what they did in June. That must also be why they introduced a bill that was 800 or 900 pages long in 2009, when stimulus was needed for the economy during the recession.

This is not normal. According to media commentators, constitutional experts and parliamentary experts, our parliamentary system was not designed for this. At present, the government is using a single bill to address a good number of issues that, in many cases, have nothing to do with the budget, were not mentioned in the budget and could have very easily been introduced in a separate bill. We have been sitting since the middle of September. Many initiatives that were not introduced could have been introduced at that time in order to be examined separately. Instead, they are all included in this monster bill.

The government often says that we should not just focus on numbers, such as the number of pages and acts, and that we must read the bill. But we must do both. We cannot do away with process, because democracy itself is a matter of process. This government seems to have profound contempt for the democratic process and the parliamentary process. We need only think of the fact that the Prime Minister's Office decided to prorogue Parliament, not as part of the normal process to transition to a new legislative agenda, but simply to protect itself and avoid a defeat on a confidence vote in the House. We need only think of the gag orders or time allocation motions, such as the one we saw this morning for Bill C-45. I cannot even count how many we have had since the last election. Obviously, there is also the use of omnibus bills like the one before us today.

Omnibus bills are not the right approach. Unfortunately, that is what the government has decided to use in this case. We find that deplorable because our economy is cause for concern right now. We have told the government many times. Economic indicators clearly show that we are in a period of uncertainty. The latest unemployment statistics are one example. Despite the creation of 52,100 jobs, the unemployment rate increased by 0.1% in September 2012. Between 2000 and 2009, Canadian productivity increased on average 0.6% a year, but the average for all OECD countries was 1.5% per year. So we are lagging behind right now.

The government claims that it is taking measures, such as Bill C-45 and Bill C-38, and that the economy is its top priority, but at the end of the day, we have to wonder if it is headed in the right direction.

I would like us to consider two situations. The first has to do with productivity, which is more or less stagnant right now. Since 2006, the government has tried different measures to increase productivity, but nothing is working.

A good indicator of productivity is research and development. In the budget and in Bill C-45—for once there is something in the bill before us that actually has to do with the budget—the government introduced changes to the way companies are allowed to do research and development. Instead of issuing tax credits, the government has chosen to provide companies with direct research and development subsidies.

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this approach that the government has not yet addressed. The first problem is that these measures leave the door wide open for the government to pick winners in every industry. The second is that a lot of money has been lost in the process. Consequently, there will be no increases in amounts allocated to research and development or in corporate assistance for research and development. Canada will ultimately lose out as a result, and our productivity will not improve. This is a recurring problem.

There is another problem with the overall reduction in corporate income tax. The government usually argues that the general corporate income tax measure, which was extended in the last budget, is a measure that allows businesses to invest. However, there are two problems with that. When the Conservative government came to power in 2006, the corporate tax rate was 22%. Starting next year, it will be 15%. Every percentage point cut results in a reduction in revenue, which varies from $2 billion to $4 billion, depending on the year. The government is foregoing an enormous amount of tax revenue through this measure, in the hope, of course—since this is the argument of the government and many economists—that businesses will reinvest the money and create employment.

What have we seen so far? Businesses are sitting on approximately $500 billion, half a trillion in unused cash or dead money. This money is not being reinvested. It is currently lying in coffers waiting to be used, and it is not benefiting the economy in any way.

Another aspect that has to be considered in evaluating the success of these measures is whether the money has in fact been reinvested. If we look at Canadian statistics on reinvestment, we see that net real investment has stagnated in the past 10 or 15 years. So the government is making massive tax cuts and losing the tax room for various programs and services that help Canadians, but we are not seeing any significant increase in investment. Private sector businesses are sitting on a considerable amount of cash that could be invested in economic growth but is not.

The government has to ask itself some questions about this situation. It has to ask itself why the methods it is using do not seem to be working. Yet, we are seeing no such introspection on the government's part. This is a major problem. We know the definition of insanity.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping that things will change.

That is what the government is doing. Eventually, the Conservatives are going to have to revise their economic ideology to allow the Canadian economy to achieve its potential. Right now, it most definitely is not.

As I told the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, the member for Edmonton—Leduc, there are many things in Bill C-45 that were not in the budget. The Conservatives can do all the mental gymnastics they like, but there are things that were not in the budget, contrary to what the Minister of Finance told the House.

A number of these elements are important enough to warrant separate debate.

Take, for example, the elimination of the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board. It was created by the Conservatives, but never did much of anything. In fact, its only function was to set employment insurance premiums. Once again, a board created for a very specific purpose will be abolished, even though it could have been useful to the government. In the end, even though the government went to the expense of creating it, the board will be shut down, which will result in more power being concentrated in the hands of the minister. That is another example of the use of discretionary authority, which is becoming a habit with this government.

Who is going to cover the cost of abolishing the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission? Workers. These are not trivial matters. We are talking about monitoring hazardous materials that many Canadian workers handle in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. With a stroke of the pen, and with no mention of it in the budget, this commission is being eliminated.

There was also no mention in the budget of abolishing the Grain Appeal Tribunal. The government is trying to make us believe that one measure in the budget, written in very imprecise and vague language, covered this. That is not the case. If a budget is headed in a certain direction and budget items, offices and agencies must be eliminated, then this should be set out in the budget so we can vote on these elements. That is not currently the case.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer raised two very troubling issues that touch on what we are experiencing with Bill C-45. First, he said—and parliamentary experts agree—that members do not have the information in hand that they need to make decisions about the budget.

In April, we voted for the 2012 budget, but we did not have all of the information. The government was talking about eliminating 19,200 public service jobs and making $5.2 billion in cuts. However, we had no idea where these cuts would be made, and where these jobs would be eliminated, or which sectors would be affected. The information is trickling out as we go along.

That was why the Parliamentary Budget Officer demanded that the government be more transparent in the budgetary process by compelling the departments and agencies to report on their cuts. In doing that, he sought to determine what services would be cut and whether Canadians needed those services. Where will those cuts be made? What objectives does the government want to achieve by making those cuts? What will the consequences be?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer is unable to obtain that information, in spite of the Federal Accountability Act, which the Conservative government asked us to pass in 2006. We fully supported that act. However, the government decided to contravene its own act in order to prevent the Parliamentary Budget Officer from analyzing the impact of budget 2012.

Honestly, I have to say that if the Parliamentary Budget Officer cannot obtain that information, members will have no access to it either and will not be able to conduct a proper debate on budget 2012 and its impact.

We are studying Bill C-45, and we are clearly feeling the impact of budget 2012, for which we have yet to obtain all the information.

Bill C-38 very significantly watered down the environmental assessment process, the Fisheries Act and protection of fish habitat. Bill C-45 will have very significant consequences for the environment, among other things.

Now with respect to the repeal of the Navigable Waters Protection Act, that act concerns the environment, despite what the government claims. It is trying to create a smokescreen by saying the act concerns only navigation. That is not true: it refers to the protection of navigable waters, including waters where one can navigate in a canoe. This is a rigorous process that the government is in a hurry to water down in order to repeal certain provisions that the lakes and rivers development sector does not like.

This is a big problem and will have major consequences, like the massive watering down of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the amendments to or massive watering down of the Fisheries Act. Some aspects of Bill C-45 also concern the Fisheries Act. We were surprised when we read the division of that bill that concerns the Fisheries Act, because most of the provisions correct the errors and excesses of the previous budget implementation bill, C-38, which was passed in June of this year.

We introduced numerous amendments that would have eliminated those errors and excesses, but the government disregarded them. I recall that the government would not agree to any amendments during the study by the Standing Committee on Finance or in the House. Now, a few months later, the Conservatives realize the opposition may have been right on certain points and they are quickly changing things so that no one realizes it. That is what is happening now.

Because of the major repercussions that will result from these important amendments, they really belong in a bill if that is the direction the government truly intends to take, and should be treated separately and given close scrutiny.

There is a great deal of expertise in ocean science, oceanography and biotechnology in the Lower St. Lawrence. In fact, the Université du Québec à Rimouski was rated the best research university by the Toronto magazine RE$EARCH Infosource for its work in this field. The University of Quebec at Rimouski has the capacity for this work because of the networking done by the Technopole Maritime du Québec.

Within the institutional community, UQAR, with its oceanography department and ISMER, its ocean sciences institute, has solid linkages and networks with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ Maurice Lamontagne Institute. The UQAR is also linked to private sector organizations like the Centre de recherche sur les biotechnologies marines. The problem is that the massive budget cuts and the dilution of environmental measures put forward in Bill C-38, and reintroduced in Bill C-45, will cripple a region that has succeeded over a 25- to 30-year period in developing internationally recognized cutting-edge expertise. The Maurice Lamontagne Institute’s department of ecotoxicology and the department that studies fish habitat are about to be shut down. The libraries and archives, the only French-language sources serving the university and researchers in the region, are also being closed.

All of these measures, which were not in the budget but derived from it, and about which the Parliamentary Budget Officer would like further details, will diminish the capacity of Rimouski and the lower St. Lawrence to make their mark as international leaders. Is that really what the government wants?

This government should do some soul-searching and look at the measures being put forward in the various budgets tabled and their budget implementation bills. It must seriously consider whether Canada is moving forward or backward.

All of the Canadian and Quebec stakeholders I have heard speak about this issue have a strong feeling that Canada is moving backward. We are deindustrializing and putting all our eggs in one basket, as we used to do when free trade was almost solely with the United States. At least we have been begun to diversify the countries we trade with.

We are putting all our eggs in one basket once again in terms of industries and relying more than anything else on natural resources. This sector is certainly important, but from an economic growth standpoint, it has become the only sector we can rely on. We need to make sure that other sectors in which we could play a leadership role are supported by this government, but there are no signs of this in Bill C-45.

That is why we will oppose Bill C-45 at this stage. We are against the process being proposed and against the content which, although it does contain some interesting ad hoc measures here and there, is definitely not a panacea for the Canadian economy.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member for Wascana that, last June, we discussed Bill C-38, which amended, created or eliminated approximately 70 laws with a single signature and a single vote.

Right now, this mammoth monster bill includes over 60 laws. Even if it were divided and the parts were examined separately by different committees, the fact remains that it amends, creates or eliminates about 60 laws. Once again, we will have to decide with a single vote.

The problem is that we do not have time in committee or in the House to carefully examine each of the laws that will be amended. The government gave us 70 hours to examine Bill C-38 in committee. We might be given the same number of hours to examine Bill C-45.

We heard from 150 witnesses. Given the number of laws that are being amended, created or eliminated, the time that has been allocated is truly laughable. Generally speaking, we hear from 15 to 20 witnesses and have 25 to 30 hours per law. However, we are not being given that much time here.

The government is telling us that all we talk about is parliamentary procedure, while it is talking about the economy. However, procedure is important because it is the foundation of democracy.

I would like to hear what the hon. member for Wascana has to say about the way in which this government is making a mockery of Parliament, parliamentary procedure and democracy by introducing massive bills such as this one.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in the debate on Bill C-45, the concerns of the Liberal opposition fall into two categories.

First, from a procedural point of view, the government is again trying to jam Parliament, making sensible debate very difficult and rendering any votes on the bill both muddled and meaningless, all because Bill C-45 is another offensive omnibus bill, one that exceeds every legitimate precedent and that clearly constitutes an abuse of power.

Second, when economic growth is slowing to a crawl; when Canadian productivity is worse than we thought; when household debts are reaching dangerous proportions; and when worldwide financial risks are “alarmingly high”, to use the words of the IMF, Bill C-45 is stunningly complacent. There is nothing significant to promote growth, jobs, innovation and productivity, or to achieve genuine sustainable development in one of the world's most important resource economies, or to foster a dynamic and successful middle class, or to combat growing inequality between different sectors, regions and demographic groups.

On the procedural point, so-called omnibus bills obviously bundle several different measures together. Within reasonable limits, such legislation can be managed through Parliament if the bill is coherent, meaning that all the different topics are interrelated and interdependent and if the overall volume of the bill is not overwhelming. That was the case before the government came to power in 2006.

When omnibus bills were previously used to implement key provisions of federal budgets, they averaged fewer than 75 pages in length and typically amended a handful of laws directly related to budgetary policy. In other words, they were coherent and not overwhelming.

However, under this regime the practice has changed. Omnibus bills since 2006 have averaged well over 300 pages, more than four times the previous norm. This latest one introduced last week had 556 sections, filled 443 pages and touched on 30 or more disconnected topics, everything from navigable waters to grain inspection, from disability plans to hazardous materials.

It is a complete dog's breakfast, and deliberately so. It is calculated to be so humongous and so convoluted, all in a single lump, that it cannot be intelligently examined and digested by a conscientious Parliament.

Worse still, routine matters and positive measures are interwoven willy-nilly with destructive and contentious issues so that at the end of the day there can be no clear vote on anything, and thus the basic reason for this House to exist, to vote and to decide, is subverted.

Clearly Bill C-45 and its immediate predecessor, Bill C-38, are an abuse of power, and there is no greater authority for that indictment than the Prime Minister himself. When he served in opposition, he complained bitterly about a rather tiny omnibus bill back in 1994 that dealt with just five interconnected topics and ran a grand total of 21 pages.

In high dudgeon at the time, the Prime Minister said that the modest bill was:

—so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

He continued:

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse? Dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill.

He asked government members in particular to worry about the implications of omnibus bills for “democracy and the functionality of...Parliament”. That was the Prime Minister in 1994 complaining about a bill of a mere 21 pages.

By contrast, what we have before us today in Bill C-45 is massive, with more than 400 pages and more than 500 sections covering more than 30 different topics, amending more than 60 other pieces of legislation, some of which were never mentioned in the budget itself.

The Prime Minister must be totally twisted out of shape by this perversion of parliamentary democracy. It is either that or, now in power, his previous principles have become expendable. Canadians fear the latter is the case.

It is not just manipulative omnibus bills that break the rules of decent behaviour. It is also ministerial binges on $16 orange juice and lavish limousines and ornamental gazebos in Muskoka, all at the taxpayers' expense, and never a word of complaint from the Prime Minister. It is hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on the most self-serving tax-paid advertising, external crony consultants, a bloated cabinet and 30 extra totally unnecessary MPs. It is routinely invoking closure to stifle debate. It is forcing parliamentary committees to do the public's business in secret behind closed doors. It is ministers' offices interfering with the public's access to information. It is systematic personal attacks to discredit and intimidate charities, NGOs, public servants and parliamentary watchdogs from the budget officer to the Auditor General, from the information commissioner to Elections Canada. The government will try to shut up anyone who has the temerity to speak truth to power. Ultimately, all of this leads to bad governance, like the multi-billion dollar F-35 stealth fighter boondoggle, which both the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer have depicted as dishonest and incompetent.

Expendable principles also lead to election financing fraud, for which the party opposite has been charged and convicted. It also leads to deceitful robocalls and tampering with people's right to vote. Abusive omnibus bills are part of that same matrix of wrongdoing with impunity.

How can this be fixed? The government accepted a Liberal idea last Thursday and Friday to carve out MP pension reforms, which were previously in Bill C-45, so they could be approved separately and immediately. That was a decent start. It proved that these bills are severable. Yesterday, the government accepted another Liberal suggestion to subdivide Bill C-45 for committee study. Instead of being sent as a single lump to the finance committee, the various subject matters in Bill C-45 will each be examined in detail by the House standing committee that has the appropriate expertise.

That is a very good second step. However, voting is the key. After all the debating is done, the vote will still remain convoluted because Bill C-45 will not be voted upon in sections or by topics but rather all together, at once, as one lump sum. That makes any such omnibus vote quite meaningless.

This too can be fixed. We call upon the government to structure the final vote on a topic-by-topic basis. It should not muddle scientific tax credits with bridges to Detroit, not confuse the IMF with the EI financing board, but should call separate and distinct votes on each of these topics and let the result be clear and honest.

With distinct and honest voting, and subject to the detailed review that will take place in the appropriate committees, there are certainly some measures in Bill C-45 that Liberals could support—for example, the IMF reforms, the CMHC adjustments, the concept of monetary penalties for violations of the internal trade agreement and, no doubt, others.

On some topics we would like to offer the government better alternatives. One example is the employment insurance hiring credit for small business. This measure is necessary only because the Conservatives are increasing the payroll tax burden on small businesses, indeed on all employers, each and every year. Last year and the year before and next year and the year after and every year into the foreseeable future, the government is increasing job-killing EI payroll taxes by some $600 million every year. Then it brags about a tax credit that gives back about $200 million. It takes away $600 million and gives back $200 million. As a consequence, employers are generally worse off. Those employers are paying more new Conservative taxes on jobs than they are getting back in any of the credits.

Business would have a greater incentive to generate new jobs if the government would just stop its annual payroll tax increases. When Liberals faced the challenge of a tough economy in the 1990s, we first froze EI payroll taxes and then we cut them, not once, not twice, but 12 consecutive times. We brought them down by more than 40%, and 3.5 million net new jobs were created. There is no room here to brag about the hiring credit. It is a temporary band-aid over the damage being done by higher and higher Conservative EI payroll taxes year after year.

Another area where Liberals would suggest a better idea has to do with the registered disability savings plans. The changes outlined in Bill C-45 are fine as far as they go. They offer some technical improvements in the plans, but they do not go far enough. Still left out, still discriminated against, are those unfortunate Canadians who are diagnosed with long-term debilitating conditions, like multiple sclerosis, for example. Given the capricious nature of diseases like MS, the sufferers may be fine today, with no signs of disability yet emerged, but they know that their future prognoses are quite likely to be problematic. What they would like to do now, while they still are able to earn a living, is to set up a registered disability savings plan and start building some financial security for their more difficult days down the road. But the government says no. To have an RDSP, they must be permanently disabled right now. They cannot make provision for the future. They have to wait until their disability overtakes them. Such rigidity in the rules is shortsighted, mean-spirited and just plain foolish. It can and it should be fixed in Bill C-45.

In the fight for greater equality of opportunity, other things should be done too. Personal tax credits for children's arts and sports, for volunteer firefighters and for family home caregivers should be made equally available to all of those who qualify, not just the more wealthy. As strange as it sounds, the government's tax credit structure is designed in such a way that those below a certain income level do not quality. It is perverse. It punishes the poor. Why is a child from a wealthy family more deserving than a child from a low-income family? Why are more wealthy firefighters or caregivers more deserving than low-income firefighters or caregivers? Of the 25 million people who file tax returns in Canada each year, more than one-third, some nine million families, have incomes so low that they are not eligible for these tax credits. It is unfair, it is wrong and it should be fixed.

Therefore, the government should stop increasing the EI payroll taxes and fix the flaws in registered disability savings plans and family-based tax credits. These things would actually promote economic growth and reduce the inequality among Canadians, but sadly, they are not in Bill C-45. Also, the government should not mangle the scientific research and experimental development tax credit by eliminating capital expenditures from the formula, because that is explicitly discriminatory against some sectors and some regions of the country that need this incentive.

We also want the government to get serious about the situation of young Canadians. Most of those young Canadians have seen very little improvement in their prospects since the depth of the recession four years ago. Unemployment among those under the age of 25 keeps hovering close to recession-like levels of 15%. Some 250,000 fewer young Canadians are employed today than before the recession began. Worse still, 165,000 young Canadians have just given up and dropped out of the job market. From preschool to grad studies, continuous, high-calibre learning is one of the keys to a strong, productive Canadian economy in a precarious world. While fully respecting provincial jurisdictions, the Government of Canada needs to be more than just an idle spectator when it comes to this crucial determinant of Canada's overall economic success and Canadians' individual wellbeing.

We will thrive, or not, in a tough global environment on the quality of our brain power. Therefore, it is good public policy for the federal government to invest in early learning and childcare, to break down financial barriers to post-secondary studies and skills, to ease the burden of student debt and shift toward more grants than loans, to bolster more curiosity-based pure research, to foster innovation and to make Canada the most connected and digital country in the world.

Squarely within federal jurisdiction for aboriginal education, the federal government must end the cap that limits first nations' access to post-secondary learning. In the kindergarten to grade 12 system, the feds need to fill that disgraceful gap between what they invest to educate aboriginal children and the much higher amounts the provinces invest for non-aboriginal children. That discrepancy has to be fixed.

Sadly, none of these courageous measures are to be found in Bill C-45, nor does the bill address the urgent need for more affordable housing, especially for seniors, students, the disabled and others with special needs. It does not take the creative step of transferring the entire federal gas tax to local municipal governments to help underpin community infrastructure. It does not advance the principle of a more extensive CPP, while it perversely maintains the government's odious decision to cut the future pensions of the poorest and most vulnerable of senior citizens. Those pensions will be cut gradually in the future at a saving of something approaching 0.3% of GDP. The burden of that minor saving for the Government of Canada will fall squarely on the backs of the lowest-income and most vulnerable older Canadians who have no alternatives.

Bill C-45 fails in the first obligation of every government, to keep Canadians safe. There is erosion in border services, prison security, our spy system, Maritime search and rescue, consumer product labelling, emergency preparedness, community crime prevention, cyber security and, most blatantly, food safety.

Why the government would choose to make these areas its primary focus for cutting has a lot of Canadians scratching their heads. They want to be able to count on their governments to ensure public health and safety, first and foremost. However, the government seems to have that priority nowhere significantly on its list.

On procedure and on substance, for what it does and what it fails to do, Bill C-45 in our judgment cannot be supported as it stands today.

Bill C-45—Time Allocation Motion

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I found it interesting to hear the Minister of State say that members of Parliament are not necessarily experts and that we must hear from experts in committee.

What does he think about the fact that we speak on behalf of our constituents? We are experts on conveying the wishes of the people we represent. Our constituents deserve to have us speak on their behalf here in the House.

When the budget was tabled, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster read numerous emails, tweets and Facebook messages, among other things. That is how he shared the opinions of the public. I do not want to take anything away from the experts who testify in committee, but that is just one part of the parliamentary process. As my colleague pointed out, the most important part of this process is when we have the opportunity to do what we are doing now: rise in the House to represent the wishes of the people who elected us. I had the opportunity to speak to Bill C-38, and I was able to share what my constituents thought. No, these people are not experts, but we are accountable to them and we are here to represent them.

The Minister of State is dismissing the parliamentary process, when it is very important here. What is the purpose of Parliament if there is no parliamentary process? Is it a dictatorship? This process is the very essence of democracy, legislation and fundamental rights in a society. If the Minister of State thinks that this process is not important, I suggest that he find another profession, because I do not think he is in the right field.

When will the members opposite respect the parliamentary process? When will they recognize that we are here to speak on behalf of other experts—the people we represent?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of State said that we must not boil things down to just process.

The government has just moved a time allocation motion, another means of shutting down parliamentary debate. The motion is about process, and that is nothing new for this government. Closure, prorogation and omnibus bills are all types of processes that the government uses to weaken the democratic framework in which we are supposed to work.

The Minister of State told us again that all they want to do is send the bill to committee as quickly as possible in order to study it. Canada is a parliamentary democracy with a clear parliamentary process: we have automatic first reading of a bill, and then second reading of the bill that members are supposed to do here in the House of Commons, before it can be studied in more detail by the Standing Committee on Finance and other committees, which the government is going to let happen, for once.

We currently have a problem. As was the case in June with Bill C-38, we will have an expedited debate and, even though the bill is going to be studied by various committees, we will not have the opportunity to give due consideration to the different elements of this omnibus bill that could be split off and passed independently.

The Minister of State was boasting about Bill C-38 and said that more than 150 witnesses had appeared before the committee, which sat for more than 75 hours. I would like to remind members that Bill C-38 covered 70 laws that were amended, added or rescinded. That comes down to two witnesses per law, whereas we generally hear from 15 to 20, and about one hour per law being amended.

Therefore, I would like to know why the government is using closure, omnibus bills and prorogation to water down the parliamentary work we were elected to do, as representatives of our constituents here in the House.

Employment Insurance

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition initiated by Mouvement action-chômage in the Les Chenaux RCM in my riding, Saint-Maurice—Champlain.

This certified petition, addressed to the Government of Canada, expresses the petitioners' objection to the notion of “suitable employment” defined in Bill C-38, regarding employment insurance.

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for your ruling in this regard and remind you that this complaint is coming from the person who, earlier, referred us to page 282 of the budget, saying that it had to do with the Navigable Waters Protection Act when such is not the case.

The changes in the budget change the rules of the game for teachers and engineers. What we are trying to say about employment insurance is that, from now on, people will have to look for jobs located up to an hour away from where they live, otherwise they will lose their benefits. This is an unbelievable threat to industries that depend on seasonal workers.

For example, what are people in Atlantic Canada who work in the fishery supposed to do if the minister is saying that, from now on, they have to move? Someone cannot train to be a fisher in five hours, five days or even five months. It takes several seasons to train someone to work on a boat. The government is already draining these communities of their lifeblood because of our artificially high dollar. All our export industries are suffering terribly. This is being felt in Atlantic Canada in particular.

Governing also means understanding the country, the regional differences and the different regional needs. Rather than making allowances for that, the Conservatives are applying the same remedy everywhere. They are attacking regions that are sorely in need of a helping hand. Instead of that help, these regions are getting hit hard. That is what the Conservatives are doing.

What is more, the Conservatives are creating an economy where salaries will be much lower. There is less pressure with regard to all working conditions because of a series of measures that are being implemented. It is not by chance that, for the first time in Canada's history, the middle class has seen a clear drop in income, and this occurred in tandem with the signing of NAFTA.

Over the past 25 years, the middle class has seen its real net income drop. This is the first time this has happened. In other words, the richest 20% of Canadians are experiencing a rise in income while the other 80% of Canadians—it has been measured and proven—are experiencing a drop in income. These are the results of the neo-conservative policies of the current government and its Liberal predecessors, who aggressively pursued the same goals for 25 years.

This is putting downward pressure on incomes and on employment conditions. As though that were not enough, these agreements are creating a race to the bottom: temporary foreign workers who used to come and work in a few sectors, such as produce farms, will now be in several employment categories. The government trumpets the fact that we can pay them a lot less than Canadians. People are working hard in mines and many other sectors and what is the result? One simply has to go visit the steelworkers in Prince George, British Columbia, to see what kind of pressure they are under. It is hard work. They work hard their entire lives. They fought hard for fair wages only to be told that the Conservatives are going to force them to work two years longer before they can retire. Then, as though these workers did not have enough pressure on them, the Conservatives want to bring in workers from other countries and pay them lower wages, and this adds even more downward pressure. That is the Canada the Conservatives dream of, where workers are subjected to working conditions from the early 1900s. That is their vision.

The NDP wants to build a fair Canada. We hear appalling speeches, like the one we heard earlier, suggesting that our dream is heresy. A country as rich as Canada is capable of paying for decent working conditions, and that is part of what an NDP government will bring.

That is the path that the Conservatives are paving for us.

Do not forget that Bill C-38, the Conservatives' budget bill in the spring, repealed the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act. That is their vision.

They are not attacking one particular group or sector. Their goal is to drive down wages for all Canadians, a total lack of an economic plan. The government is not just failing workers but businesses that create jobs too. Canada faces a perfect storm of economic challenges. We have 500,000 lost manufacturing jobs, a $50 billion trade deficit, household debt at an all-time high, the worst American downturn since the Great Depression, and we are still in the middle of a eurozone crisis.

When we talk to Conservatives about the interest that we have in using our experience, our expertise and our capability to help in Europe, we get the usual talking points of “You want us to write a big cheque to Europe”. What imbecility. As if the idea of using our experience and our expertise to help avoid a crisis that will invariably negatively affect us is something wrong.

Yet those are the talking points that come out of the PMO because they make stuff up. That is all they have. They have nothing else. They make up pages in the budget and they make up plans for the NDP that have never existed, other than the ones that were the same ones they had. They make stuff up all day long because they cannot defend what they are actually doing. That is what we are talking about now, what is actually in here, what they are actually doing and the negative effect it is having on Canadian workers across the country.

What an irony Bill C-45 is. The jobs and growth act does not contain a plan to generate either. Budget 2012 kills more jobs than it creates. It contains no strategy for the 1.4 million out-of-work Canadians. The so-called centrepiece of the economic plan is the small business tax credit, which members can applaud because the NDP supports a tax credit. It was part of our 2011 platform. This one does not go far enough. It is worth a maximum of $1,000 and it lasts just one year. At best, it may be enough to help companies hire one full-time employee. It will not even make a dent in our lagging job numbers.

The truth is that the government continues its failed policy of lavish corporate tax cuts, even as companies ship jobs overseas. For example, one company demanded a 50% pay cut and shut its doors after receiving $5 million from the Conservatives. It was called Electro-Motive Diesel in London. I got to visit the workers on the picket line in the middle of the winter. It was an extraordinary experience because just a few months earlier a beaming Prime Minister had been out there with a $5 million cheque, because this was evidence of the success of his plan for jobs in Canada.

As soon as that election campaign was over, there was a little meeting. The bosses sat down and said, “We have a deal for you. You accept a 50% pay cut or we move your jobs south of the border”. The company closed, the jobs have been moved, it kept the $5 million and there are no longer any jobs in Canada. That is the Conservative plan.

Thirty years ago a young worker could work his or her way up a company ladder. Now workers have many different jobs in a lifetime. The incentive to invest in workers is being lost. A large workforce is no longer a sign of pride. A couple of generations ago, someone who was running a big company would be very proud and take great pride in stating the numbers in his workforce. Now the great pride is saying how many of those jobs were shipped to another country. That is the change. We have to get back to a feeling in Canada that it is a social responsibility to be proud to be creating good-paying jobs.

Why do we keep doing what the Conservatives do, investing in companies like Electro-Motive Diesel that do not invest in our workforce? This is the type of short-sightedness that we see all over Bill C-45.

For example, under the changes to the scientific research and experimental development tax credit, the program would be cut. The $500 million a year that it costs would be eliminated, but it would also reduce government support for business research and development at a time when businesses need to increase innovation to compete.

To put it another way, if we cannot get the Conservatives to do the right thing because it is the right thing, let us try to get them to do the right thing because it is actually good for the economy. The only way to increase wealth in our society is to increase knowledge, and this is the dumbing down of Canadian business. That is the Conservative legacy. It is going to hit manufacturing particularly hard at a time when they need a little oxygen to keep going.

We need tailored incentives that better serve businesses and our economy as a whole. There are a couple of good examples that can be looked at in Canada where long-term vision and incentive by the government has produced a great result.

For example, take a look at the TV and film industry in Toronto. There used to be a time when it was only New York and Hollywood. Now, Toronto is in there competing with them every step of the way, but it required a partnership between government, business and labour. Those tax incentives were there for decades and they worked their way through the system and are producing the great result of bringing in billions of dollars a year and lots of high-quality jobs. However, it required government involvement every step of the way. The Conservatives simply do not believe in that.

We should be building the next success story now. Instead, we are getting less for workers, less for Canadians and less for our economy. That is what the Conservatives are about, less for everyone.

In the business environment there should be the creation of a climate for growth. We have to ensure predictability. However, look at the catastrophe this week with the sale of a gas company. The government cannot even give the criteria on which the decision was based and it released its decision at 11:57 p.m. on a Friday.

The Conservatives cannot explain the decision. They have to hide it. Then when they come back into the House, they go back to their talking points and keep referring to the statute, but the decision uses criteria that are not in the statute. How is a foreign company looking to invest in Canada supposed to make an intelligent decision? We saw the effect on the stock market immediately on Monday. Stocks were getting pummelled. People do not know. This is a government that boasts about being close to business, but its actual decisions are hurting business.

This lack of predictability is something that we would change. We would clarify the rules for foreign investment. We would welcome investments and trade as long as it was reciprocal, responsible and fair.

What concerns us the most is that since 2009, there has been a strong trend towards eviscerating anything that has to do with environmental protection in Canada. In 2009, the government even did away with one of the first steps, which was the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

I remember that the Minister of Foreign Affairs called it the greatest job killer. We were confused. At the time, we told ourselves that it was not possible to pit the environment against the economy, since the past 50 years have shown us that they go hand in hand, because both of these things must progress together.

I remember being speechless in parliamentary committee, when I saw the Liberal Party vote with the Conservatives for the first time to start dismantling the Navigable Waters Protection Act. That was in 2009. That continued in 2010 and 2011, based on what we are seeing here. They are getting rid of the protections that are so important for everyone.

But the businesses themselves are the ones that want some predictability in all of this. They do not want to end up being told that they did not fulfill their obligations.

Instead of enforcing federal environmental protection legislation, such as the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994, and so on, what are they doing? They are gutting these laws and changing them completely.

This is interesting, because we know that there are procedures, processes and ways of doing things, particularly in the oil sands, where the federal government no longer enforces these laws. The lack of enforcement will cause more degradation of ecosystems.

This government claims to be a law and order government. Normally, when a company violates the law, we force it to change its practices. But the Conservatives instead change the law to bring it in line with those practices.

I will give a concrete example having to do with the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which we were talking about earlier. In Canada, 37 rivers are considered to be heritage rivers. Of these 37 rivers, 27 will no longer be protected.

Now, 27 of Canada's 37 designated heritage rivers will no longer be protected. They include the Bloodvein River, in Manitoba and Ontario; the Cowichan River, British Columbia; the Clearwater River, Saskatchewan and Alberta; the Main River, Newfoundland and Labrador; the Margaree River, in Nova Scotia; the South Nahanni River, Northwest Territories; the Tatshenshini River, Yukon; the Mattawa River, Ontario; and the Upper Restigouche River, New Brunswick.

Mr. Speaker, I actually enjoy responding to the peanut gallery when they heckle. The question was, “Is it navigable?” Duh, yes. It is a definition in the law. No amount of rebranding will take away from the fact that the Navigable Waters Protection Act was meant to ensure sustainable development for future generations.

I mentioned the decision of Judge Lamer in the Oldman River case in my opening remarks. Let me read one section:

The Minister of Transport, in his capacity of decision maker under the Navigable Waters Protection Act must thus consider the environmental impact of the dam on such areas of federal jurisdiction as navigable waters, fisheries, Indians and Indian lands.

After that, the Conservatives stood up and said that law had nothing to do with the environment. Shame. It is Orwellian. The Conservatives made their website disappear after a question was asked by my colleague from Halifax yesterday. There were 29 references to the environment, and the Conservatives made them disappear. They want to make the environment disappear.

We are going to stand up and protect the environment, for now and for future generations. We are going to continue to fight the Conservatives' omnibus budget bills.

There are two different aspects that are being discussed today. When we look at the contents of what they are proposing, we get the results we are looking at here. We are hurting people. We are taking away programs. We are taking away protections that have been given in Canada for generations.

Before we even look at those, there is an aspect that all Canadians have to consider in what we are going through today, which is the continuation of what the Conservatives started in the spring. This type of omnibus budget bill is affecting dozens and dozens of different laws. We have fallen into the American trap of avoiding our parliamentary debate. Our system is different from the American budget system, where they tack on and tack on.

We remember the Prime Minister, and it was not something we have said, admitting that he never watches Canadian television and he never watches the Canadian news. He gets all his news from the Fox network. I guess it is not surprising that he thinks the American system applies here and he has simply given instructions to his House leader and his other officers to start following the American system of using a budget bill as sort of a catch-all, where they can throw in all the stuff they want to change. That is what we have here, again.

That is an undermining of our parliamentary democracy. Those are our institutions. The Conservatives are not only taking away things like medicare, free universal public medical care, and putting it in danger, the cuts I referred to earlier, the $36 billion that they announced without discussion or debate will lead inexorably to a two-tier system. That is just a fancy way of saying that poor people are going to have trouble seeing a doctor and rich people will have access because they will be able to pay for it.

That is not the Canadian system. That is not the Canadian way. We will stand up and fight that.

Yes, at every step, we will stand up because for the first time in a very long time we are beginning to have hope. In the next campaign, there will be two opposing visions for our country. There is the Conservative vision, which slashes the social safety net and takes out $10 billion every year. That is the figure they tried to hide. The cat was out of the bag yesterday.

I heard the member for Saint Boniface say earlier that they held lengthy budget briefings. Let us talk about those briefings. I was the finance critic for the official opposition for five budgets before I became the leader of the official opposition. Never before had I seen what I saw last spring. We often see the same people from year to year. They are usually in their offices. There is very little reason for them to be here, except for the few times they attend parliamentary committee hearings.

Officials are there to provide us with information. When I saw not only the budget cuts, but also the two-year increase in the retirement age, I went to see them to ask for a single figure that could be readily obtained. I asked them what adding two years of work would mean and how much money the government would be taking out of seniors' pockets.

This is what they told me, and I quote:

“I can't give you that information.”

I know a half-truth when I hear it. So I answered:

Are you telling me you can't give me that information because you don't have it, or are you telling me you have that information but you can't give it to me?

And the response, which was worthy of George Orwell, was:

“I can't give you that information.”

That is the Conservatives.

Yesterday the Auditor General confirmed the overall number. The Minister of Finance was asked that question at a press conference right in front of the House of Commons a few months ago. On our side, we had estimated that it was somewhere between $10 billion and $12 billion. We were not far off. They estimated it at $10 billion. The minister refused to give the number. He replied with his usual smile, as though he were saying “I do not give a damn”, that he had heard approximate numbers. Imagine that, a Minister of Finance who says such things. I can say one thing to my colleagues and to any seniors watching us at home: they can be sure that the two-year increase in the retirement age will be cancelled by an NDP government; we will put the retirement age back to 65.

We will stand up, unlike the members opposite who, day after day, have to parrot the lines written by the Prime Minister's Office. They sometimes have one minute a day in their poor little parliamentary lives to finally talk about their ridings and about real issues, and what do they do? They act like parrots. They are puppets, marionettes. They stand up and say exactly what the Prime Minister's Office tells them to say.

We can be reasonable. We can stand up and keep the real objectives in mind. We tell Canadians that when it comes to pensions, the integrity of our Parliament and our free, public health care system, we are proud to stand up for them. We will stand up for the environment, because we in the NDP know that we deserve better than what the Conservatives have been offering us for the past six years.

Since the Conservatives came to power, they have found many opportunities to invent titles for bills that say exactly the opposite of the bill's contents. Last week, I had the opportunity to say that if, by chance, they actually used the most recent incarnation of the mammoth budget bill to do what they promised to do in the election campaign, which was create jobs, we would vote in favour of the bill.

In the comments I made yesterday, I clearly explained that we could have a good discussion about some of the elements in this bill if we could split it. It could be done by splitting the bill and having different committees study it.

We believe that some things can and must be done. I gave an example earlier when I spoke about tax credits for creating jobs. That is how we could go about it.

We will not let the Conservatives fool us. We have become too accustomed to their empty promises. We are telling them outright that if they split the bill and divide it into coherent parts that can be easily studied, they will find that our party is willing to co-operate.

We shall see what they end up doing. We will test the Conservatives' ability to be true to their word. In the case of the Navigable Waters Protection Act, we saw that they said one thing and what was in the documents was altogether different.

Here are some of the elements that could be split off from the bill.

Here are some of the elements of Bill C-45 that could be split off from the bill and studied separately and properly in a parliamentary committee. It has already been shown it is possible because we did it last week.

By the way, I open a little parenthesis to say that there are 450,000 public servants in Canada who are very happy that the NDP actually read what the Liberals were putting in, because such is the Liberal incompetence that they were about to give one-two-three agreement to the enactment of a law that would have taken MPs' and senators' pensions and dealt with them on the same footing as the pensions of 450,000 civil servants.

The NDP stood up, demanded a change, and was able to get it done right.

It was so pathetic to see the House leader for the Liberals standing in the hallway, stuttering away, saying, “It was a spelling mistake. It was a typographical error.” That is one of his classics. Four hundred and fifty-thousand people are a typographical error for the Liberals.

Here are some of the elements that could be split off from the bill.

The gutting of the Canada Environmental Assessment Act should be before the environment committee. The gutting of the Navigable Waters Protection Act should be before the environment and transportation committee. The elimination of the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission should, of course, go to the health committee. Cutting the SR and ED tax credits should be before the industry committee. Changes to the Fisheries Act should go to fisheries and oceans committee. Changes to the Indian Act should go to aboriginal affairs and northern development committee. Changes to the new Bridge to Strengthen Trade Act should go before the transportation committee. Eliminating the grain act tribunal should go before the agriculture committee, and pension reforms should go before the human resources, skills and social development committee.

Therefore, I would like to seek unanimous consent, and I am sure it is going to be given, to move the following motion.

That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, that Bill C-45, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures be amended by removing the following clauses:

(a) clauses 9, 27, 28 and 62 to 64 related to the scientific research and experimental development tax credit;

(b) clauses 173 to 178 related to the Fisheries Act;

(c) clauses 179 to 184 related to the proposed bridge to strengthen trade act;

(d) clauses 206 to 209 related to the Indian Act;

(e) clauses 210 to 218 related to the Judges Act;

(f) clauses 264 to 268 related to the Customs Act;

(g) clauses 269 to 298 related to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act;

(i) clauses 316 to 350 related to the Navigable Waters Protection Act;

(j) clauses 351 to 410 related to the Canada Grains Act;

(k) clauses 425 to 432 related to the Canada Environmental Assessment Act; and

(l) clauses 464 to 514 related to pension reforms

That the clauses mentioned in section (a) of this motion do compose Bill C-47; that Bill C-47 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

That the clauses mentioned in section (b) of this motion do compose Bill C-48; that Bill C-48 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

That the clauses mentioned in section (c) of this motion do compose Bill C-49; that Bill C-49 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

That the clauses mentioned in section (d) of this motion do compose Bill C-50; that Bill C-50 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.

That the clauses mentioned in section (e) of this motion do compose Bill C-51; that Bill C-51 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

That the clauses mentioned in section (f) of this motion do compose Bill C-52; that Bill C-52 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, in life, as in politics, everything revolves around whether we have credibility. I will read page 282 of the budget, because that is what my colleague was referring to. So we, along with all the Canadians who are watching, will know whether page 282 of the budget mentions the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

In life, as in politics, everything revolves around whether we have credibility. The member just told us that on page 282 of the budget we would find a reference to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. I will now read page 282 of the budget. Under “Transport Portfolio”, it states:

Organizations in the Transport portfolio identified a combination of productivity-enhancing and transformative measures that change the way programs and services are delivered and support the Government's agenda of refocusing government and reducing red tape.

I ask members to retain that term because, in the Conservatives' mouths, reducing red tape is synonymous with reducing public protection. Walkerton, XL Foods and listeriosis is reducing public protection. That is a theme we will be talking a lot about this afternoon. I will continue.

Non-core activities will be reduced while maintaining capacity related to core mandates in order to protect the safety of Canadians and support economic growth.

For example, VIA Rail Canada Inc. will pursue productivity improvements such as augmenting the performance of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems....

Navigable Waters Protection Act? Not so far.

...on-board trains to reduce maintenance costs, reduce energy consumption, and increase passenger comfort. It will also implement automation projects such as electronic ticketing and invoicing systems.

Navigable waters? I have not heard it.

“Planned Savings--Transport Portfolio. Canadian Air Transport Security Authority--”

This is kind of interesting because this is where it starts cutting, like it cut the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, where it cut things that directly protect Canadians' health and safety. Here we have cuts ongoing of $59.7 million. We have Marine Atlantic, the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Inc. cut. The Champlain Bridge is about to fall down but it is going to cut. It goes on to mention Transport Canada and VIA Rail Canada and there is a note at the bottom of the page that states:

The Government is committed to balance air travel security expenses with Air Travellers Security Charge revenues over time. Totals may not add due to rounding.

Members may have noticed that there was no reference whatsoever in there to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. What is up?

What is up is this. On the website of the Department of Transport, under the heading Navigable Waters Protection Act, there is a summary of what that centennial legislation does. It is groundbreaking. It is a model for the world of how to protect the environment. Canada has literally millions of lakes and tens of thousands of rivers. It is constitutionally the purview, the responsibility and the obligation of the federal government, specifically in the Constitution Act, 1867, to care for navigable and floatable waters.

I have the wording straight from the website. By the way, the website was changed last night after my colleague, the member Halifax, raised it yesterday afternoon. This is pure Orwellian. The Conservatives make things disappear when it does not agree with the version they have decided to concoct and invent. It states:

The NWPA minimizes the interference of navigation on navigable waters throughout Canada. It ensures a balance between the public right to navigate and the need to build works such as bridges, dams or docks in navigable waters.

With this goal in mind, the NWPA:

prohibits the throwing or depositing of any material into navigable waters.

That stops people from polluting waters in Canada. It sounds like environmental protection to me, but obviously the member has never quite gotten around to reading the act. It is there. It is one of the statutes of Canada. It is alphanumeric. It works with the alphabet, N-22.

What is “Substantial Interference”? The application reads:

This approval process is usually longer, requiring you to complete additional steps – including advertising the proposed project to the public and undertaking an environmental assessment in accordance with the requirements under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA).

That is another act that the Conservatives are destroying with their budget. There is no mention, but in the budget implementation act, as they did in the spring with Bill C-38, they are destroying it again. They are removing environmental assessments in Canada. We will go from thousands of environmental assessments every year in Canada to a couple of dozen. That is because it is a preordained result. They started making the mistake in energy projects. They were no longer referring to the environmental assessment process. They were talking about the approval process. It was a slip of the tongue but it was really revealing.

The Supreme Court of Canada in the Oldman River dam case, a decision by Mr. Justice Lamer on behalf of the court, made it abundantly clear that there was no possibility of building a project like that unless the environment was respected. That was a landmark case in Canada and it was based on the Navigable Waters Protection Act. It is so incredibly mind-numbing to hear the Minister of Transport say that the Navigable Waters Protection Act has never had anything to do with the environment, it has to do with navigation. It is unbelievable. It has protected water courses throughout our history, it is a model for the world, it is being destroyed and it was never in the budget.

I listened to some of the economic theories of the government. This week, in The Hill Times, a reputable publication if there is one, the expert economist David Crane published an interesting paper entitled, “Resources are important but they're not enough”. It is worth going through the words of Mr. Crane. He stated:

The strongest economy is one that is well-diversified, both in its sources of economic growth and in its markets. Ignoring the need for a vibrant advanced manufacturing industry and high-value knowledge-based services, as well as a resource sector that upgrades it[s] output in Canada, is a recipe for disaster.

He goes on to look, chapter and verse, through all of the things that the member who just spoke bragged about as being the Conservatives' economic theory and dismantles it. He shows that, what we have been saying for years now, Canada is losing the balanced economy that we had painstakingly built up since the Second World War, we are losing an economy that had a strong and vibrant resource sector, a primary sector that includes agriculture and the fishery, but it also had a diverse and strong manufacturing sector and, of course, a service sector.

Since the Conservatives came to power, we have lost hundreds of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs, jobs that came with enough of a salary for a family to live on and, more often than not, came with a pension. Those jobs are being replaced by part-time precarious work in the service sector and, more important, no pension. In addition to the environmental debt that we are leaving in the backpacks of future generations, the one I just described, allowing companies to use our air, soil and water as an unlimited free dumping ground, we are also leaving a social debt because when those people retire without enough to live on, who will pick up the tab? It will be the next generation. If we allow the Conservatives to continue, we will become the first generation in Canadian history to leave less to the next generation than what we ourselves received. We will not let that happen.

The last time the Conservatives took to shoving one of their omnibus bills down the throats of Canadians, it was Bill C-38 last spring.

This bill is the continuation of what the Conservatives started last spring. Once they started and we realized that dozens of different laws were going to be negatively affected, along with the rights of Canadians and future generations, members on this side of the House tried to make use of the tools at our disposal as parliamentarians. We were facing an unprecedented situation in the history of Canada's Parliament.

Having a majority is not unprecedented. In fact, majority governments were the norm until just recently. What is new is having a government that is so arrogant and so unwilling to listen to the public that it thinks it is an emperor.

It did not need anyone. It no longer needed to talk with anyone. We are here to voice the concerns of our constituents. We are here to be heard.

In response to a question, the hon. member for Saint Boniface asked us earlier if we were aware of the global recession. I would remind the member that it was her Minister of Finance who, in the middle of that global crisis in the fall of 2008, denied its existence and refused to take action. Talk about arrogance.

Their complete lack of priorities means that instead of trimming the fat from government as needed, they are hacking and slashing away with a rusty machete. They have never defined their priorities, quite simply because they are just happy to be in power. They like to be in power, but they do not like to govern. What is the difference? One is the mere fact of occupying the most seats in the House, while the other requires competence in public administration in the interest of Canadians, and not in the interest of their Conservative cronies.

They do not have any priorities. Their most recent 450-page budget bill affects 64 other bills, including 20 that were not even mentioned in last spring's budget. As we just demonstrated, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, like 19 other acts, is not even mentioned in the budget.

As I said earlier, it is a question of credibility for the government. Let us look at some of the facts. Let us look at some examples of its public administration and measure them against what should be considered public priorities.

What could be more important than protecting the health and, indeed, the lives of Canadians? If we look at the whole pyramid of public administration, it ultimately exists to provide one thing: a service to the public. What service could be more important than public protection?

What is in the budget bill is a $46.6 million cut to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. That is in here, word for word. The Conservatives talk about things that are not in here, but I am talking about things that are in here, and this is at page 261. It is in there.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, just to clarify, I would have been quite happy to have consented to the motion had the member not included in it a provision for an additional opposition day. Had the member decided to conclude that NDP was prepared, since its subject for today was food safety, to make the balance of the day the debate on Bill S-11 and then have it proceed to committee, we would have been quite delighted to consent.

In terms of his suggestions on the budget bill, I am looking forward to meeting with him and discussing with him what opportunities might exist there further.

Earlier today, the Minister of Finance introduced Bill C-45, the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012.

This important piece of legislation will bolster Canada’s economy and help improve communities with initiatives that build a strong economy and create jobs, support families and communities, promote clean energy and enhance neutrality of the tax system, and respect taxpayers’ dollars.

We will start second reading debate of Bill C-45 on Wednesday—once honourable members have had a chance to review the bill and discuss it at next week’s caucus meetings. The debate will continue on Thursday and Friday.

I genuinely hope all members will take advantage of the budget bill study week that is available to review the valuable measures that are set out as the second half of our legislative arm of our comprehensive economic action plan 2012. One highlight of the study week will be a briefing arranged by the minister for all hon. members on Monday evening. I hope many MPs can attend, and certainly more than the paltry attendance of opposition members that appeared this spring for the briefing on Bill C-38.

I look forward to a vigorous policy debate on the economy and not on procedural games.

I turn now to the business of the House leading up to Wednesday.

This afternoon we will see the conclusion of the NDP's opposition day. Regrettably, I was personally disappointed that the official opposition did not answer my call last week to lay out the details of its $21.5 billion carbon tax and how it would raise the price of gas, groceries and electricity. Though, I was encouraged that this week in question period the New Democrats actually did acknowledge the subject and raised it.

Tomorrow and Monday will see us resume second reading of Bill S-7, the combating terrorism act. I understand we should finish that debate sometime on Monday, at which that time we will then turn to Bill C-15, the strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act; Bill S-2, the family homes on reserves and matrimonial interests or rights act; and Bill S-8, the safe drinking water for first nations act.

On Tuesday, we will debate the second reading of Bill S-11, the safe food for Canadians act, unless we find some other approach that would allow us to move on a more urgent basis. Since we did not get unanimous consent to move it forward quickly, we are hopeful there will be some other approach that can be agreed upon to move quickly with it. We hope that if we do debate it that day, we will be able to deal with it quickly and then spend the balance of that day debating Bill C-15 and Bill C-12, the safeguarding Canadians' personal information act.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what a great idea.

It is an honour for me to rise to ask the government, on behalf of the opposition, what it has in store for the House for the rest of this week and for next week.

This government clearly did not understand the message that thousands of Canadians sent it last spring regarding the omnibus Bill C-38 on the budget. Canadians said that the bill was an attack on the democratic process and on the integrity of the House, and a violation of the right of all Canadians to hold their government to account.

Today we have received Bill C-45, another monstrous bill from a government that simply does not seem to understand. The bill is 450 pages long and combines measures such as cutting funding for research and development and watering down environmental assessment rules with actual budgetary measures.

Clearly this government has not learned its lesson. Canadians expect more transparency and accountability from the Conservatives.

Eighteen years ago, the member for Calgary Southwest, the Prime Minister, said, and I want to quote him to set the context for what I am about to approach:

Mr. Speaker, I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

We now know that same member, as the Prime Minister, does not believe that applies to him any longer. At the very least, as we need to understand this bill and fully analyze, I will ask the government three questions about what follows.

Will the government split this bill into its component parts to allow for proper study?

If not, will it allow for multiple standing committees to study the divisions of this bill that fit into those committee mandates?

At the very least, will it allow for full debate on this bill without slamming the door with further closure or time allocations, as we saw last spring?

Last, New Democrats welcomed this morning's long overdue arrival of Bill S-11 from the Senate, which has been waiting for passage there for more than 120 days, and was killed by prorogation by the government previously. We are interested in passing this bill quickly to committee.

We are also interested in the integrity of the legislative process. I am somewhat surprised that the government is not so much. It has had to amend a number of its hastily written bills and has asked Canadians to simply trust it on this one and move it all stages. It cannot work with a Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food who has failed us repeatedly and seriously in his role.

With Bill S-11 in mind, I believe that if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, this House move immediately to debate at second reading of S-11, that today's order for supply be deemed not to have been called, and that the order for the putting of the question on the supply motion and the deferral of that vote be deemed to have been withdrawn.

Opposition Motion--Omnibus Legislation

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Hamilton-Centre.

We are here to debate the democratic validity of so-called omnibus bills. The term is already an old one. Many important omnibus bills have been introduced in the House over the years, as a quick search of Hansard will show. There are numerous precedents. What that search also shows is that, on every occasion, the opposition reacted as though it had been programmed in 1867 to repeat the same thing every time: omnibus bills are undemocratic.

They all claim their rights are being violated. All of them have said it over and over and over again. All of them. The Reform Party said it through the current Prime Minister, the former Progressive Conservative Party said it as well, and, it goes without saying, the Liberals have sung it in every possible octave many, many times.

In 150 years of parliamentary activity, people have expressed indignation, but no one has ever made a genuine attempt to block omnibus bills. That is why we still have them. Omnibus bills are designed, drafted, tabled and passed, and they become law.

As I noted in passing, everyone has expressed indignation. Everyone has accused the government of behaving unethically. They have also announced the death of democracy and appealed to parliamentarianism on moral grounds. Great!

The result is that life goes on; the country votes, voters punish or reward, and a new omnibus bill is ultimately introduced. And the whole rigmarole starts again.

Let us call that the march of history, or legislative bad habits, as you will, except that sometimes surprising and unpredictable consequences arise even here, in Ottawa, on what is generally rather quiet Anishnabe land.

True to their beloved excess, inspired by the tyrants of the Old Testament, the Conservatives have not skimped on the omnes reibus sub sole, orbi et urbi, all things under the sun, in the earthly city and the heavenly city.

Bill C-38, the budget implementation act, which was tabled in the spring and which I have previously discussed in the House, ran to 421 pages, contained 753 provisions and amended a series of more or less related acts.

I compared reading Bill C-38 to reading War and Peace. I apologize because I strongly recommend War and Peace to everyone. However, neo-conservative-style omnibus bills inspired solely by a raging desire to shift everything to the right without listening to or understanding anything do not make for good reading. I want to warn my colleagues because a second budget bill will of course be tabled shortly.

This time, however, we can see the theatrics coming. This document will have no fewer than 800 pages. It will be heavier than the Code of Hammurabi itself and no doubt just as modern. And why not? From now on, there will be an upward spiral. The next one may have 1,000 pages, the following 2,000 pages, and we will no doubt wind up with omnibus bills of 5,000 pages written in Sumerian cuneiform hieroglyphics on granite tablets. Dead languages are all the rage, so why not?

Of course, no consideration is given to the Canadian people in those 800 pages. They may wonder what motivates the Conservatives to act like this. It is very simple. As in everything they undertake, they are deeply convinced that they are taking action to restore Canadian society, which was languishing in perdition.

Have they asked any questions to challenge their ideas? Of course not. When you believe you have a mission, you only talk to people who tell you what you want to hear.

Knowing that they have only one majority mandate and that their days as a government are numbered, they are rushing to change things they do not like. And by “things”, I mean “everything”.

After all, the world could end next week. How will we look to St. Peter if the country is too concerned about people who do not deserve that concern? Success at any price: that is the measure of salvation.

This could be characterized as an typically medieval attitude, but that would be to overlook the fact that Europe's cathedrals were built during the Middle Ages. Apart from vandalizing and renaming museums built by others, however, the Conservatives are not doing much.

What am I getting at with all these comparisons? I am simply saying that what took 150 years to build cannot be changed in four years.

Whoever thinks that is simply a despot. However, 800-page omnibus bills are outward signs of that kind of folly.

The citizens of this country feel there is a problem with changing 1,000 acts in one fell swoop.

When we ask why, we are told that we should ask no questions and that if we object, that means we want to condemn Canada to misery.

When we resist, someone on the other side rises and unleashes a whole string of epithets: communist, separatist, terrorist or Esperantist.

Once they have calmed down, the Conservatives tell us they are doing this out of diligence. However, that is false, and everyone knows it. They are not really acting this way for my good or that of Canadians.

No, they are doing it first and foremost for their friends, the big corporations, for the cash, and to transform Canada's economy into a profit-making machine, without any scruples or long-term vision.

If you are too big a slouch to get close to the sources of prosperity, the government can do nothing for you. You can eat your shirt. But let us take a look at what we can do today to try to solve this problem.

First, I would like to put things in perspective. The gigantic omnibus bills rushed through the Standing Committee on Finance appear to be a Conservative affectation that will surely not survive them. Consequently, I will not be one of those people announcing the death of democracy. The Westminster system is built too solidly for a single government to do enough to cause it irreparable damage.

It is also obvious that no one will ever question whether the NDP, when it comes to power, will at any time act as the Conservatives are doing. We do not feel we have a mission inspired by apocalyptic revelations, and Canadians know that. We also believe in dialogue and in compromise and fairness, but we especially trust in the intelligence of Canadians. To the NDP, the Conservatives’ at-any-cost attitude is above all an obvious sign of weakness.

The Conservatives are going to keep introducing 30-pound paving stones in this House and saying, “Out of the way, coming through.” If the block falls on somebody’s head, they will not even slow down. Certainly, I will keep objecting to these kinds of crude political manoeuvres, but I can also wait them out. I will be watching and waiting, because I know this is a dangerous game. I know Canadians see what is going on and will not put up with being toyed with for very long. The public knows very well that these omnibus bills conceal low blows and schemes. There is a very real risk that the Conservatives' world will end in 2015. I will not have made them get out their Latin textbooks for nothing. Oro pro vobis—I am praying for you.

The Liberals’ solution is to use the opportunity they have today to give the impression they are doing something. They really have no other choice, stuck away as they are at the back of the House by the broom closet and the fuse box. I will give them the benefit of the doubt. They are also shocked by the legislative gall of the government, and they too want to cool its autocratic jets.

The NDP therefore has no problem supporting the motion by the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie. It will be beneficial to the conduct of parliamentary proceedings to find a way to stave off any future paving stones. And what a good opportunity, when the NDP is the official opposition and can make sure the review process is carried out with the public interest in mind.

I have no illusions, however. The Liberals are so full of a sense of self-entitlement that they are only angry because they have been outwitted by people who are stronger and bolder than them. Their indignation today is out of self-interest only. They will be happy to cite the legal precedent of the Conservatives’ 800-page omnibus bills, but as soon as they get a bit of power, it will be their great pleasure to mimic their old enemy. This motion, which seems to reflect a new-found awareness, is of course no more than the never-ending squabbling between the Liberals and the Conservatives. The sole purpose of this schoolyard quarrel is to select and crown the one that excels at enraging the other in the most underhanded way, at the expense, and to the tacit exclusion, of the Canadian public, of course.

The purpose of a Parliament is for us to talk, not just among ourselves, and not just so we can dig in our heels. It is, first and foremost, a place for dialogue with the experts who are invited to testify in committee, so that by hearing opposing opinions, parliamentarians can make informed decisions. Committees exist for that reason. A bill that amends all sorts of laws covering all different areas should not exist. Subjects and bills should be dealt with individually, so they can be examined in the proper committees. That is why we are here. We must not go on blind belief; we must understand and decide. If they do not agree with that really very simple premise, I can show them the way to North Korea.

It is crucially important that elected representatives have access to the most accurate information in order to legislate, but they must also have a minimum of intellectual curiosity, and that is unfortunately not always the case. That does not concern me excessively either, since the system is sufficiently well designed that even the biggest idiot could not do too much harm.

There is a big difference between an occasional idiot who does a bad job—and of course I am speaking hypothetically—and a party that decides in advance what is true and what is false. An 800-page omnibus bill is a case in point. It is a decree. It is a [member spoke in a foreign language], as I said last time. The czar decides and the subjects obey. All discussion is derided as a waste of time and a misplaced tendency to play the bleeding heart.

Today, we have a chance to send a message to the people who aspire to authoritarianism above all. It is plain to Canadians that decimating the machinery of government will not save them any money and will condemn them to living in a country where the guardrails have collapsed under the pressure, and Canadians will not forgive them for that.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal opposition motion urges us to put an end to the abusive and unprecedented use of omnibus legislation. It is a fact that bills to implement certain provisions of the budget have ballooned in size. They have grown at a spectacular rate since the Conservative government came to power.

A Maclean's analysis on budget implementation bills found that between 1994 and 2005, these bills averaged the length of just under 75 pages. However, from 2006 to today, they have averaged well over 300 pages.

And, as we know, this year, Bill C-38 was 452 pages long. However, it is not just the length of the bills that is in question; it is also the number of unrelated topics that are being crammed into one bill. Back in budget 2010, the government used the same scheme to amend no fewer than 24 laws, but this time, the government is smashing its own record. Bill C-38 amended no fewer than 72 laws. In almost every case, these amendments had little to do with the budget or any financial issues in general.

The government defends itself by saying that it has to act quickly because of the worrisome economic conditions. This argument would be more credible if the 452 pages of Bill C-38 actually had anything to do with fiscal measures. Such is not the case. Only 30 pages had anything to do with fiscal measures. In fact, no fewer than 151 pages amended laws concerning the protection of the environment.

The Standing Committee on Finance had to review a mishmash of issues as crucial as the weakening of many environmental laws and regulations, the end of protecting fish habit, the power given to the government to reverse decisions by the National Energy Board, the weakening of the Food and Drugs Act, the gradual change in the age of eligibility for old age security benefits to 67, the cancellation of thousands of immigration applications, the weakening of the Governor General's mandate, and so on.

Now the government plans to restart this fall with a new omnibus bill that would go in all directions. Some likely topics would be pension changes for public servants, pension changes for parliamentarians, a new mandate for the National Research Council and new oil tanker regulations. The Minister of Natural Resources repeatedly said that these changes were somewhere in Bill C-38, but no one was able to find them. It would also likely include the Rouge Valley national urban park and the renewal of the hiring credit for small business and so forth.

This is how the Conservative government transformed budget implementation bills into a steamroller that allows it to push through important measures that deserve a thorough review, without any serious, careful examination. Today's motion urges us to put an end to this suspect way of doing things, which is dangerous to the health and safety of Canadians.

Is it not as though there is no solution to this problem. In a recent communication, professor Louis Massicotte looked more closely at the practice in the United States.

He found a list of 42 U.S. states that have provisions that prohibit omnibus bills. For example, the Arkansas constitution states:

The general appropriation bill shall embrace nothing but appropriations for the ordinary expense of the executive, legislative and judicial departments of the State; all other appropriations shall be made by separate bills, each embracing but one subject.

I am not sure we need to go as far as that. I am just saying that it is possible, if we have goodwill, to find solutions to the problem we are facing today.

Professor Massicotte notes that on January 23, 2012, representative Tom Marino, a Republican from Pennsylvania, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, the One Subject at a Time Act that goes to “end the practice of including more than one subject in a single bill”.

I repeat that, with good will, we could put an end to this contempt for parliamentary democracy, which is being criticized by Canadians everywhere.

For example, Professor Ned Frank said:

These omnibus budget implementation bills subvert and evade the normal principles of parliamentary review of legislation.

However, the most sincere criticism comes from one of our colleagues opposite, who was at the time, and remains to this day, the member for Calgary Southwest, the current Prime Minister. On March 25, 1994—as we have heard repeatedly here today—regarding a budget bill that was only 21 pages long and included only measures that were clearly budget related, that member said the following in this House:

...I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

So why is the Prime Minister now putting us in a clear conflict with our own principles? Again quoting the Prime Minister:

...In the interest of democracy, I ask: How can members represent their constituents...when they are forced to vote in a block...? ...Dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill.

So, in the interest of democracy, why will the Prime Minister not divide his gigantic bill? He went on to say:

...only one committee...will inevitably lack the breadth of expertise required for consideration of a bill of this scope.

Why does the Prime Minister no longer feel the need to call on several committees instead of just one? If he will not listen to anyone else, the Prime Minister should at least take his own advice in the interest of democracy and simple common sense, so that we as legislators can do our job in service to Canadians.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this Liberal motion.

Opposition Motion—Omnibus Legislation

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, some of the contributions today from the opposite side have brought to mind a comment that at the time shocked me. Back in May when the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, omnibus Bill C-38, was being debated, the Conservative member for Vegreville—Wainwright said:

Mr. Speaker, the member must really have very little to complain about when it comes to this legislation, because he focuses on the process, as do so many others opposite.

Quite frankly, Canadians do not care about process; what they care about is what the end result will be. What they care about is having ample time for debate, and there has been a record amount of time for debate on a budget bill.

Does my colleague think this might be indicative of a broader attitude that underlies how the Conservative government thinks of democracy in the House? I wonder if the hon. member for Mount Royal might comment on whether this reveals an underlying problem with how the government thinks about the House.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in this debate on omnibus legislation. Like my colleagues, and particularly now my colleague from Etobicoke North, I agree with what the current Prime Minister stated in this place in 1994 when, as an opposition member, he criticized the use of omnibus legislation asking:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

He continued:

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse?

The complaint of the Prime Minister, then speaking as an opposition member in 1994, about the use of omnibus bills ought now to underpin his work as Prime Minister. Rather, he is forcing legislation through this place as he himself regaled against. Indeed, it is time that the House took action to study and restrict the use of sweeping omnibus legislation that, among other things, deprives MPs of the opportunity to undertake the requisite detailed and differentiated analysis of the diverse constituent elements in a given omnibus bill, deprives the members of the House of the necessary public oversight with respect to these bills and undermines public participation in the political process as well as the public right to know.

I am not suggesting that the government somehow does not have a right to pursue its policy objectives. What must be debated, however, is the integrity of the process used and the merits of the means chosen. The purpose of Parliament is not to serve as a rubber stamp of the government, to be disconnected from the people and our constituents, even in a majority Parliament. Indeed, the government has yet to explain how Canadians are worse off when this body does take the necessary time to study subject matter items in detail, to separate out disparate legislative proposals and thereby, as a result, to produce the appropriate high-quality legislation deserving of our Parliament and our people. Indeed, it would seem by his own acknowledgement in this place that the member for Calgary Southwest at the time acknowledged these same views in 1994.

Accordingly, my brief remarks will be organized around the discussion of two particular pieces of legislation, the recent federal budget implementation bill, and Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill. While those are the two latest and most blatant examples of the use and abuse of the omnibus process, the government has a pattern of bundling perfectly acceptable items with utterly untenable legislation, and does so not only to its peril but to the peril of its own case and cause.

The recent federal budget legislation, Bill C-38, is what I have referred to elsewhere as the hydra-headed Trojan Horse omnibus budget implementation bill, for it was as stealth-like in its scope as it will be and has been prejudicial in its impact, the whole constituting an assault on the integrity of Parliament and its members, as well as on the democratic process. That is putting it modestly and mildly.

Simply put, while this 400-plus page piece of legislation was supposed to be anchored in the budget, in reality it had very little to do with the budget. Rather, in its sweeping scope it introduced, amended or repealed more than 70 federal statutes with the omnibus Trojan Horse providing political cover for pervasive and prejudicial impacts on everything from Canadian retirement plans to environmental protection, from immigration to food safety. All of this was accomplished through sleight-of-hand omnibus legislation where, for example, one provision undermined the whole of our environmental protection safeguards.

This enormous hodgepodge, this disconnected bundling together of variegated legislative proposals, did not and does not allow for the requisite differentiated discussion and debate, let alone the necessary oversight of the legislation. It imbued the executive with arbitrary authority to the exclusion of Parliament thereby serving as a standing abuse to the canons of good governance, transparency, accountability, public oversight, cost disclosure and the like. Indeed, this alone should have been cause for its defeat.

As Andrew Coyne put it at the time, “The scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated”. He noted that the bill made “a mockery of the confidence convention” and that there was no “common thread” or “overarching principle” between the legislative items therein, let alone its standing contempt for Parliament in matters of process and procedure.

Moreover, and again on the crucial issues of parliamentary process and procedure, this bill was sent to the finance committee. Accordingly, the review of the environmental regulations therein, which overhauled, weakened and undermined the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and environmental protection as a whole, were thus not reviewed by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development where it belonged.

Similarly, the provisions that changed the First Nations Land Management Act were not the subject of examination and study by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, as my colleague from Etobicoke North identified, where they ought to have been deliberated. I could go on with numerous examples in this regard.

Moreover, if circumventing proper and thorough parliamentary review were not enough, the government invoked time allocation to limit discussion on the bill at every stage of the legislative process.

I am not suggesting that invoking time allocation, as the government has done again and again, violates the rules of this place. What I am suggesting, as many commentators have said, is that this use of it, particularly in the context of omnibus legislation, is unnecessary, prejudicial, surprisingly undemocratic, in effect, unparliamentary, and otherwise unsubstantiated, unwarranted and, frankly, is a contempt of Parliament and the people.

Surely if Parliament had to debate something like going to war, it would be easy to see why we might have time allocation to ensure that we get to the most pressing debate first. Or, if there were court decisions that affected many statutes, we might easily welcome an omnibus bill that could make the same change to many statutes at once, and that has been done by this House.

What is so disconcerting with the budget implementation bill is that the government need not have been in such a rush. There was no coherent or compelling theme, as commentators and experts have pointed out, to the omnibus proposals contained in the bill. Frankly, it could have used more study and, as we see with the current tainted beef scandal, the provisions on food inspectors perhaps warranted a more thorough review.

There are many issues that remain with the budget implement bill, not the least of which is the question of cost disclosure and the remaining possibility of a lawsuit from the PBO over the government's failure to be open and transparent about the extent of the budget cuts proposed and its cost impact.

In the matter of the omnibus crime legislation, Bill C-10, the problem with omnibus legislation is illustrated no less compellingly. While the same generic omnibus critiques operate in this context, namely, what Richard Poplak in a Globe and Mail piece termed “Chinese disease...hollowing out democracy”, for which Canadians are increasingly bearing the burden of this onslaught, I would refer to one case study of the government's omnibus failure: the amendments to the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, JVTA.

The JVTA was one of nine constituent bills of Bill C-10, one which received little attention. This landmark legislation, however, allowed, for the first time, Canadian victims of terror to sue their terrorist perpetrators in Canadian courts.

I supported the principles of the JVTA and had even introduced similar legislation in a previous session for that purpose. However, the government's version of this bill warranted improvement, which it did not allow for. Accordingly, I proposed a series of amendments at the legislative committee, explaining that I sought only to strengthen the government's bill. All of my amendments were summarily rejected by the Conservatives, as were all opposition amendments. Indeed, all 50 of my proposed amendments to Bill C-10 were summarily rejected. There was no debate or consideration given. In fact, I was accused of obstruction and delay for merely suggesting these changes. At the next meeting, the government moved to shut down debate entirely, a flagrant abuse of the parliamentary and legislative process.

Certainly a majority government has the procedural right to use its majority as it pleases. However, it ignores the opposition at its peril. Indeed, the government eventually realized the merit of my amendments and proposed them later as its own. Therefore, these amendments became part of the legislation in a dilatory fashion, prejudicing the outcome and even the improvement that could have been warranted in that legislation.

Simply put, legislation has to be examined on the merits and, when so examined, the Conservatives' omnibus crime bill revealed that it would result in more crime, less justice, at greater cost, with fewer rehabilitation opportunities for offenders, less protection and voice for the victims, and less protection for society. We are now slowly seeing the consequences of the legislation being that which we predicted at the time. In fact, we have situations and problems with regard with prison overcrowding, mandatory minimum penalties and the like, that are likely to be struck down by the courts. I could go on.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mount Royal.

The government has repeatedly abused Parliament by ramming through outrageous omnibus bills. For example, two years ago the government introduced an 880-page omnibus bill, a grab-bag of bills that the government wanted to pass quickly. In fact, it was half of the entire workload of Parliament from the previous year. As a result, the government was severely condemned for turning the legislative process into a farce.

Most recently, the government introduced Bill C-38, the 400-plus page omnibus budget implementation bill. Through the bill, the government sprung sweeping changes on our country, affecting everything from employment insurance, environmental protection, immigration and old age security to even the oversight that charities receive. None of these changes were in the Conservative platform. They were rushed into law by “an arrogant majority government that’s in a hurry to impose its agenda on the country”.

The government's actions reek of hypocrisy. In 1994, the right hon. member for Calgary Southwest criticized omnibus legislation, suggesting that the subject matter of such bills is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles and that dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent the views of their constituents on each part of the bill.

The right hon. member is now using the very tactics he once denounced. It is a shame that he changed his tune when he was elected to the highest office in the land. Last spring's 400-page omnibus budget implementation bill contained over 60 unrelated matters, amended or abolished 74 pieces of legislation and devoted an astonishing 150 pages to destroying 50 years of environmental oversight. I quote:

This is political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government.

Real democracy would have allowed for the environment sections to be separated out from the omnibus bill and sent to the environment committee for clause-by-clause scrutiny. Bill C-38 repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, meaning that the assessment agency would be able to exempt a designated project from even going through the assessment process and that when environmental assessments do happen they will be narrower, less rigorous and have reduced public participation. Canada's environment commissioner says that “there will be a significant narrowing of public participation”.

We have since learned that hundreds of federal environmental assessments have been dropped. Canadians should know that after a mere 16 hours of study the finance subcommittee was left with many questions regarding the legislation. What types of projects will be included or excluded under the proposed changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act? What proportion and types of current assessments will no longer receive federal oversight? How will the government define whether a provincial process is equivalent to the federal process? How will the assessment of cumulative impacts be undertaken?

During the finance subcommittee's review, Ms. Rachel Forbes, staff counsel of West Coast Environmental Law, said she did not believe the new legislation would accomplish any of the government's four pillars: more predictable and timely reviews, less duplication in reviewing projects, strong environmental protection and enhanced consultation with aboriginal peoples. In fact, she suggested the amendments may hinder them.

Bill C-38 also repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which addressed our most pressing environmental problem, namely climate change. The law required the Minister of the Environment to publish a climate change plan each year, a forecast for emissions reductions and a discussion of how the government performed the previous year and how shortcomings would be addressed. Repealing the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act will result in a loss of domestic climate accountability measures. Repealing the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy will result in the loss of a unique independent, unbiased organization, that's only fault was publishing evidence-based reports that did not agree with Conservative ideology.

Canadians should be deeply concerned by the repeal of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act as the threat of climate change is serious, urgent and growing. Nine of the ten warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000. The extent and thickness of summer sea ice in the Arctic have shown a dramatic decline over the past 30 years, with the six lowest extents having all occurred in the last six years. More disturbing still, a 2011 article in the prestigious journal Nature showed that the duration and magnitude of the decline may be unprecedented in the last 1,450 years.

However, this summer, the amount of ice in the Arctic shrank to an all-time low, destroying previous records. While scientists are enormously concerned that these changes represent a fundamental change and very little is known about the consequences of drastic sea ice reductions, the Minister of the Environment was perturbed mainly about how navigation patterns might be affected.

Bill C-38 also weakened several environmental laws, including protection for species at risk and water, and nearly eliminated fish habitat in the Fisheries Act, putting species from coast to coast to coast at risk.

Tom Siddon, the former Conservative minister responsible for the current Fisheries Act, was extremely concerned by the amendments and stated:

This is a covert attempt to gut the Fisheries Act, and it’s appalling that they should be attempting to do this under the radar.

He also said:

They are totally watering down and emasculating the Fisheries Act...they are making a Swiss cheese out of [it].

At the finance committee, he reported:

The bottom line...take your time and do it right. To bundle all of this into a budget bill, with all its other facets, is not becoming of a Conservative government, period.

Equally astounding is the fact that Bill C-38 gave the federal cabinet the authority to overrule a decision by the National Energy Board.

The Conservatives have also cut $29 million from Parks Canada and in doing so are undermining the health and integrity of Canada's world-renowned parks, risking some of our world heritage sites, significantly reducing the number of scientists and technical staff, hurting relationships with aboriginal peoples and attacking rural economies.

It is important to remember that when the Conservatives came to power, they inherited a legacy of balanced budgets from the previous Liberal government but soon plunged the country into a deficit before the recession ever hit. It is absolutely negligent and shameful that the government gutted environmental safeguards in order to fast-track development and balance its books.

The government did not campaign in the last election on gutting environmental protection. As a result, Canadians rose up in the hope of stopping the Prime Minister's destruction of laws that protect the environment, the health and safety of Canadians, our communities, our economy and our livelihoods. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute are just some of Canada's prominent environmental organizations that called upon Canadians to speak out in defence of Canada's values of democracy and the environment.

The Black Out Speak Out campaign stated:

Our land, water and climate are all threatened by the latest federal budget. Proposed changes in the budget bill will weaken environmental laws and silence the voices of those who seek to defend them.

Silence is not an option.

We simply cannot afford economic development with reduced environmental consideration. We risk environmental disaster and cleanup costs, which we may pass on to our children. We must remember that we do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

Canadians are entitled to expect much more than what they are witnessing today both in the protection of our environment and the protection of our democratic values, which our beautiful country was built on.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, briefly to my friend from Fort McMurray—Athabasca, he could search as long as he wants in any previous Conservative document, he will find no reference to bringing U.S. law enforcement agents on to Canadian soil to arrest Canadians. That was a surprise in Bill C-38. He would find no reference to the idea that we would kill the national round table.

My question to the hon. minister is this. If he wants to pass comprehensive legislation, I get it. The government has a majority. It can pass anything it wants, but why is there this persistent refusal to allow legislation to go on its own two feet before the appropriate committee?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of State for Finance knows, I am a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. I have a keen interest in finance.

In committee, we did indeed study Bill C-38, passed by the House, which changed, created, amended or eliminated nearly 70 pieces of legislation. The bill was so big that the committee had just one minute to discuss the interoperability of the RCMP with the FBI in Canadian territorial waters.

We then proceeded to study the privatization of seed inspections, and that of fish habitat.

We were not really able to do our job. The government knows full well that the interoperability of the Canadian and American police forces should be studied by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, that fish habitat should be studied by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, and so on. We, as members of the Standing Committee on Finance, were asked to study these issues.

The government often talks about the unbelievable amount of time we had to debate all this, but let us not forget that we were changing, amending or eliminating 70 laws. Roughly 280 hours were devoted to this bill, which is roughly 4 hours of debate only for each amended law. Four hours is the equivalent of two committee meetings.

I would like the Minister of State for Finance to say a few words about the fact that it made no sense for the Standing Committee on Finance to study such disparate topics and the fact that we did not have enough time to discuss each of the amended laws.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, you do reaffirm my belief in the wisdom of the Chair. I can do this on a very repetitious basis, drawing every example I use back to the fact that it requires comprehensive legislation. If the opposition wishes that I do that, I may fall into what you have suggested is not appropriate, and that is repetitiveness. I will try not to do that either.

What I was speaking about was Europe and the threat to the global economy, the indecisions, the lack of a comprehensive plan among the European Union community.

I will go back to my first statement that a comprehensive plan requires comprehensive legislation. That is what the budget implementation act, Bill C-38, was. I suggest there will be comprehensive legislation following soon to implement the rest of a comprehensive plan to keep Canada on track.

Another example I would use is in the U.S. There seems to be some indecision down there, a lack of being able to make a firm decision, perhaps a lack of a comprehensive plan such as we had in Bill C-38, which was a comprehensive legislation.

The U.S. needs to get its fiscal house in order. We are well on our way to doing that. It also needs to ensure that there is certainty in the short term so markets and investors can be confident that economic growth will not be interrupted. That is what we saw in our comprehensive legislation in the spring.

In these uncertain times, Canada's economic stability depends on the implementation of a clear plan, a comprehensive plan to safeguard our economy. This situation demands that Canada cannot be complacent. We cannot allow political gridlock and instability to stall vital economic and fiscal reforms as we are witnessing in the U.S. and Europe.

Moreover, in a rapidly changing and global marketplace where Canada faces tough competition from emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, China and India, we cannot afford to delay action to support our economy and measures to return to balanced budgets.

Therefore, in budget implementation one, Bill C-38, we actually put forward solutions to allow our Canadian companies to compete.

I think the argument is very valid, that in order for our economy to continue to grow, we need to put in place legislation and we need to do that soon. We gathered it together in a budget implementation act and we will have the second one coming soon that actually does that. It will allow our Canadian companies to compete internationally, to be able to export their resources, to streamline that process and to ensure that it is an environmentally sound plan. That is all part of our comprehensive budget plan.

The challenges that our economy faces are not small and one dimensional and neither is our plan. It is comprehensive and ambitious. It responds to the magnitude of the threats that Canada faces in this uncertain climate today.

In order to implement the plan, certain measures require legislation to be adopted by Parliament. In April 2012, we introduced Bill C-38, the one I would suggest the Liberals are referring to here today, which included provisions to spur job growth, to keep social programs sustainable, to eliminate wasteful and duplicative spending of taxpayer dollars and much more, hence, the comprehensive budget implementation bill.

Let me give the members opposite some examples of this action and explain how we plan on spurring job growth. One is by developing our resources responsibly. The NDP, when it comes to resources, has suggested it would like to implement a job-killing carbon scheme that would increase the price of absolutely everything we buy and consume. That was not part of our plan and it never will be.

Our government knows that this would not work. Instead, we are focused on responsible resource development, which will streamline the review process for major economic projects by providing predictable timelines for project approvals. It will prevent long delays that kill potential jobs and stall economic growth by putting valuable investments at risk. Most important, responsible resource development will create good, skilled, well-paying jobs in cities and communities all across this great country while at the same time maintaining the highest possible standards for protecting the environment. That required a comprehensive piece of legislation, Bill C-38.

With emerging economies in Asia and around the world providing the potential to create even more jobs and growth, our government will act swiftly to implement its plan for responsible resource development in the interests of the Canadian economy.

However, that is not all, as we have much more to do. We are making employment insurance a more efficient program, one that is focused on job creation and opportunities by removing disincentives to work and supporting unemployed Canadians.

We are also helping build a fast and flexible economic immigration system to meet Canada's labour market needs by reducing the backlog in the federal skilled worker program, returning applications and refunding fees to those who applied prior to February 27, 2008.

Our government is also making fiscally responsible decisions to ensure that spending stays in check and does not go down the path that we have seen in many European countries. To help achieve this we are modernizing Canada's currency by gradually eliminating the penny from Canada's coinage system. This as well requires changes to legislation and is why we table comprehensive legislation. This alone will save taxpayers $11 million every year.

Nonetheless, this plan is about much more than reducing spending. As a government we have a responsibility to Canadians to ensure that Canada's social programs remain sustainable over the long term. That is why in budget 2012 we took action to ensure that the retirement security of all Canadians, now and into the future, is sound by placing Canada's old age security program on a sustainable path. Beginning in April of 2023, the age of eligibility for OAS and the guaranteed income supplement will gradually begin to increase from 65 to 67. These changes reflect demographic shifts in Canada's population and are necessary to ensure that OAS and GIS are available for future generations of Canadians. This also requires comprehensive legislation so that we can enact the necessary changes to make both of these programs sustainable.

The problem with the members opposite is that they do not think down the road; they do not realize the changes that we need to make to make sure that these programs stay sustainable.

Our government is taking real action to ensure that Canada's economy continues to create jobs and grow. What, you may ask, does our government's plan do for Canadian families and communities? That would be one of the best questions to ask here today and I shall answer it.

I will talk about economic action plan 2012 and how it builds on our government's strong record by proposing new measures for Canadian families. For example, our action plan will improve the application of the GST and HST and income tax systems to a number of health care services, drugs and medical devices to reflect the evolving nature of the health care sector and to better meet the health care needs of Canadians.

That was required both in the comprehensive legislation that we passed and in legislation that will be forthcoming soon. Specifically, it would mean exempting from the GST and HST pharmacists' professional services, other than their prescription drug dispensing services, which are already zero-rated under the GST and HST.

It would also mean expanding the zero-rated treatment under the GST-HST for corrective eyeglasses or contact lenses supplied on the prescription of an eye-care professional to include corrective eyeglasses or contact lenses supplied on the order of a qualified optician who is authorized, under provincial law, to issue such an order.

It would mean expanding the list of health care professionals on whose orders certain medical and assistive devices are zero-rated under the GST and HST so as to reflect the increasing involvement of health care professionals, such as nurses, in giving orders for these devices.

It would also mean adding to the list of non-prescription drugs that are zero-rated under GST and HST.

It is obvious that we needed to open up the Income Tax Act to do that. It is part of the budget. It was referred to in the budget. It is part of our action plan. It requires comprehensive legislation to do that. That is just one of the reasons I will be opposing the motion today.

It would also mean expanding the list of GST and HST zero-rated medical and assistive devices and the list of expenses a person may claim for income tax purposes under the medical expense tax credit to include such things a blood coagulation monitors for use by people who require anti-coagulation therapy.

Every time I say zero-rated, I see a confused look on the faces of the opposition members. This is not surprising since we all know that the Liberals actually favour higher taxes. Perhaps that is why they actually opposed our budget implementation act, Bill C-38.

We know what the Liberals do when they have a chance to support initiatives that would lower taxes for Canadian families. We have seen example after example. They simply vote against these measures. That is exactly what they did with policies like the refundable working income tax benefit back in 2007. That is exactly what they did with our government's economic action plan.

Let us take a look at some of the initiatives that would also help Canadian communities but which the opposition also voted against.

Our government's plan would make direct investments in research that would support our communities. Canada's position as a world leader in research excellence is a key source of the discoveries, innovations and advanced skills that not only result in better health outcomes but also drive job creation and opportunities in the knowledge economy.

The measures in the economic action plan would help strengthen Canada's leadership position by supporting industry/academic research collaborations, as well as advanced health and public policy research initiatives of strategic importance. We all understand how important that is. The minister sitting near me here today is leading that incredible challenge, and we are winning on that.

We are announcing new chairs at universities and colleges across this country. Why is that? It is because we enacted legislation that would allow and fund that. We are proud of that record.

We have many examples. For example, in the area of health research, we have allocated $15 million per year for patient-oriented research. That was part of Bill C-38, which the opposition voted against.

I could go on and on about all the things the opposition voted against, However, I think the fundamental comment I will finish with is that I am proud to oppose the opposition motion this morning. We have great reason to think we are on the right track.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what immediately springs to mind for British Columbians or any Canadian who wants a strong economy that protects and restores of the environment without degrading it, are the changes to the Environmental Assessment Act. We saw a massive erasing of 30 years of thoughtful process to assess the potential impacts of development and to provide direction as to how development could take place in a way that would not impact the environment. This was very useful public policy that has been undermined completely. There will be 3,000 environmental assessments a year that will no longer take place.

I do want to add that it is bad for business. We see what happens when an industry does not have the trust of the public, thanks to the intervention by the Conservative government which undermines the trust of the public in the protection of the environment with the kinds of measures that Bill C-38 highlighted.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to speak to this Liberal motion on omnibus bills today and to why there should be a committee to review and report on how they may be used properly.

Omnibus bills are intended to be a tool for matters of housekeeping and efficiency, for grouping minor and uncontroversial updates into one place. They have a role. As a minister, I have used omnibus bills as they are intended to be used. They are intended to facilitate parliamentary debate by bringing together all the minor technical and administrative amendments to legislation that arise from a single policy decision, which is the critical part in how far Parliament and the Prime Minister have strayed.

I will not pretend that the phenomenon of abusive omnibus bills being used to bundle the major and consequential changes of numerous policy decisions is a new one, but I will contend that under the current government it has become an unparalleled expression of contempt for Canadians and a tool for the dismantling of a core principle of our democracy, that of Parliament's accountability to constituents.

In 2005, under another government, the budget bill was 120 pages long and at the time it was a record length. The opposition leader of the day, now the right hon. Prime Minister, asked:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation...?

Exactly, is what I would say.

He denounced omnibus bills as undemocratic and a “contradiction to the conventions and practices of the House”. That is exactly so.

Therefore, I would ask today's Prime Minister where his integrity was regarding Bill C-38, his omnibus bill, presented last spring? If his words of 2005 indeed expressed his convictions, I would ask this. What happened to his convictions?

Members were forced last June to vote on a block of legislation four times the length and with 400 times the impact on Canadians compared to the omnibus bill that he so decried in 2005. Why did the Prime Minister do that and why is he preparing another such travesty of an omnibus bill that is expected to be presented this fall? Why is his tactic, this misuse of omnibus bills, so wrong? Because it does not allow parliamentarians to do their jobs for the people they represent.

Let us look at Bill C-38 for a moment. It is 452 pages long, has 753 clauses and amends 70 different acts. First and foremost, it is an abuse of democracy to lump together such an array of massive policy change. Permit me to list a few examples.

Bill C-38 increases government's power over people's lives in many domains, such as immigration, access to employment insurance, pensions and industrial developments in people's backyards, to name a few.

As Bill C-38 increases ministers' individual powers over individual people's lives, it reduces the very accountability mechanisms that make sure these powers are not being abused. That is scary stuff indeed.

The breadth of policy change in Bill C-38 is breathtaking, such as changes to the very fabric of financial security for seniors, changes in justice that are fundamental to Canada's immigration intake process, and changes to our critical environmental safety net.

Bill C-38 gave Revenue Canada $8 million a year in extra money to intimidate and punish environmental and other not-for-profit organizations that dare to speak up in the public interest. How many Canadians wanted that? How many Canadians thought they were voting for that? That is 10 times the dollars that the government claims it will be saving by eliminating the Kitsilano Coast Guard search and rescue base in the heart of the busiest harbour in Canada. Many of my constituents, every one that I have heard from, is angry about the closure of that base because they know that it will lead to preventable deaths.

Therefore, Bill C-38 was an attack on democracy, an attack on the environment and an attack on Canadian values and the Canadian people. To lump these fundamental rewrites of policy and practice into a single bill that cannot be properly examined, understood, debated, communicated nor amended is an abuse of democratic principles. That abuse of democracy must end.

The Prime Minister used to agree with me on that but that was then and this is now. I would contend that the government's reliance on omnibus budget bills is a symptom of an underlying condition, the condition of contempt. This has been amply proven. The government has contempt for democracy, contempt for Parliament, contempt for the rule of the law, contempt for civil society and contempt for Canadians.

Canada is a country built on hard work, responsibility, freedom, equality, opportunity, compassion and respect for one another. Those are deep Liberal values but also Canadian values. Canada is a country in which contempt by its leaders for its people has no place. With Canada's history of sacrifice in defence of democracy, we must never forget that Parliament is important. What we do here and how we do it matters.

Having a healthy democracy is the Canadian way. Having a government that is accountable for its actions and decisions is the Canadian way. Having transparent processes and procedures is the Canadian way. Having a government that gives people the opportunity to get involved in politics and to participate in decisions that affect them is the Canadian way.

On the flip side, omnibus bills are an affront to democracy. They are an affront to Canada's political traditions. They are an affront to the rights of our people. There is a constitutional problem with omnibus bills because the legal boundaries are unclear. There is also a problem at the political level.

However, there are solutions. I am looking at the scope of the task ahead of us. The committee is just the first step.

The committee must do its work but that is just the first step. The committee must find out how this kind of abuse is prevented in other western Liberal democracies. It must propose changes to tighten up the latitude that exists for abusing omnibus bills and apply accountability that does not exist today.

We must ask ourselves this question: Is there not something fundamentally wrong with an electoral system, Canada's electoral system, in which 25% of eligible voters can provide a governing party with a majority, a government that can then proceed to make the kinds of major policy changes we saw in Bill C-38 without due process, without respect, with contempt and with impunity?

I can picture a day when our electoral system will strengthen democratic accountability and not weaken it. I can picture a day when the proportion of each party's public representatives in this place will more closely reflect the will of the voters. I can picture this renewed Canadian democracy creating the incentive for parliamentarians to really work together across party lines on the big challenges of the day. It is time to have that conversation with Canadians. How we elect our Parliament, how we govern ourselves, how we include and consult, and how we write and debate our legislation says something important about Canada and the kind of people Canadians want to be.

The government's abuse of omnibus bills represents secrecy, contempt, exclusion and meanness. That is not Canada, that is not who Canadians are and that means this abuse of power must be fixed. We can start right now by voting in favour of the Liberal motion to end the misuse of omnibus legislation.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Quadra.

I rise today to speak to the Liberal opposition motion calling on the House to do the following:

[I]nstruct the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study what reasonable limits should be placed on the consideration of omnibus legislation and that the Committee report back its findings, including specific recommendations for legislative measures or changes to the Standing Orders, no later than December 10, 2012.

To fully understand our motion, let us begin by examining what an omnibus bill is. Chapter 16, page 724 of O'Brien and Bosc, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, explains:

[T]here is no precise definition of an omnibus bill. In general, an omnibus bill seeks to amend, repeal or enact several initiatives.

Citing Speaker Fraser's ruling of June 8, 1988, O'Brien and Bosc further state that an omnibus has:

—one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders a bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes.

As Canadians await the impending sequel to the Conservative government's March omnibus bill, they clearly remember Bill C-38. Under the guise of implementing the budget, this 425-page Conservative omnibus bill amended more than 70 individual acts affecting an extensive list of departments, including 150 pages dedicated to gutting critical environmental protections and drastically changing the employment insurance program.

We can look at the media's response to this; it is not just Canadians from coast to coast to coast. An editorial in the Globe and Mail stated:

The federal government's 452-page omnibus budget bill contains too much for adequate consideration by Parliament, because it is really more than budget-implementation legislation. Only some portions of it are about public finance, that is, about such matters as income tax, sales tax and federal-provincial fiscal arrangements.

Another editorial in the Toronto Star said:

This is political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government. It is not what Harper promised to deliver.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has given a very clear speech on what is happening with our parliamentary democracy.

The concerns have not just been raised in the House. I was going through some mail, which I want to share with my colleagues. I received a card signed by four constituents in my riding: Hannah, Sofia, Natasha and Dom. They said they had been very upset with the way Bill C-38 had been debated and how there were so many things in that bill. They said, “Thank you for standing up for democracy”.

As a fairly new MP, I have been really disturbed by the lack of parliamentary debate and the shutting down of the voices of members of Parliament.

What steps does my colleague think can be taken to make sure that we do not keep facing bills the size of the phone books of a very large city?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the motion today by starting with the observation that there are effectively two points to this motion.

One is that the motion asks us to agree with some sentiments expressed several years ago, almost 20 years ago, by the member for Calgary Southwest, who is now the Prime Minister, with respect to a certain characteristic of what he called omnibus bills and what we are now discussing as omnibus bills in the current Parliament.

The second point is a concrete recommendation to have the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs study and report on exactly what omnibus bills are and how in fact they can be regulated within the confines of parliamentary procedure.

I will start with the second part and say simply that we would, I believe, benefit from such a study. It would clarify practice and allow a serious discussion of how bills called “omnibus”, whether by the government or by the opposition, do or do not undermine parliamentary democracy and indeed democracy at large.

At minimum, through such a study there could be a debate, hopefully not in camera, on best practices without there needing to be a decision or recommendation to give more power to the Speaker to rule on a bill in terms of it being out of order or that it should be split. We could have a study on best practices that would actually share the sentiments of all members of this House about what ideal practice would look like. Then governments, including the present government in the years of its mandate and future governments, can make their own decisions about how they want to situate themselves within a best practices framework. That is all that this report need be. Therefore, I certainly would like to commend this second part of the motion to the House.

On the substance of the issue and the specific reasons for which the motion refers to omnibus bills as problematic, it is clear that the point of order raised by the member for Calgary Southwest in 1994 talks about the problem of diversity of content in what he was calling an omnibus bill. Members should remember that this was a 21-page bill versus the almost 500-page bill that we received, which passed the House in the spring, and a much larger bill that we hear will be coming at us. However, on the 21-page bill, he says:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

His concern was that members of the House should be able to vote on specific issues more often than is permitted when omnibus bills, or something resembling omnibus bills, become standard practice. He sees it as a question of accountability to constituents.

I would suggest that it could also end up in the context of some kinds of bills being a question of conscience. There may be elements in a bill that members would very definitely want to vote for or against and want that known and on record.

It is certainly the case that the commentator from Postmedia, Andrew Coyne, also sees it in this way when he says:

But lately the practice has been to throw together all manner of bills involving wholly different responsibilities of government in one all-purpose “budget implementation” bill, and force MPs to vote up or down on the lot. While the 2012 budget implementation bill is hardly the first in this tradition, the scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated.... We have no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch....

Keep in mind that 70 pieces of legislation were amended in the recent Bill C-38.

He goes on to say: “...only that they voted for the legislation that contained them”.

This is the concern specifically referenced in the motion, and it is a real concern for the reasons given by the Prime Minister in his former capacity as solely the member for Calgary Southwest, and as Mr. Coyne has just articulated the question.

It is also important to know that there is another dimension to this that is at least as worrisome. That is the subsequent use that governments or MPs from the government party make of an omnibus bill in their debates and references in the House, quite commonly in ripostes in question period. What will they do? An MP from the opposition will raise a question in question period on unemployment insurance or on food safety. Lo and behold, a minister will stand up, give some sort of answer and say that “In any case, you're the party that voted against” this, that or the other measure. “You're the person who did so, because you voted with your party”. What they are almost always referring to when that tactic is used is budget implementation bills. We know this.

We in the House know there can be many features of a budget implementation bill that everyone is perfectly happy to see and support. Almost always, when ministers answer in that way their reference points are precisely the provisions that accord a hundred per cent with the sentiments and policy of the opposition. The opposition would have voted for it if given the chance to vote separately. The government knows this.

Omnibus bills are dovetailing with what is effectively, and what we all know to be increasingly, a deliberate strategy of misdirection and indeed mistruth on the part of the government.

We must be very clear that this practice of responding to questions in this way, by attributing votes against matters that members of Parliament are perfectly in favour of, is very much a combination of deliberate party tactics. I hesitate to say this, but it is becoming more apparent that it is a culture and mindset that is taking over the government party. It is a mindset of complete subservience to a Prime Minister's Office and an approach that really plays fast and loose with the truth and demands that its MPs fall in line with that strategy.

Even today, the House leader managed to bring it up at one point in his response to a speech. He parroted the exact same nonsense we have been hearing for a month now with respect to a carbon tax. Why, I would ask, would so many respected journalists take to print over the last month to speak out on exactly this particular tactic of using the carbon tax spectre by the government, this culture of misdirection and mistruth? It is because they know that something profound is underway in terms of the extent to which untruth is becoming part of the democratic fabric of the country, to the point that we cannot talk about a democratic fabric if it takes hold as deeply as it is starting to.

I would add two final points about the democratic problems. One is the problem that committees cannot achieve any kind of scrutiny of omnibus bills. We have to take into account how democracy is profoundly limited by lack of scrutiny. We also have to understand that omnibus bills end up being a game of cat and mouse or even catch me if you can, because of how much time is spent just trying to understand what is hidden and buried in the bill.

Finally, we have to understand the role of the media. The media too need to be able to understand, report and critically discuss bills. In a world where we have media concentration and fewer and fewer journalists dedicated to this kind of enterprise, their task as part of the democratic enterprise is more and more compromised by the practice of omnibus bills.

[Bruce Hyer, Independent, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this motion is a good one and I certainly intend to support it.

Last spring, with the amendments to Bill C-38, we had almost 24 hours of nonstop voting. All of the Conservatives voted repeatedly and recklessly against amendments that few of them had ever read. However, is this not the tip of an even bigger iceberg?

How can this House and the Liberals help to revamp our electoral and parliamentary rules so that MPs work for their constituents and Canada rather than being whipped into mindless lockstep by their parties?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Malpeque for bringing up that very important point, which I did not underline in my presentation. He is quite right. If we look at Bill C-38 there were issues dealing with the environment, immigration and a host of other subjects where committees have not only the authority but the expertise to really treat these matters as a bill makes its way through the House.

He is quite right to point out that the authority of committees and the work that is done in committees is extremely important. When we take an omnibus approach and the only committee that ends up looking at it is the finance committee, we are shortchanging Canadians with respect to the democratic process.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's remarks and agree with him. However, there is an issue that my colleague did not raise. That is that not only is the omnibus bill an affront to the House and how we vote on specific matters, it also seriously undermines the functions of committees.

Bill C-38 was a prime example where environment and fisheries were in the bill, but it went to the finance committee. Committees of the House over time develop some expertise in the subject areas. Committee members when appointed to those committees do research, do background and study the subject for a number of years. Therefore, at the end of the day, members from all parties become much more knowledgeable about those areas and the decisions that are being made.

Does my colleague agree with that? How does he see doing away with the omnibus bill approach strengthening the ability of committees to do their jobs, so that MPs can better represent the various industries and commodities on a committee basis?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

moved:

That the House agree with the comments of the Right Honourable Member for Calgary Southwest on March 25, 1994, when he criticized omnibus legislation, suggesting that the subject matter of such bills is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put Members in conflict with their own principles and dividing the bill into several components would allow Members to represent views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill; and that the House instruct the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study what reasonable limits should be placed on the consideration of omnibus legislation and that the Committee report back its findings, including specific recommendations for legislative measures or changes to the Standing Orders, no later than December 10, 2012.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to once again voice my concern, the concern of the Liberal Party and indeed the concern of a rising number of Canadians about the damage to democracy being done through the use of omnibus bills.

Concerns about the problems posed by omnibus bills have been growing for some time now. However, the lengths to which the current Prime Minister and his government have used—and I would say abused—budget implementation bills as kitchen sink omnibus bills have reached staggering and dangerous levels.

It is rather shocking to see that the Conservative government is continuing to produce bills like this. The government said it was open to suggestions from the opposition on issues affecting Canadians, but how many speeches have we heard this year about this impractical way of examining bills?

I have not compiled statistics on this issue, but we often hear the word “omnibus” in this House, in either statements or speeches during debate or question period, not to mention the many points of order.

In recent years, budget implementation bills have become increasingly long and complex. Although the length of a bill does not automatically imply that it contains a series of unrelated measures, we have seen that the bills introduced lately have covered an increasing number of topics.

Maclean's analyzed budget implementation bills between 1994 and 2005 and discovered that they averaged 75 pages. Since 2006, these bills have averaged well over 300 pages.

We all remember last June with Bill C-38, when we voted for nearly 24 hours on a long list of amendments proposed by the opposition parties in order to show that omnibus bills are essentially anti-democratic.

Given that the government has made it no secret that it intends to bring forward another omnibus bill this fall, I believe it is time for this House to recognize the detrimental effect these bills have on democracy in Canada and commit itself to find reasonable limits that could be put in place to end this practice.

When a government party abuses its power by proposing completely unrelated measures in a single omnibus bill, it deprives parliamentarians of their right to truly debate these various measures and to express their opinions on each of them by way of a vote. This way of doing things also gives Canadians less opportunity to share their opinions about the bill—whether favourable or unfavourable—and thus weakens our democracy.

Omnibus bills can play a significant role in the Westminster parliamentary system, but only when they are used to amend many laws that have a single purpose or, at the very least, a limited number of objectives. The Conservative government has abused its power by introducing several omnibus bills covering dozens of unrelated topics.

Other administrations have resolved this problem by reducing the number of subjects that can be covered by a bill to just one. For example, in 42 of the 50 American states, the constitution prohibits the excessive use of omnibus bills and, although this type of bill continues to be popular in Washington, D.C., Congress is currently examining a bill to put an end to this practice.

To understand the extent of the problem, we need only look back a few months at this spring's omnibus bill, Bill C-38.

Bill C-38 was one of the worst abuses of Parliament we have witnessed in this House. It was 425 pages long, it contained more than 60 unrelated matters, and it amended or abolished 74 pieces of legislation.

Of Bill C-38's 503 clauses, clause 52—a single clause out of 503—contained an entirely new act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012, a whole new environmental assessment act contained within a single clause of a so-called budget bill.

On March 25, 1994, a young member of Parliament, who then represented the riding of Calgary West, rose in the House to complain that a budget bill, called Bill C-17 at the time, which was only 21 pages in length, was indeed an omnibus bill and that these types of bills were bad for democracy.

He stated:

Mr. Speaker, I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

He expanded eloquently saying:

...in the interest of democracy I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse? Dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill.

I heartily agree with these words spoken by the young MP from Calgary West. It makes me wonder how that young eloquent MP could ever have changed his views since becoming the Prime Minister of this country. It defies all logic.

I will give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt that he believed he was speaking the truth back in 1994. Indeed, his criticism back then resonates even more today.

He stated:

...the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

Let us put that into context with Bill C-38. With Bill C-38, if MPs wanted to vote for improvements to the disability savings plan, they had to simultaneously vote to kill the Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. With Bill C-38, if MPs wanted to vote against raising the qualifying age for old age security, they had to simultaneously vote against making the Governor General's salary taxable.

The government tells us that it will bring forward another omnibus budget bill this fall. Liberals have said repeatedly that we would like to tackle MP pension reform. What kind of choice would there be for MPs if those pension changes are included in an omnibus bill that also makes Canada's coasts more vulnerable to oil spills? We must ask ourselves why the government would choose to do that. Why would it cram so many different unrelated measures into a single bill?

I think that the Conservatives like this approach because it allows them to then accuse members of other parties of having voted against their initiatives.

The government claims that the reason is to ensure that it can get its measures passed in a timely manner. Unless several members of the Conservative bench have recently fled their caucus, the Conservative government still has the power to pass multiple separate pieces of legislation. That is what happens with a majority government.

As for timely passage, this is hardly a government that shies away from time allocation and closure. Indeed, it has set the record, so that argument simply does not hold water. That leaves us with two other possibilities. The Conservatives either do not believe Canadians will accept some of their mean-spirited unpopular policies unless they hide them amidst other popular measures, or they intend to attack MPs who oppose negative measures in the bill, accusing them of also opposing positive measures.

No matter which of these two is true, quite possibly both of them, the math adds up to an attempt to obscure the facts from Canadians, an attempt to hide the truth and impugn false motives on their opponents. As such, these represent an attack on transparency and on democracy itself.

The Prime Minister said it very well when he stated:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse? Dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill.

Why will the Prime Minister not listen to his own words?

It is not just the Liberal Party or the younger version of the Prime Minister who oppose omnibus bills. The Speaker's predecessors have expressed similar concerns about the use of such bills and where this could ultimately lead us.

On January 26, 1971, Speaker Lamoureux cautioned the House on the use of such bills and warned:

However, where do we stop? Where is the point of no return? ...The honourable member for Winnipeg North Centre, and I believe the honourable member for Edmonton West, said that we might reach the point where we would have only one bill, a bill at the start of the session for the improvement of the quality of life in Canada which would include every single proposed piece of legislation for the session. That would be an omnibus bill with a capital ‘O’ and a capital ‘B.’ But would it be acceptable legislation? There must be a point where we go beyond what is acceptable from a strictly parliamentary standpoint.

Given what we have seen in the House with the last few budget implementation bills, Speaker Lamoureux's concerns should be heeded. We are well on our way to becoming the “one bill a session” Parliament that he feared.

This Conservative government always manages to take advantage of procedural grey areas. The definition of an omnibus bill given on page 724 of the second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice reads as follows:

Although this expression is commonly used, there is no precise definition of an omnibus bill. In general, an omnibus bill seeks to amend, repeal or enact several Acts, and is characterized by the fact that it is made up of a number of related but separate initiatives. An omnibus bill has “one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders the Bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes”. One of the reasons cited for introducing an omnibus bill is to bring together in a single bill all the legislative amendments arising from a single policy decision in order to facilitate parliamentary debate.

This is a simple and concise definition, which certainly does not apply to the budget megabill that was introduced in May.

Clearly, there is no longer any requirement for bills to focus on single topics, at least in the view of the Conservative government. The government simply lumps them all together and says it is all about economic well-being. The cabinet seems to view parliamentary oversight with great contempt, as an annoying rubber stamp that hinders it rather than the democratically elected body that holds Canada's government to account.

We should not have to remind the government that Canadians elect members of Parliament, not an emperor. Our entire system of democracy is based on our government being required to seek the consent of the democratically elected House. Omnibus bills hinder MPs from performing this elected duty.

Furthermore, Canadians who elect their members of Parliament have a right to know how they vote on different government measures. Omnibus bills deny Canadians that right. Clearly, rules must be put in place to reverse this practice before our democracy is further undermined.

We fully understand that the government has the right to manage the business of the House. It is the government. However, that management cannot be done at the expense of the basic democratic principles of transparency and accountability.

We also recognize that a rule that would arbitrarily prevent a bill from amending more than one act might be unworkable, given the reality of consequential amendments to other acts. However, a balance must be struck.

It is for that reason that this motion would direct the appropriate committee, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, to launch an immediate study to determine what reasonable limits should be placed on omnibus legislation.

While a 21-page budget bill would probably not cross the line, a 425-page bill that amends or abolishes 74 acts clearly would. We should ensure that Parliament does its work here to define that line and to put rules in place to prevent future legislation from trampling upon it.

When Parliament resumed this fall, I raised the specific issue of MP pension legislation. I made the point that the Liberal Party was ready and willing to vote in favour of whatever changes the government decided to bring forward. Given that Canadians had to tighten their belts in these fragile economic times, it is only right that we, as parliamentarians, should also set a good example by modifying our pension arrangements.

In addition to very clearly signifying this willingness to modify our pension package, I urged the government to fast-track a separate bill on this matter so that all Canadians could see how their individual MPs voted. That would have been the preferred democratic approach.

Instead, the government chose to ignore the Liberal proposal and announced that MP pension reform would be buried within the upcoming omnibus bill. Sadly, the government missed an opportunity to show how it cares about democracy.

Two weeks later, a motion that I had put on the order paper, a motion quite similar to the one that we are debating today, a motion for the procedure and House affairs committee to study ways of establishing reasonable limits on omnibus bills, was raised in that precise committee, although in camera. Again, sadly, I must report to the House that the motion has now disappeared from the order paper.

The Liberal Party does not intend to let go of this matter. Democracy is too important to be swept under the carpet. I look forward to those who will follow me today, and I genuinely hope that all of us in the House will demonstrate to Canadians that Parliament sets the example when it comes to putting democracy to the test.

In conclusion, let me read today's Liberal opposition motion one last time to refresh all of us and summarize what we will vote on this evening:

That the House agree with the comments of the Right Honourable Member for Calgary Southwest on March 25, 1994, when he criticized omnibus legislation, suggesting that the subject matter of such bills is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put Members in conflict with their own principles.

I hope that the Prime Minister will remember those words today and remind all of his colleagues on the government side of the House.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her interest in this issue. I am in favour of referring this bill to committee so that we can review it.

This bill gives rise to a lot of discussion and questions. Once again, the Conservatives have introduced a tough-on-crime bill. They are saying that there is a crime problem in this country and that it has to be solved. Statistically, it is quite the opposite; there is less and less crime in this country.

What is the purpose of this bill? Instead of addressing the challenges facing immigrants in this country, this bill comes down hard on crime committed by immigrants. As an hon. member said earlier, the crime rate among immigrants is statistically lower than that among Canadian citizens. In addition, the crime rate is going down.

I will ask this question again: what public policy considerations justify this bill? We have to ask ourselves that question, because this is a very important aspect of the bill. Ministerial discretion has been created for the definition of public policy considerations. Under the bill, the minister can now declare, for a maximum period of 36 months, that a foreign national is inadmissible based on public policy considerations. But the concept of public policy considerations is not defined. The minister has total discretion. We do not understand why the minister should have more power, when a number of immigration tribunals are already hearing immigrants' cases and the reasons why they came to Canada. There are currently enough tribunals to allow immigrants to present their evidence and to justify their place in Canada. There is no need to create another bill that will make the burden of proof heavier on immigrants, when that is not the case for ordinary citizens. Once again, this bill does a poor job of defining the concept of public policy considerations.

Why give the minister so much discretionary power in so many bills? This does not concern just this bill on criminalization in immigration. Almost all the bills that the Conservatives have introduced in the past year broaden ministerial discretion, which decreases the possibility for people to be heard by the tribunals.

Historically, the purpose of democracy was to take discretionary powers away from kings and ministers and to define the powers they have. For the past year in the House, the exact opposite has been happening. This is not normal. A living, breathing democracy should clearly define the government's power. But here, the government is in the process of broadening it.

Bill C-38 creates ministerial discretion with respect to the assessment of environmental projects. From now on, the minister has the right to decide whether or not a project will have to undergo an environmental impact assessment. Previously, certain factors would be used to determine whether or not an assessment would be done, but now it is left up to the minister. With this bill, ministerial discretion is once again being broadened, which I think is unacceptable.

A debate in committee could be useful. That is why, even with the huge reservations I have about ministerial discretion, I will continue to support the bill at second reading.

I also want to point out some inherent problems with the bill, problems that I find really very serious. In the past, in accordance with the act, an immigrant who had been sentenced to two years or more would have his permanent resident status revoked immediately. That is how it still is today. The bill we are looking at proposes reducing that sentence to six months or more. Any permanent resident who is convicted and sentenced to six months or more would lose his or her permanent resident status.

My Conservative colleague pointed out a few minutes ago that we are talking about foreigners and asked why the opposition did not support cracking down on foreign criminals in this country. Right now we are talking about permanent residents; they are not foreign. They have been allowed to enter Canada. We know them. They work here and, for the most part, they are contributing members of society and yet the Conservatives are saying that if they make a mistake, no matter what it is, a six-month prison term will strip them of their citizenship and their permanent resident status. That is it; they will be deported. That is very harsh, extremely harsh. I would like to expand on this in committee. A debate on this would be worthwhile.

Several laws in Canada impose a jail term of six months or more. I can give examples of people I know who have not paid their parking tickets. If too many parking tickets accumulate, a person can be sentenced to six months or more. If someone fails to pay their parking tickets, does that really justify deporting them out of the country? I find that a little much, to be honest.

It is extremely important that this bill be the subject of testimony by expert witnesses. Unfortunately, the people who draft the Conservatives' bill tend to go too far, perhaps because this government has a majority. Sometimes they cannot help themselves. That tends to be the Conservative way. They often appear incapable of seeing the fact that their bills benefit only a very small percentage of Canadians—perhaps those who give more money to the Conservative Party. I do not know, but maybe that it is.

It is very important for these bills to reflect the Canadian reality. I want to point out once again that crime rates are going down in Canada. I know that a few years ago the Conservatives were saying that they wanted to crack down on crime because a lot of crimes are not reported to the police. I am not going to chase shadows here; I am going after real criminals. I want to find a happy medium between protecting Canadian citizenship and an immigrant's right to a fair and equitable process. There is a fundamental right in Canadian law: everyone has the right to be heard. The minister's authority continues to grow. His discretionary powers are looking more and more like the powers of a king. That runs counter to legal tradition in Canada and all Commonwealth countries. The right to be heard is a fundamental right that the government would violate with this bill. This bill must absolutely be sent to committee to be examined carefully.

I hope that all members of the House will be open enough to allow amendments to this bill. Expert testimony will help with this. Many parts of this bill must be broken down, clarified, and debated so that the bill can truly benefit the Canadian public. Ultimately, immigrants must feel that Canada is a welcoming country. Historically, we have always been very open to immigrants, and I hope that we will continue to be.

Food Safety

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to say that I am going to share my time with the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas.

We are here to discuss a major issue. My thoughts are with the families affected by the tainted meat. That is why we are here tonight. We have heard a lot of background and many facts. What I would like to do tonight is get to the bottom of this, to get to the real heart of the problem. The heart of the problem comes down to two things: the Conservative government's lack of accountability and transparency, which resulted in the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board's refusal to assume his ministerial responsibility, among other things. There is also the matter of the cuts and the impact that the Conservative government's decisions have had on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Let us look back to April 2012. Hon. members will no doubt remember the budget, which was Bill C-38 at the time. The Conservative budget had a number of impacts. First, many public service jobs were eliminated, including—and this was announced in the media—the 825 employees who received a letter in April 2012 informing them that their job was in danger. Of these 825 people, 59 inspectors—people on the ground to investigate and to check the meat, among other things—received a letter confirming that their position had been eliminated. Approximately 40 other inspectors were expected to receive the same message as a result of the Conservative cuts.

A reporter from Postmedia News, Sarah Schmidt, asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board and the department a number of times to specify which positions would be affected by the cuts. She wanted to know whether veterinarians, people responsible for examining seed and inspectors would be affected. She repeatedly asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board these questions but never received an answer.

We could probably talk about the Parliamentary Budget Officer's repeated requests for details about the cuts announced by the Conservative government. The Conservatives refused to provide this information, despite the Accountability Act, which should force them to do it.

For a government that has made accountability and transparency its bread-and-butter issue since 2006, that is unacceptable and irresponsible.

What should we make of these 700 new inspectors mentioned time and again by each of the members who spoke this evening and, I would note, who repeated almost the same speech practically word for word. Once again, there are no details about these 700 new inspectors.

A Canadian Press journalist contacted the minister and the Department of Agriculture to obtain additional information, namely what kind of positions were included in these 700 new jobs. These are not 700 inspector jobs, and the Conservative government is deliberately trying to confuse the issue.

The Agriculture Union and the Public Service Alliance of Canada tried to find out the assignments for these 700 new inspectors. They did not get an answer. They managed to come up with an estimate. Of the 700 inspectors, 200 were assigned to monitor imports of invasive alien species, 330 were assigned to technical categories, such as seed examination, and 170 positions were inspectors assigned to processing plants, not slaughter houses.

The case of tainted meat that we are debating this evening occurred in a slaughter house and not in a processing plant.

That is an important distinction to make. Every single Conservative member who has spoken tonight has refused to address this issue and tried once again to confuse the matter.

In budget 2012, the government reduced the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's budget by $56 million. It is in budget 2012 in black and white. The government boasted about having invested $51 million in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and said that there would be no budget cuts, that everything would be fine.

That $56 million represents real cuts. The $51 million, as the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands pointed out, was distributed among three agencies: the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. This $51 million was invested to renew existing food safety programs. These were not new investments. This money went to maintain an existing program, which was created after the listeriosis crisis that hit the country not too long ago, so that it could continue focusing on food safety. So this was not new money. It went towards an existing program. However, the $56 million was cut directly from the agency's funding.

This crisis could end up being a crisis of trust. The Conservatives are accusing us of fearmongering with this issue. We are not fearmongering. It is our role as official opposition to hold the government accountable for its decisions. The budget cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will have a significant impact.

What happened at XL Foods is the tip of the iceberg of what might happen if the government refuses to take responsibility, if the minister refuses to assume ministerial responsibility, which is absolutely essential in our parliamentary system, if the Conservatives continue to deny their responsibility in the budget cuts and to provide misleading information on the true state of things when it comes to meat inspections.

Repeating left and right that they added 700 new inspectors is not helping. No inspector was sent to XL Foods. What is more, one of the most problematic things about XL Foods is that there was a shortage of inspectors on the floor of the abattoir for a very long time. The union sounded the alarm many times about this. New positions may have been created, but not many. The Conservatives are talking about two or six inspectors, depending on who is talking. Those inspectors are filling existing positions that had become vacant. No new investment had been made for XL Foods.

The hon. member for Welland, our agriculture critic, was very clear about this. We are talking about a plant that sped up its processing line. It slaughters 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle. There are 46 inspectors there, but they work two shifts. Twenty-three inspectors work one shift and the 23 other inspectors work the other shift, at a plant the size of several city blocks. It is a very large plant. Having 23 people on site at all times is just not enough, and XL Foods employees have to pick up the slack. It is absolutely irresponsible of the Conservatives to deny this fact and to try to hide it behind various figures.

I know there are Canadians still watching us this evening. It may be 11:10 p.m. here, but it is 8:10 p.m. in British Columbia and 9:10 p.m. in Alberta.

For the people watching us at home, whether in western Canada, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec or the Atlantic provinces, I simply wanted to point out that this is the government they are stuck with at the moment. The comments they have heard this evening demonstrate that this government is happy to throw around half-truths. They have a government that cares only about covering its butt when facing a crisis. They have a government that refuses to accept responsibility. Above all, they have a minister who refuses to accept his primary responsibility, his ministerial responsibility, whereby he should be assuming full responsibility for a tragedy like the one we are facing.

This government's first instinct when faced with a crisis like this one is to blame everyone else apart from the Conservative Party or the Conservative caucus, whether it be the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or the opposition parties. Quebec and Canada deserve better than that. As the official opposition, we have a duty to demand that the government be accountable and remain transparent, which it refused to do in all of the cases we have dealt with here, cases for which the Parliamentary Budget Officer is asking to see the specific data regarding the cuts to be made by the Conservatives. They refuse to provide that information.

It is the government's duty to accept responsibility for what happens, to stop hiding behind numbers, to stop spreading misinformation and, ultimately, to act for the health and well-being of all Canadians. Based on what I have heard here this evening, the government is still refusing to do so.

Employment Insurance

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by 1,023 people from Acadie—Bathurst who are calling on the government and Parliament to oppose Bill C-38—which was already passed—and its provisions concerning the power to define “suitable employment,” the power to define “reasonable and customary efforts to obtain suitable employment” and the creation of a social security tribunal. These provisions will impoverish the entire economy of our country and punish seasonal and regional workers. These measures do not improve access to employment insurance or the matching of workers’ skills with job vacancies.

Opposition Motion—Nexen

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government is still a target of criticism in Canada. The government has been avoiding a definition of what it means by “net benefit” for two years now. Now, we have the opportunity to rectify the problem.

The government ought not to come to a decision on the $15.1 billion acquisition proposal submitted by CNOOC without consulting the public. The current decision-making process is not transparent enough and it is open to political pressure. Canadians need to trust this decision-making process, but all they see is people making things up as they go along.

The member for Mégantic—L'Érable, the current Minister of Industry, felt that our suggestion that Canadians be consulted would deter foreign investors. I would argue, however, that it is the ambiguity of the “net benefit” concept and this government’s inaction that have caused investor uncertainty to increase. Open and transparent debate would provide investors with the confidence they need. Once the term “net benefit” to Canada is properly defined, investors will know how to proceed. They will know where they can invest.

Today, investors and Canadians alike are in the dark. Open and transparent debate is a key pillar of democracy. Debate and the right to freedom of expression are essential values in our political system.

I would therefore like to ask the following questions. Why is the government not consulting Canadians about the acquisition of Nexen by CNOOC? Is the government afraid of hearing what Canadians have to say? Does the government believe that Canadians do not share its foreign investment priorities? Whether we are talking about the Northern Gateway oil pipeline or the drastic changes made in the last budget, Bill C-38, this government does not appear to want to consult the people in any way. This is probably because they know that Canadians will oppose the Conservatives' plans.

And yet, a responsible and democratic government cannot refuse to consult simply because it is afraid of what the people might say. Public consultation is a two-way relationship in which Canadians give information to the Canadian government. Public consultation is an essential component of our democratic system. It is a tool for expressing our fundamental rights. A democratic and open government must actively and genuinely engage the people in decision-making processes. Canadians want to be better informed. They want to be consulted and in particular, they want to play a role in processes that affect the country’s economy and their quality of life.

Not only does the government not want to consult the public, but it appears to be turning a blind eye to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the government agency known as CSIS, whose experts warned us last week that transactions of this kind can represent a national security risk.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service demonstrates in its 2010-11 report that there are legitimate national security threats when foreign firms try to gain control of key sectors of the Canadian economy. CSIS is giving us cause to reflect on this offer.

We need to review the likelihood that the Canadian government will enforce the commitments of a company with the direct political backing of the Chinese government. Under the current act these commitments are not even made public, so how can we have faith that the government will enforce them?

The government has been shamefully neglectful in enforcing previous commitments, and we are losing control of our ability to ensure that foreign companies meet their environmental and employment commitments.

We in the NDP favour free and fair trade, and good investment agreements that advance Canada's place in the world.

We want other countries to realize that if they want to have the privilege of operating in our free and democratic society, they need to uphold values that protect the integrity of the environment, and also recognize that unacceptable employment standards will not be tolerated. The Conservatives do not seem to be able to negotiate these types of treaties, unfortunately.

I would like to talk briefly about the value-added question, as well as the risk to it. I do not understand why the Conservatives are talking down our capacity in this country to create wealth. They are content with our being fourteenth in terms of global competitiveness. The following are the comments of the member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca a few months ago at committee. Members might know that Fort McMurray is ground zero of the oil sands. He said:

I'm also glad to hear the NDP is interested in creating more jobs in Canada. Certainly I think that's important, to have value added that actually pays for itself. Here I just want to let the member know that with the glut of refining capacity in the United States right now, it's not a competitive industry so it would be very difficult indeed for a Canadian to make a profit on refining some of the raw materials we do have, because the refining can be done much more cheaply in the south—without government subsidies, of course, which I'm not into.

Can you see how this member and other members of his party talk down the Canadian economy and how their statements mislead us about the direction we have to go as an economy? A driver paying $1.50 a litre for gas does not care about an oil baron's profits. Developing here at home should mean savings at the pump for the consumer. It should mean cheaper energy costs.

The facts have not changed. Exports of unrefined bitumen are increasing. This is a valuable, finite resource and it will be processed in other places, such as China or the United States. CNOOC has not made a commitment to increase or even maintain existing Canadian value-added employment. This acquisition is clearly part of China's downstream development of oil resources, and it will taking activities that could take place here in Canada.

With the members of the government talking down value-added jobs here, it is no wonder they do not want to face Canadians and talk to them.

Canada’s private sector, communities and workers need to feel confident when there are foreign acquisitions. The manner in which the Conservative government has been proceeding lacks transparency and accountability and is creating a feeling of uncertainty.

In 2010, the government clearly promised to reform the Investment Canada Act and to define the criteria for what would constitute a net benefit to Canada. We refuse to accept that this government should be able to decide on the Nexen acquisition by foreign interests without following through on its promise to Canadians.

Once we have together reached a decision, as a free and just society, on what constitutes a net benefit to Canada, investors will have the confidence they need to invest under clear and democratic criteria. Canadians deserve better, and we need public hearings to get answers to the questions that have been raised by this transaction.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to ask the hon. member for Chambly—Borduas a question.

He mentioned a few concerns that Quebec shares regarding foreign takeovers that will affect all Canadians, not only those who live or work in the regions where the takeovers occur.

I wonder if my colleague would agree that the process needs to be more transparent.

Bill C-38 is a 400-page long document that implemented certain provisions of the budget tabled in 2012. It amended the Investment Canada Act and gave the minister greater freedoms regarding the disclosure of reasons for his decision, but only after the decision has been made.

Does my colleague think that the government should instead open up the process the minister uses to make his decision and hold public hearings in order to be more transparent when it comes to sharing his reasons for arriving at a given decision?

The Conservatives go on and on about how the minister will make his decision in the best interest of Canadians. That is what they keep telling us.

Why is this decision not being made in consultation with all of the stakeholders involved and with Canadians in general?

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, that is the essence of it. There were two pilot projects and both were showing benefit. My colleague from Malpeque, the Liberal caucus and I have long advocated for them. I have spoken on it on a number of occasions, whenever I can. Those were two pilot programs that worked well and took disincentives out of the system, and they should be adopted.

The government did one, but it had this new idea with working while on claim. It sounded really good going from 40% to 50%, but the 50% kicks in on dollar one. The 50% kicks in on the first dollar a claimant makes rather than 40% being free and clear. They are losing money from the first dollar, so it is a disincentive.

There is a way to fix it. Go back to the original. It was good the way it was. If we want to make it better, we could go from the 40% allowable to the 50% allowable and that would be taking away even more of a disincentive. We did not hear any complaints about the old system as it was at 40%, but if the government wants to go to 50% that would be even better.

We saw with Bill C-38, the omnibus bill, an unwillingness to adapt. There were 800 amendments put forward and none were accepted. I would hope that we can get together in the chamber today and help the people who are being hurt by these changes.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with the leader of the Green Party. The changes that were made in Bill C-38 to the provisions impacting those who are seasonally employed are absolutely outrageous.

The reason we focused on this particular part of the EI system for today's motion is that, one, it is a stand-alone discrete item and, two, we in the NDP kind of want to give the minister the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she did not understand her own program. We want to give her the opportunity, in this one very specific way, to say, “You know what? You're right; there is a mistake in the program design. I recognize it now and I'm prepared to fix it”. That is why we cast the motion as narrowly as we did.

The member is absolutely right. We could spend the entire rest of this Parliament talking about things that need to be fixed with Canada's employment insurance system.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I fully support the opposition day motion put forward by the New Democratic Party. I wonder if, when addressing the mistakes that are being made to the employment insurance program, we could not just reach back to the spring and include the egregious changes that were made in Bill C-38 that will make it increasingly difficult for Canadians who are dependent on seasonal industries, whether fishing, tourism or forestry, to be able to continue in those industries? It is a real threat to their employers as well.

Transboundary Waters Protection Act

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, water is without a doubt our most precious resource. Without water, humankind cannot survive. Some 75% of the earth's surface is made up of water, which is a unique situation in our solar system. The small blue sphere that astronauts see from space and describe so passionately must be protected. Water is essential to the equilibrium of this planet. Meanwhile, there is increasing pressure on our water resources. For instance, global warming is increasing the frequency of droughts and floods. Rising temperatures are causing increased evaporation of water resources and causing water levels to fall in our lakes and rivers, as was the case this summer in the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.

An increasing global population is also adding to the demand for drinking water. The demand for water is increasing not only in terms of individual consumption, but also for the production of many consumer products. Four litres of water are needed to extract one litre of oil from the oil sands; 10 litres are needed to produce one sheet of paper; 30 litres for a cup of tea; 40 litres for a slice of bread; 70 litres for an apple and 75 litres for one glass of beer.

We are therefore facing a problem. Fresh water is more and more in demand, yet it is also more threatened by pressures related to population growth, climate change and industry. Some people believe that we are heading toward water wars. I hope that is not the case. However, one thing is for certain: water has become the blue gold of the 21st century.

Canada will thus have a key role to play in the coming years since our country holds 7% of the world's fresh water. The United States has been coveting our water supply for a number of years, particularly in times of drought. Many of the southern states are facing serious water shortages and have had to import water. Other emerging countries, such as China and India, will need larger quantities of water in the coming decades. States that have insufficient water will turn to those that have an abundance. We regularly hear about proposals to export fresh water by tanker. Concerns heightened with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA in 1994. NAFTA considers water to be a consumer product, and some provisions of the agreement could open the door to the export of water.

The purpose of Bill C-383, which was introduced by the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, is to strengthen the prohibitions against bulk water removal. In fact, it corrects some of the shortcomings of Bill C-26, which was introduced by the government in 2010 and died on the order paper. The purpose of Bill C-26 was to prohibit the removal of water from transboundary and boundary waters; however, the bill did not take into account the most plausible threat to Canadian waters: the removal of water via interbasin transfers.

Bill C-383 will prohibit the issuance of licences for projects that link non-boundary waters to an international river where the purpose of the project is to increase annual flow to the United States. If the bill is passed, constructing a canal or pipeline channeling Canadian water into an international river, such as the Red River, will be prohibited.

This bill is a step in the right direction to protect our waters, but the official opposition is of the opinion that this bill will not completely resolve the issue of water management in Canada. Clearly, this private member's bill does not prohibit all types of bulk water export. It is also necessary to ensure the protection of surface water, regulate future exports of water by tanker, respond to threats presented by NAFTA and, above all, prohibit the export of bottled drinking water.

Last year, my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster moved a motion in favour of a national water strategy, and we are very thankful for that. We believe that access to water is a fundamental right, that we must prohibit all commercial exports and that we must not privatize water services. Why? Because water is not a product; it is a common property resource. It is essential to the survival of our species and all other species. The UN General Assembly declared access to water a fundamental right in 2010. Unfortunately, Canada, led by the Conservatives, abstained and said that the right to water was not codified under international law.

It is time for Canada to play a key role with respect to access to water. Some entrepreneurs will say that we must export our water to the countries that need it. However, this commodification of water will not solve the problem, especially since the poorest people will not have the means to purchase this imported bottled water.

In addition, it is not simply a matter of export and supply; it is a matter of distribution.

Large quantities of water are wasted by the richest members of society—a minority—at the expense of the poorest.

It is estimated that, in developing countries, daily water needs vary between 20 and 30 litres a day, and some very poor individuals consume only three or four litres. In Canada, the average person consumes 300 litres of water a day, which is the equivalent of three full bathtubs. That is double the amount consumed by a European. Canada is the second-biggest waster of drinking water after the United States.

Before talking about exports, we should talk about conservation. Our overconsumption of manufactured products, the exploitation of natural resources under conditions that are not mindful of the environment, and waste all have disastrous consequences on our water management.

We must also remember that old water systems that are not maintained or repaired can cause huge leaks and a lot of waste. We must repair the pipes and filtration systems, which are now a municipal responsibility.

Lacking resources, municipalities are turning to private investors to finance the work. However, water is a matter of public health and safety and it should be managed by the government, which is accountable to the community. When for-profit businesses control the water, the quality decreases and costs increase.

The federal government should help the municipalities upgrade their water supply infrastructure.

It is all well and fine for the Conservatives to announce new wastewater treatment regulations, but the fact remains that the municipalities need to have a decent budget. What is more, the municipalities are still waiting for the budget that is yet to be announced by the federal government.

We must also recognize the importance of preserving the quality of our water. The cuts to the environmental monitoring programs and the changes to the Fisheries Act will have a catastrophic impact on our waters. Fish habitat will no longer be protected, there will be fewer environmental assessments of industrial projects—the number of assessments already went down by 3,000 this summer—and the public will not be consulted as it used to be.

All of this is a result of the omnibus Bill C-38, which passed in June. In addition to weakening our environmental laws, this Conservative government is cutting water monitoring and research programs. It is axing programs such as the Municipal Water and Wastewater Survey, which collected data on water sources, water use and wastewater treatment levels.

The government is also abolishing environmental effects monitoring studies, a scientific tool to detect changes in aquatic ecosystems affected by effluent.

All these cuts will have an impact on water quality. Need I remind hon. members that in 2000, seven people died in Walkerton, Ontario, when drinking water was contaminated by E. coli?

Do we want to see poor water quality management cause other similar tragedies? Who will want to import Canadian water if there is any doubt about its quality and safety?

In closing, I would like to say that it is wrong to believe that Canada is protected from a water shortage. A quarter of Canadian municipalities have already dealt with water shortages, and a third of them rely on groundwater to meet their current needs.

We must have a national water strategy, as my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster proposed in 2010.

The bill introduced by the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound is a step in the right direction, but it is does not go far enough.

The environmental crisis we are experiencing requires fundamental changes to our lifestyle and our resource development policy.

There is no room for ideology or partisanship. We need pragmatism, initiative and leadership on the national and international levels.

We must not leave our children and grandchildren with a social and environmental debt. The time to act is now.

Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour, who will once again respond to these questions.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to return to the House today to speak about an important subject that affects all Canadians. I am referring to one of our most precious social safety nets: employment insurance.

Last spring, when the session was in full swing, I asked two questions of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour. The questions were about employment insurance, and I think that no time is better than the present to once again attempt to get answers, since this topic is again the fodder for our debates in the House.

I will therefore ask the following question. Bill C-38 on the budget proposes to repeal the clause under which a worker seeking employment is not obligated to accept a job where the working conditions, including the rate of compensation, are less favourable than those offered by good employers. In short, the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development wants to lower salaries and the buying power of this country. Why are the Conservatives waging war on workers, when they drive our economy?

We all know that Bill C-38 has now become law and that the changes made to the legislation have come into effect or will soon do so.

Since the bill was passed into law, we have received thousands of calls and much correspondence from employees, the unemployed and employers who not only say that they are concerned about the new measures, but who also confirm that they only aggravate the already precarious situation in which the poor of our country find themselves.

The reason for this concern is quite simple: the new definition of suitable employment announced by the minister is quite illogical. To begin with, the new categories of unemployed persons concocted by the minister's team now put pressure on job seekers, who after a certain time will have to agree to whatever job comes their way, with a salary of up to 30% less than their average compensation. That, therefore, means less money in the pockets of workers and their families.

These measures will put pressure on seasonal employers, who will lose skilled and specialized labour because unemployed workers will be obligated to find other employment before their seasonal work resumes. This will be more costly for businesses as they will have to continuously retrain a new labour force that will not return.

Also, the possible devaluation of skills must be taken into consideration. Nothing in the Conservatives' budget referred to training and support in order to place the unemployed in their area of expertise. In short, workers will find themselves forced to work at jobs that in no way relate to their qualifications. Skills and productivity will be lost. I cannot see how an unemployed welder will contribute as much to the Canadian economy with the salary of a packager.

The Conservatives boast that they are focusing on kick-starting the economy and creating jobs. Can the minister explain on which economic principles and which studies her department relied to create this reform and to make the claim that it would create jobs and wealth?

Helping Families In Need Act

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned earlier, the NDP will support Bill C-44 for a number of reasons. Basically, it responds to a number of the demands that the NDP has traditionally made in order to help parents who are in drastic and often unusual circumstances. With this in mind, one can hardly be opposed to virtue, and this is why we will support the bill. However, there are a number of shortcomings in the bill that I will come back to in my speech.

First and foremost, I would like to go on in the same vein and a little bit further with the question that I just asked, to speak a little bit about what the Conservatives have done to employment insurance since they came to power, particularly with the passage of Bill C-38.

I come from the Lower St. Lawrence area, a region that depends on employment insurance a great deal. It is not that we want to depend on it, but the reality in the Lower St. Lawrence, as in the Gaspé and in a number of other regions in Quebec, is that seasonal work is of major importance to the economy. It is true that there has been greater diversification over the past few years, but there are still many workers in the region who depend on either agriculture or tourism or forestry or the fisheries. These are strictly seasonal types of jobs, and employment insurance helped seasonal workers cover the periods during which they were unable to work.

In light of the provisions put forward in Bill C-38, and that are now in effect, someone who works in a specific field such as tourism can now be forced to work in a store or in a boutique for up to 70% of their salary or they will lose their benefits. They can even be forced to travel to a job location that is at least an hour by car from their home, which in the Lower St. Lawrence means from about 70 to 100 km.

The amendments that were proposed by the Conservatives and that were adopted by this House, which unfortunately had a Conservative majority, are detrimental to a number of regions that, once again, depend on employment insurance, even though of course they might well prefer not to.

There is another element, as my colleague mentioned earlier. It was caused by the Conservatives and also by the Liberals before them. I am referring to the low proportion of people contributing to employment insurance who can actually collect benefits. The Conservatives deny in their answers that this is the case, but this is a fact. Of all of the people who were unemployed and actively looking for work in July 2012, only 508,000 Canadians were able to receive employment insurance benefits. This means that 870,000 unemployed Canadians were unable to receive benefits. In other words, only four out of 10 unemployed people were able to collect benefits, and this is because of the conditions reducing entitlement to benefits that were brought in by the Liberals and by the Conservatives.

However, Bill C-44 has remedied some specific situations, and that is why we are going to support it at second reading, even though some changes are likely going to be put forward in committee later on.

This bill will make amendments to the Canada Labour Code to enable parents of seriously ill children, or of missing or deceased children as the result of a crime, to obtain leave without pay without fear of losing their jobs. It will enable employment insurance claimants, who fall ill during their parental leave, to also get sickness benefits—in other words, additional benefits. The bill will create another category of special employment insurance benefits for the parents of children who are seriously ill, which will be extended to a maximum of 35 weeks, and be shared by parents over a 52-week period. It will create a new special employment insurance benefit for the parents of children who are murdered or missing as the probable result of a crime. The benefits total $350 a week for a maximum of 35 weeks, and two weeks will be added in the case of a child located during the benefit period.

Even though these measures are positive and should be supported in order to assist parents who face a particularly difficult and traumatic period in their life, one still has to wonder why the Conservative government has specifically targeted these families, to the exclusion of other families.

For example, children may be reported missing due to circumstances that are not believed to be criminal in nature, for example, when a child runs away. A runaway child may be absent for a long time, in fact, many children run away for several days, or weeks. There is not necessarily a criminal element to what has occurred. However, I can tell you, that the vast majority of parents, if not all parents, find it to be an extremely difficult experience. First and foremost, these parents are concerned about the welfare of the child. They want to be free and able to participate in efforts to actively locate their missing child.

I do not think that it is appropriate to exclude these parents from categories of employment insurance. Yet, the Conservatives have chosen to do so. Why? I would like answers.

Another thing that bothers me is the non-explicit exclusion in the text of special benefits for parents whose child is injured while committing a crime. A crime may be any number of things. It may be a serious offence, but it might also be an act where parents have a key role to play in getting their child back on track.

I am the father of two children. I have a boy who will soon be four and a little girl who is not even one. I know what my role as a parent will be later on. My child might be nine or 10 and do something stupid, like shoplift, and my role as a parent will be to get my child back on track. It is important to not criminalize such children because it is clear that they do not have the capacity to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. It is the parent's role to guide them.

Let us take the same child and say they are shoplifting and are struck by a car in the course of the theft. The child is expressly excluded from these special benefits, in plain words. There is no room for interpretation. Here I can see the difference between the Conservative approach and the more progressive approach to parents’ role in rearing their children. This Conservative approach is even going to have repercussions on the proposed bills.

This aspect was raised by the member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin in committee during previous parliaments, where a very similar private member’s bill introduced by an opposition member was discussed. At the time, he introduced the bill as a measure to provide support for victims. It is hard to argue that this measure supports victims if the parent or family of a child who is injured falling down stairs, or is struck by a car, or injured some other way while committing a crime, is entitled to claim benefits in this case. It is not the victim who is benefiting. For that reason, I cannot support this bill.

In plain words, that is what the Conservative member who is still here today said in a previous parliament at a committee meeting. That really highlights the difference between the Conservative approach and the progressive approach to education. It is truly unfortunate that we have this in a bill like this one. We have to understand that the parents of children who are run down or seriously injured in whatever circumstances are also affected. This bill has nothing to say about those parents.

We believe it is a real problem to target one particular category, even though, like all members present here, and you, Mr. Speaker, I agree that these parents need help. We are prepared to offer them our support. We consider it unfortunate that Bill C-44 excludes or omits certain categories of parents whose children are touched or seriously affected in non-criminal ways. This is because of the law and order lens that virtually all Conservative initiatives are seen through, not just for issues relating to the justice system, but also for issues relating to human resources and employment insurance, as in this case.

The House as a whole is going to want to debate this bill. I hope the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities is going to do good work. This bill is a step in the right direction, as several of my colleagues have said. We hope to hear the government’s justification for the omissions from the categories of people who will be able to claim the special benefits. We are certainly going to propose amendments to try to remedy those omissions. For the moment, we can only express our support, in particular, for parents of children who are victims of crime, and especially who are injured or die, for their terrible tragedy. This bill will give them a way to overcome their situation. This will be a contribution by the members in this House to help them deal with this situation.

Helping Families in Need Act

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think members of the House all agree that this is a small step in the right direction to help parents of young children who may be sick or victims of crime.

We are seeing the effects of Bill C-38, the omnibus crime bill, in our communities right now. In my constituency of Surrey North, I have seen people who are struggling to get their cheques on time. People are trying to speak to a live person on the other end of the phone line. People are struggling to qualify for these benefits that they have paid into. I heard from one of my constituents who has paid into the EI program for decades.

Is my colleague hearing that people are having trouble getting someone live on the phone? Is he hearing these sorts of complaints from his constituents?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is a small step in the right direction. However, the Conservatives have taken giant steps backwards when it comes to Canadians getting benefits and how they qualify. During the time Canadians are getting benefits, if they want to work part-time or earn extra income, the Conservatives are cutting back on the take-home pay people are able to make.

I have watched Conservatives in this House as they constantly play with the numbers. We are seeing that right now. In fact, 40% of unemployed Canadians receive benefits. The other 60% are not receiving any EI benefits at all.

Bill C-38 and the cuts Conservatives brought in to services and benefits are a big issue.

Would my colleague agree that this is a small step in the right direction to help families, yet the Conservatives have taken large steps backwards in providing benefits to the unemployed?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard very similar stories in my constituency of Scarborough—Rouge River, but I must go one step further. We have extremely high levels of unemployment among adults and youth. My constituency has the highest youth to population ratio in all of the GTA and we know that youth unemployment is skyrocketing. It is the highest in our history and continues to skyrocket.

We know that 4 out of every 10 unemployed workers have not qualified for EI benefits as a result of the continued cuts and clawbacks and changes to the EI legislation from the omnibus Bill C-38, along with other changes that the Conservative government continues to make. These will continue to erode the benefits that employers and employees have paid for.

Finally, we have to remember that the EI benefits fund is one that only employers and employees have paid into, and if the government is not paying into it--

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, these are good changes that will help families in time of need and we fully support them. However, I want to highlight the bigger problem with the EI program. We have seen the gutting of the EI program by the Conservative government. Bill C-38 not only gutted the benefits paid to Canadians but also cut services for people who want to access these benefits.

I have seen this in Surrey North, where hundreds of people have come to my office. They struggle with the maze that is in place when phoning and getting either no answer or no live person answering. Not only that, but people are also having difficulty accessing the EI benefits they paid for. After two and a half months they have not received their first cheque. Under the Conservative government we have seen the highest personal consumer debt rate among all Canadians, so people who lose their jobs need the money to bridge that gap.

Has my colleague heard these sorts of complaints in her constituency?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to know that we on this side of the House support these changes to the Employment Insurance Act. They will help Canadian families at a time when they need the benefits the most.

Many people have come to my riding office who have told me they are not getting their benefit in time and cannot get access by phone. There are many cases of people waiting months to receive their first EI benefit cheque, and this from a fund they have paid into and unfortunately have to access after losing their job.

I wonder if my colleague could tell me about her experience in her riding. How are people being affected by these drastic changes to EI and the service cuts that were part of omnibus Bill C-38?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have had a chance to stand in the House since you were elected and I want to congratulate you. I know the House will benefit from your knowledge and your wisdom. I have benefited, as have many newer members in the House. I look forward to working with you.

I will be splitting my time with my fellow British Columbian, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

I rise today to speak to Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code and the Employment Insurance Act. My colleagues in the NDP support the bill. It is not a question about ideology. It is not a question about partisan politics. It is about assisting families in times when they need the help most. It goes without saying that we support these changes that would help ease the suffering of parents who need the help.

Parents who have children who are ill and parents of children who are victims of crime deserve our support so that they do not need to worry about financial support when they are struggling to cope with very difficult situations. In situations where children are in a hospital the parents need to do the parenting and not worry about financial decisions that need to be made.

It is a good bill in that sense. We also support the new right to combine EI benefits so that if people get sick or injured while on parental leave, it does not take time away from their children. The bill is definitely a step in the right direction but I do have some concerns.

My understanding is that the Conservatives promised in their campaign literature in 2011 to provide enhanced EI benefits to parents of murdered or missing children and parents of gravely ill children. This was their promise. However, the Conservatives also promised that the funding for this measure would come from general revenues, not EI premiums. The grant for parents of murdered and missing children would be paid from general revenues and not through EI. However, it appears that the Conservatives have ignored their promise that benefits for critically ill children would be paid from general revenues.

I am curious as to why they have made this choice and gone back on their promise that this would not come out of EI. We have an accumulated deficit of $9 billion in the EI fund and that deficit has occurred under the current government.

A few years ago we had a surplus of $50 billion in the EI fund that was paid by the workers and employers so that when the fund was needed it was there. However, we have seen the government take that money out of the EI fund and put it in general revenues. The money that was there for people to use EI has been taken away by the government and now we have a deficit of $9 billion in the fund.

On top of that, we have seen the government increase EI premiums both for the employer and for working people. That happened this year and that is not fair.

We in the NDP have been very clear. We want comprehensive EI reforms. We want to make EI accessible and effective for all Canadians when they need this insurance policy. These measures also do not address the greatest challenge with EI, the lack of access for unemployed Canadians. I am concerned that the government is avoiding the biggest problems with EI. For example, fewer than half of all unemployed Canadians are receiving EI benefits.

As of July 2012, about 500,000 Canadians receive regular EI benefits. We have 1.3 million unemployed Canadians looking for work. This means that we have over 870,000 or 40% of unemployed Canadians who are without EI benefits. I would remind the House that is an all-time historic low. That is why the NDP will continue to fight for an EI system that is fair, accessible and effective for unemployed Canadians.

Over the last number of months, we have seen changes to the EI program itself as well as service cuts brought through the omnibus Bill C-38. The effects of those changes are trickling into every corner of this country. I have seen this firsthand in my constituency. People who have come into my office are struggling to access their benefits because of the maze that has been created. They are having difficulty resolving issues, getting through on phone lines and even talking to a live person over the phone because of the service cuts.

On top of that, we have seen the changes brought in by the Conservatives through Bill C-38 strip away the benefits from workers who have contributed into this fund. They are not able to receive the benefits that they should be receiving. I have had many cases where people have waited months to receive their first cheque. People pay into the EI program to collect the benefit when they are laid-off. It is a bridging for them until they find another job.

We know that Canadians are burdened with high consumer debt and living from cheque to cheque. When people lose their job and apply for EI, one would think they would get their cheque as soon as possible. However, under the Conservative government, people are waiting for months. One gentleman who came into my office waited two and a half months for his cheque. He had paid into the EI system for decades and had never collected EI benefits before but, unfortunately, he lost his job. He was literally on his last box of macaroni and cheese. In fact, he had to go to the food bank to get food for his family. After two and half months, one would expect his cheque to be there. When he phoned EI, there was nobody live to talk to. In fact, there was a small administrative issue that could have been dealt with many weeks earlier. However, this fellow was getting nowhere. We were able to help him, but, again, a person who paid into the system should not have to wait that long to receive EI benefits.

I could go on because I have seen first-hand how these types of changes are affecting everyday families in my constituency and right across this country.

This is a small change but a good initiative that will help Canadian families throughout the country, and we welcome that. As we have said, we would like to discuss the changes made in Bill C-38 in committee so that we can get to the bottom of the bigger issues, which is the broken EI system that has been put in place by the Conservatives.

Health

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to go back to a very valid question that I asked in the House before the summer recess. At the end of April, I drew the minister’s attention to the fact that, all spring, the NDP had asked the government a great many questions in order to get answers about the impact of the Service Canada cuts.

What I regretted at the time and what I regret to this day is that few concrete responses have come to the ears of Canadians, although Canadians deserve clarification on the employment insurance reform this government has set in motion. The government is clearly demonstrating a lack of transparency, whereas its first responsibility is precisely to be accountable to Canadians.

I spoke then about a culture of secrecy that prevails in the Conservative team. I maintain that that behaviour puts into clear and present danger the entire system on which our democratic institutions rest, institutions that should be built on mutual trust between the government and the people.

Over the past year, Canadians have unfortunately witnessed this unacceptable behaviour on a number of occasions. At the time, I asked the minister when Canadians would have the pleasure of an open, honest and communicative government. I stand here today on behalf of all Canadians in order to obtain more information in that regard.

At present, we are well aware that in the history of Canada, there has never been a more controlling cabinet than the Prime Minister's cabinet when it comes to information. Information is disclosed in dribs and drabs. This is not surprising when we think of how things are managed, the F-35 fiasco, implementing the budget while keeping Canadians in the dark, and the many ethical lapses that the government must constantly cover up.

Examples of the lack of transparency on the part of this government abound, to the dismay of the people, who only want to know where they stand when it comes to reforms or cuts.

It is the same problem with employment insurance and its reform. Since Bill C-38 was introduced, Canadians have been given the broad general outline of an unwarranted reform but not the details and content of or, more particularly, the rationale for this reform. How can Canadians who are affected by these changes plan their futures or anticipate the possible impact on their quality of life or on their family life if they are kept in the dark?

How do we know whether seasonal workers in the regions who mainly make their living on the seasonal economy will have to be uprooted from their communities and forced into exile in a place where low-quality, full-time jobs are available? How do we know whether unemployed workers who find a job that pays 70% of their salary and who then lose their job again will not see their salary disappear by being obligated to accept a job that pays 70% of 70% of their initial salary? How do people avoid the trap of the downward spiral of poverty? How does a mother who is the head of a single-parent family get child care so that she can work a 40-hour week in a town that is an hour away by public transportation?

In an ideal world, Canada would have full employment from coast to coast to coast. However, in the real world, our economy depends on the global economic situation and one must assume that entire economic sectors—sectors that make Canada a prosperous and economically balanced country—involve seasonal work. This government must recognize and value that fact.

I would like the minister to take this opportunity to reassure Canadians of her government's desire for transparency in the management of its files, including that of employment insurance.

Bill C-38

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a number of petitions from earlier this spring. The petitioners are concerned that we should not pass Bill C-38.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with very mixed feelings that I take part in this discussion on Bill C-43. I say mixed feelings because there is definitely an issue here worth discussing and finding a solution to, but this is no way to approach it.

I am here, speaking in the House, because of the voters of Trois-Rivières. We can all agree that Trois-Rivières is not exactly an immigration gateway to Canada. Imagine my surprise in the weeks following my election when I saw the plurality of the cultural communities in Trois-Rivières, when I spoke with the people of those communities and recognized the wealth of diversity. I also recognized a need to listen to one another, in order to try to understand each other, given our respective cultural baggage.

I realized that there should be an individualized approach to immigration for each of the people that I met with in my riding office. There is no doubt that, of all the files that I have dealt with in Trois-Rivières since I was elected, those related to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration have been the most complex. It seems that this goes without saying, given the nature of the subject at hand. As a result, I have a very hard time when someone tries to present a simple or even simplistic solution to a complex problem involving immigration.

Thus, to support Bill C-43 as it stands would require me to turn my back on core values that I cannot deny. It is also asking me to take a great leap of faith to vote to send this bill to committee in the hopes that major amendments will be made to it, particularly given the number of amendments that were accepted in the case of a bill as large and important as Bill C-38. If the past is any indication, there is not much there to reassure me.

However, with all due respect for parliamentarianism, I must still place some hope in committee work and in the fact that the committee could considerably improve a bill that contains certain elements that I think are essential and could do away with others that are simply not consistent with the values held by most Canadians.

For the sake of time, I will start with my biggest concern. If I have any time left, I will end with the points on which both sides of the House could come to an agreement. I hope that this approach will be constructive and will help to set the tone for the work that members of this committee will do.

My first concern is that the vision of the Conservatives' bill is completely black and white. Bill C-43 is one of many Conservative bills that, as I said earlier, proposes a simple solution to a complex problem. With regard to the bill we are discussing this afternoon, there seem to be good people and bad people but very rarely good people who have given in to a moment of weakness and are not necessarily destined for a life of crime, but whom the Conservatives want to force to leave the country.

The picture before us is, once again, presented only in black and white, with almost no shades of grey. Yet it is difficult to describe reality without using all shades of grey. We simply have to think back to black and white television, for those who are my age, anyway. If there had been no shades of grey, we would not have seen much of anything. Very few things, particularly concerning immigration, correspond to this dualistic view of the world. Any search for consensus must look at solutions that take into account a broader range of shades of grey, which will allow us to consider every possible situation.

Bill C-43 also presents a risk of considerable abuse.

Let us first talk about the powers that would be granted to the minister. I must point out that this is not a question of examining the personality of the current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, but rather of the powers that could be exercised by any individual who is in charge of that rather complex department.

Usually, in famous western movies, there are good guys and bad guys, and there is usually a sheriff to mediate the conflict. Well, in this case, it seems that the sheriff is none other than the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. His discretionary power will increase, while the criteria used to achieve justice seem to be decreasing.

The minister would thus have the authority needed to rule on the admissibility of temporary resident applicants. That means that the minister could rule that the foreign national is inadmissible for up to 36 months, if he believes that it is in the public interest.

I will digress for a moment. First, the verb “to believe” introduces a grey area or value judgment. It is hard to imagine that the verb to believe refers to objective criteria. The belief might vary from one minister to the next. We know that cabinet shuffles, even changes in government, are legion in our democratic system.

Bill C-43 does not define public interest. What is really in the public interest and allows the minister to determine that it would be best to deport a person?

What is more, Bill C-43 takes away from the minister the responsibility, even the obligation, to examine the humanitarian circumstances of the foreign national who is deemed inadmissible for security reasons. That again is a grey area and is difficult to define.

I believe that the minister in charge of such a department must be the instance of last resort. He must rise above the fray and not be a part of the decision-making machine, and not have a penchant for ideology.

Furthermore, the bill changes the definition of what is considered to be “serious criminality”. This will be a particularly important matter to be debated in committee. What corresponds to the NDP or Conservative view of what we might term “serious criminality”, and will also garner the broadest consensus among Canadians when it is time to describe and judge what constitutes “serious criminality”?

Previously, a serious criminal was someone given a sentence of two or more years, which was the logical connection to the judge's reasoning when judging a crime. If a crime was deemed to be punishable with a sentence of two years or more, the criterion of “serious criminality” was met.

By changing this criterion from two years or more to six months or more, will judges be asked to change how they interpret the law and make their rulings? Absolutely not. It means that we are opening the door to including all sorts of crimes that, under the old law, would not have been viewed as “serious criminality” and that detractors would consider to be grounds for deportation.

We can well imagine that judges will not change their rulings and that a much larger number of cases may find their way into the new process set out by Bill C-43.

What about the right to an appeal process? It is no longer an option, even for someone given a six-month sentence for a crime that most Canadians would not consider a real threat to public safety.

For example, imagine an immigrant with an incurable illness that causes unbearable pain. He decides to seek relief by discreetly growing five or six pot plants at home. He is not selling drugs. While some parliamentarians are considering the possibility of legalizing marijuana, for just such a situation, that person could be found guilty of a serious crime and be deported to a country that he does not know well enough culturally to live in safely and soundly. He may have come to Canada as a child. Canada could be his only refuge and ours the only culture he has ever known.

Lake Protection

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, many people are perplexed by the joy the Conservatives seem to take in destroying the environment, as demonstrated by Bill C-38. For instance, in my riding of Laurentides—Labelle, the people of the municipality of Nominingue wanted to protect their lakes. They embarked on a lengthy process to change some boating regulations, which involved submitting to a long series of procedures and public consultations. These people are wondering if it still makes sense to pursue their efforts considering the elimination of the protection of wildlife habitat, or if they should simply give up and put up with the 350 horsepower engines on a lake that is only 0.85 square kilometres. Personally, I think this government could not care less. I would say that the lights are on but nobody is home.

Employment Insurance

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate you on your recent appointment and I thank Ms. Savoie for her good work. I can name her in the House now that she is no longer a member of Parliament.

I am pleased today to get back to an issue that is very important to Canadian workers who have lost their jobs: employment insurance. When Parliament was still hard at work many weeks ago, I asked a question to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, which had to do with the funds used to continue operations of the Employment Insurance Financing Board of Canada, when millions are being cut in essential services at Service Canada.

We were in the middle of debate on the reforms to employment insurance found in Bill C-38, that Trojan Horse bill that was hiding all kinds of legislation that will have a number of negative effects on our economy, our social programs and our environment. I think that my question deserves more of an explanation than what I received as an answer. That is why I am here today.

Canadians deserve more transparency from this government. It must be accountable for its unjustified actions that affect Canadians. This is a matter that concerns me greatly. Millions of dollars in cuts have been made to Service Canada in recent years; available resources should be allocated to providing the best possible services to Canadians, who, when applying for employment insurance, are already dealing with mostly casual employees.

In the view of the NDP and of thousands of Canadians, essential services for the unemployed have become inadequate and inaccessible. Workers all across the country who lose their jobs have to wait for weeks, if not months, without seeing hide nor hair of their first benefits. It has become practically impossible to speak to someone at Service Canada about one's own file and one's own situation.

The unemployed see their bills piling up; entire families are falling into complete financial peril. How many people do we know who can go two whole months with no income and still manage to meet their needs? Are we that rich in Canada that we are able to do that? Meanwhile, Service Canada employees can no longer keep up with the demand, or are let go as a result of the draconian cuts that followed the most recent budget.

The government claims that Canadians had a choice to make: eliminate the deficit or have good public services. That choice is completely absurd. Eliminating the deficit is an excellent idea as long as it is not done at the cost of public services and on the backs of Canadians. They need the front-line services and they must not be deprived of them.

Essential services must be maintained and this government will not be fulfilling its commitment to Canadians by closing hundreds of points of service and revamping appeal procedures in order to make them even less accessible. Accessibility to EI is at an all-time low in Canada. Under the Conservatives, although all workers pay into employment insurance, only 37% of them have access to it when they need it.

In conclusion, the government has put in place rules that are so strict that less than one in four people will henceforth qualify for the program. Let us also recall that the government has not contributed to the employment insurance fund since 1990. The contributors to the fund are people without jobs, people with jobs and employers.

Opposition Motion—The Canadian Economy

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Minister of State (Transport)]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member intently. Having visited his riding several times, including last summer, I want to say that it is a beautiful riding with wonderful people.

However, the NDP policies do not seem to be consistent with the desire of the people of the north. For example, on the gun registry, the member for the Northwest Territories voted against that. We had action through Bill C-38 to increase the ability for environmentally-friendly development at a fast rate. Again, it was something that would be great for the people of the north, but the member voted against it.

Everything we have done as a government is wonderful for the north, but the people across the way just want to make the north a big national park for the Americans.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.

I am delighted to have the chance to discuss this motion, which at its core is about the need for all levels of government to work together to build a balanced 21st century economy. That certainly is something the Liberal Party supports.

First, I have to say it is sad to have to beg a Canadian prime minister to participate in an economic summit with the premiers of the Council of the Federation. It is untenable in a federation to have a prime minister who refuses to attend important meetings with the premiers of the provinces and the territorial leaders. Instead, the Prime Minister prefers to act unilaterally, dictating a new health accord and ramming through costly and harmful crime bills without consulting the provinces and territories, the very entities that will be bearing huge financial costs for these decisions. This is not the way to build a united country or balanced economy. In fact, it is a betrayal of our federation's democratic principles.

Second, I cannot help but find this motion which urges politicians to work together across various regions to be a little hypocritical coming from the leader of a party whose signature economic policy at the outset of his leadership was to pit one region of the country against another. In fact, just a few months ago when the western premiers voiced their concerns about the NDP leader's divisive approach to the Canadian economy, the leader called them the Prime Minister's “messengers” and said, “I'm not responding to any of them”. How can the NDP expect a positive response from the Prime Minister to meet with those very same premiers when its own leader says they are not worth talking to?

If we are going to talk seriously about building a 21st century economy, then Canada needs a responsible government that truly stands for fiscal responsibility, equality of opportunity, and a sustainable environment. Canada needs a party that can establish a track record of sound fiscal management. On that count the current government is failing miserably.

In fact, when the Liberal Party came to office in 1993, a previous Conservative government handed us the largest deficit in Canadian history. Members will remember papers like The Wall Street Journal openly wondering if Canada was becoming a third world banana republic. Economists were writing that Canada was going bankrupt.

The Liberal Party went to work on behalf of Canadians and succeeded. It turned that deficit into a surplus. It grew the economy. It created good jobs across the country. During difficult economic times, the Liberal Party balanced the federal budget, reduced federal debt every year, and produced surplus after surplus after surplus. It reduced the size of government without stifling creativity of the nation or demonizing our civil service. The Liberal Party turned Canada into a globally envied model of fiscal discipline. It did all this while investing in a sustainable future for Canadians and their environment. I am proud to say that I was part of a B.C. Liberal government that succeeded in a very parallel turnaround in British Columbia a decade ago.

However, since 2006, what have the Conservatives done? They turned a $14 billion Liberal surplus into the largest deficit in Canadian history. They took a trade surplus of $26 billion and turned it into a trade deficit of $50 billion. This string of deficits started before the global economic crunch, and let no one claim otherwise. The government spent Canada into a deficit before the recession. To say the Prime Minister's economic record is shoddy is an understatement. He continues to disappoint. Gas prices are rising. Groceries bills are rising. Household bills are going up. Family incomes are not keeping pace. The divide between the haves and the have nots is growing larger and larger. In my city of Vancouver and across the country, more and more Canadians are falling behind.

Young people are struggling to find jobs. As an example of that, this summer I hosted a meeting about prospective youth entrepreneurs. A flood of people came out on a sunny summer evening. They were desperate to get some ideas and encouragement to start their own businesses because they were having trouble finding jobs. These are university graduates, intelligent young people who cannot find work because of the economy which is languishing under this government.

In British Columbia, we have a gorgeous natural heritage and tourism is very important. There are thousands of tourism jobs, especially on our coast and throughout British Columbia. The country's top tourism resort is located on the north Pacific coast actually, near Hartley Bay.

The Liberals have committed for 40 years to protect the waters around Haida Gwaii from risks of a massive job-killing oil spill, but the Conservative government has demonized the very people who are concerned about this risk. Citizens, environmental groups, and first nations who wanted to express concern were demonized. When that did not work, the government, in Bill C-38 , took pen in hand, and I believe on the back of an envelope wiped out the very heart of our environmental assessment legislation to remove the requirement to assess the risk to salmon streams of pipelines going across the heart of British Columbia's wilderness. That is not acceptable. Tourism is incredibly important to our economy and to job creation. The Conservative government is failing the tourism industry.

Last year, the Canadian tourism sector generated $78 billion worth of economic activity and its share of the country's GDP was larger than that of agriculture, forestry and fishing combined. Tourism is responsible for the creation of 600,000 direct jobs and 1.6 million indirect jobs across Canada. That is close to 10% of all jobs in Canada. What is more, tourism's slice of the pie is getting bigger every year.

Despite all that, Canada's share of the global tourism market is shrinking. From 2002 to 2011, most countries welcomed higher numbers of tourists. Not Canada. Over the past decade, Canada fell from seventh to eighteenth on the list of top tourist destinations. The government is entirely responsible for this decline.

Other countries invest heavily in tourism promotion. For example, the United States recently allocated an additional $200 million to fund new tourism promotion initiatives. Not Canada. Canada has cut funding for tourism promotion dramatically.

Given our rich natural and cultural heritage and the unique experiences that tourists can have here, the government should take tourism seriously.

What the government has done instead is it has wiped out enough of the budget of the national parks system so that not only are scientists being laid off, but parks are closing for parts of the season when normally they would be open. What that does is it hurts small businesses, stores, restaurants and tourist services that depend on those national parks. Small businesses are incredibly important to our economy and to job creation.

The Conservative government is failing our small businesses. It failed small businesses when it cut funding from the regional programs that support them. It failed them when it increased EI payroll taxes for businesses. It failed them because it has not changed the small business tax rate even though it has slashed the large corporate tax rate from 22% to 15% since coming into office.

I guess we can see why the Prime Minister has been avoiding the premiers.

With the right leadership, the right choices, and the right ambition, Canada's economy can thrive in the future. We must do better for our remote and northern areas, for our first nations people, for all Canadians. We need to transition to a truly sustainable 21st century economy in all aspects of that word: the people, the businesses, the environment, the economic opportunities. We can do that.

I hope that in November the Prime Minister will hop on a plane to Halifax and sit down with Canada's premiers and start working together. We have all waited long enough.

Opposition Motion—Canadian Economy

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I hope that the member will pay closer attention to the speech I am about to give than he did to the question I just asked him. I will be sharing my time with the member for Hull—Aylmer.

The motion has already been read in the House. We are asking the Prime Minister to show some leadership for once and meet with the premiers who are members of the Council of the Federation during a conference to be held this November in Halifax about how to address the economic uncertainty that Canada is still experiencing. Such proof of leadership is critical given that, contrary to what the government would have us believe, there has been very little communication between the federal government and the provinces and territories concerning economic issues.

The government can talk about individual meetings all it wants, but some issues need to be discussed and explored in depth by all of the regions together. Unfortunately, despite the promises it made in the past, the Conservative government has done nothing to make this happen. We think that this is critical to raising awareness of the flaws in the Conservatives' economic policy regardless of all of the claims they have made so far today and will likely continue to make for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day, the Conservatives did nothing and brag about being responsible for getting Canada through the last recession—even though things are still uncertain now—and for getting Canada through this period relatively unscathed in comparison to the global economy.

But according to most economists and analysts, this is not because of the policies they are implementing, but simply because of Canada's existing financial, economic and banking structures.

Before I continue, I will give some examples of bad Conservative economic policies, policies that represent opportunities the Canadian economy could have had if the right decisions had been made. I will start with their arrival to power in 2006. Members will recall that we had a budget surplus. During their first mandate, the Conservatives decided to reduce the GST by 2%. This was a political and economic move that they bragged about, even though economists said that it was probably the worst way to stimulate the economy. They did it. Since 2006, this has represented a dead loss for the Canadian treasury of between $8 billion and $10 billion a year, so nearly $60 billion overall.

But the Conservatives chose the worst way to invest this $13 billion surplus to best stimulate the Canadian economy. That is what economists told them. That is what we told them. And that is what everyone who knows a thing or two about economics told them.

I mentioned in one of my questions that for every dollar lost in GST revenue, the Department of Finance and most people who study the multiplier effect of such decisions are clear: only 30¢ is put back into the economy. This means that economic growth represents only 30¢ on the dollar of what we lose in revenue.

If the Conservatives truly wanted to effectively stimulate jobs, if they wanted to go in this direction by eliminating the surplus, they could have made other decisions. They could have invested in infrastructure. Canada has an infrastructure deficit of about $130 billion. If they had taken every surplus dollar and invested it in Canadian infrastructure, every dollar would have brought in $1.50 in economic growth. That would put us in the black.

If they had wanted to invest in housing, the return would have been $1.50 for each dollar invested in housing infrastructure. If they had wanted to take measures intended directly for the disadvantaged and the unemployed, the return would have been even better still: for each dollar invested in these measures for the least fortunate, the unemployed and the most disadvantaged people, $1.70 in economic growth would have been generated.

By lowering the GST, the government generated economic growth of 30¢ for each dollar lost. In addition, in terms of revenue from the tax on company profits, the economic growth is also 30¢ for each dollar eliminated or lost.

So the choices the Conservatives made are economic. They tried to justify them but, at the end of the day, instead of investing the $13 billion surplus in paying down the debt, they could have made better choices that would have done more for the Canadian economy.

The government's choices were not made in consultation with the provinces, even though this government and the members who have spoken so far are talking about great communication. It is a unilateral gesture.

I was talking about the $13 billion surplus that had been eliminated in a year and a half because the GST was lowered by two percentage points, among other things. We were in a deficit situation even before the recession, even before the economic stimulus packages. This government claims to be the appropriate manager of public finances. But it must realize that, aside from that period of a year and a half when this government had a budget surplus that it inherited when it was elected and that it changed into a deficit, we still have a deficit. We are celebrating a very important anniversary in 2012. It is the 100th anniversary of a balanced federal Conservative budget, because the last balanced budget under the Conservatives, before the one they inherited in 2006, was in 1912. Do you know who the prime minister was then? Robert Borden.

I know that the Conservatives really enjoy talking about the NDP's economic performance. If we look at the Department of Finance's own figures in the performance analysis of the federal and provincial governments in terms of balanced budgets and proper management of public funds, we can see that all the NDP provincial governments have the best performance economically, as well as in fiscal management and balanced budgets. They are far ahead of the Conservative and Liberal governments. It has been so since 1982 or 1987, depending on which year you choose as a reference.

Once again, in terms of sound management of public funds, the Conservative government has nothing to teach us and we have nothing to learn from it.

We also have to realize that what the Conservatives are doing—once again, generally without consulting the provinces and using a completely one-sided approach—is an impediment to the country's potential growth. I am talking about the restraint measures during this period, among other things. Let me refer you to the last budget and probably the upcoming budget, if we rely on the rumours going around. The Conservative government has started to promote its restraint measures and to talk about cutting 20,000 jobs in the public service, as well as cutting the budget of various departments by 5% to 10%.

Once again, we are talking about general cuts of 5% to 10% at all levels and no notice is being taken of whether we are cutting the fat, as the Conservatives are fond of saying, or whether we are cutting into the bone. I can tell you that, in plenty of departments, many of the austerity measures implemented—the budget cuts—were cuts into the bone. The Conservatives do not care. They are applying the 5% to 10% cuts to everyone, regardless of the impact it will have.

The Conservative government's austerity measures have been criticized by this side of the House, of course, but also by rating agencies. Fitch and Moody's condemned the austerity measures and warned the government not to go too far because austerity measures are dangerous in times of economic uncertainty, such as those we are still facing in Canada. However, the Conservatives turns a deaf ear to all the economic wisdom that is shared with them. We on this side of the House are not surprised. The government refuses to listen to anything we say. We saw this before with the budget consultations and in the different stages of Bill C-38, the mammoth bill. The fact that the Conservatives are turning a deaf ear to wise advice such as that provided by Fitch and Moody's is completely irresponsible.

I would like to end by talking once again about the lack of leadership and communication with regard to employment insurance. The measures proposed in Bill C-38 are there to address a local labour shortage problem that is affecting western Canada and other areas. We agree on that. We are waiting for the minister to provide administrative regulations for employment insurance. The implementation of a Canada-wide employment insurance reform with all these measure that have a negative impact on regions such as eastern Quebec demonstrates a blatant lack of vision for the different economic realities of the specific regions. Although it is becoming more economically diverse, my riding of Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, like those of the Atlantic provinces and others, still depends on seasonal work, whether it is in the forestry, fishing, agricultural or tourism sectors. The Conservative are blind. I will tell you who opposed this reform: most of the provincial premiers, including those of the Atlantic provinces.

For us, it is essential that the government choose the path of co-operation, of working together with the provinces, and that is why we are moving this motion calling on the Prime Minister to attend the economic summit being held by the Council of the Federation in November.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question and for zeroing in on the aspect of Bill C-38 that was the gutting of our environmental legislation.

Let us take one concrete example. Going back to 2009, there was a piece of legislation that was a world model. It was 100 years old: the Navigable Waters Protection Act. I remember the night. I was in a parliamentary committee here in Ottawa. We had canoeing and outdoors groups from all over the Ottawa and Gatineau region coming to the parliamentary committee.

They watched, gobsmacked, as the Conservatives, which was less of a surprise, with the culpable complicity of the Liberal Party voted to gut the Navigable Waters Protection Act. That is the record of the Liberals on the environment. This year they are completing the work.

We know the budget bill that we saw in the spring went after that legislation again. I remember the so-called Minister of the Environment, today in foreign affairs, saying that it was the greatest job killer. Imagine that, saying that a piece of legislation that has protected navigable waters in Canada for over a century, a model for the world, was a job killer. That is the Conservative vision.

They do not understand that in the 21st century, economic growth, protection of the environment and social responsibility all have to go together.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Leader of the Opposition for his detailed vision about a real economic plan for Canada.

This spring we saw the Conservatives' hidden agenda with their omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38, where without any notice to Canadians they cut EI benefits, had massive cutbacks in so many areas and gutted environmental regulations.

My question to the Leader of the Opposition is this. Does this negative experience with Bill C-38 not explain and detail to us why it is so important to have consultations with the provinces and territories about how we work together as a country?

Pensions

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with unemployment stubbornly high with 165,000 young Canadians giving up on finding a job, with trade deficits rising and median income falling, it is time for MPs to bite the bullet on their own pensions. If Canadians need to suck it up, so do we. Liberals are ready for it.

I challenge the Prime Minister to commit today to that reform in the form of a single stand-alone bill that is not mixed in with other bills, like Bill C-38, so that Liberals can unequivocally vote for it.

Employment Insurance

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-38, the current government imposes new appeal and review procedures on employment insurance applicants. Applicants' files will now be reviewed by public servants, which effectively eliminates any legal challenge process.

Is the government trying to do away with the principles of judicial independence that have always guided the decisions made by previous governments?

Canada National Parks Act

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-370, an act to amend the Canada National Parks Act, namely to change the name of St. Lawrence Islands National Park to Thousand Islands National Park. There has been considerable community consultation and there is broad consensus that this will be good for the region and the economy, as the name is recognized by tourists all over the world. I would therefore like to commend the member for Leeds—Grenville for this initiative and recognize that both he and the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands are both good friends of St. Lawrence Islands National Park and of the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve, an official United Nations biosphere reserve.

Very briefly, a biosphere reserve is where local communities or representatives from key sectors such as agriculture, business, conservation, education and tourism work together to develop projects that link conservation with economic development in the region. The committees are voluntary and community based.

St. Lawrence Islands National Park is the smallest national park in Canada and the oldest national park east of the Rockies, having been created in 1904. The area is an important part of our history. The first inhabitants of the park were aboriginal people who began fishing and hunting about 10,000 years ago at the beginning of the Holocene epoch, the epoch that we are now exiting. Later, following the American revolution, European settlers began moving into the area, and during the War of 1812 the area of the St. Lawrence Islands National Park was visited by both American and British warships. In the early 20th century the area became a gateway for the rich and famous in North America, and today elegant homes and summer cottages are among the beautiful sights seen on the various boat cruises of tourist attractions.

The Thousand Islands region consists of 1,864 islands at the western edge of the St. Lawrence Seaway, right in the region of the park.

Why is the park important and why should it be renamed? The first reason is to accurately brand the area. The name that people use to quickly and easily identify the area is the Thousand Islands. If one were to conduct an Internet search for the St. Lawrence Islands, he or she would find very little information. However, if the search were for the Thousand Islands there would be many hits. This is absolutely an indication that the Thousand Islands name is the one that is popularly used to describe the region and the place where the park is located.

The second reason is to accurately describe the region. The St. Lawrence River passes from Kingston to Quebec and beyond. The St. Lawrence Islands National Park stretches from Kingston to Mallorytown, so it really is centred on the Thousand Islands region. It is important not to confuse the area with the whole of the St. Lawrence River and all of the other islands within the St. Lawrence River.

It is also important to distinguish this particular national park from the phrase “parks of the St. Lawrence”, which is used by the Province of Ontario to describe a number of other attractions in the area, including Fort Henry, which, by the way, everyone should visit the first chance they have. It is important to ensure that tourist buses passing on the 401 stop and visit the region and enjoy what it has to offer. The park is a very important part of the region's economy and provides a considerable number of jobs. The latest statistics show there are 438 enterprises, employing almost 6,000 people in Leeds-Grenville alone, that consider themselves visitor based.

While this is an important initiative for the Thousand Islands region, it is important to point out that the recent cuts to Parks Canada mean that the St. Lawrence National Park could be struggling. The Parks Canada agency is responsible for 42 national parks, 167 national historic sites and 4 national marine conservation areas in Canada, and it falls under the responsibility of Environment Canada. Sadly, the government is gutting Parks Canada through implementing $29 million in budget cuts. In so doing, it is undermining the health and integrity of Canada's world renowned parks, risking some of our world heritage sites, significantly reducing the number of scientists and technical staff, hurting relationships with aboriginal peoples and attacking rural economies. Indeed, a former deputy minister of Environment Canada said that the federal budget cuts would undermine a decade of progress on protecting the health of Canada's national parks, while another critic called the cuts a “lobotomy” of the parks' system.

PSAC reported that 1,689 of its members received affected notices and 638 positions will be eliminated, representing close to 30% of all scientists. According to the union, the affected workers include scientists, engineers, carpenters, mechanics, technicians and program managers. If the scientific monitors are reduced, who will know what is happening to Canadian ecosystems and what will restore endangered species like Canada's woodland caribou?

On July 12, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, CPAWS, issued a sobering report about the state of Canada's parks. It highlighted the dangers to our national parks due to funding cuts, the loss of science and monitoring capacity, the growth of inappropriate development within and adjacent to many current and proposed parks, the shortening of seasons, and inappropriate recreation and tourism activities.

Under the Aichi biodiversity targets, the commitment is to protect at least 10% of our marine and 17% of our land areas by 2020. Currently, just 1% of Canada's marine environment is protected and 627 species are at risk of extinction. The rate of extinction is expected to peak in the next 50 years because of climate change, economic expansion, habitat destruction and pollution, yet the government, through Bill C-38, has limited the environmental assessment process and stripped endangered aquatic species of habitat protection.

According Parks Canada's report on plans and priorities, it is likely that user fees at national parks and historic sites will increase at the beginning of the next fiscal year. These include entry fees, camping fees, lockage and mooring fees. A national user fee proposal is expected to be tabled in Parliament in early 2013, which will outline the business increases.

Our party has criticized the Minister of the Environment's claim that businesses near national parks and historic sites are getting a “free ride”. We have stated that it was insulting to the owners and operators of thousands of small businesses across Canada who are a key pillar of the Canadian economy and employ over 500,000 Canadians.

In conclusion, the name change has been thought through by the community. This is not rebranding but rather about attaching the name of a park to a brand that is very old and well-known throughout the world, and something that people naturally talk about when they talk about the region.

One of my earliest memories is visiting the Thousand Islands and sitting on the dock with my brother and dad, waiting for one of the cruises. In fact, it is that faded picture that my father always hung in his office and that now lies quietly in his drawer. I hope to revisit the renamed Thousand Islands National Park with my family very soon. It is time to take them back there. I encourage all members to do so as well.

Employment Insurance

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of the people of Acadie—Bathurst. This petition is signed by 2,248 individuals who are angry about the changes to employment insurance in Bill C-38, including provisions that will weaken entire economic sectors across the country and penalize seasonal workers in the region.

First Nations Financial Transparency Act

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I usually say it is an honour to stand in the House and speak to certain bills, but today I am ashamed. I am ashamed to stand here and speak to a bill that is so offensive to Canada's aboriginal people. It is pretty unbelievable, and today of all days, the day before National Aboriginal Day.

Tomorrow the government will send its representatives out to wish aboriginal people a happy National Aboriginal Day instead of saying that they are there to work with aboriginal people, instead of saying they want to listen to aboriginal people, instead of saying that not only will they work with them but they will refrain from playing the nasty, dirty politics of division that this very legislation is all about.

I will take it one step further. Let us flip Bill C-27 around. Maybe we should be talking about a federal government fiscal transparency act. What would it look like with that crew? Would we talk about the F-35s and how that was bungled? Would we talk about the orange juice that cost $16 in London? Would we talk about the helicopters that have flown ministers around? Would we talk about the Senate appointments, the kickbacks, the breaks for friends who have given the Conservatives money?

That is what we are talking about. We are talking about a government that is so eager to change the channel and play the politics of division with some of the most marginalized people in our country instead of looking at its own complete disrespect for, frankly, legislation that governs this place and also the ethics that the Conservatives seem to be following.

If we talk about an accountability act when it comes to the Conservative government, then let us talk about aboriginal people and how the government has broken that accountability time and time again.

Some years ago the Conservatives apologized to first nations when it came to the residential school tragedy. Some months after that they cut the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, the only decentralized program so successful that it was a world model. It provided cultural healing for aboriginal people across the country. Report after report and accolade after accolade indicated how important it was. However, the government cared so little about its own commitment to residential school survivors that it got rid of that program.

How about the deadline that is approaching on the IAP? The IAP, as many aboriginal people know, is the application people, those who were abused so badly in residential schools, have made that requires to go to another level. Where is the accountability when so few supports have been put in place to support the healing of those people who are applying for the IAP? Where is the work that needs to be done to talk to people like those in my own constituency, in places like Tadoule Lake and Lac Brochet? People of the generation who were abused at residential school do not speak English in the way that may be needed in this process. They need the support for translation and for healing. It is nowhere to be found.

Let us talk about health and how out of the 33 first nations that I represent only 1 of them with a community of 6,000 has a hospital.

Let us talk about the fact that I represent four communities in Island Lake. Over 10,000 people do not have running water, that in Canada in 2012. These communities were among the hardest hit with H1N1. Many health professionals said that it had nothing to do with some sort of genetic predisposition. It had to do with the fact that people did not have running water.

Let us talk about education and the lack of accountability we see in the government in funding first nations education. Aboriginal children, because they are aboriginal, are systematically underfunded because of who they are. They receive less than half in some cases of what provinces will pay for that same aboriginal child to study off reserve. We know that means generation after generation are being left with the legacy of inadequate support and failure when it comes to the federal government.

We could talk about the mould in schools. We could talk about trailers. We could talk about the fastest growing population in Canada having a government that not only is not there to support them, but with a bill like this, insults them.

Let us talk about housing, third world living conditions. I represent communities that have a waiting list of 500 houses, not 5, not 50, but 500.

Let us talk about the way the government has lost its accountability when it comes to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Many people came together and said it is right for Canada to show leadership, to stand up for aboriginal people at the United Nations, to maybe join other countries that are leaders around the world when it comes to working with their aboriginal people. After months of pushing and prodding, and I am proud that our party was at the forefront of saying Canada should do this, yes, the government signed the declaration. It boasted about it, but it has broken the commitments it has made every step of the way.

Most recently, where it is most apparent, is in Bill C-38. The national chief came to the committee and said, “Where is the duty to consult?” By eliminating all of the legislation, the environmental legislation, the lack of protection for fish habitat, the first nations treaty right to fishing is at risk and first nations territorial lands are at risk.

Bill C-38 also proposed changes to employment insurance that would have a disproportionate impact on aboriginal people. Where is the accountability there, when so many aboriginal communities depend entirely on seasonal work? This is not a question of moving on where there is something else.

The Conservatives know very well because they know the statistics and have tried to prevent the rest of us from seeing them. They know that people will turn to provincial welfare. People will turn to the increased social turmoil that unfortunately government after government, and this government is right along with them, not only turns a blind eye to, but frankly encourages. This kind of societal breakdown is unfortunately the legacy of government after government, and this government is no different.

The bill is absurd. It is offensive and it speaks to the government's approach. We have heard about the backward policy of the Conservatives when it comes to refugees and the comment that “Canadians want this”, as though refugees who come to Canada are not Canadian.

Aboriginal people were the first Canadians. The bill seeks to divide people and to pit people against each other and their communities. It seeks to change the channel from the government's failure to live up to its fiduciary obligation, not “it would be great if it did”, but a fiduciary obligation, an understanding that there is a commitment in the Constitution to first nations.

The Conservatives loves to talk about the War of 1812. Let us talk about who allowed us to build a country like Canada. It was first nations people, aboriginal people. In their relationship with the crown, aboriginal people have always been at the other side with an attitude of respect and an attitude of co-operation and they have only been spat in the face. They have been subjected to third world living conditions in a country as wealthy as ours, followed with legislation like this.

I have a prediction here. I am sure I will be digging this quote out in the next few days. The government has its press releases and robocalls ready to go. There are issues around the robocalls. However, the Conservatives have their lines about what side they are on and what side everybody else is on.

Canadians see through this. Canadians are increasingly sick and tired, and frankly disgusted, with the politics of division, these games the Conservatives seek to play with people in our own country, pitting us one against the other. Somehow because we are of this background, we have to have an issue with aboriginal people in aboriginal communities. It is not like that.

I am proud to come from a part of the country and to represent a part of the country where people know that we have to work together, where people know that the legacy of residential schools and of colonialism impacts all of us. People know that it would be nice to have a federal government that stood on the side of eradicating the third world conditions people in Canada face.

I wish I could say there was a good chance of that prediction not becoming true, but I have seen it before. I saw it in the last election.

The government brought up a private member's bill, which again speaks to its two-sided approach. The government says that just one member brought it up so it is not where the government is at. It is a similar story with the private member's Motion No. 312, which seeks to reopen the abortion debate. We hear all sorts of stories from the government. On this one, there is no hiding the fact that the government has been behind it all the way. We might be able to say that for Motion No. 312 too. I certainly would.

After its commitments to sit down with the first nations gathering in January to continue that conversation, the government's wish is to leave this Parliament as one of its lasting legacies one of the most offensive, absurd bills that seeks nothing more than to divide Canadians, to pit Canadians against each other, and most importantly, to pit people against aboriginal people.

This is not fitting of our Canada. This is not in line with the kinds of values that we seek to realize. I am proud to be part of a party that has been at the forefront of standing with aboriginal people: first nations, Métis and Inuit. I am proud to belong to a party that so many people in my part of the country see as the party that has stood for them. I know that is the case among so many aboriginal people across the country. Many of them are looking to us tonight and will be looking to us tomorrow on National Aboriginal Day, to hear that we are willing to work with them; willing to respect our Constitution, the historical framework that is based on a relationship of respect between the crown and first nations; and that we are willing to say that we can build a better Canada.

I say these words, thinking about the elders who have supported me on a personal level, about the leaders who support their communities, about the young people who are looking to us to show leadership. They are not seeing this from the government, but that is another sign of where the government is at.

I am proud to be part of a party that believes that our Canada means working with aboriginal people every step of the way, that our Canada is one in which third world conditions for anyone, including for aboriginal people, will not be tolerated and that our Canada lives on this side of the House and will continue to live on as we fight for it.

[Member spoke in aboriginal language]

Children's Health

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP caucus has decided to vote in favour of Motion M-319, introduced by the member for Ottawa—Orléans, because obesity rates are skyrocketing and they will have a considerable impact on the health of Canadian families and on our health system.

It is important to raise Canadians' awareness of this issue and to create a dialogue that will attack obesity rates in Canada. This is a good initiative and I would like to thank the member for Ottawa—Orléans bringing it forward.

I support the principle of the motion. That being said, and although it is important to make people aware of the impact of childhood obesity, the Conservative government continues to avoid implementing concrete measures that will really attack the problem.

Even worse, some of its new policies, contained in the mammoth Bill C-38, are contrary to this motion. It seems that the government does not have a truly coherent policy to fight childhood obesity. I will come back to that.

As I indicated earlier, I support the principle of this bill because this is a worrisome problem. Obesity is defined as an abnormal or excessive accumulation of body fat, which can be harmful to health. Over 60% of adults age 18 and over—14.1 million Canadians—are overweight or obese. Overall, 26% of Canadian children between the ages of 2 and 17 are overweight or obese. So, it makes sense that this could result in significant costs.

Recent estimates of the economic burden of obesity in Canada range from $4.6 billion to $7.1 billion a year—and I did say “billion”.

The causes of obesity are complex. They can be social, cultural, environmental or behavioural, to name a few. However, two major risk factors for obesity are physical inactivity and poor nutrition. Obesity dramatically increases the risk of many chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, liver and gallbladder diseases, stroke, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cancer, sleep apnea, respiratory problems and more.

In light of these facts, the Conservatives are content to merely table a motion that invites the government to continue its dialogue with the provinces, territories and health stakeholders and encourage discussions to address the factors that lead to obesity. However, everyone knows what these factors are. Instead, the government needs to take active measures to combat obesity.

Instead of simply encouraging dialogue, the government must take real, concrete action, such as establishing obesity rate reduction targets, funding physical activity programs for everyone and regulating processed foods. The government is not taking an active role in fighting rising obesity rates. It simply produces documents entitled, “Declaration on Prevention and Promotion” and “Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Framework for Action to Promote Healthy Weights”. These documents have to do with health promotion strategies and focus especially on healthy living awareness campaigns.

In 2007, however, the Standing Committee on Health released a report entitled, “Healthy Weights for Healthy Kids”. Announced by many progressive—

First Nations Financial Transparency Act

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, transparency and proactive disclosure are important goals for all governments, including first nations governments, and these are goals that the Liberal opposition supports.

The Conservatives have a duty to work with first nations to improve mutual accountability, not just impose made in Ottawa legislation.

First nations are willing partners on issues of governance but the government must stop treating them as adversaries. The Conservative government's recent decision to cut the National Centre for First Nations Governance is hardly a promising start.

Despite the Prime Minister's rhetoric at the recent Crown-First Nations Gathering about resetting the relationship, the Conservative government has shown a total disregard for the rights of indigenous people.

The Supreme Court of Canada established that both federal and provincial governments have a duty to consult aboriginal peoples before making decisions that might adversely affect their aboriginal rights and, in some circumstances, accommodate aboriginal peoples concerns.

Further, we must not forget that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada signed, obliges Canada to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples for matters affecting rights, territories and resources.

The government now defends its lack of progress toward implementing the declaration by claiming that it is merely aspirational in nature.

Now the Conservative government is imposing major changes to first nations financial reporting requirements with no significant prior consultation with those who will have to implement these changes.

The government has used the same flawed approach on drinking water and on matrimonial real property.

The government did not hold any discussions on the specifics of these bills with stakeholders, never mind the opposition, before tabling them.

We have seen the Conservative government explicitly exclude aboriginal participation from their government's hunting and angling advisory panel despite the fact that they are the only Canadians with constitutionally protected hunting and fishing rights.

The Conservative government is a government that seems to have a pathological aversion to consultation with those impacted by their decisions.

When major changes to employment insurance and health care were recently introduced, it was done without any prior consultation with provincial governments, leaving them to sort out major structural changes in their jurisdictions with no federal-provincial dialogue.

When the Prime Minister announced major changes to our pensions, he did so to a foreign audience without having raised it during the federal election only months before or discussing the proposals with experts, stakeholders or Canadians.

The government’s approach violates the crown’s constitutional duty to consult with first nations before changing laws or policies that affect first nations people, institutions and rights.

The previous Liberal government worked with first nations to develop a broad-based and comprehensive mutual accountability framework. This framework was included in the Kelowna accord, which the Conservatives tore up in 2006. The accord established a first nations auditor general, an independent body funded to oversee the accountability framework. This was broadly supported by aboriginal people. It was creative. It was the way forward in terms of building accountability and transparency. The Conservatives cancelled this initiative in 2006.

First nations funding arrangements are currently subject to annual allocations, changing program parameters and reporting obligations, as well as unilateral realignment, reductions and adjustments. We lack a legislative framework for predictable federal fiscal transfers based on the actual cost of delivery of services.

This will require transforming the fiscal relationship with the federal government to respect first nations rights and appropriately align responsibilities. Any effort to improve accountability and transparency must be mutual and should include both enabling provisions for a first nations auditor general and a commitment by the federal government to be accountable for its spending on first nations programs.

Bill C-27 does nothing to streamline the current overwhelming reporting burden, especially for small first nations with limited administrative capacity.

The Auditor General has repeatedly called for meaningful action to reduce unnecessary first nations reporting requirements that shift limited capacity from community programs.

In her 2002 report, the Auditor General recommended that the federal government should consult with first nations to review reporting requirements on a regular basis and to determine reporting needs when new programs are set up. Unnecessary or duplicative reporting requirements should be dropped.

As recently as June 2011, the Auditor General reported government progress toward achieving this needed rationalization as unsatisfactory. The government has failed to make meaningful progress on this issue.

First nations provide a minimum of 168 different financial reports to the 4 major funding departments: INAC, Health Canada, HRSDC and CMHC. That is three per week. The majority of these communities have less than 500 people. AANDC alone receives 60,000 reports from first nations annually as a requirement under existing funding agreements. Legislation that adds additional reporting requirements for first nations must also deal with this overwhelming and often outdated and unnecessary burden of existing reporting requirements.

As I have indicated, the Liberals fully support the principle of proactive disclosure of financial information for first nations chiefs and council to band members. Clearly, cases of first nation citizens being denied access to this information are unacceptable and it may be that existing legislation provisions should require proactive disclosure.

However, as the courts have ruled, this right of access to information does not extend to the general public. Therefore, the proactive disclosure provisions in this legislation must be changed so they provide proactive disclosure to first nations citizens alone.

There are existing models from first nations that already have strong governance models which can be adopted. There are examples of bands that are already proactively disclosing financial statements on password protected websites. These are the types of creative solutions that result from thorough two-way consultations when the government does not just speak but listens and internalizes what stakeholders have to say.

Bill C-27 would force first nations to disclose financial information related to band-owned businesses to all Canadians, not simply remuneration paid out of federal grants and contributions. This is inconsistent with the principles of first nations self-government and contravenes the Privacy Act, as well as a ruling by the Federal Court.

This measure could potentially make band-owned businesses vulnerable to predatory practices, and put them at a competitive disadvantage.

I am very concerned about the double standard that would be applied under this legislation. Non-aboriginal private corporations are not forced to publicly disclose consolidated financial statements. This could very well defeat the government's stated goal of stimulating economic development on reserves, as my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan has said.

I will also point out that paternalistic lectures about accountability are a little rich coming from the Conservative government. It is a government that has decided to rule by ideology, blind to facts, blind to the reality of everyday Canadians and free from accountability offered by access to reliable statistics. To facilitate this, it has muzzled scientists, bullied non-governmental organizations and slashed programs focused on gathering and analyzing evidence-based data.

In the 2006 election, the Conservative Party of Canada was fined by Elections Canada for overspending its campaign limit by $1.3 million and to have tried to inappropriately collect $800,000 from taxpayers in rebates.

In 2011, Conservative senators, Doug Finley and Irving Gerstein, as well as senior campaign officials, Michael Donison and Susan Kehoe reached a plea deal for misleading Elections Canada. It also seems increasing likely that there was a coordinated effort to keep Canadians from the polls last year. Elections Canada is currently investigating these allegations.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister is now facing a serious investigation by Canada's independent election authority for spending irregularities. The same individual is shockingly the government's spokesperson on election fraud. So much for accountability.

What about transparency? Canada's Information and Privacy Commissioners have publicly stated that while other nations are moving toward more open and accountable federal governments, our government remains one of the most unaccountable and secretive in Canada's history.

Bill C-38, the recently passed 425-page budget implementation bill, amends over 70 different acts and could end over 50 years of environmental oversight in Canada. Not only were these changes put forward without proper consultation, they were pushed through Parliament in a way to circumvent democratic scrutiny.

First nations have little to learn about accountability and transparency from the government.

As I have stated, the Liberals support the underlying goals of the legislation but are very concerned about how it was brought to the House.

The bill, as written, is inconsistent with the principle of first nations self-government.

It is inconsistent with the new approach to relations between the Government of Canada and first nations which was supposed to have resulted from the residential schools apology in 2008.

It is inconsistent with the Conservatives' belated and half-hearted support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Prime Minister's commitment at the Crown-First Nations Gathering to reset this relationship.

We also have deep concerns about some of the unintended consequences of the impact on local capacity and first nations owned businesses. This legislation will need significant improvements and much further consultation with first nations.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-27, an act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations. I will declare at the outset that New Democrats will be opposing the legislation.

I will read from the legislative summary and I want to thank the analysts for the very good work they did in providing a good background on this bill.

The summary states:

The proposed legislation...applies to over 600 first nations communities defined as “Indian bands” under the Indian Act, provides a legislative basis for the preparation and disclosure of First Nations' audited consolidated financial statements and of remuneration, including salaries and expenses, that a First Nation or any entity that it controls pays to its elected officials.

I will come back to the entity because it is an important reason for us to oppose the legislation.

I want to start, though, by reminding the House and people who may be listening about the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the government indicated it would support and take some steps in implementing it in Canada. Of course, we have seen no action on that.

Article 4 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples says that indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions. This is an important aspect in that this is about the right to autonomy and self-determination. This bill was not developed in consultation with first nations and it certainly does not reflect that right to autonomy and self-determination.

I will provide a bit of background. When we listen to the Conservatives, sometimes we think that first nations do not do any reporting. I have to point out that first nations governments currently do all kinds of reporting and audited statements.

I want to refer to a couple of pieces out of the legislative summary. It states:

First Nations and the federal government are both subject to various policy-based and legal requirements regarding the management and expenditure of federal public funds...

Through various federal reporting requirements, First Nations are also accountable to AANDC for the federal public funds they receive.

In turn, through the annual audit cycle and program reports, AANDC is answerable to Parliament and the Canadian public.

AANDC's expenditures are listed in the Public Accounts of Canada, as are contribution agreements signed with First Nations.

The summary goes on to talk about current legal requirements and states:

—the Indian Bands Revenue Moneys Regulations require, in part, that a band's financial statements be audited annually, and that the auditor's report be posted “in conspicuous places on the Band Reserve for examination by members of the Band.

There have been some questions about the whole issue around access to information, and there is an analysis. I want to touch on one point on the Access to Information Act. This is an important piece of what first nations are being asked to disclose versus what other non-public sector organizations are being asked to disclose.

The summary goes on to state:

Section 20(1)(b) of the Access to Information Act prohibits a government institution from disclosing financial information provided to it by a third party who consistently treats this information as confidential. In Montana Band of Indians v. Canada...the Federal Court held that First Nations' financial statements are confidential information within the meaning of section 20(1)(b) of the Access to Information Act, and therefore are not subject to public disclosure. However, in Sawridge Band v. Canada...the Federal Court of Appeal held that these financial statements are not confidential vis-à-vis the members of the First Nations band, since band members may review their own band's financial statements under the Indian Bands Revenue Moneys Regulations.

This is important because these court cases indicate that first nations have a right to have this information disclosed to them, but it is not the right of the general public to have access to what could be confidential information.

Under the section titled “Current Policy-Based Requirements”, it states:

Under the Year-End Financial Reporting Handbook, First Nations must submit to AANDC annual audited consolidated financial statements for the public funds provided to them. These include salaries, honoraria and travel expenses for all elected, appointed and senior unelected band officials. The latter includes unelected positions such as those of the executive director, band manager, senior program director and manager. First Nations are also required to release these statements to their membership.

We already have rules in place that govern the release of this information. We heard the minister say that this was policy but now the government needed legislation. I would argue that the minister already has the authority, and in fact the minister admitted he has the authority, to request this information when it is not being submitted.

In December 2006, we had a report commissioned by the Conservatives called “From Red Tape to Clear Results: the Report of the Independent Blue Ribbon Panel on Grant and Contribution Programs ”. This report recommended a couple of general principles around grants and contributions, which included:

1) Respect the recipients—they are partners in a shared public purpose. Grant and contribution programs should be citizen-focussed. The programs should be made accessible, understandable and usable.

The key thing in that is “Respect the recipients”.

The second guiding principle states:

2) Dramatically simplify the reporting and accountability regime—it should reflect the circumstances and capacities of recipients and the real needs of the government and Parliament.

Further in the report, the authors specifically dealt with first nations, Inuit, Métis and other aboriginal organizations by saying:

Fiscal arrangements with First Nations governments are complex, reflecting not only the varied circumstances of the 630 First Nations in Canada but also the fact that payments to First Nations governments are (or ought to be) more like intergovernmental transfers than typical grants and contributions.

Intergovernmental transfers would actually respect that nation-to-nation status that I believe Canada has agreed to through the negotiation of treaties.

The report goes on to say:

The panel is of the view that mechanisms other than grants or contributions for the funding of essential services such as health, education and social assistance in reserve communities are needed...

Then it went on to say that it was outside of its mandate.

The report did say:

Nevertheless, in all our consultations...we were reminded that the current practice of treating these kinds of transfers to First Nations, Inuit, Métis and Aboriginal organizations as more or less standard contribution arrangements is fraught with problems and leads to a costly and often unnecessary reporting burden on recipients.

I come back to the fact that an auditor general looked at the kind of reporting that was required from first nations communities and, over and over again, the auditor general continued to talk about the fact that first nations were required to do all kinds of reports.

The minister spoke about the Whitecap First Nation, and I will refer to that for one second. It came up in a question. The aboriginal affairs committee was fortunate enough to visit with the Whitecap Dakota First Nation and look at the economic enterprises. The minister has argued that part of this would lead to better economic development. The Whitecap Dakota has a very different take on that, and it has raised concerns with the other entity that I referred to in section 6(1) of the act. There are many first nations like this, but Whitecap is an example of a first nation that has in place stellar reporting requirements.

The letter states:

—that ensure the members of Whitecap are fully apprised of Whitecap's financial position. In this regard, Whitecap has approved 20 unqualified audits and has implemented a system of public review of the audits. In addition, as you are aware, Whitecap has also created the Whitecap Council Compensation Commission that has the specific mandate of ensuring that the compensation received by the Whitecap Council is fair, equitable and accountable.

The letter goes on to say that there are some concerns about the fact that salaries or expenses are lumped into a definition of remuneration which would have the potential to mislead people as to what his salary actually was. Of course members in the House have salaries and expenses reported quite separately.

It further states:

Bill C-27 on the other hand goes beyond the reporting related to funds received from the Federal Government. It would also appear to extend beyond the requirement for public sector reporting under generally accepted accounting principles as consolidated reporting of remuneration would include any business entities controlled by a First Nation.

The minister said that would only be salaries paid by these entities, but why would the federal government be interfering in a business project where a band member would be receiving remuneration from that business entity? If the Conservatives were truly concerned about economic development, they would focus on providing first nations the tools and resources they need to do that economic development, rather than looking at what a chief or council member was paid from another business entity. I am not clear why the minister is thinking that enhances economic development.

Many of the first nations that we visited, these were business partnerships. A private sector company works with a first nations company in a business partnership relationship, and some of these businesses may not want some of this information published for competitive reasons. Therefore, I would urge the government to take a hard look at this.

It was also interesting to hear the minister talk about openness and accountability. In his speech he said, “open accountable government is a stable government”. The Conservatives are setting up a double standards. On the one hand, they are saying that first nations have to do more, report more, be more open and accountable, despite the fact that they file almost 200 reports every year to the federal government. The Auditor General has identified that. On the other hand, they will not come clean when it comes to releasing their own facts and figures about the budget implementation act, Bill C-38, its costs and what the impact will be on that. In fact, in an article dated June 19, the PBO said that the Conservative government was fighting him on access to information. He said that government-wide budget cuts would impact federal agencies.

If open and accountable government leads to stable government, why is this government not willing to cough up the facts and figures itself? Why does it have two different standards?.

Further on in this article, Mr. Page said, “What does this even mean? Someone has to explain that to me. Does he mean”, referring to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, “we're having too much impact?” He goes on to say:

Well I ain't apologizing for that. I'm not apologizing for the work we did on the F-35s, on crime bills, or on the fiscal sustainability reports. Those are all papers the government has not produced, that I produced with help from a group of people you could fit around two dinner tables.

For months, Page has been asking for detailed information on the Conservatives' plans for implementing $5.2 billion in government-wide cuts. Although the overall figure was revealed in the March budget, Canadians remain in the dark in terms of how the cuts will affect programs and services they use.

Page published a legal opinion this week, solicited from a leading constitutional lawyer, that concluded that 64 agencies were withholding information and breaking the law by denying the information.

Later in this article, “Following Page's initial request for information, only 18 of 82 federal organizations came through”.

Surely anybody who is looking at this information would recognize that we have an inequality and an injustice here. On the one hand, the federal government refuses to tell Canadians about the taxpayer money it is using. It is refusing to give that information through the Parliamentary Budget officer. On the other hand, the government is saying that first nations have to be subject to a different set of rules that the government itself does not respect. Why would they ask anybody in the House to support that bill?

There are a couple of other points I want to raise on this issue. I refer back to the Auditor General's report of 2002, entitled “Streamlining First Nations Reporting to Federal Organizations”. According to the legislative summary for this bill, this 2002 Auditor General's report:

...described existing federal reporting requirements as a “significant burden” on First Nations communities. It estimated that an average of 168 reports—200 in some communities—are required annually by the principal federal bodies that provide funding to First Nations for the delivery of various programs and services. The report suggested, among other things, that federal departments and agencies better coordinate their reporting requirements by streamlining their program authorities, thereby reducing the number of audits and reports required of First Nations.

The legislative summary goes on to say:

In a December 2006 status report on the management of programs for First Nations, the Auditor General found that meaningful action by the federal government was still needed to "reduce the unnecessary reporting burden placed on First Nations communities.” Noting that AANDC alone obtains more than 60,000 reports a year from over 600 First Nations, the report concluded that the resources devoted to the current reporting system could be better used to provide direct support to communities.

Surely, with 60,000 reports and the authority that already resides with the minister, there is sufficient reporting going on. I would refer back to the report from the independent blue ribbon panel as well, which also highlighted the excess reporting required from first nations, Métis, Inuit and other aboriginal organizations.

Again, nothing has happened with this 2006 blue ribbon report. Nothing has happened in terms of looking at the nation-to-nation relationship. Nothing has happened in moving toward intergovernmental transfers instead of the grants and contributions process that is in place.

There is no doubt that at times community members have difficulty in getting the information they need, but the minister has already acknowledged that he does have the authority to get bands to release that information. The question again becomes one of why the minister does not exercise his authority.

In his speech, of course, the minister indicated that exercising that authority is paternalistic. However, it is a bit odd that on the one hand he is saying it would be too paternalistic for the minister to require the reports that are already in the policies under AANDC, while on the other hand the Conservatives have included an administrative measure in Bill C-27 under proposed paragraph 13(1)(b) that the government could:

withhold moneys payable as a grant or contribution to the First Nation under an agreement that is in force on the day on which the breach occurs and that is entered into by the First Nation and Her Majesty in right of Canada as represented by the Minister, solely or in combination with other ministers of the Crown, until the First Nation has complied with its duty

If that is not paternalistic, I do not know what is.

It sounds to me that on the one hand the minister is saying that he does not want to interfere, but on the other hand, he is making sure that he could interfere with proposed paragraph 13(1)(b).

Another question I asked the minister was on proposed subsection 6(1), which says:

The First Nation must annually prepare a document entitled “schedule of remuneration” that details the remuneration paid by the First Nation or by any entity that it controls, as the case may be, to its chief and each of its councillors, acting in their capacity as such and in any other capacity, including their personal capacity.

The minister indicated that this was just about whatever this entity may pay a chief and councillors. However, that is not as clear as it could be, and it still does not solve the issues around the impact this may have on business relationships.

In sum, there are a couple of very key points in this piece of legislation that certainly raise concerns.

The minister mentioned the Assembly of First Nations in one of his responses. Back in January 2006, the Assembly of First Nations put together an “Accountability for Results” position paper. It outlined a number of principles that, working in conjunction with the federal government, would have helped bolster the accountability and transparency piece.

Part of that was based upon work that the Auditor General had done, which set out five principles: clear roles and responsibilities, clear performance expectations, balanced expectations and capacities, credible reporting, and reasonable review and adjustment.

The Assembly of First Nations and chiefs across this country have indicated a willingness to work with the government on accountability measures, but again, how were first nations included in the drafting of this piece of legislation?

In conclusion, on June 15 there was a press release from the minister saying that the government was strengthening fiscal management and accountability. This press release would indicate that the government already has the power to do many of the things that are included in this legislation, so the big question then becomes why the legislation is needed at this point in time.

It sounds to me as though it is continuing to play a game, saying first nations are not responsible and are not accountable. That is just simply not true.

Rather than bringing forward this piece of legislation that does not address some of the underlying problems with lack of adequate funding and lack of ability to develop some of that capacity, the government brings forward a bill that continues to play to a stereotype in this country.

I urge all members in this House to oppose the legislation.

Employment Insurance

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House to present a petition signed by 604 residents of Acadie—Bathurst who oppose the changes the government wants to make to employment insurance in Bill C-38. These changes will not make the system more accessible. Instead, they will further penalize seasonal workers and make Canadians poorer.

Financial Literacy Leader Act

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Speaker, absolutely there are a number of concrete steps that we should be taking. This party has often advocated and will continue to advocate so that our seniors do not live in poverty and are not having to choose between medication and food on the table.

We have talked about ways to address the needs of the public, such as addressing the fees for university students and the cost of post-secondary education. We should also be looking at addressing health care in a very realistic way so that people have access to health care in a timely manner.

We could be doing so many things but once again the government, after last week's travesty with Bill C-38 and then it passing through the House this week, is in the process of shutting down debate. The government was not interested in the over 800 amendments that were put forward that would have made the bill better for Canadians. It did not accept one amendment.

I am just hoping, now that the government has passed that bill, that when this goes to committee stage it will pay heed to the amendments put forward by the opposition.

Canada-Panama Economic Growth and Prosperity Act

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House to discuss Bill C-24 to implement the free trade agreement between Canada and Panama.

First, I would like to point out that, once more, this motion is subject to time allocation. This is the 25th time this year that we have had to put up with a motion of that kind.

I am going to make a somewhat lengthy comment about the level of absurdity that this Parliament has reached by being constantly constrained by the party in power. This week—actually for two weeks—we have watched the heights of contempt for this Parliament being scaled with Bill C-38. The Conservatives refused to split up a budget bill of more than 400 pages that has impacts on all kinds of departments: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Agri-Food, not to mention Human Resources and Skills Development because of the employment insurance issue that affects fisheries and tourism and that got a very poor reception from most Canadians. The provincial governments are angry. Another concern, and not the least of them, is the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

All of this is in a huge bill on which we were muzzled. The hon. members opposite are constantly throwing numbers at Canadians: 50 hours, 70 hours. Those numbers cannot really be weighed by someone who is not in the House. They do not accurately reflect the time that members would normally have required to share information and hear from witnesses in committee on such dense bills, had the work of Parliament been respected by the current government in this House.

Another aspect of Bill C-38 is completely mind-boggling. Just thinking that we were muzzled on it is astounding. There were decisions to eliminate organizations. Division 33 of part 4 repeals the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development Act and allows the government to take the necessary measures to do away with the centre. We are gagged on fundamental issues dealing with the elimination of organizations that have been very important to the development of Canadian policies.

On the Experimental Lakes Area, Mr. Del Giorgio, a professor of biology, said:

This is a disaster of proportions...that are hard to describe. It is not just the Canadian scientific community that is completely outraged; people from all over the world are sending petitions.

The government is shutting down the Experimental Lakes Area, not just slashing its budget.

For two weeks, we were simply gagged on that as well.

Here we are with Bill C-24 before us, a free trade agreement. This is not some minor information that can just slip through. This is a potential free trade agreement with a country in the Americas. That is important. Has this bill received unanimous support? If the bill had unanimous support, we could perhaps better understand why a gag order was imposed again, but no, we have before us a bill that does not have unanimous support.

Todd Tucker, from Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, has conclusively demonstrated that Panama is one of the worst tax havens in the world and that the Panamanian government has deliberately allowed the country to become a tax haven.

Despite requests from the Canadian government, Panama refused to sign a tax information exchange agreement. This point is very important. At some point during the whole free trade agreement process with Panama, the Canadian government asked for a tax information exchange agreement. Why? First, Panama has some serious problems with illegal money and money laundering associated with illegal drugs.

There is something I do not get at all. There are members here who brag about being tough on crime. They are in the middle of negotiating with a small Latin American country that has a serious money laundering problem associated with drugs and, suddenly, it is no big deal.

The Conservatives want to be tough on crime with a 16-year-old kid who makes the mistake of growing a few pot plans in his basement, but they do not have the courage to apply their own tough on crime logic, in an international agreement, to a problem as serious as money laundering associated with drugs. That makes no sense at all.

My NDP colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster moved a motion to stop the implementation of a trade agreement between Canada and Panama until Panama agrees to sign a tax information exchange agreement. This motion was rejected by the Liberals and the Conservatives. But in light of this situation, it made sense to resolve this issue first. Other countries, including the United States, that came to agreements with Panama signed similar agreements.

I will repeat, because this is a very important point. Why did a so-called tough on crime government disregard the very idea of a tax information exchange agreement that could have covered all types of trade agreements? This could have perhaps covered the problems related to money laundering. How could this have been excluded from the negotiations and not remain central to the agreement? I do not understand it.

This is not a unanimous bill, and so it is not a bill that should be muzzled. Teresa Healy of the Canadian Labour Congress testified that although the minimum labour standards of the International Labour Organization are cited, the agreement is still weaker than it should be. Moreover, as Ms. Healy pointed out, the current Panamanian government has become increasingly tough on unions and workers in recent years.

Some things having to do with workers' rights and fundamental human rights have not yet been resolved.

Muzzling debate about Bill C-24 amounts to muzzling debate on tax evasion and workers' rights. This is not trivial; it is really not trivial.

Panama is not Norway. You need to show a good dose of bad faith to throw the name Panama in the middle of existing agreements with northern European countries. That is what I heard two or three times from colleagues on the opposite side of the House. You cannot put Panama on the same list as Norway and Switzerland without showing bad faith.

A fair trade policy can be realistic. For instance, from the beginning of our discussions with emerging countries, we should demand standards regarding human rights and tax ethics that are in line with Canadian standards. It would be simple. We would not have any surprises or any appendices to add at the end, but rather just the fundamental principle whereby all trade agreements must protect and promote human rights. We should be talking about this from the beginning, imposing it, and prohibiting the import, export or sale in Canada of any products considered to have been manufactured in deplorable conditions that do not meet international standards. This notion should be imposed at every stage of the negotiation process. Ensuring that all trade agreements respect sustainable development is a notion that this government cannot seem to grasp or assimilate.

The agreement includes side agreements on labour co-operation and the environment. These side agreements are not in the main body of the text. Someone probably suddenly realized that a bare minimum should be done in order for this to be acceptable. Why is it not simply in the main body of the text?

More than one-third of Panamanians live in dire poverty. Free trade agreements should guarantee that better living conditions and working conditions will result from the agreements, rather than the potential exploitation of the poverty there. Although the agreement appears to protect the environment on the surface, it does not include any really strong measures or any mechanisms to resolve disputes.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, which someone mentioned earlier, Panama is a major financial conduit for drug trafficking and money laundering activities. Under those conditions, there is no way anyone can guarantee a better way of life for the people of Panama.

Trade between Canada and Panama is currently worth $150 million. Why the urgency, especially since we already do $150 million worth of trade with this trading partner? How can the Conservatives justify ramming another free trade agreement down our throats as quickly as possible, using another closure motion, when the agreement does not even ensure that Panamanian tax laws will not encourage tax evasion?

I congratulate the government on one thing: in this agreement, Canada has kept over-quota tariffs on supply managed goods such as dairy, poultry and egg products. That is very good.

What is deplorable about this bill is the failure to address human rights and tax evasion. I have been talking about this from the beginning. Every time we fail to address such fundamental issues in our international agreements, we somewhat deride the work of our most courageous predecessors in Canada. They struggled to move the country forward, while constantly working to improve our fundamental rights. We must never lose sight of that.

Fisheries and Oceans

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canada is trying to create obstacles for anyone who wants to move forward at the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development. After opposing the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, now the Conservatives are blocking efforts to protect marine biodiversity in extraterritorial waters. Just because the Conservatives have decided to destroy Canada's marine biodiversity with Bill C-38 does not mean they have to attack that of the rest of the world.

Why are the Conservatives determined to obstruct a project that could protect the oceans for future generations?

Employment Insurance

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Mr. Speaker, people on P.E.I. are very concerned about Bill C-38. Fishermen on wharves are now saying that anyone who applies to buy a new fishing licence would automatically be disqualified from EI.

I would like the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to confirm to this House and to all Canadians that new entrants to the fishery would not be disqualified from employment insurance.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, among the many casualties of Bill C-38 are small business owners and seasonal industries. In communities large and small across Canada, EI eligibility changes will force workers in tourism, fishery, forestry and farming to leave their industries or their region to find other work.

Where does that leave the tens of thousands of small businesses that count on their seasonal workers' experience and productivity? On top of the many other difficulties that small businesses face, some will not even make it.

Why did the government not even consult seasonal businesses? Why did it just hurt them?

Government Legislation

[John Baird, Conservative, Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, this government is very proud of its economic agenda. We are very proud of budget 2012 and the clear map it sets out for long-term economic prosperity. It contains measures on short-term economic growth to provide a real shot in the arm for the Canadian economy and provides measures in the medium and long term that will make our economy even more sustainable and create even more jobs and long-term prosperity.

We had a significant amount of debate on Bill C-38, probably more than any other bill since I have been a member of this place. That debate is now concluded. Now we will refocus and do even more to create jobs, more to create more opportunity, so that every Canadian who is looking for a job can have a job.

CANADA-PANAMA ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY ACT

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-24, which has to do with a Canada-Panama free trade agreement.

It is very important that we take a stand and take the time to read this free trade agreement, because Panama is an extremely important international partner. Panama is the largest economic power in Central America, partly because of the Panama Canal, which sees a large number of goods pass through. Right now, it is being expanded, which will allow for greater flow and traffic.

Maritime traffic is rather important to Panama. Panama also is specializes in financial services, commerce and tourism. So it is important for us to examine this agreement and decide what this agreement with Panama will contain. We need to do things the right way.

I have listened to my colleagues' comments today and will get back to them shortly. I think that the government is botching this job and is not taking the time to create a worthwhile agreement. The NDP is in favour of free trade agreements if they are responsible and sustainable. Right now, we have the momentum to show that Canada is a leader. Right now, Panama is an emerging country. Canada, as a proud economic partner and world leader, could show Panama the way in terms of proper environmental norms and a system of rights for workers and unions in Panama, and we could make this free trade agreement into an agreement that supports sustainable and viable long-term development.

This could be the time for Canada to move things forward internationally. Canada could be an excellent partner. Unfortunately, the Conservative government is completely ignoring this extremely interesting opportunity that is right in front of it.

The sad thing about this bill is that there has been a time allocation motion, which means that we will not be able to discuss it in greater detail. However, there are a number of interesting points I would like to make. When I read Bill C-24, I noticed a number of shortcomings. My NDP colleagues tried to make amendments to correct those defects, but unfortunately, all of the proposed amendments were rejected.

In my view, the most significant flaw is probably the fact that there is no tax information exchange agreement in this bill. I will say more about that later. There is also a glaring lack of vision with respect to sustainable development. The agreement lacks meaningful protection for the rights of Panamanian workers. We know what happens when jobs and workers are not protected. When that happens in Canada, factories close their doors and move jobs elsewhere. It is important to ensure that Panamanian workers are protected. Another problem is the fact that this is a bilateral agreement, not a multilateral one.

As for the tax information exchange agreement, it may sound very confusing to some, but actually, it is quite simple. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development gives a very good description of tax information exchange agreements on its website. Basically, any country can refer to that description in order to create its own tax information exchange agreement. All of the information is on the website. It was created in 2002, and since that time, many countries, including Canada and Panama, have used this model to clarify their tax information exchange agreements.

So what is a tax information exchange agreement? The following description is from the OECD document:

The purpose of this agreement is to promote international co-operation in tax matters through exchange of information...The agreement grew out of the work undertaken by the OECD to address harmful tax practices...The agreement represents the standard of effective exchange of information for the purposes of the OECD's initiative on harmful tax practices.

As I just mentioned, many countries have followed this model to create their tax information exchange agreements. Canada has entered into several such agreements, for instance with the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Saint Lucia. In 2010, Panama signed a tax information exchange agreement with the United States, one of its biggest financial partners.

I just asked the hon. member for Burlington a question. I asked him why Bill C-24 does not contain this kind of tax information exchange agreement with Panama based on the same model as the one presented by the United States.

I was told that it was not ready in time. That is not a reason. In fact, it is proof that this bill was completely botched. We need to take the time to do things. This is important; it is a free trade agreement. I was honestly shocked when I heard this. If it was not ready in time, why not take the time to do things the way they should be done before presenting them to the House? Why did they not accept the amendments presented by the opposition to resolve the problems with this bill? I wonder.

It was not ready in time, and I find that very sad. This is clear evidence that we should go back, call a halt to this bill and secure an agreement. It is not as if things are pressing and we absolutely must have a free trade agreement with Panama by tomorrow. And it is not as if they are our most important partner. Panama is not Canada's largest trade partner. Bilateral trade in terms of goods between our two countries was worth only $149 million in 2008. We are not even talking about 1%. We have the time to do things right. I do not see why we are not, and it saddens me a little to hear this.

I know that Panama was recently removed from the OECD grey list because it has implemented information exchange standards, but we do not even have these information exchanges with Panama. If that were the case, this bill would already be much better. We do not have a tax information exchange agreement, but the Conservatives, on the other side of the House, are trumpeting the double taxation convention that Panama has agreed to sign. They think that will do.

Is it really enough? I do not think so. Double taxation tax treaties—the definition is on the Canada Revenue Agency website—are designed to avoid double taxation for people who would otherwise pay tax on the same income in two countries. That applies to legitimate income only. A tax information exchange agreement helps track down all income, legitimate or otherwise. It is a much sounder and more interesting way to protect ourselves in terms of taxation standards.

Again, I am extremely disappointed not to find this exchange agreement in the bill, especially since we have already signed such agreements and so has Panama. So why not sign one together? It is a mystery. My colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster proposed some extremely interesting amendments, including some on sustainable development and responsible investment. That is what we want to see. That is the direction we should be taking. We are all responsible. We all live on the same planet and everyone has the right to fairness.

We were also very disappointed that the benefits of sustainable development were not considered. I understand that it is a system of rules, but it has to be applied fairly and it is not included in this bill.

This bill touched on several issues all at once. I will not have time to talk about protection for workers or the environment, which has been clearly bungled in this bill, as it was in Bill C-38. I would like to talk about what we want to see in a Canada-Panama agreement.

We simply want a fair trade policy, one that gives a rightful place to social justice, and fair, sustainable, equitable trade. These are very simple things that should be the basis for a free trade agreement with another country. We should instead be negotiating multilateral agreements. However, if the decision is made to enter into a bilateral agreement such as this one, we have to do more and make a more responsible commitment with this kind of agreement.

We are reaffirming our vision of a fair trade policy that puts the pursuit of social justice, strong public-sector social programs and the elimination of poverty at the heart of an effective trade strategy.

Let us protect the environment, protect workers and, at the same time, ensure that the tax measures included in this type of bill are appropriate.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, quite simply, Bill C-38 enhances environmental protection and creates an opportunity for sustainable environmental development.

I would just like to stay focused on what we are contemplating today. From the standpoint of provisions with respect to the environment and the Canada-Panama free trade agreement, as I mentioned in my speech, the agreement on the environment commits both countries to pursue a very high level of environmental protection, to improve and enforce environmental laws effectively and maintain appropriate environmental assessments. We are making sure that we have sustainable development while still having protected environmental programs in place, whether through this trade agreement or others that we will do in the future.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the bulk of the member's speech focused on the environment. The agreement says that neither party will do any damage to their domestic environmental laws. Could the member comment on what she feels Bill C-38 would mean in terms of Canada's environmental laws in the context of this free trade agreement? Does she see that many of us feel that Bill C-38 actually reduces Canada's environmental protection and what does she think it means in this context?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is nice to get back to work again and stay focused on additional issues after we unfortunately passed Bill C-38, the budget bill, last night. Today we have to move on to a variety of other issues, whether we like it or not, and I am happy to add a few comments on the Canada-Panama free trade agreement.

The Liberal Party has been in support of this agreement for some time and, in spite of some concerns, which I will outline, we will continue to be in support of free and fair trade.

One of the key concerns with respect to expanding our trading relationship with Panama has been evident with respect to the government's free trade agenda. We must not put aside our domestic practices within the countries with which we are seeking new trade agreements.

As we negotiate free trade agreements, there are some very important issues that we need to keep in mind. Whether they are issues of money laundering, tax evasion, human trafficking or issues of human rights, areas in which we could use our leverage on the agreement to make some improvements in the quality of life for people in those countries with which we are making agreements, but also to have some clear benefits over and above just the dollars and cents factor for Canada.

An additional point that should be kept in mind and one that the government would do well to carefully consider was raised by Jim Stanford of the Canadian Auto Workers, someone we see often on the Hill when we are dealing with issues in the auto industry, who recently spoke at the international trade committee. Part of his presentation outlined the following with respect to the lack of apparent benefits, as far as he was concerned, that was being derived by the free trade agreement.

Mr. Stanford pointed out a variety of things and the five longest-standing trade agreements were some of the things he talked about. He referred to the trade agreement with the United States, Mexico, Israel, Chile and Costa Rica. Canada's exports to them grew more slowly than our exports to our non-free trade partners, while our imports surged must faster than with the rest of the world.

Mr. Stanford went on to say that if the policy goal was to boost exports and strengthen the trade balance, then signing free trade deals would be exactly the wrong thing to do in his opinion.

With Colombia there are outstanding issues related to labour and human rights issues that I referred to earlier. The same concerns apply to Jordan as they do to Panama.

With respect to Panama, one of the outstanding concerns has been the issue of tax havens and issues relating to money laundering, which has been talked about a lot in this House over the several years that we have been discussing and debating this particular agreement, as with other agreements.

I will put this concern into context. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, in response to issues relating to the Canada-Jordan FTA, in violation of human and labour rights and Canada's response, told this House:

...what both hon. members fail to realize is the entire issue of extraterritoriality. There are certain things we can do when negotiating with another country and certain things we cannot do because they are beyond our sphere of influence.

Even if it is beyond our sphere of influence, we should always push right to the wall to get clear benefits for Canada. Whether we are talking about human rights, money laundering or other issues pertaining to that, if we can use our leverage, we should be doing it far more forcefully.

Clearly there are benefits on both sides but there are far more benefits in my mind to Panama. Therefore, we should be using that opportunity with these agreements to get everything possible we can get out of it, not only for our country but also for the people who live in the other areas of the world that are affected by many of these agreements.

The question that must be raised is that where there are concerns and issues that would not be acceptable to Canada, we need to know what mechanisms within the agreement should be in place with countries where issues of concern are found to exist and persist. It is a question of signing an agreement and then raising it every once in a while, issues, again, about human rights or money laundering, but being able to do absolutely nothing about it and having them ignore the concerns we are raising.

What kind of strength do we have with these agreements? How many years would we allow all of this to go on before deciding to cancel an agreement because of clear violations of the rules?

Canada is earmarked out there when it comes to doing things right, or at least it used to be. We were well respected in the world because we would follow the agreement, we would ensure the agreements were fair on all sides and we would be respectful of the countries that were trying to grow, better themselves and make a better life for their people. Often we do not use enough of our country's strength to insist that there should be some improvements to areas that we have concerns about.

An example would be the Panamanian situation. When federal government officials testified before the international trade committee earlier last fall, they could not adequately address the money laundering and tax haven issues relating to Panama.

In December 2010, Panama signed a tax information exchange agreement with the United States, not with Canada. In testimony before the U.S. house ways and means subcommittee on trade on March 30, 2011, the research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch also raised concerns with respect to the money laundering issue in the wake of the agreement between the U.S. and Panama. He said:

Panama promised for eight years to sign a Tax Information Exchange Agreement.... Yet when it finally signed a TIEA with the Obama administration in November 2010, the agreement did not require Panama to automatically exchange information with U.S. authorities about tax dodgers, money launderers and drug traffickers.

Those areas have weaknesses and, because of everybody's interest in signing these agreements, they often take one particular part of the puzzle and accept it and continue to work on the tax information issue or whatever other avenue to ensure that we stop money laundering and drug trafficking. We need to be stronger on these issues and use them as leverage.

In the previous Parliament, concerns were raised with respect to Panama being a tax haven in which instances of tax evasion and money laundering were found. Concerns were raised as to whether a free trade agreement should be proceeded with prior to a clear tax information exchange between Canada and Panama being in place.

We would be far better off to keep going slowly with this process until we have what we want, which is both of those agreements when it comes to sharing the tax. We would then be eliminating opportunities for money laundering, tax havens and other issues rather than signing the agreement and going forward in good faith, which is clearly what the government wants to do and what our party has decided to do as well. As of yet there is still no tax treaty or tax information exchange agreement signed between Canada and Panama nor an intention that it will be done.

The history, as we understand it, is as follows. Panama has asked that Canada enter into a more comprehensive double taxation treaty. Canada refused, asking instead for a more limited TIEA. Panama, which at that time had only entered into double taxation treaties, insisted on a double taxation treaty. Canada has not yet responded to this second request.

I will go back to who is in charge. I think the benefits to Panama are far better than the benefits to Canada so why would we turn around and continue to water down our leverage?

Members should note that all of the DTA's include tax information and exchange obligations between signatory countries based on article 26 of the OECD model convention. As of November 2010, Canada was party to DTA's with 87 countries, with 8 more signed but not yet in effect. As of November 5, 2010, Canada had signed 9 TIEA's, none of which are in effect.

In testimony before the international trade committee on September 29, reference was made to correspondence between Canada and Panama in which the latter was asked whether Panama had responded to the concerns expressed by Canada on the tax haven issue. According to DFAIT officials, no such response had been received.

There are a variety of concerns as we move forward. I know the government is anxious to move this forward but I hope we put in what is best for Canada first and Panama second, not Panama first and Canada second.

Bill C-38

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my second petition, which I had hoped to present yesterday before the final vote on Bill C-38 in this place, is from over 1,560 petitioners. The petitioners are literally from coast to coast, from Halifax, Calgary, Point Alberni, Port Moody, Orillia, Vancouver, Sidney, Saanich, as well as Toronto and Ottawa.

These petitioners all call on this House of Commons to reject the so-called budget omnibus bill which was neither a proper budget bill nor a proper omnibus bill, but which rammed through changes to 70 laws. The laws will be changed, repealed or amended in fundamental ways. Canadians will wake up to discover the damage once the bill clears the Senate.

Business of the House

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Minister of State and Chief Government Whip]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing or Special Order, or usual practice of the House, when the proceedings are interrupted later this day, pursuant to the order made Tuesday, June 12, 2012, under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), with respect to the third reading stage of Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures:

(a) all questions necessary to dispose of third reading stage of the said bill shall be deemed put and a recorded division shall be deemed requested;

(b) the bells to call in the members shall ring for not longer than 30 minutes;

(c) following the disposal of Bill C-38, the House shall then proceed immediately to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions respecting the third reading stage of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, and the motion to concur in the third report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates; and

(d) after the taking of the recorded divisions provided for in this order, the House shall stand adjourned to the next sitting day.

Citizenship and Immigration

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, every year, thousands of immigrants choose to make their life in the city of Laval. It is their home port.

Yet the Conservatives want to make life more difficult for all current and future claimants. Laval needs immigrants in order to keep developing. With Bills C-38 and C-31, the Conservatives are putting the brakes on Laval's prosperity and economic development.

Why are they attacking immigrants?

Search and Rescue

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be some denial on that side of the House about the implications of Bill C-38.

Last Thursday, on a local radio station, the member for Nanaimo—Alberni lamented the closure of the Ucluelet communications centre and the Kitsilano Coast Guard station.

However, instead of taking responsibility, the member blamed “bureaucrats in Ottawa” for these closures.

Ironically, he made these remarks less than 12 hours after he voted on the Trojan Horse budget bill, the very bill shutting down these stations.

When government MPs cut services in Ottawa, they should at least have the courage of their conviction to defend them at home.

However, Bill C-38 represents more than just cuts to Coast Guard services, cuts to OAS and cuts to health care. It represents the erosion of the once strong and independent voices of Conservative MPs.

As we approach the end of the session, I am hopeful more Conservative MPs find their riding voice and speak out against these cuts. Maybe one day, with some practice, they will be able to use that voice in Ottawa.

Bill C-38

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Madam Speaker, my third petition is on behalf of residents of Toronto—Danforth and relates to Bill C-38, which I would remind everyone has not yet passed this House.

The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to allow for greater study, debate and public scrutiny on the budget implementation bill.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to start my one-day-late Thursday statement with the Conservatives' deep gratitude to all of the staff and pages of the House of Commons, who were forced to endure a rather long Wednesday sitting. I thank them for that and I apologize that they were subjected to it.

On to the remaining business of the House, this afternoon will we complete third reading debate of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act. On Monday we will have the third reading debate of Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act, now that we are past the opposition's theatrical and ideologically driven delay tactics at report stage, which caused you, Madam Speaker, to have to spend an undue length of time here, in particular during the unfortunate act of slow votes, which really achieved nothing but inconvenience to the staff and pages of the House of Commons.

If we have extra time on Monday, we will resume second reading debate on Bill C-15, the strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act. For the remainder of the week, I want to see the House dispose of the many bills that are still awaiting our work and attention. To accommodate the House, we have voted to sit into the evenings next week.

I would welcome any co-operation from my counterparts on moving these bills forward efficiently. I would like to start with securing second reading and referral to committee before the fall sitting of the following bills: Bill C-24, the Canada—Panama economic growth and prosperity act; Bill C-28, the financial literacy leader act; Bill C-36, the protecting Canada's seniors act; Bill C-15, the military justice bill that I mentioned moments ago; Bill C-27, the first nations financial transparency act; and Bill S-2, the family homes on reserves and matrimonial interests or rights act.

Of course, this is only the start of my list, but it would be a good message for us to send to Canadians to show that we are actually willing to do our jobs, the jobs they sent us here to do, and actually vote and make decisions on the bills before us. A productive last week of the spring sitting of our hard-working Parliament would reassure Canadians that their parliamentarians are here to work.

To get on in that direction, since today is World Elder Abuse Day, I want to draw attention to our Bill C-36, the protecting Canada's seniors act. I believe this bill to combat elder abuse has the support of all parties. I have heard the suggestion of the opposition whip, but I would like to suggest we go one step further. I know the opposition has shown it likes to talk about things; we actually like to make decisions and get things done on this side of the House. With that in mind, and in recognition of this day, it is appropriate to advance this important bill right now and send it to committee for study. Therefore, I would like to ask for unanimous consent for the following motion:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practices of the House, Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (elder abuse) be deemed to have been read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by saying, and I am sure the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons will agree, that we all had a very long day yesterday.

However, it was also a day when Canadians saw the opposition stand up and vote for 22 hours against a tyrant and against this government's reckless and regressive agenda.

Yesterday, the opposition asked the government to accept the challenge of taking a break in order to have a question period. We lost our opportunity to ask the government the Thursday question. I appreciate the fact that we are being given that opportunity here today. I would therefore like to ask the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons if he is prepared to tell us what the government has planned for next week. Specifically, we would like to know what bills the government plans to spring on us next week, without any real public consultation.

I would also like to point out that today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. It is ironic that Bill C-38 passed yesterday, considering that it will raise the retirement age from 65 to 67. It is a funny coincidence—although I do not find it very funny.

In March, the government introduced a bill on seniors. We had just two and a half hours of debate. Many members of the official opposition want to work on this bill in the House, with the government.

In the spirit of working together with all parties on this very important day, would the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons be willing to put this bill on the orders of the day this afternoon? If he did, and if this bill could be referred to committee this afternoon, we would have a speaker prepared to take part in the debate.

Bill C-38

[Jean-François Fortin, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is a strange response from a Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

Over the past few hours, the focus has been on the marathon voting session in the House of Commons. Now, we must direct our focus to the very real consequences that the budget will have not only for citizens, workers, employers and the unemployed, but also for the environment and the regions; all will pay the price for the forced passage of this bill.

My colleague talked about the closure of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' brand-new laboratory at the Maurice Lamontagne Institute in Mont-Joli, which will be sacrificed for the sake of ideology, even though it plays a key role in environmental issues.

How can the Conservative members from Quebec shut their eyes to the damaging consequences that Bill C-38 will have for all Quebeckers?

Sports

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Madam Speaker, we know that the Trojan Horse, Bill C-38, will have serious implications for future generations. The Minister of State for Sport now has the discretionary power to stop registered Canadian amateur athletic associations from issuing tax receipts, even though they promote participation in sports and the associated health benefits. We know that our young people are spending less and less time playing sports, but the Conservatives are not taking the situation seriously.

When will the Conservatives come up with a credible plan to promote physical activity among our young people?

Canada Revenue Agency

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue]

Madam Speaker, we will not comment on speculation and rumours, but we will say that we must ensure that taxpayers' money is spent where it will do the most good, and Canada Revenue Agency must do its part.

Under our Prime Minister's leadership, our government has delivered a low-tax plan for jobs and growth that is working for all Canadians: for individuals, for families, and for Canadian businesses.

We really need to support Bill C-38. That is part of our plan for jobs, growth and long-term prosperity and getting back.

Rail Transportation

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Minister of State (Transport)]

Madam Speaker, again, it is a bit rich, coming from that member. I have said many times that we are committed to effective, safe and efficient rail service. We give VIA Rail enough flexibility so that it can operate the rail system the way it wants. We have made significant investments in VIA Rail. However, when we talk about jobs and the economy and rural Canada, the best thing for the people of Canada is Bill C-38, the bill we passed last night and that the member voted against.

Employment Equity

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, as I have already mentioned in this House today, Bill C-38 is a job creation bill. We are moving forward to make sure that Canadians have the opportunity to have a job. In fact, we have created 760,000 net new jobs since the recession.

With respect to the Employment Equity Act, it has been amended to allow greater flexibility in programming to provide an opportunity for more Canadians to have a role, a job and something to improve the quality of life for their families.

Employment Insurance

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said several times before, the top priority of the government is job creation and economic growth. That is exactly why we passed Bill C-38 yesterday evening in this House. Although the opposition were completely against all those job creation programs, we are moving forward.

The government is making improvements to employment insurance. The reason for this is to make sure we can meet the needs of Canadians. We are being responsive, to better connect Canadians with local jobs with their local qualifications.

Pensions

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that we were very pleased yesterday to see the passage of Bill C-38 so that we can move forward with our job creation and economic growth agenda.

With respect to OAS, I will repeat what I said earlier this week in the House. First, there will be no reductions in seniors' pensions.

I will also quote the OECD Secretary-General, who stated:

Bold action is required. Breaking down the barriers that stop older people from working beyond traditional retirement ages will be a necessity to ensure that our children and grand-children can enjoy an adequate pension at the end of their working life.

Bill C-38

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, in under 24 hours, the Conservatives voted to scrap the Environmental Assessment Act, end fish habitat protection and sabotage the National Energy Board.

The NDP proudly opposed those measures. Yesterday, despite his arrogance, the Minister of Finance was also unable to explain the link between assisted human reproduction measures and the budget.

Do the Conservatives realize that Bill C-38 will weaken our laws and our economy?

The Budget

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the past few days have been particularly trying for my colleagues. The mammoth Bill C-38 was passed after more than 22 hours of voting despite many amendments proposed by the opposition parties. The face of Canada has changed.

Now that it is the morning after the marathon, I would like to congratulate all MPs for their perseverance. It can sometimes be easy to feel discouraged, to wonder why we are here fighting for the values we all believe in.

I would also like to congratulate all of the staff who worked tirelessly to keep things rolling on the Hill. A big thank you as well to the people who sent us encouraging messages via social media.

Finally, I would like to most sincerely thank our staff for the professional and moral support they provide for our activities, day after day.

Air Canada

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, this is an historic evening. The government was successful in passing Bill C-38, an important piece of legislation for the Canadian economy, creating jobs and long-term prosperity for the country.

The member opposite accuses the government of reckless meddling in the Air Canada negotiations. With all due respect, if the hon. member had been paying attention during the debates over Air Canada, he would know that we went over the long process of conciliation and mediation that we went through with Air Canada in great detail.

We conscientiously and methodically followed the steps set out in the Canada Labour Code. This took time and effort. We exhausted all other avenues before we considered pre-emptive legislation to avert a work stoppage.

There was nothing reckless about our decision to bring forward Bill C-33. As we said many times, it was a last resort. We moved forward because putting forward this legislation meant protecting Canadian jobs and protecting Canadian citizens.

In the debates over Bill C-33, we presented this to the House with our projection of how costly a work stoppage at Air Canada would be, not just to the companies and unions but also to our economy.

We talked about the impact upon the travelling public, especially to families who depend upon Air Canada and do not have access to alternative carriers. We reminded the House that many Canadians were not parties to this labour dispute and that they would not have any way of affecting the outcome but would suffer the consequences of a work stoppage.

When we used this legislation to prevent a work stoppage at Air Canada, I know we did the right thing for Canadians by ensuring we were protecting air services, protecting jobs and protecting the Canadian economy.

Given all the risks associated with this situation, it would have been reckless not to bring forward Bill C-33.

Speaker's Ruling—Bill C-38

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am now prepared to rule on the question of privilege raised on June 11 by the hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition regarding information on the impact of Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures.

I thank the hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition for having raised this question, as well as the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the hon. member for Winnipeg North for their comments.

The House Leader of the Official Opposition maintains that he was unable to secure the government's co-operation when he attempted to obtain information on the impact of Bill C-38 by means of written questions, questions asked during question period and in committee, and requests made through the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

He charged that this failure to respond to a requests for information impeded members in their ability to hold the government to account and “makes them vote blind on the actual budget”, thereby constituting a breach of members' privileges and a contempt of the House.

The House Leader of the Official Opposition also maintained that by refusing to respond to the request by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government had violated the Federal Accountability Act, because the reasons given by the Clerk of the Privy Council to justify the refusal were not justifiable under the law.

The government House leader argued that the opposition House leader had failed to bring this matter to the attention of the Chair at the earliest opportunity. He contended that no specific part of Bill C-38 was objected to, arguing that the information referred to by the opposition House leader was, in any event, germane, not to budget implementation bills like Bill C-38 but rather to appropriation bills that Parliament would be asked to consider.

At the outset, it is important for members to know that it is not for the Speaker to decide whether the opposition House leader is correct in stating that the government is required by law to provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer with certain types of information. This is a legal question and is not a matter for the Chair to advocate, much less enforce.

In my ruling of October 24, 2011, which is found on pages 2404 and 2405 of Debates, I reminded the House of the long-standing principle that has guided the Chair in interpreting constitutional and legal matters. At the time, I also said:

...it is important to delineate clearly between interpreting legal provisions of statutes—which is not within the purview of the Chair—and ensuring the soundness of the procedures and practices of the House when considering legislation—which, of course, is the role of the Chair.

Thus, should members feel that the government is in breach of the Federal Accountability Act, redress for such grievances may be sought through the courts, not here in the chamber.

Echoing the ruling given by Speaker Milliken on April 27, 2010, on the question of privilege concerning the Afghan detainee documents, the opposition House leader argued that in a system of responsible government, the right of the House to hold the government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege. In the 2010 case, however, the circumstances were quite different. There had been a House order and committee orders requiring the production of documents. So it was the responsibility of the Chair to ensure that the orders of the House were obeyed. In the case before us, there are no such orders and, in their absence, the Speaker has neither the authority nor the power to compel the production of information.

This brings us to the opposition House leader's core argument, namely, that members are being impeded in the performance of their parliamentary duties because the government is not providing them with certain information that they need to properly consider legislation and hold the government to account. The Chair treats all matters that touch on the privileges of members with great seriousness.

In that regard, it is completely legitimate to try to obtain information through a variety of means available to parliamentarians. Speaker Parent confirmed this when he stated, on page 688 of the House of Commons Debates:

In order to fulfill their parliamentary duties, members should of course have access to the information they require.

Members have every right to seek financial information at any time, they need not wait for it to be found in appropriation bills or any other legislative proposal. Such requests have happened before and they will doubtless happen again.

In the case before us, the opposition House leader has acknowledged that information was unsuccessfully sought through various means including written questions, questions posed during question period and questions posed in committee. I cannot presume to judge the quality of the responses that have been received.

Speaker Milliken clearly established this on December 1, 2010, on page 6677 of the House of Commons Debates:

...it is not for the Chair to decide whether an answer or response given to a question constitutes an answer to that question. It is beyond the competence of the Chair to make that kind of decision under our practice.

Similarly, O'Brien and Bosc at page 523 points out that it is not for the Speaker to determine the quality or accuracy of the information provided by the government. This is consistent as well with a ruling given by Speaker Bosley on May 15, 1985 at page 4769 of the Debates in which he states, “I think it has been recognized many times in the House that a complaint about the actions or inactions of government Departments cannot constitute a question of parliamentary privilege.”

Furthermore, as I noted earlier, there is no House or committee order requesting the information sought by the hon. member. The Chair appreciates his frustration and I understand that he may feel aggrieved in view of his unsuccessful quest for more detailed information.

However, while the member may have a legitimate grievance, I can find no evidence that he or any other member has been impeded in the fulfillment of their parliamentary duties. Accordingly, I cannot find that there is a prima facie question of privilege in this case.

I thank hon. members for their attention.

National Public Transit Strategy Act

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand to talk about this wonderful bill, a bill to establish a national public transit strategy.

My riding has 200 communities and it is about as rural as can be, maybe not as rural as some other members ridings, but certainly the vast majority of ridings.

It is somewhat ironic that I am talking about a national transit strategy when a lot of the big spending would be on subway systems. The nearest subway system to my riding is in Boston, Massachusetts.

I do believe in the importance of the bill. Whether it is in Montreal, Toronto, or the SkyTrain in Vancouver, public transit and mass transit in this situation, like the subway or the SkyTrain, is beneficial to the nation.

There are several aspects of the bill that I appreciate fully. It will help to encourage dialogue about large cities and urban centres. It gives us the opportunity to discuss just how people will be moved around at a time when cities are expanding, like the greater Toronto area, where millions of people are set to arrive by 2020. Vancouver and Montreal are both going to expand. In places such as St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, or even Halifax, the transit system, primarily bus, or in the case of St. John's the metro bus, the infrastructure is there.

Public transit improves the environment because people can be moved into one vehicle. It also helps people who live in poverty and who are unable to find transportation of their own, either a car or motorcycle. Insurance costs are high and fuel costs are rising. Something like this would help alleviate poverty in a major way.

What I see is a bill that has a national dialogue about who we are. It takes stock of what we have thus far when it comes to infrastructure and builds and improves upon that.

I have lived in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto. In each and every city I took advantage of the transit system. It was an advantage for me because I did not have a vehicle because I could not afford one, especially living in Vancouver. I was able to avail myself of the transit system there namely, the SkyTrain and the bus system to get to work.

Several aspects of the bill will improve the conversation in our country in addition to eventually improving the infrastructure situation.

Municipalities struggle. My hon. colleague mentioned earlier the FCM meeting that was held in Saskatchewan. Right now there is a funding deficit. Many municipalities, small or large, are now in a situation where they want to renew a fiscal framework with the provinces.

As members would know, municipalities are creations of the provinces. The Constitution recognizes two levels of government, federal and provincial. The provincial government, through its own municipal affairs department, looks after municipalities.

Only 8¢ of the average tax dollar winds its way through to municipal coffers. Imagine a city the size of Toronto, or even a mid-size city like Halifax, having to support a transit system primarily through its revenue from 8¢ of the tax dollar. That is not a substantial amount of money. This is what the FCM is talking about.

This bill provides us with the opportunity to have a discussion about transit and the strategies for each and every municipality. It would be a pan-national conversation. We could discuss options such as direct subsidies to individuals through the tax code or direct subsidies to the municipalities themselves.

We talk quite a bit about the gas revenue, which is shared with municipalities through the provinces. This initiative was started in 2005. A portion of the gas tax revenue or the excise tax is given to the municipalities and a lot of that goes to transit. Investing in public transit infrastructure benefits the people of Canada. Better public transit would result in cleaner, more productive cities and communities in which people could access the jobs and services that would be needed for economic growth.

Is it not ironic that in the budget we will vote on tonight, Bill C-38, are employment insurance reforms. One of the issues at play is the government trying to hook up people with full-time work within an hour's drive. That would be highly problematic in rural areas, especially with respect seasonal industries. Some people have said that EI recipients could go from the fish plant and work in tourism to help to expand it. However, according to the philosophy of what the government is putting in place when it comes to EI reforms, they cannot go from one seasonal industry to another unless it is expanded by a couple of weeks. Even still, the government is looking to have people work all year round. It wants to ensure that people do not become repeat users of EI, which is very problematic when it comes to seasonal work.

One of the solutions to employment is that people have to be within an hour's drive. If they are in a situation where they are offered a job that is less than an hour away and they do not have a vehicle in a rural area, forget it, it just will not work. However, in an urban area they have to look at investing in a monthly pass for either the bus or the subway, or perhaps a combination of the two.

How can we help these people who find themselves impoverished and have this kind of opportunity for work. When it comes to EI reform, it is not normally the situation that they are forced to do this, that they go about getting a job and have to invest in transportation for that. Is there a way we can use the tax code, which the government has done in certain circumstances, to provide a benefit for those who want to buy that monthly pass? At the same time, we should be compelled to look at some kind of system of direct subsidy to make it affordable so people can afford a monthly transit pass.

We are talking about the national public transit strategy act. In this act, the conversation is what is key. There are certain things, like the coordinated approach, that I find very beneficial to this nation.

The Minister of Transport, in consultation with the provincial ministers responsible for public transit, and with representatives of municipalities, transit authorities, and aboriginal communities, must encourage and promote a coordinated approach to the implementation of the national strategy for public transit and advise for the assistance, development and implementation of programs and practices in support of that strategy. How is that for a novel idea, a first ministers conference of some sort, where on the agenda they talk about a strategy for public transit?

Right now it seems as if the conversation between the federal and provincial governments is non-existent. We saw that during the supposed negotiations for the new health accord. There were no negotiations. There was an edict from the Prime Minister's Office. It came down to the provinces, and they were told to accept it.

Prior to this, when the Liberals were in government, negotiation took place between Paul Martin and the rest of the provinces.

Here is a novel idea. On the agenda a first ministers conference is an item in which there is a decent, fair discussion on how to provide affordable, effective and efficient transit for the major metropolitan areas and, by extension, on how to increase transport and infrastructure facilities such as highways in smaller rural areas.

The report to Parliament is also very interesting. The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities must cause a report on the conference, described in section 6, to be laid before the House. The House gets to debate any future national strategy for public transit. That too is a beneficial idea.

Therefore, I support this because it allows for the best practices from each major metropolitan area and, by extension, from the provinces. Then there can be discussions to determine if the best practices in British Columbia, whether it be the Lower Mainland of B.C., can be exercised in the greater metro Halifax area. We can share best practices with the Prairies, Winnipeg, maybe Saskatoon and Regina, and the cities of Toronto and Montreal. We then can determine the most efficient system that helps cut down on greenhouse gas emissions as well as helps to alleviate poverty, whether it is taxes or direct subsidies. However, the federal government needs to be engaged with the people who provide the services, namely the provinces, but specifically the municipalities.

Bill C-38

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate your comments and interjection.

I want to assure all members that in my experience through the years I have come to recognize that privileges are important. The reason so much attention is given to and a lot of discretion is allowed when a question of privilege is raised is so the member who raises the issue feels comfortable enough to adequately express what he or she believes is important to say. That is the spirit in which I raised point today.

I was present when the NDP House leader raised the privilege. I have had the opportunity to listen to many speeches regarding Bill C-38 and issues related to privilege.

The timing of my standing right now is critically important. Mr. Speaker, you have the power to make a difference in terms of what is going to happen over the next period of time. The Liberal Party as an entity, from what I understand, has not had the opportunity to express its thoughts on the privilege which the New Democratic Party member brought forward.

In the best way that I can, I will try to keep my comments short and concise, but I want to make sure that people understand why I feel it is so important and where I am coming from in regard to addressing this issue.

First and foremost, all members of Parliament have an important responsibility. Our constituents want to know that we are doing our job. Part of that job is what takes place on the floor of the House of Commons. We do our job in many different ways.

The privilege to which the member made reference is in regard to information that we have not been able to access. Not having access to information seriously impacts on our ability as members of Parliament to make good decisions.

The public has a great deal of interest in what we do inside the House. I always like to cut it down to two or three things. One of those things is the budget.

The Government of Canada spends a lot of money, in excess of $250 billion. As parliamentarians we have a responsibility to try to understand the kind of money that is being spent. We also need to be able to obtain information that the government has talked about in putting together its budget to present to the House. I could give a specific example in terms of my own critic portfolio. It is a relatively small expenditure, but it is an important expenditure which has a profound impact. That is why I say information is critically important. We ask the government to provide numbers and to tell us what type of offices are going to be closed down. We ask what impact it is going to have in terms of tax dollars.

There have been some significant changes in immigration. I want to cite a specific one. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism made an announcement not that long ago, in which he said that the government wants to deal with the immigration backlog. In wanting to deal with the immigration backlog, he referred to skilled workers. He said that workers who had applied through the skilled workers program prior to 2008 were going to be deleted from the data banks. The government has put money aside that ultimately is going to be used to reimburse the landing and processing fees.

In looking at that, we say that we are debating a very important bill on the budget and we need specific information related to that. How do we know that the numbers mentioned by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism actually represent adequate compensation for those individuals? One could argue, as I have, that particular policy announcement was a cruel thing to have done, but at the end of the day, if we read the budget bill that we are expected to vote on intelligently, we need to have some very important information, and I am not convinced that information has been provided to us.

Let me use the example of someone from the Philippines who five years ago put in an application. According to this budget bill, the government is going to return that person's application fee and processing fee or landing fee. I am not 100% sure, but is important information to have. The government, with the passing of this budget bill, is going to be reimbursing those fees. If we look into it more deeply—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the other day the official opposition raised a question of privilege of great importance. We indicated then that we would like to be able to respond to it. All Canadians would be concerned about what is taking place in the House of Commons. I will take this opportunity to get on the record why it is so critically important that the Speaker take into consideration what the House Leader of the Official Opposition has put on the record in this particular question of privilege.

As I am sure many members of the House recall, it is all related to Bill C-38. This bill would have a significant and profound impact on the lives of all Canadians. I want to express our concerns related to the question of privilege. This is probably the most opportune time to do so.

I take the issue very seriously. I have had many years to address important process questions inside the chamber. I, for one, believe in process. It is a critically important component of our democratic system to be able to stand in my place and express what I think is perhaps in the minds of many a boring issue, dealing with process. The Conservative government, likely more than any government before it, has been very negligent on the whole issue of process. So I want to share with the government some of my concerns.

We need to recognize that we are really talking about information. We have all heard the expression “information is gold”. It is critically important it is that we as legislators have access to information.

Over the years, I have met with a lot of youth. When I was over at the Manitoba legislature, young people would come down. Here, a lot of youth come and meet with their local members of Parliament to talk about what the politicians do in these buildings. When we reflect on the question of privilege that the House Leader of the Official Opposition brought to the floor the other day, it is important that we put into perspective what it is that we are telling people outside of this wonderful room. What we are really talking about is the rights of individual members of Parliament. We have to do what we can to protect those rights.

Over the years I have talked to hundreds, possibly thousands, of students and I often tell them that we do three things—

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my second petition is signed by nearly 600 people from almost every province in Canada.

These written petitions resonate with the over 58,000 signatures that were revealed earlier today by the group Avaaz.

These petitioners from my riding, Mayne Island, North Saanich, Sidney, as well as from other places within British Columbia, Ottawa, Montreal, Alberta, Calgary and Edmonton, virtually coast to coast, from almost every province, call on this House of Commons to reject Bill C-38. They are calling on the current Privy Council officers to withdraw the parts of the bill that have nothing to do with the budget so that parliamentarians can do their job and vote on a budget implementation bill without voting to destroy environmental laws.

Old Age Security

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have 12 petitions in which members of the metro Vancouver community call upon the government to maintain the current retirement age for old age security benefits.

The petitioners from Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, north Vancouver, Vancouver, my riding of Vancouver Quadra and many other communities in metro Vancouver point out that over half of old age security recipients earn less than $25,000 a year, that this two year delay will cost up to $30,000 per person over two years for those with the lowest incomes and that single women will be disproportionately affected by the change.

The petitioners call upon the government to remove the two year increase from Bill C-38 to ensure that we do not increase income inequality with this measure.

The Environment

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present to the House today.

With respect to the first petition, there is a project afoot to develop a megaquarry north of Toronto, in Melancthon country. This quarry would be big enough to swallow up 60% of my riding and deep enough to bury a 20-storey building. This megaquarry would sit atop a complex watershed and threaten to poison the drinking water of about one million Canadians. The farmland that it would take out of production produces about half the potatoes eaten in the GTA each year.

This is an issue that brings into stark relief the challenge of sustainable urban development. I am, therefore, happy to table in the House a petition calling upon the Government of Canada to conduct an environmental assessment of this megaquarry development.

May this petition, and the next one I will present, serve as a last minute reminder of what a tragic disservice the government proposes to visit, not only on Canadians, but on our Earth, with the anti-environmental provisions of Bill C-38.

I am honoured to table my second petition from citizens in and around my riding.

The petitioners are deeply concerned with the current perilous trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and the rapidly closing window to avert dangerous global warming in a socially responsible manner.

Among other things, the petitioners call upon this Parliament, in concert with provinces and territories, to create and implement a science-based and innovative Canadian energy strategy that would position Canada as a world leader on climate change solutions.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-38, by eliminating the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act and putting strict limits on the number of environmental assessments, the Conservatives are playing along with the oil companies and looking to accelerate pipeline approvals and oil sands development.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, more than 100 environmental lawyers criticized this approach and cautioned that it could lead to many more legal battles.

Since it is not too late, does the government plan on withdrawing the provisions that are detrimental to the environment, as called for by the vast majority of Quebeckers and the Bloc Québécois?

Government Subsidies

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-38, the Conservative government continues to muzzle anyone who has the misfortune of saying or thinking something that contradicts the Prime Minister's Office.

After attacking scientists, the Conservatives are now attacking civil society groups.

Environmental groups are not the only ones being put through the wringer. It is happening to other groups that are politically active, fighting to eliminate poverty or demand better housing, for example.

Why are the Conservatives so intent on going after all the groups that contradict them, instead of learning from their experience? Is this the Prime Minister's vision of democracy—starving anyone who says what he does not want to hear?

The Economy

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, later today the House will begin voting on legislation to implement economic action 2012. This important and necessary legislation takes long-term responsible steps to ensure Canada's finances are sustainable and support jobs and economic growth.

Around the world, Canadians see the negative economic and social consequences of countries that delay and defer necessary reforms. Canada simply cannot afford to delay action.

Could the Minister of Finance please underline for Canadians and the House the importance of Bill C-38 and economic action plan 2012?

The Environment

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if we really want to improve our assessment process, we need more scientists at the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Instead, the government decimated the agency and transferred its responsibilities to the National Energy Board, but this kind of work is not in the board's bailiwick. Then the government cut the board off at the knees so that pipelines could be built without appropriate assessments meant to protect the natural resources that communities depend on.

Why will the government not split up the indigestible mishmash that is Bill C-38 so that these environmental reforms can receive the parliamentary consideration they deserve?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians care about the environment too. Albertans are grappling with up to a half a million litres of crude oil spilled from a ruptured pipeline, which experts say may never be cleaned up.

Gord and Bonnie Johnston watched their waterfront property become a lake of oil. They are now living in a hotel wondering what to do next. Fifty years ago, when this pipeline was built, there was no effective environmental assessment in place, and now we see the consequences.

Will the Prime Minister explain personally to Mr. and Mrs. Johnston just why he is using Bill C-38 to unravel decades of work to improve environmental safeguards and results?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP respects Canadian seniors, and that is why we will not vote in favour of the budget.

The environment commissioner said that with Bill C-38, there would be only 20 to 30 federal environmental assessments a year.

These irresponsible cuts will allow pipelines to cross our rivers with virtually no safeguards. But Canadians are already carrying the weight of $7 billion in environmental debt.

Why add to the environmental debt of future generations? Why are the Conservatives so irresponsible?

Citizenship and Immigration

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP will always vote against the Conservatives' irresponsible budgets. These changes should have been debated independently from the budget measures.

The people who wish to immigrate here followed the rules. They put their lives on hold, believing, as they should, that Canada would process their applications in a fair and equitable manner. However, under clause 707 of Bill C-38, exactly the opposite will happen.

Instead of wiping out tens of thousands of applications with the stroke of a pen, will the minister agree to withdraw this clause from the bill?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear. When this government came to office in 2006, it inherited from the Liberals a backlog of immigration cases, with 840,000 people waiting for up to eight years in the system. That is absolutely true.

In 2008, we brought forward amendments to the immigration act to allow us to begin to reduce those backlogs. The Liberals and the NDP voted against those amendments. Had we not adopted those amendments in 2008, the backlog would now be 1.5 million cases, with people waiting for up to 15 years. Thanks to the actions in this budget, in Bill C-38, we will have a just-in-time immigration system.

Federal-Provincial Relations

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister must admit that the Atlantic premiers are quite concerned about the problems with Bill C-38. The western premiers have called for some strategies as well.

Does the Prime Minister not see the contradiction here? He goes to Europe demanding fiscal co-operation between the European countries, but when it comes to Canada, he refuses to even meet face-to-face with this country's premiers.

Pay Equity

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as chair of the NDP women's caucus, today, I would like to express our deep indignation over the disastrous consequences that Bill C-38, a real Trojan Horse, will have in many areas of gender equality in Canada.

Cuts to old age security and employment insurance and the elimination of the Canadian Women's Health Network and the National Aboriginal Health Organization will have a greater impact on women than on men.

Equality is not a priority for this government. Clause 602 of Bill C-38 eliminates federal contractors' obligation to respect pay equity. This will have serious consequences for women's access to employment.

I am proud that the NDP continues to work for Canadian women so that gender equality is not just wishful thinking but a reality.

Bill C-38

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have not had time to fully answer the government House leader's point, but I would refer him to section 578 of Bill C-38, for which we have not had any effort to assess the impacts but which will be severe on Canada's economy and environment.

Mr. Speaker, I again refer you to clause 578 within Bill C-38.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, arising from a question of privilege that we raised just recently, it is incumbent upon us to respond to the government's intervention on this point.

As you will remember, Mr. Speaker, the question of privilege had directly to do with the access to information that all members of Parliament require for the vote that is coming quite shortly with respect to Bill C-38.

The question of privilege that was raised is a significant one because it talks about the central role of members of Parliament from all sides and, in particular, the role of the opposition to hold the government to account. We listened very carefully to the House leader's response from the government, and perhaps he was ill-prepared or ill-informed, but his points beared no merit to the case that we presented. We wanted to ensure, Mr. Speaker, that you understood the case as put forward by Canada's official opposition. In particular, the government House leader raised the issue of timing.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, questions of privilege must be raised at the earliest possible moment. The fact is that since the budget was introduced, we have sought, through every available means that we have at our disposal, such as questions on the order paper, during question period, at committee and through the Parliamentary Budget Officer, to find out what the implications are of this particular piece of legislation, in particular, the cuts to services and the cuts to employment that Canadians will be facing.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, from our deposition of yesterday, that information exists. The government has refused to offer that information for what we believe borders on bogus terms that came from the Privy Council Office directly, which works, obviously, hand-in-hand with the Prime Minister.

It is unlawful for the Privy Council Office to keep this information from parliamentarians and from the Parliamentary Budget Office. The timeliness of this was required as we waited for the government to provide the information that it was legally obligated to do. It was only after its final refusal in letters dated April 12 and then confirmed on May 9 that we knew that we had a question of privilege in front of us.

We have demanded and continue to demand that the government release this information so that we do not have members of Parliament voting blind on a piece of legislation. Again, it is incumbent upon all members of Parliament to be informed before they vote. The fact that the Conservatives seem to have no problem voting blind is a concern to me but not our problem. Our concern in the opposition is that we have everything available to us before we vote.

The third point, which is an important one, is that, in the intervention from the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's chief bureaucrat, it is illegal to break section 79.3(1) of the Parliament Canada Act, which is to hold known information from parliamentarians,in this case, holding it directly from members of Parliament and also through an officer of Parliament in the Parliamentary Budget Officer. We have been demanding this information for quite some time.

The last point is that the government house leader made some response that we needed to cite any particular section or provision of the bill, but he knows better than this. As we know, a question of privilege is the intervention on the rights of all members of Parliament to perform our duties. The particular example here with Bill C-38, the Trojan Horse bill, is one more example that privilege applies in the individual or the collective when members of Parliament are unable to perform our functions on behalf of Canadians while the government knowingly withholds information that is pertinent to the vote that we are about to take.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, and as Speaker Milliken knew in one of his last rulings before leaving this place, this is significant. In the case of Speaker Milliken's ruling, it had to do with the Afghan detainees. In this case, it has to do with the budget. However, the consistency of withholding information is the same. This is problematic, not just for the government in place now but for the function of Parliament and for the sanctimony with which we hold this place.

In order to do our jobs for those we represent every day, we must have the information that exists. The information exists and it has existed for some weeks. The government has refused, at all stages and at every opportunity we have given it, to respond in an honest and forthright way.

The second act the Conservatives moved once in government was the accountability act. This breaks their own act, but, more importantly, it breaks the right and respect that we have for this place and the privilege that members of Parliament have to seek the truth and to understand the information available to us so we can vote with a clear conscience. That is a principle of Parliament and one that we will consistently hold.

Mr. Speaker, as you will make your ruling in some hours to come, I ask that you find this to be a breach of privilege in the individual and the collective case.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture)]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, since our economic action plan was implemented, 750,000 net new jobs have been created across the country. Quebec has obviously benefited from that. We are now continuing to move forward with the 2012 economic action plan. Our focus is on job creation and economic growth. Our measures will have tangible benefits for the economy of Quebec and Canada. I encourage the hon. member to join us in supporting Bill C-38.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Prime Minister urged countries in trouble to combine fiscal discipline with economic growth measures.

Yet this same Prime Minister is forcing the passage of Bill C-38, a bill that will harm Quebec's economy.

We have only to think about the cuts to the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, the jewel of marine research, the cuts to the budget for regional economic development, the reform of employment insurance that will make the unemployed poorer and deprive businesses of the employees that they themselves have trained.

Why is the Prime Minister not practising what he preaches? What is the reason for these measures that are weakening Quebec's economy?

The Budget

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, economic action plan 2012 is a plan for jobs, growth and long-term prosperity here in Canada, a plan that keeps taxes low and helps encourage businesses to expand and create jobs. It is no surprise that on March 29, after only a few short minutes, the tax and spend NDP declared its opposition to this pro-jobs, pro-growth plan. Now, nearly three months later, the NDP, led by its high-tax, big-spending leader, is playing procedural games to try to further delay the implementation of economic action plan 2012.

Would the Minister of State for Finance explain to Canadians why it is so important that we get Bill C-38 passed?

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister speaks complacently to his record.

Let us look at the record. The government has increased its net debt by $117 billion, unemployment since 2006 is up from 6.4% to 7.3% and 300,000 manufacturing jobs down the table. Bill C-38 is an unprecedented assault on Parliament, a dumping on the provinces, a dumping on people and without precedent in the history of our Parliament in terms of its abuse and the way he has acceded power to himself.

That is some record. The Prime Minister has no right to boast to other countries about the Canadian record.

Pooled Registered Pension Plans

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise as the last speaker on third reading of this bill. I know you will regret interrupting me because my speech will be so good.

I have spoken to Bill C-38, the pooled registered pension plans act, before. Therefore, I will try to summarize what I think are the four important points and then I will to respond to some of the things I have heard over the last number of readings. I spoke to the bill at second reading and report stage. It is a very important bill and it is the right opportunity available to the government at present.

Previous speakers have said over and over again that there are other options, which other parties have been promoting, including changes to the CPP. However, that requires two-thirds of the provinces with two-thirds of the population to make the changes, and that is not available to us at this moment. The provinces are onside with an opportunity to bring forward legislation of their own to match the pooled registered pension plans act. We can pass something in the House that will affect federally-regulated industries. What is important for me and the residents of my riding is that it is available to all industries.

I believe the Liberal Party is in support of the bill, which we will see when we vote shortly, and we appreciate its support. It has, throughout the discussion, pointed out some areas where it feels there are other opportunities. We do not disagree with that. There are other opportunities.

What I do not understand is the position of the NDP members on the bill. They have an option that they would like to see happen. We have been very clear that the option is not available to the government at this time, but that should not stop members of the official opposition from supporting this tool. It makes no sense to me that they made the claim during an election time that they would come to Ottawa to make things work, to work with other groups that hoped to form government, I guess. Going from third place to becoming government would have been very difficult, but they did very well and they need to be congratulated for that.

The idea those members were selling at election time was they were coming here to work for average Canadians, who they met at the kitchen tables, and they were going to make Parliament work. Here is a perfect opportunity. The bill does not solve all the problems with regard to retirement income that Canadians face now and in the future, but it is a tool, an option and an opportunity that is available and can be supported by all parties. That is making things work for Canadians and that is why they should be supporting it.

The member for Welland said that this was the same as an RRSP. It is not the same as an RRSP. Two things are different. First, employees have six months to opt out. It involves people in the program. It is portable and people can take it with them if they change jobs. That is an important difference from an RRSP, where people have to opt in.

The other comment was that the owners of businesses were saying they could not afford to do it. They cannot afford the RRSP program because they have to manage the process on their own and that is tough for small businesses that only have a few employees. Even for medium-sized businesses, it is a very costly endeavour. The pooled registered pension plan would average out the costs, spread the costs out and would offer ease of entry into the program for employers. It is a perfect tool for employers to keep and attract employees.

One of the issues, maybe not from my generation but from my daughter's generation, is that workers move from employer to employer every three, four or five years. This is an opportunity for employers to use the pension plan to attract and retain employees. It is an excellent program.

We have not voted on third reading stage yet, but I would encourage the NDP to do the right thing and support the bill.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

The member is right. It is thanks to this government.

We have recovered all of the jobs that we lost during the recession. Since July 2009, we have created 765,000 net new jobs. The World Economic Forum says we have the strongest financial and banking system of any country around the world. Forbes magazine says we are the best place to do business.

A few months ago, Governor Branstad of Iowa said on Meet the Press, “The Canadian government has reduced their corporate income tax to 15%. I've had companies that I've called on in Chicago to come to Iowa say, 'We like Iowa, but if they don't change the federal corporate income tax, we're probably going to go to Canada'”.

It is all about the profits, and with profits come jobs. Moody's has given us a AAA credit rating again, as has Fitch.

Our strong economy, the jobs we have recovered and being number one in the G8 are not good enough. We are not standing still with that. I will be speaking to Bill C-38, the budget implementation bill, tomorrow.

Everything we do on this side of the House, every legislative initiative, has a purpose. Everything is tied together. It is part of our comprehensive plan. Again, it is for Canada's future. We are investing in Canada's future, in our people, not in the next election.

With respect to our retirement system, we have identified that 60% of Canadians will not have a sufficient amount of money to retire. That is unacceptable to the government. That is why we have put forward Bill C-25, the pooled registered pension plans act. Under this plan, we will add a fourth pillar to the retirement income system that we have.

Let us take a look at our retirement income system as it stands today. We have the OAS and the GIS. We increased the GIS in last year's budget by 25%, the largest increase in the history of the GIS, and it was opposed not once but twice by the opposition. In fact, the first time the opposition forced an election because it was opposed to the initiatives we had in our budget, particularly those to create jobs and to help seniors.

The second pillar is the CPP and the QPP. Both are actuarially sound, yet we still took time to improve the CPP under its mandatory five-year review.

The third pillar is the RPP and the RRSP. The RRSP is an interesting vehicle. That vehicle is open to all Canadians; however, we find that $600 billion is underfunded in the RRSP. This indicates that people are not saving enough for retirement. That is a problem.

What else have we done to help seniors in this country? We have given them, on average, $2.3 billion in tax relief. We have given our seniors pension income splitting. We have doubled the maximum amount of income eligible for pension income credit. We have established the TFSA.

The PRPP is needed in our country. I will close with a personal anecdote. My father was an immigrant to the country and he worked hard. I remember when I was a young fellow looking through the window late at night, waiting for my father to come home. He would pull up in the car, which had a very distinctive sound. I remember running to the window and watching him get out of the car. He was so tired he could barely drag himself out of the car and get into the house.

My father did not have a retirement income mechanism in place at the time. My father has since passed away. My father owned a shoe store and had one employee. It was a small business. This would have been so beneficial for him and his family, and for the employee and her family.

This is the kind of country we are trying to create in Canada, where our seniors have a proper amount of income so that they can retire in dignity and live a full life of quality.

Bill C-38—Time Allocation Motion

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have two very quick points.

I appreciate my colleague making reference to page 667 of O'Brien and Bosc in regard to the amount of time allocation for any stage not be less than one sitting day. That provides clarification in terms of the point of order that my colleague had raised.

My question is for the government regarding Conservative backbenchers on Bill C-38.

We had an individual from Kootenay—Columbia, a Conservative member of Parliament, who made fairly profound statements. It is on YouTube if people want to click into it. He makes reference to the Conservative backbenchers and feels that they are not a part of Bill C-38. It sounded as if the backbenchers were blindsided by this.

Why were the Conservative backbenchers not allowed to engage the cabinet on this Trojan Horse bill? Were they consulted? Was the member from Kootenay—Columbia wrong when he sat down with his constituents to discuss the issue or was the government negligent in not working with the Conservative backbenchers on the issue?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, the government House leader makes some interesting points.

He talks about the usual circumstances, but if members will remember, just yesterday in the Speaker's ruling on trying to allocate the number of votes and amendments to Bill C-38, the omnibus Trojan Horse budget bill we are talking about, the Speaker himself a number of times referred to these as extraordinary circumstances. Part of the reason for that is that this is an extraordinarily bad bill, massive in its implications and broad-sweeping.

To suggest that the government, and I want to get this right, in my friend's motion, seeks to have a distinction between “a” sitting day and not “the” sitting day is a debate that may be lost in its minutiae on Canadians, yet is important in its implications of what the government is doing.

We are in the midst of debating another closure motion from the government, another motion to shut down debate. It is the 26th time the government has moved time allocation and closure in this House. Twenty-six times is a lot for any government, in fact a record that the government seems proud to be breaking and setting anew for Canadian democracy.

The question and the challenge we have with this motion is that in redefining what “a day” is, the government is essentially trying to further speed its agenda through the House of Commons, to further shut down the amount of time MPs have to understand the implications of more than 420 pages of a budget implementation bill, and to further suggest to Canadians that the House of Commons and the members of Parliament do not have the responsibility to hold government to account.

We in the NDP take this job extremely seriously. I lament the fact that my friends across the way do not share that responsibility and feel that shutting down debate, invoking closures and time allocations, should be de rigueur for the government, and I lament that we are now into a debate about defining what the difference is between “a” sitting day and “the” sitting day and trying to pretend that this is somehow a normal circumstance.

There is nothing normal about the circumstance at all. It is extraordinary, as the Speaker of the House said just yesterday. If the Speaker wants to rule that we are going to change the definition of a day, and the government seems so encouraged to change the definition of what debate and democracy may mean, the government has a certain ease with which it is removing principles it used to hold, principles that it actually said at one point—

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I am rising in response to the point of order raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

Standing Order 78(3) states that the amount of time allotted to any stage of a bill shall be not less than one sitting day. However, it also does not mean we should not take that particular reference to be interpreted as the length of the sitting day on which the bill is scheduled for debate or when the motion is moved.

Standing Order 78(3) affords the government the option to allot a specific number of “days” or “hours”. Sometimes time allocation motions allot sitting days. When a motion refers to a sitting day, we take the timeframe of a sitting day literally. It does not mean how long the day is or what the circumstances dictating the time available for government orders might be. On other occasions, time allocation motions have allotted hours. The hours allotted in those motions were respected.

Let me give some examples. On November 13, 1975, a motion allotting five further hours for the second reading stage of Bill C-58, which amended the Income Tax Act, was adopted; similar motions were adopted on March 10, 1976, for Bill C-68 amendments to the then Medical Care Act; on March 29, 1977, for Bill C-27, the Employment and Immigration Reorganization Act; and on November 22, 1977, for Bill C-11, another bill to amend the Income Tax Act. In relation to Bill C-18, the National Transportation Act, 1986, a motion allotting four hours for report stage and four hours for third reading was adopted on June 15, 1987.

Most recently, the House adopted two such motions last Thursday, June 7, 2012. One allotted five hours for third reading of Bill C-25, pooled registered pension plans act, and the other allotted seven hours for second reading of Bill C-24, the Canada–Panama free trade bill. Needless to say, both motions were in order last week and each was adopted by the House.

Of interest, regarding the 1987 case, the report and third reading stages happened to be the second order of the day called by the government on each sitting day, and the debates were interrupted by the Speaker after the expiry of the time provided for in the time allocation motion but before the end of government orders. It should be further noted that on both occasions, after Bill C-18 was dealt with, the government called a third order of the day.

Looking at our recent example of Bill C-25, yesterday's order paper said we had 2 hours and 24 minutes of debate remaining on the bill. Had we resumed debate on it at 3:00 p.m., after question period last Thursday, the debate would have ended before the end of government orders at 5:30 p.m. With routine proceedings and the consideration of procedural motions, it is not inconceivable to end up with a situation where only a few minutes are available to debate a bill on a given ordinary sitting day. Those few minutes would satisfy the minimum requirement of Standing Order 78(3) if the motion allotted one sitting day.

Our motion refers to hours. When dealing with hours, it makes more sense to interpret the minimum requirement of one sitting day differently because the number of available hours could vary from day to day.

As members are aware, not every sitting day is the same. Under the usual calendar, five and a half hours are set aside for both routine proceedings and government orders on Mondays; six and a half hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays; two and a half hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. The longer routine proceedings take, the less time there is for government orders. When allotting hours, the reference to one sitting day should be interpreted as a sitting day and not the sitting day on which the bill has been scheduled for debate.

I would argue that when referring to hours in a time allocation motion, the minimum allotment of hours should be consistent with the shortest day available under the current Standing Orders, and that is two and a half hours, and that assumes we breeze through routine proceedings in a heartbeat. Of course, our motion contemplates ten hours of debate for report stage and a further eight hours for third reading, which in both cases is at least three times the two and a half hour figure I just cited.

On three of the five sitting days each week, the time available for government business is routinely no more than five hours. Some may ask what impact there may be, given that we are operating under extended hours. I would say it should not be a relevant consideration. Calling government orders is the prerogative of the government. In other words, any item on the order paper could be called this week or this fall, when we are not in extended sittings. However, should the fact we adopted a motion yesterday under Standing Order 27(1) bear relevance to the chair's consideration, let me advance two further points.

First, Wednesday, tomorrow for example, would have at most eight hours for government orders, and the coming Friday is operating in the usual schedule, with two and a half hours for government business.

The government could, if it so chooses, call Bill C-38 on either of those dates, and yet 10 hours could not be fully used in a single day. In fact, I believe everyone understands that we will be calling Bill C-38, in part, tomorrow.

Second, the 1987 precedent that I cited earlier speaks to our present circumstances. On Friday, June 12, 1987, the House adopted a special order respecting sitting hours, effective the following Tuesday. Now, recall that the time allocation motion was adopted on Monday, June 15. The House, knowing that extended hours were upon it, adopted the time allocation order for four hours for each of two different stages of the bill.

Report stage was called on Tuesday, June 16, as the second order of the day, and after all of the recorded votes at report stage there were still a couple of hours left in the day for a third item of government business. Third reading followed the next day, when again there was more than ample time in the day to accommodate that debate.

Looking at the cases I cited earlier, but in both the case of Bill C-18 in 1987 and Bill C-25 on Thursday last week, the minimum requirement of one sitting day was not interpreted by the Speaker as the length of the days on which either bill was scheduled.

Although no ruling was then given in 1987, I would submit that Mr. Speaker Fraser likely interpreted the length of the shortest available day to be the minimum time required by the Standing Orders, and as far as I can surmise, it would also have been the view of the Speaker last week.

Accordingly, I believe our motion should be allowed to stand for the same reason that it allots a greater number of hours than the shortest day on which it could be scheduled. Indeed, it will be a longer number of hours than in the normal circumstance would be provided any day at any other time of the year that we would be debating it in the House.

I believe the precedents are amply demonstrative that the motion you have before you, Madam Speaker, is in order.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Madam Speaker, absolutely not. What is in Bill C-38, budget implementation act one, is exactly what we heard from Canadians in consultation across this country. We need to make government more effective. We need to make government reflect the value of Canadians. There are lots of people looking for work. There are lots of people in the hon. member's province looking for work. The improvements to EI would provide them a conduit to find jobs within their region and skills sets. That is only common sense.

That is what this entire budget implementation act is all about. It is making sure that we protect the fisheries where it is important to protect them, not on my back forty out in southern Alberta where there never has been a fish. Those are the challenges we are facing. The old Liberal government liked to maintain a process in Fisheries and Oceans that actually impeded productivity on the Prairies and we have said that is not right. Let us focus our money and efforts where they are needed: in protecting the fishery.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary will find little dispute from me about the time spent by the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster. It is irrelevant to this debate. That was not blocking any discussion of Bill C-38 because it had not been tabled at that time.

I dispute the sort of nonsense we have heard from the government House leader that there has been abundant debate. Budget bills between 1995 and 2000 averaged 12 pages long. It has been only this Conservative brand, under the current Prime Minister, that has taken budget bills and made them Trojan Horses. It was 800 pages in 2010, and now a 420-page bill changing environmental assessment and fisheries and only 12 hours of witnesses in a committee. That is an outrage.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this represents the 26th time that the government has invoked time allocation and closure, shutting down debate and thereby breaking a record of previous governments.

Never before have we seen a bill like Bill C-38, the Trojan Horse budget bill. The government will claim that there has been a lot of debate. With 720-plus clauses, more than 400 pages and more than 70 acts of Parliament which would either being changed profoundly or ruined altogether, we have raised concerns from the opposition and from the voices of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. In this Trojan Horse of a bill, hundreds upon hundreds of pages, the implications of which Canadians can perhaps be fearful of a government that so fears transparency, we have raised opposition to these time allocations.

Our words have not swayed it, nor have the words of Canadians who are fearful of what the government plans. Perhaps the words of the Prime Minister may sway the government. When he was in opposition, and maybe his principles have since changed, he said the following:

Madam Speaker, this will be the only opportunity I have to address [this bill] in the Chamber. I was not able to speak to the bill at second reading because there was time allocation then. Now there is time allocation at report stage....It is unfortunate that in the end most members will be lucky to have 10 minutes to speak to this bill.

Where have those principles gone, for the need to have democratic debate in this House—

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, not more than 10 further hours shall be allotted to the consideration at report stage of the Bill and 8 hours shall be allotted to the consideration at third reading stage of the said Bill; and

that, at the expiry of the 10 hours for the consideration at report stage and at the expiry of the 8 hours for the consideration at third reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the Bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

Bill C-38

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise here this morning to present two petitions.

The first group of petitioners are from across Canada: from Alberta, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. The petitioners are calling on the government to withdraw Bill C-38, because it is illegitimate and because it affects and repeals important environmental protection legislation.

The Budget

[Bruce Hyer, Independent, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of residents from across Canada, from British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, who have great reservations about the government's omnibus budget implementation bill. The petitioners recognize that many measures in Bill C-38 were not mentioned in the March 29 budget at all, and many have nothing to do with implementing a budget.

Further, they note that omnibus legislation such as this subverts the parliamentary process because there is no way to properly scrutinize mammoth bills like this. They petition the government to withdraw Bill C-38 and to start over.

Canada Revenue Agency

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, it is my great privilege to address my colleague for the first time in the House. I want to congratulate her on her fortitude in staying here until this late hour. I know she has a family and it speaks to the courage of some of the women parliamentarians in the House.

At this point in time, especially with the debt crisis in Europe, it behooves our government to look at ways to ensure that our financial house is in order. We are doing so in large part with budget 2012 and part of the bill that we debating tonight, Bill C-38. The goal of the bill is to ensure balanced finances, while spurring job creation and economic growth. We have the made in Canada approach to ensuring the long-term prosperity of our country.

With that, we need to ensure that core services are still delivered and that the responsibilities of government are maintained and carried out. On my colleague's question about her specific riding and the tax centre therein, I am certainly not in a position to comment on rumours or speculation. However, our government will ensure that core services are delivered and that we are wise stewards of taxpayer funds.

She made some good comments about looking at job creation and ensuring long-term growth in the country. I would ask her to look at some of the policies we have put in place over the last few years since we became government. Since July of 2009, our economy has created over 760,000 net new jobs across the country, over 90% of which are full time and many of them in Quebec. It is that track record that we seek to improve upon, while delivering core services and ensuring the stability of our social program funding for Canada's long-term prosperity.

Bill C-38

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second group of petitions calls on the Government of Canada to immediately abandon Bill C-38 and introduce only those measures that are directly related to the budget.

The petitioners note that many of the measures in the bill were not mentioned in the March 29 budget and most of them have nothing to do with implementing the budget.

The petitioners also note that the measures would amend over 60 different laws, including repealing or eliminating the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Fisheries Act, and many others.

The petitioners say that Bill C-38 would undo decades of environmental law and degrade the Canadian government's ability to defend our environment.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition, very much on point, is from the residents of Oakville; Windsor; Kitchener-Waterloo; Niagara-on-the-Lake; Vernon; Courtenay and Black Creek, B.C.; and Montreal, all calling on the government to withdraw Bill C-38, the so-called budget implementation bill, and to ensure that those non-budgetary matters receive proper review and are not forced through, as the government appears intent upon doing.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak on behalf of my party on this motion. I want to preface my remarks by saying I was hoping to have the opportunity to ask my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, a question. I, too, am amazed at how he can so articulately outline the position of the government and make it so understandable and do it without notes. Unfortunately, I have not gained that opportunity. However, maybe with a few more years of sitting under his mentorship I will have some of that under my belt.

I am pleased to rise in support of the government's motion, pursuant to Standing Order 27, to extend the sitting hours of the House in the final two weeks before the summer adjournment. Later, I want to make a few general comments about why we need to extend the hours. Now, I would like to focus on the House rules as they relate to the ability of the government and the need of the government to implement this measure.

O'Brien and Bosc House of Commons Procedure and Practice states on page 403:

Since 1982, and the advent of a fixed House of Commons calendar, the Standing Orders have provided for the extension of sitting hours during the last 10 sitting days in June.

O'Brien and Bosc further states, on pages 403 to 404:

In order to extend the hours of sitting in June, a motion, for which no notice is required, must be moved by a Minister during Routine Proceedings on the 10th sitting day preceding June 23. The motion, which must propose to extend sittings to a specific hour, but not necessarily for every day during that period, is subject to a maximum two-hour debate before the question is put by the Speaker.

Standing Order 27 is designed to provide the government with the option of seeking additional time before the summer adjournment for consideration by the House of important government priorities. This House has accomplished a lot this session, but there is more important work to do. Adopting the motion would provide further time for the House to debate important economic bills, like Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act, which would benefit our constituents, before we return to our ridings this summer.

Earlier in the debate today, my colleague from Winnipeg North made a comment to the House leader, something to the effect he was challenging the House leader to be sure that the House leader stayed here in Parliament for the full extent of the debate that we would have during these sitting hours.

I would like to point out to those who may be watching that much of the work of a parliamentarian is done outside this House. Yes, it is important that we are here for debates, motions and votes. However, my colleague will know that much of the work of a parliamentarian has to happen outside this House. We go back to our offices here on Parliament Hill. There are emails to deal with, phone calls to deal with, stakeholder meetings that are required of us. All of these functions are part of a parliamentarian's duties.

Add to that the responsibility of a House leader and one could imagine that it would be impossible, and my colleague knows this, for the House leader to sit here at his desk all day long to engage in debate. There are other important obligations placed upon our House leader.

It is important to point out to Canadians who were expecting us to move ahead on many of these initiatives to think about some of the positions that the NDP members have taken over the past number of weeks. They have repeatedly complained of lack of time to debate the legislation that we put before them. And now, here we have before us an opportunity to extend the hours to give them more opportunity.

Another point of irony in this whole debate is that during the debate on Bill C-38, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster used virtually 98% or more of the time available for all members to debate that bill. He used up all of that time, not allowing his colleagues, even the members of his own party, let alone the opposition, the opportunity to adequately enter into debate on that bill.

So, here we are, today, giving them the opportunity to extend those hours so that we can have important debate on the important legislation that we have tabled and they are saying, “No, we don't want to do that”. I think Canadians expect us to work until the job is done.

In these last six years that I have been a member of Parliament there are two things for which I am thankful. One is that I was raised on a farm and learned how to work hard and the other is that I learned how to work as a team member. Farmers realize that when it comes to spring planting season, they have to put in longer hours if the job is going to get done. When it comes to harvest in late summer or fall, farmers have to put in extra hours and extra resources may have to be called in. Canadians expect us at this point in history, when the economic recovery is still so fragile, to get the initiatives in this legislation implemented quickly.

Some misinformation has been given out today regarding the environmental changes that we are proposing. My colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands said “we are torching” the environmental regulations. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Bill C-38 proposes that when major projects are under review there be one project, one review, so that we are not needlessly duplicating and adding time and cost to those who are trying to move on with a project. Environmental assessments will be just as rigorous, perhaps more so. We will be giving companies a timeline in which the answer will be given. The answer may still be no, that the project cannot go ahead because of an environmental concern, but at least at the end of the day the company that is trying to move ahead with a project will have a definitive answer and it can move ahead with certainty.

Over the past number of days and weeks we have debated the changes to the EI system. I sat here through hours of debate as my colleagues on the other side argued against the fact that people should have the opportunity to take a job earning 80% of what they previously earned rather than sitting at home earning 55%.

Many of my constituents find that incongruous. How can those members possibly argue that it would be better for a Canadian to sit at home, not gainfully employed, not feeling productive, not having the honour and the self-esteem of having a productive job, when that individual could earn up to 80% of what he or she previously earned?

Also in the works here are the immigration and refugee changes we are suggesting in terms of getting rid of the hundreds of thousands of backlog cases that we inherited and trying to match the skills of those who plan to immigrate to Canada with job opportunities here. On this point, there is one thing that is being missed by a lot of Canadians.

People criticize us for wanting to keep immigrants out. Nothing could be further from the truth again. I have attended probably 100 citizenship ceremonies in the last six and a half years. Those who are calling for changes to our immigration and refugee system are new immigrants to Canada, who arrived here within the last 10 to 30 years. These people are saying that we need to ensure that we have a fair immigration system, one that gives a clear timeline as to what immigrants can expect in terms of job creation.

Changes to the fisheries and oceans act would also be implemented with the passing of this legislation. I come from an urban-rural riding. Many times farmers in my community have told me how frustrating it is when the Department of Fisheries and Oceans puts undue regulatory roadblocks in the way of their development simply because at one point a particular ditch may have had water in it and there may have been a few tadpoles in it and now they are facing many obstacles in getting on with fully implementing the projects that they want to do.

Under our government's economic action plan, Canada's deficit and taxes are going down. We heard today that Tax Freedom Day is today, June 11. I remember so clearly when I was running for office in 2005-06 that Tax Freedom Day was June 26. Here we are, fully two weeks earlier in reducing the tax burden on Canadians we have been called here to represent.

It is an honour for me to support the government's initiative to extend the sitting hours so that we can actually get the job done. Canadians expect that. They sent us here to do that. If we work together, we can get it done.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will ask my colleague a fair and hopefully tough question. I am sure he has a lot of experience in the House. There are many rules and procedures that he has talked about in this House.

One of the procedures or rules that I have learned from my friends the Conservatives is time allocation. They have certainly used it enough times. I know backwards and inside out how the motion is put together. My Liberal colleague talked earlier about how that is used to stop debate in the House. I will go even further. I think the Conservatives really do not want to talk about what is in Bill C-38 so we cannot get to the bottom of it.

Therefore, my question to my colleagues is this. What are they hiding? What do they have to hide that we cannot have a proper discussion in the House on Bill C-38?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to stand here and debate some of my more learned colleagues on the motion we have before us, which is of course to extend debate until midnight over the course of the next two weeks.

Standing Order 27 is the standing order we are talking about here. I should say that this standing order, of course, has been utilized many times in the past. In fact I recall when we first formed government in 2006. I believe the first opportunity we had to utilize Standing Order 27 and extend debate was in 2007. Since that time we have not had extended debate.

We have not had extended sitting hours for the last two weeks of a Parliament, but that is due to a number of different factors. For a couple of years, 2008, 2009, I believe it was just an agreement made between parties that it would not be required. I also believe there was an implied threat from members of the opposition during those minority government years that if our government had brought the motion forward, it would have been defeated.

There is a reason why Standing Order 27 was incorporated to begin with, and that is to allow the government of the day to bring forward pieces of legislation in an attempt to get them passed before that Parliament rose for the summer. It is always in the last two weeks of a parliamentary session, heading into the summer months, that this ability of a government to bring forward a motion for extended sitting hours is there.

I find it interesting that members of the opposition, particularly members of the official opposition, the NDP, have stated that they will be opposing our motion for extended sitting hours. In fact I always find that disingenuous on behalf of the opposition members, because they have consistently stated that they want more debate time. On almost every single piece of legislation we have introduced in this Parliament and previous parliaments, the NDP has consistently stated it wants more debate time.

We are now offering more debate time on several bills that are on our legislative calendar, yet faced with the opportunity for increased debate, enhanced scrutiny, the NDP says no. The NDP members do not want to sit the extra hours each and every night to debate bills.

I do not know if we have heard nothing but loose lips talking in previous months and previous years, from the NDP, if in fact it really did not want increased debate all these years, or if the NDP is actually telling the truth right now when it says it opposes the increased debate because it disagrees fundamentally with the government on Bill C-38.

I find it strange that the NDP uses that argument when we in fact have been debating Bill C-38. The opposition obviously has seen enough of the bill to be able to introduce more than 1,000 amendments originally, pared down to 871 amendments.

On one hand, again, we see this disconnect between reality and what the official opposition is stating publicly, and that is simply this: if it did not have enough information about Bill C-38 to begin with, how in the world could it have then brought forward 1,000 amendments? It does not seem to make sense to me that it would have a lack of information about what is contained in Bill C-38 but still have the ability to bring forward more than 1,000 amendments. It must have some knowledge of what is contained in Bill C-38, or else how could it have brought forward any amendments?

We know, of course, that the reality is simply this: opposition members, both on the NDP benches and the Liberal benches, are not looking for more reasoned debate on any piece of legislation that our government has brought forward. They are simply trying to delay implementation of each and every piece of legislation we bring forward.

That is readily apparent, and not only on Bill C-38 but on some of the other pieces of legislation in which we wish to engage the opposition in debate over the course of the next two weeks. There is Canada-Jordan free trade, Canada-Panama free trade and the modernization of the Copyright Act.

All these legislative initiatives were brought forward not only a few weeks ago but, in some cases, years ago. We have been engaging the opposition in debate on some of these matters for literally years, but to no avail. Something I find very troubling is that I hear members of the opposition state that they wish to have meaningful debate and they want to have co-operation with all parties in this place, yet they consistently go out of their way to try to inhibit legislation from passing.

I understand. I get what an opposition does, and I certainly agree that it is there to hold the government to account. I understand that the opposition members' primary function is to oppose government legislation. However, they cannot then say they want to work with the government to bring legislation to fruition if in fact their primary motive is simply to kill the bill, with apologies to Quentin Tarantino.

The government is attempting to bring forward legislation in a timely fashion and to ensure we have adequate debate. However, members of the opposition have consistently demonstrated that they wish nothing more than to delay, obfuscate and do anything in their power, through procedural tactics like hoist bills and other delaying tactics, to prevent our government from passing legislation. That is okay. If that is what they consider to be their primary function in this place, we will deal with that.

However, that is the reason, more than anything else, that we have brought forward time allocation on a number of occasions now. I will also point out to those who may be paying attention to this debate, who are not completely familiar with parliamentary procedures, that time allocation is a function used by many governments in previous years. It is a part of our Standing Order package that allows the government of the day to put a certain time allocation on a respective bill before it comes forward for debate at either second reading, report stage or third reading.

However, I will point out differences between our approach and those of governments in past years, particularly the previous Liberal governments who used time allocation and closure far more frequently than our government and used to have a standard one day of debate on bills that they used to time allocate. Members of this place will know, if they have been paying attention, that is not the approach we have been taking. When we have brought forward time allocation, we have done so in a fashion that would allow for several days of debate after the time allocation motion has been brought forward. Again, contrast that with the previous Liberal government, which would bring forward time allocation motions and restrict the debate to one day and sometimes, as the record would show, to as few as three hours in some cases.

So the only reason we have been bringing forward time allocation on a number of bills is that the opposition members have demonstrated that they will do everything within their powers to delay implementation. If any government is faced with a situation where it has been demonstrated that the opposition will delay and obfuscate to the point of never allowing any legislation to pass, then the government has no recourse and no other option but to bring forward time allocation motions, and that is what we have been doing.

Of course, from a political standpoint the narrative that the opposition members, particularly the NDP, have been trying to weave is that if they can force our government into bringing forward time allocation motions it benefits them politically, by allowing them to stand up in this House and to go to political meetings and say, “This government is restricting debate; look at all the time allocation motions it brought forward”. However, what the opposition members are trying to do is run up the score. They are trying to force our government to bring forward time allocation motions on almost every piece of legislation because it feeds their narrative. That is the reality. Is it good politics? Perhaps. We will find that out.

What Canadians expect of any government is that legislation be passed and that it be passed in a timely fashion. That is what we are doing, more than anything else.

If we look at the number of days of debate, the number of hours of debate, the number of speeches presented in this House on debate with various pieces of legislation that we have time allocated, we would find on average that there has been more debate on a bill-by-bill basis than with any government in the last 20 years. The opposition members do not like that because it is the truth, but if they took the time to actually research what I am saying, they will find it is absolutely true.

We have many new members in this place, so I do not expect them to know all of the parliamentary history, but I would encourage them to please go back and look at legislation that previous Liberal governments brought forward and look not only at how many times time allocation was used but also at closure. I am assuming that the members opposite know the distinction between time allocation and closure.

The reality is simply this, that Canadians expect governments of the day, regardless of their political stripe, to pass legislation, because without that ability, no government can function.

One of the problems in a minority government, which we all saw from time to time, is parliamentary gridlock. We reached an impasse where legislation simply would not pass because of the combined forces of the opposition blocking any attempt by this government to pass legislation in a timely fashion.

Obviously the dynamics have now changed: we have a majority government we are getting legislation through. Yet more needs to be done.

I will give four quick examples of what I consider to be critical pieces of legislation that Canadians would like to see our government act upon. I have mentioned them previously. One is the copyright modernization act, an act that has not been modernized for far too many years. We are on the cusp of finally passing that bill, but we need additional time to do so.

We have two more free trade agreements, one with Jordan and one with Panama, that will greatly enhance our economic ability to create jobs, to create wealth within our country. We need time, however, over the course of the next two weeks to get those bills properly debated and, hopefully, passed.

Of course, we have the pooled registered pension plans act that will provide, for the first time, to Canadians who are self-employed and do not currently have pensions the ability to opt into a pension plan, which will affect hundreds of thousands and actually millions of Canadians.

These are all extremely important pieces of legislation that Canadians want to see passed, which is all that we are trying to do, to ensure that over the course of the next two weeks before we rise for the summer, that at minimum these four pieces of critical legislation are passed.

Do we expect to get cooperation from the opposition? I will not prejudge that; I simply will not do that. I hope that the members opposite who have been speaking today in this debate, stating that they wish to cooperate with the government, are sincere in their comments, but time will tell.

I do want to mention the relationship, as I mentioned to my colleague, my friend from Winnipeg North, that should exist among House leaders. I, too, have been involved with the House leaders management team for the past number of years. In fact, I have been the parliamentary secretary to five different House leaders since we were first elected to government in 2006, and I can assure the members opposite, all members, that from time to time, while there may be acrimony and some hard feelings, I believe that on most occasions the House leaders of all parties, opposition and government together, do work together in a fairly collegial atmosphere.

There will also be times when all opposition parties and the government, through their House leaders and their House management teams, can agree on certain pieces of legislation that can be passed.

I will not tell any stories out of school, or break any confidential pact, because House leaders meetings of course are in camera and are confidential, but I can assure members opposite that I have been involved in previous years in negotiating when sessions end.

I do not want to give the impression to any Canadian that parliamentarians want to get out of here early and do not want to do the work they have been elected to do. However, from time to time, as we get close to an end of a parliamentary session, there is the opportunity for all parties to come together to try to agree on what legislation might be available for quick passage.

It is not uncommon, for example, for opposition parties to come forward during House leaders' discussions and ask what priority pieces of legislation the government has on its agenda. That is code of sorts, quite frankly, for what pieces of legislation the government wants passed before we get out of here for the summer. Maybe we could have some discussion; maybe we could find some common ground, some agreement. It has always worked well and I anticipate, or at least I certainly hope, that this opportunity over the course of two weeks will not disappoint me and that we will find common ground again.

I particularly want to point out that I agree with a comment by my friend from Winnipeg North a little earlier, that surely to goodness there could be the type of relationship among House leaders that allows for some legitimate debate on the length of time that bills need to be debated. I have had this conversation with the House leaders of both the Liberals and the NDP in months and years past. In a perfect world I would love to see a situation or the type of dynamic in play where on a relatively normal bill, a non-controversial bill, we could agree on an average length of debate. If we could agree, whether it is five days or ten days or so many hours, that would be the standard we would try to hold ourselves to.

Obviously there would be times where legislation that any government introduced would be opposed vigorously by the members of the opposition. We have clearly seen some of those in this session of Parliament, such as on the long gun registry and the Wheat Board, and there will be others. I can understand that, and I believe that the opposition members understand that those are the types of legislative initiatives where the opposition and the government will never find common ground. That is okay. That is the nature of democracy; that is the nature of Parliament. In those cases though, I still think that we could find some common ground to agree that if we are going to encounter vehement opposition, then what is a legitimate timeframe we can put on that debate. Perhaps it would not be as short as some of the more non-controversial pieces of legislation, but can we at least find some agreement to limit debate after a certain period of time, if we know that we will never find agreement between the opposite sides of the House?

That has been attempted. At times it has proven to be successful. I would like to see more of that type of dialogue between parties. However, where we cannot bridge that impasse, then we will find that the government has to use the levers at its disposal. We have been doing that, but I believe we have been doing that in a judicious manner.

I invite comments from opposition members to see if there are ways they would suggest for us to find even more enhanced co-operation between all parties in this place.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is that, instead of being 400-plus pages that affect 70 acts and in some cases delete some of them, Bill C-38, the budget bill, likely could just as easily have been 14, 15, or even more substantial pieces of legislation. That is why Canadians need to be concerned with where the limit is. If the government says it is going to have a “long live Canada” budget bill, that means it could incorporate every piece of legislation it wants to put in in any given year and say it is now the budget implementation bill, and it could affect even more than this one does. It is a very dangerous direction we are going in today with Bill C-38.

What offends me most is that the government somehow accumulated the courage, and courage is probably not the right word on this. I would never have thought it would bring in a bill like this that incorporates so many changes in so many different ways in one bill, a budget bill. I believe it is dishonest and anti-democratic. I truly believe there are a number of Conservative members in the House who would be voting against Bill C-38, if there were a free vote.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

A member from across the way says that they do. He better canvass his constituents because it will become an election issue. The Liberal Party will take that issue to the polls.

At the end of the day, the residents of Winnipeg North, and I do not think they are too far off from those in the rest of Canada, are very upset and concerned about the pension issue. They want to have that option to retire at age 65. They believe in that program.

Let us take a look at the micro-scales on the impact of the budget bill.

We have immigration offices that are being closed down, hundreds of CIC workers are being taken out and individuals who are in need of these services are impacted.

We can talk about search and rescue and the impact the budget bill will have on it, with offices being relocated or closed down. There are many different issues.

Earlier today I received some correspondence regarding the Riel House in the city of Winnipeg. Louis Riel was one of the founders of Confederation as far as many Manitobans and Francophone are concerned, but that house is now in jeopardy.

There are so many issues that are related to Bill C-38. We have to look at all the other issues. The government House leader said, the Conservatives had other legislation that they wanted to get passed, and he then started to list off more legislation. We welcome the opportunity to debate and have proposed legislation go to committee.

We are interested in those important issues on which Canadians want parliamentarians to work. It was the Liberal Party that first raised the issue in last fall's session that the number one priority for Canadians was jobs, jobs, jobs. Unemployed people are concerned about being able to provide for their family and themselves. We have recognized the importance of the economy.

We are prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure that we move forward in a positive way and that we let the government know what the concerns are. Last fall, I spent a lot of time talking about jobs. However, in the last few weeks it seems I have been talking more and more about process because I am concerned about what is happening inside the House. Many may see process as being somewhat of a dull issue, but it is far from that.

This is about democracy. This is about the rights of members of Parliament to really engage in discussion that is necessary, whether it is on the floor of the House of Commons or after a bill passes and goes to committee. We have to ensure that those rights are protected. There is an expectation, and I do not know about other members, I would assume so, that when we knock on doors and tell our constituents we are prepared to go to Ottawa to ensure their concerns are addressed, that we do so. I have always added that I want to bring Ottawa to Winnipeg.

The point is to ensure that the concerns of our constituents are addressed. That is why in this very short of period of time, when we talk about the extension of hours, I raise the issue of the budget and the seniors issue. I can talk about how this budget will impact health care. It has always been a very important issue, not only for residents of Winnipeg North but, I believe, all Canadians. A big issue has always been crime and safety in our streets, something that I have argued may even likely be the number one issue for Winnipeg North in the minds of a good percentage of my constituents, and for just reason. This is one of the reasons why I talk about that a great deal, and will continue to do so.

However, the motion that we ultimately will be asked to vote on is if the House should extend its sitting until midnight for the next period of time. I would feel so much better if the government House leader and the government's House leadership team would work with the opposition House leaders and their teams to see if in fact we could come up with some sort of compromise so Canadians would be served first and foremost.

It is interesting. The government House leader concluded his opening remarks on the motion by saying that we should put Canadians first. This would be a challenge that I would put to him, to put Canadians first.

I was provided with a quote that the government House leader actually made back in July 2005. It states:

A major reason I became politically active was because many in my family...lost their lives, or freedom at the hands of the Soviets or Nazis. I believe our democracy is fragile, and something we must cherish and defend.

This was something he apparently had on a website on July 5, 2005. He was talking about what was a sad day in the House of Commons.

I, like the government House leader, like to think I am a defender of our democratic system and our institutions. I believe it is important that as a House we work together to try to address the important issues of all Canadians.

The House leaders of all political parties inside this chamber play a very important role. If the House leaders do their job, then we are able to have an orderly ending to a session. There will be bills that will be opposed and the opposition will want to voice those concerns. We should not try to tie their hands. We have to allow, for those controversial bills, the opportunity for the opposition members to express themselves. That means not bringing in time allocation as often as the current government has. It means to allow the committees to do the work they need to do so these issues are addressed in a timely fashion.

I look forward in the future to the government House leader working with opposition House leaders in an attempt to have more orderly windup sessions.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I stand to speak to this motion, a motion by which I am not totally surprised. One could have anticipated it, given the record of the government and its inability to negotiate in good faith.

Let me start by saying that I do not have a great deal of legislative experience here in the House of Commons, but I do bring with me quite a bit of experience from the Manitoba legislature. I like to think that a lot of the principles are the same. There are different issues and so forth, but I have a fairly good understanding of the principles of how a chamber works and how House leaders should be working with each other to try to get through legislative agendas. I have been doing it for 20 years now.

I would like to focus my first few minutes on the fact that we need to look at why we are in the situation we find ourselves in today. The government, more than any other government, has set a record on time allocation. It brings in time allocation in order to pass its legislative agenda. It is almost becoming standard process, as opposed to sitting down with opposition parties.

The Conservatives present their legislation to the House. They pick a bill, wait a day and then bring in time allocation in expectation that it will pass. They do not have to consult. I think that is some sort of pent-up anger from the minority days or something of that nature, and we are seeing a very irresponsible, anti-democratic Reform Conservative majority government that has been destructive to process inside the House of Commons.

I have worked with majority government in the past, when there were NDP House leaders and Progressive Conservative House leaders. On all occasions, I have had the opportunity to sit in the House leader's office or in a committee room, and the government members will say, “Here is what we are looking at as a legislative agenda. Here are the important bills that we want to get passed over the next number of months”. Opposition members will then say, “We want to have x number of hours of debate on this particular bill because it is controversial legislation and we feel it needs to be debated. It has a higher priority for debate.”

The point is that there is a sense of cooperation to make sure that what is taking place on the floor of the legislative assembly, or in this case the House of Commons, is being debated fairly.

That is not to say I have never witnessed closure of some form or another inside the Manitoba legislature. That happened, and whether it was the NDP or Progressive Conservatives, it happened. It is a tool that is there, and I believe political parties of all stripes have at times had to go into that tool box.

However, more often than not I have witnessed agreements to go into extended sitting hours, and that is what this motion is all about. House leaders say they need more time to get something passed, but what has amazed me in my year and a half in the House is the lack of goodwill, the lack of trust coming from the government side in terms of trying to get things through the House of Commons in a fair and appropriate fashion.

I can recall the Canadian Wheat Board legislation that was put through in this session. This huge piece of legislation impacted 30,000 or 40,000 prairie farmers. We have a law in place that says that the Prime Minister has a responsibility to ensure a plebiscite for the farmers. The plebiscite is still in the court process, but the government brought in legislation that it expects MPs to pass without the farmers even having the plebiscite, a right that the law in essence guaranteed them. It guaranteed that they should have a vote because of the changes to the wheat board.

We in the Liberal Party opposed what the government was doing. We opposed the fashion with which it was bringing in legislation. What did the government do? As it has done 20 other times, which is a record, the government brought in time allocation. It has brought in time allocation 25 times, I believe.

What does time allocation do? In essence, it prevents debate and allows the government to rush through legislation. By doing that, the government is doing a disservice to Canadians and it is not respecting the House.

I do not know what the tradition has been—three, four, five times a year?—but I do know that no other government has brought in time allocation 25 times in one year. That has to be record. It could be a Commonwealth record, as far as I know. That is what is wrong with the Conservative government.

I am not fearful of sitting until midnight. I have sat around the clock before. I have sat in committees before.

The government House leader says we have had eight or ten hours of debate. This is a budget bill, and we are spending over $250 billion. The Manitoba legislature had 240 hours of line-by-line debate on estimates to spend $6 billion. That was only on a $6 billion budget at that time. Those 240 hours have been reduced somewhat, and the amount of money that the province of Manitoba spends has changed , but everything has to be put into its proper perspective.

Bill C-38 has been termed the “Trojan Horse” as a budget bill because 70 laws would be changed, amended or deleted, and all through the back door. Is there any wonder that all these little red flags are shooting up all over the place the more Canadians find out about it? Canadians realize that what is happening here is wrong.

It goes beyond the NDP and the Liberals. I saw the YouTube clip in which a Conservative backbencher was sharing with an intimate group of constituents that a number of Conservatives have some trouble with the legislation, but that they do not have any choice. I would suggest that there is a choice, and that choice needs to be looked at.

This is unprecedented. The size of the legislation and its profound environmental impact are significant.

The motion we are dealing with does not deal just with Bill C-38. It deals with a wide variety of pieces of legislation. There is no secret here. We know the government's intentions. It is going to bring in more time allocation, because the government House leader has not been able to negotiate. He has not been able to sit down and work things through.

The budget bill would have a profound impact on the environment. Why did the government choose to put something like that in a budget bill?

I do not know how many of my Atlantic colleagues have raised the EI changes in question period to try to get the government to wake up on the employment insurance issue. This is costing industry in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and all over Canada. We have industries that are being put in jeopardy because of what is being sneaked through the back door with this legislation. There would be reforms to EI and pensions.

I have never had as much interest for signing petitions as I have had on the pension issue. Whether here or in my previous life as an MLA, I have submitted a few petitions over the years, but never with as much interest as on the pension issue. Canadians feel very passionate about our social programs. Increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67 is just a dumb idea and Canadians do not support it.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is entirely correct. The NDP went to extraordinary lengths to hold budget hearings, both here in Ottawa and right across the country.

When we realized that the government was intent on just pushing this measure through at any cost, we decided that we had to get out there and hear from people, and we did just that. We got a huge response from people, and I think it has helped to generate people's awareness about this bill and given visibility to what is in the bill.

I agree with the member that this is not an issue of whether we come here at 10 or 11 o'clock at night. We have shown on so many different occasions, whether on back-to-work legislation or in any debate we have had, that we are totally engaged in doing our work in this place. We take it very seriously.

What we are responding to with this motion is the intent behind it. I think it is just an illusion that somehow we are going to have more debate on this particular bill and other pieces of legislation.

This is all about creating space to then allow for more time allocation. Let us make no mistake about that. We absolutely know what the number is and we know what is going on here. I want to say very clearly that what we are calling for is substantive debate, not only of Bill C-38 but also of the other pieces of legislation that may come forward, so that we can have a thorough oversight and investigation into all of these elements, particularly in Bill C-38.

This is the most important thing that we should be doing, and the government has absolutely refused to respond to it.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when the government House leader claims that the government is suddenly providing additional hours for debate and proper study of the bill, at least in the case of Bill C-38, his mouth should feel as though it is full of ashes to say something like that. We have seen the torching of environmental legislation by it being rammed through at second reading and the committee process that followed.

I heard the hon. member on the Conservative benches say that this bill has received more study than ever. I worked on the passage of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act that, by Bill C-38, would be repealed. It was taken through the Privy Council Office in 1987 for permission to draft. It was finally tabled before the House and passed, but did not get royal assent until 1994. In my experience, it takes years to bring forward good environmental legislation and it takes weeks to bring out a wrecking ball.

I do not see how, at this point, being told that sitting until midnight for the two days left at report stage provides any real content to the debate.

Does my hon. friend from Vancouver East get any sense that the Conservatives are willing to negotiate to bring Bill C-38 to a conclusion that includes taking on amendments?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is just no two ways about it. The more people find out about Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill, the more they hate it and the more the government is intent on getting it through the House and out of the way. This is what this is about.

I attended a public forum with some of my colleagues in Regina a couple of weeks ago and that was when information about the bill was just beginning to come out in a way that people were asking what was going on in Ottawa and what was all the stuff in the bill. When we started listing for them all the different pieces of legislation and the issues they would impact, whether it was pensions, the environment, health care or first nations, people's jaws were dropping.

There is a critical mass of people across the country, whether in organized groups or individuals, who are aghast at the methodology that the government is using, which, of course, is why the government now wants extended hours. It wants to finish things off and get the bills through, something that we oppose.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, over the weekend, I was in Winnipeg. I have found that as more and more Canadians become aware of what Bill C-38 is all about there is a great deal of resistance. We are starting to see its quite significant presence on the Internet as more and more Canadians are starting to react to finding out what the government has done with regard to that specific bill.

I would ask my colleague from the New Democratic Party how she feels Canadians as a whole are reacting to Bill C-38 specifically.

My interpretation is that the more people find out about it the more upset they are. I think the government would do well to recognize how offensive the bill is to our democratic system and to Canadians as a whole. The government would be well advised to go back to the drawing board, in essence, on this bill and to bring in a normal budget implementation bill that would take away a lot of the amendments proposing to significantly change legislation, such as our environment act.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that we have this debate today about extending hours, because we cannot look at this particular motion in isolation from everything that has happened in the past year since the election, under this Conservative government.

I would begin my remarks by saying that I think a measure of a government is how it represents and respects the institution it operates within. By and large, certainly a majority government controls that institution. Therefore, how the government actually operates on a day-to-day basis and operates overall in terms of respecting the opinions of opposition, of members of the public, of committees, of the structures and the vehicles that we have, is a very important criterion in terms of how one looks at how a government is performing, whether it is the current Conservative government, a majority government or former governments. One has to look at this motion today in that context.

I mentioned in my remarks earlier that we have seen the government now bring in time allocation possibly 20 to 24 times on different bills. Time is a very valuable commodity. It is something by which we all operate. We understand the importance of it. I do find it incredibly ironic that, on the one hand, we have a government that has been doing everything it can to restrict the time we have for debate, for example, on Bill C-38, but on the other hand it is looking for an expansion of time in the next two weeks because it wants to get everything else through. This is really very disrespectful of the process we have in Parliament and is disrespectful of the engagement that members of Parliament want to have.

Bill Blaikie, who was the former member for Elmwood—Transcona, actually was the dean of the House. He was a very long-standing member of the House of Commons for more than 20 years. I remember speaking with Bill Blaikie on many occasions and getting a sense of how much the procedures had changed in this place, how much the rules had been bent, managed and finessed to basically minimize and restrict what members of Parliament can do.

We have to look at this issue over the longer term. We have to look at how much has been cut out already. Whether it is the right to have ongoing debate or the rules of the House generally, there has been so much undermining of the democratic process in this place. When we look at this motion today and we look at the underlying intent that motion has, which is to basically control the government agenda and to do everything it can to push through what it believes is necessary, then we can see that this place begins to be diminished. Its role and the role we have as individual members of Parliament begins to be diminished.

I remember, back in 1998 or 1999, the Reform Party of the day bringing in 472 amendments on the Nisga'a treaty. It is curious though that the Conservatives seemed to have no problem then in insisting that there had to be proper debate and a proper process. In fact, they used it. They were very opposed to that treaty. I remember voting. I think it was about 48 hours straight when we voted on those 472 amendments to the Nisga'a treaty in British Columbia. They seem to have forgotten all of that. They seem to have forgotten the process and the need to have some sort of equilibrium in this place. It has now become a very heavy-handed measure that it uses. That is what we are seeing today with this motion.

If we add on other examples, such as gag orders to employees, this is no longer a place where even people who work in different departments of the federal government are free to express an opinion. The gag orders are out there to shut down, to be silent and to self-censor. It all speaks to a pattern of incredible control. It speaks to a pattern of undermining the democratic process.

All opposition parties have a responsibility to hold the government to account. My hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley, the NDP House leader, in his earlier intervention on a point of privilege made the point well that by blocking information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, by withholding information to parliamentarians, we are impeding the proper functioning of a democratic process.

When we put all of that together, we can begin to see we have a government that is arrogant in its approach and dismissive of any opposition. That speaks badly to our democratic process as a whole.

We have seen unbelievable opposition to Bill C-38. We heard the governement House leader say earlier that this is the longest debate we have ever had. Seven days at second reading on a bill that would have so much impact on almost every aspect of anyone's life in Canada, amending more than 70 pieces of legislation, is the equivalent to having one day of debate for 10 different pieces of legislation. I do not think anybody could characterize that as any kind of adequate or substantive debate.

We are not only opposed to the motion and all of the processes that are unfolding in such a high-handed way by the Conservative government; we are also dealing with the substance. We are also opposed to the process of ramming through all of these bills because the substance of what is contained in the legislation is critical. It is important that people understand what all of these changes are about. We have been pressing that day after day in question period and in committee, where our team did an incredible job of bringing forward amendments.

The list of changes and their impacts is just unbelievable. We have heard about changes to food safety inspection and EI. The government is basically rewriting the way EI will operate. What is worse is that it will be under the complete control of the minister.

We are debating changes in Bill C-38 that would give the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development huge powers to make regulations and unilateral changes to the employment insurance system. This is particularly offensive because, as we know, the employment insurance system is based on contributions from workers and employers. It is a system that people rely on when they need it. Yet the wholesale changes that we know are coming, with respect to what is considered suitable employment, how far one has to travel, the wages that are involved, are all substantive changes. The ability to examine even that one piece in Bill C-38 has been minimal.

We also heard earlier today from the member for Halifax, who raised a question in question period, as she has done for many days both here and in committee, about the changes to environmental assessments. Today in question period she noted that Bill C-38 would, with one clause, change the whole environmental assessment procedure in Canada. The bill would basically bring in a whole new system. In normal terms over the history of Parliament, these are changes that would have intense scrutiny, each and every one of them.

Scrapping the director general of CSIS, what is all that about? Why is that being allowed to happen? What about the gutting of the Fisheries Act?

What about weakening foreign ownership rules on telecommunications? People who work in this industry, not the big corporations, are hugely concerned that buried in Bill C-38 are significant changes to foreign ownership rules that would make it much easier for corporations from abroad to come into Canada and take greater control over our telecommunications industry. That is something that requires substantive examination, but it is buried in the bill.

We have the cuts to health services for refugees. This one only came out more recently and now there is a huge outcry across the country about what the impact would be for refugees. We hear the talking points from the government members saying that refugees will not get anything more than anybody else. However, the loss of some of these medical services would have a significant impact upon people's lives.

However, do we get time to examine this? I do not think so because again this is something that is being rammed through.

The governement House leader mentioned some of the other legislation that his government wants to move through if the motion to extend the hours passes, which, of course, it has the votes to do. It is very possible that, with some of these bills with which other parties in Parliament agree with, there may be some agreement to have a good debate and to see the passage of those bills. That is something that we have done for many years where there is co-operation, where there is some dialogue, conversation, that we can actually come to an agreement. It seems to me that is the way we should be conducting our business. We should be allowing the House leaders to meet to figure out, where there is some agreement, which bills can go through, because there may well be agreement that there has been adequate discussion and that would be a timely and proper thing to do.

However, I think it is wrong to lay down a whole list of probably 15 or more bills and say that in the next two weeks we will sit until midnight, that we will ram all these bills through no matter what anybody thinks and no matter the length of debate. I know the Conservatives will use the argument that we can debate it all we want but I think the central point that we need to make about this motion is that it is not intended to allow substantive debate on these bills, whether there are 6 or 10 or 15. The purpose is to allow the government to , ram them through. I will bet my bottom dollar that it will now accompany this extension of hours, if it gets it, with time allocation.

I again come back to my first point, which is that on the one hand, the government is both restricting debate on Bill C-38 and other bills and it is also creating time for further debate so that it can also restrict debate to get the bills through. This is what we have come to. I have been in this Parliament now 15 years, through six elections. I have seen minority Parliaments and majority governments. I have seen how this operates. I know that if there is that process of some dialogue, goodwill, respect and trust, having been a House leader for eight years as well, we can arrive at a consideration and an agreement about the House agenda. We have the capacity to do that.

However, when the government y is so disrespectful of both the process and the substance and has an agenda that it just wants to ram through in the closing weeks of Parliament, all I can say is that we need to do our job and our job is to hold the government to account. Our job is to ensure that there is substantive and proper examination of all the bills before the House. We owe that to our constituents and to the public in general. I can tell from the emails that I am receiving and the stuff that is on Facebook that people are truly alarmed at the government's method of dealing, in particular, with Bill C-38.

People are only just beginning to understand the comprehensiveness and the far-reaching impact that the bill would have. This notion that it has had the longest debate ever is just nonsense. We need to look at what is in the bill. We need to know all of the legislation that it is trying to change. We need to know that none of that has been properly examined.

I do find that the government, in putting forward this motion today, is, regrettably, just a continuation of the arrogance it has displayed. It is a continuation of a disrespect of this place. It is a pattern of just wanting to get something through at any cost.

I feel very proud that the NDP, the official opposition, has spoken out very strongly. All of the amendments we have for Bill C-38, which will be voted on this week, are a reflection of the opposition that exists in this country. They are not just spurious amendments. These amendments are a reflection of what it is we are hearing from Canadians.

It is incredibly disappointing that the government is refusing to budge even an inch to look at splitting the bill or to look at ways to manage the bill so that there is proper debate. We have not seen the government willing to move anything on that front. That is a real indication, unfortunately, of where the Conservatives are at.

We will not be supporting the motion, not because we do not want to be here at night to debate. We are quite happy to do that. We are good at it. We would be happy to debate until midnight. However, we need to look at the intent of the motion and we know full well that the intent of the motion to extend the hours is so the government can bring in further time allocation to ram through Bill C-38, plus a dozen or more other pieces of legislation.

That is offensive. It is disrespectful of this Parliament. It is something that we do not think can be unchallenged, and it is for that reason that we oppose the motion.

I would like to move an amendment. I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing the words “Friday, June 22” with the following: “Thursday, June 21”.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when Canadians reflect on the opposition parties in Ottawa today, the reason that they often conclude what we see mostly are partisan games from the opposition is that normally the member would be standing up complaining that he does not have enough time to debate. Now, faced with a motion to provide more time for debate, the opposition parties, both of them, indicate that they have a problem with that motion. I find that irony tells us everything we need to know about the motives of the opposition party members in how they approach things.

Our approach, as the hon. member talked about C-38, is to take a look at what is important for Canadians. What they are concerned about most these days is job creation, economic growth and long-term prosperity. We brought forward a legislative agenda, including our budget implementation act, to deliver on things like a tax credit for small business job creation; additional investment in skills development, research and innovation; additional opportunities to harness our natural resource advantages; a way of making sure that we continue to have the most skilled workforce in the world; and bringing forward that comprehensive economic plan, subjecting it to the longest debate in decades in Parliament, the longest committee consideration, but also ensuring that we move forward with real decisions.

The opposition's response is to look for delay and obstruction tactics. It is not to talk about the substance of it, but simply to delay and play games. However, we want to deliver real results and focus on the substance of the economy for the benefit of Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I found it interesting that the government House leader, in his remarks, asked us to do what he believes is in Canadians' best interest. The Liberal Party of Canada has been doing just that.

One could ask why the government House leader is not behaving in a fashion fitting for this House. When he asks us to do what is in the best interest of Canadians, how would he, for example, defend the government's approach in dealing with Bill C-38, the budget legislation?

He complains that the opposition wants to debate the bill and have it in committee. However, it should come as no surprise to the government House leader that this is the single largest budget bill ever presented to this House. It is indeed unprecedented. The amount of legislation that is being brought into the bill through the back door is unprecedented. That is why it needs to be thoroughly debated.

The work ethic of the members of the Liberal caucus is second to no other caucus inside this chamber. We are prepared to debate the bill and other bills that are important to Canadians. We are prepared to challenge the government through amending legislation and forcing votes, to try to get the government to recognize the responsibility that it has to Canadians.

I do not shy away from work in this House. I wonder if the government House leader would make a commitment in this chamber to sit in this chamber as long as I do in order to see this bill pass. Surely to goodness he would be open to sitting as often as I do in the chamber to ensure the issues are being addressed and that Canadians are put first. Will he make a commitment to sit in the chamber as long as I do?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Not at all, Mr. Speaker. The authority for doing this is in the Standing Orders, which provide that on one day a year, we can move to have extended hours for the last two weeks of our sitting. We have been adopting the approach of running Parliament in a productive, hard-working, orderly fashion, where there is certainty and we actually come to decisions.

Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act, is a perfect example. Through our measures and the use of time allocation we have been able to ensure that we had the longest debate ever on a budget implementation bill, certainly the longest in the past two decades but probably ever. Similarly, we have also had the longest consideration in committee, not counting the subcommittee that was established. We are not interested in limiting debate. We are happy to have lots of debate and we have ensured that for some of the bills, some of the priority ones I listed like copyright. There has been far more debate in this Parliament to get to the same stages of bills than in previous Parliaments when the bills passed much sooner.

This is not our concern. Our concern is that we make decisions. That is what we were sent here to do. Canadians voted for us and said they wanted us to go to Parliament, address the important questions, debate them and make decisions on them. That is what we are asking the House to do: actually make decisions on the bills before us so that Canadians can benefit from those changes.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, regrettably, it comes as no surprise to hear the government House leader move this motion today for extended hours over the next two weeks. It is also no surprise that New Democrats are going to oppose it. Time is at a premium in this place and is a very powerful commodity.

I listened very carefully to what the government House leader had to say. He called on all members to work together in a constructive way. However, it seems to me that the process for doing that has to come from the government. There has to be a trustful relationship and a sense of goodwill about how the House agenda is managed. There are House leader meetings that take place every week to do that.

I find ironic that we have a government that is intent on restricting the amount of time for debate, whether on Bill C-38 or many others. About 24 bills have had time allocation or some sort of closure applied to them. On the one hand, the government is restricting the time for debate, but, on the other hand, wants more time. Why? It is because it wants to ram these bills through.

The government House leader gave an indication of some of the bills that the government is looking at. It seems to me that the proper place for that, where there is agreement, is at House leader meetings which are for that purpose. We now know the motivation for doing that, which is to push these bills through very quickly, as we are seeing with Bill C-38. If we allowed that to happen, we would be derelict in our duty. It would not be members working together, it would be the government acting in a very high-handed manner.

I would ask the government House leader on what basis he believes he has the authority to ram these bills through. I know he can move this motion, but in terms of proper process, is this not another example of ramming through government legislation?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 27, the ordinary hour of daily adjournment shall be 12 midnight, commencing on Monday, June 11, 2012, and concluding on Friday, June 22, 2012, but not including Friday, June 15, 2012.

Today I rise to make the case for the government's motion to extend the working hours of this House until midnight for the next two weeks. This is of course a motion made in the context of the Standing Orders, which expressly provide for such a motion to be made on this particular day once a year.

Over the past year, our government's top priority has remained creating jobs and economic growth.

Job creation and economic growth have remained important priorities for our government.

Under the government's economic action plan, Canada's deficits and taxes are going down; investments in education, skills training, and research and innovation are going up; and excessive red tape and regulations are being eliminated.

As the global economic recovery remains fragile, especially in Europe, Canadians want their government to focus on what matters most: jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity. This is what our Conservative government has been doing.

On March 29, the Minister of Finance delivered economic action plan 2012, a comprehensive budget that coupled our low-tax policy with new actions to promote jobs and economic growth.

The 2012 budget proposed measures aimed at putting our finances in order, increasing innovation and creating suitable and applicable legislation in the area of resource development in order to promote a good, stable investment climate.

The budget was debated for four days and was adopted by the House on April 4. The Minister of Finance then introduced Bill C-38, Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, the 2012 budget implementation bill. The debate at second reading of Bill C-38 was the longest debate on a budget implementation bill in at least two decades, and probably the longest ever.

On May 14, after seven days of debate, Bill C-38 was passed at second reading.

The bill has also undergone extensive study in committee. The Standing Committee on Finance held in-depth hearings on the bill. The committee also created a special subcommittee for detailed examination of the bill's responsible resource development provisions. All told, this was the longest committee study of any budget implementation bill for at least the last two decades, and probably ever.

We need to pass Bill C-38 to implement the urgent provisions of economic action plan 2012. In addition to our economic measures, our government has brought forward and passed bills that keep the commitments we made to Canadians in the last election.

In a productive, hard-working and orderly way, we fulfilled long-standing commitments to give marketing freedom to western Canadian grain farmers, to end the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry, and to improve our democracy by moving every province closer to the principle of representation by population in the House of Commons.

However, in the past year our efforts to focus on the priorities of Canadians have been met with nothing but delay and obstruction tactics by the opposition. In some cases, opposition stalling and delaying tactics have meant that important bills are still not yet law. That is indeed regrettable.

In the case of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act, a bill that will help to create good, high-paying jobs in Canada's creative and high-tech sectors, this House has debated the bill on 10 days. We heard 79 speeches on it before it was even sent to committee. This is, of course, on top of similar debate that occurred in previous Parliaments on similar bills.

It is important for us to get on with it and pass this bill for the sake of those sectors of our economy, to ensure that Canada remains competitive in a very dynamic, changing high-tech sector in the world, so that we can have Canadian jobs and Canadian leadership in that sector.

Bill C-24 is the bill to implement the Canada-Panama free trade agreement. It has also been the subject of numerous days of debate, in fact dozens and dozens of speeches in the House, and it has not even made it to committee yet.

Bill C-23 is the Canada-Jordan economic growth and prosperity act. It also implements another important job-creating free trade agreement.

All three of these bills have actually been before this place longer than for just the last year. As I indicated, they were originally introduced in previous Parliaments. Even then, they were supported by a majority of members of this House and were adopted and sent to committee. However, they are still not law.

We are here to work hard for Canadians. Adopting today's motion would give the House sufficient time to make progress on each of these bills prior to the summer recess. Adopting today's motion would also give us time to pass Bill C-25, the pooled registered pension plans act. It is a much-needed piece of legislation that would give Canadians in small businesses and self-employed workers yet another option to help support them in saving for their retirement. Our government is committed to giving Canadians as many options as possible to secure their retirement and to have that income security our seniors need. This is another example of how we can work to give them those options.

In addition to these bills that have been obstructed, opposed or delayed one way or another by the opposition, there are numerous bills that potentially have support from the opposition side but still have not yet come to a vote. By adding hours to each working day in the House over the next two weeks, we would allow time for these bills to come before members of Parliament for a vote. These include: Bill C-12, safeguarding Canadians' personal information act; and Bill C-15, strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act. I might add, that bill is long overdue as our military justice system is in need of these proposed changes. It has been looking for them for some time. It is a fairly small and discrete bill and taking so long to pass this House is not a testament to our productivity and efficiency. I hope we will be able to proceed with that.

Bill C-27 is the first nations financial transparency act, another step forward in accountability. Bill C-28 is the financial literacy leader act. At a time when we are concerned about people's financial circumstances, not just countries' but individuals', this is a positive step forward to help people improve their financial literacy so all Canadians can face a more secure financial future. Bill C-36 is the protecting Canada's seniors act which aims to prevent elder abuse. Does it not make sense that we move forward on that to provide Canadian seniors the protection they need from those very heinous crimes and offences which have become increasingly common in news reports in recent years?

Bill C-37 is the increasing offenders' accountability for victims act. This is another major step forward for readjusting our justice system which has been seen by most Canadians as being for too long concerned only about the rights and privileges of the criminals who are appearing in it, with insufficient consideration for the needs of victims and the impact of those criminal acts on them. We want to see a rebalancing of the system and that is why Bill C-37 is so important.

Of course, we have bills that have already been through the Senate, and are waiting on us to deal with them. Bill S-2, which deals with matrimonial real property, which would give fairness and equality to women on reserve, long overdue in this country. Let us get on with it and give first nations women the real property rights they deserve. Then there is Bill S-6, first nations electoral reform, a provision we want to see in place to advance democracy. Bill S-8 is the safe drinking water for first nations act; and Bill S-7 is the combatting terrorism act.

As members can see, there is plenty more work for this House to do. As members of Parliament, the least we can do is put in a bit of overtime and get these important measures passed.

In conclusion, Canada's economic strength, our advantage in these uncertain times, and our stability also depend on political stability and strong leadership. Across the world, political gridlock and indecision have led to economic uncertainty and they continue to threaten the world economy. That is not what Canadians want for their government. Our government is taking action to manage the country's business in a productive, hard-working and orderly fashion. That is why all members need to work together in a time of global economic uncertainty to advance the important bills I have identified, before we adjourn for the summer.

I call on all members to support today's motion to extend the working hours of this House by a few hours for the next two weeks. For the members opposite, not only do I hope for their support in this motion, I also hope I can count on them to put the interests of Canadians first and work with this government to pass the important bills that remain before us.

Bill C-38

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my friend for his novel and innovative approach to this question, but I think it actually ends up being so innovative that it is far off the mark.

First, I will start by saying that I believe what he was saying was that we have to deal with this now because it is in the context of Bill C-38. I understand that is the context in which he raises his point of order.

Of course a point of order such as this has to be raised at the earliest possible opportunity. Bill C-38 was introduced into the House on April 26. We are now some month and a half later, so he is very late in raising this argument.

Second, he has not cited any particular section or provision of the bill to which he takes exception, and for which he says these important questions have not been answered. Once again, I think what he is talking about is not anything to do with any content of Bill C-38, so he is off the mark there.

Third, the kinds of measures to which he is speaking, moneys that are spent on programs and personnel, are normally reported and approved by Parliament, not by a budget implementation act but rather through the appropriations bills that appear before this Parliament. That is the appropriate point for him to raise his questions. That is the process through which Parliament would report and provide the information he is looking for.

If he is looking for more detailed information than is in one of those appropriation bills, that would be the point for him to raise those questions and points. We are not currently dealing with an appropriation bill through this House. There is no appropriation bill outstanding before this House. I expect that he may wish to return to his point of order some months hence, when we have our next appropriation bill before the House, if he feels he has not achieved satisfaction at that time, that is, if he feels that the reporting mechanisms of the government have not been sufficient. However, we certainly are not facing that situation in any way with regard to Bill C-38.

Therefore, I think his point is very far off the mark, but I would be happy to return if further submissions are required.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, is decorum not a nice thing when it breaks out in here once in a while?

I bring forward a question of privilege, after significant work and research, with regard to the bill we have before us in Parliament. I bear your consideration, Mr. Speaker. A letter will be forthcoming to your office to outline and explain the specific details, but we believe we do have a prima facie case of privilege. We have looked at this with very careful consideration, and I would like to thank my team for putting this together under difficult circumstances.

There are many charges of contempt that go on within this place and not all of those are privilege, but every finding of privilege is in fact a contempt. The definition of this is that the powers of Parliament to do its job, to do three things in particular, to legislate, deliberate and hold the government to account, are paramount to all of our work. We know, through the very Constitution itself, that the exclusive legislative authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all matters coming within the classes of subjects hereinafter enumerated, “1A. The Public Debt and Property...2A. Unemployment Insurance...8. The fixing of and providing for the Salaries and Allowances of Civil and other Officers of the Government of Canada”. This will be the focus of our point with you this afternoon, Mr. Speaker.

We have also confirmed this all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada v. Vaid in 2005, that the supremacy of Parliament to do its job in this regard is paramount and cannot be confined nor restricted. O'Brien and Bosc on page 59 confirm this and that this right, this privilege can be broken either individually for members or collectively for us as a group. We include very explicitly that the privileges of members of the governing side have also been infringed by the process that has been taken on through Bill C-38.

Page 61 of O'Brien and Bosc states:

The privileges of Members of the House of Commons provide the absolute immunity they require to perform their parliamentary work while the collective or corporate rights of the House are the necessary means by which the House effectively discharges its functions.

We have built our case, Mr. Speaker, and are confident that you will find in this that the breach of privilege conducted here is significant enough to warrant a decision from you, hastily, after other parties have had their opportunity to intervene.

In one of the last rulings by your predecessor, Speaker Milliken, on April 27, 2010, in ruling on the question of privilege surrounding the provision of information to the special committee on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, Speaker Milliken said:

In a system of responsible government, the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege and in fact an obligation.

Herein lies our privilege. We have used every available tool to the opposition through questions on the order paper, requests through the Parliamentary Budget Officer, through questions during question period and at committee directed to the ministers pertaining to this issue, to understand directly and implicitly the impacts of the legislation that the government has been moving forward through its budgets and explicitly about what the cuts and implications will be for its budget measures, cuts to either services or to the number of employees who will be affected.

Allow me to say this, Mr. Speaker, and it is extremely important for your ruling, there is no dispute from the government side that the numbers in fact exist. The government is well aware of what the impacts will be on Canadians and has in fact publicly declared that the information exists. We heard from the President of the Treasury Board himself. He said in an interview with a reporter on May 9 of this year that he would like to release more information but was held ““hostage” to parliamentary reporting procedures and labour contracts, which require notices to affected employees going out before cuts could be made”.

Essentially, the government is requiring members of Parliament to vote blind on the legislation coming forward. In our conversations with the Parliamentary Budget Officer and in his conversations with the government, he has explicitly requested the information that has been made available to him, by right, under the act that the government moved as its second act, the Federal Accountability Act. Various places in the act require the government to produce, in a timely and transparent manner, information that exists.

There are two reasons why the government may withhold this information: if the information is not accessible through access to information; or if the information is confidentially provided to cabinet. The Clerk of the Privy Council has provided neither of those reasons. Herein lies the case of privilege. In citing the reasons of confidentiality because of some obligations under the collective agreement with the various unions that make up the civil service, while I may say as a caveat is a unique moment where the government has actually cared about a collective agreement with anybody under their employ, the reason given by the Privy Council, the head of the civil service, is not a valid one.

That is not a reason that he can use to block information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That is not an exercisable reason under the act and it in fact impedes parliamentarians from doing their work and, as I said, makes them vote blind on the actual budget. There is no cabinet confidentiality and these are not pieces of information that have been denied through access to information. To say this is critical to members of Parliament to understand before they vote on the budget is an understatement.

The government has moved a number of measures, which will have impacts on Canadian society, through the services and programs Canadians rely upon and directly through employees of the federal government and communities across this country. I would have expected members of the government to ask this question, but they have so far been mute on this point.

In breaking the Federal Accountability Act, the government has once again shown that perhaps the act is not worth the paper it is written on. This is the response we got from the Clerk of the Privy Council, in a letter written to the Parliamentary Budget Officer on May 15. It states:

...but, as indicated in the Budget document, the Government is equally committed to treating its employees fairly and respecting its contractual obligations. This means that departments will provide information to affected employees and their unions in the first instance, as required under the applicable collective agreements. Once this has happened...the Government will then begin...to communicate accordingly.

That is, it will then offer up to the Parliamentary Budget Officer and, through him, to parliamentarians the information.

The unions have been contacted and they have publicly said to the government and to the Privy Council that this does not break their collective agreement, thereby taking away the sole reason of the government to deny MPs their privilege.

I will run through the timeline and finish with this. The first thing members of Parliament sought to do was to request the information from the government, as is our obligation under the Standing Orders as members of Parliament, that is, to find out what the impacts of the bill would be. This would apply to any bill. Certainly with a bill as broad and sweeping as this, this would be important. The government denied this, either through question period or at committee. We then sought information through questions on the order paper. That too was denied. We then sought information through the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is legally obligated and enshrined with the right to seek this information unless legally denied, which he was not. That too was denied by the government. We are now at a place where we are being forced in some short time to vote on a bill whose impacts the government understands, but refuses to share with members of Parliament and those people whom we seek to represent. This is, by all definitions we can find, an infringement of the rights and privileges of members of Parliament.

If the House cannot hold the government of the day to account, then why have the House at all? If members of Parliament cannot do their jobs and cannot go back to their constituents with a clear conscience and understanding of the legislation that has been brought before us and its implications, then why are members of Parliament in the service of Canadians at all? They are not.

We seek this through you, Mr. Speaker. We carefully went through all of O'Brien and Bosc, which offered us numerous points. I will mention one. On page 281 of Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, it states:

The right of Parliament to obtain every possible information on public questions is undoubted, and the circumstances must be exceptional, and the reasons very cogent, when it cannot be at once laid before the houses.

There is no such reason given by the government. The Conservatives do not deny that the information exists, that the cuts to services and programming for Canadians exist and are understood. They have said that, from the most senior bureaucrat down, the person who works with the Prime Minister. The President of the Treasury Board has also said that the information exists. Their reasons for denying members of Parliament their right to this information have also been shown to be not true. All that is left in defence of this place, in defence of members of Parliament, is you, Mr. Speaker, whose job and role it is to defend the institution, regardless of the sways of the political discourse that goes on every day. The institution requires us to have the information to both debate and vote with clear conscience and information. The government is denying us that information. While this may be a pathology with the Conservatives, it does not give them the opportunity or the reason to deny members of Parliament these key and critical data. It is absolutely essential for us to maintain, as best as we may through all of the discourse that goes on here, certain principles.

The principle that we in opposition hold dearly is that our job, each and every day, is to hold the government to account. There should be those on the other side who share that principle, because that is a principle shared by all of us. The Conservatives may heckle the opportunity to speak and they may suggest that there is not something of right and privilege here, but they know better.

I remember the days when that hon. members on that side stood for these principles. I remember the days when we in opposition worked with the government on its second piece of legislation, the Accountability Act, as we have quoted here today, which set up an institution that we agreed with the Parliamentary Budget Officer should seek and garner this information.

Now what do we have? We have a government that insists that members of Parliament should vote blind, that Canadians should simply trust them and that it is somehow good enough. This is not a right-left issue; this is right and wrong. The government knows it is wrong. The government has the information and is denying Parliament and parliamentarians and the people we represent access to information that we need.

There is much more that we could say, but I understand that time is pressing. I am therefore prepared to move an appropriate motion if you, Mr. Speaker, find a prima facie question of contempt.

The Budget

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in light of the growing economic concerns around the world, the Conservatives have chosen to present a Trojan Horse that attacks employment insurance, old age security and the environment. None of the bill's measures deal with growth.

The economic measures in Bill C-38 could have been adopted already if the Conservatives had agreed to split the bill, but in these times of uncertainty, they prefer Euro-bashing and cutting services.

How will this help the economy?

Budget Implementation Act

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, conservationists, not just Conservatives, are supporting Bill C-38, the budget implementation act.

First, the bill would eliminate needless duplication of proceedings by government. The targeted inefficiencies include overlapping reviews by federal and provincial governments that do nothing to protect fisheries but interfere with jobs and economic growth.

Second, the bill would correct problems with the current habitat protection program: by clearing up uncertainty; defining more clearly what “important habitat” is; and focusing resources of the fisheries department on areas about which Canadians really care. The bill would address these faults with clearer definitions of fish habitat and stiffer penalties for offenders. The bill would also grant the minister increased flexibility to respond to the particular needs of each province.

As we approach Canada Day, I am grateful to live in the most beautiful place on earth, with such abundant resources and people who care so passionately about the legacy, environmental and economic, that we are committed to leave to our children.

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

[Jean-François Fortin, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives tried to seduce Quebeckers by making promises about an open federalism that would respect their differences, but now the only federalism Quebeckers are seeing is fraught with contempt and arrogance.

The Conservatives with Bill C-38 are like pyromaniacs with a can of gas. They are torching relations with Quebec, in particular by exempting major banks from consumer protection requirements; trampling on the Kyoto protocol; reducing health care funding even though our population is aging; and proposing employment insurance reforms that, quite frankly, will harshly penalize workers, employers and the regions of Quebec.

While the Government of Quebec is stepping up its legal recourse to ensure its rights are respected, the federal government insists on saying that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Quebeckers will not put up with being treated with contempt.

Bill C-38—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised on June 5, by the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands regarding the form of Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures.

I thank the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for having raised the matter, as well as the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, the hon. House leader of the official opposition, the hon. House leader of the Liberal Party, and the hon. members for Winnipeg Centre, Winnipeg North and Thunder Bay—Superior North for their comments.

The foundation of the arguments brought forward by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is that Bill C-38 has not been brought forward in a proper form and is, therefore, imperfect and must be set aside. Specifically, the member relies on Standing Order 68(3), which states that, “no bill may be introduced either in blank or in an imperfect shape”.

In laying out her case, she argues that in its current form the bill fails the test of being “a proper omnibus bill”; first, because it lacks one central theme, that is “one basic principle or purpose”; second, because it fails to provide a link between certain items in the bill and the budget itself; and third, because it “omits actions, regulatory and legislative changes” that are purported to be included in it by representatives of the government.

In response, the government House leader indicated that Bill C-38, as a budget implementation bill, had as its unifying theme the implementation of the budget. This, he reminded the House, arose from the adoption of the budget by the House. To use his words, “The budget sets the clear policy direction and the budget implementation bill implements that direction” and is “a comprehensive suite of measures designed to ensure jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity”.

Before I address the arguments put forward in this case, it is perhaps useful to remind members of what the provisions of Standing Order 68(3)—the basis of the point of order raised by the Member for Saanich—Gulf Islands—refer to. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, at page 728, states:

Since Confederation, the Chair has held that the introduction of bills that contain blank passages or that are in an imperfect shape is clearly contrary to the Standing Orders. A bill in blank or in imperfect shape is a bill which has only a title, or the drafting of which has not been completed. Although this provision exists mainly in contemplation of errors identified when a bill is introduced, Members have brought such defects or anomalies to the attention of the Chair at various stages in the legislative process. In the past, the Speaker has directed that the order for second reading of certain bills be discharged, when it was discovered that they were not in their final form and were therefore not ready to be introduced.

Furthermore, at pages 730 to 734, members can find a description of the various elements that comprise a bill. A bill must have a number, a title, an enacting clause, and clauses. It may also have a preamble, interpretation and coming-into-force provisions, and schedules.

Having reviewed Bill C-38, I can assure the House that it contains all of the required elements and is therefore in proper form in these respects. In addition, the requisite notice was given for its introduction and the bill was preceded by a ways and means motion, as is required. It is also duly accompanied by a royal recommendation.

Now the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has taken the argument of imperfect shape one step further in stating that Bill C-38 is not in the proper form and that it is not, in her words, “a proper omnibus bill”.

Here again it is perhaps useful to return to House of Commons, Procedure and Practice, second edition which states, at page 724, in reference to omnibus bills, “Although this expression is commonly used, there is no precise definition of an omnibus bill”.

It then goes on to state that:

In general, an omnibus bill seeks to amend, repeal or enact several acts, and is characterized by the fact that it is made up of a number of related but separate initiatives. An omnibus bill has “one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders the bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes.” One of the reasons cited for introducing an omnibus bill is to bring together in a single bill all the legislative amendments arising from a single policy decision in order to facilitate parliamentary debate.

At page 725, O'Brien and Bosc goes on to state:

It appears to be entirely proper, in procedural terms, for a bill to amend, repeal or enact more than one Act, provided that the requisite notice is given, that it is accompanied by a royal recommendation (where necessary), and that it follows the form required.

Naturally, there have been a number of rulings on the subject. Among these is a ruling given by Speaker Sauvé on June 20, 1983, which can be found at pages 26537 and 26538 of Debates, where she stated that:

—although some occupants in the Chair have expressed concern about the practice of incorporating several distinct principles in a single bill, they have consistently found that such bills are procedurally in order and properly before the House.

On April 11, 1994, Speaker Parent faced similar objections to another budget bill—C-17—when a member argued that the House was being asked to take a single decision on a number of unrelated items. As can be found at pages 2859 to 2861 of the Debates, the Speaker disagreed, noting that in the Chair’s opinion:

—a common thread does run through Bill C-17; namely, the government's intention to enact the provisions in the recent budget, including measures to extend the fiscal restraint measures currently in place.

The second argument raised by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, which is irrevocably linked to her first argument regarding the need for a central theme, was that there were elements found in Bill C-38 that were not provided for in the budget. It would be useful, at this juncture, to remind members that the long title of Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, is very broad, as is typical in bills of this kind. Clause 1 of the bill, which contains its short title, provides that “This act may be cited as the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act” and thus restates the very broad scope of the measure. O'Brien and Bosc, at page 731, notes that the long title sets out the purpose of the bill, in general terms, and must accurately reflects its content.

Speaker Fraser, on June 8, 1988, at page 16257 of the Debates, also referred to the use in our practice of generic language in bill titles and stated that, “every act being amended need not be mentioned in the title”.

If the long title had been specific and limited in scope, then the hon. member might have had a sounder basis for claiming that the bill went beyond what was contained in the budget. However, the title of Bill C-38 is wide in scope, and therefore, it is an accepted practice that the content of the bill could be similarly broad.

The third point raised by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands relates to her contention that representatives of the government, during debate at second reading of Bill C-38, claimed that the bill gave legislative effect to policy decisions that are not in fact contained in the bill.

What the member is raising here is perhaps a question of relevance in debate or a dispute as to facts. As Speaker Milliken stated at page 5411 of the Debates on October 27, 2010:

It is not the Speaker's role to determine who is right and who is wrong. I know there are disagreements over some things that are said in this House, but it is not up to the Speaker to decide either way.

It may well be that members, in their remarks, spoke about elements of the government's fiscal or regulatory policy intentions that were not contained in the bill, or that may flow from the bill if it is passed. These are matters that are beyond the purview of the Speaker. Given the generous latitude for relevance which is typically accorded to members on such wide-ranging debates, including that on the budget, it is in keeping with parliamentary practice that issues raised in debate would not exactly mirror the contents of legislation in every respect. As such, while these concerns are certainly pertinent to the wider debate surrounding the bill, they do not, in and of themselves, point to a technical deficiency in the bill itself.

As the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands noted, my predecessors have frequently been called upon to rule on matters pertaining to omnibus bills. In this regard, her argument that, “… there is a compelling case that the House must act to set limits around omnibus legislation” is one that has been made before. On these occasions, the key question faced by Speakers has been: What is the role of the Chair in dealing with such matters?

As Speaker Sauve said on March 2, 1982 at page 15532 of the Debates:

It may be that the House should accept rules or guidelines as to the form and content of omnibus bills, but in that case the House, and not the Speaker, must make those rules.

Speaker Fraser, in the June 8, 1988 ruling referred to by the member, advanced his own view of the role of the Chair in dealing with omnibus bills, by stating, at page 16257 of Debates:

Until the House adopts specific rules relating to omnibus bills, the Chair's role is very limited and the Speaker should remain on the sidelines as debate proceeds and the House resolves the issue.

Indeed, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands herself also recognized the limited role of the Speaker in such circumstances, stating:

It is clear that the Speaker is not, at present and in absence of rules from the House to limit the length and complexities of omnibus bills, entitled to rule that an omnibus bill is too long, too complex or too broad in scope.

It may well be time for members to consider our practices for dealing with omnibus bills. However, in the absence of any clear rules, I find myself agreeing with Speaker Fraser, that the most appropriate role for the chair is to step aside and allow the House to determine the matter.

When addressing similar matters in relation to omnibus bills, Speaker Jerome on May 11, 1977, at page 5523 of Debates, and Speaker Parent on April 11, 1994, at page 2861 of Debates, both suggested that members could propose amendments at report stage to delete clauses they felt should not be part of a bill, or vote against it. We all know that this has certainly been done with respect to Bill C-38.

In the same ruling by Speaker Parent, again at page 2861 of Debates, he stated:

—it is procedurally correct and common practice for a bill to amend, repeal, or enact several statutes. There are numerous rulings in which Speakers have declined to intervene simply because a bill was complex and permitted omnibus legislation to proceed.

Perhaps the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which is engaged in a review of the Standing Orders, could examine this thorny issue as part of its study, but until such time as the House feels compelled to set new limits on omnibus legislation, as your Speaker, I must continue to be guided by current rules and practice.

Having reviewed the submissions made by hon. members and the relevant precedents, including the many rulings just cited, the Chair cannot agree with the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands to conclude that Bill C-38 is not in the proper form and therefore should not be allowed to proceed.

In the absence of rules or guidelines regarding omnibus legislation, the Chair cannot justify setting aside Bill C-38 and accordingly must rule that Bill C-38, in its current form, is in order.

I thank hon. members for their attention.

Search and Rescue

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to have the opportunity to speak to the motion introduced by my hon. colleague from St. John's East.

This issue is very important to me, because I represent a maritime region. Many coastal communities are very concerned about maritime search and rescue operations, which save the lives of fishers, mariners and pleasure boaters, who flock to the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands.

People condemn the fact that there is a double standard in Canada right now. One standard applies on weekdays, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. During that time period, it takes 30 minutes to launch a search and rescue operation to save fishers or mariners. I am not saying that search and rescue workers do not give their all. These people are clearly very brave, and we really appreciate the dangerous work they do. They go through some very intense training.

The fact is there is simply not enough staff for dealing with the high volume of recreational boaters who are active outside regular working hours, on weekends, which, statistics show, is when 80% of the emergency calls enter our system.

There is a major disconnect between the service offered and the resources required to have the first-rate service we deserve in a free and democratic country such as Canada. We expect first-rate service.

Recently, there was question as to whether closing the marine rescue centre in St. John's, Newfoundland, would have an impact. For example, a sea captain with a health problem radioed the centre, but the centre did not have enough staff. The call had to be directed to a doctor in Rome. First, obviously the doctor was not familiar with the Newfoundland dialect. Second, he was unfamiliar with the Grand Banks of the Atlantic Ocean. Third, he did not know the risks this poor captain was facing. All this is very worrisome.

The budget cuts the Conservatives are proposing today, with Bill C-38 for instance, will endanger the lives of our fishers, mariners and recreational boaters. Canadians expect the federal government to protect them, but this government is abandoning them.

Frankly, Bill C-38 should not be passed by this House and today's motion moved by the hon. member for St. John's East on the staff at the search and rescue centres, is a good reason why not. We do not have the means to save Canadians' lives and we should be ashamed.

The Conservatives are offering solutions to fix the staff shortage. We already know that many of the fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft need to be replaced. What is the government proposing as a replacement? It is proposing the F-35 fighter jets. Those planes are not built for saving lives. They are built for war.

Should the Conservative government's top priority not be Canadians' health and safety, instead of going ahead with plans to declare war elsewhere? Resources absolutely have to be in place here, in Canada, but that is just not the case. The Cormorant, Griffon, Hercules and Buffalo aircraft are all in an abysmal state of repair. We absolutely must replace a great deal of our equipment, and that is just not happening.

There are delays and discussions. There is talk, but no action. We have seen the consequences of not replacing equipment. We can cite the death of Burton Winters in Makkovik, Labrador, which is really not that far from Gander, where there is a rescue centre. We should have been able to save that young man, but we did not mainly because we did not have the resources. If someone finds themselves in trouble after four o'clock in the afternoon, too bad for them. There is a good chance that they will not make it because the Government of Canada is not there to provide the help they need and expect.

Quite frankly, it is shameful to spend money on F-35s when the lives of Canadians are at risk. Many Canadians died last year, and that will continue. It is a real shame.

It makes no sense to endanger the lives of our fishers, mariners and pleasure boat operators in the name of budget cuts. We must obviously consider the state of Canada's finances, but not to the point where we jeopardize people's very lives. This is what is troubling about the Conservatives. Perhaps they misunderstood the consultations conducted last year. The Standing Committee on National Defence travelled to Gander and Halifax, and committee members met people and heard testimony from individuals who requested improved and increased resources and better service.

The committee was unfortunately unable to publish its report. Many members in the House may not have had a chance to read the testimony. I invite members from all parties to take note of the evidence received by the Standing Committee on National Defence in late January or early February of last year. It would definitely be instructive to read it even though the report was not published.

We understood that Canadians felt the Conservative government was not doing enough. In fact, it is even doing the opposite. It is cutting budgets at a time when we need more resources. It is making cutbacks of nearly $80 million at Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It has made cuts to the Coast Guard. The vessel traffic services centres are shutting down, and the rescue centres are closing. No service improvements are planned, quite the contrary. More people will definitely be at risk than in the past. I believe the Conservatives will pay a heavy price for the choices they are making today. Endangering people's lives in order to save pennies—mere scraps—is incomprehensible.

The government claims to be saving $1 million by closing the Quebec City rescue centre. The Trenton rescue centre, however, which was supposed to replace it in large part, is unable to do so. Nearly $1 million will have to be spent to upgrade it to the level of the rescue centre being closed.

You do not save money just to spend it later. Doing that not only risks the lives of fishers, mariners and pleasure boaters, but it also puts the lives of francophone fishers, mariners and pleasure boaters at particular risk.

In a recent report, the Commissioner of Official Languages pointed out that closing the search and rescue sub-centre in Quebec City will put francophones especially at risk. Clearly, Trenton is not likely to have a large bilingual population. I know that the people in Trenton do a very good job—it is a renowned military centre—but the fact is that they are not known for their bilingualism or their ability to understand the Acadian accent and dialect.

In addition, the government has closed the rescue sub-centre in St. John's, Newfoundland, and transferred the staff to Halifax, but the people there do not know the Grand Banks or the Newfoundland dialect. The government is putting people's lives at risk to save a few bucks. We do not even know for sure that this move will save money. At the end of the day, I believe it will cost money and lives, and that is truly shameful. It makes no sense to risk the lives of our fishers, sailors and pleasure boaters.

The Conservatives will have to answer for this, and they should be ashamed.

Transboundary Waters Protection Act

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question and for his positive comments on the bill. As for his comments about a minister's comments on ballast water, I am not familiar with the comments he is referring to. However, I can tell the member that his wording of “loosening” certainly would not be a true statement because we have tightened the ballast laws on incoming foreign ships into the Great Lakes system and other lakes and rivers in Canada, not loosened them. Therefore, he is certainly mistaken there.

As far as Bill C-38 goes, there is all kinds of good stuff in there, and fearmongering by the opposition and others about some of those changes is simply that, fearmongering.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our party does intend to support the bill at second reading and I applaud the member for introducing it. It is important legislation that would contribute to safeguarding our water.

The member mentioned the $17.5 million put toward protecting Asian carp and yet the parliamentary secretary travels to a foreign capital to urge it to loosen its ballast water regulations. There is a bit of an imbalance in terms of the approach the government is taking, which leads me to my question.

Protecting our water resources requires strong environmental regulation. We have seen from the omnibus legislation that is coming down that those regulations will be loosened. While I applaud the member for this legislation, I wonder how the government will be able to deal with protecting biodiversity, protecting the integrity of our soil, our air and our water. Could the member speak to this? Maybe he has other legislation prepared to fill in the gaps that would be created by Bill C-38?

Fisheries and Oceans

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, none of that is true. The changes to the Fisheries Act that are contained in Bill C-38 would allow Fisheries and Oceans Canada to focus more effectively in a practical way on the protection of commercial, aboriginal and recreational fisheries.

There are some additional protections in that act. For example, it would allow the minister to identify some ecologically sensitive areas, which he currently does not have the ability to do, which will provide even greater protection to those fisheries than they currently have.

There are some new tools to identify and regulate aquatic invasive species, which is a serious problem in this country.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the bill.

Having listened closely to the previous speaker's presentation on your ruling, Mr. Speaker, I will speak to one point on the issue that relates to Bill C-31 and to Bill C-38.

There are a number of issues in Bill C-38, our budget bill, that have a lot to do with immigration. I appreciate the member's description of what the opposition's role is in terms of keeping the government to account and accountable. However, what he failed to mention was the amount of time allocated in committee for both Bill C-31 and Bill C-38. Bill C-38 was given an unprecedented amount of time for debate, more than for any other bill in recent history. The fact is that the member would not and did not acknowledge the hours and hours spent debating each and every one of these clauses at committee, which is part of the parliamentary process. He did not even want to acknowledge the time given by the government, in agreement with the opposition, to have that debate.

I have said that because we took exactly the same approach with Bill C-31. We opened the doors at committee and said that we should bring in all witnesses. The opposition members believed that this was a big, fundamental bill that would change the refugee system in our country so they wanted to hear from all the experts in the country. Even though we had gone through the entire process once already, we went through it again. I did not hear an acknowledgement from the member opposite for the efforts made in terms of our parliamentary process and listening to what people had to say, and not just witnesses but all members of the opposition who had the opportunity to present their changes, thoughts and beliefs on what the bill should look like. With respect to Bill C-31, there were two significant amendments that were made at committee. These were not amendments that had to be made. As everyone knows, there are enough votes at each of our committees here on the Hill for us to win without having to make changes, without having to do anything other than that this is what will be moved forward for third reading and this is the bill that will receive royal assent.

In our case, we heard from witnesses and we made two significant changes. One had to do with cessation. The way the clause could have been interpreted, an unintended consequence could have been the potential for that individual to lose permanent residency if the country of origin had changed status. We made adjustments to that piece of the legislation. We also made a significant change to the detention issue for irregular arrivals. The original clause included a detention period of up to 12 months. Upon hearing from experts and witnesses who presented their case, the minister and the government listened and made a significant decision. We said that individuals who arrive in what is deemed an irregular arrival, as we saw with the Sun Sea or the Ocean Lady in British Columbia, they would have a hearing after 14 days. Subsequently, if they have been determined to have or not have success with respect to their refugee application, they would be given another hearing after six months.

Therefore, contrary to what the opposition members have been saying over the last week about this government's position with respect to listening, it does listen and it has listened. Bill C-31 is a stronger bill today at third reading than when it was introduced at first reading. Contrary to what the opposition members are saying, this government does spend a lot of time listening, understanding and moving toward the best piece of legislation that we can put forward.

In fact, it speaks to our refugee system here in the country. We welcome more resettled refugees than almost any country in the world. Based on the continued implementation of Bill C-31, which encapsulates a number of pieces of Bill C-11, which was our original refugee reform act, we will have an additional 2,500 refugees per year settle into our country, which is a 20% increase.

It again shows that Canadians have always been known to be fair and compassionate. Our country has a long and proud humanitarian tradition. This bill only strengthens that tradition all the more.

However, it is safe to say that our system, and it is no secret, is also open to abuse. We see that abuse on a daily basis. We are a generous and welcoming people but we do not have tolerance for those who take unfair advantage of our country. Canadians have told us loud and clear again and again that they want a stop put to the abuse which exists within our immigration system. By introducing Bill C-31, and where we are today at third reading, we will see and have shown to those people in this country who have asked us to, that we will protect the integrity of immigration and our refugee system.

There are three main areas covered by the bill which are all interrelated.

First, Bill C-31 includes further and much needed reforms to our asylum system. While the Balanced Refugee Reform Act went a long way to reforming Canada's refugee system, further reform is absolutely necessary. The opposition likes to ask why. The answer is very simple but it cannot be found by using political rhetoric. This is all based on a very factual, necessary and purposeful argument.

We need to look at the cold, hard and indisputable facts. In 2011, Canada received a total of 5,800 refugee claims from democratic, rights respecting member countries of the European Union. That is an increase of 14% from 2010. That number is actually more than the number of claims that we receive from Africa or Asia. There is a simple problem here. The top source country for refugee claims is Hungary, which is an EU member state. Of all refugee claims in 2011, 4,400, or 18%, came from Hungary. That is up almost 50% from 2010.

What is even more telling is that in 2010, of the 2,400 claims made by Hungarian nationals, only 100 of them were actually made in countries other than Canada. They all came to Canada to make a refugee claim from one country, except 100. There is a problem here. There is an obvious issue that needs to be dealt with. It means that Canada received 2,300 claims from Hungary, which is 23 times more than any other country has received from Hungary. The fact that most gets to the core of why further refugee reform is needed is that virtually every one of these claims was abandoned, withdrawn or rejected. Refugee claimants themselves are choosing not to see their claims to completion, meaning they are not in genuine need of Canada's protection. In other words, their claims are bogus.

The reason these claims are bogus is that people are choosing to come all the way to Canada. They have a choice. There are 26 other countries right next door and most, if not all, are part of the EU. These bogus claimants come here to exploit Canada's generous asylum system because of the lucrative and expensive taxpayer funded health care, welfare and other social benefits that are allowed under the current system we have in place. In fact, these bogus claims y cost Canadian taxpayers in excess of $170 million, and that was just last year alone.

Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, is part of our plan to restore integrity to our asylum system and restore Canadian's confidence in our immigration system. The bill would make Canada's refugee determination process faster and fairer and would result in faster protection for those who legitimately need refugee protection. It would also, and this is the important aspect of it, ensure faster removal of those whose claims are withdrawn, those claims that are bogus and those claims that have been rejected.

We will speed up the refugee claims process in a number of ways. For example, one major component of Bill C-31 is the improvements to the designated country of origin provision. This will enable the government to respond more quickly to increases in refugee claims from countries that generally do not produce refugees, such as most of those that are in the European Union. Claimants from those countries will still have the opportunity to be heard in terms of their application and to be deemed refugees in Canada.

Contrary to what the opposition has said, there is, for every person who claims refugee status in this country, an opportunity to be heard and an opportunity to have their case determined by the Immigration and Refugee Board. We will change that process so that it will take close to 45 days versus close to 1,100 days that exists now, more than on average three years to process a refugee application in this country.

If 97% or 98% of claims from particular countries are abandoned or withdrawn, we can just imagine how many months and how many years an individual can take advantage of the Canadian system just because of the number of days it takes to get through this process. This will happen no more. We will turn the system around. We will ensure that everyone gets a hearing and we will ensure it is completed within and about as close to 45 days as possible.

The designated country of origin provisions, which I mentioned and are included in Bill C-31, would bring Canada in line with its peers. Countries, like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, all recognize that some countries are simply safer than others and we can presume them to be so based on criteria, both quantitative and qualitative, that are included within the bill itself. Therefore, refugee claimants from those designated safe countries may be reasonably considered under the expedited process, the 45 day process that I mentioned.

We have had some discussion about the UN lately. I am encouraged, or at least listening, when the opposition stands to speak in favour of pretty much anything that the UN does. I thought it would be important this morning to show that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, has acknowledged that by saying:

...there are indeed safe countries of origin. There are indeed countries in which there is a presumption that refugee claims will probably be not as strong as in other countries

Mr. Guterres also agreed that as long as all refugee claimants have access to some process it is completely legitimate to accelerate claims from safe countries.

I will take that one step further. Abraham Abraham, who is the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also is not opposed to the process upon which we have designated safe countries. He indicated:

...as long as this is used as a procedural tool to prioritize or accelerate examination of applications in carefully circumscribed situations, and not as an absolute bar.

We are not just implementing a process that is being used everywhere in a number of countries in the world. We are using a process that is endorsed and understood to be a correct one. It does not exist in our Canadian system as it is right now.

I want to underscore, despite what the opposition has said, that every refugee claimant will continue to receive a hearing before the independent quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board regardless of where he or she came from. Furthermore, every refugee claimant in Canada will have access to at least one level of appeal. These procedures exceed the requirements of both our domestic law and our international obligations.

I will add this is not the purpose nor the reason for passing the bill, but there is a financial benefit to the process in which we will now receive and determine refugee applications. We will save not just federal taxpayers, but provincial and territorial taxpayers, $1.65 billion over a five-year period.

How will we use that money? The premiers, finance ministers and ministers of immigration across this country will tell us exactly how they could use that money, whether it be for settlement services, or whether it be for enhancing health care delivery. What we are offering is an opportunity for savings, an opportunity for that money to be used not to fund bogus claims, not to finance those who want to take advantage of our system, but to actually assist Canadians here in our country.

Unfortunately, what is lost in debate over the bill is what it will mean for genuine refugees who are fleeing persecution and who fear for their lives. Under Bill C-31, genuine refugees will receive Canada's much needed protection much more quickly. They will not be waiting three years in the determination process, but will be waiting as little as 45 days to know that they indeed have a home here in Canada. I cannot for the life of me understand how the NDP and the Liberals could be against that process.

Bill C-31 includes tough but fair and necessary measures to combat, deter and crack down on the criminal act of human smuggling. On this side of the House, we are not scared to face the issues of human trafficking and human smuggling. We will face them like no government in this country has before, and we will continue to do that.

Until recently, most Canadians believed that large-scale human smuggling was something that did not happen here, that it was something they just read about in the paper. They thought it only happened in other countries, for example, Australia.

That all changed in 2009 when Canada witnessed the arrival on the west coast of the MV Ocean Lady, which carried 76 migrants. It was almost as if it were a test case to see what would happen when the ship arrived, because less than one year later, the MV Sun Sea came, which held close to 500 migrants. This was not a cruise ship. This was not a ship designed to hold individuals. This was a ship designed specifically by human smugglers who take advantage of these individuals and extract as much money as they can, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, from individuals, who end up spending most of their lives paying that money back. The smugglers would put these individuals on not much more than a freighter to come across the ocean and land here in Canada.

Just as we have new members who are seeing individuals who are not true refugee claimants come to Canada to take advantage of our system, so we have human smugglers who understand the business of smuggling and the lowest common denominator in terms of which country will accept the individuals and how to take advantage of that. Not only are they taking advantage of our country, but they are taking advantage of the individuals.

We all know the stories. On board many of these ships are criminals and terrorists from a country and the human smugglers themselves who, unbeknownst to others, are dressed as if they are also in a position to claim refugee status in our country.

That is going to change. We are going to let the world know that human smuggling is not only unacceptable in this country, but that there will be a very significant price to pay for those who want to get into this business.

We do not have to look too far back to the past number of short weeks and months to know that we are catching these individuals. They are being sought out. They are being charged and they will be convicted. That is how we will stop this business.

There are so many more parts of Bill C-31 that are critically important, whether it be human smuggling, whether it be the issue of irregular arrivals, or whether it be the system itself in terms of how long it takes. We are moving from a system that takes 1,000 days on average to answer a refugee application submitted to the minister to one in which it will take anywhere from 45 days for those who are coming from designated safe countries, versus those who are coming from non-designated safe countries. There is an appeal process in place for each one of these individuals.

There is a process in place where we are now responding to those who truly deserve to be in our country. The best part of all of this is it sets in place a process that is fair to Canadians.

Bill C-38

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with respect to the point of order that was raised by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands a number of days ago. We have heard from the Liberal Party and the government. New Democrats want to add our voice to the conversation in, hopefully, a timely and brief manner.

I rise in support of the motion by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands with respect to her concerns and the concerns shared by many of us in this place about the manner in which the government has moved Bill C-38, the omnibus budget implementation act. My friend made a number of points. Some of them, we would suggest, are stronger than others for your purview, Mr. Speaker, but on the central theme we find ourselves in agreement.

On many of the concerns that were raised, you have heard from the official opposition New Democrats throughout question period, public commentary and in conversations in the House with you, Mr. Speaker, on the nature and form of the bill and the concerns we share with Canadians of its effect on members of Parliament to do our jobs. This is why I appeal to you directly, Mr. Speaker, in the decision that you have to make because, ultimately, it is your choice in the way we conduct ourselves as members of Parliament and the House conducts itself.

Let me take care of one point right away that the government has raised as a measure of defence of the process that we are engaged in with this more than 400-page budget implementation act, extending over more than 700 clauses, affecting as many as 70 acts of Parliament, either revoking them entirely or modifying them significantly. We have never seen the scale and scope of a bill like this before in parliamentary history, from our purview and the purview of experts who have watched this place over many years. Therefore, let us do away with the idea that the government believes that having a number of hours of debate either here or in committee has somehow satisfied the test that Canadians and parliamentarians understand what is in this act. That is, frankly, not the case. It is almost impossible to understand all of the implications that have been brought in with this act because the government is withholding certain pieces of information, which we will bring to your attention in days to come.

The first point that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands raised was around the fact that there is no central theme to the bill, thereby making it inadmissible or detrimental to Parliament and parliamentary democracy.

The second point raised was that there was little or no link between the budget itself and what the government has called the budget implementation act. In passing conversation with somebody not as familiar with this place as members are, a Canadian would assume that a budget implementation act would be explicitly linked to the budget by its name and form. Yet we find within the budget implementation act many pieces of government policy that are never mentioned at all in the budget. One example is the removal of Canada from the Kyoto protocol. There is no mention of this in the budget whatsoever, no mention of any aspect of climate change policy or anything to do with that particular act of Parliament, and yet in the budget implementation act there are a couple of lines that remove Canada from that international treaty.

Aside from concerns about whether one agrees or disagrees with the government's intentions with respect to climate change and its lack of actions, the point has to be made that if a government is introducing a budget implementation act with all sorts of measures that have nothing to do with the budget itself, it becomes a budget act in name only. In the actual function, the government is piling in a number of initiatives, policies and new directions for the government that should stand alone and independent for discussion by MPs and the Canadian public.

The intervention by my friend in the corner suggests that for members of Parliament to be able to do our jobs, we need to be able, in good conscience, to hold government to account. Her third point was that the bill is not ready and imperfect and she made a number of interventions on that, which I will not touch on too much.

To your role in this, Mr. Speaker. Ultimately you are the arbitrator of this place and the defender of our privileges and efforts as members of Parliament to do what Canadians send us to Parliament to do, which is to hold government to account. That is not simply the role of opposition members. So too is it the role of government members in this place. They too are encumbered with the effort to hold government to account at all times.

If we remember parliamentary history, there was a time in this country that, when MPs were elected and then needed to be placed in cabinet, they actually had to run in a byelection because their role had fundamentally changed to one in which they were defending the government's policy, that is in cabinet, as opposed to sitting as a member of Parliament regardless of party affiliation. That role is fundamentally different.

The concern that we have is twofold. We have seen a trend of increasing cynicism from Canadians towards politics in general and towards this—

Fisheries and Oceans

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer to the question that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands included in her question originally is that the latter is not true.

Let me provide a little more information. The Fisheries Act was originally established to protect Canada's fisheries resources and define federal responsibilities for the management of fisheries and the related protection of fish and fish habitat.

The current habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act are broad in scope, requiring protection of all fish habitat, regardless of their value to Canadians. Concerns about the broad and even unintended scope of the application of the existing regulatory regime have been raised by stakeholders across this country. This country, not China.

Farmers and landowners have criticized the department for applying its mandate and resources to areas with low contribution for fisheries. In addition, significant risk to fisheries have emerged that are not appropriately considered in the Fisheries Act, such as those posed by aquatic invasive species.

Many stakeholders over the years have asked us to focus on the significant impacts to significant fisheries. Many stakeholders have also asked us to find ways to work more effectively with the provinces and conservation groups. They have asked us to apply our resources strategically to ensure that Canada's fisheries can benefit Canadians today and for future generations.

In response to these challenges, the Government of Canada is proposing to renew and strengthen its current approach to management and fisheries protection through amendments to the Fisheries Act. These amendments would focus the government's protection efforts on recreational, commercial and aboriginal fisheries.

It would also draw a distinction between vital waterways that support Canada's fisheries and those that do not contribute to productive fisheries, such as drainage ditches in some cases and storm water management ponds.

They would identify and manage important threats to the fisheries, including direct impacts to fish, habitat destruction and aquatic invasive species.

Let me be clear that the rules will continue to protect Canadian fisheries waters from pollution, as they have in the past, and the proposed legislative amendments would provide additional clarity on the application of the law.

Proposed in Bill C-38 are a new suite of tools that help strengthen our protection of commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisheries. We will now be able to identify ecologically significant areas, such as critical spawning habitat for sockeye salmon and provide enhanced protection for those critical zones.

In addition, infractions under the Fisheries Act will now be aligned with those set out in the environmental enforcement act, which provides higher maximum penalties. This will ensure that those who break the rules are subject to stiffer penalties.

Through these amendments, we will also be able to establish new, clear, and accessible standards for projects in or near water. It makes good common sense that the government should be able to minimize or eliminate restrictions on routine activities that pose little or no threat to fisheries, while at the same time maintaining appropriate, reasonable and responsible protection for Canada's commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisheries.

A renewed Fisheries Act will provide us with the tools to develop effective regulations prohibiting the import, transport and possession of live aquatic invasive species, such as Asian carp, which are threatening the Great Lakes.

The Government of Canada takes the protection of our country's commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisheries very seriously. Given the importance of the fisheries from coast to coast to coast, we must focus our efforts on the effective protection of these fisheries. Their long-term sustainability and productivity are our priority.

Bill C-38

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to rise to offer some supplementary comments to the point of order raised on Monday by the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, and further to the submissions that were just advanced by the House leader for the Liberal Party.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands in her arguments went on to cite at some length some academics and some press clippings, but not really zeroing in on the full content of Speakers' rulings.

She did reference a few Speakers' rulings and did the odd selected quotation from them, but I think it would be useful for the House to hear some more complete citations or quotations from those decisions of the Chair that actually capture the essence of those decisions on how a bill such as Bill C-38 should be dealt with.

In the ruling on the 1982 energy bill, Madam Speaker Sauvé said, at page 15532 of Debates:

It may be that the House should accept rules or guidelines as to the form and content of omnibus bills, but in that case the House, and not the Speaker, must make those rules.

Therefore, having heard argument and having examined Bill C-94, I must now rule on the basis of existing precedents, which do not support the proposition that the bill should be divided or struck down.

I emphasize “or struck down” because that is what she is asking you to do in this case.

Madam Speaker Sauvé also ruled on June 20, 1983, at page 26538 of Debates, on the western grain transportation bill, as follows:

—although some occupants of the Chair have expressed concern about the practice of incorporating several distinct principles into a single bill, they have consistently found that such bills are procedurally in order and properly before the House.

This bill does not even meet that test of distinct principles. It is all one principle, the implementation of our budget.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands also quoted some decisions of Mr. Speaker Fraser, including one reference which even she acknowledged was “at best obiter dicta”.

In his June 8, 1988 ruling on the Canada-U.S. Free-Trade Agreement, he cited the 1982 ruling of Madam Speaker Sauvé, who called it, at page 16257 of Debates, “the Chair's traditional position”. That led Mr. Speaker Fraser to say:

Until the House adopts specific rules relating to omnibus Bills, the Chair’s role is very limited and the Speaker should remain on the sidelines as debate proceeds and the House resolves the issue.

He cited himself in his later rulings on April 1, 1992, at page 9149 of Debates, and December 7, 1992, at page 14735 of Debates.

Underpinning her submissions were what the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands described as Mr. Speaker Lamoureux's so-called misgivings in a January 26, 1971, ruling.

Let me add to the record the paragraph she left out on page 284 of the Journals, which immediately followed the one quoted by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

The Speaker went on to say:

At the time, having now reached second reading and having had this bill before us for some time, I doubt whether we should take the very drastic and extreme position, as I suggest to hon. members it would be, of saying that this bill is not acceptable to the House, that it should not be put by the government and that it should not be considered by hon. members. In my view it should be the responsibility of the Chair, when such bill is introduced and given first reading, to take the initiative and raise the matter for the consideration of the House by way of a point of order.

Indeed, as the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands opined in her opening remarks, at page 8719 of Monday's Hansard:

—I still think there is a compelling case that the House must act to set limits around omnibus legislation.

Later, at page 8720, she conceded that:

It is clear that the Speaker is not, at present and in absence of rules from the House to limit the length and complexities of omnibus bills, entitled to rule that an omnibus bill is too long, too complex or too broad in scope.

What she is seeking to do, through a point of order, is try to have the Speaker in fact implement new rules, effectively new Standing Orders. That is, of course, not the proper way of proceeding. Moreover, it is worth noting that over the decades of the prevailing status quo, the House has not availed itself of any opportunities to vary the status quo with regard to the Standing Orders in this matter.

I will not repeat myself from Monday afternoon when I articulated the consistent theme of Bill C-38, as it related to the implementation of this year's budget, economic action plan 2012. It is a comprehensive suite of measures designed to ensure jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity, a package which, as you will recall, Mr. Speaker, was endorsed by a vote of the House on April 4.

Therefore, in conclusion, Bill C-38 is not only built around a consistent theme, but its construction is not, as noted by your predecessors, for the Chair to veto.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the point of order that was raised earlier this week by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands concerning Bill C-38.

Simply stated, I wish to reiterate that we in the Liberal Party also have deep concerns about this legislation. That the government's argument for putting it forward in its current form is that it is all essential in order to help us stimulate our fragile economy is completely disingenuous and frankly very misleading.

For example, the government's plan to change the age for receiving old age security from 65 to 67 beginning in 2023 is hardly a critical budget decision that must be taken at this time and within this bill. I dare say most of us will not even be here 11 years from now.

Another example has to do with all of the changes to environmental and fisheries legislation. The government would have us believe that these changes have to happen right away to protect our fragile economy, but these laws will have serious repercussions and must be debated in the context of their own bills.

What has happened with Bill C-38 is quite astounding. This now infamous budget megabill has caused outrage from one end of the country to the other and the remarks of the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands certainly mirror the concerns expressed by Canadians. Simply put, there is no common thread uniting all the elements of this massive bill. What is more, many of the elements are not even of a budgetary nature, even by the wildest stretch of the imagination. As such, Bill C-38 is not a legitimate omnibus bill.

We know that budget bills can be quite lengthy, but clearly, this government has brought the meaning of the term “omnibus” to an unprecedented level.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons can tell us that the bill does have a common thread—the budget—but I beg to differ. The government should not be using the budget as a catch-all to introduce everything including the kitchen sink.

For example, if we look at clause 52 of the bill, we will see that it enacts an entirely new piece of legislation called the Canadian environmental assessment act, 2012, within a single clause of a 753 clause bill. This clause only received a maximum of 15 minutes consideration at committee.

The rules and practices surrounding omnibus bills are in place for a reason. How can members of Parliament adequately study such a bill when its content is so wide ranging and disjointed. Dare I say it, perhaps that is what the members on the other side were counting on.

I must underline, in the strongest possible terms, the fact that legislation such as this makes it almost impossible to scrutinize properly. A budget bill dealing with financial measures and taxation is one thing. The hodgepodge of clauses impacting more than 60 pieces of federal legislation before us is a completely different proposition.

In conclusion, I truly hope that the government splits this bill into several parts, because the fact is that Canadians want several parts of Bill C-38 to be addressed separately. I trust that you will rule accordingly, Mr. Speaker, and I thank you for that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite as enthusiastic as the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, but I will try.

This morning, my hon. friend, the member for Edmonton—Leduc and chair of the hard-working Standing Committee on Finance reported to this House that Bill C-38, the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, has passed the committee and been recommended for adoption by the House.

I am pleased that the Standing Committee on Finance followed the lead of the House with respect to the longest debate on a budget bill in the past two decades. The committee gave this bill the longest consideration for a budget bill in at least two decades. That is in addition to the subcommittee spending additional time to consider the responsible resource development clauses.

This very important legislation, our budget implementation legislation, economic action plan 2012, will help to secure vital economic growth for Canada in the short, medium and long term. Given the fragile world economy that is around us, this bill is clearly needed, so we must move forward. Therefore, I plan to start report stage on the bill Monday at noon.

In the interim, we will consider second reading of Bill C-24 this afternoon. This bill would implement our free trade agreement with Panama, which I signed when I was international trade minister, some 755 days ago. It is now time to get that bill passed.

Tomorrow, we will consider third reading of Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, so the Senate will have an opportunity to review the bill before it must become law, within a few weeks' time.

Next week I plan to give priority to bills which have been reported back from committee. It goes without saying that we will debate Bill C-38, our budget implementation bill. I am given to understand that there is a lot of interest this time around in the process of report stage motion tabling, selection and grouping.

Additionally, we will finish third reading of Bill C-25, the pooled registered pension plans act, and Bill C-23, the Canada–Jordan economic growth and prosperity act.

The House will also finish third reading of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act. The bill is a vital tool to unlock the potential of our creative and digital economy. It is time that elected parliamentarians should have their say on its passage once and for all. I would like to see that vote happen no later than Monday, June 18.

If we have time remaining, the House will also debate second reading of Bill C-24, the Panama free trade act, if more time is necessary, as well as for Bill C-7, the Senate reform act, and Bill C-15, the strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act.

The Budget

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might draw the attention of the government to Bill C-38, which is in fact the 750-clause piece of legislation that deals with the environment and in one clause changes the entire Environmental Assessment Act; it deals with old age pensions, raising the age of access to old age pensions to 67; it cuts EI dramatically, with details that are still forthcoming, and we still do not know what they all are; and it deals with environment and fisheries.

I would like to ask the government: Does it not see the fairness and the logic of dividing up this bill, of giving this House the opportunity to deal with it, of giving the provinces and the premiers—

Third Reading

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased today to speak to Bill C-25, An Act relating to pooled registered pension plans and making related amendments to other Acts.

At first glance, this measure seems to be a good one. However, it turns out to be a half measure when we take a closer look. That is exactly what was done by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance and even more so by the NDP in the House. This bill really has holes and problems. It has to be studied in its entirety, and we must figure out why the government has introduced this bill.

In Bill C-38 , the Conservatives attack seniors. That is clear. Just look at the provisions concerning the old age security program and the guaranteed income supplement.

The government has decided to increase the retirement age from 65 to 67 without providing any explanation. We posed questions to the Minister of Finance at the Standing Committee on Finance. The opposition was very insistent and, in the end, the government admitted that the savings would amount to $10.8 billion in 2030. The government is therefore balancing its budget at the expense of seniors and future generations, and that is a problem. We must understand where the government is coming from when we study this bill.

One of the first things that is obvious about the RPPP is that this product is very similar to an existing product, the RRSP.

In fact, RPPPs are more comparable to RRSPs—because they are administered by banks and financial institutions that will invest the money in the markets—than to a pension plan for seniors or future retirees.

On the weekend, one of my constituents told me that when he was younger, people talked about retiring at 55. They believed that if they invested as much as their advisor told them to into a retirement plan or their RRSP, they would be able to retire at 55, no problem. Today, that constituent is still working even though he is over 55 because these retirement investment products fluctuate with the market and the market has been turbulent lately. The investor's retirement income depends on the market.

What we are talking about today is exactly the same thing. It seems like the government has learned nothing from past mistakes and is doomed to repeat them. It claims it is introducing a product for the people who need it. Obviously everyone wants to have a stable and guaranteed retirement. However, this product does not offer such guarantees.

I would say it is like an RRSP because the employee is told to invest in this plan, but the employer is in no way forced to contribute to it. Therefore it is the employee who assumes all the risk. Of course, the employer might contribute, but that depends on his goodwill.

The government currently has tools such as the Canada pension plan and, in Quebec, the Quebec pension plan. These are solid plans.

No one across the way can deny that the Canada pension plan works, that it is well run and ensures a good retirement for those who are lucky enough to benefit from it: workers, self-employed workers, and people in the public and private sectors.

This plan exists and that is why we are saying that instead of creating a product that is similar to RRSPs or TFSAs, which we already have, the government should be investing in a plan that works. According to witnesses at the Standing Committee on Finance, the cost-benefit ratio for taxpayers is very high. It costs less to administer the CPP than to create a new product.

One problem is that this product is administered by financial institutions that want to generate profits. We know this; it is normal. At whose expense are these financial institutions going to make their profits? At the expense of those who have invested in this product. In this case, there is no guarantee. We talked about the fact that regulations might be brought in to ensure that the fees are not too high. However, there can be no guarantee that those fees will not go up over time. And when those fees go up, who loses? Who will have less money in the end? The people who paid in will lose. In this case, it will mainly be employees.

Rather than helping employees and people who are going to retire, the government is helping financial institutions, which, clearly, are already at an advantage thanks to the choices this government has made with previous budgets and the most recent budget. All the government is doing is continuing to reduce their tax rate so they can generate more profits. However, those profits do not go back to the common people. They do not go to those who want to retire with dignity and prepare for their future. Once again, clearly, this government does not have the best interests of seniors at heart.

My colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River introduced a bill to protect pension plans in case of bankruptcy. During the last election campaign, I met people. One person came to see me to say that we had come up with a very good idea, something that would protect them. He had spent a good part of his life working for Nortel, investing, working hard and keeping the economy going. Money was invested in his pension for the future. He was promised that he would be protected when he retired. We all know what happened in the end. Nortel went bankrupt. Because pensions were not protected, he is now living in misery. That is what he told me. This man's plight touched me deeply. He had tears in his eyes when he said that he had worked, he had invested, he had done everything he was expected to do, and yet the government failed to protect him.

What I find so difficult to understand is why the government does not really want to protect seniors, the people who truly helped build this country, who worked very hard. Thanks to these people, Canada has made progress in terms of the economy and quality of life. The government should be thanking them and telling them that they have worked hard, but what is it doing instead? It is giving them the cold shoulder. Not only that, but it is also attacking them. They worked hard and set money aside, but the government does not even want to protect them. What a shame to see that kind of attitude from the government.

As I said, that is what we are seeing in the budget, in Bill C-38. All of that and various changes have resulted in a record gap between rich and poor. That gap has been growing steadily since the Second World War. Of course, former Liberal governments have to take some of the blame, but so does the Conservative government.

The Conservative government is aware of the situation. The Conference Board of Canada and the OECD are saying it. The facts are there. The gap between the rich and poor is growing wider and wider, particularly in Canada, where it is growing more rapidly than in the United States. Imagine that. The United States has always seemed to be the prime example when it comes to this gap. Of the industrialized countries, Canada has surpassed the United States and other countries in how fast this gap is widening. It is because of measures like the budget and this bill that we are seeing these differences. Why? It is because the government is not helping those who need it most.

When we talk about old age security and the guaranteed income supplement, we are talking about people— seniors who are living on the edge of poverty. This government's solution is to tell them to work two years longer—to increase the age of retirement from 65 to 67—and that things might be better for them later. This is a completely ideological way of doing things. As the OECD said, there is no problem; this is purely a government decision.

Finance

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Finance, regarding its study of the subcommittee's report on Bill C-38.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109 of the House of Commons, the committee requests the government table a comprehensive response to this report.

I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Finance in relation to Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report it to the House without amendment.

The Budget

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from residents from many parts of Canada: from my riding, Pender Island, Mayne Island, Saanichton and Sidney, as well as from High River, Alberta; Sooke, B.C.; Kitchener, Ontario; Uxbridge, Ontario; Gabriola, B.C.; Saint John, New Brunswick; and Waterloo, London, Haliburton and Minden, Ontario.

These petitioners cite the numerous ways in which Bill C-38 is not properly an omnibus budget bill. They call on the Government of Canada to withdraw Bill C-38 and remove the sections that are not properly part of a budget bill and resubmit them to the House.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, for weeks, Canadians have been speaking out against Bill C-38. Recently, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities passed a motion requesting that the government remove sections of Bill C-38 which gut environmental protection, including changes to the Fisheries Act. Municipalities want these changes sent to the relevant standing committee for thorough review and debate.

Is the government really so ignorant that it cannot find any way to protect farmers without gutting the Fisheries Act?

Bill C-38

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the current Conservative budget, Bill C-38, not only goes far beyond simple changes to tax and monetary measures but, due to the non-monetary parts of Bill C-38, it takes away the ability of MPs to effectively do the due diligence required by the institution of Parliament to ensure and protect the rights of Canadians.

Bill C-38 has dozens of changes in policy areas, including the environment, natural resources and human resources, which demands that these changes be reviewed by the other committees of Parliament responsible for these files.

The would bill repeal the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It would change the Fisheries Act. It would scrap the Office of the Inspector General at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. In the shadowy world of CSIS, independent oversight is essential. It would remove the oversight of the Auditor General from a dozen government agency. Was that because the Auditor General released less than flattering reports on the government's record on fiscal mismanagement?

The bill should have been called the eliminating transparency and settling old scores act.

Governor General

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on the Royal Internet site about the Queen, it says:

As a constitutional monarch, The Queen abides by the decisions of the Canadian Government, but she continues to play important ceremonial and symbolic roles.

As for the Governor General's role, it is primarily representative. He represents both the Queen in Canada and Canadians abroad. If we define the Queen's role as symbolic and historical, the same is true for the Governor General.

Indeed, the Canadian political system is both a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. The powers of the Queen, and therefore of the Governor General, are thus limited not by tradition, but by the Constitution. Canada is a sovereign nation.

In short, regardless of our opinion on the issue, the Canadian monarchy bears first and foremost the mantle of this nation’s traditions and history, rather than that of real executive powers. If we go back to the distant past—well, not so distant, in fact—when Canada was but a vulgar Dominion, it is understandable that it was inconceivable at the time to tax the Queen or her representatives. Not being sovereign, Canada could not have made this decision.

Members will agree that things have changed and that the government will not cause a diplomatic chill between the United Kingdom and Canada by taxing the Governor General's salary. I do not think that the Prime Minister has been threatened in any way by London after having revealed his intention to determine the Governor General's salary in Bill C-38. Moreover, since 1993, the Queen herself has consented, quite voluntarily, to pay taxes.

The Prime Minister, especially since achieving his majority in the House, seems to have taken his admiration for royalty up a notch. Without putting words in his mouth, I believe that the Conservative party is afraid to be perceived as lacking respect for tradition and the institutions that forged this country. The monarchy will always be part of our history, whether we like it or not, but nothing is forcing us to perpetuate illogical and archaic traditions. In fact, I do not think that the transition to a sovereign nation could have been more respectful and peaceful, despite everything, than it actually was.

Basically, the Queen's representative is being asked to participate in this transition and to follow the example of the Queen, who has made a choice and is participating in a more equitable and fairer society by paying taxes. No one is above the law in this country. In any case, nobody should be. Behind the image of the welfare state and assistance and the development of a more egalitarian society, there is the law. No one is beyond its reach, and the Governor General should not be either. The Prime Minister has finally given in.

The New Democratic Party, like all progressive forces in Canada, believes in a fairer and more egalitarian society in which everyone can do their share. Without wishing to upset anyone, I believe that this government has already shown a great deal of respect by perpetuating the very existence of the position, which is also remunerated.

It must not be forgotten that of the 54 Commonwealth countries, only 16 continue to acknowledge the monarch as the head of state. Their citizens should not have to bear even the slightest additional burden to allow the head of state to shirk her or his civic duty with impunity. Yes, I consider that a shirking of responsibility. I come from a union background and know it well. As a political party that supports workers, the NDP will never come out against people fighting for and succeeding in obtaining better working conditions.

In a context in which everyone needs to tighten their belt and where for many there is not much left of the belt to tighten, altering the Governor General's salary so that there is no net impact as a result of paying taxes shows a lack of respect for all workers and unemployed people who are victims of this budget's austerity measures.

If this government were to increase personal income tax one day, would the Treasury Board increase the salaries of public servants so that they would not have to bear the burden of the increase? Of course not. Similarly, it would not exempt them from an income tax increase if a salary increase meant they would have to pay more taxes. This would be illogical and run counter to the very principle of taxation.

In particular, it runs counter to the principle of equity, which requires those who are better off to pay a little more to enable everyone to have access to public services. Why should the Governor General be entitled to more favourable treatment at a time when this government is planning to dismiss 19,000 people and penalize I don't know how many thousands of others through its employment insurance, pension plan and old age security measures?

The concept of equity is very important because it underpins the fundamental principle of every progressive society, in which those whose level of economic well-being is identical are treated identically under the taxation system.

Similarly, of course, those who are at different levels economically will not be treated identically from the taxation standpoint. Taxation is the principal way in which governments can collect income and redistribute it. From this standpoint, it remains the strategic key to achieving equity in Canada and in many other progressive democratic countries.

So the New Democratic Party is not criticizing the salary increase as such, but rather the fact that the measures proposed in Bill C-38, the budget implementation bill, do not observe the principle of equity to which all other citizens are subject.

And now, I would like to conclude by speaking about the impact of Bill C-38, which we are currently considering, and which I have currently been studying as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. In connection with this, the specific provision concerning the Governor General’s salary does raise a problem.

We tried to propose a significant amendment that would fix the Governor General's salary at a certain level. The amendment in the government bill to the provision dealing with the Governor General's salary actually brings his salary up, presumably so as to keep it at the same level. We do not agree with the arguments that the Governor General's salary is not going to go up with this bill. Actually, if we quickly do the math, we can anticipate seeing a real increase in the Governor General's salary. Moreover, there are currently other provisions that favour the Governor General. He is exempted from paying sales tax, the harmonized tax in most provinces across the country. Currently, the Governor General, who should really be a citizen like everyone else, who holds an honorary position, who represents the Queen in our constitutional monarchy and democracy, receives special treatment compared to everyone else, treatment that even the Queen does not get in the United Kingdom.

We feel that, if we have to deal with this issue, we should not do so under the radar, allowing the Governor General to get more favours than he used to have. We have to set conditions that will make it possible to go back to the way the position and salary were before.

That is why we introduced an amendment fixing the Governor General's salary at exactly what he earned previously. Our amendment was defeated.

In this sense, we are currently following the example of Australia and New Zealand in taxing the Governor General's income, but granting him an increase relative to what he presently earns. Of course, we must also consider the fact that the Governor General will also have sources of income that are not generally considered part of the salary. It may be investment income, accommodation allowances and so on. That must be taken into consideration.

However, the position, as important as it may be in a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy like ours, remains an honorary one. We have a good example of that, I feel, with the famous episode in 2008 when we went through what some might consider a political crisis in this country. The Governor General at the time received advice that she could have opposed the government's attempt at prorogation, but she chose not to do so, simply because her position is recognized first and foremost as honorary, with no executive power attached to it at all.

In that sense, I think that the Governor General's salary prior to the amendment proposed in Bill C-38 was quite appropriate given his responsibilities. His position is honorific and comes with many benefits, including the respect that other countries and our international partners pay when he travels as the country's representative, which is a reward in itself.

The government's proposal in Bill C-38 seems out of step with reality. Bill C-38 does not provide for a specific salary, but offers the Governor General a salary which will determine his or her income tax rate. This will give him pay raises that we consider unacceptable given that thousands of workers are being told to tighten their belts, and the federal government has announced plans to fire or lay off over 19,000 people across the country. Many organizations have suggested that number could be as high as 30,000.

In that sense, we understand the motion that was put forward and we support the spirit of the motion. We would have liked to see the government get on board with the proposed amendment to Bill C-38, but that did not happen.

Opposition Motion—Scientific and social science expertise

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for St. Paul's.

Two days ago I had the privilege of giving a keynote address at the world congress for the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics. As a former scientist, I was thrilled to hear about cutting-edge research regarding new technologies for imaging the brain, and the promise of stem cells and personalized medicine. I was pleased to share my work advocating for 2014 to be the Year of the Brain, and for a national brain strategy.

Science should be a driving force for public policy—for example in determining whether or not to put in place a national dementia strategy—and should always be impartial. By the way, the science is overwhelming that Canadians need to address this public health priority of dementia, which is a ticking time bomb.

Since the Conservatives came to power in 2006, there has, however, been a gradual tightening of media protocols for federal scientists. Researchers who once would have responded freely and promptly to journalists are now required to direct enquiries to a media relations office, which demands written questions in advance and still might not permit scientists to speak. Federal scientists are under growing surveillance and control. Numerous studies have shown a pattern of suppression, manipulation and a distortion of federal science. Officials have limited public access to scientific information.

Canadian journalists have documented numerous cases in which prominent researchers have been prevented from discussing published, peer-reviewed articles. For example, there is a Canadian government scientist whose work in the prestigious journal Science suggested that an unexplained virus was resulting in a higher death rate for some salmon. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans declined to make her available to the media for over 15 months.

An Environment Canada team concluded that a 2°C increase in global temperatures may be unavoidable by 2100. That is associated with dangerous climate change. Environment Canada's media office granted no interviews.

A Natural Resources Canada scientist could not talk about research into a flood in northern Canada 13,000 years ago without pre-approval from political staff in the office of the natural resources minister.

An Environment Canada scientist's research showed an unprecedented loss of ozone over the Arctic, a 2 million km² ozone hole. He was interviewed three weeks later, saying, “I'm available when media relations says I'm available.”

I can attest not only to the muzzling but also to the fear of scientists. I used to consult for Environment Canada, and I have numerous friends who are scientists across Canada and the United States. Because of fear of retribution if they speak out, Canadian scientists often ask me to speak to American colleagues, who can freely comment on what is happening in Canada.

I had one friend who was so concerned that he or she wrote to me from the spouse's email account to my old university email account, and then explained that he or she would call on the spouse's cell phone from a busy mall so that the call could not be traced.

Surely everyone in this House should be outraged by the climate in which our scientists are being forced to perform. Surely everyone should be outraged by the quashing of dissenting opinions, by the war on democracy, environment and science.

Nature magazine, one of the world's leading journals, recently reported that policy directives confirm the government's little understanding of the importance of the free flow of scientific knowledge. The journal reported that, “rather than address the matter, the Canadian government seems inclined to stick with its restrictive course and ride out all objections”.

The government's untenable position is coming under increasing pressure as a result of the scientific integrity policies taking shape in the United States. As environment critic for our party, I have repeatedly called on the government to recognize that Environment Canada's ability to protect environmental and human health depends on scientific excellence and integrity, and should therefore ensure that a scientific integrity policy is developed to foster the highest degree of accountability, integrity and transparency in conducting, utilizing and communicating science within and outside Environment Canada, and to protect the department's scientific findings from being altered, distorted or suppressed.

Recently, a symposium called “Unmuzzling Government Scientists: How to Re-open the Debate” was held at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver. The Conservative government's media policies were centre stage in the international spotlight. According to Nature, “The way forward is clear: it is time for the Canadian government to set its scientists free”. We used to be praised internationally for our openness and now we are seen “as a pariah”.

During the symposium, journalist Margaret Munro said that during much of her career it was easy to reach federal scientists to talk about their published research, but in recent years that had changed dramatically. Now the government is taking control to quite incredible extremes. Munro said that federal scientists faced many layers of approval before they could speak to the media, even going all the way up to the Privy Council Office. Approved interviews are often taped. Sometimes when the timelines are too tight, journalists receive written lines approved by the government. Munro discovered that it was the result of a new governmental policy that said a single department should speak with one voice. However, as she rightly points out, science depends on debate and discussion. If there is only one voice, where is the scientific questioning, where is the debate?

Acclaimed climatologist, Professor Andrew Weaver, said that most scientists were frustrated with the policies and their inability to speak about their research, some so much so that they were looking for jobs outside the government.

Professor Thomas Pedersen, a senior scientist at the University of Victoria, said that he believed there was a political motive in some cases. For example, he thought that the federal government would prefer that its scientists did not discuss research that pointed out just how serious the climate change challenge was.

Yesterday was Black Out Speak Out, and Liberals stood in solidarity with organizations across the country, organizations that are committed to showing the Conservative government's consistent assault on democracy and the environment. Many of the 500 organizations that joined Black Out Speak Out joined because Canada's environment was being threatened by the government, destroying 50 years of safeguards through Bill C-38 and the 2012 economic action plan.

The Conservatives are severely cutting the budget for Environment Canada, gutting environmental legislation, cancelling the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, silencing dissent from environmental non-governmental organizations, continuing to muzzle government scientists and, in so doing, impacting our economy today and in the future.

Anyone who disagrees with the Prime Minister is told to sit down and shut up. All Canadians should ask who next will be under attack for voicing their opposition. Silence is not an option. It is time to stand up and speak up for democracy, the environment, science and Canada.

Shockingly, the environment minister says that concerns about the muzzling of scientists are being driven by a small number of impatient Canadian journalists. Specifically, he has stated:

There is an element in all of this controversy, second-hand information and criticism from the scientific community abroad responding to a few, a very small number of Canadian journalists who believe they're the centres of their respective universes and deserve access to our scientists on their timeline and to their deadlines, and it simply doesn't work that way.

The environment minister should stand up for science, for scientists, for unmuzzling researchers and for ensuring a scientific integrity policy so Canadians can receive the best science, cutting-edge science to ensure evidence-based decision making.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Madam Speaker, in response to the “Black Out Speak Out” national campaign that denounces Bill C-38, and in support of which members wore black buttons yesterday, the Minister of Natural Resources said, “We want people to know the facts, not the distorted or exaggerated version.”

Frankly, this is an insult to our intelligence. The last thing this government wants is for people to know the facts. It would seem that they do not even want to know the facts themselves.

In my view, the Conservative government period will be the age of scientific darkness. The government is making cuts to science. Over the past year, 12 research organizations and programs have been eliminated in a number of areas: Statistics Canada, Citizenship and Immigration, Human Resources and Skills Development, Industry Canada, Public Safety Canada, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, to name a few.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is one of the hardest hit departments. Does the Prime Minister know that oceans are not just for warships? There are actually many coastal communities that rely on the sustainability of oceans.

The government cannot ignore it, but it does not seem to be bothered about it. In fact, it is so indifferent to it that it is making reckless cuts to Fisheries and Oceans, slashing $80 million, including a number of layoffs in research and science-related areas.

It is ending the Experimental Lakes Area program in northern Ontario, it is eliminating the aboriginal inland habitat program, and it is cutting the funding for aquaculture sciences activities. Furthermore, it is eliminating the ocean population monitoring program at Fisheries and Oceans, which means, for this program alone, the abolition of 75 scientist positions.

We know that these cuts drastically reduce our ability to resolve marine pollution issues, such as the problems associated with municipal sewer systems, contaminated sites, the impact of pesticides on salmon and the effect of PCBs on killer whales.

I would like to stress what a Conservative member said just a few minutes ago, which was that the Conservatives were here to support and help the municipalities.

With all the cuts announced by the Conservatives over the past few weeks, the municipalities in the Gaspé and Magdalen Islands region will not be able to pick up the slack and continue the scientific programs abolished by the Conservatives. The people in remote areas will not be able to take over.

In the Conservatives’ view, which private sector organization would in fact be able to take over the scientific programs in the Gulf of St. Lawrence?

Furthermore, five research centres will be axed: the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg, which works in cooperation with the Experimental Lakes Area in Ontario; the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, British Columbia; the Gulf Fisheries Centre in Moncton; and the Maurice Lamontagne Institute in Mont-Joli, in the Gaspé, in my riding.

The Maurice Lamontagne Institute is a centre of excellence in cutting-edge research in a number of scientific areas. The facility specializes in research and innovation in science. The institute also generates more than 400 jobs in a region where jobs are precious. These are well-paid jobs. The loss of 400 jobs means that 400 families will no longer be able to support themselves and that 400 families will soon be moving to another area, probably one of the larger cities.

Endangering or cutting 400 jobs in the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands will hit these people hard.

The Conservatives are making fools of themselves claiming that they are creating jobs, when they are actually cutting jobs in areas where employment is badly needed.

Clearly, they do not care about those jobs. We know their strategy. They say that all of those people can go work for less pay thanks to their employment insurance reforms. Maybe they can get McJobs or commute far from home, at least 100 km or maybe even to remote locations in Alberta. This reminds me of the bad old days when people were shipped off to work camps.

The Conservatives' disdain for coastal communities is blatantly obvious. They are planning to change fleet separation and owner-operator policies in the fisheries sector. These policies protect the culture of coastal communities that depend on fishing. The Conservatives' decision to eliminate fish habitat protection from the Fisheries Act proves that they do not care about the sustainability of fish stocks. We have to protect the whole ecosystem if we want to protect populations of fish that depend on other species for their survival. If the government eliminates the fleet separation policy, huge processing ships will move in, which could easily result in the same problems that we experienced in the 1990s, when fish stocks declined dramatically. We must not let that happen again. That is why we need science.

The Conservatives would know this if they listened to scientists. They are putting the lives of sailors and recreational boaters in danger by closing the search and rescue centres in Quebec City and in Newfoundland and Labrador. With their changes to employment insurance, the Conservatives are attacking coastal communities whose economic activities are mainly seasonal.

Canadians deserve better than a government that has no long-term vision. They deserve better than a government that makes decisions based on ideology. They deserve better than a government that tries to hide information from them. The culture of secrecy is so pervasive among the Conservatives that the government is muzzling scientists.

To name just a few, consider the following examples: Dr. David Tarasick, a scientist at Environment Canada; Kristi Miller, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans; and Scott Dallimore, a geoscientist at Natural Resources. They were all muzzled by this government. The Conservatives prohibited them from talking to the media about their research—research, I would point out, that is paid for by us, the taxpayers.

The research conducted by these scientists on climate change or on declining fish stocks is crucial to sound management in Canada. To slash funding for science means slashing the information needed to govern properly. How can the Conservatives claim to believe in science or to base their decisions on science if they cut funding for scientific research?

The Conservatives' war against science has long-term consequences that they are not taking into account. I want to emphasize the fact that in my region, we saw fish stocks collapse in the early 1990s. The economy in our region and that of the entire Gulf of St. Lawrence suffered greatly as a result. The communities in my region have had a very hard time recovering to where they were 20 years ago. Making the same mistake of not taking an accurate and thorough inventory of the fish stocks is a recipe for disaster.

While countries like Germany are increasing funding for basic research, Canada is at risk of losing its scientific expertise to other, more visionary countries. Is this government trying to trigger a brain drain? The Conservatives have forgotten that they are here to serve the public, not control the public. Canadians have the right to be informed. The Conservatives do not have the right to control information and to shut down scientific facts when findings do not suit them. That is the basis of morals and ethics. Of course to the Conservatives, whose ideology is taking us back to the Dark Ages, this seems perfectly normal.

The Conservatives are waging an ongoing war on research, data collection and the development of fact-based policies because these things interfere with their ideological agenda and force them to recognize embarrassing truths, such as the human causes of climate change.

That is why I am urging the government to support the motion of the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas. I am urging this government to drop the ideological rhetoric and make decisions based on scientific facts.

I am urging the government to get back on the right path and support scientific research for Canada's short- and long-term benefit.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am being asked to respond, and I will respond, but honestly, the answer is self-evident because my colleague is giving me an example that has nothing to do with what I am talking about.

First, I invite him to go and see the people from Archives Canada, the people who are in the park and who are protesting. They could tell him about the people doing research at the University of British Columbia.

Second, this is classic. In Bill C-38, the government is deliberately including worthwhile things, such as the enhancement of the travelling exhibitions indemnification program, but it is also including a bunch of garbage. Then, I will be criticized for voting against the enhancement of assurances with respect to travelling exhibitions.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise today in support of this motion, which focuses attention not only on the massive cuts to research, data and evidence that can be found in the budget bill currently before the House, but also to speak to the government's contempt for information, research and advocacy since the beginning of its mandate.

Research is a core driver of economic competitiveness, environmental protection, and health and safety. Objective, publicly funded research and statistical data is necessary for our public service to be able to serve all Canadians, especially since service provision is the majority of the work of the federal government. The government has made it its mandate to obscure objective facts in favour of controlling and privatizing information to create narratives that suit its priorities.

It is crucial that research be credible. In order for it to maintain this integrity we must be sure that private funding of our research respects the autonomy and independence of our researchers in their objectives and in their methodologies. Yet this last budget has proposed refocusing the National Research Council to be “business-led”, and is increasingly concentrating on targeting post-secondary research to meet “business needs”. I know that research often relies on private funding, as much as private interests rely on the research provided to them.

I know that much innovation comes from these partnerships, but this is not what the government is proposing. What it has done is increase the control that it and private interest have on what research is being done and how it is being done. That is a frightening move for the credibility of Canada's research.

By increasingly removing critical financial supports and increasingly correlating research to demand-driven funding models in order to service profit-driven demands, we are systematically inhibiting our research integrity and competitiveness.

We have seen many instances of the government obstructing research before. One of the first things the government did in 2006 was slash $5 million from the Status of Women agency and make a series of changes to its purpose. The independent research fund was abolished, and the mandate of the women's program was changed to explicitly exclude any project having to do with research and advocacy. While the funds themselves have since been recommitted to the agency, the independent research fund has not reappeared and the mandate of the agency continues to forbid research and advocacy. The purpose of this is clear. The government is ignoring the deeper, systemic injustices that women repeatedly encounter because the injustices do not fit the government's world view. Effective, long-term planning and investment in social programs, while proven to be in the best interests of women and the economy at large, are something the government fears.

As a member of the status of women committee, I hear every week from expert witnesses who are still suffering from the long-term effects of this strategic shift.

Carmela Hutchison is president of the DisAbled Women's Network Canada, which is the only organization that represents disabled women, the largest minority group in Canada. She wrote to me to say:

We could write volumes about the health and safety consequences to millions of women and girls with disabilities in Canada which are due to the lack of publicly funded research and statistical information already! How can this Government propose any further cuts to research and data collection when this information is essential to informing your honourable Members and all Canadians about the health, safety and the economic well being of millions of women with disabilities in this country, who continue to be the poorest citizens of this country!

When we look at Bill C-38 and its anti-information cuts, which are overwhelming in their scope, we see that what happened to women in Canada will happen in almost every community and sector, from first nations to academia. It is most acute in the field of environmental science. The fact of climate change is something that the government needs to suppress as quickly as possible in order to serve the corporate interests of its friends.

However, the ethically repugnant muzzling of scientists is certainly not all we are facing. The cuts to Library and Archives Canada, Statistics Canada, the National Council of Welfare, the First Nations Statistical Institute, and even the CBC are moves against the cultural identity of Canada.

Our heritage and history are deeply affected by these cuts. There is a relationship between dismantling Library and Archives Canada, discrediting Statistics Canada and disabling the CBC, which becomes clear when one considers that the government is aggressively pursuing a mandate to create a Canadian narrative that suits its interest rather than reality.

If it targets Library and Archives, we will have fewer resources available that describe what Canada once was. If it utterly destroys our ability to produce credible statistical data, we will not know who we are now. When it entirely abolishes the National Council of Welfare and the First Nations Statistical Institute, it is preventing social scientists from understanding trends and finding solutions. Couple this with the witch hunt we are witnessing against the CBC and the subsequent slashes to its budget and we see a weakening of the only mainstream Canadian broadcaster that is mandated with communicating our diverse heritage and cultures.

I was alarmed when the Minister of State for Science and Technology announced this past March that he was planning on refocusing the National Research Council and in May announced that he was changing the direction of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in order to strengthen its ties with the private sector. SSHRC, like the NRC, is a public research-funding body that is mandated with funding innovative research that benefits all Canadians, not just the business sector. Yet, in his own words, the Minister of State for Science and Technology said that this is a great opportunity to focus the NRC more toward the business end to be “a one-stop, 1-800, 'I have a solution for your business problem'.”

Coming from an academic background, I know that privately commissioned research where the objectives are determined by private interests and not the researchers themselves is simply not credible. As an MP, I have witnessed the fact that our public service providers require our research councils to conduct research on behalf of all demographics and communities, not just businesses. As a citizen, I do not agree that my taxes be spent to subsidize the needs of businesses before the needs of families.

In conclusion, without credible research all Canadians will see a decline in the quality of their service provisions the way women have over the past eight years. Innovation will be stalled by the control of private interests over what it is we study.

I seriously urge this House to consider the long-term effects of these cuts and I urge us to ask ourselves this. Who does the suppression and rewriting of information benefit? When did the needs of big business supplant the needs of citizens? Where will Canada be in 5, 10, 20 years without credible statistical data upon which we can base future planning?

If there is one thing the now abolished National Council of Welfare has taught us through its research, it is that short-term investments in human capital and communities reap long-term economic gains. It is frivolous, short-sighted and fiscally irresponsible for the government to be dismantling these institutions.

I hope that this debate enlightens the members opposite as to the dangers they are precipitating in the budget bill. I hope that they will support the opposition motion.

Fisheries and Oceans

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. memer for Trinity—Spadina already raised today in question period the decisive vote of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities urging the government to remove non-budgetary environmental items from Bill C-38.

My question is for the Minister of Fisheries, since he has repeatedly referenced FCM as a supporter of the bill and in fact said, “countless other municipal leaders have been calling for these types of reforms for many years”. Now that we can count them on the fingers of one hand, will the government admit it made a mistake in going after and gutting the Fisheries Act in Bill C-38?

The Budget

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, a lot can happen in a week. While hundreds of organizations oppose Bill C-38 because of its despicable content, now mayors from across Canada also oppose it, because the government likes to cut corners when the time comes to consult Canadians. Among other things, the mayors want all changes to legislation on the environment and on fisheries to be properly examined in committee, so that Canadians' voices can be heard.

Will the government stop going it alone and start listening to the municipalities?

Opposition Motion—Scientific and Social Science Expertise

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is the first time that I have spoken in this House as the lead critic for the Liberal Party.

I would like to thank all those who make it possible for me to do the job of representing the people of Kingston and the Islands for their support.

I also thank those who made it possible for me to study and work in the field of science, and that includes the Government of Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. I thank the member for Burnaby—Douglas for his motion today that allows us to discuss the value of science and the effects on ill-considered cuts to scientific research programs of the Government of Canada.

Today, before I focus on the main idea of my speech, I will mention some things that concern me and what are ill-considered cuts to research. Two examples that come from NSERC, which have already been mentioned in debate today, are the proposed elimination of the research tools and instrumentation program which provides money to buy and repair medium-sized equipment and is crucial to building a research laboratory, and the major resources support program which is crucial to funding the operation of infrastructure that the Government of Canada has already invested in. It is crucial to allowing us to get a return on our investment.

Scientists are telling me that cutting the research tools and instrumentation program is like sending carpenters to work without hammers. They are using words like “major disaster” or “extremely ill-advised”. Some examples of things that researchers are saying that they would not be able to buy without this program are trucks for biologists who go out and do field work, and simple things like microscopes, magnets and lasers. The program is very important because it is used to repair equipment. Equipment could break down at any time and the process for getting equipment grants from a program like CFI takes a long time. CFI is not structured to fix equipment that breaks down. So the researcher may have to choose between firing some graduate students or fixing a crucial piece of equipment.

One scientist told me that such shortages could potentially ruin the careers of new researchers.

I am hearing from young researchers that they do not want to come or are regretting coming to Canada after hearing about these proposed cuts. One of the concerns I will convey to the minister during this debate is that the policies set forth in budget 2012 would result in these cuts. He may blame NSERC for these cuts but he is the minister and he needs to take responsibility and he should be listening to the strong language that is being used by scientists in reaction to these proposed cuts.

I will now turn to the MRS program. These proposed cuts will affect facilities, as I have said before, where we have invested in large scientific infrastructure and whose use will be curtailed because of these cuts. It is like owning a car but having no money for gas. This includes the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network in which we have international agreements to monitor the sky around the earth with radar. This affects any business that has to do with satellites. The proposed cuts to MRS will curtail the use of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering. It will curtail the use of the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, which is found in Hamilton at McMaster University in the riding of my hon. colleague who asked a question previously. It will affect living collections of algae and cyanobacteria and fungi that have been carefully isolated, which could have all sorts of uses and applications in industry and cannot be replaced at a later date.

These are things that concern me. It is just a small sample of the massive number of comments and emails that I have received from scientists in Canada who are concerned about the cuts to research funding. That is just the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

The motion today is not so much about the overall level of funding for science or support for industry or business competitiveness as it is about how the government chooses to value science in the service of good government.

As one of the few scientists in the House today, I am proud to support the motion on the value that scientists and the scientific approach have to offer to the Government of Canada as it serves the people of Canada.

I am also proud to speak for the party that I chose to join, the Liberal Party, because Liberals believe that for good governance, slogans and ideology are never a good substitute for facts, evidence, a scientific approach and just hard work.

Liberals are the most likely to say that such and such an issue seems complicated and before they decide what their position is on that issue, they will do some homework. This is the kind of party of which I want to be a part. These are the kinds of colleagues with whom I want to work. They can best serve the people of Canada.

By contrast, the Conservative government believes that if enough ministers and MPs fan out across the country and repeat the phrase “responsible resource development” enough people will believe it so they can pass Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill, and get re-elected. That is not the best thing for Canadians. When the Liberals hear that, they simply smile and say that it is an empty slogan.

We must put scientists in place and give them the resources to evaluate the risks of government policies so government can make informed development decisions for natural resources. We must provide them with the equipment and the staff to monitor the natural environment so they can measure any damage to the environment or any danger to people.

Additionally, we must let these scientists speak freely to the public about their research. People need to have a dialogue with scientists to understand the knowledge that scientists have gained for their benefit, knowledge for which taxpayers have paid. Governments must not be allowed to control this flow of information, at least democratic governments. This is really the only way Canadians can be assured that true responsible development is occurring.

Instead of cutting 11% of the workforce, over 700 employees of Environment Canada, cutting scientists who monitor water pollution, industrial emissions or climate change, let us put money on the table now and make a multi-year commitment to fully fund the environmental monitoring of resource development projects such as the extraction of bitumen. Then let those scientists speak freely of their research for the benefit of the people of Canada.

Scientists must be able to speak freely for the benefit of the people of Canada.

Why are Conservatives against free speech for scientists? I am not making this up. The international scientific community and science journalists have spoken up and called upon the government to stop muzzling scientists.

In the United States, government scientists have been encouraged to talk about their research and even give their personal opinions about government policy, as long as they make it clear that it is just their personal opinion.

In December 2011, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an administrative order on scientific integrity to encourage its scientists to speak freely to the public and the media about the results of their research.

Why is the Government of Canada opposed to free speech for scientists?

Liberals believe in free speech as do most Canadians. Why do the Conservatives get off the train? It is not a rhetorical question. The answer is that the Conservative government does not accept criticism. It is not politically convenient. It is just embarrassing. It is a roadblock to continued power.

Is it just a couple of journalists who are complaining, as the Minister of the Environment has said? If a couple of journalists do not matter to the public good, I would ask the House to recall how Richard Nixon felt about the pesky journalists from The Washington Post 40 years ago.

By contrast, Liberals believe that welcoming criticism will improve one's understanding, just as scientific ideas depend on criticism in order to improve and become stronger. Science is powerful because it welcomes criticism. Criticism from scientists will help governments and others make smarter decisions, thereby making Canada stronger.

Yes, the Conservatives will be embarrassed at some point. Every government makes mistakes, but a strong government for a strong country is one that recognizes and corrects mistakes.

To do this, governments must also be open about history. It is why the commission that investigated Canada's residential schools for aboriginals was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That is why the commission that was set up in South Africa to study the effects of apartheid was called the truth and reconciliation commission. One must reveal the truth before a nation can reconcile and move forward.

The truth must be revealed before a nation can reconcile.

The Conservative government is making drastic cuts to Library and Archives Canada that will seriously harm our ability to preserve and access Canada's past. That includes a 20% cut to the workforce.

Related to what I just said about truth and reconciliation, the archival material in the LAC was instrumental in supporting the testimony from victims of the residential schools before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The minister will say that staffing cuts are justified because materials are being accessed online, but only 4% of the LAC's physical materials are available online and now 50% of the digitization and circulation staff is being cut. Conservatives have also eliminated the national archive development program, which provided funding to local communities, about 800 of them, to preserve local history in Canada.

Why spend money to save things in the National Archives and make them accessible? It is not the same thing and does not feel as good as celebrating a glorious event of the past that buttresses the ideology of the government of the day. It is about having information available, making it possible to study and understand the mistakes of the past so we can fix them and not repeat them in the future. A truly strong government would be open about its mistakes. A truly strong government would embrace its history and not simply retell it.

Liberals believe that science and a scientific approach are what the Government of Canada needs for an honest accounting of its successes and failures. I believe that providing an honest accounting in Ottawa is one of the greatest things we as MPs can do for our country.

One thing people have learned over the last few centuries is the value of observation and measurement. That is why we have made advances in science and technology. It is the idea of empiricism, of measuring and counting the number of teeth in a horse's mouth and counting the number of people, that gives us the ability to have smart government policies, to really understand what we are trying to govern.

There is an example that has already been brought up in the House today, and that is the Experimental Lakes Area. This is a great example of doing real experiments in real situations so we make smart decisions about environmental policy concerning clean water. The federal government has announced that it will cease funding for the internationally renowned Experimental Lakes Area, which is in northern Ontario and comprises about 58 lakes that have been set aside for pollution experiments.

Scientists pollute these lakes on purpose and then watch the whole ecosystem for decades to see what happens. Then they are obliged to return these experimental areas back to their original state. Research during the experiments and the renewal have helped us understand mercury pollution, the effect of phosphates and detergents, green algae blooms, acid rain and climate change. If people believe that pollution regulations are too strict, they need to know that these very experiments are the ones that help us understand how much pollution is tolerable.

Ending funding for the ELA goes against two of my core beliefs. People have to conduct experiments and measurements to really understand how the world works. This is what I believe in as a scientist. We must use facts and evidence to make good policy, and that is what I hope to bring to the House, along with my colleagues in the Liberal Party and other members in the House.

I next want to turn to Statistics Canada, which is having its budget cut by about $34 million on an ongoing basis, about 7% of its budget. The head of Statistics Canada resigned a couple of years ago to protest the elimination of the mandatory long form census. This is another example of how the government wants to avoid data.

Data is important for telling us about the country and its people, where they live and how they live, so we construct smart policy. Even if all we want to do is cut taxes, we want to know what effect those cuts will have, who will receive those tax cuts and what will happen in the country. We need statistics and good data to understand the effect of tax cuts on the Canadian population, not to mention good social policy that is meant to help people who live on the margins and who need our help. That help really defines for what Canada stands.

The First Nations Statistical Institute was brought in by a previous Liberal government of Paul Martin back in 2005 and the board was only appointed in 2009. Now the government wants to cut the institute. There was a realization that not enough census data was being collected from our first nations. This was hindering the creation of good policy and smart policy. It was decided that we would have a special institute to collect data. Now the government wants to get rid of this institute.

If government wants to do more with less money, if it wants to be more efficient and make every taxpayer dollar go as far as possible to serve the people of Canada, it needs information. It needs information to make smarter decisions and it needs an attitude that respects collecting proper information, thinking carefully and working hard to use that information to make every dollar go as far as possible.

I want to conclude with a few things that I and my party believe.

The Liberals believe that science is more effective than slogans. The Liberals believe that science is effective because it welcomes criticism. The Liberals believe that Canada needs science's honest accounting in order to be able to make informed decisions and to be competitive in the world.

Madam Speaker, from your chair, every morning a daily prayer is read. Let me read an extract from that:

Grant us wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to preserve the blessings of this country for the benefit of all and to make good laws and wise decisions.

We have been blessed in our country with the people, the resources and the institutions to pursue systematic knowledge, to observe, measure and understand what we see in the world and what we see in our country and to do all of this in the service of the people of Canada.

We ask God:

Guide us in our deliberations as Members of Parliament, and strengthen us in our awareness of our duties and responsibilities as Members.

Let us appreciate the value of scientific knowledge, which can effectively guide our country toward the future.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, the second petition I present today is relevant to today, which is World Environment Day, and it is on behalf of residents of Calgary, Guelph, Victoria, Saanichton, Ottawa and Montreal.

The petitioners plead that this House and the government remove all those sections of omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38, that have nothing to do with the budget, remove all sections that relate to degrading the environment and bring forward a bill in the proper form.

Foreign Affairs

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to pursue a question that I put in the House for the hon. Minister of Foreign Affairs on March 5.

The issue deals with the question of the integrity of Canada's ability to enforce sanctions against Iran when we are increasingly dealing with what we consider new markets or new trading partners, however we want to put it, but essentially allowing state-owned Communist Party enterprises owned by the Government of China to become increasingly large investors in Canada.

Some of the very same companies, not just the general concept of state-owned Chinese enterprises, are major investors in Iran. In fact, the single largest customer for Iranian oil is Sinopec. Sinopec, as people may know, has been investing heavily in the oil sands. In fact, it purchased a 9% share that used to be ConocoPhillips' share of the oil sands, and at the same time, the ConocoPhillips' share was a share of Syncrude, so it is a major investor now in Syncrude, but it is not the only company that deals with Iran as well as investing in Canada.

I would mention, for instance, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, sometimes called CNOOC, has completely purchased, or one of its subsidiaries has purchased, the Long Lake oil sands mine in Alberta. At the same time, it is doing a $16 billion investment with Tehran in the North Pars gas fields. That is not the only company. If we look at PetroChina, it has a 25-year deal with the National Iranian Gas Export Company, and at the same time it was only six years into its 25 year deal with the Iranian National Gas Company when that same company, PetroChina, purchased all of the mine at MacKay River oil sands project.

What does this mean for us in terms of our sanctions? On March 5 I said that in light of the increased tensions around Iran and around nuclear issues, the importance of sanctions could not be overestimated. I asked the minister, in this light, whether we were concerned that our new trading partner, Sinopec in China, which is the largest buyer of Iranian oil, was undermining the sanctions.

The minister's response, while interesting, did not relate to my question. I hope this evening, as we pursue this matter, we can perhaps get an answer to the question.

I would like to put into the discussion we are having this evening that I am not the only member of Parliament who is concerned about Chinese investments in Canada at the same time that these same Chinese companies are the major oil customers for Iran, undermining sanctions. This is a quote from the hon. member for Mount Royal that reproduced in the Ottawa Citizen:

To the extent that we’ve now got sanctions-violating companies here in Canada that are doing business in Iran, the implications are serious.... They are very, very serious.

Again, that was the hon. member for Mount Royal, who has a very strong record in the area of working as hard as we all can to ensure that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understands that Canada is not his friend. We are friends of the people of Iran, but we are not his friends.

How then did they perceive what is going on in global diplomacy when we are opening our arms? We are actually undermining environmental laws, and Bill C-38 was its destruction of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It appears to be in the interest of speeding things that Sinopec wants. How do we justify that?

The Budget

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is very directly to the matter before us in the House this week, the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38. The petitioners are from Calgary, Chemainus, Nanaimo, Ladysmith and various parts of Ontario. They call for the government to immediately abandon the so-called omnibus budget bill and introduce new legislation that contains only those measures that are actually related to the budget.

Employment Insurance

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the redefinition of what is considered suitable employment for seasonal workers in Bill C-38 will force them to accept positions for which they are not qualified.

Does the minister realize what kind of problems this measure will cause for the Mauricie region?

How can we integrate seasonal forestry workers into the manufacturing or service industries, which require different skills than what they have?

The Environment

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, contrary to what the opposition parties claim, bringing our regulatory system into the 21st century will strengthen environmental protection rather than gut it, will generate significant jobs and economic growth rather than hollow out our economy, and will provide prosperity and security for Canadians for future generations. It is not an either/or proposition, jobs versus the environment. The direction our government is taking is clear: to secure prosperity for Canadians while strengthening environmental protection. That is exactly what Bill C-38 would do.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's environment is being threatened by the government's destroying 50 years of safeguards through Bill C-38 and the 2012 economic action plan.

The Conservatives are severely cutting the budget to Environment Canada, gutting environmental legislation, cancelling the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, silencing dissent from environmental non-governmental organizations and continuing to muzzle government scientists, and, in so doing, impacting our economy today and in the future.

Anyone who disagrees with the Prime Minister is told to “sit down and shut up”. All Canadians should ask who will next be under attack for voicing their opposition. Silence is not an option.

It is time to stand up and speak up for democracy and the environment in Canada. That is why the Liberals stand in solidarity today with leading organizations across Canada that are committed to highlighting the Conservatives' persistent assault on democracy and the protection of the environment.

Bill C-38

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre has stated, if you will be reserving your opinion on this bill, we would like to be able to make formal presentation on this point of order at some point in time in the future.

I do take some exception to the government House leader's comments in addressing the bill itself. We need to recognize that Bill C-38, even though the government titles it as a budget bill, is, in the eyes of many, a great threat to Canadian democracy and the functions of this House.

We can talk about the Trojan Horse or using the back door of the budget in order to pass significant measures. The argument that has been presented by the leader of the Green Party is quite accurate when we talk about the bill being an imperfect bill and, therefore, should not be proceeded with. We are going to be very much dependent upon the fairness of the Speaker recognizing this institution for what is worth. We all value the opportunity to ensure that what is happening here is being done in a fair fashion.

I know there is a great deal of concern in terms of how the bill would have a profound impact, whether it is on the fisheries or the environment. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60-plus pieces of legislation would be profoundly, in some cases, impacted and the Speaker does need to take note. As I have said, we will be providing some future comment before the Speaker makes a final ruling on the bill.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's point of order.

She said that this bill has to have a common, unifying theme, and it does. It is a budget implementation bill and that common, unifying theme is to implement the budget, as one might expect. That is the economic action plan 2012, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act. She says that for the bill to be found in order, it has to arise from a single policy decision. She acknowledges that it does, that being the decision of the budget that was tabled in this House. She then says that another alternative is for it to have direction from Parliament. This budget was approved by Parliament, so there is indeed direction from this Parliament to proceed with this budget. On all three of those tests she has outlined, Bill C-38 is certainly in order. Of course, it is entirely consistent with clearly established parliamentary practice. We have had previous bills of greater length and of equal diversity that implemented budgets adopted by this House and found in order.

The member makes an effort to identify some items that were not included in the budget. However, in her effort to do so, she actually makes the case that they do all arise out of the budget.

First, she has objections to some of the measures on streamlining environmental assessment processes. In fact, the budget goes on for pages about streamlining environmental assessment processes, about the importance of responsible resource development. However, in her arguments she went on to advance that her objection is that every single word that appears in the final Bill C-38, all the details of how that has been done, were not in the budget. That is not what the budget has to do. The budget sets the clear policy direction and the budget implementation bill implements that direction. That is exactly what is happening and that is as it should be. That is how these two legislative devices are to work together.

The member says that the regulatory system changes go well beyond what was contemplated. That is not the case. In fact, the budget makes it quite clear what regulatory system changes are contemplated, and that the objective is to go to one project, one review. So again, her objections there seem to have no basis.

To use another example, the member said that there is no basis for the provisions in the budget bill that relate to shiprider, the program for joint law enforcement at the border on waterways and on lands, between Canadian and American border officers and police forces so they can act on both sides so people can be pursued across that border. That was part of the Canada–U.S. border action plan, the perimeter security action plan, that was enunciated by the leaders of the two countries in December 2011. It is addressed specifically again in the budget at quite some length. It says in the budget that the government intends to take measures to implement the action plan commitments and other border improvements. Again, this is set out in the budget. With item by item that she has gone through, she has actually made the case for the fact that this bill does proceed to implement the budget and is properly in order.

The member then objects to a series of measures to balance the budget. Nothing could be more core to our economic action plan than the commitment to balance the budget by 2015, so all those measures are in order. That is what even the most basic and simple budget is all about. I do not see anything that provides a basis for the arguments the member has attempted to advance here.

Then she proceeded to make a series of arguments that could be best described as debate, disagreeing with the merits of various aspects of the bill. That may be fine for a debate. It is a good reason, if she wishes, to vote against the bill. However, it is certainly not a reason to declare that the bill is not in order.

At first glance, there is absolutely nothing, not one single basis for legitimacy for requests the member has made that the bill be found not in order. That being said, since her arguments were quite extensive and did go on for well over a half-hour, I will return with more detail on them, item by item.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order today. It may be a little lengthy, so I would just like to establish that it will be acceptable to omit various page and section references and submit them in written form so that members are able to refer to the various precedents that I will be citing, just in the interests of time.

I rise on a point of order related to Bill C-38. My point of order is based on Standing Order 68(3), which states “No bill may be introduced either in blank or in an imperfect shape”.

First, let me set aside the argument I will not be advancing. I will not argue that C-38 goes too far as an omnibus bill or that it should be split. I will argue that C-38 is not properly an omnibus bill at all and therefore cannot benefit from the trend toward over-large and complex omnibus legislation.

I seek a ruling that the bill has not been put forward in its proper form, is therefore imperfect and must be set aside.

My first observation in relation to the standing rule and how I hope that the precedent will lead you to interpret it comes from a citation of the House in 1982 in which an hon. member said:

“Shape”, according to the Oxford Concise Dictionary, is a synonym for “form”. Therefore, a bill according to Standing Order 69 [as it then was] must not be in imperfect form. The question of a bill’s form is extensively dealt with in our parliamentary authorities…

A few of which are then cited from that era.

Having said I do not intend to argue that the bill must be split as being overly large for an omnibus bill, I still think there is a compelling case that the House must act to set limits around omnibus legislation.

Speaker Lamoureux stated his concern that some limits must be established in his well-known musings on this subject in 1971. He said at the time:

However, where do we stop? Where is the point of no return? The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, and I believe the hon. member for Edmonton West, said that we might reach the point where we would have only one bill, a bill at the start of the session for the improvement of the quality of life in Canada which would include every single proposed piece of legislation for the session. That would be an omnibus bill with a capital “O” and a capital “B”. But would it be acceptable...from a strictly parliamentary standpoint....

This is a critical question, but it is for another time and for the House itself. Rulings from speakers Sauvé, Fraser, Parent and Milliken have confirmed Lamoureux's misgivings but also a general traditional view that it is not for the Speaker to say an omnibus bill has gone too far in terms of its length or in terms of the numbers of different items or complex matters in one bill.

This point of order does not rest on argumentation that 420 pages is too long for an omnibus bill, nor that amending, repealing or reinstating 70 different acts of Parliament goes too far. So long as a bill meets the tests of being an omnibus bill, tradition will allow it.

In order to respect the standing orders of this House, any proposed omnibus bill must conform to the established criteria of an omnibus bill.

Furthermore, to be accepted as a budget omnibus bill, the proposed legislation must further conform to the rule that the implementation legislation must relate to commitments made in the budget document itself.

The tests for a proper omnibus bill are well established. I cite from our current authorities O’Brien and Bosc:

An omnibus bill has “one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders the Bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes”.

That is a closed inner quote. Then it continues:

One of the reasons cited for introducing an omnibus bill is to bring together in a single bill all the legislative amendments resulting from a [single] policy decision to facilitate parliamentary debate.

A further citation from Beauchesne's 6th edition, which by the way was cited with approval by Speaker Fraser in 1992, states:

Although there is no specific set of rules or guidelines governing the content of a bill, there should be a theme of relevancy amongst the contents of a bill. They must be relevant to and subject to the umbrella which is raised by the terminology of the long title of the bill.

Speaker Fraser ruled in 1988:

The essential defence of an omnibus procedure is that the Bill in question, although it may seek to create or amend many disparate statutes, in effect has one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders the Bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes.

Speaker Fraser went on to say, citing at this point a definition put forward by the hon. member, at the time, for Windsor West:

I believe that his definition will stand the test of time and be useful to the House and future chair occupants for years to come.

It is worth noting that, while back in 1982 the energy bill that was split through the action of the House due to determined action of the opposition, the famous bell-ringing episode, was not set aside by the Speaker, still Speaker Fraser cites the energy bill in the 1988 argument and by inference uses it as an example of a bill that went too far in its attempt to claim all legislative changes fit a common purpose. He compares and contrasts it with the free trade legislation, which formed a context within which his lengthy and detailed canvassing of the issues took place in 1988.

The implication is clear, that in Speaker Fraser's view the 1982 energy bill failed the test of omnibus definition he had put forward. As such, although it is at best obiter dicta, it does serve to add weight to the notion that simply calling legislation omnibus will not assure that it can be accepted as such.

His final summation on the detailed ruling does indeed confirm that the Speaker has the authority to find if a bill is in proper shape. The Speaker has the authority to determine if a piece of legislation meets the test of being a true omnibus bill.

Speaker Fraser ruled:

Bill C-130 is indeed an omnibus Bill—it meets the definition as stated by the Hon. Member for Windsor West in that it has a single purpose, while amending various statutes but without further guidance of the House and based on the practice to this day, it should be allowed to proceed...;

It is clear that the Speaker is not, at present and in absence of rules from the House to limit the length and complexities of omnibus bills, entitled to rule that an omnibus bill is too long, too complex or too broad in scope.

It is also clear that the Speaker is entitled to determine if legislation purporting to be an omnibus bill is actually in the proper shape to be considered an omnibus bill.

The tests are also clear. To be an omnibus bill, it must have a single purpose.

Bill C-38 has been introduced in an imperfect shape. It fails the tests of being a proper omnibus bill.

First, it fails because it has no central theme—that “one basic principle or purpose”—in order to be legitimized as a reasonable basis for debate and study.

Second, it fails because it does not provide a link between items in the bill and the budget itself.

Third, it fails because it omits actions, regulatory and legislative changes described by representatives of the Privy Council as part of Bill C-38. The omission of items that the ministers and hon. members speaking for the Privy Council assert are in C-38 further confirms the bill is imperfect, unready and requiring a reworking.

I will take each of these failings in turn.

First, Bill C-38 does not have a theme of relevancy, one basic principle or purpose, nor does it arise from a single policy decision. I anticipate that the Conservative Privy Council officers will respond to this point of order and say its theme is the budget. It is entitled, “An act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures”. Clearly, a budget is no longer merely a fiscal statement comprising changes to the Income Tax Act and other tax measures. It is understood to be a policy statement, and as such, a policy statement, it can be considered a theme.

Commentators have warned us that this trend undermines the role of Parliament in proper oversight of the public purse and of individual pieces of legislation.

Professor Ned Franks, professor emeritus at Queen's University, wrote back in 2010:

Canadian budget implementation acts...have morphed from short bills dealing with minor items mentioned in the budget speech to enormous omnibus bills...Parliament cannot study them properly...These omnibus budget implementation bills subvert and evade the normal principles of parliamentary review of legislation.

As the anti-democratic risks of omnibus bills draw greater scrutiny, the links to policy must not be accepted on faith. Nor should they be loose or sloppy in analysis. Much rides on knowing that there is a legitimate link between the measures in an omnibus budget bill and the budget itself. If the link is not there, the legislation fails to meet the test of an omnibus bill.

The failure of opposition parties in recent years to adequately challenge the creeping nature of omnibus budget bills cannot in itself create precedents. The silence of opposition parties and therefore of the Speaker does not create affirmative approval of the so-called omnibus budget bills of 2009 and 2010.

I return now to the first test of whether the bill is properly an omnibus budget bill.

Bill C-38 does not have one central theme. Even if one accepts that the budget document of March 29, with its myriad policy and fiscal initiatives, represents a theme, a single purpose, Bill C-38 contains much that was simply never mentioned in the budget and which further fails to have more than a fanciful connection to the public relations short title of the bill, jobs, growth and long-term prosperity.

This is frankly baffling. Budget 2012 covers hundreds of areas. There was no limit or restriction for the Minister of Finance on the topics that were chosen for inclusion. The Privy Council officers who signed off on the March 29 budget had abundant opportunity to ensure that nothing included in Bill C-38, the budget implementation act, would fall outside the scope of the budget itself. Had they done so, the affront to Parliament would at least fall within our rules. The respect for Westminster parliamentary tradition and our role as parliamentarians would not have been so egregiously abused.

As it is, I maintain that Bill C-38 fails to meet the first test to ascertain whether it is properly an omnibus budget bill, whether the measures in Bill C-38 are included in the budget itself.

The following examples establish that Bill C-38 fails to provide a link between the items in Bill C-38 and the budget itself. I will begin with the sections that have completely changed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

While “streamlining”, eliminating duplicate reviews and time limits for the reviews found under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act were flagged in the budget, the fact that the act was to be repealed was never mentioned in the March 2012 budget. The budget suggested important amendments to CEAA, but it simply never mentioned repealing the act and introducing an entirely new legislative scheme. It never mentioned that triggers for federal review, in place since the 1980s guidelines order, such as the presence of federal funds in the proposed undertaking as a trigger for required review, would be removed.

The budget never mentioned wholesale redefinition of the substance of review, of those impacts that require study under the act. These changes are not relevant to the proposed rationalization for streamlining. These and other changes represent a threat and a retreat from federal responsibilities for which no foundation was laid in the budget itself.

Further, the Fisheries Act was never mentioned in the budget at all. Other than reductions in available funding for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, enhanced funding for first nations fisheries and increased funding for fisheries science, fisheries are not mentioned in the budget at all. Nowhere in the budget is it suggested, or required as a legislative change to implement other parts of the budget, that a major overhaul of the Fisheries Act is to be expected.

The changes to the Fisheries Act concealed in Bill C-38 are simply the most far-reaching, radical and fundamental changes to the Fisheries Act in Canada's history. Nothing less would have provoked four former ministers of fisheries and oceans, representing fishery policy under three different prime ministers, to speak with one voice in urging the act to be withdrawn. Yet the proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act were not mentioned in the budget at all. They are not anchored to any promised change in the budget. Unmoored from the budget, the changes to the Fisheries Act lack all legitimacy.

Also unmentioned in the budget are changes to the functions of personnel within national parks. The amendments to the Parks Canada Agency Act are perhaps sensible. They would allow Parks Canada Agency wardens to enforce other acts for other agencies. Regardless of whether such changes would be offensive or not, and without further study of the long-term implications for Parks Canada's core mandate, I cannot say, and whether it is a good change or not is irrelevant to the main point. These changes have nothing whatsoever to do with the budget. Parks Canada's budget was reduced and a new national park was announced without funding for the Rouge Valley near Toronto. Neither of these budgetary mentions have any connection to the Bill C-38 amendments to the Parks Canada Agency Act.

Amendments to the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act to give the National Energy Board authority over pipelines and power lines crossing navigable waters, removing authority held under the Navigable Waters Protection Act, were also never mentioned in the budget.

There is similarly no mention in the budget of changes to the Species at Risk Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act or the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The only reference to the policy area of species at risk within the budget was to provide more funding. If the act governing species at risk required overhaul to deliver on this aspect of the budget, why was it never mentioned? There is no nexus between the one reference to species at risk in budget 2012 and the subsequent legislative changes in Bill C-38. There is no reference at all to policy or legislative changes in the budget related to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act or the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

I come to the repeal of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. This repeal could hardly be described as a surprise. The current executive branch has made it very clear that it wishes to repudiate Canada's global treaty obligations. Nevertheless, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider the rules and precedents of Parliament. A measure in an omnibus budget bill is only legitimate if it has some relation to a central organizing theme. The topic of climate change is never once mentioned in the budget.

The House cannot take the equivalent of judicial notice that everyone knows the Prime Minister intends to kill the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. The Prime Minister, or, more accurately, his Minister of the Environment has all the powers and authority necessary to present legislation to the House to repeal the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. The Conservatives have a majority of seats in both places, making it a foregone conclusion for this and all the other bills I have mentioned that do not belong in Bill C-38 and that properly tabled legislation will meet with parliamentary approval.

Should the Privy Council officers respond that “the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity” agenda requires the repeal of this act, they must be called upon to make proof of this assertion. The Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act provisions make its terms moot with the withdrawal of Canada from the Kyoto protocol through the action of the Minister of the Environment announced in the House in December of last year. The repeal of the act included in Bill C-38 is further evidence that the act has no central theme, purpose or principle.

Moving on from the extensive environmental aspects of Bill C-38, there are other legislative changes for which no foundation has been laid in the budget.

One of the most serious changes to Bill C-38 relates to a new supremacy of Privy Council to override decisions of the National Energy Board. This change to the National Energy Board Act was not mentioned at all in the budget document. Nor was it shared in advance explanatory notes. It is not connected to any theme, but is a significant change in the context of a quasi-judicial body with a long history of professionalism. There has been no explanation, so it is impossible to find in this change any link or theme to connect it to other aspects of Bill C-38.

The elimination of the Office of the Inspector General under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has no connection whatsoever to the budget. Neither are the changes to consolidate the responsibility for reviewing the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service into the Security Intelligence Review Committee foreshadowed in the 2012 budget. To attempt to find a theme that embraces repealing the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, weakening of fisheries habitat protection and eliminating the Inspector General of CSIS within C-38 is an exercise to make your head hurt.

The new provisions for conditional release decisions within the Corrections and Conditional Release Act are also completely unhinged from anything in the budget.

There is no logical—or even illogical—link between budgetary measures and the changes in Bill C-38. The repeal of the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is not referenced in Budget 2012. The repeal of this act could have serious implications. In addition, it is not related to other aspects of Bill C-38, which drives home the point that the bill has no overarching theme.

One of the most profound changes to Canada contained in Bill C-38 relates to the surrendering of sovereignty in relation to law enforcement. While certain measures for improved movement of goods at the border are mentioned in the budget, the so-called “ship-rider” provisions are not mentioned. The decision to allow the law enforcement officials from another sovereign nation onto Canadian territory to enforce foreign laws is a dramatic and radical change. The Privy Council is, as noted above, entitled to table legislation to reduce the traditional understanding of Canadian sovereignty. Such a radical departure from universally understood principles of sovereignty merit legitimate debate and review. Given the majority of seats held by the Conservative Party, so long as members of Parliament are required by their whip to vote with their cabinet colleagues, any such bill will pass. However, this measure is not linked to the policy direction of the budget. It is not referenced, and as such, it is further evidence that Bill C-38 is not a proper omnibus budget bill at all.

The complete list of measures that had no connection to the budget involves the elimination of numerous bodies and consequential repeal of numerous agencies never mentioned in the budget. I know that the above list is not exhaustive, but covers many of the larger measures for which there is no link to budget 2012.

There is another group of things that I find unusual, and that is the third ground on which I make the case that Bill C-38 violates Standing Order 68(3). It fails by omitting actions, regulatory and legislative changes that were described by representatives of the Privy Council as part of Bill C-38. The omission of items that the ministers and hon. members speaking for Privy Council assert are in Bill C-38 further confirms the bill is imperfect, unready and requiring a re-working.

I will cite numerous examples from the debate at second reading of Bill C-38 in which members of the Privy Council and Conservative members of Parliament spoke favourably to aspects of the legislation that were actually not in Bill C-38 at all. I anticipate that Conservative members may claim that people make mistakes in debate and that the claims that were made about Bill C-38 are not substantive and that statements made in debate cannot add to the evidence that Bill C-38 is imperfect.

In other Parliaments that may have been true. The occasional enthusiastic slip of the tongue does not undermine a governing party's description of its legislation.

However, these are not occasional slips. The claims of provisions in Bill C-38 that simply are not there were made by the Minister of Natural Resources and by the Minister of Environment. The claims were made, not in extemporaneous fashion, as if such exists any longer in the governing party of the day. The claims were made in prepared speaking notes. The same words and virtually verbatim text were submitted by a number of backbenchers as well.

In relation to claims of greater tanker and pipeline safety, I submit the following statements in debate at second reading. The Minister of Natural Resources said:

Mr. Speaker, the bill would do a great deal to protect the environment...tankers will have to be double-hulled, there will be mandatory pilotage, there will be enhanced navigation, there will be aerial surveillance, and [other] measures will be taken when necessary in particular cases.

The Minister of the Environment said, “The legislation before us would provide new funding in support of improving pipeline and marine safety....It would fund $35.7 million over two years to further strengthen Canada's tanker safety regime”.

The hon. member for Prince George said, “We would enhance pipeline and marine safety through initiatives such as a strengthened tanker safety regime”

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Trade said, “I would like to speak directly to the budget bill...We will strengthen pipeline safety...Every Canadian would support strengthening pipeline safety”.

There is a further statement from the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, a further statement from the hon. member for North Vancouver and a further statement to the same effect from the hon. member for Kootenay—Columbia.

There is absolutely nothing in Bill C-38 that advances tanker safety or pipeline safety. The budget document itself mentions such changes are planned, but Bill C-38 omits any reference to them.

Ironically, after the litany of measures never mentioned at all in the budget that are included in Bill C-38, in this case the budget promises the changes, but Bill C-38 has not a word about pilotage or double-hulled tankers or increasing pipeline inspections.

We have a choice here. We could either conclude that the ministers and other hon. members were deliberately misleading this House or, because I reject this first notion, I submit the only sensible conclusion is that there are errors in Bill C-38 that have omitted important sections that the ministers honestly believe were in the legislation they were putting before us.

In the matter of environmental assessment, ministers and other hon. members also asserted specific language to the new provisions to allow for the complete substitution of federal environment review for the provincial one. In second reading debate, the specificity of the language and its repetition suggests they honestly believe the legislation is drafted in a way that it is not. The Minister of Natural Resources said:

It would allow provincial environmental assessments that meet the substantive requirements of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to be substituted for the federal government assessment. In some cases, the provincial process may be deemed equivalent to the federal process. However, these provisions will only be put into effect if the province can demonstrate it can meet federal requirements.

The Minister of Natural Resources further said:

There will be an opportunity for substitution by the province but only if the particular province in question has the capacity and the willingness to conduct an identical level review.

The hon. member for Burlington said roughly the same thing. He said, “I want people to read the legislation.” Frankly, so do I. He said:

I want people to read the legislation. It talks about substitution. It does not talk about elimination. If there is an environmental assessment at the federal level and another one at the provincial level, we can substitute one for the other, but they have to be at least equal.

While substitution of reviews is contemplated in Bill C-38, there is no requirement for an identical level of review, for them to be at least equal, nor for meeting federal requirements.

The summary pages describing the legislation called the substitution “equivalent”, but the word appears nowhere in the operative sections of Bill C-38. In fact the relevant section of the new CEAA offers no criteria at all for a discretionary decision by the minister that the substitution would be “appropriate”, and I cite that section. There is no requirement for equivalency.

These examples of claims for subject matter not covered at all in Bill C-38, pipeline and tanker safety, as well as for subject areas included, but without the strength of criteria repeatedly referenced by Privy Council officers in debate, are further evidence that the legislation is imperfect. I will not accept that so many hon. members spoke in an effort to mislead the House. The members clearly believe that Bill C-38 meets the description they have given the House.

Furthermore, as all speeches delivered by Conservative Party members of Parliament are reviewed in advance by the Prime Minister's office and given the similarity of wording were likely written by the same person on PMO staff, the Prime Minister cannot but agree that the legislation falls short of his own stated goals.

Whether through hasty drafting or other error, the legislation does not meet the description offered by three members of Privy Council as well as several hon. members. It is imperfect and unready and should be withdrawn.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I wish to put forward one final argument to persuade you to reject Bill C-38, which violates the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. My argument is this: the respect of the body politic of this institution is at stake.

I recall the words of the late journalist, a great Canadian, James Travers. We happened to both be on the CBC program Sunday Edition in the spring of 2009, discussing threats to our democratic institutions. He commented that we really no longer have a democracy in Canada, and if we visit Ottawa today, what we will see is a democracy theme park. The buildings are still there and we can tour Parliament, but we will no longer see democracy.

I refuse to accept that is the case. I acknowledge that democracy is not a permanent state of existence. It can be won, as in Arab Spring, and it can be lost. It can be lost through violence; it can be lost through neglect. It does not survive without the constant application of checks on the abuse of power. It needs openness. Those things done by stealth invariably breed an unhealthy loss of respect in our democratic institutions. Sunlight is a great antiseptic. The myriad, unrelated pieces of legislation under cover of Bill C-38 should, to respect Westminster parliamentary democracy, be brought out of the shadows, be tabled separately and studied on their own merit.

To allow Bill C-38 to masquerade as a legitimate omnibus bill will bring our institutions into greater disrepute.

Bill C-38 is widely understood in the popular media as a fraud. I will cite a few examples of respected commentators on our system of government.

Andrew Coyne wrote that Bill C-38 “... is not remotely a budget bill despite its name.” He wrote that, while throwing non-budgetary matters into a budget bill is not unknown, in Bill C-38 “the scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy but a sort of compulsory buffet.”

John Ivison in the National Post, noting that the excuse for this omnibus approach is the urgency to move projects to approval, maintains:

... it’s not so “urgent” that it justifies an end-run around 145 years of parliamentary tradition.... Someone, somewhere deep within the Prime Minister’s Office took the decision to try to cram as much contentious legislation in one mega-bill to minimize the political fallout. It was a dumb move and it has blown up in their faces.... condemned by all but the most blinkered of partisans.

Terry Glavin wrote in the Ottawa Citizen that:

Bill C-38...is a heck of a thing. It’s an omnibus bill that purports to be a budget bill but isn’t. It’s a statutory juggernaut that introduces, amends, or repeals nearly 70 federal laws. It’s been presented to the House of Commons in a manner that may be without close precedent in Canadian parliamentary history.

Dan Gardner wrote just this weekend in the Ottawa Citizen that:

...the government’s mammoth Bill C-38, which is theoretically the budget implementation bill, but is in reality a vast number of pieces of legislation that have nothing to do with each other, or the budget. Piling most of the government’s legislative agenda together in one bill ensures scrutiny will be kept to a minimum, which is in keeping with the government’s unprecedented use of time allocation and closure to shut down parliamentary debate.

We, as parliamentarians, must be the bulwark against abuse of power, even in a majority government. Our only shield is our traditions, the standing rules, precedent and our respect for the same. Our only hope is in a fair judge. I turn to you, Mr. Speaker, without fear or favour, sine timore aut favore, to rule fairly and protect Westminster parliamentary democracy, to restore public faith in our institutions and to order Bill C-38, a bill imperfect in form and shape, to be withdrawn pursuant to our standing rules.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the last petition comes from residents in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.

The petitioners call upon the House to completely reject Bill C-38, an omnibus bill containing measures that have no place in a budget bill. They ask that we only be asked to vote on budget measures when an omnibus budget bill is put before us.

Canadian Heritage

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-38, the government is cutting the heart out of our small communities by attacking library services. The government plans to eliminate the only program that has provided reliable high-speed Internet access to small communities. Saint-Adelphe, in my riding, is one such community.

How does the minister plan to provide fair access to the cultural and historic heritage of our communities, no matter where they are located?

The Budget

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is just one of the very dangerous changes the government is making.

Bill C-38 has 753 clauses, given just 3 minutes of study each. These include changes that would gut environmental legislation, changes that would force Canadians to work longer, cuts to health transfers, cuts to EI, cuts to food inspectors, sweeping immigration changes and an attack on charities. The government is even giving away the powers of the Auditor General.

Why is the government hiding all of this from public hearings? Is it afraid to take on the official opposition, or is it just trying to pull a fast one on Canadians? Which is it?

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago, in the course of my duties, I had the opportunity to visit two western Canadian provinces. Even there, people were appalled by the Conservatives' mammoth Bill C-38.

Last week in my riding, people were even angrier. This bill amends or repeals laws that directly impact my Laval—Les Îles constituents: old age security, cuts to environmental agencies and changes to the Employment Insurance Act, to name but a few.

My constituents are furious. Day after day, they tell me that, when the next general election comes around in 2015, they will elect a government that listens to workers, Canadian families and all Canadians. In October 2015, they will elect an NDP government because we are fit to govern.

Housing

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before the budget was tabled, I asked the minister what she intended to do when a number of financial agreements between the federal government and housing co-ops and non-profit housing organizations expire.

She replied that the government was making investments in new social housing, including renovations for 21,000 seniors and 415 projects for persons with disabilities. However, I have still not been given an answer about existing social housing.

Almost all social housing built before 1994 was covered by long-term financial agreements with the federal government. These subsidies ensure that low-income renters can pay rent that is geared to income. With the expiry of these agreements, many renters will suffer because their rents will double or even triple.

There is nothing for social housing, nothing for affordable housing and nothing for the renewal of operating agreements for housing co-operatives and non--profit housing organizations in the 2012 budget or the famous Bill C-38, which is a real Trojan Horse.

There is nothing to help the more than 1.5 million households, or 13% of all Canadian households, that have core housing needs or that do not have access to decent housing that they can afford. The 21,000 people who received help from the government represent just 1.4% of all households that do not have access to affordable housing.

I have a hard time believing the government when it says it is investing in social housing. What is more, the budget makes no mention of social programs, including homelessness and housing, although there is a real need.

The City of Montreal, the Union des municipalities du Québec and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities all made requests of this budget, but all those requests were ignored. Unfortunately, there is still no long-term investment plan for housing. A petition was tabled in the House of Commons two weeks ago calling on the federal government to provide the necessary funding to renovate, improve and modernize all social housing.

I would like to know why the federal government did not allocate any funding to social housing in its budget, in order to help renters affected by the end of these subsidies. At the same time, I would also like to respond to the parliamentary secretary's question about why the opposition never supports the government's initiatives in the area of social housing.

I would answer that it is impossible for us to support initiatives that will help only 21,000 people, when there are over 1.5 million households that need assistance. Conversely, why does the government present initiatives that do not meet the needs of more Canadians?

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I have the honour of sharing my time with the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard.

Today we are discussing the motion regarding the proposed changes to the employment insurance system. This motion is a wonderful initiative from my colleague from Hamilton Mountain. This issue is very important to the people in my riding of Chambly—Borduas, who are concerned for many reasons that I will list today.

The first reason is that the changes will require daily proof of job searches. At the same time, job seekers will receive job offers via email. I addressed this issue earlier by asking a question to my colleague, but I would like to discuss it a little more.

In my riding, one of the municipalities, Marieville, is experiencing a problem that many citizens and even the mayor, Alain Ménard, have had the opportunity to tell us about. It is a matter of access to the Internet. This is not a rural municipality; it borders the greater Montreal metropolitan area, on the south shore. People have noticed a big problem. They have tried to get help from the CRTC to improve digital Internet services in the region. Increasingly, different types of Internet services are being required, and people in rural areas have a hard time accessing them. This is particularly true in Marieville, which is in my riding.

The reason why this is relevant here is that, as I said, we are talking about sending job offers by email, but not everyone has access to the Internet. It goes without saying that, often, people who have lower-paying, less stable jobs—which is often the case for people who are receiving employment insurance benefits—cannot necessarily afford Internet access, even if they live in urban areas where Internet access is easy to obtain. It is therefore hard to see how these job offers will help people.

It is said that people who cannot afford to pay for Internet access can go to the municipal library, for example. However, this presents another problem that was again pointed out to me by the people of my riding and that has to do with the municipal library in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, where I live and where my office is located.

The municipal library offers excellent services, but, unfortunately, it is going to have to reduce the services and Internet access it provides as a result of cuts to the community access program. This was an excellent program that was renewed every year in the budget. It did not just help community organizations, but also municipal libraries. These are very important tools for young people and people with low incomes who cannot always afford such luxuries.

When cuts were made to this program and this service was reduced, once again, people found themselves in a situation where they have one less way of accessing the Internet. This is one of the problems. When we look at the problems this is creating in my riding, we can see why these changes are of such great cause for concern.

The other situation, which my colleagues have addressed many times today in the House, and which I will address again to discuss how it applies to my riding, is seasonal work in tourism, agriculture and other areas. Workers in these sectors have to rely on employment insurance during the off season, especially in tourism, which is very significant in my riding. I am thinking about the city of Chambly, where one attraction is Fort Chambly, a Heritage Canada-recognized site run by Parks Canada. Many tourists from across Canada come to see it. From what we heard in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage a few weeks ago, it is one of the most visited Parks Canada sites in the region and in Quebec during the summer.

Jobs there are filled by seasonal workers, who work in tourism of course because many of the tourism programs do not operate during the winter.

These people will not only have to look for another job, but they will have to accept a job that pays less than Parks Canada has been paying them at Fort Chambly.

What is more, in the same bill, the Trojan Horse that is Bill C-38, the government also proposes cuts to Parks Canada that will cause even more problems at Fort Chambly. They knew for weeks that there would be significant cuts to this heritage site in my riding.

This heritage site is suffering a double whammy, not to mention the negative impact on the employees who work at this site during the summer season.

Aside from tourism, there is also agriculture. Although my riding is located between urban and rural regions, on the south shore of Montreal, there are still some farmers in my riding. The work they do is extremely important. This work is very interesting, because it is focusing on sustainable development. These people will have to cut back on their work in this extremely important field for environmental reasons. Their system will have to be completely transformed in light of the proposed changes. I am thinking in particular of wine producers and all kinds of agricultural producers who are not necessarily in my riding but who are in the greater Montérégie area. This will have a negative impact on them.

Incidentally, up until now, I have focused mainly on employers—people who provide services. We often hear that workers have contributed to this system and that they are entitled to use it, but the employers have also contributed to this system and have the right to be defended.

Therefore, it is important to point out that employers will also be punished by the proposed changes. Some will have to close their doors or points of service because the people they depend on to do the work will not return to their former jobs if they are forced to look for other seasonal jobs. At some point, workers will want a certain amount of stability.

If I leave my seasonal job for minimum wage work that is more regular, as required by these changes, it is hard for me to see why I would jump from job to job. This will also punish employers. I believe that it is very important to point this out.

Many business people came to my office to see me this past week, after these changes were announced. Before I am told that it is not true, I would like to give a specific example. I had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Larose, whose husband, Mr. Bélisle, owns a company in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, in my riding, and employs six seasonal workers. The company is called Irrigation Pro-Jet and it will have to close if the proposed changes are introduced. That is the perspective of one businessman.

Small and medium-sized businesses will be adversely affected, and workers will also be negatively impacted.

It is extremely important to point out the negative impact this will have on small and medium-sized businesses and on employers. I hope I have refuted the specious argument that we do not defend employers' interests. It is in their interests as well to prevent these changes.

That is why I am proud to support the motion of my colleague from Hamilton Mountain and to oppose these illogical changes that are harmful to our society.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-38, the Conservative government is attacking Canada's employment insurance system. Not content with gutting almost all of our country's social programs, the Conservatives have decided to make yet another reform, without consultation.

Employment insurance plays an essential role in this country by providing a safety net, as flimsy as it may be, to protect against the ups and downs of the market economy. Canada is such a large country that fluctuations in the economy generally create some degree of dissonance from one region to another. Thus, the realities of the fisheries on the country's east coast have little to do with those on the west. The same holds true for forestry development and the tourism-related service industry.

We have always been faced with regional disparities, which become less pronounced in periods of prosperity and more pronounced in periods of crisis. Thus, the unprecedented economic crisis that western economies have been experiencing for the past few years has served only to further accentuate the economic difficulties of some regions of Canada. No one here, in this time of crisis, has spoken about maintaining the status quo in applying the Employment Insurance Act. As legislators, members of Parliament in this House are all aware of their responsibilities, which are all the more important in these times of fiscal restraint.

However, questioning the employment insurance system in this time of crisis cannot be done without a minimum amount of consultation with subject matter experts, the political class concerned and the social groups that provide front line, essential services to people who are looking for work.

The Conservative government is forgetting the human tragedies resulting from the loss of employment in the regions. The thousands of unemployed workers who are receiving employment insurance benefits are getting only a fraction of their former salaries, which negatively impacts the resources available for community development.

This most recent EI reform, which attacks labour force mobility and the prerogative of job seekers to use their skills, does not take regional realities into account at all. What is more, the change to the definition of suitable employment ignores the minimum measure of dignity that must be included de facto in this type of program.

We built these programs to help the unemployed and meet the minimum needs of individuals and communities in crisis. Today, the current government is attempting to redefine the relationship between citizens and the state by introducing fundamental ideological messages within these reforms of Canada's social security system. The government does not have the mandate to redefine the role of the state and the social programs that are definitely part of our national identity. Our mandate is to make the country work in spite of the inherent differences resulting, in part, from its vastness.

This employment insurance reform is an attack on seasonal workers, and will force them to move in order to take jobs for which they have few or no qualifications. The government wants to force people, by imposing mandatory wage cuts for the jobs to which they apply, to go into areas of the labour market that are foreign to them. The fisher or forestry worker must now redefine suitable employment and trust an employment insurance system that denies the seasonal economic reality of these industries. The Conservative government is introducing reforms without serious studies of the economic and social consequences.

By reducing administrative employment insurance appeals, the government is ensuring that any impulse to appeal is nipped in the bud. The government is saying no to consultation and no to appeals.

On the east coast, in Quebec and the Maritimes, large sectors of our economy are subject to seasonal employment rules.

The Conservatives' announcement on EI reform upsets an already precarious balance for the people working in the fishery, forestry and tourism. Failing to consult local decision-makers, economists, the opposition and social groups about this reform shows the Conservatives' lack of sensitivity toward the regions and reveals beyond a doubt their ideological rigidity that draws on theories from another century that are no longer current in a complex and ever-changing world.

Changing employment insurance without consulting the local communities is contemptuous and disregards the historic reality of this country and its regions.

We cannot forget the successive structural crises that have affected our fisheries and our forestry and held them hostage in the international regulatory no man's land for which the Conservatives have such an affinity.

Legislating the changes proposed by the Conservatives without consulting Canadians is symptomatic of a government that relies blindly on market forces.

We have a duty to bring in reforms, because the government must be the people's watchdog when it comes to crises that shake up the world every so often. We must bring in these reforms while remaining focused on restoring regional economies, which have been abandoned by this government, which still believes in the principle of natural justice at a time when government intervention is crucial to social cohesion.

In closing, I would remind the members opposite that our economic performance today and our national security depend heavily on a government that engages with its people and its institutions. Believing that these EI reforms will fix regional inequalities and give jobs to the unemployed is magical thinking.

Before making any changes to the EI system, the Conservatives have a moral obligation to help rebuild the regional economies that have been devastated by globalization, technological changes and environmental degradation. The proposed EI reforms are unequivocal proof of this government's lack of vision and realism. Furthermore, this reform could deprive regional economies of the temporary foreign workers needed to work in seasonal industries.

This extremely symbolic displacement of workers forced to apply for jobs within a one-hour commute of their homes will affect the structure of seasonal employment in the regions. Without a doubt, we need to examine the costs involved in this kind of reform, by highlighting the real economic contribution that seasonal jobs make to our communities, and to work on creating economic programs that will support local economies.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak in favour of the motion put forward by my colleague from Hamilton Mountain.

There are many grounds for such a motion, but I want to situate the Conservative government's effort to restrict access to EI in a broader and historical context that is as something that is ruinous for our country, that is harmful to so many of our citizens and that has to be abandoned before we lose sight of the kind of country Canadians hope for and deserve.

In doing so, I want to talk about the very real impacts of these proposed changes on the city in which I live. That is Toronto.

Urban communities have a specificity, which warrants special consideration when we talk about employment insurance, and Toronto has a particular place in this story.

I will begin with this proposition, which I hold to be true and the vast majority of Canadians, irrespective of their own economic status, hold to be true.

If there is a symptom of what ails our country, it is the re-emergence of income disparity. I say “re-emergence” because, yes, we have seen these conditions co-exist before, private affluence and largely public squalor, but many decades ago.

Those who previously recognized the injustice of this, and the generation or two that succeeded them, made great efforts to escape such circumstances by erecting barriers against income disparity.

Employment insurance was one of those very important barriers erected for this purpose, but now the Conservative government, freed from the constraints of minority government status, is returning us to that place.

To be fair, we have been trending in this direction for a while now. The current government, in many respects, is following in the footsteps of those that came before it. I have spoken in this House a number of times before about how this trend has reshaped my city socially and economically over the last number of decades.

Periodically, this trend seems to be accelerated. Certainly this was done by the savage budget and EI cuts of the Liberal governments in the 1990s. And, certainly it has been accelerated by the corporate tax cut schedule, initiated by the Liberal government, but gleefully picked up, extended and implemented by successive Conservative governments. Now, with the current government and Bill C-38, the foot is firmly planted on the accelerator, hurtling this country downhill, back to a place we wisely made efforts to escape before.

To be sure, it is not all about what is in Bill C-38. Just two nights ago we were all here in this chamber to witness another assault on free collective bargaining, another effort by the Conservative government to undermine the very deliberate, purposeful role that unions play in ensuring the redistribution of corporate surplus to working people and to the creation of a middle class and the consequent revenue base to sustain the kind of goods and services that are properly delivered to Canadians by government; health care and public pensions being the most obvious of these.

The condition of extreme income disparity is certainly a fully Canadian one these days. Canada has the seventh greatest level of income disparity among the OECD's 29 member states, as we know.

However, it is in urban communities in particular that we see affluence and poverty existing cheek by jowl. The condition that afflicts us is most conspicuous by the near and sometimes total absence of infrastructure across great expanses of urban space. We have come to a point in our collective impoverishment where we talk about the existence of food deserts in the city of Toronto.

This social and economic reshaping of our cities reflects dramatically changing labour markets across the country and particularly in Toronto. In the past 10 years, there has been a 59% increase in the number of temporary and contract jobs across the country. These changes have been particularly acute in Toronto, where there has been a 68% increase.

While Toronto had lost well over 100,000 manufacturing jobs before the recession, it has seen a dramatic increase in the number of jobs paying less than $10 per hour. This has led to the rapid increase of working poor in Toronto.

While the Conservative government has taken the position that there is no such thing as a bad job, let me quote from the Metcalf Foundation's recent report entitled, “The 'Working Poor' in the Toronto Region”.

It states:

Although work can provide a ladder out of poverty, this is not always the case. In the Toronto Region, an increasing number of people are both employed and living in poverty. The highest concentration is found in the city of Toronto. We call them the working poor. They live in a region with the highest cost of living in Canada.... They live in a region with the second most expensive housing market in Canada. In this high-cost environment, earnings from a job – even full-time – may not be sufficient to escape poverty.

Indeed, it is not. What we have seen in the Toronto region is an increase in this population of the working poor of 42% between 2000 and 2005, which again is pre-recession.

Employment insurance has failed to stem this tide of income disparity. What has become clear is that employment insurance rules have not kept up with shifting labour market realities. Professor Leah Vosko expressed this succinctly in her report in support of the Mowat Centre's recent study on employment insurance. She said:

A notable overarching finding is that EI’s entry requirements disfavour part-time workers. For instance, in urban areas and metropolises, where entry requirements tend to be highest, more than 50 per cent of workers in this group do not meet the 700 hour threshold.... Insensitivity of regular benefit requirements to the changing nature of employment in this formula contributes to disentitlement of workers falling outside the norm of the full-time permanent job in low-unemployment regions where workers in part-time and temporary forms of employment face high entry requirements.

In Toronto, fewer than 25% of unemployed workers are actually eligible for EI benefits. This is far less than the national average for eligibility, which hovers just above 40%, which is a problem in and of itself. It also compares, woefully, to the pre-Liberal reform levels, when 56% of the unemployed workers in Toronto were eligible for EI benefits and nationally were somewhere in the range of 80%.

It is into this context of these social and economic conditions, of people trying to find work, of people working but still in poverty, of people having nothing to catch them when they fall out of work, that the current government sees fit to tighten eligibility for employment insurance to force people into jobs that would not allow them to keep themselves or their families out of poverty.

How does this make any sense? How in the world can this be considered to be wise policy? In whose perverse economics text can one find such prescriptions for building a prosperous society? In whose strange imagination is this reflective of the kind of society we should be building here in Canada?

The fair and just thing for us to do in our role here is to amend EI, but in a manner that would provide meaningful income security to Canadians in all parts of this country in all labour markets when they lose their jobs, in a manner that would allow Canadians to maintain their dignity in the face of misfortune, in a manner that would facilitate and expedite re-entry into meaningful, productive and, yes, good jobs, and in a manner that would build a barrier against that which ails us most in this country these days: income disparity.

These are the kinds of policy criteria that reflect the generous, compassionate and prosperous Canada that Canadians really want us in this place to build.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we must recognize that there are literally tens of thousands of seasonal jobs of many different variations. These are good jobs that Canadians have depended on for many years. What the government has done is it has gone through the back door on Bill C-38 and has tried to make significant changes that will destroy lives, that will cause a great deal of anxiety for not only the individuals directly affected, but also for their family members.

Would the member provide her thoughts with regard to how this will be damaging for many smaller rural communities in particular that are very dependent on seasonal industries for their survival?

The Environment

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, I remind my colleague opposite that legislative improvements to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in 2010 did go some distance toward eliminating duplication in environmental assessments. However, we would build on that with Bill C-38 and we have introduced timelines. We would also contemporize processes under the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. We would strengthen and improve what was already in place.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that it is now 2012.

Other Conservatives are against Bill C-38, including voters and the hon. member for Kootenay—Columbia.

The government claims that overlap in federal and provincial jurisdictions is creating delays and unnecessary costs. That is absolutely not true. An internal document prepared for the Minister of the Environment confirms that there has been no overlap since last fall.

What, then, is the real reason behind the government's decision to dismantle environmental assessments in Bill C-38?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, this bill will create a lot more uncertainty.

There was a time when the Conservatives thought it was very important to protect the environment. That is why the Mulroney government implemented the Fisheries Act, which the Conservatives are trying to destroy today.

Yesterday, the former Conservative fisheries minister, Mr. Siddon, told the subcommittee that responsible parliamentarians would withdraw these changes from Bill C-38.

Will the Minister of the Environment listen to his Conservative colleague and split up this irresponsible bill?

Fisheries and Oceans

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, the measures we have introduced in Bill C-38 would allow Fisheries and Oceans Canada to focus its efforts in a practical, sensible way on managing threats to Canada's recreational, commercial and aboriginal fisheries. I know he likes to use former minister Siddon to criticize this new direction we would take here, but let me read this for him. It states, “The policy applies to those habitats directly or indirectly supporting those fish stocks or populations that sustain commercial, recreational or Native fishing activities of benefit to Canadians.”

Who wrote that? It was the Hon. Tom Siddon in the 1986 habitat policy that is still in force here in Canada.

The Budget

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at the C-38 hearings, the Conservative majority is pushing through dozens of pieces of legislation with little study. With 753 clauses, that is just three minutes of study per clause.

Now even former Tory ministers are testifying that Conservatives railroading these changes through are wrong.

Last night it got even worse. The Conservatives voted to block bringing ministers back to testify. Why will they not come back? Is the Minister of Natural Resources afraid he will be called on his boast about drinking from tailing ponds?

The Environment

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague forgets that on the first day that the subcommittee met to consider Bill C-38, all three ministers met, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Minister of Natural Resources and I. We provided two hours of enlightenment to an opposition that was hard-challenged to come up with questions material to the subcommittee's work.

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are in the House to discuss a motion by the official opposition concerning employment insurance.

Our motion essentially asks the Conservative government to abandon its plans to further restrict access to employment insurance. The proposed changes arise from Bill C-38 to implement the budget. In addition to containing no job creation measures and triggering the dismissal of tens of thousands of public servants, the latest Conservative budget tightens access to employment insurance by giving the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development the authority to create new rules to define what constitutes “suitable employment” and “reasonable and customary efforts to obtain suitable employment.” That appears in a budget of more than 400 pages.

Incidentally, the minister refuses to provide all the details of her reform, but is asking us to vote for Bill C-38, which will give her the authority to change the employment insurance plan as she wishes. She is in fact asking us to sign a blank cheque.

We do not have all the details of this reform. However, on May 24, the minister tried to clarify the government's intentions in part, although without disclosing all the details. Essentially, unemployed workers are now more than ever being compelled to find a job outside their area of activity and their area of residence.

We also know that the government will establish three classes of workers based on the frequency with which they file employment insurance claims. After receiving benefits for a certain period of time, unemployed workers will be required to accept lower-paying jobs or else their benefits will be reduced. Frequent claimants, who have filed three or more claims and received more than 60 weeks of benefits in the past five years, will, after a period of time, be required to accept jobs at 70% of their previous earnings. We find those changes unacceptable for a number of reasons.

The main problem with this reform is that it disregards the fact that many businesses operate on a seasonal cycle, particularly those in the tourism, agri-food, forest and other sectors. Seasonal industry makes a major contribution to economic activity. What would Lac-Saint-Jean be without forestry? Where would eastern Quebec be without the fisheries? What would Quebec City and a number of Quebec communities be without the economic contribution of tourists? These industries and the workers who support them contribute to the economic growth of Quebec and the rest of Canada. It is essential that the federal government acknowledge through its programs that these sectors are important and legitimate.

For lack of adequate coverage by the employment insurance program, many workers are abandoning these sectors of activity, leaving business people without skilled workers. For example, Le Quai des Bulles, a Kamouraska business employing a dozen seasonal workers, is afraid it will lose workers as a result of the reform. It is important to understand that 26% of employment insurance claims are filed by seasonal workers, and 30% of those are Quebeckers.

I will be pleased to continue my speech after question period.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, Liberals understand that the changes the government is bringing forward would have a devastating impact on tens of thousands of Canadians. We believe that the government is using the back door to implement these changes in Bill C-38. That is most unfortunate. We should be allowed to have a full, healthy debate in the House on separate bills as opposed to bringing in the changes in Bill C-38 through the back door. That is one point I would appreciate the member's comment on.

The second point is about the uncaring attitude of the government with regard to individuals who, in essence, ensure that industries are viable. They may be seasonal jobs, but they are important too. We need to emphasize that all jobs, even seasonal jobs, are important. The Canadians filling those jobs should be recognized and appreciated for their efforts, not penalized by the government taking action of this nature, which is going to hurt Canadians more.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not at all pleased to be rising in the House today. In general, I am happy, indeed very happy to be here, but I am less happy to have to debate this issue.

I will say at the outset that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

I would like to go back a few years in time to the root of the matter to remind hon. members that the problem we are facing today has been fabricated. It has been created by those who are now exploiting it for the purpose of making decisions that are truly contemptuous of Canadians in general, more particularly Canadians who are currently having trouble finding a job.

If, a few years ago, the Liberal and Conservative governments had not dipped into this fund, which Canadian workers paid into out of their own pockets, it would now stand at more than $50 billion and not be an underfinanced fund of less than $2 billion. Now, the government can exploit the idea that the fund needs attention because it will be short of money. It can say that people are abusing this paltry sum of $2 billion. Collectively, we had produced a $50 billion cushion, but it is no longer there. If we had that money today, we could introduce a pilot project to help the regions solve the problems the seasonal industries are facing. There would not be a problem.

There could be a major reform to do exactly what countries with few human resource problems, such as Germany and Norway, are currently doing: focus on ensuring the money is used for their obsession with ongoing training. That is the key. In Germany and Norway, when someone wants to take a course, they do not take away his employment insurance benefits if that course serves economic needs. If someone does not know how to read but wants to learn, he does not lose his benefits. He is asked if he is able to learn to read within a certain number of weeks. Those countries have understood that if they support their citizens in learning basic skills or trades that are in great demand, the entire community will be more prosperous in the short and medium terms.

If Canada had the $50 billion in its possession right now, it could start establishing those policies across Canada and see Canada become as prosperous as Norway and Germany.

I would like to remind the House that the two countries in question are not at the same end of the spectrum. The Norwegians are clearly social democrats, but the situation is not that clear in Germany. However, both countries share this obsession with ongoing training and use job search tools with a view to training people. And yet they are stuck in an economic quagmire much worse than ours.

The U.S. economy is struggling to get back on its feet, but it is not a disaster. Yet, these two economies are located close to partners, Greece and Spain, which are having major problems and are on the verge of economic disaster. Despite this terrible mess, they are succeeding with fewer human resource problems and a level of prosperity that is comparable or superior to our own. They have not used tools as big as $50 billion to help people prepare for employment. This money was squandered on all sorts of things, so that now this government can exploit the bogus underfunding of what should have been a major tool for Canada’s prosperity.

Now we have before us Bill C-38, which reduces human resource and environmental problems to budgetary issues. The budget will fix everything.

I made an important note to myself: the budget is the top priority. The proof of this is that the vast majority of NDP governments in the provinces have an exemplary roadmap enabling them to deliver balanced budgets, with a few rare exceptions. Overall, the NDP has been more successful in this regard than other provincial governments. It is a top priority.

The problem, when it comes to the big issues and the major responsibilities in society—the environment and human resources—is that when things are limited to a budgetary analysis, it is easy to lose sight of the investment and sustainability side of things.

This is normal. If I am responsible for the budget, the only question I ask myself is whether I can save $2 tomorrow. I want to save $2 tomorrow. I do not ask myself whether that $2 is going to cost us $25 in terms of loss of skills and investments for the future. Bill C-38, the mammoth budget bill, reduces hugely important responsibilities, such as the environment and human resources, to a simple budgetary calculation, and nothing lacks long-term vision more than that.

My next comments will focus on what is happening in the regions. Since I was elected, Service Canada centres have actually been closed in the regions despite the fact that in the last election campaign the Conservative Party unveiled with great fanfare, in Quebec at least, a slogan that read “power to the regions”—that vaguely reminded me of slogans from a gentleman by the name of Duplessis, in Quebec—and despite the fact that for 40 days they plastered telephone poles with the slogan. In towns in my riding, 20%, 25% or 30% of the postal services have been closed.

We have just learned that there will be a 50% cut in rail service between Halifax and Toronto. Why not? The government is going to hit the tourism industry hard. Why not also arrange things so that fewer tourists can take the night train to go and spend a week in the maritime provinces or Quebec? Why not? An excellent idea, good timing, terrific.

And now here we are, dealing with this employment insurance reform that deals a huge blow to the tourism industry, which by its very nature is highly seasonal. Many regions are extremely attractive in the summer, but not in winter. They therefore find it difficult to develop. Even the most brilliant business people in these regions are unable to develop a 12-month cycle. Believe me, if they could they would. These are business people and they are brilliant. If there was a way to come up with an initiative that would be the least bit viable in December, January and February, they would do it.

For almost a month now, in my role as the NDP critic for SMEs and tourism, I have met with many people from Quebec and the maritime provinces. I met with Minister Paris in Nova Scotia. And of course, I met with the organizations in my own bailiwick, such as Tourisme Rivière-du-Loup. I met with the people who handle tourism for the Acadians, those who administer tourism for all of Newfoundland and Labrador and all of Nova Scotia, and those who handle special tourism development projects in southern Nova Scotia.

I met with dozens of organizations. Fully one-third of them said that they were worried. Two-thirds told me that they were truly angry about the decisions currently being made. They all said that they had never been consulted. We are talking about an industry that is worth billions of dollars. We are talking about close to $1 billion for New Brunswick alone, approximately $2 billion for Nova Scotia and over $5 billion for eastern Quebec. We are talking about a multi-billion dollar industry that necessarily goes through difficult economic cycles. The people in this industry are therefore directly affected by the kind of employment insurance reforms that are going to be forced down the throats of Canadians, even though they were never consulted.

The current government is telling them not to worry because of the so-called “reasonable””clause. They put the word “reasonable” in their bill. The word means absolutely nothing if it is not defined first. It will be reasonable based on what and from whose point of view? I will give just one example of something impossible.

Like me, a senior Conservative government official from eastern Canada asked the question, and he had no more of an answer than I did. Let us imagine a hotel manager who, in the four winter months, loses 80% of his business. It is a seasonal industry and there is no ski hill beside his inn. Will he work at the corner hardware store for four months?

The businessman who owns the corner hardware store knows that the hotel manager is a bright man and, for years, he has not hired him for those four months because it is not cost-effective to give him two months of training for him to learn all about paint, when he will then leave to go back to the hotel.

Business people in the regions are not idiots. They are bright people. I find this government extraordinarily presumptuous when it says that it will establish a system that will finally work for them.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the Minister of Veterans Affairs.

As many government members have already stated, we cannot support a factually incorrect motion.

I would like to drill down on some of the details of what our government is actually proposing with this legislation.

The changes we will make will ensure that unemployed Canadians are made aware of all available work in their local labour markets within their skill set. However, if there is no available work within their skill set, then EI will be there to support them. It always has been there to support them and always will be there to support them.

As indicated in Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act, the government intends to establish clear definitions for suitable employment and reasonable job search. Please note that these improvements can only apply to Canadians receiving regular EI benefits and EI fishing benefits. They will not apply to Canadians receiving EI for special benefits, such as maternity, parental, compassionate, or sickness.

Let me focus on suitable employment for a moment.

Several factors will affect the definition for suitable employment. These factors will include, first and foremost, the personal circumstances of that person who applies. This is a point that the opposition members have been very ignorant on as they attempt to scare Canadians with respect to the impact of these changes. As a member of Parliament from Atlantic Canada, I want to assure my constituents that the personal circumstances of an EI claimant will always be taken into account when determining what is considered suitable employment.

Claimants receiving EI will not have to accept work if they have a health problem that prevents them from taking a particular job, or if they have family obligations that prevent them from working at certain times of the day or if they have limited transportation options for commuting them to and from work. If they are not physically capable of performing work, they will not be required to take that job.

As the minister of HRDSC stressed again at committee yesterday, these changes would be implemented in a fair, practical and reasonable way.

What has not been reasonable is for the opposition to enlist in a campaign of fearmongering on topics such as commuting time. Under our proposed changes, a workplace must be within an hour's commute unless the claimant's previous commuting history and the community's average commuting times are longer than that. It is simple common sense.

Let me focus on the two criteria for suitable employment that are drawing the most attention. They are the type of work and the wages that are considered reasonable. In determining what criteria apply, EI claimants will be placed in one of three categories: long-tenured workers, frequent claimants and occasional claimants.

Let me take a few moments to define each of these categories.

Long-tenured workers are those who have paid into the EI system for seven of the past 10 years and who over the last five years have collected EI or fishing benefits for 35 weeks or less. These workers would be initially required to look for a similar job that would pay for 90% of their previous wages. After 18 weeks on EI benefits, long-tenured workers would be required to expand their job search to jobs within the field of one they previously held and to apply for jobs that would be above 80% of their previous wages.

Frequent claimants are those who have had three or more claims for regular or fishing benefits and have collected more than 60 weeks of EI benefits in the past five years. They would be required to expand their job search to jobs similar to the job they normally performed from the start of their EI claim. They would also be required to look for work that paid wages starting at 80% of their previous hourly wage. After receiving benefits for six weeks, they would need to expand their search to any work they would be qualified to perform so long as the wages would be within 70% of their previous employment.

Occasional claimants would include those not captured by the definitions of frequent and long-tenured workers. Occasional claimants would be allowed to limit their job search for their usual occupation, with similar wages of at least 90% of their previous hour wage for the first six weeks of their claim. After receiving benefits for six weeks, they would have to expand their job search to jobs similar to the one they normally performed, with wages that would be within 80% of their previous earnings. After 18 weeks, they would then need to further expand their job search to include any work they would be qualified to perform, as long as the wage would be at least 70% of their previous earnings.

It is a sad testament to fearmongering in which the opposition has engaged that I feel the need to point out the obvious, which is that no one would ever need to accept employment below minimum wage in Canada. The simple truth is that under these changes, EI claimants will always make more money working than by collecting EI, which is currently not the case.

As many people know, employment insurance pays 55% of an individual's average weekly income. The maximum annual salary used to calculate the weekly average is $45,900 per year. Therefore, if an individual is a frequent claimant and a reasonable job search will offer at least 70% of previous earnings, that is a substantial increase over 55% of the earnings that would be collected on EI.

This is why the opposition motion we are debating in the House today is factually incorrect. Canadians receiving EI will only be required to look for work that pays significantly more than they are currently collecting on EI. It is a net benefit to claimants.

Let me also be clear on a further point. As a Canadian from Atlantic Canada, I understand that in many small communities there may not always be economic opportunities outside peak seasons of employment. The Prime Minister has been perfectly clear on this point. If there are no available jobs in one's community, EI benefits will continue to support Canadians as they always have.

Let me turn briefly to the topic of a reasonable job search.

Canadians receiving EI benefits will be required to undertake job search activities, including researching and assessing job prospects, drafting a resumé, searching for job vacancies, applying for positions, attending interviews and undertaking other efforts to improve their employability, such as attending workshops, going to employment agencies and also job fairs.

EI claimants will also be required to look for a job daily and to keep records of their job searches. These search efforts will be consistent with the opportunities that are available. For example, in a community with few job openings, a job search should focus on identifying new opportunities and not applying for the same job or to the same business every day. In comparison, a job search in an area with numerous job opportunities should focus on both identifying and applying for available positions.

As part of the investment we are making under this initiative, EI claimants will be made aware of local jobs in their local labour market.

These improvements to EI will help more Canadians get back into the labour force and enable them to better support themselves and their families.

Unfortunately, we have seen the opposition attempt to play politics of fear and to confuse Canadians into believing some of these things are not true. Sadly, this is not the first time we have seen members of the opposition ignore clear realities of the Canadian economy in order to advance their narrow interests.

I would ask all hon. members in the House to support our government's plan for jobs, growth and economic prosperity. This is the reason Canada is leading the G8 in growth of 750,000 net new jobs created since the depth of the recession in July 2009. Therefore, I encourage members to join me in voting against this factually incorrect motion.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, what the Conservative government is doing in terms of these changes will have a profoundly negative impact on seasonal jobs from coast to coast, and in particular, as our Liberal Party critic talked about, in the province of Quebec, in Atlantic Canada and so forth.

One needs to question why the government decided to bring in these changes through the back door of Bill C-38, thereby preventing debate on this issue and, most important, to then have the debate carry on into a committee of the House where experts from across Canada could participate and provide what I believe is absolutely critical information because of the impact this change will have on our economy and on industries that are so dependent on seasonal jobs.

Does the member not agree with the Liberal Party's stand that Bill C-38 should have been broken down, that there should have been several pieces of legislation brought in and that this should be a stand-alone debate taking place on a separate bill?

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to support the motion of the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain, which reads:

That this House call on the Conservative government to abandon plans to further restrict access to Employment Insurance for Canadian workers who have followed the rules and who will now be forced to choose between taking a pay cut of up to 30% or losing their Employment Insurance benefits.

I support this motion. It is necessary to do so because we have before us Bill C-38, a budget implementation bill that we call the Trojan Horse bill because there are so many things hidden in it. It is extremely controversial for this reason as well as others. It contains far too much. We have said many times that this bill should be split into at least five parts. It cannot be examined in the proper committee because the Standing Committee on Finance is discussing the environment. This bill should be examined by the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities or the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. It needs to be examined in the proper place.

Moreover, the Conservatives are limiting debate. They are not only reducing the time the committees have to debate this bill, but they are also passing time allocation motions in the House. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to distract Canadians while they impose major, negative changes on them. By way of evidence, did the Conservatives talk about changes to environmental law, old age security and employment insurance during the election campaign? No. They did not say a word about those issues. They hid their intentions throughout the election campaign.

Let us now discuss the section of Bill C-38 that deals with employment insurance, which is also very controversial. Members of Parliament have to vote without having received much information. The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development said that she has not yet announced the details as she wants to make sure that the bill passes first.

What details are we talking about? Just trifles; for example, the definition of suitable employment or the acceptable distance to be travelled. The bill abolishes the existing definitions, but when we ask for clarification and new definitions, the information is very vague. For example, a reasonable commuting time is said to be one hour. Is that one hour by car? If I drive for one hour, I will be halfway to Montreal.

What about the people in remote areas who do not own cars? Will they also have to travel one hour by car? In some parts of my riding, there are far fewer north-south public transit routes. Will these people have to spend one hour on the bus? How will it work? We do not know. In short, major changes to employment insurance are hidden inside a mammoth bill. Once again, the Conservatives are controlling the debate on the bill. That is not all.

When we listen to what some of the Conservatives are saying we can hear the contempt they have for employment insurance recipients. During her appearance yesterday at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development said that the government was working on removing disincentives to work. She added that it is question of improving the federal system in order to ensure that Canadians better understand what is expected of them when they receive employment insurance benefits.

Such comments suggest that EI recipients are abusing the system. There are indeed people who abuse the system, but they are the exception. Not everyone abuses the system, but they are being treated as though they do. I invite the Conservatives to come to Hochelaga and see what life is really like, what people really need. Employment insurance is a social safety net that was established decades ago to respond to a real need. This tool that Canadians created to be used when they need help is getting a bad rap from the Conservatives. I wonder sometimes whether they really know anyone who is poor.

Let us now talk in greater detail about the changes proposed by the Conservatives and the ensuing problems. Take job search, for example. The government says that it is going to send out emails about available jobs twice a day.

I knocked on a lot of doors during the election campaign. When I told people to consult our website to learn more about the NDP platform, they would often tell me that they did not have Internet access, that they could not afford it or that they did not have a computer. They could have gone to the library, but the Conservative government has cut the community access program, so there are a lot fewer computers available in libraries.

The hon. members might recall that, a few months ago, the Service Canada job search website did not work for a number of weeks. So what happens in those types of situations? Are the people going to be penalized? But one of the biggest problems—and we are going to hear about it a lot—is the impact on the regions and on seasonal work. Let us talk about seasonal work. Seasonal workers are often highly skilled workers. You cannot just drag people around from job to job.

Under the proposed measures, these people could be forced to leave their skilled occupations or their regions or both. As an example, a witness who raises silver foxes recently appeared before the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. That industry has a six-month season and he has one employee who has very specific expertise and who returns every year.

This employer told us that if his employee did not come back, he would not know what to do or where to find another employee with that kind of expertise. The witness also told us that the same is true in horticulture and livestock farming.

In-school child care services are another example. Do we really want to have to look for new child care providers every year? Do we want people with a lot less experience looking after our children every year?

Every January and February, only a few groups came to visit the museum where I used to work. As a result, at least 10 of the 20 guides would not get any hours. Zero. So they needed employment insurance every year. Since those guides have been there for three or four years, they would automatically fall into the new category of frequent claimants. This means that if they have not found another job after six weeks, they would have to accept work at 70% of their previous hourly wage or they would no longer be entitled to employment insurance.

By the way, in Quebec, 15% of employment insurance claimants are seasonal workers. Instead of a short-term and repressive view for reducing the unemployment rate, perhaps there might be other options. For example, we could invest in training. But no, the Conservatives are making cuts to training.

I have two examples from the recent budget. First, we see cuts of $44 million—so, 64.7%—to contributions that help older unemployed workers in communities with a high unemployment rate or those affected by downsizing. Then, transfer payments to apprenticeship incentive grants and apprenticeship completion grants, worth $155 million, are being cancelled completely. It makes no sense.

Furthermore, when the government gives grants to large companies, perhaps it could ensure that jobs are created quickly—in Canada, not in Mexico or the United States—and that the companies do not take the money before relocating elsewhere, which is what Caterpillar and Electrolux did.

I have three more comments to make before I wrap up. First, employment insurance is fully funded by employees and employers. It belongs to employees and employers. What is the point of paying into it if you are not allowed to use it? It would be like buying a car and not being allowed to drive it.

The new definition of suitable employment suggested by the minister is at odds with the International Labour Organization's, which says that a government seeking to promote employment and guard against unemployment should take into account the claimant's training, experience and qualifications.

The third and final point I would like to make is that by forcing workers to take lower-paying, less fulfilling jobs that they are likely to quit more rapidly, the government will increase rather than decrease poverty.

I would like to reiterate what I said at the beginning of my remarks: this motion is important and must be adopted.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to share my time with the member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord.

First I would like to say that I am proud the NDP has proposed this motion on employment insurance.

I find it sad that the government thinks that people who receive employment insurance are a bunch of lazy slackers. As the member for Madawaska—Restigouche put it so well, there are still people who prefer to receive employment insurance because they want to go hunting. That is how the Conservatives think.

The parliamentary secretary asked whether it was not better to have a job 12 months a year rather than six months a year.

Yes, it is much better.

The parliamentary secretary said she went to visit Newfoundland. I would like to know whom she spoke to in Newfoundland. Let her report to the House on whom she met in Newfoundland, because there is a fishing industry in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and the Gaspé.

If the Conservative government is so smart, I invite the Prime Minister to introduce a bill to melt the ice in Chaleur Bay so that people can fish in winter. If he is so smart, if he really believes in jobs 12 months a year and if he wants to support the fishing industry, I invite the Prime Minister to melt the ice in Chaleur Bay. That way, people could fish 12 months a year.

In addition, let him put some fish in the sea because this same government shut down the groundfish fishery. I invite the parliamentary secretary to come and tour New Brunswick. Let her come, and I will take her around to the employers who are having problems as a result of seasonal jobs: they want to keep their employees. However, the government's bill does the exact opposite. It wants those employees to go work elsewhere.

Industry back home in New Brunswick, and in the riding of Acadie—Bathurst, amounts to fishing and peat moss. Has anyone ever wondered how you harvest peat moss under the snow? This Conservative government is really out of touch with the reality of the regions to a ridiculous degree. The parliamentary secretary says she comes from a rural area. All right, but she may come from a rural area where there are secondary or tertiary processing jobs and employment 12 months a year.

If the Conservative government wants to do the right thing, let it put tools in place. Let the human resources minister put the tools in place for us to do the secondary and tertiary processing instead of sending all our fish to Japan.

Under these new regulations, unemployed workers are required to look for work twice a week. Some 3,000 people lose their jobs at the end of June because the fishery winds up in June and starts again in mid-August. The biggest surprise this government could have right now would be for fish plant employees to decide, twice a week, to go and see employers one hour’s drive away about jobs those employers do not have. Employers would tell the Conservative government to get those workers off their backs because they would not be able to produce anymore with them coming to work in their yards when there are no jobs.

The government's parliamentary secretary said they were going to send unemployed workers job alerts twice a day to tell them where they could find work, but the problem that was raised is that some of them do not even have a computer. The government responded that 85% of people filing employment insurance claims did so online.

They file employment insurance claims online because the government requires them to do so. It has shut down human resources offices everywhere. There were more than 100 human resources offices in Canada, and since the Conservatives intend to close some of them, there will only be 22 left.

Applying once for employment insurance means going to a neighbour and asking to use his computer. This happens once a year. But if a person has to ask to use his neighbour’s computer twice a day to check jobs, the neighbour will get fed up.

The government is saying that if you want a job, you will have to use a computer to get it, because that is where the jobs are. Is the government telling us that it is going to send out two letters a day to Canadians to tell them that jobs are available? My goodness, I do not know what planet I am living on. If there are that many jobs in Acadie—Bathurst, I cannot wait to find out where they are. I am sure that the residents of Acadie—Bathurst cannot wait to know where all these jobs that the government is announcing are.

We are not against motherhood and apple pie, we are not against the fact that the government is telling people that there are going to be jobs available at specific locations. We are not against employers posting jobs or workers being available. The problem is telling somebody that if he does not go to a specific location for a job and accept it, his employment insurance will be cut off. If I were an employer, I would tell the government to mind its own business because it is not up to the government to dictate who should be in the private sector. If the government forces somebody to work for a particular employer and the person does not like the job, how productive will he be?

The 70% model sounds good, does it not? For those who get a job at 70% of their salary and are then laid off, will the next job be at 70% of that salary? Will it be 70% until the person receives the minimum wage? The government wants to help employers keep wages down. The government is going to play a role in forcing people to go and work for employers who will not increase wages. The Conservatives are going to make sure that people remain in poverty. That is what this measure is all about.

Furthermore, this measure is found in Bill C-38. Why did they not separate it from Bill C-38? They should let the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities conduct a real study. If the bill put forward by the minister and the federal Conservative government is so good, why is the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador not satisfied and why was it not consulted? Why is the Province of Nova Scotia not satisfied and why was it not consulted? Why is the Province of Prince Edward Island not satisfied and why was it not consulted?

The exception is New Brunswick, because we know that our premier, Mr. Alward, follows everything that the Prime Minister of Canada says. The Conservatives are in power in New Brunswick and they will not touch this with a 10-foot pole. The premier might have to answer for this in the next election in New Brunswick, because at the moment he does not represent the seasonal workers in our province.

The people in our province who work in the fisheries are wondering where they are expected to find a job. What will happen to the 60-year-old woman in Caraquet who has almost reached retirement age if she tries to take her car to work at a McDonald's in Bathurst with the winter road conditions that we have? By the way, it is not funny when you drive along the coast. With the wind, even if there is not much snow falling, it becomes a storm. On the peatlands and in open country, the roads can be impassable just because of the winds. This is what they are doing; they are putting people's lives in danger.

The Conservatives think that people are happy to receive 55% of their salary and feel as though they are on vacation. They should see these people's living conditions and they should live in these conditions. They should answer the calls that I get in my office from people saying that they would like to work. They should remember the time when the fisheries were good and people worked 35 weeks per year. They worked 15- and 16-hour days, 7 days a week, for 35 weeks. I will never allow them to call our workers lazy slackers. These are the same people who leave our region to go work out west, where they can find jobs.

If the Conservative government wants to help people get jobs, it can help us get a better airport in Bathurst. The runway needs to be lengthened. It can give us a building that is capable of handling our people travelling up to the far north for jobs. This is the same government that cut $18 million from ACOA and that gives us no tools. Tools are what we want. It is the government's responsibility to provide tools and to make it possible to get jobs, not to do what it is doing at the moment, cutting employment insurance so that people fall on hard times, sending them onto welfare and putting all the burden onto the provinces.

I hope that the Premier of New Brunswick is also listening to me; I hope he realizes that we, the taxpayers of New Brunswick, are the ones who are going to be paying for the federal government's mistakes—

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

moved:

That this House call on the Conservative government to abandon plans to further restrict access to Employment Insurance for Canadian workers who have followed the rules and who will now be forced to choose between taking a pay cut of up to 30% or losing their Employment Insurance benefits.

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

I am pleased to move, on behalf of the entire NDP caucus, a motion calling on the Conservative government to abandon its reckless changes to Canada's employment insurance system.

First and foremost, employment insurance must be about providing a safety net for workers. Government ministers and Conservative MPs keep saying that jobs are not being filled because the unemployed do not want to work, but Statistics Canada pointed out just last week that there were almost six unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy in Canada. In other words, despite its rhetoric, the Conservative government's record on job creation has been an abject failure.

Therefore, yes, this is the time that workers need to draw on the employment insurance that they paid into all of their working lives. However, instead of helping workers to access what is rightfully theirs, the minister responsible for the program hurls insults by saying, “We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it”. It is outrageous. Workers need EI, not so they can stay at home but so they can keep their homes.

Even before these ill-advised changes, only 40% of unemployed Canadians were able to access EI benefits, and those who do bring home a maximum of 55% of their former wages. Unemployed workers can assure the minister that EI is not lucrative.

What then motivated this last round of EI reforms? Toronto Star columnist, Thomas Walkom, hit the nail squarely on the head when he blamed the changes on “bone-headed ideology and contempt”. The Conservatives have continually demonstrated their hatred of Canada's social safety net, including employment insurance, and the disdain starts right at the top.

This is what the Prime Minister told the American Council for National Policy in 1997. He said:

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

He also derided Atlantic Canadians for using social services, saying in 2002:

I think in Atlantic Canada, because of what happened in the decades following Confederation, there is a culture of defeat that we have to overcome.... Atlantic Canada's culture of defeat will be hard to overcome as long as Atlantic Canada is actually physically trailing the rest of the country.

As Walkom rightly points out, “The contempt is that of comfortable, well-heeled politicians who, deep down, assume that those unfortunate enough to have lost their jobs lack moral fibre”. However, the issue is not that Canadians do not want to work. The issue is that there are no jobs available in many parts of our country. Yes, that means that Canadians will try to access employment insurance. It is, after all, a program that was designed to help the jobless get by while they search for work.

As things stand right now, regular EI covers up to 55% of former salary to a maximum of $485 a week for up to 45 weeks. Last year, 850,000 people relied on the program, including thousands in my hometown of Hamilton where the manufacturing sector has been particularly hard hit. If one were to ask people who have tried to access employment insurance, they would be the first to point out that the system does need reform. The reforms just are not in the direction that the government is moving. We need to enhance, not restrict, access to EI for Canadians who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

As it stands now, less than half of the unemployed qualify for EI benefits. Only 40% of men collect and an even lower 32% of women get any support from EI. The reason is that the rules are biased against part-time, temporary, self-employed and women workers, yet all workers pay into the system.

The conversation we should be having in this chamber is about how we enhance access to the benefits that employees and employers paid for. It is only the workers and the employers who contribute to the EI system. There is not a dime of the government's money in the pot and yet successive Liberal and Conservative governments have raided the surpluses in the EI fund to the tune of $57 billion. They have treated it as their own cash cow to fund everything from debt reduction to new government programs and now it has the audacity to suggest that the program is too lucrative for workers and that things need to change. It is completely outrageous.

If we are going to change the system at all, we should live up to the commitments made by the motion on EI reform that I tabled here in the last Parliament, which, I might add, was passed by the House of Commons. That motion called for the elimination of the two-week waiting period, a lower qualifying period that was consistent across our country, an increase in the replacement wage to 60%, improved funding for training and a mechanism for allowing the self-employed to participate in the program.

Three years later, the government has still only acted on the will of Parliament with respect to one of those proposals, and that is making EI available to the self-employed. All other tinkering the Conservatives have done with respect to the EI system has been counter to the spirit of my motion and has been at the expense rather than to the benefit of hard-working Canadians.

We need to just look at the changes resulting from the most recent Conservative budget. Budget 2012 announced the Conservative government's intention to introduce legislation “to strengthen and clarify what is required of claimants who are receiving regular EI benefits and are looking for work”. Instead, the Trojan Horse bill, Bill C-38, gave the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development the power to create regulations concerning what constitutes suitable employment and reasonable and customary efforts to find employment.

When asked what the regulations would look like, the minister responded, “We haven't announced those details yet. We want to make sure the legislation gets through first”. Really. Do the Conservatives want us to buy a pig in a poke? That will not happen and the more details we learn, the more we know just how misguided the government's approach has become.

Under the new scheme, frequent EI claimants will no longer be able to hold out for something akin to their former jobs at roughly the same wage. Instead, they will need to accept similar work at as little as 80% of their previous wage during the first seven weeks of benefits, yet we do not know what “similar” means. After that, they must take any work they are qualified to perform for as little as 70% of what they used to make. Less frequent users will fare marginally better. They can hold out for jobs within their usual occupation at 90% of their former wage for 18 weeks. After that, they, too, must accept similar jobs at 80% of their previous wage.

Obviously this has nothing to do with connecting workers with suitable jobs. This is all about driving down wages. The Conservatives love free markets unless, of course, it is a labour market. One has to wonder though for whom they are doing this.

Yes, these changes will help their friends in the tar sands hire temporary foreign workers who can now be paid 15% less than the going regional wage. At the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development, where we have been studying the projected shortages of skilled workers in Canada, many employers have actually come forward to tell us that forcing workers in seasonal industries to do other work during the off season will do permanent harm to their businesses and, indeed, to their entire regions. That, of course, is due to out-migration.

If the fisherman's helpers, forestry workers or farmhands are forced during the respective off-season to take on a job they do not like and that pays less, they will be more inclined to head to western Canada. That leaves local businesses high and dry.

When we combine that attack on rural Canada with the fact that stripping Canadians of their employment insurance will lead to an increased reliance on provincial social support systems, it is no wonder that premiers from across the country are crying foul. Despite the fact that it is their provincial budgets and their provincial taxpayers who will pay the price for these ill-conceived changes to Canada's EI system, none of them were consulted before the changes were announced.

As an editorial in the Saskatoon StarPheonix put it:

This is clearly an issue that needs a national debate--one we were robbed of when the government stuffed the changes into its omnibus bill.

That is why the New Democrats have brought this motion to the floor of the House today. We do need a national debate on the changes to Canada's employment insurance system and the people who pay for that system and who use it must have a say in its future. Until then, we must change course and abandon all plans to further restrict access to employment insurance for Canadian workers.

Human Rights

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to present two petitions. The first relates to human rights, particularly in China.

This petition is from members of the public in Mississauga, Toronto and the vicinity who are offended by the continued persecution of people practising Falun Dafa or Falun Gong within China.

The petitioners call on the Government of Canada and the Minister of Foreign Affairs to impress upon the Chinese government the importance of human rights to Canada.

The petition is timely as we are creating more investment opportunities for China without environmental reviews as a driving force behind Bill C-38. It is important that we give this petition attention.

Opposition Motion—Cooperatives

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the cutbacks are not only affecting co-operatives.

For example, ACOA, which is responsible for economic development in the Atlantic regions, had its budget cut by $18 million. There may have been investments in co-operatives, but now that $18 million has been cut from the ACOA budget—and with the cutbacks to economic development in every region of the Atlantic—how can the member say that his government is going to do the right thing in the future? Bill C-38 proposes an $18 million cutback to regional economic development.

Restoring Rail Service Act

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada figures confirm that in April of this year employment increased by 58,000, mostly in full-time work. This was the second consecutive month of notable gains on the jobs front for Canadians. Moreover, confidence among Canada's business leaders, a leading indicator for future economic growth in job creation, edged up in the first quarter of 2012. According to The Conference Board of Canada, business leaders showed increasing optimism over the future performance of their firms and the Canadian economy.

We can add to these glowing statistics the support for our economy contained in the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act recently introduced by the Minister of Finance. As a result of our government's efforts, Canada has an economy that is the envy of many other countries in the western world. At a time of global financial uncertainty, at a time when sluggish world demand is impeding job growth, why would we allow anything within the boundaries of our own country to jeopardize our economic prospects? Why would we deliberately undo the good work that has protected our economy so far?

Canadian Pacific Railway is one of the iconic components of Canada's vast transportation system. Founded in 1881, the railway itself is a phenomenal engineering feat. It is one of the reasons we exist as a nation, uniting Canada from coast to coast.

In the 21st century CP Rail remains a crucial player in Canada's economy. Each year CP Rail moves freight in Canada valued at approximately $50 billion. According to Transport Canada, CP Rail annually carries about $11.1 billion worth of grain, $5 billion of potash and $5.25 billion of coal.

I would like to tell the House how the CP Rail work stoppage is harming Canadian businesses. In October 2009 the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management report estimated that four key Canadian bulk shipping industries, oilseed and grain farming, coal mining, wood products manufacturing, and pulp and paper and paper products manufacturing contribute more than $81 billion to the Canadian GDP each year and account for close to 1 million jobs.

I find it staggering to contemplate the losses these four sectors of our economy will suffer as a result of the disruption in CP Rail shipping services. These services are very essential for these key sectors of our economy.

It is no mere metaphor to describe CP Rail's 22,000 kilometre network as a lifeline of our nation's economy. Moreover, its capacity for facilitating trade within Canada and other nations is enormous. This is a rail network that operates in six provinces and 13 states. It extends to the U.S. industrial centres of Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Washington, New York and Buffalo. Agreements with other carriers extend CP's market reach east of Montreal within Canada, and throughout the United States and into Mexico. By moving freight to and from Canada's west coast ports, CP Rail is also a vital link to the markets in Asia through the Asia-Pacific gateway.

This work stoppage is preventing our ability to keep products moving in and out of Canada and undermines Canada's reputation as a reliable place to do business. This is a setback from which it could take years to recover lost business and lost investments. Is the House prepared to stand by and allow a vast number of Canadian businesses to continue to be harmed as a result of the CP Rail work stoppage? As with any company, every lost day of business could weaken a firm that is already coping with reduced revenues.

A rail work stoppage has created an unsettling business climate. Businesses do not like uncertainty. When businesses do not feel confident about the future, they may postpone opportunities to expand, or change their shipping suppliers altogether. They may even lay off some of their employees. At a time when we want to build jobs and nurture our economic recovery, can we actually sustain this risk? Do we want this stoppage at CP Rail to jeopardize our work and achievement to date and put our recovering economy in peril?

The answer must be a resounding no. The time for action must be now. The legislation will end the work stoppage at CP Rail and provide the parties with an interest-based arbitration process to help them resolve their outstanding issues. The failure to reach a collective agreement has not been for lack of trying. The Government of Canada has done its utmost throughout the negotiation process to encourage the parties to reach an agreement. However, despite assistance from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the parties have been unable to resolve their differences.

I would like to take this opportunity to commend the Minister of Labour and the mediators and conciliatory officers from the labour program for their efforts to assist the parties under the Canada Labour Code.

Canadians can take pride in the fact that 94% of labour negotiations in this country are settled without a work stoppage ever taking place when the labour program's professional mediators and conciliatory officers get involved. This would definitely be the preferred option for resolving the disputes under consideration today. Sadly, this preferred option is not one that was chosen for this dispute between CP Rail and its running trades employees and rail traffic controllers.

I will emphasize again that intervening in these disputes is not the option we would choose if circumstances were otherwise. The Minister of Labour always encourages parties to work together to find mutual solutions to their differences. Most regrettably, it would seem that the will to come together for such a resolution does not exist with the parties in this case.

Our government fully recognizes that free collective bargaining is the basis for sound industrial relations. This is also clearly stated in the preamble of the Canada Labour Code. That code gives the parties the right to strike and lock out. Intervention is only in situations when the public interest is negatively affected. This is true, for example, when the national economy is affected by a work stoppage, as it is in this case.

Let us keep the statistics that are crucial in mind. CP Rail handles 74% of potash containers, 57% of wheat containers, 53% of coal and 39% of other containers in this country.

I would like the House to reflect on just a few questions. First, can we afford to let Canadian businesses and our economy continue to suffer? Second, can we let down the people of Canada who are counting on us to act? Third, can we deliberately undermine our enviable position of being one of the few nations in the western world to weather the global economic downturn?

To my mind, the answers to these questions are self-evident and that is why we must act now. I urge the members of this House to join me in doing the right thing. Let us give our full support to Bill C-39 to protect our economy.

POOLED REGISTERED PENSION PLANS ACT

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to speak to Bill C-25, its inadequacies and the concerns that many of us continue to have here on this side of the House.

I have often referred to Bill C-25 as being nothing more than bread crumbs to a starving person because in reality that is all it is. I doubt very much that it would help very many Canadians. From everything I am hearing from the provinces and from other people who have looked into the issue, there would be big management fees and little help for people when it comes to serious pension reform. It would simply be a mechanism for those who have money to save for their own retirement. The government tries to call that its answer to pension reform. I am sure we will hear its solution to pension reform was PRPPs for the next five years or so, until it realizes that as Australia's plan failed, so would this one. While I have no difficulties with creating savings vehicles for Canadians, we must also work to help those without the means to save. That is what pension reform is really all about. Bill C-25 is not pension reform. Anyone who makes that claim is misleading the public.

Two years ago, I asked the government what it planned to do to protect and preserve pensions for all Canadians. The minister responded in this House by saying that pensions were provincial and should be left to provincial legislatures to deal with. He said pensions were not a federal problem. However, Canadians rightly found that notion to be wrong, short-sighted and clearly unacceptable. The Conservatives produced Bill C-25 which is a copy of an Australian proposal that, after 12 years, has been declared a failure. The government was sent into a scramble. It had to find something to satisfy the accusations that it was not doing anything so it came up with this idea.

I will cast my vote, as will my party, with very deep concern and caution because it is nothing more than bread crumbs to a starving person. However, it is that small tool in a toolbox. It is not the answer but we will support it because it is one small step in the advancement of talking and recognizing the need for pension reform in Canada.

In 1998, when the current Prime Minister was campaigning, he announced that he wanted to privatize the Canada pension plan. That is right, the Conservatives proposed the elimination of the public Canada pension plan. Just imagine where we would be today. Not only is the government talking about moving from age 65 to 67 in this current budget bill, and is clearly moving in that direction, imagine where Canadians would find themselves if we did not have the Canada pension plan or it had been privatized. All of a sudden their retirement plans would severely change.

Who knows if that is not the next shoe to drop in the big plans that the government has? Will the Conservatives decide they are going to privatize the CPP? I am not fear mongering, but who knows what is going to be next on the agenda of the government?

At the time, the government suggested that the CPP should be replaced with a super savings account that would allow Canadians to put all of their extra money into investments for their retirement. The government did not talk about the fact that most Canadians are not up to speed on how to invest in the stock market, that they can make poor choices and that their alternative would be to pay high management fees to people who have that expertise. This would be another way of discouraging Canadians from what they are trying to do. Canadians would have to become market experts. Their employer would be playing no administrative role in PRPPs. Canadians would have to bear 100% of that investment risk. A single market stumble could spell the end of any retirement hopes. We all know what happened with the investments a few years ago when the stock market crashed, and what happened to thousands of Canadians whose retirement income was lost.

The Conservatives talk about people working later. They are going to have to work later because they lost a tremendous amount of their retirement income. They do not have the expertise needed. They would need the expertise with PRPPs, to be able to manage a certain degree of their investments. Employers would be forced to create administrative systems to enrol members. If the provinces made them mandatory, and that is highly unlikely, Ontario, the province I represent, has already indicated it is not going to have anything to do with PRPPs. It does not believe this is the answer to the pension issue.

The proposal for an enhancement of the Canada pension plan, which is what we have been proposing, along with the supplementary Canada pension plan, which I will talk about a little further, are much more reasonable methods for most Canadians out there.

This PRPP will be of no help to homemakers unless they are contributing to employment income. One of the challenges facing many women today is that, when they are at home caring for children or elderly relatives, parents and so on, they are out of the workforce. When they are out of the workforce, they have a much more difficult time thinking about their pension and what will be in it for them. That is why unless they are in the workforce for 35 or 40 years, most women at 65, or 67 as the government is going to, end up with minimal income. They are living on $11,000 or $12,000. That is not the Canada I want to live in, and I do not think it is the Canada most people want to live in. Changing that age to 67 years old will certainly hurt a tremendous amount of people.

I had a meeting in Kemptville last night. There were about 60 or 70 people. When I asked the people there, who were a non-partisan group, to raise their hand if they supported moving the age of retirement from 65 to 67, everyone in that room opposed the change, and there were many Conservatives in that room. They did not feel it was necessary, but that it was part of an ideology of the government or because the Conservatives are starving the government for revenue sources by removing the GST and lowering taxes. The government only has so much money. That is probably the real reason: they are starving the beast we call the government. They will not have the money to give people pensions at age 65, so they want to move it up and take $30,000 out of the pocket of every Canadian over that two-year period of time.

As I indicated, the management fees are a big problem on PRPPs. We know that Canada has an F rating, according to the OECD. It says Canadians already pay some of the highest management fees in the world on their mutual funds. That is exactly where we are going with PRPPs, creating more vehicles for people to be able to do this.

However, the government knows all of this. We raised all these issues at committee. Our Liberal finance critic moved a couple of amendments that would have strengthened and improved the PRPP, which went nowhere. The Conservative members put their heads in the sand and voted down the amendments rather than possibly thinking that maybe together, because we were prepared to work with the government on this, we could strengthen it and make it better, recognizing that we need some pension reform. However, the government members do not care what everybody else offers. If it is not their idea, it is not good enough.

It is the same if we talk about some of the things in the budget. Look at the changes to EI and what impact they will have on Canadians all across the land. Never mind talking about where they are putting money into pensions. Many of these people will be forced to move away from their families to go out west, which is clearly where the jobs will be, starving other parts of Canada. Again, that is not the way we are supposed to be going. Canada needs to be a land where everybody is treated fairly and with a bit of respect and understanding.

What happens to the seasonal workers who are being brought into the country? Many of those seasonal workers are the reason we have a thriving industry when it comes to fruits, vegetables and so on. Canadian employers need those temporary foreign workers to come over and be able to do those jobs. We should not kid ourselves. There are lots of Canadians who physically do not want to do those jobs. I think they are quite happy to see these temporary foreign workers come over and work for six months in the agriculture industry or other industries and then go back to their home countries with some very much needed money, because many of these people are coming from countries that are very poor. Will we deny them that opportunity, again with short-sightedness and some of those issues that are in the budget, in Bill C-38, that we will continue to deal with over these next few days that will hurt many Canadians and employers? It will hurt Canadians if that is the only work they have. It is not as if they do not want to work 12 months or 10 months of the year. They are seasonal workers. Who will be working the fisheries?

I remember the amount of people who told me they would love to work longer but the season is only so long, when I visited the east coast last year with one of my colleagues. Where are they supposed to go at the end of that particular point? They have to collect EI because they have no other options.

Some of the changes at second reading, which the Liberal caucus said it would have liked to put forward, were raised by many witnesses as additional ideas. However, when it comes to voting at the committee level, government members vote down anything anybody else suggests, no matter how good it is. The Liberal finance critic put a very good amendment forward on the issue of controlling high management fees, because that is a major concern for Liberals, one that would cap the management fees. There was a bit of discussion with government members, but it did not matter. They voted it down as they do everything else because it was not their idea.

Reducing government spending is a laudable goal, as we hear from the government. However, financial players offering PRPPs will need to offer annuities so that members may convert their accumulated balances into a stream of pension payments. Once that occurs, insurers are required by law to price in a profit margin and keep regulatory capital aside to underwrite those contracts. In simple language, this means that investors, the average Canadians the government is talking about, are legally required to pay fees that would guarantee a profit for the banks and insurance companies. This is a very inefficient way of delivering pensions, and once Canadians find out about all the small print, fewer and fewer of them and businesses will be interested in getting involved in all of this.

Those requirements are the cornerstones of the PRPP we are talking about. With this in mind, I am left to wonder how the PRPPs could possibly yield any results for Canadian pensioners. The simple answer is that they are not going to help the average Canadian prepare for retirement, just as millions of Canadians have not been able to max out their RRSPs either. It is just a locked-in RRSP. That is what the PRPP is. Forcing seniors to work longer and harder to save for retirement on top of asking them to pay for $6 billion in giveaways to the largest corporations, $13 billion for new megaprisons and $40 billion for untendered stealth fighter jet deals is not a plan for pensions. However, the government is certainly spending a lot of money and clearly it is looking to pay for all of these on the backs of Canada's seniors.

PRPPs will not work for those who need them the most. Instead of copying the failed work of others, why did the Prime Minister not seek to lift seniors out of poverty? The supplemental Canada pension plan already proposed by the Liberals would provide the best of both worlds. It would create a new retirement savings vehicle for Canadians who need it, while delivering the low overhead cost structure of the Canada pension plan.

The supplementary Canada pension plan is a simple and cost-effective solution to the pension question. It is a defined benefit pension for everyone who has a social insurance number, even those who have left the workforce during their lives for child rearing, illness, seasonal employment and educational advancement. It would use proven and existing resources to give every Canadian man, woman and child a reliable and stable investment vehicle for the future.

The supplementary Canada pension plan is a plan for real pension reform, and I offer it to the government at any time because it would benefit Canadians all across the board, no matter what their occupation. Even if they are home and not able to work, they could still contribute to the Canada pension plan. I could contribute to the supplementary plan. However, by steadfastly following their PRPP plan, by ignoring Liberal calls to improve the CPP, moving to slash the old age pension, slashing EI, cutting people off, making it difficult for farmers to be able to employ temporary foreign workers and all that goes with it, the Conservatives are really showing their true colours. Balancing the budget on the backs of seniors is nothing short of waging a war on the poor. It is unacceptable, and the government should be ashamed of that direction.

The Prime Minister, who is the sixth highest paid political leader in the world, earning an annual salary of $296,000 U.S., is telling Canadians to put their extra money into the bank for their retirement, but he seems to forget that not everybody has extra money. What about the seniors who pay their taxes, raise their families and work hard but still do not have extra money to invest?

Let me tell members about a woman named Mary, whom I met last night. She is a single woman who talked to me about income splitting. Yes, the income splitting idea is a good idea for all those who have money and who have a partner, but for single men or women who do not have anyone to share their pension income with, what help is it to them? Mary has to take the hit for the taxes that others get to save. She asked me why the government would do that when it is clearly unfair. I said she would just have to look around and judge for herself. Government is all about choices.

As a government, one makes choices every day and decides what is important and what is not. Clearly, this government's choices are far more interested in helping the rich and much less interested in helping the low-income or middle class Canadians, or in helping to build the Canada, Mr. Speaker, that you and I believe in.

The Prime Minister is the same man who said that the Canada pension plan should be scrapped in 1998, which I referred to earlier, and that government involvement in the financial security of Canadians runs counter to the Conservative ideology of fending for oneself. If one cannot fend for oneself, there is no room in the Conservatives' Canada.

That is very different from the Canada I want to live in. I believe we have an opportunity for a hand up, not a hand out. We can create an atmosphere where Canadians can thrive and do well. Canadians are a very independent, tough bunch of people. We are used to standing on our own feet, and we take great pride in that. I do not believe there are a whole lot of Canadians who are interested in living off the purse of the government.

Given the fact that the Prime Minister has made the kind of comments he has made, I have to wonder if these changes are not the first bricks in the long-desired firewall that the Prime Minister indicated he wanted to create.

I am very glad to have had the opportunity to speak for a bit today. The changes that are coming forward, both in Bill C-25, the PRPP legislation, and in Bill C-38, and all the things the government is moving are going in this direction, which is not an area to which I think we should be going.

We need to be making some changes as well to the Bankruptcy Act. We all know about Nortel and what happened to the thousands of people who were working for Nortel and in other companies that go bankrupt where individuals lose their pension funds.

There is no change. With all of the multitude of things in the omnibus Bill C-38, there is nothing in there about how to protect people's pensions when it comes to bankruptcy, how to better protect Canadians. It is all about creating crisis management and making people think that the country is in a major crisis situation when it is not, whether or not we are talking about immigration issues and creating a crisis, in order to justify the means at the end.

It is unacceptable for us and it is unacceptable for Canadians.

Telecommunications

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I will talk briefly about recent steps that our government has taken to help provide Canadians with more choices at low prices for the wireless services that have become so important in their everyday lives.

In 2008, our government took action to encourage the entry of new competitors into the wireless market. Since then, new players have launched services and are providing more choice to Canadians. In addition to these new competitors, large telecom companies have made substantial investments to better serve their subscribers. Because of these actions, consumers are seeing the benefits of access to more advanced services, greater choice and lower prices.

We recently announced decisions that will continue to promote our goals of increased competition and investment in the sector and to see that all Canadians, including those in rural areas, benefit.

First, we would amend the foreign ownership rules under the Telecommunications Act, meeting a commitment we made in the 2010 Speech from the Throne. These amendments are included in Bill C-38. We are lifting these restrictions for companies with a small share of the telecommunications market so they can better compete and grow.

Access to capital is an important issue, especially for the new wireless competitors, and our targeted actions would remove a barrier to investment for the telecommunications companies that need it most, so that Canadian families and businesses can continue to benefit from more choices and competitive prices.

In addition, we will support competition and investment in the upcoming auctions by applying rules that will enable new wireless competitors access to the spectrum up for auction.

We will also extend and improve the existing wireless roaming and tower-sharing policy to further facilitate competition. These policies provide access to existing networks and infrastructure and support better coverage and services for consumers.

We believe all Canadians should share in the benefits of advanced wireless services and that rural Canadian families should have access to the same services as those in cities. We are applying specific measures in the upcoming auction to see that Canadians in rural areas have access to the most advanced services in a timely manner. All Canadians should be able to benefit from the fastest mobile speeds and latest devices, such as the newest iPad, PlayBook or smartphone. These are the first such specific measures of their kind in Canada.

Finally, to improve the safety of Canadians and first responders, we will be reserving some spectrum for exclusive use by public safety users across Canada. Our government believes that Canadians, in both rural and urban areas, deserve value for their hard-earned money, and our government is taking action to see that they get it.

Canada–Panama Economic Growth and Prosperity Act

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as usual, my colleague made some important points with respect to this trade deal and Canada's role in the world, making fair and just deals with other countries. As has been said, there is no doubt about the fact that Canada is a trading nation. It always has been a trading nation. I am from Nova Scotia. It is a trading province, always has been and always will be.

I have looked at some of the work the government has been doing, whether it be the CETA deal or what it has done on NAFTA, or other free trade agreements. The crux of the problem is that the government does not have a clear policy on what its position is on trade, just that it wants some.

Its negotiators do not have an industrial policy to work from. The European Union has an industrial policy. All other major trading nations in this world have a domestic, industrial policy to work from. They know where the strengths and weaknesses are in their economies. They know what it is that they want from a trade deal, not just the fact that they want a trade deal.

That is extremely important to begin with, to understand where we want to make gains and what the downsides might be in order to get those gains. If we understand them up front, then we understand that during the negotiations we need to make accommodations for the downsides. If we are going to engage in some deal that is going to affect a particular industry, in their wisdom, the negotiators and the government departments responsible may decide that the gains are greater than the losses. Nonetheless there are going to be losses, and they have to prepare for those.

There has to be, built into the deal, accommodation or adjustment strategies for the possible closing of an industry, the laying off of employees, the retraining, the relocation, perhaps, of the people and communities affected.

This is what a fair and responsible trade policy has to look like. It has to be progressive. It has to be fair. It has to be socially just. There has to be a commitment to human rights, to the environment, to labour protections and to making sure that the deal, in the final analysis, is right for this country.

I agree, and I bet there are not too many members on this side who would disagree, with the idea that Canada needs to be out there promoting what Canadians do best, creating new markets, creating new opportunities for our entrepreneurs, our businesses, our ideas, our technology and our resources. I do not think this country, certainly under the government, is doing a good enough job with that.

What are we dealing with here on Panama? We are dealing with a country that is important because it is a country and because there are working people, an environment, a government that is perhaps making some mistakes and doing some things that we are not happy about. Nonetheless, there are hard-working women and men in that country who are trying to provide for themselves, their families and their communities. There is an important ecosystem in Panama that we need to ensure is maintained.

However, in 2008, for example, two-way merchandise between the two countries reached only $149 million, less than 1% of Canada's total trade. Now I am not suggesting because we only do a bit of trade with this country it is not important. I would say just the opposite. It is even more important that we tailor the kind of deal that we do with a developing country like this, so we are all gaining from the experience, so the people of Panama gain as much as the people of Canada and the businesses in Panama gain as much as our businesses.

The problem is the government has put together a deal that is very much like the NAFTA deal. It is like a deal it would do with a major industrialized country. It does not have the kind of sensitivities that are necessary in dealing with a developing country, and those are some of my concerns. It does not deal to my liking with human rights issues. It does not deal appropriately with the environment, with labour rights and, has been stated by successive members of this caucus, it does not deal with the fact that Panama is a tax haven. Panama has been delisted by the OECD. As the member before me stated, it has been black- and grey-listed because it will not provide information and there is no transparency with respect to financial transactions. Even with this deal, the Government of Canada tried to get the Government of Panama to sign a taxation information agreement that would make its information more transparent and it did not happen. However, it is a free trade deal and the current government is a free trade government and it is going to sign it come what may.

It was interesting listening to my colleagues. We talk about pushing for environmental protections, human rights and labour rights. I began to think about what we have been talking about in this House in the past number of weeks and months. How many times has the government brought in back-to-work legislation? Twenty-one times, completely and utterly taking away the right to free collective bargaining for working people in this country. The Conservatives are getting rid of science. They have shut down the Freshwater Institute; the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research, gone; the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, gone; the National Council of Welfare, gone; the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, disbanded last fall. These were organizations that provided valuable scientific and fact-based research to help governments and to help the private sector, to help communities make sound decisions and conduct themselves in ways that make our communities and our countries stronger.

The government has brought in a piece of legislation we are dealing with right now, the Trojan Horse bill, Bill C-38. It has stuffed an unprecedented amount of legislation into that bill. Seventy pieces of legislation would be changed. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act would be completely repealed. The Fisheries Act would be changed substantially to the point where it would hardly be recognizable. EI would be irreparably changed. Is it being changed in the face of discussion and debate? Not one iota. The government unfortunately is engaged in relations with countries like Panama and it has absolutely nothing to hold to that country because the way it is conducting itself is anti-democratic and opposed to human rights. That is why it should be subjected to all kinds of criticism from this side and from others in this country.

Continuation and Resumption of Rail Service Operations Legislation

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising once again in this House to defend the rights of Canadian and Quebec families and the fundamental rights of workers. This government is a repeat offender in attacking the rights of workers to associate and bargain freely. In this case, 5,000 workers and their families are being affected. These people are being attacked by a government that cannot stop interfering and sticking its nose into matters that are none of its concern. The government does not do the things it should do, but when it should be doing nothing, there it is, in the wrong place at the wrong time. This has an effect on people's lives and on the living and working conditions of Canadian workers. This is unacceptable to us in the NDP, the official opposition.

I would like to point out a paradox that would be amusing were it not for its serious impact on workers and on the future of labour relations in this country. The paradox has to do with the Conservative government's ideology, which includes allowing the market to decide everything, the state not intervening, small government and no redistribution of wealth through social programs. In other words, laissez-faire economics. It is the notion that society will manage best if there is no intervention. Yet, bizarrely, the Conservatives' ideology no longer applies when it comes to the rights of workers; the government intervenes, and intervenes quickly—too quickly.

It is strange, because the Conservative government is looking a lot like the leaning tower of Pisa: it always leans on the same side. It always leans on the side of the shareholders, never on the side of working people and their families and their interests. I am going to try to demonstrate this, but the Minister of Labour has made a good start on that today by showing her true colours: the colours of a Conservative government that could not care less about people’s working conditions or their right of association, their right to use pressure tactics, their right to speak or their right to negotiate a collective agreement without having big brother, in the form of the federal government, coming along and saying no. They have to get back in line and get back to work, and they no longer have the right to speak or to bargain freely, because the government has changed the rules of the game. This is not the first time it has done this, and we will come back to that.

This bill, which we have not seen yet and whose content is unknown to us, is a matter of great concern on more than one front. It is a matter of concern because this government reoffends repeatedly, attacking free bargaining and working people’s right of association; this is not the first time it has done it. This violates the bargaining framework that has been in place in Canada for about a century. It upsets the balance of power between the parties, because in negotiations between an employer and an association of employees, each side has the ability to put pressure on the other. The employer has the right to lock out and has its management rights; the employees have their association and a collective agreement, and the right to use pressure tactics, including the right to strike, but we get the impression that under this government, the right to strike is being eroded away. Every time someone is inconvenienced, a stop is put to all of that. The people are told to get back in line and shut up, and told they no longer have a choice.

The right to bargain means the right to use pressure tactics. Last week, the Minister of Labour came out publicly and went to the media to announce, not even 24 hours after the workers went on strike, that if there was no negotiated agreement there would be special back-to-work legislation. What did the minister accomplish when she did that? She told the private company and the employer that there was no longer any motivation to bargain in good faith, because the legal and constitutional threat that the workers were using had disappeared. There is no longer a balance of power. The employer has no incentive to find a negotiated solution that would be reasonable for both parties.

In so doing, this government attacked not just those 5,000 families, but also the right to strike and to use pressure tactics. That upsets the historic balance between employer and union in labour relations in Canada, and this is not the first time it has done this. It is strange to note that the Conservatives do not do this when it is to preserve jobs. We will recall what the Minister of Transport had to say, not so long ago, when it came to the 2,400 jobs at Aveos.

The Conservative government responded that it would not interfere because Aveos was a private company.

As far as I know, CP is also a private company. How is it that the Conservative government cannot save 1,800 jobs in the Montreal area, but can rush to the aid of a very profitable company that wants to attack its employees' working conditions and pensions? In this case, the Conservative government is acting as quick as a flash, jumping in with both feet and imposing its will on the parties.

Last Wednesday, the minister told the head of CP that he did not have to negotiate any more because she was going to take action and force 5,000 people to return to work. That was the Conservative government's message—the same message it gave to Canada Post and twice to Air Canada. Today it is attacking the rights of CP workers.

In just over one year, on four occasions, this Conservative government has interfered in collective bargaining, favoured the employer and attacked the rights of workers by shoving down their throats concessions regarding their working and living conditions.

That is not acceptable to us in the NDP. We are concerned about this and so are the workers and their families across this country. Who will be next? The postal workers have paid the price. For the first time, the official opposition put up a fight in this House to defend their rights and allow them to negotiate longer. The Canada Post employees remember. They still congratulate us on the work we did as the official opposition, even though the Prime Minister's Office killed the agreements that had been reached at the bargaining table.

The Conservatives attacked the rights of the Air Canada pilots. They also attacked other Air Canada employees, like the mechanics. This time, it is the 5,000 workers at Canadian Pacific who will pay the price. For the NDP MPs, this is unacceptable. We are wondering who will be next. Which groups of workers will have to suffer once again the unnecessary, irresponsible, and unjustified interventions of this government, which jumps at every opportunity to impose cutbacks on the workers and hurt the economy in the same breath? I will come back to that.

There are not a lot of figures on this file, but there are some that are very important: 570 is the millions of dollars in profits that Canadian Pacific made in 2011. This is not a company that is struggling.

I had the honour of representing Quebec membership for years and with my union background, I can tell you that when a company is in real difficulty, the union and the workers' associations are able to sit down and come up with solutions. Concessions are negotiated. I have seen it happen. When the company is doing well, the employees can do well. When it is in difficulty, the employees are careful, they tighten their belts, they can accept freezes, they can spread things out. The workers know the score. They are not stupid.

CP Rail made $570 million in profit in a year. What is the government doing? It is dipping into workers' pockets in order to pay the company's U.S. shareholders. That is what is happening today. It is shameful and unacceptable. We are fed up with seeing this government interfere in free bargaining and attack fundamental rights, as they are doing once again today and tomorrow.

With $570 million in profit, this company is hardly in trouble. If the government had let the parties bargain freely, they could have found a solution. There is optimism in the early stages of bargaining, but when the government stuck its nose into the process, the employer started to get the message that it did not need to do anything. It could just sit back and wait for special legislation, which is very sad.

In the past quarter alone, CP made $142 million in profit. This is a company that is in very good shape financially. In the past four quarters, shareholders have received the largest dividends in CP's history. We are talking about historic amounts. In 30 years, CP shareholders had never received dividends as large as they received in the past four quarters.

The message that sends is that even if your company is doing well, you have the right to attack workers' working conditions. The government will not only let you, it will encourage you. That is what the government is doing today.

This gives us an idea of the real situation at CP Rail. We are told that there are problems with the pension plan. All pension plans have problems, and I will come back to this later, but the pension plan negotiated by the Teamsters and CP was 96% funded last year, and that is a very high rate. The plan is healthy. Yes, workers get good pension benefits, but that is because they put a lot of money into the plan. CP workers put twice as much money into their pension plan as other rail workers, including those at CN. Obviously, at the end of the day, they benefit from that, which is a good thing.

What is retirement? It means deferred wages, money that people set aside for their senior years, and this is a good thing. Canadian Pacific was asking for huge concessions, and the union, which was also at the negotiating table, was prepared to compromise. There was some openness in that regard. When the company talked to the union and met with it, that is what it told us. It knew it was facing a challenge, but I would also point out that this company is extremely profitable and financially sound. We must not forget that.

The Minister of Labour and the Conservative government have only a single argument: the impact this will have on the economy. I have not heard anything else from the minister. The first thing I would say to that is this: if you use pressure tactics and it has no impact, you do not hold much balance of power. When the minister announced the special legislation, the strike was not even 24 hours old. This really pulls the legs out from under workers. It pulls the rug right out from under them and violates their rights, once again.

If this has any impact on the economy, it is because of the balance of power. That is how the labour relations system functions in this country. Of course it should have an impact. When the employer imposes a lockout, that also has an impact on workers. When workers resort to pressure tactics, of course it has an impact. If that were not the case, they would not be called pressure tactics, because there would be no balance of power. Our system is built on that principle.

I would like to respond to the minister's argument about the economic impact of the job action. Reducing Canadian Pacific workers' pensions by up to 40% will have an economic impact because it will reduce salaries and pensions overall. That is dangerous because we need people, seniors with good pensions who can keep spending money in their communities. If these people have no income other than OAS, which they will not receive until they turn 67, what impact will that have on our cities, towns and communities? These people will be poor and will no longer be able to spend money the way they used to in restaurants, corner stores and clothing shops or on travel and tourism.

A company that racks up a $570 million profit in a year, then asks its workers to agree to cuts of up to 40% of their retirement benefits is indecent. The NDP understands why workers are not okay with this. These people have contributed to their retirement plans and do not want the benefits to decrease.

The icing on the cake is that 2,000 non-unionized workers—mainly Canadian Pacific managers—contribute to the same pension plan. Yet, they receive the same benefits despite the fact that they contribute half as much as the unionized workers. That means one thing: this is an attack on people's ability to spend and have a satisfactory retirement. It is a very important issue, not only for the workers of Canadian Pacific, but also for the entire population.

In passing, I wish to salute the campaigns of the Canadian Labour Congress and the FTQ that, for several months, have been urging the government to invest and inject money into the public pension plans.

Indeed, that would be the most effective and healthy way of ensuring that retirees and seniors live decent lives. These are simple and affordable solutions that could save all seniors from the grips of poverty. Therefore, it is important to invest in the guaranteed income supplement, and also to invest in the public plans, the Canada and Quebec pension plans.

These tools exist, but the Conservative government is ignoring them and prefers to give free reign to a company that intends to slash the benefits of its workers. For us, that is unacceptable because it will have repercussions on the economy and on the lives of families and future retirees. When people invest a lot of money in a retirement plan, they expect to receive benefits; that is natural. It is a pity that the government is encouraging management to move in this direction. That is what this legislation does today. It is not good for the economy, nor is it good for communities and families.

Here are a few examples of the draconian effects that Canadian Pacific's demands will have on Canadian middle-class families. Indeed, the attacks on unionized workers are very much attacks on the middle class. The middle class is primarily a creature of the union and labour movement because, before people became organized and fought for their working conditions and their rights, they faced exploitation that was even worse than we see today. Yet, there is a sense that the middle class is crumbling because labour unions are being attacked. Once again, the Conservative government is pushing this ideology.

Here is an example: an employee who is 50 years old with 30 years’ service for Canadian Pacific would lose $9,900 every year to the end of their life. The changes proposed by the employer and encouraged by the Conservative government would cause that person a loss of nearly $10,000 a year. A locomotive engineer aged 50 with 30 years’ service, who lives and works in British Columbia and has five years left to work before being able to retire would see their pension cut by $9,900 a year, if Canadian Pacific gets the concession it is demanding. That employee will have invested their entire adult life in that career; they are preparing to retire and have no alternative to replace that income to entitle them to a pension that Canadian Pacific is trying to take away from them. That employee made higher contributions than the contributions paid by employees of any other railway company, and now the government would give the employer preference by acquiescing in the significant concession that Canadian Pacific is demanding from its Canadian and Quebec employees. This is shameful. This is not the way to treat people. This is picking the pockets of working people and their families so the company, which is already making a profit, will make even more profits. A profit of $570 million in one year is not enough; it has to have $600 million or $700 million. How are they going to achieve that? They are going to hit the workers over the head, they are going to lower their working conditions and cut their pensions. What that will do is impoverish our society; it will impoverish the whole of our real economy. That is what the Conservatives seem to forget. They are blind to this phenomenon.

Here is another example: an employee who is 40 years old with 20 years’ service for CP would lose more than $27,000 a year. That is appalling. A conductor aged 40 with 20 years’ service who lives and works in Saskatchewan and has about 15 years left to work before being able to retire would see their pension cut by more than $27,000 a year, if Canadian Pacific gets the concession it is demanding. That employee will have invested their entire life and be preparing to retire. They will have no other choice, no other option. They counted on this; it was their nest egg. I would point out that this employee has paid higher contributions than the contributions paid by employees of any other railway company in the country, but the government is giving the employer and its concession demands preference, once again. It is shoving substantial losses of income down these people’s throats, when these women and men, who work hard, who provide a service to our economy, will be losing their pensions. In the NDP, we think they deserve more respect than that.

Here is another example: a 30-year-old employee with 10 years of service with CP would lose more than $30,000 a year upon retirement. An Alberta train conductor who is 30 years old with 6 years of service will still need to work another 25 years before retiring. His pension will be cut by $30,000 a year. He will have invested in this fund throughout his life, because there was no other alternative available, no other option. The Conservative government is going to make this young worker pay the price, and his living conditions will be affected by the special bill that the Minister of Labour is about to introduce in the House.

And it is unfortunate, because I would have liked to have had the opportunity beforehand to ask her whether she was going to have the courage to introduce the bill today so that we could see exactly what the details were. Or did she feel that it would be better instead to wait another day, given that the motion on the subject was clear in any event: she is planning to spend only 3.5 hours of debate in this House on the matter. We will have 3.5 hours to discuss very important special legislation that will have a major impact on the lives of 5,000 people in this country.

Pension plans are an essential factor for the redistribution of wealth and equity in our societies. Unfortunately, we have a government that is not doing anything to improve or protect pension plans.

I am going to relate a family anecdote. My grandfather Urgel—I think I am allowed to use his name—worked for the Singer company for 44 years in a big factory; it was a big company in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. He worked at the forge with his friends. When he retired, the company left with the pension fund. He was left with nothing. There were legal proceedings for years, even decades. By the time the workers finally won their case, my grandfather had died. He never got his money.

Why is this government going down the same road and attacking Canadians' retirement plans? Why is it unable to do anything to help them? Why, when a company declares bankruptcy, are the workers not at the top of the list of creditors? Why are the banks and shareholders the ones who collect the money and why are there only ever crumbs left over for the workers? We have a government that is heading in the wrong direction, that makes bad economic choices, that always favours the same people, when people are in need and people in the middle class are having a hard time making ends meet. The middle class is shrinking and the Conservative government is not helping.

From 1980 to 2009, the purchasing power of the middle class has remained unchanged. The richest 20% became 38% richer. Over a period of roughly 30 years, their incomes increased by nearly 40%. The poorest 20% have seen their incomes drop 11.5%. The poor are poorer today than they were in 1980 because they had greater purchasing power then than they do now. The middle class has stagnated; there was no increase. Middle class incomes did not go up. If their income does not increase, how are they supposed to cope when the price of fuel, milk and meat increases, when the cost of groceries and rent goes up? What does this mean? This means that there are people who are poorer today. The middle class is poorer today than it was 30 years ago.

Shoving special legislation down our throats is not going to improve the situation or change anything. The government giving tax credits to the oil companies at every turn is not going to help Canadian and Quebec families. The government tells us it gives families tax credits, but, again, those families have to have enough income to pay income tax in order for such credits to be of any benefit.

Allow me to come back to the issue of the Canadian Pacific negotiations, because they are at the centre of today's discussion and of this infamous bill that the Minister of Labour will be introducing.

I want to speak about fatigue management. Canadian Pacific workers are constantly on call. They must be reachable by telephone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is a real problem at Canadian Pacific, that of fatigue management. There was a pilot project that lasted five years. This phenomenon, which affects hundreds of workers across eastern Canada, was studied. The issue was studied because there is a real problem with fatigue at work. Solutions were found, but nothing was done.

Today, we have a government that is helping an employer perpetuate a dreadful situation where employees working conditions subject them to extreme fatigue. Canadian Pacific workers have put forward legitimate demands at the bargaining table.

Just imagine: what was the demand for a person who has worked several weeks full-time? Two 48-hour break periods per month, real breaks, just to sleep. From time to time, it feels good to be able to sleep at night, and not during the daytime, because it is not the same quality of sleep. The workers documented this, had a study done, and came up with concrete solutions.

It is 2012 and we still have to fight to get days off, to be able to say that enough is enough, that we have worked long enough, and that we would like to spend a couple of days at home. The fact is that Canadian Pacific workers are unable to plan anything at all because they are always on call. Why not come up with a freely negotiated solution that says these workers will have two 48-hour periods per month when they can guarantee that they will be at home with their family and their loved ones? That is not asking too much. These demands are entirely reasonable.

What is this Conservative government doing? It is making it possible for the employer to perpetuate this situation. Canadian Pacific workers will continue to be tired. This not only has an impact on workers, their families, their family and community life, it also has consequences in terms of public safety. It is not in anybody's best interests to have people who are overtired managing trains. It may end up causing accidents and derailments. It is impossible to know what might happen.

We know that CP transports goods and sometimes dangerous goods. The trains sometimes go through residential areas, towns. Do we really want to have exhausted people working on or around those trains? Personally, I want CP workers who are healthy, proud of what they do and able to work under normal conditions, but they cannot at present. The Conservative government is totally insensitive to this.

This special back-to-work bill, the fourth in a year, will have an impact on public safety. That is shameful. It is shameful because not only does it send the wrong message and violate workers' fundamental rights, but it delays solving the real problems at CP.

Just imagine what will happen if this bill is passed and CP workers are forced back to work, even though they were exercising a legitimate and legal right. Imagine the poisoned work environment. This is not in anyone's interest, not even the company's. Problems that are not resolved today will still be problems tomorrow.

What the government is doing is putting things off, seeking a short-term solution and violating workers' rights. This will mean downgrading working conditions and reducing pensions, wages and leave; that is the message the Conservative government is sending today. This will leave scars on CP workers, and the problems that are not resolved will resurface with even more resentment, even more acrimony, because people will be frustrated. Forcing people back to work is never a good solution for the medium or long term. The government should have let the parties negotiate freely. The bargaining had not been going on for years. This strike is not very old.

The minister did not even wait 24 hours to issue her threat and hoist her sword of Damocles over the heads of Canadian Pacific workers. That is not a responsible way to behave. For once, we would have agreed with the Conservatives government's tendency to do nothing, to let the two parties continue negotiating. The government could have let the two parties—on the one hand, a strong union representing hundreds, thousands of workers, and on the other, a company just as strong, important to the country and profitable, which is a good thing—reach an agreement. Still, given that the company is profitable, it should treat its workers well because they are entitled to their fair share.

Another issue that this bill raises—and this has come up over and over again in the House over the past year or more—is the fact that just as this government seems driven to attack workers' rights and working conditions, so it seems driven to silence MPs.

The motion we are debating here today is basically another gag order, because it sets out very specific guidelines for the discussions and because the government does not appear very willing to listen. I will read the motion:

(a) the said bill may be read twice or thrice in one sitting;

(b) not more than two hours shall be allotted for the consideration of the second reading stage of the said bill, following the adoption of this order;

(c) when the bill has been read a second time, it shall be referred to a Committee of the Whole;

(d) any division requested in the committee shall be deferred until the end of the committee's consideration of the bill;

(e) not more than one hour shall be allotted for the consideration of the Committee of the Whole stage of the said bill;

Wow, one hour.

There are 308 members in this House, all parties combined. I do not have a calculator, but if we divide one hour by 308 members, that does not allow much time for everyone to speak, although when we are in Committee of the Whole, we should be able to propose amendments to the minister's bill.

Thus, at second reading, two hours of debate will be allowed, but during the Committee of the Whole, only one hour is granted. The motion continues:

(f) not more than one half hour shall be allotted for the consideration of the third reading stage...

It is a good thing we do not have a fourth reading, for it would get only 15 minutes, since the Conservatives are cutting the time in half each time.

Canadians and Quebeckers are starting to get a little tired of the government’s arrogant and condescending attitude, because we are seeing the gag being used repeatedly in this House. We have seen it several times. If my calculations are correct, today is the 21st gag in a year. That is a record I would not be proud of if I were a Conservative member, because it is an infringement of members’ freedom to speak to bills as fundamental as those.

We have seen this with other bills. Debate on Bill C-38, a bill that amends 69 acts and is 450 pages long, was gagged. That bill will therefore be considered by only one committee, the Standing Committee on Finance. In Bill C-38, the government is amending a lot of things and attacking a lot of rights. One third of the Act to implement certain provisions of the budget relates to environmental assessments. As they say, the connection escapes me. The bill also amends the Fisheries Act and fish habitat provisions. That is going to be considered by the Standing Committee on Finance. I imagine that the Standing Committee on Finance has invited a lot of fish habitat experts—or at least I hope it has—because that is a consequence of this bill.

Why is the government refusing to listen to parliamentarians, to members? Because it does not want to hear the amendments; it does not want to have suggestions; it does not want to agree to amendments; it does not like opposition; it does not like democracy; it does not like debate; it does not like discussion. One thing is clear: to the Conservative government, democracy means 35 days every four years.

We know that once the election is over, if we happen to have the misfortune of getting a Conservative majority government, it has no further need to listen to anyone and it does what it likes.

Excuse me, but that is not a healthy, living democracy. There has to be dialogue with the public, with the people. There has to be discussion with colleagues in Parliament. Unfortunately, we have a government that has a closed mind and even gags its own members, who might like to speak occasionally, but have to close ranks.

Recently, we had a few examples of people who dared to think for themself, dared to use their critical thinking skills and say that it was perhaps a little extreme to impose a gag for a 450-page-long bill with consequences for a multitude of issues and subjects, but they were immediately brought to heel. Bam.

On the opposition side, perhaps we would also like to hear what the Conservative members have to say, what they are talking about, what they think. Do they think it is healthy in a democracy to have a bill of this kind shoved down the throats of parliamentarians—on which they are unable to express their views?

Unfortunately, the special back-to-work legislation is another demonstration of this. We have a government that will not take responsibility when workers lose their jobs. It says that nothing can be done; these are market forces at work; and it is really sad.

I really liked it when the Minister of Transport expressed his sympathy and his sadness about the 2,400 Aveos workers, even though the Air Canada Public Participation Act had provisions forcing it to maintain jobs, primarily in Montreal as well as other cities across the country. Now the minister is refusing to enforce it because Air Canada created a subcontractor, Aveos. Because of that, the legislation does not apply anymore and the government can wash its hands of the whole thing.

When that is the issue, the Conservatives sit on their hands and do absolutely nothing. However, when it is a question of people exercising their right to freedom of association, freedom of expression, to use pressure tactics and a possible strike, then, what does the government do? It does what it did before. It brings out the big guns and boom. It tells people to get back into line and go back to work, because it does not want any repercussions. The company is doing well, but it does not have to make any concessions. It is always the same ones who have to make concessions; it is always the workers who have to compromise their working conditions and their living conditions. For us in the NDP, the official opposition, this is not a fair and equitable standpoint. This is not the kind of society we want to live in. Why can they not simply let the parties express themselves and give free reign to the balance in union-management relations that we have found in this country? The collective agreement with CP had not expired very long ago and, before the government got involved, the negotiations were going well. The company is profitable and is able to talk with its employees. However, with the threat of special legislation hanging over them, I say again, the Minister of Labour has destroyed that balance and unfortunately given the advantage to just one side, the management side.

The official opposition—the NDP—is incensed and opposes this bill that attacks workers' rights. We are starting to get fed up with the attitude of this government, which gives tax breaks to big corporations that do not need them and does nothing to help people who have trouble paying their bills and providing for their day-to-day needs. That will be the fate of the CP workers if this bill passes and their pensions are affected and reduced in this way, as is expected. We are anxious to see what exactly is in the bill because we do not yet know what it contains. Will the government impose arbitration? Will it side with the employer? We are anxious to find out. We would have liked the Minister of Labour to introduce her bill today, but she does not seem to have the courage to do so.

I will close by simply saying that the official opposition vehemently opposes a special bill that forces workers to return to work, attacks their fundamental rights and worsens the working and living conditions of thousands of Canadians. It is unacceptable and we condemn it.

The Environment

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, while the Conservative government has an abysmal record on attacking climate change, it is trying to take credit for what the provinces have been doing. We know that in my home province, the provincial government has taken various efforts to try to reduce its greenhouse gases.

While the government has an abysmal record, it is trying to take credit for work that it did not do. The parliamentary secretary also mentioned the Sustainable Development Technology Canada program, which it cut in this budget.

We are missing out on an occasion to participate in the $1 trillion global green technology market.

Despite what my hon. colleague said, budget 2012 and Bill C-38 are two more measures that prove that the Conservative government does not care about the environment.

First of all, Bill C-38 confirms the repeal of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. Then, it eliminates the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, an organization that advises the government on sustainable development. Initially, the minister said that the organization was being abolished because the unique research it did was available on the Internet. However, the government recently admitted that it had been embarrassed by the organization, which was a thorn in the government's side—

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for participating in the debate. I think she is misinformed in a number of respects, one of which is the suggestion that Roma asylum claimants are not being fairly considered by our refugee system. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Under the current system and the system proposed by Bill C-38, claimants from whatever country of origin, ethnicity or cultural or racial background will all have the same access to the same fair and independent quasi-judicial process on the merits of their claim before an independent decision-maker of the quasi-judicial IRB in a manner that is consistent with natural justice and due process and that exceeds the requirements of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the 1951 refugee convention.

The member raises the notion that somehow there is a negative prejudice associated with asylum claims from European Roma. I have certainly done nothing to suggest such a negative prejudice. However, what I have done is comment on the objective mathematical fact that since we granted visa exemptions for several European countries in 2007 and 2008, some 95% of the European asylum claimants have not shown up for their own refugee hearing at the IRB and have abandoned or withdrawn their own claims. Of the tiny fraction that went to adjudication, only a tiny fraction of those were deemed to actually be well-founded asylum claims.

Is the member not concerned to see such a large wave of demonstrably unfounded asylum claimants in our system, not based on my opinion but on the actions of the claimants themselves?

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first, arising out of questions of decorum, I am a believer that anything we do to elevate decorum here is a positive thing. I encourage him. For example, one of his members today, in a question, referred to a minister as being responsible for the department of propaganda. That is an example of what we consider to be the inappropriate kind of thing we hear from the opposition all the time.

We are very interested in seeing this Parliament function and making decisions. We have been happy to see that happening on the budget, with the longest-ever debate on a budget bill probably in Canadian history. We were happy to facilitate that through the rules. We will continue to ensure that we have broad and thorough debate here, but that we also make decisions so we avoid going down the path that others would like to go, to see us go down the path that we see Greece going down and places like the United States, where they have not had a vote in the Senate on a budget bill since April 29, 2009. We do not want to have that kind of indecision and crippling of our economy. However, we are moving forward.

The government's top priority is the economy. On Monday night, as scheduled weeks ago, the House passed Bill C-38, the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, at second reading, bringing us one step closer to balancing the budget and assuring the responsible development of our resources.

The bill, which implements economic action plan 2012, is now with the Standing Committee on Finance and a subcommittee for detailed study by those two bodies.

As a result of the extensive debate we ensured for this bill, even the deputy leader of the NDP described it yesterday in the House as “being studied more than any other budget bill.”

Just so my friend understood this clearly, it was his own deputy leader who described the bill in the House yesterday as having been “studied more than any other budget bill”. That demonstrates our commitment to full debate in this House.

This afternoon, we will continue report stage for Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act. This bill needs to become law before the end of June, so we will resume debate on the immigration bill on Tuesday, May 29, after the House returns from its upcoming constituency week.

Tomorrow the House will have an opposition day when we will debate an NDP motion.

On Monday, May 28, the House will have third reading of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act, which would help our creative and digital economy. After years of thorough study and debate in this chamber, the members of the other place will finally have a chance to consider this important economic legislation.

May 30 shall be the fifth allotted day, which I believe will see a Liberal motion debated. Finally, May 31 shall be the sixth allotted day, which will go to the New Democrats.

The Budget

[Claude Patry, NDP, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of Parliament, it is my duty here today to denounce Bill C-38 as an affront to democracy.

This bill shows contempt for Canadians. Logically, this bill should be divided into six separate parts and each of those parts should be studied in a parliamentary committee.

Worse still, this bill further reinforces Canadians' distrust, as they no longer have any confidence in the Conservative government.

As parliamentarians, are we going to be forced to ask people to take to the streets to defend democracy? I am beginning to wonder if that is the only solution.

Is there not some way for us to work together in a positive manner, regardless of our political affiliation, in order to get results for Canadians and communities, and to make more compassionate decisions that reflect the wishes of the people we represent?

Arrogance always has its price. If the government goes ahead with Bill C-38, Canadians will remember in 2015.

Opposition Motion--Budget Legislation

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to support the excellent motion moved by the hon. member for Halifax. This motion states that the budget legislation guts the environmental assessment and fisheries laws. The measures included in Bill C-38 will leave Canada’s lakes, rivers, oceans, ecosystems, and fisheries at risk.

The disastrous report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development tabled on May 8 clearly shows that the Conservatives' track record on the environment has been very consistent—it is one of bad faith, mismanagement and contempt for statistics and common sense. What is more, the Conservatives have also acted undemocratically.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs admitted this week that when the government is not happy with something, it just gets rid of it. That is what the Conservatives did with the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. They decided to abolish it because the panel of experts dared to discuss a carbon tax. The round table will soon issue a report that shows that the government's lack of action to combat greenhouse gas emissions will be very costly for Canada, much more so than if it were to try right away to establish infrastructure and rules to decrease such emissions.

Because the government seems to be incapable of costing its current reduction plan or the Kyoto plan, I imagine that it will be very interested in this report by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, unless it decides to muzzle the scientists once again, as it is so inclined to do.

This is 2012, the 21st century. The Conservatives are playing with the health and safety of Canadians. This government must immediately assume its responsibilities. Is it a question of greed, Nimbyism, incompetence, or all of the above?

Yesterday, in committee of the whole, the Minister of the Environment could not tell us which programs would be abolished by his department and what impact this would have on environmental protection. He was even unable to tell us the type of work that would be eliminated, the work of these thousands of public servants who will be let go.

If the minister himself cannot give us the answers, who else in this government can? Yesterday, we grilled the Minister of the Environment for four hours without obtaining concise, concrete and clear answers. That is rather disturbing, especially since the people want answers. Canadians want to be consulted, but everything about this government makes it impossible.

Why is this government refusing to do anything tangible about this? Examples, statistics, science all point to how serious this is. We have to act now. All the experts agree on that. Even the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development said so a number of times on Tuesday.

This government has responded by introducing a 431-page omnibus bill that is being decried by every environmental organization and even by former Conservative MPs who were responsible for some of the files. We have a 431-page bill that has a devastating effect on our cultural heritage, among other things.

The Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development and experts will not even get the chance to take a critical look at these changes. This is an insult to Canadians and to democracy. It almost feels like we are living in a dictatorship.

Although I could go on about the countless irresponsible and reckless aspects of this bill, I will focus on those concerning the environment, which is the subject of today's motion. Unfortunately, the only thing this government is trying to do is to destroy the environment and destroy progress. Soon it will destroy the economy with all of its destructive measures.

Instead of gutting all of our environmental protection measures and erasing all the progress that has been made over the past few decades—including with regard to the fisheries and the environmental assessments that have taken years to set up—this government should be showing leadership and enhancing environmental protection measures because we are running out of time. There are deadlines to be met.

Even the Commissioner of the Environment said last week that given the Conservatives' efforts or lack thereof, he doubted that the very minimal targets set by this government will be met at the rate we are going today. Is that any way to build a 21st century country? Is that any way to stimulate the economy and boost innovation in the private sector? This is truly quite alarming.

I can think of many positive examples. Consider Germany, for instance, where stricter environmental regulations have led to the growth of the renewable energy sector and helped create thousands of jobs, making the country a world leader in the area of sustainable development. The situation there is much more positive than it is here in Canada right now. Canada has become the black sheep at international conferences on the environment. And Canada ranks third among OECD countries that are the world's worst polluters per capita, right behind Australia and the United States. Congratulations to the Government of Canada.

As the commissioner's report clearly demonstrates, the government needs to stop its archaic way of seeing things. The Conservatives need to wake up. The preventive measures suggested by environmental groups, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy and a number of experts will not cost anything; in fact, they will save money.

The initial cost of implementing environmental regulations quickly generates savings if we consider the short- and long-term social benefits, as good managers should. We do not have to look far to find a good example of this. The White House's Office of Management and Budget compared the costs and benefits of environmental protection. The United States, our closest neighbour, which the Conservatives so frequently turn to as a policy model, found that the combined cost of all U.S. federal air and water protection regulations is approximately $26 billion per year, yet they save up to $533 billion because of a lower incidence of smog-related respiratory diseases and fewer problems associated with contaminated sites.

It is clear that Canadians' health and safety is closely related to environmental factors such as the quality of the air we breathe, the impact of global warming on food security, the safety of the food we eat and water quality, to name but a few.

The Conservative budget is a perfect illustration of that party's vision, or I should say, lack of vision. In fact, it shows the short-sighted and irresponsible vision of a government that would rather give in to pressure from its friends in the oil lobbies than protect our natural heritage and the health of future generations.

Once again, this government is showing just how willing it is to circumvent democracy and science to concentrate power in the hands of cabinet. The government is grouping measures that fall under the jurisdiction of a dozen committees into a single bill to ensure that these measures will be examined by as few experts as possible.

This week, when the government invoked closure for the 21st time on a bill jam-packed with as many measures as possible, Canadians were denied a fair and thorough debate on issues that will affect their health, their safety and their environment. The government is on a witch hunt, and environmental groups are the target. This is reminiscent of 1950s McCarthyism.

Canadians want the government to prioritize sustainable, responsible development, but this budget undermines—nay, eliminates—all of the environmental safeguards that protect our coasts, our rivers, our wildlife and our food.

Unfortunately, this government puts economic interests, particularly those of large foreign oil companies, before the health of Canadians, long-term energy security, and the protection of Canada's natural heritage.

By eliminating the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, arbitrarily shortening environmental assessments and scaling back experts' and scientists' role in the process, the Conservative government is clearly showing that the environment is not a priority. In fact, the government is showing that the environment is no longer even on its radar.

The Conservatives even have the audacity to believe that cabinet has more expertise to make decisions about major pipeline projects than scientists and experts do. Let us not forget that the Conservatives' estimate for the purchase of the F-35s was out by $10 billion and they responded by saying, “Oops. Sorry.” What will happen if a Northern Gateway spill destroys the magnificent coast of British Columbia near Kitimat, pollutes the drinking water of several hundred first nations communities and threatens the health of our most beautiful forest? Is the government just going to again say, “Oops. Sorry.”?

For all these reasons, I support the motion. The budget is an absolute affront to democracy, and Canadians deserve much better. They deserve principles of responsible and sustainable development to make this budget viable.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last night I was honoured to participate in the committee of the whole regarding the environment. It was extremely unfortunate, however, that the minister kept telling parliamentarians that he did not have answers. Sometimes he simply refused to answer, even though his officials were sitting right in front of him with the information.

For example, the minister failed to answer my questions on the cost of liabilities that would arise under the new environmental assessment process, how the government compares it to the cost of liabilities under the old assessment process and whether he would table said analysis.

He failed to answer how many of the 10 ozonesonde stations would be supported under the new budget. This matters because ozone is critical life on earth and it protects us from the sun's harmful radiation.

He failed to specify what is in the budget to address the concerns of the environment commissioner.

He failed to answer whether there were any disruptions in service at the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre.

He failed to list the organizations he has accused of money laundering. These were only a few of my questions that he failed or refused to answer.

Let me provide some facts about the Conservative government's repeated failing grades on the environment. The 2008 climate change performance index ranked Canada 56th of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions. In 2009, The Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance. In 2010, Simon Fraser University ranked Canada 24th of 25 OECD nations on environmental performance. Most recently, Columbia and Yale's environmental performance index ranked Canada 102nd of 132 countries on climate change.

This profoundly sad time for the environment under the Conservatives continues. The government is now gutting 50 years of environmental oversight and threatening the health and safety of Canadians, our communities, our economy, our livelihoods and our future generations.

We need to be very clear that when the government came to power it inherited a legacy of balanced budgets but soon plunged us into deficit before the recession ever hit. It is absolutely negligent and shameful that the government would gut environmental safeguards to fast-track development rather than promote sustainable development that meets the needs of today without compromising those of the future. The government did not campaign in the last election on gutting environmental protections.

Canadians should therefore rise up, have their voices heard and stop the destruction of laws that protect the environment and health and safety of Canadians.

Maurice Strong, a prominent Canadian who spearheaded the Rio earth summit in 1992, has urged people who are concerned about the future of the environment to do an end run around the federal government. He urged grassroots groups to mobilize and make full use of social media, saying there was still time to bring the pressure of people power.

Instead of understanding the gravity of the situation and standing up for the environment, the Conservative government returns to tired talking points, trying to score political points by attacking the former Liberal leader, saying that the Liberals took no action on climate change when it knows this is absolutely false. The Liberals implemented project green, which would have taken us 80% of the way to meeting our Kyoto targets. The Conservatives killed project green, reduced our greenhouse gas emission targets by an astonishing 90%, spent over $9 billion of taxpayers' hard-earned money and achieved little, walked away from Kyoto, are in the process of repealing the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, and continue to ignore the fact that failing to take action on climate change will cost Canadians $21 billion to $43 billion annually by 2050.

Last week the environment commissioner reported what we have known for a very long time, that the government is not on track to make its 2020 emissions targets. Environment Canada's own forecast shows that in 2020 Canada's emissions will be 7% above 2005 levels, not the promised 17% below.

The so-called law and order government has yet again violated the rule of law. According to the environment commissioner, the federal government did not comply with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act passed by Parliament in 2007. Does the minister think it is okay to break the law, and going forward, what accountability measures would he put in place to ensure transparency when reporting greenhouse gas emissions to Canadians?

Maurice Strong says that the government may be totally negative when it comes to being a constructive force in mitigating climate change. For example, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment continues to rail against Kyoto. Is she aware, however, that her own minister has, for the second time, said that Kyoto was a good idea in its time? He first said it to The Huffington Post and he has now said it to the BBC.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway's former prime minister and the former chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development and former director general of the World Health Organization, recently said that Canada was moving backward on the issue of climate change and warned Canada not to be naive on the issue. She recently told delegates in Canada that despite the weaknesses of the Kyoto protocol, the world could not afford to push it aside without an alternative, as emissions are continually rising.

When questioned about the link between human activity and climate change, she said, “Politicians and others that question the science, that's not the right thing to do. We have to base ourselves on evidence.”

When will the minister deliver the plans and regulations for the six remaining sectors, and particularly for one of the most important sectors, the oil and gas industry, as the oil sands are the fastest-growing source of emissions in Canada?

Last night I asked the minister how many of Environment Canada's climate impacts adaptation group, many of them Nobel prize-winning scientists, would be supported to undertake adaptation work for Canada, as the cost of adaptation will, once again, be $21 billion to $43 billion annually by 2050. I was asked to repeat the question.

On asking the question a third time, I received the ridiculous answer that the adaptation research group is, like climate change, an evolving organization.

While the Conservatives claim a balanced approach to protecting the environment and promoting economic growth, when has the parliamentary secretary or the minister actually ever stood up for the environment? Was it through cuts to Environment Canada, cuts to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, or cuts to ozone monitoring?

The list of cuts goes on and on.

Canadians should not be fooled by mere snippets of environmental protection but should pay attention to the government's budget reductions to Environment Canada and to other investments on environmental protection and research by hundreds of millions of dollars, while maintaining several tax incentives for the oil and gas sector that the Minister of Finance's department recommended eliminating in his secret memo.

After we vote against this kitchen sink budget, a budget that devotes 150 of its 425 pages to environmental gutting, the Conservative government will stand and say that the opposition voted against some good things for the environment. However, the government gives us absolutely no choice, as we simply cannot vote for the wholesale destruction of environmental legislation and 50 years of safeguards.

If the parliamentary secretary, the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources really believe that Bill C-38, the kitchen sink bill, is good for the environment, they should have the courage to hive off the sections on environmental protection, send them to the relevant committees for clause-by-clause study under public scrutiny and end the affront to democracy.

I have a list of cuts to Environment Canada and just some of the changes on the environment to be found in Bill C-38.

There are cuts of 200 positions at Environment Canada.

Last summer the government announced cuts of 700 positions and a 43% cut to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

There are cuts to research and monitoring initiatives, air pollution, industrial emissions, water equality, waste water and partnerships for a greener economy. There are cuts of $3.8 million for emergency disaster response.

As well, the government is consolidating the unit that responds to oil spill emergencies to central Canada, namely Gatineau and Montreal, far from where emergencies, including those involving diluted bitumen, might occur on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and along the proposed route of the northern gateway pipeline project.

What are the numbers and percentages of the slashes to the new central Canada unit that will have to respond to oil spill emergencies? When will the minister table the scientific analysis that backs up his claims that there will be no negative impact?

Last week Environment Canada released its report on plans and priorities, signed by the minister. I will quote from the report:

Skills: Due to transition alignment challenges, the Department risks being unable to stay current with advances in science and technology. In addition...knowledge required to support programs and internal services could pose difficulties...

Environment Canada is a science-based department. The above passage suggests the government is doing Environment Canada serious damage. The minister has previously misled Canadians by saying there would be no compromise of programs.

Given the recognition that there is a problem at Environment Canada, I would like to know what new funds the Minister of the Environment has specifically allocated to bring his department up to date with advances in science and technology in order to protect the environment, the health and safety of Canadians, and evidence-based decision making.

The government has repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. It has repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which allows the federal government to avoid environmental reviews of many potentially harmful projects and to do less comprehensive reviews when they do occur.

Canada's environment commissioner says that the changes are among the most significant policy development in 30 or 40 years and that there will be a significant narrowing of public participation.

The Minister of Natural Resources complains:

Unfortunately, our inefficient, duplicative and unpredictable regulatory system is an impediment. It is complex, slow-moving and wasteful. It subjects major projects to unpredictable and potentially endless delays.

but Premier Jean Charest says:

In Quebec, we've very well mastered the ability of doing joint assessments.... I have learned, through my experiences, that trying to short circuit to reduce the process will only make it longer, and it is better to have a rigorous, solid process. It gives a better outcome, and for those who are promoting projects, it will give them more predictability than if not.

There are more changes: the weakening of several environmental laws, including species at risk and water; the near-elimination of fish habitat in the Fisheries Act, putting species from coast to coast to coast at increased risk of habitat flaws and population decline; placing the authority of the federal cabinet to approve new pipeline projects above the National Energy Board; and the elimination of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the independent think tank with a direct mandate from Parliament.

The Minister of the Environment has never said what will replace it, despite my asking twice in Parliament. The head of NRT does not know either, as what it does is unique.

This week the Minister of Foreign Affairs said the closure of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself, namely promotion of a carbon tax as a means of addressing climate change. He said:

Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something which the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected?

The Minister of Foreign Affairs confirms what we have known for a very long time, namely that the government puts ideology above evidence.

The NRT issued economic and science-based reports, which did not agree with Conservative ideology. The national round table has been a well-respected, unbiased, independent organization for over two decades. It was started by the Mulroney government, our present Governor General was its founding chair and the government should know how important it is.

The foreign minister's remarks two days ago had nothing to do with the carbon tax—after all, the Prime Minister himself has promised a price on carbon of $65 per tonne by 2016 to 2018—but were the government's attempt to change the channel, as it was coming under harsh criticism for gutting environmental protection. It was also the government's attempt to silence its critics. The government is practising 1940s-style McCarthyism: shut down any independent voice, and bully and intimidate those who cannot be shut down.

We are also seeing the silencing of government critics through changes to the Canada Revenue Agency and the attempts to seize control of the university research agenda. The government should be able to stand on its own merits and should be able to withstand criticism, but instead of making its arguments, it is just looking to eliminate dissent.

The criticism of Bill C-38 is extensive. For example, the Ottawa Citizen reports, under the heading “Something's fishy with Bill C-38...”:

There was no need for great chunks of legislation to be retrofitted into a 420-page omnibus budget bill that looks to have been intended to confound every effort by the House of Commons to scrutinize its contents intelligently.

Under the heading “Omnibus bill threatens fish...”, The Vancouver Sun reported:

A new front in the battle against the federal government's omnibus budget bill opened up Monday when B.C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins sent a letter to [the] Prime Minister...warning of major threats to fishing communities and the environment if major Fisheries Act amendments are passed.

For decades, Canadians have depended on the federal government to safeguard our families and nature from pollution, toxic contamination and other environmental problems through a safety net of environmental laws. This bill shreds this environmental safety net to fast-track development at the expense of all Canadians.

Instead the government could have implemented my Motions Nos. 322, 323 and 325, which focused on Canada's commitment to sustainable development, recognizing that it was not a choice between saving the economy and the environment and therefore working with the provinces, territories and stakeholders to develop a green economy strategy and a national sustainable energy strategy to build the jobs of the future for our communities and for Canada.

When we compromise the air, the water, the soil, the variety of life, we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am interested in hearing the minister try to address this issue, in a somewhat fictitious way, I must say. The government, in fact, caused the backlog to hit the one million point. What the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is doing is hitting the delete button, literally telling 100,000 people abroad that they can no longer come to Canada. Bill C-38 would do that. It is a cruel way of dealing with would-be immigrants.

The member is trying to play the politics of that being a great minister when reality shows us quite differently. We have never seen a minister hit a delete button on backlogs. We have never seen a minister put an absolute two-year freeze on being able to sponsor parents. How is that fair? Why has the government has chosen this budget, Bill C-38, to go through the back door and—

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly why we are putting this motion forward. There are 70 amendments to legislation in Bill C-38, the budget implementation act. The member referenced one. That one issue alone should have enough study in the House. We are focusing on fisheries and the environment as major elements of the budget. There are over 420 pages in the bill which includes so many changes.

That is why Canada's New Democrats are spreading out across the country to engage in dialogue and to consult with Canadians, not just on the environment and fisheries, but also on immigration, on EI and many other changes that are included in this financial bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the NDP actually meant for this opposition day motion to deal with the budget bill, Bill C-38, so I want to bring up one thing which I think the government could have incorporated into the bill. It is related to immigration.

In the budget the government is trying to hit the delete button on tens of thousands of individuals who have applied to come to Canada as skilled workers. That is a cruel policy. It is something that should have been brought to this House as a stand-alone amendment so that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the government could be made fully aware, in detail, why this is a bad policy idea that should never have been incorporated into Bill C-38.

Would the member comment on that aspect of Bill C-38?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party supports the motion. It talks about the importance of our fisheries industry, the environment and how the government is using the back door of Bill C-38 in order to have serious and significant impacts. What surprises me to a certain degree is why the NDP would narrow it down to just those two items in the form of the motion itself.

The real debate that needs to take place is the way in which the budget bill is being used to pass a great deal of amendments. We are talking about 60 or 70 amendments to different legislation, deletions and so forth. Yes, it is going to have an impact on these two issues, but also on immigration and many other areas.

My question to the member is this. Why did the NDP choose to narrow the debate down to just these two issues when there are so many other issues within that Trojan Horse bill that the member would, no doubt, acknowledge?

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Budget legislation guts the environmental assessment and fisheries laws, leaving Canada’s lakes, rivers, oceans, ecosystems, and fisheries at risk while unfairly downloading federal environmental responsibilities and their associated costs to the provinces, territories, and future generations.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share my time with the hon. member for New Westminster—Coquitlam.

My colleagues and I are hearing every day from Canadians who are rallying against the Conservative government's decision to table a Trojan Horse budget bill that contains measures that will do irreversible harm to our environment. It will affect the health, livelihood and future of Canadians, and it will leave an unacceptable and unequal burden on generations to come.

Canadians know intuitively that this cowardly attempt to avoid real debate on such significant legislation is undemocratic. It is another example of the government's penchant for avoiding accountability and scrutiny while it placates its industry bigwig buddies at the expense of the best interests of our communities.

There will not be sufficient public oversight or consultation on the bill. Communities that are relying on the very protections that are being gutted are being silenced. It is happening because the government knows that if Canadians were given the opportunity to examine this legislation fully, as they should be allowed to do in a democratic nation, they would reject the proposed changes because they recklessly gut environmental protection in this country.

New Democrats know and understand the importance of public participation in a democracy. That is why the NDP is holding a series of hearings in Ottawa and across the country that will allow experts and the public to engage in the policy areas of Bill C-38, such as the anti-environment provisions, in a meaningful way, which the government is trying to avoid.

The latest attempt by the government to hide from the public is yet another blot on the Conservative government's environmental record. From muzzling scientists, to withdrawing from international protocols that included mandatory greenhouse gas emission audits, to killing independent research bodies like the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy and cancelling funding for environmental groups like the Canadian Environmental Network, the government shows time and time again that its number one policy is to stifle as much information and evidence as it can because that evidence flies in the face of the Conservative agenda.

The Conservatives keep forgetting one key thing and that is that Canadians from coast to coast to coast see these actions for what they really are: blindly partisan, incredibly short-sighted and devoid of any evidentiary framework or base.

One of the worst themes of Bill C-38 is the total lack of clarity and understanding on what impact these changes will have on the environmental protections we do have. For me, that is what makes this Trojan Horse bill so alarming. Canadians cannot be sure what the government is actually forcing upon this country.

We see in many different places where this legislation aims to give unparalleled discretion and powers to government and ministers, allowing them to override the best interests of Canadians in affected communities without really defining the scope of powers or important tests that would determine, for example, who could participate in a hearing.

Decisions will be made in the absence of an accountable framework. Make no mistake, these decisions of the future will be politicized and they will be partisan. This again flies in the face of good environmental stewardship.

I would like to talk about some of the proposed changes in the bill. In some of the cases we do not know what the outcome will be. We can see how the legislation is being changed, but we do not know what the impacts will be in the long run. That is all the more reason that we need to have a fulsome debate in the House and at committee on all aspects of the bill.

The entire Environmental Assessment Act is going to be replaced, and it is based on recommendations coming from the environment committee. That might sound like a positive thing, except that the review was the result of a very flawed legislative review at committee. It failed to meet any acceptable standard for a study of such an important piece of legislation.

I would like to talk about a couple of the changes to CEAA that are being proposed.

The bill would limit who could testify at environmental assessment hearings. It would limit that discussion to affected parties. Who is an affected party? Is it someone who lives in a place where a pipeline is going through the backyard? Is it someone who is five kilometres away or twenty kilometres away, or fifty kilometres? Think about Fukushima. How far away did that actually impact? Would people in that radius be able to participate?

What if people fish, but they fish very far downstream from a spawning bed, and there is an action taking place on a spawning bed? Are they an affected party if they live in southern Manitoba and the spawning bed is in northern Manitoba? Where do we draw the lines here? How do we know who gets to participate? What if they are scientists based out of Vancouver and they have good information about what could happen in northern British Columbia, or perhaps even in another province? Are they considered to be an affected party?

It is absolutely not clear what is being done here in limiting who can testify and who can participate. I am very worried that we are not going to get the good information that we need from the experts and from people on the ground who actually are directly affected, whether or not the government wants to believe they are.

This bill would also allow the federal cabinet to approve a project, even if the reviewing body has determined that there would be adverse environmental effects. In other words, if an arm's-length, non-partisan body says that a project should not go ahead—or yes, it should go ahead, but maybe with these changes—ultimately it is the cabinet that gets to make the decisions about whether that project goes ahead.

We also have a shift of moving from list versus trigger. This is a technical aspect of the bill, but right now an environmental assessment can be triggered because, for example, a navigable waterway is crossed or migratory birds may be impacted. We would switch to a list of what is included and what is not in an environmental assessment.

On its face, this might sound like a good idea, but we heard very good testimony at committee that asked this question: if lists are what is in and what is out, what do we do with projects that we cannot even conceive of right now? For example, if the list had been drawn up 50 years ago, would oil sands exploration have been on that list? Probably not. Do we think there should be environmental assessments of oil sands exploration? Yes.

This change would really limit what gets assessed and how the assessments are done, and it would not follow the evidence that we heard at committee, which is very unfortunate.

I will touch lightly on the fisheries provisions, and I am sure my colleague will also touch on them.

One really important aspect is that under the Fisheries Act provisions, we would change the focus from impacts on fish habitat to impacts causing “serious harm to fish”. What is “serious harm”? Well, let us imagine that a fish is maimed, deformed or has its growth stunted. Maybe its habitat is even destroyed. Maybe a future generation of fish is destroyed. As long as that fish is not killed, it seems it is okay under this legislation. That is absolutely impossible for me to wrap my head around, and it flies in the face of testimony we are hearing from people on the ground, who say that we need to protect fish habitat if we are going to protect the next generation of fish.

I will remind the government that allowing the degradation of our environment has long-term economic costs. The budget bill is not good financial management.The budget bill is not responsible governing. It is, plain and simple, an attack on our environment by a government that lacks the maturity or the common sense to see the long-term risks that it is engaging in.

How will my colleagues opposite explain to their constituents, their friends and their families why they are choosing to reject a path of innovation, environmental stewardship, sustainable development and intergenerational equity? I wonder how they will answer that question to their constituents, their families and their friends.

This legislation would be bad for our air, our water and our soil, and it is bad for humans and animals alike. I ask all members of this place to support our motion today in its denunciation of the government's environmental proposals.

Employment Insurance

[Jean-François Fortin, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives can no longer hide the scope of their proposed changes to employment insurance in Bill C-38.

Their new brainwave for weakening the system, according to what the Minister of Finance is saying, seems to be to force the unemployed to take jobs that do not correspond to their aspirations or their qualifications and that are not even in their region. The Conservatives have real contempt for workers' expertise.

Instead of permanently undermining the employment insurance system, why does the federal government not agree to the request of the Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses and transfer responsibility for employment insurance to Quebec?

Environment—Main Estimates, 2012-13

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

He keeps going back to climate change. The actual question was on ozone.

Will the Minister of the Environment appear before the finance subcommittee on Bill C-38, and before the Senate committee to explain his outrageous accusations against reputable Canadian charities and finally list the organizations he accused of money laundering?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Chair, the bulk of the money, and I will see if I can put my hands on the specific dollar amount, will go to aboriginal consultation with a very small amount will go to administration costs.

Through Bill C-38, through the responsible resource development legislation, we have ensured that we not only do what has been done so well in the past with regard to aboriginal consultation, but that we engage earlier and that we fulfill our statutory obligations to support and assist their interventions.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Madam Chair, it is an honour to address my remarks regarding Bill C-38 to Canada's magnificent endowment of freshwater resources that are so important to our country.

I think Canadians treasure our freshwater endowment almost above all other resources. Our freshwater resources are vital sources of safe drinking water, key transportation routes and are the basis of our freshwater fisheries, as well as important for tourism recreation. Our lakes and rivers simply are what makes Canada Canada.

Our government has recognized that we have a tremendous responsibility to ensure our freshwater resources are protected. We understand that there are significant pressures affecting the health of some of our freshwater. We are addressing those challenges by taking concrete and measurable actions to restore and protect nationally significant bodies of freshwater, such as the Great Lakes, Lake Simcoe and, in my own backyard, Lake Winnipeg.

Environment Canada is carrying out this work by conducting leading edge science, research and monitoring to better understand issues, identify threats and inform decision-making to protect our precious water resources.

Our government is building partnerships with other levels of government, stakeholders and the public to plan and deliver on water-related priorities. We are cleaning up problem areas and addressing specific issues, such as eutrophication and to improve overall water quality.

In my own riding of Dauphin--Swan River--Marquette, we have many beautiful freshwater lakes, rivers and wetlands that are used for both recreational and commercial fisheries and are very important to local communities, the local environment, the ecosystem processes, our economy and our rural way of life.

I would like to take a moment and focus on three nationally significant bodies of freshwater, their importance, what we have accomplished and where we are headed.

The Great Lakes and the major rivers that connect them constitute the world's largest freshwater system and they are fundamental to the well-being of millions of Canadians. This region supports Canada's highest concentration of industry, nearly 25% of total Canadian agricultural production, a commercial and recreational fishery that has been estimated to be worth about $7 billion and a transportation corridor with shipping from all over the world. The Great Lakes provide the foundations for billions of dollars in economic activity, sustain a rich a variety of plants and animals and are a direct source of high quality drinking water for one-fourth of Canadians.

The Government of Canada has made significant investments in the Great Lakes, resulting in important gains for both the environment and human health. Our investments include over $538 million since 2007 to enhance municipal waste water treatment infrastructure, which directly improves water quality within the Great Lakes. We provided $48.9 million from 2008 to 2016 to accelerate the remediation of contaminated sediment in the Great Lakes and the renewal of the Great Lakes action plan in budget 2010. We are committing $8 million per year on an ongoing basis to support the remediation of Great Lakes areas of concern, locations that have been identified as experiencing environmental degradation.

Budget 2011 provided new funding of $5 million over two years to improve nearshore water and ecosystem health and better address the phosphorous issues in the Great Lakes.

These significant investments in the Great Lakes are resulting in important environmental gains but more work needs to be done.

To that end, the Governments of Canada and the United States are in the process of finalizing amendments to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Since 1972, this agreement has guided the efforts of both countries by aligning objectives and coordinating action across multiple jurisdictions.

The agreement has been an international example of effective management of shared water resources and was instrumental in reversing eutrophication issues in the late 1970s and 1980s, significantly reducing persistent toxic substances in the ecosystem and cleaning up contaminated areas within the Great Lakes.

The agreement and the leading edge work it produced has also served as a powerful driver for developing and reforming environmental laws and policies within the United States and Canada, including our own Canadian Environmental Protection Act, a key tool in delivering the highest level of environmental quality for all Canadians.

An amended Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement would allow our government to comprehensively address current problems in the Great Lakes, including cumulative stresses acting on the nearshore environment, aquatic invasive species, habitats and species loss and climate change impacts, and move quickly to prevent future problems.

For over 40 years, the Government of Canada has worked in co-operation with the Province of Ontario on Great Lakes aquatic ecosystem health through a series of Canada-Ontario agreements respecting the Great Lakes basin ecosystem. The Canada-Ontario agreement establishes a domestic plan of concrete actions that the federal and provincial governments will undertake to implement the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to restore, protect and conserve the Great Lakes. We anticipate a new Canada-Ontario agreement later this year that will align with the newly amended Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

The Government of Canada is also working to restore, protect and conserve water quality and ecosystem health in other bodies of water, such as Lake Simcoe in Ontario. Located north of Toronto, the lake is a major recreation area generating millions of dollars a year in tourism revenue. It lies in a major agricultural area and supplies drinking water to eight municipalities. The lake has been suffering some stress due to phosphorous inputs and eutrophication.

The health of Lake Simcoe has been declining for many years. Since 2008, the Government of Canada's $30 million Lake Simcoe cleanup fund has supported initiatives to preserve and protect the environment of Lake Simcoe and has allowed Canadians to live, work and play near Lake Simcoe to enjoy the benefits of a cleaner lake. I am proud to say that our government has supported, which I find unbelievable, approximately 160 local projects so far, including over 90 habitat and non-point source pollution improvement projects to restore and preserve the health of Lake Simcoe. That is what I call delivering real environmental results.

Recognizing the success of this program, budget 2012 continues to provide new investments to ensure we are able to work together with local partners toward improving the water quality and ecosystem health of Lake Simcoe and deliver on our commitment to clean water.

The Government of Canada is also taking action on Lake Winnipeg to restore its ecological integrity, reduce blue-green algae blooms, ensure fewer beach closings and ensure continuation of a vibrant and sustainable fishery. Lake Winnipeg is the sixth largest freshwater lake in North America and supports a $50 million per year freshwater fishery and a $110 million per year tourism industry. The lake is situated in and receives inputs from a drainage basin of almost one million square kilometres that encompasses four provinces and four U.S. states.

Beginning in 2008, the Government of Canada committed $17.7 million over four years to work with our provincial partners to clean up Lake Winnipeg through the Lake Winnipeg basin initiative, again delivering real environmental results. This initiative has contributed to cleaning up the lake and supporting science.

Despite the work done to date, Lake Winnipeg continues to experience poor water quality due to excess nutrient loading from multiple local and transboundary sources. The excess nutrient load causes increasingly large, frequent and potentially toxic algal blooms. Without a reduction in nutrient inputs, primarily phosphorous, deterioration in the lake's water quality will continue.

Budget 2012 also provides renewed funding for Lake Winnipeg to continue the important work begun in 2007, which will enable us to work with partners to take action to resolve problems that threaten this great resource. Through our work on Lake Winnipeg, Lake Simcoe and the Great Lakes, the Government of Canada is ensuring clean freshwater for all Canadians.

We will continue to deliver on that commitment through our government's investments in research, monitoring, leading edge science, partnerships with other jurisdictions and targeted actions to clean up problems of the past. We hope to prevent future problems because Canada's freshwater resources are not only a source of immense pride for our country but are vital to supporting our environment, our economy and our society.

I cannot emphasize enough that this government provides resources to deliver real and tangible environmental results.

I have questions for the minister. I was wondering if the minister could please explain and elaborate on what our government is doing to protect the Great Lakes.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Chair, my colleague obviously needs to pay some attention to the detail of Bill C-38.

The responsible resource development legislation has four very simple, very clear and environmentally logical provisions and principles. They are: to strengthen environmental protection first and foremost from my perspective as the Minister of the Environment; to make reviews of resource projects more predictable and timely; to reduce duplication and regulatory burden; and to enhance consultations with aboriginal Canadians. That is what Bill C-38 would do.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Madam Chair, I would like to focus my comments on environmental assessment and the work of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. This, of course, is a key part of the environment portfolio and a very important part of what the federal government does. The funding being considered as part of the main estimates is necessary for the continued application of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and preparation for the implementation of the proposals in Bill C-38 should that legislation receive royal assent.

Environmental assessment sits at a crucial intersection between the environment and the economy. Environmental assessment is a way to ensure responsible resource development. It allows the Government of Canada to assess and mitigate the environmental impacts of projects that represent billions of dollars of potential investment for Canada.

While founded upon the best of intentions, the current federal process is overly complex and dated. Accountability is spread across government, and there have been inconsistent application and delays as a result. This situation actually harms the economy. Project proponents face unnecessary costs. Investment decisions are put off. Jobs for Canadians are put on hold. The argument can be made that this actually harms the environment, too.

Limited government resources are consumed by unnecessary process steps and the need to assess small projects that pose minimal risk to the environment. There are also few enforcement provisions. The current law is based on concepts and approaches from the late 1980s. It is time to build on our record and move forward. It is time to modernize federal environmental assessment.

A responsible resource development plan sets out a path to modernization that relies on four pillars: one, making reviews more predictable and timely; two, reducing duplication; three, strengthening environmental protection; and four, enhancing consultation with aboriginal peoples. The new Canadian environmental assessment act supports all four pillars through responsible and certain timelines, better integration of federal and provincial responsibilities to avoid duplication, fair and consistent enforcement measures to ensure the environment is protected, and an explicit requirement to ensure that changes to the environment that affect aboriginal peoples are assessed and mitigated.

Environmental assessment is receiving much attention, inside and outside the House, as part of the debate on Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act. Let me take this opportunity to set the record straight on some of the myths that have unfortunately dominated this debate.

The first myth is that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency budget has been cut by over 40%. Perhaps members have heard that. The opposite is true. At a time of fiscal restraint, the agency's capacity has been protected. Its budget is in fact increasing by 5% as a result of budget 2012. Additional funds are being provided for consultations with aboriginal peoples. Fundamentally, the provision of funding to the agency will ensure that it continues to provide Canadians with high quality environmental assessments.

The second myth permeating this debate is that environmental assessment is somehow being gutted by Bill C-38. A brief comparison between the current law and the bill is in order to explain this point. As I just noted, the government is providing additional funding to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency because we expect it to do more, not less.

For an environmental assessment to be required under the current act, there has to be a federal decision associated with the project. No decision means no environmental assessment, even though there might be serious effects on matters within federal jurisdiction. The bill proposes to address this gap. An environmental assessment may be required when there are adverse effects within federal jurisdiction and the project is on the project list or specifically designated by the minister. A federal decision about the project is not a prerequisite.

When there is a federal decision associated with the project undergoing an environmental assessment, the environmental effects of that decision will be assessed. This is a requirement today. This is a requirement in the updated act.

The current law requires follow-up programs for major projects. These follow-up programs verify if mitigation measures are protecting the environment. Unfortunately, application of this requirement has been fragmented across government. Follow-up information is not being put to the best use possible.

The bill proposes to fix this problem. Follow-up programs would be mandatory after all environmental assessments. The results would flow to one of three responsible authorities: the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the National Energy Board. These bodies would use this information to help manage unanticipated environmental effects and improve the practice of environmental assessment.

A final area of comparison relates to enforcement. The current law has no enforcement provisions. This is a very significant shortcoming. As parliamentarians we expect bills to be enforced when they become law. Bill C-38 proposes to make this the case for environmental assessment through several measures.

The act would prohibit a proponent from proceeding with a project identified in regulations unless it underwent an environmental assessment or the agency decided that one is not required. At the end of an environmental assessment, proponents would have to comply with the conditions set out in a decision statement. Federal inspectors for the first time would have the authority to examine whether conditions in an environmental assessment decision statement were met. Finally, there are proposed penalties for violations that range from $100,000 to $400,000.

Bill C-38 proposes to close gaps in what projects can be subjected to a federal environmental assessment. It would strengthen how follow-up information is managed and used. New enforcement powers would be provided. All of this adds up to a strengthening of environmental assessment in a significant way.

Now I would like to turn to the third myth. Some are saying that the government has not consulted nor heard from Canadians on how to improve environmental assessment. There has been a wealth of input from various sources under both this government and the previous government. Let me run through some of the highlights.

In 2003, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development issued a report entitled “Beyond Bill C-9”. Among other things, the standing committee recommended creating a system of environmental assessment permits. Bill C-38 proposes to do so through the enforceable environmental assessment decision statement.

The standing committee also recommended that the agency look into the use of regional environmental assessments as a means to deal with cumulative effects of multiple projects and activities. This examination of the potential of regional studies was done in cooperation with provinces and territories through a task group of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in 2008-09. The result can be seen in proposed provisions for regional studies.

In 2004, the government appointed the external advisory committee on smart regulation. Environmental assessment was the issue that generated the most complaints from stakeholders during this study of the broader federal regulatory system.

The smart regulation committee recommended the creation of a single federal agency for environmental assessment, better integration of federal-provincial assessments, timelines and more emphasis on follow-up programs. Proposals consistent with the spirit of these recommendations are all found in Bill C-38.

In 2009, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment also issued a discussion paper and held consultations on the issue of one project, one review. The outcome is reflected in the bill's proposal for substitution and equivalency.

These new tools allow provincial environmental assessments to substitute for, or be recognized as equivalent to, a federal review as long as the substance of requirements of the act are met.

The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development members, many of whom are in the House tonight, reviewed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act this past year. The majority of the committee's recommendations have found their way into the bill, including the use of a project list to avoid requiring assessments of small projects, such as a blueberry washing facility.

This project list approach includes a safety net authority for the Minister of the Environment to require the environmental assessment of a project not identified in the regulations. This power could be used in unique circumstances where a relatively routine type of project is of concern because of its proposed location, for example, in a sensitive environmental setting.

Two standing committee reports, a public consultation by federal and provincial governments and a blue ribbon committee have all contributed to the development of this important bill.

We have listened to what is being said about environmental assessment over the past decade. We are moving forward to protect the environment while promoting jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for all Canadians.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Chair, I will correct my hon. colleague. What we are doing is strengthening and contemporizing the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It is an act that our government has been reviewing for some time now. Legislative changes with regard to CEAA were brought into effect in June 2010. They have worked.

What we have in the legislation before the House now, in Bill C-38, is to improve on those original fixes to strengthen environmental protection while at the same time eliminating duplication and providing firm and efficient timelines.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Minister of the Environment]

Madam Chair, I am pleased to be here this evening to discuss with the committee of the whole this important budget and our commitment to environmental excellence in Canada.

I am accompanied this evening by my deputy minister, Paul Boothe, the chief executive officer of Parks Canada, Alan Latourelle, and the president of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, Elaine Feldman.

Recently I marked my one-year anniversary as Canada's environment minister. I must say that the past year and a half has been challenging, but it has been very rewarding.

As we look forward to the next year, our government is keenly focused on ensuring that our natural resources are developed in an environmental and sustainable manner while maximizing economic growth, competitiveness and the creation of good long-term jobs for Canadians.

As we all know, one of the main duties of Environment Canada is to develop, implement, monitor and enforce science-based environmental standards and regulations across Canada.

This year, we are focusing on simplifying and increasing the efficiency and transparency of our regulatory processes to make them more effective. The department is strongly committed to growing as a world-class regulatory organization, and it will continue to improve its track record of regulatory excellence.

My department has made steady progress in a number of key areas. Working in partnership with Alberta, I announced on February 3 an historic plan for implementing a world-class, comprehensive and transparent environmental monitoring plan in the oil sands. This plan will deliver rigorous scientific data to ensure that the oil sands are developed in an environmentally sustainable manner. My department will monitor water, air and biodiversity, and it will be among the most transparent and most accountable systems of its kind in the world.

Monitoring will be carried out in more places, more frequently, for more substances. For example, by 2015 we will add up to 22 new water sites, 11 new air sites, and over 37 new biodiversity sites. The dedicated scientists in my department have already begun collecting crucial measurements during the spring melt and the ice breakup. Throughout this process, we have been engaging industry, independent scientists, aboriginal peoples and other stakeholders.

Canada is making significant progress in reducing Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 through a sector-by-sector plan. In fact, federal measures, combined with actions taken by provinces, brought us one-quarter of the way toward our 2020 target a year ago, and we have made significant progress since then. Emissions have declined in almost all sectors, including oil and gas and electricity generation, since 2005. Between 2009 and 2010, our emissions remained virtually steady, despite economic growth of 3.2%.

More progress on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is forthcoming, following on publication of our final cold-fired electricity regulations in coming weeks and the proposed heavy duty vehicle regulations I recently announced.

All of these proposed regulations will help enhance Canada's position as a world leader in clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality for all Canadians.

We are now moving forward to develop regulated performance standards for other major emitting industrial sectors. We have already initiated an engagement process with the oil and gas sector and the provinces to enable ongoing consultation on regulatory development. We plan a similar engagement as we move forward to develop regulations for other emissions in intensive industrial sectors.

My department will also continue its efforts to improve air quality by working with provinces, industry and non-governmental organizations to implement the air quality management system. This system is a comprehensive consensus-based approach to reducing air pollutant emissions and improving air quality across Canada, eventually in partnership with the U.S. along the lines of the acid rain treaty.

Furthermore, under the next phase of Canada's chemicals management plan, our department is working with partners to assess and regulate a multitude of chemicals used in thousands of industrial and consumer products.

As part of the action plan for clean water, in 2011 the Government of Canada invested almost $3 million for the cleanup of Lake Simcoe and almost $400,000 for nine new community projects to clean up Lake Winnipeg. Negotiations with the United States to modernize the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement have been successful. The process to amend the agreement is nearing completion.

Significant resources were invested in the Great Lakes for the cleanup of contaminated sites, reduction of harmful algae blooms, waste water infrastructure and science and research.

We are also taking action to protect and conserve Canada's rich and abundant biodiversity. Under our new Plan Saint-Laurent, we are working with Quebec to ensure water quality, to protect ecologically sensitive areas and to conserve the incredible biodiversity of that mighty river. In that regard, the Canada-Quebec agreement on the St. Lawrence was signed and announced in Montreal last November. This new agreement sets out the St. Lawrence action plan up to 2026.

Under budget 2012, $50 million over two years is being provided to support updated application of the Species at Risk Act. This money will support improvements to the program that respond to submissions made during and after the parliamentary review of the act in 2009 and 2010. These changes will deliver greater conservation benefits, reduce the need for direct federal intervention and provide greater certainty for partners.

On the international stage, Canada has played a significant role in advancing work toward a new international climate agreement for the future. The Durban platform for enhanced action took an important step forward by setting out a negotiating mandate for all countries to develop a single new international treaty to include all major emitters to be implemented by 2020. This has been a long-standing objective of our government.

We have invested and continue to invest $1.2 billion in fast-start financing to help developing countries address global climate change. Canada is also working with international partners to reduce short-lived climate pollutants such as black carbon and methane.

There has been much talk—and great exaggeration, misrepresentation and few factual references—about the changes to environmental assessments under the responsible resource development initiative. My colleagues will speak to this matter in detail later in the debate, but let me just say that our government takes environmental protection very seriously. We are amending outdated and inefficient elements of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in order to modernize the environmental assessment processes and strengthen enforcement provisions.

For the first time, for example, federal inspectors will have authority to examine whether conditions in an environmental assessment decision statement are actually met. When passed, Bill C-38 would allow for monetary penalties that range from $100,000 to $400,000 for non-compliance. These are real penalties meant to ensure compliance and to safeguard Canadians. They complement the much greater stiffening of regulations under CEPA a year ago.

Environment Canada has also focused its resources to address areas of highest concern to Canadians, such as severe weather. I announced investments to strengthen weather monitoring infrastructure, ensuring Canadians continued access to world-class weather, water and climate monitoring data, and we will continue to provide Canadians with a comprehensive national weather, water and climate monitoring system.

I must say that I am very proud of the accomplishments and dedication of this government vis-à-vis the environment. We are serving Canadians every day and protecting Canada for years to come. Our government's economic action plan is creating jobs and growth for Canadians now and in the future.

In conclusion, I take this opportunity to thank members present on both sides of the House for their interest in the work of my department and I welcome their questions throughout the evening.

Copyright Modernization Act

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I note that the member used her time to go after the NDP for, apparently, speaking too long on Bill C-38. I am surprised by that because such a massive bill, which we have correctly named a Trojan horse because it has so many non-financial aspects in it, is something that absolutely has to be investigated and debated in the House of Commons. I was surprised to hear her say that 12 hours or 19 hours of debate is too long.

Having said that, I am curious about her position on this bill, and I wonder if she agrees with one of its main criticisms, which is that it cozies up to some of the big rights holders, like the big movie studios and largely U.S. cultural interests. The idea is that there is balance in the bill, but when we give it a close examination, we see that a lot of artists and small players are left behind.

I wonder how she would respond to the criticism that this is, basically, a sop to the big players who have been lobbying for these changes and that her government has now very nicely responded to them.

Bill C-11—Time Allocation Motion

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP can reference Bill C-38 and other things, but when we do it, it is against the rules. Anyway, whatever, that is the member for Timmins--James Bay.

The reality is, the amendments that were put forward, particularly those from the leader of the Green Party, were serious and substantive amendments, and I understand that. However, the ideas represented therein were not new. They were considered by our government and had been considered over the past two and a half years, throughout this entire process.

We certainly do respect that, but if the NDP's idea concerning debate is just ongoing, never-ending, continuous debate and members can keep putting forward amendments to change “us” to “them” and “we” to “they”, and then condemn us for not considering sometimes frivolous amendments, it is nonsense. We have been debating this for two and a half years. We have considered the ideas. They are thoughtful ideas. They are just reasonable differences of opinion with some of the amendments that were put forward by the leader of the Green Party.

It is not obstruction to say we have had two and a half years of debate, and now two years of debate on a specific piece of legislation. We have considered it. We have thought about it. We have tabled our legislation. We gave signals to Canadians in the election campaign. We put it in our throne speech. We put forward the legislation. We invited Canadians in at the front end through our consultations.

Let us just get on with it, pass this legislation and serve Canadians' interests.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the Minister of Canadian Heritage now for almost half an hour and he consistently says that there has been debate for two years, two and a half years. That seems to be his yardstick for when it is reasonable to bring in time allocation.

On Bill C-38, the government just rammed through in six days of debate an omnibus bill of 425 pages, dealing with everything from gutting environmental regulations to old age security to changing EI, fundamentally changing how we govern this country.

Would the Minister of Canadian Heritage agree with me that two years may seem to him adequate debate, but if that is the standard then certainly six days is not enough?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the Minister of Canadian Heritage that the bill has had consideration in contrast to a bill such as Bill C-38 that has had none.

My concern is with the approach that the government House leader has taken. We find ourselves on the day of a vote that was not previously on notice. We had notice yesterday of time allocation but we had no idea if it was two or three or four days. There will be extensive votes tonight because there are a lot of substantive amendments to be reviewed.

It would show more respect to opposition members and to all parties in the House if the government House leader were to allow bills to have proper notice. People have plans, such as a charity event in memory of my daughter's best friend. I am sorry to bring up a personal matter. We all sacrifice things so we can stay in the House for late votes. More notice would have shown more respect.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the next petition relates to the ongoing threat of supertankers and pipelines across British Columbia.

The signators are from British Columbia, from many spots within it, from my own riding, from Victoria, Brentwood Bay, Saturna, Kelowna area, Summerland and also from Ottawa. They call on this House to respect the current environmental assessment process as it exists before Bill C-38 and to have a full, fair and transparent inquiry.

Report Stage

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the MP spoke to the bill itself. Today we have heard Conservative members speak to other bills and speak generally about Bill C-38, such as the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming or the member for Oak Ridges—Markham, and lecture us about not telling the truth.

My question is simple and is directed to the member for Oak Ridges—Markham. Conservatives talked about the government creating jobs directly through this legislation. How many jobs are going to be created through Bill C-11?

Oral Questions

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I hope this is properly put as a point of order. I noted earlier in question period, in debate, that the Conservative members of Parliament made note of the long speech of the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster and claimed that it had prevented people from speaking to the elements of Bill C-38.

I merely wish to point out that long after the member for Burnaby—New Westminster ceased speaking, Bill C-38 was introduced two weeks later.

Nothern Economic Development

[John Duncan, Conservative, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development]

Mr. Speaker, increased borrowing limits for the territories is a vital step toward increased prosperity for northern communities. It will be used to support critical infrastructure projects such as the road between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, a project the NWT government and aboriginal leadership support.

I urge the NDP member from NWT to reverse his stance and support Bill C-38. Northerners benefit from this government's successful agreement with the territories.

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Mr. Speaker, economic action plan 2012 promotes jobs, growth and economic prosperity for all Canadians. We do this by keeping taxes low, so that businesses will expand and hire more people.

However, it was no surprise on March 29, after only a few hours of review, that the tax-and-spend NDP declared its opposition to this pro-jobs and pro-growth plan.

Tonight we will implement a key part of economic action plan 2012 by supporting Bill C-38. This vote will implement a plan that will help create more new jobs on top of the more than 750,000 net new jobs that have been created since July of 2009.

Instead of playing silly procedural games, maybe the NDP should start acting responsibly, focus on the economy and support a real plan that will create jobs and growth for all Canadians.

Nutrition Among Children

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Madam Speaker, first of all I would like to once again thank my colleague from Ottawa—Orléans for this motion.

Obesity is a chronic disease that is becoming increasingly prevalent among children and youth. Today, 26% of children between the ages of 2 and 17 are overweight or obese. Setting aside the statistics, we are dealing with children who are made to feel self-conscious by others. In addition to living with the physical problems caused by obesity, such as diabetes and respiratory difficulty, overweight children are often the targets of teasing and bullying in the street or schoolyard. The insults often leave permanent scars.

A study by Dr. Wendy Craig, a professor of psychology at Queen's University in Kingston, indicates that obese children are more often victims of abuse, which robs them of their confidence and self-esteem.

Dr. Rebecca Puhl, a professor at Yale University in Connecticut, has also studied the psychological effects of childhood obesity. In addition to affecting their self-image, abuse fuels their unhealthy eating habits and inactivity.

Childhood obesity also increases the risk of adult obesity. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, an obese 4-year-old is 20% more likely to become an obese adult. This rate increases to an alarming 80% for adolescents. Over the span of a quarter century, the rates of obesity among children and youth have almost tripled in Canada. We are now seeing children with “adult” problems such as high cholesterol, sleep apnea and high blood pressure.

We must remember that the causes of obesity can be a combination of social, cultural, environmental and economic factors and that some populations are at greater risk than others. Aboriginal populations have a high rate of obesity. Approximately 20% of aboriginal children aged 6 to 14 living off-reserve are obese. And for children living on-reserve the rate is even higher—26%.

One of the causes is that it is difficult for aboriginal people to access healthy food that is affordable. For example, a litre of pop is often three times cheaper than a litre of juice or milk.

Healthy and nutritious foods—fresh fruits and vegetables, for example—are more expensive and harder to find the further away we get from large urban centres. The rate of obesity is often higher in rural areas and in the far north of Canada.

Access to nutritious food is therefore a major part of the problem. Many people cannot afford to buy these foods. Over 800,000 Canadians need to use food banks to survive and, today, over 2.5 million Canadians are affected by food insecurity.

Nevertheless, the right to food is recognized by most of the major international conventions that Canada has signed. The first of these to come to mind may be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but there is also the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 24 of this binding treaty requires states parties to “combat disease and malnutrition...through the provision of adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water”.

The situation in Canada has deteriorated to the point where the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food is here in Canada, and has been since Tuesday, on a mission to assess the situation. The rapporteur will consider access to healthy and affordable food for vulnerable groups such as children, aboriginal people and people in remote areas. He will examine factors such as obesity, malnutrition, and food production and distribution.

Today, junk food is everywhere and is offered at low prices by large fast food chains, while healthy, nutritious, locally produced foods are often more expensive and more difficult to find. Some elementary and secondary school cafeterias still have french fries, hot dogs and hamburgers on their menus. Some snack bars are strategically located close to schools. Young people simply have to cross the street at lunch time to get a poutine. This certainly does not help combat childhood obesity.

Physical inactivity is also an important contributing factor to the growing problem of childhood obesity. Many parents cannot afford to register their children in sports or to buy the equipment needed for these activities. In small communities, there is often not enough funding to build sports infrastructure. Even the way our cities are designed does not encourage people to be active. This motion makes it possible to continue the public debate on the critical issue of obesity. But right now, we need more than debate: we need to take action. All the experts are saying so.

Obesity is not just a health problem. It is a problem that is costly for society as a whole. A recent analysis conducted by the Public Health Agency of Canada showed that the total cost of obesity is estimated to be $4.3 billion—$1.8 billion in direct health care costs and $2.5 billion in indirect costs.

There is no more time to lose. Studies, expert committees and recommendations have been piling up for years, but the government still refuses to do anything about it.

This motion is based on the Declaration on Prevention and Promotion signed by federal, provincial and territorial health ministers, and on the framework for action on curbing childhood obesity. The declaration states that population health depends on environmental, social, economic and cultural factors in society. We need measures to tackle the social and environmental conditions I have just described: taking into account remoteness, the price of food, the need for infrastructure that supports physical activity and junk food regulation, among other things.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any useful measures the government has introduced recently to address these issues. Worse still, Bill C-38 undermines all existing regulations that might help people achieve better health.

I would also like to remind the House that, in 2005, as I mentioned earlier in my question, the federal government set up a trans fat task force, which recommended limiting trans fat content to 2% of total fat content for all vegetable oils and spreadable margarines, and 5% for all other foods.

In 2007, the government agreed to all of the recommendations and gave the industry two years to voluntarily reduce trans fat content in its food products. Some companies took action, while others did nothing. In 2009, the Minister of Health, the current Conservative minister, promised to take further action, but we learned recently that the plan to draft regulations was aborted. In February, a research centre obtained documents under the Access to Information Act showing that in 2010, the minister ordered the regulatory plan scrapped.

Why? Such measures would have helped fight child poverty. That was one of the recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Health in 2007 when it studied the issue. The committee also recommended establishing childhood obesity reduction targets to bring the obesity rate down to 6% by 2020. The committee also recommended implementing measures with the first nations to address problems of access to food.

All of these measures could make a real difference in the fight against childhood obesity.

The NDP has always pushed for regulations governing trans fat content in foods. In 2004, the member for Winnipeg Centre introduced a private member's bill that was adopted unanimously.

Another group of experts, who studied sodium in processed foods, also made recommendations to the minister two years ago. We know that high sodium intake is a significant risk factor for high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks. The working group recommended an annual reduction of 5% in sodium intake until 2016.

Guess what? The government decided to disband the working group. In December 2010, the minister said that she no longer needed the group. We do not know what strategy the government will adopt with respect to reducing sodium in food.

One member of the group, who is also the national coordinator of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, had this to say:

What is worrisome, is not just that the group was dismantled, but that the minister has remained silent about the future of our recommendations. This suggests that the department is not on the same page as the group's experts.

So why is this government afraid of experts, researchers and scientific facts? Why set up working groups on trans fats, sodium, the environment, the F-35s and others, and then dismantle all these groups and reject all their recommendations? Is this government protecting the interests of some—industry, to name just one—to the detriment of all Canadians?

In short, with regard to what we are discussing today—childhood obesity—I will support the hon. member's motion, but at the same time, I would like to remind the House that, although the causes of obesity are complex, we know what can be done to tackle this issue. The time for debate and discussion is over: it is time for action.

I hope this government will take the action necessary to combat childhood obesity in order to protect children's health today and in the years to come, and will take into account the recommendations by the expert panels that it put in place itself.

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to request an emergency debate on the possibility of splitting the budget implementation bill, also known as Bill C-38.

As you probably know, a week ago now, the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park, the House Leader of the Official Opposition and I tried to work with the government to split the bill into separate pieces that could be studied more thoroughly.

This bill is very large, has a very broad scope and affects over 60 laws. That is why we should examine it more thoroughly. This has been our party's position from the beginning.

As you undoubtedly know, House of Commons Procedure and Practice states that an emergency debate is legitimate when the matter “could not be brought before the House within a reasonable time by other means, such as during a supply day”, which is the case here. It also says that an emergency debate must be on a topic that is immediately relevant throughout the nation. This request for an emergency debate indeed meets the requirements set out in this book.

It is impossible for us to properly debate this bill, which is over 425 pages long. In fact, the House has passed a time allocation motion, and the government refuses to split the bill into pieces that could be studied by the appropriate committees.

In my opinion, it would be completely appropriate for the members of the House to rise, speak about and discuss the possibility of splitting this bill so that Canadians and we, as parliamentarians, can be better informed about the scope of this budget implementation bill.

I therefore request authorization to hold this emergency debate in the House.

Employment

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, economic action plan 2012 takes responsible action to support our economy now and over the long term, while keeping taxes low and returning to a balanced budget. While our Conservative government is working to help Canada's economy by implementing economic action plan 2012 through Bill C-38, the NDP and Liberals want to play partisan procedural games to delay and defeat the pro-economic and pro-job growth measures.

Can the minister please inform the House how we are keeping Canada's job market strong?

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-38, a perfect bill for the paper shredder. The Cascades paper company would be happy to de-ink the confetti and make useful, recycled paper out of it.

The death of democracy is seldom sudden. It is almost always a slow and painful death caused by indifference, apathy and cynicism. The first signs of this death are the authoritarian regime's loss of perspective and its insensitivity towards the people. Next, people lose their freedom and the means to criticize the regime.

I would like to read a quote in English. I am relying on the interpreters to ensure that the member opposite understands.

“There is no doubt that dictatorship is a much more efficient way to govern”. That was George W. Bush.

Employment

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Madam Speaker, on February 17, I rose in this House and asked when the government would finally help Toronto families deal with rising inflation and higher gas prices, and help them to make ends meet.

I asked specifically when the government would come up with a real jobs plan, a plan that would provide jobs to help support families instead of low-wage, part-time jobs many families depend on. The government has not created jobs in Toronto. The people in my riding of Scarborough Southwest know and live it every single day. There are fewer and fewer good jobs in Toronto, and therefore more and more families continue to struggle.

When I asked the question of the government, I received a glib, meaningless, puerile response from the Minister of State for Finance. The citizens of Scarborough Southwest, Torontonians and indeed all Canadians deserve much more respect from the member for Macleod and indeed from any member of cabinet in the Canadian government. This would include the parliamentary secretary actually paying attention to a question when it is being posed to her, which she failed to do last night.

We need the member for Macleod and the whole Conservative government to take the needs of Canadian families seriously. The Conservative government has no jobs plan. Canada is losing quality jobs under the Conservatives. Since the Conservatives took office, we have lost over 400,000 good manufacturing jobs. Since September alone, we have lost 60,000 more full-time jobs.

Unemployment now stands at 1.4 million Canadians and three-quarters of the new jobs created since May 2008 have been part-time. Now with the cuts coming as a result of the recent federal budget, 102,000 more may be added to the ranks of the unemployed.

This is shameful, and the government should indeed be ashamed. Yet the Conservatives are sticking with their failed approach of blind, unconditional tax cuts for profitable corporations. They are not creating jobs. Too many multinational companies are taking their tax breaks and then turning around and shipping good jobs overseas, as the member for London—Fanshawe was mentioning with Caterpillar in London as it closed the 450 job Electro-Motive plant.

New Democrats have a practical, affordable plan to create good, full-time jobs, offering targeted tax credits for new hires, implementing investments to help businesses that create jobs, investing in job-creating infrastructure and ensuring foreign investment keeps good jobs here in Canada.

The job situation is getting worse under the Conservatives, not better. Their policies have failed Canadian workers and failed to create Canadian jobs. Now, the Conservatives have introduced a budget which will do nothing to create jobs but, according to journalist, Don Martin has everything but the kitchen sink in it. Believe me, we have looked at it, and we found the kitchen sink in Bill C-38.

Frankly, the bill is just an end run around accountability and transparency from the very Conservative government that made commitments to govern better than the Liberals and to be accountable to Canadians.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, our government's priority is, of course, the economy. We are committed to job creation and economic growth.

As a result, this afternoon we will continue debate on Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act. This bill implements the budget, Canada's economic action plan 2012, to ensure certainty for the economy.

For the benefit of Canadians and parliamentarians, when we introduced the bill, we said we would vote on it on May 14. The second reading vote on the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act will be on May 14.

After tomorrow, which will be the final day of debate on this bill, we will have had the longest second reading debate on a budget bill in at least the last two decades.

On Monday and Tuesday we will continue with another bill that will support the Canadian economy and job creation, especially in the digital and creative sectors.

We will have report stage and third reading debate on Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act.

This bill puts forth a balanced, common sense plan to modernize our copyright laws. Committees have met for over 60 hours and heard from almost 200 witnesses. All of this is in addition to the second reading debate on Bill C-11 of 10 sitting days.

After all that debate and study, it is time for the measures to be fully implemented so Canadians can take advantage of the updated rules and create new high-quality digital jobs.

Should the opposition agree that we have already had ample debate on Bill C-11, we will debate Bill C-25, the pooled registered pension plans act; Bill C-23, the Canada–Jordan free trade act; and Bill C-15, the strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act in the remaining time on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday, May 16, will be the next allotted day.

On Thursday morning, May 17, we will debate the pooled registered pension plans act. This bill will help Canadians who are self-employed or who work for a small business to secure a stable retirement.

In the last election, we committed to Canadians that we would implement these plans as soon as possible. This is what Canadians voted for and this is what we will do.

If it has been reported back from committee, we will call Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, for report stage debate on Thursday afternoon.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that the government does not want to listen to Canadians, does not respect parliamentary conventions and does not want to split Bill C-38, the Trojan Horse.

This bill will gut environmental protections, take money out of the hands of pensioners and further reduce the powers of the Auditor General.

I am wondering what else the government has in store for Canadians.

Jobs, Growth and Long Term Prosperity Act

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in this same spirit of compromise and in the interest of having a reasonable and reasoned debate on a very broad bill, and also in an effort to honour democracy, I am seeking the unanimous consent of the House to move the following motion: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, clauses 68 to 131 be removed from Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, and do compose Bill C-38A; that Bill C-38A be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources; that Bill C-38 be reprinted as amended; and that the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary to give effect to this motion.

We are proposing this motion because Canadians and Quebeckers want a debate on the many far-reaching changes that are included in the bill.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of having a full debate on some important and complex legislation, and in an effort to reach out to our colleagues on the other side of the House, I would like to seek unanimous consent to move the following motion: that notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, clauses 412 to 419, 473 to 475, 506 to 515, be removed from Bill C-38, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures and do compose Bill C-38(A); that Bill C-38(A) be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food; that Bill C-38 be reprinted as amended; and, that the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary to give effect to this motion.

We are proposing this motion because we believe Canadians deserve a full democratic debate on some very complicated and far-reaching changes that are included in the bill.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of a proper analysis of this bill, I would seek unanimous consent of the House to move the following motion: That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, clauses 218 to 222, 420 to 426, 468 to 472, 476 to 478, 516 to 524, and 711 to 712 be removed from Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, and do compose Bill C-38A; that Bill C-38A be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates; that Bill C-38 be reprinted as amended; and that the law clerk and parliamentary counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary to give effect to this motion.

We are proposing this motion to ensure that this important and far-reaching bill be studied properly by various committees, given the number of laws it would amend.