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.

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 time frame 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.