Bill C-24 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act

This enactment amends the Salaries Act to authorize payment, out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund, of the salaries for eight new ministerial positions. It authorizes the Governor in Council to designate departments to support the ministers who occupy those positions and authorizes those ministers to delegate their powers, duties or functions to officers or employees of the designated departments. It also makes a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act.

Speaker's Ruling

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to what the status of women minister has done about violence against women, let us just look at some of the numbers from this government. Remember, the government is spending $20 million a year to eliminate violence against women, despite the violence impacting one in three indigenous women and one in four Canadian women. However, $12 billion was given to other countries, and $400 million more was spent to collect Statistics Canada data. Does that tell us the priority the Liberal government is putting on violence against women?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to get into a debate about which member of cabinet is more influential and important, because sometimes that changes with personalities. We all know that different cabinets take on different structures. Sometimes a member with a so-called lower level portfolio has more influence at the cabinet table and with the Prime Minister. One way is to follow the money. Sometimes it matters quite a bit. As my colleague pointed out, ministers with portfolios that have a large department and large impact, such as defence and finance, typically have proportionate influence.

I am confused about this whole bill and wonder if the member can help me out. I am often confused by Liberal doublespeak. I am unsure how to phrase this. At committee when this bill was going through, questions were put forward. Is this bill about gender equality? Has it been put through a gender lens? Is that what this legislation is about?

The Liberals at committee said absolutely not, that this bill was not about that. However, with the bill now in the House, other Liberals have stood to say that this bill is about all of that. Can she help me and Canadians understand what this bill, which is consuming so many hours in the House of Commons, is actually about? Is it about what Liberals did not apply, which is a gender analysis lens to this piece of legislation, or virtually any piece of legislation which they promised to do, or is it about what Liberals studying the bill are now saying it is about?

The Prime Minister made this great commitment that the cabinet would be balanced. However, a reporter pointed out that the cabinet was not gender balanced; rather, the Prime Minister was including some ministers at the secretary of the state level, as what have traditionally been called “junior” ministers. They were included in that number to make the cabinet look balanced. Is this not to repair their claim, and to make what was false now true by simply changing the designations and the pay of each of the individual members of this now larger cabinet?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that excellent point. He has pointed out the utter hypocrisy between what the Liberals say and do, and the way the message changes as they go along. We saw this during the recent disastrous tax changes that the finance minister introduced. At the beginning he said, “We are going after the wealthy 1%. People are not paying their fair share of taxes.”

The Liberals were very strong and chose to double down on that. However, when they started to see the huge fire created across Canada, they said, “We're consulting with Canadians. We're going to listen to Canadians”. Then, when it became the climbdown that it was, they said, “Well, there are a few tweaks that we've got to make to our proposals.”

We saw the same thing when this bill came forward, namely, that it was not about gender parity. In reality, it should not be about gender parity because jobs are evaluated based on one's skills, experience, and levels of responsibility. There are many global systems that people use to determine what the pay grade should be based on those factors, and not based on gender.

However, when it is convenient and the Prime Minister wants to look like a feminist or as if he is doing the right thing for a photo op or a headline, and not for the actual money on the bottom line that he is putting into the budget, he does exactly what the member said he does.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the reason feminism is material to this bill is that colleagues in the Liberal Party have talked about the Prime Minister's feminist bona fides. Colleagues in my party have talked about whether this bill is actually feminist. Colleagues in the NDP have raised the same question. I want to have a more honest conversation today.

Two days ago, in the House of Commons, the Minister of Status of Women was asked a question by one of her colleagues on the Liberal backbench about feminism and different slurs that have been used. She made a reference to two things that have made the news recently. One was calling parliamentary colleagues Barbies. I have had the great pleasure of being called that before. In fact, an artist in Manitoba, who I understand actually had grants at the time, although I am not sure, from the Manitoba Arts Council, put together a movie that insinuated that I was a talking-point Barbie, so I have some sympathy. The minister also talked about a very derogatory term, “feminazi”, being used.

The problem I had with the Minister of Status of Women's response was that she made a glib comment that I think was designed to absolve her party of guilt on this aspect. To me, rather than being honest about the fact that none of us, to put it politely, is perfect in this regard, and no party is fantastic about this, the minister herself stood very proudly and very glibly ignored this key fact. I raised comments made by one of her colleagues. If I had had more time to find the quote, I could have raised the fact that one of her colleagues may have insinuated that one of my colleagues was akin to a stripper. Some of my colleagues opposite are now sitting on the independent benches for various reasons.

We are all uncomfortable here now, and we should be, because when we talk about being feminist and standing up for women's rights, we cannot pay lip service or make it a partisan issue. That is what we do here over and over again. I am not going to pretend that my party has been perfect, and I am also not going to wave the stick at just the Liberal Party. I am going to ask all members in the House to do a lot better.

With regard to this bill, if my colleagues in the Liberal Party really support women's rights, they are going to tell the Prime Minister that maybe it is not right to pass a bill that calls female ministers equal when they do not have the ability to bring memoranda to cabinet. For my colleagues on the Liberal backbench who do not understand what that means, it means that there are people in the “gender-parity cabinet” who are called full cabinet members, and are included in the count of their quota, who do not have the right to bring a topic to cabinet for consideration without the approval of a senior, and in most cases male, minister.

They also do not have the right to chair cabinet committees. In fact, if we look at the chairmanship and composition of the Prime Minister's cabinet committees, which is where the real power is in government, which you know, Mr. Speaker, and all of us in this place know, it is actually a lie and an affront to say that there is gender parity in that cabinet. If we are going to be uncomfortable, let us talk about that fact.

Rather than enshrining this in law and having people stand here and extol the virtues of it, let us call a spade a spade. This bill would not create gender parity. It would make women in cabinet say that they are equal, even when they are not, because of the Prime Minister's ego. That is the antithesis of feminism. That is making women cover over inequality for the political gain of a man. I do not care what political stripe members are in this place, that is wrong.

I have had to roll my eyes and facepalm when some of my male colleagues have said things that made me absolutely and completely angry, things that were cringeworthy. I have talked to them afterward and said that I was not going to carry the bag for them. They know that.

I am very proud of the advances my party has made for women in this country. We might not agree on how to achieve gender equality, but if we are going to move forward on that, I would like to think that we are going to agree that a bill like this does not do it.

I do not care if the Prime Minister calls himself a feminist. He should be putting his money where his mouth is all the time, and this bill does not do it. I cannot support it, nor should any member of the Liberal caucus. I would like to see them talk to the minister and say that I have a point and this should be tweaked.

I was appointed as a junior cabinet minister. I was appointed as a minister of state. I was really glad to do that, because it gave me time to understand how the bureaucracy worked, how government worked, and how the cabinet table worked. Male colleagues were appointed by former Prime Minister Harper to the same role. It was not about gender. To me it was about career progression. I had someone who believed in me and thought I had the potential to be a senior member of government but who also gave me time to learn how government worked before the onslaught of question period and media scrums.

We know that there are ministers in the government, and I am sure they are well-intentioned and came to Ottawa wanting to effect change, who do not know how to do their jobs. They do not understand that bureaucrats are going to put out memos for them to sign off on about things like taxing employee discounts. They are not going to understand that it means that they should not sign off on those memos and should review things.

I had time to learn how that worked before I was stuck in as a minister of national revenue. That is not a bad thing. That is a good thing. I am so honoured that I had the opportunity to learn how to do that while contributing to government.

Here we are today with a bill that says that it would create gender parity in cabinet, and it would not. How can people across the way stand and say that it is a great advancement for feminism, when it is not?

A better way to have more women in politics and around the cabinet table would be if we understood that there are tools at our disposal right now. Earlier in the debate, one of my colleagues talked about the fact that the Prime Minister already has in his toolkit the ability to have full cabinet ministers. Hopefully they would be, as they have been across different governments, people who have a degree of experience in this place and in parliamentary committees and an understanding of how government works. That is a different skill set than they would have in any private sector industry or NGO. This place has a learned skill set, and that is okay.

Focusing on tokenism, and then trying to cover it up with a thin veil of feminism that is false, is actually doing a disservice to Canadians, because we are throwing people into situations when they are not ready to govern. That abdicates our fiduciary responsibility to Canadian taxpayers. It abdicates our responsibility to the public service to understand how to translate a political mandate into change within the public service. It abdicates our responsibility to Canadians in that ministers have to understand how those two things work together when they are bringing bills forward in the House of Commons and through committee. It abdicates our responsibility to women, because we are calling something feminist when it is not.

I am not going to stand here and say that I am perfect or that anyone in this House is perfect, but by standing here pretending that this bill is feminist, we are doing a disservice to all Canadians.

My colleagues opposite should go into their caucus room next week and say that maybe they should make some changes to this bill. It can be done in committee. It does not work right now. It is not doing it for me, it is not doing it for the NDP, and I am sure it is not doing it for a lot of people in the Liberal caucus.

Let us do something that resembles work in this place. Let us have a debate, translate those changes at committee, especially given the testimony we heard at the government operations committee, and have a bill that creates, not stymies, gender equality.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a central focus of the member's concern about the bill was memoranda to cabinet. Within our government, with our Prime Minister, all ministers within the ministry can provide a memorandum to cabinet. I was wondering if, given that fact, it changes the hon. member's view of the bill, as that was a central focus of concern for her.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that under the structure created by the Prime Minister, there are certain ministers in cabinet, many of them women, who have to report to senior members within the cabinet who are men. That is not gender equality.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue on the theme of gender equality, which I was surprised to hear Liberals bring up in today's debate. We had a witness at committee, Professor Margot Young, from the Allard School of Law at UBC, who said:

Framing this as a bill that somehow addresses issues around gender equity in the current cabinet composition is a mistake, and it's a mistake of significant ideological character....

...to respond to a question about women in the cabinet by saying simply “because it's 2015” loses a key leadership moment to articulate and shape opinion about what it means to actually have women in positions of equality, in positions of leadership and power.

In response to that, the Liberal member for Don Valley East said:

I thank you for being here, but I don't think we have the relevance to our study for Bill C-24....

If you have any additional points to make.... They would not be regarding this bill, because it is irrelevant to what you are saying. There is nothing that says it is a gender-balanced bill; there is no indication that it has anything to do with gender equality.

Members might forgive me for being surprised to hear Liberals saying today that the bill has everything to do with gender equality.

The member for Newmarket—Aurora said, in response to the same witness:

I don't disagree with anything you've said. I'm not sure the purpose of this bill was at all to express gender equality.... I don't think it's meant to be a tool that's going to address gender inequality, pay equity, or any of the other issues you raised in your opening [statement].

I would like to know what the member thinks about that.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am tired of feminism being used as a word and a tool for political gain by all parties in the House. I am tired of tokenism. I am tired of having worked my way up to where I am and having bills like this come to the House of Commons. I am tired of having Liberal colleagues, colleagues of all political stripes, stand up on technicalities, saying that maybe this is not this and that.

If we are going to get serious about gender equality, this debate has to stop. We have been having this debate for 30 years. We need to stop putting bills like this forward, stop technicalities, and stop having announcements about gender parity when it is not gender parity. We need to start empowering women and overcoming systemic barriers to allow women to participate in all facets of society. The Prime Minister needs to stop saying that he is a feminist to sell his socks on the cover of international magazines.

That is the difference between this and a true conversation about feminism that we can achieve through different policy mechanisms. It is not based on one political stripe or one political ideology. We cannot gloss over the fact that it is a convenient label to sell votes. That has to stop.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to switch the channel a bit and ask the member if she could talk about the days when she was minister of state for western economic development, which is a regional development agency that is going to be cut off. Under this legislation, there will not be ministers for regional economic development agencies. What if a minister from Toronto had been the minister in charge of WED? I wonder if my colleague could talk about that and the work she did in that portfolio.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, sadly, there are a lot of Calgarians and Albertans who are used to Toronto telling them what to do. I will leave it at that.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill for pointing out the vacuousness of the Liberals' position on gender equality. It is all show and very little tell when it comes to their position. I thank her for that very gracious yet succinct effort to expose what the Liberals have really done on gender equality, which is very little.

I want to go to the other part of this bill, which addresses the regional economic development facilities we have across the country. Bill C-24 effectively does the following. It abandons a decentralized decision-making process and replaces it with a highly centralized top-down decision-making process when it comes to the regions of our country, to my region of the country, British Columbia, in the west, to the northern areas of our country, to eastern Canada, and to the Atlantic provinces. What this bill does is effectively create eight new Liberal ministerial positions, which reflects the five minister of state roles that were filled after the 2015 election. It also does something else. It adds three Liberal ministers yet to be named. I will get back to that in a moment, because it comes down to transparency. I can say that, after 12 years in this House, it is the first time I have seen legislation come forward that creates undefined ministerial posts without any idea of what purpose they will serve.

Also, Bill C-24 formally eliminates the positions of the six ministers for the regional development agencies across the country, agencies like Western Economic Diversification Canada, FedNor, and ACOA in Atlantic Canada. That must be concerning to everyone in this House, because it reduces the accountability of government to the regions and the communities across this country.

In my early years as a politician, I was a member of city council. It has been said, quite correctly, that city council is the level of government closest to the people. When I was sitting on city council, we had residents of our communities come forward and make their concerns known. They would bring us their proposals as to how they wanted to see our city develop. We could make decisions that very night or day, and the next day we could start implementing those decisions. What was great was that, as a municipal councillor, because we were from that very community, we could hear directly from the people affected by our decisions, and we could tailor our policies and programs accordingly.

What is happening now federally is the exact opposite. The ministers who were appointed to the various economic development agencies in the main regions across the country were the ones who had their ear to the ground. They were the eyes and ears of the government when it came to that region of the country. What the current Liberal government has done is quite arbitrarily said, without any consultation with the regions, that it will not have any ministers for the regions but will simply get rid of them and appoint a minister from Toronto to make all major decisions relating to those regions. I do not want to begrudge Toronto and Ontario with a minister responsible for economic development, but I can say that once we get out into the other regions of the country they will be saying, “What happened? What about us? There is somebody in Toronto making decisions for us out here in the region.” That should be embarrassing for the Liberal government.

What should be even more embarrassing is this. In the last election the Liberal Party elected 32 members of Parliament from Atlantic Canada. One would figure that out of 32 members of Parliament, the Prime Minister could find one who would be the representative for ACOA , and represent the interests of Atlantic Canada.

He just could not get his mind around that and said that it would be better, rather than having an Atlantic Canada minister, to appoint someone from downtown Toronto to make these decisions. I think of our democratic process, about the accountability that governments should be focusing on, and about responsiveness to the very people whom each one of us serve when we are establishing ministries that are focused on ensuring that every region of our country benefits from economic development. We should make sure we also appoint people to represent those regions and to be the voice in cabinet of those regional development agencies and of the people who live in those regions.

How do I know there is a lot of concern? We just have to ask the people from Atlantic Canada. For example, Conservative leader Jamie Baillie, said, that appointing an ACOA minister from Toronto, “is yet another sign that the Liberals are taking Atlantic Canada for granted.” We saw that with the appointment of a Supreme Court justice from that region and how long it took for the current Liberal government to finally understand that Atlantic Canadians needed to have a voice on the Supreme Court.

We go on to Éric Tétrault, president of the Quebec Manufacturers and Exporters. He indicated that he hoped that the situation would not be a total loss and that a Quebec MP might be put in charge of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the regions of Quebec. Did that happen? Of course it did not. He went on to say, “We have quite a few development programs with them [being a government] in areas such as innovation and skilled labour. We are afraid they'll get mixed up with a national policy that won't necessarily work for Quebec. If we have to deal with officials as far away as Toronto or Ottawa to get the government to pay attention to problems with the Quebec economy, we're in trouble.”

We are hearing that across the country.

Let us go back. I was reading the Cape Breton Post, and this is what it said:

The more you push...out to big centres, like Toronto, Ottawa, or maybe, Montreal, as the base of decision-making for those organizations, the less in tune they are with the regions that they're trying to help the most.

As we focus on developing an economy that is truly going to share the prosperity of this country with every Canadian, with every community across this country, and with every region, the government has to understand that the government members need to have their ear to the ground in each of those regions. It is not enough to say, as the member across the way just suggested, that they have 32 MPs from the area. Do the Liberals have any representation when it comes to economic development?

The previous government understood full well how important it was to have a member of cabinet who was also designated the person to represent the interests in that person's region. That is why there were not a lot of complaints heard across Canada. One of the concerns I have is that this decision was taken because the Prime Minister has completely capitulated to our public service. We know that for years our public service has not necessarily been a big fan of these regional economic development agencies. Now of course the public service has the Prime Minister, who will do its bidding, and has eliminated the key ministers who could have provided the ears to the ground and the eyes in the region that would have allowed the government to make good decisions for economic development in every part of our country.

I have one last thought. Bill C-24 also lacks transparency. As I mentioned earlier, the bill would appoint three mystery ministers for whom the job description has not been defined. That is a lack of transparency. The government, by stealth, is trying to introduce ministerial positions and Canadians have no idea what the positions are going to entail.

Therefore, this bill, Bill C-24, is very disappointing to me, to our Conservative Party, and certainly to Canadians across this great country of ours.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard a number of Conservatives refer to the Minister of Innovation as the minister from Toronto. We would be more than happy to bring forward a map for hon. members on the other side, because his constituents would think differently about where they are from.

The hon. member was concerned about Atlantic Canada, an area of the country in which the Conservatives did not win any seats. In terms of the hard work of 32 members of Parliament from Atlantic Canada standing up and demanding better than the previous government, we have seen $282.7 million invested in ACOA for innovative, evidence-based growth, working with the Atlantic immigration pilot project to increase immigration, which the Atlantic provinces want. Our minister is listening to the hard-working MPs who are bringing forward those concerns. Is that a concept that did not exist in the previous government? The results speak for themselves.

With the economy firing on all cylinders, how can the hon. member be opposed to this particular plan?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we see the disingenuousness of that question when we think about energy east. Energy east was strongly supported in the Atlantic provinces but the Atlantic provinces did not have a regional minister who could advocate for them. What happened? The federal government stuck its finger into the pie, messed around a bit, interfered in the process, and energy east threw up its hands and said it is no longer going to invest in Canada. That is what comes from a Liberal government, a top-down, centralized government not in tune with the regions.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the focus of the member's speech was more on the issue of regional economic development ministers. With respect to that, one of the funny things about this legislation is that the Liberals are keen to eliminate the option for separate economic development ministries to reflect the current practices of government, but they are not doing other things that would reflect the current practices of government, like getting rid of ministers of state. That would be a bad idea in our opinion, but it would reflect the current practice of the government. There is a double standard when it comes to what they want the legislation to reflect and what they do not want it to reflect.

I do want to come back briefly to the issue of gender equality in cabinet and back to the committee meeting where we learned some interesting things from some of the Liberals on that committee. One witness at committee said:

The second point I want to make is that to claim that it is about gender equality [not only is a mistake but] is dangerous. I think it's dangerous because too often we cut off the really important, substantial, and tough conversations about gender equality by claiming that we've already dealt with it and we've dealt with it in some more formalistic way.

That is why I suppose Liberals on committee were quick to deny that the bill was about gender equality, because they did not want to be doing that very thing, where they pretended that we had dealt with substantive gender equality issues when we had not in fact. That is why it is such a surprise to hear Liberals making that argument again.

I am wondering if the member has any thoughts on why Liberals today in the House would be so keen to muddy waters that their colleagues at committee thought it was important to keep clear.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the father of four wonderful grown daughters who have their own careers and who have really blessed our lives and blessed the lives of people around them, I know how important gender equality is, but it cannot be artificial gender equality and that is what happened here with the Liberal government. The Liberal government is great at photo-ops. It is great at using slogans, but when it comes to addressing the underlying reasons why women are not rightfully taking their place in our society, the Liberals are an absolute failure.

We need to empower women to understand that they can aspire to anything in this country, whether it is to be in the House of Commons, whether it is to be the CEO of one of the most powerful corporations in our country, whether it is to be the principal of their school, or whether it is to be in their home providing leadership as a mother, as a mentor, to their kids.

I concur with the member. Even though Bill C-24 pretends to be a bill that would strengthen the Liberal government's reputation for gender equality it actually undermines it, because it is fake.