Bill C-331 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Federal Courts Act (international promotion and protection of human rights)

This enactment amends the Federal Courts Act to provide for the jurisdiction of the Federal Court over civil claims brought by non-Canadians in respect of alleged violations outside Canada of international law or a treaty to which Canada is party.

Opposition Motion—Government Policies

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we actually deal in facts, science and evidence and not just throw things out there for the sake of trying to perpetuate a discussion to oppose meaningful action.

I find it extraordinarily frustrating when I see things like what we see going on in Ontario right now. I look at the Ford government's decision to cut programs to plant 50 million trees. I look at the Premier visiting flood plains and saying that something must be happening shortly after he has cut funding to prevent floods across the province of Ontario.

The reality is that the federal government has access to an incredible body of scientists. In Nova Scotia, one of the things that frustrated me and inspired me to get involved in politics in the first place was the decision of the previous government to eliminate the research that was already completed and on hand at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

The fact is that we have experts whose careers have been dedicated to providing us with the solutions. All we need to do is find the political will to implement them.

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

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary for environment and climate change, knows how deeply I lament the weakness of the government's plan, just as much or more than I lament the fact that the Conservatives have no plan. The Liberal plan will take us nowhere near Stephen Harper's old target, which puts us on a path, as the hon. parliamentary secretary well knows, to catastrophic climate breakdown that could deprive our own children of a livable world.

We are in a climate emergency, yet in this place, as in many parliaments around the world, we continue to pretend that the incremental efforts to do something in the right direction should be applauded, even as we know, and this is a really enormous example of cognitive dissonance, that what we are doing now is not enough to protect our children.

The Conservatives may not know it. Some do. Certainly some hon. Conservative members know it. The NDP should know it, but its plans are also nowhere near achieving the kinds of reductions that actually are about phasing out fossil fuels, 100%, by 2050 and cutting Canada's use of fossil fuels by at least 50% within a decade.

I do not think it is solely corporate influence, but can the hon. parliamentary secretary deny that corporate influence is a big part of why a government tries to have its cake and eat it too? It brings in carbon taxes and then buys a pipeline.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the hon. member on her recent nuptials. I have a few friends who attended, and they said it was an incredible time. I want to personally congratulate her, on the record.

When it comes to the member's question, she is absolutely right that we need to be doing more and more. We have to have a plan that is based on science that is going to protect us against the kind of catastrophic danger she warns of.

The fact is that we are trying to implement the solutions that will have the greatest impact. That is why we are accepting the advice of people like Professor William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for his development of the kind of approach to pricing pollution we are now implementing. That is why we are making the largest investment in the history of public transit and embracing green technology and green infrastructure. I look forward to continuing to put forward more and more.

On the issue the member raised about corporate influence, it is important that when we are developing policy, we pay attention to how it is going to have an impact on Canadian industry and the Canadian economy as well. I believe that climate change is not just a great challenge for us but is an extraordinary opportunity. If we can work with companies to help them become more efficient and put people to work converting us towards a more effective and efficient future, then I think we are on the right track. I look forward to getting there one day alongside the member.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou.

It is a real honour to rise in this House. The parliamentary secretary's comments must have been hard to make when serving under a prime minister who has exhibited very stunning hypocrisy on the climate file. The Prime Minister spends more time flying to his vacations than most Canadians have spent on a vacation in the last five years, whether that is private flights by jet and helicopter to the Aga Khan's island; private trips to Florida, and then back to Ottawa, back to Florida and back to Ottawa again in the same week; or taking the jet to Tofino for the weekend to go flying again.

Therefore, I will take no lessons regarding my carbon footprint from the Liberals, when my carbon footprint comes from heating my home, as most Canadians do here in Canada, one of the world's harshest climates. That is not a luxury or a behaviour to be corrected. I drive my car to work, but I would love the opportunity to take public transit across the great riding of Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes—

[An hon. member]

Is Ford building you a subway, too?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

—but we are not going to be taking lessons from the Liberals.

The parliamentary secretary made some great comments about civil discourse in the House. I agree that all members come here with the best interests of their constituents and all Canadians in mind. However, to get a lesson on conduct in the House, when his peers around him have already heckled me during my speech, is pretty rich coming from these folks who are speaking against a motion, as they continue, in their shining example of conduct in the House, to speak over top of me. We talk about ethical conduct. The current government gets an F on the report card, for sure.

[An hon. member]

Stop whining and speak.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

There is a member speaking over me right now who is actually so poorly engaged in the democratic process that he suggested that the Premier of Ontario be whacked or have a hit taken out on him. Again, it is very disappointing from these folks over here.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Regarding respect for this House, one cannot do indirectly what one cannot do directly. Therefore, if someone is making accusations that a member from the other side is threatening a premier, he should at least have the decency to name him or withdraw the comment.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay for his comment. Certainly, when it comes to this kind of speech, if it is directed to a person who is a member of the chamber, the rules on parliamentary language are fairly clear. That said, we encourage all hon. members to use styling and phrasing of their ideas and arguments that do not invoke a conclusion of that nature. Therefore, while I did not hear anything specifically unparliamentary in the comments by the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, I encourage him to avoid that kind of speech.

The hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I encourage the member opposite to be judicious in his choice of words when speaking about democratically elected provincial leaders in this country. That kind of language used by the member was not honourable or parliamentary. In fact, it was not said in this House; it was said on the public record. Therefore, I am not going to take the opportunity or any of my time to withdraw the comments. The member knows what he said, and he knows that is was absolutely inappropriate.

Since taking my seat in this chamber in December, I have had a front row seat to some of the most disturbing and troubling behaviour by a government in modern history. No one who is engaged in pop culture will be surprised that the government made it all the way to The Simpsons last night. I know my hon. colleagues were excited to have one of their co-workers portrayed on The Simpsons, but it was in a shameful way. We are talking about the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Going back to 2015, lobbyists' influence started to take hold on the Liberal government. The sunny ways promised in the election are not what Canadians received. Instead, we see a company accused of bribery to the tune of $48 million, a company that had yachts and prostitutes on offer for Libyan government officials and that is alleged to have defrauded the Libyan people to the tune of $130 million. This has been the undertone of the SNC-Lavalin issue and why it will be facing a judge.

Had SNC-Lavalin gotten its wish, it would have received a deferred prosecution agreement. That remedy was not available in law at the time, so SNC-Lavalin began working on the government. It started working on ministers, backbenchers and the Prime Minister's Office. Because it had that access and was able to get access to the chief clerk of the Privy Council Office, in 2018 it was able to get the deferred prosecution agreement introduced through the budget, and now that tool is available.

However, what the government did not count on was that it had people in cabinet who would stand up against that type of unethical behaviour. There were horrendous actions by this company, which took advantage of the Libyan people trying to recover from a bloody civil war. It offered no contrition for its actions but said that it had hired new people, that it had changed and that it was a new company, so it should not be punished for the actions of people who had the job before. The Liberal government thought it would be a great idea to give it a DPA, so that it would not have its day in court and it would face some much more modest penalties.

Liberals will say that it is not a get out of jail free card. If it is not something sought after, then why did they work so hard and engage in so many meetings to do it? Why have we learned since then that the Prime Minister would fire his Attorney General for not following through on the actions that the lobbyists had the government insert in the budget bill? Liberals went on to see another cabinet minister resign. The Prime Minister's principal secretary resigned, as did the chief clerk of the Privy Council. This was all born out of those meetings, the meetings those lobbyists were able to effect over and over again.

Inserting the DPA in the 2018 budget, giving the possibility of that remedy to the courts, was another broken promise by the government. It took lobbyists to convince the government to do that. The broken promise was that there would be no more sweeping omnibus bills under the sunny ways of the Prime Minister. However, in the back of a 500-page omnibus financial document, the government sought to help out its friends in a powerful corporation. That powerful corporation is well known to the Liberals. It cut them donations to the tune of over $100,000, which they later had to return.

Liberals will deny this. They will deny that there has been unethical behaviour, which the Prime Minister has done several times. They will say there is nothing to see here. However, whether through providing DPAs for friends or providing $12 million for fridges for Canada's most wealthy, the government has not heard a good idea from a corporate lobbyist that it has not tried to get Canadians to pay for.

These decisions are made by a prime minister who is flying from coast to coast, north to south, on vacation getaways that most Canadians can only dream about. They can only dream about them because Canadians are just a couple of hundred bucks away from insolvency under the government. They only wish that they could get the kind of access the corporate elite gets from the government.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the member opposite can tell that I was listening intently to this debate and his speech, because it provoked many responses in me.

The SNC-Lavalin affair, the event the member is so concerned about, happened under the Harper government's watch. In fact, the very trip to Libya that is under investigation is a trip on which John Baird accompanied SNC-Lavalin. John Baird had to resign his post in government two weeks after he accompanied SNC-Lavalin to Libya. Conservatives may want to release cabinet details about that. A month after his resignation, charges were laid.

Is the member opposite prepared to release the cabinet documents, as well as the conversations between John Baird and Stephen Harper, that relate to what John Baird was doing in Libya with SNC-Lavalin, noting what relationship that might have with some of the allegations the member referenced regarding prostitution?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that the member for Spadina—Fort York knows that it is his turn to speak when he is recognized by the Speaker. He is, of course, the member I referenced who made the egregious comments about the Premier of Ontario. He should be ashamed.

There is smoke and mirrors from the Liberals when they say SNC-Lavalin committed a crime when the Conservatives were in government. We would like to see SNC prosecuted for those crimes. We do not want it to get a special deal. We do not want the elite Laurentian Liberals to decide judicial outcomes in this country. Just because they did not like the course that was charted by the former attorney general, that does not mean she should have been summarily fired.

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

Mr. Speaker, to my hon. colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, I am again going to point out that the differences are not so much differences but continuing evidence that companies like SNC-Lavalin, or the large corporate influencers in Canada, get through doors that other Canadians cannot get through, whether they are civil service doors or political election doors.

We heard the earlier example of the trip to Libya involving then Conservative foreign affairs minister John Baird. However, the elevation of the people associated with this scandal by former prime minister Stephen Harper includes Arthur Porter, who was implicated in a bribery scandal with SNC-Lavalin over the McGill hospital issue. He was given the highest security clearance in this country and was made the head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee by former prime minister Harper.

The man who was the chair of SNC-Lavalin through all of the dealings that are before the court at the moment, and who was also chair of the governance committee, was another one of Stephen Harper's most trusted and closest corporate friends. That was Gwyn Morgan. He has a career in the energy business, but Stephen Harper put him forward to be the head of the national public appointments commission.

My point here is not to attack any one individual, but to say that the pattern of government influence by corporations like SNC-Lavalin, regardless of who is in office, is a real problem. We should be getting at that. How do we root out what is essentially systemic levels of corruption, because our governments in general have become too beholden to corporate interests and influence?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands will get that Senate appointment that she is looking for from the Liberals quite soon.

When it comes to this SNC-Lavalin scandal and the Liberals, we have never seen anything like it. When people were called on the carpet, it resulted in, as was predicted by the then attorney general, a Saturday night massacre. Everybody lost their jobs. We lost the attorney general, we lost the Treasury Board president, we lost the Clerk of the Privy Council and we lost the Prime Minister's BFF, Gerry Butts. Everybody was fired. Then we had a game of cabinet shuffles every week. This is unprecedented, and it is all born from corruption that is sourced and rooted at the highest levels of the Liberal government.