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

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Madam Speaker, in response to my colleague's question, I would say that it is important to note that in the case of this particular company, 75% of the funding comes from private enterprise. This will be like taking 50,000 cars off the road in Canada, which is something very concrete to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is just one initiative among many. It was assessed on its merits through a very rigorous process.

Our government's plan to combat climate change goes beyond this initiative. We have made historic investments in public transit, and these investments are helping to develop a vision for public transit across the country. As members know, this is a good way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other investments in the environment include programs like the clean water and wastewater fund, or CWWF, which helps municipalities across Quebec and the rest of Canada with their waste water treatment systems. These types of investments do not always make the headlines, but they are helping us protect the environment and do our part in combatting climate change.

Putting a price on pollution is another aspect. Phasing out coal is another. People like Steven Guilbeault and Sidney Ribaux, from Équiterre and who now work for the City of Montreal, say that they have never before seen a federal government so committed to climate action. We have a range of measures for combatting climate change, as I have demonstrated.

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

Madam Speaker, it is very interesting that when the NDP members speak about this debate and the $12 million, out of a $48-million investment, they do not mention the fact that it will be the equivalent of 50,000 cars taken off the road. I do not know why they would hide that. The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay is laughing, because he thinks it is funny that there will be a GHG reduction. I do not know why he finds that funny, coming from the north.

That being said, my question is in regard to the official opposition. It has been said that the Conservatives do not have a climate plan. It turns out that they do, but it seems that the only plank of that climate plan is to build a pipeline through Quebec. I was wondering if the hon. member could comment on the plan the Conservatives have put forward.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

Anyone willing to believe the Conservatives on the environment is extremely naive. For 10 years they did nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They did nothing to fight climate change. In fact, the only thing they did was embarrass us when it comes to Canada meeting its international obligations on climate change and environmental protection.

They won the fossil awards five years in a row for Canada's inability to acknowledge climate change. Let's not forget that Mr. Harper's science czar was a creationist, which says it all. This was all part of their fight against science that went on for 10 years, a fight against the environment where we saw inaction. Remaining inactive in the fight against climate change when we see what is happening all around the world is abject and shameful. The fact that they still have nothing to say about it is just as abject and shameful.

Canadians are no fools. Whatever the Conservative Party proposes, Canadians will see through that party leader's smile and find Stephen Harper's same old policies, if not worse ones. Faced with the choice, Canadians will agree that the Liberal government may be the one that has been willing to do the most for the environment in the history of Canada. Yes, there remains a lot to be done and yes, we must do more.

People can certainly count on me to keep advocating for that.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, my question is very simple and very brief.

In view of what I just heard from my colleague from the Quebec City region, if we were so inept on the environment, why did the Liberals adopt the same environmental targets that we introduced? They are not even able to achieve those targets.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is one thing to have targets and another to have a plan to reach them. That is what sets us apart from the Conservative Party, which never had a plan.

The only plan they could count on to reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions was the 2008 financial crisis. Then there was the 2015 recession, into which they thrust us with their disastrous environmental and economic policies.

If greenhouse gas emissions were cut during that period it was mainly due to Ontario's Liberal government, which decided to eliminate carbon. No one in the House is naive enough to believe that the Conservatives have a serious environmental plan and that they can defend their record on environmental protection and fighting climate change.

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

Madam Speaker, it is fascinating to hear my hon. colleague talk in this debate about trying to deal with offshore tax havens and how the government is going to deal with them, when this is specifically about the $12 million we gave to Galen Weston, who lives in a gated community, who is now facing, through the justice department, the fact that Loblaws' financial holdings were seen to be holding upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that should have been paid to Canada. It set up an offshore haven in Barbados so that it did not have to pay taxes.

People who are super-rich and friends with the Liberals get money, and then we are told what great people they are. However, when the people I represent do not pay their taxes and do tax cheating, they do not get gifts. They do not get people buying them fridges. They get charged.

Whether it is KPMG, where one of the KPMG directors was appointed to oversee the finances of the Liberal Party after KPMG was found to have set up an international tax fraud scheme, or whether it is Loblaws, which set up its offshore tax haven to avoid paying taxes, the government gives them gifts, because this is the government of the 1%.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why he thinks it is good government policy to give tax money to tax cheats.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Madam Speaker, as usual, the member opposite is mixing up a number of issues to try to leave a certain impression. I think that is disingenuous.

He wants to talk about tax evasion, aggressive tax avoidance and what our government is doing, when the fight against tax evasion was not a priority for a decade. Minister Blackburn in the Harper government said on air on TVA last summer that it was a taboo subject, that they never talked about it and that it was never a priority.

Under our government, the Minister of National Revenue and the Minister of Finance have invested considerably to provide the Canada Revenue Agency with the resources needed to prosecute those who try to hide their assets, their fortune and their income through tax evasion or aggressive tax avoidance. Nearly $1 billion has been invested over the past three years. Before that, the agency did not have the necessary resources, because it was not a priority. It is for us. There have been more investigations and more criminal proceedings, but these things take time.

As for the project he referred to, it is important to remember that the company that makes the refrigerators is in Mississauga, that this will be like taking 50,000 cars off the road and that 75% of the money is coming from the company. It is important not to confuse matters.

If my colleague wants to talk about tax evasion or tax avoidance, unlike the previous Conservative government, our government is giving the Canada Revenue Agency the financial and legislative means to prosecute those who try to evade taxes and avoid paying their fair share.

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

Madam Speaker, I am so proud to rise for the New Democratic Party today. I will be sharing my time with the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

I rise to talk about the corrosive power of the 1% with the current Liberal government. We have a Prime Minister who won so much support from Canadians, because coming after the years of Stephen Harper and the ugly scandals with Nigel Wright and the dodgy senators the Conservatives appointed, such as Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy, we had the present Prime Minister promise to do government a different way. What we saw quickly after the Liberals came to power was the same old grotty, rum-bottle politics on the Rideau that have been the mark of the Liberal Party for the last 150 years. It is always about the friends. It is always about corruption.

When I talk to people back home, they cannot for the life of them understand why this Prime Minister thought it was a good idea to give $12 million to a guy who lives in a gated community in Florida, who fought against giving his employees a living wage and whose company was found guilty of cheating Canadian families out of bread. These are the people who belong to the Laurier Club, and these are the people who are invited to hang out with the Prime Minister and with the senior staff of the environment minister because they give money to the Liberal Party. Canadians know that it is wrong.

The Canadians I represent in the north work hard. They play by the rules. Many of them do not have pensions. Many of them are facing increasingly perilous short-term and contract work. We see not just an attack on the traditional working class but on the new white-collar working class of people who are working as professors with short-term contract work or as health care workers with short-term contract work. They see a system that is moving increasingly against them, yet they have this Prime Minister who said that the Liberals were there to support the middle class and those wanting to join it. This Prime Minister made them believe, but what we have seen with the current government is that it is always about the super-rich and the policies that favour them.

When we saw the Stelco pensions being undermined, just as the Nortel pensions before them had been undermined, and we saw the Sears workers being ripped off by hedge-fund predators, and we asked day after day in this House that the government do something, the Liberals were not going to do anything to help those pensioners. They got up and cried crocodile tears and showed their emotion, but the family business of the finance minister, Morneau Shepell, is the company that got the contracts to wrap up those pensions.

It is about the power of lobbyists. In fact, the Liberals are so tightly in with lobbyists that we had the present finance minister, in 2013, talk about the need to change legislation so that it would be easier for Morneau Shepell to take over the defined pension benefits. In 2014, Morneau Shepell gave recommendations about changing the legislation to make it easier for its business model. Instead of having to have a lobbyist, the company just got its guy elected as finance minister, and the very first thing he did was Bill C-27, which would have made it easy for the privatized pension industry to retroactively go after pension benefits. They were not here to represent working-class people. They were here to represent the investors and the 1%, of which this finance minister is a part.

We have been going after the Liberals for their unwillingness to go after international tax cheats. We have just heard from them that they are taking tax fairness seriously. Really? Loblaws has been found to have set up a Barbados bank. It is claiming that it was just holding the money, but hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money Canadians should have received to improve the system of services for Canadians are not being paid because of this offshore tax haven.

In Canada, when ordinary workers do not pay their taxes, the government comes down on them with all the power it has. However, when Loblaws does not pay its taxes because it has set up an offshore tax haven, it gets a $12 million gift. Then we get told how great it is for the environment. Thank God for Galen Weston.

Canadians might think I am just picking on Galen because he lives in a gated community in Florida and rips families off for the price of bread and does not want to pay a half-decent wage. Canadians might think I am just being mean; it is the whole class-conscious NDP who do not understand how things are with their betters. However, it is the pattern.

It is the pattern we saw with KPMG that established an international tax fraud scheme for the millionaires and billionaires. When it was caught, not a single person was found guilty. Nobody. I go back to folks back home, and my God if they got an overpayment on their EI, there is no mercy. However, KPMG set up this offshore account for rich billionaires to not have to pay taxes, and no one was charged. In fact, not only were there no charges, but, lo and behold, the same month that the Prime Minister stopped the investigation into KPMG, the Liberal Party of Canada hired a KPMG director to oversee the finances of the Liberal Party. I guess if they can set up offshore tax havens, they probably have the moral backbone to represent the Liberal Party.

It is the same with SNC-Lavalin. The government does not understand why it is in trouble. It thinks that getting someone to call into the Prime Minister's office because they worked on the Trudeau Foundation or they go to the same country clubs that it is, “Hey, what is the problem? We were just trying to change the law.” The law on deferred prosecutions was actually rewritten for SNC-Lavalin, and it still did not meet the criteria.

They had a whole series of efforts to intervene and undermine, and get to the director of public prosecutions, which is why the OECD anti-bribery unit is investigating and watching Canada. It said that the government's actions have lit all the alarm bells. We could go on about the SNC issue all day.

However, what I thought was fascinating is that the SNC lawyer fighting Canada is Frank Iacobucci. Michael Wernick told the former attorney general that she had to be careful with this guy, that he was not a shrinking violet. He is also the same guy who was appointed by the Prime Minister to oversee the Trans Mountain consultations. It is the same little circle of friends who look after each other time and time again.

We have a situation here. We need to have a system where Canadians can trust that there is fairness. They cannot have belief and trust when what is being run in Ottawa are the phone calls into the Prime Minister's office to change laws, to do favours, because of who people know in the PMO. That is the fundamental rot that makes people not believe in the system.

We are looking at the environmental crisis we are facing. The government came back, after the Prime Minister showed off his Haida tattoo, and said they would make everything work. It decided that it would stick with Stephen Harper's greenhouse gas emission targets and with Stephen Harper's investments into the oil sector. Our greenhouse gas emissions, because of what is going on in the oil sands, are higher this year than they were last year, which was higher than it was the year before. Year in, year out, the gas keeps rising. Year in, year out, the government continues to subsidize.

The government tells us that if we give $12 million to Galen Weston to fix his fridges, it will show a whole new commitment to environmental change. What it is really showing is that those who are the super-rich, the super-powerful, those who can get invited to the Laurier Club, can get the lobbyists in to see the key ministers and the Prime Minister and go to cash-for-access events will get their way. That is the broken trust that the Prime Minister is going to have to explain to the Canadian people.

I am more than willing to take questions.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened again to another New Democrat talk about the support for the greening of the refrigeration system at Loblaws. They refer to it as some sort of cheque that was being handed off to someone who lived in Florida in a gated community.

The member opposite is probably not aware that the technology, servicing and product being sourced is coming from a firm in Mississauga. In other words, there is a supply chain. While Loblaws is purchasing this technology and this upgrade, it is coming from a firm which has its headquarters in Mississauga.

Would the member opposite like to explain to the workers at the Mississauga firm why he thinks they should not get an investment and why their contribution to new technology, their innovation and their skills, should not be employed by programs that help to benefit the economy?

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

Mr. Speaker, oh dear Lord, how do we deal with the member for Spadina—Fort York who is now saying that giving $12 million to a billionaire who lives in a gated community is really about defending the workers? That is the disconnect of the Liberal Party. It is this belief that it is trickled down, and that if we give to the insider, to the powerful, somehow it is creating jobs. Well, we can create jobs in many ways. We can create jobs with a coherent energy strategy. We can create jobs with a national retrofit program. We can do a lot more than giving $12 million to Galen Weston. Then again, my hon. colleague is the one who told us about the million homes he said that the Liberals built that were never built. I mean, if we are going to talk fiction in the House, we could talk about a million mysterious houses that were never built or about how Galen Weston is helping the working class in Canada by us giving him money.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the member's speech. I would like to give him more of an opportunity to talk about how hopelessly and helplessly disconnected from the reality of regular everyday Canadian families these Liberals are.

I am sure that the member is aware of a well-known study that has been mentioned many times in the House of how some 47% of Canadian families are roughly about $200 away from financial catastrophe. The kind of financial catastrophe that such a family might worry about could be what would happen if they needed to buy a new refrigerator. Here we have a government that sees fit to hand over $12 million to a well-capitalized corporation for it to buy refrigerators. I would like him to comment on that further.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think one of the really shocking things about Galen Weston's attitude was that when he was told he had to pay $15 an hour, which is barely a living wage in any urban centre right now, that he would respond by automating more of his shops so that he did not have to hire people. This is about taking away the jobs that people have. This is about putting people on contract work. This is about the growth of precarious work.

We know that the Prime Minister was against the $15 minimum wage in the federal work sector because he said it would not help anyone. Well it would not help anyone he hangs out with, because he grew up in a different middle class than where my family grew up in as the kids of miners. I know a lot of people who do not make minimum wage back home. I know a lot of people who work three jobs and still cannot make ends meet. The Prime Minister did not think it would help anyone. That is his problem. He is the Prime Minister of the 1%, and he does not have a clue what it is like to be working class or middle class. He thinks, like the member for Spadina—Fort York, that giving money to Galen Weston is somehow going to help workers, rather than just helping the uber-rich.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise in the House to speak to the opposition motion moved by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona. I would like to approach this issue from a slightly different angle. I will begin by reading the preamble to the motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, corporate executives and their lobbyists have had too much access to and influence over the Government of Canada, setting working Canadians and their families back...

The preamble is crucial. The rest of the motion lists examples of how that influence is exerted, but the fact that there is undue and excessive influence on the part of corporate executives and their lobbyists is a growing problem here in Canada.

This is interesting because we started the day off with a debate on my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby's Bill C-331, which is about giving Canadian courts the power to hold Canadian mining companies responsible for things they do in other countries. That makes perfect sense to me because they are Canadian companies. How interesting that the government was besieged by lobbyists representing the Mining Association of Canada and its members, who did not want the new ombudsperson for responsible enterprise to have more power over them. Although we still do not know exactly what the ombudsperson's duties are, we do know the position is vital to holding mining companies accountable, which explains why, even before the mandate was defined, there was a barrage of lobbying aimed at neutralizing the position.

There are many more examples. We have heard a lot about SNC-Lavalin, so I will not spend much time on that. Instead, let me talk about the web giants, also known as GAFA. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, while we were talking about them being given unfair advantages in Canada compared to Canadian companies, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix were unrelentingly lobbying the Liberal government.

Amazon lobbyists and executives had 99 meetings with the Canadian government in 2016-17. Google had 337 registered contacts. Microsoft, for its part, had 35 registered contacts. Netflix had 16. While all this was going on, we were debating whether companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook and Twitter should collect sales tax on their products and advertisements and pay income tax on their revenues. I did not include Amazon in this list, because Amazon Canada collects sales taxes.

This goes beyond lobbying. These companies have had privileged access to members of the government. For example, Google hired former Liberal chief of staff John Brodhead to run a program. Leslie Church, who worked as director of communications at Google, became the chief of staff to the then heritage minister.

As for Microsoft, its national director of corporate affairs used to be the director of operations and outreach for the then Liberal leader, who is now the Prime Minister. There are really a lot of ties between these people. Ultimately, the upshot of all this is that the status quo continues for telecommunications companies and American web giants. Nothing changes. Why? Because this lobbying is highly effective, and these companies can afford it.

My Conservative friends should not feel too smug, because they have some questions to answer about their own history with lobbying. The examples of Arthur Porter and KPMG have been raised in the House.

While CPA Canada, the organization that represents Canadian accounting firms, was seeking to intercede on behalf of its KPMG members, it signed a deal with the federal government to have a say in potential changes to CRA programs and services. This happened under the Conservative government.

Does anyone believe for one second that the whole SNC-Lavalin affair would not have happened under a Conservative government? We know that SNC-Lavalin secured a meeting with the Leader of the Opposition and several other MPs. That meeting was specifically about issues related to law and order and the administration of justice. It was clearly about the situation that has been making headlines for the past few months.

In 2012, I stumbled upon a CBC article published online under the following headline:

“Enbridge lobbying of Harper government a 'success story'.”

At that time, everyone was talking about the northern gateway pipeline. Apparently, there were dozens of meetings between the government and Enbridge lobbyists. In fact, in 2011-12 alone, meetings were held with 12 different lobbyists. In 2006 and in 2010, 27 different lobbyists lobbied the Conservative government to try to make northern gateway a done deal.

I find that interesting, because one of the groups that lobbied the government is called the Clean Air Renewable Energy Coalition, made up of groups as diverse as Enbridge, Shell and ConocoPhillips Canada.

I am not trying to blame anyone in particular, but rather point out the undue influence of the corporate sector in Canada. It is undue influence because it is not transparent and because these companies usually get whatever they want. If we really want to ensure transparency, we need to go further than just the registry of lobbyists. It is estimated that Canadian companies spend about $300 million a year on lobbying activities. Since this is considered to be part of their business activities, they are given tax credits worth about $100 million. This means that we are paying companies so that they can engage in lobbying in the hopes of influencing the government.

Perhaps that does not seem like a lot of money. Every year in the United States, roughly $2.6 billion are spent on lobbying. I want to illustrate just how much that is. That is more money spent on lobbying than is spent on funding the United States House of Representatives and Senate combined. American companies spend more money to appeal to and influence U.S. Congress than U.S. Congress budgets for its own operations. That shows just how powerful a force lobbying is in North America. That is true in the United States and it is true in Canada. Yes, we have the lobbyist registry, but no one knows exactly how much is spent. No one knows exactly how much money has been invested.

Our saving grace is probably the fact that we have a limit on contributions. Companies and corporations cannot contribute directly to campaigns, which makes our system different from the U.S. However, our lobbying system is not better than the U.S. There is more accountability and more transparency with respect to the lobbying that is done in the U.S. than there is in this country.

I will be voting in favour of the motion and I invite other members of the House to do likewise. The reason is simple. We need to be able to examine for ourselves the impact that lobbying has on the life of Parliament and the impact it has on the balance of forces in Canadian society. We do not talk about this enough, and we take for granted that the current reality cannot be changed. It is our responsibility to change that reality, to restore the balance that no longer exists, and to ensure that Parliament, the House of Commons, represents what it is supposed to represent, namely all of the ridings across Canada, not just the economic interests of corporations that are only looking out for number one.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am always interested in what my colleague has to say. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject.

I would like to take this a bit further. When we talk about lobbying, we are talking about a legal activity. I do not want to put words in his mouth and I have my own thoughts on this. When we talk about lobbying, of course there is lobbying by all the major corporations, but there are also interest groups that organize to lobby the government.

How is it that groups that have demonstrated for major changes to employment insurance, for instance, have never won?

When different points are raised about bringing in a pharmacare program, why do the pharmaceutical companies win and not the interest groups?

There are examples of this when it comes to the environment, but I am running out of time. I want to hear from my colleague.

Why is it always the major corporations who win?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Trois-Rivières for his very relevant question.

I am not trying to say that those meetings should not happen. I think that society's interest groups have to be able to meet with members to let them know where they stand and make them aware of certain issues. We are aware of many issues because we need to stay informed for our jobs, but it never hurts to have additional information.

I meet regularly with those types of groups. I also meet with companies, industry representatives and business people to find out more about what is going on.

The big difference is that, when a group is calling for improvements to EI or improvements relating to important social issues, they will meet with us once or maybe twice a year. The group meets with a limited number of MPs.

However, in less than two years, Google met with the government, which has the power to act, 99 times. Lobbyists for SNC-Lavalin and other companies have the ability to meet with MPs, ministers, cabinet members and senior Liberal officials dozens or even hundreds of times. They have the ability to exert pressure. They present economic arguments that scare the government. That is how we end up with governments that refuse to take action for the collective good. Instead, they act for the good of those companies.