Bill C-45 (Historical)

Cannabis Act

An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts

This enactment enacts the Cannabis Act to provide legal access to cannabis and to control and regulate its production, distribution and sale.
The objectives of the Act are to prevent young persons from accessing cannabis, to protect public health and public safety by establishing strict product safety and product quality requirements and to deter criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties for those operating outside the legal framework. The Act is also intended to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis.
The Act
(a) establishes criminal prohibitions such as the unlawful sale or distribution of cannabis, including its sale or distribution to young persons, and the unlawful possession, production, importation and exportation of cannabis;
(b) enables the Minister to authorize the possession, production, distribution, sale, importation and exportation of cannabis, as well as to suspend, amend or revoke those authorizations when warranted;
(c) authorizes persons to possess, sell or distribute cannabis if they are authorized to sell cannabis under a provincial Act that contains certain legislative measures;
(d) prohibits any promotion, packaging and labelling of cannabis that could be appealing to young persons or encourage its consumption, while allowing consumers to have access to information with which they can make informed decisions about the consumption of cannabis;
(e) provides for inspection powers, the authority to impose administrative monetary penalties and the ability to commence proceedings for certain offences by means of a ticket;
(f) includes mechanisms to deal with seized cannabis and other property;
(g) authorizes the Minister to make orders in relation to matters such as product recalls, the provision of information, the conduct of tests or studies, and the taking of measures to prevent non-compliance with the Act;
(h) permits the establishment of a cannabis tracking system for the purposes of the enforcement and administration of the Act;
(i) authorizes the Minister to fix, by order, fees related to the administration of the Act; and
(j) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting such matters as quality, testing, composition, packaging and labelling of cannabis, security clearances and the collection and disclosure of information in respect of cannabis as well as to make regulations exempting certain persons or classes of cannabis from the application of the Act.
This enactment also amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, increase the maximum penalties for certain offences and to authorize the Minister to engage persons having technical or specialized knowledge to provide advice. It repeals item 1 of Schedule II and makes consequential amendments to that Act as the result of that repeal.
In addition, it repeals Part XII.‍1 of the Criminal Code, which deals with instruments and literature for illicit drug use, and makes consequential amendments to that Act.
It amends the Non-smokers’ Health Act to prohibit the smoking and vaping of cannabis in federally regulated places and conveyances.
Finally, it makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Cannabis Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Questions, the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe I am hearing the House leader tell us that it is okay for them to do it because someone did it once before in another government. I cannot believe that the rhetoric we are hearing in this place will be heard as genuine by Canadians. It is so shallow and so repetitive that it is becoming a joke. Frankly, it is very insulting to be sitting here until midnight, as committed and dedicated as we all are, for the kind of substance being thrown at us by the governing party. This is really upsetting. We can hear the Liberals convincing themselves of their own argument. This brainwashing and rhetoric is very frustrating. Canadians are seeing it, and I am starting to feel like this is some kind of joke and there has to be a hidden camera somewhere. This is ridiculous.

I want all Canadians listening to know that they can look up in the House of Commons Procedure and Practice a definition for ministers. What is happening here, removing the ministerial title for regional economic development, is counter to what the House leader is saying tonight.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in this place there is a lot talking, and sometimes there is not enough listening. I believe that the member for Windsor—Tecumseh is mistaken. Those were not the comments I made. I encourage her to check the record so she can see the comments I made.

I have never said that because the previous government did it, it is okay to do it. What I am saying is that it is important that the ambitious agenda this government has received from Canadians be advanced.

We know the importance of the portfolios and the ministers in these positions. We know that a minister is a minister is a minister. When it comes to the regional development agencies and the economic diversity of the country, they are important. We know that they need to work better together. We continue to support the important work the RDAs do. We know that they need to be supported so that the economic benefits for Canadians are in the best interest of the entire country.

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

Mr. Speaker, what the government House leader said is so absurd that it could not go unchallenged. She talked about so-called unprecedented consultations and waxed, I would say aimlessly, about the importance of hearing the diversity of opinions while we are debating a time allocation motion that prevents the diverse opinions here in this House from being heard.

It is absolutely ridiculous. I would like her to maybe try it one more time, and let us see what we get.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the member does not understand that we are at second reading and this legislation will be advanced to committee.

Committees do very important work in this place and in the process when it comes to legislation. We know that the previous government had no appreciation of committees so that they could do the independent work they do. They hear from witnesses. They study legislation clause by clause, phrase by phrase.

This government knows the importance of committees. That is why we have increased their resources, because they have to do important work. They can look at this legislation. They can hear from witnesses and hear from stakeholders to recognize why this legislation needs to be advanced, and I hope the member is part of that process.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of our Prime Minister, who was very courageous, wise, and forward thinking when he appointed a cabinet that had gender equality. I am very proud of that.

Here we are talking about a situation where all ministers will be equal, so no matter what one's gender or title, it is equality one will experience. I believe that is the only fair way of working together and having a working relationship where everyone is respected and treated fairly and equally.

How will this impact working relationships in a very positive way so that everyone at the cabinet table feels heard, feels equal, and feels valued? I would appreciate the government House leader's comments on that question.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question, and I appreciate the ability to respond.

To be around the cabinet table and hear the diversity of opinions matters. When the Prime Minister appointed a cabinet in which there were the same number of men and women, that was a really empowering moment for Canadians. I cannot tell the House the number of people I speak to who aspire to and want to run to be part of this place. We know we need more women in this place. We know we need representation from more under-represented groups. That is part of the mandate I have received. That is important.

This legislation treats a minister as a minister as a minister. Why should the Minister of Status of Women or the Minister of Science or any other minister not be equal to any other minister? We know that the work they do is imperative to the functioning of this country. We will continue to advance that.

I agree that the actions the Prime Minister has taken are unprecedented. They were needed, and Canadians are appreciating it.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as a former minister of state for seniors, I think I have the most powerful authority to tell the government side what exactly Bill C-24 means.

If the Liberals really believed in elevating women, they should have been given full ministerial positions. Is the government claiming that the only way to elevate women is by appointing them to an inferior position and then elevating that position?

The Liberals talk about equal work for equal pay. Without giving equal resources, such as a deputy minister and a full budget, how can they call that equality?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure members would call that equality. What is unfortunate is that the previous government did not recognize that, but this government does.

When we talk about our seniors, we are talking about the fastest-growing demographic. We know the numbers. Their voice should be equal to any other portfolio around that table.

The member speaks about nuance and details. What is important is the ability to represent stakeholders and to be the voice for people who need to be represented around the cabinet table when the decisions are being made. That is exactly the case, and that is why we are saying that a minister is a minister is a minister. It is important that we treat all ministers equally, especially when it comes to seniors. This population has contributed to the best interests of our country for a lifetime, and it is important that they be treated equally as well.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I would remind hon. members that when another hon. member has the floor, members should not be interrupting them when they are trying to make comments. It is also difficult for other members to hear the answers or questions, as the case may be. I implore hon. members to keep the noise to a minimum when another member has the floor. Questions.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in reference to the hon. government House leader's comment that a minister is a minister is a minister, that is not quite the way it is, because not all ministers have equal portfolios and equal resources for dispatching their duties. That needs to be recognized, and it has been in previous Parliaments.

We know one thing for sure, that a Liberal is a Liberal is a Liberal. Eventually a Liberal behaves like a Liberal. A Liberal displays those attitudes of arrogance and unethical behaviour. When they talk about paying their junior ministers a senior minister's salary, they do it through a backdoor through the estimates. That is just plain unethical.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the member in regard to recognizing the importance of the work we do in this place.

Ministers have portfolios to advance the best interests of their stakeholders and Canadians, just like every member of Parliament has a role in this place. We know that under the previous government, there was a huge differentiation between cabinet ministers and backbenchers. The opposition, at that time, had no voice.

However, we see things differently. Every member of Parliament has a role to play. We welcome those perspectives. We want to ensure that all Canadians are represented.

The member talked about Liberals. This government represents Canadians. We are the Government of Canada. That is partly why I ran, because I was tired of the previous government representing Conservatives alone and not having my voice heard or listened to.

I will make sure that we represent all Canadians and listen to different perspectives. Whether we agree with them or not, it is important that we listen to them when we make decisions. We will continue to represent them.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, listening to my colleague across the way, I was compelled to rush over to comment on what she said.

My colleague talked about the Liberals. She said that everyone here speaks on behalf of Canadians. Let us talk about it, then. We too were elected to represent Canadians, and we too want to have a voice. It is not just the Liberal Party who speaks on behalf of Canadians. The Conservative Party does as well.

The member should know that, on this side of the House, we have the respect of Canadians. When we talk about transparency, we want actual transparency. We want to have discussions here, not on behalf of the Liberal Party, but on behalf of all the parties, because they all have a voice in the House.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is what I said. Each member works for their community. We will respect the work of our colleague.

We look forward to having the bill sent to committee, where it can be considered and where each party has a responsibility. We will also have the opportunity to hear from expert witnesses. We want to have an effective House of Commons where all the parties agree to work together and consider legislation in the best interests of all Canadians.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about ministers, all equal, in the words of our esteemed colleague. Is the government House leader telling me and the Canadian public that every minister the Liberals appoint is going to get a vehicle, a deputy, and a secondary deputy minister? Is he or she going to get staff equal to every other minister, and are they going to charge those finances to the Canadian public so that every one of their ministries has a full, complete staff, deputy ministers, etc.?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said, we believe that a minister is a minister is a minister, and every minister has been treated exactly the same way since we took office. We recognize the importance of their voices. This legislation is currently at second reading. We would like to see it go to committee, where it can be studied. The committee can call in experts. It can study the legislation clause by clause, phrase by phrase. We recognize the importance of this legislation, and we welcome that opportunity.

The previous government would perhaps not have seen me as an equal minister. I am an equal minister. It is not just about the resources. When I have a voice at the cabinet table, that voice matters. As the Minister of Small Business and Tourism, I know that small businesses are the backbone of the Canadian economy. They employ 99% of the private-sector workforce. When it comes to the tourism industry, we are talking about a $90-billion industry. We are talking about 1.7 million jobs.

If the member does not recognize the importance of the work these Canadians do, it is unfortunate. Perhaps he too should be part of the committee to recognize that our small-business owners are crucial to the best interests of Canadians and this country.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very simple question. I must have missed it, but perhaps the government House leader could inform the House when legislation was brought before the House to make the department of tourism and small business a stand-alone department outside the department of industry.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, for the first time in the history of this country, and we are talking about the 150th celebrations this year, we have a full Minister of Small Business and Tourism. We have an equal voice at the cabinet table. We are talking about 18 departments and agencies working together on a regular basis to ensure that their voices are being heard.

We recognize who the job creators of this country are. We know that they are small businesses. We recognize the importance of the tourism industry. We are talking about a $90-billion industry. We are talking about 1.7 million jobs across this country.

When we talk about the tourism industry, and the backbone of the tourism industry is small business, every single community across this country benefits from the tourism industry. When we talk about inclusive growth, we are not just talking about urban centres. We are talking about rural and remote areas as well.

We know we can do better. We will continue to improve conditions so that Canadians can succeed. When Canadians succeed, this country succeeds.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, back when the Prime Minister first formed cabinet, there was a great deal of anticipation as to who was going to be in cabinet, but there was a huge sense of pride. The minister is part of a historic cabinet, the first cabinet in the history of Canada that was appointed with just as many women as men. That was a very powerful statement.

The other thing is that the Prime Minister indicated that all ministers were going to be treated equally. They might have different portfolios, but when they sit around the cabinet table, they are all equal.

Because of the minister's insight from being part of this historic cabinet, I would ask her to reflect on how important the message to Canadians was and the sense of pride that followed.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what a thoughtful question, and it is appreciated, because I recognize the value of it.

I was born and raised in Canada. I have been in the Waterloo region my whole life. Did I ever believe that I would be part of a cabinet with gender parity? Many Canadians did not, nor did I, but I am a living part of that team.

We will continue to advance the best interests of Canadians. I visit many schools, as do many members in this place. It gives many Canadians great pride to recognize the diversity in the chamber. When this government talks about diversity, we are not only talking about the diversity of the shelves that we occupy but also about the diversity of experience, the diversity of knowledge, the diversity of where people come from, and it is such an exciting place.

I know that one Liberal member is the first female engineer to be elected to this place. I know that gives engineers a lot of pride because they too know that they belong here.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the previous government recognized the importance of representation for Canadian seniors. Uniquely, there are more Canadian seniors than youth. In the mix of Canadian seniors, there are more women than men. I was honoured that the member in front of me was the former minister for seniors and, appropriately, a talented women.

Why are Canadian seniors being ignored? Why are Liberals not appointing a minister—a minister is a minister is a minister—for seniors, and why is it not a woman?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

First, Mr. Speaker, we are taking the whole-of-government approach. Every minister has the responsibility to represent all Canadians. Perhaps the member was not present at the time, but even his colleague referred to herself as a minister of state. Conservatives saw the voice of seniors as a junior ministry. This government does not see it that way. We do not see it as being two-tiered. We see the importance of a one-tier ministry to ensure that every voice is represented.

When it comes to seniors, we know they are the fastest-growing demographic. I know the hard work that seniors have contributed to building this country. We will represent their voice and we will represent their best interests. We know that we need to treat them better. Unfortunately, under the previous Stephen Harper Conservative government, as it was known, that voice was not heard. It is heard today, and we will continue to be the voice for them.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith the question necessary to dispose of the motion now before the House.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #310

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed from October 19, 2016, consideration of the motion that Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Second Reading

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise and address the chamber. Bill C-24 is one of those pieces of legislation that one would expect that all members of the House would get behind and support. I want to highlight three aspects of the bill that are really important so that members across the way understand exactly what they are voting against, or, we hope, voting in favour of.

One of the things that I am especially proud of is the fact that this government has recognized the importance of infrastructure in Canada in a very real and tangible way. One of the things the legislation does is reinforce that. It does that by recognizing that the Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs is going to change to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities. As we all know, the Prime Minister deals with intergovernmental affairs and I will provide a brief comment on that shortly, but I want to pick up on the issue of infrastructure.

I have always thought that all parties in the House recognize the value of infrastructure. The Stephen Harper government talked a lot about it. Their actions did not really follow through, but they talked a lot about it. The NDP members have also talked a great deal about infrastructure. For the first time, not only do we have a government that talks about infrastructure, but we understand the benefits of investing in Canada's infrastructure and we are doing it in record amounts. Never before in the history of Canada have we seen so much money allocated to infrastructure.

It should not be any surprise that we have a Prime Minister who has acknowledged that we need a minister who is responsible for and dedicated to the infrastructure of our country. That is something we as a government or as a caucus have recognized and believe in because we understand that municipalities have been talking about the importance of investing in infrastructure for years. It is not only municipalities. Provincial jurisdictions and many different stakeholders recognize if we do not invest in our streets, bridges, community centres, green projects, and housing, we cannot advance our communities in every region of our country.

For the first time we have, through the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, a solid, tangible commitment to reach into the many different communities in all regions of our country and invest in Canada's infrastructure. One could talk about the very direct benefits of x millions of dollars committed to a community, which will see the construction of something through that money, but we can also talk about the indirect benefits. By investing in infrastructure we are enabling our businesses, small, medium, and large, to be able to have a higher level of commerce. We could talk about our community centres or the many other investments in Canada's infrastructure and how they will benefit.

It was telling when the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities last week talked about the difference between this government and the former government when it came to real investments and announcements in regard to improving Canada's infrastructure. In the month of May, we made more announcements and investments in infrastructure than Stephen Harper did in four years. That is significant in every region of our country, including areas where there is concern, where many of the Alberta MPs are standing up to say they want to see more action by the Government of Canada. They started asking those questions well after the Alberta Liberal MPs were lobbying and suggesting that we needed to be able to get on the ground floor in terms of making sure that Alberta's needs were being taken care of.

That is why we saw special attention, from the very outset, paid to how we could work with the Province of Alberta. That is not to say that Alberta will get more. We understand the importance of treating every region of our country equally. Whether it is in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, B.C., or the territories, we are seeing incredible amounts of investment of public dollars in infrastructure, because we recognize just how important that is. It is not just announcements. We are talking about real, tangible dollars that are going to have a real, desired impact.

With the passing of the legislation, we would be sending a very clear message. The message is that given the importance of infrastructure, not only for today but into the future, we need to make it very clear that we have a stand-alone department of infrastructure that has the sole purpose of ensuring that Canada's infrastructure is moving forward in a very aggressive and progressive way. We have seen the minister do an outstanding job of not only using those public dollars but looking beyond that to ensure that we maximize the benefits.

With the infrastructure investment bank, we now have the opportunity for organizations, such as organized labour, to assist in investing in our infrastructure, as opposed to looking in other countries outside of Canada and using those union dollars, for example, in infrastructure. We have singled out the importance of infrastructure, and I am very glad that we have taken the time to introduce that aspect to the legislation.

I had the opportunity to ask the government House leader a question on this very important issue. I recall, so vividly, after the last federal election, when the Prime Minister introduced the federal cabinet to Canadians. We were all so very impressed with what we saw. We saw gender equality. We saw an equal number of women and men in cabinet, and that is historic. I believe that we not only have a Prime Minister who talks about being a feminist but who is actually a feminist. He does us all proud with the types of actions he takes, day in and day out, to reinforce just how important it is that we recognize that women's role in society is not for tomorrow, it is for today, and where we can take action, we need to take action. We saw that as one of the very first announcements that the Prime Minister made.

When we look at the legislation we have before us today, we see it was not good enough to say that we were going to have a cabinet that was gender equal. We are also going to have a cabinet where every minister is treated the same. It is a one-tier cabinet. That is something we understand and appreciate. Whether it is the Minister of Status of Women or the Minister of Finance, when they sit around that cabinet table, they are equal. It is one vote.

I know the Minister of Status of Women has just as strong a personality as the Minister of Finance or any of her other colleagues, and she should have that equal voice around the cabinet table.

I am very proud that we have a Prime Minister who has recognized that we need to have one level of cabinet ministers. This ensures there is that sense of equality. That will not take effect once the legislation passes. In fact, that took effect from day one when the cabinet was sworn in.

The government House leader reminded me of pay equity. This is something we all talk about a great deal. I heard an interesting quote from a New Democratic MP across the way, and I want to repeat it. When we were talking about pay equity just over a year ago, I believe on an opposition day, the member said:

In 1981, Canada ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which recognizes women's rights to equal remuneration and to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value. It has been 40 years since Canada committed to these three foundational documents, and we are still not where we need to be.

I agree. We need to improve and do better. Groundbreaking pay equity commitments were made by Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government. This is something one of my New Democratic colleagues from across the way highlighted. It has taken a while, but what are we saying in this legislation? We are saying that all ministers should receive the same pay. When we talk about pay equity, a statement needs to be made. I am not sure exactly how members are going to vote, but we have legislation that takes that into consideration. I suggest it is a wonderful opportunity. Instead of just talking about it, we can vote on the issue.

I again want to highlight there are five ministers of state, which we say are full ministers. They are the Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, the Minister of Science, the Minister of Small Business and Tourism, the Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, and the Minister of Status of Women. They are the ones we said we had to change and put them in full minister positions, ultimately being one-tier.

I truly believe, whether it is sitting around the cabinet table or looking at departments, that if we wanted to do a department-by-department cross-check, one of the most important departments, which I have mentioned before, is small business and tourism. Earlier today, the minister talked about how small businesses are the backbone of Canada's economy. When we think in terms of growth for our country, small businesses have to be at the table. We do not have a minister of state responsible for that, but a minister who, when she sits at the cabinet table, is treated in the same fashion as any other minister.

Along with business comes tourism. We have seen incredible increases in the last year in tourism. We are talking millions-plus of additional tourists who have come to our country in the last year. It was 2016 over 2015, I believe, when I saw that number a while ago. Let us think in terms of jobs. If we ask Canadians what they are concerned about, those in the middle class or those striving to become part of it, they are all concerned about jobs. Think of the jobs created when a million-plus additional tourists come to our country. That creates opportunities. We take that very seriously. The minister who deals with small business, entrepreneurs, and tourism is just as important as any other minister who sits around the cabinet table.

That is why I would challenge members across the way when they start saying there are two tiers, and they start to favour that, or they have questions about issues of pay equity, or questions about infrastructure. These are all good reasons for why the opposition should be voting in favour of this legislation.

Another component deals with regional development. We have a number of different agencies that we are looking at to bring under one ministry: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Western Economic Diversification Canada, Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec , Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, and Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.

I am somewhat sympathetic to what some of the opposition members have said with respect to this. However, let me encourage them to take a broader approach to the benefits of having one of the ministers lead the whole issue of innovation, technology, and development. He, in this case, has a multitude of different programs that he happens to be responsible for and is doing an incredible job. All members need to do is look at some of the numbers that have been coming in, and the trend looks fantastic. He is responsible for those agencies continuing to be not only effective but he is actually making them more effective. We have a government and a ministry that is better coordinated to do that.

I believe that is the best way to approach it. We have a Minister of Health, and I will use health as an example. The administration of health care is a provincial jurisdiction. I do not hear members across the way arguing that we should break it down into regions, and then have those regions report to the Minister of Health nationally. No, we have one single Minister of Health who has the responsibility of health and all the components, including mental health, hospice care, emergencies, health accords, all that responsibility and so much more. Even though there are differences in the different provinces and territories, the minister is able to pull it together and come up with some wonderful things.

I would suggest we have another wonderful minister who is able to look at Canada as a whole, respecting the importance of investments in our different regions, and supporting not only those regional agencies but also has his hands on a multitude of different programs, ensuring they are working as one, so that these organizations will be healthier. I do not know about the other caucuses, but in our caucus the ability of my colleagues to communicate the importance of their individual regions let alone their own constituencies to the different ministries, and advocate for them is very strong. I do not believe we are losing out by moving forward on this particular bill. For many reasons, I would encourage members across the way to have an appreciation that this is a bill that is worthy of support.

In conclusion, I have made reference to this before and other members have addressed the issue of why we are using time allocation. At times there is a need for a government to use time allocation, and I said that when I was in opposition because I recognized that. I also voted in favour of sitting until midnight, even when Stephen Harper requested that. It is because we are prepared to work hard in order to make a difference in the everyday lives of Canadians from coast to coast to coast, and that is why I do it.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about all ministers being tier one ministers now, but of course, we know that is not true. The responsibilities do not match all of them. Some of them have deputy ministers, and some of them do not. Some have junior portfolios, and some have far greater responsibilities.

The great thing about Parliament is we are all tier one members of Parliament. We all have an equal voice. Of course, it does happen that the government then uses time allocation and shuts down debate on us, and allows its members to have a say within their caucus when introducing government legislation. However, we also know why there will be three mystery ministers added in Bill C-24, because the government will make sure the member for Winnipeg North, who has worked hard, will join cabinet. The minister for disinformation would be a fine title for him.

I would introduce a private sector concept based on my human resources background, pay for performance. I would introduce performance-based pay, and I know that the former minister for democratic institutions did not meet the requirements of her mandate letter, insulted the electoral reform committee, and failed actually to achieve what the Prime Minister and the electoral platform the Liberals ran on was set to do.

Would he agree with me that we should introduce performance-based pay for all ministers of the government?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to disagree with the member, and really challenge him to revisit the way he might be considering voting on this legislation. Let me just use one example. He points out the deputy ministers, and those ministers who have deputy ministers. The Minister of Status of Women, to whom the member made reference, has a deputy minister. In fact, if the member was aware, he would know that one of the most senior indigenous women is the deputy for that particular department.

In terms of getting the job done, we have seen the minister, along with other ministers within this government, demonstrate day after day that they know how to get the job done, something with which Stephen Harper's minister were challenged at the best of times.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague will find I am already sold on the basic principle of equal pay for equal work, but where are the job descriptions? It seems to me that the Liberals are trying to quietly pass ministers of state off as ministers.

Here is a very simple example. When I ask the Minister of Science a question about pyrrhotite, which affects many families in my riding, I get an answer from the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. This shows, or at least seems to suggest, that a hierarchy is forming.

If a hierarchy does exist, then there have to be multiple job descriptions; in other words, equal pay for equal work does not apply. This seems to me like a massive cover-up by a government that appointed a number of women ministers without giving them any major portfolios. Now they are backpedalling by saying everyone should have the same salary, regardless of job description. Their argument is that every minister has a vote at the cabinet table.

I would like some clarification on the job descriptions of the various ministers.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, maybe the member across the way does not recall, but there was a commitment by this Prime Minister to be more transparent and accountable. Let me use his question as one of the ways we can demonstrate that. We all know that Stephen Harper, as the former Prime Minister, used to have ministerial mandate letters. It is something that is fairly common, but we did not necessarily realize back then, and I know my colleague across the way was here when Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister, that it was a private issue between the ministers and the Prime Minister.

Along with the gender equal cabinet that was announced, and along with the announcement that there is only one level of cabinet minister that sits around the cabinet table, we also made public and transparent the ministerial mandate letters.

A good starting point for the member might be to review some of those publicly. They are out there to be found. If the member has a challenge finding them, I am sure we can assist him on that. I can assure him in a very transparent, open, and accountable way, we have a Prime Minister who shares with the public every minister's mandate letter. We see that as a positive thing.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we see priority areas, not just for this government but for Canadians, in each one of these titles. We see it in the performance of each one of these women, what they are performing, and the sense of duty they bring to these jobs. I have to concur that their effort level and the requirements they are fulfilling, this type of a one-tier cabinet is absolutely essential. These are priority areas for all of us.

As the father of a 15-year old daughter, and as the son of a single mom, I am proud to come to work every day with these fine ministers. I see no reason why they should not be on an equal par. Could the hon. member comment?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question gives us a bit of a mindset with respect to the importance of the issue of pay equity among Liberals.

Earlier today, the Minister of Status of Women told me that they were aggressively looking at ways to ensure there was more pay equity among federal workers. This is a very popular discussion within our caucus. I have had the opportunity to comment on it in the past as have others.

I can assure members that I have not only heard from that member, but I have also heard from the Minister of Status of Women on this issue. This is a very popular discussion point in many circles. It certainly is a popular discussion in the Liberal caucus.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I never get tired of listening to what my colleague opposite has to say. I must admit that I was due for my fix because it had been a while since I heard him speak. It feels good. We are indeed in the House of Commons, he is speaking, and all is well.

I want to know if he realizes that his government once again promised the moon during the election. They came here and said that everything would be fine and that there would be a gender-balanced cabinet.

Am I the only one who noticed that most of the ministers of state in their cabinet are women? Now the Liberals are backpedalling saying there is equality because they get the same pay.

Is it not obvious that it is women who hold these minister of state positions?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member across the way will never convince me that the minister responsible for small business and tourism is a junior minister, given that small and medium-size businesses are the backbone of Canada's economy. Stephen Harper had it wrong. If he genuinely believed that small business was important, he would have done what the current Prime Minister did. I would have treated the then minister of state for the status of women the same and elevated that. They should all be equal, and the legislation would do that. We should be proud of that fact.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Prime Minister Harper at the time lowered small business taxes, which is the best way to help small businesses, not adjusting the pay of ministers.

I want to go back to my performance-based pay example and ask a question of the parliamentary secretary.

It seems that every time the Liberals talk about openness and transparency, they end up fleecing the taxpayer more, which triggers parliamentary investigations or the failure to appoint potential candidates to the position of official languages commissioner.

Why are we talking about raising the pay of certain ministers instead of lowering the pay of all ministers to that of those ministers who do not earn as much? Why does the taxpayer always wind up paying more instead of less?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, given the amount of time I have, I will pick up on two points. The member made reference to taxes and small businesses.

Need I remind the member that when we reduced the tax on the middle class of Canada by hundreds of millions of dollars, which affected over nine million Canadians and their families, the Conservative Party voted against that. That put hundreds of millions of dollars back into the pockets of Canadians. By doing that, we increased the disposable income of those Canadians, which allowed more Canadians to spend money in small businesses. What does a small business want more than anything else? It wants customers, and this government has delivered on all points.

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

Mr. Speaker, Canada has historically drawn a distinction between ministers of the crown and ministers of state based on the scope and scale of the work in their portfolio. For example, small businesses and tourism are important components of the Canadian economy. Indeed, they are important enough to warrant a voice in cabinet dedicated to representing their interests. However, speaking up for small business and tourism during policy discussions in cabinet is not the same as overseeing a volume of case work, which for example the minister responsible for Service Canada supervises. Nor is it the same as being responsible for the budget overseen by say, the Minister of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship.

The distinction between full ministers of the crown and ministers of the state is based on the requirements and responsibilities of the position, not how useful or how important a given policy area is, and certainly not on demographic characteristics of the office-holder.

This distinction is lost on the Liberals. In this bill, they are attempting to justify officially changing the title of various ministers of state to full ministers. They claim that just changing the names and salaries but not the responsibilities of ministers of state somehow make them equivalent to full ministers. This is not only disingenuous; it is actually insulting to the ministers of state in question.

When this bill first came up for debate, the opposition House leader accurately observed that it insulted someone to actually appoint him or her to an important but subordinate position, a position without a deputy minister, without a dedicated department, and without the sort of budget that accompanies a full ministry and then tell him or her simply that the positions were equal because they would have the same title and the same salary. It makes the position appear equivalent on paper, but not in fact. The government should be honest with its ministers of state and honest with Canadians.

The discussion about equality between ministers is a distraction from the much more pressing matter contained in the bill. The more substantial concern raised in the bill is democratic accountability by ministers for funds they are supposed to supervise. Indeed, it is a shell game. It is a bait and switch, mere window dressing to cover for their plans to reduce democratic accountability by rolling six regional development agencies into one minister's office.

Before I continue, Mr. Speaker, I plan to share my time with the member for Richmond Centre.

These six agencies represent very different regions with unique challenges and opportunities, which is the core reason why these agencies exist.

I do not question the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development's capabilities. He seems like a talented and capable man. However, being responsible for so many areas at one time will pull him in too many directions, and that reduces ministerial oversight. If the minister himself cannot direct sufficient attention to these disparate portfolios, the task will end up falling to unelected staffers and unelected civil servants. That is not good for democratic accountability.

Canadians elect members of Parliament who serve as ministers. They do not elect staff or civil servants. If staffers and bureaucrats end up mismanaging funds for regional development, it will then be as a result of the minister not being able to have adequate oversight, thus there is no loss of democratic accountability.

Accountability for tax dollars is not just important to Conservatives; it is important to all Canadians. The real effect of the proposed changes to the Salaries Act has nothing to do with salaries. It is a bait and switch. It has everything to do with centralizing spending power in Ottawa and reducing democratic accountability for the spending.

Earlier in the debate on the bill, the member for Yukon expressed his disappointment that the House was devoting significant time to debating it at all. He said way back in October that he thought we would not need to talk about the bill and was surprised the opposition was prepared to debate it. I wonder what he would have thought then that we are debating this at 9:45 on a Wednesday night in June.

Tinkering with titles and salaries for positions may seem like small potatoes to some members, but these seemingly small changes do matter to Canadians, and people will inevitably wonder why newly elevated ministers of the crown have no departments, deputy ministers, or designated budgets. Canadians are not impressed, and will not be impressed, by empty honours and titles without commensurate responsibilities.

The measures of the bill and the disdain for discussion, which the member opposite displayed during the first period of debate, further provide evidence of the current government being out of touch with Canadians.

Instead of heading regional development agencies with ministers from the regions, the Liberals are handing over significant spending power to unelected civil servants and one over-worked minister from Mississauga.

The Liberals say that they want more consultation and consensus. Then they say that they want to listen to Canadians. Then they say that they want to co-operate with the provinces and municipalities. Then they go and abolish the regional ministers who keep these communication channels open. Rolling these development agencies into one minister's portfolio also abolishes regional voices in cabinet.

Previous governments routinely appointed these regional ministers as liaisons between cabinet, the provinces, and municipalities.

Living in the regions and in the municipalities gave regional ministers skin in the game, which distant bureaucrats and one single member from the GTA will lack. Without regional ministers, mayors and councillors will not have a dedicated regional level person to whom to provide their perspective on the needs and opportunities of their jurisdictions.

For a government which constantly boasts of holding consultations, abolishing regional ministers demonstrates a lack of interest in listening to local advice on how best to allocate funding. In fact, when the government says that it is holding consultations, it increasingly looks like a stalling tactic, delaying making a tough decision.

When the government wants to get something done, it usually just puts the bulldozer blade down and does it, just like when it ran over the mortgage and housing industry with mortgage rule changes in October last year, which were done without consulting anybody. However, when it wants to delay a tough decision or maybe not make a decision at all, it can hold consultations that last for months at enormous expense to the crown, such as it did with democratic institutions before breaking that promise.

Previous governments knew that regional ministers strengthened our federal system by giving regions a voice at the cabinet table.

Bill C-24 also asks Parliament to let the Liberals create three new ministerial level positions with portfolios to be determined later. They want us to authorize spending without knowing what it will fund. That is like asking for a blank cheque. It is like asking for a sizeable loan and telling the bank that we have no business plan, no major purchase in mind, but we are sure we will find a way to spend the money. We cannot do this with the government at a time of out-of-control spending, broken promises on deficits, mounting debt, and complete abandonment of an election promise to balance the budget by 2019. We are not going to give the government any more blank cheques.

Canada does have precedents for ministers without portfolio. They could be appointed as needed. They do not have to have space carved out long in advance just in case the government wants a particular minister at a particular time. At a time when the government is demonstrating that it cannot be trusted to manage public funds prudently, we cannot agree to these new ministries.

Canada does not need fully staffed ministries for sport, democratic reform, or small business and tourism with whole departments and deputy ministers backing them. These are important areas and it is important that there are cabinet voices at the table, but they are well served by ministers of state.

Canada does not need retroactive paper equality in its cabinet. Nor do we need ministers with blank portfolios to be filled later. Instead, we need democratic accountability and financially transparent ministers whose work we can understand now. We do not need an ever-bigger and more centralized government ruling distinct regions from Ottawa. We do not need unaccountable and unelected staffers and bureaucrats directing funds for regional development. Instead, we need attentive ministerial oversight on spending. We need responsible representation from regional ministers with strong ties to the communities they serve.

Perhaps the member for Yukon was right, that we ought not to spend a lot more time, while we are in extended sitting hours, on this legislation. We should just defeat it promptly and move on to other areas of priority.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find it a little rich when I hear the member talk about regional ministers and ministers of state. I recall the Stephen Harper government and James Moore was the regional minister for Western Canada. We never went to the minister of state for western economic diversification. We went to Colin Metcalfe in British Columbia. Ontario had a minister of state for FedDev but nobody went to that minister. They instead went to Stella Ambler, who was the director of regional affairs and worked for the minister of finance.

I find it a bit rich that the member says we need a regional minister. Back then, we still went to staff. We did not go to an elected official.

What does the member have against having minsters recognized at the cabinet table on the same level playing field as their other colleagues? I find it a bit rich that the member talks about unelected officials being unaccountable.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is the bait and switch. This is not really about who is equal at the cabinet table but about centralizing power, and in this government, the only place one goes to get a funding decision is to Gerald Butts.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

This is certainly a head-scratcher. What drives the government to come up yet again with something like that, something that is clearly just for show?

It is not clear to me and I just wanted to make sure that my colleague truly felt this was an urgent matter. I hope that all the parties know that parity, equality in terms of the proportion of men and women in cabinet, is a priority for both the ministers and the ministers responsible, right?

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

Mr. Speaker, the gender of a minister or a minister of state should not matter. If they are a minister with the responsibilities of a minister, they should be paid as such, and if they do not have departments to run and all of the things that attend with those same responsibilities, they should not be paid as such.

Much of the bill is simply a distraction from what they are really doing with the consolidation of decision-making.

If I correctly understood the part of his question urgency, here we are with a bill that was tabled last June, debated a couple of times, and pushed down in October. Here we are, following a couple of days of debating motions on legislation that has already passed while under extended sitting hours. Here we are, moving on to the middle part of the night, talking about something that with better House management could have perhaps been dealt with much earlier.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have a feminist Prime Minister. We have laid out gender equity as a priority for our government. It is a priority for Canadians. We have a gender-balanced cabinet. We have a pay equity bill. Why should the Minister of Status of Women not be on a par with other ministers? This is clearly a priority for the government.

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

Mr. Speaker, of course, by that logic they could simply lower everyone else. I reject the premise that everything always has to be about raising salaries.

This is again the distraction. The point is not what the department is or what the gender of the holder of the office is. It is about having a minister paid to do a minister's work, or a minister of state doing the work of a minister of state and being paid as such.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise again this evening to speak to Bill C-24, regarding the Salaries Act.

This bill aims to change five important aspects of ministerial roles and designations. These include the creation of new positions, the removal of several important positions, the creation of legal backup for departmental support for these new mystery positions, the transfer of authoritative powers, and the correction of references to the Minister of Infrastructure.

There are two prominent aspects of this bill that I would like to speak to tonight. The specific changes proposed in Bill C-24 that I will mention are particularly relevant to me, my riding, my province, and also my experience as a parliamentarian. In the previous government, I served as a minister of state, the role in question in this legislation, and I represented Richmond Centre, a riding in British Columbia, which used to have a regional ministerial representative at the cabinet table until the Liberals came to power.

As a result, this legislation directly impacts my riding, and I believe that my own experience has allowed me to have a good understanding of what is at stake in Bill C-24.

Let me start by addressing the first prominent aspect: raising the salary of ministers of state, who are women in the current Liberal cabinet, to be equal with full ministers. There should be more than that for it to be truly equal.

Here is my own experience. As the minister of state, I had my own team and budget, but I worked closely with the minister of employment. The most notable difference between a minister and a minister of state is that the latter does not have a deputy minister devoted to the file. Additionally, a minister of state does not manage the same departmental budget or have the same authority as a minister.

The Liberals are claiming that the changes in this legislation are just simple changes aimed at addressing equal pay. The reality, however, is that this is just Liberals being Liberals, just like a duck that quacks like a duck and walks like a duck is a duck.

I am always supportive of equal pay for equal work. I would not have minded being paid more as a minister of state. I did an excellent job, not because of the pay but because of an excellent staffer and because of my passion. I was able to protect seniors. I was able to create legislation with help from the Prime Minister to make things really happen. It did not matter if I was called a minister or a minister of state as long I was doing the job. I was proud of my ministerial position.

I am always supportive of equal pay for equal work. Unless these roles are made to be full ministers with the authority, responsibility, and departments that are required of all other files, I do not believe they will accomplish true equality. Moreover, we believe in a merit-based system. We believe in giving women an equal chance based on their hard work and abilities, not by appointing them to fill a quota just because they are women.

This legislation shows the government is only seeking to elevate their positions and salaries for political purposes, rather than using a merit-based system that would mean much more in helping to empower women.

I would also add that the government chose to appoint only women to the minister of state roles. That was its decision, and it does not exactly fall in line with the government's gender parity rhetoric.

Had the Liberals thought about that even before they appointed all the ministers, they would have appointed all the women as full ministers. If the Liberals really believed in elevating women, they should have been given full ministerial positions, as I said. Is the government claiming the only way to elevate women is by appointing them to an inferior position and then elevating that position?

Let me discuss the other issues in this same bill.

The present Liberal government is neglecting the unique challenges and needs of regional issues in British Columbia and, truly, across the country. My province of British Columbia provides tremendous opportunity. We are proud of the role we play as Canada's gateway to the Asia-Pacific. However, with this great potential for growth, we are also presented with challenges that other parts of the country do not face. British Columbians are eager to overcome these barriers, but they do not see a government willing to support their efforts.

Stakeholders of our terminals are looking forward to exporting resources, while remaining committed to balancing economic growth with caring for our coastal waters.

In addition to opportunities presented with exporting resources, the tourism and the tech sectors are also expanding rapidly. We have a younger generation that is underemployed, but they are educated and eager to join the workforce. By not recognizing the need to address these issues by appointing a cabinet minister to take on this role, the Prime Minister is failing the people of British Columbia. He has also failed all the western provinces, which share similarities in their resources and challenges and the need for strategic planning in their economic growth.

I know that my province and region is not the only one feeling the effects of a lack of representation at the cabinet table. There has been significant discussion regarding representation of the Atlantic provinces and the apparent lack of funding and opportunities. In a report put forward by the Liberal Atlantic caucus, the members acknowledged that people have indicated that standard processing times have tripled due to the wait on ministerial approvals for things like programs or funding. I fear this will only continue for other regions. I would encourage the government to listen to its own Atlantic members and bring back proper regional representation.

We are always open to hearing ways to make government operate more efficiently. However, removing key regional ministers is a failure to recognize the unique needs of the different regions of the country. The Liberals' top-down approach to governing does not make government more efficient; rather, it is neglecting those it claims to be helping. Local jobs are at stake in B.C., and the Liberals are playing politics to make cabinet fit its agenda rather than listening to needs of local people.

I will also note that the removal of these positions is counteracted by the addition of new roles, for some of which we do not even know the titles.

I still remember how wonderfully our minister for western diversification had been working tirelessly for all the western provinces in the days when we were in government. That was the time when we could market our products collectively overseas and that was the time when we were able to create record-breaking full-time jobs. Trade is the number one job creator. Small businesses, as has been mentioned, are depending a lot on our trade opportunities.

Let me get back to the first prominent aspect of the bill. The Liberals are claiming equality to justify this bill. Equality has nothing to do with it. If the government truly wanted equal positions for every minister, the bill would have included the other appropriate changes. Simply changing the pay does not change the role or level of work.

In Bill C-24, the Liberals have also opted to leave out regional representation for no apparent reason. I believe my experiences show exactly why the changes outlined in Bill C-24 are unnecessary, and I strongly urge the government to reconsider its decision to eliminate the role of regional ministers.

I believe it is irresponsible to assume that a single minister from Ontario can appropriately represent all the region-specific concerns, despite what I presume are his best efforts. I hope the government will recognize these concerns and choose to continue with the appointment of regional ministers, as has been the tradition for many decades.

Pat Carney, who was Brian Mulroney's B.C. regional minister in the 1980s—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I am afraid the hon. member is out of time.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Guelph.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening throughout the course of this discussion to try to understand the viewpoint of the other side. We have contrasting management systems: the Stephen Harper Conservatives top-down approach; and the current Government of Canada approach, which is across all regions of the country, with gender diversity and all backgrounds, all at the table as one voice. We are recognizing that formally through what we are proposing in Bill C-24, where all ministers would have not only an equal voice but equal pay for equal work.

Could the member look at what we are seeing from our side and comment on a model of equal pay for equal work?

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I have no problem with equal work or equal pay. However, Bill C-25 has not addressed the other equal supports. If only the salaries are raised, without giving these now full ministers the true support they need, it is just window dressing. That is why this should have been taken out of this bill and discussed in greater detail. Being Liberals, they are very good at lumping everything together so that if members vote against the whole bill, they would be voting against, for example, pay equity for women.

Had they been really serious right at the beginning, they would have given to these ministers of state who are women full support. Why wait 18 months to do that?

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think she just answered my question

Does my colleague agree that, if the Prime Minister were truly a feminist and truly believed in gender equality, he would have appointed female ministers from the get-go and given them the full suite of powers instead of appointing them as ministers of state with fewer powers?

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the point. Liberals have been saying that they are feminists and that they value women, but right at the beginning, when they appointed women to these ministerial positions, they had already carved out some female ministers who were not good enough to be full ministers, and now they say there is something wrong with that. They then attached Bill C-24 to something else. That shows that they are not serious about this. This is exactly why I say that the Liberals are only paying lip service in saying that they want to give equal respect to women, but that is exactly what they have not done.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the incredible work she did previously as the minister for seniors. As I mentioned earlier, there are more women seniors in Canada than men seniors, and it is the largest-growing demographic in Canada. The previous government recognized that and was working hard for seniors.

I am also disappointed that the member has been ridiculed and belittled by the Liberal government, which is so-called feminist. I was wondering if the member feels that the Liberal government, which calls itself feminist, really is feminist and is really standing up for the dignity of all women.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what I have been saying. The Liberals only pay lip service. The fact that they do not even have a ministry for seniors, a minister of state, or a full minister for the benefit of seniors shows that they do not care. This is exactly why we have said we want to have more debate. They are now cutting the debate with time allocation. We represent our constituencies. I am standing firm to fight against this because of my riding, my senior women friends, and also me.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to say hello to all the viewers at home tonight who are paying attention to what we are debating, doing the good work Canadians sent us here to do.

I am pleased to rise to speak at second reading of Bill C-24, an act to update and modernize the Salaries Act. I would like to emphasize a few points made by my colleagues who have spoken before me. They bear repeating.

The bill would update the Salaries Act to reflect the structure of the current ministry by adding five titled positions. It makes good administrative sense that the legislative framework reflect the operating reality. The five positions that would be added to the Salaries Act are already occupied by ministers who are working on important priorities for this government and for Canadians: science, small business and tourism, status of women, Francophonie, sport, and persons with disabilities. The amendments would formally recognize that these are full ministers with equal status around the cabinet table, something we should all be applauding.

I wish to focus on the status of women portfolio, because our party and our government under the Prime Minister have much to be proud of. Yes, I am a feminist as well. On our recent trip to Italy, I was proud to hear our Prime Minister speak to the Italian deputies about the importance of having a gender-balanced cabinet and of having young women be proud of their government.

Our government believes in putting an agenda forward that has gender equality. If we look at the policies we have adopted, there is the Canada child benefit, which removes approximately 40% of children from poverty, which helps single mothers. We can look at the recent EI changes in the budget implementation act, which give women or men a choice to extend their paternity leave from 12 months to 18 months. We look at the Canada caregiver tax benefit. We amalgamated three tax measures. Again, it is family friendly. For the most part, we know that women do a lot of the work at home taking care of their loved ones. Those are facts, and we have put forward an agenda that reflects them.

When I was in Italy with the Prime Minister, he spoke to the Italian deputies and the trade delegation. I saw the reactions from the speaker of the house in Italy. They commented about having a prime minister in this world who stands up for women and puts gender equality first.

I have two daughters at home, and I am proud that they have a wonderful future ahead, because they have a government that is paying attention to their needs and to all Canadians' needs. That is something the opposition parties can learn from.

Our investments in child care, the funds we have set aside and the work we are doing with the provinces is groundbreaking and helpful for working moms. We need to get the labour force participation rate up for women at home who wish to enter the labour force. It is good for the economy, for Canada, and for our future.

On infrastructure, Bill C-24 would formalize the naming of the ministry of infrastructure and communities. One of the things we ran on in our platform was to invest in Canada and Canadians through infrastructure. I am proud to say that we are investing over $180 billion over 12 years, something that is growing our economy. Our job numbers in the last seven or eight months and our growth rates have easily surpassed the last 10 years of the Harper government. Look at the job numbers. We are leading the G7 in job growth and GDP growth. Our unemployment rate has fallen almost a full percentage point. It was 7% and change. Now it is in the 6% range. Again, it is something to be proud of.

At home in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, we are going to be getting a wonderful subway through investments in infrastructure. In Ontario we are investing $2 billion in GO Transit and getting people home more quickly after work for their kids' soccer games, hockey games, or piano lessons.

Those are the priorities of our government, and I am proud to be part of that government. That is why Canadians elected us. That is why Canadians sent us here and gave us the mandate to invest in Canada and Canadians from coast to coast to coast. That is something I am very proud of.

I think about the announcements we have made about clean water and waste water funds in York Region, where I was proud to stand with my York Region colleagues just two or three weeks ago. We put over $50 million into projects in York Region for water and waste water treatment facilities. Canadians can be assured, and people in York Region can be assured, that their infrastructure is up to date, that it is modern, and that we have clean drinking water for our families.

Those are investments that pay off today, tomorrow, and for the years to come. That is something we are proud of.

On the infrastructure side, we are investing in buses, regional transit, ports, services--

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have been listening to the member's speech, and I fail to see how any of that infrastructure spending is related to the Salaries Act debate we are having right now on ministerial pay. Perhaps I could have the member return to that subject matter. I have been trying to figure out how it is connected.

I leave it to you, Mr. Speaker, to determine whether it is relevant.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The hon. government House leader would like to respond to this.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is definitely relevant. Within the legislation, there is a change in the ministries. One of the changes is that it would establish a minister of infrastructure. I would suggest that any topic related to infrastructure--

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I believe we are moving into the area of debate.

As I have said before, when the Speaker is up here, we hear stories, and we often hear things said and wonder how they are going to be relevant or wonder where they are going. However, there are 338 members in the House whose constituents put them here to speak about their constituencies and represent them. How they represent them, I will leave up to them, and hopefully they will bring it back and it will be relevant. I have a lot of hope in all these 337 members, other than me, and I am sure it will all work out.

I will let the hon. member continue, and I will keep an ear open. I want to thank the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

The hon. member for Vaughan—Woodbridge.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, looking at the name of Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, there is no irony in “communities”, because Canada is made up of communities from coast to coast to coast. That is what we are doing and what our minister is doing, and I am proud to stand beside him in this House to invest in Canada and Canadians.

Again on status of women, I go back to chapter 5. We have created an equal tier of all ministries. This is why it is important for status of women to be a full portfolio, which it is of course. Chapter 5, a gender-based analysis, is a gender-based view of our budget for the first time ever. Women make up something like 52% of our population. It is our government that put forward this feminist agenda to ensure that women are participating in the labour force.

For small business and tourism, the numbers are going very well for Canada. We are attracting more and more tourists. When we travel the world, people tell us that they want to come to visit Canada and see what we are doing here. They like it and they like the direction this government is going. Again, small business and tourism will be a full ministry. Small businesses, or SMEs as I like to call them, are the driver of economic growth in my wonderful riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge. They employ thousands of people in Vaughan and thousands of people in York Region. We need that focus on small business.

One thing we have done is that when we cut taxes for the middle class and we raised them on the 1%, we created aggregate demand so people felt better about themselves, felt better about the future, became more optimistic, and they spent and invested in their families, in their regions, and in their communities. Therefore, yes, it is a full ministry for small business and tourism. Tourism continues to be an economic driver for Canada. We need to do more. We will do more. We are investing in our marketing agencies and so forth.

When I look at these five title changes and what is in the Salaries Act, I say to myself that we are going in the right direction. Our focus on status of women and on small business and tourism is exactly the direction we need to go in as a government and I am proud to be part of that government. These updating exercises are not new. The list of Salaries Act ministers has been amended several times in the last decade, most recently in 2013. In each case, the changes aligned with the priorities of the times and with the Prime Minister's preferences with respect to the composition of his ministry and the organization of the government administration.

The bill would also modernize the Salaries Act by introducing a measure of flexibility to cabinet-making going forward.

It would do that by adding three untitled ministerial positions. These positions would provide room for prime ministers at a future time to appoint and title ministers to reflect and respond to the changing priorities of their day. To me, that is smart planning. I worked in the private sector for 25 years. The world is evolving. There is a lot of global uncertainty. Things are evolving at home. We want to make sure the government has flexibility to introduce ministers or ministries as it sees fit and to respond to changing circumstances. It makes sense to me. That is what we would do in the private sector. I like that, and we bring it here to government.

Members on the other side have asked what the Prime Minister's plans are for these cabinet posts. Why are they needed? Why are they not named? To that, I would say that this change looks to the future. It builds in a degree of flexibility in the structuring of future ministries to reflect the priorities of the day. This is a government that looks to the future and that values adaptability to change in big ways and small. This is a small but an important way. It would enable a modern, adaptable ministry well into the future.

There are safeguards too. The bill would not enable the installation of an oversized cabinet, and we all know what that looks like from the past administration. The proposed increase in the number of Salaries Act positions would be offset by the removal of six regional development positions. The maximum number of ministers that may be appointed under the Salaries Act, including the Prime Minister, would increase by two positions from 35 to 37.

I have heard comments from the members of the House on the removal of the regional development positions. For them, I would like to emphasize that removing these positions from the Salaries Act in no way affects the status of the regional development agencies themselves. Let me re-emphasize that point. FedDev, ACOA, and the regional development agencies would continue to operate and do a great job for the regions they represent. They would continue to invest in Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

I grew up in a small town in northern British Columbia. I understand what it means to come from a region where the next town is two hours away, or 144 kilometres, if I remember correctly. People feel like they are far away from a big city, whether it is Vancouver or Toronto, and they want to make sure their voices are being heard and that investments are taking place in their area of the country. This Salaries Act would not change the prerogative or the role of the regional development agencies. It is misleading to suggest otherwise.

The regional development agencies will continue to be a vital part of this government's economic development work, and will be overseen by a minister. Regions are not being ignored under this government. Accountability is not being ignored under this government. These administrative amendments to the Salaries Act would change none of that.

I would like to correct a misconception about the bill that has been asserted in this place. It has been suggested that its effect is merely to authorize a raise for the five ministers who were appointed by orders in council on November 4, 2015, as ministers of state to assist other ministers, and that those orders in council make it clear that these are junior ministers, subordinate to other ministers, and therefore not deserving of the same salary. Let me be clear. To those comments I would first say that all ministers have been paid the same salary since day one. Equal pay for equal work is what we believe in. The bill would not change that. There is no raise for any minister under the bill.

Then let me say that I believe our government has been clear in explaining that the legislative framework in place on November 4, 2015, prevented the appointment of four ministers to these five positions. Use of the Ministries and Ministers of State Act allowed ministers to be appointed to those positions and to get to work on the priorities of this government and Canadians on day one.

The Prime Minister committed to introducing legislation that would formally equalize the status of all members of his ministry. A promise made is a promise kept. I am proud to be part of a government that keeps its promises to Canadians and is investing in Canadians. We have seen that handsomely in the recent months with our economy growing at a rate of over 2.5%, which had not been achieved under the Conservatives, from my understanding. We see job growth taking the unemployment rate down to the 6.2% range. We see income growth. We see exports rebounding. We see business investment starting to show green shoots. These are all things that we can be proud of as a government. When the full ramp-up of infrastructure spending takes place, which it will and it is, we will see further gains in employment numbers across the country from coast to coast to coast.

The bill fulfills this commitment. When it comes into force, the orders in council that appoint these ministers as ministers of state to assist other ministers will be repealed. They will be in law, as they are in practice, full and equal ministers.

In closing, let me repeat what I said at the beginning of my remarks. The Salaries Act amendments are administrative in nature. It makes good sense to update and modernize the legislation to reflect the structure of the current ministry, and to enable flexible and adaptable ministries, now and in the future. I hope all members will join me in supporting this bill.

When we look at our government's agenda, including Bill C-24, Canadians sent us here to do the good work they wanted us to do, and what we told them we would do in our platform. We have fulfilled many of those promises. I look to the Canada child benefit, our middle-class tax cuts, and our investments in infrastructure, and I say to myself, where are we taking Canada?

I look at these changes in Bill C-24, where we would appoint full ministers for the status of women, la Francophonie, small business and tourism, and my finance background tells me that our government is taking Canada to a place we need to go. We are not only passing the puck. We are going to where the puck is going to be, if I made that analogy correctly from my former ice hockey days. We are going to score the goal, and we will continue scoring the goals. For me, scoring the goals is ensuring that Canadians have a brighter future, that Canadians find the jobs they are looking for, that they come home to their families quicker in the evening, and that we continue to invest in them. That is the mandate of our government.

For me, it is to ensure that my two daughters who visited Parliament here yesterday, Eliana and Natalia, have a bright future. When this privilege ends, and I can say that it will not end for a long time, there is nothing more important to me and my family.

I will close my remarks off there. I look forward to answering any questions from my humble colleagues.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member began by talking about programs that help women, but I would like to talk about the real issues.

For example, a low-cost day care program would really help women return to work and give them a fair shot at earning a better income in the labour market, but there is no such bill on the table.

Instead of introducing an empty shell of a bill like this one, why does the government not introduce a meaningful bill that will really help women by creating a low-cost day care program?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our investments in Canadians and in Canadian families, specifically women, are groundbreaking. The Canada child benefit, which increases benefits for nine out of every 10 families an average of $2,300 more than what they were receiving. That is incredible.

The investment in child care is approximately $500 million a year, creating 40,000 annual spaces in child care for low- and middle-income folks who really need child care, who really need the help. We are working with the provinces, Canadians, and women's groups, and we are listening.

Those investments, and I could name off another five or six, are just two that are going to make a difference in families' lives from coast to coast to coast.

[David Lametti, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member touched on some interesting points.

As parliamentary secretary for innovation, science, and economic development, I see the impact first-hand of removing the old ministers of state for the regional development agencies. I echo his comments about the fact that we have created a much more lean and efficient ministry and department, and that the departmental functions of each of the regional economic development agencies has in fact not been impaired, but I would argue, improved with standardized practices.

I would invite the hon. member to elaborate on the fact that this is reflecting a reality in good governance, making government more efficient and making the regional development agencies more effective.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, about two or three months ago I was able to make an announcement in York Region, where FedDev provided a $3-million or $3.5-million repayable loan to a commercial aircraft parts supplier. These were high-skilled jobs. Jobs that paid well north of $100,000 a year. We made that announcement, and I was proud that FedDev was making that announcement in a manufacturer providing good-quality jobs in York Region and competing against companies globally. Those types of investments are the investments we need to grow the economy. We need to grow key sectors. In this instance it was the aerospace sector. It was something that I was proud of. I spoke to the owner that morning and he thanked us for being partners with his company. He thanked us for that repayable loan, or if one wants to call it a grant.

I remember our conversation vividly. I said that we are investing in high-tech, high-margin industries, in industries where we see growth. Here was a company in York Region manufacturing parts for the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A330 and A320. It was something we could be proud of and that was provided by FedDev.

I agree wholeheartedly on governance. I come from the private sector. Governance is very important to me. I would not invest in a company if it did not have good governance, and I would not believe in government if it did not have good governance.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I have had lots of conversations about the Kurdish issue in the parliamentary friends of the Kurds group that we are in together.

I want to ask him about these late sittings that we have had. We are considering C-24, which is a bill that was introduced pretty much a year ago. Is this really the urgent matter that the government wanted to have debated in evening sittings, a salary increase for Liberal cabinet ministers? We could pretty much retitle this the pay raise for Liberal cabinet ministers.

Why is this such a critical, important issue for the government when we could be debating lowering taxes on small businesses, actually getting control of the budget and reducing the deficit down to zero, actually following through on infrastructure, or the completion of projects instead of just announcements and more press releases. Why are we having late sittings to debate Liberal cabinet pay increases?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr Speaker, I want to correct something. Bill C-24 would not increase and does not result in any new spending or any new salaries. The salaries were effective the date that these ministers were appointed. The salaries are unchanged. There would be no new spending in place with the bill. I do wish to correct that. I think my friend had mentioned that. I do wish to correct the record on that because he is incorrect.

I am here to work. I was sent here by my residents to work. Frankly, if I have to stay here until midnight every night to work for them and their priorities, I will be here. That is what we get paid for. We get paid by the taxes that our constituents and Canadians pay. I will be here every night to work until midnight if I have to, to get the good work done of all the voters across Canada.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know a lot of people are watching tonight, and I just want to say that all the Canadian daughters are being spoken of very proudly by their fathers, and rightfully so. I am a proud daughter who learned from my father not to get schmoozed, not to worry about the names we might be called if we are smart or assertive, and we are applying our critical thinking to some of the things people say. I would say to these same daughters, who are watching tonight, to think about this. There are a couple of questions, and maybe the hon. member would like to answer them.

Does this mean these ministers of state will now have power and responsibility equal to the ministers under the definition of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice? Does this mean we will have ministries of state now? Does this mean we are so serious about gender equality now that we will implement this legislation that has been committed to? Does this mean people who are taking on roles and responsibilities in senior positions will be equally men and women? Does this mean the word feminism is more than just a charade? What exactly do ministers of state do? Are they equal to the power of a minister of a department if they do not have a ministry?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the responsibilities for each of these ministers is laid out in the mandate letters provided by the Prime Minister. I look at the Status of Women ministry, and I think to myself, that is the right direction everyone has to go in, and that is the right direction that all Canadians wish to go.

For me, personally, I want to make sure that labour force participation rates for the women across the country increase and match those of men. That is important. I want to see this globally as well, women empowered, and that is very important for us.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, finally, I am starting to see agreement on both sides of the aisle, but that might be because the hon. member is from a different part than the other people on the other side of the aisle. We have been discussing issues of governance, and the hon. member mentioned his private sector experience. Right now, we are talking about governance. Could he expand on the range of governance we are now introducing with equal say around the table?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from the wonderful riding of Guelph, which I had the chance to visit a few times.

Governance is a very important transparency, and with Bill C-24, the first thing it does is equalizes the ministers, and that is very important. Equal pay for equal work is supremely important, and the responsibilities are laid out in the mandate letter by the Prime Minister, so there is full transparency there and what his ministers are directed to do. As a result, there is full accountability by the mandate letters, and that is also very important. It is very important to me, and very important to my voters back in the beautiful riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, which I hope to visit soon again.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise in debate tonight on Bill C-24, an act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act.

I have a few problems with this bill. I want to speak to two aspects of it. I am going to start by speaking in my former capacity as the minister of state for western economic diversification. My understanding is that if parliamentarians vote in favour of this bill, essentially all of the economic diversification agencies in Canada would formally come under the auspices of one minister. That minister is from Mississauga. I have nothing against Mississauga. It is a wonderful place. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. However, Mississauga is not western Canada.

One of my Liberal colleagues applauded that. I am not sure why they would applaud that Mississauga is not western Canada. It was somebody from western Canada, fantastic, good to know.

Now that we have established that fact, and there seems to be some enthusiasm for that fact, it is important to note that economic diversification agencies were created to essentially underscore the fact that while we try to come up with national economic development policies or national economic policies, Canada does in fact operate under a heavily regionalized economy. There are differences between the different regions of our country, and in order to ensure we function as a cohesive unit, these agencies work to bolster the economies of each part of our country, to essentially ensure we are greater than the sum of our parts.

I was the minister of state for western economic diversification. My background is in intellectual property management. I spent most of my career prior to politics in several fields, but the last position that I occupied had some role in managing the intellectual property portfolio, to a certain extent, of the University of Calgary, as well as managing its sponsored research portfolio. I actually had the privilege of working with some of the great public servants who were in this department prior to entering politics.

I came in with a certain level of domain expertise. It was really interesting to be able to marry some domain expertise with an understanding of why it is so important to use an agency like this to incent innovation, and bolster different parts of the economy to see long-term economic growth in that region of the country.

I am a Winnipeger by birth, and a Calgarian by choice, much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues. The point is I have a deep understanding of western Canada. I was appointed as a minister to help bolster the economy of western Canada. I am happy to speak to some of the successes I had there.

The point being, it was important to have a minister of state at the cabinet table who was not only responsible for grants and contributions, and managing the process related to grants and contributions to western Canada, but also meeting with stakeholder groups and taking that opinion, in terms of an economic minister, up to the cabinet table, and formulating economic policy for the entire nation. What this bill would do, if we adopt it, is we would essentially lose that very fundamental linkage of a regional minister and regional economic development agency with the cabinet table for expediency sake.

I want to speak about the specific need of why we need an economic diversification or an economic development minister from western Canada, but I am actually going to speak to some of my colleagues' concerns from Atlantic Canada. I read a report that came out earlier this year, I believe it was from the industry committee, that talked about how ACOA was actually seeing close to 12-month delays in seeing some of its innovation grants being approved. It was because of the bottleneck going up to the minister from Mississauga.

Many of my colleagues from across party lines have heard great frustrations from stakeholders in Atlantic Canada. They were saying that this 12-month delay, because a minister is not signing-off on these grants, was not particularly conducive to many start-up companies, many industries where they needed to have that seed funding in a very short runway in order to see results. That was not conducive.

I just do not understand why the Liberal government would enshrine in legislation a bill that would make Atlantic Canadians apply for these innovation funds and go through a minister from Mississauga. That is defeating the purpose of the agency, to a certain extent. I have no idea what is going on. I just do not understand why we would do this.

We could have an entire philosophical discussion on whether we need regional development agencies at all, but if we are going to have regional development agencies, part of whose mandate is to bring to the cabinet table and to Parliament the viewpoints of regionalized economic concerns in each part of the country, then surely we should have ministers who are representing those agencies at the cabinet table. That has been lost. It is just not there anymore.

When I was minister of state for western economic diversification, I took my domain expertise and went into the agency with a great team of public servants. Whenever I have a chance to speak about how fantastic they were and put it on the record, I do that, and I am doing that again today. We sat down together and asked how we could make this agency more effective. The mandate I gave them was to go to the stakeholders that utilize our services in our communities, and ask them what the mandate and purpose of this agency should be, and that we should do it on an ongoing basis because that is not a static question. It changes from year to year. What we need to do to bolster the economic diversification of western Canada should be evaluated on an ongoing basis. That was the first thing we did. We said we would have a formal consultation process to establish what we are managing as an agency.

I undertook a very extensive tour, close to six months, of western Canada. It was very formalized. We took feedback from industry, not-for-profit organizations, academia, small business owners, and came up with a set of five priorities that we felt at that time were important to ensure there was economic diversification in western Canada. Those things included first nations economic participation; ensuring there was skilled labour because there was a significant shortage of skilled labour in western Canada at the time, and still is; ensuring that western Canadian businesses were participating in trade agreements or taking advantage of agreements, such as CETA and how we could position that; bolstering innovation; looking at things like the R and D life cycle, not necessarily basic research but things like prototype development, start up-scale up, these sorts of things; how WD could play in that; and a variety of other aspects as well.

We made those criteria very formal and from there, I asked my department to translate what we are managing to there down into our grants and contributions, and make sure that our funding programs reflected the goals and objectives of what we are managing to through that contribution process.

As well as having a background in intellectual property management, it is also in academic research administration. I understand how to manage a grants and contribution process and said I was not comfortable with ministerial direction all the time in terms of some of the processes, that I would like to move it more toward the minister's direction in terms of the policy outcomes of what the grants and contributions would achieve, and that I would like to move to a call for proposals model.

We changed the process by which people applied for grants through WD. We launched an initiative of $100 million over five years because at the consultation I mentioned. We heard that one of the key determinants of economic growth in Canada for small and innovative business was a start-up capital gap, particularly in prototype development and start up-scale up phase, so we tailored a program specifically for that with very defined criteria.

The point I am trying to make is that took a lot of my time as a minister. It took a lot of time. It was probably one of the most rewarding two years of my professional career, because I felt like I could go to the cabinet table of a G7 country, and then take my policy expertise, but, more importantly, the feedback of a very specific group of people in Canada, that being western Canadian businesses, tailor our grants and contributions programs to ensure that everybody had equal participation, and then make some magic happen.

Now, three or four years after that process, we are starting to see the results. Jobs are being created through intellectual property being commercialized and retained in western Canada. There are innovative skills training programs with first nations communities in a wide variety of sectors. These metrics that are now reported through the departmental report are a result of the fact that this economic development agency had a minister who was providing political will through the bureaucracy and the outcomes of the grants and contributions process.

That might not sound very romantic, but that is really the job of a minister. Some people think the job is photo ops or swanning around, but really, it is saying, “As an executive member of the government, I have a political mandate to fulfill.” It is taking that mandate and working with public servants to ensure that political will comes to fruition through process, procedure, and a lot of hard work. Sometimes ministers have to bring their bureaucracy onside with them. Sometimes it is a bit of a struggle. Sometimes they have to bring stakeholders on board with them and flesh out that mandate a bit.

The point I am trying to make is that it takes work and it takes time. If we are going to have economic development agencies, we need to have someone who is willing to be the fulcrum of that particular work to work with the bureaucracy. Bill C-24 would eliminate that relationship. It would eliminate the relationship between a minister and the bureaucracy and the relationship with the stakeholders in the community. It would centralize it.

I am all for government efficiency. It is very important to look at our processes and ask how we can deliver services more efficiently and effectively, but what we have seen, from the evidence in stakeholder groups like ACOA, for example, is that these grants and contributions are not being approved.

I have to give a lot of credit to my former deputy minister, Daphne Meredith, who was one of the most talented public servants Ottawa has ever seen. She is very smart, very gentle, and very firm. I learned so much from her. However, she could only do so much without having a mandate from a minister and an understanding that the minister had her back in implementing certain process changes.

There is a gif on the Internet. It is a dog playing the piano, saying, “I have no idea what I'm doing.” That is probably what a lot of the deputy ministers in some of the economic development agencies are feeling right now. It is not from a lack of skill. It is a lack of political oversight because of bills like this.

If the government wanted to eliminate oversight in economic development agencies, it should have put forward to stakeholders a plan on how it was going to engage them and how it was going to overhaul grants and contributions processes to achieve the objectives I mentioned before it put this bill forward. The bill, without that detail, provides a lot of uncertainty for small- and medium-sized businesses, academic groups, and other groups, especially first nations communities, which often rely on these economic development agencies to achieve outcomes.

There are critics who say that economic development agencies should not exist at all. One of the fundamental things we need to ask ourselves as parliamentarians, and as people who have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent in the most efficient and effective way possible, is what we are managing to. What is the outcome of the tax dollars we are spending?

The problem with not having political oversight of these development agencies is that it is very difficult to set those parameters and measure whether they are successful without having political oversight. The reality is that the member for Mississauga—Malton, who is the industry minister, has a lot of competing concerns in the industry portfolio. He has announced $1 billion for something on superclusters. We could have an entire other debate on the efficacy of that. He has to look at things like the internal trade agreement. He has some responsibility for government procurement with regard to supply chain development, indirect cost benefits, and all these sorts of things.

What is happening with Bill C-24 is that we are saying to let us manage economic diversification or economic development agencies off the corner of a really overstuffed desk. I do not think that is the best approach.

I think the government needs to say, “Look, we're either in the business or we're not, and if we're not in the business, let's be honest with our stakeholders rather than making them wait for 18 months.”

This might seem like a very pedantic debate, but at the end of the day, if we are going to have these agencies and be able to explain to taxpayers that this is worth their while, we need to have political oversight; otherwise, it becomes bureaucrats shovelling cash off the back of a truck. That is not anything that anyone in this place wants. Some of my colleagues question that, and fair enough. Perhaps we can answer that in question-and-answer period.

I honestly think that without political oversight, it is very difficult to say, within these agencies, “What are we managing to?” and then “Do our processes reflect our ability to get to that point?”

To be honest, for that reason alone, I cannot support Bill C-24.

We are going to get a little feminist in here tonight. In Bill C-24, the Liberals have stood up and claimed that there are housekeeping items to legislate equal salaries for all ministers. That is just a talking point. For my colleagues in here who have not served in cabinet or perhaps do not understand the cabinet process, in order for us to take what is called a “memorandum to cabinet” as a minister, we need to be a full minister. A memorandum to cabinet is basically a direction to cabinet. It is saying, “This is what I want the executive to do and vote on.”

This bill does not address the fact that people who have been named as full ministers by the Prime Minister in his “gender equity cabinet“ still do not have the capacity, on their own accord, to bring that direction to cabinet. I do not understand how that is gender equity. There are still women in this cabinet who are being called full ministers, yet they have to report to a man to bring their own memorandum to cabinet. That is not equality at all.

I have worked really hard to get to where I am in my life. I have men laughing at me in here for that. I find that highly amusing.

I sacrificed a lot. I have made choices to make sure that my career has been placed first and foremost in my life. That is a choice that I have made.

For someone to come up to me and say, “Oh, you know, you're part of a gender equity cabinet. By the way, the Prime Minister announced that the day before cabinet happened. I might not agree with them on a lot of things, but there are women in the Liberal cabinet who have resumés or CVs that should stand. Canadians should say, “Look, these are talented women.” However, he took credit for their CVs by saying, “They're here because it is a gender equity cabinet.” However, some of these women now do not have the ability to bring memoranda to cabinet on their own. They still have to go, “Oh, hey, Mr. Minister, can you please sign off on my MC?”

This bill would not fix that. I would prefer that the Prime Minister just be honest about the fact that he actually does not have a gender parity cabinet. He does not. If he did, these women would have the capacity to bring memoranda to cabinet on their own, and they do not. We can pay women one way, but this bill also does not address the fact that many of these women do not have their own deputy ministers. That is also the hallmark of a full minister.

I do not understand why we have this bill in front of us. There are so many things that are affecting this country, from foreign policy issues to our immigration processes at home to people being out of work in my home province, yet we are spending valuable House time debating a bill that would not help the economy in any way, shape, or form and would not make women more equal. To me, that is the hallmark of the Liberal government: useless legislation, legislation in name only that really does nothing at the end of the day. It is a Seinfeld episode. For that reason, I encourage my colleagues not to support Bill C-24.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Speaker, after having spent a fair bit of time in the ministry of innovation, science and economic development and having gone out west and worked with WD on the ground, I now have a fuller understanding of why there was no diversification in the west under the previous government and why the regional development agencies all generally failed to do what they had to do.

When we took office, we had to fix ACOA. We have fixed it, and it is now working very well. We have 32 very satisfied members of Parliament from the Atlantic region who are happy with ACOA, as well as stakeholders in Calgary, Fort McMurray, and Saskatoon, where I was last week with WD officials on the ground, in universities, and in other settings. People are very happy with the way we have restructured.

I would invite the hon. member to comment on why one would not want to restructure in good faith with the ministry and with officials from regional development economic agencies to have a more coherent innovation and skills agenda. This is precisely what we are doing, and the regional development agencies, including WD, are putting this policy into practice on the ground.

Why would it not be a good thing to be sensitive to the needs of the west and sensitive to the needs of Atlantic regions and other regions in Canada through a more efficient, coherent, and diversified economic policy?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for the chance to correct his odd mashup of Orwellian Newspeak and Internet buzzword generator. I heard “innovation”, “synergy”, “synergistic”, “work together” without any sort of metrics, and that is the point.

I would like to clarify some of my colleague's points.

First, the government does not have 32 satisfied members. It has 32 very whipped and gagged and muzzled Atlantic Canada members, four of whom had the courage to put their names on a report talking about the fact that ACOA is about 12 to 18 months behind in terms of approving grants and contributions. That is not an improvement.

In terms of western economic diversification, if the Liberals had any desire to look at diversification of the western economy, they would understand that the natural resource sector, particularly the energy sector, has an enormous capacity to be a receptor for innovative technology, including clean technology, carbon capture and sequestration, and things like flocculent development for the oil sands for tailing ponds.

I could go through numerous technologies that are being developed in academic institutions in western Canada, yet we do not have any commitment from the Liberal government to see the long-term development of that sector. Intellectual property that is developed for that is licensed out to other countries. There is no desire to retain it in western Canada. As a result of the Liberal government's detrimental policy in the energy sector, the tanker ban, no contributions to pipeline development, no contributions to keep skilled labour in western Canada, that intellectual property is leaving and the economy cannot be diversified.

I absolutely reject the premise of the question, the idea that the Liberals have any authority to speak on economic diversification in western Canada.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before we go to the next member, I just want to remind hon. members that if they are sitting near a microphone and they are speaking, it picks up what they say and it really does interfere with what we are hearing.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her very interesting speech. She once held the kind of position that we are talking about tonight, the ones this government has decided to do away with. It was really good for all of us to hear her experiences, which clearly show that there are indeed advantages to having ministers responsible for economic development in the various regions.

Today, I would like to ask my colleague whether she thinks that these positions, which were so good for our regions' economic development, are being completely eliminated to cover up another broken promise. Essentially, that promise was catching up with the Liberals and they would have had to allocate funding to pay those ministers. They had to do away with something of value to fix a campaign mistake.

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

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with my colleague. The Liberals spend for spending's sake. It is like fun coupons. That was the point I was trying to make in the earlier part of my speech. The Liberals have not defined what they are managing in spending taxpayer dollars. It is all about spending for spending's sake.

In the budget this year, we saw an increase in the deficit year over year for the fiscal year 2016-17, but we saw a decrease in the GDP projections from fiscal year 2016-17. In that component, the Liberals have spent more to get less.

With respect to how the economic development agencies could be utilized, if we are to invest in these agencies, we should have political oversight from people who have expertise and understanding of the economies of those regions of the country and marry that into an overall economic growth strategy that operates within the context of a balanced budget. That has not happened.

That is part of the problem with Bill C-24. It is like let us getting rid of political oversight on something and hope that everything turns out all right. That is not management. I do not know what to characterize that as, a #fail, some great socks, I am not sure. I just know that the public servants who work in these departments and the stakeholders that depend on them would not want us to support this.

There is a lot of consternation about the fact that the bill has been tabled without any sort of operating plan being put forward. If the plan is to let public servants completely manage the oversight of grants and contributions related to regional economic development agencies, that is a bad plan.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, by the member's description of what she did and what she accomplished in her time as the minister responsible for western economic diversification, she worked hard, applied her knowledge and her skills, and had some really good results. We will not debate that part of it, but did she get paid as much as other ministers in that cabinet?

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

Mr. Speaker, I was appointed as a minister of state. I was not appointed as a full minister and I understood that going into my position.

The minister of state position has a certain level of salary attached to it and a full minister position has a certain level of salary attached to it. It would be like me being hired as the VP of a company, but expecting to be paid as the president of a company. I had the responsibility of a minister of state, which I think I exceeded, and I was paid accordingly. I was very proud of the fact that I was a minister of state in the past government. I think I did a fantastic job. I do not like being humble so I was awesome, it was great and I was paid accordingly.

The point is that I did not try to say I should be paid equal to my peers without having the responsibility of my peers. If my colleague opposite truly felt that I should be paid at the level as his female colleagues in cabinet should be, then I should have full rights to bring memorandums to cabinet. I should have a deputy minister and have the accountability of an entire department.

Given my managerial expertise, my CV, and my political experience, I would expect that had we formed government, I would have been appointed as a full minister, and I am happy to say that here, and I should have been paid accordingly. However, for that level of responsibility, I was paid to what my responsibilities were. That is not sexist; that is the way it is. Sexist is trying to claim that women are paid one way, but do not have the responsibility of their peers. That is embarrassing and disgusting.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Shepard.

I am thankful to be speaking to Bill C-24, an act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act. However, it is late at night and the government has made it clear that it is not interested in hearing further input from the opposition parties. Once again, it is shutting down debate and sending it to committee where, based on what it has done with other bills, it will not accept any of the amendments. Therefore, I am not sure what kind of an impact I will have tonight. However, I will go ahead and make a few points about the concerns I have with Bill C-24.

My first concern has to do with the elimination of the six regional development agency ministers. We have heard other people speak to it, but I will provide my thoughts on that. Also, the creation of three entirely new mystery ministers is of concern to me.

Amending the Salaries Act to legislate equal pay for all ministers concerns me. All of this has already been done. We heard testimony earlier that at the very beginning, once everybody discovered the Prime Minister had put women in junior minister roles and paid them less than other ministers, there was an outcry and it was immediately fixed via the estimates. The Liberals had already ridded themselves of the regional ministers. Therefore, I am not even sure why we have to talk about it if they have already done that, especially when the government has failed on its legislative agenda, is having us sit late at night, and is now bringing forward items on which action has already been taken. Therefore, whatever we say here tonight is kind of irrelevant.

With respect to regional economic development, I want to share why I think that those six positions were important.

One of the things we need in our country is to create jobs. We need to get that economic growth happening. Every region has different industries, different constraints, and different provincial and municipal regulations. There is a lot to know about.

Sarnia—Lambton had a southwestern regional minister who was familiar with the industry in Sarnia—Lambton, in London, in Windsor, and did a lot of work to help start our bio-economy, helped get us into advanced manufacturing, and helped us partner in the water industry. Time is required to get to know the industries and the economic opportunities in the area, coming with a voice in government to advocate on behalf of those opportunities, and then help the wheels of government turn to get that money out in a timely fashion. For example, when we are trying to start up a new bio-industry or trying to get into a new business, time is of the essence.

I have heard similar stories when I look to the Atlantic provinces. I have a lot of connections there, so I hear about what is going on there, I hear about what is going on in Quebec, and the importance of these regional ministers. Therefore, it is extremely concerning to have those eliminated. The departments have not been eliminated, which is of some comfort. That means the government recognizes the need to have that local and regional information. However, there is nobody to direct the ship other than the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. He is a great guy, but he is a busy guy. He does not have enough time for the oversight. He has to be in the House and he has responsibilities in his municipality as well.

These are some of the things the minister is responsible for. In addition to all of the economic growth in the different regions across the country, he is also in charge of the rural Internet initiative, which is really important. We have a huge need for that in the north. There is a huge, ambitious program under way, which I appreciate. He is also the one who is trying to initiate the superclusters. That involves developing a plan and that is a huge change. It requires a lot of coordination of different players. He is responsible for the census. He is responsible for the innovation agenda. He is also trying to launch new areas like artificial intelligence. He is trying to advance us in green technology, while maintaining our leadership in the aerospace and automotive industries. If we look at all the things involved there, they are all important. If we take focus away from them, then we will not make progress as quickly.

That is why these six ministers were so important. It was because they could spend the time to look at what the opportunities were and move those forward, and now we are missing that.

We have heard complaints. I have heard complaints from Quebec that things are not moving quickly now that those ministers have been removed. I have heard in the Atlantic provinces the same thing that the member for Calgary Nose Hill shared, that there are delays of 12 and 18 months. It is taking three times as long to get things approved. When people are in the innovation space trying to take ideas and turn them into jobs, time is of the essence. This whole idea is not good.

With respect to the mystery ministers, nobody here was able to say who they are. Maybe they will come up eventually. Is it really a priority to talk about things that may or may not happen in the future and to pick three of them that might happen in the future? It just speaks to the government's lack of openness and transparency. We have seen all kinds of evidence of this in the refusal to answer questions in the House of Commons. We see that on a dally basis. We see, when we try to get access to information, that they black out the costs of the carbon tax for the taxpayer. We see that they are trying to rearrange the parliamentary budget officer so that members of Parliament cannot get information out of him. I could go on, about partisan appointments and all the other things that the current government is doing that are not open or transparent.

Clearly, these three mystery ministers are something that does not exist, and if it does exist and there is a hidden agenda, then it is just another example of what I am talking about.

That brings us then to the discussion on the salaries and whether the salaries of the women who are serving in these junior minister roles should be equal. Certainly, as the chair of the status of women committee, I am somebody who firmly believes in gender equality and in pay equity. I was on the pay equity committee and sat endless hours talking about what we could do, and made recommendations to the government on which it has done nothing in budget 2017. For all the talk of being a feminist, there is absolutely nothing happening from that point of view.

I would also say that in my career I have experienced discrimination as a woman so I am probably an extra advocate for trying to make sure that things are done fairly. One of the things that is important when we talk about pay equity—and they can even Google this on the government web page—is that when we try to figure out whether jobs should be paid equally, an analysis is done. The analysis looks at skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

When we compare some of these junior positions, for example the Minister of Sport with the Minister of Finance, let us look at the budget that the Minister of Sport handles versus the budget that the Minister of Finance is handling. Let us think about the Minister of Democratic Institutions, now that we are not going to do any electoral reform because we broke that promise. If the minister of electoral reform does not do a good job, what is the consequence of that versus the Minister of Public Safety not doing a good job? There is a huge difference there. Let us think about what the responsibilities of the Minister of Status of Women are versus the defence minister, for example. She has a $38-million budget.

When we do a pay equity analysis we are going to see that in fact there is a different level of responsibility in these positions, so I do not personally think that they should have been restored to a full minister's salary because I do not believe they have the same responsibility. They clearly do not have the same effort and in some cases the skill level that has been put into these roles is actually troubling. The government House leader is a rookie with no experience with parliamentary Standing Orders, and we have seen how that has jumbled the government's agenda and made for all the filibustering and the delays that have resulted in our sitting this late.

These are my main concerns with the bill. Obviously, it does not really matter what I say because all of these changes have been put into effect anyway, and I expect there will be no amendments at committee.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to talk about math because they are very focused on math on that side. I recall in 2006 when Prime Minister Harper said he was going to start with a tiny cabinet. It was about 28 members and then the cabinet grew to 41 members. When the Conservatives talked about saving money and being really good with the taxpayer dollars, we know that was the wrong approach.

What we have decided to do and the path we have chosen is to say that women deserve equal pay for an equal voice at the cabinet table. I do not understand what is wrong with an equal voice at the cabinet table with equal pay. Does the member not support that?

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

Mr. Speaker, the government's own procedures on how pay equity should be implemented say that having the same voice at the cabinet table in terms of a vote is not part of responsibilities, skills, efforts, and working conditions. It is one small element of that whole equation.

While I agree that women should be paid equally to men in the same job, I have just given a number of examples of why that is not true. I will tell the House about one position, a minister, that has changed with the focus of the government on infrastructure. That would be the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, who has now been given $180 billion to spend over the next 10 years, with only $2 billion for rural of course.

That responsibility has changed, because of the focus of the government on the responsibilities, efforts, and skills required to do that job. The minister has the infrastructure bank, and that is going to be a big schmozzle that will take a lot of time. In that case, I can see a reassessment of what the job is worth based on what is being put into it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. It is always interesting to hear her thoughts.

I must admit that I would prefer to be discussing a real bill on pay equity. Then we could have really made some progress. In a past career, before I got into politics, I fought for the cause of pay equity in the Quebec school system. Before equity could be achieved, we spent months and years comparing job descriptions to make sure that the positions in question required the same skills and involved the same duties.

Are we really expected to believe that the Liberals will manage to solve the problem overnight and until the end of time simply by declaring that everyone will have the same salary?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Definitely, the government has had every opportunity to take an excellent example from the folks in Quebec who actually testified at our committee on pay equity, about the legislation that was brought in that rapidly closed the gap between men and women, and what they were paid.

The government has had 18 months to do something about it. We see no legislation. We see nothing in the six pages of the gender statement of budget 2017. It has certainly missed an opportunity there.

[Deb Schulte, Liberal, King—Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here listening to my colleague across the way. I know she is an engineer, and has professed many times that data should guide, facts should be what informs us and helps us make our decisions. I have been listening to her speech, and I am really quite shocked. What she is quoting is not at all the experience that I have had with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. We have seen amazing work coming forward. We have not seen a slowdown.

The member has been quoting that there have been some delays and lots of problems. I would like her to tell us where this data is coming from. It certainly is not the experience that I am having. I am confused. I would like to hear her explain where that data is coming from.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will just give one example, and that is from Sarnia—Lambton. In November 2015, the minister agreed to provide funding. By the time we got it out the door, it was a year and a half later.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad I am debating at so late an hour. It is not quite midnight, but we are getting there.

Like I mentioned before during the questions and comments of other members, I made comments that, really, we should be renaming the bill “the pay raise for Liberal cabinet ministers”. I really do feel that way. I know some people say that the pay was adjusted before. Then the logical question is, why are we considering this legislation if it is just to change a bunch of titles? The Liberals could have done that before. They really did not need to do anything. They could have just scribbled all over their notepads and on their business cards, and got it done.

They come into the House, consuming so many hours of the debate that supposedly, they said, was to improve the middle class. I do not really see how the Liberal cabinet getting a higher pay raise improves the fate or the economic ability of the middle class.

As for the content of the bill, I am looking at it and I have read through it several times now. It formalizes its eight new Liberal cabinet ministers. These are so-called full ministers, but as we heard from the member for Calgary Nose Hill, they actually will not be full ministers because they will not be able to bring MCs directly. They will still have to ask the ministers that they report to in order to be able to do that.

They are also asking for three new cabinet ministers yet to be named. I will be referring to these as the mystery cabinet ministers, and a good deal of my speech will focus on them, because what the Liberals are asking us to do, just like the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge said, is to give them a blank cheque. They want these three new cabinet ministers to be appointed some time in the future, so I have a bunch of suggestions on roles they could fill on their side in areas in which I feel they need desperate help. They need reinforcements to actually get their agenda through.

I do have a Yiddish proverb. It will come up very soon, because I know several members are looking at me, expecting one ready.

As for raises for salaries of junior ministers to cabinet ministers, like I said before, every time there is talk of openness and transparency in this place, it seems to cost the taxpayers ever more money. Why are the Liberals raising cabinet ministers' pay? Why not lower all pay? I see some ministers in the House are probably very worried when I mention this, but that would be the right thing to do for taxpayers when we have a nearly $30-billion deficit we are rolling through and for which the Liberals will be punishing the taxpayers of the future, who will have to pay for it.

This would be a great way to treat everybody equally: just lower everybody's pay. It is equal. It is fair to everyone. It is open. It is transparent. It is generous. Why not? Like I said, we could do the opposite. That would just require a minor amendment on the government side. Why is it always more money, more expenses, a car, a deputy minister, more exempt staff, more ability to travel. It is always more money, more money from the taxpayers. It always winds up being that way.

The Yiddish proverb I wanted to use is, “A wise man hears one word, but understands two”, and I feel like that wise man when I say, “Read the legislation”, because there is much more at stake here than simple pay. There are these three mystery cabinet ministers the Liberals will be introducing. It is not as if they do not have enough cabinet ministers already. We see week after week so-called ministers not delivering on their press releases, not delivering on their mandate letters. In fact they had cabinet shuffles, and I fully expect another cabinet shuffle in the future and certain ministers to be moved around, especially after the week they have had with the failure to appoint a Commissioner of Official Languages who will be fair to all parties in the House and with the true consultation of all members in the House.

Let us talk about these mystery ministers, because I think that is the right terminology. If the Liberals had amended the legislation and called them mystery ministers, I might even have considered voting for it, just a little bit.

Now who among the Liberal backbench has worked hard enough to join and become a mystery minister? What kinds of positions could they hold? Who has distinguished themselves the most? I have wondered that, and I have a few suggestions. However, let us go to those new portfolios first.

I think we should have a minister for balancing budgets, because I can see the Minister of Finance suffers terribly in the House not being able to follow through on what he believed when he was in the private sector working for Morneau Shepell, for a company that worked in human resources, a well-known EAP. I worked in human resources before with many HR professionals. It was the company that was involved in it. It was considered an expert in the field. Now they need to help. A full minister responsible for balancing the budget could find those savings all across government, and they would not even need to rely on the Minister of Finance to accomplish that.

Now I think they also need a minister for the tabulation of Liberal broken promises. I say that tongue in cheek, but there is just so many of them, it would be a full-time job. It would probably mean overtime and many late hours of tabulation. I also think they could use a minister for strategic photo-ops, or photo bombs, as the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge likes to say, maybe Instagram as well, because that seems to be an all-consuming passion of the Prime Minister. Why not make it a full ministry while we are at it?

The minister for seniors is a very serious suggestion. There is no minister for seniors, but I have a colleague here who was the minister of state for seniors. That is the seriousness of what we are doing for seniors and the growing seniors population in Canada. There are many members on our side of the House that advocated for the government actually appointing a person, a champion, an advocate for seniors in government to bring those issues forward. That one is far less tongue in cheek. That would have an actual impact on government legislation and government regulation, and their focus areas as well.

I will suggest another one: a minister for anti-corruption. We have had Liberal cabinet fundraising on the cocktail circuit, and really iffy appointments being brought before the House for an official languages commissioner, which is now pulled. Many other ones have come through for ACOA and for other organizations in government. We are still waiting on those judges to be appointed.

How about a minister for procurement to actually fix what is happening on that side of the House. Between the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of National Defence, they just cannot get it done, and they will not get it done. Why not appoint a person whose sole job in this government will be to procure equipment for our Canadian Armed Forces, for the Coast Guard, and throughout government? Just appoint someone, and not the Minister of Public Works. Obviously, she cannot get it done.

How about we appoint a minister dedicated to holding the President of the Treasury Board's hand to actually follow through on his mandate letter that says he will go ahead and amend the Access to Information Act, which he has now said he will not do. They are not following through on those reforms. They have no intention of doing it anymore. Why not actually have meaningful transparency and fulfill a campaign promise, one of which I thought was not a bad idea? Why not do it?

I have been on the receiving end of ATIP and how it does not work. Right now I have an access to information request with a government department for what I think is the fictional orphan drug framework. I have been basically told that I will not get it for another eight years. It is a very reasonable access to information request, but they told me they would use the extension provisions in the act to prevent me from getting what I am a actually asking for, the thousands of documents, until eight years from now. That is far beyond the mandate of a member of Parliament.

How about a minister for sock selection? That is more tongue in cheek. Obviously, we have seen there are lots of different permutations they could have.

Mr. Speaker, you do not have interesting socks like the Prime Minister does. I am sorry to see that.

Like my colleague for Perth—Wellington said, the government is all socks, no action. We seem to spend way more time talking about the Prime Minister's socks than his achievements. What has he actually done? What has he actually achieved almost two years into this mandate? There is barely any achievement, any legislation passed, a massive deficit, a huge debt, a carbon tax, and really no plan. Actually they are forcing carbon taxes on every single province whether the population wants it or the government wants it.

I will say that there are lots of good members on that side of the House who could make it into these mystery ministerial portfolios. I am looking at one gentleman whom I am sure would desperately want to get one.

How about the member for St. John's East, a member I travelled with on the Canada Post review committee through Atlantic Canada, or the member for Malpeque, who has an independent streak?

I will end on this one point, I think the last ministerial position they could appoint, from one of my very favourite shows, is the minister for administrative affairs. I am sure Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Fowlds, and Diana Hoddinott would be supremely pleased by such a title in this government because I think Yes Minister represents exactly the fulfilment in this government of everything they are able to achieve, which is very little, blocked by the bureaucracy that seems to love them very much, but is unable to actually achieve any of the goals they were elected on, unable to actually follow through on any of the goals set out in the mandate letters, and actually have achieved very little in the past two years. Except now, we have a late evening sitting and we are debating cabinet raises, pay raises for cabinet ministers as opposed to the Cannabis Act or maybe balancing the budget or actually any number of the other pieces of legislation before the House that could have been brought forward by the government. They have chosen not to.

It is just a poor piece of legislation and I will not be voting for it.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, would the member not agree with me that when we look at the five portfolios, such as science, something that we believed in and I think the past government really did not believe in, science and looking at facts and evidence and making decisions based on facts and evidence, they should each be a full ministry? Status of women is the same thing. How about small business and tourism? It is the backbone of the economy. Tourists are coming to Canada in greater numbers. Small businesses are growing and our economy is growing.

Is it not important that these great members of our government who serve their residents and serve Canadians have the authority of our full ministers and are paid equally? Again, I correct the record that there are no salary increases with C-24. I would like to let the member know that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the bill does not achieve any of those goals. All it does is set different pay levels for cabinet ministers. All of the ministers already have a voice at the table. They are already working on files. The problem is that they do not have the same responsibilities. They cannot present directly to cabinet. As the member for Calgary Nose Hill said, they do not have the ability to push MCs without the approval of their lead ministers. They do not have the same pay because they do not have the same responsibilities. It really has nothing to do with their gender.

I made a point earlier and posed this question when other members spoke. How about pay for performance? How about we pay them based on their performance, their ability to meet their mandate letter requirements? That would be a great way to pay cabinet ministers.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hate to disappoint the member, but in the previous government, no ministers had decision power because they had to go through the kids in short pants.

I will bring the member back to what the ministers of state were under the previous government. I recall a minister losing some power under her senior minister. Her crime was that she gave $400,000 to the Toronto gay pride parade. That was the state of those ministers under the previous government.

Again, I go back to having an equal voice at the cabinet table and equal pay. What does the member not understand about equal pay for equal work?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member said “kids in shorts pants”. I would rather kids in short pants than kids in Prada pants.

I believe the member worked for Dalton McGuinty. I worked as an exempt staffer for Gordon O'Connor when he was in national defence. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, either. We should not slag those in our profession who are now occupying exempt staffer positions in ministers' offices. I do not do it to those who served in the Conservative government. I also do not pick on staff in the different ministers' offices.

The Prime Minister's Office is very different. Everything runs through Gerald Butts. How about that? Nobody seems to want to talk about that as much. On this side of the House, we mention that all the time. It seems that everything is decided by the Prime Minister's staff at the highest levels, not the Prime Minister.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, different governments have different priorities. We have been very clear. The Prime Minister was very clear right from the beginning when cabinet was first appointed that the ministers would be on an equal footing. This is bringing that about. We have set out our priorities clearly for each one of them: the francophonie minister, the small business and tourism minister, the status of women minister, and the science minister, and I am missing one. Each one is a priority. We have been transparent, we have been clear, and the bill will set the record straight and put things where they should be. Why does the member not understand that these are the priorities of this government?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I serve together on the foreign affairs committee. I have deep respect for his specialization on human rights. We oftentimes agree at the committee level. However, the priority of the government should be reducing the deficit to zero, building up a surplus, paying down the national debt, and helping the middle class instead of offering up pay raises for Liberal cabinet ministers.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be sharing my time with the hon. member for Hochelaga.

I want to take this opportunity tonight to speak to Bill C-24, and to discuss the reasons why it is an illusory attempt to cover-up a key political charade with regard to the Prime Minister's commitment to gender parity. That commitment rings hollow when we get down to the heart of the matter, and the substance of the bill which creates a new set of problems for economic development.

The whole thing is a diversion from the real issues and required actions. Canadians deserve a candid account of what is before them with the government's Bill C-24. There are three key measures contained in the bill. First, it adds the current ministers of state to the minister's section of the Salaries Act, thereby giving them the same salary as ministers. Second, it creates three new place holder cabinet positions to be filled and defined whenever the Prime Minister chooses to do so. Third, the bill removes ministers who act as the heads of regional economic development agencies from the Salaries Act.

The effect is that if someone is the head of a regional economic development agency, it no longer makes them a minister. That is significant because it stands to reason that the minister in charge of economic development of a region must also know and understand that region. The Liberals have made a crucial error in consolidating all the economic development agencies under a single minister. Central control of regional development was an ill-advised move that should have been turned back, and now the bill removes all possibility of appointing a minister specifically responsible for the economic development of a particular region. What they are doing is entrenching their mistake into legislation.

In a press release issued by the government when it introduced Bill C-24, it said that the legislation was meant to show that the Government of Canada was committed to creating a one-tier ministry that recognized the equality of all cabinet members and supported their work on the government’s priorities. The government would have us believe that there is an important principal of equality at stake with the bill, but in fact, the bill fails to demonstrate any greater equality between ministers or between men and women in cabinet, for that matter, than an existing legislative regime already does.

The NDP has long championed the closing of the gender wage gap in cabinet as well as for all Canadians. The problem with the bill, however, is that it is not so much designed to close the gender wage gap as it is meant to fix a political problem the Prime Minister created when he boasted about having a government with gender parity, but appointed a disproportionate amount of women to junior posts.

Members will recall that the Prime Minister originally bragged about having gender parity in his cabinet. However, he quickly came under criticism for having made most of them ministers of state instead of full ministers. As I pointed out, ministers of state are not department heads, and between 2008 and 2015 inclusively, they have not been paid as full ministers.

Changing the law so that ministers of state receive the same pay and status as full ministers is the Prime Minister's disingenuous solution which only deals with the issue of his contrived gender pay gap in cabinet. It does not deal with the issue of whether or not real gender parity in cabinet means appointing an equal number of women to be department heads.

By papering over the distinction between ministers of state and full ministers, the Prime Minister is prioritizing equality of compensation over equality of responsibility with respect to gender parity in his government.

In addition to that huge problem, we are also deeply concerned about the Liberals' move to consolidate the economic development agencies under one minister, from Mississauga, who is the current Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. This is a huge mistake. It should go without saying that the minister in charge of economic development in a region must know and understand the region. Our provinces and territories will be best served by economic initiatives designed to meet their unique challenges and issues, something that a pan-Canadian approach will not do.

I have to underscore that what makes it worse is that this bill would remove the possibility of appointing a minister specifically responsible for the economic development of a particular region. Regional economic development should absolutely be a priority of the government, but the current approach of centralizing control of regional economic development under a solo minister from Ontario is broken. The government should not entrench its mistakes in legislation.

The law currently allows for the provision that ministers of state with the appropriate level of responsibility be paid as ministers for departments. House of Commons Procedure and Practice clearly states and specifies the difference in their roles. I will quote a portion of it:

The principle of individual ministerial responsibility holds that Ministers are accountable not only for their own actions as department heads, but also for the actions of their subordinates; individual ministerial responsibility provides the basis for accountability throughout the system. Virtually all departmental activity is carried out in the name of a Minister who, in turn, is responsible to Parliament for those acts. Ministers exercise power and are constitutionally responsible for the provision and conduct of government; Parliament holds them personally responsible for it.

In other words, one minister must ultimately be accountable for the actions of a department. While ministers may delegate responsibilities, they are ultimately responsible for the actions of those to whom they delegate.

Either the Liberals are creating a situation where the lines of accountability are not clear, in which case they are compromising the principle of ministerial responsibility, or they must admit that some ministers will still be subordinate to others; i.e., not all ministers are equal.

There is nothing wrong with having some ministers who run departments and some who do not, nor is there anything wrong with having a convenient title, like minister of state, to designate those ministers with less responsibility.

Canadian taxpayers are being asked to pay more for junior ministers so that the Prime Minister can be spared the embarrassment of explaining that a gender pay gap in cabinet existed because he failed to appoint enough women to senior posts. If the goal of the bill is simply to eliminate the gender pay gap created by appointing a disproportionate number of women to junior roles, it is completely unnecessary. This could be accomplished in two ways: by making the current ministers of state ministers of departments, or by establishing ministries of state for the current ministers of state.

Meanwhile, the gender parity argument is cringeworthy. The Liberal government is dragging its feet when it comes to implementing pay equity for all Canadian women who are not in cabinet. We are still waiting for this feminist Prime Minister to implement proactive legislation on pay equity before the end of 2016. We are still waiting for the repeal of the unfair 2009 Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, and last but not least, we still await the adoption of the recommendations of 2004 pay equity task force.

If the government is sincere, we need it to conduct and publicly release a gender-based analysis of this bill, close the gender wage gap, and address the responsibility gap in cabinet by making more women department heads. The government must address pay equity and equal opportunity for all Canadians in conjunction with those meaningful initiatives.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated hearing the comments by my colleague across the way about different women's issues and all of that. She focused on the importance of women's issues in this country. What I heard in earlier debate from across the way is that the position of Minister of Status of Women is a less important role. It is not as important and does not have the same responsibilities as other roles. As far as I understand, that is a role that covers 50% of our population.

I wonder what she has to say about the idea that the Minister of Status of Women is not as important a role as other roles in government.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is twisting words and distracting from the point.

If you go back and look up the definitions of ministers of state, you will see the difference and the nuances. It is not a matter of it being less important per se and ideologically; it is a matter of the salary structure.

That is why Bill C-24 is being proposed. It is because you are changing the Salaries Act.

We have a legislative framework that is contradicting what the ideological stance is. That is why I would encourage all of the members to go back and read the definitions.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I want to assure the hon. member that I am not changing anything. I am sure she meant the Liberals, not the Speaker.

The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on that very heartfelt speech and ask her if she thinks it is sad to see the Liberal government once again flatly refusing to admit to even the tiniest mistake.

The government wants to slap a band-aid worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on this problem and is making MPs put in hundreds of hours of work at all hours of the day and night to get it done.

One of these days, will the Liberals acknowledge that they do not actually know everything and that they are not perfect all the time?

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very fortunate to come from the riding of Windsor—Tecumseh, where people are extremely progressive and extremely well informed. I think part of the reason is that we are a cross-border community that is in proximity to our wonderful neighbours in Detroit, Michigan.

We have a chance to discuss policy in a very collegial way, and people drill down into the meaning of it. I love going home and listening, because I hear people talking about the charade of politics, which is really what got me involved in politics. I saw the cynicism and I felt the cynicism growing within me, but I feel that there was a hopefulness that intrigued people.

Now we see a charade that really boils down to an emotional immaturity and an arrogance. Instead of stepping up to say, “We are going to be collegial. We are not going to make unilateral decisions. We are going to be sincere with the campaign promises that we made. We are going to sincerely work with you”, instead words have been twisted in very much the same way that words were twisted in the fairytale that we tell our children to teach them a valuable social lesson, called The Emperor's New Clothes.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Resuming debate. I would remind the hon. member for Hochelaga that she has about seven minutes left before we wrap up.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to get right to the point, even though it is not easy.

I want to talk about equity. My colleagues may be familiar with the concept of a trompe-l'oeil, which is a drawing that really looks like the object depicted. I think of Bill C-24 as a trompe-l'oeil. It is a fake, an illusion. The bill is supposed to ensure that ministers of both sexes are equal, but that is not really what it does.

The Prime Minister changed a title, reclassified a particular position, and gave both jobs the same salary. Ministers of state will now get the same pay as ministers. Is that really equity? I think not.

Earlier, the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill showed us that there is no equity between these two types of positions. Personally, I would add that a designated minister can delegate tasks to another category of people, called ministers, for whom departments are designated. What do we call ministers for whom departments are designated? We used to call them ministers of state.

Some categories of ministers can delegate tasks to others. The hierarchy seems pretty clear. Those to whom powers, duties or functions can be delegated are all women. They will get equal pay, but they will not have equal responsibilities. Every junior minister is a woman. They do not have the same powers.

If the Prime Minister were a real feminist he would have appointed more women to head departments from the outset. Instead of introducing bogus bills that are not substantive and do not solve the real problems, why not work on something that would truly help women, all women? I have two examples. The first is pay equity. I will be brief.

We have already talked about the fact that Canadian women earn barely three-quarters of what Canadian men earn. Traditionally female occupations are undervalued in the job evaluation and compensation systems.

Do my colleagues not think that a truly feminist government would have introduced legislation on pay equity as soon as it was elected, rather than Bill C-24, which merely scratches the surface, and only for a tiny fraction of the population? Meanwhile, women continue to get poorer and poorer.

The second example is the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. I think that piece of legislation should be completely repealed. The Harper government imposed that act on public sector workers eight years ago, and it is truly an abomination. I will explain why.

It forces women to lodge complaints as individuals rather than obtain the support of their union. It prohibits access to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. It also makes pay equity an issue for collective bargaining, rather than a human rights issue. It forces unions to make a choice between addressing systemic pay discrimination and seeing what is left to improve working conditions for all the employees they represent. This places the blame on women.

As my colleague from Trois-Rivières was saying earlier, he negotiated in favour of pay equity. I too negotiated pay equity at the museum where I used to work. It is a very long and complicated process. Filing this type of complaint must seem like an impossible task to a person acting alone. It is very difficult. I suppose most women do not file complaints because of those rules.

Obviously, the NDP is in favour of eliminating the gender wage gap in cabinet. We believe in equal pay for equal work. However, while Bill C-24 may change salary amounts, it does not achieve equity. Men still hold more power than many of the women in cabinet. For true equity, we need to create equal opportunities for and give equal responsibilities to men and women. The provisions of the federal pay equity legislation must be enforced right away. I believe we should also immediately repeal the legislation I just mentioned, the terrible Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act.

Bill C-24, an act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act, is not very useful in achieving real gender equality in cabinet.

I did not mention the other reasons why I will not be voting in favour of this bill.

This government's lack of good faith shows in this bill. It could have introduced much more meaningful legislation. I will therefore be voting against this bill, and I hope that every other real feminist will do the same.

The House resumed from June 7 consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Cannabis Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

It being 3:05 p.m., pursuant to order made May 30, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment of the member for Niagara Falls to the motion for second reading of Bill C-45.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #311

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I declare the amendment defeated.

The next question is on the main motion.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #312

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, this bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Health.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)