Debates of Oct. 6th, 2011

Chinese Canadian History

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, a brief chronology of 160 years of the Chinese Canadian history from segregation to integration.

Improving Trade Within Canada Act

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture)]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Agreement on Internal Trade Implementation Act and the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Inco Limited Acquisition Act

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-328, An Act respecting the acquisition of Inco Limited by CVRD Canada Inc.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a private member's bill entitled, “An Act respecting the acquisition of Inco Limited by CVRD Canada Inc.

Vale, formerly CVRD, acquired Canada-owned mining company Inco in October 2006. I have made requests of the Minister of Industry, Vale Inco, the House of Commons and through the Access to Information Act to have the details of the agreement made public and have been repeatedly denied.

I, therefore, present this legislation which would release the details of the Vale Inco agreement, along with any correspondence between the minister and the company and its enforcement.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Falconbridge Limited Acquisition Act

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-329, An Act respecting the acquisition of Falconbridge Limited by Xstrata PLC.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce a private member's bill respecting the acquisition of Falconbridge Limited by Xstrata PLC.

Xstrata acquired Canadian mining company Falconbridge in July 2006. In the House of Commons, I asked the Minister of Industry to make the agreements in question public and I also asked the government under the Access to Information Act, but have, so far, received no response.

I am, therefore, introducing this bill which would require the Government of Canada to publish all written undertakings given in the right of Canada under the Investment Canada Act in respect to the acquisition of Falconbridge. The bill also would require the publication of all correspondence exchanged between the minister and the company about enforcement of this agreement.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Foreign Affairs

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today to present a petition on behalf over 1,000 Nova Scotians who are concerned about the situation of Mr. Philip Halliday, a Canadian citizen who has been incarcerated in a Spanish prison since December 21, 2009, over 18 months, without a trial date set.

The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to defend the rights of Philip Mason Halliday and take action to intervene on his behalf with the Spanish authorities. They call upon the Government of Canada to use diplomatic channels to ensure Mr. Halliday receives a fair and speedy trial or immediate release based upon the length of his detention with no trial date and his continued deteriorating health issues.

Asbestos

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to stand today to present a petition signed by thousands of Canadians from all across the country who call upon Parliament to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known. They point out that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other occupational and industrial causes combined and yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world, spending millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and blocking international efforts to curb its use.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to ban asbestos in all of its forms and institute a just transition program for the asbestos workers and the communities in which they live, to end all government subsidies of asbestos both in Canada and abroad and to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Bill C-13—Time Allocation Motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-13, An Act to implement certain provisions of the 2011 budget as updated on June 6, 2011 and other measures, not more than three further sitting days shall be allotted to the consideration of the second reading stage of the bill; and

that, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government orders on the third day allotted to the consideration at second reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1 there will now be a 30 minute question period. I invite hon. members who wish to ask questions to stand in their places so the Chair has some idea of the number of members who wish to participate in this question period.

Given the number of people interested, I would encourage members to limit their questions to perhaps about a minute or minute and a half and, as in previous incidents of this, the Chair will give priority to members of the opposition during the question and comment period.

I recognize the hon. member for Outremont.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, a French philosopher once said that while once is philosophy, twice is perversion. That is what we have here today with the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, who is demonstrating the majority Conservative government's utter contempt for Parliament and our democratic institutions.

We know that 39% of the Canadians who voted in the last election chose the Conservatives. That was 39% of 60% of the eligible voters, because 40% of the voters stayed home. This means that they were elected by less than 25% of eligible Canadians. We have very clear rules, and that is one reason why, since its creation, Canada has always enjoyed peace, order and good government. We must all defend our democratic institutions.

But instead of defending our democratic institutions, the government is ignoring them and treating them with contempt. It is telling us that since we made the mistake of giving them a majority, it will now do whatever it wants, gagging us and bringing out the guillotine every time we start to debate a bill. According to the Conservatives, no one has the right to question their priorities or to ask any questions about their bills.

Madam Speaker, you are here to enforce the regulations that we have set for ourselves, and I urge you to take note of the Conservative government's latest affront to Canadian democracy and to defend the rights of parliamentarians to deliberately, carefully and meticulously debate bills. That is why we were elected. This shows contempt not only for Parliament, but also for the voters of the Canadian electorate.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not think, in my lifetime, that there has been a budget that has received as much debate as this one. The budget was introduced in the previous Parliament and it was rejected by the opposition. We had an election and the main platform on which we ran was essentially the budget. After we won a majority government, confidence from Canadian voters, that budget was reintroduced in virtually the identical form and that budget was adopted by this House and is now being implemented through this budget implementation bill.

The amount of debate that has happened and the consultation with the public is unprecedented for this type of a bill. On top of that, we are proposing for this debate an entire four days of debate, which is more time than has typically happened, on average, for any budget implementation bill in the past 20 years. For all the budget implementation bills the average is certainly less than four days.

Therefore, we have ample opportunity to debate in this House following an unprecedented amount of public debate on this matter.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that we are beginning to see a trend here with government bills with the new majority government. Unfortunately, it will stifle the proper debates that need to happen.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that one of the big shortcomings in this budget implementation plan, Bill C-13, is the fact that, once again, the government is discriminating against those who are poor, those who have less than the average Canadian. I will give an example. It has to do with the fact that some of the tax measures that the government talks about are non-refundable. This is something that perhaps escapes many Canadians but, unfortunately, it has a very real effect on those who are poor in this country.

I will talk about the example of the volunteer firemen who will have the opportunity to have a non-refundable tax credit. We, in the Liberal Party, gave a refundable tax credit. However, the reality is that if they are well off as volunteer firemen, they will be able to take full advantage of that tax credit against their imposable tax. If they are not, they will not have that opportunity to take advantage of it. That means again that it is the poor in this country who will be discriminated again, and we need to talk about that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is an important bill to proceed with quickly because it has important measures that would address what I think, and certainly what this government thinks, is the biggest challenge, but apparently not the opposition, and that is jobs and economic growth. We have that in this bill with a proposal for a hiring tax credit for the creation of new jobs by small businesses in Canada. It is very important for job creation. We need that measure in place now.

The opposition members asked for a jobs plan and we have it for them. First, they voted against it the other night and now they want to delay and obstruct it further. That is why we want to move forward with it quickly.

We also want to move forward with additional measures, such as our accelerated capital cost allowance so that businesses can continue to invest and improve productivity to ensure that Canadians stay at the cutting edge of being able to produce and grow to innovate and so that businesses would have the capacity to hire and create jobs and compete successfully.

We are in a context of a global economic downturn and being able to compete successfully globally is critically important for creating jobs here in Canada. That is what a measure like that would do and that is why we want to see that measure put in place without delay.

We have had unprecedented debate, a general election on--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. Questions and comments. The hon. member for Outremont.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Madam Speaker, finally, some lucidity on the government side. We are in the middle of a world economic downturn. We are about to live the second Conservative recession since 2008. In three years, we will have lived through two consecutive Conservative recessions. Precisely because the world economic situation is degrading so rapidly, he does not realize the contradiction in his argument.

Last spring's budget no longer pertains in that context. We need vigorous, robust intervention to create jobs, to stimulate the economy and to hold on to what we have. Instead, we are being served these old bromides, doctrinaire Conservative approach. This is Herbert Hoover redux. This is the Conservative approach. That is not what Canada needs right now. We need stimulating expenditures on infrastructure. We need to keep the economy going. We need to create jobs. The situation has changed. That debate has to take place. The Conservatives are shutting down debate on the very subject that they do not want to hear about. It is the impending recession. It is what is over the horizon. They do not want Canadians to know that they are sitting on their hands like usual and they are using last year's remedies for this year's problems. We want to discuss that. Parliament exists to debate these issues. They are shutting down debate. That is what is going on here today.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Minister of State (Finance)]

Madam Speaker, I am actually quite proud to stand and support this motion that has been put forward. I think we need to put this in perspective. We had a very thorough debate on this budget bill. It comes in two forms, as that hon. member and every member in this House should know. We would have moved this forward more quickly if we had not been forced into an election.

However, we had a debate, a debate that was very fulsome, probably the best debate that one could ever have, and that was with all Canadians for 37 days in the election campaign.

We tabled this budget on March 22. We had 37 days of fulsome debate. This is great debate in here, and there will be more debate on the economy as we move forward, but Canadians have spoken and they have spoken loudly by giving our government a strong and stable mandate and showing support for the budget that we tabled.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is completely mind-boggling to me. The government says that it had the economic action plan and that it went to the people with it, but things have changed. Even the Minister of Finance recognizes that things have changed because he was in the media as late as yesterday saying that the government needed to be flexible and pragmatic. If we want to be flexible and pragmatic in addressing the recent economic downturn, then we need to take another look at what the government proposed last spring when the economic situation was entirely different.

We need to take the Minister of Finance at his word. It is not just the New Democrats who are saying that the government's approach is flawed and that we need to revisit it. I will read a list of people. Sherry Cooper, the chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns; TD Economics; Scotiabank; the Conference Board of Canada; the International Monetary Fund; and the Bank of Canada. Even the Department of Finance itself recognizes that we need to do things differently. The Toronto Board of Trade also thinks we are now in a unique situation where we need to do things differently.

We started debate on this bill only yesterday and today the government is bringing a motion to shut down the debate. People in Canada need to be heard on this issue. It affects hard-working Canadians and seniors whose retirement savings are once again going up in smoke. The Minister of Finance agrees that we should be flexible and pragmatic, so let us bring the debate to the floor of the chamber. That is what Parliament is for and that is why we will be opposing this motion.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is no surprise that the New Democrats will be opposing this motion to move forward with the continuation of Canada's economic action plan, a plan for jobs and growth, because they have voted against every other phase of it.

The New Democrats stand in the House now and say that we need to stimulate the economy. When we put forward a budget to stimulate the economy, they voted against it. They voted against every phase of both budget implementation acts 1 and 2 of the 2010 budget and, in fact, if I recall correctly, in 2009 as well when we put forward the first phase of our economic action plan that has worked. Why is it working? It is working because 600,000 Canadians are working. That is more jobs than we lost. We gained more output than we lost. They want to belabour this legislation that would actually provide more stimulus to the Canadian economy and more tax credits to families that need it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I find it most interesting that the government House leader introduces a motion in the House and then kind of turns his back to the whole debate on the issue and will not even stand up to answer specific questions.

It is very noteworthy that we recognize why it is we are here. We are here to hold government to account. We have has major bills introduced in the last few weeks. In this case, just yesterday the government introduced a bill and yesterday the minister said that he would be bringing in time allocation. Bill C-10, a crime bill, would do nothing in terms of preventing crimes from taking place and yet we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Bill C-4 would victimize refugees. The government put time allocation on these major bills.

Just so members across the way can say that they have actually seen the bill, this is the bill that we are supposed to be talking about. The government House leader and the Prime Minister see it fit to limit the debate on substantial pieces of legislation.

I would look to the government House leader to stand in his place and tell Canadians how he justifies bringing in this type of legislation and then saying, on the day it is introduced, that there will be only three days to debate it, not to mention the other bills that he—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. The hon. Minister of State for Finance.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Madam Speaker, no matter how loud the hon. member yells, it does not make any more sense. I could stand here for 10 minutes and recite all of the closure bills that the former Liberal government put forward in the House.

[An hon. member]

Anything I did you can do, too.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

The argument just put forward by that hon. member is very hollow.

I would go back to what I referred to in my first comments—