House of Commons Hansard #142 of the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was changes.
Decorum During Voting on Bill C-38Points of OrderOral Questions
Conservative
The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer
I will take a look at what was said Thursday night. I have heard from both the member for Malpeque and the minister. If there is anything that the video can help shed light on, then I will get back to the House.
The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer
Order. This is not a subject for debate. I have indicated to the House how I will handle it and I will come back to the House in due course.
Peter Van Loan ConservativeLeader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 111.1, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, a certificate of nomination, with biographical notes, for the proposed appointment of Sonia L'Heureux as Parliamentary Librarian. I request that the nomination be referred to the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament.
Government Response to PetitionsRoutine Proceedings
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 25 petitions.
While I am on my feet, I move:
That the House do now proceed to the orders of the day.
The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer
In my opinion the yeas have it.
And five or more members having risen:
Call in the members.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.
The Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer
As the Deputy Speaker promised the House when she initially ruled on this matter, I am now prepared to rule substantively on the point of order raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg North on Tuesday, June 12, in relation to the allocation of hours in the motion by the hon. government House leader to allocate time at report stage and third reading of Bill C-38. As members will recall, the motion called for an additional 10 hours of consideration at report stage and 8 hours at the third reading stage.
The Chair wishes to thank the hon. government House leader, the hon. opposition House leader and the hon. member for Cardigan for their interventions on the matter.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North has argued that the number of sitting hours that can be allocated to a given stage of a bill pursuant to Standing Order 78(3) must, at a minimum, mirror the number of sitting hours in effect when the time allocation motion is moved and applied. This week and last week, depending on the day, due to the adoption of the motion for extended sitting hours, that could be up to14 hours.
The hon. House leader of the official opposition and the hon. member for Cardigan have echoed that view, claiming that the intent of the Standing Order is that a time-allocated debate have as a minimum duration of one sitting day, however long that day may happen to be, as per Standing Order 78(3)(a) which states:
...that the time allotted to any stage is not to be less than one sitting day...
For his part, the hon. government House leader has argued that the minimum number of sitting hours that can be allocated to a given stage of a bill pursuant to the same Standing Order need only be equal to the shortest day possible, in his view, 2.5 hours.
In the Chair's opinion, a close reading of the Standing Order and relevant precedents will show that none of the arguments advanced have exactly hit the mark.
A review of the best and most relevant precedent available, that of 1987, cited by the government House leader, illustrates well the equilibrium that the Chair always tries to achieve in cases of this kind. Let me explain.
The government House leader stressed that on that occasion in 1987, four hours were allocated for report stage and a further four hours for third reading on a government bill during extended sitting hours in June. He added that he believed, “Mr. Speaker Fraser likely interpreted the length of the shortest available day to be the minimum time required by the Standing Orders”.
However, it should be pointed out that in 1987, the sitting hours of the House were very different, and this is of critical importance if we are to extrapolate a rationale for what occurred.
In 1987, the House sat Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. If one were to subtract from these sitting times all the time allotted to statements by members, question period, private members' business and, in those days, lunch hour, 18 hours were left for the consideration of government orders in a normal sitting week. That number divided by the number of days in the week, five, yields an average of 3.6 hours per day. In my view, it is reasonable to conclude that this is where the four hours comes from: in other words, to reason that, on that occasion, in moving time allocation, the government of the day appears to have rounded up to the nearest hour.
In fact, on June 11, 1987, at page 7001 of Debates, Mr. Mazankowski, in giving notice of his intention to move time allocation, stated: “I give notice that I will be moving at a later sitting...that four hours, the equivalent to one day’s sitting, shall be allotted to the further consideration of report stage of the bill and four hours shall be allotted to the third reading stage.”
This was in keeping with an earlier example on November 13, 1975, at page 9021 of Debates, when Mr. Sharp in speaking in debate on the motion to allocate time stated, “This motion allocates another five hours of debate, equivalent to at least another full sitting day”. That the two ministers, while specifying a specific number of hours, indicated that these were equivalent to a sitting day is consistent with the current interpretation that requires at least one further sitting day when allocating time under Standing Order 78(3).
Normal sitting hours for the House are at present 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Mondays, 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Fridays. Applying the same calculation to these hours by accounting for statements by members, question period and private members' business leaves 23.5 hours for the consideration of government orders in a typical week in 2012. That number divided by the number of days in the week, five, yields an average of 4.7 hours per day. Rounded up to the nearest hour would make it five hours, which is coincidentally exactly the number of hours used with regard to third reading of Bill C-25.
Accordingly, the Chair finds that the allocation of hours to report stage and third reading of Bill C-38 is in order since it respects the terms of Standing Order 78(3). Should future instances arise where arrangements pursuant to this Standing Order are contested, the Chair will continue to be guided by this method of calculation.
I thank hon. members for their attention.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Speaker, before statements by members and question period, I briefly explained why Bill C-38 is antidemocratic. There are several reasons. As I explained, we were given very little time to debate it despite the government's claim that 70 hours of study in committee was plenty of time. The bill amends, adds or repeals 70 acts, which would take some 350 hours—four to five hours per act—based on the committees' traditional practices. That is not what happened.
In addition, the scope of this bill is immense. In 2009, the budget implementation bill was over 500 pages long—552 pages to be exact. However, every clause in the 2009 budget implementation bill related to the budget. There were amendments to the Income Tax Act, sales and excise taxes, the customs tariff, employment insurance, financial system efficiency and so on. Every item in the bill was related to the budget. That is not the case with Bill C-38.
Not only did we not have enough time to deal with such a vast bill, but we also had to deal with a number of provisions that had absolutely nothing to do with the budget, which causes a specific problem.
If I have time at the end of my speech, I will add some interesting quotes.
However, it is interesting to note—and I insist on doing so—that the way the government proceeded has really created a consensus that crosses party lines. Both left and right are against the way the government presented the budget in an omnibus bill, a kitchen sink bill.
Let us come back to the economy. In fact, as we know, the bill is called the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act. However, when you get right down to it, it is exactly the opposite. It is important to understand that the 2012 budget tabled in March, which has already been passed, even though the government does not seem to remember that, talked about $5.2 billion in cuts and the elimination of 19,000 jobs. This will have major repercussions. It is an austerity bill that will have recessionary consequences. That is why the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act is ill-advised, or at least the title is.
Let us talk about growth. The Parliamentary Budget Officer made an estimate using the same model as the Minister of Finance did. He did not pull it out of his hat. There is nothing new about it. For his projections, he uses the same methods as those used by the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance. By adding in the elements of the 2012 budget, the Parliamentary Budget Officer came to the conclusion that we could expect 0.9% less growth than the potential we might have expected. So that means that if we had been expecting an increase of 2.5% in the GDP, for example, we will get an increase of only 1.6% in the GDP instead. That will be a problem in the future because a reduction in growth like the one the Conservative budget will entail will also have an effect on the number of jobs. In that context, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, still using the same model as the Minister of Finance, estimates that, in 2014, 102,00 jobs that could have been created will likely not be, and will therefore potentially be lost.
In that sense, the government's bill does not promote jobs. It does not promote economic growth. The effect will be the opposite.
A number of provisions in Bill C-38 will result in downward pressure on salaries and will have terrible consequences for jobs. I will describe four in particular. We all know that the bill contains many provisions. It has 753 clauses, after all. In the time I have, I will focus on four aspects that will have harmful effects on the economy.
The first is employment insurance. There is nothing much about it in Bill C-38. Two items that define suitable employment are being eliminated, specifically the reasons for which a claimant may refuse a job without fear of losing his benefits. Two specific aspects are being eliminated. The first is that he can refuse work if it is not in his profession. The second is that he can refuse work if it is of lower quality than his previous employment.
Why are we eliminating those two clauses? It is to give the minister the discretion to draw up regulations that will make up the rules of the game. By giving the minister this discretion, we end up with a situation where the rules of the game can change without the consent of Parliament and its elected members. That will be in the hands of the minister.
Actually, I think she was feeling the heat because she had to justify those regulations. She refused to explain, and so did the Minister of Finance. She had to justify herself and explain what the provisions would be at a news conference. Those provisions kill jobs. The Conservatives are going to, or are likely to, force unemployed workers, who are laid off and are entitled to employment insurance—be they seasonal or other workers—to take a job at 70% of their previous salary or risk losing their benefits.
That in itself is an incentive for companies to lower salaries. A negative effect could very well be that companies will let employees go, in order to be able to rehire them perhaps by offering them 70% of their previous salary.
There are also other negative effects.
The question was put to the member for Madawaska—Restigouche in the Rimouski media. The journalist’s question was very simple and very enlightening. The hon. member was asked to imagine a situation where someone loses his job and is forced to take a job at 70% of his salary and is then laid off again. Does that mean that the bill would force that person to potentially accept employment at 70% of the 70% he had before? The answer from the minister of ACOA, who is also the member for Madawaska—Restigouche, was very clear: if we follow the logic of the bill, yes. That is why we have minimum wage laws.
We already see that this particular provision of the bill is going to drive down wages. Another consequence of this bill is that employers who hire people for seasonal jobs for various reasons—and there is still seasonal employment in my riding, in my region, as is particularly common in eastern Canada—risk losing the workforce they trained, because they will want greater stability, because they will not be interested in hiring people for two or three months, even at 70% of their wages. Generally, employers want to have a permanent workforce.
Another component of the bill is the elimination of the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act. This act allowed construction employees working on government contracts to enjoy standards comparable to the rest of the industry. We know that in the construction industry, federal contracts are tendered. So the fact that wages had to be protected ensured that all companies were on a more even playing field. Now, with the disappearance of this act, companies will be able to arrange it so their employees are paid quite a bit less in order to meet the specific conditions and successfully bid on government construction contracts.
This means that there is no more real incentive for companies to ensure that their employees are well paid and that working conditions are respectable. This is yet another part of Bill C-38 that will end up driving down the wages and living conditions of Canadians.
Another element raised by my colleague during a question is the elimination of the Employment Equity Act provision, which obviously ensures that for the same work, women and men can be paid the same. What we need to realize is that with the bill, companies doing business with the federal government and subcontractors will no longer have to comply with the act.
Now, the government tells us that it will be in the form they will have to fill out. They will have to put in provisions; nothing is going to force them. What the government is being asked to do is allow companies to regulate themselves. We know very well that a company’s main motive is to maximize profits. This will be done on the backs of women working in these companies that will potentially receive federal government contracts. This is just another example of wages being driven down.
Lastly, a measure that will occur later on, something that has been talked a lot about and something the government has never given a crystal clear justification for, and that is increasing the age of eligibility for old age security from 65 to 67 in 2023.
With this measure, anyone 53 years of age and under will end up paying the equivalent of $12,000 per person per year for the two missing years. We are talking about approximately $25,000 per couple.
It will be the middle class and less fortunate Canadians who will end up paying for these measures. This is serious. If we look at the evolution of salaries in Canada—people watching at home will probably be very interested to know—employees these days earn an average salary, but the average salary is not necessarily a good indicator. Large salaries will often bring that figure up, but that is not necessarily reflected in the standard of living.
The best indicator to assess salary levels is the median salary, which is the point at which 50% of Canadians earn more and 50% of Canadians earn less. In 2010, the median salary for all Canadians was lower than the median salary in 1981. The median salary is calculated in inflation-adjusted dollars. The country has grown richer since 1981, but not all Canadians have benefited from that.
The government loves to pat itself on the back for our economic performance, but we are headed in the wrong direction. This has been acknowledged by the International Monetary Fund, which estimates that in 2012—the current fiscal year—the Canadian economy is headed for 152nd place in the world. There will thus already be implications for Canada's performance and its competitiveness in the future.
We have an income inequality problem, and this is where I was going with the question of median salary. It was stated that the top 1% of salaries now make up 24% of income in Canada. This has been mentioned often over the past two years. Concentrating income in such a narrow band has quite a negative impact on investment and the real economy. Up to a certain point, people with that much money can consume. They will even consume luxury goods.
However, ultimately, everything they do not consume will mainly go toward trying to generate a return by investing in capital markets. We are not talking about investing in capital markets to support the real economy; they will invest in the casino financial market, the one that creates its own bubbles, either real estate bubbles or stock market bubbles. In this respect, the real economy is left behind. What matters now is the financial economy.
The federal government budget is set to grow this bubble. Since wages are shrinking, Canadians as a whole will not benefit. This will cause problems with the growth of the GDP, which is measured in part by consumption.
What we are doing today is really forgetting the lessons that we learned during the Great Depression. We are moving in that direction once again. What is interesting is that the difference between our salaries today, the gap between rich and poor, is almost the same as it was before the Great Depression, so before the 1930s. The government does not seem to be aware of that.
As a result, the government is ignoring all the indicators that should be pushing it in the right direction so that it can develop policies for all Canadians. However, that is not what the government is doing at the moment. It is creating policies that will stand in the way of the poorest, most disadvantaged and, in many cases, the unluckiest Canadians. Bill C-38 is a good indication of that.
I would like to quickly come back to another key element of our opposition to this bill. I spoke briefly about it: it is the undemocratic nature of a bill that is 435 pages long, includes 753 clauses, and modifies, amends, adds or eliminates close to 70 laws in a single vote, which will take place this week.
When I said that it created a consensus among policy analysts and commentators, I meant among everyone, from left to right. A number of columnists in Quebec and across Canada have spoken out against the way that the federal government is operating.
I would like to quote Andrew Coyne who made the following comments in a Postmedia article right after the budget implementation bill was introduced:
Not only does this make a mockery of the confidence convention, shielding bills that would otherwise be defeatable within a money bill, which is not: It makes it impossible to know what Parliament really intended by any of it. We've no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch, only that they voted for the legislation that contained them. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet.
This was written at the end of April. He was back on the attack to comment further on the consequences of the direction the Conservatives are taking at this time.
On June 13, so just last week, he had this to say:
...we can look forward to a future in which Parliament would be reduced to two votes of consequence per year — one to rubber-stamp the government’s spring agenda, a second to cover the fall. This is how it happens. This is how it has happened: the more powers government acquires at the expense of Parliament, the harder it is for Parliament to resist still further encroachments, or even to recall why it might. And if somebody doesn’t stop it, somewhere, this is how it will continue.
These extremely wise words clearly explain the problems we are facing right now.
Another journalist, Dan Gardner, summed up the fundamental danger of the Conservatives' approach with this bill—and he did it really well in under 140 characters on Twitter. He said:
“I'm prepared to say it's no longer a parliamentary system. It's a presidential system, minus checks and balances”.
That is what we are seeing here now, with the anti-jobs, anti-growth, anti-prosperity bill that has been presented as a package for us to vote on in its entirety without sufficient time to study the consequences of each of its provisions.
As I was saying, although we have studied the bill for 70 hours in committee and in subcommittees, if we had spent five hours on each of these bills, as is customary in the House of Commons, we would have spent 350 hours.
Thus, the government is trying to keep us in line. We must—of course—oppose that, not only because we are opposed to the bill and its provisions, which are, as I said, anti-jobs, anti-growth and anti-prosperity, but also because of the way the government is doing this. That is why we stood up and presented the amendments in the House. That is why we voted for 22 hours.
In conclusion, I will quickly say that many of my colleagues think this is a bill that will change the face of Canada for a generation. I do not subscribe to that view, because in 2015 we will take the place of the current government and we will do away with most of these measures.
Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity ActGovernment Orders
Blackstrap Saskatchewan
Conservative
Lynne Yelich ConservativeMinister of State (Western Economic Diversification)
Mr. Speaker, while the member quotes Andrew Coyne's observation, I will quote the Toronto Sun that said:
As Europe stands poised on the brink of a disastrous economic wildfire that could blacken the world, [the] NDP leader['s] hypocrisy and self-obsession is in full flame.
...vowing to delay the passing of [economic action plan 2012] by playing silly bugger with amendments and procedure....
This is nothing but grandstanding.
This is a budget designed to create jobs and inspire economic growth, and it comes to the House of Commons at a moment that can only be described as the 11th hour of a global economic conflagration....
Right now, there is only one enemy in our fight to protect Canada from the repercussions of Europe's burning.
And it's [the NDP leader]....
This is inarguable.
While the member can quote someone who speaks to democracy, the member also belongs to a party that unequivocally decided to vote against it before its members even read the budget, so I do not think that was exactly a representation of democracy.
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Speaker, I can do nothing but laugh at that statement.
With respect to the budget, the hon. member already knows full well that, for starters, we had eight hours to read it in camera before giving our opinion. Then, we voted on the budget itself, and we are currently voting on the budget implementation bill, which includes a large number of provisions that have nothing to do with the budget. Third, she is quoting the Toronto Sun. I have not read the article in question. It is probably the only newspaper, the only statement, that was in favour of the government's approach.
I mentioned Andrew Coyne and Dan Gardner, but I could have spoken about John Ivison and John Ibbitson, people who do not generally support the NDP's politics but who have great integrity when it comes to Parliament and respecting the democracy we are currently developing. These people spoke out against this way of operating. I could name plenty of others, including Pierre Duhamel, in Quebec. The Toronto Sun article is really the only one that supports the government. I am not necessarily surprised, knowing its editorial leanings. However, I must salute the integrity of most of the commentators who criticized the way the government is operating.
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the number of pages in Bill C-38 and the number of bills that it would change and impact make it very much an anti-democratic bill and completely unprecedented. This Conservative majority government has a different type of attitude in the way in which it wants to manage the House, which is most unfortunate.
There are many issues, but I want to make reference to one specific issue, and it is the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area. The government is hoping to save $2 million. There will be an impact on water research, scientists, fish habitat and water quality. The government is now looking at getting rid of it completely. There are those specific things that this budget would impact and then there are the bizarre things that, through the back door, the government is bringing in, such as wiping out environmental legislation and neglecting and being cruel to immigrants who are being processed.
I am wondering if the member would agree with me and members of the Liberal Party that the best way to fix this bill is to take it back to the drawing board and bring in legislation that is in fact a budget implementation bill because, as this bill currently stands, it is the farthest thing away from that.
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with the hon. member. The official opposition and the third party have combined their efforts to divide this bill up so that we can study its key parts.
In the 2009 budget implementation bill, which I believe was 552 pages long, most of the provisions were not fundamental reforms to our public policies, but in this budget implementation bill, they are. The environmental assessment should have been studied in much greater depth, not over 10 days, during four or five compressed meetings. I am quite familiar with the situation.
I was actually talking about the budget that I considered to be detrimental to employment and growth for the reasons that I mentioned. We could also say that it is detrimental to science, because some aspects clearly show that the government is trying to minimize the contribution of scientists. Not only is this true for the legislation itself, but also for the decisions that were made. As the hon. member mentioned, the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, near my riding, is also feeling the Conservative government's wrath.
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has put his finger on a problem we have had repeatedly in these debates, which is that hon. Conservative members appear to confuse Bill C-38, which is before us, and the budget itself. Earlier today in debate, a parliamentary secretary said that this bill had been placed before us March 29. That is clear confusion. This bill was placed before us April 26 and the budget was March 29. They are not the same thing. In the same way, the Toronto Sun was misinformed, as if this is somehow holding up the economic action plan. If the economic action plan is to remove the Inspector General from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, I wish we had time in the House to find out how they are connected.
In point of fact, this illegitimate, monstrous bill represents 40% of the legislative agenda of the House of Commons in the last year with totally inadequate debate.
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Speaker, that also raises an interesting question.
As everyone probably knows, I am a member of the Standing Committee on Finance. We spent about 50 hours studying those provisions. It was really odd and surreal; some experts talked about employment insurance and then the next expert talked about the Inspector General of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Then we talked about the Fisheries Act, followed by old age security. So we did not really have an opportunity to focus on one particular issue.
In my opinion, one factor in particular really raises some questions about the government's approach. Specific legislation will be created on the interoperability of Canadian and American police forces in Canadian territorial waters. In co-operation with the RCMP, the FBI could make arrests in Canadian waters.
The government said this had to be adopted now, because it had to do with an international treaty, a long-standing agreement that had to be ratified. The Senate and the House have tried to ratify it on two separate occasions. The government could have introduced this in a separate bill following the 2011 election so that the issue could have been studied independently, but it did not do so.
Now it is telling us that time is running out and that we must absolutely pass it. Yet the government could have done so six, seven or eight months ago. It has no one to blame but itself for its failure to do so.
Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity ActGovernment Orders
Oak Ridges—Markham Ontario
Conservative
Paul Calandra ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage
Mr. Speaker, the problem with the NDP members is that it is not just on economic matters that they filibuster. We had a bill before this House with respect to opening up the barriers so that producers can bring wine across the borders and they actually filibustered and caused that to be delayed.
The member for Kildonan—St. Paul had a bill to protect some of the most vulnerable men, women and children and they delayed that bill, so it is not just on economic issues.
The hon. member said that we should talk and we should debate for hundreds and hundreds of hours. Does he actually think that the global economy will sit around and wait for the New Democratic Party so that its members can talk among themselves about how great they are and how good their non-economic policies are? Is he not ashamed of the fact that the NDP has just become a sad, pathetic protest party with absolutely no policies? The fact is that what they are—
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think we need to maintain a level discussion. The words “sad” and “pathetic” are pitiful. The member should stick to the facts when we are number one in the country.