Debates of Dec. 3rd, 2013

Bill C-4—Time Allocation Motion

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I noted the hon. member mentioned that we are going to vote against the bill. One would be led to presume that the Conservatives intentionally draft their bills so that we will oppose them. If one takes an action, one will get the predictable response.

Clearly one of the strong arguments that we continue to make in the House on behalf of Canadians, who are equally fed up with the way the government operates with its budget bills, is the inclusion of legislation that should be tabled independently.

One strong example is the long-awaited legislation to afford a level of protection for offshore workers in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. Grudgingly, Conservatives allow the review of that briefly. We waited 12 years for that legislation to come forward. Surely that merits a separate debate.

I can simply quote the now Minister of Justice in 2004 who said:

The speed with which the government has acted in this fashion in bringing about closure is a true signal as to how the Prime Minister and the government are going to treat the so-called democratic deficit that the Prime Minister has had a revelation on in discovering that a democratic deficit exists in the country.

That was the current government complaining about the previous Liberal government. The Conservatives changed sides of the room and they changed their attitude to parliamentary democracy.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will remind the hon. member that the House has had before it in the past a free-standing bill on the offshore health and safety measures. That is dealt with separately, so I am quite puzzled as to her concern.

However, I will say it is quite predictable that the NDP will oppose our budgets and budget bills. Yes, we do calculate them that way because we say we do not want to go down the NDP path, we want to keep taxes down, so we will put forward a budget and a budget bill that keeps taxes down. We know the NDP will oppose that.

We will freeze employment insurance rates, for example, and will create incentives for the creation of small businesses by having a tax credit, a further tax reduction. Again the New Democrats always oppose those tax reductions, whether it be the reductions in the GST that we brought in twice or income tax reductions that again they opposed or reductions in taxes for small businesses, such as the small business job creation credit. They always oppose those things.

Yes, to that extent it is calculated that way, but it is calculated that way because that is what is right for Canadians. That is what is right for the economy and that is why the NDP policies are so dangerous for the economy. That is why we do have a genuine contrast in views here between ours, which says Canadians should keep more of their tax dollars and we should keep taxes low to create jobs, and the NDP approach of high taxes, big government, big spending, big deficits. The member is right. It is a very clear difference.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I found the House leader's statements about the government's economic record a little funny. As we know, Canada has now fallen to 154th worldwide in terms of economic growth, so I do not think we can take any lessons from the Conservatives in that sense. They have dragged us down a number of spaces.

I want to ask who said this:

...the decision to invoke closure on the bill represented in some ways the death of the true meaning of parliament.... The federal...government has failed Canadians.

Who said that? It was Stockwell Day, the former leader of the Reform Alliance party, I think called C-R-A-P at one point. Absolutely, that was the Conservatives when they were in opposition.

Who said this?

When the bill was rammed through the House with closure, it really did not present a lot of opportunity for meaningful public debate....

The interests of all of Canadians must be served, not the interests of politicians, not partisan interests or political self-interest.

In referring to closure, who said that? It was the Prime Minister.

Finally, who said this?

...we have morphed into what we once mocked....

I no longer recognize...the party that I joined....

Why have the Conservatives become what they used to mock?

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

Mr. Speaker, on the question of economic growth and prosperity, it is interesting that the approach of the NDP and the hon. member is to compare Canada with developing countries where people live on a handful of dollars a day. That is what he wants to compare Canada to, and there is good reason for that. It is because if the NDP were in government, its policies would lead us to them as a peer group.

We believe that economically, our peer group consists of the major developed economies of the world, the OECD countries and the G7, and we lead those countries consistently in economic growth. In fact, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has again indicated that Canada will lead the G7 in economic growth in 2013. Once again, that is where we are headed.

We do not compare ourselves with countries where people live in abject poverty, in many cases because of terrible government policies. I know that is what the NDP uses as a comparison. We compare ourselves with those countries that can deliver the highest standards of living for themselves, and among the countries with high standards of living, we are proud to be leading the world in economic growth and delivering a good standard of living for—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I would appreciate it if all members would look at the clock. One minute is one minute, and I am going to enforce it henceforth.

The hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is the same old story: the Conservatives put all kinds of unrelated items in omnibus bills. Then they rise in the House during a debate such as this one, or during question period, they take a small piece of the mammoth bill, something we could have approved, and they say how awful it is that the opposition voted against it. However, the “it” is buried under a heap of policies that simply do not make sense. The Conservatives think that they can convince Canadians with such a ridiculous line.

What kind of respect does the government have for Canadians?

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

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that at the end of the day the arguments of the opposition members consistently are that their problem with the government is that the government is actually getting things done. It is that we are delivering on our agenda, whether it be our economic policies, our policies for developing the labour market, or our policy for harnessing Canada's economic advantages and resources, but I make no apologies for that. Our government is proud to be delivering on that track record.

Again this year, we will have our strongest legislative performance with the most bills passed at any time since we became government, and the reason is that we are here to change this country for the better, to ensure that we are on a strong economic course, and to consolidate our position as a leader among the developed economies in getting things done.

Of course, the NDP resists, because it does not like that path, the path that leads to low taxes, economic growth, job creation, and, it is fair to say, perhaps a smaller role for government than the NDP would have.

We believe that the solution to Canada's problems and the opportunities for Canada's future lie in the hands of Canadians—not in the hands of the Canadian government, but Canadians, who, through their own hard work and initiative, work to build a better life for their families' futures, to build small businesses, to build stronger communities where they live, and to make better lives for themselves. Our economic policies aim to do exactly that, and we are going to make sure that we give everybody in the House an opportunity to vote on those policies. I know that on this side we will support them; I am quite confident that members on that side will oppose that approach.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sitting here shaking my head. We are not really here to discuss the mythology of the Conservatives' economic record. What we are here to discuss, and what is very dangerous, is the fact that the government is trying to shut down parliamentary debate yet again.

If there is a danger to our parliamentary democracy, it is sitting right across the way. The Conservative government invokes the closure motion to shut down debate over and over again.

Part of the parliamentary process is that parliamentarians are given an opportunity to speak and to shed light on what the government is trying to do.

My question is based on the motion that is before us. Why are the Conservatives trying to ram through this bill? What do they have to hide?

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

Mr. Speaker, what is curious is that I thought we were here to discuss a budget implementation bill and why it is important for the country. The member is saying that we need to debate the important issues, yet I have not heard one single criticism from the opposition of the major elements of this budget implementation bill.

The opposition members do not actually want to debate the bill, yet they are calling for more debate. They are not discussing—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. On a point of order, the House leader of the official opposition.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the leader of the government in the House of Commons knows better. He knows exactly what we are here debating, which is the time allocation motion that the Conservatives moved.

We would like to move this question because it is an important question of the fundamentals of democratic behaviour and how government works. The current government has invoked time allocation 58 times. The Conservatives started this debate today. This is what the debate is about: the current government's heavy-handed tactics when it comes to Parliament. The issue of the bill itself will be debated once we move past this and back to the legislation itself.

For the Conservatives to pretend this is about something other than the democratic principles of Parliament and how they are ramming through legislation in bill after bill is a fallacy. The government House leader knows this. I would ask that he stay on topic and stay on the anti-democratic point that he started with today.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I would ask the government House leader to wait just a moment.

The tradition in the House on motions like this is quite clear. The debate can focus on either the motion itself or on the bill that is the subject of the motion. Any debate today with regard to the motion is in order, and any debate with regard to Bill C-4 is in order.

I turn the floor back over to the government House leader.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate those wise comments.

That is exactly the point that I would like to make. It is that we have before us an opportunity to put in place before the end of the year, by scheduling the order in which we are going to do this and ensuring there is a vote, measures to extend and expand the hiring credit for small businesses for an estimated 560,000 employees; measures to increase and index the lifetime capital gains exemption to help small businesses and to help farmers; measures to expand the accelerated capital cost allowance to further encourage investments in clean energy; and measures to freeze employment insurance premiums for three years, benefiting millions of employers and employees.

Therefore, my question is this when I hear the resistance from the opposition: What is it about those measures that the opposition members do not want them in place by the end of the year? Why is it that they wish to see them delayed and resisted? That is what we are debating here today. We think they should be in place by the end of this year.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for my friend. There is suddenly this urgency. It seems to me that when the Conservatives were in opposition, they hated these very same tactics because they did not agree with the agenda. Now that it is their agenda, they think the tactics are wonderful—so wonderful, in fact, that they have used them more than any government in Canadian history in invoking closure on debate in the House of Commons and shutting down what happens in this place.

This bill was so urgent that it took three weeks before the finance committee even picked it up. This bill is so important that it would fix the mistake of the last bill they rammed through Parliament, which was so perfect that it fixed the mistakes of the bill they rammed through Parliament before. At one point, the Conservatives are going to actually learn.

The member talks about his economic agenda, and, Mr. Speaker, you properly ruled that we can talk about it. All right, the two largest deficits in Canadian history were Conservative deficits. The greatest job losses in the manufacturing sector in Canadian history were Conservative job losses. This is the Conservative record: adding deficits and growing government faster than any government in Canadian history.

Now the Conservatives stand here and say those things are not true. They are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts, and the facts speak clearly. The current government has shut down debate more than any government in history. This government has added more to the national debt than any government in history. Those are the facts that the Conservatives will have to live with. Those are the facts that we will take to the Canadian public in the next election.

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

Mr. Speaker, the approach of the opposition House leader—not surprisingly, as it is the NDP's economic policy generally—is one that treats Canada as an island. It does not realize that there is actually a global economy out there.

When we look at that global context, we see that Canada actually has the strongest record. Canada has a deficit that has been cut in half and is on track to having a balanced budget in 2015, ahead of all our other competitor countries. We have far and away the lowest debt per capita, the lowest debt as a proportion of GDP, meaning that we can keep taxes low and have the lowest taxes on investment and new job creation in this country for those who want to come and invest here and create jobs. We have the strongest job creation record of any of those developed economies.

This is the track record. This is the product of our economic policies. This is why we want to stay on course. This is why we want to see a productive, hard-working, and orderly Parliament approve these economic measures by the end of the year, measures that were introduced almost a year ago in the budget.

It is time to get on with it, and I look forward to the House doing that today and in the days ahead.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

It is now 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, NDP, Joe Comartin]

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

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

In my opinion the nays 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 #18

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed from December 2 consideration of Bill C-4, A second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.