Debates of May 27th, 2014

Oral Questions

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

That seems to be a matter of debate and not a point of order.

On a point of order, the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, the New Democratic House leader raised a question in which I think he was making reference to me. He referred to me as the member for Lanark—Carleton, and indicated that I am on the board of directors of a company called “Giant Target”.

I want to inform the member that I was the member for Lanark—Carleton before that riding ceased to exist a decade ago, about the same time he arrived here, and I am not on the board of directors of Giant Target but of Giant Tiger. Rumours of our merger with Target are overstated.

On the positive side, I believe that if he wants to take out a trademark for the name “Giant Target”, it is available.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I am sure the House appreciates the clarification.

The hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley is also rising.

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

Mr. Speaker, for my friend across the way, I apologize for misnaming the company of which he sits on the board of directors.

I, of course, am not the House leader for the opposition anymore. I am finance critic. My paycheque has shown me that. I would show him my pay stubs if he needs any kind of confirmation, but I feel quite comfortable with the role that I take on as finance critic.

I am glad that the merger is not happening, and I am glad that he still has his position on the board. I wish him good luck with the Minister of Finance and his lobbying against the new changes to the Copyright Act.

Motion that debate be not further adjourned

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

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That, in relation to the consideration of Government Business No. 10, the debate not be further adjourned.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will now be a 30-minute question period. I would ask members who wish to participate to keep their questions to around one minute and responses to a similar length.

The hon. opposition House leader.

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

Mr. Speaker, we in the NDP are always ready to work. Last year, the government tried the same trick. However, if we look at the debates that took place every evening in June, sometimes 90%, even up to 95%, of those who came to work and discuss bills were NDP members. That is a record we are very proud of. We are here to work, no question about it.

However, this motion is a licence for laziness. Not only do the Conservatives not come to speak in the House, but now there is also talk of holding no votes in the evening. The votes will be held around question period. Of course, the Conservatives want to prevent the opposition from using the procedures that we are familiar with. That is not democracy as I see it.

I am interested in why the government House leader did not raise this at the House leaders meeting. We are supposed to be meeting shortly.

The NDP has always said that this is the kind of stuff that should be talked about around the table. There was no consultation with the opposition and, of course, no consultation with the Conservative caucus either.

My questions are very simple. Why did the member not consult with the opposition? Why did he not consult with his caucus? Why is he trying to ram this through the House one more time without doing the consultations that are really the hallmark of Canadian democracy?

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

Mr. Speaker, of course, the great consultation we are having with the House is the consultation we are having right now, in which we are debating the motion and hopefully allowing the opportunity for many more consultations in this House.

The last time we were up dealing with the matter of this motion, and I was answering questions on the motion itself, the member had a lot to say about speeches. Apparently, he had been counting who had been delivering speeches. I think this House, and perhaps the public, might have been left with the mistaken impression that the New Democrats were participating vigorously in debate and Conservatives had not been, last spring when we had extended hours just like this.

I actually took a look at those statistics, which I had not done before that debate, and discovered that in fact on those days—and there were 20 of them between the Victoria Day break and the end of session last time—on 11 of those 20 days, Conservatives actually spoke more often. More Conservatives gave speeches than New Democrats. There were only five days in which New Democrats gave more speeches than Conservatives.

So it seems very odd to me that the member is trying to suggest that Conservatives were not speaking. The fact is that, overwhelmingly, on the majority of those days, it was actually Conservatives who spoke more often than New Democrats.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things to be very clear on is that the Liberal Party is not fearful of work. We are quite anxious to ensure that there is a good deal of debate on many and a wide variety of pieces of legislation. Having extended hours is something that, from a personal point of view and from our party's point of view, can be of great value to Canadians.

However, I want to highlight and ask the government House leader why it is that it seems to me—and I have been in a position where I have had to negotiate and talk about House processes and how a House should proceed, in terms of passing legislation—that this particular government House leader has not been able to sit down with the opposition House leaders from the Liberal Party and from the NDP to try to work out some sort of timely debate on a series of legislation, as opposed to always wanting to use time allocation.

I for one do not mind sitting. For as long as they want to sit, I am prepared to sit. However, whatever happened to good-faith negotiation on legislation, so that we could do things in a timely fashion, so that important bills are in fact being appropriately debated, such as the fair elections act, which was really restricted in terms of its debate? Why not negotiate in good faith?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member from the Liberal Party for that question because, in fairness, without disclosing what happens in our behind-closed-door negotiations, I can say I actually enjoy a very positive relationship in which we do have a very constructive exchange with the Liberal Party. I have to say that those experiences are very positive. Indeed, we do have very constructive negotiations, and there is an understanding of how government works and the need to approach it properly. I commend the Liberals for the way in which they have approached such discussions and negotiations.

Obviously, not everybody comes to the table with the same attitude and, as a result, we have to adopt other measures.

However, the reason for it is that we are trying to deliver on commitments we have made to Canadians, important commitments, commitments like delivering on our budget and our budget implementation bill, which was an important part, for example, of ensuring that Canada remains an economic leader by delivering a budget that is in balance in 2015. We have been lucky to enjoy coming out of the economic downturn in the strongest fiscal position of any of the major developed economies. Our budget bill would allow us to continue to enjoy such a strong position, help ensure that Canada continues to lead in job growth as a result of that, and keep taxes down. As we heard today, Canadians are paying 12% less in taxes today than they were many years ago, as a result of the tax reductions made by this government. That means everybody's standard of living in Canada is higher than it was before, thanks to our policies.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think what the Conservative House leader has just said is what Canadians already know. The Liberals basically roll over any time the Conservatives have to push their agenda through. That is increasingly what Canadians are saying across the country. Perhaps that is why the leader of the Liberal Party only shows up one-third of the time to question period, while the leader of the official opposition is here every day, holding the government to account, which is the way it should be.

I want to come back to the issue of time allocation and closure because the government House leader loves to throw this around. At one time, though, prior to the Conservatives actually coming into government, they actually felt that debate was important.

I want to quote what the Prime Minister said on December 9, 2002, prior to the Conservative majority:

We have closure today precisely because there is no deadline and there are no plans. Instead of having deadlines, plans and goals, we must insist on moving forward because the government is simply increasingly embarrassed by the state of the debate and it needs to move on.

That was the Prime Minister in 2002. If we fast-forward to 2014, he is putting in place every bad habit that we saw from the former corrupt Liberal government.

My question is quite simple. The Conservatives have now brought in closure and time allocation 64 times. It is a record. It is even as bad as the former Liberal government's was.

Are the Conservatives not just a bit ashamed of themselves? Rather than consulting with the opposition, rather than consulting with their caucus, all they know how to do is closure and shutting down debate.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is actually one of the rare occasions when we actually are dealing with a closure motion. We have had just a handful of them in our Parliament.

The reason the member's numbers are so high is that we do not use time allocation in the fashion he has suggested. We use it as a scheduling device. In some cases we have been criticized by the opposition for utilizing time allocation and allocating more time than was necessary for a bill to be debated. That is because we want to ensure we make our best assessment of how much time will be needed for a bill to proceed, to allow a full and adequate debate and to allow decisions to be made. It also creates certainty in members' schedules, so they can plan to be in attendance when a vote happens and not be taken by surprise.

That kind of orderly approach has delivered us a productive, hard-working Parliament that has delivered real results in advancing Canadians' priorities, which we delivered to them in the last election. Those priorities are ensuring our focus is on the economy, job creation, and long-term prosperity; ensuring we are delivering safer communities for Canadians by tackling crime and by rebalancing our justice system to improve the rights of victims; making sure we are opening Canada's markets abroad for Canadian workers, employers, and businesses, so they can export goods and create jobs here in Canada and create greater prosperity here in Canada.

These are all items that stand ahead of us in the weeks ahead, when we can support and advance the legislative agenda in further steps: the actual proposals that we have delivered to Canadians, that Canadians say are important to them.

The irony of it all is that we are talking about a motion that would allow more debate, allow more sitting to occur, allow more discussion of bills to happen, allow more decisions to be taken, and allow more bills to be passed through certain stages. This is all productive hard work that Canadians want to see. Those who complain about any lack of debate should obviously want to see more debate and will support the motion, I am sure.

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

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons says that this is a closure motion, but that the Conservatives are not as bad because they use time allocation motions most often. This is nonetheless one more closure motion on top of the other 64 times the Conservatives have used closure and time allocation.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said that time allocation was different, so let me quote what his leader, the Prime Minister, said on June 12, 1995:

Madam Speaker, this will be the only opportunity I have to address Bill C-68 in the Chamber. I was not able to speak to the bill at second reading because there was time allocation then. Now there is time allocation at report stage and time allocation again at third reading. There has been time allocation at every stage of the bill. It is unfortunate that in the end most members will be lucky to have 10 minutes to speak to this bill.

The Prime Minister, who was only a member then, said that time allocation was just as unacceptable as closure. Now the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is saying that time allocation is not as bad. However, the Prime Minister said the opposite.

How can the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons account for the fact that his leader, the Prime Minister, criticized the abuse of time allocation when the corrupt Liberals were in power?

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

Mr. Speaker, it all comes down to the technique or the way in which the device is utilized. One could utilize time allocation to shut down debate immediately. As I said, our approach has been entirely different. We use it as a scheduling device to create certainty, so members know when bills are going to be debated and they can come to debate them at those times. They will know when votes will take place, and this will create certainty.

The result is, under this government, some of the longest amounts of time allocated to the debate of bills in the history of Canadian Parliament. We have had, for example, four of the longest debates ever under time allocation on budget implementation bills.

It is not a question of inadequate time for debate but rather a question of how it is utilized. If it is used in a different fashion to try to limit debate rather than as a scheduling device, then we would have the kind of events that provoked the response we heard from the Prime Minister, but that has not been the approach of this government.

This government's approach has been one of using it as a device for certainty, for productivity, to let us get things done on the economy, on tackling crime, on opening markets abroad to Canadians and Canadian workers and businesses, so they can create jobs and achieve prosperity. It is all about delivering results and, at the end of the day, that is what this is about.

The bottom line difference is that the NDP would like us to never come to any conclusions, to never have to make any decisions, just to have endless filibusters, whereas members on this side of the House are more interested in getting things done, and from what I hear, the Liberals are as well. That is why they support the motion, so we can make decisions, so we can get things done, so we can deliver results for Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, let us look at the results. In 2013, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said not only are 300,000 more people unemployed in this country, but also what jobs the Conservatives were able to create, 95% of them were part-time jobs. We have Canadians increasingly struggling to make ends meet.

Last month's unemployment figures lost tens of thousands of jobs across this country. How do we know? The manufacturing sector lost 500,000 jobs that were good family-sustaining jobs. What the Conservatives have done is created some part-time jobs for those folks who lost their full-time jobs. Of course, they have the record in terms of creating jobs for temporary foreign workers, but we know what a colossal amount of chaos and debacle the mismanagement of the temporary foreign worker program has been.

Conservatives used to talk about democracy before they became entitled and forgot about their actual electors. The former minister of justice, a Conservative, said this when speaking of the corrupt Liberals who were doing the same kinds of things that the Conservatives condemned at the time. He said on November 28, 2001:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister of Canada swung an axe across the throat of parliament....members of all parties in parliament lost the ability to express the concerns of Canadians....why did the Prime Minister do the wrong thing by invoking closure?

I think we are getting a body of evidence now that shows very clearly that Conservatives, when they were condemning the corrupt Liberals, acted quite differently than how they are acting now. They condemned those Liberals when they were at the end of their regime, just before they were tossed out by the Canadian public. I guess if anything is encouraging, it is the fact that we are seeing the end of this regime. Increasingly when we look at Conservatives, we are seeing a government that is in disarray and has to use these types of methods, the steamrollers, to try to force through legislation.

The problem is that their legislation is increasingly rejected by courts. The Supreme Court has rejected a number of pieces of legislation even over the last few weeks. We have seen other cases where time allocation or closure has led to Conservatives ramming something through that was so bad they had to bring other legislation to fix the problems that were in the first piece of legislation.

My question for the government House leader is very simple. Why did he not consult with the opposition? Why did he not consult with his caucus? Why is he setting up the same kind of situation where the Conservatives try to ram through legislation that is after the fact rejected by the courts? The Conservatives have to then spend more House time introducing new legislation to fix the old legislation that had real flaws but because there was no debate and accepting of amendments from the opposition, the government ends up spending more parliamentary time fixing the errors it made. Why did the government not just consult with the opposition? Why did it not consult with its own caucus members?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am most puzzled by the question just delivered by my hon. friend. It bears very little relation to anything that is actually taking place on our legislative agenda. As far as I can tell, there is only potentially one bill in the months ahead that would deal with correcting laws that had been struck down by the courts and that would be the invitation by the Supreme Court for us in the Bedford decision to make changes to the prostitution laws that it has found unconstitutional and contrary to the charter.

The member said that is because they were rammed through by a Conservative government. I guess in some sense he may be correct because the bulk of those laws were put in place in 1892 when it was a Conservative government in place. I believe it was Prime Minister John Thompson who as the minister of justice was responsible for the comprehensive reform of the Criminal Code at the time. I will say in fairness to the prime minister at the time in 1892, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was not yet in place. The changes he did bring into place, the legislation did seem to withstand any kind of court challenge for at least a century. Any response that we may bring legislatively can hardly be said to be responding to a bill that was brought in rashly, rammed through, and thrown out by the courts a century plus a couple of decades later. I really think it is a very bizarre kind of characterization of what we might be doing legislatively.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for our House leader, Mr. Van Loan.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I will just remind the member that he had it right when he said House leader, but then he went a bit too far because we do not—

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are two House leaders here. I apologize.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The government House leader is sufficient for the House.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the question is regarding Bill C-17, Vanessa's law. I am trying to understand what these extended hours will mean with respect to Bill C-17.

As the House knows, Vanessa's law will, among other things, empower the Minister of Health to order dangerous drugs that are harming Canadians off the market immediately, change labels, give better safety warnings, and so forth.

The timeliness of this bill is important. For example, we know that there are hundreds of patients in Canada who suffer serious adverse drug reactions daily. That is what this bill is designed to address. If this bill is passed sooner, without a word of exaggeration it will save lives. It will protect Canadians from serious adverse drug reactions.

I did not count how many NDP members spoke in support of the bill today. I think it was 10 or more. The New Democrats are supporting the bill in principle. They want to get it to committee to talk about amendments. I would love to get it to committee to talk about amendments, but we did not get the direction or agreement from the NDP House leader today to send it to committee. We need to do that soon in order to get it through committee, passed in the House of Commons, and sent to the Senate for consideration before the end of June.

Therefore, I would ask the government House leader this. What do these extended hours mean with respect to Bill C-17, Vanessa's law?

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

Mr. Speaker, I know this is an issue in which the hon. member has taken a great interest for obvious reasons and has been a champion. It is fair to say that if it was not for his leadership and initiative we would not have the opportunity to be debating this particular bill on the floor of the House of Commons today.

What was disappointing to me today was, contrary to what we had been led to believe, certainly it was the impression I had this morning, we did not succeed in getting the debate to a conclusion today. This is one of the difficulties we find. We debated the number of speakers people have put up. According to the NDP, there was some virtue in the fact that they have had more speakers in the evenings, even though the statistics are quite different than that when we look at the fullness of debate.

Our approach is to let those who feel passionately about it have their say, allow the debate to occur, but also allow a decision to be made, allow a vote to happen, allow a bill to proceed to the next stage.

This is an important bill. These extended hours will give us the opportunity to get it to the next stage because clearly simply relying on the good faith of the opposition to allow it to proceed to the next stage is not sufficient. That is why we have to sometimes take unusual steps with our process to allow that to happen. Members should keep in mind that we are only talking about getting it to second reading in the House of Commons.

I often take school visits and school groups through the stages of getting a bill adopted. I explain that it has to go to committee to be studied, to have witnesses heard, and then be put to a vote. It then comes back to the House for report stage and to be voted on there. There will then be a further debate in the House at third reading and be put to a vote. I then say, “Is it a law now?” They all say yes. Then I say, “No. Guess what? It then has to go to the Senate for all the same things all over again”. Then they realize that there are indeed many hurdles and safeguards.

If we want to get bills passed, if we want to get changes in place and get Bill C-17 in place, it requires a real commitment from all of us to put our shoulder to the wheel and get things done. That is what this motion would allow us to do on Bill C-17 and a number of other bills that are before us that Canadians want to see us deliver results on.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about time allocation, what the government is doing is preventing certain fairly controversial areas of debate from being thoroughly debated.

Let me give a few examples where the government has brought in time allocation. We can talk about the major budget bills, where there are literally changes being made to 30 or 40 pieces of legislation and it allowed a few hours of debate. We can talk about the Canadian Wheat Board, where it allowed a few hours of debate before closing down the Wheat Board. We can talk about the pooled pension plan, copyright legislation, many pieces of first nations legislation, and a series of critically important legislation where the government has brought in time allocation. Every time it brings in time allocation it is preventing an adequate amount of debate and opportunity for members of both sides of the House to be engaged and hold the minister and government accountable for what it is they are trying to bring in in terms of legislation.

My question is for the government House leader. I think the government has used time allocation 60 times. That is like 60 plus hours that have been allocated between questions and answers and bell ringing. That is a lot of debate that could have happened, much like right now where we are having questions and then we will likely have the bells ring. Why do we not just do the work and if we have to sit longer we sit longer? We are not shy of sitting longer in the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, our ways are making these things move faster. If they wish to have the bells ring, we could cease asking questions. They need not rise and fill the space just because it is there. They could allow things to proceed to the next stage. Those options are available to them, but I am obliged to stand here and answer the questions as long as they keep coming for the time contemplated in the Standing Orders.

When we talk about budget bills, for example, as I said, we had the longest amount of time ever allocated to any budget implementation bill to its passage in Canadian history. One can hardly say that debate is any way constrained.

We want to see ample debate, but we want to see decisions get made. We want to see things come to a conclusion, but we are not shy of working extra hours to do it either. That is why the motion that we are dealing with here, government Motion No. 10, would see us prepared to sit until midnight every night in order to get results, to get more things done, and to deliver for our constituents back home on the very questions that they expect us to make decisions on for them.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today a little bit puzzled. We have a parliamentary democracy, and a parliamentary democracy has checks and balances built into it. Part of those checks and balances is the role of the opposition to debate legislation.

By the way, let me make it clear that I do not mind sitting until midnight. When it is midnight here, it is only 9 p.m. out on the west coast. I was raised in a household where, through many functions, we had to be up three or four nights and days in a row anyway, so that does not bother me at all.

What is beginning to bother me is how, time and time again, as a parliamentarian, I am having my voice silenced. What is so obnoxious about the motion before us right now is not the extended hours. I am hoping that we will have a House full across the way so that we can have a fulsome debate. What I find obnoxious is the votes now being limited only to straight after QP. Maybe the government's side is worried that it cannot keep all of its MPs awake late at night. The other thing is that there are no dilatory motions from the opposition, only from the government.

Does my colleague across the way sincerely believe that parliamentary democracy works when the government uses bullying tactics like this and uses its majority to silence opposition and legitimate debate?