Debates of June 16th, 2014

Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law)

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

(Motion agreed to, bill reported, concurred in, read the third time and passed)

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, presented to the House on Wednesday, February 5, 2014, be concurred in.

I always say what an honour it is to rise in this institution, but as I reflect on the government's response to the report on the Conflict of Interest Act, I have to say that I am not proud of what has been taking place in this Parliament.

We have what is being presented to the Canadian people as a Potemkin democracy. It is a false democracy. Democracy does not really happen here any more. It is a sideshow that Canadians are being exposed to on a daily basis in a House that has become a circus, an ugly circus, a vicious circus.

What we see here is an overall attack by the government against the institutions that are supposed to maintain the credibility of the Westminster tradition, a continued unmitigated attack on the various institutions that are supposed to bring accountability to this place. As Canadians watch the daily circus show and the silliness and the way the government has dumbed down important issues into little buttons that it can press at a given moment, what we see is the bigger issue that is being deflected which the Canadian public is not seeing, which is the attack on the credibility of the institutions that would hold some level of accountability.

Let us go through the standards that are supposed to be there to ensure a functioning democracy.

We hear of MPs who go back to their ridings and when people ask about the circus that they watch on TV, they will say, “Oh, yes, but committees are where the good work is done.” When I was elected 10 years ago I used to think that. I used to think that maybe on a given day it may be fairly mediocre in the House, but in committees, by and large we were there to do relatively good work, even if it was sometimes very partisan. Sometimes it was not the brightest. This is a democratic system after all, and it is what is it is, depending on who is elected. However, the notion of the committee had a place. That is not true any more. Committees have become circuses. They have become kangaroo courts. It is all done in camera or it is done to use the notion of majority to undermine even legislative positions that have existed since the Westminster tradition.

In England, in the U.K. Parliament, it is considered a failure of the committee if there is not unanimity, if oe has to bring forward a minority report. Unfortunately, we are having to bring forward minority reports all the time.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the circus of what happened at the ethics committee with the review of the conflict of interest guidelines. We heard from witnesses from across the political spectrum about the need to develop a coherent set of conflict of interest guidelines to hold government and the public office holders to account. What was delivered to the Canadian people in this report was an absolute democratic fraud.

The recommendations that were brought supposedly through the committee were never even raised by a single witness. I will get to the key recommendation, the number one recommendation that the government found in dealing with issues of conflict of interest. The conflict of interest review had raised all manner of issues, such as the need for administrative monetary penalties of a substantive nature, to ensure compliance with basic due diligence so that people were not just doing things for their friends or their pals, that there were clear rules to ensure that insiders did not have access, and that public office holders were acting in the public interest.

The number one recommendation that came out of this committee, and I want to say again it appeared in the report when we were examining it without a single witness having brought it forward, was that the definition of “public office holder” be changed. The government's notion of who will now be under the Conflict of Interest Act are the members who collectively bargain with the Government of Canada. They will now be public office holders.

What is a public office holder? A public office holder, according to the act, is a minister of the crown, a minister of state, or a parliamentary secretary. They will now have the same provisions around their conflict of interest as someone who does the vacuuming in a public office building for the federal government. Someone in Scarborough who works in a call centre for the federal government answering the phones is now going to have the same legal obligations as a minister of the crown.

Members of ministerial staff, all the little boys in short pants who write all those notes so the marionettes in the front row do not look so slow on a given day, and someone working in a secretarial function in an office in Calgary for the federal government will be treated as having to have the same responsibility for reporting their behaviour as the men in the little short pants who work for the Prime Minister's Office. A ministerial appointee under the Governor in Council will be treated the same as someone working at a Service Canada outlet in Moose Jaw, Kenora, or Timmins. That means there would now be between 240,000 and 300,000 people who are under the Conflict of Interest Act, whom the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has to oversee.

The government approved this. Members of the government thought this was a good recommendation. They are laughing at us. They are laughing at the Canadian people. This is an absolute fraud of democracy when they decide that a minister of the crown, who can be bought and sold if there are not clear rules for lobbying and for conflict of interest, would be held to the same code as a person who goes into a government office in Winnipeg in the evenings and sweeps and cleans.

The Conflict of Interest Act was one of the key provisions of the Conservatives' commitment to have themselves elected in 2006. It is notable that the Conservatives made this promise that they were going to clean up the corruption of the Liberals in 2006. Their electoral platform was to give the ethics commissioner the power to fine violators—wrong; to enshrine the conflict of interest code into law—wrong; to allow members of the public, not just politicians, to make complaints to the ethics commissioner, which did not happen; to make part-time or non-remunerated ministerial advisers subject to the ethics code. It does not say anything about making 250,000 Canadians apply under the same code, a code that has no provisions for holding these ministers to account.

There is another fascinating recommendation that the government has brought in. If one of its ministers is under investigation, it has to be kept secret. It has to be kept secret to protect their reputation. It is a government that believes in maximum secrecy for its members while insisting on maximum transparency for average Canadians. That is a fundamental failure of accountability.

We had a Conservative member from London the other day who said that if people go to a public demonstration, why should the government not be able to keep tabs on them? The Conservatives believe that being able to spy on Canadians is their right, but if their ministers are under investigation, good luck investigating them because the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner would be absolutely swamped with the 250,000 civil servants she would have to deal with. We asked the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner what she thinks of this report and she said she is extremely disappointed. Of course she is, because it is making a mockery of her position.

The conflict of interest office is just one of the attacks the Conservatives have been making. Let us look at a few others.

We saw what they did with Marc Mayrand and Elections Canada and the attack on him personally. The insinuation was that Marc Mayrand in doing his job was doing it for partisan reasons. They wanted to make it illegal in Canada for Elections Canada to be able to tell Canadians about their rights to vote. International observers said that if Canada went down this route, it would fundamentally undermine the basic notion of democratic accountability.

We saw how they attacked the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Kevin Page, one of the most respected civil servants I have met in my career, was regularly ridiculed and undermined and attacked. His job, which was to provide members of Parliament with basic financial data, was interfered with every step of the way. I have to tell people back home that the House of Commons does not oversee the spending that is going on. It is a shell game that happens here. Billions of dollars are spent in all manner of categories, and yet the government makes sure that they keep members in the House of Commons in the dark. It's as though they were raising mushrooms on what they are feeding the House of Commons when it comes to actual information.

The one office to provide basic financial accountability, the Parliamentary Budget Office, was considered a threat and Mr. Page had to go. That is another one of the officers of Parliament that has been undermined.

There was the lastest appointment of the Privacy Commissioner. The Prime Minister ignored the recommendations of all the experts and picked Mr. Therrien, a lifelong civil servant, but one with no expertise in the privacy field. He was appointed over all the qualified people. Mr. Therrien was given a poison chalice with this appointment. As soon as Mr. Therrien was approved, the government attacked his credibility, because even Mr. Therrien, without the necessary expertise, recognized that the government's bills, Bills C-13 and S-4, on warrantless access and snooping on Canadians, were very problematic and probably were not legal.

The Privacy Commissioner was undermined. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was undermined. The Elections Canada office was undermined. Now with this report, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's office is being turned basically into a farce. She said that she has no ability to keep track of the 244,000 civil servants across this country when her job is supposed to be keeping an eye on a government that is mired in corruption.

These are respected institutions that provide accountability to Canadians when government does not want to be accountable. There is another key element, and that is the access to information office. The government now routinely tells the access to information officer that it will not comply with requests. It will give delays of 300, 600, 900 and 1,000 days on basic rights to access to information. Canada was a world leader on access to information 15 years ago. Now it is behind tin-pot dictatorships and third world countries in terms of providing information to citizens. The President of the Treasury Board runs around like some two-bit flim-flam artist talking about data sets and open government on his Twitter account. It is a farce. The Conservatives are making sure that the real key information that Canadians need is not being made available to them.

The Department of National Defence, the CRA, the justice department, and Indian affairs routinely stonewall and shut down the attempts of citizens and journalists to find out why decisions are made. If we do not know who was in the room when a decision was made or what source provided the information, we have no idea whether or not we are getting accountable government.

The government undermined the other institutions. We can talk about Rights and Democracy. We can talk about the round table on the environment. We can talk about Census Canada. I do not know what he is the minister of now, but he was the minister of immigration, and he is now running around trying to explain why he blew it so badly on the foreign worker program and saying he did not really have any data to go on and is having to look it up on Facebook and Kijiji. It is the same party that ridiculed and laughed at the Census Canada information that was considered the gold standard for information around the world.

There is another institution that the Conservatives attacked and undermined, and it is the one institution that so far has stood up to them. That is the Supreme Court.

I will not mention the Senate. We were taught in school that legislation goes from the House to the so-called chamber of sober second thought, but it is full of hacks, partisans, and friends of the party who rubber stamp bills again and again. They are not doing their legislative oversight. What ends up happening is the Supreme Court has to address bills.

Before I get to the issue of the Supreme Court, let us talk about the justice department. The justice department has a job to review legislation to ensure that it is charter compliant, that it meets the overall legal framework of this country. We see time and time again the advice that is given is ignored, or perhaps the Conservatives decide to favour their political masters, because this is a government that runs and butts its head again and again on the basic issues of the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They are beginning to look increasingly ridiculous. Rather than the Conservatives stepping back and saying that they have to respect the Supreme Court, even though they will respect no other institution in this country, the Prime Minister personally led an attack on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The Conservatives attempted to bring in a judge who was not able to sit on the Supreme Court. They had legal advice on this. They ignored it. They created an unnecessary crisis.

We saw the Conservatives' prostitution law thrown out by the Supreme Court. The Conservatives have gone right back at the Supreme Court, banging their heads against it with a bill that will also be found unconstitutional, because it ignored the fundamental issues in the Bedford decision.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on the Spencer decision last Friday that talked about the fundamental legal obligation to get a warrant to get access to IP information and cell phone information. I heard one of the parliamentary secretaries the other day saying, “Oh my God, this is going to mean a four to six week delay in police investigations”. Nonsense. It is a one-day turnaround.

We also have, within the legal system in Canada, the right the police have, if they believe a crime is being committed, to get that information without a warrant. The proviso is that they have to be able to show to a judge later on that there was the urgency. There is still judicial oversight.

The government believes that there is no need for judicial oversight. We have a situation now where 1.2 million times a year, government agencies are grabbing information on private citizens without any apparent warrant. The government says that it is only being done in cases of extreme threat, terrorism, or violence. Obviously that is not true, given that there are 1.2 million requests a year.

All that being said, we had Vic Toews, who tried to bring in his warrantless snooping bill, who stood up in this House and told ordinary Canadians that they were on the side of child pornographers if they wanted to defend privacy rights. They put the run on Vic Toews pretty quickly.

The Conservatives then came back with Bill C-13, which would create the provisions to give legal cover for the telecoms to hand over this information, and Bill S-4, which would allow corporate interests to get at Canadians' information without warrant or disclosure to people.

The other provision, the absolutely bizarre one, is that the Conservatives are now going to allow personal tax information to be transferred without warrant or oversight. They somehow think this is going to get past the Supreme Court. Since Friday's ruling, it is clear that it is not.

Rather than use this institution for the benefit of all Canadians to ensure that we have clear, definable rules in this country, we are going to see the government running and butting its head against the Supreme Court and then howling like a victim when the Supreme Court does what its job is to do, which is to maintain legislative and constitutional obligations.

This brings me back to the Conflict of Interest Act. The government's response and its recommendations, which will protect its ministers, will dilute the act and turn the office of accountability into an unmanageable and unenforceable branch. It has completely broken the commitment it made in 2006 to Canadians.

It was very interesting when we heard from Ms. Dawson, the commissioner, the other day. We asked her about one of the most serious cases we have had in memory in terms of a breach of the act, which was the secret payment made out of the Prime Minister's Office to a sitting senator.

I am not a lawyer, but when I read section 16 of the Parliament of Canada Act, it says to make a payment to a sitting senator to make a political problem go away is an indictable offence. The RCMP chose not to follow through. The RCMP said that there was nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen, move on. Yet when we looked at Corporal Horton's ITO, there were serious questions about who was involved in that $90,000, and it was clearly an issue of quid pro quo.

If the RCMP is not going to follow through, and the RCMP said that it had received all the legal advice necessary but did not appear to have talked to the Department of Public Prosecutions, which has oversight in this, then the issue goes back to Mary Dawson. Mary Dawson has no ability to go after the senators. The senators are in a closed world unto themselves. However, Mary Dawson does have the authority to investigate Nigel Wright. She says that she is not investigating Nigel Wright, because she is under the impression that the $90,000 was still under investigation by the RCMP. I find that surprising, because I do not know how it could be illegal to receive the money but not illegal to pay the money. I am not exactly sure. I think Ms. Dawson would do us all a favour if she could explain.

This is the kind of work Ms. Dawson is intended to do. It is to ensure that secret payments are not made to insiders, that backroom pals do not have access that ordinary Canadians do not have. This is why we were supposed to have the Federal Accountability Act. Unfortunately, with the motion and the report, the government has signalled that it has no intention of following through on those commitments.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I hate to bring it up, but when it comes to ethical issues, the NDP has a lot to answer for. There is the over $1 million in mailings. We have a situation where the NDP has used parliamentary office space for political purposes. We all know that this is a big no-no.

I am not sure if Mary Dawson has the jurisdiction to check those items out, but certainly those who do have the jurisdiction have condemned the NDP for doing something that every member of the House knows not to do. We do not use third-party printers. We do not do clandestine mailings. We do not use parliamentary resources for political purposes.

I wonder if the member could reflect on all the ethical breaches the NDP has undertaken in the last little while.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is a great question, because it shows people the kind of circus Parliament has become. We have a report on the legal obligations of an officer of Parliament, and they turn it into a clown show, just the way they have with parliamentary committees. I do not know if the member was here when I was speaking about how the committees have become a functional joke of the House. They are going to take that and run a kangaroo court. The hon. member cannot even get his story straight, that the NDP used parliamentary office space.

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

That is idiotic.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Why not say that, Mr. Speaker? This has become the circus they run, where they get everyone running after some false thing, while they are ignoring the fact that they are stripping the basic obligation to hold government to account.

My hon. colleague will no doubt come out next and say that the NDP sank the lost continent of Atlantis and should have to pay it back. I am sure they will say that. The fact is, we are dealing with a report that is undermining the basic legitimacy of this parliamentary tradition, yet we see Bozo the clowns on the back bench jumping up and down and cheering whenever the government throws red meat at them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it was the House administration that ruled that the NDP was breaking the rules in regard to the satellite office and the mailings. Canadians need to be concerned about the unethical behaviour of the NDP leader and members of its caucus on this issue.

Having said that, when we think of wasting time, the member knows full well that we have been looking toward debating legislation as we wind down, to what will likely be the end of the session, by Friday. He has chosen to present this motion, which will no doubt precipitate yet another half hour of bell ringing. We have lost the opportunity to bring forward petitions today. For example, I was wanting to bring forward my petition on the OAS and CPP, which our pensioners treat as very important. Then we would get on to government bills and working hard, as opposed to what we see with the New Democrats, which on three separate occasions has moved for adjournment.

Why is the NDP and its leader choosing to be lazy and to not do the work Canadians expect us to do here in the House of Commons?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Lazy, Mr. Speaker, I love that from a guy whose leader does not show up for work except once a week. I get a kick out of my friend. He is sort of like the Ezra Levant of the Liberal Party. We have heard of ethical oil. Now we hear of ethical Liberals.

I have never seen a man who complains more when he is asked to show up and actually debate substantive issues. We are debating the undermining of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. That is what we are debating here, and he is outraged. He thinks this is an impediment to the work of democracy because he wants to go home. He can go home any time he wants. His leader left ages ago, so I am sure no one will notice. However, our job is to look at conflict of interest.

When the Conflict of Interest Act was first brought in, it was to deal with the corruption of the Liberal Party. I know that they do not want to ever have any rules on it, but I would like to think that he would start looking across the bench to his dear friends on the corruption that is going on under them as they dismantle the Federal Accountability Act.

I thank my colleague, Ezra. Any time he wants to discuss laziness in the House of Commons, I think it is a great issue, and I would certainly love to meet his temporary boss at some point on the issue as well.

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

Mr. Speaker, I certainly enjoyed the remarks of the member for Timmins—James Bay, who has been doggedly determined in pushing the government on a whole range of ethical issues, ethical lapses, and misspending. No government in history, even worse than the Liberals, has been so appallingly bad at public accountability. The Conservatives are just awful. What they have also done is just destroy due process. They have destroyed the BOIE, which used to function according to consensus. They have destroyed that, and now they believe that they can just rule by partisan Conservative decree.

I ask my colleague from Timmins—James Bay, who has been extraordinary in this House and has more credibility than the entire Conservative caucus put together on issues of conflict of interest and issues of ethics, how come the government thinks it can get away with anything? The Conservatives have attacked viciously the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. They attacked the Chief Electoral Officer. They attacked the Parliamentary Budget Officer. They simply have no shame. How can they get away with it, and what can Canadians do who want to get rid of the government in 2015?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is a fundamentally important issue we are debating. We see that the Conservatives have turned the House of Commons into a circus. We have seen that they have taken the traditional work of committees and turned them into trained marionettes or soft puppets, but what holds Parliament to account are the officers of Parliament.

This report we are debating is a serious report. We can look at all the recommendations that were brought forward by men and women of all political stripes who believe in accountable government, regardless of what political party one is from.

We see the Conservatives turning this into a circus, and we see the Liberals not wanting to discuss it. We are talking about an act that was put in place to hold government leaders to account. Instead, and this is the ultimate circus and fraud we are seeing, 244,000 civil servants will now be treated, under this act, the same as key ministers, key deputy ministers, political partisan staff of the Prime Minister's Office, and the person cleaning the office in Winnipeg. They will be treated the same as one of the Prime Minister's insider friends, like Bruce Carson. It is a joke.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite talked about different things that undermine this Parliament. There are a number of things, and he happens to be one of them. He has criticized every party and anyone who has not agreed with him. He has refused to answer any questions that have been put to him in this entire debate.

The question that needs to be asked and continually will not be answered by the member is when the NDP will repay what they took from taxpayers that was against the rules. It has been ruled by the non-partisan staff of this place that the NDP broke the rules, took the $1.7 million, and took off with it. We are talking also about the revelations of the scandal that saw the House of Commons staff, taxpayer-paid staff, now housed in partisan--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order. The member is running out of time. We have less than 30 seconds.

The member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the folks back home, what kind of mailings have they received from the Conservative Party? Those ridiculous, crazy attack mailings about the NDP and its carbon tax, the NDP breaking up the country, and how the NDP is a threat to life itself. The folks back home should think of all the crap they have received from the Conservative Party paid for by the taxpayer and then look at the members on the other side. Do they trust them? I would not.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. During the last question exchange, I do not know if you heard it, but I did, the use of unparliamentary language by the member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there was no unparliamentary language used whatsoever. I used the word “hypocrisy” in the House and if I did use the word “hypocrite”, I stand by it.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The member knows that the use of the term “hypocrite” is unparliamentary. The term “hypocrisy” is permitted within the context. I would have to ask the member to withdraw the comment.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I happily withdraw the comment “hypocrite” and stand by my comment that the government is marked by hypocrisy.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The House has heard the terms of 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.