Debates of June 8th, 2015

Concurrence in Vote 1 — Senate

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague across the way for his question. He has been on a kind of gerbil's cage treadmill, because what I hear is the same preface to almost every question he asks.

Let me make it very clear to him. My kindergarten students and grade 1 students would understand that a kangaroo court is where two parties collude behind closed doors and give nobody a chance to present evidence or to present their case. Let us not go there.

Let me go on to say this. Our leader has been very clear about the process. We have a grandiose mess over there. What we need to do, and our our leader has made it very clear, is consult with Canadians and meet with the premiers of the provinces and territories. At least we are prepared to do something, not like that government and that party and just sit--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. There are two or three voices I have been hearing repeatedly who do not have the floor, so I would ask those members, if they would like to have a conversation, to do so anywhere but in the chamber while one of their colleagues has the floor.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member say that there was nothing wrong with the offices the NDP opened in Montreal. Does that mean that an NDP government would reopen those offices at taxpayers' expense?

I would like to come back to the main point of the motion. The NDP members have been saying over and over that two key problems with the Senate are that the appointments are patronage appointments and that the senators are too partisan. Would the NDP like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Liberal Party on showing some leadership on those two issues?

We know now that the NDP wants to open the Constitution and have constitutional negotiations, which is something my constituents do not want. I do not know about the member's constituents. How would the member and her party limit the discussion to one topic, or would she allow the discussion to be open to additional topics? Where would she draw the line? Would she draw the line--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Newton—North Delta.

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

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether to thank the member for that question, but I was really hoping that the member would ask me a question very similar to this.

We had all the scandals that existed during the Liberal government, and now we have the Senate scandals involving both Liberal and Conservative senators. To me, it is more of the same.

I think the question the Liberal member of Parliament has to answer is why his party, in 2013, voted to improve accountability in the Senate. It did not support the introduction of measures to end senators' partisan activities or to limit their travel allowances to those activities clearly and directly related to parliamentary business. For him to then stand and make that kind of grandiose speech and be self-congratulatory, while their senators, Liberal senators, are still out there doing partisan work is disingenuous at best.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that I will be sharing my time with the honourable member for Sherbrooke.

I am really very happy to be able to express my views on this motion. It is funny because the government is trying to tell Canadians that the reason we are here this evening is because the opposition wants to debate its motion. I would like to remind the parliamentary secretary for the Prime Minister that this is not an opposition motion by the NDP, but rather a government motion. What we want is simply to vote against the votes in the main estimates.

As they say, “That's it, that's all.”

We are here because of the government. That is fine because it gives me an opportunity to say just how outraged I am that the Liberals and the Conservatives are accusing us today of debating a subject that is not important to Canadians and are saying that Canadians have other things to worry about. There is nothing more fundamental than respect for the Canadian values of integrity, transparency and ethics. People vote for us and send us here, to Parliament, to make policies and pass bills that will help the most vulnerable, for example, and families.

Let us talk about the Conservative Party. The RCMP has told us that the Prime Minister's Office was directly involved in altering reports on senators' expenses. We know, thanks to plain facts, that Conservative members used the services of Conservative senators to raise funds in their constituencies at taxpayers' expense. We have a Conservative government that tells us that it tried to reform the Senate and that it wants an elected Senate with term limits. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the Conservatives' plan was unconstitutional. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister rose to talk about this plan and added that, unfortunately, because the plan is unconstitutional, the government will leave things alone and allow senators to continue to travel at the expense of taxpayers and the people of La Pointe-de-l'Île, who pay for Conservative senators to fundraise in Conservative ridings. That is unacceptable. The Conservative Party wants to continue sending $57 million to the Senate, but it does not know how to reform it.

Then there are the Liberals. I can hear them laughing behind me. The Liberals think this is awfully funny. They are saying that they are going to create a committee made up of unelected people. They do not know who will sit on that committee. Will the committee members be appointed by the Prime Minister or by the government? We do not know. They are going to create a committee to appoint senators. The Liberals' plan involves saying that the Prime Minister will have to appoint senators and take responsibility for them. However, the Liberals are now rising in the House to say that the Liberal senators are no longer members of the Liberal Party and that they are no longer responsible for them. They are trying to tell us that they are going to take responsibility for their future appointments, but they are not responsible for any appointments they made in the past 30 years. Honestly, that is ridiculous. It is just ridiculous.

The Liberal Party wants the status quo. It is going to create a committee to appoint people to appoint people. It is ridiculous to think that a new layer of bureaucracy is going to solve the problems with the Senate. Whether senators are elected or not, they are not accountable to Canadians. That is the first problem. None of the parties here has been able to come up with a solution that will ensure that senators who pass bills will be accountable to Canadians.

Not only do they have the nerve to point fingers at the opposition and say that we have no solution or that our solution is ridiculous, but the Conservatives also have the nerve to come here and say that they have solutions, but they cannot implement those solutions because they would not work. That is ridiculous.

We have bills on the environment and LGBT rights that have been held up by the Senate. There are even bills that were passed by Conservative members. For example, there is the party reform bill. Remember that one? It is in the Senate. Even some Conservative bills have not been passed by senators. Never has a senator voted against his or her party and truly represented the people in his or her district. The Senate's constitutional role is to represent the regions because it was created to counterbalance regions with less representation in the House of Commons.

No senator has ever come to my riding to meet the people of La Pointe-de-l'Île, to say hello and tell them that he represents them in the Senate, to find out what matters to them, to talk about their rights. No senator has ever done that. For someone to tell me that the Senate is a democratic institution is ridiculous.

On top of that, we have senators who do not show up for work in the Senate, but who go to the ridings of government MPs to help get them re-elected. Senators who represent Canadians do not even bother to meet with them, and yet those senators go and meet people in other ridings who have the fortune or misfortune to be represented by a Conservative member.

The reform proposed by the Conservatives is impossible, because it is unconstitutional. The reform proposed by the Liberals is the status quo. They are proposing adding a small selection committee, but they have no idea what will come of that. Basically, it is the status quo. They have no plan.

The only concrete plan to reform our democratic institutions is our plan to abolish the Senate. That is precisely why we are here in the House this evening—to vote against funding the Senate. Right now, we are about to allocate millions of dollars to an institution that is extremely corrupt and, unfortunately, no longer works. Bills passed by Parliament, even those that pass unanimously, are sent to the Senate and are blocked by unelected senators who travel at Canadians' and Quebeckers' expense.

We cannot allow this to continue. We need to take action and do something about it. If we listen to the Conservatives or the Liberals, the Senate will stay the same, and that is unacceptable. We are here today to try to put an end to this undemocratic system that is stealing money directly from Canadians to fund the parties in power.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it is really odd to hear this member talk about taking money out of the pockets of Canadians, when she owes the people of La Pointe-de-l'Île $27,711. Those were monies meant for her constituents that were taken away and funnelled to an illegal partisan office in Montreal.

Again I will ask, for maybe the tenth time tonight, and perhaps one member of the NDP can give this answer to Canadians. After you have finished consulting Canadians, if you are given the honour of serving Canadians in government, what specific legislative steps will you take to abolish the Senate? If a referendum is one of them and it fails, what steps will you then take to abolish the Senate?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Again, I will ask the hon. member to direct his questions to the Chair rather than directly to his colleague.

The hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for asking me that very interesting question.

The first thing we will do is consult the provinces, something the Prime Minister has refused to do since being elected. The Conservative Prime Minister has never met with all the provincial premiers at the Council of the Federation. The first thing my leader will do is attend the first ministers' meeting.

Then, there will indeed be a referendum. I am looking the hon. member in the eye to assure him that the will of Canadians and Quebeckers will be respected.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for finally uttering the word “referendum”. We wondered whether our NDP colleagues got a memo asking them not to use that word. Maybe she got the memo and forgot.

Indeed, if people vote for the NDP, there will be a referendum. Thank you very much for saying so. Now it is a matter of determining whether the only topic during these constitutional negotiations will be the Senate, or whether, as some of her colleagues said today, they would want to talk about all sorts of other things as well. The list was long. Some in the NDP caucus are nostalgic for the Charlottetown agreement.

Does the hon. member want a discussion on the Senate only? How will she convince the Premier of Quebec to stick to a discussion on the Senate if that requires reopening the Constitution and holding a referendum?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is so funny to see the two old parties continuing to use the same arguments they have been using for 30 years, the same arguments that discouraged Canadians from voting. They discouraged young people from becoming interested in politics.

We are going to respect the wishes of Canadians. We are going to consult Canadians and respect their wishes, something those two parties have never done. They got voted in and then they broke their promises. It is very easy for them to attack me personally as a member and to come to the House and repeat the same old arguments they made in the past.

We want to work with the provinces and Canadians, something those other two parties never did. The Liberals stole millions of dollars from Canadians in the sponsorship scandal and the Conservatives did the same in the in and out scandal and the Senate scandal. They stole millions of dollars from Canadians. We want to change things. We want to bring real change to Ottawa.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise to speak to this motion, which seeks to give the Senate $57 million or so in funding.

I will be honoured to vote against that motion, so that we do not send millions of dollars more to an institution that, as we know, is not very good with its money. What is more, as we speak, this spending is being examined and called into question by several authorities, and rightly so.

I urge all of my colleagues to do as I am doing and vote against the motion to ensure that no more money is wasted by the Senate or spent in a questionable manner by senators. This obviously brings me to talk about that institution. I would therefore like to provide some background on the institution we are talking about today.

The Senate is an unelected body made up of senators who were obviously never elected by the Canadian people. They are accountable to just one person: the person who appointed them. The current Prime Minister has appointed over 59 senators. These senators are accountable only to the current Prime Minister, the Conservative Prime Minister. They are not accountable to anyone else. When they spend money and that spending is called into question, the only person they have to answer to is the Prime Minister. They do not have to answer to Canadians.

It is obvious how deeply involved the Prime Minister's Office is in Senate affairs. We know that on several occasions, the Prime Minister and his office tried to erase parts of Senate reports and change the content. The institution is clearly archaic, and we cannot allow it to go on. The people of Sherbrooke cannot stand it anymore either.

Often when I am in Sherbrooke, I hear people say that they are tired of seeing that institution vote on our laws without being elected or accountable to anyone. It is a relic. The current Prime Minister said the same thing a number of years ago. That institution is a relic of the 19th century that should be abolished or reformed. This same Prime Minister has appointed 59 senators, 10 of whom were Conservative candidates who were defeated in elections.

In the election in 2011, some senators who had resigned from their duties as senators to run in the election lost. This means that the people in the ridings in which they ran said that they did not want those people as their MP. A few weeks later, the Prime Minister shamelessly turned around and reappointed them as senators.

Some people will argue that senators are eminent Canadian intellectuals, when we all know that these appointments are simply partisan. Of course, it is hard to beat the Liberals on that, but I do not think that any other prime minister has gone as far when it comes to appointing senators. This is despite the fact that he once called the Senate a relic of the 19th century.

What I mainly gather from the debate of the last few hours is that two parties are acting like cowards. Leaders, party leaders and MPs are cowards and are afraid of constitutional discussions—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville on a point of order.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that accusing one's colleagues in the House of cowardice is parliamentary.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The Chair was distracted for a moment and did not hear the exact comment that the hon. member made. Again, I would take the opportunity to remind all hon. members to speak to the matter before the House in appropriate terms.

The hon. member for Sherbrooke.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will use other terms and say that they have no political courage because they are afraid of constitutional debates and consulting Canadians.

It is like the Leader of the Liberal Party going to a boxing match and, upon seeing that his opponent is too big, too tall and too strong, quitting even before the match starts. He refuses to try anything. We can also imagine a Liberal or Conservative MP competing in a 100-metre race, but quitting even before hearing the starting pistol because he does not have the courage to confront his 10 opponents, who seem too big and too strong, or the challenges he faces. He lacks political courage.

The NDP has political courage, unlike the other two parties we have heard from today. The solutions presented by the other two parties who have exchanged power over the last 150 years lack any kind of political courage. They are, quite simply, ignoring the problem. When the Conservatives realized that their reform was not possible without consulting the provinces, they simply gave up and continued to appoint partisan senators who are accountable only to the Prime Minister.

The Liberals' idea is no better. They want to transition from an unelected Senate appointed by the Prime Minister to an unelected elitist Senate. At the end of the day, the Prime Minister will still be the one who appoints the senators. The Liberals say that an independent committee would be responsible for selecting the unelected officials, but this Canadian political elite would still not be elected and would also not be accountable to anyone other than the person who appointed them—the Prime Minister. In short, this solution is no different than the status quo and certainly will not have the support of Canadians.

The only remaining solution is the one that we are proposing. I will admit that it is a courageous solution because it will take political courage. Here we have one party that has such courage and others that do not. In order to come up with such a solution and vote against the motion, it takes political courage and a party leader with vision who will not be afraid to consult and listen to the provincial premiers once he is elected.

I think that that is what is missing in politics today. I am therefore happy to be part of a political party whose members have been rising in the House all evening and who are prepared to raise less popular topics. That is the difference between our party and that of the current Prime Minister, who is still up to his elbows in the Senate scandal and is trying to control everything, as the Auditor General's report to be released tomorrow will show.

Obviously, the Senate is not independent and the Liberals' solution will not change anything. There is therefore only one other solution. The first step is the easiest, and we are going to take that step tonight by voting against the motion and taking back that $57 million. Canadians are hoping that it will be spent responsibly. I therefore invite all of my colleagues to oppose this motion.

The House resumed from June 4 consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Nutrition North Canada

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. It being 10 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The first question is on the opposition motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Northwest Territories.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #421

Business of Supply

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion defeated.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion — Employment Insurance Premiums

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The next question is on the opposition motion relating to the business of supply.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #422

Business of Supply

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion defeated.