Debates of June 6th, 2016

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

I have to say that this government presented the best budget to support families and the middle class. As we all know, a middle-class family with more money in its pockets spends more, and that helps to boost the economy and support small and medium-sized businesses.

I would like my colleague to explain that.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, I do not share the same perspective about the budget. In fact, I do not see the Liberals tackling inequality or helping those who are not in the middle class join the middle class.

Again, on the middle-class tax break I talked about earlier, those who earn $23 an hour or less do not get the tax benefit. How are those people supposed to join the middle class?

When we talk about small business, the economic generators, the job creators in our communities that create 80% of jobs, they are not getting a tax break that was promised to them. The child tax benefit the Liberals are offering is not enough to cover child care.

In fact, the people who would benefit the most from the middle-class tax break earn between $100,000 and $200,000 a year. If we ask them, even they will tell us that it is unfair that someone who earns $23 an hour or less gets nothing.

To the member, I completely disagree. I think the Liberals failed to do what they promised: tackle inequality and help those who are not in the middle class join the middle class. Two-thirds of Canadians are not getting the benefit they were promised.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, earlier on in a debate on this same topic, I believe it was the member for Winnipeg North who expressed to me that the small business owners in his riding were very happy with this budget. They were happy because there were so many dollars being put back into the pockets of everyday Canadians in the middle class that suddenly small businesses were going to have all of this additional cash coming in their doors. I wonder if the member might have a perspective on how that would somehow balance out with small businesses actually receiving what was promised to them in the budget initially.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is a great question. I was actually just in the member's riding at FCM. I was in north Winnipeg, and I talked to a couple of people. I gave them the breakdown for the middle-class tax break that was promised. They earn less than $23 an hour, their children are over 18, and they feel that they have been forgotten, been left behind and been lied to.

I agree that the best thing the Liberals could have done is to make sure that everyone counts in their so-called tax break for the middle class. They could have done their research to find out where median incomes lie in Canada, and in places like Winnipeg and especially north Winnipeg. We know it is certainly less than $31,000.

Also, who drives the economy? It is small business people. That promise was made to small business people. In Winnipeg north, in the member's riding, and in all of our ridings, it is small business people who are driving our economy. They are the people who are building our economy.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for the attention he gave to small and medium-sized businesses.

On that note, I was wondering what he thinks about the attitude that this government and the Prime Minister himself have shown toward small and medium-sized businesses. The Liberals broke their promise to lower the tax rate for SMEs.

During the election campaign, the Prime Minister was probably thinking about his own numbered companies when he said that Canada's entrepreneurs were using their small businesses to try to avoid paying taxes.

Can my colleague comment on the attitude of the government, and more specifically of the Prime Minister, toward SMEs, as well as their perception of these small businesses? The Prime Minister seems to believe that everyone uses these companies the way he does.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his strong values and for standing up for the people in his community. He is absolutely right. We hear rhetoric from the members from the government side, saying things like small business people are bad fiscal money managers, or they are tax cheats. About 80% of small business people earn less than $80,000 a year. Actually, 70% of them earn less than $60,000 a year. Therefore, this rhetoric is unacceptable. These people are the foundation of our community. These are the people who we should be celebrating and helping to lift up.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand today in regards to Bill C-15, the 2016 proposed Liberal budget. I am beginning, actually, by expressing my disappointment and confusion as to why Bill C-12, an act to amend the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act was initially tabled in this House to deal separately with budget items that specifically apply to veterans, only later to be pulled from debate and buried in Bill C-15. Veterans were so pleased to learn about Bill C-12, encouraged to see that the government appeared to be committed to responding in a timely and inclusive way to improvements in their financial needs.

With the current attention in the media and within the veterans' community to the unfairness of the decrease from the lower corporal rate to the highest private rate as the base salary benchmark for the earnings loss benefit, perhaps the intent was to have less focus on the inappropriateness of this change that cast such a dark shadow over what was to be a victory for better care for our veterans, an increase of the earnings loss benefit from 75% to 90% of military pay prior to release.

The Liberals claimed that they are now increasing the earnings loss benefit; however, lowering the minimum benefit threshold to a senior private salary instead of a basic corporal salary will result in a significant reduction in the benefits received by the most vulnerable injured veterans. The increase in this benefit for permanently disabled veterans will be minimal for those who make the least, but as much as a 20% hike for the higher ranks.

The proposed increase to the earnings loss benefit will still be applied unequally to the detriment of those seriously injured former members of our Canadian Armed Forces who were at the low end of the pay scale or who were discharged decades ago, before military salaries climbed. This is discriminatory toward veterans who are unable to work because of their disabilities and who had to leave the forces at a young age before they had the opportunity to earn an ongoing living wage. It keeps them at a low income level until they reach the age of 65.

At the same time, those who were able to stay in the forces longer will receive more under the benefit, with bigger increases, a higher percentage increase than those who receive less.

Some disabled veterans have been making more than 75% of their pre-release salary through the earnings loss benefit because those salaries were so low that the previous Conservative government acknowledged the veterans were not getting enough to meet their basic needs.

In 2011, our Conservative government saw how inappropriate this was and adjusted the benefit so that no one would receive less than $40,000 annually, which was then, at that time, 75% of the salary of a basic corporal.

With the new Liberal minimum base, the end result is that those whose benefits rose under the Conservatives will now get only small increases when changes take place in October. They include those who were injured in places such as Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia, and those who were discharged before the government approved significant military raises in the late 1990s and over the past decade.

Meanwhile, those former members of the Armed Forces who were discharged at salaries higher than $49,449 that is currently paid to a senior private, such as majors, colonels, generals, and even high-ranking non-commissioned officers, will not be affected by a rank change and could see their benefits rise by tens of thousands of dollars.

This leads me to wonder how many high-ranked members of the Armed Forces have been discharged due to injury or disability in comparison to our lower-ranked soldiers who, I would think, are far more likely to be the ones in larger numbers facing the potential of high-risk situations where they could be injured severely, either physically or mentally, to require them to willingly, or unwillingly, be discharged from service.

Of the millions allocated by the government to earnings loss benefits in this budget, how many of those dollars will actually be spent on these most vulnerable injured soldiers who are unable to provide for themselves and their families because their injuries took away their commitment to serving in the military, fighting for and protecting the freedoms and lifestyles of all other Canadians?

Will there be unspent funds in this portion of the budget because of fewer claims by those in the higher income bracket who do not leave prematurely due to injury? If so, why were these funds not implemented into other election promises made, such as the promised $100 million for more family caregiver benefits, or the post-secondary education benefit for all veterans, or the $20 million for two centres of excellence, or opening operational stress injury clinics where none exist for veterans needing mental health services?

The details of the budget in relation to veterans were only added to the Veterans Affairs website on May 9, after it was brought to the attention of the House that none of the details were available online for veterans and their families. Now that it is there, I would like to quote the following from the website: “In the interest of fairness, the increase is based on a Senior Private's salary. To do otherwise would mean that some Veterans receiving the benefit could be making more than their comrades on active duty.”

I cannot help wondering why, then, the approach was not used for a formula that provided a ceiling for those who could have ended up making more than their comrades on active duty under the existing basic corporal salary, rather than penalizing those on the low end of the benefit scale where the increase to 90% of the new senior private's salary will be as low as $100 a month. On the website, the government shared a slightly better bottom line example, stating, “a Veteran who was a corporal in 1996 could receive up to $2,000 more each year because of this proposed enhancement [or a total of $166.67 a month].

The veterans who needed the increase the most feel betrayed by this unfair approach to the earnings loss benefit in the budget. The retroactive increases in the lump sum disability award does improve on the original award set out by the last Liberal government. I believe the amount of $3.7 billion under financial support for veterans on page 193 of the budget, table 5.2, reflects the retroactive payments that need to go out to cover some 70,000 veterans who have been eligible since 2006 and were promised this retroactive payment.

That being said, it is important to note that with this $3.7 billion payout, that leaves $400 million per year budgeted for the disability award, and changes to the earnings loss benefit for each of the next four years, with a total commitment of $5.6 billion over these next six years.

We are all very aware that the budget is being presented as a deficit investment, which is an oxymoron and already a broken promise at best. This greatly concerns our veterans and Canadians who see a formidable future of debt repayment for their children and grandchildren.

Budget 2016 only partially addresses four of the 15 directives in the Minister of Veterans Affairs' mandate letter, and the earnings loss benefit falls short of what was expected for our most vulnerable wounded. Still to come are lifelong pensions, promised; guaranteed four years of post-secondary education, promised; two new centres of excellence, promised; improved education, counselling, and training for families, promised; increased survivor pensions, medical benefits for spouses married after the age of 60, and development of mental health and suicide prevention strategies. There are many, many promises.

Did the Liberal Party members who made these promises actually study and forecast the implications of their promises? Did they make them with true intent to keep them if elected, or were they made without adequate consultation?

In closing, I have deep concerns that the promises that were translated into new measures in the budget, coupled with the increased deficit spending over the remaining mandate of the Liberal government, will not be sustainable on a long-term basis.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, in a number of the member's comments, she is looking for issues that affect people. If we look at Veterans Affairs, I could talk about the nine offices we have committed to reopening. The budget allows for that to take place. There is substantial support going to the veterans.

Would the member provide a comment on what I think is a very progressive aspect of the budget dealing with some of Canada's very poorest seniors in all regions of our country? The budget puts into place a substantial increase. It could be as high as $900 for a single senior who is finding it very difficult because of a limited income.

I am wondering if the member would provide some comment in regard to how important a guaranteed income supplement is and recognize that the money flowing to that program is a positive step forward in helping a good number of Canada's poorest seniors.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, I certainly would have liked some answers to some of my questions followed by a question in regard to our veterans, as that is the area about which I am especially concerned. Being on the committee and being deputy critic for Veterans Affairs, I know these issues are very serious and a deep concern to them.

I represent one of the ridings in the country with the largest percentage of older people, and I communicate with them a great deal. They are concerned about a number of things. One of them is about the highest end of a possible increase in the GIS. Many of these people are facing situations where the amount they are being provided is minimal, not unlike our lowest and most vulnerable veterans. They receive the bottom end of potential support that really will not make much of a difference to them in the long term.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question about the definition of middle class used by the government.

In many communities, at least in my community of Sherbrooke, the definition of middle class is not necessarily the same one that could be attributed to the government, which is cutting taxes. In fact, those earning more than $160,000 a year receive the largest tax cuts.

My colleague from Courtenay—Alberni just said that he calculated that a full-time employee would have to earn $23 an hour to benefit from the government's so-called middle-class tax cut.

Accordingly, could my colleague comment on these facts and figures concerning the middle class, which seem rather high for the Liberal government?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, this is of deep concern to me as well. Prior to being here, I was a small business owner. I still am, but I am not involved in the business. Watching our employees and the amount of money they are earning, they are certainly not what the current government deems the middle class. The vast majority of people in Canada who should be receiving support from the government, who truly do need it, do not fall into the categories that the Liberals have presented to us today. What this would do is again reward in circumstances where the need is not as great as those who truly do need that support in a truer representation of the middle class.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The member will have one minute remaining the next time this debate is before the House.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Canada Revenue Agency

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

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to revisit a question that I asked the government, more specifically the Minister of National Revenue, about the KPMG affair some time ago. This matter is very much in the public eye. It concerns a deal between the Canada Revenue Agency and KPMG, or more specifically KPMG clients. Some of them have accepted the deal offered by the Canada Revenue Agency. By all accounts, these taxpayers broke the law, but they nevertheless were given a deal by the Canada Revenue Agency whereby they will have no penalties, pay almost no interest, and be spared legal proceedings.

This story was much talked about in my riding and made the people of Sherbrooke furious. We are talking about rich taxpayers, millionaires, who could afford to pay the KPMG accounting firm $100,000 for its services, according to what we were told at the Standing Committee on Finance. KPMG set up a scheme that allowed them to keep assets on the Isle of Man, not declare income on these investments, and thereby avoid paying taxes. These are taxes that should have been paid in Canada. These taxpayers should have paid their fair share so that Canadians can get the services they expect from the government.

This story was much talked about. It even gave rise to a committee study, which picks up again tomorrow, in fact, with new witnesses who will speak to this secret agreement. When I say “secret”, that is important because the agreement is several pages in length, including a confidentiality clause. It says that the taxpayer who receives and signs this letter must not talk about it to anyone and it must remain confidential.

This gives an idea of the government's so-called openness and transparency. It makes secret deals with taxpayers, many of whom can afford to pay KPMG $100,000 to have that accounting firm set up a tax scheme for them. This raises a lot of questions.

Today I would like to talk to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue about how that letter came to be. I want to know who wrote it. Who was behind the letter, who wrote it, who was involved in writing up this agreement?

Was the minister of the day directly involved? Did she approve it? Ms. Henderson testified before the committee. Which of her superiors approved the letter? She says that she does not remember signing it. She says that it is her signature, but she cannot tell us if she really was the one who signed it or even whether the letter exists.

I hope that my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue, can shed some light on the existence of the letter and tell us who was in charge of drafting the letter that was sent to KPMG, the letter that was then signed by rich millionaire taxpayers who are KPMG clients.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to respond to the comments made by my hon. colleague.

First of all, as the member mentioned, the minister and Canada Revenue Agency officials attended a number of parliamentary committee meetings. All the questions he just mentioned were part of those deliberations, and they were answered. I understand that my colleague may not be happy with the answers, but we answered those questions.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform the House that our government has begun addressing the issue of international tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. That is a commitment we made during the election campaign. We talked about it a lot during the campaign, and now we are working hard to keep our promises.

I would also like to remind my colleague, the member for Sherbrooke, that as a result of the request made by the Standing Committee on Finance on February 14, 2016, the Minister of National Revenue provided more details on the issue that he raised when she appeared before the committee on May 19, 2016.

On May 5, CRA officials also had the opportunity to provide more information about the efforts they are making to combat tax evasion and tax avoidance. We can proudly say once more that our government is open and transparent.

Without exception and without favour, all Canadians are subject to our tax laws. I assure the House that the Canada Revenue Agency is determined to fulfill its mission to have all Canadians pay their fair share.

Court documents made public prove that the Canada Revenue Agency's efforts exposed the offshore tax avoidance scheme set up by KPMG. The agency also identified a good number of participants and is actively working on this issue. This includes auditing and reassessing many taxpayers already identified by the Canada Revenue Agency. Thanks to the agency's continued efforts and our government's historic $444-million investment, we will continue to combat tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance.

This $444 million, which our government announced on April 11, 2016, will enable us to increase the number of auditors. We also said that the Canada Revenue Agency has been collecting information on all fund transfers over $10,000. The Canada Revenue Agency has access to these tools to combat international tax avoidance and tax evasion.

We are committed to this issue, as we said during the election campaign. When we tabled our budget, we allocated $444 million to the Canada Revenue Agency so that it can intensify its efforts to make this type of scheme a thing of the past.

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

Madam Speaker, I will make my question as simple as possible, without a preamble, to ensure that my colleague does not get carried away with the broader issue of tax evasion.

Can my colleague explain to the House what action this government plans to take against KPMG? This company facilitated tax evasion and even came up with the scheme.

What action does the government plan to take against KPMG and those who facilitated this tax evasion?

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Madam Speaker, we heard from KPMG partners or representatives. My colleague knows full well that this case is currently before the courts and we therefore cannot talk about it at length.

My colleague also knows that section 241 of the Income Tax Act prevents us from talking about individual cases. However, measures are being taken, and my colleague has to trust the CRA officials. They are doing an excellent job of tracking down people who engage in tax avoidance or evasion.

National Defence

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, I speak for the women and men who serve as members of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment from Garrison Petawawa, located in the heart of the beautiful Upper Ottawa Valley. Canadians can be proud of their efforts in the international war against terrorism.

All life is precious.

To the troops and their families who are watching these proceedings, they should have no doubt that, even if the government does not, I have their backs.

My question was to the Minister of National Defence over the controversial decision by the Liberal government to withdraw our CF-18 fighter jets from the bombing mission against ISIL. The minister referred to this decision as a difference of opinion. This is more than a difference of opinion.

This is not the first time a Liberal government has made a politically expedient decision on the backs of serving women and men in the Canadian Armed Forces. The decision by a Liberal government to cancel the Sea King helicopter replacement contract cost money and lives. In addition to being on the hook for over half a billion dollars in cancellation fees, Canada ended up purchasing an inferior commercialized version of the same helicopter with no industrial benefits to Canada. Those benefits would have come to Canada if the Liberal government had not interfered or cancelled the military procurement.

Now it appears history is about to repeat itself once again with the decision to purchase an obsolete fighter jet to replace the jets the government refuses to allow to protect our soldiers on the ground in the international war against terrorism.

Considering the procurement process to replace Canada's fighter jets was started by a previous Liberal government and that it has been substituted for a secretive process explains the recorded surge in lobbying activity in Ottawa. It also confirms that for the Liberal government, partisan politics trumps the lives of our soldiers.

In the case of the helicopters, the decision by the Liberal government to send Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan lacking proper air support cost lives. Without strategic airlift provided by the medium lift helicopters that would have been purchased by a Conservative government, Canadian soldiers died on the bomb-laden roads of Afghanistan on a mission they never should have been sent on without the right equipment. If air support was necessary for the soldiers who were deployed by our Conservative government, then more air support, not less, would be required for more soldiers who are sent into combat.

The government has publicly stated that somehow the lack of air support is compensated by placing more soldiers on the ground, a position that strategically makes no sense. Worse, it appears that not only has the Liberal government pursued a policy of placing more soldiers at greater risk by not providing air support, it has decided to allow for the publishing of greater details about the mission itself. Those additional published details not only put our soldiers at risk overseas, they increased the risk to the families of serving soldiers here in Canada. Military families were horrified last week to read for the first time details in the press that would not have been disclosed by our Conservative government, nor should they be. We understood that the bad guys can read just as well as Canadians.

In Canada the threat is real.

We honour the recent memory of Canadian soldiers who were murdered here on Canadian soil, including within the sight of Parliament Hill, by individuals claiming to commit their acts of terror in the name of international terrorism.

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Madam Speaker, it is hard to keep track of all the non-sequiturs in the hon. member's speech, but let me just deal with a couple of them.

The first one in her original question was that ISIL had declared war on Canada. It really does not matter whether it is ISIS, Daesh, or whatever it wants to call itself, it cannot declare war. It does not much matter what it says about Canada. In order to declare war it would have to have a state. Only states can declare war on each other. As the head of the Canadian Forces has said, we are in state of armed conflict with a non-state actor. In this business, words do matter. That was the first non-sequitur.

The second non-sequitur is that apparently the lives of the people who died in Afghanistan were worthless because we did not give CF air cover in Iraq, I am assuming. How those two are linked I do not really know.

We will recall that we are in a coalition. A coalition by definition is an alliance for combined action. Among the various coalition partners, they piece out the various tasks to be done. In this instance, we had an oversubscription to jets and fighter bombers. Apparently there were something in the order of 200 in theatre, of which Canada had 6. Of the 200, 150 of them were U.S. jets.

Therefore, we made the decision, after no less than 98 members had discussed it in the House of Commons, after an election, and endless amounts of conversation, that we would refocus the mission to one of training, advising, assisting, intelligence, and security stabilization. We have tripled the actual number of people who are in theatre to 830. They are primarily involved in the training and assisting. They are being deployed as we speak. Brigadier-General David Anderson is in Baghdad providing invaluable assistance with the minister of the interior in order to keep not only the coalition partners, but also the Iraqi security forces and various militia at least going in the right direction. We provided something in the order of $1.6 billion in security stabilization in Lebanon and Jordan.

All of these efforts on the part of the government, which is euphemistically called a whole-of-government approach, we hope will be a valuable contribution, will reduce the redundancy of six jets, and therefore focus our efforts on the ability to encourage the Iraqi security forces to actually end this conflict.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, mission redirect for air support on the ground can only be called in by Canadians if we have our own bombers in the air.

It is up to the government to explain to the military families that are listening to this debate why the Prime Minister took away our military's air cover from the front line in Iraq. While he is explaining that decision, he needs to explain why he reversed the policy of protecting the identities of our special forces by allowing details on their positions and weaponry to be published.

Why is the Prime Minister insisting on putting the lives of our soldiers at greater risk? What does the government think it possibly has to gain by sending photos to the media that identify the Canadian special forces? It is bad enough the selfie Prime Minister is making our troops in combat so much more vulnerable, but when he further allows the location of the families of our soldiers on the front line to be pinpointed, the spouses and children are put at risk also. Why is the Prime Minister being so reckless with the safety and well-being of our soldiers and that of our military families?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, unlike the previous government that seemed rather fond of the hero shots, using our military men and women as props for the background, we have not actually engaged in that previous practice. Any photos that have been taken of members of the Canadian Forces have been only with the explicit and direct permission of the Chief of the Defence Staff and have not been involved with any member of the Liberal government, including the Minister of Defence.

I do not know why the hon. member continues to spin such nonsense. We have refocused this mission. We want this fight to be won by local security forces, and we are doing our part, leveraging both our expertise and our strength.

Foreign Affairs

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

Madam Speaker, for weeks, months actually, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister told us that the Saudi Arabia arms deal was a done deal that happened under the Conservatives. At some point in April, though, we learned that it was the minister himself who, that very month, had signed the export permits for these arms that are headed to Saudi Arabia.

Yes, indeed, it is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs who signed the export licence for the Saudi arms deal. The Liberals had said for a long time that the deal was a done deal. There is no explanation to that. It is either that the minister and the Prime Minister actually misled Canadians on such an important issue, or that they consider export licences to be a formality that are not really important. As soon as the sales deal is signed, who cares about the export licence?

They did an assessment, but they did a very weak assessment. They have to do an assessment of the potential to commit abuses against human rights before granting an export permit, but the assessment is so weak. It does not respect our rules, our regulations, or our international commitments at all.

Let me quote some experts from civil society about that assessment. They said:

The Minister of Foreign Affairs has stated that Canada “has no evidence” that Saudi Arabia has used Canadian-made goods against civilians. However, the threshold established by Canadian export controls to assess the possibility of misuse is neither “evidence” nor “certainty” but “reasonable risk.” Given what is known about Saudi Arabia’s abysmal—and worsening—human rights record, both within Saudi Arabia and in neighbouring Yemen, we consider this risk to be evident.

I completely agree with those experts. We saw what Saudi Arabia did in Yemen, and what it does to its own people using armoured vehicles similar to the ones that we are going to sell it. The Liberals seem to have signed those export permits with their eyes closed. The Prime Minister said that cancelling the sale would have tarnished Canada's reputation. First, the sale would not have been cancelled. A sale is not complete until the permits are granted. Second, I think that our failure to abide by our own rules and keep our commitments is what is really tarnishing our reputation.

That raises other questions as well.

Why did the minister sign for 70% of the deal, which is supposed to go over 14 years? Is it because he is afraid that once Canada accedes to the ATT, as he has promised, Canada will not be able to play with the rules and lack transparency, as it has done in this case?

[Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased for the opportunity to be absolutely clear on this export deal.

This deal was signed by the previous government. It is a deal that this government, during the electoral campaign, committed to upholding. It is a deal that, during the electoral campaign, both major opposition parties also committed to upholding.

This government is honouring the deal because it has a duty to protect the value of Canada's reputation and signature as a global trading partner. This government is honouring this deal because it takes its duty to protect 3,000 jobs in London, Ontario, and across Canada seriously.

This government is honouring this deal because cancelled contracts result in financial penalties for Canadian taxpayers. This government is also honouring this deal, and this is something important to understand, because Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner in an increasingly volatile region and is an essential partner in preventing the chaos, lawlessness, atrocities, and terrorist attacks perpetrated by ISIL, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups active in the region and beyond.

Having made the decision to not overturn the contract signed under the previous government, the Minister of Foreign Affairs then had the responsibility to determine whether it was appropriate to authorize export permits.

The minister made his decision because he was satisfied that the equipment will be used in a manner consistent with Saudi Arabia's role as a strategic partner and took into account an assessment based on the fact that for 20 years, this equipment has been sold to Saudi Arabia and that all checks to date indicate that the equipment has not been used contrary to its intended purpose or to commit human rights violations.

However, as with all export permits, the Minister of Foreign Affairs retains the power to revoke the permits at any time should the government's assessment change. The minister has committed to exercising this responsibility with the greatest rigour and transparency.

Do we agree with Saudi Arabia's human rights record? Not in the least. That is why we are committed to continuing to make use of every opportunity to engage our Saudi counterparts to raise concerns and to work towards advancing human rights, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs did directly with his Saudi counterpart in December and again in Jeddah in May when he met with senior officials, including the president of the National Human Rights Commission in Saudi Arabia.

This approach to Saudi Arabia is also the same as that of our allies, which stands Canada in good stead.

This government has committed to developing measures to further enhance transparency in the export controls process, and this government is proud to be acceding to the arms trade treaty. This government is keeping its word by doing exactly what it, and both parties opposite, said it would do during the campaign by honouring the contract and by granting the export permits.

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

Madam Speaker, it is rather troubling, and not only a bit. It is quite troubling.

The government says that it is committed to upholding the contract, but at the same time, it says that it would cancel it at any time. I am not sure I see the logic in that, unless of course nothing had happened up until now.

I am sorry, but we have evidence of violations of international law in Yemen. Yet the Minister of Foreign Affairs says it is good. I am talking about violations of international law by Saudi Arabia. The minister has said that it is good, because Saudi Arabia will be able to use those arms there. I fail to see the logic.

As for the—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order.

The hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie's time is up.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, on rebuttal.