Debates of June 7th, 2017

Second Reading

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from the wonderful riding of Guelph, which I had the chance to visit a few times.

Governance is a very important transparency, and with Bill C-24, the first thing it does is equalizes the ministers, and that is very important. Equal pay for equal work is supremely important, and the responsibilities are laid out in the mandate letter by the Prime Minister, so there is full transparency there and what his ministers are directed to do. As a result, there is full accountability by the mandate letters, and that is also very important. It is very important to me, and very important to my voters back in the beautiful riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, which I hope to visit soon again.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise in debate tonight on Bill C-24, an act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act.

I have a few problems with this bill. I want to speak to two aspects of it. I am going to start by speaking in my former capacity as the minister of state for western economic diversification. My understanding is that if parliamentarians vote in favour of this bill, essentially all of the economic diversification agencies in Canada would formally come under the auspices of one minister. That minister is from Mississauga. I have nothing against Mississauga. It is a wonderful place. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. However, Mississauga is not western Canada.

One of my Liberal colleagues applauded that. I am not sure why they would applaud that Mississauga is not western Canada. It was somebody from western Canada, fantastic, good to know.

Now that we have established that fact, and there seems to be some enthusiasm for that fact, it is important to note that economic diversification agencies were created to essentially underscore the fact that while we try to come up with national economic development policies or national economic policies, Canada does in fact operate under a heavily regionalized economy. There are differences between the different regions of our country, and in order to ensure we function as a cohesive unit, these agencies work to bolster the economies of each part of our country, to essentially ensure we are greater than the sum of our parts.

I was the minister of state for western economic diversification. My background is in intellectual property management. I spent most of my career prior to politics in several fields, but the last position that I occupied had some role in managing the intellectual property portfolio, to a certain extent, of the University of Calgary, as well as managing its sponsored research portfolio. I actually had the privilege of working with some of the great public servants who were in this department prior to entering politics.

I came in with a certain level of domain expertise. It was really interesting to be able to marry some domain expertise with an understanding of why it is so important to use an agency like this to incent innovation, and bolster different parts of the economy to see long-term economic growth in that region of the country.

I am a Winnipeger by birth, and a Calgarian by choice, much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues. The point is I have a deep understanding of western Canada. I was appointed as a minister to help bolster the economy of western Canada. I am happy to speak to some of the successes I had there.

The point being, it was important to have a minister of state at the cabinet table who was not only responsible for grants and contributions, and managing the process related to grants and contributions to western Canada, but also meeting with stakeholder groups and taking that opinion, in terms of an economic minister, up to the cabinet table, and formulating economic policy for the entire nation. What this bill would do, if we adopt it, is we would essentially lose that very fundamental linkage of a regional minister and regional economic development agency with the cabinet table for expediency sake.

I want to speak about the specific need of why we need an economic diversification or an economic development minister from western Canada, but I am actually going to speak to some of my colleagues' concerns from Atlantic Canada. I read a report that came out earlier this year, I believe it was from the industry committee, that talked about how ACOA was actually seeing close to 12-month delays in seeing some of its innovation grants being approved. It was because of the bottleneck going up to the minister from Mississauga.

Many of my colleagues from across party lines have heard great frustrations from stakeholders in Atlantic Canada. They were saying that this 12-month delay, because a minister is not signing-off on these grants, was not particularly conducive to many start-up companies, many industries where they needed to have that seed funding in a very short runway in order to see results. That was not conducive.

I just do not understand why the Liberal government would enshrine in legislation a bill that would make Atlantic Canadians apply for these innovation funds and go through a minister from Mississauga. That is defeating the purpose of the agency, to a certain extent. I have no idea what is going on. I just do not understand why we would do this.

We could have an entire philosophical discussion on whether we need regional development agencies at all, but if we are going to have regional development agencies, part of whose mandate is to bring to the cabinet table and to Parliament the viewpoints of regionalized economic concerns in each part of the country, then surely we should have ministers who are representing those agencies at the cabinet table. That has been lost. It is just not there anymore.

When I was minister of state for western economic diversification, I took my domain expertise and went into the agency with a great team of public servants. Whenever I have a chance to speak about how fantastic they were and put it on the record, I do that, and I am doing that again today. We sat down together and asked how we could make this agency more effective. The mandate I gave them was to go to the stakeholders that utilize our services in our communities, and ask them what the mandate and purpose of this agency should be, and that we should do it on an ongoing basis because that is not a static question. It changes from year to year. What we need to do to bolster the economic diversification of western Canada should be evaluated on an ongoing basis. That was the first thing we did. We said we would have a formal consultation process to establish what we are managing as an agency.

I undertook a very extensive tour, close to six months, of western Canada. It was very formalized. We took feedback from industry, not-for-profit organizations, academia, small business owners, and came up with a set of five priorities that we felt at that time were important to ensure there was economic diversification in western Canada. Those things included first nations economic participation; ensuring there was skilled labour because there was a significant shortage of skilled labour in western Canada at the time, and still is; ensuring that western Canadian businesses were participating in trade agreements or taking advantage of agreements, such as CETA and how we could position that; bolstering innovation; looking at things like the R and D life cycle, not necessarily basic research but things like prototype development, start up-scale up, these sorts of things; how WD could play in that; and a variety of other aspects as well.

We made those criteria very formal and from there, I asked my department to translate what we are managing to there down into our grants and contributions, and make sure that our funding programs reflected the goals and objectives of what we are managing to through that contribution process.

As well as having a background in intellectual property management, it is also in academic research administration. I understand how to manage a grants and contribution process and said I was not comfortable with ministerial direction all the time in terms of some of the processes, that I would like to move it more toward the minister's direction in terms of the policy outcomes of what the grants and contributions would achieve, and that I would like to move to a call for proposals model.

We changed the process by which people applied for grants through WD. We launched an initiative of $100 million over five years because at the consultation I mentioned. We heard that one of the key determinants of economic growth in Canada for small and innovative business was a start-up capital gap, particularly in prototype development and start up-scale up phase, so we tailored a program specifically for that with very defined criteria.

The point I am trying to make is that took a lot of my time as a minister. It took a lot of time. It was probably one of the most rewarding two years of my professional career, because I felt like I could go to the cabinet table of a G7 country, and then take my policy expertise, but, more importantly, the feedback of a very specific group of people in Canada, that being western Canadian businesses, tailor our grants and contributions programs to ensure that everybody had equal participation, and then make some magic happen.

Now, three or four years after that process, we are starting to see the results. Jobs are being created through intellectual property being commercialized and retained in western Canada. There are innovative skills training programs with first nations communities in a wide variety of sectors. These metrics that are now reported through the departmental report are a result of the fact that this economic development agency had a minister who was providing political will through the bureaucracy and the outcomes of the grants and contributions process.

That might not sound very romantic, but that is really the job of a minister. Some people think the job is photo ops or swanning around, but really, it is saying, “As an executive member of the government, I have a political mandate to fulfill.” It is taking that mandate and working with public servants to ensure that political will comes to fruition through process, procedure, and a lot of hard work. Sometimes ministers have to bring their bureaucracy onside with them. Sometimes it is a bit of a struggle. Sometimes they have to bring stakeholders on board with them and flesh out that mandate a bit.

The point I am trying to make is that it takes work and it takes time. If we are going to have economic development agencies, we need to have someone who is willing to be the fulcrum of that particular work to work with the bureaucracy. Bill C-24 would eliminate that relationship. It would eliminate the relationship between a minister and the bureaucracy and the relationship with the stakeholders in the community. It would centralize it.

I am all for government efficiency. It is very important to look at our processes and ask how we can deliver services more efficiently and effectively, but what we have seen, from the evidence in stakeholder groups like ACOA, for example, is that these grants and contributions are not being approved.

I have to give a lot of credit to my former deputy minister, Daphne Meredith, who was one of the most talented public servants Ottawa has ever seen. She is very smart, very gentle, and very firm. I learned so much from her. However, she could only do so much without having a mandate from a minister and an understanding that the minister had her back in implementing certain process changes.

There is a gif on the Internet. It is a dog playing the piano, saying, “I have no idea what I'm doing.” That is probably what a lot of the deputy ministers in some of the economic development agencies are feeling right now. It is not from a lack of skill. It is a lack of political oversight because of bills like this.

If the government wanted to eliminate oversight in economic development agencies, it should have put forward to stakeholders a plan on how it was going to engage them and how it was going to overhaul grants and contributions processes to achieve the objectives I mentioned before it put this bill forward. The bill, without that detail, provides a lot of uncertainty for small- and medium-sized businesses, academic groups, and other groups, especially first nations communities, which often rely on these economic development agencies to achieve outcomes.

There are critics who say that economic development agencies should not exist at all. One of the fundamental things we need to ask ourselves as parliamentarians, and as people who have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent in the most efficient and effective way possible, is what we are managing to. What is the outcome of the tax dollars we are spending?

The problem with not having political oversight of these development agencies is that it is very difficult to set those parameters and measure whether they are successful without having political oversight. The reality is that the member for Mississauga—Malton, who is the industry minister, has a lot of competing concerns in the industry portfolio. He has announced $1 billion for something on superclusters. We could have an entire other debate on the efficacy of that. He has to look at things like the internal trade agreement. He has some responsibility for government procurement with regard to supply chain development, indirect cost benefits, and all these sorts of things.

What is happening with Bill C-24 is that we are saying to let us manage economic diversification or economic development agencies off the corner of a really overstuffed desk. I do not think that is the best approach.

I think the government needs to say, “Look, we're either in the business or we're not, and if we're not in the business, let's be honest with our stakeholders rather than making them wait for 18 months.”

This might seem like a very pedantic debate, but at the end of the day, if we are going to have these agencies and be able to explain to taxpayers that this is worth their while, we need to have political oversight; otherwise, it becomes bureaucrats shovelling cash off the back of a truck. That is not anything that anyone in this place wants. Some of my colleagues question that, and fair enough. Perhaps we can answer that in question-and-answer period.

I honestly think that without political oversight, it is very difficult to say, within these agencies, “What are we managing to?” and then “Do our processes reflect our ability to get to that point?”

To be honest, for that reason alone, I cannot support Bill C-24.

We are going to get a little feminist in here tonight. In Bill C-24, the Liberals have stood up and claimed that there are housekeeping items to legislate equal salaries for all ministers. That is just a talking point. For my colleagues in here who have not served in cabinet or perhaps do not understand the cabinet process, in order for us to take what is called a “memorandum to cabinet” as a minister, we need to be a full minister. A memorandum to cabinet is basically a direction to cabinet. It is saying, “This is what I want the executive to do and vote on.”

This bill does not address the fact that people who have been named as full ministers by the Prime Minister in his “gender equity cabinet“ still do not have the capacity, on their own accord, to bring that direction to cabinet. I do not understand how that is gender equity. There are still women in this cabinet who are being called full ministers, yet they have to report to a man to bring their own memorandum to cabinet. That is not equality at all.

I have worked really hard to get to where I am in my life. I have men laughing at me in here for that. I find that highly amusing.

I sacrificed a lot. I have made choices to make sure that my career has been placed first and foremost in my life. That is a choice that I have made.

For someone to come up to me and say, “Oh, you know, you're part of a gender equity cabinet. By the way, the Prime Minister announced that the day before cabinet happened. I might not agree with them on a lot of things, but there are women in the Liberal cabinet who have resumés or CVs that should stand. Canadians should say, “Look, these are talented women.” However, he took credit for their CVs by saying, “They're here because it is a gender equity cabinet.” However, some of these women now do not have the ability to bring memoranda to cabinet on their own. They still have to go, “Oh, hey, Mr. Minister, can you please sign off on my MC?”

This bill would not fix that. I would prefer that the Prime Minister just be honest about the fact that he actually does not have a gender parity cabinet. He does not. If he did, these women would have the capacity to bring memoranda to cabinet on their own, and they do not. We can pay women one way, but this bill also does not address the fact that many of these women do not have their own deputy ministers. That is also the hallmark of a full minister.

I do not understand why we have this bill in front of us. There are so many things that are affecting this country, from foreign policy issues to our immigration processes at home to people being out of work in my home province, yet we are spending valuable House time debating a bill that would not help the economy in any way, shape, or form and would not make women more equal. To me, that is the hallmark of the Liberal government: useless legislation, legislation in name only that really does nothing at the end of the day. It is a Seinfeld episode. For that reason, I encourage my colleagues not to support Bill C-24.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Speaker, after having spent a fair bit of time in the ministry of innovation, science and economic development and having gone out west and worked with WD on the ground, I now have a fuller understanding of why there was no diversification in the west under the previous government and why the regional development agencies all generally failed to do what they had to do.

When we took office, we had to fix ACOA. We have fixed it, and it is now working very well. We have 32 very satisfied members of Parliament from the Atlantic region who are happy with ACOA, as well as stakeholders in Calgary, Fort McMurray, and Saskatoon, where I was last week with WD officials on the ground, in universities, and in other settings. People are very happy with the way we have restructured.

I would invite the hon. member to comment on why one would not want to restructure in good faith with the ministry and with officials from regional development economic agencies to have a more coherent innovation and skills agenda. This is precisely what we are doing, and the regional development agencies, including WD, are putting this policy into practice on the ground.

Why would it not be a good thing to be sensitive to the needs of the west and sensitive to the needs of Atlantic regions and other regions in Canada through a more efficient, coherent, and diversified economic policy?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for the chance to correct his odd mashup of Orwellian Newspeak and Internet buzzword generator. I heard “innovation”, “synergy”, “synergistic”, “work together” without any sort of metrics, and that is the point.

I would like to clarify some of my colleague's points.

First, the government does not have 32 satisfied members. It has 32 very whipped and gagged and muzzled Atlantic Canada members, four of whom had the courage to put their names on a report talking about the fact that ACOA is about 12 to 18 months behind in terms of approving grants and contributions. That is not an improvement.

In terms of western economic diversification, if the Liberals had any desire to look at diversification of the western economy, they would understand that the natural resource sector, particularly the energy sector, has an enormous capacity to be a receptor for innovative technology, including clean technology, carbon capture and sequestration, and things like flocculent development for the oil sands for tailing ponds.

I could go through numerous technologies that are being developed in academic institutions in western Canada, yet we do not have any commitment from the Liberal government to see the long-term development of that sector. Intellectual property that is developed for that is licensed out to other countries. There is no desire to retain it in western Canada. As a result of the Liberal government's detrimental policy in the energy sector, the tanker ban, no contributions to pipeline development, no contributions to keep skilled labour in western Canada, that intellectual property is leaving and the economy cannot be diversified.

I absolutely reject the premise of the question, the idea that the Liberals have any authority to speak on economic diversification in western Canada.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before we go to the next member, I just want to remind hon. members that if they are sitting near a microphone and they are speaking, it picks up what they say and it really does interfere with what we are hearing.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her very interesting speech. She once held the kind of position that we are talking about tonight, the ones this government has decided to do away with. It was really good for all of us to hear her experiences, which clearly show that there are indeed advantages to having ministers responsible for economic development in the various regions.

Today, I would like to ask my colleague whether she thinks that these positions, which were so good for our regions' economic development, are being completely eliminated to cover up another broken promise. Essentially, that promise was catching up with the Liberals and they would have had to allocate funding to pay those ministers. They had to do away with something of value to fix a campaign mistake.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with my colleague. The Liberals spend for spending's sake. It is like fun coupons. That was the point I was trying to make in the earlier part of my speech. The Liberals have not defined what they are managing in spending taxpayer dollars. It is all about spending for spending's sake.

In the budget this year, we saw an increase in the deficit year over year for the fiscal year 2016-17, but we saw a decrease in the GDP projections from fiscal year 2016-17. In that component, the Liberals have spent more to get less.

With respect to how the economic development agencies could be utilized, if we are to invest in these agencies, we should have political oversight from people who have expertise and understanding of the economies of those regions of the country and marry that into an overall economic growth strategy that operates within the context of a balanced budget. That has not happened.

That is part of the problem with Bill C-24. It is like let us getting rid of political oversight on something and hope that everything turns out all right. That is not management. I do not know what to characterize that as, a #fail, some great socks, I am not sure. I just know that the public servants who work in these departments and the stakeholders that depend on them would not want us to support this.

There is a lot of consternation about the fact that the bill has been tabled without any sort of operating plan being put forward. If the plan is to let public servants completely manage the oversight of grants and contributions related to regional economic development agencies, that is a bad plan.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, by the member's description of what she did and what she accomplished in her time as the minister responsible for western economic diversification, she worked hard, applied her knowledge and her skills, and had some really good results. We will not debate that part of it, but did she get paid as much as other ministers in that cabinet?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was appointed as a minister of state. I was not appointed as a full minister and I understood that going into my position.

The minister of state position has a certain level of salary attached to it and a full minister position has a certain level of salary attached to it. It would be like me being hired as the VP of a company, but expecting to be paid as the president of a company. I had the responsibility of a minister of state, which I think I exceeded, and I was paid accordingly. I was very proud of the fact that I was a minister of state in the past government. I think I did a fantastic job. I do not like being humble so I was awesome, it was great and I was paid accordingly.

The point is that I did not try to say I should be paid equal to my peers without having the responsibility of my peers. If my colleague opposite truly felt that I should be paid at the level as his female colleagues in cabinet should be, then I should have full rights to bring memorandums to cabinet. I should have a deputy minister and have the accountability of an entire department.

Given my managerial expertise, my CV, and my political experience, I would expect that had we formed government, I would have been appointed as a full minister, and I am happy to say that here, and I should have been paid accordingly. However, for that level of responsibility, I was paid to what my responsibilities were. That is not sexist; that is the way it is. Sexist is trying to claim that women are paid one way, but do not have the responsibility of their peers. That is embarrassing and disgusting.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Shepard.

I am thankful to be speaking to Bill C-24, an act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act. However, it is late at night and the government has made it clear that it is not interested in hearing further input from the opposition parties. Once again, it is shutting down debate and sending it to committee where, based on what it has done with other bills, it will not accept any of the amendments. Therefore, I am not sure what kind of an impact I will have tonight. However, I will go ahead and make a few points about the concerns I have with Bill C-24.

My first concern has to do with the elimination of the six regional development agency ministers. We have heard other people speak to it, but I will provide my thoughts on that. Also, the creation of three entirely new mystery ministers is of concern to me.

Amending the Salaries Act to legislate equal pay for all ministers concerns me. All of this has already been done. We heard testimony earlier that at the very beginning, once everybody discovered the Prime Minister had put women in junior minister roles and paid them less than other ministers, there was an outcry and it was immediately fixed via the estimates. The Liberals had already ridded themselves of the regional ministers. Therefore, I am not even sure why we have to talk about it if they have already done that, especially when the government has failed on its legislative agenda, is having us sit late at night, and is now bringing forward items on which action has already been taken. Therefore, whatever we say here tonight is kind of irrelevant.

With respect to regional economic development, I want to share why I think that those six positions were important.

One of the things we need in our country is to create jobs. We need to get that economic growth happening. Every region has different industries, different constraints, and different provincial and municipal regulations. There is a lot to know about.

Sarnia—Lambton had a southwestern regional minister who was familiar with the industry in Sarnia—Lambton, in London, in Windsor, and did a lot of work to help start our bio-economy, helped get us into advanced manufacturing, and helped us partner in the water industry. Time is required to get to know the industries and the economic opportunities in the area, coming with a voice in government to advocate on behalf of those opportunities, and then help the wheels of government turn to get that money out in a timely fashion. For example, when we are trying to start up a new bio-industry or trying to get into a new business, time is of the essence.

I have heard similar stories when I look to the Atlantic provinces. I have a lot of connections there, so I hear about what is going on there, I hear about what is going on in Quebec, and the importance of these regional ministers. Therefore, it is extremely concerning to have those eliminated. The departments have not been eliminated, which is of some comfort. That means the government recognizes the need to have that local and regional information. However, there is nobody to direct the ship other than the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. He is a great guy, but he is a busy guy. He does not have enough time for the oversight. He has to be in the House and he has responsibilities in his municipality as well.

These are some of the things the minister is responsible for. In addition to all of the economic growth in the different regions across the country, he is also in charge of the rural Internet initiative, which is really important. We have a huge need for that in the north. There is a huge, ambitious program under way, which I appreciate. He is also the one who is trying to initiate the superclusters. That involves developing a plan and that is a huge change. It requires a lot of coordination of different players. He is responsible for the census. He is responsible for the innovation agenda. He is also trying to launch new areas like artificial intelligence. He is trying to advance us in green technology, while maintaining our leadership in the aerospace and automotive industries. If we look at all the things involved there, they are all important. If we take focus away from them, then we will not make progress as quickly.

That is why these six ministers were so important. It was because they could spend the time to look at what the opportunities were and move those forward, and now we are missing that.

We have heard complaints. I have heard complaints from Quebec that things are not moving quickly now that those ministers have been removed. I have heard in the Atlantic provinces the same thing that the member for Calgary Nose Hill shared, that there are delays of 12 and 18 months. It is taking three times as long to get things approved. When people are in the innovation space trying to take ideas and turn them into jobs, time is of the essence. This whole idea is not good.

With respect to the mystery ministers, nobody here was able to say who they are. Maybe they will come up eventually. Is it really a priority to talk about things that may or may not happen in the future and to pick three of them that might happen in the future? It just speaks to the government's lack of openness and transparency. We have seen all kinds of evidence of this in the refusal to answer questions in the House of Commons. We see that on a dally basis. We see, when we try to get access to information, that they black out the costs of the carbon tax for the taxpayer. We see that they are trying to rearrange the parliamentary budget officer so that members of Parliament cannot get information out of him. I could go on, about partisan appointments and all the other things that the current government is doing that are not open or transparent.

Clearly, these three mystery ministers are something that does not exist, and if it does exist and there is a hidden agenda, then it is just another example of what I am talking about.

That brings us then to the discussion on the salaries and whether the salaries of the women who are serving in these junior minister roles should be equal. Certainly, as the chair of the status of women committee, I am somebody who firmly believes in gender equality and in pay equity. I was on the pay equity committee and sat endless hours talking about what we could do, and made recommendations to the government on which it has done nothing in budget 2017. For all the talk of being a feminist, there is absolutely nothing happening from that point of view.

I would also say that in my career I have experienced discrimination as a woman so I am probably an extra advocate for trying to make sure that things are done fairly. One of the things that is important when we talk about pay equity—and they can even Google this on the government web page—is that when we try to figure out whether jobs should be paid equally, an analysis is done. The analysis looks at skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

When we compare some of these junior positions, for example the Minister of Sport with the Minister of Finance, let us look at the budget that the Minister of Sport handles versus the budget that the Minister of Finance is handling. Let us think about the Minister of Democratic Institutions, now that we are not going to do any electoral reform because we broke that promise. If the minister of electoral reform does not do a good job, what is the consequence of that versus the Minister of Public Safety not doing a good job? There is a huge difference there. Let us think about what the responsibilities of the Minister of Status of Women are versus the defence minister, for example. She has a $38-million budget.

When we do a pay equity analysis we are going to see that in fact there is a different level of responsibility in these positions, so I do not personally think that they should have been restored to a full minister's salary because I do not believe they have the same responsibility. They clearly do not have the same effort and in some cases the skill level that has been put into these roles is actually troubling. The government House leader is a rookie with no experience with parliamentary Standing Orders, and we have seen how that has jumbled the government's agenda and made for all the filibustering and the delays that have resulted in our sitting this late.

These are my main concerns with the bill. Obviously, it does not really matter what I say because all of these changes have been put into effect anyway, and I expect there will be no amendments at committee.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to talk about math because they are very focused on math on that side. I recall in 2006 when Prime Minister Harper said he was going to start with a tiny cabinet. It was about 28 members and then the cabinet grew to 41 members. When the Conservatives talked about saving money and being really good with the taxpayer dollars, we know that was the wrong approach.

What we have decided to do and the path we have chosen is to say that women deserve equal pay for an equal voice at the cabinet table. I do not understand what is wrong with an equal voice at the cabinet table with equal pay. Does the member not support that?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government's own procedures on how pay equity should be implemented say that having the same voice at the cabinet table in terms of a vote is not part of responsibilities, skills, efforts, and working conditions. It is one small element of that whole equation.

While I agree that women should be paid equally to men in the same job, I have just given a number of examples of why that is not true. I will tell the House about one position, a minister, that has changed with the focus of the government on infrastructure. That would be the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, who has now been given $180 billion to spend over the next 10 years, with only $2 billion for rural of course.

That responsibility has changed, because of the focus of the government on the responsibilities, efforts, and skills required to do that job. The minister has the infrastructure bank, and that is going to be a big schmozzle that will take a lot of time. In that case, I can see a reassessment of what the job is worth based on what is being put into it.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. It is always interesting to hear her thoughts.

I must admit that I would prefer to be discussing a real bill on pay equity. Then we could have really made some progress. In a past career, before I got into politics, I fought for the cause of pay equity in the Quebec school system. Before equity could be achieved, we spent months and years comparing job descriptions to make sure that the positions in question required the same skills and involved the same duties.

Are we really expected to believe that the Liberals will manage to solve the problem overnight and until the end of time simply by declaring that everyone will have the same salary?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Definitely, the government has had every opportunity to take an excellent example from the folks in Quebec who actually testified at our committee on pay equity, about the legislation that was brought in that rapidly closed the gap between men and women, and what they were paid.

The government has had 18 months to do something about it. We see no legislation. We see nothing in the six pages of the gender statement of budget 2017. It has certainly missed an opportunity there.

[Deb Schulte, Liberal, King—Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here listening to my colleague across the way. I know she is an engineer, and has professed many times that data should guide, facts should be what informs us and helps us make our decisions. I have been listening to her speech, and I am really quite shocked. What she is quoting is not at all the experience that I have had with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. We have seen amazing work coming forward. We have not seen a slowdown.

The member has been quoting that there have been some delays and lots of problems. I would like her to tell us where this data is coming from. It certainly is not the experience that I am having. I am confused. I would like to hear her explain where that data is coming from.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will just give one example, and that is from Sarnia—Lambton. In November 2015, the minister agreed to provide funding. By the time we got it out the door, it was a year and a half later.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad I am debating at so late an hour. It is not quite midnight, but we are getting there.

Like I mentioned before during the questions and comments of other members, I made comments that, really, we should be renaming the bill “the pay raise for Liberal cabinet ministers”. I really do feel that way. I know some people say that the pay was adjusted before. Then the logical question is, why are we considering this legislation if it is just to change a bunch of titles? The Liberals could have done that before. They really did not need to do anything. They could have just scribbled all over their notepads and on their business cards, and got it done.

They come into the House, consuming so many hours of the debate that supposedly, they said, was to improve the middle class. I do not really see how the Liberal cabinet getting a higher pay raise improves the fate or the economic ability of the middle class.

As for the content of the bill, I am looking at it and I have read through it several times now. It formalizes its eight new Liberal cabinet ministers. These are so-called full ministers, but as we heard from the member for Calgary Nose Hill, they actually will not be full ministers because they will not be able to bring MCs directly. They will still have to ask the ministers that they report to in order to be able to do that.

They are also asking for three new cabinet ministers yet to be named. I will be referring to these as the mystery cabinet ministers, and a good deal of my speech will focus on them, because what the Liberals are asking us to do, just like the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge said, is to give them a blank cheque. They want these three new cabinet ministers to be appointed some time in the future, so I have a bunch of suggestions on roles they could fill on their side in areas in which I feel they need desperate help. They need reinforcements to actually get their agenda through.

I do have a Yiddish proverb. It will come up very soon, because I know several members are looking at me, expecting one ready.

As for raises for salaries of junior ministers to cabinet ministers, like I said before, every time there is talk of openness and transparency in this place, it seems to cost the taxpayers ever more money. Why are the Liberals raising cabinet ministers' pay? Why not lower all pay? I see some ministers in the House are probably very worried when I mention this, but that would be the right thing to do for taxpayers when we have a nearly $30-billion deficit we are rolling through and for which the Liberals will be punishing the taxpayers of the future, who will have to pay for it.

This would be a great way to treat everybody equally: just lower everybody's pay. It is equal. It is fair to everyone. It is open. It is transparent. It is generous. Why not? Like I said, we could do the opposite. That would just require a minor amendment on the government side. Why is it always more money, more expenses, a car, a deputy minister, more exempt staff, more ability to travel. It is always more money, more money from the taxpayers. It always winds up being that way.

The Yiddish proverb I wanted to use is, “A wise man hears one word, but understands two”, and I feel like that wise man when I say, “Read the legislation”, because there is much more at stake here than simple pay. There are these three mystery cabinet ministers the Liberals will be introducing. It is not as if they do not have enough cabinet ministers already. We see week after week so-called ministers not delivering on their press releases, not delivering on their mandate letters. In fact they had cabinet shuffles, and I fully expect another cabinet shuffle in the future and certain ministers to be moved around, especially after the week they have had with the failure to appoint a Commissioner of Official Languages who will be fair to all parties in the House and with the true consultation of all members in the House.

Let us talk about these mystery ministers, because I think that is the right terminology. If the Liberals had amended the legislation and called them mystery ministers, I might even have considered voting for it, just a little bit.

Now who among the Liberal backbench has worked hard enough to join and become a mystery minister? What kinds of positions could they hold? Who has distinguished themselves the most? I have wondered that, and I have a few suggestions. However, let us go to those new portfolios first.

I think we should have a minister for balancing budgets, because I can see the Minister of Finance suffers terribly in the House not being able to follow through on what he believed when he was in the private sector working for Morneau Shepell, for a company that worked in human resources, a well-known EAP. I worked in human resources before with many HR professionals. It was the company that was involved in it. It was considered an expert in the field. Now they need to help. A full minister responsible for balancing the budget could find those savings all across government, and they would not even need to rely on the Minister of Finance to accomplish that.

Now I think they also need a minister for the tabulation of Liberal broken promises. I say that tongue in cheek, but there is just so many of them, it would be a full-time job. It would probably mean overtime and many late hours of tabulation. I also think they could use a minister for strategic photo-ops, or photo bombs, as the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge likes to say, maybe Instagram as well, because that seems to be an all-consuming passion of the Prime Minister. Why not make it a full ministry while we are at it?

The minister for seniors is a very serious suggestion. There is no minister for seniors, but I have a colleague here who was the minister of state for seniors. That is the seriousness of what we are doing for seniors and the growing seniors population in Canada. There are many members on our side of the House that advocated for the government actually appointing a person, a champion, an advocate for seniors in government to bring those issues forward. That one is far less tongue in cheek. That would have an actual impact on government legislation and government regulation, and their focus areas as well.

I will suggest another one: a minister for anti-corruption. We have had Liberal cabinet fundraising on the cocktail circuit, and really iffy appointments being brought before the House for an official languages commissioner, which is now pulled. Many other ones have come through for ACOA and for other organizations in government. We are still waiting on those judges to be appointed.

How about a minister for procurement to actually fix what is happening on that side of the House. Between the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of National Defence, they just cannot get it done, and they will not get it done. Why not appoint a person whose sole job in this government will be to procure equipment for our Canadian Armed Forces, for the Coast Guard, and throughout government? Just appoint someone, and not the Minister of Public Works. Obviously, she cannot get it done.

How about we appoint a minister dedicated to holding the President of the Treasury Board's hand to actually follow through on his mandate letter that says he will go ahead and amend the Access to Information Act, which he has now said he will not do. They are not following through on those reforms. They have no intention of doing it anymore. Why not actually have meaningful transparency and fulfill a campaign promise, one of which I thought was not a bad idea? Why not do it?

I have been on the receiving end of ATIP and how it does not work. Right now I have an access to information request with a government department for what I think is the fictional orphan drug framework. I have been basically told that I will not get it for another eight years. It is a very reasonable access to information request, but they told me they would use the extension provisions in the act to prevent me from getting what I am a actually asking for, the thousands of documents, until eight years from now. That is far beyond the mandate of a member of Parliament.

How about a minister for sock selection? That is more tongue in cheek. Obviously, we have seen there are lots of different permutations they could have.

Mr. Speaker, you do not have interesting socks like the Prime Minister does. I am sorry to see that.

Like my colleague for Perth—Wellington said, the government is all socks, no action. We seem to spend way more time talking about the Prime Minister's socks than his achievements. What has he actually done? What has he actually achieved almost two years into this mandate? There is barely any achievement, any legislation passed, a massive deficit, a huge debt, a carbon tax, and really no plan. Actually they are forcing carbon taxes on every single province whether the population wants it or the government wants it.

I will say that there are lots of good members on that side of the House who could make it into these mystery ministerial portfolios. I am looking at one gentleman whom I am sure would desperately want to get one.

How about the member for St. John's East, a member I travelled with on the Canada Post review committee through Atlantic Canada, or the member for Malpeque, who has an independent streak?

I will end on this one point, I think the last ministerial position they could appoint, from one of my very favourite shows, is the minister for administrative affairs. I am sure Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Fowlds, and Diana Hoddinott would be supremely pleased by such a title in this government because I think Yes Minister represents exactly the fulfilment in this government of everything they are able to achieve, which is very little, blocked by the bureaucracy that seems to love them very much, but is unable to actually achieve any of the goals they were elected on, unable to actually follow through on any of the goals set out in the mandate letters, and actually have achieved very little in the past two years. Except now, we have a late evening sitting and we are debating cabinet raises, pay raises for cabinet ministers as opposed to the Cannabis Act or maybe balancing the budget or actually any number of the other pieces of legislation before the House that could have been brought forward by the government. They have chosen not to.

It is just a poor piece of legislation and I will not be voting for it.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, would the member not agree with me that when we look at the five portfolios, such as science, something that we believed in and I think the past government really did not believe in, science and looking at facts and evidence and making decisions based on facts and evidence, they should each be a full ministry? Status of women is the same thing. How about small business and tourism? It is the backbone of the economy. Tourists are coming to Canada in greater numbers. Small businesses are growing and our economy is growing.

Is it not important that these great members of our government who serve their residents and serve Canadians have the authority of our full ministers and are paid equally? Again, I correct the record that there are no salary increases with C-24. I would like to let the member know that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the bill does not achieve any of those goals. All it does is set different pay levels for cabinet ministers. All of the ministers already have a voice at the table. They are already working on files. The problem is that they do not have the same responsibilities. They cannot present directly to cabinet. As the member for Calgary Nose Hill said, they do not have the ability to push MCs without the approval of their lead ministers. They do not have the same pay because they do not have the same responsibilities. It really has nothing to do with their gender.

I made a point earlier and posed this question when other members spoke. How about pay for performance? How about we pay them based on their performance, their ability to meet their mandate letter requirements? That would be a great way to pay cabinet ministers.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hate to disappoint the member, but in the previous government, no ministers had decision power because they had to go through the kids in short pants.

I will bring the member back to what the ministers of state were under the previous government. I recall a minister losing some power under her senior minister. Her crime was that she gave $400,000 to the Toronto gay pride parade. That was the state of those ministers under the previous government.

Again, I go back to having an equal voice at the cabinet table and equal pay. What does the member not understand about equal pay for equal work?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member said “kids in shorts pants”. I would rather kids in short pants than kids in Prada pants.

I believe the member worked for Dalton McGuinty. I worked as an exempt staffer for Gordon O'Connor when he was in national defence. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, either. We should not slag those in our profession who are now occupying exempt staffer positions in ministers' offices. I do not do it to those who served in the Conservative government. I also do not pick on staff in the different ministers' offices.

The Prime Minister's Office is very different. Everything runs through Gerald Butts. How about that? Nobody seems to want to talk about that as much. On this side of the House, we mention that all the time. It seems that everything is decided by the Prime Minister's staff at the highest levels, not the Prime Minister.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, different governments have different priorities. We have been very clear. The Prime Minister was very clear right from the beginning when cabinet was first appointed that the ministers would be on an equal footing. This is bringing that about. We have set out our priorities clearly for each one of them: the francophonie minister, the small business and tourism minister, the status of women minister, and the science minister, and I am missing one. Each one is a priority. We have been transparent, we have been clear, and the bill will set the record straight and put things where they should be. Why does the member not understand that these are the priorities of this government?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I serve together on the foreign affairs committee. I have deep respect for his specialization on human rights. We oftentimes agree at the committee level. However, the priority of the government should be reducing the deficit to zero, building up a surplus, paying down the national debt, and helping the middle class instead of offering up pay raises for Liberal cabinet ministers.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be sharing my time with the hon. member for Hochelaga.

I want to take this opportunity tonight to speak to Bill C-24, and to discuss the reasons why it is an illusory attempt to cover-up a key political charade with regard to the Prime Minister's commitment to gender parity. That commitment rings hollow when we get down to the heart of the matter, and the substance of the bill which creates a new set of problems for economic development.

The whole thing is a diversion from the real issues and required actions. Canadians deserve a candid account of what is before them with the government's Bill C-24. There are three key measures contained in the bill. First, it adds the current ministers of state to the minister's section of the Salaries Act, thereby giving them the same salary as ministers. Second, it creates three new place holder cabinet positions to be filled and defined whenever the Prime Minister chooses to do so. Third, the bill removes ministers who act as the heads of regional economic development agencies from the Salaries Act.

The effect is that if someone is the head of a regional economic development agency, it no longer makes them a minister. That is significant because it stands to reason that the minister in charge of economic development of a region must also know and understand that region. The Liberals have made a crucial error in consolidating all the economic development agencies under a single minister. Central control of regional development was an ill-advised move that should have been turned back, and now the bill removes all possibility of appointing a minister specifically responsible for the economic development of a particular region. What they are doing is entrenching their mistake into legislation.

In a press release issued by the government when it introduced Bill C-24, it said that the legislation was meant to show that the Government of Canada was committed to creating a one-tier ministry that recognized the equality of all cabinet members and supported their work on the government’s priorities. The government would have us believe that there is an important principal of equality at stake with the bill, but in fact, the bill fails to demonstrate any greater equality between ministers or between men and women in cabinet, for that matter, than an existing legislative regime already does.

The NDP has long championed the closing of the gender wage gap in cabinet as well as for all Canadians. The problem with the bill, however, is that it is not so much designed to close the gender wage gap as it is meant to fix a political problem the Prime Minister created when he boasted about having a government with gender parity, but appointed a disproportionate amount of women to junior posts.

Members will recall that the Prime Minister originally bragged about having gender parity in his cabinet. However, he quickly came under criticism for having made most of them ministers of state instead of full ministers. As I pointed out, ministers of state are not department heads, and between 2008 and 2015 inclusively, they have not been paid as full ministers.

Changing the law so that ministers of state receive the same pay and status as full ministers is the Prime Minister's disingenuous solution which only deals with the issue of his contrived gender pay gap in cabinet. It does not deal with the issue of whether or not real gender parity in cabinet means appointing an equal number of women to be department heads.

By papering over the distinction between ministers of state and full ministers, the Prime Minister is prioritizing equality of compensation over equality of responsibility with respect to gender parity in his government.

In addition to that huge problem, we are also deeply concerned about the Liberals' move to consolidate the economic development agencies under one minister, from Mississauga, who is the current Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. This is a huge mistake. It should go without saying that the minister in charge of economic development in a region must know and understand the region. Our provinces and territories will be best served by economic initiatives designed to meet their unique challenges and issues, something that a pan-Canadian approach will not do.

I have to underscore that what makes it worse is that this bill would remove the possibility of appointing a minister specifically responsible for the economic development of a particular region. Regional economic development should absolutely be a priority of the government, but the current approach of centralizing control of regional economic development under a solo minister from Ontario is broken. The government should not entrench its mistakes in legislation.

The law currently allows for the provision that ministers of state with the appropriate level of responsibility be paid as ministers for departments. House of Commons Procedure and Practice clearly states and specifies the difference in their roles. I will quote a portion of it:

The principle of individual ministerial responsibility holds that Ministers are accountable not only for their own actions as department heads, but also for the actions of their subordinates; individual ministerial responsibility provides the basis for accountability throughout the system. Virtually all departmental activity is carried out in the name of a Minister who, in turn, is responsible to Parliament for those acts. Ministers exercise power and are constitutionally responsible for the provision and conduct of government; Parliament holds them personally responsible for it.

In other words, one minister must ultimately be accountable for the actions of a department. While ministers may delegate responsibilities, they are ultimately responsible for the actions of those to whom they delegate.

Either the Liberals are creating a situation where the lines of accountability are not clear, in which case they are compromising the principle of ministerial responsibility, or they must admit that some ministers will still be subordinate to others; i.e., not all ministers are equal.

There is nothing wrong with having some ministers who run departments and some who do not, nor is there anything wrong with having a convenient title, like minister of state, to designate those ministers with less responsibility.

Canadian taxpayers are being asked to pay more for junior ministers so that the Prime Minister can be spared the embarrassment of explaining that a gender pay gap in cabinet existed because he failed to appoint enough women to senior posts. If the goal of the bill is simply to eliminate the gender pay gap created by appointing a disproportionate number of women to junior roles, it is completely unnecessary. This could be accomplished in two ways: by making the current ministers of state ministers of departments, or by establishing ministries of state for the current ministers of state.

Meanwhile, the gender parity argument is cringeworthy. The Liberal government is dragging its feet when it comes to implementing pay equity for all Canadian women who are not in cabinet. We are still waiting for this feminist Prime Minister to implement proactive legislation on pay equity before the end of 2016. We are still waiting for the repeal of the unfair 2009 Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, and last but not least, we still await the adoption of the recommendations of 2004 pay equity task force.

If the government is sincere, we need it to conduct and publicly release a gender-based analysis of this bill, close the gender wage gap, and address the responsibility gap in cabinet by making more women department heads. The government must address pay equity and equal opportunity for all Canadians in conjunction with those meaningful initiatives.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated hearing the comments by my colleague across the way about different women's issues and all of that. She focused on the importance of women's issues in this country. What I heard in earlier debate from across the way is that the position of Minister of Status of Women is a less important role. It is not as important and does not have the same responsibilities as other roles. As far as I understand, that is a role that covers 50% of our population.

I wonder what she has to say about the idea that the Minister of Status of Women is not as important a role as other roles in government.