Debates of Dec. 9th, 2019

Supplementary Estimates (A), 2019-20

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, there are two keys words here: respect and collaboration. We have a great deal of respect for the Canada Revenue Agency employees who are currently working in Quebec and particularly in the regions of Quebec. Second, we are very pleased to work with Revenu Québec to make the job easier for Quebeckers.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, does the President of the Treasury Board agree with his colleague that those who support a single tax return should be ashamed?

Should all members of the Quebec National Assembly be ashamed for asking for a single tax return?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, this is a great opportunity to talk about results and about the work that we are doing with the Quebec government to make life easier for Quebeckers and to invest in families and workers in Quebec. We have a responsibility, as federal elected officials, to ensure that the federal government also commits—

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order. The hon. member has the floor.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, I have a lot of respect for the President of the Treasury Board, but I am not getting a lot of answers to my questions, so I will move on to another minister.

On September 5, I wrote to the Minister of Transport asking him to put an end to the transportation of dangerous goods by rail in the Eastern Townships because we have no guarantee that it is 100% safe. Why am I still waiting for an answer?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Madam Chair, Transport Canada is doing its job. This summer, we carried out inspections between Farnham and Lac-Mégantic. That is the rail line my colleague is talking about. We inspected the repairs that were done. Other inspections will take place in the coming year. We are doing our work to make sure transportation of dangerous goods is safe.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, with the additional funding in these supplementary estimates, how many aviation technicians and pilots will be hired to expand the defence team?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Minister of National Defence]

Madam Chair, what we are doing is investing and making sure that we have the right number of pilots. We started the program some time ago to increase. One of the reasons we need even more pilots is that we are buying more aircraft than the previous government wanted.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, how many pilots and aviation technicians will be hired using these funds?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Madam Chair, I do not have the exact number in terms of how many we are going to be hiring this year. However, regarding the number that the air force is managing, we are going to be needing a lot more pilots because there is a challenge for recruitment. One of the things we are doing is changing the support to our members so that we focus on retention.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, at which military base will the remotely piloted aircraft systems be located?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Madam Chair, it is not about which base. It is the operational aspect of where search-and-rescue aircraft go. Our helicopters and our fighters are across the country. When we look at the entire plan, it is about how many operational aircraft are going to be needed and then the number is based on that. The number for recruitment has also been set.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, the Diefenbaker icebreaker project is worth over $1 billion. It was supposed to cost $720 million and be delivered in 2021. Now it will cost over $1 billion and might be delivered in 2023. It is late, the cost has doubled, and many projects are on hold.

Is the government doing an analysis of the costs, repercussions and negative impact of these new delays?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Madam Chair, I did not hear which project the member was referring to.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, I am talking about the Diefenbaker icebreaker project.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, as the hon. member probably knows, the government has decided to invest heavily in the renewal of the Coast Guard fleet. More details will be provided soon, in due course.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, the crisis with China hurt canola producers and continues to hurt producers. Bad weather in 2019 forced canola producers to leave thousands of tonnes of their crop in the field. Can the minister tell us what is in the supplementary estimates to help the producers?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I remind my colleague that the supplementary estimates we are debating do not pertain only to agriculture. That said, I can repeat how important it is to the Canadian government to support our farms and our farmers. They are the backbone of many of our rural and remote regions.

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

Madam Chair, through this whole process, I have listened to several ministers talk about different initiatives and I want to share a few thoughts.

When we talk about the issue of transportation, for example, I have seen the minister talk about the importance of airports to our local communities. I can only imagine the potential impact that an airport and the facilities surrounding it would have on the economy and the community in which they are located.

I know that even though the minister responsible talks a great deal about rail line safety and how important that is for him personally, being his number one priority, I also know that he gives a great deal of attention to our aerospace industry and in particular our airports.

We have seen legislation that has allowed for significant growth in our aerospace industry, and in particular our airports. In the city of Winnipeg is our Winnipeg international airport. I know how much it contributes to our economy and, as I mentioned a few seconds ago, the social fabric of our community.

I wonder if the minister can provide some of his thoughts on how important it is that, when we talk about budgets, whether a budgetary measure or a regulation measure, the government recognize how important our airports are to the many communities in all the regions in Canada.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Madam Chair, airports in this country, whether they are small and in remote regions or large and in some of our urban centres, are engines of our economy in a very significant way.

Canada is the second-largest country on earth. In order for Canadians to travel across the country and go to foreign destinations, because we are a trading nation, which requires us to visit other countries, our airports play an absolutely essential role.

The statistics indicate that flying is continuing to increase in our country, so we have to have airports that are safe, secure, efficient and well served by the different airlines. That can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. Canadians would like to be able to go to their local airport and sometimes go to destinations that are not possible to go to directly. Those are obviously some of the things we have to deal with.

Some people have said that when they go to airports it takes too long to go through security. That is another area we are trying to address: the challenge of making it a smoother experience. There are still things we need to do to improve that situation.

Sometimes we would like our airports to be transportation hubs so when people come out of the airport, particularly in large cities, they can access other modes of transportation to get downtown and the like.

There are a lot of things we can do. However, the fact is more Canadians are flying and it is important to have safe, modern airports in this country that cater to those requirements.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Chair, as many of my colleagues will be aware, I have had the honour and privilege of serving in the Canadian Forces for a few years in the regular force. I was posted out in Edmonton, where I participated in the 435 Squadron. I was air traffic control assistant.

One of the things we were dependent on was the Hercules aircraft. It has been a workhorse for the Canadian Forces, in particular for search and rescue, for quite a while. Then just a couple of years ago, under the minister, we were looking at the replacement of the Hercules for search and rescue.

I had the opportunity to represent the Minister of National Defence in Winnipeg, where 435 Squadron, the search and rescue squadron, is located. We had a presentation of the C-295 aircraft, which is fantastic. I raise it because the minister is a leader on this. I like the line that he used in his report: strong, secure and engaged.

Through this government, the minister recognized the many different deficiencies of the Harper government. He said that we needed to be more long-term in our thinking and we needed to ensure we were moving forward on many different fronts when it came to our Canadian Forces. He recognized that we needed to be there in that very real and tangible way, and the report highlights that.

My question for the minister is twofold. First, could he provide some of his thoughts in regard to that report? Also, I was really impressed with the C-295. I had the opportunity to go in one, take a look at its radars, its ability to magnify and see things from 30,000 feet in the air. The details they could see were amazing. They had infrared. It was very impressive.

I am not too sure what the actual deal was or how many we would acquire, but it was a positive step in providing our women and men of the Canadian Forces a state-of-the-art search and rescue aircraft. I believe all Canadians will benefit by this, because it is not only for military benefit; it is also for civilian benefit. I may be a bit biased because, after all, I served in Edmonton, but we can now provide second to no other search and rescue in the world.

Could he provide his thoughts on those two points?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Minister of National Defence]

Madam Chair, I want to thank the hon. member for his service in the Canadian Armed Forces and his resounding advocacy for search and rescue, especially for 435 Squadron, which lost two of its members in accidents. It just goes to show the tremendous work that our search and rescue technicians do on a daily basis. They do get deployed quite regularly, so it is important for us to ensure they have the appropriate equipment to carry out their very difficult work.

The fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft is going to revolutionize how we do search and rescue. No longer is it going to be strictly by looking out the aircraft with binoculars. We are using the same type of technology we use when it comes to dealing with adversaries. We are using that technology to locate hikers who are missing or downed aircraft. One thing I am particularly impressed with is what members will be able to do with this type of technology. It will save a lot more lives. It just goes to show that when we give the right tools to our Canadian Armed Forces members, they will do wonders for us.

I want to give a huge shout-out to all our fixed-wing search and rescue folks who will be working on this project, because they will put the ingenuity into this and ensure they continue to save Canadian lives.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Chair, I was quite pleased that the minister responsible for indigenous affairs was able to be with us this evening, because it is one of the most important files. We see the importance of indigenous people in throne speeches and in every budget we propose. The Prime Minister says it quite well when he talks about the relationship between indigenous people and the national government.

In the last 30 or 40 years and beyond, we have been moving in the direction of doing some wonderful things by working with indigenous leaders. One of the issues that has come to the table in the last number of years is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and its 94 calls for action. I do not know if the minister is aware of it, but I know there were a number of direct responses to those calls for action. When we talk about those 94 calls for action, we are not saying that every one of them is of a federal or national nature, but a number of them are. The minister and I talked about this a little earlier. Language was part of it, and foster care and the issue of citizenship and the taking of the oath. In many ways, the government has made the Truth and Reconciliation report a very high priority when talking about establishing a sense of respect and having the dialogue necessary for us to move forward on a such a critically important issue.

The minister spent a great deal of time on Bill C-262, dealing with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Could she provide her thoughts on the progress made, generally speaking, on the bigger picture? We see it in the throne speech and in budgets. I would ask her to provide some of her thoughts on those issues, and to reflect in particular on the private member's bill, Bill C-262, that passed the House.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations]

Madam Chair, I thank the member for talking about the calls to action that all Canadians feel we have to be part of. We are pleased to report that 80% of the calls for action that the federal government has responsibility for have either been completed or are well on their way. We have the other road map in the calls for justice from the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls commission, but our commitment to put the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into legislation is very important.

As the member has identified, the very important bill that former member of Parliament Romeo Saganash tabled was debated and eventually passed in the House. Unfortunately, it did not make it through the other place. However, we will work to co-develop legislation with first nations, Inuit and Métis to go forward with a piece of legislation for which Bill C-262 would be the minimum. With first nations, Inuit and Métis partners, we will build it as a true piece of legislation that will really explain what the rights of indigenous people are.

At this time, we congratulate the Province of British Columbia for its Bill 41, which actually sets that tone and legislative framework at a provincial level, and now we get to live up to that at the federal level.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member has a minute and 50 seconds to ask a question and get a response.