Debates of Feb. 7th, 2019

Justice

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that from the day the Liberals took office, from the Prime Minister down, the proclaimed ethical standards and the “go-beyond-the-letter-of-the law” ministerial mandate letters were simply window dressing, empty words. Every violation exposed by the Ethics Commissioner was sloughed off with, “The PM is working with the commissioner.”

Today's revelations of alleged corruption in the highest office in Canada, attempted interference in criminal justice and punishment of a minister who resisted demand answers and accountability now.

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister said earlier today, the allegations contained in the article are false.

Employment Insurance

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this evening, a Liberal motion to improve employment insurance sickness benefits will be moved in the House. It looks like the Liberals have finally seen the light and realized that 15 weeks to heal is not enough.

I am very proud to have stood up with my NDP colleagues and hammered home the message that 15 weeks is not enough.

My question is simple. Will the Liberals support their Liberal colleague and increase the 15 weeks of EI sickness benefits?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all members of the House for being sensitive to the major struggles all too often faced by our families.

I also want to thank all members of the House for understanding that we have taken meaningful steps since 2016. We made the five EI special benefits that were already in place when we took office more flexible and more generous. We also introduced two other benefits, namely the caregiving benefits and the parental sharing benefit, which will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

We know there is still a lot of work to do, and we are raring to go.

Indigenous Affairs

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the response I got from the Prime Minister on my call for urgent action on first nations was met with platitudes. The federal government is ignoring communities like Garden Hill that do not even have running water, but the crisis continues.

Today in Mathias Colomb, over 500 students cannot go to school because it is shut down because of mould contamination: mould contaminated housing, schools, and no running water. When is the federal government, the Prime Minister, going to stop the empty words about reconciliation and relationships and urgently work with first nations to deal with the serious crisis they are facing right now?

[Dan Vandal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, all children deserve a safe and healthy environment to learn in. Work is currently under way to remediate mould at the school, and it is anticipated that it will be complete by the end of the week. We will be following this work as it progresses, and I look forward to working with the hon. member as we go forward.

Official Languages

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Franco-Ontarians are proud of their language and culture. It is inconceivable that, even today, 50 years after the implementation of the Official Languages Act, we still have to fight to uphold our language rights.

In November, Doug Ford's Conservative government launched a direct attack on Ontario's francophonie by eliminating the independent Office of the French Language Services Commissioner and cancelling funding for the French-language university.

Can the Minister of Tourism, Official Languages and La Francophonie tell us here in the House how the government is helping Franco-Ontarians so that they can continue to assert their language rights?

[Mélanie Joly, Minister of Tourism, Official Languages and La Francophonie, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Ottawa—Vanier for her excellent work, her very good question and everything she does for Franco-Ontarians.

We, on this side of the House, believe in the Canadian francophonie and particularly in the importance of bilingualism in Canada. We know that we still need to protect Canada's francophones and always will. We need to protect our linguistic minorities.

We also know that Franco-Ontarians have the right to their university, and we are going to do everything in our power to make that a reality.

Justice

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, these are shocking allegations that the Prime Minister appears to have fired his attorney general for refusing to politically interfere in an ongoing criminal prosecution. Did her refusal to favour the Prime Minister's friends cost her her job? Canadians deserve clear answers to these serious allegations. Did the Prime Minister fire his attorney general because she spoke truth to power?

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister said earlier today, no such direction was given to my predecessor. I can say that no such direction has been given to me to come to any particular conclusion in this matter.

As Attorney General for Canada, I am the chief legal officer of the Crown. I provide legal services to the government, with a responsibility to act in the public interest. I take these responsibilities very seriously.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was a carefully scripted response, but at the same time, pressure can come in many forms outside of merely direction. The evidence is mounting, and the Prime Minister's responses are not adding up. Actions speak louder than words, and Canadians deserve the truth.

The former attorney general spoke truth to power, but maybe the Prime Minister cannot handle the truth. Did the Prime Minister fire the former attorney general for defending the independence of Canada's judiciary?

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister said, no direction was given to my predecessor in regard to this decision. I can say that no such direction has been given to me, nor has there been any pressure from the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office.

As Attorney General for Canada, I will continue to give legal advice to the government as its chief legal officer, based solely on the public interest.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians want the facts and the truth from those directly affected by the scandal the Globe and Mail exposed today.

With all due respect to the Minister of Justice, he is not the one in the hot seat here. The current Attorney General is not in the hot seat, but the person who just lost that job is.

Will the Minister of Veterans Affairs, Canada's former attorney general, rise and tell Canadians if she was or was not pressured by the Prime Minister's Office? Was she pressured, yes or no?

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister said earlier today, neither he nor his office exerted any pressure or issued any directives in this matter.

As Attorney General for Canada, I am the government's chief legal officer. I take my responsibilities very seriously.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing personal in what I am about to say. With all due respect to the Minister of Justice, he is not the one being implicated in all this, but rather the person he replaced. He has been appointed Attorney General. Congratulations. I am very happy for him, but Canadians want to know what his predecessor was subjected to by the Prime Minister's Office.

Let me say it again. My question is for the individual implicated in the scandal that all Canadians care about. Can the former attorney general tell us whether the Prime Minister's Office approached her about the scandal exposed in today's Globe and Mail?

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his congratulations.

As the Prime Minister said earlier today, there was no pressure, there were no directives, not from him or from his office on this matter.

Health

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the most heart-wrenching and impactful experiences I have had as an MP was door-knocking in Parksville and meeting an elderly woman living on a fixed income. She told us that she had to choose between eating, paying rent and buying medicine, telling us she had no choice but to live in pain.

This should not and does not have to happen in a country like ours. We need a universal pharmacare program for her and so that nobody else has to make these choices. How can the Liberal government drag its feet when people are unnecessarily living in pain?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to something as important as pharmacare, we certainly want to get it right, and we need a plan. That is why we have moved forward with the implementation of an advisory council on the implementation of a national pharmacare program. For this advisory council, we appointed a stellar group of experts in the field. They have had a national conversation with Canadians and also with experts in provinces and territories. I look forward to receiving their report in the spring of this year.

Transport

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport finally heard the NDP's call. He acknowledged a 79% service gap in Saskatchewan's intercity public transportation and agrees with us that the situation is urgent and more important than partisan politics. However, offering $10 million to the Saskatchewan Party government is not a solution if it is not willing to share the cost to tackle the crisis.

Why was this minister's funding conditional, when the Saskatchewan Party has made it clear that offering reliable transit to people is not its priority?

[Terry Beech, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, we understand how important bus transportation is to remote, rural and indigenous communities. That is why the second we learned about Greyhound's decision to withdraw from western Canada, the minister began working with private partners and the provinces. We have come to the table with funding for the provinces, but if the premiers of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are not willing to sit down, then they are leaving their own residents out in the cold.

Justice

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister fired his former attorney general for speaking truth to power. Now he is banning her from speaking at all.

There would be no good reason for anyone in the PMO to be talking with anyone in the attorney general's office about the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Will the Prime Minister allow his former attorney general to speak and answer: Did anyone in his office speak to anyone in her office about that prosecution?

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister has said earlier today, no such direction was given, no such pressure was made with respect to my predecessor. Certainly I can say from direct experience that I have received neither pressure nor direction from the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the question was not about pressure or direction. The question was whether or not the subject of the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin came up in any conversations between staff members of the PMO and the attorney general's office. There would be no good reason for such conversations to occur, because prosecutions of that nature have nothing to do with the political office of the Prime Minister. Why can the minister not just rise today and tell us, yes or no: Was the matter ever discussed between the PMO and the attorney general's office?

[David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister said earlier today, the allegations contained in The Globe and Mail article are false.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, he said “no” earlier today, so we know he is able to answer at least one yes or no question. I want him to answer this one. According to the lobbyists registry, SNC-Lavalin met with the Prime Minister's Office on 14 different occasions to discuss justice and law enforcement. This is a construction company, by the way.

In any of those meetings, was the subject of the criminal prosecution of that company ever discussed, yes or no?