Debates of Sept. 29th, 2020

Peschisolido Report

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Madam Speaker, every member of the House is subject to the Conflict of Interest Act and every member of the House should be expected to be held to those high standards. Therefore, absolutely any violation needs to be held to the same standards so that we can do exactly what I referred to in my speech, which is repair the erosion of trust in the institution of Parliament and ensure Canadians can trust their members of Parliament, from coast to coast to coast, to do what is best and act in a way that Canadians expect.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Madam Speaker, this is my first opportunity to speak in the virtual Parliament, and I have to say I am disappointed that I am speaking to this motion. Like my colleagues across the way and in my own party, I have been meeting with constituents daily, hearing that their businesses are struggling, that they do not know if they are going to make their mortgage payments or pay rent or put food on their tables. I am hearing from people at local charities that things are tough, that donations are not coming in anymore and they are trying to find a way to make that up. I hear that affordable housing is not getting better in our riding or in Niagara. Despite the fact that people are struggling, housing prices are still going up but we are not seeing the jobs associated with that. I hear that the opioid crisis continues to rage on. I am worried.

The previous member, the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot, pounded his hands on the desk, saying that we need to help Canadians and we need to deal with the issues. However, he made one point that I was concerned about. I am worried it reflects the views of his party, because I believe I heard another member say in this debate that the Liberals will stand up and say that there is an emergency.

It is truly unfortunate that the Conservatives do not believe that there is an emergency. This motion reflects the lack of seriousness they feel for the crisis that Canadians are facing. It is a crisis that has seen 9,000 Canadians die. It has affected members of the House. It has affected the leader of the Conservative Party and the leader of the Bloc Québécois, and other politicians across the way are in confinement. I know colleagues, and their families and their friends, have suffered through this illness. We all know someone who has been affected or has lost a loved one. We have seen the army go into long-term care facilities in this country because of this devastating crisis. To make the allegation in this place that we are only saying that there is a crisis, and that we are inventing this as some reason to ram legislation through, is unconscionable.

Canadians expect us to work together. Canadians have a lot to be proud of. They have seen the Prime Minister working with Conservative, Liberal and NDP premiers, as well as with the premier of Quebec, in this crisis. We are not always going to agree and we should not always agree. That is not what this place is about. This is a place for debate. As the hon. member for Malpeque stated, there are good ideas on all sides, but let us debate that.

I have been hearing from members of the Conservative Party that we need to be debating issues like unemployment. We need to be getting people back to work, looking after their businesses and helping out.

What have the Conservatives deemed the priority issue for today when the government is bringing forward legislation to help Canadians? It is this motion. I think my constituents would be embarrassed that this is the priority. This is what we are debating and not how we can help them, how we can bring relief to them and continue to ensure they are able to pay the rent and put food on their tables.

I know the Leader of the Opposition tweeted that the Liberals were going to cancel CERB. However, it is being replaced and that is what we are talking about today. At least we should be, but the Conservatives wish to discuss a former Liberal member of Parliament and ethics violations. That is their priority, even though committees will meet again and there will be plenty of opportunity for the ethics committee to deal with this if it deems this to be its priority.

I saw another hon. member bring up this fact. If we are talking about former members of Parliament, I have not heard the Conservatives bring up Rob Anders and what we have learned today about tax evasion. He was a member who for years railed against the CRA and the work it was doing. We do not see that level of priority.

We see a lack of seriousness. They see an opportunity to play some political games to delay this debate. I do not know what the end goal is. It is truly unfortunate.

My constituents, our constituents, the people of Canada, want us working toward solutions. Do they want the opposition to hold the government to account? They absolutely do. However, bringing forward a motion on a former member of Parliament to delay debate on a serious discussion about bringing immediate relief to Canadians should shock their consciences. It should shock the conscience of members of the Conservative Party that they are picking up where they left off during the pandemic.

I keep coming back to this because it really impacted me when the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot suggested that there was no crisis. The motion shows that. The motion shows the lack of seriousness among the federal Conservatives. We see in Ontario and across the country that provincial Conservatives and their governments understand that there is a crisis and that there is a need for assistance. There is a time to put these types of partisan games aside, and this is that moment. However, here we are.

We really do need to get back to this crisis. It is true that this is the greatest crisis we have faced as a nation since the Second World War. The economy has been dramatically impacted. Over 9,000 Canadians have died. We are in the midst of a second wave of this pandemic. I want to be there in the House, but I am home because of agreements between the parties. It is too dangerous for us to all gather together.

There is a crisis. Parliament has not seen anything like this. In their lifetimes, Canadians have not seen anything like this. They want us to be debating help for them, not some Conservative talking points that take cheap political shots to try to get something, though I do not know what it is. I am at a loss.

Members of the Liberal Party are anxious to debate the legislation that has been proposed to help Canadians. As another member mentioned, there are changes that need to be made. I will give credit. l have mentioned a few times that the member for Battle River—Crowfoot said there are opportunities for changes to be made. He mentioned the Canada emergency wage subsidy and how it was changed. We heard from businesses and the opposition, and changes needed to be made. This is the place to do that and debate those ideas.

There will be time for partisan fights. There will be a time for committees to meet. They will be ramping up again. However, what Canadians want to hear from their elected representatives is how we are going to help them, how we are going to get a vaccine, how we are going to get businesses through this and how they are going to pay their rent. However, what we are stuck debating again is a former member of Parliament.

I am at a loss, and I hope the Conservatives are not playing on the cynicism of Canadians and that Canadians will not be paying too much attention to this. The Conservatives can post a few angry rage videos on Facebook that show they have stood up, but they have not stood up for Canadians.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member for St. Catharines talked about a lack of seriousness. I will tell members what the official opposition finds serious. It is the work that the House should have been doing for the last six weeks. The Liberal Prime Minister slammed the door on Parliament, slammed the door on democracy and locked committee rooms. That is what is unconscionable.

We wanted to do work over the last six weeks, not when this benefit was set to end. We wanted to have debate and discussions about it, not wait until the eleventh hour and call it an emergency. We obviously recognize the seriousness of the pandemic, but the business of holding the government to account goes on and so do Liberal scandals, which happen regularly.

It is unfortunate that the member wants to conflate different sets of rules. The conflict of interest code and the Conflict of Interest Act are what we are discussing here today, not other issues.

Was the six-week cover-up prorogation the best that your government could do for Canadians?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I remind the member that he is to address questions and comments to the Chair.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member is referring to the two days of time for debate that was lost during the prorogation. It is interesting to hear the Conservatives complain that we have lost two days of debate and that they are going to make up for that by wasting a lot more time in not talking about the issues.

There is a lack of seriousness from the members of the opposition, because if they were truly serious about making up for lost time, we would not be debating this. We would be talking about the issues that matter most to Canadians, which are not about a former member of Parliament.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague's words left a bad taste in my mouth because I feel like I have to defend my Conservative colleagues.

I find it a bit hypocritical to say that the motion we are debating today lacks seriousness and is a political game. Throughout his speech, my colleague talked about debates. What does the word “debate” mean? I get the impression he has not grasped all the subtleties of debate. Debate takes place between two parties. Sometimes that means letting go of some concerns in order to achieve a certain degree of consensus. That is why I wonder why the Liberals did not immediately agree to the motion and prove, for once, that ethics matter to them. They would have saved us all that time.

Why did my colleague not immediately support the motion and allow us to move on to another debate? That is what I want to ask him.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are locked into two hours of debate. Perhaps something was lost in translation, but I did not quite understand the question from the hon. member about this not being debate.

Again, Canadians want us to debate. We are talking about issues that matter, and to be locked into this debate for two hours takes away from the discussion that could be had. I do not think the members on the other side of the House are going to put these speeches in this debate into their householders.

Canadians want us to talk about the issues that matter to them: putting food on their tables, helping them out and getting them through a crisis, even though members of the Conservative Party will say that there is no crisis. This entire debate is truly unfortunate.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House of Commons. It is great to return to Ottawa to represent the constituents of the great area of southwestern Saskatchewan.

I want to thank my hon. colleague, the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, who serves as our shadow minister for ethics, for bringing forward this very important motion. It is a shame that it did not come from leaders or members of the Liberal caucus. We have heard from several senior Liberal members who believe, quite frankly, that ethics really matter. They had a great opportunity to show they take it seriously.

I am disappointed that we have to consider and discuss the misconduct of one of our former colleagues, the member for Steveston—Richmond East from the last Parliament. It is something we have to address if we are to maintain any integrity as an institution and show respect to all the people who sent us here.

As it says in the text of the motion, the actions of the member have “cast unacceptable reflections upon the House and its members, amount to an offence against the dignity and authority of the House, and warrant sanction.” It is especially disappointing for me to consider this, as I am a member of Parliament in my first term. I believe we have the ability and opportunity to make a difference for our fellow citizens, which is why I am here.

I want to touch briefly on that very point. I am a new member of Parliament. We have several senior members trying to skirt debate about ethics and about the importance that it has in our role as parliamentarians. A question for one of my colleagues, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, was about whether we take this emergency seriously. Ultimately, proroguing Parliament proved that the government does not take it seriously, because we had the time to debate the help that Canadians need and deserve to get through this emergency, but instead six weeks was completely lost to political games. So much for the team Canada approach that we keep hearing about from the government.

Being a newly elected member of Parliament, I am looking at members from all parties to see the example that is being set. There is a long list from the government. Canadians are looking to the government to set the tone and the example for what the standards should be for citizens in our great country.

We have different reports. We have “The Trudeau Report”—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I would remind the hon. member not to mention the first or last name of anybody who sits in the House. I would ask him to refer to titles instead.

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

Madam Speaker, with all due respect to the Chair, I disagree. Since this is the title of the document, it can be quoted in the House of Commons, whether it is the “Trudeau Report“ or the “Trudeau II Report”. It is not our fault if that is the same name as the Prime Minister.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I will follow up and get back to the House. Normally members cannot do indirectly what they cannot do directly.

I will allow the member to continue. The hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, I will take the liberty to apologize right now for that. We will refer to it as the Prime Minister's report going forward here.

The Prime Minister's report number one, on the Aga Khan, states:

No minister of the Crown, minister of state or parliamentary secretary, no member of his or her family and no ministerial adviser or ministerial staff shall accept travel on non-commercial chartered or private aircraft for any purpose unless required in his or her capacity as a public office holder or in exceptional circumstances or with the prior approval of the Commissioner.

It is very easily laid out. The Prime Minister chose to ignore that and was found guilty.

We move on to the Prime Minister's report number two, which involves SNC-Lavalin. The report concluded that the Prime Minister violated section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act. The report was simply entitled “[Prime Minister] II Report” as it was his second violation, setting quite the tone for the people of Canada.

Then we keep moving on through other members of his cabinet. We have the clam scam report, for lack of a better term, where the Liberal government violated Conflict of Interest laws when it awarded a contract to a company where the wife's cousin had significant influence. Again, that was setting the tone for Canadians.

Next up is the former finance minister. We have the “Morneau Report” number one, with the French villa. He only had to pay a $200 fine. Recently we had Morneau report number two. When he was campaigning he was found in contravention of the Elections Act. What were the consequences of that? It was merely a $300 fine. That is $500 so far in total.

He is implicated in a third scandal, which is ongoing and which many of us here in the House suspect is the reason why Parliament was prorogued by the government. We are also waiting on the Prime Minister's report number three, which we are certain will be coming from this very same scandal.

Once again, why was Parliament prorogued? It was to avoid further scrutiny. That is the way it seems. That is the way Canadians are perceiving this as well.

When we talk about hearing from our constituents, yes, they are all absolutely concerned about the emergency situation that we find ourselves in. However, when we talk about the national unity issue that we face in this country, one of the main objectives that western Canadians see the government undertaking, which undermine the institutions we have, is the ethics breaches, the ethics violations that continue to happen.

Again, it starts at the very top. It did not take very long in the Prime Minister's mandate to be convicted and charged with his very first ethics violation. Then we had number two and we are waiting for report number three. This is a systemic issue within the government, starting from the top and filtering its way down. We are talking here today about a motion on a former member who was not in the cabinet, so it made its way from the top all the way down through all different levels of the government.

What are we going to do as parliamentarians to uphold ethics? The whole notion of the system that we have as hon. members is that we would do the right and honourable thing when we are found guilty of these types of breaches and violations. In particular, the noble thing would be for members to step down. We are serving in public. The public demands and expects the utmost from us as members. We should be held to a higher standard than people who are not in public life.

There is one other point I would like to make to emphasize that. When we look at the Elections Act, if a financial agent makes a simple mistake on a campaign return, they are threatened with jail time, yet when we look at the Morneau report number two, he had only a $300 fine. We need to make sure we have actual teeth in our ethics laws that will dissuade people. Merely being named and shamed, as we talked about earlier, obviously is not doing enough. It is a $300 fine for a second breach. What is going to happen if there is a third or fourth that ever comes out? Will it be $400? I do not know. When we look at the history of its going from $200 to $300, one could assume that is the direction that it is going to go.

In talking about the motion before us, I want to bring up another point from the commissioner's report:

Where I conclude that a Member has contravened the Code and I find no mitigating circumstances, as was the case in this inquiry, I may recommend a sanction for the House to impose on the contravening Member. However, in the present case, given that Mr. Peschisolido is no longer a Member and therefore not subject to the rules governing Members of the House of Commons, issuing such a recommendation would serve no purpose.?

As members of the House of Commons, we must take it upon ourselves to ensure that ethics standards are upheld to the highest degree. Whether one is in Parliament or not, we need to make sure that we are doing something. That is what we are striving to do here today. Our constituents, especially in western Canada, are bringing this issue up. This is an issue that pertains to national unity. We need to ensure that all members of government are holding ethics to the highest centre that they possibly can, because that is what our constituents demand from us.

Going back to the issues that we have from the top down, again, the finance minister held a pretty high portfolio. He was one of the top government cabinet ministers. I have to wonder right now if the most recent cases with the former finance minister will turn out to be similar to the case in front of us here today. Are we going to be discussing this further on down the road? I do not know. Are we going to continue to see what happens with the WE Charity scandal? I do not know.

Again, the government prorogued Parliament to get rid of the scrutiny and the digging that we were doing on the government. I am just wondering where that is ever going to take us.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The time provided for the debate on the motion to concur in the report of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner entitled “Peschisolido Report” having expired, it is my duty to put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the motion.

The question is as follows. Shall I dispense?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

[Chair read text of motion to House]

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

As this voting process is new, I ask members to be patient. I heard a few “yeas” and “nays”.

Pursuant to order made on Wednesday, September 23, we will proceed with a voice vote.

I see the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to defer the vote.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Pursuant to an order made on Wednesday September 23, the division stands deferred until later this day at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

Thank you once again for your patience. Since this is a new process, I need to make sure that it is done correctly.

Maternity and Parental Leave

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this House, on the traditional territory of the Algonquin nation, to present a petition to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development from many petitioners across Canada.

This relates to something that touches all of our constituencies, and that is, of course, parents dealing with COVID who are trying to take care of their kids, particularly parents who are on maternity or parental leave and who have had to be in lockdown, missing important social and bonding opportunities for their children that are crucial for early childhood development. It also touches those who are currently on leave and have missed out on having support from family, friends and grandparents, also due to COVID.

The petitioners ask that the minister extend paid maternity or parental leave by three months in response to COVID and the consequent lockdown.

Carding

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to table the electronic petition, e-2663, which has 5,654 signatures on it, on behalf of my constituents. It calls on the Government of Canada to ban the practice of carding in Canada. The practice of carding, which is random street checks to obtain identifying information by police, has had a disproportionate impact on Black, racialized and indigenous communities and it has not led to a reduction in crime.

Human Rights

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a petition that recognizes an article by the Associated Press that revealed an ongoing campaign of Uighur birth suppression by the Chinese Communist Party.

The petitioners state that they would like to recognize that Uighurs in China have been and are being subjected to genocide, and ask that the government use the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, the Magnitsky act, to sanction those who are responsible for the heinous crimes being committed against the Uighur people.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I as well am very proud to stand in the House to present petition 432.

In addition to my hon. colleague's reference to recent news of coordinated Uighur birth suppression, there is also a body of mounting evidence showing that Uighurs are being subjected to political and religious indoctrination, arbitrary detention, separation of children from families, invasive surveillance, destruction of cultural sites, forced labour and even forced organ harvesting. Moreover, it is estimated that up to three million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in what have been described as concentration camps.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions today.

The first one is on the treatment of the Uighur population in China. They are being subjected to what amounts to genocide, and the petitioners call for the justice minister to use Magnitsky sanctions to end these horrific atrocities.