Debates of May 5th, 2021

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

COVID-19 in Alberta

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The Chair has received two notices of a request for an emergency debate, the first coming from the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Alberta is facing a public health emergency unparalleled in Canada. Today Alberta has the highest rate of COVID-19 infection in the entire country. In fact, Alberta has the highest rate of infection in North America. Alberta's infection rate is double that of Ontario's and is one of the highest rates in the world. In some hot spots, such as Calgary and Fort McMurray, the rate of infection is higher than in India. The situation is so bad that last week physicians in Alberta were given instructions on a special COVID-19 protocol. It was a way to decide which patients would receive life-saving treatment and which would not. This is the first time in history that Alberta's doctors have been given emergency instructions like this. It is the first time they have been put into the situation of determining who lives and who is left to die.

The reason is quite clear. Alberta's acute care health care system is on the very edge of collapse. This is a public health emergency, but it is not just Alberta's public health emergency: With a positivity rate of 13% and infection hot spots such as Wood Buffalo, where oil sands workers fly in and out from all over Canada, Alberta's COVID crisis will soon become Canada's COVID crisis if nothing is done.

On Monday, Alberta Health stopped testing for variants of concern, because variants have taken over. Virtually every case of COVID in Alberta is a variant of concern now. The goal must be to stop the exponential growth of infections in Alberta to save lives and not put doctors, nurses and other health care workers through the trauma of saying no to patients who desperately need help.

We have an obligation as parliamentarians to address this public health crisis in Alberta. It is a public health crisis that simply cannot be contained within Alberta's borders. We have an obligation to debate the federal role in combatting it.

We have heard the Prime Minister state again and again that he has our backs and that every Canadian will get the support they need. We cannot shrug our shoulders and say this is Alberta's problem. We owe it to Albertans and all Canadians to acknowledge that what is happening in Alberta is an emergency that demands an emergency debate in the House.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I thank the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona for her intervention and I am prepared to grant an emergency debate concerning the COVID-19 situation in Alberta. The debate will be held later today at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

The second request is from the hon. member for Banff—Airdrie.

Line 5 Pipeline

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a “ticking time bomb”. Those are the words of the office of the Governor of Michigan in regard to the Line 5 pipeline.

I will point out, and it is very important to do so, that those words are entirely inaccurate, but it is a statement that makes very clear that this is, in fact, an emergency situation for Canada. It also makes it very clear that our government has failed to take appropriate action to ensure this matter is taken care of.

The Governor of Michigan has ordered this critical piece of Canadian infrastructure to be shut down by May 12, a week from today, and the government has failed to ensure and secure the critical continued operation of this piece of infrastructure. This pipeline is a crucial link between the energy producers in the west and the consumers in the east. Through this pipeline, Alberta fuels Quebec and Ontario.

The Minister of Natural Resources has confirmed this one pipeline alone is responsible for 53% of Ontario's crude and 66% of Quebec's. It is responsible for the majority of propane in Ontario and Quebec as well. Without this pipeline, gasoline prices would skyrocket, the economies of Ontario and Quebec would crash and propane supplies would completely disappear, wiping out farmers, shutting down warehouses and threatening heating and life-saving equipment at hospitals that are already stretched beyond capacity.

This is not just a threat to tens of thousands of direct jobs in Sarnia, Montreal, Quebec City and the province of Alberta, but to 40 million Canadians and Americans who rely on the products produced by these refineries for the necessities of life.

In short, the shutdown of this pipeline would cause catastrophic economic damage to Canada at a time when COVID-19 has already created an incredible burden on Canadian workers. It would also create catastrophic damage from an environmental perspective, because shutting down Line 5 would be an environmental disaster.

The shortfall that would result would mean Canada would have to obtain energy from far less environmentally friendly sources. It would also mean the potential for transport by truck and rail rather than through a pipeline, which is the far more environmentally friendly alternative. It would require approximately 2,000 trucks or 800 rail cars each day to make up for the shutdown of this pipeline. Neither of those options is good for either our economy or our environment.

With this in mind, I would ask that you accept this request for an emergency debate, pursuant to Standing Order 52, so members of Parliament can debate this very urgent economic and environmental crisis for our country.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I am prepared to grant an emergency debate concerning the Line 5 pipeline shutdown. The debate will be held tomorrow at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

Alleged Misleading Comments by the Prime Minister

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have been quite eager to stand up and add to my question of privilege. I would like to respond, just very briefly, to the government House leader's intervention on my question of privilege concerning the Prime Minister deliberately misleading the House about when he knew of the sexual misconduct of General Vance in 2018. I will let my submission of last week stand, as presented, but I want to make a few additional comments.

The government House leader raised the matter of my reference to the emails from Janine Sherman, the deputy secretary to the cabinet responsible for Governor in Council appointments, where Ms. Sherman sent a draft email that the Minister of National Defence could use to respond to Mr. Walbourne. This is what the government House leader actually said: “While she does not include the words 'allegations of sexual harassment', I can only speculate that she was making an assumption.”

The government House leader offers the speculation that someone is assuming, and this someone is not just anyone; she is the deputy secretary to the cabinet, and the person speculating on the assumption is a minister of the Crown. This is all the more reason, Mr. Speaker, for you to rule this to be a prima facie question of privilege and have the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs get to the bottom of this important matter.

I will not go over the three tests applied to the question of privilege. I made my submission on that subject and I know the government House leader offered his version. However, there is another important application that Speakers rely on that is just as important, and in many cases more important, when considering questions of privilege that I would like you to consider, Mr. Speaker.

I ended my original submission referencing Maginot's second edition of Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, at page 227, where he suggests that if the Speaker feels any doubt on the question, he should leave it to the House. This citation is from a ruling from March 21, 1978, page 3,975 of Debates, where the Speaker cites the report of the U.K. Select Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, and from a ruling of October 10, 1989, at pages 4,457 to 4,461 of Debates.

In another ruling, from October 24, 1966, at page 9,005 of Debates, the Speaker uses the same application when referring to the member at the time who was raising the question of privilege. I am going to quote what it says:

In considering this matter, I asked myself what is the duty of the Speaker in cases of doubt? If we take into consideration that at the moment the Speaker is about to render a decision as to whether or not the article complained of constitutes a breach of privilege ... and considering also that the Speaker is the guardian of the rules, rights and privileges of the House and of its members and that he cannot deprive them of such privileges when there is uncertainty in his mind ... I think, at this preliminary stage of the proceedings, the doubt which I have in my mind should be interpreted to the benefit of the member.

Again, on March 27, 1969, page 853 of Debates, the Speaker stated:

[The member] has, perhaps, a grievance against the government in that capacity rather than in his capacity as a Member of Parliament. On the other hand, honourable Members know that the House has always exercised great care in attempting to protect the rights and privileges of all its Members. Since there is some doubt about the interpretation of the precedents in this situation, I would be inclined to resolve the doubt in favour of the honourable Member [the one making the request].

No one will argue, except for the government House leader, that the Prime Minister's assertion that he did not know the nature of the complaints was believable; and no one will argue that there is much doubt and uncertainty about the interpretation of the evidence and precedents in this matter.

Casting further doubt on the innocence of the Prime Minister was the fact that on the same day the government House leader made his submission on the question of privilege, the Liberal chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence unilaterally cancelled the meeting where the committee was prepared to invite the Prime Minister's chief of staff to bring some clarity to this issue. Many viewed this as an attempt to cover up and conceal the truth about what the Prime Minister knew.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, the authorities are consistent about the need for clarity in our proceedings and about the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to this House. As I said earlier, the government House leader is the only one who thinks there is not sufficient doubt to justify the Speaker's allowing me to move the appropriate motion and get to the bottom of this.

I would like to bring to the attention of the House a few observations to support that point, starting with an article written by Chantal Hébert over the weekend. She actually puts it much better than I could. She is talking about the report prepared by former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps, a report I also referenced in my original submission. Here is what Ms. Hébert said:

Her 2015 report recommended the creation of an independent agency for reporting misconduct.

Those findings and that core prescription were in [the prime ministerial] in-tray when he took office.

And yet, following up on the recommendation to create an independent body has not made it into the marching orders the prime minister has given Defence Minister....over the years....

For weeks, the media and the opposition parties have been trying to find out why [the Minister of Defence] along with [the Prime Minister's] staff took so little action when first apprised in 2018 of allegations of misconduct against then-Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance. This, after all, is a government that never lets an opportunity pass to flaunt its self-styled feminist credentials.

Given that, being on the lookout for instances of sexual harassment [especially in the upper levels of institutions such as the armed forces] would be expected to be a priority....

And yet, to listen to the prime minister...[this week], his advisers were unaware that the allegations against Vance were sexual in nature.

Forget that there is correspondence between some PMO staffers that suggest otherwise.

For anyone who had read Deschamps’ report, sexual harassment would logically be one of the first possibilities that would spring to mind upon hearing about misconduct allegations against Vance.

In light of the prime minister’s oft-stated commitment to a zero-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct, the mere possibility that Canada’s top soldier might be part of the systemic problem he was tasked with fixing should have set off alarm bells.

That it apparently did not is testimony either to a remarkable collective case of wilful blindness or an abysmal lack of interest...

Andrew Coyne wrote an article published this morning that I believe colleagues will find pretty much sums up the confusion and what most Canadians are thinking about regarding this question. He states that:

The issue, then, is no longer "who knew what when," but who said what and did what—or did not say or do what—and for what reason. If the Prime Minister was, as he claims, not told, it would be of the greatest possible interest to know why.

Did his chief of staff take it entirely upon herself not to inform him of such a potentially explosive development? Or was there some prior understanding that he was to be kept out of the loop on such matters? If so, on what other matters is he kept out of the loop? And, most intriguing of all, why?

Or, if he was told, then it would follow that the Prime Minister has been lying through his teeth, again, about a scandal for which he bears primary responsibility.

I have one final article to briefly reference, but keep in mind that there are more. This article is one that I really appreciate from Robyn Urback, published at the beginning of the weekend. She concludes that:

If hundreds of (mostly) women were being sexually assaulted in any other federal workplace—and were accused of lying by their superiors—there would be marches in the street and demands for resignations. The minister on the file would not be able to get away with claiming he didn't want to look at allegations for fear of “political interference,” as [the defence minister] claimed, implausibly, when questioned about Mr. Vance during a committee hearing. Similarly, the Prime Minister would not be allowed to both boast about his government's “feminist credentials” and claim, also implausibly, that no one in his office knew the charge against Mr. Vance was a “Me Too” complaint - though emails show otherwise. And the minister would not be able to announce, with a straight face, a new independent review by another former Supreme Court justice....

In conclusion, a few moments ago, the House disposed of a Conservative motion, my motion, that suggests the Prime Minister's chief of staff failed to notify him about serious sexual harassment allegations at the highest ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces and was complicit in hiding the truth from Canadians. The Liberals voted against the motion, which suggests very strongly, that Katie Telford may very well have notified the Prime Minister.

Once again, Mr. Speaker, if you find there is a prima facie question of privilege, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I want to thank the hon. member, and I will take it under advisement.

We have a point of order from the hon. member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with regard to the previous vote.

I have been having technical issues with my device. I had originally cast my intended vote, but, subsequently, I received a message saying that there was only about a minute left and that my vote had not been submitted. In panic form, I went back to my device and cast a vote, which, unfortunately, was opposite to my intention, and it was recorded.

I am pretty sure that I am not able to ask the House at this point to change it, but I do want to publicly state that I have the highest respect for the chief of staff of the Prime Minister. My intention was not to vote with the Conservatives, and I apologize for that.

Once again, I inadvertently cast the wrong vote during—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I believe I have heard enough. Normally what would happen is that you would ask for unanimous consent to allow you to change your vote.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, because it has become a custom in this House to allow this, I think if you seek it you will find unanimous consent to allow the member to change his vote from yea to nay.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

All those opposed to the hon. member moving the motion will please say nay.

[An hon. member]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I am afraid we do not have unanimous consent.

On a point of order, the hon. member for Banff—Airdrie.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to rise on this point, because, obviously, when a member finds themselves in a situation where there has been an inadvertent mistake, certainly I believe that we should always try to apply the principle that we do. However, I suggest that members should rise and seek that clarification prior to the result of a vote being announced. I think it is a bit of different precedent that we would be setting to have someone come after the result of a vote to do so. I would encourage the member to have risen prior to that, which would have been the correct way to do it.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on that point, I think the member clearly indicated the confusion in what had happened and the reason why. I am sure he was respecting the House and the procedures that we were going through with Routine Proceedings in order to get to the point that he did before he brought this to the attention of the House. Perhaps, as he indicated, he was just unaware that there was still a possibility to do that. I know that it has become a practice in this House to take the word of a member if they had made an error, especially during the time of virtual voting like this.

I know that unanimous consent was not given, and I will not necessarily ask for it again, but I would encourage my colleagues across the way to reconsider this and to allow the member to cast his vote in the manner in which he had intended to do so.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I thank hon. members for their input.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1

[Chrystia Freeland, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

moved that Bill C-30, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere pleasure to join this debate on Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have done everything necessary to protect Canadians’ health and safety, to help businesses weather the storm and to position our country for a strong recovery. After 14 months of uncertainty and hardship, Canadians continue to fight COVID-19 with determination and courage.

Right now we are being hit hard by the third wave, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. More and more Canadians are getting vaccinated. The recovery is around the corner. The bill before us today would implement our plan to finish the fight against COVID-19, create jobs, grow the economy and ensure a robust recovery from which all Canadians would benefit.

The budget I presented to the House on April 19 contains further details about the plan. The budget focuses on middle-class Canadians and seeks to help more Canadians join the middle class. It is also in line with the global shift to a green, clean economy.

This plan will help Canadians and Canadian businesses heal the wounds left by COVID-19 and come back stronger than ever.

This budget meets three fundamental challenges. First, we must conquer COVID. That means buying vaccines and supporting provincial and territorial health care systems. It means enforcing quarantine rules at the border and within the country. It means providing Canadians and Canadian businesses with the support they need to get through these final lockdowns.

Second, we must punch our way out of the COVID recession. That means ensuring that lost jobs are recovered as swiftly as possible and hard-hit businesses rebound quickly. It means providing support where COVID has hit hardest: to women, to young people, to racialized Canadians and low-wage workers, and to small and medium-sized businesses, especially in tourism and hospitality. When fully enacted, this budget will create, in total, nearly 500,000 new training and work opportunities for Canadians.

Third, the major challenge is to build a more resilient Canada: better, more fair, more prosperous and more innovative. That means investing in Canada's green transition and the green jobs that go with it, in Canada's digital transformation and in Canadian innovation, and it means building infrastructure for a dynamic, growing country. This budget invests in social infrastructure and in physical infrastructure. It invests in human capital and in physical capital. It invests in Canadians and it invests in Canada.

Vaccine campaigns are accelerating, and that is such a good thing, but we need to vaccinate even more Canadians even more quickly. Thanks to plentiful and growing vaccine supply, that is something team Canada can get done working together. This legislation proposes a one-time payment of $1 billion to provinces and territories to reinforce and roll out vaccination programs.

Canadians should take advantage of our increasing vaccine supply and, when it is their turn, go and get the first Health Canada-approved vaccine available to them. I was vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine nine days ago at a Toronto pharmacy, and I am so grateful I was able to be vaccinated when it was my turn.

COVID-19 has placed extreme pressure on health care systems across the country. The pandemic is still with us and Canadians do need help urgently. That is why we propose to provide $4 billion through the Canada health transfer to help provinces and territories address immediate health care system pressures.

These funds are in addition to our unprecedented investments in the health care systems during the pandemic, including the $13.8 billion invested in health care under the safe restart agreement.

A full recovery from this pandemic requires new, long-term investments in social infrastructure, from early learning and child care to student grants to income top-ups, so that the middle class can flourish and so that more Canadians can join it.

COVID-19 has brutally exposed what women have long known: Without child care, parents, usually mothers, cannot work outside the home. A cornerstone of our jobs and growth plan is a historic investment of $30 billion over five years, reaching $9.2 billion annually in permanent investments when combined with previous commitments, to build a high-quality, affordable and accessible early learning and child care system across Canada.

Within five years, families everywhere in Canada should have access to high-quality child care for an average of $10 a day. This will help increase parents', and especially women's, participation in the workforce. It will create jobs for child care workers, more than 95% of whom are women. It will give every child in Canada the best possible start in life. Early learning and child care has long been a feminist issue. COVID has shown us that it is an urgent economic issue as well.

As we make this historic commitment, I would like to thank the visionary leaders in Quebec, and in particular Quebec feminists, who led the way for the rest of Canada. I am very grateful to these women.

Of course, the plan also includes additional resources for Quebec that could be used to provide further support for its early learning and child care system, a system that is already the envy of the rest of Canada and, indeed, much of the world.

We also recognize the continuing need to bridge Canadians and Canadian businesses through this tough third wave of the virus and into a full recovery. To date, the Canada emergency wage subsidy has helped more than 5.3 million Canadians keep their jobs. The Canada emergency rent subsidy and lockdown support have helped more than 175,000 organizations with rent, mortgage and other expenses.

The wage subsidy, rent subsidy and lockdown support were set to expire in June 2021. Bill C-30 extends these measures through to September 25, 2021, for a total of $12.1 billion in additional support. Extending the support will mean that millions of jobs will be protected, as they have been throughout this crisis.

To help people who still cannot work, we also propose maintaining flexible access to employment insurance benefits for another year, until fall 2022.

We also plan to extend the number of weeks for certain major income support measures, including the Canada recovery benefit and the Canada recovery caregiver benefit.

We are providing an extra 12 weeks of benefits to recipients of the Canada recovery benefit, which was created to help Canadians who are not eligible for employment insurance.

Bill C-30 also proposes extending the Canada recovery caregiver benefit by 4 weeks, up to a maximum of 42 weeks at $500 a week. This will help when the economy begins its safe reopening.

For caregivers who cannot find a solution, especially those who take care of children, the employment insurance sickness benefit will be extended from 15 to 26 weeks.

Canada's prosperity depends on every Canadian having a fair chance to join the middle class. Low-wage workers in Canada work harder than anyone else in the country and for less pay. In the past year, they have faced both significant infection risks and job losses. Many live below the poverty line, even though they work full time. We are Canadian, and this should not be acceptable to any of us.

Through Bill C-30, we propose to expand the Canada workers benefit to invest $8.9 billion over six years in additional support for low-wage workers. This will extend income top-ups to about a million more workers and will lift 100,000 Canadians out of poverty. This legislation will also introduce a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage.

Young people have made extraordinary sacrifices over this past year to keep us, their elders, safe. We must not and we will not allow them to become a lost generation. Bill C-30 would make college and university more accessible and affordable. This legislation will extend the waiver of interest on federal student and apprentice loans to March 2023. Waiving the interest on student loans will provide savings for the approximately 1.5 million Canadians repaying student loans.

In the past 14 months, no one has felt the devastating health effects of COVID-19 more than seniors. They deserve a safe, secure and dignified retirement. We therefore propose a one-time payment of $500 in August 2021 to old age security recipients who are or will be 75 or over in June 2022.

Bill C-30 also includes a permanent 10% increase in the old age security benefit for people aged 75 and over as of July 2022.

Small businesses are the cornerstone of our economy. Lockdowns, though necessary, have hit them hardest. To heal the wounds left by COVID, we have to put a small business rescue plan into action as well as a long-term plan to help them grow.

In addition to extending the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the Canada emergency rent subsidy and lockdown support, we also have to make sure that [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. minister seems to be having technical issues. We stopped hearing her feed.

I would like to inform the House that technicians are currently checking the minister’s connection. We will return in a few minutes.

In light of the fact that the technical problems seem to be a little more problematic than we expected, we are resuming debate with the hon. member for Abbotsford. We will return to the minister's speech once the technical issues are resolved.

The hon. member for Abbotsford.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.

It has been over two years—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

We have to obtain unanimous consent for the sharing of time.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands is rising on a point of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I was rising on a point of order that I believe unanimous consent was required.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition is rising on a point of order.