Debates of Feb. 27th, 2024

Labour

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last November, our government tabled legislation to ban the use of replacement workers in federally regulated industries, a commitment from our 2021 election platform. This is something that the labour movement in Canada has been asking for since before Canada was a country. This will both make the collective bargaining process stronger and make employers and unions focus on the negotiating table, where the best deals are made.

Will the Minister of Labour explain to the House how our bill to ban replacement workers will strengthen the collective bargaining process in this country?

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, Minister of Labour and Seniors]

Mr. Speaker, we are banning replacement workers. We are banning replacement workers because we believe in collective bargaining. We are banning replacement workers because the best deals are made at the table, bigger paycheques are negotiated at the table, and better labour relations and long-term stability are created at the table. Let us keep that bargaining table free and fair with the full support of every MP in the House.

With unanimous consent, let us vote to move Bill C-58. Let us make some history. Let us ban replacement workers.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

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

Mr. Speaker, axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, that is the Conservative common sense plan.

Common sense is also knowing the extent of the Liberal arrive scam disaster. Even though the Liberals can count on the Bloc Québécois to close their eyes to millions of dollars in spending, the Conservatives want to shed light on the arrive scam scandal.

Will the Prime Minister co-operate with the RCMP in its investigation into arrive scam or will he once again refuse to fully co-operate with the police, as he did in the cases of the Aga Khan's island and SNC-Lavalin?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, I would like begin by congratulating my colleague, whom I like a lot, on his ability to repeat his leader's slogans.

The Conservatives are working hard on that. What they are less good at is following the news. For weeks now the Auditor General has been working with many other organizations, including the RCMP, to shed light on the disturbing observations she raised in her report just a few weeks ago.

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

Mr. Speaker, if my colleague were more aware of what is happening in Canada, he would know that after eight years under this Liberal Prime Minister, two million people are going to food banks every month. Food banks are now lining up to get the food they need to feed the lines of hungry people. That is what Canada looks like under this Prime Minister.

The Liberal government, with Bloc support, managed to find a way to spend at least $60 million on an app that was supposed to cost $80,000.

I will repeat my question. Is the Prime Minister going to voluntarily co-operate with the RCMP, or is he going to cover up the arrive scam yet again?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Minister of Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, what Canadians are seeing on television is a Conservative Party that opposes all of the measures. They have consistently voted against every measure we have introduced to help Canadians. What did the Conservatives do? They voted against competition reform, one of the most important reforms in the country.

I want to ask them a question. People are watching them at home. Will they vote for our bill to allow more competition reforms in the country, more choice for consumers and better prices?

It is time they did something for Canadians.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP commissioner was clear this morning. He wrote to the Leader of the Opposition to confirm that a full investigation will be conducted into the ArriveCAN affair.

What is more, we learned from the RCMP commissioner in committee that the Prime Minister obstructed the investigation into both the SNC-Lavalin affair and the Aga Khan affair.

Can the Prime Minister confirm that he will fully and completely co‑operate with this RCMP investigation and that he will not interfere with it?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I am glad that my colleague has noticed something that has been common knowledge for some weeks now.

My colleague, the Minister of Procurement, clearly indicated that the Auditor General had investigated some troubling circumstances surrounding contracts awarded by the Canada Border Services Agency.

Obviously, the government's responsibility is to ensure that measures are in place to prevent this from happening again and to co‑operate with the law enforcement officials who will be investigating the matter.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what is clear to us is that, in November 2022, the government voted against the proposal to ask the Auditor General to conduct an investigation. The Liberals were not the ones who helped discover what had happened with ArriveCAN. At the time, some 10,000 people were forced to quarantine because of a tool that did not work.

Can the Prime Minister confirm this time that he will not obstruct the RCMP investigation and that he will ask his government to hand over all the documents and ensure that we get to the bottom of the ArriveCAN scandal?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, we have already answered this question multiple times.

However, there is one question which has still not been answered.

Given the Leader of the Opposition's policy of intimidation, insults and name-calling, will my colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute‑Saint‑Charles agree to join my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent for a meeting next week with the Quebec City municipal council to tell all elected officials and the people of Quebec City why his leader insulted them and called them incompetent?

Public Services and Procurement

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, ArriveCAN is the result of the federal government's dependence on dubious consultants.

GC Strategies, a two-man company offering no real services, pocketed $20 million, but it was not the only one. Dalian, another two-person company offering no real services, got $8 million. Ninety-nine per cent of Dalian's contracts are with the federal government. It is hard to know what that company is doing with all that money because La Presse has revealed that it does business in two tax havens.

How many other companies like these is the federal government giving our money to, and what is it doing to make sure our share comes back to us?

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Minister of National Revenue]

Mr. Speaker, the whole ArriveCAN affair is completely unacceptable, and that is why the work and the investigations continue.

As for tax havens, of course, they are equally unacceptable. I can assure the House that we have a competent team that is well equipped to carry out the necessary investigations on any file whenever there is any doubt.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the reliance on dubious consultants is not limited to ArriveCAN or to the Liberals. Under Stephen Harper, the Conservatives themselves gave millions of dollars to Coredal Systems Consulting, a company that does not provide any services and that was founded by the same two people who founded GC Strategies and who pocketed $20 million for ArriveCAN. Fortunately, the committee will investigate all of the contracts awarded to these two individuals, but we need to go even further.

Will the government commit to disclosing all of the contracts since 2004 that connect the Conservatives and the Liberals to any company that does not provide any service other than finding subcontractors?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, a little less than four years ago, Canada was going into the worst health crisis since 1919 and the worst economic crisis since 1929-30. We had to close the border at the request of then President Trump. We had to deal with $1 billion a year in economic costs and with the hundreds of people who were dying every week in long-term care facilities in Quebec and across the country.

We had to act quickly and effectively. That is what we asked the public service to do. However, public servants were supposed to follow the rules. Unfortunately, some of those rules were not followed. That is what the Auditor General found.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. The government spent a minimum of $60 million on arrive scam. It could even be more. We do not know because there is missing documentation. IT middlemen at GC Strategies got $20 million for doing no actual work. The top cop in the RCMP announced today a full investigation into arrive scam.

Today, the Prime Minister has a decision to make: Will he co-operate with the RCMP, or will he obstruct justice, as he usually does?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, again, this question has received multiple answers, including from our colleague, the Minister of Public Safety. If the Conservatives are trying to find new questions to ask, I suggest asking these. Why, for instance, during the eight years of our government, have we built 10 times more homes than during the 10 years of the Conservative government? Why has poverty fallen by half in Canada? Why is the Canada child benefit taking 400,000 children and their parents out of poverty every single month? There are a couple of other questions on which we would be interested to hear from Conservative members.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, even the Auditor General said that a crisis situation is no excuse for this lack of value for money for Canadians. Conservatives have today put forward a motion, related to arrive scam, to get money back from the contractors who did no actual work. There is one person in this chamber who can make that decision: the Prime Minister. He has the power to make the decision to get the money back for hard-working Canadians.

Will the Prime Minister commit today to getting the money back for Canadians, or will he shirk his responsibility, as he usually does?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, our government has said from the beginning that those who misused taxpayers' money will be held to account. Once the investigations that the CBSA, for example, ordered internally and the RCMP report is completed, if money was misappropriated, of course the government will take all the steps to recoup that money.

We have said from the beginning that anybody who mishandles taxpayers' money will face the consequences, and that is exactly what this government is doing.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, those who misuse taxpayers' money will face the consequences in the next election. While common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption after eight years. We heard ministers telling us today that RCMP criminal investigation into corruption in their government has become so commonplace, after eight years, it is not really news anymore. I am old enough to remember a time when it was a big deal that the RCMP investigated the government. It has been too many times, and it is time the government be held to account.

Finally, will the minister tell us whether the government will co-operate with the RCMP investigation?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, just because my hon. friend asserts something with manufactured indignation does not make it true. What we have said from the beginning is that we take the responsibility to manage taxpayers' money very seriously. That is why, when the border services agency identified irregularities, it began an internal investigation and referred the matter, as is appropriate, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Our government will always do what is necessary to hold everyone who may have misused taxpayers' money to account.

Indigenous Affairs

[Ben Carr, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, indigenous tourism has the power to create jobs, transform the tourism industry and advance reconciliation. It is worth over $1.2 billion and supports more than 30,000 jobs across the country. Last November, the Minister of Tourism announced the creation of the micro and small business stream of the indigenous tourism fund.

Can the minister tell us how our government is supporting the indigenous tourism industry to ensure its sustainable growth?

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Minister of Tourism and Minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec]

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

The tourism fund is about empowering indigenous peoples to advance economic reconciliation. At the international indigenous tourism conference today, the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada and our government announced more than 79 projects.

Unlike the Conservatives, who want to cut the indigenous tourism fund, we on this side of the House believe in its future.

As a government, we will always support indigenous tourism. We will always support indigenous communities in making their own decisions, choosing their own paths and growing their tourism sector at their own pace.

Public Safety

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, let us make a contrast. While common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, the Prime Minister is tripping over his feet trying to save his reputation by covering up yet another scandal. He is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption.

Will the Prime Minister release all the Winnipeg lab documents today, or will the shame and embarrassment be too much to endure?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to redactions, it was the Public Health Agency of Canada that conducted them. I would ask the opposition members this: Is it their position that a government should be involved in redacting documents? That is a deeply disturbing thing for them to hold as a proposition.

Instead, what happened was that we asked Parliament, we suggested and Conservatives refused to look at the documents or to participate but eventually did, to ensure that parliamentarians could look at what information was there and could make the decision that the redactions done by the Public Health Agency were or were not appropriate. The processed worked. It was a process we introduced and one they supported eventually—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester.