Adam Vaughan

[Employment Insurance, April 18th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot for requesting this adjournment debate. As the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development said, the delays that Canadians are experiencing at the tribunal are unacceptable.

Simply put, as the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development has stated several times in the House that the delays Canadians are experiencing at the tribunal are unacceptable.

Last year, on March 7, our government announced that the tribunal would undergo a comprehensive review process to improve its appeals process. This review was a response to the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities and of the employment insurance service quality review. We released that report publicly in January.

The report was very clear. It explained the reasons why the tribunal was not functioning as it should. It also provided seven recommendations on how the tribunal could better fulfill its mandate, each supported by a range of more specific options, from making changes within the current legislation and governance and appeals structure to proposing foundational changes to the tribunal.

We intend to implement all recommendations of the report in addition to assessing all options presented. We will also consider options that go beyond those recommendations. Our government will release an action plan that will focus on both short and long-term improvements, with the aim of making the recourse and appeals process faster, simpler, and more client-centric. We will also provide new support to assist people with their appeals.

As we are implementing changes to the tribunal, we will work closely with unions, employers, and other stakeholders. On that note, we will ensure that the EI commissioners and stakeholders play a key role in shaping this renewed system. We have already asked them to give us their insight on potential improvements that go beyond the report's recommendation and options. During the development and implementation of our action plan, we will need the expertise and views of these key partners to improve the system. We want to ensure they have their say on renewing the appeals process. That is why we are working with the commissioners to establish a group of partners that we can connect with regularly when we have issues and questions as we move forward.

We want to build upon the relationship that exists between our government and the organizations that represent employers and workers, and invest in fruitful discussions to arrive at the right system for Canadians.

It is through working together that we will achieve real success, which is creating an appeal system that will be more efficient, fairer, more transparent, and more responsive to the needs of Canadians.

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, that is a question between the Prime Minister and the officer of Parliament. The member opposite is free to pursue that. The reality is that the process we have is we cannot pretend there is a problem and then demand an inquiry about this pretend problem, and then demand that there be recommendations about the pretend problem that they perceive as being possibly in existence.

We know that there was a statement of facts in that report and that the officer of Parliament, who has the ability to provide recommendations or course corrections, commented on what would be a more appropriate way of handling the situation in the future. The Prime Minister has availed himself of that report, has committed to following every single word of that report, whether it is stated as a capital “R” recommendation, or whether it is implied through the referencing inside the report. Every single word of that report has been read and is being followed by the Prime Minister. That is ethical leadership. That is being responsible to the offices of Parliament. That is respecting the House. It is the party opposite that is having trouble dealing with the report. Members think it did not go far enough. That is their problem, and it is partisan issue. It is not a point of principle.

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the ethical standards that we are being held to are the standards of the House. We have been held accountable, and we accept the ruling of the officer of Parliament. The previous government refused to do that. Whenever the courts or some other body ruled against it, the Prime Minister threw a little hissy fit, denounced the individuals in question, and ripped up everything from the rule of law to the Constitution. That is why Conservatives ended up in jail in the last term of Parliament; they had contempt for the democratic traditions of this country.

The member opposite said that better is always possible. Of course it is. The House is made up of individuals from cross this country. We are humans, and humans make mistakes. When they make mistakes, they are held to account. This government has accepted the findings of the officer of Parliament. It has acted on every single suggestion, recommendation, and response contained in that report, and has fulfilled its obligations to the House and the country. That is leadership, and that is being held to a higher standard. That is a marked difference from the party opposite that thinks common sense, when I come from Ontario—

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, for a political party whose central belief seems to be that we do not like government, a whole bunch of them seem to like being in government. What is apparent is how much disrespect they have for the parliamentary process, parliamentary traditions, the law and the rule of Canada. Not a single Liberal has ever been led from their parliamentary seat in handcuffs, which certainly happened in the last term of Parliament, yet we get lectured on ethics.

Conservatives deliberately told Canadians where to vote, knowing that they could not vote where they were being directed to. That is the respect they have for Canadians. That is the same respect they have for the Supreme Court, the offices of Parliament, and for public servants. When they talk about the democratic values of the Conservative Party, it is that image that I have of a parliamentarian being led away in handcuffs, that memory of redirecting Canadians to polling stations that did not exist to deliberately thwart the democratic will of the people. That is the most scandalous thing I have ever seen in this Parliament, yet they sit there as if they have some sort of ethical high ground to stand on and lecture us from.

I repeat. This motion is so pointless, so useless, so without merit, that the party opposite that introduced it wants us to stop talking about it. Members should get that through their heads. The party that introduced this motion does not want to participate in the debate and would ask us to stop talking about it because it is pain for them. They should be careful of what they ask for.

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to my colleagues on all sides of the House who continually stand up to participate in this debate, and quite clearly they have not exhausted their opinions on this.

The member opposite wants to know how I am going to vote on this. I will be voting against it. This issue has already been dealt with by Parliament. I want to explain why I am voting against it. It is effectively redundant. We have a process. The process has been followed. The process has been responded to respectfully by the Prime Minister. That is the process.

If the members opposite would like to have a whole new debate about government processes they did not bring in while they were in power, they are welcome to that conversation. However, having been asked to talk about this motion, and I have done nothing but talk about this motion, I will tell the member that I do not support it. It is redundant. It is pathetic. It is unnecessary. It is a waste of time. It is not the priority of Canadians.

I will vote on this motion and I will vote against it. However, I will also take this opportunity to express in the clearest terms how ridiculous the tactic of the Conservative Party is. The Conservatives introduced a motion they do not want us to debate. I hope Canadians are watching.

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, once I have finished my speech, I will be waiting to vote, like every other member of Parliament.

I also know that if we moved closure on this debate, we would have a hue and cry from the members on the opposite side for upending the parliamentary process and not giving them the full right to speak.

The member opposite suggests that the Conservatives would like to speak to this motion, yet several times the Speaker has risen, looked down the bench, and not a single Tory has risen to his or her feet to talk about it, except when it offers a chance to raise a point of order or ask a question. We are not filibustering; we are simply responding to the request by the Speaker to speak to an issue which those members presented. If they do not like the fact that we are responding to the motion they moved, maybe they should not have moved it to begin with.

If they would like to get to the voting on this issue, then they can sit there patiently and stop interrupting with more questions. The more of us on this side—

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I will not reference the fact that members opposite are reading the newspaper and not participating in the debate. I understand that to be unparliamentary. I withdraw those comments.

The issue is quite clear. Parliament has very few sitting days, and those sitting days are all precious and the priorities of our constituents matter deeply to each one of us. I know that to be true. I feel sorry for the members opposite who cannot bring their issues forward because their House leadership is more interested in playing stub-their-toe politics than in putting good, strong policies in front of this House and good, strong ideas in front of Parliament, so that all of us can debate and consider the needs of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

The problem with this House sometimes is that it gets engaged in these games, these 20 hours of voting and histrionics around one scandal or another. As I said, if they want to go back and prosecute them all from Confederation, they can knock themselves out. We have a country to build. We have people to help. We have a government to run and a Parliament to be responsible to. I find it shocking that members of the party opposite think that this game does anything other than undermine their credibility. It has completely undermined their credibility. When the House leader stands up and says, “Here is a motion that requires debate; please do not talk about”, and sits down and thinks that is being clever, I can assure members that Canadians will assess it in a very different way.

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, let me be perfectly clear. The priorities of this government were reflected in the Order Paper today. What we want to talk about is the budget. What I would like to talk about, as the parliamentary secretary in particular responsible for housing, is that the $40-billion national housing strategy, which was proudly put in last year's budget, has been added to in this year's budget. From now on, when the hon. members want to refer to the longest and most impressive investment in housing in the history of the country, it is no longer an investment of $40 billion over the next 10 years, it is $42 billion over the next 10 years. That is important because I have heard from constituents in virtually every city I have been to from coast to coast to coast over the last three years as a member of this House that housing is of fundamental importance to Canadians.

Whether it is the lack of ability to repair housing on the east coast, the affordability on the west coast, the challenges of homelessness in the centre of this country, or the high cost of housing in the north and in the territories, these issues are the real priorities Canadians want to have addressed. The budget addresses those issues, and if we could have a thorough debate on that, Canadians might tune in to this place. Instead, they have to watch the games that are played opposite.

As I said, the party opposite introduced this motion. The party opposite is begging us to stop talking about it. The party opposite does not want to talk about the budget. I can guarantee that if we were talking about the budget, the same silence we are hearing on this motion would be heard across the way because it is pretty clear that the party opposite really is not engaged in the budgetary process. The party opposite really is not engaged in making lives better for Canadians. The party opposite is engaged in playing politics for the sake of politics, and that kind of governance in this place is irresponsible.

I reference back again to opposition members in the third party who stand time and time again and offer constructive criticism to us. It is tough sometimes. It makes us stop and reflect on the policy positions we have taken. On indigenous affairs in particular, great leadership has been shown and partisanship has been set aside to put the interests of Canadians and indigenous people first.

The official opposition's voice is silent in those conversations because its members do not see a political wedge that they can play. They do not see a way of getting back to previous scandals that they think are fascinating but nonetheless resolved. What they are fundamentally involved in is politics for the sake of politics, government and acquisition of power for the sake of government and acquisition of power. They are not interested in Canadians. That is why they lost the last election. They drifted away from the core responsibility of a parliamentarian, which is not to use this place for political advantage but to use it to make Canadians' lives better. The absolute best test of that is the motion the Conservatives moved today. This motion is the most important thing they can think of to discuss. It has already been received by Parliament. It has already been responded to by the Prime Minister. It has already been adjudicated by the conflict of interest system. It has all been addressed. There is not a single recommendation in this report that has not been adhered to.

The problem on the opposite side is that those members have nothing else to talk about but the Prime Minister. I understand. It bugs them. It bugs them that they lost to a great Prime Minister, and that their prime minister was sent packing so fast that he left this House as soon as he was elected.

This is change. We are now focused on working with opposition members who want to constructively engage with us and make legislation better. We want to hear from Canadians and talk to Canadians about their priorities and make sure they are reflected in the budget. As for holding up newspapers and hiding behind the papers and the shame and the embarrassment, I can clearly see the member does not want to be embarrassed and blush—

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it reminds me of a very similar event, and it is becoming a pattern with the party opposite, when a reference was made to a confidential briefing to the media that they thought meant classified when they knew it was not for attribution. The members opposite have journalists in their ranks. They know what not for attribution means. It does not mean classified information was handed across to journalists. Of course that did not happen. However, they deliberately choose to misunderstand public, social, and professional conventions and torque them so they can have some sort of fantastical debate about something that has already been resolved.

This is instead of talking to the priorities of Canadians, priorities such as to which part of the country that next group of jobs is going to come; which industry is going to be supported by what government policy; vulnerable Canadians; people with disabilities who face challenges getting housing; people who are homeless who have trouble accessing emergency shelters; and senior citizens who cannot afford their prescription drugs. All these people have priorities that are not spoken to when the Conservative Party refuses to discuss the budget. Instead, the Conservatives come back with a whole series of fantastical arguments about issues that have already been resolved and decide to try to reintroduce the debate because for some reason that policy interests them more than any other policy or any other behaviour of any other Canadian in the country.

It is a sham. We can tell it is a sham because the Conservatives are not participating, except to stand on fanciful points of order and poke fingers at the other side. Big deal. If that is what they ran on to get to Parliament, if that was their ticket, vote for them and they will interrupt parliamentary procedure, if that was what their campaign platform was, they have fulfilled their promise, but let me tell them that is not much of a campaign platform for re-election. Parties that do that are listened to in a different way than parties that try to govern and contribute.

As I said, motions from the NDP have made a difference with government policy because they are mature, constructive criticism, and are engaged with investigation and research. The party opposite is just playing procedural politics. That is all it is doing. It is the same thing with the all-night vote. We might as well go back to the Pacific scandal and re-prosecute John A. Macdonald for all it is worth. The party opposite is focused on the past. It is focused on rehashing past scandals. Members of that party really do not care about individuals, their families, their communities, their provinces, or the country, because if they did, their motions would reflect that.

[Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Report, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue.

These motions set priorities, and they clearly identify the priorities of the party opposite. The member opposite just rose, and it shows the ridiculous position being asserted by the opposition. The party opposite says it wants to have a debate about this, but no member on their side, beyond introducing this motion, will stand to talk about it. If the opposition members had something to add to this debate, they would stand up, not on points of order but as participants in the debate. However, they are afraid to, because they know that what they are doing is ridiculous. What the opposition members are doing is sitting on their hands and asking us to stop talking. They say that the best way to prosecute this argument is not to talk about it. That is the fallacy in what is being presented here.

I will speak specifically to the issue that has been raised in the motion. The opposition members want us to effectively rewrite the entire process that they availed themselves of: to submit a complaint to an officer of Parliament, to get a finding from the officer of Parliament, and to condition the behaviour of a member of this House based on the finding of that officer of Parliament. Once the whole thing plays out, they suddenly say it is not good enough. They may have been in power for 10 years and never touched or changes these rules, but they are saying it is not good enough.

There is no capacity we could fulfill that would ever be good enough for the opposition. Their job is not to agree with us. Their job is to disagree with us. That is fine. We can live with that. That is part of the parliamentary system.

However, the reality is that the officer of Parliament charged with investigating and delivering findings to this House has reported, and the person being investigated has responded and completely subjected himself to the findings of that report. The member opposite knows this full well. The opposition cannot even stand up and tell us a recommendation of the report that was not followed by the Prime Minister, because the truth of the matter is that the Prime Minister accepted those findings, and the case was closed. That is the end of it.

However, the party opposite wants to continually rehash and play Groundhog Day all over again. I do not blame it. It has no perspective, no priorities, and no other pressing issues in this country. All the opposition wants to do is play this record over and over again. The reality is that Canadians are listening to a completely different radio station right now. What they are listening to, what they are watching, and what they are focused on is how to build a stronger country and how to make sure that the vulnerable citizens in this country get the support they need, and those with ingenuity and imagination succeed. That is what the budget is all about.

The opposition members claim they want to talk about the budget, but the reality is that they could have done that today with one of their motions. If their priority really was helping those with ingenuity succeed or helping support those who are vulnerable, that is what their motion would have spoken to. The fact that it speaks to a finding of this Parliament that has already been tabled and debated is, as I said, beyond my capacity to understand.

I will continue to debate whether the motion in front of us is appropriate and whether it does anything to change the circumstances we are confronted with, which it does not. It does not one bit. If it did, one Conservative member would stand up and take his or her place in this debate. One member of that party would stand up and participate, without raising a point of order, by simply putting his or her name on the list of speakers.

The mere fact that the opposition House leader came in—