Adam Vaughan

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, if the member thinks that drinking water and the crisis around clean water has been solved, he is out of his mind. I invite him to go to the northern communities that have had 5, 10, and 20-year boil water alerts that were not addressed in the last 10 years. If he drinks a glass of water, we will see how well he does in answering questions of his colleagues in the House.

On the issue of critical infrastructure, the mayors in the major cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Mississauga, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City have said that not a penny of federal infrastructure has come from the building Canada fund for two years.

If we ask folks in Calgary and Edmonton what that infrastructure money would be doing right now, it would be putting unemployed workers back on the job. Instead we had a previous government that walked away from that province. That is one of the reasons their unemployment challenge is so hard to solve right now.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the social and cultural infrastructures this government is investing in, including the universities. It is not good enough just to build housing and transit; we need to build complete neighbourhoods. This infrastructure program does just that.

The spending categories for infrastructure, the social, green and transit, also include something else that is critically important. Much of our housing infrastructure stock is aging. Many of the federal programs built in the 1950s and 1960s were built at a time when energy efficiency and high-quality construction was not a priority in the federal government programs of the day. This budget puts $500 million into the revitalization and the retrofitting of those housing units, which not only become more expensive to operate, but also generate a significant amount of greenhouse gas. We can both repair, restore, and also address some of the climate change needs with the infrastructure spending targeted at low-income Canadians living in aging housing stock. This is the smartest infrastructure program related to housing that is in this budget.

We have also committed and lived up to our promise to sustain the subsidies that keep people in affordable housing. Whether it is seniors in Alberta, or single mothers in Toronto or aboriginal and first nations people living in the Maritimes, those subsidies under section 95 will be restored for two years, while we sit down with the provinces and our housing providers and renegotiate a new housing dynamic for the country that goes well beyond the life of any one government into the future so we have a program of which we can all be proud.

The other thing that is part of this budget and this government's action, which underpins all of that is the need for better data on how, where and why Canadians are choosing to live where they live, is the long form census.

I was part of the city council that had to take the previous government to court to get it to admit that it had deliberately under-measured and under-counted people living in high-rise buildings. It said that it could not get into the building. The reason it was unable to get in was because it was not committed to the census and what the census would give cities and communities as they did long-range planning.

Restoring the long form census, doing a proper census, and getting real data and evidence into the hands of cities allows us to spend the money that is now on the table more effectively to produce better results for Canadians, not just economically but socially. That is part of the approach this government has. It is not just about putting resources on the table. It is getting smarter about how we spend them so we spend them into the economy quickly and fairly, meaning equitably, and at the same time in a flexible manner that realizes and understands that smaller provinces no longer have the capacity necessary to participate in the infrastructure programs constructed as they were three decades ago.

The smaller municipalities do not have the opportunity to get public-private partnerships put together because they are asset-based and the size of the project is not big enough to attract the interests of the private sector partners. We have changed those dynamics because we have listened to cities. Most important, we have listened to people living in those cities.

The transformation that this promises for a majority of Canadians is profound. However, at the same time we have not walked away from other parts of the country that do not define themselves as a “large urban centre”. The broadband investment is about economic development and access to the Internet and the larger world for smaller and more remote communities. It is a critical piece of infrastructure investment that once again will not only build and strengthen remote and smaller communities, but will deliver capacity economically to those places so they too can thrive, grow and become strong metropolises.

Additionally, and this is the most important part of the budget, we have stepped up on aboriginal affairs with $8.4 billion in funding. We have declared that the clean water crisis will come to an end, that equity in education and health care outcomes and investments will be there, that education and distance learning will be invested in and made stronger. We have declared and supported the call for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.

I remember sitting here during budget day, looking up into the gallery and seeing the pride, the confidence, and the trust on the face of the chief of the Assembly of First Nations. I remember the particular applause that budget received. We should all be very proud of this. It is one more reason to support this budget.

This budget turns a page on 10 lost years. It projects equity, opportunity, and economic growth into the future for 10 years and beyond, and provides an ability to build a country we can truly be proud of and is truly one that takes care of Canadians no matter where they live, how they live, or why they choose to live the way they do.

It is a critically important time in the history of our country on the aboriginal component alone. However, for cities and municipalities, there has never been a budget that has spoken more directly, more respectfully, and more profoundly to their needs. As someone who comes out of that sector politically, when I talk to mayors across the country, they know that on October 19 the right decision was made. However, more important, they know this budget is the right thing to support as we move forward.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to speak to this bill today and, in particular, to follow my colleague, the member for Humber River—Black Creek, who laid the groundwork for a new urban agenda in Ottawa, after all those years, before the lost 10 years of the last decade, where as a city councillor, support for cities disappeared.

The reason I chose to run federally, to leave city council and join Parliament, was for one reason, and one reason only. Beyond the need for a stronger urban agenda, we needed a new national housing program. This budget is the first time in 25 years, the first time in my political life, I have seen a federal government step back in with the strength, the commitment, and the diversity of programs for housing that our country so badly needs, as we watch thousands of people who night after night go homeless.

Compared with the last budget which had $2.7 billion over 10 years, this year's budget provides for $2.3 billion over two. This includes doubling the money flowing to provinces to a total of $500 million to build, subsidize, and repair public housing. It includes $200 million for senior housing. It includes, importantly, $90 million for people escaping family violence. Taken together, this is the most substantive and the most important investment in affordable and public housing we have seen in a generation. It is this budget that delivers it, and it is the most important reason to support the budget.

Cities have also been spoken to. We have moved away from the one-third funding formulas that defined infrastructure programming over the last 20 years. We have moved to a fair system, a flexible system, a system that gets money into the hands of city councils fast.

The fifty-fifty split defines a new relationship that we have established between the federal government and our municipalities, large and small, rural, highly urbanized, in the south, the north, and coast to coast to coast. This is the most important dynamic in our new relationship. We now recognize that cities are where the majority of Canadians live. If we are to improve the lives of the majority of Canadians, we have to invest heavily in the equity, the stability, and the capacity of cities, not only to provide shelter and services to Canadians, but also to generate economic growth.

One of the other critical steps that has been taken in this budget, which has not been present in the last 25 years, is we now recognize that aging infrastructure, not just new infrastructure, needs support. State of good repair and the recapitalizing of urban infrastructure is a fundamental part of the new infrastructure program. Cities have been crying for this for decades. Finally, we have a party and a government in Ottawa that is prepared to listen.

I sat by as a city councillor and watched the province of Prince Edward Island, in particular, see more money spent on billboards about infrastructure than on the actual infrastructure that was advertised on those billboards.

The previous government was very good at putting up the billboards, very good at cutting ribbons for projects that did not exist, but when it came time to cut the cheque, it was missing in action. While it put up the billboards, spending actually went down. That is unacceptable.

Major cities in this country, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, St. John's, received zero dollars in the new building Canada fund over the last two years, while citizens in those cities cried out for support. If members talk to the mayors in those very cities, they will find out that is exactly what happened.

The other thing I am proud of is the fact that infrastructure programming goes beyond just transit and housing. It reaches into arts and the social infrastructure which builds stronger neighbourhoods—

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as someone who represents a riding that I think has more bookstores than any other riding in the country, I cannot tell the House how refreshing it is to hear a Conservative actually talk about literature and books.

For ten long years, the cuts to the Canada Council, the cuts to the programs that supported authors and the publishing industry, the damage done by the copyright reforms to publishing and the authors in this country was astonishing, a shameful record on literature.

However, if the member opposite is actually interested in reading more books, I would like to suggest a few titles for him: Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of ...Conservatism, Dismantling Canada: ...New Conservative Agenda, and my favourite one that I could really recommend, The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.

Would the member opposite like to reflect on the fact that the budgets that his party produced prior to the recession, during the recession, after the recession, and, even now, have landed us in more debt than any other government in modern Canadian history? Why do the Conservatives think they have any right to lecture anyone on fiscal management when they put $160 billion of debt on the backs of their children?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's analysis of his interpretation of what an omnibus bill is. I have to say there is actually no formal definition in either the rules of the House or in terms of legal definitions of what constitutes an omnibus bill.

However, when one reads his and other assessments of what constitutes an omnibus bill, it requires that the omnibus bill not only group together legislation, which any budget implementation bill does, but it groups together legislation that is not related to the budget.

The very clauses that the member raised concern with as being complex and many—and I appreciate that even though it is not 643 pages, it is only 180-odd pages, a much smaller version of a complex bill than we have seen presented in previous budgets and certainly in the last one I was in the House for—every item the member identified is actually a budget item. In other words, they are of a family of changes to existing bills and legislation that are related not only to each other but are directly related to the budget.

I appreciate that the movement on restoring and growing benefits for veterans is a previous piece of legislation which has been sped up through this process so we can get help to veterans as quickly as possible. I appreciate his concerns on that, even though he seems to support it, that we have included it in the budget, I think is appropriate.

Additionally, the idea that EI reform and expanding EI reform is part of the budget, is part of the legislative agenda, and we are bringing it through at the same time.

A very famous New Democrat by the name of Jack Layton once said at Toronto City Council that when they argue with process, they have conceded defeat on the principle.

I am wondering if the member opposite would like to reflect on the fact that they actually support these measures in the budget, and that what they are complaining about is that they cannot support them individually often enough.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am tempted to quote one of my favourite movies and say, “You have to have a little faith”.

The committee that laid the groundwork for this legislation, the bill that is in front of us, explored a lot of issues; and at the end of the day, the justice minister presented a bill, which in the opinion of the government, gets the issue fundamentally right as it relates to the Supreme Court. It takes away some of the other issues, says that this is core of what we need to do, and leaves it to Parliament to improve upon it. We need to seize that, as parliamentarians, as an opportunity to show how Parliament can work collaboratively around, in particular, difficult issues.

The challenge we have is to find ways to address some of the ideas we want pursued, not just through this specific piece of legislation. Advance consent is an issue for me, or the different names that it is given, like advance care directives. It is a fundamental part of what is missing in this bill, and I want to see that really seized upon by the committee. The palliative care component, the duty of care to people with vulnerabilities, all of those issues are other issues we need to bring to the House, and we need to bring the same level of creativity and compassion to those issues.

We get locked into this notion that governments must present perfect legislation or, otherwise, it is thumbs up or thumbs down. Parliament is not supposed to work that way. We come here representing parties and our constituents, and we have to bring all of that to bear on legislation each and every day, not just simply vote party colours all the time. That is part of the freedom we need to explore in Parliament and one that our leader has put on the table and is trying pursue, and we need members' support to make it happen.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I was in the House last session when Liberals were in opposition and we moved a motion to speed this debate up to give us that time, and it was defeated. I do not think it is our privilege now, having already gone to the Supreme Court and asked for an extension, to prolong other people's suffering. We have a responsibility to act.

This issue has been in front of us for a lot longer than the bill has been in front of us; the committee spent time on it and did extraordinary work exploring this issue and laying the groundwork for the legislation; and there was work done in the previous Parliament, although not nearly fast enough.

The issue is that we have to accept, as parliamentarians, that we do not produce perfect legislation. We never will. We are just people giving it our best effort. On this bill, where a free vote has been offered to all parliamentarians on this side of the House, and I assume on the other side, we are in the position of trying to make this work. The deadline we have been given by the Supreme Court is the right decision.

It is time to act. It is time to end the suffering for some and provide clarity for others, so I do not think the responsible thing to do is to ask for a delay. We must make a decision, and then we must revisit this issue when problems arise again, because, as surely as we stand here today, they will.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank members for pursuing this issue not just from some excellent legal scholarship, and we heard that tonight with presentations from my colleagues, but also talking about the impact their lives have had on how they assess the legislation before us.

I too will reflect on my time on this planet, dealing with the challenges of watching a loved one pass away. In this case it was my mother. It was 20 years ago this past January. After a very determined 15-year battle with cancer, she succumbed. Part of the process involved palliative care at the end, which was excellent. However, it was too much for her at one point and she called her three children around, my two sisters and myself. She said, “Kids, I've had enough.” She pulled her oxygen mask off and said, “Don't revive me. I love you. Goodbye.”

We had been dealing with three or four months, it is almost impossible to measure the time, of watching my mother struggle on to make sure that all the kids were there to say goodbye, and saying goodbye to loved friends and family. Clearly, after 15 years, she had had enough.

We sat there by the bedside and watched as life started to leave my mother's body. For myself, who had been in the city and was taking care of her at the end, most persistently on a daily basis, it was too much for me. I could not take it anymore. I left the hospital room knowing that I had said my goodbyes and this was the end. When I came in the next morning, there was my mother sitting up in bed saying, “Well, that didn't work.” Palliative care continued for weeks afterward. It was a palliative care that got more fragile, more painful, and a greater hardship for her and for us to deal with, but in the end she passed away.

She had a do not revive order. As we talk about this issue, we have found ways in the country before to assist people in making decisions, even when they are not in a place to make those decisions.

That is what we are struggling with today. How do we find a more proactive and more informed way of doing this when different dimensions and different diagnostic tools come into play, and different eventualities are being considered?

What we are trying to figure out here is how to extend the do not resuscitate orders into a new sphere of medical assistance. That is the essence of what we are trying to do. It strays into other areas. I have heard it in these debates that the legislation is fine but it does not do X or it does not do Y, which are really topics for other pieces of legislation. We are not focusing on what we are trying to get done right here.

The bill responds to the Supreme Court, as we are compelled to do constitutionally. I do not resent it. It is an extraordinary responsibility to respond to the Supreme Court when it assesses our laws to be lacking or the needs of our population not being met. What we are trying to do is to get a perfect letter through a defined letter box and making sure it clears that letter box.

People in our country are suffering and families are suffering as we debate this. I appreciate the sentiment from many people in the debate to try to get the legislation perfect. It deserves to be perfect. We all strive to make it perfect. However, we cannot let perfection get in the way of what is needed and what is good. There is goodness in the bill, because it does limit people's suffering. Have we done enough on palliative care? Of course not. Have we done enough on the quality of life? Of course not. Have we done enough on medical research? Of course not.

Death is still a very difficult subject for far too many of us. However, Bill C-14 responds to the court's challenge in a very particular way, and the committee will try to make it better. I trust it will come back to the House with a better bill. I hope we can get the bill to committee as soon as possible so it has the space to work on that perfection, rather than us pursuing our task of trying to perfect the criticism of the bill. We need to get the bill to committee so it can be studied, some of the language refined, some of the opportunities better understood, and some of the restrictions better defined. We need to get it to committee quickly.

However, we have to resist being afraid of this bill because it would start to do things that we have not contemplated, such as the slippery-slope comments we had, where we are worried about what happens with person X and person Y in five and ten years' time if these conditions change. We have to look at the legislation that is in front of us, we have to deliver it to committee with criticisms attached, and then we have to trust ourselves as colleagues, as parliamentarians engaged in this issue, to try to and hope to deliver a better bill for the next reading and then on to the Senate for its work and for its resolution.

Let us not kid ourselves. There will be no bill passed in this Parliament that will not be challenged at some future date at the Supreme Court. There will be no new thinking or new idea or new circumstance that does not demand of us to revisit this bill in one, two, three, five, or ten years from now. We have lived on this planet for thousands of years and never perfected the art of dying. It is a tough issue. It is a hard issue. If we lose sight of the fact that our inability to come to terms with that promotes and prolongs the suffering of individuals, we will have truly failed as parliamentarians. We are being asked to make a tough call. This legislation would define what we think is a good judgment and would define what we think is a good approach to this.

I can hear good ideas emerging. However, the debate being called for by many quarters about improving palliative care did not need this bill for that call to be made. We should have been perfecting palliative care years ago. The call to ensure that vulnerable people are better protected and their quality of life is better protected did not need this bill for that debate to happen. Vulnerable people should have been spoken to and their needs addressed long before this bill was ever presented.

However, to use those as roadblocks to end suffering is unconscionable in my perspective, and we have to respond to the deadline that has been imposed upon us by a court that has already been asked to extend that deadline once and already has referenced the suffering as a reason not to extend it again. We have a duty, and we have a duty tonight and over the next few days to get this bill to committee as quickly as possible, and then to listen to what we have said to one another in these last few hours. I do not think anybody has presented a concern that is not of value and does not inform our ability to talk about this bill in more pronounced ways and more reflective ways, and that is good.

Let us amend. Let us lean into the parliamentary committees that we have here. Let us trust one another to fix good ideas and make them better ideas. That is what the committee process is supposed to be about, and that is something that I trust will happen. Let us measure the impact of this debate through that process and ensure that our voices and the voices of our constituents are heard in this debate and also heard in the legislation as it moves forward. At the end of the day, let us be honest with ourselves. We will be revisiting this issue the minute it gets royal assent. We will revisit it because life brings us these challenges as surely as it brings us death. We have to be, on these sorts of issues, smart enough to trust one another, compassionate enough to learn from one another, and at the end of the day, disciplined enough to ensure that this Parliament works for those who are suffering, those who are vulnerable, and those who want to live out their last few days with dignity.

My mum taught me a lot about life by the way she died, and I am sure it is a story that all of us have learned from loved ones as we have watched them move through very difficult times. However, I also remember my mum saying, as she was sitting there, that she loved us and it was not just her suffering she was trying to manage, it was ours. Therefore, it is not just our difficult decision we are trying to manage here today; it is the country's difficult decision.

I trust all members to take that seriously, but I also trust them to support us as we pursue palliative-care improvement, as we pursue the opportunity to improve the lives of vulnerable people in this country, and as we seek to deliver choice to people about how they move forward, with support when they make mistakes but understanding when they get it right.

I hope we can get it right with this legislation. I hope the committee gets it right, and I hope the next debate about this finds even more consensus.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the presentation and appreciate that these issues bring back memories and experiences that are extraordinarily personal, and I do not mean to move into those areas unduly, so I hope the member can forgive the question.

In situations where, quite clearly, individuals are exerting an individual right and an individual choice, I wonder if the member could reflect upon what right we have to impose bureaucracy, layers of decision-making, additional voices, and additional concerns into people's lives when they are trying to make a choice for themselves about the most personal decision they may ever have to make.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, putting aside the fact that we are under a deadline because of inaction by the previous Parliament and that an extension has already been sought at the Supreme Court, the issue that concerns me is this notion that people with psychiatric conditions, post-traumatic stress disorder, I think, was the issue raised, would be able to avail themselves far too easily of physician-assisted dying.

Does the member not reflect upon the provisions around requiring attending doctors or medical personnel to assess the psychiatric condition of the individual seeking this? Are those not the safeguards that would prevent an unfortunate circumstance from being pursued based on psychiatric conditions which were present when the request was made?

Are those safeguards not significant enough to prevent a mistake from being made and could they not be strengthened with further conversation in committee?