Adam Vaughan

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, June 15th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest as my colleague from Toronto spoke about some of the priorities. One of the issues I did not hear him discuss was infrastructure and housing, but more importantly, transit. I know the party he represents has made a huge commitment to fund transit, and I note that he did not raise the issue. I have two questions for him.

First, the NDP government at Queen's Park in the early 1990s was the first provincial government to cut subsidies for operating agreements with the Toronto Transit Commission. Is the transit money your party is putting on the table for operating, and will it restore those NDP cuts that devastated the TTC in the early 1990s?

The second question is whether your party supports the Scarborough subway.

[Points of Order, June 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, if something slipped out of my mouth that offended the hon. member, I will not contest it. If members were offended, I of course apologize. The colleague next to me had the question. I was just astounded that the Tea Party is not good enough; the Magna Carta is now a Conservative document.

[Infrastructure, June 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, if Canadians want to build the country, there is a party on this side prepared to do it. If all they want are talking points, those are talking points.

Across Canada, cities and towns are scrambling, holding emergency meetings, and trying to fill out very complicated and convoluted application forms for the Canada 150 fund. There is different criteria for different cities. There are different provinces dealing with different applications forms. The government has spent more time composing its talking notes and creating billboards than it has actually creating an infrastructure program that works for towns and cities.

Why does the government not sit down with the FCM and municipalities, and come up with real money for transit, housing and infrastructure, instead of these gimmicky plans and silly programs?

[Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, June 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member talk about the needs of victims to be addressed in a proactive manner: to craft legislation and government action to try and prevent victimization, as opposed to simply respond to victimization; and rather than simply respond to a problem, actually anticipate the problem and put in place the measures needed to protect people ahead of them being harmed, as opposed to simply tracking the perpetrators afterwards.

If that is the value system and the approach to solving legal challenges and moral dilemmas in this country, why on God's earth are the cases of 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women being responded to with a data bank for DNA instead of housing; investments in education; and investments in aboriginal, first nations, Métis and Inuit communities?

Why, if proactive action is the order of the day, is the Conservative government so silent on the 1,200 Canadian women who are missing, and it is unacceptably tolerated by this House?

[Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, June 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to my colleague's speech. I am struggling to find in this bill something that is not already illegal. It is almost like we are making it illegal twice because we hate it so much. In doing so, we are ignoring what I think is the real cruelty in the government's current legislation with respect to marriage, in particular marriage that spans the globe, which is that families have had their separation extended from 11 months to 29 months almost arbitrarily.

I was in a restaurant on Queen Street, in my riding, when a young chef came out from the back of the fast-food restaurant and said, “What happened? My spouse was told that she would have to wait 11 months to come to this country. I just checked the website, and it is 29 months.”

I am not very familiar with the cultural customs on the Barbary Coast from 1,500 years ago, but it seems to me like a cruel practice to make young people suffer like that, yet that is legal in this country. Yet all the steps in this bill simply make what is illegal already illegal twice. It is like the Conservatives like it so much they thought that doing it twice would make it even more of a vice.

[Infrastructure, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, those are encouraging words, but just short of a yes. I will take it as a good sign that the government is prepared to engage with the city council of the city of Toronto and the mayor, and deliver on a clean green waterfront. It will also, when it does that, ensure that we do not upset the balance that is also protected by the tripartite agreement and protect the tripartite agreement, which balances the commercial, residential and environmental needs of the city of Toronto.

The other issue is the takedown of the Gardiner. I hope, as we debate this issue, that the will of the people prevails along the waterfront and that a clean green waterfront, a waterfront for all and not just for some, is pursued.

If we cannot get a yes on this tonight, the question to follow is this. Will the government of the day commit to sustaining the vision that Waterfront Toronto has for this stretch of the lake? Will the government support and renew the mandate for Waterfront Toronto and continue that fine agency's good work on behalf of the citizens of Toronto, who are after all hoping not just for dollars but for political support as well?

[Infrastructure, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is never too late to rise in the House and defend the great city of Toronto, particularly the waterfront. The waterfront, as we know, is one of the great Liberal legacies to the city of Toronto. The gift of Harbourfront Centre by Pierre Trudeau in the mid-seventies started the rejuvenation of Toronto's waterfront. It laid the groundwork for not just an industrial port, but a recreational place to live and a place to work. The transformation of that waterfront was continued when Jean Chrétien gathered with the premier of the day and the mayor of the day in Toronto and started Waterfront Toronto, a $1 billion-plus investment that has now led to the Queen's Quay being reopened.

I rose in the House about a month and a half ago to discuss this, because the next phase of Waterfront Toronto funding is required. The next phase will transform this great city's waterfront into an even better place to live, to work, to play. Unfortunately, the federal government chose to neglect the waterfront in the last federal budget.

There has been a stated request from all three orders of government to continue this project, but the funding is required and it is time for the federal government to lead.

Therefore, the question I have tonight for the federal government is very simple. The Unilever site is a site almost as big as Canary Wharf in London, millions of square feet of new commercial and residential space, new parks, new retail. There is the opportunity for two new transit lines to be built with the revenue that would come from redeveloping this site.

However, to do it, the flood plain, the naturalized mouth of the Don River has to be invested in. It is about a $1 billion project. All three levels of government have been talking about putting about $325 million each into this project. If they do this, it not only kicks starts and opens up the lower Don to redevelopment and naturalization, and a beautiful opportunity to clean our water and also deliver a clean, green waterfront to the citizens of Toronto, but it also opens up the southern Portlands for the next phase, the third and final phase of the waterfront revitalization.

The question is a very simple one for the federal government and a very important one to the city of Toronto. Is the government, despite the fact it failed to do it in the budget, prepared to put the $325 million being requested by the other two levels of government into this project, into the city to trigger this next stage of waterfront development, or will it withhold that money or play games with that money and try to force the province into spending its transit money all in one site in downtown Toronto and stop waterfront development, turn its back on this great project and actually put the city in harm's way?

What we know about floods in major cities, and we saw it Calgary, is that if we do not do the flood protection, if we do not do the investment in naturalizing waterways and managing the runoff, we have huge challenges that come to the city. They cost billions of dollars later if we do not put the hundreds of millions of dollars in right now. We learned that lesson in Calgary. I hope we will learn it in Toronto. In the last six years, Toronto has had six storms of the century, and we cannot afford to lose the downtown core to a flood. We certainly cannot afford to lose this opportunity.

Will the government commit tonight to putting in the $325 million into Waterfront Toronto, to partner with the province to match those funds and have the city contribute its share as well? Is the federal government prepared to say yes tonight and talk about specifically this one particular project, flood proofing the lower Don, nothing else, just the Don. Is it prepared to do it, yes or no? We can go home early.

[Infrastructure, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, he can twist it all he wants, the transit funds he promised will not come for years and when they do come, what we found out this weekend is that they are only coming for a few choice cities. At the FCM meeting, the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification said the funds are for big cities only. That was not in the budget.

Then the Minister of Finance said it is only for a few major projects, not for every city in the country. It is always the small print with the government. Conservatives are always playing one side off against another, one city off against another. Why will the Minister of Finance not invest in cities now, treat all cities fairly and come clean on the budget?

[Infrastructure, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Edmonton this weekend, cities and towns across Canada were treated to a new version of the old classic Oliver Twist. On transit, urban leaders are pleading with the government, “please, please, just a little more”. Instead what they got from the stage was a spin on the old classic, what they got was Oliver twisted.

The Minister of Finance barked to municipal leaders. He said, “Get real. Get real, cities. You can expect less from this government”. Cities and towns are clear, they need infrastructure dollars and they need them now and they want them now. Instead, the government has orphaned Canadian municipalities. When does the transit money come and why does it not come now? When are they going to give us more?

[Digital Privacy Act, June 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thought the member could hear from my comments that it is never an either-or total proposition. There are changes that are constantly required to protect public safety, just as there are changes constantly required to protect the public's charter rights. We rely and depend heavily on our courts to protect those charter rights.

In the situation of the legislation that was referred to, sometimes there are elements in an omnibus bill that one supports and other parts one fights to change. One continues to work toward the change.

I will give an example. Civilian oversight to me is a fundamental principle. I know there is a private member's bill before the House that advocates for civilian oversight of security forces. What we could not achieve through committee we are going to continue to fight for in the House, and we will continue to fight after the next election as well.

Yes, there are ways of framing an issue as being perfectly black or perfectly white, perfectly this or perfectly that, but when it comes to public safety, public charter rights, and the way in which we guard our civil liberties, it is a nuanced position that is constantly being evolved and crafted.

I share the concerns of the opposition party down the aisle on this issue. We cannot simply let legislation lie still and hope it defends rights. We must constantly re-evaluate it. There must be sunset clauses in provisions like this one. There must be civilian oversight.

As parliamentarians we need to agree where we agree and disagree where we disagree, but we must never lose sight of the fact that constant vigilance on this file is the only way it is going to be made right. Having an independent judiciary is fundamental to that as well. Those are the principles I think we can agree on while we sometimes disagree on specific parts of specific legislation.