Adam Vaughan

[Petitions, May 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of the residents of the Toronto waterfront, who are asking the federal government not to reopen the tripartite agreement that governs the island airport, in large part because of a proposal for jets on the waterfront, which many Torontonians find objectionable and at odds with the billions of dollars of investment that the federal, provincial, and city governments have made to beautify the waterfront.

The petitioners ask that the federal government reject the request from Porter Airlines to reopen the tripartite agreement to allow for jets, and for all members of this House to respect the residents of the waterfront and whenever possible refrain from flying Porter Airlines and making a situation, which is bad, much worse in terms of air pollution.

[Infrastructure, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, those are all very nice figures, except when it comes to water plants, there is no dedicated money for them. If we take a look at areas like Cape Breton Regional Municipality and Sydney, Nova Scotia, the cost of putting in a water plant is the exact same amount as the entire municipal budget for one year. It is $625 million.

While the member talks about money being available, there is a $440-billion infrastructure deficit in this country, 60% of which is controlled by and under the responsibility of municipalities. Putting in an extra $5 billion is a drop in the bucket. The trouble is, because we are talking about clean drinking water, it is not drinkable water that is going into that bucket.

We need an infrastructure plan that deals with small towns and water supplies, we need it critically and we need it immediately. None of the programs that were just listed address that issue. Transit money does not build water plants. Housing money does not build water plants. Only water money, money identified for water services, will get the job done.

Why did the last budget not include a penny of funding for water supplies?

[Infrastructure, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rose in the House just a few weeks ago, discussing the situation of a small town in Manitoba. St-Pierre-Jolys has an opportunity to add 300 people, 150 homes, to its community. The trouble is that the waterworks of the town has already passed capacity. It currently has capacity for 800 people but actually has 1,000 people in the community.

It is looking to grow. This is critically important. It is a francophone town in southeastern Manitoba. It needs critical mass to sustain services in French. If it is not allowed to grow and sustain its population base and add jobs and opportunities that providing 150 new homes would create in that community, much is at stake.

Therefore, the town is looking to its federal member and the federal government for infrastructure money, but instead of getting a response what they get are a couple of answers. First, it is a big announcement, but none of the money is available for 10 years. Second, the water services it wants to provide need to be changed and upgraded in order to meet new federal standards. The problem with that is that there is no money in this budget earmarked for water services in small communities, or even large communities, despite the fact that the federal government has actually changed the specifications for cities right across the country.

We have small towns with the capacity to grow. We have small towns that have urgent needs around water infrastructure. We have an infrastructure fund that is back-end loaded and much of the money will not even arrive until after the next election, forget this election, yet it keeps telling people in these small communities not to worry, that there is money on the table. There was not even a desk to apply to up until late last fall. A year ago, when the town wanted to apply for infrastructure funding, it could not apply. There had not been a provincial and a federal agreement put in place. There is no money earmarked for this now. There will be no dollars set aside for it. Federal standards have changed and this community, which is trying to grow, which has the capacity to grow, is being frustrated because it has no federal partner willing to step up.

My question is very simple. Why has this budget, which we have just voted on, refused to put dollars on the table for small municipalities and towns to upgrade their water facilities so they can grow and provide clean and safe drinking water?

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member from the north talk about the heritage and the cultural values and the safe use of firearms in hunting and in conservation. I do not dispute that story line. However, in urban areas, we deal with the fact that since 1996, close to 65,000 guns in this country have been lost or stolen. Those guns, when they show up in urban areas, cause trouble like we saw in my riding last week, where a young man was shot and a house was shot up.

My question is this: How does making it easier to bring a gun into the city, easier to travel around a city with a gun, and easier to use a gun in a city, where no one is hunting ducks, no one is hunting raccoons, and no one is going after the squirrel population, make our cities safe while we also respect the culture and the values that were spoken to?

[Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I heard my riding mentioned, so I thought I would rise to ask a question about the sale of ammunition in cities, in particular hollow-point bullets. These bullets are known as cop killers because they can pierce the armour that protects our first responders.

Does the party opposite not believe that the safety of our first responders, and police officers in particular, should be paramount as we craft any firearms controls? Do the Conservatives not believe that there should be restrictions on selling ammunition, particularly in urban centres where it is not used for any rational purpose?

No one is hunting squirrels in downtown Toronto that I am aware of. Is there not a case to be made that our first responders be protected by making sure that the powerful ammunition which is not used in hunting, and in the recreational or cultural capacity that was spoken to, be restricted? Is there no value to restricting those sorts of things in dense urban areas?

[Canadian Heritage, May 25th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's 150th birthday seems to have caught the government by surprise. The Prime Minister has now cobbled together some sort of a scheme to fund community projects to sort of mark the date, sort of. The deadlines differ from city to city. Some towns have a few days, others a few months or a few weeks to apply. From region to region, the criteria are different and, of course, they have no idea how much anyone can actually apply for because the Conservatives are making this up as they go along.

If anyone is actually in charge of this program, could someone please explain why the process is so complicated, why it is so rushed and why the criteria are so flimsy, or will the Prime Minister just admit it is a slush fund for the upcoming campaign?

[Health Care, May 15th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to speak on the motion before us.

I was comforted to hear the member who presented the motion talk about the notion of molecular evolution. The work of Linus Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl spoke very precisely about molecular evolution and the theory of evolution, which was so critical to understanding exactly when species changed and evolved. It is an amazing body of thought. We all do better when we embrace and think about evolution as a real scientific theory.

Equally, I think we are all supportive of innovation that leads to choice, giving patients choice in how they protect their wellness, and choice in which medical procedures they choose to explore and employ to prevent health outcomes they do not want. Choice is critically important.

Innovating our health care system in such a way that it accommodates choice is something our party has long supported. It is critical for improving health outcomes and giving patients the power to make the decisions about their bodies in a way that protects the integrity of their ability to survive and thrive as individuals in our community.

It is incredibly important that new ideas and opportunities be available to individuals who suffer from various afflictions. It is not just about treating the symptoms, but about treating the whole person. For people with perhaps significant drug addictions, a medical condition that affects many people, harm reduction strategies that embrace the whole person, that treat more than just simply the medical phenomenon of addiction can present themselves. Safe injection sites is an example of one of the great innovations in our country that has allowed people to live, thrive, make better choices and to embrace their whole health outcome to drive significant change into their lives.

Any proposal on the floor of the House of Commons that seeks to empower an individual to choose these new options is critically important. I am glad the member has brought forward an idea that totally and fundamentally embraces that sort of notion of harm reduction, of allowing patients to have the full scope and full access to all of the medical innovations and scientific research that has been presented to communities.

I am glad the motion calls for the provinces to have the power to set up these centres of innovation without having to go through extraordinary laborious processes, but rather to embrace what science, medical facilities and patients are advocating for. This a great step forward and one of the reasons why private member's bills and motions are so critically important. Sometimes governments do not embrace those ideas, but I am glad that private member has given us the opportunity to talk about it.

I am also glad that the motion talks about preventative care, getting to the root causes of issues, trying to prevent problems from becoming so large and expensive that the treatment afterwards becomes prohibitive, and instead taking the opportunity to look at root causes and invest in preventative strategies. This is another way of rooting out not just medical conditions but things that transform people's psychological capacity to contribute to society.

It great to see a member of the House stand and be proud about preventative care, proud of an analysis that would get at root causes. This deals with much more than simply the scientifically available dynamic that might be leading to poor health. Instead, it creates the opportunity to deal with the whole person, cure the whole person, so a person may again become a more contributing and positive member of our society.

These things are extraordinarily important, and the principles that are outlined in the motion are ones that all of us should and can support: the idea of evolution, preventative care, and seeking alternative treatments that deal with the whole person and not just simply deal with conventional medical approaches to some of the challenges we face as a society when we deal with public health care.

I do, however, recognize that most of the jurisdiction that is being discussed here is provincial in nature. While we seek to create a more broad-based national dialogue, while seek to stimulate areas of excellence in different regions, and while we try to bring as many voices to the table as possible as we explore new health outcomes, it is critical that we respect provincial jurisdiction in this area. It is also critical that we do not lead this conversation and be oblivious to the constitutional jurisdictions that were established in our great federation.

We look forward to seeing where the motion delivers the House, we look forward to having more debate on it, and we are happy to see the House coming around to those principles about which I just spoke.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a common practice for the government to put some things in an omnibus bill together with a lot of really awful, terribly bad things. As I said, totally useless, totally unfair and totally unnecessary, which are the three Ts the Conservative Party has come to like.

If you were to split those provisions out, I am sure you would get pretty good support across the House, but when you couple them with pathetic programs on urban affairs—

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

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for the hon. member to wait for the full platform before he criticizes it. The platform is coming, and it will be balanced, as were the last seven budgets presented by a Liberal government in the House, the last of which was a balanced budget that had $2.7 billion for housing, which his party voted against. The $2.7 billion that was not spent on housing in the last decade is a large part of why the crisis has deepened. The NDP needs to take responsibility for that as a party.

However, there will be other measures. I just outlined what our housing platform would look like, and it is a real housing platform. It is not a plan to have a plan, it is actually a detailed agenda to deal with a series of housing crises that have emerged across the country.

The Conservative government has not only deepened the affordable housing crisis, it has now started to create a crisis in housing affordability, and we need to address the full spectrum. The Liberal Party will do that in a way which is fiscally responsible.

I remind you that we balanced the budget, and the last budget that was balanced had $2.7 billion plus a daycare plan, and your party voted against it, rolled the dice and gave us that government over there.

I am not prepared to sit here and take that again. It is time for a change and for a vision for the future. If you want to go back and prosecute—

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

Mr. Speaker, for the last week, we have been hearing how the government treats all Canadians the same. Yet every measure he just identified singles out specific groups of Canadians and treats them differently. That is a contradiction the government has to answer, not me.

There are several provisions in the budget that, of course, we support. There is the capital gains tax that allows people who sell their homes not to have to lose so much of their assets and allows them to protect their retirement. We understand that there are elements of this bill which all of us, in fact, I think all three parties, if we split the bill apart, would give unanimous support for. However, there are provisions in this bill, which, quite frankly, do not measure up.

When one loads into the approach to housing being all aimed at affluent, well-housed Canadians and punitive measures are taken against those people living in rental and affordable housing, one has, effectively, not treated all Canadians the same, and that is not fair.