Adam Vaughan

[Infrastructure, February 4th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rose in the House late last year to ask a specific question about federal infrastructure spending and referenced the city of Calgary.

I suggested that perhaps the problem Calgary was having was that it had not elected enough members of the government to this House in order to receive its fair share of infrastructure spending.

We have heard through repeated questions that the government claims it is making the largest investment in infrastructure in the history of this country. Let me explain what that means to the city of Calgary, as the big city mayors gather in Toronto as we speak to discuss the crisis on this very subject.

Last year Calgary got the grand total from the new building fund of zero dollars. There was not one penny. This year, again, zero dollars, not one penny. That is two straight years without a single investment from the government and the new building fund, despite the claims that it is a grand fund and a big fund.

Cities like Calgary, cities right across this country, and even small towns, for example we heard about Sydney, Nova Scotia this week, are getting nothing from the government this year, and they got nothing last year.

The problem with the fund as it is being proposed is that it is back-end loaded. Those of us with municipal experience and those of us who have watched government accounts know what this means. All of the money comes in the latter years of the program and none of the money is doled out on a consistent basis.

Canadian cities, and we will hear it from the big city mayors tomorrow as they meet in Toronto, are asking for a very simple commitment from the government. They do not want big funding announcements that get handed out sporadically and are back-end loaded. What they need is consistent and robust funding this year and every year.

The challenge the cities are facing is that without that funding arriving in city coffers on an annual basis, in a consistent and predictable way, they are unable to do the planning that is required to sustain growth in the cities.

In Calgary, with the oil market in decline and with oil prices dropping, and with the announcement this week that the housing market is very soft and prices dropping, it means that people are being unemployed in that city due to cuts at places like Suncor. What they also are not getting, despite the promise of the government, in terms of infrastructure support, are jobs to pick up the slack as other parts of the economy start to fail.

The call we have been making and the request we make of the government is to stop talking about these plans as being big unless they are big every year, to stop talking about them as a plan if they are simply back-end loaded, and to allow cities to move forward with constructive plans that make sense for the residents of their cities.

In the city of Calgary, it is very clear what that money is needed for. The money is needed, in particular, for transit. The request that we are going to see coming straight out of city hall will be for the Green Line transitway, $150 million; the goods and movement package which is going to refine and fix overpasses right across the city of Calgary, $78 million. They also need support for disaster resiliency funding and they are not getting it.

Zero dollars this year; zero dollars last year. When the government stands up and claims, as it will, I am sure, I have heard the speech, that this money is large, robust and is going to meet the needs of Calgary, the city of Calgary quite clearly, in concert with other big cities across this country, is saying zero dollars is not funding.

Zero dollars now is not meeting the needs of Calgary now. The challenge with receiving the funding in 10 years is, as we have seen with the government, that there is always an opportunity for governments to bail on the programs, to cut when they see recessions heading their way, and not sustain these commitments.

What we are asking the government to do is very clear. Will it make the funding available immediately? Will it roll these programs out immediately? Will the funding start to arrive at the same time the billboards come?

It is $29 million for billboards that arrive now; zero dollars for Calgary this year and zero dollars last year. That is unacceptable. Make a change, please.

[Infrastructure, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the current government has spent $29 million on billboards to advertise new infrastructure spending. One cannot sleep under a billboard. One cannot get drinking water from a billboard. One cannot ride a billboard to get to work, and they make really bad bridges if one is trying to cross a river.

To put this in perspective, $29 million on billboards is more money than the current government is spending on infrastructure, new infrastructure, in Prince Edward Island, one whole province. This is ridiculous. It is unsustainable. Instead of building a strong Canada, the current government buys billboards.

When will the minister cut this advertising budget and spend the money on cities and towns across Canada and build a better Canada for us all?

[Child Poverty, January 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, setting up and speaking to this bill is of extreme importance to those of us who represent urban areas and municipalities, in large part because the need to deal with these issues defines the quality of life in our cities. Without a concerted effort on this, what we will end up with is a scattergun approach that will, quite frankly, leave sectors in our cities in a great deal of trouble.

The issue of housing is an example that has been raised here several times. We know that the housing agreements have been renewed across the country, but they are sustaining the status quo and providing a dribble of new housing. In my city, perhaps 60 units of housing per year will arrive out of the new renewed arrangements. With a 92,000-person waiting list, 60 units of housing per year is effectively a 1,500 year waiting list.

Without a new era of co-operation and without new programs to address poverty, the urban strategies, and struggles that cities and towns have across the country, we will be in significant trouble in Toronto. That is one of the reasons why child poverty is growing at such an alarming rate, while the city takes its place as one of the wealthiest places in Canada, if not the world.

The ranking of Canada as a safe place to live comes as cold comfort to those communities where housing conditions are so deplorable, access to social services like child care and education is so limited, and isolation due to poor transportation infrastructure is so profound. To call it one of the greatest places in the world to live leaves families and, particularly, young people gobsmacked. Something needs to change here.

What needs to change is not simply cutting taxes for people without incomes and providing income splitting and billions of dollars to affluent communities and individuals, as low-income communities struggle. What we need is a series of programs that deliver on the urban agenda.

As the urban affairs critic for the Liberal Party, I have had the privilege of meeting with dozens of mayors across the country in the last six weeks. Contrary to what we hear from the government side, mayors across the country are asking for just this kind of legislation. They are asking for a return to the kind of advanced thinking that defined Paul Martin's tenure as prime minister, when the gas tax was created, when infrastructure funding was stepped up and committed to, and when a housing program was put on the table. Even the plight of urban aboriginals was part of a national dialogue to resolve issues, rather than simply believing that a tax cut could build a bridge, get a subway delivered, or suddenly make daycare appear even if people had an extra $100 in their pocket.

Something needs to change, and what this bill would do is highlight the areas that need to be focused on to build stronger communities right across Canada. As someone who sat on the municipal council for eight years and who has come to Ottawa to try to strengthen this partnership, I am challenged that it is simply a plan to have a plan. Cities cannot wait for thinking on this issue. They need action.

It is all well and fine to propose theoretical solutions and to aspire to strong language, but what we need are strong programs and specific programs that fit directly into municipal budgets on an ongoing basis and in a consistent way that delivers these programs. We need this particularly for housing and transit, but also for the management of water.

One of the challenges that municipalities are having right now is that climate change has happened. It is not a theoretical possibility. If we listen to Fox News, we hear it is not even a reality. Sometimes, when we listen to the Conservative government, we hear it is beyond its grasp as well. Nevertheless, climate change has happened, and it is doing extraordinary things to civic infrastructure and civil engineering.

We had a flash storm in one part of Toronto, while another part of Toronto was in sunshine, which drove so much water into the sewer system that it blew a 40 feet by 100 feet by 4.5 feet reinforced concrete cap on a sewage capacity holding bin at the waterfront 60 feet into the air and flooded the entire waterfront of Toronto. This was in downtown Toronto, while Scarborough was in sunshine.

These sorts of thing are not happening every hundred years, as predicted by the insurance models or by civic engineering standards; they are happening once every two or three years. Sometimes, they are happening every six months in some parts of the country. The government needs to step up and address the infrastructure needs of Canada and assist cities on all of the other fronts, including transit and housing. If the support is not there, the partnership is not built, and the money is not defined and delivered in a direct, predictable, and robust way, cities and municipalities will not have the capacity to deal with the fundamentals of urban living, which are the delivery of water and the picking up of garbage.

We need a comprehensive approach to municipalities, we need a comprehensive approach to dealing with poverty and we need a comprehensive approach to setting the stage for a stronger relationship with our country. Infrastructure needs must be led by housing. They need funding programs that directly deliver dollars to cities, without complex subscription models and costly subscriptive programs that require pages of applications to simply fund and get the state of repair attended to and housing built. We need to ensure that co-ops in particular are protected, that their agreements are renewed with other affordable housing providers and that the subsidies are sustained. We need to lean on the co-op model to deliver more capacity, not shrink our footprint and our federal program in that area.

We also need to pay attention to the social needs of cities as we build the physical infrastructure. That is why things like daycare are so critical. Arts funding and recreation funding are also critical. Without a solid perspective and a platform on these issues, cities struggle.

We have been critical of the Prime Minister this week for not having met with the premiers. However, the Prime Minister should also be sitting down on a regular basis with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities at its annual conference. He should also should be pulling together the big city mayors conference, which was a program initiated under Paul Martin, to talk about where some of the significant economic challenges are emerging in large urban centres. That is where most of our immigrants settle and where most of the social problems are embedded in affluence and therefore not directly attacked under some of our national programs. It is where the majority of Canadians live.

We have the most urbanized country in the G7 and yet we are the only G7 country without urban strategies on some critical files. It is time for that to change.

I have talked to mayors in Kitchener and Waterloo, Cambridge, Burlington, Oakville, Regina, Calgary and Vancouver. They are meeting soon in Toronto with the new mayor of that city, with whom I have also met. There is not a mayor among them who thinks the federal government is stepping up and meeting its obligations. One of the critical areas pronounced daily in question period is on the question of infrastructure. The funding is back-end loaded.

Cape Breton and the city of Sydney have not had a penny from Ottawa in two years. They have no hopes of getting money this year, and the money they need for a $450 million infrastructure rebuild of their water plant is not even part of the 10-year capital program. In fact, if Sydney, Nova Scotia had to build that water plant itself, its annual budget is only $140 million. That is its annual tax draw. The project will cost $450 million to build to give clean water to people living in the regional municipality of Cape Breton. It would have to shut down the city for three years to build this by itself. The reason it needs to rebuild this is that federal standards changed on water supply.

The federal government is side-loading and downloading and not meeting its responsibilities. Small towns and big cities are all falling behind on the infrastructure file. When they do, the social dynamics and the social status of the lowest-income Canadians are hurt the most. Housing, transit and social services are fundamental to the health of cities. They are as important as the roads, the bridges and the rail, yet the federal government has walked away from all of those capacities and has not funded them properly.

The back-end loaded infrastructure program is a joke in city halls and town halls across Canada. There is not a mayor, or town reeve or city councillor who does not understand that the money is not coming for 10 years. That money was needed yesterday. It was needed last year. Instead what we get are $29 million worth of billboards. Frankly, sleeping under a billboard is not what I call a housing policy.

[Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, January 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, if there is one issue for which we would hope partisan sniping would be suspended, it is this one. All of us in this House want to make Canada more secure.

The issue in front of us is that we know there is a second piece of legislation that is supposedly being tabled and perhaps unveiled in another part of the country today. The briefing for this companion piece of legislation was held simultaneously with question period and at a time when most members of Parliament from all sides of the House are not in Ottawa.

A legitimate question that did not get an answer was this: will you hold a second briefing so that we can understand the complexity and the nature of the legislation, legislation that you are talking about outside the House and outside the capital region? It is a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer, rather than a cheap shot back.

My second question is very similar to my colleague's as well. The critical issue is trying to figure out what is creating this circumstance. What is creating the conditions that lead to radicalization, which in turn leads to acts of terrorism? This is a significant question. In fact, the leader of the Liberal Party has often spoken about dealing with the root causes of terrorism, as opposed to simply dealing with the symptoms of terrorism.

What would this bill do about root causes, and why, when your party talks about root causes, is it proactive, but when we do, is it something to be criticized?

[Housing, January 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, mayors across Canada have been absolutely clear. Thousands of Canadians across the country are languishing on housing wait lists which are getting longer because of government inaction.

In Toronto, 92,000 people are waiting for affordable shelter. Renewing the housing agreements is only sustaining the status quo, and it is absolutely unacceptable. It is in inaction.

To make matters worse, co-op housing residents are not only being told they are not getting their agreements renewed, they are actually having their rents jacked by the government. It is unacceptable. While it does that, the government is handing out billions to well-housed and affluent Canadians.

When the Minister of Finance presents his budget, we want him to immediately fund and renew the housing agreements. We want him to cut the funding for income splitting.

[Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, January 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, as members know, we support this bill insofar as it explores and seeks to strengthen provisions to ensure the safety of all Canadians. However, we have concerns, when the Conservatives say “a robust debate” and “a robust process”, that closure will not be used, and that when it comes to committee, they will not be scoping the input from learned Canadians to ensure the bill is improved.

My question is centred on the concern that the member had about a political leader who talked about root causes as being somehow inappropriate. My understanding is that the Prime Minister is today announcing measures in Richmond Hill that explore how we stop the root causes from creating the dangerous circumstances and how we work with our friends and neighbours in the Muslim community, who seek peace and a just world, to ensure that radicalization does not happen, and that the elements and conditions that create radicalization and dangerous circumstances are addressed before terrorism exists.

Surely, terrorism does not just create terrorism. There are root causes. That is why the Prime Minister is making his announcement. Does the member not support his Prime Minister?

[Infrastructure, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the knocking we are hearing is the Minister of Finance's knees beneath his desk.

Yesterday, I met Cecil Clarke, the mayor of Sydney, Nova Scotia. I asked him about how much federal money he was going to get this year. The answer was, “I don't know.”

Federal infrastructure has been cut by 90%. In Cape Breton that means no money last year, no money the year before, nothing, not a penny from Ottawa.

Cape Breton needs a federal partner. It is looking for $60 million to remediate the harbour and $450 million for a new water plant. What does it get from this minister? Nothing. He is afraid to answer questions.

That city, and every city across the country, needs an answer. Where is the budget? Where is the money? Where is the commitment? Get it here now.

[Infrastructure, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I asked the Minister of Finance to announce his municipal infrastructure budget for Canada's cities and to do it now. He ducked the question. He is not just hiding his budget, he is hiding under his desk.

In town halls across Canada, mayors are asking for a partner in Ottawa. Here is part of what one city, Regina, is looking for: $30 million for a new transit facility; $38 million for highway overpasses; $67 million for the railroad revitalization project.

Does the minister not want a strong Regina? Does he not want people working in Regina? Why will the Minister of Finance not release the budget for municipalities and get the money flowing now?

[Business of Supply, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, in the municipal sector it is called the “inaction plan”. As someone who has struggled with eight years of city budgets, trying to put them together without consistent, predictable, and robust funding, the very things the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is asking for, I just listened to that and it blew my mind.

I have talked to more than a dozen mayors in the last two weeks. There is no infrastructure money in their budgets from last year and none is expected this year. It is a problem that needs to be addressed. Part of the problem is that the subscription process is so complicated for the provinces that even they cannot figure out how to get the federal money flowing. The only thing that has happened is the $29 million worth of billboards that have been posted at the sides of roads as we wait for someone to come to pave the highway. It is a problem. If the government would meet with the premiers, as this motion requests it do, it would find out why its rhetoric does not meet reality.

The programs the government talked about were hand-picked programs during the bailout that had nothing to do with municipal priorities. No matter much how much the cities cried, no matter how much the provinces demanded to meet, there was absolutely no consensus and no ability for local governments to drive local priorities.

Will the government sit down with the provincial premiers and figure this out before we lose another season of construction and wait 10 years for the money to arrive?

[Business of Supply, January 29th, 2015]

Once again, Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has never met a fact he cannot mangle. There was a contested nomination and I defeated someone in that nomination race, but he should not allow the facts to get in the way of a good argument.

The transit funding that he speaks of is so profoundly insufficient that it boggles the mind. We have yet to get a 30-year commitment on transit. The reality is that the transit funding that was secured came after the fact. The provincial Liberal government at Queen's Park is the government that actually drove this agenda. If it had not had the ability, together with the City of Toronto, to force Ottawa into this conversation, it would have gotten nothing, just as when the stimulus package was unveiled. We had asked for money to expand our streetcar and light rapid transit lines and were turned down by the government. Instead, we had to build tiny parks everywhere in the city, in particular in the ridings held by Conservatives.

I will take no lectures from a government that has no national transit policy, which sporadically invests in transit, has never provided an operating subsidy, and only funds projects when Rob Ford asks.