Adam Vaughan

[Business of Supply, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the notion that the Liberal Party has taken a firm position not supporting proportional representation is news to many of us in the party. The idea that we have not been talking about this is news to many of us. As a former journalist, I have sat in on those conversations as a reporter covering those debates. Therefore, I am not sure where this idea of it being new to us comes from.

What is new today are the details of the proposition we are being asked to speak to and vote on in very detailed specifics, that being a list of 100. The details of the bill are not known until suddenly we ask questions in the House.

In the spirit of collaboration, I am curious as to whether anyone from the sponsoring party has approached the Liberal Party or the critic responsible and detailed exactly what the NDP means by this very specific proposal we are learning about today

[Business of Supply, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as the member of Parliament for Trinity—Spadina, I am proud to represent the only provincial district in Ontario that voted for proportional representation in 2007. We had to fight the NDP very hard to get that put in place. However, the prevailing thought of the province was not to go in this direction because of the vagaries of the system.

I just listened to the presentation made by the hon. member and I understand there are more details to the proportional representation proposal than are currently in the motion in front of us. For example, there is the list of 100 people. However, if majority rule is the problem that prevents accurate reflection of the general population inside the House, how would a list that does not set aside specific seats for a region over a national interest, or women over men, or perhaps even a selection from our aboriginal first nations people to make ensure their voice, like in New Zealand, is protected and heard inside the House, solve that problem?

The members have all these details. They have not shared the details with the House, yet they have a very prescribed way of getting to a list of 100 people and allowing the majority to choose. How would they ensure that minorities would get a voice in the House if they are subjected to majority rule, once again, through the proposed system?

[Housing, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, the Minister of State for Social Development referenced a shelter in my riding, built by her department with federal funds. She blamed me for cost overruns approved by her department in advance.

What the minister did not tell the House was that the additional funds were needed to make the shelter accessible. In fact, what was required was an elevator. That was the reason it cost more.

These changes were required not only to meet new provincial guidelines but as I said, to make the shelter accessible for people with disabilities. That information was not in the Sun news story, so I guess it was not in her briefing notes.

On this the International Day of Persons with Disabilities does the minister really think that making housing accessible is an unacceptable cost overrun? Is it something that she defines as a waste of taxpayers' money?

On this day of all days, it is time for the minister to support making housing accessible and to stop defining reasonable accommodation and meeting provincial accessibility guidelines as a financial burden, and not something to be mocked.

Building good housing, accessible housing and affordable housing is her job. She should get to work.

[Lincoln Alexander Day, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak with respect to Lincoln Alexander. While Hamilton may claim him as a son, I know that on Draper Street, in the riding I represent of Trinity—Spadina, there is a historic row of houses, one in which he was both born and raised when his family came to Toronto and he started his amazing life.

Draper Street has an annual event when the guards of Fort York march up to commemorate an old stand of houses that used to be military homes, but later became homes to Canada's railway workers. It was in this industry that many of Canada's early black settlers and early African-Canadians found work in Canada and in Toronto.

We have a proud history in the riding of leading a civil rights conversation with strong leaders. Lincoln Alexander's voice, his presence and his accomplishments are celebrated among a group of Torontonians we all remember. In holding this day for Lincoln Alexander and recognizing it nationally, we also stand and recognize the amazing contribution of people like Wilson Head and Bev Mascoll, one of the early black entrepreneurs in Toronto.

We talk about Stanley Grizzle, the first black judge who also came out of this neighbourhood in the Bathurst Street corridor that linked the railway workers' homes to the rail yards in the south end of the city, and in the riding that I represent.

We know that Harry Gairey, Sonny Atkinson, the Ellis family and the Padmore family were all part of this collection of one of the oldest communities in Toronto, a community that at one time produced a mayor of the city back in the 1890s and that has produced significant folks.

However, Lincoln Alexander holds a special spot in the city of Toronto. Although he represented and worked in Hamilton, his time in Toronto was also well celebrated and his presence in the city was one that made all of us better as citizens, as politicians and as actors in public life.

During his time at the legislature, I was a young reporter covering Queen's Park. I remember when his name was announced. I remember when he was invested in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor. I remember the focus he brought at a critical time in our city's history. When racial relations and tensions with police were running high, not only did he bring a strong and clear voice with respect to equity, inclusion and civil rights injustice, he also managed to build a bridge between the communities and the police service in our city. That was recognized with the honour that was bestowed upon him when he became an honorary police officer and fulfilled those duties. He was present while I was a member of the police services board in Toronto, and was present at many of our events.

He brought history to life. He brought the achievements of a community in Canada that can call itself black, that can refer to itself as African-Canadian and that can draw its roots from Nova Scotia, the United States, the Caribbean and from Africa. Lincoln was a leader among all of those men and women.

To honour him today, to stand and to recognize it nationally, is to do a service to what our country has always done well, which is to find a way to open the door to the next community coming in, the next person arriving, the next person looking for a job, and to ensure they get the dignity and the opportunity in the future that all of us deserve and that our families hope will be realized for all our children.

Lincoln Alexander was a strong voice in the civil rights movement of Toronto, of Hamilton and of our country. He was a strong presence in this chamber, in the legislature of Ontario, in the police service of Ontario and in the city of Hamilton. However, most important, for those of us who call Trinity—Spadina home, he was one of the early voices, one of the early leaders, and one of the great contributors to a much better Toronto on the way to becoming a much better Ontario and ultimately a much better Canada.

For that, we thank the member who has brought this motion forward. We look to the support of the House to celebrate this in solidarity with Lincoln Alexander.

I remember the last time we celebrated his presence on Draper Street. He pointed at the house where he was raised and then pointed across the street and said, “But that's the house I had my most fun in.” We never heard the end of that story, but if we did, we might not be honouring him today.

Lincoln Alexander is missed and he is celebrated. His gentle smile, his gentle ways and his fight for a better Canada will always be remembered fondly for those of us who call Toronto home and Canada home as well.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member opposite's long list of accomplishments the gas tax has brought her riding.

I am very proud to be a member of the party that introduced the gas tax. I remember, as a young reporter, covering that announcement by the then finance minister Paul Martin in Hamilton. I remember then following that announcement up to the Hill to cover the passage of the budget.

I recall distinctly that a party voted against it. She was a member of that party. I am curious as to why she voted against the gas tax when it has done so much good for the community she represents, and how she squares that with the comments she just has made.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, if we look at all of the organizations that have been cited there, in particular Australia, we will see that the person brought in as chief medical officer of health is also a doctor and a scientist and manages multiple departments within that agency. That does not interrupt the ability for scientific and evidence-based decisions to come forward.

The trouble we have here is that the government shows a clear pattern of not appointing someone with expertise or capacity, but simply people with political skills to do the work that scientists and people with evidence should be doing. The problem we have with the way in which the government is processing this is that we know that it does not like science, expert opinion, and evidence. What it wants is simply to bureaucratize the information it is receiving and politicize it so that it does not have to listen to it.

In this case, there may be a way of rationalizing it as a replication of other jurisdictions, but what we have is the deliberate practice of a government that refuses to engage with science, refuses to look at data, and dismisses evidence. It is saying, “Don't give us the facts, give us the anecdotal evidence.” That is how it proceeds case by case. We can see it with the harm reduction strategies around InSite and the common sense firearms licensing act. Every time you run into evidence, you change the bureaucracy and politicize it. That is why the opposition has absolutely no confidence in your ability to restructure this department.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the examples in recent days have been numerous. However, when the government acts unilaterally on a single piece of legislation, it gets ripped apart. The veterans bill is not even a week old but has already been withdrawn, rewritten, and turned on its head, and the minister is running all over the world trying to avoid any questions about it. Because of the political failings of the government opposite, I can understand why it would want to have an omnibus bill. It is easier to hide bad legislation.

The reality here is that as we start to pick apart even the high water marks of this folly of a piece of legislation we can see that there is no reasoning, no rationale, no factual support, no research, and no documentation supporting any of the claims being made publicly by the ministers or the government backbenchers. What we end up with is opposition member after opposition member standing up and picking apart clause by clause, division by division, explaining why division 14, division 20, and division 19 do not work. Therefore, the Canadian public is left wondering why the government would present such a horrible omnibus bill. The reason is that it is all so bad that people cannot pick out which part is the worst.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I was told that technical briefings are something on which we should present information to the House. I am pleased to do that because I was at those briefings, and quite frankly, some things I heard shocked me.

Most important, with respect to the changes in this bill around the ports, not a single port authority across the country was consulted. Not a single municipality across the country was consulted about the changes that are contemplated in this bill. In fact, there was no public consultation. It was simply a change that was foisted upon the House as part of an omnibus bill. It is a practice that has been described as too frequent, too complicated, and unnecessary in the promotion of democracy by Professor Peter Russell of the University of Toronto, who is an expert in parliamentary procedure.

The reality here is quite something. Ports are now being given the power to expand their letters patent arbitrarily and unilaterally by simply acquiring property. When they do that, those lands are then exempt from local zoning conditions. No municipality was consulted and no cost-benefit analysis was done around what this does to local tax bases or the costs of operating the ports.

Further to all of that, we now see in the city of Toronto that the port authority is seeking to regulate zoning permissions right across the city. It can unilaterally down-zone property, acquire it and then rezone it. That is a scam. There was no consultation and not a single conversation.

It does not get much better when one starts to look at changes to aerodromes, which are under division 2 of part 4 of this bill. Instead of having a public process where there are public boards and public conversations about the behaviour of aerodromes and airports in this country, now all the decision making would be concentrated inside the minister's office, not even in the House of Commons.

Again, were municipalities or airport authorities consulted? What we heard in the technical briefings is that they were not. It was simply something dreamed up on the other side of the House. This is the public process that omnibus bills give us: a concentration of power in the hands of a few, often unelected, and a complete departure from debate in the House, let alone public scrutiny and consultations. The government members may talk a good game about public consultation, but the only people they really talk to are each other.

On aerodromes, significant concerns are being raised by pilots right across the country. This is from the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, who oppose this bill but were never consulted about it, the very people who use the airports:

We are concerned about the manner in which the Act amendment was developed, without consultation, how far the power of the Minister would extend and the one-sided nature of imposing consultation requirements and prohibitions on aerodromes when no such Aeronautics Act consultation requirements or prohibitions exist....

The government is making up legislation, but what is worse is that this bill was introduced as simply housekeeping, a few enabling pieces of legislation to get a budget bill through. This was never in any other legislation. It was never proposed, presented, nor debated in any part of this country. It simply showed up in a committee one afternoon and got into a press release, and then we are supposed to swallow it whole as part of an omnibus bill. That is unacceptable behaviour, and it is wrong.

There is another serious issue that changes to aerodromes deal with, which is the impact on local communities. Many defunct aerodromes are now being used as landfill sites, effectively. When construction happens in one part of the country, the land gets hauled to another part of Canada and dumped, without rules or regulations, because that is allowed. There is no public consultation, rule, or regulation about that.

As a result, the power now resides with the minister, not the House of Commons. Decisions are being made in this House today as we debate this that will have far-reaching impacts in every corner of this country. We cannot and will not support that. Those are the kinds of arbitrary rules that bring all the actions of this House into question.

Turning to public health, not only does the government want no consultation with the public on other items, but on public health it is trying to bury scientific evidence, which is a really disturbing pattern of behaviour. A government appointee, who needs to have no scientific or medical expertise but who is simply a political functionary, is being dropped in on a public health department. The medical advice we need to deal with things like SARS—and God help us if ebola ever arrived here—and the power of the chief medical officer of health to act unilaterally within a federal department when an emergency prescribes is being lost to someone without any medical expertise.

If we take a look at the history of what chief medical officers of health have done in this country, we will find that public works departments—not just of cities and provinces, but also of the country—are a direct result of medical advice and scientific evidence being presented to decision makers. From that, public policy flows.

What are we doing? We are burying that expertise in a bill that purports to be a budget bill but is quite clearly another attack on science and evidence by the Conservative government. It is unacceptable.

The other issue we are dealing with is the employment insurance changes that are forecast in this bill. They are changes that have been denounced by virtually every significant economist in the country. When we went to the technical briefing and asked staff from that department where this idea came from, they had no idea. In the evidence that they produced as part of this debate, when they were asked directly what studies they had done to verify the claims being made by the government, they said not a single study was requested or done. In other words, the numbers come from a source outside of the government.

Where did these numbers come from? When we went to committee, what we found out is that the numbers came from the very lobbyists that asked for the cut. They are not verified. There was no due diligence. We are spending $550 million on a whim, on a promise from vested interests, on some conversation that happened in the back rooms of some ministerial office.

When the party across the way asks for us to go to committee and listen, which we do, and asks us to attend technical briefings and focus in on the evidence that is presented, the evidence is that there is no evidence, yet the policy emerges out of the back rooms as if it is somehow well thought through.

When the Parliamentary Budget Office does report on these topics, what do we get? We get a complete contradiction of the numbers that are presented by the ministers. It is not 500 or 1,000 jobs; it is 800 jobs. It is 800 jobs at a cost of $550 million. On the same legislation, which would freeze premiums, the Parliamentary Budget Office's evidence, which was presented in committee, is very clear. This act would cost the economy 10,000 jobs. That means there would be a net loss. We would be cutting taxes, but we would be cutting employment at the same time and leaving Canadians in a very bad spot.

The information that has perhaps not reached the Conservative benches is very simple. When 10,000 people lose jobs, tax cuts do not help. When 10,000 people lose their jobs, families are negatively affected. The Conservatives can hand out all of the tax cuts they want for kids in sports programs, but if parents are not working, kids are not playing. It is that simple.

That is the evidence that is presented as part of this discourse, yet that evidence never seems to reach the backbenches on the other side, and it certainly does not reach the talking points of the ministers involved.

The final and most horrific part of this bill is the private member's bill, which is not a budget bill. It is political discourse. It is rhetoric that has slipped its way into this omnibus bill. The Conservatives were not confident enough to present it as government policy. They put it in place and then they slipped it into an omnibus bill, hoping that no one would notice, but of course, we all noticed. The reason we noticed is that this notion of denying social assistance to refugees is morally bankrupt. It is wrong.

When we went to the technical briefing and asked the staff of the department if they had consulted with anybody, the answer was no. Did anybody comment? It comes back that one province spoke up. That one province, the province I reside in and Parliament resides in, the Government of Ontario, said not to do this. What was the government's response? It did it.

For all of those reasons, this bill cannot be supported. It must not be supported. If the Conservatives were serious about what they heard in committee, they would withdraw it.

[Respect for Communities Act, December 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard the phrase “common sense” used repeatedly. It is a phrase we are not used to hearing in Ontario since it was last used in that province and it became the hallmark of not doing consultation, amalgamation being perhaps one of the most prolific examples where no consultation was ever done by a party that happened to also call itself “Conservative” and liked to bandy about that phrase.

However, the government is now talking about public consultation. It is interesting. The common sense gun bill that is front of us has not had any public consultation, yet the member and other members have spoken about how the police should be involved in the injection sites but should not be involved in deciding whether weapons are in the hands of certain individuals. I guess the notion of consultation only reaches so far when we use common sense.

As well, when the government talks about consultation, the omnibus bill in front of us has provisions changing the powers of courts in our country, no consultation. Where we do have consultation? If we talk to the folks who run InSite, what they talk about is the need for housing as part of a third stage of dealing with people with heroin addiction. Repeated consultations across the country have called for housing. Why has the government not listened to those public consultations, if consultation is now the order of the day and that is common sense?

[Intergouvernmental Affairs, December 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, a report released in Winnipeg indicates that close to 5,000 seniors will lose their housing due to the current government's inability to renew the co-op housing agreements. Where is the junior minister on this file? He is missing in action.

However, it does not stop there. Across Canada, mayors and premiers are on the same page when it comes to issue after issue. In Ontario today, new mayor John Tory met with the premier. Where is the Prime Minister on this file? He is missing in action.

The Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs is not just missing in action; the funds are actually missing. There has been a 90% cut to infrastructure funding. They are missing in action.

When will the Prime Minister meet with the premier and get down to business?