Adam Vaughan

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of being a journalist here when some of those budgets were passed in the 1990s and 2000s. I recall the NDP voting several times with the Liberals to promote some good budget measures. The one that did not get passed was a national daycare program negotiated with the provinces, an issue the member will soon be confronting if her motion around daycare ever comes to fruition or if the NDP ever forms government. We all know we cannot negotiate with the provinces quickly.

The issue is this. When we have opportunities to agree, we should agree and we should work together to get stuff done on some issues. The last Liberal budget in 2005 had $2.4 billion for housing. If that budget had gone through, it would have taken with it the Kelowna accord, which would have had an extraordinary impact on aboriginal first nations communities. We would also have had a national child care policy from coast to coast to coast. Unfortunately, that budget did not survive. Co-operation on that one, which was not an omnibus bill, would have been really good for cities, municipalities, provinces and communities, but, most important, Canadians right across the country.

We need to start thinking about these issues in a more concise way. I share the NDP concern that the other side has done one thing and one thing only in this budget, and that is to make housing more expensive, while ignoring all of the other demands for housing.

On the issue of refugees looking for social assistance, the government has listened to nobody because nobody has asked for action. The Conservatives have slipped in a private member's bill in a way that can only be described as trying to hide their true motives. On that one, I share the NDP's distaste for the way in which the government has moved on this legislation

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel.

I come from a background of being on city council. I referenced that earlier today in my remarks. When councillors are confronted with bills or motions that do multiple things, they are usually ruled out of order. One has to introduce items that are specific to a line of thought and amendments and motions have to line up in a logical order. One cannot solve a problem in the fire department, while talking about transit, with a focus on a bill named after a daycare program. It confuses the public, but it also puts legislators in a position where, with a single vote, they have to contradict positions, or policies or promises made to constituents and residents. Members find themselves in exactly that situation today.

There is a procedural process on many city councils and in legislatures across the country where a motion can be split so one can accurately record one's position item by item. It is a shame the government has chosen to proceed the way it has and stack 100-plus different intents all together under one umbrella, pretending it is a budget bill when in fact it is sort of a cross-section of promises and announcements that have been made across the country. Sometimes in Parliament, they land on our desks and we have to make a decision yes or no on all of them all at once, and I do not think that is a fair process. It does not allows us to accurately register or represent our positions, and that is a concern.

I will try to address some of the issues that are specific and important to the folks who I represent.

First is the child fitness tax credit. We all understand that the goal is to get kids physically active, but a lot of kids cannot be physically active due to disabilities and, as a result, this is not a tax break that would be applied equally to all children. As well, many other children choose to exercise their minds and many families put their kids into cultural programs. There is no corresponding tax cut for that. This seems to be an oversight and is something that should be addressed. It is a concern because in cities it is not as singular an approach to child rearing. Parents do not stick their kids on a hockey rink if the kids want to do something else, such as dance, which is also a physical activity, but does not get covered under this program because it is an art and not a sport. It is a big problem.

There has been reference by some New Democrats that there is no initiative around housing. There are actually two initiatives around housing. The government is doing something spectacular in the middle of a national housing crisis, which is to look for ways to increase the cost of housing. If a condominium is renovated and the renovation is significant, people end up paying more for housing. How is making housing more expensive a strategy that anybody in our country has embraced? In fact, making housing more expensive, particularly in the condominium market, is the housing bubble about the government is so concerned. It once again shows, and this was the comment at the end of my member's statement earlier today, that the government does not seem to understand that the “C” in front of CMHC stands for Canada.

Canada has always had a national housing program in one way or another. The difference is that in the last 10 years the Conservative government is walking away from that responsibility. In this set of motions, beyond clearing up a past legislative error, the only real initiative under way by the government is to actually make housing more expensive, particularly in urban areas. That is so short-sighted, so ill-conceived and such a wrong move, I do not know how to describe it. What it really shows is that when given half a chance, Tories do raise taxes; they just do it on the vulnerable.

The other issues of concern are items that have been slipped in. The one that concerns me the most, coming from a city with a very small port that somehow keeps having privileges granted to it, is the changes under the federal ports act and the Canada Marine Act with regard to how federal ports can acquire new property.

For municipalities, the federal port system and the Canada Marine Act grant powers to land use zoning patterns that are not regulated by local city halls. Therefore, when the power is given to a port to acquire new land, it actually acquires land in very important, very sensitive parts of cities, sometimes environmentally, sometimes economically, and the government has stripped the local authority away from that land and has given it to federal agencies that are appointed largely through order-in-council. This is not good local planning, this is not good economic development, and this is not reasonable insofar as there has not been consultation with a single city, let alone a province, on this fundamental power that the government would extend to federal ports. That is a problem.

Finally, there is the issue of trying to pretend that a private member's bill is now something that was announced in the budget. This refers to the move to suspend the requirement that all provinces support refugees with social assistance.

Not a single province beyond Ontario was consulted. When we talked to Ontario, it was not consulted and it wrote the Conservatives to say not to do it. Therefore, the only province who speaks to the government on this issue is saying not to do it.

I do not know how to describe it. An anti-democratic move is one way to look at it, because there is nobody asking for this. Nobody is asking for this change, yet the change shows up mysteriously in a bill that is sold to Canadians as a budget bill. It is actually simply a mask or diversion tactic to slip in a private member's bill that the Conservatives are too embarrassed to have voted on individually because they know how bad the legislation is.

This is not good government. It is not good process. It is really a basket of flawed policies. When we total up the flaws, the correction of 10 mistakes that the Conservatives made in drafting legislation too swiftly before, and some initiatives which are worthwhile but they do not stand up in contrast to the damages, problems and inadequacies of the other legislation, parties like ours are left with no choice but to cast one vote, because that is the only opportunity we have been given, and the only vote we could cast in good conscience is a “no”.

If we have to pass this legislation based on its weakest piece of legislation, we have to vote no. It does not mean that we would pass it because we like a couple initiatives and let the other bad stuff slide by. That is not responsible government. It is not responsible legislative law drafting.

We have in front of us a collection of initiatives, some of which are not serious in terms of having to worry our time debating. They are housekeeping bills that simply clarify legislation. However, the bulk of them is an attempt to slip in poor legislation and trumpet the stuff that the government likes. That is not a fair way to present legislation. It is not an appropriate way for this body to deal with the complex issues in front of it. I would urge all members on this side of the House to certainly vote against it.

The backbenchers on the opposite side ought to think about what they are being told to do, and what they are being led into. If this process becomes common practice in this place, it will have them voting against their core principles one day and they will be just as upset as we are.

[Housing, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, a report released yesterday from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness indicates there are now 235,000 homeless people in Canada.

As that number grows, the government's response is to cut funds for housing. In Toronto, half of the people who go to sleep in a shelter every night are children. It is bad enough that the government has cut daycare, now it seems not to care about night care for the city's most vulnerable.

What is worse is that this very same report shows that despite a budget surplus on the horizon, even more cuts for housing are in the forecast.

Instead of reducing funds for housing, the government should increase funding for provinces and for municipalities, and it should solve this crisis now. If the only way the government thinks it can solve a problem is by cutting taxes, why will it not cut the taxes on private sector developers who are trying to deliver rental housing? Why is that tax not addressed in the omnibus bill?

This country has an affordable housing crisis. It also has a housing affordability crisis, in particular out west. The government is silent. I remind the ministers opposite—

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, before I start my question, I would like to congratulate the member opposite. His daughter has been elected to Toronto City Council, an elected body that I am well familiar with.

I guess it also gives me an interesting point on which to start a question. The member opposite endorsed the winning candidate in the mayor's race, who made a pointed campaign platform that included a set of requests to the federal government, in particular around transit funding and housing funding. He talked about the problems of the city that he represents, and the city that the member opposite recommended that he be elected to represent. He made a particular point that the federal government had to get back into the transit and housing game if Toronto was going to succeed.

The member endorsed this mayoral candidate and this budget, yet there is no money for transit and no money for housing. None of the issues that his daughter will have to deal with at Toronto City Council are addressed by the current policies in front of us today. How does he square that circle?

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the comments the member opposite made regarding a New York Times article and Canada's middle class. I would like to quote a few excerpts from that article.

Members of the middle class in Canada worry about whether they can afford college for their children and whether their children will find jobs afterward. Housing costs are a major concern, as are everyday costs for transportation and mobile-phone plans. Middle-class Canadians worry about inequality.

It goes on, and it does not describe a very happy middle class in this country, I might add. To get a sense of how those trends are affecting people, they talked to a number of them. One person, Deborrah Mustachi, said:

When you have a family to raise and you are middle class, you are on a treadmill. It’s very difficult to save when you have to live for today.

She means paycheque to paycheque.

The article goes on to add one last comment about the fact that Canadians credit labour unions for giving them a decent pay raise. Those are interesting comments.

If that is the information the member opposite wishes to cite as evidence that the government's plan is working, can he explain why The New York Times talks about so much anxiety, so much fear, so much stress, so much struggling, and why the budget addresses none of it?

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, being new to this chamber, it is a little odd not to have committees meeting and to have every budget circumvented. I am beginning to question what exactly this institution is supposed to be trying to achieve by not working. I do not think it is a question, necessarily, of defining people's personalities, but there is obstruction at play, and it concerns me.

The hon. member said, in representing this motion, that this was a budget tabled months earlier, that it is just housekeeping being tabled today, and that we are simply trying to be efficient.

However, there are measures in this process that were not tabled in the spring budget. I would like to know how those measures will be properly dealt with. Measures that were never announced in the budget are now being slipped into this process. How are we supposed to fully debate and understand those and represent our constituents' needs when those measures were not presented or tabled earlier?

[Housing, October 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, since coming to power the Conservative government has increased spending on outside consultants by almost $2 billion a year. A report that was released today on homelessness identifies that if they had spent that money on housing, they would have drastically and dramatically reduced homelessness in this country. Instead, they have hired their friends.

With respect to housing wait times, does the minister want some evidence? Housing wait times across this country are growing. In Vancouver, close to 5,000 people are waiting. In Montreal, it is close to 10,000. In Winnipeg, over 4,500 people are waiting for housing.

Instead of bringing consultants in-house, when is the government going to start building housing for Canadians who need housing now?

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, October 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, there is a significant concern. There is also the concern that as it is farmed out, and as it delegated or done by proxy, or that through this bill it is re-regulated, the very text we are quoting as being delegated to or made proxy to can change under our feet without our being notified or having any requirement of being notified. We would end up in a situation where laws are being changed in the absence of Canadian scrutiny. That is a concern.

The goal here is an admirable one. We understand the goal, and we understand the efficiency that is being sought. We all seek to create more efficient systems.

However, as I said, we build in inefficiencies when we delegate to authorities and chambers and bodies making decisions that we have no connection to, no relationship with, and in some cases have no reporting mechanism. We are referencing rules that could be changing, and as a result we are giving an unfair advantage to those entities outside the country to effectively use Canadian law against Canadians in a way that was not expected because the law is not changed and the ability to exploit those changes resides with entities outside the country. Therefore, we are granting them unfair practice and procedure inside our own courts system, and Canadians may be oblivious to this.

We do not need to refuse to pursue these agreements, to abdicate the opportunities that may be presented to knit together, on a global stage, treaties and agreements and trade deals. We need to do that. We understand that, and we live in that world. However, we need to do it in a way that respects the common law traditions, the practices of Parliament, and the Constitution of Canada, including the rights that the member has raised.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, October 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to get too specific in the legislation only insofar as the colleague who asked me the question is a much more learned professor of law than I am.

The issue is that there is this handing off at arm's length and referencing at arm's length to other organizations. We understand why it happens. We understand that sections of existing laws get drafted into new laws, treaties or agreements. We understand how the law evolves and lives over time.

The trouble is that as we enter into a world where international law governs much of our trade, much of our economic activity and much of our obligations, and as we short-circuit the detail and definitions, we enter into areas where other legal practices, conventions and terminology start to enter into, and at times, confuse, contrast or even contradict very similarly phrased legal agreements. We start to look at some of the agreements that govern down into the provinces and into the municipal level around trade. The CETA agreement is one of those issues where these concerns are being raised.

We take a look at non-parallel situations that may exist in a continent such as Europe, where trade agreements have been put in place. We have the European Parliament governing it. We have individual nations governing it, and subregions, provinces, cities and other legal entities providing governance. When we start extrapolating all of the different variations that may exist around a certain set of regulations, customs, practices, and most importantly, laws, the opportunity for gaps in understanding, for clarity to be replaced by confusion, is a real and significant possibility.

Writing into and codifying directly into laws that govern and regulate Canadian practice needs to be done in the context of Canada. That means in both official languages simultaneously. It also means taking the time to make sure that the language is right, because language is at the root of law-making.

[Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, October 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to this. I note with irony that yesterday we spoke to a private member's motion that attempted to ban the practice of proxy marriages. We have here an attempt in some ways to provide regulation by proxy. If it is unacceptable to marry someone by proxy, it ought to be just as unacceptable to try and govern a country by proxy and distribute regulation and use proxy in this case to create a simplified legislative tool, but in fact complicate the regulatory regime.

There are significant issues with this legislation. We are profoundly concerned. They range across the legislation as it is presented, but they go to the heart of this issue. In trying to make things simple, sometimes we actually end up making them that much more complicated. In trying to be efficient, sometimes the efficiency creates confusion, legal challenges and complications that actually slow things down and make things less fair. Instead of creating accessible definitions, inaccessible procedures are created, and inaccessible and sometimes even costly regulations come into effect. It is the unintended consequences perhaps of good intention.

However, I return to the notion that if it is unacceptable to do marriages by proxy, why would we create legislation and regulation by proxy and simply choose to proceed in a quick way rather than in the right way?

For example, if an incorporated document is protected by copyright and that copyright document regulation is referenced in the legislation, it may actually cost people to get the information they need to comply. Willing individuals, willing corporations and willing institutions are prepared and attempting to participate properly and legally. Yet because of the way the legislation is constructed, they have to pay to get public information.

We have talked a great deal about the value of an open democracy and open government, but our regulations, our rules and our laws must also be just as open. When we short-circuit that process, as cumbersome as it may be, as rooted in tradition as it may be, it provides us with positive thought and in this case with cause for concern sufficient enough to stand in opposition.

Section 18.6 says:

A person is not liable to be found guilty of an offence or subjected to an administrative sanction for any contravention in respect of which a document, index, rate or number—that is incorporated by reference in a regulation—is relevant unless, at the time of the alleged contravention, it was accessible as required by section 18.3.

In other words, what it is saying is if the rate is done by proxy, or in this case defined in the way it is in this legislation, the numeric figures that must be complied with are suddenly just beyond the reach of someone acting within what they think are the bounds of the rules and regulations. In fact, because they have not had access to those exact data files, they actually do not know what rate they may be governed by.

Additionally crown corporations may have their rates changed. We have a situation where the details of the rules and regulations are hidden by the provisions in this document we are debating today.

This is critically important for a country that is bilingual. We have no guarantee that the proxy regulations, especially if they are overseas or outside the jurisdiction of Canada, are translated in real time into either official language. That is significant because under Canadian law, we have an obligation to treat both language groups equally and fairly. If outside organizations, which do not have an obligation to meet, are the ones having their rules and regulations referenced, that lag time between having equality of languages creates an unfair condition and such a troubling precedent in this country. It is again, something with which we really need to be concerned.

In a globalized world of complex trade agreements and trade treaties, in a world that wants to speed up and in a complex federal system, we understand the impulse of what is being proposed here. What we are doing, as I said, is circumventing the proper process, a good process and a sound process. We are substituting it with something that creates glaring inequities and gaps.

When we draft laws and knowingly draft laws that have these gaps, we are inviting court challenges and non-compliance, even through good intent. We are also opening the door to potential exploitation of that, which is perhaps the most serious of all of the concerns.

We are concerned to the point of opposition to Bill S-2, and the Liberal Party will not be supporting it.