Alain Giguère

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 12th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in the past, we have been told that victims of sexual assault are being encouraged more and more to report the abuse they suffer. We have also noted the many cases of missing women in aboriginal communities. These women are never found.

So, how can a police force that refuses to deal with the issue of sexual harassment within its own organization possibly deal with those kinds of problems in the future?

[Business of Supply, February 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, he simply checked the numbers and provided us with a non-partisan answer. He was not the only one who gave us that answer. A lot of other information came from the same government source.

Problems arise when the government refuses to accept the truth. That is the problem. If the government agreed to rectify the situation every time it made a mistake, there would not be a problem. We would not be having this discussion now. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is not the problem. The problem is the government, which systematically ignores any information that is not in line with its messages and its obsession with telling everyone that it is perfect just because it is doing something.

Perfection does not exist, and the Conservatives are far from perfect when they make mistakes on the order of 300%, as they did with respect to the F-35s.

[Business of Supply, February 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, public servants are not officers of Parliament. Their career progression is tied to a bureaucratic hierarchy. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has no authority over other public servants and cannot obtain certain required documents. Currently, he must go to court to get the documents he needs.

That makes no sense. This is proof positive that we need an officer of Parliament to carry out this duty. The Parliamentary Budget Officer cannot set his own budget. He is not accountable to us. He is accountable to a hierarchy of public servants who are accountable to politicians.

Our answer to everything the member said is yes. Yes, we have to give this officer greater independence.

[Business of Supply, February 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to present an approach that is different from the one taken by my colleagues: an overall vision of a government that must act and must have a watchdog. In this case, the watchdogs are the officers of Parliament.

Need we recall the circumstances in which the position held by Mr. Page, the position of Parliamentary Budget Officer, was created?

At the time, following a series of financial scandals, all political parties agreed to seven recommendations made by Mr. Broadbent, the former leader of the New Democratic Party. One of them was that there be someone who could provide information to parliamentarians faster and more easily.

It is essential that parliamentarians be well informed so they have a more accurate idea of what they need to investigate and so they can be sure they clearly understand the consequences of their votes on financial legislation. To a large extent, that is what it was.

Mismanagement by the government may be an isolated incident, but it can also be a pattern. No one is immune to mistakes. The only people who never make mistakes are people who do nothing. Since parliamentarians do a lot, it is entirely probable that they will make mistakes.

In the past, a Parliamentary Budget Officer was quite useful on the question of the firearms registry. That registry was supposed to cost $20 million, but it cost $2 billion. That is a little discrepancy that it would have been nice to have brought to our attention faster. As well, sponsorships would have been cut much sooner.

On the question of using $58 billion from the employment insurance fund, if someone had said at the time that the money should not be taken or it would cause major problems for unemployed people, we would not be where we are right now. The unemployed are in trouble now. If the $58 billion had stayed in the employment insurance fund, we would not be having to make reforms now to save a few crusts. People who are starving find crusts very useful.

The NDP hopes to form the government in 2015. If that happens, it will not be immune to mistakes. It may be that an environment bill introduced by the NDP someday will cost too much. It would be practical for someone to tell us we are making a mistake and we have to make adjustments. Since we are responsible, we would make those adjustments. There is no shame in making a mistake. What is idiotic, however, is to keep repeating the same mistake and hoping to get a different result. That is the height of idiocy. Unfortunately, the same mistake keeps getting made at present.

With respect to the F-35s, the Conservatives should be thanking the officers of Parliament and the Parliamentary Budget Officer for saving them and the taxpayers money, a bill of $30 billion in additional costs. That is no small thing. It is a major mistake, but they persisted. That problem should have been solved when the report was first submitted. Instead, they persisted in repeating the same lies, over and over, hoping that someday they would become the truth. Regarding the F-35s, they were told that the cost would be $45 billion. Then the Auditor General told them that the cost would be $45 billion. And finally National Defence admitted that it would cost $45 billion. That is a long way from the $15 billion initially predicted. And yet it took three answers before they saw sense. That is the problem. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

In this case, all of the parties who are here now created the position of Parliamentary Budget Officer. It is not just yours. It is also ours.

The position was established unanimously and it has proved its worth.

Governments around the world are grappling with the question of who supervises those in power. Here, we have the officers of Parliament. Mr. Page is not an officer of Parliament. He is an employee of the Library of Parliament—an employee. He does not possess the powers of an officer of Parliament. It is not part of his role to require a department to undergo an audit; he needs to ask permission. This is a major difference.

When it comes to establishing his budget, he has to discuss it with a hierarchy of bureaucrats that depend on political powers. An officer of Parliament discusses his budget before Parliament, in full view of the political class. There is a difference in terms of independence.

We would like the PBO to have greater independence. That is why we would like the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is preparing to leave, to retain his authority and for Mr. page to remain in the position until his replacement has been appointed. We would like to avoid having to do without a Parliamentary Budget Officer for any period of time. It is hard to believe that those who claim to have created the position and want to keep it should so readily agree that the position should go unfilled for a while. There are times when criticism requires circumspection.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s budget also contributes to his independence, which is what keeps him from getting bogged down in frivolous requests, and prevents him being overwhelmed by directives. This is extremely important. Within an officer of Parliament’s general mandate he or she establishes his or her own objectives and immediate missions. The Parliamentary Budget Officer cannot because he is an employee of the Library of Parliament. If he is given an order to conduct an investigation, and even if the investigation will not amount to much, he is required to conduct it. When the Standing Committee on Finance ordered him henceforth to conduct audits on all written requests, he was obliged to comply. He is not an officer of Parliament, but rather a public servant, and that is a major difference.

If we compare this situation to what happens in the United States, Japan and other countries, we see that the people in these countries have genuine checks and balances, and the authority to inform parliamentarians about any excesses. Here, this power has been worn down, largely diminished and restricted.

We can say that the work has been done well. It is sometimes politically unpleasant, particularly when people insist on denying the truth. As soon as Mr. Page's report on the F-35s was presented, the government should have admitted that something was wrong, apologized, re-done its homework and done some checking. This did not happen.

Churchill used to say that the most important of all parliamentary committees is the public accounts committee. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and I can attest to the critical importance of having a source of information other than the government, a source that can disagree and has greater freedom of action.

I would like to conclude with a wonderful quote from Galileo:

The authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.

When I refer to thousands of opinions, I am talking about the entire government.

[Business of Supply, February 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very closely to my distinguished colleague. He spoke of an independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer with a decent budget and so on.

I listened closely, but the big issue I have is that he did not say if he agrees that the PBO should become an officer of Parliament and should no longer be an employee of the Library of Parliament. I would like some clarification on that point.

Does he agree that the office should be completely independent and totally free of all political interference? Does he agree that the PBO should become an officer of Parliament instead of remaining part of the Library of Parliament's staff?

[Business of Supply, February 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard many things said today. The Conservatives have said, among other things, that our perception constitutes an urban myth.

I am sorry, but when a minister states that the unemployed are the “bad guys”, that is not an urban myth. It is a reality. When a minister from the Maritime provinces says that the unemployed are people who take advantage of their period of unemployment to go hunting and fishing, it is not an urban myth: it is an insult.

When another minister tells us to our faces that people are essentially frauds, and we have to hire inspectors and ask them to cut $40,000 a month in employment insurance benefits, I am sorry, but we are no longer dealing with urban myths. We are dealing with the truth. It is not us who are dividing workers. It is they who are deciding that the unemployed are no longer workers, but frauds. It is they who are deciding that the Maritime provinces are populated only by people who do not want to work. The reality is that we have gone from 1 million unemployed to 1.4 million unemployed. That is a reality of their economics.

I would like the member to tell us the truth clearly, and why people are not working. It is quite simply because there are no jobs.

[Villa Ste-Rose, February 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this past Friday, the Villa Ste-Rose retirement home was destroyed by fire. Thanks to the dedication of the four employees on site and the emergency services personnel, no one was injured.

And with the help of neighbours, the assistance of all the municipal services in Laval and the leadership of the Red Cross, the 79 residents immediately received shelter in neighbouring homes, comfort and, most importantly, heat. I want to say a huge thank you and well done to all those who participated in this rescue.

As the member of Parliament for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, I am very proud to say that my constituents have very big hearts and they are in the right place.

This fire reminds us just how vulnerable our seniors are and how important it is to treat them with dignity. Now is the time for Canada to develop an affordable housing policy for people who are losing their autonomy.

Our seniors are the ones who created the wealth in this country. Now is the time to give them affordable, safe and comfortable housing.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, January 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, while on winter vacation, I enjoyed reading Mafia Inc., a book that reveals everything about the big mafia bosses, including their criminal records. It also describes how these people came to Canada illegally, how they lied to Immigration Canada and how their activities engender crime.

This government claims to want to protect Canadians, but it is reducing the number of police officers, who are needed to put these people behind bars. This government also says that it wants to pass immigration legislation to protect Canadians from dangerous foreign bandits. These big-time criminals are not concerned by this law.

These big-time criminals will not be threatened by this law, which is just a smokescreen. It is nothing but a marketing ploy to make people believe that the Conservatives are tough on crime. In reality, they have not delivered the goods. None of the members opposite can guarantee that these people, these top criminals, will be deported.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, January 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the problem with this process is that it will lead to us passing a bill that, in theory, should deal with criminals. But, in reality, a court would deem this type of law to be ultra vires. What is more, this bill does not address serious criminality.

The Rizzutos are a crime family in Montreal. They came from Venezuela, where they were drug traffickers. In Canada, they have been involved in nothing but drug trafficking and a few murders. But this law will never keep them awake at night. We are passing it too hastily. This law will never protect Canadians from foreign crime.

This bill is nothing more than a marketing ploy by a government in desperate need of publicity. That is the problem. That is what is behind this process.

[PETITIONS, December 12th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition, in compliance with our rules, from 371 people from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, who are calling on the government to maintain funding for Development and Peace, to ensure that this non-governmental organization can continue to do work around the world that promotes Canadian culture.