Alistair MacGregor

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am also a member of Parliament who represents a wine-producing region, the beautiful Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island.

There are a lot of great things about visiting the province of British Columbia. However, our fine wines and our wine industry really are a top reason that many people come to my area. We get a lot of Americans, but we also get a lot of people from other parts of Canada.

I think the member is a fantastic representative for the wine industry in his area. I was wondering if he could tell this House a bit more about some of the feedback he has received directly from his constituents with respect to this particular issue.

[Business of Supply, June 13th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I could not agree with my friend more.

This is about looking to the future, about stopping criminal records for young people. That is who it affects. It is completely unjustifiable and immoral that we are saddling these young people with these records far into the future and are putting the onus on them to clear their records.

It is time to move on. Our police have better things to do.

[Business of Supply, June 13th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I would argue the exact opposite. Right now, police are caught between a government's intentions and what the law actually is.

I attended the recent police convention, the reception in Ottawa. I had the chance to speak to many police officers from both the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. They understand that the law is the law. However, when that is contrasted with a sitting government's intent to change the law, it leads to nothing but confusion.

We are simply trying to make the law clear. It is a stop-gap measure while we get to the government's intentions. Let us stop harming people with criminal records. The police have much bigger things to do. They could go after drug traffickers. People who possess marijuana are not a threat to society. This is outdated science and outdated moral values. It is time to move on.

[Business of Supply, June 13th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I have not read that particular report, but this issue has gone on much longer than that report.

In 1969, a royal commission began an inquiry into the use of cannabis. Its recommendations included the need to repeal the prohibition against simple possession of marijuana and cultivation for personal use.

If we are going to talk about harm reduction, let me say this to the member. The reason for this statement was that the commission concluded that the criminalization of cannabis had no scientific basis, and the “costs to a significant number of individuals, the majority of whom are young people, and to society generally, of a policy of prohibition of simple possession are not justified by the potential for harm” that comes from criminal sanctions. That was continued again in a Senate report in 2002.

If we are talking about harm reduction, let us stop sending people to jail.

[Business of Supply, June 13th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to say that I will be splitting my time with the member for the great riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam.

It is a great honour to be rising to speak to the motion that was brought forward by my friend from Victoria because it is a motion the House really needs to debate. Furthermore, it shines some much-needed sunlight on the absolute confusion and contradictions of the current Liberal government when it comes to marijuana policy. It is a discussion the House needs to have, and more important, it is a discussion that Canadians need to hear.

We are debating a motion that would recognize the contradiction of continuing to give Canadians criminal records for simple possession of marijuana, after the government has clearly and explicitly stated that it should not be a crime. That is a glaring contradiction and is completely unfair.

We have heard in the House before, and I am sure many Canadians have heard, that the definition of insanity is to do things over and over again expecting that, even when it brings about the same result, it will bring a different result. That is simply what we are doing in this case with our marijuana laws and it is time we take a closer look at them.

Cannabis prohibition in Canada has a history that goes back to the 1920s when it was first added to the narcotics drug act as an amendment after a very late night session in April 1923. Its prohibition, going to the United States as well, has also been linked with some of the racial policies as it was seen as an effective tool of controlling Mexican immigrant labour. There is a very clouded history with marijuana prohibition and not all of it was based on completely clear science.

Legalizing marijuana was the big campaign item of the Liberal plan. However, since the Liberals have taken office, not very much has been done. It has already been a big change from the Liberal position. In 2009, the Liberals voted with the Conservatives to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for cannabis-related offences, not a sign of a very progressive party back then. We even have former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. We see even within the Liberal Party itself there are a few different splits, and the official policy of the government is off base with a lot of those members.

It is the height of hypocrisy that we have a Liberal government that openly and loudly campaigned on the promise to legalize and regulate marijuana and is now refusing to do anything for Canadians who are found guilty of that possession. The parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice continues to repeat that the law is the law is the law, and that he hopes that all Canadians will respect the law. He has made mention of the fact that he is of the opinion that decriminalization would not do anything to protect our children or to remove the profits from criminal activity.

While I respect the parliamentary secretary's many years as a police officer, his statements are somewhat misleading to the House and to the Canadian public. Let me make this perfectly clear for everyone listening right now. Under our current marijuana laws, the black market is worth $6 billion in British Columbia alone. Criminal sanctions up to this date have completely failed to make a dent in this trade. As for children, let me also inform members of this fact. Under our current prohibition laws, one can go to pretty much any major city in Canada to the nearest street corner, and marijuana will be easier to obtain than either alcohol or tobacco, two products that are strictly regulated by the provincial governments.

I applaud the fact that the Liberals will be moving ahead with legalization and regulation sometime in the future. However, what we are talking about is the here and now and the continued unfairness of our current regime. Provincial governments regulate alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, and they make millions of dollars off all three. It can be argued quite clearly and with lots of evidence that all three do much more harm to our society than does marijuana, yet look at the laws we have; they are completely unbalanced.

I of course agree that we must do everything to reduce harm to our children. I am a father of young children and I expect it is a conversation I will have to have with them at some point in the future. However, using the argument that decriminalization would do nothing toward preventing children from using the drug or that it would do nothing against criminal profits is a logical fallacy of the highest degree, especially when the current regime is quite clearly failing in both of these regards right now.

The time has come to talk about what decriminalization will do.

Under our current Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, under subsection 4(4) and subsection 4(5), marijuana possession of 30 grams or less can result in up to a $1,000 fine and/or six months in jail, and yes, it comes to the discretion of the police officer. However, our problem on the NDP side of the House is that the law is applied haphazardly depending on which jurisdiction in Canada a person is in. I do not feel that it is right to base a person's future on the simple discretion of a police officer. We need to have current laws that apply equally in every part of this country.

This can have profound consequences on a person's life, and not many of our young people are aware of those consequences. As we continue with the prohibition of marijuana, they might not get criminal sanctions. They might not even get a charge, but they will always have it on their record that a police officer stopped them for that, and it can haunt them for years to come.

In 2014, there were 161 marijuana possession charges per 100,000 Canadians, and that is a total of about 57,314 Canadians in 2014 alone. Possession of cannabis is responsible for 54% of all police-reported drug crime.

The Minister of Health has been quoted a few times saying that it is impossible to arrest our way out of this problem. Yet by not supporting decriminalization efforts, that is precisely what the Liberal government is doing. We are continuing to arrest our way out of this problem, which I want to make perfectly clear. Canadians should not have to wait for another year and a half for the current Liberal government to get its act together on a promise it made to Canadians. It is completely morally unjustifiable.

When we have a Prime Minister who, on the campaign trail, made an explicit promise to Canadians that the marijuana laws were going to be reformed and that legalization was going to be brought in, and then that party forms government, we can understand the confusion. I have constituents who thought that marijuana was suddenly okay to possess the day after the Liberals got elected. I have had police officers tell me that they do not know whether to apply the law equally or not, because they simply do not know what the government's intentions are.

My friend, the member of Parliament for Victoria, has already quoted a few justices who said that they do not want to be the last judge to hand out a marijuana sentence because of the intent of the government. It is complete chaos and confusion, especially on the west coast of British Columbia, an area I am so fortunate to represent as a member of Parliament.

The promise that the Liberals made has evaporated into nothing, because that is what we have now. We have nothing. We have no action. We have the status quo. Canadians did not vote for the status quo. They did not vote to continue with indefensible punishments of possession of marijuana while we wait for the government to get its act together and introduce laws sometime next year.

Canadians will continue to be arrested. They will continue to receive criminal records. They will continue to be listed in police databases and continue to suffer from those records long into the future. It is another year or more under our Liberal government of needless arrests and wasteful trials, tying up our police resources and the courts. The Department of Justice has confirmed that this will cost taxpayers as much as $4 million a year, a complete waste of taxpayer resources.

These are not the actions of a progressive government on marijuana laws. If anyone needed further evidence that the word “progressive” was used as a convenient bumper sticker by the Liberal Party for electoral purposes, they need look no further than the blatant and completely unfair stance of the current government on marijuana. Shame on them for continuing this failed policy. Shame on them for not standing up for what is right. Shame on them for breaking a clear promise.

I am proud to be a part of a party that has stood strong on the decriminalization of marijuana since the 1970s. Liberal members can continue to quote the member for Outremont on what he said in an interview in 2012, but the history is clear. The NDP has been on the right side of this issue for decades now. We will continue to lead the right charge and we will continue to stand up for what is right.

The Prime Minister's father once famously said, “There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”. The time has now come for the state to get out of people's personal choices with respect to marijuana possession and use, especially if there is no harm or violence being committed.

I call on the government to immediately move to decriminalize marijuana, take the right action, and be on the right side of history.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, when solemn promises like that are broken, it gives all MPs a bad name, because people start saying that they just cannot trust politicians; they put their faith in them but promises get broken.

In our previous constituency week, I sat down with a veteran who had been in Afghanistan. This poor man was quivering with rage and tears, because he firmly believed the Liberals were going to honour that promise, but then they ended up taking veterans to court.

I think it is just a despicable 180-degree turn, and I hope the government finds it within itself to reverse that, and gives instructions to the government lawyers to stop this shameful practice of taking our veterans to court.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I might have to request an additional 10-minute speech to go through that list.

I have always had a very strong connection with the veterans in my riding, and I think that broken promise in the court system was a big one.

In terms of the real reforms on employment insurance, I think this budget was a very real opportunity to get something meaningful done by making sure that there was a common threshold, no matter what part of Canada a person lived in, and also that we had a fund that was protected very much in the way that the Canada pension plan is. This would have ensured governments against future unemployment shocks, and it would have given all workers peace of mind, knowing that there is a dedicated fund that would always be there for them and which would not disappear into the consolidated revenue fund.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to answer that question.

Of course, that was going to be a conversation that we had with the provinces. As to how we would pay for our program, what the member lacks in understanding is that the $15-a-day child care program would allow more parents to enter the workforce, which would broaden the tax base. It is very simple economics.

The other thing is in terms of how we paid for our budget as a whole. The Liberals have refused to touch the corporate tax rate. They have refused to tackle tax loopholes. As a result, we are stuck in this trickle-down economics. There is so much dead money sloshing around in corporate bank accounts, which is something that has been explained by Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada. The Liberals did nothing on that.

They are not helping the job creators of Canada, the small businesses, and they are not touching corporate tax rates. As a result, we get a $30-billion deficit, because I do not think the proper areas of fiscal management have been looked at.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I just want to thank my hon. Liberal colleague for splitting his time with me, although we will probably take some different approaches on our views on Bill C-15.

Bill C-15, the budget implementation bill, is, as I have heard some Liberal members of Parliament say, where the rubber meets the road for a government's budgetary policy. The NDP has examined some aspects of Bill C-15, and we do agree that there are some positive measures that the NDP has fought for, so we will acknowledge that there are some good things in the bill. However, it is nowhere near what the Liberals promised and it is not what is necessary to strengthen our economy and combat inequality.

For example, one of the major things that I campaigned on and on which I received feedback from my constituents was child care spaces. It is one thing to increase the child benefit, but when families are struggling to even find spaces or they have wait-lists that go on longer than a year, that will not really help two-income families try to find that space so that one parent can have the freedom to find work.

The other major glaring omission is with employment insurance. There was a real opportunity in the bill to make some profound changes to the Employment Insurance Act, to how it operates for Canadians on an equal basis from coast to coast to coast, and that is what was lacking.

In conclusion to my introduction, we will be opposing Bill C-15 because of its content, but also because of the fact that it is an omnibus bill.

The Liberal government has studied a few Conservative tactics from the previous government. The bill has been rushed through. We have had time allocation. The committee meetings that were held were also rushed. We have an act that spans 179 pages. It changes over 30 different statutes that fall under nine different ministries. There are a few things that we argued should have been split off to give proper study, but the committee, when it was studying Bill C-15, had six meetings. Only two had witnesses and the amendments that were proposed by the opposition were all rejected.

The Liberals make a big deal about how they reach across the aisle and they want the opposition to work with them, but when over 35 amendments are proposed by the opposition and all of them are rejected by the Liberals, I do not see that as working together.

It brings to mind the quote from the movie, Jerry Maguire, “Help me help you”. If the Liberals want the opposition to truly work with them, then I think some deference has to be paid to the propositions we are putting forward and not have them rejected out of hand. Those are a few of the reasons.

In terms of the time to adequately review the different components of the legislation, when the Liberals were in opposition and on the campaign trail, I remember they talked about how undemocratic omnibus bills were. They said during the campaign that they would not resort to legislative tricks to avoid the scrutiny of their bills. I think we will see the history of the previous six months shows completely the opposite.

The Liberals promised to change the Standing Orders of the House to bring an end to this undemocratic process of omnibus bills. I just truly feel that if we are to study an omnibus bill that is changing a few different pieces of legislation, it has to be given the proper time and scrutiny. I believe all Canadians and expert witnesses deserve to have their say in things like this.

I will devote a little time to just going over a few of the good things, with the caveat that there will be a few criticisms as well. The NDP proposed in the last Parliament that we would remove taxes on feminine hygiene products because that costs women $36 million a year, so we are happy to see that mentioned in the bill.

We are also happy to see the Liberals recommit to returning the old age security and GIS eligibility back to age 65. I heard my previous Liberal colleague talk about the GIS and what a wonderful thing it was that it would be increased by 10%. Let me provide a bit more of a factual basis to that claim.

The guaranteed income supplement is going to be increased for people in the income range of $4,600 to $8,400. A person with an income of $4,600 per year or less would get an increase of $947 per year, which is less than $100 per month. GIS benefits will be phased out completely at $8,400. Rather than increasing the GIS by 10% across the board for every senior who is eligible for it, the Liberals are targeting a narrow bandwidth. It is important to illustrate that fact because it gets lost in all of the hyperbole about how great the Liberal government is and how it is helping our low-income seniors. We must always read the fine print.

I am also happy to see that the government has committed to enhancing the Canada pension plan. This pension model survived the recession very well. It is a model for the world to see how well managed a pension plan can be. Our interest is in making sure that every worker who pays into the CPP can retire with an adequate income.

One of the biggest broken promises comes with respect to small businesses. Page 10 of the Liberal fiscal plan in the 2015 election specifically mentioned that the Liberals were going to reduce the small business tax rate to 9% from the current 11%. Not going ahead with this reduction is going to cost the small business sector $2.2 billion. It is going to cost $125 million in the next fiscal year, $475 million in the year after that, $770 million by 2019-20, and $825 million by 2021. This is according to both the finance ministry and the parliamentary budget officer.

What am I supposed to tell entrepreneurs in my riding, when I tell them there will be personal income tax cuts that mean income earners in my range will get a reduction but they will not see that? Furthermore, small business owners usually pay themselves a small amount of money to keep their business afloat so they are going to get hit twice. Their business rate is not going to be reduced and their personal income tax rates are not going to be affected. That is a shameful broken promise.

Bill C-15 swallows what was Bill C-12, which dealt with veterans. We were happy to see the changes in Bill C-12 because we agreed with them, but we believe that Bill C-12 should have been made a stand-alone bill so that we could have proposed different changes to make it better. Swallowing Bill C-12 into Bill C-15 creates an omnibus bill and avoids proper scrutiny. The Liberal government's record with veterans right now is absolutely shameful. It has broken a solemn promise that was made during the campaign. The Liberals agreed during the election campaign that the government has a sacred obligation, a social covenant, and now they are taking veterans to court. I would like to see the government take some firm action and stand up for our veterans for once and not use them as campaign props to get votes.

In terms of employment insurance, I suggested to the Minister of Employment that one of the great things the Liberals could do would be to set up the employment insurance fund as a stand-alone fund so that it would be protected from raiding by future governments. Right now, those premiums, which are paid by workers in the event that they might end up unemployed one day, simply get raided as a cash cow. It would set something meaningful up for workers if we put that up as a stand-alone fund. Again the Liberals have taken no significant action on that and we still have an employment insurance system where six out of 10 Canadians will not qualify.

To help my Liberal colleagues understand why we oppose the legislation, it is always helpful to read quotes that Liberals have given in the past. The current Minister of Public Services and Procurement and the member of Parliament for Bonavista—Burin—Trinity said something in 2014 that really sums it up. She said:

...there is so much contained in this omnibus budget bill that it really does not give parliamentarians the opportunity they need to act on behalf of the people they represent. We do not get to scrutinize the legislation.... At the end of the day, we end up voting on a bill that we have had little time to digest.

I could not have said it better myself.

[Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the hard-working women and men in agriculture in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and their important role in local food security.

Blessed with Canada's only maritime-Mediterranean climatic zone, the Cowichan region is continually making a name for itself as a region capable of producing a wonderfully diverse range of high-quality farm-fresh produce, artisanal foods, and beverages. Whether it is organically grown produce of our numerous community-supported agricultural programs, the very fine wines of our many award-winning wineries, or the delectable pork, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, and eggs raised from our pastures, our farms have what it takes to allow every visitor to sip and savour their way through a beautiful summer.

As an owner of a small-scale farm myself, I am proud to stand here in support of our local food and drink producers and their role in making our region a highlight for the thousands of visitors who come to Vancouver Island every year.