Bernard Généreux

[CANADA LABOUR CODE, September 26th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from South Surrey—White Rock for sharing her time with me. Clearly, it is much easier to say the name of her riding than to say Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.

I also want to thank the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent and the member for Lévis—Lotbinière, who participated in last week's debate. They did an excellent job of pointing out the importance of the bills passed a few years ago by our government, specifically Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. They were very important bills.

The government seems to be saying that these bills are not as important because they are private members' bills. Today, the government is trying to make it seem that these bills are less important, even though the Liberals themselves have some bills of this nature on the table at present.

We should also applaud the contributions of former member Russ Hiebert and the member for Red Deer—Lacombe, who is still with us. They sought to make the labour movement fairer, more transparent, and more democratic.

If Bill C-4 is passed, the government will be denying workers two fundamental rights. The first is union transparency, which is very important. Members pay union dues and must therefore have the opportunity to vote in a transparent process. That is what we believed at the time and what we still believe today. We also believe that unions need to be transparent, particularly with regard to the dues they receive.

Workers must be able to exercise their right to vote by secret ballot without fear of reprisal from their colleagues or superiors. We know that there have been instances of retaliation in the past. Intimidation occurs within the labour movement. That has always been the case and will likely always be the case.

These two rights are common sense and taken for granted. They should have the unanimous support of all members of the House, but they do not. The Liberal Party feels indebted, not to ordinary workers, but to big union bosses who obviously worked behind the scenes to help the current government get elected.

Whether they are members of a union or not, all Canadians have a vested interest in ensuring that labour groups are transparent with their members and with all Canadian taxpayers, since $4 billion in union dues are collected every year. As a result, unions are entitled to tax credits for labour-sponsored funds, such as Fondaction CSN and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ in Quebec. These funds are paid for by all Canadians.

We therefore believe, and rightly so in my opinion, that full transparency is needed when it comes to these funds and the taxes that are paid. That is why Bill C-377 was so necessary.

As our colleague pointed out last week, $500 million in taxpayers' money goes into these funds annually. That is a huge amount of money. The government opposite believes that requiring unions to make public any expenditures of $5,000 or more places a heavy administrative burden on them.

As members of Parliament, to get reimbursed for a taxi ride we are required to submit a receipt if the total is equal to or greater than $25. We have to substantiate our claims.

I think this government has a lot to learn from what happened in the past few months because by all accounts transparency was lacking. This government claims to be extremely transparent. However, we learned that the Minister of Health claimed $1,700 in expenses for her limousine, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change claimed $6,000 in expenses for a photo session, not to mention everything we learned last week about the moving expenses for key government employees, including employees of the Prime Minister. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars have been spent by a number of departments.

If it were not for the fact that transparency is mandatory in this Parliament, we would be none the wiser. It is therefore essential that the same level of transparency required of governments and elected members be required of unions and of big union bosses.

If I were a factory worker in La Pocatière, Montmagny, Rivière-du-Loup or l'Islet, which are four towns in my riding, I know that union dues would be deducted from my paycheque every week in order for the union to protect my interests. However, that money must be spent wisely.

Any government or organization must be transparent for its taxpayers or its members. We cannot stress this enough. We must ensure that all members of an organization have a full accounting of how their money is spent, because it is their money. As MPs, we manage taxpayers' money. Thus, the government must be transparent. It says it is, however, it is not even exercising its own prerogatives.

If this government believes that $5,000 is too low a threshold for a detailed accounting of expenditures, what amount does it believe is more appropriate? That is an excellent question because $4 billion in union dues is paid every year. Five thousand dollars is a minimum. That was our belief back then and that is what we continue to believe today. Does the government have a different minimum threshold?

It is important to remember that, as MPs, we have to report any expense of $25 or more. I do not see why a union should not have to do the same for expenses of $5,000 or more so everyone knows how people's union dues are being spent.

The government has to answer for how it spends taxpayer money, and charities also have to account for their spending to comply with Canadian law.

Any charity that supports a particular candidate or party during an election campaign runs the risk of being stripped of its special tax status under the Income Tax Act. Why should unions be exempt from similar neutrality and impartiality obligations?

The Liberals say they are all about evidence-based policy, but they often seem willing to turn a blind eye to union activities whenever it suits them.

We believe that Bill C-4 will destroy all the crucial measures we included in those bills. Transparency being a priority, union leaders must demonstrate the same degree of respect, integrity, and care as government and opposition MPs. As those in charge of managing taxpayer money, we must be transparent about how we spend it.

Bill C-4 gets rid of all that. Those two essential pieces of legislation worked very well together. I think they are necessary and should continue to be necessary. That is why I am going to vote against Bill C-4.

[Main Estimates 2016-17, June 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to explain to us in clear and simple terms how someone can furnish offices with equipment that we all have in our offices, but at such a ridiculous cost. How can someone spend $825,000 to set up offices for 32 or 34 new staff when it is not a new department?

Our colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean was the infrastructure minister in our government until last year, and he managed to spend and oversee an infrastructure plan worth $60 billion. The Liberals have doubled that amount.

Does my colleague think it will take 32 new staff to spend twice the amount we announced in recent years and spent for the most part?

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, if Quebec's dairy producers were pleased with the current government, they would not have descended on Ottawa and, in some cases, they would not have travelled 25, 30, or 40 hours to get here.

That must be obvious. If I were a diary producer, I would not drive my tractor from Gaspé to Ottawa to listen to empty rhetoric, which is what they heard. That is unfortunate. The producers I met on the weekend told me that they were very polite. That is a very important point that I did not raise in my speech. Dairy producers are very polite and respectful. They are respectful as long as they are respected.

When the day comes that they no longer feel that the government respects them, things will be different. Quite frankly, things are heating up. It is time for the government to take action and it is urgent because dairy producers and other producers under the supply management system are more than fed up.

I believe that the government has the answers to these questions. It is up to the government to respond and to take action. Once again, the government must show leadership, there must be a driver in the tractor. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the answer to the hon. member's question is quite simple: there is no driver in the tractor. It is not complicated. We have a government with no leadership. This is a government that was elected seven months ago and promised in its electoral platform, in black and white, that it would resolve the problem of diafiltered milk. I am not making this up. They are the ones who boasted about this for 75 days, not just 30 days, saying that they would fix the problem. They said that in every riding in Quebec. Today, seven months later, the problem is still not fixed. We need to have a driver in that tractor and fast.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

He is quite right. Clearly, the Liberals do not understand the situation. Just last week, 3,000 farmers made their way here to Ottawa on their tractors, some from as far away as the Gaspé. I am not sure whether my colleagues know how long it took them, but it was more than just hours; it took them days to get here. As my colleague said earlier, they paid out of their own pockets to come and demonstrate here.

All 3,000 people who were here last week were mostly farmers. It took them days to get here, in order to show the government that the issue of diafiltered milk is important and that it needs to be resolved quickly. This is like the third overtime period in a hockey game. This issue should have been resolved a long time ago. The government promised to do so during the election campaign. It seems simple to me: when you promise to do something, you do it.

We were known for keeping our promises. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the current government.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, to ask that question is to answer it.

That has been part of our policy for quite some time, and we have no intention of removing our support for supply management. Honestly, my colleague opposite knows the answer, and I do not know why he is asking me that question when he already knows the answer. It is in their platform, and it is in our platform. There is no way we would turn our backs on supply management.

If leadership candidates have their own ideas on this, they have every right to defend those ideas. In fact, all the parties have an incredible opportunity to say that supply management matters. I do not understand why we should be afraid of saying such a thing. That leadership candidate is speaking on his own behalf, because he is running for the party leadership.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with the House something that happened to me last week, if I may.

Last weekend, I was in my riding after having issued a press release the week before stating that I support supply management. I had supported it in the past and I promised to continue supporting it in the election campaign.

I wanted to issue the press release in order to clearly make the distinction between that and a visit to my colleague's riding, Beauce, for the kick-off to his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party. I attended the event as the Quebec caucus chair.

If five candidates from Quebec ran for the party leadership, which I would love to see, by the way, I would attend all five events, regardless of the policies the candidates proposed, as the candidate from Beauce did on supply management. Indeed, I would be there regardless, because I think it is important to support our colleagues who want to run in a contest to represent Quebec in Canada.

That being said, I was at an event this PAST weekend where I happened to meet quite a few farmers who were also there for Relay for Life. Those farmers are part of our everyday lives in the regions. They are part of our regional realities because they participate in everything. They sponsor events and are very involved in our communities. We started talking about this and that, and naturally, we ended up talking about diafiltered milk, an issue that is having a serious negative impact on those farmers, especially dairy farmers, most of whom are in Quebec.

We promised to address the diafiltered milk issue if we were elected, but unfortunately, that did not happen. The Liberals are the ones in power now, and they made that same promise to address the issue quickly.

Seven months have passed, and it has been 30 days or more since they got the consultations they were after. They consulted a whole lot of industry stakeholders. Now, according to the resolution they themselves put forward, they want another 18 days.

It is truly incredible to see what this motion says. The government is saying it has a problem in its own motion. This motion was not drafted by the Conservative Party, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, or the Green Party. It is a motion in which the Liberals are telling themselves that things are not going well in agriculture. We do not need for a motion to see that there is a problem. I honestly do not know where we are going with this, but it does not look good.

Life is tough for these farmers these days because they are losing income. They invested in equipment and in their farm to increase productivity. They did not anticipate having to compensate for a loss because of something else, a problem that the government is not fixing. They made those investments to increase their farms' productivity, to have a bit of extra money in their pockets and to be able to reinvest.

Farmers know they have to constantly reinvest. It is impossible not to invest. A farmer who does not invest in his facilities or his productivity is bound to fail and possibly lose his farm.

When farmers invest $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, and even more in their own farm to ensure that they increase productivity, they are not trying to make up for their losses.

At present, diafiltered milk is costing them tens of thousands of dollars. As recently as April 13, the president of the Union des producteurs agricoles said that farms are losing between $15,000 and $18,000 a year. That is a lot of money for a dairy farm with 40 or 50 cows. That is a lot of money for these producers, who have to invest in relatively short periods of time.

As a business person, I know that the reality is that any investments should be amortized over the shortest possible period because technologies change very quickly.

That now also holds true for agriculture. When farmers invest in milking machines, the amortization period must be as short as possible because the machines will inevitably become outdated, just like the methods they replaced. Technology is constantly changing and therefore being replaced.

I spoke to a woman who said she was tired of fighting. Dairy producers have been fighting for decades against all sorts of things like the climate, changes, the increase in farm productivity needed to ensure their financial viability, and environmental constraints that are imposed on them.

They have to constantly invest in their own farms. When a problem arises, such as that of diafiltered milk, which has become a huge problem in recent months, the financial losses are discouraging for producers.

I sincerely believe that the human aspect, which we have not discussed today, is important. In the past five years, in Quebec and Canadian rural areas, there has been an unprecedented number of suicides in farming communities. This is the result of the pressure on the agricultural sector in general.

Producers are being asked to produce more and more and to find more environmentally friendly ways of doing so. They are being stretched to the limit. They are under unbelievable amounts of pressure. Many producers who would like to hand down their farm ultimately decide to shut it down or sell it.

Just last week, a woman was telling me that the president of Les Producteurs de lait in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region said that there had never before been as many active farm sales in Quebec as there have been in the past two years. That is because producers are exhausted.

They are not able to cope with governments that do not keep promises, especially the current government, which promised during the election campaign to fix the problem quickly but is still conducting consultations seven months later.

As my colleague said earlier, there is a lot of blah blah blah, but there is also a lot of meh. Nothing happens. The government does not understand farmers. Unlike what the Liberals have been saying since this morning, they are way out in left field. They could fix this problem very quickly and they committed to doing just that. I do not think that seven months is very quickly. This problem could be fixed in two days. I do not know why they will not do it, but it should have been done a long time ago.

Agri-food research is being done in La Pocatière, in my riding, and there needs to be a kind of balance. Farms do not increase productivity simply by purchasing equipment. Research and development in processing and in the dairy industry are important as well. Everything is important.

The Liberal Party seems to be defending only the processing industry, but this industry needs the milk in order to process it. If there is no milk to be processed, where will it get the milk from? We want Canadian products and we want people to buy local.

People in Kamouraska have been talking to me about this for 20 years. I was mayor of La Pocatière from 2005 to 2009 and an RCM of Kamouraska councillor. People talked to us about processing and buying local. If people want to do that and make it possible for farmers to process food locally, they have to be able to make a living at it. Right now, they are definitely having a hard time making a living at it.

Farmers are having a hard time coping with and justifying this reality. Once again, these people are having a hard time getting through this. The government's delays are costing them $10,000, $12,000 or $20,000 per year, and at the end of the month, those losses make it hard for them to balance their budgets. The added pressure makes them want to quit farming. The government has to give farmers every possible advantage, and some impossible ones too, especially dairy farmers who are going through tough times because of diafiltered milk.

The government must understand that it needs to fix this before the summer. Today is June 7, and I think it is important to deal with this before the summer so that farmers can go work in their fields with a load off their minds. Right now, all farmers are having a terrible time getting by. The government has the answers and needs to act. As my colleague said earlier, the government has to walk the talk.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the farmers in our region know that during the election campaign we promised to resolve the issue of diafiltered milk in the first days and weeks following our election, if we were elected. My colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable, I myself, and many of my colleagues in the Quebec caucus all agree. We will do what it takes to stand up for supply management.

People came to the Hill on behalf of the entire industry to urge the government to take action now that it has been in power for seven months. The Liberals also promised to resolve the issue of diafiltered milk. However, they have yet to do anything about it other than listen and talk without really saying anything at all. As my colleague just said, that is all we have been hearing in the House for weeks.

I would like my colleague to share what he heard on the Hill. The farmers are saying that they just want to earn a living from what they do. Is that what my colleague heard?

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague for her opinion on the following issue.

During the election campaign and last week, when farmers came to demonstrate on Parliament Hill in order to have and preserve the right to produce, they told me very clearly that they did not want any compensation.

All they want is the right to produce. They do not want compensation. They do not want anything more from this government than they did from our government when we were in office. They want the right to produce, and that is why we protected supply management and our policies always sought to protect supply management.

Could my colleague give us her opinion on that?

The reality is that dairy farmers want to contribute to the Canadian economy, not by getting government contributions that take money out of taxpayers' pockets, but by simply producing and reaping the fruits of their labour.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, after you spend years in politics, you start to see that cynicism is everywhere. People question whether we are doing good work. Many politicians cannot avoid cynicism in their political life.

Cynicism can sometimes get quite bad, especially in the form of caricatures, even though we never asked for that to happen to us. There have been pictures of the member for Berthier—Maskinongé circulating on social media since yesterday that do not show any semblance of respect for her. The member certainly did not ask for something like this to happen to her. Unfortunately, today, she is suffering the consequences of a completely irresponsible and cavalier act on the part of the Prime Minister.

No one can predict the indirect consequences of this act, as is evident today, given the completely inappropriate things on social media. Once again, she did not ask for this.

Can my colleague talk about what kind of consequences she has seen in the current political debate in Canada?