Bev Shipley

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the amazing work that he did when he was minister of veterans affairs, in terms of the respect that our country has for our veterans.

We have heard from the RCMP about the abuse that has happened. Let me just say one thing. This morning we were at an event that was covered by representatives from around the world. At one time our Prime Minister said “Canadians know Canada is broken. It's time for real change. It's time to do things differently”. Well, he just did. I had people from different parts of the world this morning ask me what happened to Canada yesterday.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, what happened was the Prime Minister either did not know about the process, or I believe just had the arrogance to say “I'll fix this” because they were not moving fast enough according to his agenda, and he just strong-armed our whip to get him up there. Unfortunately, because of the lack of process that he followed—after all, he has to know it, he is the Prime Minister of this country—he got into the issue of abusing an individual. There is absolutely no justification for that, and we cannot in this place minimize the situation that happened here yesterday, brought on by the Prime Minister of Canada.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect the member would not have had the opportunity to ask that question.

If the member was in the workplace as an employer, and he walked in and grabbed an employee within that business, hauled the person out, turned around and went back, and maybe accidentally knocked one of the ladies around, I can almost guarantee he would not have the privilege he has in this place of showing up for work the next day.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that until today, every time I stand in the House, it has been an honour to talk about bills or a matter that moves this country and my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex forward.

For 20 years, I was involved in municipal government. I started out in planning, became a councillor, and then reeve and mayor for many of those years. Then I had the distinct pleasure and most distinguished honour of being elected to this place to represent the constituents of my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. I have done so for a little over 10 years now, which I guess says a bit about how old I am. However, I can say that in that time and in my career as a business person, I have never in my life even attempted to visualize the abuse of an institution that we saw yesterday, not by a member of Parliament but by the distinguished head, the Prime Minister, of what I call this great country of Canada.

Every one of us will stand and say what a privilege it is to be here, and it is. I take every one at his or her word. Yesterday, I saw the Prime Minister get up out of his seat for some reason and storm across the aisle. I also watched the video clips last night and I have to say the clips did not show the anger in his face. I have absolutely no idea why a Prime Minister would get angry just because people had not yet taken their seats for a vote on cutting off the time for debate. However, he did. He stormed across the aisle, grabbed the Conservative whip, and dragged him away. Then something must have occurred, because the Prime Minister went back.

Not only did he abuse his authority, not only did he grab the Conservative whip and pull him away, but he went back and used coarse language in the House, which is not acceptable. Nobody on the other side seems to want to talk about it. I have listened to two members across the aisle today who actually tried to minimize what the Prime Minister, their leader, did. It will not get minimized and it will not go away until he does something to make sure there are consequences for what he did not only to our NDP colleague but to the members of the House and to regain the respect of Canadians across the country which was lost yesterday.

I am trying to figure it out. He was like an angry, spoiled adolescent who did not get his way, so he got up and went across the aisle. He instantly apologized. He made the apology not after the first time he crossed the aisle, not after he crossed the aisle the second time, but he made it after the House erupted and he maybe figured out that he had better say something. Then this morning, in a written statement, and my colleague from Portage—Lisgar said, “I understand, not likely a great night,” we have a written apology.

We learn from history. We learn from apologies. He is a great orator. He is a drama teacher. That is his background. He is a good actor.

When a member stands up in this place, we have to take the member at his word. In 2012, the Prime Minister, then a member of Parliament, made a comment to a colleague of mine. I was in the House. He used unparliamentary language. He hurled a comment at our environment minister. We were in government at the time. He said, “Oh, you piece of” and I cannot say the word in this House, but he did. Our Prime Minister, unapologetic about the spirit that moved him, said, “I called him something that was fundamentally biodegradable, compostable and good for the environment.”

Now our colleagues across the way are on their knees saying, “Oh, please, take him at his word. What he said was compassionate and he meant it.” In families and in business, and with people I deal with every day, I take people at their word when they follow their word. I do not take people at their word because they are good speakers, good orators, or a drama teacher before becoming the Prime Minister.

He has brought the House to the point where we have no trust in the government. The government almost lost a vote on Monday, and for almost the first time in the history of Canada, it took the Speaker to break the vote, because people did not show up for work.

We got elected to show up for work. I guess the government was embarrassed because it could not get its members here, so the government drafted Motion No. 6. First of all, the government took away the calendar. What does that mean to the folks who are listening? It means the government can bring bills forward and we will have no time to prepare to debate them. It took away the calendar that indicates which bill is going to be on the docket, and we would have no time to prepare for it. We have a dictator who created a motion that more or less says, “We are going to tell you when you are going to speak, what you are going to speak on, and by the way, we will tell you what the bill might be, just before we introduce it.” That is not democracy.

Democratic reform is a bit of a joke after the actions we have just seen. The Prime Minister has taken away the ability of the opposition to oppose. That is what we do. That is our mandate.

I am going to be looking for the consequences that Canadians are asking me about. The question of privilege will be going to PROC, which is rigged up and has a majority of Liberal members on it, but what sort of consequences will there be for our Prime Minister?

[Petitions, May 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition with a number of names of residents from my constituency on it, which basically talks about the significance of life and how important it is until natural death.

The petitioners are calling upon the House of Commons and Parliament to continue to prohibit euthanasia and assisted suicide.

[Ethics, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the issue is not Ms. McFall's knowledge of the industry. It is the fact that she practically owns the industry. She claimed, as my colleague quoted, “my family’s business is pretty relevant to (the portfolio) so I think that’s part of how I got the job”.

She got the job because of her family and her company, and apparently the minister, in all due respect, did not see the conflict. However, I have to ask this of the minister. Why hire a chief of staff who has such a direct conflict of interest?

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate questions that the concern small business people, particularly in agriculture.

I just do not get it. I know it is coming from the NDP. The New Democrats have a little trouble comprehending the financial aspects of a $9 billion or $10 billion benefit that the TPP would bring if we get it signed. We have to get it signed or those numbers will drop because people lack the confidence in their companies to invest. It is pretty simple stuff.

I agree that with anything we do, we should always do it alongside our businesses so they have the resources and the research behind them to add value to whatever the product. When we were in government, we involved others in our cluster funding for research. We brought industry, the public, and businesses to the table with the researchers and the universities so they could work together to determine what was the best way forward to add value and prosperity to their industry.

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard about trade deficits and trade surpluses and about what they did and what we have done. We were told many times that there was a great balance between trade surpluses and trade deficits. They all create jobs. We want to remember that this is about creating jobs.

I will take a different analogy. Why, when we were in government during the greatest recession since the Great Depression, did we have a trade deficit? The Government of Canada of that day, the Conservative Party of Canada, dealt with the economy in such a strong manner that the people in Canada had the resources to buy from those countries because we still had the money in our pockets. Those countries that went through the recession did not have the money to buy what we had in Canada. On the plus side, Canadians did well in respect to other countries. In fact, that is likely the main reason why we had a deficit in exports as compared to a surplus.

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George.

It is an honour to come to this House to speak to something that is quite significant for my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. I am going to focus on my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, which is in southwestern Ontario. It is a little bigger than the province of Prince Edward Island. Prince Edward Island is a beautiful province, as is the riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. It is made up of small towns, small businesses, and energetic people. The largest urban area has 14,000 people. I know that in some of the ridings around here, members can jump on a bicycle and go around their riding in 15 minutes. They likely have as many constituents in a couple of high-rises that I may have in my whole riding.

Let me tell members the significance of the trans-Pacific partnership. I happened to be on the international trade committee at the time of the trade discussions on CETA and the TPP, and also the agriculture committee. International trade, agriculture, and Lambton—Kent—Middlesex have so much in common. The business of my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex is agriculture and includes many of the supporting industries that make agriculture so significant and also very successful. They have had successful years because we as a Conservative government always took the lead in determining what we could do for those industries and manufacturers in our province and in our country. What is the purpose of these trade agreements?

I want to thank the member for Abbotsford, the previous minister of international trade, so much. A comment came from across the aisle a little while ago about the new international trade minister travelling around. I think she might want to stop some of the travel to the vanity shows in Hollywood and actually call the previous minister, the member for Abbotsford, to find out how to work with countries around the world and successfully walk through win-win situations for those countries involved, including Canada, to sign some 46 trade agreements.

I will go back to the start. What is the purpose of these agreements?

Actually, to boil it down—and that is what I like to do; in my business of agriculture, we like to get to the point—it is about jobs. We create trade. That is what the trans-Pacific partnership and CETA are about. To my colleague across the way who took the credit for COOL, I am glad that somebody bought the pen for them so that they can sign the work that was done that got COOL resolved. That is actually what they are doing now. Whether it is with CETA or the TPP, we need to just give them the pen, because all the work has been done, to get the job in place, so that people in Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, in fact in all of Ontario and across this country can move forward, be competitive, and be a part of the largest trade pact in the world.

The NDP actually does not support any trade, but I want to talk about the significance of what the Liberals are creating by delaying moving forward on this. It is all about investments.

In Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, and across this country, we have investors of all sizes. We have investors who come in and make parts for the auto industry. In my riding, they make parts for the aerospace industry. They do not sell directly to the aerospace, car, or truck manufacturers; rather, they make the parts for a company that further produces an end product. Every day they get up, go to work, do their job. They work with this. If we continue to build trade, these companies in our ridings will continue to grow.

In my riding, there was a small tool and die manufacturer, a family-run business, which made parts for the auto industry. It was a third-generation family, and the youngest had taken the lead responsibility for the business. When the recession came, they announced the expansion of their business. I said to the grandfather, the founder, “This is quite amazing to think that this is off the main roads of Ontario and Middlesex centre. How does this work? We are in a recession and you are actually expanding.” He said, “It's because of that young guy over there”, and he pointed to his grandson. “He researched what we could do with respect to ventures for small businesses to grow and open markets so that we could be competitive with our production and get into markets that were not hindered as much by certain tariffs.”

We went through this whole debate with respect to the trans-Pacific partnership. I sat on the committees. I will focus on agriculture because it is my passion and because all of the businesses in my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex benefit from it. The auto industry is also doing amazingly well, but they do amazingly well when agriculture does well because agriculture tends to buy a number of vehicles, as do the agriculture equipment dealers. I want to touch on how important it is for these businesses to have access to opportunities to move forward.

At committee we heard from Ontario stakeholders, commodity organizations, the Grain Farmers of Ontario, and the beef, pork and canola farmers from across Canada, anything in agriculture, from direct producers to those who were in processing. I will admit that some of the processors were faced with the challenge of being able to meet some of the demands. I think we need to fix some of those terms with respect to labour. We all agree on that.

My time for debate is wrapping up, so I will close by saying that this is an opportunity for the Liberal government, the Government of Canada, to step forward and be a leader. It is not the time to take away from investments. It is not the time to take away credit from those investors who are waiting. They say that Ontario is an opportunity, and that Canada is an incredible opportunity. We have seen that in past trade agreements.

My plea to members is this. I see some members of the agriculture committee sitting across the way. I appreciate that they have taken the time to be a part of this, because we know the significance of this agreement to our greatest and largest industry in Canada right now. Therefore, I would just ask that they use their influence not only with the Prime Minister but also with the trade minister to put the pen to paper and get it done so that investment and growth in this great country can proceed with another great trade agreement.

[Ethics, May 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am amazed that he is criticizing the Ethics Commissioner for making the comment about what she can do and what she cannot, because the Minister of Agriculture hired his chief of staff, a major stakeholder in one of the largest egg producers and processing companies in Canada. Now she is prohibited from supporting supply management, the egg industry, and any trade issues, particularly around the trans-Pacific partnership.

Why did he leave supply management and free trade in the hands of an individual who is not allowed to talk about them?