Bob Nault

[Criminal Code, May 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the use of sending references to the Supreme Court should be used sparingly. I know the opposition tends to like the idea of sending this to the Supreme Court. I am sure it will go to the Supreme Court, but it will go on specific matters, not based on whether we think the overall bill is charter compliant or not.

I firmly believe the bill is charter compliant. I agree with the minister that it does meet the test, and that it will not be the bill we are dealing with specifically, Bill C-14. It will be matters like whether we did not go far enough, and others will challenge that.

I know you are trying to hurry me up, Madam Speaker. I was going to answer the other question. Maybe I will get it in the next go-around.

[Criminal Code, May 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, my colleague has asked a good question. It goes back to my original discussion that we should go slowly and take our time. We should not just let the Supreme Court, or courts, decide what Parliament should decide. We have to make decisions in this place based on what is good for Canadians, in accordance with their beliefs and values. They will be interpreted in the courts, as will this legislation. If in fact, as the member has suggested, we do not allow for conscience rights for members of the medical profession to not participate and if this is considered to be unacceptable to the courts, we will hear that, and we will have further debates.

I have been in this place for 17 years, and my colleague has been here quite a long time himself. We will continue to have this debate, because it is a fundamental change for us as a society. We cannot compare ourselves to other countries, and we should be very careful how we approach that.

[Criminal Code, May 31st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to have this opportunity to speak to this legislation and enter this debate. First, I want to thank the leadership of all the parties for making this a free vote. This is such an emotional, difficult, and personal debate. Having had the opportunity to sit in the House since the eighties, I have had the opportunity to be involved in many debates. From my experience, this is one of the most difficult debates that as a parliamentarian I have entered into.

I want to be clear, as we start this discussion, that I support the legislation, and I will lay out to some extent the reason why I feel this way. This decision has to be based on our own personal life experiences and some would say, our own values. However, the reality is that all members in this place come from different parts of Canada, come from different experiences, and have different understandings in some respects of what we are entering into.

We all have to keep this in mind. This is fundamental societal change. This is fundamental because we are moving to allow individual Canadians, people who we love, who we are close to, who are our neighbours, our friends, the ability to have medical assisted dying. It should be one of those debates that should not be taken lightly. Nor should it be a debate where we talk specifically about what the lawyers or the courts are saying. Yes, we have a court case to deal with and the Supreme Court has told us what its sense is, that in fact people have a right to assisted dying. However, we should not diminish the importance of what that may do to our country over the long term.

I want to use my experience as a member of Parliament to explain the rationale for being extremely careful and diligent in our decisions as we move forward over the next number of years.

I represent a riding that probably has the most suicides of anywhere in Canada. Over the last decade, I have watched hundreds of young people take their lives, people who I know their families, their moms and dads, and have watched with some horror as they have made that kind of decision. Yes, it is a little different than what we are debating today, but it defines how we feel about the objective of allowing people to make that ultimate decision of taking their own life with the medical assistance of others.

We should in some regard be careful not to assume what is being said by others in the House, for example, that the legislation does not go far enough, or that it may be not charter compliant because it is too restrictive, or that it goes too far for some people who have made equally compassionate arguments in the House. This decision has to be based on where we think we want our society to go. It is not up to the courts to define and to suggest, as some have suggested even today, that we have not gone far enough so therefore we have to go all the way to a particular place because it may not potentially be compliant with the charter.

I sat in cabinet for a number of years and I have seen many legal arguments put to cabinet on different issues by legal counsel and on many occasions. On many occasions I have had the opportunity to see the decision made right or the decision made wrong, or the advice to be given not exactly as we had anticipated. Therefore, we cannot stand in this place and assure Canadians that this legislation is absolutely perfect one way or the other.

That is why I like the approach the government has taken. It has taken an approach that it is very restrictive. It gives society time to look at the other areas that we may consider, as parliamentarians, to allow people to take their own life, for example, minors.

As I said, I have had the experience of watching many young children take their lives. To talk about minors who are willing to take their lives and make it legal and easier, if I could put it in those terms, is not something I totally support. I am very concerned about that.

I am worried about the whole issue of advance requests. It is hard to predict the situation a person will find themselves in, so we need to have more study of the whole issue of advance requests, and minors and mental illness.

I support the legislation, not because the leadership told me to do it. I do not tend to work that way and never have. I think it is the best approach for something that would fundamentally change our society forever.

We have to remind ourselves as we stand here, and when we vote tonight, that someone close to us very soon will use this legislation. It may not be as comfortable and as simple as some people have made it sound. We have had this discussion today.

The legal framework is important. It is important for the Senate not to get into this discussion about whether or not it goes far enough. The reality of it is that if it is a framework that allows us to get the compliance we need through the charter, we should move forward on it. I want to make this clear. I do not care which legislation we would pass, the one the NDP seems to favour or the one the Conservatives seem to want to have, and I am not sure exactly which way that would go. That legislation will go to the Supreme Court to be tested as we move forward. It does not matter which legislation we pass because this is such a fundamental change to our society, there is no doubt people will go to the Supreme Court to test the reality of the legislation.

Here is the reality we face. Under the legislation, we allow mentally competent adults who are in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability, have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability and are experience enduring and intolerable suffering caused by their medical condition, and whose death has become reasonably foreseeable, taking into account all of their medical circumstances, to seek assisted dying. That is a pretty large amount to start with.

I know this will change our health care system for the next generations. I strongly recommend to members of Parliament not to be too quick to judge what other generations will want to have 50, 100 years from now. We should be very careful about that.

I believe, as most Liberals do, in individual rights. I am not suggesting we restrict those, but the right to choose for people who are competent is fair. Having control and obviously the dignity in dying are very important concepts for me as a member of Parliament.

Today I am pleased to have this opportunity to make these comments. This is not a partisan issue. This will not get any member of Parliament more votes, one way or the other. This is a profound fundamental change in how I will deal with individuals every day with whom I am close. I want to ensure we get it right. If we did restrict it too much this time, I would rather do that than go too far.

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said before in this place in other speeches I have given, when a commitment is made during an election campaign and the commitment is significant by a very activist party, now a very activist government, I would not expect anyone in this House or any Canadian to believe that all the commitments made by the government would end up in the first budget.

It will take us a number of years to make significant changes, as it did when we took office in 1993 to change the direction of the Mulroney government. It took us four to five years to clean up the budget mess, just to get into a surplus.

Governments take time to direct and develop their structures. It will be the same issue here. Next year, people will be seeing things in the budget then, so that is important. In other budgets over the next three or four years, we will see the commitments made by the government starting to appear.

I know people are anxious. I know they think we should do it all in one year. However, if we were to take the NDP's philosophy and have a balanced budget, we would not be doing any of this.

In fact, child care will come, as we negotiate with the provinces, as we talk about infrastructure deals for child care spaces. We can look forward to those improvements in years to come.

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am on the same page as the member. I can assure him that I am lobbying the government every day to look at not only the way we will make decisions on our national infrastructure projects but also the way we will interact with the local communities and the provinces to make sure that the best decisions are made, and not just made for political reasons.

The infrastructure, as the Prime Minister has said many times, is not a very sexy topic. Most people just gloss over it.

I will give an example in northern Ontario of why this is so difficult for me to feel comfortable that this will ever happen in my term here in office. I hope I can say to the member that that may not be the case. Just the grid for 22 first nations communities that are isolated is a $1.3 billion infrastructure project.

That is a lot of money to expect the governments to put in place, but that is the necessity of the situation in which we find ourselves. If we want to improve the lives of northerners and first nations northerners, we have to put that infrastructure in play here in the next couple of years.

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure and an honour to have the opportunity to speak today to the first budget of the new government. This is my opportunity to speak directly about the budget as it relates to northern Ontario and rural Canada. I want to start by saying that this is a historic budget, from the perspective of the investments that will be made in the north.

If we look at the Canada child benefit and the needs of northerners for child care, financial resources, aboriginal children, and communities that have a large segment of their population who are unemployed or on social assistance, this Canada child benefit will have a disproportionate way of improving the lives of northerners more than any other region in the country. There are thousands of families in the north who are living in poverty, who do not have jobs, who are on social assistance. They could have an opportunity to collect the child benefit, and it would make improvements to the lives of those families right off the bat. That $23 billion that will be moved as early as July 1 will have a significant impact in regions like northern Ontario.

I want to congratulate the government for understanding the importance of raising children, and also understanding that there have to be options. It is not all about child care spaces. It is about the importance of having enough financial resources to buy food and clothes. We have had debates in this House about aboriginal people in the last few days. I strongly recommend that people visit communities in the north that are isolated, where the cost of living is sometimes double that in the south. If people had an opportunity to visit these isolated communities, some 22 that I represent in northern Ontario, in the heart of North America, they will find that this will be a welcome and historic investment in the lives of these communities.

Because of the child benefit and the importance of of it being tax free and not clawed back, there will be an opportunity for people who are on social assistance and who fill out their income tax return to gain more opportunity to buy clothes, food, and other essentials for life. I want to ensure that members are aware of that.

Before I forget, Mr. Speaker, I want you to know that I am splitting my time with the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge.

The other major historic investment that could have a huge impact in northern Ontario is the investment in infrastructure. I have heard some comments across the way that it is not enough this year and that it is not what was expected. However, we all have to be very straight about how this will work.

It will be a historic investment of some $120 billion of federal funds. That does not include in the discussion the share of the provincial, municipal, and first nations governments in infrastructure. If we look at it from the perspective of even being divided in thirds, we could in essence be talking about $350 billion over 10 years, if all levels of government participate. That is a lot of money to be putting into the process of developing our country's infrastructure. This is where I want to talk more about the north than I normally do. In this place, there is a big difference in representing a large rural riding which is one-third of Ontario's land mass, with 13 municipalities, 42 first nations, and virtually no infrastructure. This is a great opportunity for us in this place to support the building of the north, for the first time in decades.

It is always interesting in this House to listen to members of Parliament, in particular from urban Canada, talk about the importance of transit in Toronto or Montreal or places like that. However, where I come from, there are no roads. When we talk about transit, we have to start from the basics.

If we are going to invest and build our nation, if we are going to improve the lives of first nation citizens who live in isolated communities, we are going to have to start from the very basics of putting the financial resources, the infrastructure dollars, into building all-weather roads and grids.

If we want first nations children to be successful, they have to start off with the same level playing field. These communities have to have the same infrastructure, the same abilities to see the progression of their lives in a positive way, as our children do. This infrastructure does not have to happen this year, because planning needs to take place.

Let us talk about all-weather roads and grids. I will use Pikangikum as an example, because I attended the funerals last week of the nine people passed away in a major fire there. There was a lot of conversation nationally about it. Pikangikum has a shovel-ready project to build a grid that would connect energy to the community and allow it to have sewer and water, an operational recreation facility, and housing that is connected to energy. All of this is ready to go. All we need is the green light from the Government of Canada and the participation of the provincial government. We could build an all-weather road and the grid next to it, starting this year.

That shovel-ready project has been sitting on the books now for a number of years. The previous government could have put that infrastructure in place for Pikangikum, but refused to do it. That is one of the reasons there are the kinds of tragic situations that we hear about on a regular basis.

My region, northern Ontario, does not have a twinned highway. It is the only region of the country, aside from the Northwest Territories and in some respects, obviously, the Yukon and Nunavut, that does not have that kind of infrastructure, from the Manitoba border into southern Ontario. When people talk about infrastructure, it is extremely important to realize that my region is coming from a long way back. If we want people to be successful, we have to start with the basic infrastructure that we all need and expect to have.

The other part of this budget that I think is extremely important for northerners is the section on social infrastructure. There is $3.4 billion in the budget over five years for social infrastructure. What is social infrastructure? Social infrastructure includes affordable housing, early learning and child care, cultural and recreational infrastructure, and community health care facilities in places like reserves. Those are the kinds of historic things in this budget.

The next historic part of this budget is the environment, the whole concept of understanding what we need to do not only as northerners but as Canadians and citizens of the globe. We have to take our environmental issues a lot more seriously than we have in the past.

I always tell people I am a lake person. Where I come from, there are thousands of lakes, in some cases lakes that people have never set foot on because they are so isolated. There seems to be more water than there is land. We have to not only cherish that but protect it, because that is the history and the future of my region; it is all going to be based on water.

This budget put in place $5.5 million for the watershed on Lake of the Woods, which is where I live, and it will have a huge impact in doing studies on the effects that climate change and pollution have on a lake as large as Lake of the Woods. It runs into Manitoba and the United States, as well as Ontario. It is a big lake with a lot of issues that need to be dealt with, and I commend the government for understanding what that means.

I stand here today to remind my colleagues in the House that making investments in infrastructure is not always political. It has to be done because it makes the most sense.

We will not get a lot of political bang for our buck for spending billions of dollars in northern Ontario for one seat, two seats, or three seats, but we do it because it builds the nation and it improves the lives of a lot of people, now and in the future.

On behalf of northerners, I am thankful for being given the time to talk about some of the issues in the budget. I am sure we will get a chance to talk about many more.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague to speak a little bit about the 40% threshold, the fact that we have an employment insurance program that just benefits literally close to 40% of men and women who are working out there who could use a program like this.

One of the commitments made by this government is on the issue of dealing with those who are not part of the labour force, but in fact, could be on welfare, could be on some form of social assistance, and the skill development that would go with that and the training.

I am just curious as to how the member sees us developing a strategy to deal with those people.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, these changes and the larger review will allow us to look at the productivity and the opportunities that regions like mine have. We are a successful mining region. In the past, we have been successful in forestry, and we will be again once we move to new products and new structures. Therefore, this analysis and the work being done by the minister responsible will give us the opportunity to see how the new jobs in the future will be developed through the training and through the role we have with the provinces and the territories. That is why we are excited to see these changes coming forward.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, this is the issue with the Conservatives. They think we should uproot a whole family for a job that is minimum wage or just above minimum wage. Imagine saying that to a family that is on EI, that has been structured and working in seasonal employment. That was what the Conservatives were trying to accomplish until everyone figured it out, and that is why they are over there.

The reality is that we do not move a whole family for a low-paying job. If individuals can get a job that pays a high wage, then in fact they will make that move. The problem with the Conservatives' program was they were trying to make people who were on seasonal employment move for low-paying jobs, and move their whole family, when in fact that would not work.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I go back to what I said earlier. The NDP already knows that is a commitment we made in the last platform, that in fact we are moving toward a structure in 2017 where the government will not be able to use those funds in its general revenue. Everyone in this place knows that, but the NDP pretends it somehow never happened. That is a commitment we have made very clearly. The minister has made it. The parliamentary secretary has made it. We on this side have all made it.

I do agree with the member that there are some components of the motion that are good. That is important. One of the things I do not like about the present structure is the way the training structure works. I hope in the larger review, we will look at how the training process works for those skilled trades people who are doing apprenticeships and things like that.