Cathy McLeod

[National Day of Mourning, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to mark the National Day of Mourning to honour workers who have been injured or killed on the job or suffer from work-related illness. This day reminds us of the undeniable importance of having and ensuring safe and healthy workplaces for Canadians.

We have made significant progress. From 2007 to 2011, the rate of disabling injuries in the federally-regulated sectors decreased by 22%.

Every life is precious, and each year across Canada, in both provincial and federally-regulated industries, close to 1,000 people lose their lives while working.

Together we can do better. That is why our government will continue to work to ensure that our most important resource, workers of all ages, have fair, safe and healthy workplaces.

Building and sustaining safe workplaces contributes to Canada's continued economic prosperity.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this is typical of the fundamental difference between the NDP and the Conservatives. The NDP regularly wants to have national discussions that go on and on, whereas our government is a government of action. We are a government of giving the police the tools they need. We are a government that will see that criminals receive the criminal sentences that should rightfully be coming their way.

Again, we are a government of action, not a government of continuing to talk and talk about issues.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, a crime is a crime, regardless of whether or not it is on the Internet.

More importantly, we have talked about the distribution of non-consensual intimate images and the ability to remove them. He should talk about the issues we looked at in terms of some of the people. For a good majority of them, the issues are around the distribution of intimate images. We are taking an approach that is going to give police the investigative and legislative tools to truly tackle this issue.

Of course, we need to continue to do the very important work, outside of a legislative process, that is focused on education and making sure that Canadians are aware of this issue. Anything this big requires a multi-pronged approach.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime act.

I would like to first set out a bit of context in terms of where we have come from. Members might be aware that it was 25 years ago when the first test was done on the World Wide Web. We have to look at how far we have come in 25 years.

Facebook, a powerful tool, was introduced in 2004. I might be dating myself a bit, but I remember going to my first tutorial to learn about the World Wide Web, and it was very complicated. There were DOS commands and giant computers. Now we have the ability to take a picture with something the size of our palm and distribute it immediately around the world. That is an absolutely incredible change over a relatively short 25 years.

Before I go into the details of the bill and why it is so important, I need to reflect on the fact that this tool in some ways has been fabulous for Canadians and people around the world. I remember a colleague telling me how his grandmother in Argentina every night read a book over Skype to put his child to bed.

We have the ability to pay our bills by email. We have the ability to interact immediately with family around the world. It is much easier to keep those connections we treasure and value.

As politicians we have seen the dark side of the Internet. Anyone who has a Twitter account or a Facebook account regularly sees some of the very vicious comments that come in through those forums. As my colleague across the aisle just said, these comments are often anonymous and vicious. As politicians, we deal with that, but that is nothing compared to really overstepping the bounds and the issues some children and adults have had to deal with.

A quick Google search on cyberbullying immediately brings up hundreds of names. There is Ryan's story, Bronagh's story, and Megan's story. Look at Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd. Just recently we heard the she allegedly fell victim to someone on the other side of the world.

Times have changed incredibly, and we need to change with the times.

This legislation proposes changes to the Criminal Code, the Competition Act, and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. The bill would create a law to address the behaviour that can occur in cases of cyberbullying. This new offence would be called non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Investigative powers need to be updated to ensure that they are in line with the modern technology I just talked about, where in one minute, something as small as one's hand reaches across the world.

I would like to expand a bit on the amendments to the Criminal Code and highlight how they are designed to ensure appropriate privacy protection in the face of the new technology. It is a difficult balancing act, because we need to ensure that privacy is protected while providing the tools to tackle these horrendous issues.

There are a few areas I would like to talk about. I will start with preservation orders and demands and updates to the tracking warrant provisions, which are essential tools to ensure that effective investigations are conducted in Canada when the police are faced with crimes involving technology.

What is this new preservation order? The preservation order would create new powers, to be used in both Criminal Code and Competition Act contraventions. The goal of these two new provisions is to ensure that volatile computer data will not be deleted before the police have time to get a warrant or court order to collect it for investigations.

The need for these tools is obvious. Not only is computer data easily deleted but it can also easily be lost through carelessness or just in day-to-day business practice.

A preservation order or demand would legally require a person to keep the computer data that is vital to an investigation long enough for the police to seek the judicial warrants and orders necessary to obtain the information. This tool would ensure that the police could get the investigation under way without the loss of really important evidence.

People may have concerns about the impact of these amendments on a person's right to a reasonable expectation of privacy. They might have heard about Europe's data retention regime and worry that our legislation is going to import that to Canada. That is not what Bill C-13 is doing.

Data retention would allow the collection of a range of data for all telephone and Internet service subscribers for a defined period of time, regardless of whether or not the data was connected with the investigation.

Bill C-13 does not provide for data retention. It provides for data preservation, and that is a very important fact. It would require that specified computer data in connection with a specific investigation and specific people be preserved for a limited period of time.

It is important to understand that this data would not be turned over to the police unless they first obtained a judicial warrant or court order for that disclosure. Also, any of the data that was preserved and whose presentation was not otherwise required for regular business purposes would have to be destroyed as soon as it was no longer needed for the investigation. This would protect the privacy of Canadians. This would also ensure that the regime created in this bill did not inadvertently result in the kind of data retention I have just described.

As members can see, the data preservation scheme the government is proposing is actually quite constrained in its focus and has been designed as a stop-gap measure so that the judicial warrants and the court order police obtain subsequent to access to the evidence are not rendered useless. Again, it is a really important intermittent tool.

Another change Bill C-13 proposes is updating the Criminal Code's existing tracking warrant provision. Of course, this warrant was created in the early 1990s. Police could obtain and use this warrant to track people, cars, or objects. Again, as I described earlier, so much has changed in tracking technology since then and in the accuracy of this tracking technology. The continuity with which it can track things has also improved.

Because of the improvements, the existing tracking warrant is outdated, and its privacy safeguards no longer reflect the reality of modern tracking technology, which could allow for greater privacy invasions than before. This is an important thing we thought we had to tackle.

Bill C-13 proposes to heighten privacy protections for the most invasive uses of tracking technology. This legislation would do this by creating a dual threshold for tracking warrants.The police would be able to get the first kind of tracking warrant the way they have always been able to get one for the less invasive type of tracking: prove to the judge or the justice that they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the warrant will assist in the investigation of an offence. The police would use this warrant to track objects, vehicles, and transactions.

However, for the more invasive technique of tracking a person using a device usually worn or carried by the person, such as a cell phone, the police would have to get a second type of warrant, which would provide for greater privacy protection than the first.

Bill C-13 would provide that to get such a warrant, the police would have to prove to the judge that they had reasonable grounds to believe that the use of a tracking warrant would assist in the investigation of the offence.

Legally, this is a tougher standard to meet, and as a result, it would provide more privacy protection than the first type of warrant, which is about tracking objects. This is an important distinction, as it reflects a higher level of protection, commensurate with the more intrusive potential of tracking persons, which is reflected in the second type of tracking warrant. It was designed to very carefully meet that difficult balance in terms of giving the police tools in the modern day that ensure that there are appropriate safeguards in place.

To bring things to a conclusion, I talked about two specific measures. Canadians have understandably been outraged by the crimes committed through the use of the Internet, including massive fraud and horribly cruel incidents of cyberbullying. I believe that Bill C-13 is both a necessary and balanced response. It would enable law enforcement to have tools to respond to these criminal activities. I encourage all members in this House to support Bill C-13.

[Employees' Voting Rights Act, April 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to rise in the House today to speak about Bill C-525, employees' voting rights act.

In bringing this bill forward, the member for Wetaskiwin has focused our attention on an important aspect of labour relations in Canada, and that is the process of governing the certification and decertification of unions.

The amendments our government proposed to the bill, after consulting with key stakeholders in committee, would help ensure that unions remain relevant in today's evolving workforce by legitimizing union certification and decertification in federally regulated workplaces.

As members know, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities had the chance to study the bill clause by clause, and of course, we heard from a number of stakeholders, union members, employers, and academics. I think we can all agree that given the fragility of our national economy, it is important that we get this right for employees who are under federal jurisdiction.

After hearing from Canadians who will be affected by the bill, we have proposed a number of common sense changes that strengthen its democratic value and fairness. We have carefully reviewed them, and I believe that the bill is, overall, the better for it.

It is simple. These changes improve the bill's fairness and democratic values while they maintain the principle of the bill that all federally regulated workers should have a democratic right to a free and fair secret ballot vote when deciding whether or not to unionize.

I argue regularly that this is not about the employer and the employee and the union. It is really about the relationships among the employees. This is a very personal decision, and I think they have the right to have that very personal decision reflected through a secret ballot process.

I think it is important to note that the NDP members put forward an amendment at report stage to gut the short title, employees' voting rights act. Why have they done this? They do not want Canadians and the workers they claim to represent to learn that the purpose of the bill is simply to give them the democratic right to a secret ballot vote. Again, we have talked about how important that is for employee relations. There is the union and the employer, but we have to remember the individual relations.

The facts are the facts. We strongly oppose the NDP amendment, because we believe that the short title is exactly what this bill represents, an act that delivers voting rights to employees in federally regulated workplaces.

I would like to take a few minutes to highlight some of the common sense changes we have proposed in this bill.

The employee's voting rights bill would give all employees the opportunity to have their say about certifying or decertifying a union. As things stand today for federally regulated employees, this is not always the case. Again, that is very much undemocratic. Instead, if at least 50% plus one of the employees in a bargaining unit sign membership cards, an application for union certification can be filed automatically. This means that a significant percentage of the people in the bargaining unit may find themselves in a union, whether they like it or not and without the opportunity to have had their views heard.

I fundamentally believe that all employees should have the democratic right to have a free and fair secret ballot when considering whether they want union representation in their workplace. I would like to ask my fellow members if this is too much for workers to ask. Are free and democratic elections not a foundation of Canadian society?

In my humble opinion, not only would it appear to be a reasonable request, it is a basic right. This is exactly what the employees' voting rights bill proposes. It proposes to eliminate automatic certification and would require that a secret ballot vote be held before certifying or decertifying a union.

For a union to be certified or decertified, the bill originally required a majority of employees in the bargaining unit to vote in favour. In cases where members did not vote, for one reason or another, their unused vote would essentially be considered a vote against a union.

We propose instead that the majority be based on the number of ballots actually cast, like in most elections. With this method, uncast ballots would not affect the outcome of the vote.

Canadians take a great deal of pride in the democratic process. The right to vote and the right to be heard go right to the very core of what it means to be Canadian. When we vote, whether it is at the federal, provincial, and municipal level, we do so by secret ballot.

A secret ballot means the freedom to vote the way we want to, to vote for what we think is best for ourselves, our families, and our country. This is the essence of what it means to live in a democratic society.

A decision as important as whether to form a union should represent the employees real intentions. The only way to guarantee that employees are free from pressure and that they can express their honest opinions the way they wish is to give them a free and fair secret ballot voting system. I think I can safely say that just like there are some Canadians who do not wish to reveal who they voted for in an election, there may be some workers who are not comfortable expressing their views on unionization publicly. Their reason for wanting privacy is their own and none of our business. It is as simple as that.

Subtle and sometimes not so subtle forces can come into play in these situations. The opinions and actions of colleagues and others have an effect on how someone might make a choice. If employees do not have the opportunity to vote freely for any reason, the results of a vote cannot truly reflect how the employees feel about union representation, and that is not fair. The concept is one that our government fully supports.

We also suggest lowering the minimum level of employee support required to trigger a certification and decertification from 45% to 40%. This number is much more in line with international conventions and the majority of provincial statutes. This approach is fair and will ultimately establish a level playing field for both supporters and opponents of the union.

I would like to take the opportunity to address the amendments proposed by the NDP during report stage. They propose to raise the card-check threshold required to trigger a vote for decertification from 40% to 50%. In short, the NDP is proposing to undermine one of the basic principles of the bill, which is to ensure that certification and decertification rules are the same so that supporters and opponents of unionization are placed on the same level playing field. These amendments would give a clear and unfair advantage to supporters, and although we are not surprised by this bias, the government simply cannot support such a blatantly unfair proposal by the NDP.

Our government has also proposed amending the date on which the new bill would come into effect. Our amendment states that this bill would come into force six months after receiving royal assent. This would give labour boards sufficient time to make the necessary changes to the regulations and procedures. I believe these amendments have resulted in a stronger bill, one that is more democratic and fair, and one that serves the needs of Canadian workers.

With these amendments, we are pleased to fully back the employees' voting rights act. I would like to encourage all of my hon. colleagues to support the bill, and in doing so they would be showing respect for hard-working Canadians and the principle of democracy. Again, to me, this is an issue about employer relationships and what happens in terms of their workplaces. Being able to have a secret ballot vote is absolutely fundamental.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for Wetaskiwin for raising this issue and acting as a champion for the democratic rights of hard-working Canadians.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am absolutely proud of the work that our government has done for seniors. The number who are living below the poverty line, compared with when we took office, has changed dramatically. The increase to the GIS was the biggest increase in many years, and there is income splitting available to seniors.

Again, our record on seniors is very strong and we are very proud of that record.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have looked very carefully at the NDP's plan, its plan on the carbon tax and the plan in terms of how it was going to spend that money. To be frank, it was a myriad and hodgepodge of social programs that the members were going to spend that money on.

In contrast, we believe that Canadians work very hard for their money and they need to keep that money in their pockets. It is very expensive these days in terms of day-to-day living. The more we can have that hard-earned money in the pockets of Canadians, the better off Canadians will be, and of course the better off Canada will be because they will be investing that money. They will be investing it into their families, their futures, their businesses.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to address that question. The member is perhaps not familiar with it, and I hope other provinces follow suit, but the first nations in British Columbia, in partnership with the federal government and the province, were the first to sign on to a first nations health authority. They are assuming responsibility for their services, their programs. Everyone is watching, and this will be a great opportunity in terms of creating the robust programs that meet the health care needs of our first nations communities throughout British Columbia. Hopefully, they will follow suit across Canada.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to BIA no. 1 today. We all know that the budget was introduced a number of months ago now, and there are two process whereby we turn our budget into legislation. Today what we are talking about is the first very important piece of legislation.

When I spoke to the budget a number of months ago, I talked about how we had a plan that started when we first took government in 2006. It was a plan that saw us through the global recession, and we saw how the finance minister followed this plan and was leading us into some of the best positions in the G7, including the best net debt-to-GDP ratio and the best job growth rate. We are incredibly proud of the plan that we had, which saw us through a very difficult time and coming back to a balanced budget.

That speaks to the three broad themes of this budget: returning to balance, supporting jobs and growth, and supporting families and communities. I will speak to these three themes and perhaps give some small examples that represent those themes, but first I want to make a general statement.

We hear the New Democrats frequently comment about the number of pages. I am not sure if they have challenges and do not want to read those 359 pages, but it is important to recognize that legislatively it sometimes takes a lot of pages to make a little change.

For example, making MP pensions fairer for Canadians was a small change, but it took about 20 pages of legislation to actually do that. I do not think we should be judging a budget document, a plan, in terms of its number of pages.

The other point I would like to make is that I certainly believe that if the NDP, God forbid, ever had the opportunity to present a budget, given all its national plans and tax raises, it would probably fill a bookshelf with national strategy, national strategy, tax increase, tax increase. That is one piece that we need to look at.

Of course, we know that the Liberals would probably have about one page. They know that budgets balance themselves, so one page would probably be sufficient for any budget that the Liberals might decide to present.

Our government realizes that crafting a plan is a multi-year, multi-faceted process, and it requires measures that are both large and small.

First I would like to target why it is important that we return to a balanced budget.

We know that we cannot leave debt for our children and grandchildren. It would not be fair. We would not do it as a family member and we should not be doing it as a country. We also know that when we have a good fiscal position, our debt repayment is low, which means we have more money for health care, hospitals, and all the many things that Canadians feel would add value for infrastructure. When we are not paying a lot of money in debt repayment, we have additional funds to focus in those areas. We know that it gives us the ability to keep taxes low and gives us the opportunity for flexibility and stability.

When we first took government, economic times were good. We paid down $37 billion in debt. We had to provide some economic stimulus during the years, but we are on track to be back to a balanced budget by 2015-16.

Certainly if we look around the world and compare Canada with other countries, we can be incredibly proud. How do we do that? We do it in two ways. We do it on the revenue side. We do it by creating an environment where small and large businesses can thrive and survive and create that economic benefit. We do it through our aggressive trade plan and our trade agreements, such as the South Korean and the European free trade agreements, just to name a couple.

In the province of British Columbia, my cattlemen in B.C. are absolutely thrilled with the aggressive measures we have taken in terms of what is going to open up new markets for them. They have gone through an incredibly difficult time and they see huge opportunities. It was said by the cattlemen that they now have 500 million hungry customers waiting for them, so creating the environment for revenue is really important. Ensuring that the people pay their fair share of taxes by closing tax loopholes is another part of taking care of the revenue side.

The expenditure side is another important area. Again, we are looking at the expenditure side very carefully. We are making sure that the money the government spends is very thoughtful money. We are making sure that there is value for dollars, and we have undertaken a number of measures to make sure that compensation is fair.

That was a look at the return to balanced budgets and the importance of returning to balanced budgets.

Now I have just a few comments about some measures for supporting jobs and growth. I will look at one, which is a very tiny measure. We know that in British Columbia, we have a fabulous wine industry. The member for Okanagan—Coquihalla has a private member's bill to make changes to the importation of intoxicating liquor so that if people are visiting British Columbia from Ontario, they can go to one of those wineries and pick up a bottle from Quails' Gate or another winery and take it across the border. It would really open up the market. Amazingly, in Canada, the ability for interprovincial trade has been constrained for our wine industry.

In this bill we have given craft brewers and artisan distillers the same opportunities to open up their markets. I will give an example. I used to be the mayor of Pemberton. Pemberton is well known for its seed potatoes and it is known for its pristine glacier waters.

I can remember, when I was there, that for many years people would muse that someone should make vodka in Pemberton. They had potatoes and fantastic water. What a great combination.

Entrepreneurs are out there. It did not happen when I was there, but a family moved to Pemberton, and they had the same thought. They created a new business venture, Pemberton Distillery, and they make Schramm vodka. It was a small entrepreneur setting up a business. What we are doing is opening up their opportunity to sell their product.

When that kind of environment is created across the country, what we are doing is creating success for our small and medium-sized businesses. Again, it is a small measure, but it is incredibly important in terms of what the opportunities will be.

There is another area we are looking at supporting for opportunities, jobs, and growth. Last week, the Premier of British Columbia was in Ottawa. She was speaking about skilled trades shortages. She was speaking about their goal, which is coming to fruition, of having a robust LNG industry in British Columbia. She was talking about needing the manpower to fill the jobs that are going to be created.

We did identify, and I know that it is not across the country, that there are definitely skills shortages. We have a need for apprenticeship support. We have done a lot in terms of the apprenticeship program.

If we look at someone who perhaps is going back into an apprenticeship, he might have a wife and a family. We announced support in this latest budget such that registered Red Seal programs will have access to $100 million in interest-free loans. That is $4,000 per individual per session. That can make the difference for people going back, getting their Red Seal, and opening up their opportunities in terms of the new available jobs throughout British Columbia and Alberta, and of course, across the country. Again, it is important support that is going to hopefully help generate the people we need into the future.

Finally, every one of us, in our offices, have cases that touch us. I had a case of a couple who were not able to have children of their own. They had waited many years and were able to adopt a child. This child was in another country. Of course, sometimes babies do not come according to plan. The baby was born prematurely. The family had to travel to this country to spend time with their newborn. The expenses to spend that time before they were able to bring their newborn back home were extraordinary.

The $15,000 tax credit they could have to support their adoption expenses would make a phenomenal difference.

The crafting of this budget was done with input from Canadians across this country. We see many measures that we know we submitted or that our colleagues submitted. It is a plan to move Canada forward, and it is a plan to return to balanced budgets and a successful, prosperous future.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague and one thing that stood out was her suggestion about the EI credit for small businesses. But is she aware that this government provided important temporary stimulus when it was needed during the global recession? When we look at the job numbers of today, we see that we are now at over one million net new jobs.

Would the member not agree that the government should be looking at getting back to balanced budgets, which this budget does? After we have put temporary measures in place for economic stimulus and economic action, how important is it for her children and grandchildren that we actually have the discipline to then have a balanced budget by the end of 2015?