Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I think one of the really shocking things about Galen Weston's attitude was that when he was told he had to pay $15 an hour, which is barely a living wage in any urban centre right now, that he would respond by automating more of his shops so that he did not have to hire people. This is about taking away the jobs that people have. This is about putting people on contract work. This is about the growth of precarious work.

We know that the Prime Minister was against the $15 minimum wage in the federal work sector because he said it would not help anyone. Well it would not help anyone he hangs out with, because he grew up in a different middle class than where my family grew up in as the kids of miners. I know a lot of people who do not make minimum wage back home. I know a lot of people who work three jobs and still cannot make ends meet. The Prime Minister did not think it would help anyone. That is his problem. He is the Prime Minister of the 1%, and he does not have a clue what it is like to be working class or middle class. He thinks, like the member for Spadina—Fort York, that giving money to Galen Weston is somehow going to help workers, rather than just helping the uber-rich.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, oh dear Lord, how do we deal with the member for Spadina—Fort York who is now saying that giving $12 million to a billionaire who lives in a gated community is really about defending the workers? That is the disconnect of the Liberal Party. It is this belief that it is trickled down, and that if we give to the insider, to the powerful, somehow it is creating jobs. Well, we can create jobs in many ways. We can create jobs with a coherent energy strategy. We can create jobs with a national retrofit program. We can do a lot more than giving $12 million to Galen Weston. Then again, my hon. colleague is the one who told us about the million homes he said that the Liberals built that were never built. I mean, if we are going to talk fiction in the House, we could talk about a million mysterious houses that were never built or about how Galen Weston is helping the working class in Canada by us giving him money.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I am so proud to rise for the New Democratic Party today. I will be sharing my time with the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

I rise to talk about the corrosive power of the 1% with the current Liberal government. We have a Prime Minister who won so much support from Canadians, because coming after the years of Stephen Harper and the ugly scandals with Nigel Wright and the dodgy senators the Conservatives appointed, such as Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy, we had the present Prime Minister promise to do government a different way. What we saw quickly after the Liberals came to power was the same old grotty, rum-bottle politics on the Rideau that have been the mark of the Liberal Party for the last 150 years. It is always about the friends. It is always about corruption.

When I talk to people back home, they cannot for the life of them understand why this Prime Minister thought it was a good idea to give $12 million to a guy who lives in a gated community in Florida, who fought against giving his employees a living wage and whose company was found guilty of cheating Canadian families out of bread. These are the people who belong to the Laurier Club, and these are the people who are invited to hang out with the Prime Minister and with the senior staff of the environment minister because they give money to the Liberal Party. Canadians know that it is wrong.

The Canadians I represent in the north work hard. They play by the rules. Many of them do not have pensions. Many of them are facing increasingly perilous short-term and contract work. We see not just an attack on the traditional working class but on the new white-collar working class of people who are working as professors with short-term contract work or as health care workers with short-term contract work. They see a system that is moving increasingly against them, yet they have this Prime Minister who said that the Liberals were there to support the middle class and those wanting to join it. This Prime Minister made them believe, but what we have seen with the current government is that it is always about the super-rich and the policies that favour them.

When we saw the Stelco pensions being undermined, just as the Nortel pensions before them had been undermined, and we saw the Sears workers being ripped off by hedge-fund predators, and we asked day after day in this House that the government do something, the Liberals were not going to do anything to help those pensioners. They got up and cried crocodile tears and showed their emotion, but the family business of the finance minister, Morneau Shepell, is the company that got the contracts to wrap up those pensions.

It is about the power of lobbyists. In fact, the Liberals are so tightly in with lobbyists that we had the present finance minister, in 2013, talk about the need to change legislation so that it would be easier for Morneau Shepell to take over the defined pension benefits. In 2014, Morneau Shepell gave recommendations about changing the legislation to make it easier for its business model. Instead of having to have a lobbyist, the company just got its guy elected as finance minister, and the very first thing he did was Bill C-27, which would have made it easy for the privatized pension industry to retroactively go after pension benefits. They were not here to represent working-class people. They were here to represent the investors and the 1%, of which this finance minister is a part.

We have been going after the Liberals for their unwillingness to go after international tax cheats. We have just heard from them that they are taking tax fairness seriously. Really? Loblaws has been found to have set up a Barbados bank. It is claiming that it was just holding the money, but hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money Canadians should have received to improve the system of services for Canadians are not being paid because of this offshore tax haven.

In Canada, when ordinary workers do not pay their taxes, the government comes down on them with all the power it has. However, when Loblaws does not pay its taxes because it has set up an offshore tax haven, it gets a $12 million gift. Then we get told how great it is for the environment. Thank God for Galen Weston.

Canadians might think I am just picking on Galen because he lives in a gated community in Florida and rips families off for the price of bread and does not want to pay a half-decent wage. Canadians might think I am just being mean; it is the whole class-conscious NDP who do not understand how things are with their betters. However, it is the pattern.

It is the pattern we saw with KPMG that established an international tax fraud scheme for the millionaires and billionaires. When it was caught, not a single person was found guilty. Nobody. I go back to folks back home, and my God if they got an overpayment on their EI, there is no mercy. However, KPMG set up this offshore account for rich billionaires to not have to pay taxes, and no one was charged. In fact, not only were there no charges, but, lo and behold, the same month that the Prime Minister stopped the investigation into KPMG, the Liberal Party of Canada hired a KPMG director to oversee the finances of the Liberal Party. I guess if they can set up offshore tax havens, they probably have the moral backbone to represent the Liberal Party.

It is the same with SNC-Lavalin. The government does not understand why it is in trouble. It thinks that getting someone to call into the Prime Minister's office because they worked on the Trudeau Foundation or they go to the same country clubs that it is, “Hey, what is the problem? We were just trying to change the law.” The law on deferred prosecutions was actually rewritten for SNC-Lavalin, and it still did not meet the criteria.

They had a whole series of efforts to intervene and undermine, and get to the director of public prosecutions, which is why the OECD anti-bribery unit is investigating and watching Canada. It said that the government's actions have lit all the alarm bells. We could go on about the SNC issue all day.

However, what I thought was fascinating is that the SNC lawyer fighting Canada is Frank Iacobucci. Michael Wernick told the former attorney general that she had to be careful with this guy, that he was not a shrinking violet. He is also the same guy who was appointed by the Prime Minister to oversee the Trans Mountain consultations. It is the same little circle of friends who look after each other time and time again.

We have a situation here. We need to have a system where Canadians can trust that there is fairness. They cannot have belief and trust when what is being run in Ottawa are the phone calls into the Prime Minister's office to change laws, to do favours, because of who people know in the PMO. That is the fundamental rot that makes people not believe in the system.

We are looking at the environmental crisis we are facing. The government came back, after the Prime Minister showed off his Haida tattoo, and said they would make everything work. It decided that it would stick with Stephen Harper's greenhouse gas emission targets and with Stephen Harper's investments into the oil sector. Our greenhouse gas emissions, because of what is going on in the oil sands, are higher this year than they were last year, which was higher than it was the year before. Year in, year out, the gas keeps rising. Year in, year out, the government continues to subsidize.

The government tells us that if we give $12 million to Galen Weston to fix his fridges, it will show a whole new commitment to environmental change. What it is really showing is that those who are the super-rich, the super-powerful, those who can get invited to the Laurier Club, can get the lobbyists in to see the key ministers and the Prime Minister and go to cash-for-access events will get their way. That is the broken trust that the Prime Minister is going to have to explain to the Canadian people.

I am more than willing to take questions.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, it is fascinating to hear my hon. colleague talk in this debate about trying to deal with offshore tax havens and how the government is going to deal with them, when this is specifically about the $12 million we gave to Galen Weston, who lives in a gated community, who is now facing, through the justice department, the fact that Loblaws' financial holdings were seen to be holding upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that should have been paid to Canada. It set up an offshore haven in Barbados so that it did not have to pay taxes.

People who are super-rich and friends with the Liberals get money, and then we are told what great people they are. However, when the people I represent do not pay their taxes and do tax cheating, they do not get gifts. They do not get people buying them fridges. They get charged.

Whether it is KPMG, where one of the KPMG directors was appointed to oversee the finances of the Liberal Party after KPMG was found to have set up an international tax fraud scheme, or whether it is Loblaws, which set up its offshore tax haven to avoid paying taxes, the government gives them gifts, because this is the government of the 1%.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why he thinks it is good government policy to give tax money to tax cheats.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Are you standing up to defend the interference?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I always find it so fascinating to hear the Liberals talk about the importance of protecting the independence of the judiciary. It is actually a fundamental principle of a democratic system and it is what cost the current government the former attorney general, the former president of the Treasury Board, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister and the former clerk of the Privy Council when the government attempted to interfere in the independence of the judiciary. However, I am not going to go there today, because I know my friend is still trying to build the walls to protect the damage that was done to the Prime Minister.

Among all the damage control the Liberals did, we found out that in an attempt to go after the former attorney general, someone leaked information about the nomination of Justice Joyal to the Supreme Court. That is a serious breach. In any other government, that would have been considered a very serious breach.

I would like to ask the member about the habit the Liberals have of using their Liberal fund to vet judges with respect to how much they donate to the Liberal Party. Does he understand that is a complete breach of the obligation to separate the pecuniary interests of the Liberal Party from the independence of the judiciary?

[Government Priorities, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I was back home talking with people about job and pension insecurity, talking with Kashechewan evacuees facing another year of devastating floods and broken promises. Everyone asked me to explain why the Prime Minister gave $12 million to Galen Weston to fix his fridges. This is a guy who lives in a gated community in Florida and fought against a living wage for his employees. It is the disconnect of the government that offends people.

Why is the Prime Minister preferring to act like a head butler for the uber-rich and the lobbyists rather than stand up for the interests of working-class Canadians?

[Cancer, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to invite Canadians to participate in the Canadian Cancer Society's daffodil campaign. This campaign matters.

I think today, as I think every day, of my sister Kathleen. Wherever there was the loudest table or the greatest laughter, there was Kathleen. Wherever there was a shout-out for one more song and one more story, there was my sis. Even as a little girl, she blew through our lives like a defiant summer storm.

She suffered grievously from cancer. It was not bloody fair, but it never is. I have never seen anyone tougher and more resolute in the face of death. Doc Holliday had nothing on my sis. Kathleen taught me that what we have is the time we have and that our only wealth is the investment we make in the ones who love us and who can love us back. She fought like hell to carve out a space where pain and sadness had no domain.

For all the families dealing with cancer, to all the researchers and hospital workers who work every day, we wear the daffodil to support them. Cancer can be beaten. I love my sis.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Regarding respect for this House, one cannot do indirectly what one cannot do directly. Therefore, if someone is making accusations that a member from the other side is threatening a premier, he should at least have the decency to name him or withdraw the comment.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. I note that when the Liberals get really emotional and touchy it is when we start talking about lobbyists.

The member is worried about civil discourse in the House. Why? It is because we are talking about the power of lobbyists over the government. That is what we should be talking about in the House, because we are seeing policies that are interfered with time and time again. The discussions in the House become irrelevant when they call into the Prime Minister's Office.

We do not have a pharmacare strategy and will not have a pharmacare strategy. Why? It is because big pharma is going to talk to the finance minister. We have nothing to protect pensions in this country, whether it is Stelco, Nortel or Sears. Why? The Liberals said how much they cared about it, but what do they care about more? They care about the family business of the finance minister, which got the contract to wrap up those pensions.

Now the Liberals are talking about climate change. I always love it when they talk about nice things that will happen. We are further from our Paris targets this year than we were last year, which is further than we were the year before. Why? It is because the Liberals are following Stephen Harper's numbers, and that is because they continue to be beholden to the lobbyists.

The member said he was tired of us sending cheques to millionaires who do not deserve it. Does he not think Galen Weston is an example of a millionaire who does not deserve it?