Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, on truth and reconciliation, the Prime Minister made a promise to enact it. It does not need speed. It needs moral courage, which is lacking.

The House voted just two weeks ago, forcing the government to agree to move the $155 million in child welfare. It has not moved it and it will not move it because that motion also told them to stop fighting children in court, which the Liberals are doing.

The fact that the Liberal government spent $500,000 so far fighting Cindy Blackstock shows a lack of moral courage. The fact that the justice minister goes to court and says that a child who was raped should have the case thrown out by the Ontario Superior Court because the child cannot remember the date shows a lack of moral courage. This is not something we need years to plan or prioritize over urban transit or rural strategy. It is about moral courage. It is lacking on the issue of truth and reconciliation and it is breach and it has to be addressed.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, if we are looking at the Prime Minister damaging his credibility on human rights, then we could talk about his deal with the Saudi Arabians.

The Saudi Arabia human rights commission rubber stamped the mass killings last January of a series of dissidents and said that it was perfectly legal. It met on Parliament Hill and we flew its flag. To me, that damages our credibility on the international stage. If we cannot deal with terror regimes like that, which are killing people now, then all of these other issues that we talk about mean nothing.

I understand that the Minister of Status of Women met as well with members of the commission. She wanted to talk with them about how women and girls would be agents of change in Saudi Arabia. Is that not ridiculous? This is like making pusillanimous a party policy when it comes to dealing with international dictators.

With all due respect, we can debate back and forth what happened in Cuba, but deals are being made with the Liberal government and a pusillanimous attitude toward killers and state repression needs to be called out for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in this august institution and speak. For the folks back home who are wondering just what the heck is going on in Parliament today, it is Thursday afternoon and it is the time of the month when the Conservatives have to release the pressure valve, let all of the backbenchers off the chain, let them run around, howl at the moon, pound their chests, light the big bonfire, and throw red meat to their base.

Today, for people watching, we are now back in the cold war. The cold war is a place the Conservatives love to be. Those were glory days for the Conservatives. The fact that the world has moved on means they are a little lost. They need something. This is their day to bring an issue of great importance to Canadians. For folks back home, all Parliament stops today so the Conservatives can bring forward a motion. It is the right of the opposition—New Democrats do it—to have a debate on an issue of substance.

The folks back home whom I represent would probably want us to talk about the pension crisis. That would be a good debate here. There is the fact that many families that I represent do not have doctors. A lot of that is provincial, but with the health accord and the transfers, that is a debate we could have here. People are deeply concerned about the brutal bombing in Aleppo and the role Canada could play. That would be a matter for debate in the House. However, the Conservatives figure they have a gotcha moment on the Prime Minister, so they will have a special debate to re-fight the cold war in order to try to embarrass the Prime Minister of this country.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, by the way.

It is not my job to defend the Prime Minister on any given day, although people on the other side probably know I am always more than fair, more than reasonable, and more than willing to bend myself into a pretzel to understand some of the inane comments I have heard. However, I am not going to lose any sleep over his comments on Mr. Castro.

I listened to the Conservatives invoking Marco Rubio, of all people, saying we should be outraged. I do not know; I may classify myself as one of the few Canadians who has actually never visited Cuba. Everybody else I know goes to Cuba all the time. They tell me about the Havana nightlife and the great people, but the Conservatives make it seem as though they are flying into some kind of death camp. The only reason I have not visited Cuba is that I do not deal with a warm climate very well, being a northern boy.

I was listening to the Conservatives invoking Marco Rubio, of all people: if Marco Rubio is upset, Canadian people should be upset. One of the statements that was made on the day of Castro's death was, “Upon receiving the sad news of the death,...I express my sentiments of sorrow to...family members of [Mr. Castro]”. The Pope said that. Pope Francis did not mind saying something nice about the guy, so if Pope Francis said something nice about the guy, let him rest in peace.

We have more important things to talk about here than the legacy of Castro and the Bay of Pigs and the legacy of the cold war. We have issues that have to be dealt with. If we are going to get to whether the Prime Minister should have said a little more this way or a little more that way, I am not the kind of guy who loses too much sleep over prime ministers or politicians speaking off the top of their head. If they are in front of a microphone 24 hours a day, they are going to say some stuff and get called out. That is fair play.

I am more interested when people make statements that are supposed to mean something and they do not actually live up to them. That is when I think debate should happen. For example, I remember the Prime Minister, when he was in the third party, saying 2015 will be the last election using the first-past-the-post system. He was not equivocating; he was as clear as could be.

Now Liberals are saying that all of the work of the all-party committee, which was told by the Prime Minister to go across the country, was too rushed, too radical, unnecessarily hasty. Then we had the disgrace in the House this afternoon when the Minister of Democratic Institutions insulted the work of politicians and Canadians who participated in those hearings, saying they did not work hard enough. That is what I would hold the Prime Minister to account on.

We have a tradition in the House. It is this old gentlemen's club and, now that there are women in the House, there are gentlewomen. It is very unparliamentary to ever accuse someone of lying. We can never do that, but it seems perfectly parliamentary to lie, because someone could say that maybe the member misunderstood.

We need to call the Prime Minister out on promises that he made, that he told people he would keep, and that he had no intention of keeping; for example, on democratic reform, and on cash for access.

The Prime Minister's mandate letters to his ministers said not just to follow the law but to go above it, and they were under the Conflict of Interest Act. Now they are saying that every other party has done it.

For all the years I have been in Parliament, no one on the Conservative side ever once said that I took their side. However, when Bev Oda tried a cash for access scheme, she gave the money back. The Conservatives knew it was wrong and they gave the money back.

It might be the finance minister. Maybe he believes that actually being in a billionaire's living room and getting paid $1,500 might be democratic consulting. Maybe it is just the way he thinks.

God forbid I should say great things about Jim Flaherty. Jim Flaherty and I went at it like brass knuckles, but he was a democrat. He knew what meeting people was about. We disagreed on a lot of stuff, but Jim Flaherty did not need to raise his money sitting in a corporate boardroom with six or 12 friends paying $1,500. There is something wrong with that. That makes people cynical. When the Prime Minister promises to do better, he has to do better.

I am thinking mostly about what he said to the residential school survivors. I was there when he said:

Moving forward, one of our goals is to help lift this burden from your shoulders, from those of your families, and from your communities. It is to accept fully our responsibilities...as government....

Yet, this week, the justice minister was in court trying to overthrow a ruling of compensation to a child survivor of sexual abuse. The government, the feminist government, said that a residential school survivor had to prove intent of an adult. There is no legal standard in the world that accepts that, except when it is applied against Indian people.

Last month, the Minister of Justice tried to throw out a case. The Ontario Superior Court called it a perverse misapplication of justice on a child who was raped in a residential school but could not remember the date, and the justice department believes it can have that case thrown out.

We had the Department of Justice knowingly suppressing thousands of pages of police testimony. When it was forced to hand over the documents, it took out the names of the perpetrators, including a serial pedophile at St. Anne's Residential School who abused children for 40 years. The person who came forward for compensation had the case thrown out because the Department of Justice had that thrown out.

I go back to this again and again, because either we have one set of laws in our country or we do not. That the justice minister believes they can undermine and establish a second set of rights for Indian people in this country is absolutely appalling and is a breach of all legal duty.

I was there when the Prime Minister made that promise. I teared up. I believed him, Canadians believed him, and the residential school survivors believed him. There are many promises the Prime Minister made, and he made them with full heart, and people trusted him

I could talk about Bill C-51. The Liberals did not like it, then they were afraid not to vote for it, and then they said “Don't worry, elect us and we'll change it”. Nothing happened.

They talked about a nation-to-nation relationship, and the justice minister said Site C did not meet the standards and ran roughshod over aboriginal title, and they approved it anyway. A politician's word has to mean something.

We are having a lot of fun today debating something that I do not think most Canadians are going to care much about tomorrow, or the day after, or probably even after the debate is over, but we have issues that we need to debate in the House. The debate has to be about how we start talking in a way that Canadians can start to trust us.

With all due respect to my Conservative colleagues, they are having a lot of fun. They are taking the pressure off. They are feeding red meat to their backbenchers. They are howling at the moon, jumping up and down, beating their chests, and denouncing the reds and the commies. In fact, I have not been called a Bolshevik yet, but I am sure that is coming too. That is all right. Meanwhile, we will get back to work.

Yes, I will be taking numbers on that one.

[2016 U.S. Election, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. election has cast a dark shadow across North America. Donald Trump ran a campaign based on hate, blame, misogyny, and xenophobia. He threatened the forcible deportation of millions and has mused about a national registry for Muslims.

In Canada, we are not immune, because we have seen a rise in hate attacks against synagogues and mosques.

Just last week, I spoke with a number of people in the Muslim community. There is a deep worry that these forces of division will drive deeper wedges into our national fabric. However, they also told me that they are hopeful, because in difficult times, they see what people are made of.

Canadians will rise above the politics of fear, division, and paranoia, just as I know many of our American cousins will rise to the better angels of their natures. How do we do this? It is about getting active in our community. It is about standing up. It is about speaking out. It is about telling our neighbours that we have their backs, because the politics of community will beat the politics of fear any day.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have enormous respect for you. I was worried that my hon. colleagues were not listening just as I was getting to the real point.

The real point today has been fascinating. I have seen my hon. Conservative colleagues invoking the poor. We know the Conservatives are in trouble when they start to say how much they love the poor. I am seeing my hon. colleagues on the Liberal side saying they are feminists while they are leaving young mothers behind.

We can certainly do better than this. We need to work together to fix a flawed bill so we can go back to Canadians and say that in the House we can actually make positive change for the better.

The government is shutting down debate and saying it is somehow at a stalemate just because people are exposing some of the bogus lines its members are coming up with. The government's argument is not credible. It is certainly not how we need to move forward in 2016.

As always, Mr. Speaker, you have my greatest respect.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to participate in this debate as the representative of Timmins—James Bay. This discussion on improving the retirement system is very important for our country. Canada is obviously facing a crisis with regard to financial insecurity in retirement because many Canadians have not saved enough to maintain their lifestyle in retirement.

The NDP is prepared to work with the government to enhance the plan, but I am troubled by the government's decision to limit debate because there are clearly a number of problems with this bill. I am particularly concerned about the fact that young women and people with disabilities will be excluded from the enhancements in this bill. This could have a major impact, particularly for women who depend on the drop-out provision to be able to raise their children and who currently receive much lower CPP benefits on average.

I remember that in 1977, prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau promised that young women would be included in the CPP reform of the day. However, the new Prime Minister forgot that promise. This is not how a feminist government should behave. The NDP will work to change this situation and stand up for the interests of young workers, particularly young female workers.

My grandfather, Charlie Angus, never had a pension. He died on the shop floor of the Hollinger mine. He was 68 years old. In those days, people worked until they died. My grandmother lived upstairs in our little house. There were three generations of us living in that small house. I remember her saying, when she received her Canada pension cheque every month, “The NDP fought for me to get this”.

At that time, of course, the Canada pension was limited. Seniors tended to live with their families. At that time we had a growing, robust private pension plan that was starting to really change the quality of life for Canadians. My father was 42 years old when he finally joined the middle class. He saved all of his money so that when he died my mother, who was a secretary, would be able to live a good quality of life. She is able to live a good quality of life because of their savings and their pensions.

Our younger generation does not have that same stability. Younger workers tell me about the triumvirate of insecurity that is facing them now. They are coming out of school $60,000 and $70,000 in debt without the possibility of paying it off even at today's interest rate. They talk to me about housing, especially in urban areas, and the incredibly high prices they have to pay while trying to pay off their student debt. Then of course, there is the rising precarious nature of work, with more and more people working on contract.

My Conservative colleagues are always talking about letting people choose how they want to save their money. They talk about RRSPs and everything else. That is great if people have money. Conservatives look after their friends, so they tend not to understand what it is like. If contract workers put a bit of money aside and then find themselves in between jobs, they have to eat into those savings. A good friend of mine says people in Toronto are one bike accident away from poverty because they are living in the perpetual cycle of contract work.

As a nation we have to find a way to start changing this situation. I am certainly pleased to see that the government is willing to address the fact that CPP has not kept up and that the vast majority of people are not even getting the maximum contributions. Even if they did get the maximum contributions, it is not enough to live on.

I am concerned about the exclusion of the dropout provisions in this legislation, which would leave out, in particular, young women and people with disabilities. In 1977, then prime minister Trudeau, the elder, when his government was reforming CPP, talked about the importance of making sure to protect the interests of women who stepped outside the workforce to raise children. Young women are already enormously at disadvantage in work. Men tend to get promoted, because it is known that women will take time out in childbearing years.

It affects her overall income. We need to protect their pension contributions, especially as more and more women, at that age, are living alone. They need that support. We are seeing that 30% of women are now living in poverty. It is increasing year by year. Yet, only 4.5% of women are able even to get the maximum CPP payment, and only 18% of men get it.

This is a system that should work, but is clearly not working. What does that mean? I see people in my riding affected by this. I recently spoke to a man who is 68 years old and is going back to work underground in a hard rock mine because he does not have enough for him and his wife to live on.

We need to look at dealing with this. I am concerned that the government has chosen to ignore the issue of the dropout provisions. This is something we can fix in the House. I am very disturbed that the government has shut down debate on this.

To hear the finance minister tell us he is somehow at a stalemate in the House is shocking. It shows a dismissive arrogance. I suppose that maybe at a certain point, members of Parliament are going to have to pay $1,500 and go to the CEO of Shaw or Rogers or some other company to meet with the finance minister one on one to share our concerns.

It is during debate in the House that ordinary people get to talk to the finance minister. For him to say there is a stalemate on this issue is absurd. New Democrats, particularly my wonderful colleague, the member for Hamilton Mountain, have brought forward ideas on how we can fix this. Leaving young women behind is not a feminist action by a Prime Minister who claims to be a feminist.

We see a government that believes it can run on slogans, selfies, and Hallmark card political aphorisms, but within the House we have to be able to find ways to work together to address problems. This is not about a weakness in the government. For any government that brings forward legislation, there will be problems. The role of the House of Commons is to suggest how we can fix these.

Fixing these dropout provisions for people with disabilities and young mothers is a way of making this a more progressive response. Is it enough? No, it is certainly not enough. The pension crisis and the pension insecurity in this country is a very serious issue. We have to start dealing with issues at the ground level of student debt. We have to deal with issues of social housing. We have to deal with issues of the clawbacks to the guaranteed income supplement for senior citizens. We have to talk about the number of people who cannot pay for their dental work.

However, that is an ongoing conversation we can have. What we need to talk about right now is the CPP, which is clearly insufficient to meet the needs of 2016 and the next generation of workers. We also need to say that, yes, this does something right, but it is also doing something very wrong.

It is penalizing young women who will be stepping out of the workforce to have children. When the government does that, it will be putting in place a systemic injustice for young mothers who, when they grow to retirement age in coming years, will have suffered more in terms of their earnings. If we look at it now, we can see the trajectory with 30% of women retiring in poverty today. We should be trying to diminish that level of poverty, not augmenting it when it is a clear problem that can be fixed.

I am worried about my colleagues on the other side getting very dismissive about debate, getting a little arrogant—

[Canada Pension Plan, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my colleague.

I am troubled by the government's decision to limit this debate. There are clearly a number of problems with the bill, particularly with regard to the fact that people with disabilities and young women are being excluded from the enhancement. This could have a significant impact, particularly for women who depend on the drop-out provision when they leave the labour force to raise their children. I find that odd since the Prime Minister claims that his is a feminist government.

My question is simple. How can a government that claims to be feminist move forward with a bill that undermines the retirement of young women in Canada?

[Canada Pension Plan, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of reforming the CPP is very important for this country. The New Democrats are committed to doing whatever it takes to get a good process in place.

Our concern is with respect to the government's declaring a stalemate with respect to our asking questions about the real and clear problems in this bill. There is a danger of government slipping very quickly into arrogance when it comes up with a bill that has problems, rather than the government working with the opposition.

I am talking about the dropout provisions that particularly target young women who step out of the workforce to have children, or persons with disabilities. Young women suffer time and again in the workplace because they are the ones who step out to have children. In the 1977 changes to CPP under the then Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau, we had provisions that identified the need to make sure that women would not be affected when they stepped out of the workforce. However, the current government has decided to exclude these provisions.

Therefore, I am asking my hon. colleague this. Why is the government shutting down debate on such an important provision that we can fix if we work collectively?

[Canada Pension Plan, November 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, this is a government that told Canadians it could run on slogans, selfies, and Hallmark card political aphorisms. However, when it is questioned about the policies that favour the 1%, it shuts down debate.

On the issue of pension reform, the tool the government is using is to try to limit the ability of the opposition to look at the serious problems. As New Democrats, we are committed to pension reform because of the pension crisis facing people in this country. Yet we find out that the government has deliberately excluded young mothers, who are going to be penalized. We have a Prime Minister who walks around calling himself a feminist, when we have policies that target women who step out of the workforce and policies that target those who are suffering from disabilities.

We have asked the government to fix it. It blows us off and says that one of the important tools it has is shutting down debate. This is not credible. This is a breach of what the Prime Minister promised.

My hon. colleague can remain a friend of the 1%, or he can actually stand up and start to speak for people who trusted the government to do something a little more honest. It can actually be a government that is a feminist government and that is willing to fix the obvious problems in the bill, or it can just shut down debate and carry on with its Hallmark card aphorisms.

[Petitions, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to rise to speak up for people in the Sault Ste. Marie and Thessalon area who are very concerned about the shutting down of the Algoma Central Railway.

We have already seen, in the north, the loss of the Northlander passenger service that the provincial government said was over-subsidized at 86¢ a person; whereas, the province subsidizes urban transit at $156 per person.

In losing train service in the north, we are isolating communities, particularly along the Algoma Central Railway, where there is no other way to access these communities.

The petitioners are calling on the government to take action and show its support that everyone in this country deserves adequate public transportation.