Charlie Angus

[Canadian Human Rights Act, October 18th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the question I would ask is in terms of actual law or even the importance of the symbolism of this debate and this law, in terms of affirming the rights of individuals to be protected from intimidation and violence.

I was at a high school last week in Timmins talking with young people. They talked about transgender rights in the school. I was fascinated by that, because I remember my high school years. I remember the violence, the bullying, and the shame, and what we saw on a day-to-day basis, against any young person who was considered to be potentially gay or was not manly enough or not girly enough, the kind of abuse that young people were subjected to. People I have known in my community have committed suicide from that kind of abuse.

What we are called to do in this Parliament is to affirm the importance of people, the importance of people making the choices they need to make and should be able to made.

Beyond the actual legal implications of this bill, there is the symbolism of the Parliament of Canada standing together and saying that transgendered people will be welcomed, they will be loved, they will be affirmed. What does my hon. colleague think of this?

[Indigenous Affairs, October 6th, 2016]

Actually, Mr. Speaker, I never said that the member lied. I said the government has lied.

It is a fascinating thing that it is perfectly okay to lie in court, but—

[Indigenous Affairs, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that was from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources. Wow, what disrespect the government shows. The Minister of Justice, who gets paid on these files, is a no-show, day after day.

That member stood up and said what I said was not true. What was not true? Was it the fact that her government is fighting in court a rape survivor from Spanish?

The Liberals think that if they just talk indigenous stuff, it will somehow cover everything. They will get up and say indigenous this, new partnership that, and nation to nation.

We are talking about the fact that they lied at the hearings. We are talking about the minister refusing to take responsibility, and the fact that they lied in this House when they said they were not fighting the survivors at Ontario's Superior Court. That is a lie.

If that member had any level of credibility or—

[Indigenous Affairs, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am always honoured to rise in the House, but tonight I am not honoured by what we will be talking about, concerning the question I asked the justice minister, but which she refused to answer. It was regarding her decision to send lawyers into the Ontario Superior Court to try to overturn an award of compensation to a survivor of rape at the residential school in Spanish, Ontario.

My proudest day in the House was when former Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood up and made that historic apology. Where I come from, there were people who cried for days after that apology because they could not believe that justice would ever be done by a Government of Canada after what had happened to them.

They trusted the process. The process was the independent assessment process, where they could come in, talk about the abuse that was done to them, and tell their story in a non-confrontational manner. However, that is not what happened. These people came into the hearings with the federal government, which was defendant and which also had the legal responsibility to provide the documents.

In the case of St. Anne's Residential School, which was a house of horrors, they suppressed thousands and thousands of pages of police testimony. They lied about it. The ministers lied. They lied in hearings. They had cases thrown out. What kind of government could do that?

In the case of the decision on the residential school at Spanish, no one argued the merits of the case that this child had been raped by a priest, but the boy could not remember when he was raped. The IAP, agreeing with the justice department, had that case thrown out. It was thrown out under two re-reviews under the independent assessment process. It was brought to Justice Perell, who called this a “perverse” misapplication of justice. What else would any person call that?

To see the justice minister deciding to go in to challenge Justice Perell's ruling is shocking. It speaks to a larger pattern that we need to have the justice minister explain.

We had the case of a seven-year-old girl raped at St. Michael's Residential School. The government argued that it was not obligated to pay compensation because she was a day scholar student, even though Indian Affairs was paying for her attendance at that school.

We had the case of a child who had their arm broken and suffered paralysis. The government had the case thrown out, saying that under the administration, these were day scholars and that they, the government, were are not responsible even though they were paying for their attendance.

In the case of St. Anne's Residential School, they lied about the access. It had the documents. It had obtained them from Ontario Superior Court in 2003, because it said it was unfair for the defendant, that is Canada, to go into these hearings without knowing all the evidence. It was ordered to share that evidence and did not share the evidence.

It had a case thrown out of a survivor who was raped by a serial pedophile, and the government sat on the evidence. It went into the hearings and said there was no merit to his case.

Why has the justice minister refused to answer a single letter about this and why is the minister using the full force of Canadian law to fight these survivors and to continue this pattern of obstruction and denial of justice, and making a mockery out of the promise that was made in the House and by this Prime Minister when he said that he would stop fighting these victims and survivors in court?

[Points of Order, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I think the issue we are dealing with here is whether a minister of the crown poisoned an important case by making that gesture. That is the issue before us. People can make all manner of judgment—

[Indigenous Affairs, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the first promise that the Prime Minister made in the election was to first nation children. Fast-forward a year, and we see the Liberals trying to stonewall the PBO, pretending that documents on the underfunding of first nation children do not exist. We find the blacked out financial documents on clawing $800 million back from the election promise. In these documents, one of the minister's staff explains their attitude, which states, “number crunching is for suckers.” No. Keeping an election promise on funding education is not about suckers; it is about children and our responsibility to them. Why the stonewalling from her department?

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague. In the 12 years I have been here, I have seen some deplorable, thuggish behaviour. It is up to the Speaker to handle that, and I think in this Parliament the role of the Speaker has attempted to do that.

I guess my concern is there is a tendency to infantilize this House as though we are all bad children; we use penalty box metaphors.

I came here to speak truth to power. I did not come here to belong to an august little club where we all pat each other on the back and say, “What an excellent question”.

Decorum is about truth and answering.

I would suggest one of the main problems that I see, which adds a great deal of frustration, is that we have people standing in the House, reading things that were written by somebody else, and we can tell they are reading something that was handed to them five minutes ago. What are they doing here? Why not just have their staff come in?

To read repeated notes from ministers, day after day, is a debasement of debate, so yes, I get frustrated. I would suggest we return to the Standing Orders that existed, whereby we have to just speak. It might be a bit more difficult for us. We might be a little wibbly-wobbly for a while; but that would actually restore a level of accountability in the House, because what is happening under this faux decorum is that we are being run like vacuous marionettes by whatever political staffers higher up are saying, such as “This is what you are going to read today. This is what you are going to say, and in trouble, say only this”.

That is not democracy.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague about how we can cut those strings of the marionettes so we can actually start to speak truth to power, get proper responses, and do it in a dignified fashion.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, there is an old joke in Parliament that goes, “this is question period, not answer period”. That is a regrettable attitude, because it diminishes the transparency of government and the credibility of our institution.

For example, this government tends to hide the Minister of Justice when a question is asked about the government’s legal obligations to the first nations.

When a member asks a minister a clear and reasonable question, the minister should respond clearly and directly, without the prime minister’s notes and without showing off. Would my colleague agree?

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, over the last 12 years I have seen this Parliament wax and wane and sometimes become extremely toxic. This Parliament has begun on a much better tone and I do thank the Prime Minister for that. There is a desire to move toward something better.

However, the question before us should not be about what makes it easier for us, but rather it should be what would make us more accountable and transparent to the people who voted for us. That to me is the fundamental question.

I know a lot of MPs do not like sitting and standing to vote and would like to get the heck out of here so they could watch Netflix or do whatever else. However, when we stand in the House, we put our faces to our votes. If there is a repetition of 12 votes on the same subject, I would be interested in perhaps finding a faster way to do it, but the fact that we stand up and make our yes mean yes, or our no mean no, is important. I have seen voting in city halls and elsewhere where serious votes went down and no one actually knew if someone was voting. It allows us to hide, when we are accountable to the people back home.

Could my hon. colleague tell me how we could make this more efficient and a little less dull? We could make our ministers a little more accountable so that they actually answer questions, but our fundamental focus should be our transparency and our accountability to the people back home.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little concerned about a lot of the focus in the House on making it easier for parliamentarians to get home.

We do hard work, but our people send us here to be accountable. My focus today is how we can make Parliament more accountable and more efficient so that the people we represent know they can trust what is happening here.

I read the mandate letter from the Prime Minister, and it is fantastic in terms of the role ministers must play in terms of starting to be more accountable in the House. However, I notice, with the justice minister, that there have been a series of questions that are important to have answered. For example, there are questions about sending in lawyers to overturn the ruling in favour of residential school survivors that she refuses to answer. There are questions about whether the Site C dam met the legal obligations. These are questions for the justice minister. To have a minister in such an important portfolio not bother to respond to such questions diminishes all the promises the Prime Minister is making about making the House more accountable.

What does my hon. colleague think about making sure that when we have questions and responses that those responses are actually credible on the question?