Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my concern, as I have been stating, is that when we look at the brutality of ISIS and its deliberate targeting of ethnic and religious minorities, it is certainly within the context of a genocidal series of actions. However, they are also within the context of a much broader attack on basic international law and in the context of the war crimes of a number of organizations, criminal gangs, and the government of Bashar al-Assad, who has caused much more turmoil in terms of the refugee crisis than all the other ones. Bashar al-Assad is attacking his own people, so it would not necessarily even meet the definition of genocide but would meet the definition of a war crime.

My concern is that we are applying to the Security Council to have the definition and the investigation undertaken. I support the UN doing it, but the Security Council, we know, will make sure that Bashar al-Assad is not brought to justice, because of his allies in Russia and China.

I would ask my hon. colleague this. How do we ensure that we hold all of them accountable for the overall criminal attacks against civilians throughout the region while making sure that ISIS is certainly held accountable for its deliberate targeting? We need to make sure that we have some form of international law to go after the overall atrocities and human rights crimes that are being committed.

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. I think it is the role of this House to be discussing these issues. The atrocities that have been committed in Syria and Iraq are a disgrace to the entire world with respect to the lack of action.

My concern is not with respect to the word play on either side, but it is about dealing with the overall failure of international law and dealing with what is happening, particularly right now. It is not just about ISIS and its brutal and disgraceful activities, but also about what we have seen with the Bashar al-Assad regime and the photos of 11,000 victims of torture and murder, the attacks in Ghouta, the use of chemical weapons that has gone on without any sanction, the deliberate targeting of civilians through barrel bomb attacks and attacks on hospitals. We are dealing with a huge breach of international law that needs to be addressed. I think it is within the role of this Parliament to discuss this.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague about the need to look at the larger frame, where ISIS is playing a very destructive role among a number of players, including a supposedly legitimate government that has been supported by various western allies.

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, what is very disturbing today in the debate, both from the Conservatives and the Liberals, if we are talking about the brutal crimes that are being conducted, is this fiction that in Syria local authorities are unable to provide safety, as the minister said something about. We have seen no mention of the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad: the torture and killing of thousands under his watch, the fact that the regime has used barrel-bomb attacks against civilians. They talk about chemical weapons only in the context of ISIL, which is a brutal barbaric gang, when Bashar al-Assad has already been found to use them.

I want to ask the member this. Both Russia and China, on the Security Council, have blocked attempts to have international investigation of crimes by the regime of Bashar al-Assad so that all participants in the brutality that is happening in Syria will be held accountable. What will the current government do to stand up and say that all those who commit crimes against humanity will be held accountable, including the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria today?

[Indigenous Affairs, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, international Human Rights Watch has called out the government for the systemic water crisis on indigenous reserves. Not only are families getting sick or suffering bacterial infections, we have had youth die from mercury poisoning at sites like Grassy Narrows that should have been cleaned up years ago.

The Prime Minister made a personal commitment to have clean drinking water in every single community within five years, but government documents show it will not get close to that target because it is shortchanging the commitment by billions.

Why is the government continuing this shameful legacy of leaving indigenous families at risk?

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, once again I am listening with fascination to this concurrence debate the Liberals are bringing forward.

If people back home were listening, they would be thinking that this is an emergency debate to respond to the fact that a couple of Conservative members are running for leadership on the question of supply management.

We did not end up having any emergency debate when Martha Hall Findlay, the trade critic for the Liberal Party, campaigned extensively to destroy supply management. John Manley, a long-time Liberal, has been outspoken on supply management.

In fact, we had a debate here just recently in the House. It was on a very clear question of whether we were going to support the dairy industry in dealing with diafiltered milk, and the Liberals voted against it.

What we are seeing here is an attempt to sort of change the clock and create the impression that the Liberals actually support the dairy industry. What we have heard from them this morning is how much they love cows, how much they love their neighbourhoods, and how much they love all the people who put food on our tables, but we are not hearing a single thing from them about committing to standing up for the dairy industry as it is being undermined by the international trade agreements the Liberals are signing.

I come from farm country, and we have large dairy and cattle interests. If I went to a farmers meeting and told them how much I loved them, and expected them to love me back, they would put the run on me. They would ask what I was doing for the industry, because they are the backbone of the region.

We see the Liberals standing up promoting their love for farming, without doing anything to respond to the issue of the undermining of supply management, and trying to change the channel on the fact that they voted against supporting farmers. Why are they wasting our time in the House with this useless debate?

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, for the folks back home who want to know what is happening today, this is an attempt by the Liberal Party to rewrite what has really happened. What the Liberals are trying to say is they meant to say they actually support dairy farmers. It is because the dairy farmers came, asking for action, and the Liberals turned their backs on them. There was a debate in the House about supporting the dairy farmers, and the Liberals turned their backs on them. Now they have heard from their constituents and have realized they have alienated the dairy sector, because at a time when they should have been standing up for them, they voted against them.

For folks back home, what is happening is this is a fiction we are debating, the importance of the Liberals to consult. The Liberals consult on everything. When we look up “consulting” in the Liberal playbook it means keep talking and do nothing. That is something people really need to understand. Every time they hear a Liberal say “consult” it means keep talking and do nothing.

That is not good enough for dairy farmers. That is not good enough for the farm families who came to Parliament Hill asking for action.

Therefore, I would like to ask my hon. colleague what he thinks about this spectacle that we are dealing with here, of debating something that was already debated, and the Liberals voted against a clear form of action. Now they are debating something to continue to debate, to show they are actually willing to debate. It is a complete waste of time and energy for the farm families of our country.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the region of Timmins—James Bay has a large dairy sector. One of the fundamentals of the dairy sector is that it does not have the boom and bust that has affected grain prices and the cattle industry. It is because it is a principle in how production is carried out.

Canada has basically the only system in the world that is not subsidized. We are going up against international competitors that pump billions of dollars into their export-driven milk industries, subsidized by taxpayers. Our system is not subsidized.

When the government is signing negotiations, signing away pieces of the market here and pieces of the market there, the overall stability of the sector becomes destabilized. We have been hearing this message from family farms across our region.

The government is talking about a consultation process and it is talking about that because it does not want to deal with the fact that it is going to have to start compensating and subsidizing dairy farmers for the trade deals it is signing.

We are either going to support supply management with clear principles or we are just going to hear more government hot air.

All morning long I have heard the Liberals tell us how much they love farmers and how important farming is to them. However, I have not heard a single commitment about dealing with the issue of the undermining of our markets. The flooding of foreign ingredients into our markets is undermining the ability of the supply management sector to stay afloat without subsidies.

Could the member tell me if the government is planning subsidies? Will it work with the sector to stop undermining a system that works?

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I listened with fascination to my colleague, trying to see if they were actually doing anything to support supply management. As for the Liberal Party's record, I will give the member five words: Martha Hall Findlay, John Manley. They ran to take down supply management. It comes from the member's own party. Far be it for me to defend the Conservatives on anything and they will back me up on that, but let us talk about a clear record.

When the region I represent, which is dairy, is looking at the undermining of supply management through the trade agreements that have been signed in terms of cheese standards, in terms of milk substitutes coming in, we see that the government is telling us that it supports it but we have not seen any action.

Rather than tell us all to thank a farmer today, the farmers are saying, “Do your job”. I want to see what commitments the Liberals are going to make to stand up and stop the practice of undermining supply management through these trade deals that are being negotiated. That is the question before us today, not pablum.

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that concerns me about the bill is that the government is purporting to respond to the court ruling about the rights of RCMP officers who have been denied the ability to undertake collective bargaining. However, we have a bill that sets out to allow collective bargaining, but then strips away key provisions that should be in place in normal collective bargaining.

For example, there is the issue of being able to talk about staffing in terms of whether or not a police officer has backup. These are fundamental health and safety issues that would normally be under collective bargaining. There is also the issue of harassment. We have seen so many cases of officers subjected to harassment who did not have a proper dispute mechanism. The Liberals are telling us there are many other existing processes that they could take their harassment claims to, but they have failed.

Today, on a day when an RCMP officer with 27 years of duty has been terminated, who is suffering PTSD from what she referred to as systemic harassment on the force, would it not be wise to allow collective bargaining? Would it not be wise for that to be one of the places where RCMP members could put these issues on the table to start finding solutions, so that we do not end up with RCMP officers, who may be suffering in unhealthy work environments, before the courts?

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I have noticed in my 12 years in the House of Commons is that everything is an emergency now. We have to get these bills through immediately or we are failing in our duty. The role of Parliament has become increasingly, as the present leader of the Conservative opposition says, an audience or a rubber stamp of bobble heads.

We are here to do due diligence. Therefore, when I hear the hon. member talk about responding to the court ruling on the rights of RCMP officers and yet I look at the bill and see what is taken out of the collective bargaining rights, I think there are serious concerns that have to be addressed here. The inability to bring forward issues of harassment allegations and the inability to talk about issues of staffing, whether or not a police officer has proper backup, are things that belong within the collective bargaining process. The hon. member tells us not to worry, that there are other manners within the civil service that work well. Well, no they do not work well.

The problems we have seen with the RCMP, such as fundamental harassment and backup, are issues that have not been dealt with. This is where the collective bargaining process is supposed to be in place. It seems to me that the government is stripping out all those rights in providing a Potemkin process for the RCMP to go through, while not giving it the tools it needs to be in conformity with the courts.

Why this rush to push this through, when we need to scrutinize the lack of credibility of key parts of the legislation?