Charlie Angus

[Canada Labour Code, February 16th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, it is fascinating to hear the Conservatives tell us that they are friends of the workers. It is sort of like the crocodile inviting us down to the riverbank to have a luncheon with him.

We saw the attack on labour. We saw the attack on environmental groups. We saw the attack on any organization that was seen as even a potential threat to the ideology of the Conservative government. The attacks it launched against charities, from OXFAM to PEN to birdwatchers, which were absolutely unconscionable, were allowed to happen in the country. I would like to ask my hon. colleague's thoughts on the matter.

[Canada Labour Code, February 16th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, for the members who have just arrived in the House of Commons, it is fascinating to hear the revisionist history from the Conservatives, that they are on the side of the working people and transparency. I could not think of anything more bizarre. I would actually think they were kidding us, but it is this kind of undermining of public confidence that the Conservative Party has specialized in.

The Conservatives' idea of privacy is maximum privacy for their friends and maximum accountability for the public, whereas it really should be maximum accountability for politicians and privacy for individuals. I mention that because there was the Brent Rathgeber bill last session, a Conservative bill, which was a very good bill about bringing accountability to Ottawa. The Conservatives gutted that bill. They gutted a bill that would have disclosed the salaries of the people who worked for the party. They gutted a bill that would have disclosed the kind of money that was being paid out. Brent thought that a $188,000 threshold should be made public. They cut it so that only people making over $444,000 a year had to disclose that.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague this. The Conservatives beat up on the unions, they beat up on first nations leadership, but they protected their friends for the last eight years. Why the hypocrisy?

[Indigenous Affairs, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if the hon. minister heard the question. The question was for the justice department.

What we have learned is that 1,000 victims of sexual and physical abuse in the residential schools had their cases thrown out on a flimsy legal technicality, which is that children who were abused in institutions run by the government are not, somehow, eligible for compensation by the government.

This travesty was conjured up in the Department of Justice. I am asking the minister, as its boss, will she do the right thing? Will she tell this House that those cases will be reopened and that justice will be done? I am asking her to answer for her officials.

[Gasoline Prices, February 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, here is a lesson in classic Canadian economics. Have members ever noticed that when the price of a barrel of crude jumps on the international market, the price at the pumps goes up within seconds? Why is that? They say it is the input price of the commodity being reflected to the consumer.

When the price of a barrel drops, say 70%, what happens at the pumps? For people living in northern Ontario, the price remains high. Why is that? The answers get a little more vague. It is a lack of refining. It is the low value of the loonie. It is yada yada yada. Meanwhile, people in Timmins are paying about 20% more than in Toronto and about 35% more than in Regina.

It is hard-working families in the north who are subsidizing the refineries every time they have to go to work, and it is northern Ontario businesses that are taking the hit. I am pleased that the City of Timmins has stood up on this issue of gas fairness. I am inviting all northern municipalities to do the same, because we need to stand up for our residents who are being hosed at the pumps by big oil and gouged in their pocketbooks. In this time of economic downturn, how about a bit of fairness for hard-working Canadians?

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I find it fascinating how the Conservatives always speak on behalf of their grandchildren. It is about the debt we are going to leave to our grandchildren, how we have to stand up and fight for our grandchildren.

That was a government that ridiculed the Canada pension plan day after day in the House. Even today they are telling us that the TFSAs are better than the Canada pension plan. They are telling their grandchildren that if they make a lot of money they do not need to worry, but hard-working Canadians without defined pension plans are on their own.

This has been the operating culture, to undermine and attack pension systems in our country while we have an ongoing pension crisis. I do not know what world my colleague lives in, but wherever I go I am meeting people in their fifties who are telling me that they do not have enough money to retire, that the Canada pension plan is not sufficient, and that they do not have the company pension plan that existed before. They are asking how they are going to get by.

The member is hiding behind his grandchildren. When was the last time the Tories ever looked to anything for the future?

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, this will interest my hon. colleague, who I have known for many years. He is a very likable fellow and a decent guy. I feel bad for him that he is having to do this job, which is the Liberal attempt to treat Canadians like they are rubes at a country fair.

When the Prime Minister talks about the middle class, who is he talking about? He is not talking about the 18 million people who pay taxes.

My hon. colleague says the Liberals are worried about people who are facing tougher times, and I am looking at who will benefit from this and who will not. If people are in the top 30%, they will make out like bandits. If people are in the top 10%, they are going to love these guys.

However, if people are getting by as office workers, there will be zero dollars for them. A hairstylist earning $27,000 a year will get nothing. A social worker earning $43,000 a year will get nothing. A fish plant worker in Newfoundland will get zero dollars. A cashier will get zero dollars. Are these people not working hard?

However, if someone is a parliamentary secretary, thumbs up. If someone is a member of Parliament, thumbs up. If someone is a bank manager, thumbs up.

The question for the Liberals is to be honest. When they are using this shield of the middle class, they should at least have the decency to say that it is for the people who are doing quite well, thanks very much, and the rest of the hard-working Canadians who pay their taxes and do their jobs are the ones being left behind by the government.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, those who represent resource-based regions have certainly seen the huge downturn in the commodity cycle. We are seeing layoffs and mine closures. There are people who travel to work in the gas fields and we want to make sure that we have an economy that makes sense, that is balanced the issues of the environment. The previous government's support to maintain that balance was certainly out of whack.

I want to ask my hon. colleague about the following. One of the concerns I am hearing from the people I work with in the mineral sector is that they want good, clear environmental policies so that they can build trust in first nation communities and develop, but they also want to know if the government will maintain the mineral exploration tax credit, which is so important for maintaining prospecting and finding the next generation of mines, because aging mines are closing now.

Can we get a balance between good, clear environmental direction, but also maintain the support that we need for the resource economy in our regions?

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I listened with some shock and surprise to my colleague. I come from a resource-based economy. My family worked in the mines. We understand. I never met anyone in Timmins who said let us build our economy by dumping the dirt into the river systems. They want a clean economy. I hear the hon. member want to jerry-rig a review system of the pipelines and then attack the Prime Minister. I have no love for the present Prime Minister, but he went to Paris. Why was he in Paris? It was to deal with the international environmental climate conference. This is something the Conservatives' prime minister refused to do. It made Canada an outlier because they believe to talk about greenhouse gas and about the environment is somehow anti-jobs.

I want to tell the member it was that attitude for 10 straight years that put them in this pickle now that the rest of the country said no more until we have a credible, coherent, clean, and transparent system to prove that it will be environmentally safe. The Conservatives failed and they continue to fail. Until they start talking about the issue of climate change with any credibility, they are going to remain a marginal party.

[Indigenous Affairs, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, on the very day that the Human Rights Tribunal ruled on the systemic discrimination against indigenous children, officials in Health Canada told a little indigenous girl named Kendall that they would not pay for badly needed orthodontic surgery. Now Kendall also has an ocular tumour and needs special drops to save her vision. The response from the officials was “absolutely not”. I ask myself, as a parent, how that is possible.

For the health minister, what steps has she taken to issue directives to her ministers to make it right for Kendall and all the other children who are still being denied basic rights every single day?

[Government Appointments, January 27th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as Cindy Blackstock says, indigenous children have waited too long for justice in the country and they want action now.

Unfortunately, the pattern of systemic discrimination continues to be the operating culture within various government departments today. For example, Cindy Blackstock has identified Michael Wernick as a key player in fighting her human rights case. He was also lambasted by a parliamentary committee for dragging his feet on the child welfare crisis.

For reconciliation to be real, action must be louder than words. What kind of message is the Prime Minister sending to indigenous families by appointing Mr. Wernick to oversee the entire civil service?