Charlie Angus

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we are seeing from the government an act of contempt for the basic workings of democracy. Democracy is not about the Conservatives' partisan spin versus ours; it is about accountability. What more important place to talk about the issue of accountability than in the spending of taxpayers' dollars?

What the government has done with the budget implementation bill and the estimates is stuff all manner of ideological issues into the footnotes of a massive bill. They demand that Parliament pass it, refuse to allow proper debate, and refuse to allow the committees the proper time to study it. This is an incredibly large and complex issue, but we are seeing all the little poison pills that favour the Conservatives' ideological, strange people in their ranks. They are using a budget implementation bill to do this.

I was talking the other day with my colleagues at the provincial level. For the estimates for, say, agriculture, the MPPs might have the deputy minister before them for 13 hours to discuss the implementation of the estimates. This is what happens at the provincial level, yet at the federal level, we see debate shut off. We see the Conservatives using budgets to force ideological agendas to attack people's rights and to attack all manner of things. Then when they cannot find--

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

What we saw in the case of Abitibi was that a company saw an opportunity, but what really drove the agenda was that a province understood that a plan was needed for development to create a region and to build what was building in northern Ontario at that time.

At that time, there was an agreement with Abitibi, a young company. It would have access to the forest and the province would give it access to the power of the dams. That is what made Abitibi the economic powerhouse known around the world. It was the agreement with the province. The same deals were struck then in Quebec and in the Maritimes that these were the resources of the people of the province, but they would work with the company to share the resources to build a base.

In the case of Abitibi, the communities of Ansonville and Iroquois Falls built up around it. Generations and generations of people worked in that mill. There were times when over 1,000 people were working in the mill. Thousands of people were working out in the bush, cutting the wood and bringing it in.

The sense of spirit and community in Iroquois Falls has always been very strong. There was the building of the arena, the most beautiful arena of its kind in the north. The Abitibi Eskimos, the junior hockey team, has been able to sustain itself in a community like Iroquois Falls.

However, over the years, we have seen continuing pressure on the paper industry. We have seen the decline of the forest industry across northern Canada. We are hoping that the markets are beginning to rebound and that we might begin to see the return of some of these once-mighty forestry communities. However, in the case of the No.1 paper machine, which is 100 years old, the market has changed. This is a recognition that we are in a new economy. What was once the big papermaking money machine operation at Iroquois Falls is no more.

We have to take that into account, and nobody understands that better than people who live in a resource economy. When we look at these issues, we need to have a long-term plan. Unfortunately, we have seen the absolute failure, at the provincial level, of the Liberal government, and at the federal level, of the Conservative government. The Liberals provincially had such a short-term vision of the north that they thought they would just sell off the dams to private interests, make some quick bucks, and pay off their badly managed debts. Here were people who were ringing up $1 billion on gas plants through a dodgy deal to save a few Liberal MPPs while at the same time they were trying to have a fire sale of some of the provinces best resources, which were the mills on the Abitibi River. That certainly affected the bottom line of the Abitibi company.

Again, it was the lack of understanding of how to build a region. We saw the provincial Liberals cut train services to northern Ontario. “We'll save a few more bucks. We'll just keep writing off anybody who lives north of Highway 17. They don't really belong in Ontario anyway”. It was a lack of understanding that to build an economy, there has to be investment. There has to be the infrastructure.

At the federal level, we see the problem, particularly in this bill, of no vision for the pension crisis in this country. There is no response to the fact that more and more people are falling through the cracks when it comes to EI.

There is a failure of the government to work on adequate infrastructure investments in communities. As the population ages in northern communities that were once able to count on the tax dollars from single employers, like a paper mill or a mine, more and more of that cost is being downloaded onto the backs of ordinary Canadian citizens.

My colleagues in the House always talk about this fiction that the average taxpayer pays so much less in taxes. Time and again, whatever they have lost at the federal level they have gained in costs at the municipal level. That is the reality. If we ask citizens about their municipal taxes, they ask why it is that they are paying such enormous taxes. Unfortunately, more and more of the costs have been downloaded to the provinces and the municipalities without their partnership. We certainly see that in Iroquois Falls where there are roads and bridges that are going out, and there is no money to replace them. We see that in decaying infrastructure and a lack of investment.

Iroquois Falls was also ground zero for the pension crisis in this country, because when the company was facing bankruptcy, it was the Abitibi workers who were facing the insolvency of their pension plan, just as the Nortel workers did.

If we ask Canadians, the issue of the need for an overhaul of Canada's pension plan is paramount. My father-in-law, who worked in the oil patch, paid into a pension for life and retired with a pension he was able to live on, but that is less and less available now.

I regularly meet people in their late-60s who come up to me at Tim Hortons and tell me that they have paid into the Canada Pension Plan their whole lives and cannot afford to live in their homes anymore. Men who are 68 and 70 tell me that they are going back to work underground in the gold mines, because they cannot pay the cost of living. When the municipal tax rates were reassessed in Timmins, again the costs were downloaded onto senior citizens. I see people in their late-60s going to work at Walmart and in the mines. They are trying to find work, because the pension system has failed them.

The New Democrats have tried to work with the government on a coherent pension plan. The CPP at one time was the best pension plan in the world. It is a system that works. However, the government attacked senior citizens and said that they had to work an extra two years.

Right now, the Conservatives are over in the Senate with their buddies saying that Pamela Wallin is being hard done by and they have to work out a deal for her. They have to get a deal for Patrick Brazeau. They had to get the Prime Minister's chief of staff to cut Mike Duffy a secret cheque, because he is one of them.

What about all the senior citizens who are being told, “Too bad, so sad, the cupboard is bare. Work an extra two years. It won't kill you. Just get back to work and stop complaining”? It shows complete disrespect for the people who built this country.

We know that at least 5.8 million Canadians do not have the ability to retire on their pensions. That is a serious issue. It is standing before us. We have debated this time and again. The government has said not to worry about that and to tell them that there are pooled savings, as though if RRSPs worked, they would not need them. They would prefer to tell the senior citizens of this country to work an few extra years. To add to the gall, the Conservatives did not have the guts to tell senior citizens to their faces. The Prime Minister had to go off to Davos to tell the world's millionaires that he was putting the screws to Canadian senior citizens.

In Iroquois Falls, where we are seeing the shutdown of the No.1 paper machine, we are seeing the loss of at least 70 jobs. We are seeing people who are in transition, who paid into EI, who do not have enough to retire on. They will be in for a shock when they call Service Canada, the operation in the community that is supposed to help them. They are being told that they are not allowed to talk to a real person anymore. They have to go online.

The government also got rid of the EI appeals board. Now there are a couple of Conservative hacks running that. What we have now is more and more denials for people with legitimate claims.

The Conservatives on the back bench always say that there are lots of jobs in Alberta, so what is the problem? The problem is that they are not looking at a national economy.

When we have a community like Iroquois Falls that is in transition, we need to ensure that the people who work there are able to receive EI and are able to receive retraining, and fundamentally, that everyone who pays into the system is able to retire with dignity. Once again, the government has ignored that.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

The heretics over there are going off the deep end again, which happens when we question their false god of capital.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour, as always, to rise in the House and represent the great people of Timmins—James Bay. I am rising today to speak on the government's budget implementation bill, another bill that fails the average Canadians of this country.

I speak with a heavy heart, as just this past Friday, I was in discussions with the residents of Resolute about the shutdown of the historic No.1 paper machine of Abitibi, in Iroquois Falls. The situation facing that community is an example of what happens in an economy based on resource development and of the need for understanding transition.

The Iroquois Falls paper mill is historic in this country. Abitibi, which was the largest paper company in the world, got its start on the shores of the Abitibi River, in northern Ontario, over 100 years ago, when it realized that there was an enormous opportunity for utilizing the hydro power on the Abitibi River. It also realized that there was an incredible amount of wood product nearby, so a deal was set up. This is the important thing. My hon. colleagues on the other side have this belief in the mystical powers of capital, that capital is something that comes down from heaven and creates. What we saw in Abitibi—

[Privilege, October 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a great honour to stand in the House.

I would like to offer some additional comments on the question of privilege that I raised on October 17 regarding misleading statements made by the Prime Minister in the House in relation to the secret and potentially criminal payout to Mike Duffy. More specifically, I feel I need to add to this issue in order to answer the intervention yesterday by the government House leader.

First, let me say I was very disappointed that the government House leader would say that this issue was “absurd” or a “political stunt”. I hope that, given the seriousness of the matter before Parliament, the House leader would not have taken it so lightly and would not have tried to shove it aside. This is not an issue that can be brushed aside, because Parliament is where the laws of this land are made and there is an obligation for all of us to meet certain standards. Canadians want answers in this very disturbing and squalid scandal, and they want to know what happened. Therefore, when the Prime Minister was asked questions and provided false information, he interfered with the rights of the members of the House.

One of the arguments of the government House leader yesterday was that it is a long-established practice in the House that parliamentarians are to be taken at their word. Indeed, that is a practice that is essential for the workings of a democratic institution, and we agree with him, which is why the issue of a minister knowingly misrepresenting facts to his colleagues in the House or misrepresenting facts because his staff misled him is a breach of the privileges of the members of the House and can be found to be a contempt on the workings of Parliament.

What we are talking about right now is not he-said-she-said, as is being inferred by the government House leader, but facts that have been shown to be false through the affidavits of the RCMP and now through other statements that have come forward. The government House leader says that we must take parliamentarians at their word, and yet we have a situation where we now have two parliamentarians who have made completely contradictory declarations about the role they played in an issue that is under investigation by the RCMP. Therefore, it is essential that we find out the true answers.

Yesterday in his speech to the Senate, Mike Duffy was categorical in stating that the Prime Minister's Office was involved in the secret negotiations for the $90,000 cheque and that the Prime Minister himself was directly involved in negotiations with Mike Duffy. Senator Duffy said the Prime Minister himself had ordered him to repay his living expenses because they had become a political problem for the Conservatives. He said that at a meeting on February 13, 2013, between him, the Prime Minister and Nigel Wright, “just the three of us”, the Prime Minister told him, “'It's not about what you did. It’s about the perception of what you did that’s been created in the media. The rules are inexplicable to our base'”. Duffy said, “I was ordered by the prime minister to pay the money back, end of discussion”.

These comments are very troubling because they contradict the statements that were made by the Prime Minister in the House, which he reiterated again today when he said that he spoke to Mike Duffy at a caucus meeting. The appearance given to the House of Commons was that this was in passing. At the time the Prime Minister made those comments, he said he told Mr. Duffy that if the expenses were inappropriate, he should pay them back. The Prime Minister today gives us, number one, the statement that he was categorical and emphatic that Mike Duffy had misrepresented his claims and was ordered to pay them back. That is different from what the Prime Minister said earlier.

The Prime Minister was asked today whether there was, as Mike Duffy said, “just the three of us”, Nigel Wright, Mike Duffy and the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister went back to saying that this meeting happened at a caucus meeting. Both men are giving completely contradictory information, and in order to do our jobs as parliamentarians, we need to know. We cannot believe both of them, so what is it that we should do? Certainly, if we were dealing with he-said-she-said on some minor matter, this would not be a matter of privilege.

However, the issue before us is that there is evidence prepared by Corporal Greg Horton, peace officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, delivered in court, and an application for a production order that presents evidence that is in clear contradiction to the Prime Minister's position.

The Prime Minister had said in this House, and it was reiterated by his parliamentary secretary on Monday, that Nigel Wright had acted alone. Now, according to the police evidence, we begin to see more names appear of who in the Prime Minister's Office was involved. That brought us at least Chris Woodcock, David van Hemmen and Benjamin Perrin who knew, and this is from the RCMP.

Now, however, after the revelations of the last two days, we see that there are at least 13 key Conservatives who were involved in this deal that may be found to be an illegal payout. Nigel Wright, Benjamin Perrin, Chris Woodcock, Mr. van Hemmen and Patrick Rogers were all directly within the Prime Minister's Office, and the claim is that Mr. Wright acted without anyone else. The Prime Minister has started to slowly change his position, but he was emphatic in June, and we were led to believe him.

We now know that Senators LeBreton, Tkachuk, Stewart Olsen, Finley and Gerstein were involved in this negotiation. Jenni Byrne was involved. Mike Duffy now tells us that Ray Novak and Senator LeBreton said they were speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, and what is very troubling is that Mr. Duffy says he was told by them that there would be a deal. If he did not go along quietly, they would have him expelled from the Senate for not meeting the housing requirement; so either Mr. Duffy met the housing requirement or he did not, which again contradicts what the Prime Minister has said previously.

The government House leader yesterday suggested in his answer to the question that one of the precedents I mentioned for 1978 of a similar case cannot be used, because contrary to that case, we do not have an admission of wrongdoing from the Prime Minister of his staff.

That argument simply does not hold up, because it is based on the equivalency of saying that anyone can provide false statements to the House as long as they do not admit it. What kind of Parliament would we have if that were the case?

For my colleagues' benefit, let me again mention another precedent, from 2002, when the member for Portage--Lisgar said that the Minister of Defence had misled the House regarding the detention of Afghan prisoners. This case was found by Speaker Milliken to be prima facie case of privilege. Let me quote Speaker Milliken on this:

The authorities are consistent about the need for clarity in our proceedings and about the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to the House.

As the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst has pointed out, in deciding on alleged questions of privilege, it is relatively infrequent for the Chair to find prima facie privilege. It is more likely that the Speaker will characterize the situation as a dispute of facts.

However, in the case before us, there appears to be, in my opinion, no dispute as to the facts. I believe that both the minister and other hon. members recognize that two versions of the events have been presented to the House. Continuing on, he said:

On the basis of the arguments presented by hon. members and in view of the gravity of the matter, I have concluded that the situation before us where the House is left with two versions of events is one that merits further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air.

Mr. Speaker, we have had such good, judicious rulings through the years. I think this is certainly a very appropriate one to be looking at.

In presenting his arguments, the government House leader also mentioned a ruling in 1987 by Speaker Fraser. Let me quote again from this judgment, because it offers very clear advice on what we should do in the present case:

These institutions [Parliament and the courts] enjoy the protection of absolute privilege because of the overriding need to ensure that the truth can be told.... Such a privilege confers grave responsibility on those who are protected by it. By that I mean specifically the Hon. Members of this place. The consequences of this abuse can be terrible.... All Hon. Members are conscious of the care they must exercise in availing themselves of their absolute privilege of freedom of speech. That is why there are long-standing practices and traditions observed in this House to counter the potential for abuse.

The freedom of speech that we protect for the members in the House means that neither I nor any citizen of Canada can go to the courts on a case based on something that the Prime Minister said in this chamber. However, as Speaker Fraser said, we do have practices and traditions in this institution that allow us to deal with cases of abuse of freedom of speech, because such abuses can be detrimental to Parliament and to the democratic life of Canadians.

This is exactly the situation we are faced with today. It is certainly an unprecedented situation, which is very grave and serious. That is why I felt the need to rise again. We have to get to the bottom of this disturbing story, and the way to do that is to refer it for an indepth study at the committee on procedure and House affairs.

Let me repeat that we are not in the domain of simple assertions here, we are talking about facts that have been brought forward through RCMP investigation, which is that the Prime Minister repeatedly said in the House that no one in his office knew of the Wright-Duffy deal. We now know that it is anywhere from three in his office to 13 key people around the Prime Minister.

In my previous intervention I put forward two possibilities: either the Prime Minister misled the House himself, or his own staff in the Prime Minister's Office had gone rogue behind his back and misled him. Either of these cases is a contempt of Parliament and a breach of the privileges of the members of the House.

We cannot, as the government House leader would have it, shove this matter aside and hope it will disappear on its own. We need to shed light on this matter, and the only way to do this is by finding that this is a prima facie case of the abuse of our privilege.

[Privacy, October 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the privacy of Canadians is again under attack. This time it is Bell, which will start gathering a massive amount of information on their customers: every website they visit, every search they do, every time they click the mouse, Bell will snoop on them whether they give their consent or not.

When Canadians pay their Internet bills, they expect good service, not to have Ma Bell keeping tabs on them.

Will the Conservatives act now to protect the privacy rights of Canadians and bring our privacy laws into the digital age?

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in July, the RCMP revealed that Nigel Wright had in his possession detailed records of Mike Duffy's “travel, meetings, teleconferences, social events, holidays, noteworthy current events, speeches, and political interactions”.

Here is what is troubling. The Prime Minister promised the House that he would turn over all the evidence to the RCMP. Why would he allow a former staffer to walk out with such a trove of evidence when an investigation by the RCMP was taking place?

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, part of the problem for my Liberal colleagues is that they do not have the ability to step back and see the problems being caused by the poison that runs through this system. An example is Mac Harb.

Mac Harb was an hon. member of the Liberal caucus. On June 9, 2013, the present Liberal leader defended his caucus member, because a caucus has to defend its own. He said that what Mac Harb did was an honest mistake and that all Mac Harb had to do was pay the money back and he would be welcomed back into the Liberal caucus. Mac Harb was under investigation for breach of trust and possible fraud, but because he was within the caucus, the present Liberal leader had to defend him.

I would point out to my hon. colleague that we found out that Mac Harb's housing scheme included a plan through which he basically bought an unlivable house in Cobden. What would an unlivable house in Cobden cost? Then he sold it and kept a .01% stake in that house. What would that be? Let us say it is a $50,000 house; that would be a $50 investment. He could not even get a can of paint to fix up that unlivable house, so for the $50 that he owned in the house he could collect $20,000 a year.

I disagree with the leader of the Liberal Party. That is not an honest mistake.

If we are going to continue to have these people sitting in caucus, then we are going to continue to see the massive distortions in ethics that will go from the so-called upper chamber right into the Liberal Party caucus. I am trying to help my colleagues in the corner get out of that ethical morass. I would ask them to come with us into the 21st century.

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very serious issue when a parliamentary secretary writes to a semi-judicial body, because it is against the rules of cabinet. I am very glad that my hon. colleague has had this issue dealt with and I am glad for him.

I will continue to ask questions about whether or not these are breaches, but the fact that he has been found okay is good news for him.

[Business of Supply, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise as the elected representative of the people of Timmins—James Bay who have given me their trust to speak on their behalf in the House of Commons.

I make this speech today recognizing that the democratic life of this country is at an all-time low. There is an incredible amount of political cynicism out there among ordinary Canadians, who look to this House, which is supposed to be the democratic House of the commons, for the common people of Canada, at a time when we see a government that has undermined the basic principles of accountable democracy. There has been the suspension and shutting down of the independent organizations that provide information, the muzzling of scientists and researchers, and the fact that under this first-past-the-post system, a mere 5,000 votes across 15 ridings gave the present Conservative government its so-called stable and very corrupt majority.

One can look at how electoral fraud and robocalls were used in ridings where some members were winning by six or seven votes. Phone calls were made misdirecting Canadian people from their right to vote, such as in Nipissing and other areas. No wonder Canadians are frustrated with the democratic system.

Even more so, Canadians look at the squalid example of the so-called upper chamber. These are the people who are supposed to be above the fray, who are so important, these senators, that we are supposed to just trust whatever they say, trust whatever they do, because they have the bigger picture. They are not supposed to be sullied by the ordinary partisan nature of politics.

We see today that they are debating in this so-called upper chamber—it is even in the language of the chambers; we are the lower people and they are upper people—the fact that three to four members completely misappropriated funds and completely abused the system. We are being told that well, they are senators. If a senator says that he or she is entitled to money, he or she is entitled to it.

Senator George Baker the other day stated in the press that “The Senate is above all rules”. Senators can set their own parameters for rules. Senator Baker thought it was really unfair that because these senators could set their own rules and decide what they want we would actually suspend senators for stealing money.

We had Senator Wallin's lawyer say that the move to suspend her for her abuse of the public trust was “...an affront to...democracy”. I was trying to find a comparison to an unelected and unaccountable senator who cannot be fired but can abuse the system. They cannot do anything with her except cut off her pay, and that is somehow an affront to democracy.

It goes much further, as we learned yesterday with the latest revelations from Mike Duffy. We now have a widening picture of a Prime Minister involved with his key fundraiser, Mr. Mike Duffy. They were threatening each other, blackmailing each other, and working out a deal to make a payoff with hush money. There were numerous senators involved, and part of the payoff for this hush money was that they were not going to actually comply or work with the Senate audit.

Of course, within the Senate, we did not believe that they were out doing the right thing with the audit anyway, because it was the old boys' club. However, we found out that in the Prime Minister's Office, the sitting Prime Minister had access to all of Mike Duffy's travel records, which is what the auditors did not have. Their knowledge of what Mike Duffy was up to was extensive.

It is unprecedented that we have a case of a police investigation into a sitting prime minister. It is unprecedented the legitimacy crisis we are seeing in the Senate.

The New Democrat position is well known. We believe that the Senate is an anachronistic institution that has been full of people who flipped pancakes at fundraisers for the Liberals over the years and got appointed or flipped pancakes for the Conservatives and were party hacks. They were paid off and were made men. We know that. However, the issue, if we are not going to move to abolition, is to look at what has been the poison in the Senate. That poison is the partisan work they do for the parties. By being made men in the Senate, they work for their political leaders.

I want to give an example of this idea of sober second thought. Canadians need to reflect that for the next 12 to 15 years, the sock puppets and hacks appointed by the Prime Minister will continue to interfere with, undermine, and potentially derail the democratic decisions of an elected House of Commons. That is what sober second thought means in Canada. It allows the Liberals their veto when they are kicked out: they will still have their party hacks doing the party work above the rights of the elected House.

Perhaps we will not move to abolition right away. However, the Senate has completely breached faith with the Canadian people, and the Canadian people are fed up with the abuse that has gone on. We see the bleeding of their friends, who are asking about due process and about these poor senators who have a right not only to rip off people, not only to claim whatever they want, not only to claim that they live in Saskatchewan or Prince Edward Island just because they say so, but also to get the money and not be held accountable.

It will take a lot to clean up that mess, but one way we can begin is by imposing on all senators the same rules that the Senate has applied to Ms. Wallin. If they are here to do the work of sober second thought, then by all means they can travel to Ottawa and charge for their stay here if the charges are legitimate and they legitimately live 100 kilometres outside the city and they are not running some kind of scam. If they are doing Senate committee work, they can travel. They have a budget for that.

However, the days when senators could stand up and claim that they travelled across Canada to do the cheerleading and the fundraising for their political party have to end. The days when senators could travel across the country and attend their various corporate boards and charge it to the taxpayer have to end. If the Senate is to have any credibility in this age, then the senators have to stop being the partisan puppets who do the heavy lifting.

It has to end. Hiring campaign organizers, fundraisers, and bagmen and putting them in the Senate has to end. In what possible alternate universe would anyone think that Leo Housakos would be someone to put in a so-called upper chamber for life because he would put the interests of the people of Canada above his own partisan interests? It is unfathomable. The man was a Montreal bagman. That is why he is in the Senate. Those days have to end.

My colleagues in the Senate are feeling bad that Canadians are noticing how much they have been ripping them off. They feel that nobody has ever paid attention to what they have gotten away with.

I am asking my colleagues in the Senate to come forward as well, because they have a responsibility. What we are seeing with the latest allegations against Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright is that Nigel Wright told Mike Duffy they would not give him a hard time about the fact that he was as much a resident of Prince Edward Island as I am because if they went after Mike Duffy, then Nigel would be asking about all of the other senators who are employing the same scheme. That was the so-called honour system, or dishonour system, of these made men and women, who claimed that if they were entitled to the money, they would get it.

The Senate is now in a situation in which Canadians are fed up. We are trying to offer an alternative here, which is to clip their wings. Let us say that we will end the poison in the Senate until the day comes when Canadians get a vote on replacing that anachronistic institution. The poison in the Senate is the fact it has been a partisan dumping ground and is doing partisan work. All of the other work it is doing has become a facade for its real purpose, which is as a party political machine, and it has to end.