Chris Charlton

[Copyright Modernization Act, May 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the member's comments, as I did this morning to the comments of the Minister of Canadian Heritage when he was vigorously defending the need to close debate on this bill because, as he said, there are a number of validators on the record who have said that enough is enough and that this is the right bill. I want to put a couple of comments on the record as well, because I think both members have been very selective in their discussion of this bill.

First I will quote Michael Geist. Everybody here would know him as a renowned technology commentator. He puts it very succinctly when he states:

The foundational principle of the new bill remains that any time a digital lock is used—whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices—the lock trumps virtually all other rights....[This] means that both the existing fair dealing rights and [Bill C-11's] new rights...all cease to function effectively so long as the rights holder places a digital lock on their content or device.

There are others. I know I do not have time to quote them all, but in the cultural industries, the Writers Guild of Canada, SOCAN and the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic all have serious concerns about the bill.

I wonder whether the member would choose to address even one of them, since in his own comments he said there are only some parts of the bill that he supports.

[Copyright Modernization Act, May 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the Minister of Canadian Heritage now for almost half an hour and he consistently says that there has been debate for two years, two and a half years. That seems to be his yardstick for when it is reasonable to bring in time allocation.

On Bill C-38, the government just rammed through in six days of debate an omnibus bill of 425 pages, dealing with everything from gutting environmental regulations to old age security to changing EI, fundamentally changing how we govern this country.

Would the Minister of Canadian Heritage agree with me that two years may seem to him adequate debate, but if that is the standard then certainly six days is not enough?

[Copyright Modernization Act, May 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, along with my colleagues I must say that I am not at all surprised that we are now dealing with time allocation for the 21st time in this Parliament. I am saddened, not surprised, but definitely saddened. The government seems to suggest that debate is somehow evil, that it is something of an impediment to its legislative agenda. We would think that the government would have learned that every time it has tried to shut down debate in this Parliament, three times already, it has actually benefited from the deliberative process here in this Parliament and ended up having to withdraw its bills or make significant amendments.

The House will remember the Internet snooping law. After debate in the House that bill never even came back because it was so flawed.

The crime omnibus bill that was before the House needed amendment. The government rushed it through with time allocation. In the end the government had to go to the Senate to have it amended.

What we do in this place is important. It improves legislation. The government has a majority and of course it will get its way. However, the deliberative process here matters. The government should respect Parliament and allow us to do our jobs.

[Employment Insurance, May 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that under the Conservative government, fewer Canadians have access to EI than ever before, and now the minister will be able to kick people off EI if they do not take a so-called suitable job. However, she refuses to say what suitable is.

To avoid accountability, the Conservatives chose to sneak these changes into their Trojan Horse budget bill.

The Conservatives are even cutting back on the ability of unemployed Canadians to appeal EI decisions. Can the minister tell Canadians how just 74 people are going to fairly adjudicate the over 31,000 cases each year?

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, we obviously share a very deep-seated concern about how the government is approaching its budgetary policy, as well as how it is treating Parliament and, by extension, Canadian citizens. This is a place for debate. It is not a place for us to debate each other and listen to our own concerns. It is about sharing the views of Canadians on very significant changes in public policy.

The way the government is ramming through its legislation in one omnibus bill, a procedure, by the way, which the government and the Prime Minister, in particular, used to object to when he was in opposition, is unprecedented in its magnitude and does not just do a disservice to members of Parliament, which it does, but, more important, therefore silences the voices of Canadians who we are here to represent. It is not about us, it is about Canadians, and the government owes Canadians an apology.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I would remind my colleague of two things.

First, the NDP critic on finance, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, did a superb job laying out our concerns about the budget on behalf of all Canadians. He was not doing that to hear himself talk. He seized the opportunity to ensure that the views of Canadians were heard in the House.

Second, that was a speech on the budget. We are now dealing with the budget implementation bill. This is a bill of 425 pages in length. This bill needs to be considered with all due diligence. We do not have the opportunity to do that in the House because the government stubbornly refuses to allow sections of the bill to go to various committees so we can deal with the environmental changes, the OAS changes and the very significant changes that the government will make to the lives of everyday Canadians.

When the member suggests that Conservatives are trying to pre-empt a crisis in the old age security system, with respect, I would suggest that they are creating a crisis. Every actuary in the country says there are no financial reasons to change the old age security system. Therefore, we have to assume it is politically motivated. I do not understand a government that is politically motivated to do harm to seniors, the very seniors who built our country.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to participate in today's debate on the budget implementation bill, although I must say that 10 minutes to deal with the 425-page bill is absurdly inadequate. It is impossible to offer a comprehensive analysis if the government is intent on giving me less than one second per page of the bill to articulate the concerns of my constituents. What happened to the government's commitment to accountability?

I will, however, try to make the most of what little time I do have. This speech may not end up hanging together very well but, in the interest of hitting on all the key points, I will just jump from one to the next while keeping a close eye on the clock.

I will begin with the environment. The Conservatives have the worst track record of any recent Canadian government when it comes to environmental protection and action on climate change. In fact, the government is engaged in an all out dismantling of Canada's environmental regulation and protection system.

Canada reduced its federal environmental spending by 40% between 1993 and 1997, starting a long and continuing period of environmental backsliding. Our country's environmental ranking is now the worst in the world. The 2011 Climate change performance index ranks Canada 57 out of 60 nations.

Why are the Conservatives doing this? They are gutting Canada's long-standing environmental laws so that their friends in the oil and gas industry get what they have been asking for: fewer environmental safeguards so they can push through resource megaprojects, including pipelines, with little regard to environmental damage.

Fully one-third of the budget implementation bill deals with such environmental deregulation. It is an all out attack on the laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the communities in which we live. It is outrageous. It is our children and grandchildren who will pay the price.

Although there is much more to be said, I must move on and I will move from kids to the other end of the demographic spectrum and talk about seniors.

The Conservative government is using Bill C-38 to balance its budget on the backs of Canadian seniors. The Conservatives gave $16 billion in tax cuts to profitable corporations without receiving a single job guarantee. Now, facing a revenue shortfall, they expect Canadian seniors to pay the price. It is absurd. The Conservatives have no problem spending $30 billion on their F-35 boondoggle and another $19 billion for their unpopular prisons agenda but they cannot spare $540 a month for Canada's poorest seniors. It is about time they got their priorities straight.

In fact, it was not that long ago that the Prime Minister would have agreed with me. In the thick of the 2004 election campaign, his Conservative Party sent out a REALITY CHECK entitled “Paul Martin's hidden seniors agenda”. At that time the Conservatives claimed that the Liberals were hiding a plan to raise the retirement age to 67 for the old age security. They ridiculed the idea of raising the eligibility for OAS because, “Canadians would have to work two years longer only to receive less from their public pension”.

In 2004, the Conservatives were ready to stand up for seniors but that was then and this is now.

Today, the Conservatives have absolutely no qualms about leaving seniors behind. Instead of working to lift every senior out of poverty, the Conservatives are throwing tens of thousands of seniors into poverty. In fact, without OAS-GIS for two years, almost 100,000 recently retired Canadian seniors would be made poor today. For single senior females, the poverty rate would rise from 17% to 48%.

There is absolutely no sound fiscal or policy justification for any of that. In fact, all evidence shows that the OAS is sustainable. Pension and retirement expert professor Tom Klassen of York University noted, “I haven't heard any academic argue that there's a crisis with OAS". In fact, numerous experts, including the Parliamentary Budget Officer, have confirmed that the OAS is sustainable in its existing form. Even the government's own latest actuarial report indicates that the OAS-GIS will account for a smaller percentage of the GDP in 2060 than it does today.

So why punish future generations? By changing the OAS, the Conservatives are pitting one generation against the next. We have all worked hard and played by the rules. There is no reason to bankrupt the next generation of Canadians with the Conservatives' reckless cuts.

In fact, that is exactly the position taken by CARP, one of Canada's leading advocacy organizations for seniors. CARP members have stated that they:

...do not see how cutting OAS spending would help future generations. Instead, they are calling for measures that will create job opportunities for them as a better way to secure their future. Rather than selfishly guarding their own interests...CARP members and other older Canadians are defending an important part of the social safety net and do not want to see it torn up for their children and grandchildren.

If only the government were only listening.

I will keep moving along.

I was encouraged when I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance say last week, “the best way to fight poverty and deal with inequality is to ensure that Canadians have jobs”.

I was cautiously optimistic that a government bill that is entitled the “jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act” might actually deal with the critical issue of jobs, and it does, but instead of dealing with job creation, it deals with job cuts. That is terrible news for communities like my hometown of Hamilton, which was built upon a thriving manufacturing sector.

Since the Conservatives came to power, Canada has lost 365,000 manufacturing jobs. There are nearly 1.4 million Canadians out of work and the employment rate remains well above the pre-recession level. Youth unemployment remains nearly double the national average at 14%.

What is the government's job strategy? It throws more people out of work.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that, in addition to the 19,200 positions being eliminated in budget 2012, there will be a further 6,300 jobs cut as a result of the government's previous strategic reviews that have yet to be implemented and a further 9,000 jobs cut as a result of the government's budget operating freeze. That would total 34,500 federal public service jobs being cut.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer suggests that the total will be even higher, at 43,000 jobs lost, since, “we're actually talking about cuts on top of cuts”.

Anyone who had hoped that the Conservatives would live up to their rhetoric of investing in jobs to alleviate poverty will be sadly disappointed. However, they will not be surprised because the government's track record on poverty is one of exacerbating the problem rather than working to eradicate it. From cutting the National Council of Welfare to eliminating key public programs and failing to invest in housing supports and child care, the Conservative government has failed to ensure that we build a Canada where no one is left behind.

As the Canadian Labour Congress rightly pointed out, budgets are all about choices. With unemployment and underemployment still at very high levels and a shrinking middle-class, the federal government could and should have laid the basis for sustained and broadly shared economic recovery.

Instead, the government introduced a number of measures that will unfairly target the unemployed, severely reduce avenues for unemployed workers to appeal the denial of benefits and reduce the standard of living for workers everywhere.

Instead of fixing a broken EI system that results in the denial of benefits to the majority of unemployed workers, the Conservatives are making it even tougher for the unemployed to receive the benefits of an insurance policy they have paid into all of their working lives.

First, the government plans to cut unemployed workers off their EI benefits if they decline “suitable employment”. The definition of “suitable employment” will be set by none other than the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. That minister, of course, is the same minister of HRSDC who laid off claims workers at Service Canada at a time when unemployment and, therefore, claims were actually going up. That minister is also the same minister of HRSDC who sat on her hands while hundreds of workers at U.S. Steel in her own riding were unable to access EI during a recent lockout. If she is not willing to stand up for her own constituents, she certainly cannot be counted on to stand up for unemployed workers in other regions of the country. Yet, the minister is assuming even more power for herself under the EI appeal system.

Whereas the almost 26,000 EI appeals used to be dealt with by regional tripartite boards of referees made up of labour, employer and government chosen representatives, the minister alone will now appoint one board of full-time members to deal with all appeals. This is a recipe for unprecedented backlogs and logistical nightmares, and that is before I even begin to comment about the outrageous replacement of fair and balanced boards of appeal with the minister's pet patronage appointments.

When we combine that with last month's announcement that changes to the temporary foreign worker program will now allow employers to pay highly skilled migrant workers 15% less than the average local wage, the government's agenda is thrown into stark relief.

The Conservatives are absolutely determined to interfere in the labour market to the detriment of not only migrant workers, but all Canadian workers by pushing down wages and, in effect, subsidizing big business.

Workers and their communities deserve better. It is time for the Conservative government to stop being preoccupied with issues of power and prestige and get to work on the bread and butter issues that really matter to Canadian families, like creating quality jobs.

Until we see that change, I will proudly vote against the budget at each and every stage.

[41st General Election, May 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in the last few days we have seen troubling new evidence further linking the Conservative Party of Canada to suspected voter suppression during the last election. We have learned that a single IP address now links RackNine calls to Conservative operatives and to the Conservatives' federal voter database. We know they used burner cellphones, proxy IP addresses and disposable credit cards in an attempt to hide their tracks. Elections Canada is questioning more Conservatives. Missing evidence about who accessed the Conservative database may never be recovered.

Despite this mounting evidence, Conservatives continue to deny any connection and are not even admitting that they are under investigation. No one trusts the Conservatives on this. When will the government do the right thing and call an independent public inquiry?

[41st General Election, April 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, for anyone concerned about electoral fraud, that answer does not cut it, nor does misquoting the Chief Electoral Officer.

When asked if this investigation was serious, what the CEO actually said was, “I think it is absolutely outrageous. This is totally unacceptable in a modern democracy”. When asked if the investigation goes beyond Guelph, he said, “If you ask me, it is ten provinces and one territory”.

The CEO knows it and Canadians know it. Why will the government not admit that the Conservatives are under investigation for dirty tricks committed during the last election?

[41st General Election, April 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely clear that only the Conservatives are under investigation for dirty tricks, and the parliamentary secretary knows that.

The parliamentary secretary knows that the investigation into voter suppression is getting wider. Investigators were in northern Ontario to interview people who were victims of this voter suppression scheme. These people were called on election day and directed to polling stations 20 miles away. We have examples from coast to coast to coast.

Will the parliamentary secretary finally acknowledge that this scandal goes well beyond Guelph?