David Christopherson

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate. I want to commend my colleague from Welland for articulating very carefully what happens to people when they are unemployed. It is important to do that because we can get caught up in the loftiness of national programs and billions of dollars this and billions of dollars that. At the end of the day, however, everything we do is about, or is supposed to be about, people in their homes, raising their families, hopefully going to work and going about trying to enjoy as much as they can the quality of life this great country can offer.

I want to address this very quickly because I suspect one of the backbenchers will want to jump up for their moment of fame and ask me to address why it is that I can come in here and, before even seeing the budget, say that I will be voting against it.

I have a great answer for that one. I spent eight years in the Ontario legislature watching the Mike Harris government dismantle all the things that were great about the province of Ontario. After one budget from Mike Harris, I did not need to read any other budgets. I did but I did not need to because I knew the destructive path that premier and that government were on and I knew the damage they would do. A lot of what is happening in Ontario is the result of those chickens coming home to roost.

Not only is it a government with the same direction, but the chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada just happens to be the same chief of staff that Mike Harris had.

I look at the front bench, I listen to QP, I listen to ministers talk and what do I hear? I hear a finance minister going on and on about tax cuts and corporations, and this, that and other thing. He is the same finance minister we had in Ontario. I know the damage that finance minister did.

There are other cronies from that era. Make no mistake, many of us in this House knew exactly what that budget would do, whether or not we had the details. We knew that even if there were something in there that was halfway good, we could not count on the government to implement it. We could not count on the government to keep its word. It passes laws and goes against them. It makes promises and goes against them.

Why, for one minute, would we believe that the government would suddenly be different? All the government had to do was get past the vote, remember, and the Liberals made sure it did. Now, whether it is implemented in a way that is acceptable or not, time will tell. I have no doubt in my mind how all of this will ultimately play out.

I want to raise a couple of issues—

[Employment Insurance, February 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, when the Conservatives' human resources minister claimed that increasing employment insurance benefits would “make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it”, she did not just expose her own ignorance. No, she revealed how little the Conservative government and its Liberal dance partners care for workers who lose their jobs during this recession.

EI is not charity. It is an insurance program that every employed worker has to pay into, and people expect that insurance will be there for them when they lose their jobs. But 70% of women and 60% of men do not even qualify any more. My office in Hamilton is hearing from people who applied in November and still have not heard anything. Perhaps the minister should focus on clearing these huge backlogs instead of talking nonsense.

Canadian workers are worried about their next paycheque. They are struggling to protect their families, their homes and the lives they have built. The last thing they need is to hear insults, ignorance and innuendo from their own government.

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, since this is the first time I have stood in the House since the election, I want to begin by thanking my constituents of Hamilton Centre for returning me and giving me the honour of being here again for a third term.

When I was listening to the member I was struck by the member’s respectful tone, tenor and approach as he tried to avoid being offensive. He conveyed a partisan message in an effective way without being personal or making things any worse here. I applaud him and thank him for that tone.

I have not had a chance to work with the member that much but we have many similarities. We both came here in 2004 and we both served municipally, provincially and federally. We also have both been inside cabinet in government and in opposition. I understand very much where the member is coming from.

My question is similar to the one that the previous member just asked. The member said in his earlier remarks that the intent of the economic update was not to prescribe details but rather to talk about broad strokes and generalities and yet part of that statement was an outright attack on the rights of women and labour. I would like to know how he can square the intent of a generalized statement in which the government did not provide the details we needed for stimulus but did provide details on attacks of other citizens.

[Petitions, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition from my constituents in Hamilton Centre who are troubled that Statistics Canada's error in calculating the consumer price index resulted in lost revenues for Canadians who are on fixed incomes, like CPP, old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. These are incomes that are directly tied to Statistics Canada's calculations.

The petitioners call on the Conservative government to take full responsibility for this error and to take every step necessary to repay every Canadian who was shortchanged by this egregious error.

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue with the riveting reading I was doing, putting on the record the editorial from the Globe and Mail of May 20 of this year. I believe I left off with the sentence that states:

But given concerns “about the use of lawsuits, more particularly libel suits, to prevent a Member from performing his or her duties in the House of Commons,” she wrote, Parliament might wish to amend the rules to make clear that such suits do not pose the same sort of “private interest” as business interests and other assets and liabilities.

While all three opposition parties have seized on this option, using their combined majority on the ethics committee to pass a motion calling for Parliament to amend the code accordingly, the Conservatives remain resolutely opposed. They scuttled the proposed change last week by successfully arguing that the committee exceeded its jurisdiction. That argument had merit on purely procedural grounds.

But it did little to help the House operate as it should.

At stake is the principle behind parliamentary privilege. If it is possible to silence MPs by filing a lawsuit against them, however frivolous, it may become far more difficult for opposition parties to hold governments to account. That may not concern the Tories now that they hold power. But when they next find themselves in opposition, they may come to regret endorsing the precedent set by Ms. Dawson's ruling.

Now I would like to underscore again the comments the Speaker made earlier. It is one thing to hear from all that I have read so far, but the Speaker rules, with a capital “r”, in this place and this is the way the Speaker saw it.

The member for Scarborough—Rouge River took issue with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's contention that being a defendant in a libel suit was tantamount to having a private interest since this interpretation would open the way to limiting the rights of members through the simple act of filing a lawsuit. Specifically, he challenged the interpretation given by the commissioner of the term 'liability' as used in the Code, claiming that the commissioner's extension of the meaning of the word 'liability' to include the sort of contingent liability represented by being named defendant in a libel suit was unreasonable.

The Speaker goes on further to say:

It should be noted at the outset that no one has suggested that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, in her consideration of the present case, did not recognize the importance of the rights and privileges of members, nor was any concern expressed that she had not exercised the highest standards of diligence or that she has not acted in good faith.

I will break from quoting the Speaker's remarks to say that I am not aware of a single member either on the floor or quietly out in the hallway who disagrees with any aspect of that. The commissioner did the job the House has asked of her. Let us remember that she is an officer of the House. She is not accountable to the government of the day. There is no one minister or prime minister to whom she reports. She reports and is answerable and accountable to the House as a whole.

It is my sense, and I believe that of every other member, unless somebody wants to stand at the appropriate time and contradict it, that we do not in any way fault her for doing exactly what we asked of her. In fact, if we take a look at her report dated June 17, she goes out of her way in the conclusion to say the following:

The addition of paragraph (b.1) to subsection 3(3) of the Code has the effect of excluding from the scope of private interests any liability arising from a legal action relating to the performance and functions of a Member of Parliament as a Member. Applying sections 8, 12 and 13 to the facts underlying the Report as if the amendment to subsection 3(3) of the Code had been made at the relevant times, I conclude that [the member for West Nova] would not have failed to comply with the Code had that amendment then been a part of the Code. Furthermore, as of June 5, 2008, [the member of West Nova] no longer has any obligations under section 8, 12 or 13 in relation to his previous private interest resulting from the lawsuit.

I thought it said an awful lot about that commissioner and her attention to duty, that she so promptly re-issued another response in light of the actions of the House. The commissioner made an interpretation under the existing rules. I am not lawyer, but it would seem rightfully concluded that the wording we or previous Houses had passed, in the interpretation of the incident case, left the member for West Nova in the position in which he was.

The House then dealt with that issue, moved and passed a motion that changed the code. As a result of that change, the House believed that any other member finding himself or herself in the same situation as the member for West Nova would now be relieved of the responsibility to stay silent.

One could have just left it there because it speaks for itself and takes care of itself. However, I thought it said a lot about Mary Dawson, who I worked with at the provincial level in Ontario, that she took it upon herself to issue a report that made the chronology of what happened clear, why she did what she did, and it is not that long, but most important, concluded with what I read into the record.

As this incident case applies, one can see that we believe the issue has been dealt with adequately. However, the amendment and the main motion both speak to the ongoing obligation of the House, of all of us collectively, to do our due diligence on an issue of such great importance. Therefore, it makes sense that both the amendment and the main motion would be before the House, and I would hope we pass both.

I fully understand we are sending it off to a committee that at this point is not working the way it should. We know the fault lies with the government. Nonetheless that does not mean we should stop doing all our other business because we have a bit of a political bottleneck somewhere in the process. In a minority government, from to time to time, it happens. It is disappointing that it is happening with such a researched systematic approach, the anarchist handbook, but these things do happen. In a minority situation if we all work to try to make this place work for the people who we represent, then one finds a way through it.

As difficult as that might be, as someone who has been in a majority government and served in Houses where there are majority governments on the government benches, this is a lot better in terms of the problems we have. Normally when there is an issue like this, what is in front of us is a government using its majority and the procedures to have the effect of shutting members down.

In this case we have an opportunity where it is not any one party that has majority control of the outcome. What a great unique opportunity to ensure we look at this issue in its fullest and in the most non-partisan way we will find, meaning no one party has the majority in the House and therefore nobody has a majority in committee. This stands the best chance of going through this carefully to ensure no other rights are impinged inadvertently as a result of the change that has been made.

However, I am pleased the member for Scarborough—Rouge River and the member for Burnaby—New Westminster have both moved the main motion and an amendment that is helpful to the House. I hope we keep that same attitude and approach and do what is in the best interests of not only those of us who are here today, but, more important, for the members of Parliament who will be elected and take—

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will do that. It is here in both languages in the record. I am just watching my time but I will certainly slow it down a pace.

--should have disclosed this potential conflict at the outset of the committee's proceedings. But her assessment that he should have recused himself from the hearings because the lawsuit gave him a financial interest sets a troubling precedent.

The message has now been sent that it is possible to silence our elected representatives by filing lawsuits against them, regardless of their merit. This may not be Ms. Dawson's fault; perhaps the rules should be amended to make clear that lawsuits do not belong alongside business investments and other assets and liabilities as private interests that present conflicts. But the principle must be preserved that, as parliamentary privilege is meant to ensure, MPs are able to openly air their concerns sheltered from the legal concerns they might face in the outside world. The last thing Parliament needs is a wave of libel chill.

The second Globe and Mail editorial was on May 20 and it stated:

It might have been a bit much to expect [the Prime Minister's] Conservatives to rally to the defence of [the] Liberal MP[for West Nova]. But for the Tories to wholeheartedly embrace Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson's recent ruling against him, and the libel chill that it encourages, displays short-sightedness on their part.

Even Ms. Dawson seemed to recognize that her ruling might necessitate a change in the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons. By the code's definition, she found, a lawsuit filed by Brian Mulroney over comments [the member for West Nova] made in a television interview represented a “private interest” that should have led the MP to recuse himself from committee hearings into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair. But given concerns “about the use of lawsuits, more particularly libel suits, to prevent a Member from performing his or her duties in the House of Commons,” she wrote, Parliament might wish to amend the rules--

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, we need to underscore the importance of this debate. I know there are probably government members who will at some point, either on the floor or in some fashion, be asking why are we wasting our time on this when we should be dealing with blah, blah, blah.

The reality is that stopping and dealing with these kinds of fundamental issues are crucial when they happen because we soon forget about them and go on about our daily business. This is not a partisan issue and it is not even about us. It is about those people who are elected to sit here. Today it is us but there will be a day when it will be someone else. So this is about the rights of members of Parliament. As time goes on, those issues will pop up and at that moment, as you had to do today, Mr. Speaker, and as the Table had to do, there is a scramble to determine what the ruling should be.

The first thing that is looked at is the precedent for when it came up in the past, what was said, what the circumstances were and whether any of them were similar to the issue at hand. It could be decades before anything remotely similar comes up. However, a parliament in the future expects that those who came before would have done their job, just as we are fortunate enough that parliamentarians who came before us took the time to lay down the foundations that are truly the basis for our democracy in this great country. Therefore, this is important.

It would be fair for someone to ask, because I know it crossed my mind, that we have had the issue come up, we have had the ruling, we had a review and another report as a result of actions taken by the House, what is left to do? That is a fair question. The amendment is particularly important because it talks about ensuring that if there are any unexpected results from this rule change, which, in the world of the CIA is called “blowback”, will it affect other things that we have not thought of. Given the fundamental importance of this issue, it makes every good sense to ensure we do the job thoroughly and properly.

If the committee could spend as little as five minutes taking a look at it and saying that everything is okay, so be it. However, if it is not, we need to grab it now, wrestle with it while the issue is fresh in front of us, while we have actually made changes to our Standing Orders or the code which forms part of our Standing Orders, so that when it comes up again in the future the homework will have been done and we will have done collectively what we believed was the best we could do in the interest of current and future parliamentarians.

If anyone thinks that this is all inside baseball, that nobody really cares about this and that even though we can think it is a big deal, no one else does, I would like to place on the record two editorials from the Globe and Mail. Unless I missed the memo, the Globe and Mail is still considered to be the national paper of record. That is the paper that takes it upon itself to watch the national scene in a very detailed way on a regular basis as opposed to most of the other great newspapers and the not so great newspapers, which will, from time to time comment.

If we were wasting a lot of time on this issue or if it were not important, believe me the Globe and Mail would be the first to say so. On May 12 of this year, the Globe and Mail stated:

In March, at the height of the Chuck Cadman affair, [the Prime Minister] threatened to personally sue [the leader of the official opposition] for libel over allegations of attempted bribery. Few would suggest that, had the Prime Minister followed through, the Liberal Leader would have had to recuse himself from parliamentary debate on the controversy. But based on a ruling last week by the federal Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, [the leader of the official opposition] would have had little choice.

Among all MPs, [the] Liberal [member for West Nova] was most aggressive last fall in asking questions about the relationship between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and businessman Karlheinz Schreiber. It only made sense that he would sit in on the ethics committee's hearings into the affair when they began in November, establishing himself as one of the few MPs with a strong grasp of the relevant issues.

I did not say that they were always correct. I said that they did not always pay attention.

The Globe and Mail goes on to state:

But in response to a query from [the] Conservative MP [from Dufferin—Caledon] Ms. Dawson has ruled that because he was facing a lawsuit from Mr. Mulroney over comments he made during a television interview, [the member for West Nova] had a “private interest” in the matter that left him in violation of the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons.

Ms. Dawson is right that [the member for West Nova] — who had not yet been served with a libel notice in November, but was aware of its likelihood--

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

The royal you.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians were shocked and saddened this week by the passage of the Conservative government's immigration law. The new law will abolish any guarantee of fairness in the system. It will not help reunite families and it will not end the backlog of almost a million applications. Instead, it will shift the focus to temporary workers who have no opportunity to put down Canadian roots. It will allow the Conservative minister to make totally arbitrary decisions about who stays and who goes.

We needed real reforms. We need to clear that application backlog. We need to bring families together.

The Conservatives could not bring in this awful law alone. They needed help and they got it. The Conservatives' new best friends, the Liberal caucus, sat by and watched the law pass. They could have stopped it. They should have stopped it, but they did not. Thousands of families will suffer as a result of the Liberals' self-serving refusal to simply say no.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, June 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the member is a representative of Toronto, the largest city in the province of Ontario, naturally, and these people are being hit very hard. This theft of $54 billion means that if we get into a serious downtown we run the risk that there will not be enough money there, even for those who do qualify. It may not happen tomorrow, next week, next month or even in this cycle, but eventually, unfortunately, cyclically it will happen. When it does, we run the risk that there will not be enough money there, even for those who do qualify.

There are two things that need to be fixed. One is that more people who pay the premiums should be entitled to collect the benefits when they need them. When they are down and out, they do not need their own federal government putting the boots to them by telling them the support mechanism that is there is an emergency fund that they do not qualify for.

What would be just as bad would be to qualify and then find out there is not enough money because the money has been taken by the previous government and the debt will not be paid by the current government, a debt that I hope it loses in the courts, because it ought to be paid. It ought to be there for every unemployed worker who needs the money. That is what it is for.

For far too long, governments have been taking that money and using it for other things to make themselves look good, leaving unemployed workers and their families twisting in the wind.