Erin Weir

[Government Communications, December 11th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government has aggravated the crisis in local media by slashing its own advertising in Canadian publications, while pouring millions of dollars into American digital giants. In a report tabled last week, the government operations committee unanimously recommended increasing the share of federal advertising in Canadian publications.

Will the government follow this all-party recommendation to support our local media and reach more Canadians?

[Canada Post, December 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, a year ago, the government operations committee tabled an all-party report calling on Canada Post to restore door-to-door delivery. Last week, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement promised that she would finally respond to the report before the House rises, but her director of communications backtracked yesterday, saying that the minister would respond in due time.

Will the minister clarify to Canadians whether she will respond before the House adjourns, or will she break yet another promise?

[An Act to change the name of the electoral district of Châteauguay—Lacolle, December 6th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I have had a great experience working with my colleague from Châteauguay—Lacolle on the government operations committee. However, I have to say, after that answer, it is still quite unclear why she has chosen to use a private member's bill to change the name of her riding.

We do not dispute the importance of this name change, but as we speak, there is a process under way by the House leaders of all parties to put together a bill to change the names of several ridings. The member for Châteauguay—Lacolle had access to that process, and we really do not understand why she did not use it, and why she is instead using a private member's bill, which is a rare opportunity.

There are a limited number of spots for private member's bills to be put before Parliament. Many members will not have an opportunity in this Parliament to have a private member's bill of theirs debated or voted upon, and we are using one of those opportunities here to do something that other MPs are doing through a collaborative process.

I want to give my colleague another opportunity to explain, not why it was important to change the name of the riding, but why it was important to do so through a private member's bill.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, December 6th, 2017]

With regard to federal funding in the constituencies of Regina—Lewvan, Regina—Qu'Appelle and Regina—Wascana, for each period from November 1, 2015, to December 31, 2015, January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2016, and January 1, 2017, to October 1, 2017: (a) what applications for funding have been received, including for each the (i) name of the organization, (ii) department, (iii) program and sub-program under which the application for funding was made, (iv) date of the application, (v) amount applied for, (vi) whether funding has been approved or not, (vii) total amount of funding, if funding was approved; (b) what funds, grants, loans and loan guarantees has the government issued through its various departments and agencies in the three constituencies that did not require a direct application from the applicant, including for each the (i) name of the organization, (ii) department, (iii) program and sub-program under which funding was received, (iv) total amount of funding, if funding was approved; and (c) what projects have been funded in the three constituencies, broken down by organization tasked with sub-granting government funds (i.e. Community Foundations of Canada), including for each the (i) name of the organization, (ii) department, (iii) program and sub-program under which funding was received, (iv) total amount of funding, if funding was approved?

[Access to Information Act, December 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to once again speak to Bill C-58, but it is a bit disappointing to have to make some of the same criticisms of it that we on the opposition side have been making throughout. Notwithstanding some of the comments we have heard from the government, the bill actually has not been significantly amended and many of the original problems with it persist.

I would like to address this legislation in terms of three headings: first, the scope of the act; second, exceptions to the act; and third, the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information.

In terms of the scope of the bill, it is important to note that the Liberals were elected on a promise to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and to the offices of other cabinet ministers. Bill C-58 would not do that. It is really part of a litany of broken promises by the government. Here we think of electoral reform. We think of the promise to close the stock option tax loophole. We think of the promise to restore door-to-door mail delivery. The government is building up quite a track record of broken promises and, unfortunately, the commitment to extend access to information to cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister, is another one of those broken promises.

I had an opportunity at the committee on access to information, privacy and ethics to ask the Privacy Commissioner whether there were any privacy reasons that the government could not extend access to information to those cabinet offices. He confirmed that there were no such privacy reasons and that as far he was concerned, it would have been and would be feasible to extend access to information to the offices of cabinet ministers. Our first major disappointment with the scope of the bill is the fact that it fails to extend access to information to the very cabinet offices the government promised to include.

The second heading I would like to address is exceptions to the act. There are already exceptions related to cabinet confidences and policy advice to ministers. These exceptions have proven to be quite troublesome, because it is easy for the government to define almost anything as policy advice to a minister or as somehow being subject to a cabinet confidence. It is a very broad-sweeping exception that the government can use to not disclose information. Unfortunately, Bill C-58 would not correct this exception.

The really bad thing about Bill C-58 is that it creates new exceptions that would allow the government to not disclose information that citizens are requesting. In particular, it empowers the government to deem that an access to information request is frivolous or in bad faith. It is difficult to put government officials in the position of having to try to define the motivations of people making access to information requests. This is a very poor criterion on which to accept or deny access to information requests.

What is this really all about? The example we heard from a couple of different government members throughout this debate is the case of “an ex-spouse [who] ATIPs his or her former spouse's work hours on a daily basis or their emails”. There is obviously a problem with that type of request, but the way to respond to that is through proper protections of privacy, not by deeming the request itself to be frivolous or in bad faith. It is obviously the case that the government cannot disclose certain information for privacy reasons, and the privacy protections need to be very robust in federal legislation.

However, the idea of protecting privacy is not a justification for giving the government broad, sweeping powers to deem that particular access to information requests are frivolous or in bad faith. We do need to have proper protections for privacy, but those in no way justify the new exceptions introduced in Bill C-58, which try to get into the motivation behind an access to information request, which is a very difficult thing for the government to ascertain, and a very difficult thing for citizens to trust the government to ascertain in an objective and proper way.

The third aspect of the legislation that I would like to address is the difference between proactive disclosure on the one hand and access to information on the other hand, because of course one of the aspects of Bill C-58, which the government touts, is the notion of increased proactive disclosure. We have the idea, for example, that the government will proactively disclose ministerial briefing books. A cynic might suggest that this provision will to result in government officials and ministers' assistants spending time drafting briefing books for public consumption. Knowing they will be proactively disclosed, they will just prepare documents that they are happy to have disclosed and that do not really contain a lot of sensitive or controversial information. We are very concerned about that, but even if we assume that would not happen and that everything would be done entirely in good faith, we still have to face up to the fact that proactive disclosure, as positive as it might be, is no substitute for access to information.

Proactive disclosure is about the government choosing to disclose certain things. On the whole, it is good for the government to proactively disclose more documents, but access to information is fundamentally about citizens being able to request information that the government does not want to disclose and does not think it should have to disclose. There is a very important distinction to be made here between proactive disclosure, which is a good thing and the government is touting, and access to information, which is what the bill is supposed to be about.

To sum it all up, I would like to conclude by reading a quote from the Information Commissioner's report on Bill C-58 entitled “Failing to Strike the Right Balance for Transparency”. She said:

In short, Bill C-58 fails to deliver. The government promised the bill would ensure the Act applies to the Prime Minister's and Ministers' Offices appropriately. It does not.

The government promised the bill would apply appropriately to administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts. It does not.

The government promised the bill would empower the Information Commissioner to order the release of government information. It does not.

Rather than advancing access to information rights, Bill C-58 would instead result in a regression of existing rights.

[Access to Information Act, December 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the member for Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan and I worked together on the government operations committee to put together a report on whistle-blower protection in the federal public service. We heard harrowing stories about public servants enduring hardships and taking risks to blow the whistle and release information to the public. It struck me that if we had a stronger access to information system, where citizens could obtain information that the government does not want to divulge, there would be far less need for our brave public servants to take those risks. I wonder if the member for Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan would care to reflect on that observation as well.

[Public Services and Procurement, December 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, that kind of scripted answer is not good enough. It is not good enough for the workers who held a rally this weekend, saying they were not excited for Christmas because they could not afford presents. It is not good enough for the woman in Edmonton who has been told to repay $43,000 to Phoenix when she only makes $35,000. The minister's talking points are unacceptable.

Will the minister commit to fixing Phoenix by next Christmas so that workers can at least enjoy that holiday?

[Public Services and Procurement, November 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary tried to suggest that the existing emergency pay system was working properly. There are blatant examples that it is not working properly, of people losing their homes, of people applying for welfare. We need to get those facts on the record.

Even if the emergency pay system were working well, why do we expect public servants to repay that money to the government? Why are we not content to accept that money as an advance on pay public servants are owed? I would be very interested in hearing the parliamentary secretary's comments on this. What is his objection to simply debiting the emergency pay from the salary public servants receive, if and when they actually receive it?

It seems to me that this would make the system work much more smoothly for public servants who are in need.

[Public Services and Procurement, November 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, the Auditor General reported that the Phoenix pay system would continue to plague our public servants for years to come. Earlier this week, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement told the government operations committee that the government should mostly have fixed the Phoenix pay system by the end of 2018. Therefore, our public servants are going to have to rely on emergency pay for months, if not years, to come.

The Liberal government has also come to rely on emergency pay as a political explanation for its inaction on Phoenix. For about a year and a half, I have been asking the government why it does not empower managers in departments and agencies to write cheques to employees whom they know are not being paid. The government's answer is that those employees can apply for emergency pay.

For about eight months, I have been asking the government to establish a hotline for MP offices so we can assist constituents who are having problems with Phoenix. The government's answer is that those people who are under stress can apply for emergency pay.

Therefore, I would like to focus this evening's adjournment debate on the question of emergency pay, how it works, what the problems are, and what a solution could be.

At the outset, we need to recognize that the existing emergency pay system is not working. When we hear about federal public servants who lose their homes because of Phoenix, or federal public servants who are applying for provincial social assistance because of Phoenix, it is obvious those people were not able to access emergency pay. One of the reasons for that is glitches within the Phoenix system itself. For example, individuals who are identified within Phoenix as having received an overpayment, whether or not they actually got the money, are automatically ineligible to apply for emergency pay.

Even public servants who might qualify for emergency pay are very reluctant to seek it, because they know it is just a loan that has to be repaid, and often public servants are asked to repay the gross amount of that emergency pay, rather than the net amount that they were actually advanced. Therefore, a consequence of receiving emergency pay is often being trapped in a cycle of having to apply for more emergency pay in order to repay the initial emergency payment. Public servants should not be locked into that cycle, and it is quite understandable that they do not want to be.

It strikes me that a very simple solution is, instead of treating emergency pay as a loan that needs to be repaid, to start treating it as an advance on the pay that public servants are owed, so rather than expecting public servants to write the government a cheque to repay those emergency amounts, we should simply debit emergency pay from the future salary that our public servants are owed. I believe this would actually make emergency pay a far more effective safety net for public servants caught up in the Phoenix boondoggle.

[Saskatchewan Roughriders, November 27th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it was great seeing so many people in our nation's capital this past weekend wearing green and white, despite our Roughriders previously falling victim to a last-minute Toronto comeback. As someone who was elected by 132 votes, I appreciate late-breaking victories and hope that the Argonauts will not face a judicial recount.

My grandfather, Ken Weir, played for the Roughriders from 1949 to 1951. He did not win the Grey Cup, but legend has it that he and some neighbours once managed to set up an outdoor hockey rink for well below $5 million.

To mention a third sport, we are tremendously proud to have former MMA fighter Matt Fedler as our NDP candidate in the Battlefords—Lloydminster by-election. Matt works for the Canadian Mental Health Association in his hometown of North Battleford. All of us should support his goal of mental health coverage.