Erin Weir

[Railway Safety Act, May 12th, 2017]

Relevance.

[Railway Safety Act, May 12th, 2017]

Nonsense, sheer nonsense.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the member for Oshawa, noted that the amendment the Liberal government accepted from the Senate was one the Liberals previously voted against when put forward by the Conservatives.

I wonder if my colleague believes the Liberals have changed their minds on this point or whether they are just trying to validate the million dollars per year they are spending on this new process to appoint, supposedly, independent senators who now feel emboldened to push back on and delay legislation passed in the House?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member across the way defended the government's acceptance of the first Senate amendment on the grounds that it would not really do anything, that it would not actually require a 45-day waiting period in all cases. It would only happen, if necessary, some of the time.

I would like to clarify whether the government is supporting this amendment because it believes it would actually improve the legislation or whether this a matter of giving the Senate a pat on the head and validating the changes the government has made to the Senate, which have really emboldened that outdated and undemocratic institution to push back against urgently needed legislation passed by the great majority of elected representatives in the House of Commons.

[Public Services and Procurement, May 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary mentioned the resources being brought to bear on the Phoenix pay system, but we have never really received a proper accounting of what this boondoggle is costing. The parliamentary secretary mentioned $50 million to keep temporary pay centres open, but what we do not know is how much the government will ultimately need to spend over and above that amount to compensate federal employees who have incurred interest and penalties as a result of not being payed the money that they have earned.

As part of announcing this task force, the government has talked about spending $140 million to fix Phoenix. I do not think that is based on an actual accounting or estimate of cost. The government said that Phoenix was forecast to save $70 million a year, so if we use the supposed savings from Phoenix for two years, that comes to $140 million and will be enough to solve the problem.

That is kind of fun with numbers, but I think we need an actual audit and accounting of the specific and tangible costs of cleaning up this mess.

[Public Services and Procurement, May 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss the Phoenix payroll system, which has burdened federal employees in our country for well over a year now. People who are delivering important public services all across Canada continue to be paid incorrectly and to have problems accessing benefits. This is really a travesty.

If we look at the advanced economies around the world, their national governments are able to pay their workers correctly and on time. Provincial and municipal governments in Canada do not seem to have a problem with this, so it is really quite an embarrassment that our federal government still has not fixed the Phoenix payroll system.

This program started out as a Conservative scheme to cut costs and cut corners by merging the payroll systems that existed in different departments and agencies. There were a couple of major flaws with the idea. One was the notion that this new centralized payroll system could be run using off-the-shelf software from IBM. Another mistake was to locate the new pay centre in Miramichi, New Brunswick. The only reason it was put there was to replace the jobs that were lost when that former government eliminated the firearms centre. It was not put there because there was a population there that had expertise in managing federal government payrolls. We had the Government of Canada laying off people who had experience in federal payrolls and moving this new centre to Miramichi for political reasons.

The current Liberal government rushed ahead with the implementation of Phoenix, despite many indications of problems and despite many warnings that the system was not ready to go. The government had to admit this summer that there were some 80,000 public servants who had been paid incorrectly or not at all.

The federal government set for itself a deadline of October 31, 2016, to fix Phoenix. That seemed like a long time. However, that deadline came and went, then the end of the year came and went. As a result, many federal employees received incorrect tax information. Some 50,000 T4 slips had to be recalled as a result of Phoenix problems.

That original backlog has not totally been cleaned up. Worse yet, there are more Phoenix cases cropping up every day. Indeed, there are some 280,000 payroll cases currently that have been in a queue for three weeks or more.

The government's solution to this has been to appoint this dream team of half a dozen Liberal cabinet ministers to tackle Phoenix. I hope this is an indication that the government is finally taking it seriously. I hope that it will not lead to a situation where none of these ministers are actually responsible for what happens. I think that is one of the risks with a committee of six people.

I am hoping that we will receive some clearer answers from the parliamentary secretary this evening. I also hope that he will finally provide an answer to the question I asked a couple of months ago about setting up a dedicated phone line for MPs' offices to deal with Phoenix so that at least we, as parliamentarians, can help our many constituents who have been impacted by these payroll problems.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, May 9th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the member across the way talked about a tax cut putting money in the pockets of consumers to spend. I wonder if she would agree that the consumers most likely to spend any extra money they receive are those earning less than $45,000 per year, precisely the Canadians who will not receive anything from the so-called middle-class tax cut.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, May 9th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the member for Edmonton Manning pointed out that the federal budget skews the allocation of transit funding in favour of existing ridership rather than population. For example, Saskatchewan has 3.2% of Canada's population but will receive only about 1.6% of transit funding from the federal government. Our per capita share of the $20.1 billion of transit funding would be about $640 million. In fact, the federal budget shortchanges Saskatchewan by providing it with only about $320 million in transit funding.

I wonder if the member for Edmonton Manning could elaborate a bit on how this misallocation of transit funding would affect his province of Alberta.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, May 9th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about $11 billion for affordable housing in the budget. In fact, the budget shows only about $10 million for affordable housing in this current fiscal year, 2017-18. Indeed, almost all of the promised $11 billion is after 2019—in other words, after the next election. The government cannot even really commit to what might happen at that point in the future.

If affordable housing is really such a priority for the government, why is it not investing in affordable housing now while it has the opportunity and the authority to do so?

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way spoke about helping veterans. Therefore, I have to ask why the current government has not kept its promise to reinstate a lifetime pension for injured veterans and why it is fighting in court veterans who are trying to seek access to those benefits.