House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 35% of the vote.
Business of Supply May 8th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, the member across the way spoke about the central role that the Minister of National Defence played in Operation Medusa due to his intelligence work. We in the NDP do not dispute that statement. However, given the minister's knowledge of intelligence in Afghanistan, how could he not be aware of the treatment of detainees? Why does he not tell the House what he knows, or if he feels he is in a conflict of interest step aside so another cabinet minister can lead an inquiry?
Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1 May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, it has been a pleasure to serve on the all-party steel caucus with the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. Certainly, I would welcome the improvements to trade remedy provisions as a positive feature of the budget. Of course, the devil is in the details, and I hope the government follows through with enforcement on the good words in the budget.
I would like to ask about another aspect of the budget, which is the billions of dollars for infrastructure that other government members have mentioned during this debate. I would like to ask the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek whether there are any provisions in the budget that would encourage the use of that money to procure Canadian steel, rather than building infrastructure with steel imported from offshore. Something that has concerned me is the new Champlain Bridge in Montreal, which is a huge federal infrastructure project. It is only using 19% Canadian steel. I believe we can and should do much better than that.
Holidays Act May 4th, 2017
Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise in favour of this bill. It is worth noting at the outset that Remembrance Day is already a statutory holiday in federal jurisdiction and in six provinces, including my province of Saskatchewan. This bill would amend the Holidays Act to define Remembrance Day as a legal holiday, which I hope would prompt the remaining provinces to consider designating it as a statutory holiday.
There have been a number of previous attempts to make this change. In the last Parliament, the former New Democratic MP for Scarborough Southwest presented a nearly identical bill that made it to third reading before dying on the Order Paper. It had support from all parties. Liberal MPs tried to make this change in 1991 and 1994; Conservative MPs tried in 2004 and 2006; and NDP MPs tried in 2006, 2009, and 2014. Hopefully the eighth time is the charm, and we will finally achieve this worthwhile change and correction to our legislation.
The first point I would make in favour of this bill is that we should welcome more statutory holidays. As our economy grows, those benefits should be shared with working people in the form of both higher wages and more time off. We hear a lot of rhetoric from the government about helping the middle class and those working hard to join it. One of the tangible ways that the government can help improve the lives of working people is to increase the number of statutory holidays.
The reason to make Remembrance Day one of those statutory holidays is to allow people to attend commemorative ceremonies at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. In Saskatchewan, where Remembrance Day is already a statutory holiday, the result has been that thousands of people attend the indoor ceremony at the Brandt Centre in Regina. Hundreds more in Regina attend the outdoor ceremony at the Cenotaph in Victoria Park. Having Remembrance Day as a statutory holiday clearly works in terms of improving attendance at these ceremonies.
The argument that we just heard from my colleague from Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte against making it a statutory holiday is that it is better to have students in school observing Remembrance Day there. What I would point out is that schools can and should teach about Remembrance Day on other days, but on the date itself, I believe it is far more meaningful for children to go to the ceremonies with their families than to do it as part of some sort of mandatory school activity.
I would also point out that every year, unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer veterans from the world wars with us. If those veterans are sent into schools on November 11, then they are not available to attend the public Remembrance Day services, whereas if veterans share their wisdom and experience in schools on other dates close to November 11, then they are available to attend the public ceremonies on that date. It clearly makes sense for schools to have activities on days other than November 11.
The purpose of these ceremonies is, of course, to honour the service of veterans to our country. Since Confederation, more than 100,000 Canadian soldiers have been killed in wars. I would like to pay special tribute to the Regina Rifle Regiment. It was one of the regiments that landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and was the first Canadian regiment to secure a beachhead.
I would also like to say a few words about the role of the South Saskatchewan Regiment in the Second World War. It was thrust into the ill-fated raid on Dieppe. It also served with distinction in the more successful campaigns in northwestern Europe after the Normandy landings, and as part of that, it liberated the Westerbork concentration camp.
I think in addition to honouring service, a big part of Remembrance Day is remembering the horrors of war so that we do not repeat them. For me, a very important part of November 11 is remembering for peace. I would like to say a few words about current events. We have the war in Syria. We have both North Korea and the United States testing long-range missiles. We have sabre-rattling about Russia, including, unfortunately, on the floor of this House oftentimes. Therefore, I feel that this is an important time for Canada to send a message of remembrance for peace by designating Remembrance Day as a legal holiday in our country.
Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1 May 4th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North tried to give us a laundry list of what the government has accomplished over the past year and a half. In that vein, how many bills has his government presented to this House, and how does that number compare to the average that new governments would have presented to Parliament in their first year and a half after being elected?
Mr. Speaker, the member for North Okanagan—Shuswap makes an excellent point. I represent Regina—Lewvan and I am in a similar situation in terms of travel. There is no direct flight between Ottawa and Regina for most of the year. Eliminating Friday sittings but sitting later on Thursdays would not really make a positive difference for MPs from western Canada. That is exactly the kind of point that needs to be considered through a much more consensual and consultative process.
All members of the House agree there are a lot of trade-offs involved in these proposals. Eliminating sittings on Fridays could require sitting later on Thursdays which would entail other problems and difficulties for staff and employees of Parliament. Eliminating Friday sittings could involve adding sitting days at other times of the year which certainly would keep members out of their constituencies during those times. There are a lot of trade-offs and that is why we need to consider this very carefully and collectively.
Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting question whether we should sit more in January versus in June and how sitting days should be allocated throughout the calendar year. This is the kind of issue that members from different parties operating in good faith could probably come to some kind of agreement on, but in order for that to happen, there needs to be a genuine negotiation process that includes all MPs from all parties.
The reason we have not been moving toward any sort of agreement or consensus on proposed changes to the rules of the House is that, so far, the government has been using its majority to try to ram a sweeping package of changes through the committee. I am optimistic that this scaled-back set of proposals from the government House leader presented earlier today signals a change in the government's approach and that there will be an opportunity to hash out questions such as the one the member just posed.
Mr. Speaker, we have just heard from the government House leader a scaling back of the proposed changes to the rules that govern Parliament as proposed by her government. We appreciate there has been some movement on the government side. We appreciate there is perhaps some indication of a willingness to compromise. We on the opposition side are certainly prepared to take a very serious look at the new package of proposals from the government.
However, this initiative is coming at the very last minute. In fact, this set of proposals was presented yesterday to the media before it was presented to any of the opposition parties. Therefore, this obviously has not given us a lot of opportunity to consider the rule changes being proposed and it certainly is not something that builds a lot of trust or instills a lot of confidence.
Nevertheless, we are pleased to see a somewhat revised set of proposals coming forward. We are also pleased to hear from the member for Winnipeg North that the government is prepared to have the procedure and House affairs committee consider this question of privilege, rather than use that committee to try to ram through the much broader set of changes to the rules governing Parliament for which the government had previously advocated.
We also heard a very interesting argument from the government House leader about the need to make these changes to the rules governing Parliament because some of them had been in the Liberal election platform. That argument is a bit rich coming from the government. A lot of things were in the Liberal election platform that the government is not doing. One example that leaps to mind is electoral reform. The government was elected on a very clear promise that 2015 would be the last election conducted under the first past the post voting system.
We had the whole process of consultations on electoral reform with a view to making that change. The overwhelming majority of experts consulted by the committee of the House and the overwhelming majority of citizens who showed up at public meetings across the country said that we should implement a proportional voting system in which the share of seats that a party received in the House would more or less line up with the share of votes that it had attracted in a general election. The government's response was that there was no consensus and therefore it could not move ahead.
When it comes to this issue of changes to the rules governing Parliament, there is clearly no consensus at all. There is far less consensus on this than there was on electoral reform, yet on this point the government's argument is that some of it was in its platform so it had to do this, even if meant using its majority to ram it through. On electoral reform, why is the issue that the Liberals need 100% consensus to do anything even if it was in their platform, whereas on the issue of changes to the rules governing the House, the argument is that they have to do it because it is in their platform even if there is no semblance of consensus, even if there is nothing approaching agreement on these changes?
Beyond the analogy I just made, there is another connection between what the government is doing on changes to the rules governing Parliament and what the government is failing to do on electoral reform. What the government is trying to do is pass some of these changes to the rules and procedures of Parliament and then say it achieved something on democratic reform, that this was its democratic reform agenda and it has done it. We in the NDP certainly are not going to let the government get away with that. The Liberals very clearly promised a new voting system. There were very clear recommendations, something that was pretty close to a consensus in favour of a proportional voting system. The government has blatantly broke that promise and intends to go ahead with the outdated, outmoded first past the post voting system.
Whether or not the government puts forward some changes to the rules governing Parliament, it certainly does not make up for that very severe broken promise on electoral reform. In terms of these proposed changes to the rules of Parliament, we on the opposition side are going to need to take some time to take a look at this scaled-back package that we just heard about from the government House leader.
I would like to return to the question of privilege that we are discussing today. I do think it is a matter of great importance that should concern every member of this House. It is an integral principle of this institution that members of Parliament have unfettered access to the parliamentary precincts. As members of Parliament, it is fundamental that we be able to be here to vote and in general that we have access to Parliament in order to represent the people who elected us. When events happen that prevent members from accessing the parliamentary precincts and therefore prevent us from doing our jobs, it is very important that we investigate seriously.
According to the Compendium of House of Commons procedure:
The House of Commons and its Members enjoy certain constitutional rights and immunities that are collectively referred to as parliamentary privilege (or simply “privilege”).
It goes on to say:
Any physical barrier preventing a Member’s access to the parliamentary precinct or blocking their free movement within it may be treated by the House as a breach of privilege.
That is exactly what we are talking about today. When members are not able to come to Parliament, it fundamentally prevents each and every one of us from taking on the very specific and important role of holding the government to account.
The privileges of the member for Milton and the member for Beauce as elected representatives to this House have been breached. What happens after that is what brings us into this whole discussion of parliamentary privilege that was raised by the member for Perth—Wellington.
The member pointed out that it was an inappropriate violation of privilege for the government to end debate on the previous question of privilege in the manner that the government did without a vote. The Speaker quite wisely ruled that it is not appropriate for debate to simply end on this point. Equally problematic is that the government continues to try to shut down debate and limiting dissent in this House.
As I acknowledged at the outset, the government seems to have backed off a little on the sweeping changes to the parliamentary rules that had been proposed at the procedure and House affairs committee. We welcome that, as far as it goes, but I would also note that when the New Democratic House leader asked the government House leader whether this new package of proposed rule changes would require consensus or whether the government would just ram it through using its majority, we still did not get much of a commitment to a consensual process or much of a commitment to actually consult with other parties, which we believe is the standard required for changes being made to the rules governing this House.
It obviously would not make sense and would not be democratic for whichever party has a majority to use that majority to rewrite the very rules of Parliament. It is kind of a different category from all sorts of other public policies that we accept the government has the mandate and the authority to control.
We are faced with a very serious question of privilege. We are hopeful that it will be resolved either here or before the procedure and House affairs committee. We are going to take some time to seriously consider the scaled-back set of rule changes that the government House leader just introduced here a few moments ago.
Saskatchewan Transportation Company April 13th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, this year's federal and provincial budgets threw Saskatchewan under the bus. The provincial budget proposes to eliminate the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, STC, depriving communities of needed bus service with less notice than required by the Canada Labour Code.
The federal budget allocates transit funding mostly based on existing ridership, which favours large centres that already have extensive transit systems. Saskatchewan's share of federal transit funding is less than half our share of Canada's population, shortchanging our province by far more than the Saskatchewan Party says axing STC will save.
I invite all Saskatchewan's elected representatives to join me in pushing for an equal per capita allocation of federal funding to improve transit in Regina and Saskatoon and to save STC.
Canada Business Corporations Act April 6th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, my colleague, who also serves on the government operations committee, suggested that inequality and the 1% represent a false concept, but I am sure he is aware of the fact that the top 100 CEOs, on average, make 193 times as much as the average Canadian employee.
I wonder he would justify this. Does he believe that these CEOs are 193 times more productive than the average worker? Maybe they are somewhat more productive, but are they 193 times more productive? I am just wondering what the explanation is, if it is not an example of unfairness and justified inequality.
Canada Business Corporations Act April 6th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if my colleague could speak to the growth in inequality between wealthy CEOs and ordinary Canadians and whether he could explain if Bill C-25 usefully addresses the explosion of executive compensation.