Erin Weir

[Canada Business Corporations Act, November 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we are nearing the end of the year. New Year's Day 2017 falls on a Sunday. The first paid day in 2017 is January 2. By around noon on January 3, Canada's top 100 CEOs will, on average, have made as much as the average full-time employee will earn over the entire year.

In 2013, and again in 2014, Canada's top 100 CEOs made an average of $9 million each. In other words, the average of these top CEOs makes 184 times as much as the average Canadian worker. This inequality is not only large but it is also growing. Figures on the top 100 CEOs only go back to 2008 on a comparable basis. However, if we look at the top 50 CEOs, an even more elite group, in 1995 only about 20 years ago, they made only 85 times as much as the average worker.

Why should Parliament care if private corporations decide to pay their CEOs a lot of money? Because it is a lot of money that is not being used for other purposes. If we consider 100 CEOs each making an average of $9 million, that is almost $1 billion not being used to hire other employees, not being invested in machinery or equipment, not being devoted to necessary research and development.

Corporate Canada as a whole would be better off if companies could pay CEOs less, but individual corporate boards feel the need to keep up with other companies. This produces a circular logic to justify ever-increasing executive compensation. Even for the CEOs themselves, there is no real benefit to these pay increases. For one of the top 100 CEOs, another million dollars does not actually mean a higher material standard of living. It just means a change in the relative ranking.

Our economy would be stronger and even corporate Canada would be better off with government regulation to limit CEO compensation.

Bill C-25 includes some minor improvements to corporate governance, but what it is missing is mandatory and binding “say on pay” provisions as have been adopted in other advanced countries. Canadian companies can put executive compensation to a vote of shareholders but they are not bound to the results. Bill C-25 should require companies to have votes on CEO and executive compensation and be bound by the results.

[Canada Business Corporations Act, November 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Sarnia—Lambton was touting the one-for-one rule to reduce regulation. I wonder if she perceives a risk that civil servants might hang on to obsolete regulations so they have something to get rid of when they need to bring in a new regulation. In other words, is it not possible that this policy could have an unintended consequence of keeping obsolete regulations in place for longer?

[Public Services and Procurement, November 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has not shown up at committee to address Phoenix, and now the parliamentary secretary for public services has not shown up to this evening's adjournment debate. I believe that an important part of showing leadership and taking ownership of the situation is actually being present, not hiding behind the deputy minister in public presentations, and not having another parliamentary secretary come forward during an adjournment debate.

What did we hear from the parliamentary secretary for national defence?

We heard about temporary pay centres, and we know the government is spending almost $50 million on those. We heard about compensation to employees who have missed bills as a result of not receiving the money they have earned. The government admits that it has no estimate as to how much that is going to cost.

Therefore, Phoenix remains a huge boondoggle. The government has not provided any sense of when it is going to be fixed or how much it is going to cost to fix it. I hope that the parliamentary secretary for national defence can provide some answers during his final minute.

[Public Services and Procurement, November 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Phoenix payroll system began as a Conservative scheme to cut costs and cut corners by replacing complex federal government payrolls with off-the-shelf software from IBM. The Conservatives decided to operate this new system from Miramichi, New Brunswick for political reasons. The goal was to replace jobs lost due to the removal of the firearms centre even though experts on federal payrolls were not in Miramichi.

The Liberal government went ahead with implementing this ill-conceived scheme despite many warnings of problems. The government rushed ahead with phase 2 of Phoenix even after problems were uncovered with phase 1. The Liberal government removed the old payroll system that was functional without having established that the Phoenix system was working properly.

This summer, the government had to acknowledge that some 80,000 federal public employees had been paid incorrectly or not at all as a result of problems with the Phoenix pay system. Some of us wondered why the government did not start writing cheques. Of course the Government of Canada has the ability to issue cheques. Indeed, every federal employee's first payment comes in the form of a paper cheque.

However, the Liberals assured us that Phoenix would be sorted out by the end of October.

When the Minister of Public Services appeared before the government operations committee on September 19, I asked whether the government was on track to meet that deadline of October 31. The minister assured our committee that the government was on track to meet that deadline. October 31 has come and gone.

On November 16, just last week, the government acknowledged that there were still 18,000 unresolved Phoenix cases from that original backlog. That is nearly one-quarter of the backlog that has still not been fixed.

The government has presented no timeline to deal with those remaining cases in the backlog and it has presented no plan to address the fact that employees will have incorrect figures on their T4 income tax forms if these cases are not resolved by the end of the calendar year, which is now just a few weeks away.

In addition to this backlog, new problems with Phoenix are cropping up every day. The government has decided to say that it is just not meeting its service standard as opposed to admitting that it is in addition to the backlog.

Also, on September 19, the minister said that she would appear again before the government operations committee around October 31 to update us on the government's progress with resolving the Phoenix pay system. Three weeks later and the minister has still not appeared before our committee.

I hope the parliamentary secretary will be able to provide us with some answers this evening.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, November 24th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is eminently sensible in suggesting that we must strike a balance between protecting the environment and the human use of our environment. I wonder if he would acknowledge that part of that balance is having certain areas, such as national parks, in which we really do err on the side of protecting and preserving nature.

[Italian Heritage Month, November 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member across the way has asked for unanimous support. The NDP is certainly proud to support Italian heritage month, and it sounds like the Conservatives are as well. I am proud of the fact that the last annual meeting of the Regina—Lewvan NDP was held at the Italian club, a very popular and historic institution in Regina.

Saskatchewan's provincial motto is “From Many Peoples Strength”. Therefore, I would like to ask the member across the way if she could elaborate on how Italian immigration has strengthened our country.

[SaskTel, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, in most parts of Canada the federal government has struggled to foster competitive telecommunications to lower prices for consumers. In Saskatchewan, phone companies face stiff competition, and consumers enjoy the lowest prices in Canada. That is because we own SaskTel, a crown corporation dedicated to providing good service at affordable prices across our province.

Unfortunately, Brad Wall's SaskParty has presented legislation allowing it to start privatizing SaskTel without the approval of the Saskatchewan people. However, such a deal may require the approval of the federal Competition Bureau, the CRTC, and the minister of industry.

If the federal government is truly committed to competitive telecommunications and consumer protection, it should strive to keep SaskTel public.

[Infrastructure, October 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting that the parliamentary secretary made an argument that I very much anticipated, which is that we supposedly need to buy foreign steel for our public infrastructure in order to keep foreign markets open to Canadian steel. In fact, the parliamentary secretary went so far as to suggest that the North American Free Trade Agreement requires this. But as I pointed out, the United States has Buy American policies for public infrastructure. I would be all for negotiating a Canadian exception to that and giving reciprocal treatment to the United States. Perhaps in her final minute, the parliamentary secretary can let us know whether her government is actually doing that.

However, the bigger point is that with offshore markets there really is not any of this reciprocity. China is dumping steel into Canada; it is not buying any of our steel in exchange. So a far better policy would be to use public procurement here.

[Infrastructure, October 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I had asked in the House why only 19% of the steel used in the new Champlain Bridge will be made in Canada. This is one of the largest federal infrastructure projects. I also asked whether Canadian or offshore steel would be used in several other infrastructure projects: the Alexandra Bridge, the Alaska Highway, and the Esquimalt Graving Dock. We have not heard an answer to those questions, but I am hoping the parliamentary secretary will be able to speak to the use of Canadian steel in those projects this evening.

It is very strange that the Government of Canada is importing steel while Canadian steel mills are laying off workers. I would consider why the Government of Canada might be doing that. One possibility is that it is cheaper to buy the steel from abroad. However, the rationale for these infrastructure projects is not simply to build the infrastructure at the lowest cost but to boost economic growth and to create jobs in Canada. The government itself has made that argument. If that is the goal, then clearly the government should be trying to procure the inputs from the Canadian economy. Doing so would generate more tax revenue in our country, which could certainly offset any higher cost of the steel.

The second reason we might be procuring steel from offshore for public infrastructure could be as a result of some sort of reciprocity; we want our steel mills to be able to sell Canadian steel for public infrastructure in other countries. While our biggest trading relationship is with the United States, we have relatively balanced trade in steel with the U.S. If the U.S. were to grant a Canadian exemption from buy-American policies, then it would make sense for us to also consider American steel in Canadian public infrastructure projects. However, there is no reciprocity in Canada's steel trade with the rest of the world. We export only about $1 billion a year of steel offshore, yet we import more than $4 billion of steel per year from offshore. There simply is no reciprocity to be achieved there.

I have mostly talked about steel procurement in economic terms, but we also need to consider some important environmental arguments. Steel is very heavy. It takes a lot of energy to transport it. The carbon emissions are much less if we are able to use Canadian-made steel rather than having it shipped from overseas. Similarly, it emits a lot less carbon to produce the steel in Canada, because our country has a much cleaner energy mix and also has much stronger environmental regulations. Producing a tonne of steel in China emits about 14 times more carbon than producing a tonne of steel in Canada.

If we are concerned about economic development in our country, if we are concerned about our environment, we should be using Canadian-made steel in federal infrastructure projects.

[National Defence, October 27th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the response from the parliamentary secretary. I noticed he used the adjectives “open and transparent” many times. He said that they were gathering information in an open way, but even the parliamentary secretary has not claimed today that the government has kept its promise to conduct an open and transparent competition to replace the CF-18s. That is certainly what the NDP is pushing for in the House.

I also note there was no response at all to the points I made about the provocation of Russia. I would simply note that U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy was to “...speak softly, and carry a big stick”. By contrast, our Prime Minister's foreign policy is to speak inconsistently and carry a selfie stick.

Our country needs better defence procurement and less military provocation.