Francis Scarpaleggia

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very interesting point. There was an article in Le Devoir last week about how there are laws at the provincial level, for example in Quebec, to protect the interests of boaters and so on, but in fact constitutionally they do not have the same authority. It is disturbing when a government takes away rights for Canadians that were established at the very beginning of Confederation without having any kind of public debate, other than on a budget bill.

I think this is a problem. I will leave it up to those who are more knowledgeable about the law than I am to delve into this issue, but it obviously merits discussion.

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me this morning to rise once again in the House to debate a 2012 budget implementation bill. This is the second round of debate on the 2012 budget. I would like to start by taking my colleagues back 20 years in time, to 1993 and 1994, when three events took place that I believe are relevant to the debate today in the House.

The first event was the election of a Liberal majority government headed by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, which set Canada, the state, the federal government, on the road to sound economic and fiscal management. The Liberal government bequeathed to the Conservative government a budget surplus that was extraordinary and unprecedented in Canada's history and that could have been used to maintain economic prosperity. In the end, that did not happen.

The second event occurred in the House of Commons before I was elected. However, I was on the Hill at the time. I remember the arrival of about 50 Reform members, including today's Prime Minister, who was the member for Calgary at the time. As I recall, he arrived in the House with 49 Reform Party colleagues.

The third event I will mention has to do with the Liberal government of the day, under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. That government introduced Bill C-17, its budget implementation bill. I would like to remind the House of the length of that budget implementation bill. Mr. Speaker, you and my other colleagues in this House might be surprised to hear that, in total, Bill C-17 was 21 pages long and amended a total of 11 pieces of Canadian legislation.

Let us compare that to the current situation. Last fall, we debated a budget implementation bill that was about 500 pages long and amended about 70 pieces of Canadian legislation. Today we are debating Bill C-45, which is 443 pages long and amends 60 Canadian acts. In less than 12 months, we have debated two bills that together total about 900 pages and amend about 130 Canadian acts. We have come a long way since 1993.

What is interesting is that even the short, 21-page budget implementation bill that I just mentioned, that modest bill, triggered a strong reaction from the member from Calgary who is now the Prime Minister of Canada. He said, and I quote:

The particular bill before us, Bill C-17, is of an omnibus nature. I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that you should rule it out of order and it should not be considered by the House in the form in which it has been presented....

I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

If people were outraged at the time, in 1994, regarding a budget implementation bill that was 21 pages long and amended 11 Canadian acts, well then they should be 45 times more outraged today.

What we have seen recently in the House is about 45 times worse than what went on in 1994 with Bill C-17. This should put things into perspective a little bit.

It is interesting that we heard the member opposite speak about family. That is an important point. It is important that every now and then we bring things back to the perspective of the communities and families we represent here in the House.

Sometimes things get a little too complicated here. They get too broad and complicated, layer upon layer, to the point where parliamentarians have a hard time seeing things clearly. Imagine how hard it is for our constituents, who are not engaged in this House every day, who are going about their business, earning their living, bringing up their kids, to wrap their minds around what is going on in this House, especially around a budget?

Let us look at what a family does when they create a budget. Let us say, hypothetically, that a family sits down, the parents and the kids, to discuss the family budget. What would they discuss? They would discuss the revenues they expect for the coming year, what they expect to spend and how they perhaps expect to lower their debt levels. That is what they need to talk about, if they are to have a good budget. If they start to talk about junior's hockey schedule or how much time the son or daughter should be allowed to watch TV per week, and so on and so forth, they would go astray from the subject at hand. They are not going to be as effective in managing the household economy essentially, the household budget.

I would suggest that the fact that we keep bringing in complex pieces of legislation, such as these two budget implementation acts, may be distracting the government's focus and not allowing it to be as effective as it might be.

I have seen two bills, which are unrelated to this bill, come before the House, and they had glaring holes in them. One was Bill C-383, and I do not understand how it got by the lawyers in the trade department, quite frankly. We saw another bill last week, the nuclear terrorism act, which my colleague said omitted a very important and central piece.

We should simplify things a bit and not spread ourselves too thinly, so that we can do our work properly as parliamentarians and the government can achieve some focus and get some results.

On that theme, the budget implementation act obviously does include measures which should be in a budget implementation act. That goes without saying. Even if we disagree with what the government is doing with the SR and ED, the scientific research and development tax credit, it belongs in a budget; it is a budgetary matter.

I would add that I think it may be dangerous that the government is getting away from a kind of broad-based program to stimulate innovation in this country in every small- and medium-sized business across the land, to an approach whereby the government would be giving subsidies instead of tax credits for research. It would be giving subsidies to a few bigger players in an attempt to pick winners and losers in the 21st century economy. We have issues with that, but I would agree that it belongs in a budget bill.

However, there are some things that do not belong in a budget bill. One is rewriting laws that protect Canada's waterways. I do not know what that is doing in a budget bill. Another is redefining the definition of aboriginal fisheries. What is that doing in a budget bill? Eliminating the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission is about human health and public safety. That is not about revenues and expenditures and debt levels and so on.

I have an issue, like many of my colleagues in the House, with the budget going astray and including all kinds of extraneous elements.

However, to get a subject that is of great interest to me, I would concur with my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands that when the Fisheries Act was passed and the Navigable Waters Protection Act was passed, the word “environment” did not exist. If we are to be literal, as the government likes to be, let us go back to the quote that I just read from the then Reform Party member and now Prime Minister, who said that 21 pages amending 11 acts is too long.

[Ethics, October 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about following the rules. There is still a cloud hanging over the head of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. He exceeded the campaign spending limit by thousands of dollars. He obtained an interest-free loan from his buddies at the development agency for his own first nations government.

What is worse, a local airline gave him plane tickets, which is another apparent breach of the Canada Elections Act. In the meantime, he is laughing it off and claiming it was a rookie mistake.

The minister can correct his mistake; he can resign. What is he waiting for?

[Petitions, October 23rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by many Canadians asking the government to reverse its ill-advised decision to close down the Experimental Lakes Area, a program that is world-renowned, that has provided research that determines what we buy and do not buy as consumers and that has the longest monitoring record of fresh water in Canada.

[Business of Supply, October 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right. The bill affected refugees and impacted those who want to become Canadian citizens, and, as I said, the environment. Indeed, it impacted on many different segments of society. It impacted on tomorrow's seniors. By ramming the bill through in one piece in a short period of time, by definition, the government did not give an opportunity to the large number of people impacted by the bill to have their say.

What also worries me, and the member alluded to it, is that the government is changing our traditions and standards. It was shocking to have an omnibus bill of that size. Now that a precedent has been created, it might become a practice by the government and then people will start to think it is a normal part of the way democracy functions. However, it is not and we need to stand up to that kind of misuse of democracy.

[Business of Supply, October 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I neglected to mention in my speech that I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague from Sydney—Victoria.

Indeed, in an election campaign, many issues are discussed, parties have their platforms, but obviously not every conceivable issue that will come to the floor of the House of Commons after the election is brought up in a campaign.

In the last election campaign, I do not remember anyone talking about weakening the Fisheries Act. Maybe I missed it or maybe I was not following the news that day, but I never heard it.

It is incumbent upon a government, even if has a majority, when it introduces something that has not been debated in the context of an election campaign to show a bit more openness to debate and compromise.

I would agree with my hon. colleague that democracy is not a simple thing of going to the polls every four years, voting and then tabulating the results. Yes, that is extremely important. It is at the centre of our democracy.

However, people elect representatives to come to the capital, to this legislature, to further debate, to come up with new ideas, to challenge old ideas and to create good legislation, which is very complex and obviously is not always discussed during a campaign.

[Business of Supply, October 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, people watching at home may want to turn up the volume. I do not think I can match the projection of the hon. member, though I hold as passionately to my views as he does. I respect the experience that he brings to this debate, having been a member of the Ontario legislature and having witnessed many legislative moments.

Speaking of legislative moments, I recall how the session of Parliament ended in June, with all night voting. I have been in the House for almost eight years. I had never experienced an all-night voting session. It was really something. We were part of history that day and night. In fact, I was not sure if people at home were paying attention to what was going on in the House or if they understood we had been voting for 24 hours. However, when I got home the next day, I ran into people who said that they could not believe I was there, that I was up and awake as I had been voting for 24 hours. Everyone knew about that episode.

That 24 hours of voting did more for our democracy than many of the speeches that have been given in the House, even the excellent speeches, like the one given by the hon. member before me. In some way it alerted Canadians to the fact that we were dealing with a government that was uncompromising.

Canadians did elect a majority government, but they did not expect that the Canadian parliamentary tradition of compromise would just evaporate and go out the window. They expect the government to work with the opposition. In this regard, I remember seeing a video not too long ago. It was a video of the very first televised question period in the House of Commons. It was in 1977, October I believe. The prime minister at the time was Prime Minister Trudeau. We had a Progressive Conservative opposition, and Joe Clark was the leader of the opposition.

The very first question in the very first televised question period was quite riveting. I would invite my hon. colleagues to Google that question. The economy was top of mind back then, as it is today. I believe the Trudeau government was in the process of preparing a budget.

Mr. Clark got up, and he was quite eloquent, quite reasoned and quite forceful. He basically called on the government to do more, to present some kind of plan to would help combat unemployment. In fact, the problem at the time was stagflation. It was a stagnating economy combined with price inflation.

It was a tough and well-reasoned question. The prime minister got up very calmly, thanked Mr. Clark for his question and basically invited the opposition to make suggestions that could be incorporated in a financial plan or in a budget.

I found the tenor of that exchange much different from what we witness here every day. It was an invitation to compromise on the part of Mr. Trudeau even though he had a majority at the time. I think this is what Canadians want to see. They want to see compromise. They want to see parties working together.

When my constituents asked me about the all night voting, I told them it was because the government had stuffed everything imaginable into one piece of legislation, variously called a Trojan horse bill and a kitchen sink bill. They were not pleased. Nor were they amused. They started thinking about just what kind of government they had elected a year before.

Canadians want us to work together. How do we know that this was not just any kind of omnibus bill, that it was an especially flagrant kind of omnibus bill that was introduced and voted on in the spring session?

When Canadians hear the word “budget”, they think of a financial plan for the next year or maybe the next two or three years. However, what we voted on in the spring was not just a financial plan.

As I said before, 625 scientists wrote a letter to the Prime Minister to say that that he should not weaken the Fisheries Act using a budget bill to do so. The fact that 625 scientists, environmental scientists and biologists, wrote to the Prime Minister to ask him not to amend the Fisheries Act gives us an idea that maybe the budget bill was not just a financial plan, maybe it was much more.

Former fisheries ministers, Liberal and Progressive Conservative, also wrote the Prime Minister arguing against weakening the Fisheries Act and adding that they were very concerned about the process.

I will quote a letter from Thomas Siddon, a Progressive Conservative; David Anderson, a former Liberal fisheries minister; John Fraser, a former Progressive Conservative fisheries minister; and Herb Dhaliwal, a former Liberal fisheries minister. We have two from each party. They wrote, “We are especially alarmed about any possible diminution of the statutory protection of fish habitat”. They were saying basically the same thing as the 625 environmental scientists. They went on to say, “With respect to process, we find it troubling that the government is proposing to amend the Fisheries Act via omnibus budget legislation”.

Here we have former ministers, two Progressive Conservatives and two Liberals, coming together united in their opposition to the government's approach to democracy to say that this is not the way to revamp environmental legislation in this country.

We know we have a problem when the budget bill does much more than cut programs that should not be cut. Of course, we are upset that the government cut the world renowned Experimental Lakes Area program. Quite frankly, it is the greatest laboratory in the world for freshwater research. We are upset about that, but it was a budget decision. Any budget bill by a government intent on destroying water science would include that kind of measure.

One can understand a budget measure within a budget bill, but when a government starts amending the Fisheries Act and changing environmental assessments, it is way outside the realm of creating a narrow financial plan for Canada.

I know the Prime Minister is an economist. I studied economics as well. There is a term in economics called “money illusion”. If one has taken a macro economics course, one would know what that means. It is a situation where people are not aware of the impact that inflation is having on their real standard of living. When I think of the government's omnibus bill, I think of the fact that it is really creating smoke and mirrors. It is trying to hide certain facts from Canadians, certain changes to immigration policies and environmental policies. It is creating an illusion like the Wizard of Oz with lots of smoke and mirrors. We have a couple of people, maybe in the Prime Minister's Office, changing the face of the country. It reminds me of the concept of money illusion.

The government's approach also reminds of telecommunication companies that sell cellphone plans. The other day my wife and I were talking about what kind of plan we should get. She said that she called and that we could save so much a month, but I really did not believe it. It is all smoke and mirrors. We will save here but end up paying more there. These plans are so complex one just cannot understand them.

That is essentially what the government is doing with democracy. It is making legislation so broad, so complex, that is very hard even for hard-working parliamentarians to wrap their minds around the many aspects of omnibus legislation.

Does it make any sense that changes to the Fisheries Act would be studied by the finance committee of the House of Commons? Does it make any sense that the experts, the financial experts, the great members of Parliament with all kinds of financial expertise on the finance committee are going to discuss, for a limited period of time, changes to one of the most complex pieces of environmental legislation in the country? No, it does not.

I sincerely hope the government understands that Canadians do not appreciate the smoke and mirrors, that they want a bit more democracy in this place, that they want a bit more compromise and that they are very serious about they want.

[Business of Supply, October 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when the omnibus bill was introduced, 625 Canadian scientists and scientists from all over the world protested the government's use of a budget bill to amend the Fisheries Act. Does that not say something when 625 scientists get involved on a budget bill? Does that not tell us that maybe the bill was not just about the budget?

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, if I have understood correctly, Senator Dallaire is saying that it is well and good to have laws and legislative provisions that prohibit this or that, but that the resources must be provided, either by the Department of National Defence or by the Canada Border Services Agency. The resources must be on the ground in order to intercept the movement of dangerous devices and materials.

It is one thing to have laws. But in order for them to be effective, they must be accompanied by the necessary resources. We cannot sit on our laurels once the law is passed and forget about it.

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I think it has to do with where the political part of the government puts its emphasis. If the government is interested in legislation that has media appeal, it will ask its public servants to spend more time on that legislation. On the other hand, if it has to produce very technical legislation that will not really create much of a bang but which is required in order for us to meet our international commitments, it may send a message, unwittingly perhaps, to public servants that this is something to get rid of rather quickly because we want to get back to the business of introducing big headline legislation. It could be that this was not made a priority within the bureaucracy because the political leadership communicated the message to the public servants that it was not a big deal.