Françoise Boivin

[Canadian Wheat Board, December 9th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians play by the rules and they expect their government to do the same. As the chief justice of Alberta, Catherine Fraser, said in a ruling earlier this year:

When government does not comply with the law, this is not merely non-compliance with a particular law, it is an affront to the rule of law itself….

My question is a simple one and a yes or no will do. Does the government agree with the statement by Chief Justice Fraser?

[Justice, December 8th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, since the government answers any old thing, I am going to provide numbers which show how much this bill will cost.

The budget of Correctional Service Canada will have doubled between the time the Conservatives came to office and 2014. As for Quebec, the costs will total at least half a billion dollars annually. The government is forcing the provinces to double their budget for jails, because of a bill that is rejected by all the experts.

Would the government go forward with its legislation if it had to foot the bill itself? I doubt it, but I will be pleased to listen to the same old tune again.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, December 8th, 2011]

With regard to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada funding in the riding of Gatineau for the last five fiscal years: (a) what is the total amount of spending by (i) year, (ii) program; and (b) what is the amount of each spending item by (i) Technical Assistance and Foreign-Based Cooperative Activities (International Trade and Labour Program), (ii) Skills Link (Youth Employment Strategy), (iii) Consultation and Partnership-Building and Canadian-Based Cooperative Activities (International Trade and Labour Program), (iv) Canada Summer Jobs (Youth Employment Strategy), (v) Children and Families (Social Development Partnerships Program), (vi) Labour Market Development Agreements, (vii) Labour Market Agreements, (viii) Labour Market Agreements for Persons with Disabilities, (ix) Enabling Fund for Official Language Minority Communities, (x) Opportunities Fund for Persons with Disabilities, (xi) Aboriginal Skills and Training Strategic Investment, (xii) Enabling Accessibility Fund, (xiii) Skills and Partnership Fund - Aboriginal, (xiv) Targeted Initiative for Older Workers, (xv) International Academic Mobility Initiative - Canada-European Union Program for Co-operation in Higher Education, Training and Youth, (xvi) International Academic Mobility Initiative - Program for North American Mobility in Higher Education, (xvii) Surplus Federal Real Property for Homelessness Initiative, (xviii) International Labour Institutions in which Canada Participates (International Trade and Labour Program), (xix) Labour Mobility, (xx) New Horizons for Seniors, (xxi) Career Focus (Youth Employment Strategy), (xxii) Fire Safety Organizations, (xxiii) Organizations that Write Occupational Health and Safety Standards, (xxiv) Social Development Partnerships Program - Disability, (xxv) Foreign Credential Recognition Program Loans (pilot project), (xxvi) Fire Prevention Canada, (xxvii) Adult Learning, Literacy and Essential Skills Program, (xxviii) Canada-European Union Program for Co-operation in Higher Education, Training and Youth (International Academic Mobility Initiative), (xxix) Labour-Management Partnerships Program, (xxx) Social Development Partnerships Program - Children and Families, (xxxi) Social Development Partnerships Program - Disability, (xxxii) Foreign Credential Recognition Program, (xxxiii) International Trade and Labour Program - Technical Assistance and Foreign-Based Cooperative Activities, (xxxiv) International Trade and Labour Program - Consultation and Partnership-Building and Canadian-Based Cooperative Activities, (xxxv) International Trade and Labour Program - International Labour Institutions in which Canada Participates, (xxxvi) Sector Council Program, (xxxvii) Federal Public Sector Youth Internship Program (Youth Employment Strategy), (xxxviii) Aboriginal Skills and Employment Partnership Program, (xxxix) Employment Programs - Career Development Services Research, (xl) Career Development Services Research (Employment Programs), (xli) Occupational Health and Safety, (xlii) Youth Awareness, (xliii) Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy, (xliv) Homelessness Partnering Strategy, (xlv) Youth Employment Strategy - Skills Link, (xlvi) Youth Employment Strategy - Canada Summer Jobs, (xlvii) Youth Employment Strategy - Career Focus, (xlviii) Youth Employment Strategy - Federal Public Sector Youth Internship Program, (xlix) Apprenticeship Completion Grant, (l) Apprenticeship Incentive Grant, (li) Work-Sharing, (lii) Small Project Component (Enabling Accessibility Fund)?

[Senate Reform Act, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question, but I do not want to start a debate with the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

When I first read the bill, that was the impression I was under. However, there is indeed an additional clause that provides for the possibility of having an independent candidate. That is how I understood it.

Nonetheless, in my opinion it is nothing but tricks—there is no other word for it—because the thing that comes out of all this is the fact that the Prime Minister is never required to choose the person who was duly elected by the public. That alone leads me to believe that once again this is just smoke and mirrors to give people the impression that the Conservatives are being democratic.

When the Conservatives were elected in 2006, they said they were going to start doing what the Liberals had stopped doing and that is to govern properly. The Conservatives were going to be transparent, do things better and be scandal-free. Look at them now. It did not take long before they were up to their eyeballs in alligators. The hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie criticizes their antics almost every day.

Somewhere along the way, we traded one bad thing for another, and that is what has to change.

[Senate Reform Act, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, what a great question. The people should be consulted because it is their House and their Senate. The Senate was created to ensure that all regions of the country would be well represented and to serve as a counterbalance to the House of Commons, where members are elected and where the system is not based on proportional representation. This allows Conservatives, for example, to have a majority with only 39% of the vote.

We want to transform the Senate, which is supposed to represent the Canadian people. We have reached this point in our constitutional life. Seventy-one per cent of Canadians want to have a say in the lifespan and viability of the Senate.

[Senate Reform Act, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, we could have a very interesting debate with the hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. The NDP's position on the distribution of seats and on maintaining Quebec's political weight, which the hon. member has deemed to be unconstitutional, simply recognizes the unanimous motion adopted by this House giving Quebec the status of a nation within a united Canada. We did not hear any province or territory object to this fact.

When a motion such as this one is adopted, members play politics to look good, but when the time comes to act on such a motion, they are happy to ignore it. The NDP's positions on Senate reform and maintaining Quebec's political weight are not inconsistent in any way.

[Senate Reform Act, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that is a tough act to follow, believe me.

I am pleased to rise here today to speak to An Act respecting the selection of senators and amending the Constitution Act, 1867 in respect of Senate term limits. I admit that the issue of the Senate is one that may seem straightforward at first, but it must nevertheless be carefully analyzed, because we are wading into constitutional waters, as some would say, and into muddy waters, as others would say.

I can think of one prime minister who talked about abolishing the Senate for quite some time and then started talking about an elected Senate. Once he came to power, he suddenly changed his tune and decided to do the same thing as the previous Liberal governments—he started giving Senate appointments to political friends, fundraisers, and as my hon. colleague from Welland so aptly put it, people who work behind the scenes, all paid for by taxpayers.

When I began my legal studies and was studying constitutional law, the issue of the Senate of Canada came up. I had the great pleasure of taking classes taught by none other than the great Senator Beaudoin himself—not necessarily great in height, but great in terms of eminence. He was not a Conservative senator when he was teaching my classes. He taught us about the Canadian parliamentary system.

I grew up thinking that the Senate was indeed what had always been called “a chamber of independent sober second thought”. That title always impressed me. The title is even longer in French: “lieu de la réflexion indépendante, sereine et attentive au sein de la démocratie parlementaire canadienne”. I was so naive that I believed that for a very long time. I thought we had a parliament made up of MPs elected by the public to debate the issues, represent their constituents and engage in dialogue, which might be vigorous but is always supposed to be respectful.

Since then, I have learned that Canadian democracy is not all that healthy. When we want to talk, we end up being silenced. There are time allocation motions. That is a new expression I have heard a lot in the House the past few months.

While I was learning about the wonderful Canadian system, I learned that the Senate was a place free from any influence, a body that would disregard partisan politics and work together to examine issues. I learned that the Senate conducted in-depth studies of bills once they passed all the stages in the House and in committee.

I have met senators whom I admire a lot. They are strong people, people with whom you can have extremely interesting and deep conversations. Unfortunately, the very politicized and partisan side of the system seems to have drifted down the hall to that sacrosanct chamber, where we do not often have the right to enter, except on rare occasions, and even then, only in the hall. In any case, we do not go in very far.

As co-chair—with a colleague from the Senate—of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, I learned that no matter where it goes, the Senate always has priority over the House of Commons, the people's house.

Partisan appointments have always tainted the quality of the Senate. Once people were appointed, they were there until the age of 75. We saw Senate reports that were not necessarily partisan and that did not reflect the views of the party that had the majority in the Senate. It was not uncommon to see bills come back to the House of Commons with amendments because they had been carefully studied.

The problem with the current situation is that not only do we have an ultra-partisan House of Commons that hardly debates any more and is often democratic in name only, but we also have a Senate that is the same in nature. That is of great concern to me. In this context, when examining the issue of changing and improving the Senate, I take everything with a large grain of salt. I see nothing in any of the changes proposed by the government in Bill C-7 that will ensure that the Senate will serve as chamber of independent, sober second thought within Canada's parliamentary democracy.

There are even some aspects of the bill that are of great concern to me. On the one hand, we will end up with a sort of patchwork Senate, made up of senators who may be elected, who are not really elected, who are almost elected, who are not elected at all, and who are elected but not appointed, and this will really create a rather unusual situation. As for its fundamental role, we must be honest, and members of the House of Commons have to take a good look and ask themselves what the purpose of this Senate is, other than having a Liberal or Conservative wing that, depending on who has the majority, does the Prime Minister's bidding.

Canada is probably the country where power is most concentrated in the hands of only one person. I challenge even my colleagues opposite to say that they have a lot of power. What the PMO says is what the PMO does. The rest just trickles down and people fall in line. There is only the official opposition to stand up to and serve as the counterweight to the government. Thus, under the circumstances, I went one step further and asked myself what the purpose of the Senate is. To my mind, it serves no purpose. The NDP nevertheless realizes that there are very important constitutional issues involved in abolishing the Senate. We are very much in favour of putting the question to the people, and I believe that they must decide if we should continue to have a senate.

Since 1968, I believe, every provincial senate has been abolished, and the provinces are doing just fine without their senates. This solves my problem. I am acutely aware that we have to discuss this with our partners in the federation, namely the provinces and territories. We cannot come up with this type of change and be paternalistic about it and presume that it is up to us, because this has a huge impact on how the Canadian Constitution operates. I am also well aware of the position of Quebec, which challenges the constitutionality of the Conservative government's proposed changes.

We have a much simpler suggestion: it might be time to put the question to the Canadian public. The Liberals are saying they do not want more MPs, but we keep asking the wrong questions. The real question is this: what is a reasonable number of constituents for an MP to represent? Once we establish that, we stop playing political games, we respect the fact that some provinces are less populous, and we respect the nation of Quebec. That would work.

The same goes for the Senate. Let us put the question to the public. If we put our trust in the public, we might be surprised by the result. They might say something intelligent. They might say that the Senate is indeed a waste of time, that it is redundant and full of people who get pensions that cost the country a lot of money, when other people are in real need of that money. I am not talking about the people here in this House, but those outside the walls of Parliament. Perhaps we could find a better way to invest that money than in a stronghold of partisan players who are working at our expense to help the Liberal or Conservative cause.

[Fair Representation Act, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues said earlier, this way of doing things is starting to become fairly routine. The time when we actually felt as though we all had a say is over. With this government, the time when all those who had the desire, the need and the right to speak on behalf of their constituents—who elected them democratically—were able to have their say is basically a thing of the past. Now that the Conservatives have a majority and know full well that the numbers are on their side when it comes to votes, they do not give the other side, the various opposition parties, or even their own members enough time to discuss the bills in question. We are not talking about small bills. Here we are talking about a major change to the distribution of seats.

I would like to give the minister the opportunity to once again explain or to provide clarification. When he says that it is the Chief Electoral Officer who said that this must be done quickly, he is misleading the House a little. This is true only if we want this legislation to be in place by 2015. So, this is not an urgent issue. It is a matter of doing the job right.

I would like the minister to tell us that it is not the Chief Electoral Officer who is insisting that this be done quickly. It must be done quickly only if we want these changes to take effect by the next election in 2015.

[Points of Order, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I was really hoping that the member for Lethbridge would rise at least to apologize for his gesture. It is sad. True, it happened some weeks ago; however, the act is behind us.

When I got home yesterday, I had many messages from people across Canada who were offended by the gesture. This matter really got under people's skin, and we know what it stands for. It was definitely a very regrettable and very disrespectful gesture.

Mr. Speaker, I refer to the ruling you handed down yesterday concerning decorum in the House. When people vote, they are supposed to exercise restraint. They express their opinions through their vote and through their “yeas” or “nays”, but no one should be making any gestures that could be perceived as offensive. I am sorry, but imitating the firing of a handgun was definitely an offensive gesture. It is completely understandable that many people would misinterpret the gesture, which, unfortunately, has been seen around the world.

I would have liked my colleague to have the decency at least to let us believe that perhaps he had misunderstood something and to apologize to anyone who was offended. And, yes, people were definitely offended. The gestures were completely inappropriate and had no place in this House during a vote.

[Firearms Registry, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it turns out the government's story on firearms tracking is not quite true.

In fact, the government is playing with fire.

The RCMP commissioner of firearms confirmed yesterday that firearms dealers and stores will no longer be required to record information on gun sales.

Gun vendors are no longer required to keep a record of transactions.

Thanks to this government, police have lost their last tool to track firearms used in violent crimes, but that is not what the government wanted us to believe. Either the government does not understand its own bill, or the RCMP has it wrong. Which is it?