Garnett Genuis

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about eliminating Friday sittings. I have a young family, and I do not support eliminating Friday sittings for the simple reason that many members are not here on Fridays anyway, because there are no votes that take place on Fridays. Friday still provides an opportunity for debate and for holding the government accountable, but at the same time, members can go to events in their ridings if there are other people here to cover for them.

Would it not be a better fix, if the member is concerned about members being able to spend time in their ridings, to reduce the number of days on which votes could occur, rather than reducing the number of days on which the House sits? Would that not more directly address the problem of members being available to go to events in their riding while still maintaining the same amount of time for debate and for holding the government accountable?

[Paris Agreement, October 4th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, that was a great question from my colleague and I look forward to hearing his speech next.

On the issue of process, we have a Prime Minister who had initially said he would negotiate and discuss these issues in good faith with the provinces, but then right in the midst of a meeting, he declared unilaterally that the federal government would impose punitive taxes on provinces that do not agree. This is hardly collaborative federalism.

I believe that it was Premier Wall who said that the provincial meeting was not worth the carbon emissions it took to get the ministers there. It certainly was not, if the Prime Minister was not actually prepared to listen to what ministers were saying, if he already had a policy course in place. This shows profound disrespect for provinces, which are actually the ones that will have to do a lot of the practical on-the-ground implementation. It is the wrong approach for Canada. It is not going to help achieve results.

Again, the government should look at the record of the previous Conservative government, which actually achieved concrete results in this respect.

[Paris Agreement, October 4th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, this is really curious, because in my speech I laid out specific numbers in terms of policies undertaken and reductions achieved. However, my colleagues in other parties continue to want to cast aspersions without the facts of the record of the previous government.

With respect to my friend for Edmonton Strathcona, your saying it does not make it true. The record of what happened under the previous Conservative government is very clear. Therefore, if you say nothing was done, if you say emissions were not reduced, well, all Canadians have to do is look at the facts, look at the record.

With respect to coal, let me be very clear that the previous Conservative government did put regulations in place, but they are regulations that respect the reality that we are dealing with in an internationally competitive environment, one in which China adds a coal plant every single week. Therefore, we have to proceed in a way that has an effective suite of policies that address environmental challenges while strengthening our economy at the same time.

[Paris Agreement, October 4th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, it will not surprise members to know that I quarrel with almost the entire premise of my colleague's question. However, to very specifically answer if I believe that carbon emissions cause climate change, and if I believe in the science of anthropomorphic climate change, yes I do, and so does my party. Do I think that we need a policy response? Yes.

What do I think that policy response is? I outlined it in detail in my speech. It is a policy response that not only works in theory but works in practice. We reduced emissions, and I went over the numbers, by 1% under the tenure of the previous Conservative government, which is far better than the previous Liberal government did. We did it while GDP went up 35%, and while global greenhouse gas emissions went up by 16%.

The member should look at our record if he wants to know what it takes to get it done. It is very clear in the numbers, and it was not only in some jurisdictions but across every single jurisdiction in Canada that we made significant progress on these issues.

[Paris Agreement, October 4th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my friend from Oshawa.

My grandparents were my inspiration for my involvement in politics. My maternal grandmother was a Jewish child who grew up in Nazi Germany, and taught us up the importance of universal human rights. My grandfather was an engineer who worked for Syncrude in Alberta in the 1970s and 1980s. My grandfather made sure that we understood the devastating impact that bad and capricious government policy could have on the lives of ordinary hard-working men and women, men and women who, from the stroke of a Prime Minister's pen, could lose the ability to make a decent living for themselves and their families. This is his story.

My grandfather was born in Toronto in 1922. His parents came to Canada during the Irish potato famine. Even in Canada, he grew up poor. He studied engineering at U of T. He told us that he got good grades in the first year, and then he joined a fraternity. He went on to travel the world, practising his craft in the U.S., the Philippines, Venezuela, and Ecuador, where he met my grandmother at a house party.

Neither of my grandparents were political people in the same way that I am, but they were people whose lives were affected by politics. They settled in B.C. upon returning to Canada, and then moved to Alberta in 1975. Then, along with an entire generation of long-term and brand-new Albertans alike, my grandfather saw the economic health of Alberta collapse around him under the weight of the national energy program.

This is a common Alberta story, but it was a shock for me to discover, upon starting university in Ontario, that many people in this part of the country had not even heard of the national energy program. For those unfamiliar, the national energy program was a policy of the last Trudeau government that forced oil produced in Alberta to be sold at below market prices. Predictably, oil companies reduced production as a result, reducing wealth and benefiting no one. The program cost Alberta between $50 billion and $100 billion. Bankruptcies increased by 150%. We took decades to recover.

Albertans are not bitter people. We are proud and optimistic Canadians. We are proud to do our share, and more than our share. We are not bitter people but we will never forget, and indeed we will be ever vigilant. People like my grandfather, who were hit by the national energy program, were not privileged aristocrats, they were not big banks and they were not oil companies. They were ordinary people who came to one of those beautiful places in the world where hard work was enough.

There is not much so-called old money in Alberta. When Alberta is booming, anyone can make it. It does not matter where people come from or who their parents are. If people are willing to work, then they can make it in Alberta. When Alberta does well, everyone does well. When Alberta does poorly, everyone does poorly.

The national energy program was a high-minded elite scheme that hit ordinary people hard. Here is another thing about it. It was just plain stupid. It did not make sense. Reducing Canadian oil production did not make the east better off, it did not move jobs to other parts of the country; it just killed them.

It is 2016, but 2016 is apparently the new 1980. The Liberal government has once again turned its back on ordinary, decent, hard-working women and men who work in Alberta's energy industry, and all the interrelated jobs in Alberta and from coast to coast.

The government has announced that it is intent on imposing a national carbon tax. If provinces refuse to participate, then the Prime Minister will impose a jurisdiction-specific tax on that province. To my knowledge, this is the first time in Canadian history that we have a prime minister who wants to impose a punitive tax on some jurisdictions and not others in response to what it views is supposed to be their areas of jurisdiction.

What happened to national unity? What happened to working with the provinces? What happened to consultation? This announcement happened while provincial environment ministers were supposed to be discussing the way forward. A prime minister has not behaved this disdainfully toward the provinces in 35 years.

Let us talk about the policy here. Imposing a carbon tax will make it harder to do business in Canada. It will make it more expensive to produce energy. It will make it more expensive to eat, to travel, to heat homes. In the process it will reduce the production and consumption of goods in Canada.

We can hope that Canadian energy production will become more efficient in the coming years, and thus reduce emissions, but a punitive tax is probably more likely to reduce emissions by reducing production. It is not much of a win if that production is replaced by production in less environmentally friendly jurisdictions. The economic theory predicts that taxing a thing reduces its production, but it does not predict the mechanism by which that will occur. In the context of international competition and an already struggling energy markets, it is most likely that a blunt-ended new tax will just see investments not get made.

Canada accounts for less than 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so doing our part does not mean cutting ourselves off at the knees to reduce that amount marginally. We can actually do much better than that. We can look for policy solutions that incentivize innovation without incentivizing reduced production.

I would support binding sector-by-sector intensity-based regulations which would require companies to innovate and reduce emissions, but which would also allow them to admit more if they were producing more. I would also support additional incentives for new projects which produced energy in more efficient ways, not just wind and solar but natural gas and energy production that involved effective carbon sequestration.

This is not just hypothetical. Conservatives in office reduced greenhouse gas emissions. GHG emissions went down by 1% from 2006 to 2014 because of this suite of policies, even while they surged under the previous Liberal government. Our critics will say that they went down because of the global economic crisis, an event, incidentally, that they only seem to remember when they talk about the environment. However, the facts do not support that at all. While we were reducing emissions in Canada, global emissions grew by 16%, and we were one of the countries least affected by the global economic recession. Further, while decreasing emissions by 1%, we oversaw GDP growth of 35%.

Other critics will say that emissions only went down under the Conservatives because of policies in Ontario, but in reality emissions increased in every province under the previous Liberal government. Then, under the Conservatives, emissions in every province either went down or increased by a much lower amount than they did under the previous government.

Emissions reductions were not just happening in one province. The facts show that under the leadership of prime minister Stephen Harper, real improvements on greenhouse emissions were evident in every jurisdiction from coast to coast. Those are the numbers and members can check them.

An approach that encourages cleaner production as opposed to less production is good for the environment and it is good for the economy. However, an approach that taxes Canadians and Canadian companies, forcing them to produce less and lay people off, is terrible for the economy and does nothing for the environment as other countries pick up the slack. Let us not forget that China is building a new coal plant every week. Maybe the Prime Minister wants to extradite our coal industry to China, but I would like to keep energy jobs in Canada.

This is just like the national energy program, a proposal that kills jobs and reduces production without actually addressing the problem that it is supposed to address. Some Liberals will say that a carbon tax is a market mechanism. This is sort of like saying that eating a doughnut on the bleachers at a basketball game counts as going to the gym. It is formally correct, but substantively misleading.

I am not sure that the Liberals and the New Democrats believe in market mechanisms in any event, but just to make the point entirely clear, I think it would be considered a market mechanism if it uses market forces to drive behaviour. However, the value of that market mechanism is entirely dependent on its effects. A market mechanism which incentivizes good behaviour is likely good. A market mechanism which incentivizes bad behaviour is likely not.

Here is a simple comparison for hon. members. The United States has experimented with private prisons. Private prisons insert market incentives into prison administration, but they are the wrong kind of market incentives because prison operators do not have any incentive to encourage rehabilitation. In fact, they have every incentive to encourage recidivism and therefore repeat business. One might say that private prisons involve a market mechanism, but it is still a bad market mechanism.

The same is true of carbon taxes. One reduces one's carbon tax take by cutting production, killing jobs, and moving jobs overseas. Again, this might be markets in action, but it is still a bad outcome.

Many of us hear from time to time from representatives of different energy companies, but the government needs to spend more time listening to energy workers. "Bernard the Roughneck" is one of those workers, a young man who came to Parliament Hill two weeks ago to tell his story. This is what he had to say: “We've got people from all over this country coming to Alberta....These are places that you can go being an average person, and if you're willing to work hard and work more than 40 hours a week and bust your butt you can have something and you can have a decent quality of life. I would never have been able to get an education were it not for the oil patch.”

Bernard and so many other young Canadians did what my grandfather did. They came to Alberta, they busted their butts, and they made something for themselves and their families. Listening to Bernard's presentation struck a chord with many Albertans, because we or our families have been there before. However, now we are going back to a place of economic policy, which, to be frank, is just plain stupid. It will have a devastating impact on regional and national economies. We cannot let this happen again.

[TAMIL HERITAGE MONTH, September 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak in favour of Motion No. 24, which states:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should recognize the contributions that Tamil-Canadians have made to Canadian society, the richness of the Tamil language and culture, and the importance of educating and reflecting upon Tamil heritage for future generations by declaring January, every year, Tamil Heritage Month.

I want to congratulate my friend for Scarborough—Rouge Park for bringing the motion forward. I have had the pleasure of working with him on the scrutiny of regulations committee. I am sure he finds its work as interesting and engaging as I do.

Whenever we discuss motions like this, I sometimes get these questions from people. Why do we need another commemorative month? Why is it important for us to spend time and energy on this discussion? What does this discussion accomplish?

At the outset, it is important to answer those questions and underline that what the motion calls for fundamentally is recognition without instituting specific policy changes. There is no cost associated with the motion, and it does not create a civic holiday, for example.

Points of cultural recognition like this require the action of Parliament, but they do not really involve us necessarily or at least oblige us to take specific subsequent action.

Some might ask what the purpose is of these kinds of steps. Despite not necessitating subsequent formal action by government, I think all of us in the House agree that these kinds of points of recognition are still very important. So much of our politics in the fullest sense of the term, of our life together, is shaped by our understanding of our identities, not simply by material considerations or choices. The kinds of communities that we form, and often the political choices we make, are shaped by a deep sense of who we are individually and collectively.

Canada is a country in which, at least historically, we have aspired to a shared common civic national identity, complemented by a multiplicity of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious identities. There is unity and diversity, and both the unity and diversities are important.

Further, acts of political recognition of the contributions of minority communities are essential to helping us preserve our unity in the context of diversity. People from minority communities benefit from expressions of cultural recognition and appreciation from majoritarian institutions like Parliament. These acts of recognition help ensure a fuller sense of national unity.

Therefore, when we as a chamber undertake acts of specific recognition like this, we certainly are recognizing Canada's diversity, but we are also enhancing unity by showing Tamil Canadians our firm commitment to recognizing their distinct cultural identity and their contributions to Canada. Through that recognition, we help to ensure that all Canadians feel fully included.

We are also, of course, inviting Canadians who are not of Tamil origin to become more aware of Tamil culture, the contributions of Tamil Canadians, and maybe to reach out and learn and experience some of the richness in Tamil culture.

We often hear Canadian multiculturalism described in a way that suggests it is a modern, politically spawned phenomenon. However, multiculturalism is not a product of government policy. It is a concept that our relatively new country drew on by learning from and observing the experiences of other societies through the vast swath of history.

To start with, in fact, as my colleague for Scarborough—Rouge Park specifically mentioned in his original speech, multiculturalism is indigenous to Canada. Canada has always had a plurality of languages and peoples living here since time immemorial.

However, Canada also draws into its understanding of multiculturalism from the experience of various immigrant communities to Canada, and from Indian immigrants to Canada in particular. Canada has a large and growing South Asian community, which happens to include my wife and in-laws.

Immigrants to Canada from India bring with them the experience of another multilingual, multi-religious, multicultural democracy. They have been doing multiculturalism for much longer than Canada has.

Multiculturalism, though enhanced by acts of state recognition like this, fundamentally stands on ground created by individuals, families, communities, and by civil society as a whole.

I congratulate Tamil Canadians and all Canadians for the hard work that they do to preserve and strengthen their cultural identity as part of the Canadian whole. Anything that we do or say as acts of cultural recognition as Parliament really pales in comparison to the significance of the more substantive acts of cultural preservation and sharing that ordinary Canadians in every part of this country are involved in every day. Parliament can undertake this act of recognition, and I believe it is important that we do so. However, the substantive work continues to be in the hands of individuals, of families, of communities, and of civil society.

I note this because the Tamil community is a model of both the unity and the diversity that we aspire to here in Canada as a whole. The Tamil community contains a wide variety of different faith traditions. It includes people whose families hail from India or Sri Lanka or from other places. It includes people who are active in and have made significant contributions to all three of our major political parties and probably other ones.

One of the key ties that unites the Tamil community is the beautiful and historic Tamil language, and I know other members have spoken about that today. Tamil is one of the oldest surviving languages in the world. We know of written inscriptions that date back about 2,500 years. The Tamil language is remarkable for its longevity, but also for its continuity over time. I read recently that around the world there are over 300 daily newspapers published in Tamil. It is an old language but also a language that is very much with us today.

I have to say I was surprised that my friend from Brampton East neglected to mention the contribution of Tamil Canadians to sports, though I am always happy to share my knowledge of sports with him. Canadian tennis player, Sonya Jeyaseelan; cricketer, Sanjayan Thuraisingam; ping-pong player, Pradeeban Peter-Paul; and hockey players, Raman and Velan Nandhakumaran have made us all very proud.

As members can tell, Tamil is not my mother tongue but I am working on it and always interested in learning more.

My colleague noted in his opening speech that we would not be the first government in Canada to recognize Tamil heritage month. This has been recognized by the Province of Ontario, as well, he noted, by a variety of municipalities, including Ajax, Pickering, Brampton, Toronto, Ottawa, York Region, Markham, Stouffville, Oshawa, and Whitby.

I will just conclude by saying that it is so great to be in a country where valuing our diversity is a point of political consensus. We can look around the world and see places where the value of diversity is debated as part of politics. However, we are in a chamber, not perhaps the only one in the world but relatively unique in the world, where this is very clearly a point of consensus, where we all recognize the benefits of diversity and the value that immigration has brought to our country. I think that universal political recognition of the value of diversity acts to strengthen our collective unity in the context of that diversity.

Again, this is a good opportunity to both recognize the contribution of Tamil Canadians but also to invite non-Tamil Canadians to learn more about Tamil culture and to take the opportunity to draw on the richness that this community has brought to this country.

I want to again thank the member for bringing this forward and encourage all members to join me in supporting the motion.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is fascinating to hear my friend from the Liberal side suggest that a study on sanctions is the same as a study on the arms trade. They are perhaps related, but very distinct items.

I want to ask my friend in the NDP about this issue of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. It is an extremely complex relationship. We should very much call out the very serious human rights abuses there at the same time as we recognize some of the strategic considerations insofar as there is a growing threat from Iran to international peace and security everywhere, especially in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is sort of a counterweight in many ways to Iran.

There is a tension there between this long-term concern about containing the influence of Iran in the region, but also recognizing some of the real issues of human rights in Saudi Arabia. Where does that leave us in how we should relate to Saudi Arabia? I am curious about the member's thoughts on that.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with some of the things my colleague said. Conservatives are not going to be supporting a call for a separate standing committee on this issue. However, the Liberals on the foreign affairs committee voted against having a subcommittee to study the arms control issue, and contrary to what we have heard from some Liberal members, there is not a study currently scheduled on this issue at the foreign affairs committee.

We are not going to assume there is a big problem here, but would it not make sense, given some of the issues that have been raised and certainly the importance of this area, for there to be a study at the existing committee or at some subcommittee thereof to develop some clarity around what is happening in this situation, and especially whether some of the rules that have been in place for a while are being effectively enforced in these cases?

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thought we might hear a bit about the relationship between this motion and sports betting. I will ask my question in a bit of a different direction.

We agree with the member on the importance of having a parliamentary committee study this issue. At committee we supported the creation of a subcommittee on this.

I am curious about the member's thoughts on why this motion does not direct the foreign affairs committee to study this or create its own subcommittee. Surely there has to be a limit on the number of standing committees we have in this House. At the same time, this is something that could and should be studied within the context of the foreign affairs committee.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps this is the pot calling the kettle black. The member has spoken a lot about human rights, among other subjects. However, with respect to the issue of the ATT, my colleague has addressed this very clearly. It is important that the arms control treaty recognize the legitimacy of lawful firearms ownership, and there are some concerns there with respect to law-abiding citizens owning and using firearms for legitimate purposes.

On the issue of human rights, I do not dispute that there is a lot of human rights talk that has come from some in the party opposite. However, for us, when it comes to foreign affairs, we believe in an absolute commitment to human rights and that clearly is not present in the approach of the government.

I could give a wide variety of examples we have already seen from the government in terms of shifting foreign policy to de-emphasize international human rights. We have its negotiations, or not, or something similar but not quite negotiations, on extradition with China. The Prime Minister has said this is something that is going ahead.

We have the refusal to support our private member's bill on Magnitsky sanctions, a clear way of addressing human rights abuses in Russia. I do not know why the government is not supporting that. We have the elimination of the ambassador for international religious freedom and the creation of a new, so-called human rights department without its own ambassador, and effectively the downgrading then of an emphasis on—