Garnett Genuis

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, with greatest respect to the member, there are so many things he said that are just not true. I was here for the parliamentary secretary's speech. I asked her a question. The argument she rests on is this supposed ICC process, without appreciating the fact that every member of the European Union is also a signatory to the International Criminal Court and they have all had no problem agreeing, through the European parliament, to recognize this as a genocide. This is not a process that any other country seems to feel is absolutely required before declaring this a genocide. This is a process that the Liberal government has created as cover because it does not want to call it a genocide for whatever reason.

The previous prime minister did call this a genocide. A motion in the House was not necessary because it was well understood and repeatedly communicated by the Canadian government. When we took power, I remember repeatedly asking members of the government questions about whether it recognized this as a genocide. This was during the debate we had about involvement in Daesh. We earlier sought a unanimous consent motion, and now we have this opposition day motion today.

We repeatedly raised this issue when we were in government and now in this Parliament, and I think the record will show that. Why are we pushing this issue? Why does this matter? Why do words matter? Words matter and words are important. That is why we take the denial of genocide in other cases so seriously because recognizing the reality of genocide is how we respond to them. It is the first necessary step to respond to them. It is why it is so important to the Yazidi community that we recognize genocide because it understands that is a necessary step to condemning genocide there and everywhere. It is a necessary part of the response that we use words correctly.

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge.

On the relationship between peace and justice, there is a theoretical tension between these two. The pursuit of peace may on certain readings in certain situations require us to let go of things we would rather address, to allow to pass by things which we would rather confront but the confrontation of which would lead to a loss of peace.

On the other hand, the pursuit of justice may put us in conflict with others, with the purveyors of injustice and with those who, while desiring justice of a certain kind, have a different conception of justice than we do. When peace is valued over justice, we are inclined to leave injustice unaddressed. When justice is valued over peace, we risk regular conflict even between those with good intentions on the basis of rival conceptions of justice.

I do not just mean military conflict in the context of loss of peace but also conflict as in a disruption of favour and goodwill, and perhaps conflict in terms of being opposed in our ambitions. The pursuit of justice always upsets the tranquillity of life, in this context, the relative potential tranquillity of Canadian international diplomatic relations.

During our previous Conservative government we regularly put the pursuit of justice ahead of tranquillity in international relations. We stood for what was and is right. We stood for the rights of persecuted religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities. We stood for the right of self-determination for any peaceful community. We stood for the right of the Jewish people to a safe and secure homeland. We stood for the right of the Russian people to know that human rights abusers from their country will not be able to travel to and invest in the west. We stood for the rights of Chinese Uighurs, Afghan Sikhs, Crimean Tatars, and yes, Yazidis, Christians, Kurds, Turkmen, Shia Muslims, and other groups in the path of Daesh.

We were willing to stand up and upset our tranquillity in the process. We believed that a country in pursuit of justice might have to pay a price for its stand, but that it was right that we be prepared to pay that price.

This government has a fundamentally different approach when it comes to foreign affairs. While we believed and believe deeply in the pursuit of justice, this government values peace, values tranquillity, over justice. The Liberals are not prepared to speak clearly about international human rights. They are downgrading our capacities in this respect and they are refusing to speak the truth about injustice. In this particular case, they are refusing to call a genocide what it is.

Now many of my colleagues have already spoken eloquently about why using the term genocide is not only justified, but is necessary in the case of Daesh actions towards Yazidis and Christians in Syria and Iraq.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as:

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Any one of these conditions is a sufficient basis to qualify as genocide, but there is clear, documented evidence that Daesh has engaged in all five of these things. That is why the American administration, the American Congress, the British Parliament, and the European Parliament have all recognized this as a genocide. Are we to seriously believe that our Minister of Foreign Affairs is wiser or happens to know something these august bodies do not?

The best that the Liberals can come up with in opposition to this is to assert that our membership in the International Criminal Court in some way prevents us from calling this a genocide.

The only thing worse than using legalese to cover moral cowardice is using bad, ill-informed, made-up legalese to cover moral cowardice. Every single EU country is a member of the ICC. They have all recognized the genocide through a motion very similar to this. The parliamentary secretary said it was just a motion in the European context. This is a motion as well, and our recognition of genocide should not be and need not be held up by a Security Council veto.

These arguments are obviously not the point. The evidence is clear and international law is clear with respect to what genocide is. We know it is clear, they know it is clear, and we know that they know it is clear. However, they still will not use the word “genocide”, quite obviously because there is a certain safety, a certain comfort, a certain tranquillity, in resisting taking a stand and holding back on the call for justice; because using the word “genocide” upsets our peace. It is a disruptive word because it crystallizes and clarifies the truly evil nature of Daesh and our moral and legal obligation to respond in a serious way. The government prefers similar but sufficiently unclear language in this, so as to appear to be roughly on the same page but not to upset the Liberals' desired foreign-policy focus of peace and tranquillity as opposed to the pursuit of justice.

Why is it necessary to speak the truth in this case? Why is it necessary to call a genocide a genocide? Why do we take the denial of genocides, historic or present, so seriously? I have spoken before in the House about my grandmother's story. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, one of millions of European Jews who suffered in some way because of Hitler's efforts to exterminate them.

On August 22, 1939, about a week before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave what has come to be known as the Obersalzberg speech to his military commanders, in which he laid out his genocidal intent, in this case toward the Polish people. For our understanding of history, of how and why genocides happen, it is important to know what he said:

...our war aim does not consist of reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness...with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space...we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

In this seminal address to his commanders, it was important for Hitler to reflect on the absence of international recognition or regard for the Armenian genocide. This was not the first time that Hitler invoked a comparison between the Armenian genocide and his intended plans. He inferred from the experience of the Armenians that nobody would care if he killed the Jews.

When we stand in the House to remember and recognize the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor, and other such events, we are not just engaging in a collective exercise in the study of history. We are remembering because reminding ourselves of the reality of past evil, ensuring that violence against the innocent is condemned over and over again in the strongest possible terms, is a way of ensuring that we finally learn the lessons of history. As much as it upsets our tranquillity from time to time to call out evil, in the past or the present, it must be done. What good is remembering the past if we only pay attention to genocides that happened decades ago? The failure to confront evil in the present is precisely what leads tyrants in the future to conclude that their contemporaries will not care either. To call out evil, to speak the truth about international human rights, to do so in a way that is clear and unambiguous may cost us friends and goodwill; it may cost us more still. However, it is the only thing that prevents would-be tyrants of this world from believing that they will get away with it.

On the relationship between peace and justice, there is, yes, a theoretical tension between the two, but there is also an essential unity between the two. Those who violate the basic rights and dignity of their own people invariably become a menace to their neighbours and the entire community of civilized nations, as Daesh has already become. It is not in the nature of tyrants to, on the one hand, overthrow the domestic rule of law and then to respect international law, on the other. It is a certainty that those who are a menace to justice in their own land will be a menace to peace, if not right away then eventually. Even on consequential grounds, it makes sense to stand up for justice in the first instance, but more important, we cannot call ourselves a just society if we refuse to speak clearly about justice on the international stage.

That is justice in the pursuit of peace, and justice that is disruptive to peace, because the 19 Yazidi girls who were burned alive in a cage this week are every bit as human as the members here or my daughter or their daughters. If members would call it a genocide for themselves or their people group, then they should do it for someone else's.

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the only thing worse than using legalese to mask moral cowardice is using bad and misinformed legalese to mask moral cowardice.

The member has talked about the International Criminal Court. She well knows that every single member of the European Union is also a signatory to the Rome Statute with respect to the international court. The member knows that. These are transparent efforts to construct non-existent legal norms. We have every right to do it. We have a moral responsibility to identify this as genocide and all of the evidence is clear.

Will the member at least, if she wants to oppose the motion, give her real reasons, instead of hiding behind this nonsense, which does not at all resemble a realistic description of her international legal obligations?

[Natural Resources, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, President Obama's visit to Parliament this month presents an important opportunity for us to advance Canada's national interests, and in particular, to highlight the importance of Canada's energy sector to the United States.

I hope the Prime Minister will change his tune and emphasize energy in his meeting with President Obama.

He should tell the President that Canada has the third-largest oil reserves in the world and that almost all of the other top 10 are dictatorships, human rights abusers, or highly unstable, or some combination thereof.

Tell President Obama that Alberta's oil sands account for 0.12% of global greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. emissions from coal-generated electricity alone account for 3.6% of global GHGs, about 30 times the emissions from the oil sands. Tell the President that we need Keystone XL.

I am hoping for change from the Prime Minister. This time, put the selfie sticks aside and stand up for Canadian workers.

[Committees of the House, June 7th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I think the record will show that over 10 years in government, the Conservatives not only defended supply management but defended it in the midst of a variety of very important trade deals in which many people thought it would not be possible. People thought we would lose supply management in the trade deal with Europe and TPP, yet we got through those very important negotiations and we preserved the supply management system.

I want to ask the member specifically about the record of Martha Hall Findlay, who is the former international trade critic for the Liberals. While we were negotiating important trade deals preserving supply management, the Liberals had a critic responsible for international trade who came out later as being opposed to supply management. How does the member square that with these high-minded words about the Liberals' commitment to supply management, when the person they put in charge of international trade clearly did not have a commitment to supply management?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 6th, 2016]

This is probably a debate that would take more than the time you would allow me, Mr. Speaker, to engage in great depth.

Probably the easiest way to answer that is as much as there are some good arguments for fiscal stimulus in certain contexts where there is sort of a brief aberration in terms of levels of demand, in the long term it will be an increase in productivity that sustains economic growth over a long period. I think Keynes would agree with that, as well as a range of economists across the spectrum.

The problem I have with the government's budgetary policy is not that it supports fiscal stimulus in unique times of recession, but that it seems to believe that we can perpetually run deficits. I think every serious economist would agree that we cannot be constantly running deficits to stimulate the economy. The very basis of Keynesianism is that we run deficits at certain times and surpluses at other times, not that we have a constant situation in which spending exceeds what the government is taking in. Obviously, that would lead us to a debt crisis, and then we are in a situation where we cannot stimulate our way out of it, because we have run out of other people's money.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I think to some extent the member would put words in the former finance minister's mouth, although to the extent that we may disagree on aspects of this.

On the question of people staying home or not, the tax system should be neutral with respect to the choices people make about child care. I do not think it should penalize people who make one kind of child care choice over another. Some parents may decide that a certain kind of child care arrangement is better for their family, whether that is a person at home, be it mom or dad; whether that is grandparents; whether that is institutional child care; or whether that is some kind of child care sharing arrangement with neighbours or friends.

What I see in my community is actually the increasing flexibility and variability of child care relationships. We increasingly see people working from home, and working different hours. We are not in that sort of narrow nine-to-five model for many people. Increasingly there is flexibility there. There is a lot of change and variability in child care.

From a state perspective, we should not go to families and say that we think this is what we want them to do with respect to child care. We should leave the decisions to the people who we think are the most important child care experts, mom and dad.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join this important debate on the government's budgetary policy. I will be focusing my remarks on certain areas that I have not had a chance to discuss yet in previous speeches on the government's budgetary policy.

There is an evidence sense of unreality to the discussion coming from government members on this. We hear a lot about what the budget aims to do. The budget aims to do this and it aims to do that. Our complaint is not with the intentions of the budget. Our complaint is with the provisions in the budget. There are many cases in which there is this obvious dissonance between high-minded claims about what the budget aims to do and the substance of the provision. We just heard a good example of that. A member talked about small business in his riding and the important work it did, but then supported a budget that would raise taxes on small business and eliminate the hiring credit for small business. There is this evident dissonance here.

I had an opportunity to question the finance minister in committee of the whole last week. I asked three times, consecutively, if he believed that the government should eventually balance the budget at some point in the future. We did not get an answer to that question.

When the finance minister, who should know better, cannot even answer a direct question about whether it is important for a country to balance its budget at some point in the future, then we have a real problem with the seriousness of the plan. It is not a problem with intentions necessarily, but it is a problem with the seriousness of this so-called fiscal plan.

I want to talk about three specific things today. I want to talk about where economic growth really comes from. I want to talk about the impact of the budget on families. I want to speak about the impact of the budget on indigenous Canadians, specifically in the context of indigenous education.

We hear a lot about economic growth, and this comes back to the good intentions here. We hear the word “growth” used over and over again. Like so many of the words the government uses, especially in the context of budgetary policy, we have not ever heard it clearly defined. We do not hear the Liberals explain what they mean by growth and what exactly they plan to achieving in growth.

Economic growth is produced when there is an increase in the ability of society to provide for itself, when society grows in its economic means to provide for itself in terms of its wants and its need. Therefore, it is very closely linked to the concept of economic productivity, productivity being the rate of output given the input.

We often talk for example about labour productivity. As labour productivity increases, the amount of output that can be produced in a given hour of labour increases. That is really what creates economic growth. Economic growth is about finding ways of more productively using our time and our resources to produce more things that we can use to satisfy our wants and our needs. Fundamentally, foundationally it is about growth in productivity.

When the government thinks about trying to encourage economic growth, it should focus on productivity. The current government talks as if all that is required to increase growth is more government spending. Looking around the world, it is easy to see how there is no linear relationship at all between government spending and economic growth. Some countries do much better than others that have much lower levels of public spending. That is not to say the government does not have a role in identifying areas where productivity growth can occur, but it certainly is not in any sense linear.

From my perspective, there are a number of different things that facilitate increases in productivity, which is important for economic growth. One would be a more educated workforce, specifically though a workforce equipped with job-ready skills, and a marketplace that is well-equipped to commercialize knowledge that is produced.

That was why in 2007 our government came forward with a science and technology strategy that looked at ways of more effectively encouraging commercialization of knowledge. It was why we put an emphasis on encouraging the trades as well, because of the needed to have a workforce that was equipped with job-ready skills. That was important for productivity and economic growth.

Efficient transportation infrastructure is obviously an important part of that as well, both in education and infrastructure. These are areas where government spending can play a positive role. What is disappointing about the budget is the total abuse of the word “infrastructure”. The government redefines infrastructure to mean almost everything.

The minister confirmed in our discussion in committee of the whole that he believed child care was a form of infrastructure. Well, it is certainly not in the sense that economists traditionally define it. Transportation infrastructure obviously has a positive impact on productivity when it is well placed, well designed, and when it helps people get to and from work more quickly.

Productivity growth requires an economic system that provides significant returns on business innovation. Business innovation creates improvements in productivity, and therefore we need a system that creates incentives for that business innovation, things like relatively low business tax rates and benefits accruing to companies that choose to hire more people. That is why this budget would negatively impact productivity by effectively increasing the tax on small business by eliminating the hiring credit. These types of measures are not good for economic growth.

Economic growth requires a stable and predictable economic environment as well. People will invest in an economy that they have a reasonable expectation will do well over the long term. When we have extended periods of large budget deficits and we have the government going into deficit with no plan to get out of it when we are not in the midst of a recession, that clearly damages confidence and reduces the reason for investments in things that produce productivity growth.

We hear a lot about growth from the government, but we do not actually hear any discussion of those foundational constituent parts of growth, things like how we increase the productivity of our economy and how we increase the productivity of labour. These are things that the government should be thinking about in a more serious way, but the Liberals repeat this mantra that more government spending is somehow, absent of any clear connection or specificity in investment, going to lead to economic growth. That is a major concern I have with the plan of the Liberals.

I want to speak as well about the impact of the budget on families.

I believe in a simple principle with regard to family taxation. If two families are earning the same amount of money, then they should pay the same amount of tax. It would seem arbitrary and unreasonable, and therefore unfair, that we would have two families each earning the same family income but happen to pay different amounts of tax, simply by virtue of which people in the family are earning the income. That is why we brought in income splitting. It was an important tax cut, but it was also a measure to ensure tax fairness.

However, the government does not seem to agree with this principle of tax fairness. The Liberals would eliminate income splitting, having the effect of raising taxes on many families, but also now ensuring a system of unequal taxation where we have families that are earning the same income, yet paying different amounts of taxes, simply because of how they decide to divide child care responsibilities. Our view has always been that it should be up to families to make their own child care choices, and families should not face some kind of direct or indirect fiscal penalty because of the financial choices they make.

Of course, the Liberal changes would also remove universality of child care benefits. We think that is a problem. We think a universal taxable benefit made good sense. Of course, a taxable benefit is inherently more progressive because the more money one makes, the more tax one pays on it. It had that built-in progressivity to it, but it was still designed to ensure that everyone had something to benefit from.

I want to speak briefly about the impact of the budget on indigenous Canadians. This budget would spend a significant amount of new money, but it does not come with the kinds of measures that are necessary to ensure the success of those investments, especially as it pertains to education.

We have a core problem when it comes to education in aboriginal communities. Unlike in every province across the country, on-reserve first nations education does not have legislated educational standards and a legislated mandate for core curriculum. It does not require that schools award a recognized provincial diploma. That is a problem. It is a problem when we do not have those structures in place to ensure that there can be a seamless transition between a school on a reserve and a school off a reserve. These are the kinds of measures, the kind of collaborative structuring of the system, improvements to accountability, that would make a real concrete different. We think those kinds of changes should, and could, be accompanied by increased investment. However, the government has put in new money but does not actually have an effective plan to improve the system at all.

Those are a number of reasons, and there are many more I could list, why I am very concerned about this budget, and I will be opposing it.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, what my constituents and I have significant concerns about in the budget is the elimination of the small business hiring credit. It is hard for me to understand why the government would eliminate a measure specifically aimed at helping small businesses hire more people. Also of concern is the movement away from the election commitment made by the Liberal Party, as well as all parties in this place in fact, to follow up with the commitment to lower small business taxes. Small businesses will effectively experience a tax increase.

Specifically, on the elimination of that hiring credit, in light of the things he said in his speech, and good intentions no doubt, I wonder if the member could explain these policies.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is just that the member should not reference the name of a member of the House.