Guy Caron

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share my time with my esteemed colleague from Windsor West.

We are debating the opposition motion moved by the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, whose efforts are very similar to his work on behalf of the wine industry. This time, the motion pertains to beer in light of the case involving a New Brunswick man who was arrested for purchasing alcohol in Quebec and bringing it into New Brunswick. Obviously, this ruling caused a bit of an uproar in Quebec.

I would like to pick up on a comment made by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, for whom I have a great deal of respect. However, he added to the confusion on this issue when he said that the government has taken action.

That is not what the government is demonstrating at this time, either on this issue or many others. The member referred to the agreement on internal trade and the issue of the environment and climate change. I think he is confusing consultation with action.

In many cases, the government's current consultations are merely a stalling tactic to avoid taking action.

In this case, the minister is trying to reassure us by saying that negotiations are under way and that the government is facilitating negotiations between the provinces regarding the agreement on internal trade and the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers in Canada.

Obviously, there are non-tariff barriers in this case. These legislative barriers imposed by the provinces are inconsistent with the intent of section 121 of the Constitution, which, I would like to remind members, is included in the motion.

That section says:

121. All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.

I agree with my Conservative colleagues when they say that this decision and the Government of New Brunswick's efforts to appeal this decision are inconsistent with the intent of this constitutional provision.

However, I think it is unfortunate that they are calling for an opinion application or a Supreme Court reference because I think this matter should be dealt with by the government.

Right now, the government is trying to reassure us by saying that consultations have taken place, that it is working with the provinces, and that it wants to eliminate these barriers. The problem is that we have no idea what kind of efforts are being made or what type of negotiations are being conducted. As my colleague from Windsor West mentioned, we have to trust the government.

I would like to remind the House that, during the previous Parliament, the industry minister at the time, James Moore, spoke about this a lot. He said that it was a priority of the Conservative government at the time. However, it is clear that, although a few first steps were taken in the previous Parliament, we did not see much in the way of results.

A private member's bill was passed to eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers for wine and the shipment of wine. This serves as a reminder to the House that there are two steps: first, legislation needs to be passed and, second, that legislation needs to be implemented. Legislators, including members of the House, often forget about the second step. When we enact new legislation, we need resources and a strategy in order to implement it.

That is why I will vote in favour of this motion. I support the spirit of the motion, and we agree on the Conservatives' interpretation of this section of the Constitution.

We do not necessarily agree that referring the matter to the Supreme Court is the way forward. The way forward would be for this government to take real action. It must prioritize the agreement on internal trade, which could help solve this impasse.

We took action on internal trade. We voted in favour of a bill introduced by the industry minister at the time, which shows that internal trade is important to us and that we agree on this issue.

That said, we must always be cautious with these types of issues, as we should be with international trade.

We can support the principle of the free movement of goods and services within Canada, just as we support the principle of international trade. However, we can oppose details in trade agreements and we can disagree with how provisions are implemented.

I want to be very clear: on this side of the House, we support the principle of internal trade and the main provisions of the agreement on internal trade. However, we must ensure that the agreement on internal trade does not become an excuse for us to do the bare minimum and weaken our regulations, workplace health and safety provisions, or standards for labour and for the quality of goods and services. In general, we support what has been proposed.

As members know, there are two ridings in Quebec that border New Brunswick. There is mine, which borders the western edge of New Brunswick. Edmundston is just an hour and a half from Rimouski. Then, there is Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia. There are two main roads on which New Brunswickers and Quebeckers can travel freely. There are no border crossings because we have an economic union.

In that case, what is the justification for provisions that prevent people from buying goods such as beer, wine, or other things in Quebec and bringing them back to New Brunswick? The opposite situation would be just as odd. Why prevent Quebeckers from going to New Brunswick and bringing certain types of goods back to Quebec when there is no customs provision, and rightly so?

I wonder why there are any provisions. During the last Parliament, my colleague from British Columbia raised a similar question about wine. Often these are economic issues.

According to the New Brunswick Liquor Corporation, lifting this ban would be economically unfavourable. When we discussed the issue of wine during the last Parliament, the Société des alcools du Québec was against this provision for similar reasons.

We have to be careful and ensure that the standards remain the same. When we talk about standards, we are also talking about import standards. During the last Parliament, one of the legitimate objections raised by the Société des alcools was the following: since British Columbia and Alberta had import conditions that are different from Quebec's, it would be easy to go through Alberta to flood the Quebec market with wine products and wine from outside Canada. Quebec has different import provisions.

That is the type of question that needs to be answered to satisfy the provinces. It is not that complicated to do so. If we want wine from British Columbia, beer from Quebec, or alcohol from Ontario to cross the border, we can use the internal trade agreement to limit these provisions to Canadian products and not to the import of foreign products. If products are currently being imported under lesser or different standards, then the agreement on internal trade could be beneficial.

In summary, I support the motion, but I do not believe that we need a Supreme Court reference to resolve this issue. The federal government must make this issue a priority. We also need much more transparency in the negotiations. At present, the government is asking us to take it at its word that it is taking action on the agreement on internal trade, even though we see absolutely nothing happening.

I urge the government to be much more proactive and transparent about the negotiations that are under way. Meanwhile, we will support the motion in principle. Therefore, I will be voting for the motion.

[Fisheries and Oceans, June 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, northern shrimp stocks in Newfoundland and Labrador are floundering. The provincial government has asked the new Minister of Fisheries to use the last-in, first-out policy to give big corporations the lion's share of what is left, cutting out inshore fishermen.

We in the NDP believe that those closest to the resource should benefit. Adjacency, historical dependence, and sustainability should be more important than politics.

Will the Liberals eliminate the last-in, first-out policy and help Newfoundland's inshore fishery and coastal communities survive?

[Impaired Driving Act, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-226, introduced by my colleague, the member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis.

As mentioned several times in the House, Bill C-226 is designed to limit or make more difficult the conditions that allow for impaired driving, a glaring problem. I can say that I have had a close personal experience with this problem. Just a year and a half ago, while I was driving around in my constituency, I nearly had a collision with someone who was impaired. As some members of the House will remember, in March 2015, the former provincial member for Gaspé, Georges Mamelonet, died in a head-on collision involving an impaired driver, very close to Rimouski, in fact.

This is an extremely important matter, and no one in this House will deny the importance of dealing with it appropriately.

The bill itself has three particular components. The first proposes tougher sentences by setting minimum sentences for cases of impaired driving causing death. The second component of the bill is intended to restrict legal defences and eliminate the possibility of defending oneself legally and using certain defences that are questionable and harmful to the fight we must wage against impaired driving. The third component is intended to institute random alcohol testing for impaired driving.

I can say that I do not have a problem with eliminating certain more questionable defences. People have probably abused legal loopholes to actually avoid facing the consequences of their actions, namely choosing to drink and drive.

With regard to random alcohol testing, I am open to the possibility. Obviously, it raises certain questions associated with privacy and individual freedoms. In some cases, however, we also have to look at the common good, in general. In that regard, I am not completely convinced, but I would lean in that direction.

With respect to minimum sentences, we see here, unfortunately, the usual automatic response of the Conservatives to opt for such sentences in almost every case. What is interesting is that the Conservatives, in a previous government, in 2008, had toughened certain legal provisions on impaired driving. As part of that reform and those amendments, the fines for a first impaired-driving offence were raised from $600 to $1,000. For repeat offenders, who are liable to a term of imprisonment, the sentence was increased from 14 to 30 days.

However, while this was expected to deter impaired driving, in the end the opposite effect was observed. The number of people failing impaired-driving tests did not decrease, far from it. This demonstrates the limitations of using sentences as a deterrent. That has often been proclaimed in the House. There is no evidence that sentences, whether they are minimum sentences or just tougher sentences, produce enough of a change in behaviour to truly satisfy the intentions of the House, the intentions of legislators and especially the intention that we should have in legislating for the public good.

Therefore, I can say from the outset that I am opposed to the provisions concerning minimum sentences. I am not the only one in this situation, as MADD, or Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is also opposed to the imposition of minimum sentences, and in this case, a minimum sentence of five years. That does not mean we are in favour of lighter sentences, quite the contrary. However, giving that discretion to judges, allowing the legal system to make decisions that account for the context, will, in our view, be completely satisfactory and will undoubtedly lead to tougher sentences and a wider acceptance of that legal power.

In many cases, judges make their decisions based on a social context in which impaired driving is less and less tolerated. It is no longer a socially acceptable behaviour. On the contrary, it is socially and universally condemned. My colleague from Durham said it well. In that regard, that often leads to more serious legal consequences, unfortunately. I am thinking specifically of minimum sentences.

Let us then allow the judges to do their jobs, and let us do ours as legislators. I was somewhat disappointed with this bill, because if the idea was to deal with impaired driving, other elements could have been included. There is a lot of talk about sentences and punishing crime, but not much about prevention.

If the intent was really to discourage people from using a vehicle while impaired, it would have made sense to include in the bill provisions such as the obligation to have an alcohol-ignition interlock device in cars, which might automatically prevent drunk drivers from using their cars.

It would also have been worthwhile to have the bill mention a problem that is likely to become more important in the future: drug-related impaired driving. Since we are talking about legalizing marijuana, I should mention that, in some American states where marijuana has been decriminalized or legalized, impaired driving problems have emerged. However, all the bill mentions is blood alcohol tests to detect alcohol-related impaired driving.

If we want to be consistent, we will eventually have to address this issue. When the Liberal government drafts future legislation to legalize marijuana, if it goes that far, I encourage it to include provisions to protect the public. Our existing impaired driving laws are getting increasingly tougher.

As I mentioned, I will vote in favour of this bill at second reading, but I think it needs to be carefully studied in committee, because there is no guarantee that I will vote the same way at third reading. If the minimum sentencing is still in the bill, there is a good chance that I will have to vote against the bill and we will have to find another way, as legislators, to combat impaired driving.

The House takes this issue seriously, and the political parties probably have different philosophies on how to deal with this issue, but we need to find a solution that works, not a solution designed to score political points.

I would like the committee to examine whether random testing is effective, based on facts and evidence. I know that 31 of the 34 OECD countries use random testing, and Canada is one of the exceptions. I have no doubt that there will be studies on other countries' experiences.

We need to look at how these legal defences are being abused, as a way to avoid penalties for drivers who would have otherwise received punishment. We are talking about the safety of our families, neighbours, and communities, as well as the common good.

I urge all members in the House to carefully consider the various measures we could use to effectively combat this issue. The bill provides three lines of attack, so we should be able to come up with others. Most importantly, we should be able to keep the measures that work, not the measures that were proposed by those who share our political views.

[Business of Supply, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands.

When I look at the motion, I see various points. I think that the House agrees with most of the points, and that it recognizes that ISIS is responsible for crimes against humanity aimed at groups such as Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims, as well as other religious and ethnic minorities.

That is indeed the case, and it is recognized that they are using rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war and enslaving women and girls. I think there is no debating that matter. It is indisputable that Daesh is targeting gays and lesbians who have been tortured and murdered. Moreover, there is no question that the House strongly condemns these atrocities.

Now we are talking about the last point in the motion, which states that these crimes constitute genocide. If we take the declaration of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, we see that genocides are acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. I think that for most people, this meets the definition.

Therefore, can we not go along with this motion by giving the government direction to act in accordance with the perspective of the United Nations for recognizing this crime as a genocide and to take action accordingly in the United Nations?

[Parliamentary Budget Officer, June 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary budget officer appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance this morning.

It was a good opportunity to remind everyone that the Liberals took a page from the NDP playbook during the election campaign in promising to strengthen the role of the parliamentary budget officer, make his office truly independent, and give him the resources he needs to do his job properly.

Seven months after the election, however, nothing has changed and nothing is happening. Time is moving on. Just some simple changes to the Parliament of Canada Act would suffice to enhance his independence. We could simply bring back the private member's bill introduced by the member for Outremont in the previous Parliament.

When will the Liberals make the office of the parliamentary budget officer a fully independent and well-funded organization?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.

We are indeed seeing similarities in the Liberal government's practices, in how this bill was studied, and in other measures that have been brought forward as well.

I was thinking about another Liberal promise, the one to reinstate the tax credit for labour-sponsored funds immediately after the election. They did indeed reinstate it in this budget bill, but only effective next year and after lowering it to 5%.

The way the Liberals are currently operating, they might end up being just like the Conservative government. Hon. members will recall that in the 1990s, despite the promises made in one of the most progressive platforms I had seen at the time, the Liberal Party's 1993 red book, the government spent 10 years adopting a series of measures that truly went against what they promised they would do. This eventually led to extremely significant cuts in the name of achieving a balanced budget.

We hope that all these promises are going to work for the Canadian economy. If they do not work, we are going to end up with a very large deficit, few results, and a call for a return to balanced budgets that could undermine the economy, a bit like what the Conservatives did between 2006 and 2015, and specifically in 2009.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent for his question.

I want to respond to what he said about refugees, because it is also important. It is an excellent example. The NDP was the first to talk about the need to welcome between 10,000 and 15,000 government-sponsored refugees. The Liberals promised to welcome 25,000. We regarded that as a bit of one-upmanship during the election campaign. They are claiming that they kept their promise in that regard, but I would remind the House that they said those 25,000 refugees would be government sponsored. We are now dealing with 25,000 privately sponsored refugees. This means they did not keep their promise, but at least we are helping refugees, which is good. The fact is, their commitments were unrealistic from the beginning.

I am an economist by training. I realize that a deficit can be a good thing. It all depends how the deficit is used. There is no denying that one of the Liberal Party election promises was to have a $10-billion deficit the first year, an $8-billion deficit the second year, and a $5-billion deficit the third year; in the fourth year, we would magically have a balanced budget.

We asked repeatedly during the election campaign how the Liberals were going to balance the budget, but we never got an answer. Now we are in a completely different situation, because now we have no idea when we will return to a balanced budget. The government seems to be improvising on this issue, which is extremely unfortunate.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to remind the member for Winnipeg North that we have a university in Rimouski. Therefore, he could come there and debate me. I would be more than happy to go to Winnipeg to do it as well.

What is quite interesting is that rather than giving us facts, he is replying with talking points. I stated the facts. It is a 179-page budget with over 30 laws that are either being added, amended or eliminated. We had two committee meetings with witnesses out of six committee meetings. We had 17 witnesses for 179 pages of legislation. We had time allocation, which the Liberals actually denounced at the last election.

Therefore, the Liberals cannot say that this bill has been fully debated in the House. It has not been fully debated in the House. It has not been fully debated in committee. The government is actually breaking any promise with respect to transparency. Transparency is not just showing us bill and saying that we can read it, that this is what they are offering us. It is also about having the time to go through very technical details to ensure that everything is right, that there are no perverse effects, and that there is no negative impacts with respect to what we vote on. This is the way the Liberals have presented this. The way they have forced us to work in committee makes us derelict of our duty of examining it carefully and clearly.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the first thing I want to say at third reading of this bill is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Conservatives introduced omnibus bills that were around 175 pages in length and sometimes 500 or 600 pages. Now, we have a 179-page omnibus bill that amends or eliminates 35 acts.

The Conservative government systematically refused to accept any of the amendments proposed in the Standing Committee on Finance. Now, the Liberal government is systematically refusing to accept any of the amendments proposed in the Standing Committee on Finance. It is just more of the same.

I think this bill clearly shows why Canadians are so cynical about politics. The Liberals promised to do things differently, but they introduced this massive bill. If we had had the time to study it carefully, we could perhaps have gotten through it all and thoroughly analyzed it to identify its shortcomings.

However, we had only two committee meetings to hear from witnesses and examine the Liberals' 179-page budget bill. We were able to hear from only 17 witnesses in committee to discuss the various aspects of the bill. That is only one witness per 10 pages of legislation. I commend the Liberals for this so-called comprehensive study.

Some extremely important aspects of this bill were dealt with in a very cursory manner. I am thinking about the entire chapter on the mechanism for bank recapitalization in the event that our key or systemically important institutions break down.

First of all, I am not fundamentally opposed to that provision. However, it completely changes the way our banking system can get help when it might be in trouble, which we hope will never happen. It changes the way our banking system works.

When we requested a more comprehensive study, the Liberals told us that it was unnecessary because a department official had explained to them how it works. Yes, that is what they said. If we follow that logic, why bother hearing from witnesses in committee at all? Let us just ask department officials to explain the measures on which we have to vote and then just vote on them already.

I see that my colleague does not agree, and I am sorry, but that is the reality. The official in question, Glenn Campbell, did a good job explaining the technical underpinnings of the bill. However, the fact remains that we did not have a chance to hear a single witness talk about this important provision.

The other part of this bill that warranted closer attention is the issue of compensation for veterans. First of all, that should have been in a separate bill, but the Liberals decided to include it in the budget implementation bill. We heard from only one witness on that, the veterans ombudsman. That was it.

If it had been examined more thoroughly, first of all, it would not have been in the Standing Committee on Finance, but rather in the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, and second, at least two or three meetings would have been dedicated to examining precisely those points. Ultimately, we heard from only one witness in committee on something that should have been in its own bill.

To sum up, to study Bill C-15, we had two days of debate and a time allocation motion in the House at second reading, before it went to committee. It was so urgent that the committee began examining it before it even passed second reading. Regardless, we still only invited witnesses to two of the six committee meetings. The minister and other officials attended some of the other meetings.

On top of that, the Liberals rejected all the amendments proposed by the opposition. It is not as though we went too far. We proposed 15 substantial amendments to a 179-page bill. The Conservatives proposed three, and I know the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois also proposed some. One of the amendments proposed by the Conservatives came from a member who does not sit on the committee.

I will digress for a moment. Once again, this shows that the Liberals operate much like the Conservatives did before them. They even moved the same motion at a Standing Committee on Finance meeting to force independent MPs from parties not recognized in the House to present their amendments in committee so that they could be discussed for a minute instead of using their rights as independent members to move those amendments in the House. They did exactly what the Conservatives used to do.

We studied the amendments, and the Liberals listened to them. They are perfectly happy to listen to the opposition, but when it comes to really hearing, analyzing, and actually using what the opposition says, forget it.

I mentioned an interesting fact in the question I asked the member for Milton, who is the official opposition finance critic. The Liberal side was totally disorganized during the committee's work. Take, for example, the employment insurance provisions that the government included in the bill. Once again, the Standing Committee on Finance should not have been the one studying that issue. It should have been the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Nevertheless, it was included in the budget bill.

The Liberals decided that only 12 regions in the country would benefit from the extended EI benefits. What is the formula? The formula seems somewhat flexible, but 12 regions are going to be included, mostly in western Canada and Newfoundland. We realize that these regions have been hit especially hard by falling oil and commodity prices. However, the random nature of the criteria that allowed those regions to be included on the list was never really formally explained to us.

In mid-May, the Prime Minister himself announced that three new regions would also qualify for the extension: Southern Saskatchewan, Southern Interior British Columbia, and Edmonton. In committee, we tried to explain that instead of having a random formula, perhaps all regions should be included in the formula. That was declared out of order, so I cannot blame the parties for that. However, I do not think the government would have been very receptive to that measure.

We decided to include only the regions that were benefiting from this five-week extension to fill what is called the black hole before the Conservatives and before 2012. The black hole is the period of time between the end of EI benefits and a return to work, for those who work in seasonal industries. Again, the government was not really listening and this was declared out of order.

Finally, we proposed our third amendment. This one sought to remind the government that it promised to include these three regions. In the House, I cannot explain succinctly the level of confusion that reigned on the Liberal side on this aspect because they seemed to have forgotten that promise. They did not seem to understand that this amendment needed to be added in committee. The Liberal Party made no proposal on the matter. Finally, we ended the clause-by-clause review without any such amendment. The Liberal government was forced to correct its mistake by introducing a motion here at report stage.

I should point out that the committee accepted just one amendment during its study. It was a Liberal amendment to fix a mistake that the Liberal government introduced into this bill. This was nothing new to me, since I saw this kind of thing go on for five years with the Conservatives' omnibus budgets. They would realize after the fact that the bill was poorly thought out and needed to be fixed. Conservative amendments would be accepted, but the opposition's amendments never were.

What we have here is a series of measures. I just talked about veterans and bank recapitalization. These issues should have been dealt with separately. I also talked about employment insurance. In fact, many measures should have been dealt with separately, or there should at least have been a more careful study than just 17 witnesses for 179 pages of text.

Since the start of debate, I have been listening to the government side claim that this is not an omnibus bill since all of the measures were in the budget. Indeed, there are lots of things in the budget, because in a 500-page document, you can have one little line about a forestry program, another line about the TFSA, and another line about a post-secondary education program for indigenous communities.

The government can include pretty much anything in a budget or a budget implementation bill by arguing that it appeared in the previous budget. That is not how things work. The Liberal members who were here during the previous Parliament completely agreed with our definition of an omnibus budget bill. I would like to quote a few of them.

At the beginning of this Parliament, in April 2016, the member for Malpeque, who is now the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, indicated that the Department of Finance had gotten into the habit of putting a lot of things in a budget bill. He said that his concern was that there could be an area in a bill that really required giving MPs the opportunity to debate that issue in the House, not as part of a budget bill, but as part of a separate bill.

We completely agree with him. That is the whole point of my argument. Let us look at what the member for Kings—Hants, who is now the President of the Treasury Board, said in 2015, in the previous Parliament. He said:

For years, the Conservatives have crossed the line in what is acceptable in a functioning democracy as a government in the area of respect for Parliament. It is not only how they have now normalized the use of massive omnibus bills, they regularly shut down debate in the House...

Lo and behold, the Liberals cut short debate in the House and introduced massive bills that we were not able to study in detail.

Do members want other examples? The current Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and member for Charlottetown said:

...the government's use of omnibus legislation has degraded the committee review process and hidden important legal changes from public scrutiny.

That is not all. The Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board and member for Vancouver Quadra said:

Liberals will end the abuse of omnibus bills, which result in poorly reviewed laws.

I challenge any Liberal member to state in the House that they kept their promises concerning transparency and are allowing this Parliament and this committee to carry out an exhaustive and thorough review and, ultimately, letting us fulfill our responsibilities as MPs on the committee.

If that is what the Liberal members are interested in doing, I urge them to explain how holding two committee meetings with witnesses qualifies as a comprehensive study of thirty or so acts in this 179-page bill. I urge them to explain why, in June 2015, they said they would put an end to these massive bills because they are not conducive to thorough and transparent study, yet now, they have introduced just such a bill. I challenge any Liberal member to tell me to my face that there was no time allocation, something the Liberals strongly criticized back then.

Today, with this first budget implementation bill, this government is showing what the next four years will look like. It seems to have no remorse for breaking its promises. I am thinking of promises such as reducing the tax from 11% to 9%. The government swore that it would reduce the small business tax. That is not the only broken promise. It also said that it would fix Parliament so that it could do what it should do: analyze legislation and even help the government address deficiencies in these bills. Obviously, the government has its own idea of how things should be, but it may miss some things.

We do not expect the Liberals to accept or adopt all the recommendations or amendments that we propose, but we do expect them to listen carefully, to be able to realize that they may have been wrong or they may have forgotten something and, ultimately, to make changes.

I mentioned three parliamentary secretaries. I have other examples of Liberal members who, in the previous Parliament, said similar things. I think it is a huge shame that the government is acting in a way that it does not even seem to regret or repudiate.

If the government wants to change its tune and introduce omnibus bills to get legislation passed faster, like the Conservatives did, will it at least own that?

Whenever we bring up certain incidents, the government, in defiance of truth and logic, denies them.

Earlier, in response to a question about cutting small business taxes from 11% to 9%, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance asked why the government should keep that promise seeing as it kept others. He did not even attempt to answer the question.

He said that nine million Canadians will benefit from the tax cut, but he left out the part about how it will do nothing for 18 million Canadians.

He talked about the Canada child tax benefit even though the question was about small businesses. That benefit does not have much to do with investing in businesses, particularly if the owners of those businesses do not have children.

There is a group mentality, that this is the Liberals' theme and they can do no wrong. That despite what they said during the last electoral campaign, they are in government and totally justified in doing whatever they want, and that the opposition cannot say a word, especially with a majority government. I see some heads shaking no. This was the Liberal Party's thinking in the last Parliament when it was the third party, and now it is no longer good.

When we sit in Parliament, we represent all Canadians. I am proud to represent my riding. How can I go back to my riding and say that all the shiny promises that Parliament will work better and that committees will actually be able to do the work that they are supposed to be doing are no longer any good? I cannot, in good conscience, say that the government is respecting its promises.

The government boasts about all the nice measures in the budget. There are some interesting measures that New Democrats are glad the government is implementing, such as the elimination of the GST on feminine hygiene products, which is something we fought for in the last Parliament. There are some interesting measures, but there are some measures that would have deserved significant study and were not. We are in breach of our responsibilities in this Parliament.

Can any MP in the House explain to me what the 25 pages on bank bail-in provisions actually mean or will entail? I suspect not. Can any Liberal MPs in the House explain to me the mechanisms of the changes in compensation for veterans? Some questions have been asked on that specific point because it is not clear to everyone. It is not clear that it will actually achieve what the Liberal government says it will achieve.

Can anyone explain to me what formula was used to define the 12 regions that will have access to the extension of EI benefits? Before voting yes or no, members should think about what they know in this budget bill. If they do not know a lot, then I suspect members are victims of the group theme mentality of their team telling them to vote in this way or vote blindly, and trusting their team.

In the end, I expect and forecast that there will be some disappointments on the Liberal side. There will be some disappointments because more and more, maybe not right now, maybe not in two months, maybe not next year, people will eventually realize where the government has respected its promises and where it has broken them.

We have seen that this type of attitude toward the fundamental duties that opposition members have in committee and in the House has led to an atmosphere of mistrust, which led to the very tense situation that we witnessed a few weeks ago.

New Democrats are happy that there has been some co-operation on some of the files; namely, the committee on electoral reform, but that cannot be the only instance where there will be such co-operation. We need to work together and ensure that committees will be able to fulfill their duties of examining government bills and keeping government to account. We have not seen that in committee.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the Conservative Party finance critic, with whom I have the pleasure of working on the Standing Committee on Finance.

I would like to come back to what happened at the Standing Committee on Finance. I would like to know my colleague's thoughts on how disorganized the Liberals were in committee with regard to a very specific situation.

The bill proposes extending employment insurance benefits to claimants in 12 regions determined by a formula that seems quite arbitrary to me. In mid-May, the Prime Minister promised to extend this measure to three additional regions. Now that the clause-by-clause review of the bill is over, they are still talking about 12 regions. There is no clause that talks about three additional regions.

We proposed an amendment to correct this situation, but the amendment was deemed out of order. It seemed that the Liberal members did not understand what happened. They had such a poor understanding of their own promise that they had to correct this mistake here in the House at report stage.

I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about the Liberals' level of disorganization on an issue that is so very important to regions such as eastern Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.