Jack Harris

[Request for Emergency Debate, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as was pointed out, I did give notice to the Speaker of a request for an emergency debate under Standing Order 52(2). I am seeking leave to propose an emergency debate on the alarming reports of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces.

There is an urgent need for an emergency debate to allow parliamentarians to address this crisis in a substantive way so that substantive action can be taken to determine the extent of the problem and much-needed steps can be taken to prevent future cases.

I want to emphasize the fact that sometimes when emergency debates are proposed, it is suggested that there may be an opposition day on which the issue could be raised. However, there are no opposition days in the following weeks. There are none on the planned agenda of the House, and an emergency debate may well be the only occasion we will have to debate such an important and urgent issue.

It involves a serious matter: victims of sexual assault in the military. We have seen reports that as many as 1,700 assaults per year, or five a day, take place. People in the military need to have confidence that when anything like this happens, their complaints will be taken seriously, that it will not have a negative effect on their careers if they complain, and that the perpetrators will be handled properly and appropriately. That seems to be a big problem.

There is a potential significant loss of confidence that the current government is taking the matter seriously. We need a debate to allow members to talk about this issue and to discuss the possible ways of dealing with it.

There is the fact that we do not have reports that are statutorily required and a whole series of serious issues that cannot be dealt with and answered properly in 35 seconds of question period. Therefore, there is a need for a substantive debate. If it does not happen by way of an emergency debate, it may not be debated until the fall.

These are the reasons it is an emergency. The seriousness of the issue, I think, speaks for itself. We are talking about victims of sexual assault, and there are reports in the media that they are being re-victimized within the military because of improper handling of these matters.

This is a matter that has been ongoing for some time. There were reports of it 16 years ago. We have similar reports today.

Something serious needs to be done. We need to debate the issue here in Parliament, and an emergency debate seems to be the best method of doing that right now.

[National Defence, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Canadian Armed Forces who have faced sexual assault know that this issue requires an admission that we have a problem and an urgent response. So far, we have neither.

Reports to the minister are three years behind, even though they are required by law, and they bury the numbers for sexual assault. The Chief of the Defence Staff, General Tom Lawson, said it will take one to two months even to find someone to lead an investigation.

When will the minister stop washing his hands and passing the buck to the military, take responsibility, and appoint an independent judicial inquiry?

[National Defence, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, every day, five individuals in the Canadian military become victims of sexual assault. The shocking extent of this abuse broke last month, and the minister promised a review, but only of policy and procedures. However, he has nothing to show for it.

When faced with a similar crisis in Australia, the army chief came out swinging against sexual harassment. He simply demanded that those who cannot respect their colleagues in uniform leave.

When will the minister take the same approach and finally address this crisis?

[Extension of Sitting Hours, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Markham—Unionville was complaining about the length of the opposition House leader's speech. I wonder whether he is aware that he had unlimited time. I thought he used remarkable restraint in only using 10 or 20 minutes instead. I would just point that out.

My experience in Parliament, both this Parliament and the House of Assembly in Newfoundland over some 24 years, is that every time the government seeks to use extended hours in debate, it is for one reason and one reason only; that is, to try to wear down the opposition. It is not only to do work but to try to wear down the opposition. However, I want to assure him that this part of the opposition will be the ones actually doing the work when these extended hours are taking place.

I wonder if he would like to comment on that because that is really what is going on here. It is not the government trying to do more work, but it is the government trying to wear down the opposition by forcing us to do the work by maintaining the idea of holding the government to account. We would happily do it because we represent our constituents.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I agree with my colleague. She has made some extremely important points about the role of CBC/Radio-Canada.

In the Broadcasting Act, where CBC's national mandate is set out, it is not simply another corporation that is expected to make money and provide a service. It has a national mandate, and the press, known as the “fourth estate” in democratic parliaments, after the courts, parliament, and the executive, plays an important role. The member has outlined one of them in terms of investigative reporting providing information about what is going on in our country and provinces. She mentioned the Charbonneau commission in Quebec as a result of that investigative journalism. It is extremely important and vital for our democracy.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, of course, the Conservatives talk about the role of CBC as a crown corporation as if it was just another arm's-length corporation when in fact it is a vital national institution.

Yes, I believe that in the minds of a number of members opposite, and a significant part of the Conservative Party, that CBC would be under existential threat if they had their way. Fortunately, the Canadian public does regard CBC with great importance, wants to see it have stable, long-term funding and does not want to see it disappear.

I think we are on the side of the people in trying to save this corporation and ensure that it does not get cut, like the Conservative government has, and unfortunately, as the hon. member would know, as it was cut by the Liberals in the 1990s to try to save money.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

It was R.B. Bennett. Sorry, I got the wrong prime minister, in the same era.

During the Depression we had the CBC started as a national institution. Why? It was to assist Canadians in understanding each other, to help create a national identity, and to play an important role in the building of this country. I think it has done so and it continues to do so. Its importance is no less now than it was then.

We see it in every region of this country. We see it in communities that, because of their location and linguistic diversity—Franco-Manitobans and Franco-Ontarians—have separate services. Radio-Canada operates in Quebec and other parts of Canada in the French language. In my region of Newfoundland and Labrador, we have terrific, valuable, important regional programing without which we would know a lot less about other parts of our own province and our own country.

In the Prairies and in agricultural Ontario, there is a great reliance on the special agricultural programing. In the Atlantic region as well, there are fisheries-related programs specially designed to deliver services to people in the country. That is not provided by other broadcasters or private networks.

In the area of the arts, it is extremely important, on a national level in terms of helping to develop a national cultural understanding, bringing artists from one part of the country to the whole country, which has seen a blossoming of the arts in music, songwriting, plays, and theatre, which again in some respects is not provided by the private system. There is obviously cultural and artistic programing throughout the broadcast milieu, but nonetheless the CBC plays the flagship role in that.

In my own province, for example, one program that is going to be affected by this is something called The Performance Hour. It is not disappearing entirely. It is being subsumed into an Atlantic program, but within Newfoundland and Labrador it has been extremely important in bringing professional concert-style recordings with professional sound engineering to the radio, to the broadcast, showcasing local artists, new artists, emerging artists, bands that have become nationally known such as Hey Rosetta! and Great Big Sea, and people like Amelia Curran and Ron Hynes, a Newfoundland treasure in terms of songwriting and performing and a national treasure as well. The CBC deserves credit and acknowledgement of the important role it plays in bringing these out.

There are lots of other examples. I could go on naming great artists, such as Pamela Morgan and Gordon Quinton. Sherman Downey, an artist from Newfoundland and Labrador, recently emerged at a CBC Searchlight contest, winning that with his band called the Ambiguous Case. They are very clever and unique in coming up with these bands' names, but Sherman Downey and the Ambiguous Case won the national CBC Searchlight contest last year, and that came out of the work CBC does in Newfoundland and Labrador and nationally in supporting artists and artistic endeavours.

When we hear the kind of language from members opposite, that they are supporting the CBC and that is why they gave it $1 billion, what they neglect to say is that it is $170 million less than the CBC got in 1996. Since 2012, the current government has taken $115 million away from the CBC. What our party has been talking about and asking for, and asks for in this resolution, is to have some stability in the CBC, not an annual allotment from Parliament depending on whatever the budget has to offer in any particular year, but rather to recognize that CBC/Radio-Canada performs significant and important national institutional roles, and to have stable, multi-year, and adequate funding for the CBC, so it can carry out its mandate. This is a very simple thing. It is an important national, cultural, social, linguistic institution that is part of the Canadian fabric.

I know that, opposite, there is not a lot of respect for institutions. We see the kind of cavalier manner in which the Supreme Court of Canada has been dealt with in recent days by the treatment of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by the Conservative government, in terms of deriding and casting aspersions about the honour and dignity, and questioning the integrity of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. To what avail, it is unknown, but it clearly shows that the government does not seem to respect the important institutions of our country. Obviously the CBC does not have the same level and importance of constitutional role as the Supreme Court of Canada in what we are now—a constitutional as well as a parliamentary democracy—the important institutional role that the Supreme Court of Canada plays in the balance of institutions between the executive, the Parliament, and the court. However, CBC is important nonetheless.

We see it in other countries: France, the U.K., and Australia. They have national broadcasters with substantially more funding on a per capita basis than we see here in Canada. The Conservatives can talk about $1 billion as being a lot of money, but if that is inadequate to provide the stable funding necessary to meet the mandate that the CBC has in this country, then obviously they are not doing a proper job.

One could spend a lot of time talking about the value of CBC to our country. Canadians realize that they know a lot about this country that they would not know if it were not for the CBC/Radio-Canada in terms of its mandate to help us understand one another, to build a sense of national unity, to build a sense of national values that we talk about all the time. When we talk about Canada's national values in the world, in part we are talking about the values that have been shared, created, and developed through the medium of the CBC/Radio-Canada since its inception back in the 1930s. It is an extremely important and valuable institution. It deserves to have adequate, multi-year, stable funding so it can carry out and fulfill its mandate to the people of Canada. That is a very simple request, and I am surprised that it is treated with controversy by members opposite and an unwillingness to recognize that they have played a role in diminishing the capacity of CBC/Radio-Canada to fulfill its mandate by reducing its funding by $115 million since 2012.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say at the outset that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Louis-Hébert.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this important resolution in the House today. It is one that I think the government House leader seemed to regard as being very tiresome, but it is one that is actually extremely important to Canada and the identity of a national institution that has been around for a very long period of the time. The motion reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House, CBC/Radio-Canada plays a key role in informing, entertaining and uniting Canadians and is today weakened because of the many rounds of cuts over the past 20 years, and calls on the government to: (a) reverse the $45 million in cuts for 2014-2015 in Budget 2012; and (b) provide adequate, stable, multi-year funding to the public broadcaster so that it can fulfill its mandate.

Frankly, I do not think that is a very big ask, so I do not understand why members opposite seem to be so determined to vote against the motion. From time to time, we hear members across the House castigate even the very existence of the CBC, and they entertained resolutions at their convention to destroy public funding for this important public institution.

As I mentioned in my comments to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, this is an institution that has been around since the 1930s when the Conservative government of the prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, brought in the CBC at the height—

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, although the government talks about the independence of the CBC, it appoints the president, the CEO and all the board members. Then the government says that the CBC is doing all of this.

The CBC was started in the height of the Depression by a Conservative government because it believed it needed to create an important national institution. The member says that the position of the motion is extreme. The motion asks for two things: the $45 million in cuts from 2014-15 budget to be reinstated; and to provide adequate and stable funding to the public broadcaster so it can fulfill its mandate.

Why is the member against that, if he actually believes what he just said? This a national institution created by a Conservative government in the heights of the depression when money was an object but the importance of the CBC was recognized.

[Petitions, May 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of residents of Ontario, mostly in the town of Aurora, regarding a group of Valcartier cadets who in 1974 were part of a cadet camp in Valcartier where there was an explosion killing six cadets, wounding some 60 others, and a number of survivors who are concerned they have needs that are not being met.

The ombudsman has determined that it is in the national and public interest to have a full investigation and make recommendations to the government to help these former cadets and that it requires the consent of the Minister of National Defence. Therefore, this is a petition to the Minister of National Defence, calling upon the minister to grant the Canadian Forces' ombudsman the authority to investigate this case and make recommendations to the government to help these former cadets.

This is an important and serious matter. I hope we will get a positive answer on this question soon. These cadets have been waiting eight months for an answer.