James Moore

[Municipal Affairs, February 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, again, my colleague from Ajax—Pickering has his facts wrong. It was the elected city council of Ottawa that voted down the light rail project. In fact, the people of Ottawa do not need a member of Parliament from Toronto telling them what they need in their community.

The then president of the Treasury Board did his job. The Ethics Commissioner says so. The Treasury Board Secretariat says so. There is in fact nothing wrong that took place here. Nice try.

[Municipal Affairs, February 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, again, unfortunately, the Liberals here are doing what they do worst. They are attacking people without any evidence whatsoever.

The Ethics Commissioner was clear that no wrongdoing took place here. The train project was defeated by the elected Liberal government, which included the votes of five former Liberal candidates.

The then President of the Treasury Board did his job, the rules were followed and nothing improper took place, except that the Liberals are going to, unfortunately, lose. A false scandal is going to blow up in their faces yet again.

[Municipal Affairs, February 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, everything in the question is, of course, false. The Ethics Commissioner investigated this at the request of the Liberals and the Ethics Commissioner said nothing improper happened here. The Treasury Board Secretariat has said that no impropriety happened here at all.

Ottawa City Council itself voted against the light rail project. The Minister of the Environment, then president of the Treasury Board, has always stood up for his constituents and has always done a great job for taxpayers.

[The Budget, February 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, budget 2008 is a great news budget for British Columbia.

For B.C., we have increased spending on health care over last year.

We have increased spending on education.

We are boosting our support for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

We are investing to promote B.C.'s forestry industry in new international markets.

We are fighting crime by hiring more police officers.

We are investing in rapid transit by supporting the Evergreen SkyTrain extension to the tri-cities. The Canadian Urban Transit Association says, “This is a good news budget for transit”. The chair of TransLink, Dale Parker, goes further, saying our support for the Evergreen line is “fantastic news” for metro Vancouver's transit system.

In opposing the budget, the NDP is voting against the Evergreen line and against these important gains for British Columbia.

For over two years, through three budgets, the Conservative government has delivered for British Columbia. We have delivered British Columbians the results they deserve. They are getting great government and great results from this Conservative government.

[Canada Elections Act, February 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the speech from my friend from Don Valley on this important legislation. I think we can, as usual, make our case for or against legislation without personal attacks or judging people's motives in the way that we just heard.

The member asked whether the Conservatives wanted any minorities or women to be members of Parliament. The first ever female cabinet minister was a Conservative. The first female prime minister was a Conservative. The first Chinese Canadian member of Parliament was a Conservative. After the next election in New Westminster—Coquitlam, the first Korean Canadian member of Parliament will be Conservative. We can leave that out of the debate and still make our arguments.

However, she did make two points that I want to respond to and invite her to respond to my response.

She said that we agreed that we would have appointments made after consultation with Parliament. She said that the head of the Public Appointments Commission, who we put forward, was a Reformer and that the person was appointed and should not have been because the person was a Reformer. I believe she was talking about Gwyn Morgan. Gwyn Morgan, who donated twice as much money to the Liberal Party as to the Conservative Party, is the example that she gave. Of course, the appointment of Gwyn Morgan was defeated at the government operations committee and, therefore, he was not appointed to the position for which the Prime Minister had suggested. We did in fact listen to Parliament, so that part of her speech does fall flat.

She did spend a long time criticizing the minister for the portfolio for which I am responsible, the Minister of Public Works. She said that it was unacceptable that we have a minister who is not elected in this House. The leader of the Liberal Party was appointed to cabinet while he was unelected. Was that inappropriate? Was Jean Chrétien wrong to appoint the current leader of the Liberal Party to cabinet without him first running in an election?

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I do not agree.

We are against abolishing the Senate for the reasons I gave in my speech.

First, we can improve our Senate through non-constitutional changes, with this bill, just like the other one, which would reduce a senator's mandate from 45 years to eight years.

Second, we know what the Bloc wants. It wants the Senate to disappear so there are 80 fewer politicians in Ottawa to defend Canada in its current state. The Bloc simply wants there to be members from Quebec like them, in order to destroy Canada. We do not agree.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I sense an interest in my colleague running for a district in Newfoundland and Labrador for the Senate in the future.

First, on the issue of equalization, I went into that debate, but he misrepresented what was said in the past by us in the campaign and what we delivered to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Beyond that, on the issue of Senate reform, there will be disagreements within provinces on how we go forward. However, I would like to turn the question on itself and suggest this to him. Why should a member of Parliament from Deer Lake prevent the people from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and in the future British Columbia, their right to choose their senators?

Why should any province say to another province that it cannot do what it democratically has chosen to do? Again I will use the example of Manitoba. A provincial NDP government passed bill 20 to elect senators in the province of Manitoba. That is its choice. It has its own Senate delegation that comes to Ottawa and fights on behalf of Manitobans. Why should anyone from any other region of the country tell it who it can or cannot send to Ottawa? That is not right. It is undemocratic.

If the province of Quebec wants to sustain the status quo, this legislation provides for that. If Quebec wants to sustain the status quo, it does not have to engage in consultation. It is consultation about how we go forward.

If those provinces are ready for democracy and reform, so their citizens are empowered to elect their senators, why should the federal government get in the way? We want to encourage those provinces to do so.

If his province and other provinces do not want to go forward under this prescription, I suspect the provinces he described are not unanimous in their position and alternatives. Some of them want to abolish the Senate to increase the power of individual premiers. I suspect that is the case with Newfoundland and Labrador, where he is from. That would be keeping in step with the style, but that is not always the case. Each of these provinces has its own internal dynamic in terms of what it would prescribe as the right solution for Senate reform, and there is a fair debate to be had.

For those provinces that have had their debate and chosen the way forward, let us get out of their way.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

I would comment, as well, that my colleague from the Bloc is continuing to heckle me.

The reason the Bloc Québécois is in favour of abolishing the Senate is because in order to abolish the Senate we must amend the Constitution. There is nothing the Bloc would rather have this country do than to get into a divisive constitutional debate.

What is more, the Bloc members want to abolish the Senate because it wants to have that Senate debate. They also recognize that about a quarter of the 105 senators are from the province of Quebec, which means that about 75% of the Senate are federalists. The Bloc does not like the idea of having that many more people in Ottawa in one of the two Houses of Parliament fighting for and defending Canada's interests. It wants to have fewer federalists in Ottawa, which is why it believes in abolishing the Senate.

The members of the Bloc Québécois, as usual, are up to their own mischief on this issue. They do not have a sincere position. Their position is about mischief making and about driving their agenda of tearing Quebec from the heart of Canada and we, frankly, will not have any of that.

This bill is about consultation. It is about reaching out to provinces and recognizing their role in having provinces at the forefront of the decision making of who will represent the provinces in Canada's upper house, which is an important step forward.

It is important to note that the province of Alberta has Senate election legislation and it has been exercised twice. In our government, we appointed Bert Brown to the Senate, who was elected by the people of Alberta. When a subsequent vacancy arises, the Premier of Alberta will have the capacity to elect senators in waiting who will then be appointed to the Senate on a democratic basis by the people of Alberta.

Under the NDP, the New Democratic government in the province of Manitoba passed bill 20 to elect senators in the province of Manitoba. The citizens of that province can have their say on who will be fighting on their behalf on Parliament Hill.

In the province of Saskatchewan, Premier Brad Wall has already indicated that he is drafting legislation and working hard to put forward Senate election legislation in the province of Saskatchewan so that the people of Saskatchewan can decide who their senators will be.

In British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell has indicated that he is interested in following this path as well.

We have a conceivable situation where the four western provinces of Canada, based on their democratic choice, will enter into a process to elect senators at the grassroots level so Canadians can have a direct say in which politicians are in Ottawa, spending their money, in scripting their freedom and advocating for public policy changes. It is important that Canadians have that democratic right. That is something our party has always advocated and it is something in which I have always believed.

The is all about that. It is about consultation with provinces and it is about incremental reforms.

My colleague from Timmins-James Bay also mentioned the former Liberal government, under the member for LaSalle—Émard when he was prime minister. He used to constantly say, when he was campaigning in western Canada, that he believed in Senate reform. He was not prepared to engage in sweeping constitutional reform and Senate reform. He was not prepared to have any kind of incremental reform. Outside of that, he was all in favour of Senate reform.

We recognize we have a minority Parliament. We think Canadians are prepared for this debate and are prepared to engage in it. I do not think we want to go down the road of engaging in constitutional discussions if it is not necessary. We think there can be incremental Senate reform in the country, and this is one of the mechanisms by which it can be done.

A couple of bills on Senate reform are being considered by the House. The other bill is to have Senate term limits, to limit the number of years somebody can serve in the Senate, from a maximum of 45 years down to 8 years. That is a reasonable reform and proposition. Also we have the bill before us, which provides for consultation.

I reiterate the point that abolishing the Senate requires a constitutional amendment. The New Democrat position is a very idealistic one, but it is a very unrealistic one. Without constitutional amendment, the Senate cannot be abolished.

There is a backdoor way of abolishing the Senate, which is do not appoint any senators, leave the vacancies sitting there. Over time, these vacancies will accumulate. There are a couple of problems associated with that. One is the Senate vacancies will not come up proportionately across the country. We may be a situation where one province is dramatically disadvantaged in the Senate by virtue of the number of vacancies relative to another province.

We are almost getting to that point in British Columbia. Three out of the six seats in the Senate are currently vacant. Half of our Senate delegation is not there. We hope those seats will be filled through a democratic process, ultimately by consultation.

The other problem with the backdoor way of abolishing the Senate, without constitutional reform, is we get into this dynamic where the smaller the Senate, the more power it has. We have seen this. We have seen the Senate exercise its power in a way that is not helpful to the democratic mandate provided to the House by the Canadian people. We have seen that in the past and we see it today.

We know the clichéd saying that the Senate is supposed to be the chamber of sober second thought. We have the example of Bill C-2, a comprehensive crime bill. It was one of the cornerstone issues on which Conservatives campaigned in the last election campaign. When I campaigned in my district in the suburbs of Vancouver, it was the dominant issue I pushed on the doorsteps. That was what I heard back from my constituents. As good politicians, we talk about the issues that are of concern to our constituents.

Criminal justice reform was probably the central issue of concern for my constituents. We campaigned hard on criminal justice reform matters. We were elected to Parliament on the basis of our criminal justice platform, and we put forward these bills twice, once in the individual forms, and we did not succeed. The House prorogued. We came back, we packaged them together in Bill C-2, a comprehensive tackling violent crime act, and we have pushed that legislation forward.

We had full debate in the House of Commons on the legislation in the original form. When it came in the form of Bill C-2, we had a full debate in the House. We had a full debate at committee. We considered amendments and accepted them. Then the bill finally passed, with the support of opposition parties. Now it is in the hands of the Senate.

The government was elected on the basis of a very specific platform of criminal justice reforms. We passed them in the House, with the support of the opposition parties, and they went to the Senate. Now the Liberal Senate members have proposed 59 witnesses on Bill C-2 to logjam bill at the Senate side. After more than two years of government, where we have compromised on the bill, we have worked together, we have worked across party lines, we have passed the bill, we want to see it become a reality. This kind of activity on the Senate side needs to be stopped.

Therefore, if there is abolition of the Senate through constitutional means, the Bloc will play its games. If there is abolition of the Senate through backdoor means, by restricting senators, a smaller number of people will be empowered to play more games like we have seen on Bill C-2.

The way to go ahead is to have incremental reform with reasonable measures. It is not unreasonable to say that senators should sit for a maximum of eight years rather than 45 years and have that responsibility of being a senator circumscribed to that amount of time. That is an entirely reasonable reform.

The second one we have proposed is to have the federal government sit down with the provinces and consult with them in the best way to allow the people to decide who should legislate on their behalf in Ottawa.

This is quite straightforward. I think if that proposition were put forward to Canadians, we would win this debate 95:5. This is why I hope the bill will see that kind of support in the House, with the support of opposition parties.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to heckle them when they speak and I would appreciate the same courtesy.

We decided to appoint an eminent Montrealer, who is well known in the city of Montreal, to our cabinet table and, at the same time, appoint him to the Senate on the condition that he present himself as a candidate in the next election campaign for this House. The Senate actually does have a question period. Three out of four seats in the Senate are occupied by Liberal members and opposition members and there is an opportunity there for accountability so we tried to combine the two best possible scenarios.

It was one of those dynamics where we were damned if we did and damned if we did not. If we appointed Minister Fortier to the position that he has right now, people would make the noises that we just heard from the opposition parties. If we did not appoint him, people would say that the Conservatives do not care about Montreal because they did not appointment somebody to cabinet from Montreal. It was a lose-lose proposition but we think we made the right decision and we have somebody who is doing a fantastic job on behalf of Montrealers at the cabinet table in the form of Michael Fortier.

I want to talk about this bill and why I do think this is a good step forward. My principal reason is that it allows for consultation. I disagree with my colleague from Timmins—James Bay in his description of the Senate and how it was founded on rotten first principles. He may make that argument about the House of Lords but it is not a transferrable argument to the current Canadian Senate.

The Senate, in its Canadian form, our upper house is designed in order to have the grievances of provinces represented in Ottawa. Yes, of course it can do a better job of that. My colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan just mentioned the issue of western alienation. If we take the number of seats in the House and the number of seats in the Senate, combine them together and divide them by the population of that province, by a wide margin my province of British Columbia is overwhelmingly the most dramatically underrepresented province in Ottawa on Parliament Hill. We need to do a better job of ensuring that Canadians have a fair voice in the House of Commons, which is why we put forward a bill to add more seats into the House of Commons, more seats for those provinces that are currently underrepresented, Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay on his speech. I do not think he used notes, which shows his capacity to think and speak on his feet, and he actually presented the NDP position on the Senate quite well. The NDP's first position is to abolish the Senate and its second position is to elect, if possible. Its final position is status quo.

My first and foremost option is to have Senate elections at the top of that list. My friend from the Bloc Québécois is heckling me here on the issue of Michael Fortier.

In the last election campaign, we did not happen to win seats in Canada's second largest city. We thought it would be appropriate to have somebody representing Canada's second largest city at the cabinet table so we appointed--