Jean Crowder

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I read into the record earlier the fact that Transport Canada, under the infrastructure program, had lapsed $1.1 billion. What we know in this particular budget is that it is not dealing with the fact that there are infrastructure deficits from coast to coast to coast, whether they are bridges, drinking water, sewage treatment plans or roads.

I wonder if the member could comment on the fact that this omnibus budget bill simply does not deal with the realities that face Canadians.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. The member and I are both from British Columbia, and although they were not federally regulated industries, we saw a spike in deaths a few years back in the logging sector. There was some attention brought to bear, and through working with the workers, WorkSafeBC, and the employers, there were some changes made.

What we see here is a regressive step. What we should be doing with federally regulated employment is strengthening workplace safety to ensure that workers have the supports in place that ensure they can go to work and go home safely. It is also a benefit to employers. There are all kinds of things that happen in a workplace when there is an accident.

This is a very unfortunate move on the government's part. The government claims to stand up for working families, but it is hard to believe that statement when it does these things that do not protect the workers and do not protect the workplace.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. In fact, we are seeing an erosion of the trust of Canadian citizens in the process. As I mentioned, when 70 different pieces of legislation and regulations are jammed together into one omnibus bill, it does not allow adequate oversight.

If the government actually had confidence in the legislation it was proposing, it would propose stand-alone legislation and allow us the opportunity to bring witnesses forward, but it limits the time, limits the number of witnesses, and limits the ability to have oversight. It makes one wonder if it is actually afraid to hear criticism and afraid to have people turn their attention to the bill.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, of course I have met with municipal councillors and regional districts. It is a little different in British Columbia in that we have regional districts.

I spoke to them about infrastructure spending, and one concern that was raised, as I pointed out in this Global News article, is that the government announces the money, but it actually does not spend it. If it does not spend it, if it does not get the money out the door, it does not actually help the bridges, roads, waste water treatment plants, or water treatment plants.

If the government is going to announce infrastructure money, it should make sure there is an adequate process in place to submit proposals in a timely manner, adequately assess them in a timely manner, and then cut the cheques. That is what needs to happen. It is fine to announce the dollars, but they need to be spent.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the member's speech. It is as though we are living in a parallel universe. The people I have talked to are worried about the fact that funds for social housing are disappearing, that child and family poverty in parts of our country have not gone down, that people are working two and three jobs just to feed their children and that student loan debt is increasing. Municipalities have been calling on the government to invest in infrastructure, whether it is sewer, water or roads.

With respect to the environment, over the last couple of weeks we saw Canada being castigated on the world stage for its grim record on greenhouse gas emission reductions, plus any of the other initiatives we might be taking around prevention and mitigation. Our former leader, the late Jack Layton, used to say that we needed to talk about the fact that it was fine to fix the roof, but it did not do us any good if the foundation was crumbling. I would argue that the foundation in Canada is crumbling under the government's watch.

With regard to Bill C-4, the NDP is opposing it both on process and content. This is just like the three previous omnibus budget bills, C-38, C-45 and C-60.

Bill C-4 would amend 70 pieces of legislation. It contains two entirely new acts, the Mackenzie gas project impacts fund act and the public service labour relations and employment board. In talking about this, I want to refer to the process for one moment. It is our responsibility as parliamentarians to thoroughly review legislation that comes before us, to call witnesses and propose amendments. We are not able to do that in this current democratic deficit climate.

I want to quote a couple of people who have commented on the government process with regard to omnibus bills.

In iPolitics, former finance officials Scott Clark and Peter DeVries stated:

Budget vagueness is a troubling trend. Vagueness and obtuseness have featured in successive budgets, with details provided in the omnibus budget bills. The real budget has now become the budget omnibus bill. This undermines the credibility and transparency of the budget and requires much more diligence in assessing budget proposals.

Andrew Coyne stated:

Not only does this make a mockery of the confidence convention—shielding bills that would otherwise be defeatable within a money bill, which is not—it makes it impossible to know what Parliament really intended by any of it. We've no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch, only that they voted for the legislation that contained them. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet....But there is something quite alarming about Parliament being obliged to rubber-stamp the government's whole legislative agenda at one go.

I could not agree more with Mr. Coyne.

The challenge here is that time after time we have heard the government get up and say that the NDP has voted against X. What it does not say is that it was an omnibus budget bill that would change several different pieces of acts and regulations. Perhaps there were pieces of the legislation that we agreed with but also pieces we could not agree with. Therefore, we do a balancing act. We take a look at the overall public good, then we determine whether we will vote for or against. Unfortunately, with the way the government acts, we largely end up voting against its omnibus budget bills because we do not see them as being in the public good overall.

I want to highlight some of the changes proposed by this legislation. As I mentioned, it will amend or repeal 70 pieces of legislation in over 300 pages. It strips health and safety officers of their powers and puts nearly all of these powers into the hands of the minister. It significantly weakens the ability of employees to refuse work in unsafe conditions. It moves to eliminate binding arbitration as a method to resolve disputes in the public service. It guts Canada's most venerable scientific research institution, the National Research Council. It reduces the number of permanent members on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and repeals the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board. It pushes ahead with the Conservatives' ill-advised $350 million tax hike on labour-sponsored ventured capital funds and allows for three directors of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to be non-Canadian residents.

Many of the changes that proposed deserved separate legislation so we could have had that kind of thorough review. Instead, we have a bill that was rammed through and presented to three different committees in very limited time frames. Any amendments that were proposed by the official opposition or the opposition parties were rejected out of hand.

That is not good governance. That is what the Conservatives claim they stand for in this country: good governance, accountability, and transparency. None of those three are true.

I just want to touch on the Parliamentary Budget Officer for just one moment, another officer of Parliament who has been under attack by the government. He has been forced to go to court to try to get documents to demonstrate what kinds of savings are being proposed by the government.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the overall impact of budget 2012, fiscal update 2012, and budget 2013 would be a loss of 67,000 jobs by 2017 and a 0.57% reduction in GDP. This is a significant decline in economic growth.

That leads me to the smoke and mirrors games played by the Conservatives. An article from November 13, on Global News, indicated that the government had“sat on more than $10 billion in funds Parliament approved and Canadians were told they could expect in 2012-13 through a slew of programs in dozens of departments”.

The federal government held on to more than $10 billion it was expected to spend in 2012-13, with almost half coming from two departments, according to recently published financial documents. These were funds Parliament approved and Canadians were told they could expect...including the Senate Ethics Officer, disability and death compensation at Veterans Affairs, and weather and environmental services for Canadians at Environment Canada.

I want to touch on one particular part of this fund, and that is Transport Canada. I do not know where most members live and whether the municipalities where they live are suffering the kinds of infrastructure deficits many of our communities are suffering from. Many of our communities have aging infrastructure, and this is a deficit that is being passed on to future generations, because we have refused consistently over decades to provide the federal contribution to updating and upgrading the infrastructure.

Interestingly, Transport Canada, with Infrastructure Canada, had the most trouble spending its budget.

In 2012-13, that department was responsible for almost $1.6 billion of Transport's overall $2.5 billion lapse, according to the Public Accounts....

Within Infrastructure Canada, a large chunk of the lapse in 2012-13 came from the Building Canada Fund, an $8.8 billion project announced in 2007. The project was set up to support national, regional, and municipal projects related to public transit, green energy and drinking water, among other priorities.

Last year, the two components of the funds—the “major infrastructure” and “community” components—were together slated to spend more than $2.2 billion. Only $1.1 billion made it out the door.

That is shameful. If that is the way the government is going to move toward balancing the budget, it is balancing the budget on the backs of our communities.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer suggested, in a review of the supplementary estimates, that the government has been unable to spend approximately $10 billion of the budgetary authorities provided by Parliament over each of the past three years. As such,

Parliamentarians may wish to seek clarification regarding why this level of unspent money remains so high, what measures will be undertaken by departments and agencies to ensure that spending directed by Parliament occurs, and whether all of the $5.4 billion sought in these supplementary estimates is actually required.

That is just one example. I just want to close by saying that child poverty is not even being tackled in this budget. I want to point to the grim record in British Columbia, where child and family poverty has simply not been tackled. There is absolutely a federal government role in this, and I would actually encourage members in this House to support my Bill C-233, which proposes a poverty reduction plan. The federal government can take some leadership.

I have just a couple of numbers here. B.C. had a child poverty rate of 18.6%, the worst rate of any province in Canada using the before-tax, low-income cutoffs of Statistics Canada as the measure of poverty.

By any measure, I think each and every one of us in this House would agree that children should come first and that it is time for the government to actually demonstrate leadership by putting in place programs and services that support our families and our communities.

[Petitions, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition calls on the government to do something about the overcharging on gasoline in Canada.

The petitioners call for the implementation of meaningful protection for consumers of gasoline in Canada and to augment the existing inspection regime and that the government create an oil and gas ombudsman with power to monitor the oil and gas industry to ensure consumers are be protected.

[Petitions, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition calls on the House of Commons to support Bill C-257, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods).

[Petitions, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present.

The first petition is an act to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The petitioners remind the government that Cowichan River on Vancouver Island in recent years has experienced dangerously low water levels. This situation poses a significant health risk to salmon stocks.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon the House of Commons to support Motion No. 495 to reinsert the Cowichan River into the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, once again, the Conservative government has failed first nations, this time on emergency preparedness.

The Auditor General found that the department is stuck in a cycle of reacting to disasters and not doing enough to prevent and mitigate emergencies. Year after year, money set aside to respond to fires, floods and the lack of safe housing is not adequate.

When is the minister going to end this cycle of waiting for disasters to happen, and act to fix the problems that cause these emergencies?

[Violence Against Women and Girls, November 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Cowichan Valley is recognizing the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence” with its “Purple Light Night” campaign. It is a made-in-Cowichan response to the levels of violence against women and girls in our community. It invites people to hang strings of purple lights in their homes, business windows, and downtown trees to show support that gender violence has no place in our community.

Over 1,000 women access Cowichan Women Against Violence Society services each year. My community recognized it had to take concrete action to reduce violence. The City of Duncan established a designated domestic violence court in 2009, and it deals with around 300 cases each year. The North Cowichan RCMP established a domestic violence unit that same year. Recognizing that 90% of assaults are not reported to police, our local Cowichan District Hospital has a specialized response unit known as the sexual assault nurse examiner program.

We hope these actions get us closer to our goal. A community that is safe for women is a community that is safe for all.