Joe Preston

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, March 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the great and hard-working member for Huron—Bruce. His speech follows mine.

I would like to join my colleagues in voicing support for the implementation of the Canada-Honduras free trade agreement. On November 27, 2013, our Conservative government unveiled the global markets action plan. This strategy is part of our ongoing efforts to create jobs, growth, and prosperity for Canadians. The global market action plan will focus on 80 countries that have been identified as target markets for Canadian business. The plan aims to grow our exports, which are vital to Canada as a trading nation. For example, the plan foresees increasing the percentage of Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises that are active in emerging markets from 29% to 50% by 2018.

However, we will not focus only on traditional areas, such as exports. Canadian companies need to innovate to survive. Businesses that make science, innovation, and research and development a core part of their strategy are creating the kinds of skilled, well-paying jobs that we want here in Canada, so the plan will also work to stimulate new innovation partnerships.

Gaining preferential market access is also an important role of the government's strategy. We cannot afford to hold back while our competitors are securing important trade deals. We need to be sure that we can compete and that we can deliver on the expectations of Canada's exporters, investors, and service providers. They have made it clear that we need to help them open doors so that they can generate jobs and growth in their communities. This is precisely why bolstering Canada's commercial relationships in rapidly growing markets around the world, such as Honduras, is an important part of our long-term prosperity plan.

Our Conservative government is currently pursuing an ambitious trade and investment agenda. Last fall the Prime Minister announced that an agreement in principle had been reached with the European Union. Once the Canada-EU comprehensive economic and trade agreement is implemented, it will secure access to 28 diverse markets and more than 500 million consumers. There would be 500 million new customers for Canadian businesses. The agreement will cover virtually all aspects of our trade with Europe, such as goods and services, labour mobility, investment, and procurement, including sub-national procurement, to name just a few of the areas. Canada stands to benefit from access to the world's biggest market, with a $17 trillion GDP. This is a landmark achievement for Canada and Canadian companies.

While the agreement with the EU will bring important benefits for Canadian companies, it would be short-sighted to focus exclusively on one area of the world. In October 2012, Canada joined the negotiations for the multilateral trans-Pacific partnership, the TPP. This group includes 12 Asia-Pacific countries, and when we look at all of the current TPP countries together, we see they represent over 39% of the world's economy, with a combined GDP of $28.1 trillion. It is absolutely critical that we take advantage of this chance to favourably position Canadian companies in the Asia-Pacific market.

Looking beyond the TPP, talks are also well under way with Japan and Korea.

I would also like to highlight our Conservative government's most recent international trade announcement, the launch of modernization and expansion negotiations with Israel. During his first official visit to the region, the Prime Minister confirmed that we will modernize existing chapters in the Canada-Israel free trade agreement in the areas of market access for goods, rules of origin, institutional provisions, and dispute settlements. In addition to updating key areas, Canada will also seek to negotiate new chapters in the areas of trade facilitation, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, intellectual property, electronic commerce, labour, and environment. This undertaking will enhance the bilateral commercial flows by reducing technical barriers, enhancing co-operation, increasing transparency in regulatory matters, and reducing the transaction costs for businesses.

The updated Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement is yet another aspect of our broad international trade agenda. Modernization of free trade agreements, like the one we are undertaking with Israel, are about keeping Canadian companies competitive.

The issue of competitiveness is also at the heart of why we need to implement our free trade agreement with Honduras. The U.S. and EU already have free trade agreements with Honduras. How can we give our companies an edge if we cannot ensure they are getting comparable treatment? Keeping pace with Canada's main competitors is just one reason that we need to move forward with this deal.

There are other benefits to the free trade agreement as well, which I would like to reiterate. First, the agreement would help Canadian producers and exporters by eliminating tariffs. That is what free trade does. This will help a variety of Canadian companies and sectors, such as chemical products, wood, pulp, pulp and paper products, vehicles, auto parts, as well as fish and seafood. It will also be advantageous to Canadian agriculture producers in areas such as beef, pork, and processed potato products. Canada's service providers would enjoy enhanced commitments in sectors of export interest to Canada, such as natural resources, professional services, information and communication technologies.

Moreover, Canadian investors would be protected by the agreement's legally binding obligations to ensure they will be treated in a non-discriminatory manner and have the ability to access transparent, impartial, and binding dispute settlements.

As part of Canada's 21st century approach to trade agreements, Canada has also included language on corporate social responsibility, as we heard from my colleague earlier in this free trade agreement. This acknowledges Canada's expectations that our companies observe internationally recognized standards of responsible business conduct, both at home and abroad.

Our commitment to supporting good corporate governance does not end there. Along with the free trade agreement, we are also ratifying parallel agreements between Canada and Honduras on labour co-operation and environmental co-operation. This is part of our commitment to make sure that labour and environmental practices do not suffer at the hands of increased trade.

With such a comprehensive approach to free trade agreement negotiations, it is no surprise that the resulting Canada-Honduras free trade agreement is a high-quality agreement. Its benefits, and those of the government's and other international trade initiatives, should be clear to all hon. members. That is why I am urging that this House adopt this agreement.

[Committees of the House, February 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, if the House gives it consent, I move that the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs presented to the House earlier today be concurred in.

[Committees of the House, February 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Orders 104 and 114 I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding membership of committees of the House. If the House gives its consent, I intend to move concurrence in the eighth report later this day.

[Business of Supply, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, currently at committee we are not getting to the point of this piece of legislation. We have a motion before the committee, which is almost exactly the same as the motion we are debating today that says exactly what the committee must do, and that is to lay it out, do not let the committee decide, but just do what today's motion says. I have been chair of a committee in this place for a long time. I have never seen committee work done this way before. I have certainly not seen it done here in the House.

Could the parliamentary secretary tell me if we have had difficulty in committee before with respect to picking witnesses or planning our studies or the way to move forward? Would it not be better to be talking about that?

[Committees of the House, February 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The committee advises that pursuant to Standing Order 91.1(2) the Subcommittee on Private Members' Business met to consider items added to the order of precedence as a result of the replenishment of Wednesday, January 29, 2014, and recommended that the items listed herein, which it has determined should not be designated non-votable, be considered by the House.

[The Economy, February 11th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we learned that the vast majority of high school students, 81%, agree with our government's plan to reduce the federal debt. We know that the Liberal leader has a lot to learn from these students. Despite a leader who has no plan for the economy, the Liberal Party continues to criticize our government's efforts to balance the budget.

Can the parliamentary secretary for finance please tell the House what Canadians are saying about our efforts to balance the budget?

[Fair Elections Act, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question and the kind words that I think he said about me.

The real answer is that this piece of legislation moves the covering of robocalls, of using telephone devices in an election campaign, to the people who do that best. As a business person and a politician, I look to the experts in the field. In this case, we have gone to the experts in the field who have said that the CRTC is the right place to be monitoring people who are using telephone communications.

We have it right. We have the experts on the job. They have already found them. They were able to by monitoring the use of telephone communications in both election and non-election times. I believe a member of this House, from Guelph, was even found guilty by them for what he did during the last campaign.

[Fair Elections Act, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will share with the member opposite that we will agree to disagree, if that is the case.

The civic right is a civic duty. It is the duty of voters to know where they need to vote and when they need to vote. It is the duty of the political parties to convince people who they should vote for and that it is time to do it.

The cynicism comes when the rules are weakened or are used in a way that is arguably incorrect. We set the rules in place so that people know what to expect when they go to vote, what they need to have with them when they approach the voting station, and what to expect when they get to the voting station. That is how we remove the cynicism.

[Fair Elections Act, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to stand today to speak to Bill C-23. I am going to go back in history a little and talk about my background.

I had parents who were good enough to speak at the dining room table about things like elections, so my six brothers and sisters and I learned about elections that way. We learned from them the importance and duty of Canadians to go vote when it was time to vote. Sometimes we talked about the issues, even before we were old enough to know some of them. I had that ability in my past life. Then I became a small business person who had a very busy life. Twenty-four hours a day 7 days a week I worried about a business I had to run. However, I am proud to say I do not remember ever missing an election: municipal, provincial, or federal, because my parents had instilled in me the duty of Canadians to vote.

Long before politics I never thought about the actual running of elections. I never thought about the rules that are there to make sure Canadians vote fairly and accurately. I did not think of them, but I certainly went to polling booths, gave them my name, showed my ID, received a ballot, and made my choice based on the work that the parties or the candidates had done during an election.

Fast forward now through a whole pile of life to 10 years ago when I decided I would become a candidate. I became a little more interested in what was happening with elections: how elections were run, what Elections Canada did, who made sure people got to the polling stations, who generated the lists, and who made the rules as to what days we could or could not vote. I still ran into some of my peers, small business owners and other very busy people, who would have loved to have more time, who wanted to exercise their duty as Canadians to vote, but sometimes the hockey practice or a scout meeting got in the way. We know how that is: life gets busy and that happens.

Move forward now into this Parliament. I have been here almost 10 years. Now, as the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee for a good number of years, five I think, I have been dealing with Elections Canada during that time. I now know more about elections and Elections Canada than I care to know. After each election, the Chief Electoral Officer writes a report and sends it back to Parliament. The procedure and House affairs committee gets to review it and from that comes up with elections legislation. The Chief Electoral Officer is one of the people from whom we get most of our ideas for changes to the legislation. We certainly have had many discussions at committee.

It is a fun committee. I see some of the members here in the House today. We tend to get a lot done, but elections are one of the things we are responsible for. We tend to work on a good, consensus basis without a great deal of argument. We have had many witnesses over those times looking at the Chief Electoral Officer's report and other pieces in our discussions about elections. We have had many briefs come to us from those witnesses. This is where this piece of legislation has come from. It has come from answering those questions.

I am going to say something from a business point of view. First, if I am trying to attract more customers, as a business person I need to first find out why customers are not coming to my business and where else they are going. We have done the same thing with elections. If people are not going out to vote, let us find out why and then we will know where to go to find those people.

As the speaker before me said, why a person votes, why they are making that urgent visit to the voting booth, has to do with the parties. It has to do with the candidates. However, the who, what, when, and where the polling station is, what time it is open, and how many of them there are is set by Elections Canada. Most non-voters told Elections Canada in a survey that practical reasons were what prevented them from voting in 2011. Travelling was cited by 17%, as they were away from home. Work or school scheduling accounted for 13%. Also, being too busy was cited by 10%, and lack of information was mentioned by 7%. That is just to name a few.

Over the past several elections there has been a steady rise in the proportion of electors identifying everyday life issues as the main reason for not voting, and a steady decline for political reasons. That is according to Elections Canada, the “Report on the Evaluations of the 41st General Election of May 2, 2011” by the Chief Electoral Officer, which we have discussed thoroughly at committee.

Better customer service will remove some of these practical issues, some of the reasons like, “I can't make it because it's the middle of hockey practice, it's the middle of my business meeting and I had to stay at work”.

We are offering more voting days. During the 2011 general election, more than two million Canadians cast their ballot on an advance poll day. Two million Canadians took into account the fact they were not going to be able to be there for voting day and went to an advance poll. We are adding an extra advance poll on the seventh day. So the tenth, the ninth, the eighth, and the seventh days before election day will now all be advance poll days, the seventh being a Sunday.

My pastor knows where I should be on Sundays but he also knew that I operated a business seven days a week and that sometimes I was not always able to be there, which also opens up the opportunity that afternoon of my going to an advance poll. That in itself offers something to the percentage of people that I said, from a customer service point of view, were not able to find a day to vote.

Let us go from attracting those customers to the poll to the point of view of my being a business person trying to attract more people to our business. In that case, the other step I would take is to tell them where I was. I would tell them what time my business was open. I would tell them when I was available to give them the service they were looking for. That is all we are asking of the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada, to please tell people where and when they can vote. Please tell Canadians how many days are available to vote and that, by special ballot, it is almost the whole 35 days of an election. There will now be five advance polls days plus a full day of election day voting at each of the other polls.

This is a tough business to run with 308 ridings across this country, soon to be 338, and about 200 polling stations in each of those ridings. Imagine turning that on and off from an Elections Canada point of view. I admire its ability to turn that type of service on and off and the way it is done, but let us use our time to tell the people of Canada when and where they can vote. Let us as politicians, as members of parties or not, give the reasons why people want to go to the polls. It is up to Elections Canada to tell them when and where. It is up to us to get them there and tell them why.

I will recap quickly. It is about customer service. There are many other parts of the bill that I know, when it gets to committee, the committee will be happy to deal with and talk about. We will have a great discussion. We will certainly see lots of lots of witnesses. In summary, I just wanted to talk about the customer service side of an election and the customer service side of Elections Canada.

[Petitions, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from 25 friends and neighbours from St. Thomas and the area on Canada's voting system.