John McKay

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, the minister had great fun saying that various members of the opposition, particularly the member for Papineau, had submitted requests under this particular piece of legislation. It struck me, and I wondered whether it strikes the hon. member, that possibly there are so many members from both the opposition and the government side coming to the minister about specific issues due to the fact that this program is actually in such a mess that individual members have to intervene on behalf of constituents to straighten out the messes created by the minister in the first place.

That is question one.

Question two has to do with the fact that some financial institutions have been using this program in a way that no one, and I cannot even imagine the minister, would have contemplated; namely, using Canadians to train temporary foreign workers so that the Canadians, at the end of the training, no longer have jobs.

Now—

[The Budget, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, when confronted about Ontario's massive transfer payment deficit, the former minister of finance said it is just math. However, $11 billion is some math, and $9.5 billion infrastructure differential is some math.

The University of Toronto said, “The formula is rigged and dozens of political decisions consistently discriminate against Ontario”.

Will the new Minister of Finance from Ontario stand up for Ontario, dump the formula, and redo the math?

[Mental Health, April 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one in five Canadians is affected by some form of mental illness. That means that in this chamber, 60 or more members or families are directly impacted. My family would be included in that number. Our son's diagnosis and prognosis are not good.

We all fear stigmatization, yet the less we speak out, the less likely we are to see some solution in our lifetimes.

Today the Canadian Psychiatric Association is on the Hill to speak to parliamentarians about the importance of mental health. Psychiatrists are an integral part of Canada's health care system. However, many Canadians cannot easily access one, and the average wait time is 11 weeks.

I encourage my colleagues to meet with the psychiatrists today to discuss how the federal government can provide the strategy necessary to implement a mental health strategy and continue to combat the stigma associated with mental illness. If we deal with the stigma, maybe the solutions will follow.

[The Environment, April 9th, 2014]

How many years ago was that?

[The Environment, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, indeed the record of the government does speak for itself. On the Conservatives' own numbers and trend lines, they are at least 40 megatonnes behind where they need to be in order to meet their own targets.

The default position of the current government and particularly of this minister is “whenever in trouble, blame the Liberals”. I would just take note that the Liberals have not been in government for the last eight years, which has been a regrettable situation and contributes to the fact that we are in the mess that we are in, given the trend lines that are evident for anyone to read on greenhouse gases.

The other thing that I did not disaggregate was the inaction with respect to the oil and gas industry, and the fact that there are no negotiations going on and the fact that the Conservatives are budgeting for no negotiations.

[The Environment, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to be the order of the day that we speak extemporaneously, and I will do my best to do so.

I want to first express sympathy to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, who will have to leave his notes now and actually enter into debate. The debate is on the question I asked a few days ago, which has to do with two trends: the trend of greenhouse gases going up and the trend in the government's budgetary capacity to deal with greenhouse gases going down.

The government's own documents, which I will read from, shows that the trend line on greenhouse gases as of 2014 is on the way up. Most people focus on the fact that at the end of the trend line, the government is short by about 120-odd megatonnes of greenhouse gases in terms of its 2020 commitment, when it is supposed to have reduced it by 17%. If we apply it to 2014, the government is already 40 megatonnes behind the eight ball. Some may say that if the government were actually hitting the 2020 targets at this point, it would be 100 megatonnes behind the eight ball. For argument’s sake, let us just leave it as 40 megatonnes behind the eight ball.

The other trend is again taken from the government's own documents, and it has to do with budgetary planned spending. This is the implementation of the budget. In 2014–15, the planned spending of the government on the climate change and clean air file is about $254 million. In two years’ time—in other words, two years down that greenhouse gas megatonne line—the planned spending is $54 million. That is a $180-million reduction.

That is a $180-million reduction when the trend line on greenhouse gases is going up and the government's capacity to deal with those gases is going down. What does that actually mean? Eighty per cent of Environment Canada's budget is personnel. The effect of that is that this year, it will have 699 people dealing with it. In the other two years, it will have 338, less than half, and 361 full-time person years will be lost. That capacity will be lost.

We have two trends. The trend is that greenhouse gases are taking off, the government is 40 megatonnes behind, and, simultaneously, it is hobbling itself and destroying its capacity to actually address this very serious issue.

I will be interested to hear how the parliamentary secretary, without his speaking notes, responds to this particular issue.

[Business of the House, April 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as you know, Bill C-474 is the only vote that is up for tonight. It does seem like a misallocation of resources to call the members in for one vote. Therefore, as there has been discussions among the parties, I wonder if you would seek consent to the following motion. I move:

That the deferred recorded division at the second reading stage of Bill C-474, An Act respecting the promotion of financial transparency, improved accountability and long-term economic sustainability through the public reporting of payments made by mining, oil and gas corporations to foreign governments later today be further deferred to Wednesday, April 9, 2014, immediately before the time provided for Private Members' Business.

[The Environment, April 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as predicted by previous IPCC reports, Canada will continue to experience more and more extreme weather events, such as we have witnessed in Calgary, Toronto, and elsewhere. The government's response is to cut Environment Canada's budget by 30%, cut climate change adaptation programs by 77%, and cut infrastructure spending by 87%.

Can the minister, without looking at her cue cards, tell Canadians and the House why she is abandoning Canadians in their time of need?

[The Environment, March 31st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I took the liberty of notifying the minister that I would be asking a question on the IPCC report in order to relieve her of the burden of reading from her talking points.

In light of the decimation of her budget and the even greater decimation of the climate change file, how does the minister and the Government of Canada respond to the IPCC report? It says:

Human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems.

[Transparency of Payments Made by Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations to Foreign Governments Act, March 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to give a final summary of this debate. I want to thank all of my colleagues for participating in the two hours of debate. I am actually a little more enthusiastic about my colleagues on this side of the House than that side, but nevertheless I do appreciate their at least engaging.

I want to commend the member for Lac-Saint-Louis and the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek for speaking today. I do want to correct the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. I think he confused me, as the sponsor of the bill, with his esteemed colleague from Ottawa Centre, who has his own very worthwhile bill on the floor of the House.

As he and others have rightly said, this bill is modelled on the Cardin-Lugar amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill. It is about as similar a bill as one could make it given the differences in the jurisdiction, because I did not want to see an unnecessary regulatory burden imposed on Canadian companies that trade exclusively in Canada.

Ironically, Canadian companies that trade both in Canada and the U.S. will be forced to comply on September 1. They will be forced to tell the United States Securities and Exchange Commission what monies were paid, to whom they were paid, the currency they were paid in, and what project they were paid for, so that everyone in the world, including Canada, will find out what Canadian companies paid to secure those concessions, and yet the government continues to resist.

I had occasion to go over the arguments put forward by government members in the last hour of debate, which I found more amusing than anything else. Regrettably, it is not a laughing matter.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources has referred previously to “The new mandatory reporting regime announced by the Prime Minister...”. There is no mandatory reporting regime. There are no regulations. There is no law. There is an announcement. That is it. The only time a Canadian company would actually have to disclose the information in Bill C-474 would be when it files its return with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

The parliamentary secretary went on to say that “Canada already has a well-established financial recording system...”. There is no recording system. If there were a recording system, we would not have to go through this.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs recognizes international voluntary guidelines. It cannot be voluntary and mandatory at the same time. The industry is actually quite supportive of the voluntary guidelines.

The same parliamentary secretary then made reference to the CSR's extractive sector and Marketta Evans. She has been in place for, I think, either three or four years. She resigned last year. Her budget was around $1 million a year. She had precisely three cases, none of which were resolved. I do not know how that can be considered to be progress on this particular file.

This month, the former minister of natural resources, now the Minister of Finance, made a big announcement at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference, where he said that if they could not get their game together, particularly the provinces, the government would start the process of initiating legislation on April 1, 2015, more than a year from now. Any legislation he initiates will look a lot like Bill C-474.

As I said, it cannot be both voluntary and mandatory. There is no voluntary aspect. It is actually mandatory.

The government, by its announcement at PDAC, contradicts all of the representations made by the speakers from the Conservative side in the first hour.

This is very serious stuff. Mining companies are having real difficulties these days. It is extremely expensive. The meltdown in shares, particularly of one company in South America, because it did not follow disclosure requirements and did not take corporate and social responsibility seriously, has resulted in a massive multi-billion dollar write-down in its share value and the exit of the chairman of that corporation.

I wish not to be discouraged but I am. The Prime Minister is prepared to blow off the G8, President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, and Canadians. I regret to say that the industry is desirous of this kind of legislation and the only drag is the government itself.