Julie Dabrusin

[Persons with Disabilities, October 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, in September, Canada watched with excitement as our Paralympians made history with their performances in Rio.

Our high-level athletes are among the best in the world, but when they get home they still face accessibility challenges across the country.

Would the Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities share with the House some of her vision and what she hopes to achieve with Canada's accessibility legislation?

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his questions and comments.

What I am trying to do is to find a way for the House to become more efficient. Perhaps it is not about the number of questions. We can discuss that. However, I do not think that Canadians want to see the same questions being asked and the same answers being given for a half an hour.

Canadians want us to have a real discussion. I am open to other comments and ideas, but I would like to make our work more efficient.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend for all the nice things he said.

It is true, and the question comes as no surprise. Things get a little complicated if we give the Speaker the power to decide if it is exactly the same question or if it is the correct answer or the same answer.

Earlier, we talked a bit about how we will behave in the House. It is up to us to decide. We all know when we are repeating a question or an answer. We see that. Everyone knows when it happens.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it has been almost a year since I had the privilege to start participating in debate in this place. I recall fondly the day of my swearing-in last fall. I received a pin after I was sworn in, and I received a very large green book of over 1,000 pages of procedural rules. I have to say, like my friend for Laurentides—Labelle, I can be a bit of a geek too. I took that book home, I read and tabbed it, and I was very excited about participating in the debate.

We have had some very good moments here, but I see some spots where there can be some improvement, and I would like to discuss some of those.

Primarily I would like to talk about how we approach private members' bills, the order for private members' bills, and how we can improve debate in this place, and particularly on that point, how we can avoid some of the repetition that we have sometimes. When we look at private members' bills, we all come to this place because we are passionate about something. We want to make a difference in our community, or whatever issue we may have that motivates us and makes us want to be here to make a difference.

I was motivated by wanting to address income inequality, which I saw was growing in my community. I wanted to deal with public transit, which was crumbling in my community, and active transportation. I also wanted to deal with food policy issues that encourage that Canadians have access to healthy food.

I see that type of passion in the private members' bills that come forward here. We recently saw tabled a national cycling strategy. We voted last night on a community benefits bill. We made a change to the national anthem to make it gender neutral. These are the diverse issues that are presented by the many people here from different parts of this country.

Despite all this passion and excitement about these many issues, whether we actually have an opportunity to table and have debate on a private members' bill is governed by chance; it is by a lottery. Many of us in this place will not have an opportunity to see a private members' bill move forward to debate and to a vote. I think that we need to see some changes made to this lottery system.

The way it works right now is that we have first-time members of Parliament arriving here, and they could be tabling a private members' bill within only a few months of having been elected. This does not really give them the opportunity to reach out to their colleagues across the way to hear their ideas and perspectives. It does not give them an opportunity to adjust and learn how things work in this place, because it is a learning experience. Therefore, we are not setting people up for success. On the other hand, there is no guarantee for the people who have been here for multiple parliaments that they can ever have a private members' bill to reflect what they would like to present. There is no weighting given to that.

My suggestion is twofold. I think we should create more time for private members' bills in this place, and I also believe that we should change the way we weight the lottery.

I have heard considerable debate today about Fridays. What do we do with Friday? I have to say that I do not necessarily take issue with continuing sittings on Fridays, but I would like to see them be more efficient. I say this as a person who has a young family that I would like to get back to. However, truthfully, I do not know if family matters on this. We all have reasons to go home and be in our ridings, but for me, the hardest part is saying goodbye to my family every week. Therefore, I would not want to add more weeks of sittings.

I think there is value in taking those Fridays and finding a way that we can make more use of that time. I would suggest that we set aside Fridays for private members' bills. It would be a chance to have more opportunities for people to present their bills and to be heard. That would be my suggestion for Friday as a way to make them more efficient. However, if we are not able to create more opportunity and more time for the hearing of private members' bills, then I would suggest we change the weighting of the system for the lottery.

However, I had not thought of the suggestion of my friend for Laurentides—Labelle, but I think he has a good idea in that perhaps we make sure, after a Parliament rises and we go into the next Parliament, that the bills on the Order Paper do not die for the returning parliamentarians. That is definitely one good idea that might help with the waiting.

My own suggestion, and I have been thinking about it, is that there be a system for returning parliamentarians who did not have a private members' bill in the past Parliament, so that they would go to the front of the line. There would be a lottery for those, and then for the new members. I think that would help both the returning members and the new members. It would give new members more time to get adjusted to the system, and it would give returning members an opportunity to make sure they could be heard. Those would be my suggestions in respect of private members' bills. I would also like to see us perhaps looking at using Fridays, and changing the lottery system so that we could have a better system of waiting on the dates.

On improving debate, one of the most moving and genuine debates I have witnessed in this place was the one we had on the crisis in Attawapiskat. On that evening, I heard very genuine stories from members of all parties in House. There was an authenticity to that debate. When I was listening to people, most of it was devoid of partisanship. It was a real opportunity for us to learn from one another during that debate. I thought the questions we asked and the chance for us to learn from one another was very valuable. I would like to see more of that in our debates in this place. From time to time, we can sort of lose the thread. I would really like to see a return to that.

I worry that we are often subject to a fair bit of repetition in this place. Sometimes the same ideas are repeated, which does not necessarily give us much of a chance to learn about each other's ridings and where we are coming from.

I would use question period as one example of where there is quite a bit of repetition. There has been a lot of discussion today about how we can make question period more effective. I was keeping note during question period today, just to get an idea, and I noticed that members of the same party asked 10 questions on pretty much the same issue. Actually, there was another issue as well. The four questions that followed were on pretty much the same issue. It was not a case of different variations of the same question, but pretty much the same question was asked, all by the same party.

Obviously different parties may have the same question to ask, and that cannot be changed, but I wonder if there is not a way that we could restrict members of the same party from asking the same question, or largely the same question, more than, let us say, twice. We will be generous and say that twice is good, but that 10 times seems like a lot of times to hear the same question.

It is one thing for us to be here and to be part of that debate, but another when we think of public who are watching it. I am not sure that it increases their respect, as there are multiple other issues that could be raised. I would like to see us move away from the repetition that we sometimes see.

I would also say that with respect to the course of regular debate. It would be really nice. I truly enjoy hearing and learning from all the members who are here about what is important to their communities. It gives me an opportunity to reflect and go home to my own constituency and say, “We have this perspective, but while I was in Ottawa, I heard all these other perspectives that can open our eyes to how we have different impacts.”

I would like to move away from repetition and to see if there are ways we can move the debate to be closer to the kind of debate we had the evening that we debated the crisis in Attawapiskat.

I also like the suggestion of having a clock that we could watch, that would give us a rundown on the amount of time we have left. I think that would be helpful for a lot of us.

For today, my primary suggestions are about private members' bills, affording them more time, changing the wait times in the lottery, and seeing if we can avoid repetition in the course of our debate.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, October 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague for his comments about decorum. It is a very important issue that we need to look at.

I took particular interest in the fact that he raised the question of his daughter coming to watch the debate and how she would respond. We know that in this place, women only make up 26% of the members.

Does the member see the impact of gender on the lack of decorum sometimes in this place? Does he see how we can improve the way we work so we can encourage more young women to become members of this place?

[Health, October 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this summer I spent a lot of time talking to my constituents at farmers' markets and community activities all over my riding.

One of the concerns they raised most often was about how junk foods and sugary drinks are marketed to children. I believe Quebec already has a law to address this health issue.

Can the Minister of Health tell the House what her department is doing to stop this practice?

[Fight Against Food Waste Act, October 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Berthier—Maskinongé for raising two important issues in this place: food waste and food insecurity.

Food waste is an important issue when we consider its environmental impact, and food insecurity is something that must be dealt with because everyone needs access to healthy food to survive. I agree these are important issues to address, but the problem with the bill, and the reason I cannot support it, is that it draws a link between food waste and food insecurity. That is not the proper way to seek solutions.

There are two issues. First, there is the wrong date. I will start with the wrong date and then I would like to speak about the link.

As far as the date goes, the date that was chosen to create a national food waste day was October 16. October 16 is World Food Day. That is the day when people across the world have a chance to talk about food policy and to reach out to each other to try to find solutions. For example, Food Secure Canada will be having a conference in Toronto, spanning the weekend that includes World Food Day, where people can talk about the larger issues around food policy. Personally, I will be present at the Leslieville Farmers' Market, where I can talk with people in my community about food policy, sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, and the issues that are important to them on a broader basis. That is what we really need to talk about on World Food Day. Therefore, it would be a mistake to put national food waste day on this date.

There is also a larger problem with the bill. That is the fact that a link has been drawn between food waste and food insecurity. Food insecurity is due to poverty. It is not about the availability of food. I would like to read a quote from The Huffington Post, by Nick Saul, who addressed this issue. He is from Community Food Centres Canada. He said:

...let's not conflate a food waste strategy with a poverty reduction strategy. It's destructive to do so. Are we saying that the poor among us are only worthy of the castoffs of the industrial food system—the majority of which is unhealthy food, laden with fat, sugar, and salt, which increases the risk of diet-related illnesses? There's no question we can and must do better than this as a society.

I agree with that point fully. We can and must do better to address food security and poverty, which is the underlying problem we must deal with.

Some of the ways we can deal with the issue in a much more tangible way is, for example, with the Canada child benefit, which we passed and people started receiving in July. The Canada child benefit focuses on providing funds to families in greater need. That is one tangible way to address poverty in families with young children. Increases to the GIS, which also formed part of budget 2016, deal with seniors in poverty. That is another tangible way we can address the underlying issue of food insecurity. Finally, the investments that we are putting forward in affordable housing is another step in the right direction in dealing with poverty. That is because when we are talking about food security, too often people need to make a choice between having a roof over their heads or having healthy food on the table.

I am very happy we are starting this discussion about food waste and about food insecurity in this place, but I would propose that this is not the right solution and that we should be dealing with the underlying issues of poverty and talking about food policy as a whole.

[Canadian Women and Girls in Sport, September 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage is about to begin a study on Canadian women and girls in sport.

Helping girls get involved in sports is important to my community and to me personally.

In my riding, we have community organizers like Karen Decker, who started a girl's division to the Withrow Park Ball Hockey League. Her efforts have increased participation of girls in the league from 5% to 30% in just five years. Because of her encouragement, I have been proud to coach three teams to championship wins.

Another elite level sports leader in my riding is Paralympian rower, Victoria Nolan, who won bronze in Rio just this year.

I look forward to getting started on our work in committee to learn more and to encourage women and girls to get involved in sports.

[National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, September 27th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman pointed out that there was confusion, and I am confused, because I listened to his comments about checks and balances and the need for them. However, when I look back to the past decade, I see a history of private members' bills being brought by members of the Liberal Party to try to get this kind of parliamentary oversight, yet nothing was ever done. Today, I am sitting here and hearing that because we are taking action, this is somehow upsetting.

Perhaps the member can explain to me the history of why, over the past decade, no national oversight committee was put into place by the former government. Perhaps he can explain to me why he is upset now. Is it the fact that action is finally being taken to create this committee?

[Canadian Heritage, September 20th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, Tatiana Maslany won the Emmy for her role in the Canadian television series Orphan Black. The Minister of Canadian Heritage launched extensive consultations on the creation, discovery, and export of Canadian content in a digital world. This conversation will give Canadians the opportunity to think about ways to better promote the creative Canadian spirit.

Can the minister give us an update on the progress of these consultations and tell us how Canadians can participate?