Keith Martin

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, November 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member and all of our colleagues across party lines on being elected. It is a huge honour for all of us and I look forward to working with everybody. I want to congratulate everybody on their great victory in being able to represent their constituents.

There are a couple of things.

First, the national medical manpower strategy ought to be implemented by working with our provinces. The Minister of Health should work with her colleagues across the country to implement a national workforce strategy.

Second, the head start program is the most effective way of preventing an array of social problems. It keeps kids at school longer, reduces youth crime by 60% and saves the taxpayer $7 for every dollar invested.

By looking at the European models of mixed systems of public and private, and we already have that in our country, we can utilize the best of both worlds to strengthen our public system and enable us to have better outcomes at a lower cost.

As time passes, the amount of money that is being spent on health care is growing and consuming vast amounts of the public purse, so much so that health care is being rationed in our country and being withheld from the public in order to save money. That cannot continue. Who pays the price? The poor and the middle class. They are the most vulnerable in our society.

Last, on the issue of poverty, so many members of our society do not have enough money for their basic needs. We had an excellent solution in our green shift to shift some moneys to those who were least privileged in our society. The government should take that on as one of the most important tasks at hand.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, November 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, one of the greatest honours any of us could have is to be chosen by our fellow citizens to represent them in this wonderful and august House. I would like to thank the constituents of my riding of Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca, the most beautiful riding in Canada, for enabling me to serve them for a sixth term and to be their voice here in Parliament to fight for their needs.

I also want to give a very big thank you to all of the volunteers. Clearly, with a win by 68 votes, this would not have been done without their hard work. This is a victory by them and for them and I thank them very much for this, especially my two campaign managers, Harry Kuiack and Lynne Henderson. They worked tirelessly, along with all of the volunteers on my team.

The Speech from the Throne was reasonable in its content but it lacked vision and specifics on the big issues of the day.

All of us here are citizens of our great country, but our citizenship implies a responsibility, a responsibility to ourselves, to our citizens and to our country. It also implies a responsibility on the part of the government of the day to our citizens, and as elected members we have a responsibility to our fellow countrymen and countrywomen.

A series of solutions should have been enshrined in the Speech from the Throne to deal with the most pressing and persistent issues that affect our citizens on the ground, and in that, the throne speech was lacking. I am going to outline some of the things the government should do. If the Prime Minister is truly being honest in his desire to work in a bipartisan fashion, then I know he will find across party lines the willingness to do this in the interests of the common good of our great country.

We have heard much about the economic challenges. This will entail a number of solutions. Timely, temporary and targeted fiscal stimuli may be necessary. The Bank of Canada rate is at about 2.25%, which is low. We could also use a number of integrated responses here. We could have an integrated parliamentary committee to deal with international trade, revenue and finance, to work together on the solutions that are required.

We could also bring together our best and brightest minds to put together the science and policy making, rooted in good research, which should drive the policies our country requires to deal with the challenges ahead. One of the heartbreaking things that I have noticed in this House over the last six terms is the inability to connect the best and brightest minds in our country with the challenges at hand. Too often the battle that goes on here has to do with trying to embarrass the other side, rather than trying to find the best solutions. Rather than a battle over ideas, people try to make the most egregious comments against each other.

There is something that is missing internationally. International tools are required to have a common securities regulator, for each country to have common objectives and common guidelines, in terms of how we deal with investments. The recapitalization of banks is critically important. It is essential that the countries of the world come together to ameliorate the contagion that is running through the financial markets in order to limit the damage but also to prevent this from happening in the future.

We saw a Ponzi scheme wreak havoc with the international financial markets, but most important, destroy the financial savings of citizens around the globe and cause the unemployment rates to increase. This is having a devastating effect on people's lives. At the end of the day, that is what it is all about.

The Speech from the Throne missed many other areas.

The number one sleeper issue that is not being dealt with is our aging population. Years ago people could expect to live to about 57 or 58 years. Now men can expect to live to the age of 79 and women can expect to live to the age of 82. There will be a huge impact upon our society, especially on the expenditures that will have to come out of government revenues. We have to deal with this by providing solutions now.

People could be encouraged to work longer if they were able to extract their CPP, perhaps tax free. We have to expand our workforce in a way that is responsible and give people the choice to continue working if they wish to. Today, 65 years of age is the new 40. I can say that at my age very easily.

Access to education is important. Education is key to ensuring that we have a productive economy. Shockingly, access to education in our country is dependent upon the amount of money one has in one's pocket. We live in a country where we should never have to say to those who are qualified and want to get a post-secondary education that they cannot because they do not have enough money in their pockets. In the last election the Liberal Party put forth a very comprehensive series of solutions to enable our citizens access to education without hurting financially as a result.

As I said before, we have to connect some of our excellent research groups, such as Genome B.C. and the Public Health Agency of Canada, which do phenomenal research, and innovative groups such as the MaRS Centre at the University of Toronto which links up research and the utilization of that research to market.

The big issue that was not dealt with in the election campaign, much to our chagrin and to the chagrin of the Canadian public, was health care. In Canada today it is a toss-up for those who get sick as to whether or not they will get timely access to quality health care. Why on earth are we wedded to a piece of paper? Why are we not wedded to the fundamental principle of enabling our citizens, when they get sick, access to timely, quality health care when they need it, without hurting financially as a result? That is what we should be fighting for.

The old shibboleth that we have a choice merely between the Canadian system and the American system is nonsense. What about the systems that exist in the European countries, in Germany, France, Norway, and Sweden? They have better outcomes and healthier populations at a lower cost. Why is that? We do not have to study this any more, but we need to work with the provinces, the managers of health care, to enable them to implement those solutions that will enable our citizens to get the care they need when they are most vulnerable.

We are all getting older, and so too is our medical workforce population. They are getting older. They are getting burnt out, and they are leaving the profession, which means there is a smaller number of medical professionals who are able to carry on the work. We put more pressure on them, and therefore, more of them burn out. There is a crisis in our medical workforce. We need a national medical workforce strategy. We need to work with the provinces and the professional faculties to deal with this crisis, not tomorrow, but now.

The public service has been maligned and ignored by the Conservative government. No longer can that continue. If the Prime Minister really wants to work in a bipartisan fashion, he needs to listen to MPs from all parties. No longer can it be a government run by the Prime Minister’s office. A small number of people, largely unelected, cannot continue to make the decisions in our nation. The problems are too large and too complicated. There are many people with many good ideas who must be heard in order to work for the common good. The public service cannot have a situation where those of us in the opposition require somebody from a minister’s office to listen in as a spy during meetings with them. That is absolutely ridiculous.

On the international aspect, the world needs more Canada. We are in a unique position to deal with the global challenges that face us. We are part of a global society. We must work in our own self-interest, but our self-interest is tied to the interests of our fellow citizens around the globe. As the saying goes, we only have one race, the human race. The Prime Minister said that he wants to double aid to Africa. Make no mistake, that aid should be for development and should be measured in outcomes. We should focus on the millennium development goals and not simply focus on a number but on the outcomes we are having in the international field. We are at the nadir with respect to our international diplomacy. We need to deal with that.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I thank the constituents of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. Together we can work for the common good and for all of us, that is our task at hand.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, November 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her excellent speech. I know that coming from Toronto she has a deep interest in social issues and I want to ask her about an issue that is very pressing on the minds of many of our citizens, and that is the issue of access to child care.

The absence of child care is an enormous problem for families across our country. Today is the international day for the year of the child. One of the most effective programs that can be adopted for children which can prevent an array of social problems, from youth crime to keeping kids in school longer, is the ability for us to have access to a head start early learning program.

Does my colleague think the government should work with us in a bipartisan fashion to implement a national early learning daycare head start program for children so that the children of our country can have the basic needs they must have in order to develop and be nurtured in a loving, caring environment?

[Committees of the House, June 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, briefly, this is about gender equality, so presumably it is about both genders, men and women.

Would the hon. member and her party support the implementation of the solutions in the Cools-Galloway report, which would go a long way to implementing fairness in the way that non-custodial parents are treated by our courts, which is in an appalling way?

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that is an intriguing question. As a basic principle of what my colleague gave, we do not want to be in a situation where we impede high quality candidates from being able to run for public office.

I am a big fan for merit and I think people who come here are chosen by the public on the basis of merit, not on any particular personal characteristic they have outside of that. The best person in terms of the qualities of intelligence, compassion and skills that they possess should be able to come to this House.

However, what should not be a restriction is the amount of money that one has in one's pocket. One of the things all of us are very proud of is the fact that in our country someone from any socio-economic background can run for public office. That is not the case south of the border where, generally speaking, one needs to be rich to run in an election in the United States. In Canada, thankfully, which is something I am so proud of as a Canadian, someone from any walk of life can run, become elected and even become prime minister and it is not based on the amount of money one has in one's pocket.

If the government, as an outcome of this bill, restricts the ability of those with modest means to run, then we cannot allow that to happen. Every Canadian, regardless of the amount of money they have, should be able to run for public office in our great nation.

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I could not improve upon the comments of my colleague. He is truly an expert in this and I bow to his--

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that we already have a situation where deep pockets cannot affect legislation. We have a situation where deep pockets cannot affect and control those who run and are successful in achieving public office. That is the principle of the matter that I think most fair-minded Canadians would adhere to.

Therefore, what the government is doing has nothing to do with trying to prevent deep pockets from affecting electoral success or government legislation down the line because the ultimate intent of providing those kinds of funds would be to have control over the person or persons who are elected.

The fact is that this is a picayune document that is intended to go after or imperil and penalize those in my party who have chosen, bravely, to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. That is what this is all about. Anybody who can see this bill for what it is would know very clearly that it is nothing more than a callous and cynical political exercise that has nothing to do with true accountability or the removal of any kind of influence peddling on government legislation.

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, we know that Bill C-29 is certainly aimed at dealing with how campaigns are financed and the borrowing of money. I would like to talk about that in the final moments of my speech.

All of us know very well and support the notion of ensuring that we have a situation where big money and deep pockets cannot affect public legislation and the production of legislation that we have in our country. It is something that all of us support.

In fact, we are thankful that in our country, unlike our friends south of the border and many of our citizens are aware of this, we do have limits on what we can actually spend in terms of an election, determined by the size of our ridings and the number of constituents that we have. We also have limits on what we can actually receive and what people can donate.

The problem is that the government has gone so far to one side on this particular issue that it is actually impeding the ability of ordinary citizens to donate moneys in a democratic environment and to provide financial resources that are required for people to run for public office.

That is not healthy in a democracy. Individual citizens must have the ability to fund, in a reasonable way, people who have chosen to put their lives on the line to run for public office. Unfortunately, what has happened with respect to the government and this bill, and previous bills attached to it, is that the restrictions that have been placed have nothing really to do at all with the ability of trying to remove any kind of influence with respect to money and the development of legislation.

I have been in this House almost 15 years and I have yet to see one case in this House of anybody from any political party somehow profiteering from being in this House and using moneys that they have received to change or affect legislation in the public interest. I have never seen that, and I would venture to say that nobody else in the House here has ever seen it either.

The reason for that is that we already have good checks and balances. We already have, thankfully, good restrictions on the connection between campaign finances and the ability of individuals who are running for office to receive those moneys, and I hope that continues.

In closing, I can only warn and implore the government that if it goes too far in this way, it is doing nothing that deals with public accountability. It is actually restricting a fundamental right of individuals to fund people who are running for public office and restricting the ability of individuals who want to run for public office to do so.

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. The relation between what I am talking about and the ties to accountability really does relate to this bill which is about loans, financing and accountability.

The reason why I am bringing this up is because it is quite heartbreaking, and I lamented that fact in the government's introduction of what it claimed was accountability, which is in the bill, that the accountability really does not have anything to do with true accountability.

I am trying to explain where that comes from going backward in time and backward to the origins and roots of why we are seeing the government not put bills forward with true accountability. Instead, it is putting bills forward that actually restrict and impede the ability of members in the House and the public service to work.

I want to get back to that principle and tie it in with my hon. friend, something that I know affects him and affects all of us. It is the issue of how these changes that the government has been implementing affect the public service. All of us are very privileged to work with public servants. They are some of the finest public servants found in the world. They are honourable, decent, honest, hard-working, and intelligent individuals. Members across all parties would agree that it has been a pure pleasure and a joy to work with them. We admire them for the work that they do, much of it completely unheralded.

Unfortunately, the government is actually undermining the public service, marginalizing it and not listening to it. We cannot have a strong democracy without a strong public service. Internationally, when we are dealing with developing countries, we say that one of the things that a developing country has to achieve is a strong public service. We try to help out. We could do more. But in our own House, we are actually undermining our public service and I will give a couple of examples.

A previous Liberal prime minister introduced the office of the science adviser to the Prime Minister's Office. This was a wise move because all of us here have, in some form, been involved in science, and many of my colleagues have some excellent ideas of the work in this area. We lament the fact that the government not only let go the science adviser, Dr. Arthur Carty, one of the finest scientists in our country, but also removed the entire office of the science adviser to the prime minister.

This is in a place where science and research should have a much greater play in driving public policy. If we get the science and the facts right, they enable us to connect science and facts with some of the best researchers that we have here in Canada and around the world. If we connect that to the creation and building of strong public policy, then what we have is the strongest public policy that we could possibly have in our nation for the best interests of our citizens.

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill, which deals with loans, financing and accountability.

To begin, it is important for us to go back to first principles and to look at what accountability is.

Early in its mandate, the Conservative government introduced the so-called Federal Accountability Act, but the bill had very little to do with true accountability. During our speeches I and my colleagues asked government members to define accountability in a general context. Nobody from the government could actually give a definition of what accountability is.

I will paraphrase an expert on this in Canada, Henry McCandless. Mr. McCandless was an assistant deputy minister in the Officer of the Auditor General. He is a very learned person. He wrote a seminal work on public accountability. Mr. McCandless would say that public accountability is the obligation on the part of elected officials, senior public office holders and senior public servants to explain what they are doing, why they are doing it, what it will cost, who will benefit and who will pay.

It would be sensible if the government were to put forth an accountability act that enshrined those principles for all public office holders. If we were to enshrine a true public accountability act, which could be fairly simple, the onus and the line of responsibility from those of us who are elected to those who are unelected members of the public service could be well defined. Most important, the public, the people who pay our salaries and fund this House, the taxpayers, are the individuals who would know very clearly what they could expect from all of us. It would be a liberating thing on the part of the government to introduce a bill such as that.

In defining accountability in this way, we could tell the public exactly what we were doing, why we were doing it, when we were doing it, who would pay for it and what it would cost. Members of the public, the taxpayers, could see when we did or did not do something. The line of responsibility and accountability would be there for all to see. What we were doing would be there for all to see. There would be nothing opaque about it. This is what should have happened with the Federal Accountability Act.

Rather than liberating the House, elected officials and the public service, the new Federal Accountability Act, which has nothing to do with public accountability, has added layer upon layer of responsibility and reporting. It has introduced levels of administration into the system of how the federal government works to such an extent that it is restricting the ability of the public service and the House and its members to work properly.

Why would anybody do this, some would ask. It could be a couple of things. One would be a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding of what public accountability is. I would say that would be a less likely excuse. Rather, it is an effort to try to undermine the ability to have a strong central government in Canada.

This falls into a larger objective of the Prime Minister, who is a follower of Leo Strauss, an American political philosopher from the early 1900s. Many Canadians will not know that the Prime Minister is a follower of Professor Strauss in terms of his ideology and philosophy. It is the same ideology and philosophy followed by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, as well as the former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

It is important for people to understand that. In understanding what Professor Strauss was articulating is to understand what the Prime Minister is trying to do. It is to understand why we are not seeing the accountability that we ought to see. Instead we are seeing a truncating, restriction and weakening of the federal government.

Professor Strauss believed that the best form of governance is when a very small number of people are predestined and to lead. Professor Strauss believed that was the best form of government and that small group of people could then tell everybody beneath them what to do, what to say and when to say it. Does that sound familiar? It is happening today in the Conservative government. It is a tragedy for all members, but most important, it is a tragedy for Canadian citizens.

However, I feel very sad for the members across the way who cannot do what they need to do to represent their constituents. They are told by the Prime Minister's Office, the half a dozen or so people around the Prime Minister who direct what is happening in the Government of Canada. They tell cabinet ministers what to do and what to say. They tell backbench MPs what to do, what to say and when to say it. As a result, the ability of individual MPs in the government to articulate what their constituents want is severely restricted.

This is very interesting because it flies in the face of the roots of the Conservative Party, which is the Reform Party. The Reform Party believed in something that was very different. It believed in the power of democracy. It believed in the power of the people. It believed that we could generate the best ideas from our populace and, as elected officials, bring those ideas to the floor of the House and represent the will of the people, the ideas of the people, for the betterment of our citizens. That is what the Reform Party stood for. Yet, what we have seen is a metamorphosis, a 180-degree change.

People do not wonder why our current Prime Minister left during his first term in office. He left because his views were diametrically opposed to that of the then leader, Preston Manning, who believed, as a populist, that the power of the people should be brought to the floor of the House.

When our current Prime Minister was elected, he, true to form, did what he said he was going to do. So, in a way, I guess, democracy exercised itself. But I think that many of our citizens do not really understand that. They do not really understand that the current view of our current Prime Minister is diametrically opposed to what the roots of the Reform Party were, which was to have and build our country from the grassroots, from our people, that the power of the people, the wisdom of the people, could be exercised in this House. That is a far cry from what we are seeing today.

In fact, Professor Ned Franks and Professor Donald Savoie, the chair of governance in Canada, have made some very strong statements. They have said that MPs are nobodies on the Hill. That is a play on the term that then Prime Minister Trudeau said years ago, that MPs were nobodies 50-feet off the Hill.

Now, Professor Franks and Professor Savoie have both said that the power of the individual MP, within the context of this House, has so been undermined by the central form of government, the Straussian philosophy, that it has completely changed the complexion of what we believe is a democracy in our country. We have a nominal democracy, and that is really a shame, because what the Prime Minister should be doing is enabling his members of Parliament to bring the best ideas to the floor of this House so that they can represent their constituents.

Disagreement in this House cannot be looked on as some form of weakness on the part of a leader, or on the part of a prime minister, or on the part of anybody in this House. Rather, differences of opinion merely reflect the differences of opinion that we have in our country. Our country is not a homogenous state. Our people are not homogenous. We have a heterogeneous populace with a wide array of ideas that should and ought to be brought to this House.

All of us understand, of course, the importance of a prime minister being able to say to the public, “These are the things that I want to do; these are the things that my party stands for; and these are the things we are going to do”.

It is all well and true to have those as confidence motions. That is fine. But beyond those things that are true confidence motions, they are a very small bundle of policy ideas. Beyond that, members of Parliament should be able to express the wishes and the desires of their citizens in this House, even if it means being different from what the majority of their own party wants. There is nothing wrong with that.

In fact, many of the great ideas that we have seen in the world actually met with significant and sometimes violent resistance when they were put forward. Those have come to pass with time and history to be seen as wise ideas, but at the time that they were initially put forward, people sometimes opposed them strongly, or sometimes violently.

We have an opportunity, and certainly the Prime Minister has an opportunity, to change that. He has an opportunity to liberate our House, to liberate the members in his own caucus, to bring the best ideas to the forefront of our nation, and apply them for the betterment of our citizens.

What we are seeing now in this House bears little resemblance to the needs of the Canadian public. Most of us, and certainly all of us in my caucus, have many ideas as all party members do, but we are trying desperately in my party to bring those ideas to the forefront, to work with the government and offer those solutions that are not only important for our constituents in opposition but, I dare to say, they are important also to the constituents of members across the way.

No party has a hammerlock on good or bad ideas and there are fine ideas on all sides of this House. What the government and the Prime Minister should be doing if they were wise, would be to work with members from across party lines to put ideas forward for the public good. That is not what we are seeing. We are seeing a Prime Minister who is poisoned by partisanship and poisoned by the desire to have control. He is behaving as a control freak, if I can say that, and behaving in a way that is not in the public interest.

Take a look at what is happening in committees. Directives have come down to committee chairs and members of the government in those committees to filibuster. We get paid by taxpayers to serve the public. If the public were to take a look at what is happening in many committees today, they would be shocked and appalled. Witnesses come to those committees from across our land with good ideas and yet what they see--