Kennedy Stewart

[Petitions, February 10th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by dozens of people right across Canada. The petitioners recognize that only 26% of the seats in the House of Commons are held by women and that we are 64th in the world when it comes to electing women to Parliament.

Last year, the government joined with the Conservatives to vote down my private member's bill that would have incentivized political parties to elect more women in Parliament. I noticed that the electoral reform committee also recommended that these kinds of measures be brought in.

The petitioners are asking that the Liberals move ahead with these petitions and prove that they are not fake feminists.

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

You said it. Absolutely.

I think British Columbians feel betrayed about this. The minister gets up and talks about 15,000 jobs, which he knows will be filled by temporary foreign workers, when the company's own website says it is only 90 full-time jobs.

The company will make $2 billion a year off this pipeline, and we are getting nothing. You shut British Columbians out. I think you should apologize.

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I know we are having a Kinder Morgan love-in here, but let me express a position from a different province. British Columbia feels absolutely betrayed by how the minister and his government said they would review the whole pipeline review process, but then the Liberals broke their word. Throughout the election campaign, they said they were going to review the process and allow British Columbians to have a say. Then, of course, they break their word and ram this thing through.

The minister had the audacity to say that he would bring in the army to force this pipeline through—

[Petitions, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition gathered by George Sojka and many residents of Burnaby.

The petition concerns the death of Helen Sonja Francis, who was tragically killed by an impaired driver. The driver was not charged because the four-hour time limit for the warrant had expired. Mr. Sojka and those who signed the petition would like the time for warrants to be increased from four hours to six hours.

In the last Parliament, this condition was added to new changes to the Criminal Code. However, that bill was not passed, so the petitioners are calling on this new justice minister to make sure that the time for warrants is increased from four hours to six hours.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Return, January 30th, 2017]

With regard to the government’s recent approval and future efforts to facilitate the construction of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline: (a) what is the complete and detailed list of meetings in which the use of military or paramilitary force to facilitate Kinder Morgan’s expropriation of private property, municipal lands, First Nations’ traditional territories and Indian reserves was discussed; (b) were Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP, local police, or any government agencies included in each of the meetings identified in (a); (c) what were the results of each of the meetings identified in (a); and (d) what are the projected costs of any considered actions and how will these costs be shared among different levels of government?

[Petitions, December 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition today calling upon the government to reject the Kinder Morgan pipeline for all kinds of reasons. These petitions were collected by the We Love This Coast group, led by Shirley Samples and her friends, who have been petitioning all over the lower mainland gathering hundreds of signatures against this pipeline. The petitioners say that they speak for those who have no voice, including the endangered orca pods in the southern Salish Sea. The petitioners are calling upon the government to reject this decision.

[Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, December 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the fine work he does in the House and for our party on many files.

The member said that Europe would be an important group of countries to make a trade deal with, although this was not it. Could the member let us know what a better deal would look like?

[Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, December 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his good work in the chamber and in his riding, which is of note for sure.

Canadians have a lot of concern about trade deals. The biggest concern is when sovereignty is taken out of the hands of Canadians. The problem with many trade deals is that Canadians like to control their own destinies. When bad trade deals are signed, they lose some of the sovereignty. I think that is what is happening. We have heard that from multiple actors across Canada, in terms of municipalities or producers of particular goods. That is part of the problem with this trade deal and why we object to it. It takes too much control out of the hands of Canadians and puts it in the hands of multinational corporations or other national governments.

We were hoping we would find a fair and equitable trade deal with Europe that we could support, but the Liberals did not deliver, mainly because they took the deal off of the table that the Conservatives had negotiated under the Harper government.

[Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, December 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very good work in the chamber and in her riding.

I would ask members to cast their minds back to last week. My speech in the House was with regard to the government's general approach to public participation in the public policy-making process. In 2016, the government undertook many different kinds of public participation, including around this trade deal, to some extent. However, the question I raised during my speech concerned the disingenuousness of some of the consultation processes.

During my speech, I alluded to the fact that while genuine public participation was certainly welcome and, indeed, necessary for successful public policy, there were two courses of consultation that the government seemed to be undertaking. The first is what Sherry Arnstein would call manipulation. That is where the government has a policy path in mind, decides it needs to make it look like it is consulting with the public, so it twists its consultation processes to be manipulative, to trick the public into thinking it has input when it does not.

The other process that is disingenuous is something called therapy, where people have very strong views about issues or policies and the government uses the public consultation process to cure them of their ills. This is what is happening with the CETA deal. The public is very wary of these trade deals when they look at, for example, how NAFTA has hollowed out the manufacturing sector in Canada and how other trade deals have had negative effects, mainly because the government does not follow the NDP prescription of being fair trade deals. That is why we have supported some trade deals in the past and do not support other trade deals, like this one, for example.

I would call on the government to be genuine in its process in the future to ensure it does not try to manipulate or subject Canadians to therapy.

[Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, December 9th, 2016]

That is what this place is for, to call it as it is. Being in the official opposition in the last Parliament and not being there this Parliament, I think that what we can do in this place is to tell Canadians what is going on here. That has been a great role of the NDP in the past, to try to explain things to Canadians in an honest way. These two parties we can hardly tell apart, so it is up to us to explain.

This is disappointing. There is a difference also between these two parties, I have to say, in how they put their bills forward. In the last Parliament it was closure, ram it through, stack the Senate, and get it passed. I did not agree with it, but at least they knew what they were doing, and at least it was genuine in the sense that Prime Minister Harper and his cabinet would tell people what would happen, ram it down our throats, and then it was done. We could fight against it but at least we knew it was coming

On this side of the House, what we get is endless fake consultation. There is a wonderful article that was written in the late sixties about consultation. I remember a great mentor of mine, Professor Patrick Smith, was the first one to bring it to my attention. Really, there are different forms of consultation that can take place around bills or any kind of government business.

We can inform people about things. We can have a back-and-forth consultation. We can empower people. However, the worst thing the government can do is to manipulate people, to give them fake information, to make them think they are participating in something by having have them fill out little cards and mail them back in, or to complete cheesy online surveys, and then say that people have been consulted and then just go ahead with what it was planning to do anyway. The worst kind of participation is what the current government does; it is called therapy. What the Liberals are trying to do is to tell Canadians that they misunderstand, that their thinking is wrong and that it will cure them of their bad ideas. That is what is happening on their side of the House.

I would be remiss if I did not come back to things like pipelines. The Liberals promised throughout the election that there would be a brand new consultation process, with a very strict and thorough science and evidence-based review process to replace the one that was basically ruined by the Conservatives. They did not do that. Instead, they okayed pipelines based on the previous regime. Then they told Canadians they were wrong to be mad about it, they were wrong to tell first nations that not having consent was okay, and that they were wrong to think that consent was necessary. However, that is exactly what the other side is doing. Why? It is in order to get 10 bills through Parliament, six of which would not fail.

The incompetence that we are seeing from the Liberals is astounding, and I think it is showing in CETA. This bill is too important to get wrong. I think the Conservatives got it wrong. I said that in the last Parliament and I'll say it in this Parliament. We can debate that. However, the Liberals are not doing us justice and allowing us to stand up to have a full debate so they can answer our questions honestly without talking points. I think that is a problem.

I am happy to answer questions and give my suggestions as to how we might move forward in the new year.