Kennedy Stewart

[Petitions, June 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, there is a housing crisis in Burnaby and indeed in many parts of British Columbia. To address that, earlier this year I tabled Motion No. 20, a made-for-B.C. affordable housing strategy.

This petition is signed by many residents in Burnaby and the rest of British Columbia. The petitioners are calling for the government to take seriously this motion, and to indeed implement an affordable housing strategy for British Columbia, including investment in public housing, which has been lacking over many decades; and as well to examine the impact of investor speculation and housing vacancies on rising real estate prices.

I urge the government to take this seriously. I will be bringing up this topic again.

[Natural Resources, June 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals promised during the election to fix the NEB's broken review of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, but instead they just added a smokescreen to the gutted Conservative review process.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and B.C. first nation leaders from Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations are in Ottawa today sounding the alarm on the Liberals' flawed environmental review process.

Is the Prime Minister really planning to dismiss their concerns as easily as he broke his promise to British Columbians on the Kinder Morgan pipeline review?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 6th, 2016]

With respect to the communication of scientific research and government scientists speaking to the public about their research: (a) what is the complete and detailed list of all changes, amendments, or updates made to the communication policies of departments and agencies since November 4, 2015; (b) for each item in (a), (i) what department or agency was it for, (ii) what section of the policy did it pertain to, (iii) on what date was it implemented, (iv) what was the text of the relevant sections before the change, (v) what was the text of the relevant sections after the change, (vi) what was the government’s rationale for it, (vii) is there any evidence that the approval process for scientists speaking to the media has changed; (c) what is the total number of media interviews given by federal scientists for each month since November 2014, broken down by department or agency; (d) what new processes has the government implemented since November 4, 2015, to track and ensure that science-related media requests are responded to in a timely and accurate manner; (e) what new resources or programs has the government provided to federal scientists since November 4, 2015, to assist them in speaking to the public and the media about their research; (f) what is the complete and detailed list of all internal memos, directives, or emails sent to federal scientists since November 4, 2015, concerning the communication of scientific research and the approval process for speaking to the media; (g) for each item in (f), what are the details, including, but not limited to, (i) its title, (ii) who was it sent by, (iii) on what date was it sent; (h) what is the complete and detailed list of all briefing notes prepared for Ministers since November 4, 2015, concerning the issue of scientific integrity or science integrity policies; and (i) for each item in (h), (i) what was its title, (ii) which Minister was it for, (iii) on what date was it prepared?

[Status of Women, June 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, numbers do not lie. Only a quarter of the seats in the House are filled by women. That is the most we have ever had. We are 61st in the world.

I put forward a bill. The most important thing for private member's bills is to get them to committee. That is what I am asking for, a vote to get it to committee.

I am happy to build concessions into the bill. For example, in Ireland, these kinds of measures have been phased in. As I have said, I have asked the House of Commons law office whether the bill is constitutional. It indeed meets all the requirements of the constitution. It does not interfere with the way parties select candidates. In fact, it is the only way forward in the House.

Therefore, the member is either for the bill and for gender equity or he is against gender equity measures. How will the Prime Minister be a feminist if he does not put forward gender equity measures?

[Status of Women, June 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand tonight to speak to an issue that I asked the Minister of Democratic Institutions about a few weeks ago during question period. Specifically, I asked whether the government would support my private member's bill, the candidate gender equity act, when it comes up for a vote at second reading.

Before getting to my questions for the government, let me start by going over the details of Bill C-237 and the reasons why I put it forward.

While Canadians felt pride when the Prime Minister announced that his cabinet would be Canada's first gender-balanced cabinet, we really cannot lose sight of the fact that women still only hold 26% of the seats in the House of Commons, and this is the closest we have ever been to gender parity. This means that almost three out of every four MPs are male and Canada now ranks 61st in the world when it comes to the proportion of women in our national legislature, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. While we were ranked 21st in 1991, we have fallen behind countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and El Salvador so it is a poor record.

This is more than mere statistics. These numbers mean something. The politics of presence is essential for any well-functioning democracy, and the decisions made in this place directly reflect the perspectives of those who propose and vote on decisions in the House. If our Parliament were equal and more diverse, our democracy would better represent Canadians and their aspirations.

That is why I put forward the candidate gender equity act. Academic research, some that I have actually published myself, shows that women face significant barriers and unfair biases in the processes used by political parties to select their candidates. It is not the voters that are the problem, it is the parties that are the problem. That is what Bill C-237 would do. It would incentivize parties to recruit more women candidates and move toward parity in their candidate lists. We would incentivize this by using the existing public subsidies that parties receive from taxpayers. A party's post-election rebate would be gradually reduced if it did not have at least 45% women candidates, and then of course the subsidy would be further reduced as the party moved further from parity.

I was disheartened that the minister said that the current government would oppose the bill, at least now. However, today, where the government has accepted our opposition day motion, our suggestions for how we might change the committee studying electoral reform, I am perhaps hopeful that maybe the minister will also change her position on the bill.

I would like to outline a few things.

First, the bill that I put forward was formulated by experts and drawn from laws from other countries. For example, Ireland passed a similar law in 2012 and under this law, the Irish increased the number of women candidates in the election by 90%, and believe it or not, increased the number of women in their legislature by 40% with just one year of this single law.

Second, this law could work under any voting system. We will be changing our electoral system here, from what I understand. This law would work under any voting system, so it would not constrain us in that sense.

Third, what is most important is that this would not be a quota. I have heard from this side of the House and the other side of the House that it is a quota. It is not a quota, and in fact, in no way would it interfere with the internal workings of the parties.

This is an important measure and I look forward to the response from the other side.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my hope springs eternal, and I forgot to mention in my speech how much I would like to thank the member for Skeena and the member for Rosemont, from our party, for making this happen.

We will have this committee, we will have our discussions, and there will be a committee report. I think it is something that is such a big change that we will have to take it step by step. However, I am very happy with the first step we took today.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, these are great questions and these are the kinds of discussions that will take place in committee. However, let us be clear that we all have partisan choices. New Democrats have been clear for decades that ours is mixed member proportionality, but the member's preference is for the current system.

In the election campaign, the Prime Minister made a promise to the Canadian public that that would be the last election under first past the post or single member plurality, as my colleague would call it. That is what we are trying to move towards. I would encourage the member to drop the spirit of the last Parliament and work with this Parliament. He should not use the adversarial system of the last Parliament and change his behaviour. Let us all work together on this.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I guess it is technicality versus what the public is most familiar with. Of course, we will not have to talk about it much because the last election was the last election that used first past the post/single member plurality, so perhaps it will be thrown into the dustbin of history and we will have a new system.

I take the member's point that we have to make it clear when we are explaining to Canadians that this is a very technical thing, which I have been explaining for 20 years to people. I really hope the government puts all of its resources into this to help Canadians through this, because it is basically a mathematical redistribution of votes, which is not that sexy most of the time.

[Business of Supply, June 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

I am very happy to stand up today to speak to the motion. My colleagues have outlined the core of the motion, what we are proposing for the committee, and the good news about the co-operation that seems to be bursting on the scene here in the House of Commons. However, I would like to give a little context. Since I did spend six years doing a Ph.D. on political science, I might as well geek out a bit and use some of that knowledge, as we look at changing what is a fundamental institution of our country.

In early political science, all that political scientists studied were rules. They studied the institutions by which we make decisions. They tried to say that if we had a certain set of rules or institutions, we would always get a certain outcome. That was how political science really started. They soon found out that was not the case because a little thing called human behaviour got in the way. Consequently, in the fifties, we had a behavioural revolution. All we studied was human behaviour, saying that was what determined the outcomes of politics. However, after some while, they found that institutions did matter, and we had this kind of merger of the two ideas. It was said that both institutions, the rules by which we make the decisions and human behaviour, help to determine how we make certain political outcomes. Therefore, in a way, the rules by which our institutions are structured bound our behaviour.

We notice this in the House of Commons. We are elected through the first past the post system currently. That sets up an adversarial system in the House of Commons. By the nature of the rules, we have to have a majority on one side, followed by an opposition on the other. The expression that we are two sword lengths apart, and all that, has come from that tradition. However, it means we have an adversarial system. The government proposes something, and then our job as opposition is to criticize it.

These kinds of rules exist in all kinds of legislatures. Some first past the post majority systems are very adversarial. We see that. We see conflict and nastiness. Others are less so. Others are more co-operative. Although they are adversarial and although people are pitted against one another, the behaviour within the House matters. Therefore, I am hopeful that what we are seeing here today is perhaps us taking control of this institution, realizing that we are bound by the current rules we have, but deciding to change our behaviour collectively.

I was in the last Parliament. It was very adversarial, and it was by nature. I was very opposed to a number of the bills that the Conservatives put forward, the way they were pushed through the House of Commons by closure, omnibus bills, and those types of things. I was not just angry at the content of the bills, but a lot of the ways by which those bills were forced through Parliament offended me. I spoke up about that quite a lot.

Now, we are in a new Parliament, and we have had promises that things are going to work differently. We have the same rules we had before, but perhaps we can have different behaviour. What I have noticed as an MP is that we have vestiges of the last Parliament. We are still acting that way. We have a different Prime Minister. We have different positions on this side of the House, and maybe we do not have to be so adversarial. I was very happy with the motion we put forward, but I was extremely happy to hear that the government had decided it would support it. To me, that represents an important cultural shift in the House. I will not say everything is roses, but it does say to Canadians that this place is different now than the last Parliament. That would never have happened in the last Parliament, and it is an important step forward.

If the vote does pass next week, we will have a committee that will go forward to study our electoral formula, the formula by which we redistribute our votes, but also other aspects of the electoral system. That is very important.

We actually have two institutional changes to consider. We have the matter of how the electoral formula will redistribute our votes. The other consideration is the way we are going to make the decisions about how we change the votes.

The Conservatives have been quite clear. They demand a referendum, although I have not heard much detail, for example, on the threshold of acceptance. I do not know if it is 50% or 60%. They have not laid out much in the way of specifics in terms of what their referendum would look like.

I think it is a valid thing for them to argue, although I do not agree with it at this point. We have a bit of a conundrum here in the House of Commons because we had an unusual election promise. It is playing out that we are a little uncertain about how this should go forward.

As an example, our platform included a promise to bring in a mixed member proportional system. We have made that very clear. We made that clear in many elections, all the way through. If we had been elected in a majority in the House of Commons, we would have had a mandate to put through a mixed member proportional system. In other elections, parties campaigned on referendums to change electoral systems. I did not see that in the Conservative platform. I did not see a proposal for a referendum. This is a new thing for the official opposition to suggest this.

We had from the Prime Minister an election promise that I have not seen in any other election. It was not a promise for a specific system; it was a promise that changed the current system, and that is unusual. I think we have had a bit of trouble trying to figure out how that should happen because we do not have a lot of precedents to look at. We do not have many countries where we can say a government was elected with a majority making a promise to change the system, without giving an idea of what that would be.

I suspect if I were a Liberal, I would probably like a alternative vote system because that would benefit me in upcoming elections. I have read the work of the very respected political science professor from Quebec, our Global Affairs minister, whose preference is for some version of alternative votes. I know that the Liberals will be going into the committee thinking that this is their top preference and what they would like. Of course, Canadians know what the NDP's position has been forever, which is a mixed member proportional system, so that is what we will be going into the committee for.

With the Conservatives, we know it is the status quo, but the promise from the Prime Minister is that we will not have the status quo. I am quite happy that we have come to point where we have a committee that can show Canadians what a proportional system would look like. It is not an adversarial system. We know committees are set up to be adversarial. One side has a clear majority and another side argues. It is just like here in the House of Commons. Eventually, if behaviour changes, sometimes we can make amendments to committee reports, or sometimes bill will change slightly. That is if the behaviour changes, if the culture is different. However, it is still a majority system, where the majority kind of rams things through.

If the motion holds, we are getting into a position where we will show Canadians how we as politicians will operate under a proportional system. That is incredibly important. It is almost a preview of what Canadians could see if we changed our electoral system to make it more proportional.

My colleagues have outlined very well what we have proposed here. They have also outlined, and again thanks to the government for agreeing, that this is a better structure for a committee that we should go forward with. However, what we need to hear as soon as the committee is struck are the principles for it.

I have a bill in front of Parliament concerning gender equity, which would nudge parties toward running more women candidates in the hope that we can get more women elected to this place. Canada is ranked 61st in the world in terms of the number of women who are elected to this legislature. We used to be 19th in the world. We have fallen to 61st because other countries have taken measures within their electoral laws to prompt parties to run more women candidates. I know we started to have that debate here, but I think that would be something that the committee might consider. Because we are proportional, we could have a very balanced discussion about that.

I know what my sights are set on. It is trying to get as much of a proportional system as we can, but which the parties can agree on. The second thing is to fundamentally change this place to make it more reflective of the Canadian population. To have only one-quarter of our members being women, parties have to nominate more women candidates. We want a Parliament that reflects Canada more broadly and that the politics and presence of all Canadians are felt in this place.

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to this bill today.

However, before I do, I noticed that a number of members in this House have been talking about how much we respect the RCMP and value their service. I would like to point out one very special member of the RCMP in my own riding of Burnaby South, Chief Superintendent Dave Critchley. He is the officer in charge of the Burnaby RCMP detachment. I would like to thank him for his service to our community, because Chief Superintendent Critchley has informed me that he is retiring this year. All of us are going to miss him very much. I wish him and his wife Debra all the best.

It is worth going through a short bit of Chief Superintendent Critchley's career. He has spent 33 years in the RCMP, which included a posting here in Ottawa. He was seconded to the Privy Council Office as the RCMP federal liaison for the winter Olympics. We all thank him for the great job he did there on what was a spectacular event. Not to stop there, he was also posted to Kabul, in Afghanistan, as the Canadian police commander. He was the senior Canadian police officer in Afghanistan. He has done fantastic work, and I would like to thank him again for his service and for being so kind to me during my time as a member of Parliament in Burnaby.

I will move from the niceties of being able to stand in the House to thank people, to the unpleasantries. This is a general comment on the government and its seeming inability to get bills passed through this place, and of course the other place, the Senate. I have been here since 2011, and although I did not agree with many of the Conservatives' bills, I did agree with their professionalism. I think that the Conservatives did a good job in letting us know what bills would be put forward, and they did them in an orderly way in this House.

I find that the current Liberal government seems totally incapable of getting things passed. This is not because there is filibustering. It is not because there is any lack of work on our behalf. They seem confused. We look at the parliamentary website. We heard about 100 days of action. We heard about real change. Out of the 16 government bills that have been put forward here, only one has made it through the Senate, besides the three that were for budget spending. Of the things besides money that the Liberal government seem to care about, it seems incapable of getting them through this place, and who knows what is going to happen in the Senate? The Liberals have created complete chaos over there, and we are all waiting to see what happens.

This bill, again, is an example of incompetence on that side of the House. We all know what the Supreme Court has ordered. We have various points that we do not agree with in this bill, but the Supreme Court has struck down a law. It said that the RCMP is allowed to form a union or some kind of association, and the government on that side is playing politics. The bill that was put forward here is not robust enough, from our perspective.

I do not have a huge union background. I have been in faculty associations at universities. At Simon Fraser University, we have just been fully unionized. However, this is not something that I am that familiar with. I am proud to say that our political party is the only party that has a collective agreement with our employees, and we dutifully uphold it. I see the benefit of being an employer with a properly structured collective agreement. Therefore, when I read that the exclusions from this bill included discussions of staffing, employment, harassment, and discipline, it made me think that this is a hollow attempt to abide by the Supreme Court's decision that the members of the RCMP have the right to organize collectively. I do not agree with my colleagues on the Conservative side that some kind of secret ballot is needed; just sign a union card or association card and one is a member.

However, it seems strange that the government would restrict so many things from this discussion between employer and employee, for instance, that they cannot agree upon staffing levels. As my hon. colleague from Esquimalt said earlier, employers and employees should have a discussion about how many RCMP members would be in a car in an evening shift. There should be discussion and then agreement on what is appropriate.

I was fortunate enough to sit on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when the harassment issues were happening in the RCMP and finally came to light. These types of things have burdened the RCMP in the past. They have been one of the only marks against a very fine record and have caused numerous lawsuits and problems. Of course, that is something that should be negotiated through a collective agreement, and discipline too, to make sure that what is happening is fair to the members.

Although I have worked in a unionized environment, I was not familiar with the workings of that environment. Now, being an employer with unionized employees, I see how important that is. What unionization and collective agreements allow for is a discussion of these important issues. There are a lot of times as an employer that we do not understand or realize the perspective of the person hired and the constraints that they are under. Abiding by a collective agreement is a way to foster discussion within an organization.

The other huge advantage as an employer in a non-unionized environment, which I have worked in plenty of, is that the employer is the person overseeing the operations of the organization and is the enforcer of the work, the monitor of the quality of work. However, when a union is brought into a situation, there is almost a double monitoring. There is the regular management that sets the course of work and the direction of the organization, but there is also the union, which makes sure that union employees are protected and that they are working collectively toward the goals of the organization. That can only help to enhance any workplace. Again, not being familiar through most of my life with unions and how they operate, and now being very familiar with them, I see this only as a benefit to the RCMP.

The bill is a long time coming. Earlier today, I had the pleasure of seeing Svend Robinson, the very famous former MP from a number of Burnaby ridings with a lot of different names. He brought in the first bill to the House, in either the late seventies or early eighties, to allow the RCMP to organize. We have had the Supreme Court finally say that the laws that are on the books right now are not appropriate. They do not jibe with the Constitution and have been struck down. Now Parliament has an obligation, if we are going to put restrictions on the RCMP and their collective organizing, that it abides by the conditions laid out.

I am disappointed, in two ways. I am disappointed with the government side of the House and the way it has mishandled the flow of legislation through this place. Despite all the talk about consultation and working together that we hear from the Minister of Democratic Institutions daily, the Liberals are not listening. That is a problem. It is trying to railroad things through. While the Conservatives were quite good at railroading things through the House of Commons, I cannot say that is happening on the other side. That speaks to a level of competence that the Liberal government has not yet developed, which is distressing to Canadians. We are going to hit our June break, go back for barbeques, work with constituents, and there is hardly going to have been anything done here. It is because the Liberals are not listening, and that is a huge problem.

There is the larger problem of process in this place with the government not being able to get things through. There is also the problem in the bill, which is too restrictive. It should be altered to allow the union and the employer to negotiate things like staffing, deployment, harassment, and discipline.