Laurie Hawn

[The Budget, February 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and honoured to rise and discuss economic action plan or budget 2014. At the outset, I will say I am going to be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Calgary Centre.

It may come as no surprise to members who know me that I am going to be discussing veterans' issues as related to this budget specifically, and veterans' issues more broadly.

The new veterans charter was passed in 2005 by the previous Liberal government, and good on it for doing that. It passed with 100% support from the House, from every member of every party. In 2006, our government implemented it, again supported by all veterans' organizations. In 2011, it was updated by our government, not with entire support from across the floor, but that is okay; we got it done. With economic action plan 2014 or budget 2014, the new veterans charter would be updated again.

As many know, we are also doing a comprehensive review of the new veterans charter in the veterans affairs committee, and it will be updated again after that. It is a work in progress, as it should be. Is it a perfect document, a perfect plan? No, that plan has not been invented yet, and that is why it has to be continually updated, as it is being in economic action plan 2014; to the point that even the hon. member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, on many occasions, has pointed out that the new veterans charter is in fact superior to the old pension plan, given that we all agree it needs to be continuously updated.

In this economic action plan, there are additional measures to honour the sacrifices made by veterans and their families and to facilitate the transition to civilian life and provide better access to services.

We are expanding the eligibility to funeral and burial programs to ensure that modern-day veterans of modest means have access to a dignified funeral and burial. In economic action plan 2013, we added $65 million over two years and raised the amount available to such a veteran to $7,376 from $3,600 plus the cost of the plot. In economic action plan 2014, we are adding a further $108.2 million over three years, starting in 2013-2014, to expand eligibility for those veterans of modest means. That includes eliminating some of the items that had inflated the amount of their assets, which would have eliminated their ability to participate in the program. That is changing.

In this budget, we are also committing to commemorating the Afghan mission. I can tell members that the highlight of my time in Parliament will be the time I spent in Afghanistan with the troops on numerous occasions. It has been the longest military engagement in Canada's history, and it certainly deserves to be commemorated properly, mainly for the 158 Canadian soldiers plus 5 civilians who lost their lives, and the families who suffered, not just those who suffered the loss of a member but those who suffered through the injury to family members or just the stress of having family members in a theatre of war. As I said, the highlight of my career in Parliament will be the time spent in Afghanistan, waking up on Christmas morning in an outpost somewhere in the boondocks of the Panjwai with those incredibly remarkable Canadians who went back there time after time, some of them, to help people whom they will never meet again and had never met before. There was nothing in it for them other than doing what was right.

I mentioned this before in a previous speech, but I will talk about the kind of people they are and the determination they have to do good. In the last Edmonton rotation a couple of years ago, in the combat mission, there were nine soldiers going back to Afghanistan for the fourth time. The commander of Land Force Western Area, who was a friend of mine, talked to me about having a personal interview with each of them just to ensure their heads were on straight, so to speak. He said he was talking to this one young master corporal and he asked him, “What is your biggest concern about going back to Afghanistan for the fourth time?” He said the soldier looked him in the eye and said, “That you will not let me go, sir”. Whereupon, the commander said, “You are okay; get out of here”. In fact, I wound up talking to that soldier with a bunch of others at the airport a couple of days later when they were leaving and, not knowing it was him, I recounted my conversation with the general. He stepped forward and said, “That was me, sir”. I shook his hand and thanked him very much and wished him good luck.

As we have said before, we are introducing priority hiring for veterans. We are going to change the Public Service Employment Act and the public service employment regulations to cater to the fact that there are 7,600 men and women who leave the Canadian Armed Forces every year. In round numbers, 1,000 of those leave for medical reasons beyond their control.

We are creating a statutory hiring priority in the Public Service Employment Act for Canadian Armed Forces members medically released for service-related reasons and extending the duration of their entitlements from two years to five years, giving them more time to adjust and more time to prepare themselves for employment in the public service, if that is what they wish to do.

We are also amending the Public Service Employment Act to give preference to eligible veterans in external public service job competitions and allowing Canadian Armed Forces personnel with more than three years' service to participate in internal public service job competitions.

We want to give our men and women in uniform every opportunity to transition to the public service, if that is what they want, or to other areas in the private sector.

We will be providing better access to online services to the tune of about $2.1 million in 2014-15 to improve the My VAC Account, to enhance the ability to do routine business with Veterans Affairs Canada. This is intended to mimic in-person services.

Online services do not cater to everybody. A lot of the older veterans may not be as tech savvy as some of the younger folks, and there are other ways in which we are trying to cater to them. However, this targets the largest and fastest growing segment of the veteran population. It is just another example of our trying to keep ahead of change, instead of being dragged along by change.

On veterans issues more broadly, they are all budget related because they have related to past budgets and hopefully, in my view, future budgets. One thing we need to understand is that the aim of the veterans affairs programs is not lifelong financial dependence. It is based on giving veterans the opportunity to retrain, rehabilitate, and get on with their own lives under their own terms.

A lot of these men and women are very young. Some are in their 20s and they have a long time ahead of time. The last thing that almost anybody would want to do is to sit there and be financially dependent. We want to honour their spirit to get out and do that. We want to help them in every way we can.

There is an awful lot of misinformation out there. Most of it is based on emotion. The notion that we “give them a lump sum and kick them to the curb” is absolutely false, and frankly it is shameful when people keep bringing that up.

All MPs on all sides of this House care deeply about our veterans and the men and women in uniform, notwithstanding what we might hear in the media or from the opposition or the unions. I do not blame them. The media relies on conflict to make stories, and I get that. The opposition's job is to oppose, and I get that. The union's job is to advocate for union jobs, and I get that.

However, people should understand that and maybe not take everything from anybody, government or anybody else. People should not take everything at face value. They should understand that the media, opposition, union, and government are all operating in their own interest. They should look at all the facts.

I have done a number of veterans events, and all I ask is that we look at all the facts. We can disagree about facts. That is okay, as long as we are doing it respectfully, rationally, and with all the facts on the table, not cherry-picking facts and building a case around that.

The broad range of veterans' benefits is very comprehensive and, yes, it is very complex. It should be simpler. We have had different things added, one on top of the other, for many years. I understand that there is confusion about what is available and how to access it. We do need to make that simpler, and I will talk about that more in a minute.

There is a broad range of benefits available, and I do not have time to go over all of them. There is a broad range of facilities now available.

What I will say is there are challenges, and I firmly acknowledge that. We have challenges of access, which we are working on; challenges of burden of proof; challenges transferring information from one department to another, DND to VAC. The forms are too complex, but we are working on making them simpler. It needs to be faster, with more one-stop service and more online options that cater to the changing demographics. We need improved wait times and stronger partnerships with DND and others.

The bottom line and the question we have to answer is this: are the Veterans Affairs programs a success? Yes, they are. Are they a failure? In some respects, yes, and we are working on those. Are they a work in progress? Absolutely, they are a work in progress, and that is what we have to keep doing. With the co-operation of people on all sides of the House and people outside the House, we will make that happen.

[Afghan Veterans Monument, February 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I was not on the list initially tonight, but I am really pleased to have the opportunity to add to this debate.

There is obviously unanimity in the House about the need to recognize and celebrate the spirit of our troops, army, navy and air force, who served in Afghanistan. I have to say I was a little disappointed at the last speaker's remarks. It took away from the dignity of this motion.

I do, as we all do, recognize the duty to honour, the duty to remember, the obligation that we have. It is important that people of good faith on all sides remember that obligation and work together, despite the challenges. Of course there are challenges, but we need to work together to overcome those.

I want to talk about the mission in Afghanistan and the people who prosecuted that mission on our behalf and on behalf of the people of Afghanistan. Being from Edmonton, I realize there is a huge connection between that mission and my city and the people of Edmonton.

Earlier today in a Standing Order 31 statement, I spoke about the reception the troops received when they came back to Edmonton, which is like nowhere else in Canada. No matter the time of day or night, no matter the weather, a group of people was there giving out Tim Hortons coffee, doughnuts, and so on. The Edmonton Police Service was there. The RCMP was there. With their sirens blaring and lights flashing, they provided an escort through the centre of the city of Edmonton to the garrison on the north side of the city. I was in that convoy a number of times. It was extremely moving. I know the soldiers appreciated it very much.

On one particular day, I knew the air crew flying the Airbus which had been escorted into Edmonton by two CF-18s in a colourful display of support. The captain of the Airbus asked air traffic control for clearance to fly across the city at low altitude with the F-18s in tow. For those who know Edmonton's 97 Street, it is kind of the main north-south drag, and about 1,000 or 1,500 feet above, there was a Canadian Forces Airbus with an F-18 on each wing, very visible and very loud. The phone calls started to come in. As soon as people found out what it was, they asked if they could come back again. That is the kind of spirit Edmonton and I know the rest of the country has for those men and women.

There are other organizations in Edmonton, a couple of which have been alluded to by other colleagues. We have something in Edmonton called Project Heroes which commemorates with portraits the 158 soldiers we lost, as was done elsewhere. We have an organization called No Stone Left Alone. It is not just about Afghan vets, but about vets writ large. Their objective is to put a poppy on every veteran's headstone in Canada, eventually, around Remembrance Week. I think they are up to about 15,000 in Edmonton alone, and it is growing.

When we talk about the mission in Afghanistan, the question will ultimately be, was it worth it? Everybody can answer that in their own way. I can say that I was very familiar with the mission from a variety of angles. One was defending the reputation of our soldiers over there when they were being accused of being war criminals by some people in this House. I will not bother going into the politics of that, but it was absolutely shameful. I was extremely proud to be on the front lines of defending those men and women and the honour that they displayed.

I saw them in action. On seven occasions I spent time with our troops in Afghanistan. That will be the highlight of my time as a member of Parliament, the time I spent in Afghanistan. Waking up Christmas morning, which I did five times, at a forward operating base somewhere in the Panjwai district with those kinds of people is something I will certainly never forget.

We talk about progress. One little vignette that I mention often occurred on Christmas Eve 2006. I was standing in a place called Masum Ghar, looking out over the countryside. It was dark and rainy. I had a cup of coffee and a cigar with the chief of the defence staff, Rick Hillier, and somebody else. We were standing there looking over the countryside. It was bleak. There were bombs going off in the distance. It was pretty grim. That was my first visit. I knew that it was real and that what was happening there was regrettably real.

One year to the minute later, Christmas Eve 2007 at Masum Ghar, I was with the new chief of the defence staff and the minister of national defence, now the Minister of Justice, the member for Central Nova, having a cup of coffee and a cigar, looking out over the exact same piece of territory. It looked like a scene from the Canadian Prairies. The lights were on in all the villages. It was quiet and peaceful. Just that one little thing said to me that what those men and women did was incredibly worthwhile.

I visited a number of times after that and saw the progress they had made with schools and interacting with the children. They were interacting with the Afghan institutions, government institutions like the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, which they did a tremendous job of training.

I had the pleasure of spending time there with people like Rick Mercer and Mary Walsh, and on my last trip there, Don Cherry, who was understandably a pretty big hit with the troops. I spent time with Ron Joyce, who was the co-founder of Tim Hortons. He threw open the Tim Hortons—I think it was 2006 or 2007—for two days and wrote a personal cheque at the end of those two days for everything that was given away.

Our troops were leaders in Afghanistan. We were the go-to folks. We were smallish in numbers, compared to the Americans and the British, but we provided the leadership. Our training, the quality of our people, and the quality of our equipment was second to none. At the end of the Afghanistan conflict, and I think it is still true today, Canada has the best small army in the world. When I say army I mean army, navy, and air force. It is because of the kind of people we have that we are commemorating with this monument.

I have another little story about the spirit of our men and women in uniform who went back, some of them four times. They fought to go back, which I am sure drove their families crazy. It was because they knew they were making a difference. On one of the Edmonton rotations, there were eight or nine soldiers going back for the fourth time. The commander, the brigadier general, called each of them in to have a little heart-to-heart, just to make sure their heads were on straight, since they were going back there for the fourth time. He asked one master corporal what his biggest fear was about going back to Afghanistan for the fourth time. The master corporal looked him in the eye and said, “It is that you won't let me go, sir”, whereupon the brigadier general said, “Carry on; you are fine”.

I was at the airport many times seeing people off or welcoming people back, and I was seeing this particular group of soldiers off. There were about 150 of them. I was standing, chatting with four or five of them. I recounted the story of the brigadier general and the master corporal. They kind of laughed, and one guy piped up and said, “That was me”. I shook his hand and said “Good on you; the people of Afghanistan are going to be much better off because of people like you”.

The people of Canada are obviously much better off because of people like him, whether they are Princess Patricias, RCRs, Van Doos, engineers, or Lord Strathconas, with the Leopards, and there were a lot of air force and navy personnel there. I had a lot of friends there with whom I had served in one of my previous lives. I saw some of them there in Afghanistan. I have had the rare privilege of seeing that. Not many people have. I am tremendously honoured, privileged, and grateful for that opportunity to spend time there with those people.

Therefore, I understand the importance of doing everything we can to recognize their service and sacrifice. There were 158 who made the ultimate sacrifice, plus five civilians. I have had the sad honour of attending many ramp ceremonies and things of that nature and going back to Kandahar year after year and watching that memorial grow, tragically, as it inevitably would.

It is incredibly important that we do everything we can to celebrate, not war, but the spirit of the kind of people who will stand up time after time and lay it on the line for someone halfway around the world whom they have never met and will never see again. They know they have made a difference. In making a difference, in this case, for the people of Afghanistan, they have made a huge difference for the people of Canada, and there is nothing I would not do personally—and I am sure everyone in the House feels pretty much the same way—to help celebrate that spirit and what those people have meant to us.

This is obviously going to be unanimously approved by the House and that is absolutely the way it should be. I can think of no better thing to do at this moment.

[Kingsway Legion No. 175, February 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, for almost 10 years, a small band of dedicated Edmontonians from Kingsway Legion No. 175 have faithfully trekked to the Edmonton International Airport at all hours of the day or night, and in any weather, to say farewell or to welcome back our troops from their tours of duty in Afghanistan. Many of them wear Legion dress and medals. They are supported by others who value and salute the service and sacrifice of Canadians in uniform. They offer Tim Hortons coffee, donuts, cell phones, and unbridled thanks and admiration for folks who put it on the line.

I have been privileged to join them on many occasions and can attest to the gratitude of the troops for the reception they receive, for the occasional escort home by CF-18 fighters, for the police escort through the city to their garrison, for the fire trucks with lights flashing, and for other first responders and citizens who line the streets to say thank you.

I have never seen a city embrace the military like Edmonton does. Thankfully, the duty of providing this 24/7 welcoming committee is coming to an end.

I want to thank and salute Vicky, Mac, Wayne, Betty, Jim, Kate, and many others, for their service in days gone by, and for their dedication to honouring those who serve today.

You may now stand easy.

[Fair Elections Act, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of points on my colleague's assessment of the students' ability to vote. He said that if they had just arrived, they would not have a student ID and that they would be stuck at the university. I would suggest that their photo ID cards from home would be just as useless, because that is not where they would be living at the time.

The member talked about the students having to drive home for several hours and so on. I would remind him, in case he does not know, that people do not have to wait until election day or the advance poll days. As soon as Elections Canada is set up in a riding, a person can go and vote any day during the entire writ process. Most students would probably go home at some point during that time. They know when the election is, so there really is no excuse for not finding time to do that.

Apart from that, the member talked about vouching a lot. I have been the victim of fraudulent vouching, but that is okay.

I have a couple of questions for the member. Does he consider big money to be a 5% increase in campaign expenses, which are obviously going up all the time? Does he consider big money to be a $300 increase in a personal donation, which still eliminates unions and so on? As well, how many people does he think one person should be able to vouch for during an election?

[Fair Elections Act, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to a speech that had nothing to do with the content of the bill, but that is okay. It is the member's prerogative.

I have three very specific questions for my colleague.

First, does he think the voter ID cards should be an allowable form of identification by themselves, considering that Canada Post drops off bundles of voter ID cards in apartment buildings, for example, as came to light in our elections?

Second, how many people does he think one person should be able to vouch for? There was massive evidence, speaking personally, of busloads being vouched for continually, until we stopped that practice.

Third, he talks about 100,000 people not being able to get to vote, most of those on first nations. Does he understand that a first nations status card is in fact one of the 39 forms of ID?

[Fair Elections Act, February 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I briefly wanted to get my colleague to talk about the power of the Commissioner of Elections to act independently. Our campaigns in 2004-2006 were the victims of pretty extensive election fraud, to the point where a lawyer bragged on the Internet and in email about how many times he had got to vote for my opponent by going from poll to poll with voter ID cards that, of course, were not his.

There were massive vouching problems and massive fraudulent registration problems. We fixed it in 2006, because we knew about it.

Could my hon. friend comment, just based on that one experience that I and others have had, on the importance of making sure that the Commissioner of Elections is independent, so that he can operate and do something about those kinds of situations?

[Interparliamentary Delegations, February 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association respecting its participation in the fourth part of the 2013 Ordinary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly at the Council of Europe held in Strasbourg, France, from September 30 to October 4, 2013.

[Business of Supply, January 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to hark back to the previous speech by my colleague and some comments that came across the floor.

I am a member of a Legion, as I believe is my colleague. When he made the comments about legions being points of service, with 1,461 offices across the country, the member for Scarborough—Agincourt, said that they are drinking offices. I think that shows a complete disrespect for the legions, the members of legions, the good work that they do, and for the great work that most of us are trying to do for veterans.

Therefore, I think he should apologize.

[Ukraine, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is a pertinent question, because that is the kind of thing we are trying to get to.

There is a crisis in Ukraine right now. If we can get the Ukrainian people beyond that by either moving Yanukovych to a higher level of understanding and decency, or frankly, by helping them move him aside, then the Ukrainian people can aspire to all of the things Europe enjoys and all of the things we enjoy in our trading relationships with Europe, the United States, and other countries. It is the kind of thing that will move the Ukrainian people forward. Trade is what makes commerce, industries, and economies work. It is crucial that we get past this crisis so that the Ukrainian people can enjoy the kind of economic and trade freedom that will help them prosper.

[Ukraine, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in response, I would say that we can do what we are doing now, which is standing up and loudly and clearly expressing the concerns of Canadians of Ukrainian descent, of which there are approximately 1.3 million, many of them in my riding, and Canadian Ukrainians across the country. We cannot stand by. There are measures we can take. We cannot take kinetic measures, such as invading Ukraine and measures like that, but we can certainly do other things. Those are all on the table. They do not necessarily play themselves out in public.

I go back to my previous life. When I was commanding an F-18 squadron in Europe, just before the wall fell, I took the members of my squadron on the ground to the Berlin Wall so that they could see why we were, in fact, deployed to Germany and why it was important that we, as Canadians, did what we were doing. There was silence. I cannot remember the name of the town. It was a little town in East Germany. It was dead silent. It was a town of about half a million people. We could hear dogs bark and the odd car, but it was otherwise silent. The place was virtually dead. That is what we cannot allow to happen in Ukraine.

We cannot be prepared to do it the way we were prepared to do it in central Europe at that time, but we can certainly do what we are doing today, which is standing up, loudly and clearly, and taking what measures we can, along with our allies, the Americans, the Europeans, and everybody else, to make it clear to Yanukovych and the thugs he works with and the thugs, frankly, he works for in other countries above his pay grade, that we will not stand for it. We will do whatever we can to make life better for the Ukrainian people.