Libby Davies

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-28, the budget implementation bill.

First of all, I would just like to respond to the comments made by the Liberal members across the way. It really astounds us every time we hear Liberals get up and blame the NDP for their own downfall. They conveniently forget that we had an election and it was the people of Canada, it was the voters in this country, who voted them out because of their arrogance, their corruption, and this sense of entitlement that they have, that they are somehow entitled to power no matter what happens.

It is unbelievable and even after an election, even after the Canadian people have spoken, we still hear this kind of rhetoric coming out of Liberal members. I guess they just do not get it. As the member for Winnipeg Centre says, I guess they just do not get it and they should be in therapy. It will be a long therapy session, but they have some lessons to learn.

[Business of the House, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we just saw this motion a few minutes ago and consider it completely inappropriate that the Liberal Party would attempt to do this.

We know there needs to be discussion on these bills and we are prepared to do that. To bring it forward in this manner, when there has not been discussion among the critics or among the House leaders, is why we denied unanimous consent.

We are prepared to talk about it, but not when it is done in this manner.

[Canada Post, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that this was not mail. It was advertising. Since Canada Post has refused to deliver advertising in the past for the Vancouver store called The Art of Loving, how can it justify approving advertising that is nothing more than hate against gays and lesbians?

This hate mail would never meet the standards of any newspaper, TV or radio station in Canada and yet Canada Post, I would point out, says that it meets its standards. Why does it have such low standards and why does it not have a policy against this?

Again I ask the parliamentary secretary to make it clear that he will instruct Canada Post to bring in rules that will ensure this kind of hate literature is not distributed through our postal system.

[Canada Post, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Vancouver, hard-working letter carriers took a courageous stand and refused to deliver anti-gay literature. The so-called literature amounts to a homophobic rant calling HIV-AIDS a homosexual plague comparing gays and lesbians to fleas on rats and blaming homosexuality for the global spread of this devastating disease.

Will the President of the Treasury Board tell Canada Post that it is totally unacceptable to spread misinformation and hate literature, and will he ensure that rules are in place to prevent this from happening again?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a brief opportunity to address the member for Burnaby—Douglas who has given us a very good sense of what this budget means in terms of people's everyday lives.

In my riding of Vancouver East a lot of low income housing, or what we call single room occupancies, has been closed down and low income people are being evicted. Housing is being lost at an alarming rate. Just recently, a number of people in the downtown east side took over a building. Is it any wonder homelessness and destitution are growing on the streets not only in the downtown east side but in other communities across the country?

The member for Burnaby—Douglas has outlined very well the situation in his own riding with respect to the cuts made to the summer student career program and the cuts made to the literacy program. We have to ask the question: Who benefits from this budget? Who are the winners and who are the losers, especially when the cuts are stacked up against the $13 billion surplus that could have been reinvested in substantial programs that people in this country really need?

One group that gets overlooked for sure by the government are new Canadians. As the very able citizenship and immigration critic for our party, my colleague knows that new Canadians want to settle into their new communities and learn English, and yet those programs have been cut back. We have seen that in British Columbia.

I wonder if he would comment on the need for investment in these areas given the fact that we have a $13 billion surplus at the federal level.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I do not remember the date of the meeting of the House leaders. There might have been a couple of meetings when this was brought up. That would be the nature of those meetings. Because they are generally closed meetings, I will not go into detail. However, in a new Parliament we have discussions about provisional Standing Orders and the fact that they will expire unless some further action is taken. There were certainly discussions about extending them so we could decide what to do. Those discussions have now taken place through the procedure and House affairs committee.

I do not think there has been any violation of any agreements. This has been done in a transparent and open way. We are now debating the provisional Standing Orders, and that is how it should be. I am scratching my head a bit about what the problem is. We are doing what we should be doing, which is dealing with this business, having this debate and making a decision as to whether these provisional Standing Orders are going to go ahead and become permanent or not . The debate and the vote will decide that.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I guess I and the hon. member will respectfully disagree because as I said earlier, I do not believe that the issue here, as the government would like it to be seen, is whether or not some agreement was broken. The issue here is whether or not the provisional Standing Orders should be made permanent.

Certainly there was discussion at the House leaders meeting about how to proceed on this matter. Certainly there was an understanding that we needed to have an extension, otherwise they would have run out much more rapidly. I do not remember the date, but the member says November 21. There is nothing to preclude discussions by staff, if that had happened, but it did not happen, or a committee legitimately taking up its business.

This is not really about agreements being broken. it is about the House doing its business. It was entirely appropriate that the procedure and House affairs committee should take this up if it so wanted, and that is what it is there to do, and bring it back to the House. That is exactly what happened.

I would suggest to the hon. member that we should focus on the real debate here in terms of the Standing Orders. If there are changes that the member wants to see, maybe we will hear that in his presentation in a little while, and it can go back to the committee for that kind of consideration. Clearly the issue here today is to vote on whether or not these provisional Standing Orders should be made permanent. We think they should be.

What is going on here is quite a big brouhaha that the government would like to make. Does the government think that other parties do not talk to each other? All kinds of discussions take place, at committee, at House leaders meetings. That is the nature of this place.

It is being dealt with in an open and transparent way at the committee and back here in the House. I fail to see what the complaint is.

Again, I would say let us focus on the debate here, which is saying to Canadians that we need to improve the way we do our business. We need to improve the way we conduct ourselves as members of Parliament. We still have a long way to go on that and that is what we would like to focus on.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the 17th report of the procedure and House affairs committee dealing with the provisional Standing Orders, which are the changes that were made to the Standing Orders and hopefully making the provisional Standing Orders permanent.

I heard the parliamentary secretary say to my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst that the issue is not the provisional Standing Orders, that the issue is that the official opposition broke its word. I really want to put this to rest. That is clearly not the issue today. The issue is whether or not the provisional Standing Orders should be made permanent and whether or not they should go forward.

To go back into the history of the subject, we should be very clear that when these items were discussed in the House leaders meetings there was agreement that there would be discussion. That discussion did not take place, but there is nothing to preclude it from coming up at the procedure and House affairs committee, which is an entirely appropriate committee for that kind of discussion to take place.

I find it curious that the government would now say that this is about breaking faith or breaking an agreement. Clearly that discussion was had in the committee. That is why we are here now with this report today. I would just leave that aside, because I think it is a secondary matter. The issue is whether or not the provisional Standing Orders should be made permanent.

From the NDP's point of view we are in agreement that they should be made permanent. They were first brought forward in the last minority Parliament. Ironically it was discussions among the three opposition parties at that time, including the party that is now the government but was then the official opposition, the Conservative Party, which looked at the Standing Orders and brought forward these provisional changes in the last minority Parliament.

Why was that done? The changes were brought forward on the basis that there was agreement among those three parties at the time to actually make this place more democratic. Mr. Speaker, as you well know, being the dean of the House, you have seen the erosion over the decades of democratic practice in this House.

This was actually an attempt by the three opposition parties in the last minority Parliament to look at the Standing Orders to figure out where there was some agreement on what could be done to make some of the procedures and the practices that we live by more democratic and more open. They were important changes. In fact, they were adopted by the last Parliament, but they were not permanently set; they were set as a provisional order.

In terms of whether or not the changes themselves should become permanent, I think they are good changes. Over the last couple of years we have had a great deal of experience with the provisional Standing Orders. We know how they work. I think there is a very strong consensus, at least among three parties, that they should remain.

One of the provisional Standing Orders is that all opposition days should be votable. This is something that is very important to the NDP. In the permanent Standing Orders not all of the opposition days, or supply days, were votable. It seemed to us to be very forward looking to make supply days, opposition days, votable. We have now done that. It is considered to be acceptable and I hope that it is not under dispute.

There is also the setting of the supply days in a regular cycle to ensure for example that our party gets three opposition days. This is something that did not happen before as a smaller party. It is a very important change. It gives a more level playing field to the NDP to ensure there is an additional opposition day. Previously for us this was always very much in question; sometimes we would get it and sometimes we would not. These changes ensure that we get that third opposition day.

The second item is the debate and vote on motions to concur in committee reports. This is very important. This item is likely one which the government now wishes it had not agreed to. It is very interesting how positions can change when in opposition or in government, but at that time, the opposition, the Conservative Party, was very eager to get this change through.

We have had a great deal of experience with it. The idea that a committee can bring forward a report, just as we are doing today, and have a debate on it in the House and then a vote really gives voice to the work that members undertake in committees. Members on all sides have experienced a lot of frustration in that the work that is done in committee, which is often very solid and good work, does not get any expression in terms of being adopted or brought forward in the House. That provisional Standing Order allows for that to happen.

Many reports have been brought forward and have had a full debate in the House, and then we have actually voted on them. It has provided very good continuity between the work in the committee and what comes into the House. It provides members with a sense of encouragement that the work they undertake in committee can actually be brought forward to the House and voted upon.

In that way the provisional Standing Orders are quite substantive. In my opinion the provisional Standing Orders improve the practice and the democracy in the procedure that we use in the House of Commons. Do we need to go further? Absolutely.

Today the NDP held a press conference. We put forward a motion in the procedure and House affairs committee to urge the committee to consider a report from 1992, 15 years ago. I am sure members will remember that report. It was a report of the special advisory committee to the Speaker. It put forward a number of very sensible, intelligent recommendations about improving decorum in the House.

We have certainly seen the situation in the last week, but even since the beginning of this Parliament, there has been a sense of chaos. There has been a lack of respect for each other, a level of debate that has gotten down to name calling. Sexist and racist remarks have been made in this House.

The NDP was very interested to take that report off the shelf, so to speak, to dust it off and bring it forward. That report from 15 years ago when John Fraser was the Speaker was never acted upon and it is time to bring it forward again. In the meantime, I think we can do our business by making sure that the provisional Standing Orders become permanent.

A lot more work needs to be done in terms of the Standing Orders, the procedures that we follow, as well as improving the decorum in the House. We are very interested in seeing another debate take place at the procedure and House affairs committee on this issue of the June 22, 1992 report to the Speaker from the special advisory committee. We hope it will generate further discussion about what we need to do as parliamentarians, what responsibility we need to take individually, within our caucus, as parties and as the government to ensure that this place reflects a much higher standard about how we do our business.

I wanted to bring that issue up because it puts this debate in a broader context. I know that people who watch question period, who watch the debates in the House of Commons, or who visit the House and sit in the gallery are sometimes aghast at what takes place here.

The more that we can take these issues on, not in a way that is sort of dealing with celebrity politics, which is what we have seen in the last few days, but to deal with this in a serious, substantive way that focuses on the changes that need to be made, so that we can show the public that this Parliament is respectful, that it is about serious debate and that we actually confer, I hope, on the Speaker a greater discretion and mandate from the parties to actually keep order in this place.

I am sure that is something that this Speaker would agree with. I think a lot of people think it is long overdue. We will get to that. We have just introduced that at committee today. In the meantime, I think we can do our business by making sure that these provisional standing orders do become permanent.

An amendment has been put forward by the government which basically seeks to undo all of that by sending the report back to the committee. We will not be voting for the amendment because we think that the provisional Standing Orders should become permanent. I would say to the government that if there are some technical issues that need to be further considered, we are certainly open to doing that at committee. There is nothing to prevent the government or any other member of the committee from raising consequential issues and further debate around the provisional Standing Orders.

We are not prepared today to see this go down and be lost. We have an opportunity now to make them permanent. If we need to do more review in terms of technical issues, that is fine, no problem, but on the principle of what these provisional Standing Orders represent, we are behind them. We support them here today and hope that members of the House will support them as well.

[The Environment, October 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this act does not make the air better, it makes it worse.

If the minister thinks that industry is a cheap date, as she said, then why did she give industry another five years to pick up the cheque? If the government really believes in regulating industry, then why did it not have the guts to do it today?

Will the Prime Minister admit that the big winner today is the pollution industry, while the losers are Canadians who are tired of being promised clean air when all they get from Liberals and Conservatives is hot air?

[The Environment, October 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is official. Just like the Liberals, the Conservatives are going to make the air Canadians breathe a whole lot dirtier. Despite what the minister says, there are no caps on greenhouse gases. There are no targets for the industrial sector. By the government's own admission, pollution will not go down, it will go up.

Can the Prime Minister explain why he just gave his friends in big oil and big industry a 20 year pollution holiday?