Marlene Jennings

[Public Safety, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, for three years now, the governments of at least five provinces have been asking the Conservatives to give them the legal means to obtain the information they need to fight criminal gangs. My bill, Bill C-285, introduced two years ago and introduced again a few weeks ago, addresses their concerns. It would limit criminals' ability to use sophisticated technology to operate secretly.

Will the minister finally wake up and do something, as called for by the provinces?

[March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, once again the government makes a statement, makes a commitment, makes a promise and then, all of a sudden, it drops off the radar screen.

In Canada's economic action plan, in budget 2009, and I have a copy of the overview pamphlet, it states, “Budget 2009 will create or maintain up to 190,000 jobs for Canadians by the end of 2010”. A little further down, it states, “Over the next two years, Canada's economic action plan will produce a net increase of 190,000 jobs”.

We have not heard anything since then about the 190,000 jobs. Every time we ask the question during question period, the Conservatives hide from it.

Over the last two months, Canada has lost 212,000 jobs. Montreal alone lost 16,000 jobs in February.

I fail to see what the laughing matter is when I hear members of the government laughing when I make that statement. I would like to know what the government intends to do on those--

[March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, some time ago I rose in the House during question period and asked a question of the Conservative government, given the history of a Prime Minister stating that there is no recession, given that if there were going to be a recession we would already be in a recession, and given that the Minister of Finance was coming out in November with a disastrous and completely unrealistic economic and fiscal update. And it goes on and on. My question was, how can Canadians believe the Conservative government when its numbers are always contradicted by experts?

The answer I received from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance was basically that there are lots of experts in here. Some have projected high; some have projected low. Then he quoted from Dale Orr, a very respected economist from Global Insight who said, “The budget overall was a pretty reasonable compromise. The best thing to do is to pass it and get on with it and get things moving as quickly as possible”.

In the 2009 budget the Conservative economic action plan claimed that it would create or maintain close to 100,000 net Canadian jobs and yet there has been no mention of that job figure since. What are economists saying to date on the rosy forecasts that were predicted and are still being predicted by the Conservative Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance?

David Dodge is calling the Prime Minister's prediction that Ottawa will be back in surplus by 2013 “totally unrealistic”. David Dodge also says the economic recovery “is not going to be as quick as everybody thinks”. He says, “I think anybody would be dreaming in Technicolor to think that you're going to get through this by the third quarter of this year”. He also says, “And the rest of the world, including the United States, is probably not going to recover as quickly coming out of this recession as it did coming out of 1982 or coming out of 1990-91 recession”.

Don Drummond of the TD Bank calculates that Canada's federal debt will swell by $81.5 billion over the next two years, which is more than the Conservative government has calculated it will increase. In fact, when the Conservative Minister of Finance tabled his budget 2009, he predicted that the debt would grow by $63 billion.

Don Drummond of the TD Bank says the government will produce an “all-time high deficit of $39.2 billion in fiscal 2009-10 and $42.3 billion in fiscal 2010-11, well above the red ink of $33.7 billion and $29.8 billion shown in the budget”.

Experts have spoken and what they are saying is that the forecasts and predictions of the Conservative government are not realistic. In fact, Canada is shedding jobs 50% faster than the United States over the same period of time. Canadians are going to want real accountability from the government with its economic action plan.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite honoured to rise to speak on Bill C-302, which was introduced in the House by my colleague from Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel. As an Italian citizen, I am proud that a member of my caucus has introduced this piece of legislation.

I would like to read a statement that was issued yesterday, March 23, 2009, in Montreal, by the National Congress of Italian Canadians, responding to the Conservative government's announcement regarding the community historical recognition program. It is entitled, “A Shameful Attempt to Divide and Conquer”.

The National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC) deplores the manner in which the minister of immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism...has chosen to bypass the legitimate community organizations who have been negotiating with the Government in good faith to arrive at a fair and equitable resolution on the issue of redress for the internment of Italian Canadians during World War II. The establishment of an advisory committee within the Community Historical Recognition program is an attempt to create division within the Italian Canadian community.

“The NCIC does not in any way consider that this program and the establishment of an advisory committee settle the community's historical claims on the issue of internment,” said Michael Stante, President of the National Congress of Italian Canadians.

The Agreement in principle of November 12, 2005, between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community, as represented by the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the National Federation of Canadian Italian Business and Professional Associations, the Order Sons of Italy and the Fondation communautaire canadienne-italienne, did answer the concerns of our community. That agreement, reached within the parameters of the ACE program, provided a settlement in the sum of $12.5 million to be administered by the community through the NCIC Foundation. This would be in keeping with the administrative process which has been put in place for the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Unfortunately, the current Canadian Government unilaterally breached the Agreement without notice nor consultation and introduced a new program which is totally unacceptable to our community.

Mr. Speaker, you have told me my time is virtually up. In the next part, where I am able to complete my time, I will finish reading this statement. However, I would like to take five seconds to underline the contribution of the Liberal member for Etobicoke Centre, who worked on the development of the ACE program.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in response, I want to talk about why we should trust the Tories, the Conservatives, the government with $3 billion of Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars with no controls whatsoever.

Let us look at how the Conservative government has already spent money that was approved in the House in past budgets. If we look at specific infrastructure projects the government approved and announced in 2007 and 2008, 77.8% of them were in Conservative ridings, but the Conservatives represent only 46.4% of all ridings in Canada. When we look at the building Canada fund, they announced 37%. While 30% went to Conservative ridings, only 7% went to non-Conservative ridings.

Let me quote Greg Weston, who is an Ottawa Sun columnist. He said, “Welcome aboard”, and he used the Prime Minister's first name, “pork-barrel express”. That is why we have put forward the Liberal motion. We want to ensure that there is accountability, that the facts do come to light and that we do not wait for a year, two years, three years before an Auditor General report comes out.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, because of the government's record, because of its incompetence and inability to govern in an efficient and effective fashion and to tell the truth to Canadians, the official opposition has come out with its motion today.

It is an attempt to force the government, if it cannot be competent, effective or do the job, to at least give up the facts so Canadians can see these for themselves. It is an attempt to bring some form of accountability to the government. It is an attempt to demonstrate if my view that the government and the Prime Minister are incompetent, the facts will show it. The motion will force the government to reveal the facts on that $3 billion so it is not a slush fund.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the official opposition motion. As I listened to the President of the Treasury Board, I noted that he presented a bit of disinformation and I would like to correct something. I encourage him to read the motion itself and not simply rely on the briefing notes prepared for him. In the first paragraph, the Liberal Party motion clearly states:

... this House calls upon the government to table in the House, by April 3rd, 2009, a list of the departments and programs which are likely to require access to this extraordinary authority; ...

The extraordinary authority is the $3 billion blank cheque. The President of the Treasury Board tried to confuse the issue by saying that the government will be unable to provide this information on April 3 because, when a project is approved, if it has partners such as the municipalities or the provinces, those partners must be willing to make the agreement or partnership public.

However, this has nothing to do with the government's ability to table in this House a list of the departments and programs which, as the motion states, are “likely to require access to this extraordinary authority”.

The President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and the various departments know whether their budgets will come out of the government's economic stimulus package.

If the President of the Treasury Board is claiming the government is unable to abide by the first paragraph of the Liberal opposition day motion, then that is an admission the government is clearly incompetent and does not merit the trust of Canadians to govern. For that minister to stand in the House and say that he does not know which departments might use this extraordinary power and that he does not know which programs may be used in effecting this extraordinary power is an astonishing admission.

I am sharing my time, Madam Speaker, with the member for Charlottetown.

I have been a member of the House since June 2, 1997. This is the first time I have heard a representative, a member of the government, say that he or she and the government do not know what departments or what programs may be used in order to realize certain objectives. It is unheard of. For the minister to stand and say that it would also be premature is nonsense.

The second part of the Liberal motion requires that once the approval is made, and clearly if there are partners it would be contingent on those partners also coming to an agreement and an actual accord, the government table in the House, within one sitting day of each such use, a report that discloses the name and location of each project to which the funding is being provided, including the federal electoral district in which it is located.

The reason this section is in the motion is the government's public records indicate that under its building Canada infrastructure program, the overwhelming majority of projects approved went to ridings held by Conservatives. I believe the figure is something like 77%. Clearly, there is something wrong.

The Auditor General, in the Ottawa Citizen on March 22, said:

I must say that I don’t buy the argument that they can’t tell them something—maybe not the detail of, say, what festival, or how much, but they could at least say where the money is going, whether it’s (to) infrastructure or festivals.

That is in stark contrast to what we have just heard from the President of the Treasury Board. I wonder why he is still in his position, given that he does not seem to have the basic understanding of how government operates.

The government comes to the House with a budget. It asks for spending approval and that approval is designated for certain departments and programs. For the minister to stand and say that the Conservative government cannot abide with the Liberal motion and that is why it will vote against it, is one clear admission of incompetence. If it is not incompetence, then it is wilful disregard to the public, to the right of Canadians to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

We are in too much of a dire situation to have the Conservative government play politics.

If we look at the employment figures for Canada only, in February we lost 82,600 jobs. That pushed our unemployment rate up to 7.7%. In January Canada lost 129,000 jobs. In fact, since October 2008, 295,000 Canadians have lost their jobs and have no income coming in.

We hear about Canadians who apply for employment insurance and wait two to three months before they receive their first cheques. Then we hear the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development show her ignorance of the law she is there to apply. She stated that someone who is eligible for employment insurance can access the fund the government put in place for training, even if they are not touching their benefits yet.

The minister does not know her own law. She stated that the budget is for people who do not qualify for employment insurance. Yet we have thousands of workers who have either lost their jobs or have been informed by their employers that they will lose their jobs before summer. They will receive some form of severance, but under employment insurance, they cannot begin to collect EI benefits until their severance has completely expired.

Under the Employment Insurance Act, those unemployed workers cannot access job training while they are living off their severance. How silly is that? If they were allowed to have their training immediately, there is a good chance they might find a job before their employment insurance benefits begin to flow. Saving money for the taxpayers and bringing in stimulus measures that make sense is too complicated for the government.

I urge all hon. members, including hon. members of the governing party, to read the motion, independent of whatever brainwashing information ministers have given them, and support it motion when it comes to a vote.

[Employment Insurance, March 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, unless they are on their severance and they do qualify but not yet, then they do not get the job training.

Last December, Mrs. Pacquet, who lives in my riding, was laid off. She waited 84 days for her first employment insurance cheque. She had a hard time putting food on the table for her family. But the government carries on singing the same tune, saying that everything is fine and there is no problem. People are desperate.

When will the Conservatives do something to minimize delays so that people can get their employment insurance—

[Standing Orders of the House of Commons, March 13th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that enlightening information. We now know where this motion originated.

I come back to the point that if this motion should be adopted, members would be disadvantaged. Members of the opposition and backbench members of the current governing party or any future governing party would be disadvantaged. That is why I am against this motion and I am calling on all members in the House to vote against it.

It is unfortunate that a member would seek to modify the current Standing Orders of the House to disempower backbench MPs rather than to further empower backbench MPs. This motion would reduce the chances that each of us has of a bill, if and when it came up for debate, being adopted, going to the Senate, being treated with priority, which it should, and becoming the law of the land.

This motion would put us back to pre-1986. While I found the movie Back to the Future to be interesting, I do not know about anyone else, but I have no interest in reliving it here. I was not here prior to 1986. I came here in 1997. I thought we had a pretty good system. I have no problem whatsoever looking at our system here and actually learning what the system is in the Senate and whether the Senate treats private bills from senators differently, with more priority, than it treats private members' bills that originate in this House, are adopted here and are sent to the other place.

That is the point that needs to be looked at. That is the point the procedure and House affairs committee is looking at, which is why I believe that the member's motion is premature and has not been properly researched and thought out. One looks for reciprocity and reciprocity means that if the Senate gives priority to its private bills, it should give priority to private members' bills from this House.

[Standing Orders of the House of Commons, March 13th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion the motion before the House is fraught with problems. I would urge all colleagues in the House not to vote in favour of it.

I will give a little of the history.

For many years, members of Parliament sought to increase the role of the private member. Until the 1980s, a private member's bill or motion was debated for one hour, usually talked out, mainly by a designated government member, and then the item would fall to the bottom of the list and disappear forever. All this began to change following the adoption of the McGrath committee report in 1986. Since then, and gradually, the procedures have been changed.

First, some private members' business items have become votable. Then a further change made most of those items votable, which as all hon. members in the House will know is the system still in effect right now.

Before the landmark changes of 1986, private members' bills dealt almost exclusively with riding name changes and other similar non-controversial issues. Today, however, things are very different. For example, in 2005, part VII of the Official Languages Act was given judicial status by way of a private member's bill from a senator and in the House by the then MP Don Boudria. All parties in the House supported that bill. The hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst was an enthusiastic supporter of the measure.

If we move on to the 39th Parliament, the international development assistance was placed under a new accountability regime, thanks again to a private member's bill sponsored by the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood.

The Kelowna Accord Implementation Act and the Kyoto Implementation Act were both private members' bills. The latter was authored by the hon. member for Honoré-Mercier. I would like to congratulate all those members.

The question that needs to be asked is this. How did these bills become law? First, they became law because a member of Parliament proposed the measure in question. Second, they passed the House of Commons because a majority of the members sitting voted for those bills. Finally, the Senate gave these bills a priority status and passed them, as well. That is how those bills were passed. This is how private members' bills that originate in this House are passed and become statute laws of Canada.

The motion that we have before us reads:

That Standing Order 89 be amended by deleting the words “and of second reading of a private Member's public bill originating in the Senate”; and Standing Order 86.2(2) be amended by deleting the words “a Senate public bill or”.

Now while some members may mistakenly believe that if fewer Senate bills were on the House order of precedence, more House bills would pass, but the effect is the exact opposite. In fact, we in the House give priority to the small number of Senate private members' bills that reach our House and in exchange our private members' bills receive priority in the other House. It does not mean the House always gets its way, but it does mean that the absence of this reciprocal agreement would be to the disadvantage of the House.

When the member for Beauce says that he only wants reciprocity, in fact, if one looks at the system that exists in the Senate, there is reciprocity with the system that we have in the House to deal with private members' bills originating from the Senate.

Senate private members' bills would be relegated to the bottom of the list on the House side, while House bills would go to the bottom of the Senate list rather than to the top, as is currently the case. I will speculate as to who would come out the winner in a minute.

All the reform measures for which hon. members have fought for years would disappear with the passage of this motion. Private members' bills would almost never become law in the future. The only winners in this scheme, in my view, could possibly be the Conservative House leader and his colleagues around the cabinet. If it were another party in power and a member of that party proposed this change to the Standing Orders, I would rise and say the same thing, even if it were my own party sitting on the other side.

It would mean that many fewer private members' bills would ever have the chance of becoming law. The 1986 reforms and the reforms subsequent to those virtually guarantee that when we table a private member's bill it stands a good chance of becoming law.

Should Motion No. 277 sponsored by the member for Beauce actually be adopted in the House and the Standing Orders changed, we would be disadvantaging ourselves. More and more power would be drawn away from Parliament and placed into the hands of the Prime Minister and the governing party. I do not believe for one minute that this scheme originated in the mind of the hon. member for Beauce. I will leave it to others to speculate as to where it actually originated, but I have to say it would be one giant step backward for the backbench should it succeed and one very sweet victory for any government that is secretive, unaccountable and--