Matthew Dubé

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, we can see just how ashamed the government is of its record on this file when the Liberals talk about how they negotiate collective agreements just to change the subject.

To echo the comments of the member for Windsor West, as the public safety critic I have often met with customs officers, who have not had a contract for quite some time. What the Liberals say they will do may be different, but what they bring to the table is not so different than what was proposed by the previous government.

I would like to thank my colleague for his speech, and ask him why the government refuses to take responsibility. It is odd because the parliamentary secretary tried to apologize, but I do not believe him. Instead of saying “we shortchanged you” or “we failed in our responsibility”, he said that he was sorry that they are experiencing these difficulties and that the system is not working. That is the opposite of taking responsibility.

Why is the government refusing to openly admit that it showed a lack of judgment, made a mistake, and is sorry?

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in light of the repeated allegation that there is no evidence, I will again seek the unanimous consent of the House to table the documents obtained under the Access to Information Act. These documents indicate the dates the Phoenix pay system was not working after the Liberal government was elected.

[Parks Canada, February 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to give this one more try.

I have some more documents for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services, who is still asking for evidence that the Phoenix pay system was not ready on time. This time, I would like to table the record of a teleconference during which the following statement was made.

There are still outstanding technical issues, such as connectivity, 50% fail of EUAT, EDP issues that are now occurring, business transformation gaps, blackout impacts, and lack of morale and capacity at pay centres.

Once again, I would ask for not debate but unanimous consent to provide that proof to the parliamentary secretary.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Gatineau has been asking for evidence all day. I therefore seek the unanimous consent of the House to table some evidence. It is a memo written by the Office of the Comptroller General, addressed to the Treasury Board, and dated January 13, 2016, or one month before the Liberals implemented this system.

It is a readiness assessment of Phoenix that says things such as “Unknown if collective agreements are well coded into Phoenix”, “Testing results...unknown”, “less than 50% success” rate, “30% errors”.

Mr. Speaker, I think you get the picture. This is proof enough for the parliamentary secretary to show that Liberals knew full well this system did not work, and I would ask for unanimous consent to finally give the parliamentary secretary the information he ignores.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to asking my colleague from Gatineau this same question. After all, he asked for proof that the government was aware of the problems with the Phoenix pay system.

I have a memo provided by the Treasury Board, dated January 13, 2016, a little more than a month before the Liberals pressed the metaphorical big red button. It is a readiness assessment of Phoenix, and it has such gems as “System readiness is questionable out of our 25 outstanding defects 10 are still critical and not fixed”; “Increase in overpayment at the moment without the Phoenix implementation, what will be the impact later”; “On the fix there will not be any testing before go live”; “What is the contingency plan, not serious of not having this.” Here is another gem, from Public Safety Canada, which says, “Testing results issue: 30% errors not satisfactory. Issues with conversion.”

Members get the picture. I am sure this access to information request is a great long read in The Ottawa Citizen for the member for Gatineau.

At the risk of posing a rhetorical question, I am wondering if the member who just spoke can explain why the government refuses to do what governments should do, which is take responsibility and fix the problem.

[2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, February 8th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in less than 24 hours, Canadians will be glued to their screens as the Pyeongchang Olympic Games kick off.

Events include biathlon, bobsleigh, curling, hockey, luge, figure skating, speed skating, ski jumping, skeleton, freestyle skiing, and snowboard. With so many exciting sports and so many athletes making us proud, we will not even notice the cold. From the Dufour-Lapointe sisters and Kaetlyn Osmond to Mark McMorris, Patrick Chan, and Marie-Philip Poulin, there will certainly be no shortage of spectacular athletes to cheer on.

However, I cannot forget our amazing flag-bearers, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. This is the first time Canada will have dual flag-bearers and they could not be more deserving. In 2010, here in Canada, they were the youngest skaters ever to win Olympic ice dance gold and won silver four years later in Sochi.

We may watch the medal count very closely, but let us enjoy the moment, and more importantly, take pride in these incredible ambassadors who, for a few exciting weeks, will be the face of our country to the world.

Go, Canada, Go.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, if the member thinks so little of the power that he has in cabinet, we would certainly like to do the job for him. Basically, he is saying that opposition MPs stand on the same footing. He is not wrong in the sense that we meet with stakeholders. However, when the Minister of Justice attends a fundraiser at $1,500 a head with people who are in the law profession who are directly engaged as stakeholders with the issues that she has legal, regulatory, political, and financial power over within days, weeks, months, and years of that fundraiser taking place, to not understand that notion, as opposed to me as the public safety critic meeting with stakeholders who are concerned about the government's policies and what direction we should be going in, is absolutely crazy to me.

Let us be clear. To simply divulge even the fact that these cash for access things are taking place is at best a cosmetic change. We will support the baby steps. However, at the end of the day, the public already knows that these things are happening anyway. If the Liberals are really serious about fixing it, then they should be doing more and that is not what we are seeing here.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps my colleague was too busy heckling the previous speaker to have heard what I said in my speech.

I specifically mentioned that I recognized that we all have an obligation in this place as candidates and certainly as members of Parliament to have the strictest laws and rules in place to ensure that we are not finding ourselves in positions of conflict of interest, or “cash for access”, which is the term that is used. We cannot pretend there is not a difference between an opposition MP, regardless of whether he or she may one day be in cabinet or even in the Prime Minister's seat, and the immediacy of a minister who within weeks or months of having participated in said fundraiser will have the power to give out contracts, to hire people, to spend money, to make all kinds of regulatory and political decisions that are completely different from any decision that I may make after an election two years' down the road, in the event that there is an NDP government and I should be so honoured as to be part of that cabinet.

The point is to acknowledge that when one is in government there is a constant and immediate power that exists.

To my colleague's question, I recognize that extending that to party leaders and others who are in slightly more influential positions than a simple opposition critic is understandable. We are not going to disagree on that point. However, this notion that the government keeps putting forward, as it has with every conflict of interest issue that has marred it since it has been in power, that somehow we are all equal in this place and that it does not recognize the power it holds, is quite disconcerting for me.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this is timely, because the heckling we are hearing between the Liberals and Conservatives only serves to reinforce the point I wanted to make.

In the previous Parliament, the Conservative government only generated more cynicism and changed our elections legislation, making it harder for Canadians to vote.

Now the Liberal government is fuelling cynicism with superficial changes that ultimately will do nothing to correct a serious perception problem that the Liberals themselves created. Everyone who has been watching today's debates heard the Liberals say that the leader of the official opposition was just as bad and that he did the same thing. The Conservatives, for their part, said that what they did was less serious because at least when their ministers attended fundraisers, they met people whose areas of business were not directly related to the department.

I have been an MP for almost seven years now, and I am starting to get pretty sick of giving speeches about all the issues that breed cynicism. Others have talked about this today. As my colleague from British Columbia mentioned this morning, when we go door to door and talk to people, that is what is on people's minds. They say they are not interested, they do not want to donate money to political parties, and they do not want to take out memberships. Worse still, some say they do not even want to vote because of the cynical mood fuelled by stories in the news and legislative half-measures. We will support the changes anyway because one step in the right direction is better than nothing, but everyone needs to understand where this is coming from.

Bill C-50 is a first step. Unfortunately, although I have a lot of respect for the minister, it will probably be the only step. The Liberal government is unlikely to leave behind anything else that qualifies as a legacy of democratic reform.

I have to wonder if it is mere coincidence that this bill was introduced right after the Prime Minister broke his lofty electoral reform promise, right after the dismal failure on that front. This is a big problem for our political system as a whole, not just party financing.

We recognize that some of the changes have made things more difficult. My Bloc Québécois colleague and others spoke earlier about the per-subsidy vote, which is money allocated for each vote received by a party or a candidate.

The member for Beaches—East York spoke about similar issues. He even went so far as to speak about making changes to tax credits for donations. I am raising all these issues to point out that it is possible to be open-minded in this type of debate and to find ways to improve political financing.

We can study all the important changes made in Quebec following revelations about the corruption that occurred over several years, as well as all the changes in political financing and the lowering of contribution limits.

These are all legitimate ideas and we could have a healthy debate about how to provide the financing needed, for better or for worse, to run an election campaign. It takes money to print brochures, inform voters about our positions and important issues, obtain telecommunications equipment for campaign offices, communicate with voters, hear their concerns, and share our positions. We recognize that this is the reality, whether we like it or not.

In that sense, it is very important to find a way to work together in a non-partisan manner to fix this system or at least create a system that instills confidence in Canadians. There are many reasons why that is currently not the case. Sometimes it is because of changes that have nothing to do with political donations as such, but have more to do with the electoral system itself and how it works. I am talking about Bill C-23 from the last Parliament, which had to do with electoral reform, or deform, as people jokingly used to refer to it. That is the type of thing that fuels cynicism and makes all of this that much more challenging.

However, we also have to consider the optics of a minister receiving the maximum donation allowed by law to attend an event with people who have a direct stake in his or her portfolio. What we need to understand is that ministers and regular MPs wield a very different level of power. I agree with the Conservatives on that. I would add that we keep reminding the Liberal government of that fact with each new conflict of interest scandal. Everyone knows that party leaders aspire to be Prime Minister one day and that members of the official opposition or another opposition party could easily end up in cabinet with decision-making power within two or three years. Nonetheless, ministers have the power to make extremely important decisions, hire people, award contracts, spend money, and so on. As such, their ear is much more valuable to have than that of a regular MP.

This does not mean that all members of the House are not prepared to follow the conflict of interest rules—political financing rules, specifically. However, when the government denies that things are different when it comes to ministers and claims in the House that everyone should be on a level playing field, it is insulting the intelligence of those who want to participate in this debate and make real change, so that we can have a political financing system that allows us, among other things, to run political campaigns. People want to see candidates on the ground, which costs money, whether we like it or not, but people also want to have confidence in the financing system.

This morning, the member for Beaches—East York talked about how things work south of the border, and he is right. In other countries, such as the United States, money plays such a dominant role in politics that it has become a problem. For example, my campaign spending cap for my riding would buy about one ad for a U.S. Senate hopeful. We have to acknowledge that our system does have merit. Seeing how bad things are elsewhere makes us feel better about how we do things here, but that does not mean we can rest on our laurels.

Whenever a journalist digs up another scandal, we can pretty much count on the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the Minister of Democratic Institutions to say that our system is a good one, spending is in check, and there are strict caps on how much an individual can donate. That is not enough, though. We cannot compare ourselves to the worst of the bunch, places like the United States, where a Supreme Court ruling made the who and how much of election spending a free-for-all. Corporations, unions, anybody can spend as much as they want. Even so, alarming situations that are bad for democracies elsewhere are no excuse for us to be content with the status quo here.

In closing, as I said earlier, there are too many situations in the House that remind me of the cynicism I have seen among too many voters as I have gone door to door as an MP for almost seven years now, and I know that my colleagues have seen the same thing. If we really want to make Canadians less cynical and put an end to political financing scandals, we need to engage in a real debate. The government needs to do more than introduce a bill that is merely a smokescreen designed to hide its broken promises on electoral reform and to try to make people forget about the scandals it has been caught up in. Let us stop pointing fingers and arguing over which political party was worse than the other when in office. Let us seriously consider this reform and the measures that we could change or even those that we could bring back, in the case of public financing.

There are all kinds of interesting questions. Of course, the NDP's main goal when it comes to bringing in true electoral reform is the implementation of a mixed member proportional system. There are also many other issues that need to be seriously considered. That is not at all what we are seeing from this government, and it is not what we saw from the previous government, either.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his welcome. It is interesting to see that in the House, because the exchanges that were taking place during my speech—