Matthew Dubé

[Air Canada Public Participation Act, April 15th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I will pick up my speech where I left off. I was saying that this bill is a betrayal of workers since it seeks to amend the law that ensures that their jobs remain in the locations indicated in that law.

However, this is not just about job losses. Although the job losses that will occur as a result of this bill are very worrisome, the instability of the jobs in this sector is also a cause for concern. That is perhaps an unintended consequence, and it makes us wonder how much the government really thought about the consequences of its bill. Let me explain.

According to the bill, it would be deemed appropriate to outsource these jobs if that allowed Air Canada to maintain its competitive advantage. After the bill is passed, jobs may stay in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Mississauga. However, we do not know how long that situation will last and we will have to deal with the fact that these jobs will become unstable. Air Canada may justify outsourcing jobs by saying that it wants to avoid raising prices for consumers. That is a problem.

As I said before question period, we have high-quality, well-paying jobs here. It will be counter-productive if those jobs become unstable. We are not just talking about job losses, but about job quality as well.

Since this debate began, Liberal government members have been arguing that Air Canada has to remain competitive in an ever-changing industry. The problem is that we not only have to stand up for the workers affected by this bill, but we also have to think about the precedent that this bill sets.

Imagine a world where every time something like this comes up, the government claims that the company's legal requirements prevent it from remaining competitive and will cause rates to increase and all kinds of problems.

If, every time, the government decides to change the law and make legal something that used to be illegal, namely the loss of good-quality jobs, what will prevent the government from doing the same thing again for another company that has similar legal obligations, under the pretext that the industry is competitive?

How many jobs would be in jeopardy and would become precarious? How many jobs are we prepared to outsource to keep our companies competitive? That is not what a free market is. By intervening to favour a company on a legal level, the government is going against the idea of a free market. This is not the role of a responsible government.

A government, especially this one, which was elected on its claim of wanting to stand up for the middle class, is responsible for standing up for the workers who are protected by law.

I want to reiterate that this is a betrayal. During the last Parliament, in 2012, the Liberal Party was outraged about the Conservative government's refusal to step up and enforce the law. However, the Liberals are now saying that they will absolutely enforce the law, because they are going to change it.

Changing the law makes the Liberals even worse than the Conservatives. The Conservatives did not enforce the law, but the Liberals have simply decided to change the law at the expense of workers.

I am thinking about all those members from Montreal.

The same goes for members from Winnipeg or Mississauga, members who are from cities that have workers who rely on these jobs which are protected by Air Canada's legal obligations. Today we see a betrayal of those workers, those workers who now are now seeing the Liberal government change the law after saying that the previous Conservative government should apply the law. The changes to that law are not only creating a situation where those workers will lose their jobs, but those who manage to hang on to their jobs will no longer be guaranteed the same high-quality long-term jobs and the long-term guarantees which the law affords them today.

Therefore, Canadians should remember this the next time the Liberals tell them how they set bar so much higher than the previous Conservative government. It is rare that I will take the side of the Conservatives in an argument. The Liberals are doing worse than what the Conservatives did. They propose to change the law, and that is a slap in the face for the workers who are protected by the legislation.

We also need to consider the situation at Bombardier. I will have to say more about that later because I did not have enough time to delve into the subject as much as I wanted to during my initial remarks on this subject. We need to consider the fact that Bombardier is going through a tough time across Canada, but especially in Quebec. That has major repercussions on the entire aerospace and aeronautics sector. The problem today is that people are trying to take shortcuts.

I will admit this is speculation, but we have the right to ask certain questions in this debate, and we have to ask them. This bill was introduced before an announcement about the decision on whether to provide, or not provide, assistance to Bombardier.

The answer is clear to the NDP: yes, we should help Bombardier, but there should be strings attached. We should have a solid agreement with provisions to ensure utmost respect for taxpayer dollars throughout the process. We certainly do not want to give Bombardier a blank cheque.

The problem is that there was no mention whatsoever of Bombardier, and no mention of the entire aeronautics and aerospace industry in this budget. Today we are debating Bill C-10, which will have a serious impact on the aeronautics and aerospace industry and on all related decisions, even though we have no idea what direction the government plans to take.

This is quite problematic because, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, it really seems like this is about returning a favour, after Air Canada committed to purchasing the C Series planes from Bombardier. Every time we ask the minister any questions about this file, he simply gets up and says that it does not matter, that we have good news from Air Canada. Of course we have some concerns about this. We will continue to stand up for workers.

That is why we will be voting against this bill and why I am pleased to move, seconded by my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the following amendment:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and to provide for certain other measures, because it:

(a) threatens the livelihoods of thousands of Canadian workers in the aerospace industry by failing to protect the long-term stability of the Canadian aerospace sector from seeing jobs outsourced to foreign markets;

(b) forces Canadian manufacturers to accept greater risks and to incur greater upfront costs in conducting their business;

(c) provides no guarantee that the terms and conditions of employment in the Canadian aeronautics sector will not deteriorate under increased and unfettered competition; and

(d) does not fulfill the commitments made by the Prime Minister when he attended demonstrations alongside workers in the past.

[Ethics, April 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, here is the situation. We have a Prime Minister who is using numbered companies to pay less taxes and a Minister of Finance who runs a company bearing his name that uses the Bahamas to make bigger profits. Meanwhile, ordinary Canadians are paying their fair share of taxes. There is no problem for the wealthy. It is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. It is absolute hypocrisy.

Does the Prime Minister realize that people are fed up with always seeing the same well-connected people benefiting from this system that does not work?

[Indigenous Affairs, April 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the crisis in Attawapiskat is not an isolated incident. Indigenous youth all across the country are living in conditions that nobody here would accept for their children. These young people need help and resources. However, there is nothing in the budget to address this crisis or the issue of indigenous mental health.

Will the minister commit to increasing the budget for mental health care services and finally help indigenous communities?

[Air Canada Public Participation Act, April 15th, 2016]

Before I begin, I would like to thank some of my colleagues who worked on this file. This was a team effort, after all.

I would like to thank, of course, my colleague the member for Edmonton Strathcona, who is our transport critic, and my colleague the member for Windsor West, who is our innovation, science, and economic development critic. Both those colleagues have worked very hard on this issue as well.

I also want to thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. As an MP from Montreal, he represents a good number of the workers who will be affected by this change. I want to thank my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona as well. Since he represents a riding in the Winnipeg area, he is also seeing first-hand the impact of the decisions made here.

This issue also affects me. I say that with a bit of a smile, since my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent and I have often talked about the importance of Quebec's aerospace industry, specifically. I am from a suburb in the greater Montreal area, where there are workers and machinists in various industries who work hard, particularly at Air Canada. This bill will therefore have a major impact in my region. That is why I am very pleased to share the NDP's position on this with the House.

First of all, we must condemn the government's lack of rigour on any issues related to the aerospace industry. This government has been improvising ever since it was sworn in back in November. Since the Liberals say they recognize the importance of the aerospace industry in Canada, and particularly in Quebec, I think that they should have a plan. That goes without saying. During the election campaign, the Liberals kept saying over and over again that they had a plan, but they do not seem to have one for that industry, as we can see from the many problems that have arisen.

First of all, regarding Bombardier, we asked the minister on the day that he was sworn in what he planned to do about this file. Of course, I did not expect an answer the day that he was sworn in. However, it has been several months now, and the Liberals just keep saying that the situation is being evaluated and that they presented a budget. We have yet to hear anything about this, and they tell us to simply trust them. Instead of saying “just watch me” like his father, the Prime Minister keeps saying “just trust me”. The problem is that we do not find him trustworthy so far.

The Air Canada Public Participation Act that we are discussing today is very much intertwined with the Bombardier situation. The Minister of Transport is using the Bombardier case and Air Canada's promise to buy Bombardier aircraft as an excuse to change the legislation, saying that it is a good agreement and giving them carte blanche to decide how they are going to protect jobs here in Canada.

As my colleague put it so well, the problem is that the bill changes the current legislation and asks us to trust Air Canada to meet its obligations. For now, those are legal obligations, but if the bill is passed, that will no longer be the case.

We seriously wonder whether we are seeing a favour being returned. The Minister of Transport seems to want to thank Air Canada for buying Bombardier aircraft, thereby helping the government to off-load this hot potato. This gives the minister some good news to announce during question period, when he is asked about Aveos or Bombardier. He can go on about how nice it was to sit in one of those planes and he also gets to avoid having to defend his colleague, the Minister of Innovation, who remains unable to tell us when a decision will be made in the Bombardier case.

I do not pretend to know what the government members are thinking, but the facts are not reassuring, neither about the government, nor about the future of Air Canada maintenance jobs, which are supposed to be protected by law.

Before I go on, it is important for me to put things into context to better understand how we got to this point.

My colleagues will remember that Aveos announced that it was filing for bankruptcy in 2012. Naturally, the unions representing the machinists and the Government of Quebec sued Air Canada, accusing it of failing to meet its legal obligations. In fact, almost 3,000 jobs were lost after the news broke.

At the time, we asked the Conservative government a number of questions. Unfortunately, we never got an answer. We wanted to know what the Conservatives were going to do to enforce the law. As usual, we were given all kinds of excuses about market realities, even though there was a law. There were legal obligations. The government was not able to give us an explanation.

We now have a new government. What is important and what we are interested in today are the questions posed by the Liberals at the time. They were so indignant that the current Prime Minister, who is an MP from Montreal, protested alongside the workers in Montreal. As my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona said so well yesterday, he wasn't embarrassed to sing Kumbaya, to chant “So-so-so-solidarity” and shout out all kinds of slogans along with the protesters.

After all, people often said that the Conservatives came to change Ottawa and Ottawa changed them. Now, the same thing is happening with the Liberals. They came to change Ottawa and Ottawa changed them. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the Liberals have not changed. These are the same Liberals that we knew before. When they were in the opposition, they tried to tell us one thing, they were going to protest with workers, but now they are flouting the law by changing it to legalize things that are illegal today, that will be illegal tomorrow, and that will be illegal until the bill is passed. It is completely shameful. It is disgraceful and unbecoming. It is particularly unbecoming because they promised to do things differently. Unfortunately, that is not what we are seeing today.

I would like to continue providing more context. After 2012, the situation changed. With the purchase of the Bombardier C Series, or at least the promise to buy since it is not yet a done deal, the Government of Quebec put an end to the dispute. It was only natural to do so until an agreement could be reached. Meanwhile, the government once again took advantage of the circumstances to make changes.

At the time, the Minister of Transport provided a justification. I said “at the time”, as though it were a long time ago, because time flies when promises are being broken. A few months ago, the Minister of Transport explained that this was to allow for more flexibility. This sounds as though Air Canada is being given an opportunity to flout the law, but no one is actually saying so. Air Canada is simply being given an opportunity to legally flout the law. It is being given permission to do things it is not allowed to do now.

I want to raise an important point here. I heard a number of Liberal colleagues say the same thing. I even heard a Liberal member question our trust in Canadian workers and Canada's industrial capacity. I would like to give him some figures that are relevant here. The first figure has to do with the export of supply chains to the Asia-Pacific region. From 2003 to 2013, exports of supply chains grew rapidly by 190%. We lost jobs here in Canada. These jobs are going elsewhere. Supply chain exports to the Asia-Pacific region account for nearly 20% of the overall growth in value of exports.

We can see that more and more aerospace companies are outsourcing to Asia and other countries. Jobs here in Canada in these industries have become unstable. That is why we need a law to protect those jobs. We are not questioning the workers' skills or the quality of our industry. We are questioning whether the current market will protect those jobs. After all, they are high-quality jobs with good working conditions, pensions, and guaranteed income. It is so easy for large corporations to outsource jobs like that to places where labour costs less. That is being done to the detriment of the people we represent. That is exactly why the law was passed at the time, because, to put it bluntly, Air Canada benefited from the money of these same taxpayers who are now going to lose their jobs.

Once again, as one of my colleagues put it so well in one of his questions, over the past few years, in cases where the tax rate was lowered for large corporations, for example, companies often promised to return the favour and keep jobs here in Canada. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

I have some other things to say, but it is almost time for question period, so I will pick this up again later.

[Air Canada Public Participation Act, April 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

Since the consequences of the present act do not suit the government, it would rather change the act than enforce it. I will have more to say about that later in the debate.

My question for my Conservative Party colleague is simple: when the Conservatives were in power, why did they do nothing to enforce the Air Canada Public Participation Act?

In 2012, when Aveos went bankrupt and people lost their jobs, we asked the government some questions. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the Liberals asked the same questions.

Why did the government of the day do nothing to enforce the law? Can my colleague help us understand that?

[Rail Transportation, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers and Canadians certainly understand that rail safety is important. The minister says he understands it is important. Maybe he should tell that to the Minister of Finance because the rail safety budget was cut by 21%.

Tragic incidents like the one in Lac-Mégantic and other accidents happen across Canada. The Lac-Mégantic tragedy is very fresh in people's memory.

We recently learned that Transport Canada sat on information about the 500 most dangerous rail crossings. It is time to stop talking and start taking action.

When will the minister and the government start taking action?

[March 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's question because it illustrates exactly what we are trying to help our Conservative colleagues understand.

I am not sure whether he will agree with me when I say that, in the example he just gave, freedom of religion is not even the issue. The issue is a group of people experiencing racism and hatred. That is exactly the challenge we are dealing with. Hatred and violence show up in different ways against different groups.

This is the third time I have said this since the beginning of my speech, but at the risk of repeating myself, we have the tools, we have the institutions, and we have the people to help us combat hatred and violence and find long-term solutions.

Let us put the tools in place to do that.

[March 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, in response to my colleague's comments, we are certainly disgusted by the violence being committed in these conflict-ridden countries. I do not think any member in the House could see such images and think they were acceptable.

However, with respect to the member's examples, as I said in my speech, yes, certain religious minorities are being attacked, but other minorities are as well, such as members of the LGBT community. Are we also going to create an office to protect the rights of the LGBT community?

We are not saying that we do not want to protect these denominational minorities. What we are saying is that Canada is equipped to take a comprehensive approach, which includes all of these rights.

It is interesting to hear the Conservatives say that the NDP is pitting rights against each other, and I would venture to say that they will say the same about the Liberals. In reality, it is the Conservatives' approach that is pitting rights against each other.

We had institutions and we still have institutions to protect not only the minorities that my colleague mentioned, but also those persecuted by the very groups committing this violence, and that is the approach we want to take.

If we want to ensure that these groups are protected in the long term and indefinitely, these countries need democratic reform, and this must also be part of the approach. That is not the case right now.

[March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laurier—Sainte-Marie for sharing her time with me.

I am glad to speak after her because I would like to elaborate on several points she mentioned. We can debate Canada's institutional tools and how public funds are used to achieve diplomatic objectives abroad even if there is some disagreement about how to achieve those objectives and what our offices and institutions should look like. Nevertheless, we recognize the tremendous importance of religious freedom.

This debate reminds me of something one of my professors at McGill University often used to say: human rights apply horizontally, not vertically. In other words, no single right is more important than another. Human rights exist side by side. Some countries are grappling with extremely complex situations that result in certain rights clashing with other rights. Here in Canada and in countries with strong democracies, we recognize that different rights can create more nuanced situations. In those cases, the Supreme Court of Canada sometimes has to adjudicate.

We have judicial, political and legislative institutions here to tackle those problems, but in countries where conflict exists and countries that do not have democratic institutions, the situation can become even more complex.

That is one of the main reasons why we need to have a strategy as well as an office that deals with all human rights, not just rights related to freedom of religion. At the risk of repeating myself, as my colleague did and we will continue to do, the right to freedom of religion is extremely important.

Let us come back to the situations in various countries. It is important to look at the long-term solutions that Canada can provide through our diplomatic action and the work done by the Department of Foreign Affairs. It is not about focusing on human rights alone, but looking at every situation. For example, we could say that this also applies to the fight against ISIL. It is not about photo-ops and sound bites. It is about long-term solutions in order to set up real democratic institutions in these countries and ensure that they are capable of enforcing these rights.

Since the beginning of the debate, Conservative members have named several countries where there is terrorism or violence. Not so long ago, I head a member talking about Boko Haram. Even though there is an office to protect religious freedom, what long-term solutions can we envision other than a comprehensive solution for protecting all rights, real democratic reform in those countries, and the implementation of real democratic and judicial institutions? That is the key. That is what Canada should be working on.

Let me get back to why we oppose the motion. As the old saying goes, we should not put all of our eggs in one basket, but that is what happened here. The Department of Foreign Affairs and our diplomats should not be functioning on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. They should try to resolve the conflicts that lead to persecution in those countries by putting forward a long-term democratic solution. That is part of the solution.

It really bothers me that today's motion was moved by the government. My colleague from Mount Royal asked one of our Conservative colleagues why the motion was not worded differently.

This is yet another us-against-them motion, a divisive motion that says, “[T]hese were our policies when we were the Conservative government; take it or leave it” instead of trying to work together to find a real solution that will really tackle these terrible situations in which people are persecuted. That is not something we can tolerate. That kind of violence is unacceptable and appalling.

That is why this motion is so hard to swallow. Rather than look for constructive solutions by adopting a more comprehensive outlook, they are pushing a “my way or the highway” agenda. Unfortunately, that is how things were handled for the past 10 years almost. That is the approach today's Conservative motion argues for.

That mentality and that idea are troubling considering that there were already groups in place doing the work. There has been a lot of talk about Rights and Democracy. Members of the House would be surprised at how much Canadians cared about that organization. When the Conservatives announced the cuts that led to the closure of Rights and Democracy, people were furious and very disappointed. I should not even say that they were furious. They were disappointed because that group had been doing the work for a very long time. Rights and Democracy had built relationships and had known for a long time what the best practices were. That was the case in my riding and I think it was also the case in the ridings of many of my colleagues. Some of them even mentioned it in this debate.

I heard one of my Conservative colleagues, a former minister at that, say that public servants had advised them against getting involved in some files that they should have gotten involved in. The Conservatives used that as an argument to say that the Office of Religious Freedom was a good thing because it allowed the government to intervene in files that public servants did not want it to get involved in. That shows exactly what the problem was with the Conservative approach. When the Conservatives found that something was not working or that an approach needed to be changed, their solution was to do away with it completely and start fresh with something completely ideological in their own image.

That is why we take issue with this Office. It is not because we oppose protecting freedom of religion but, on the contrary, because we had the tools in place to solve and address these problems. Instead, we should have perhaps taken a modified approach taking into account the international reality that changes from one minute to the next and that can be very complex. We should have worked instead within the existing framework and with groups that already had the expertise and a mandate supported by the people, as was mentioned by those who contacted our offices to protest these cuts and, consequently, this closure. We can see the problem there too.

Without repeating what my colleague from Laurier—Sainte-Marie said, this is even more problematic when we consider it together with the problems associated with the Conservatives' approach to other rights. We need only think of the number of countries in the world that have passed homophobic or racist laws that attack other minorities besides religious minorities in their countries. The government seemed to be more reluctant in those cases. My colleague mentioned the example of Raif Badawi. That is another fine example. That is an example of a type of freedom that was violated when a blogger was subjected to the situation he is suffering through now simply for blogging. The government was very reluctant to intervene in that case and even refused to do so. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, we see that instead of being considered and applied horizontally, rights were applied vertically, and that is unfortunate.

We oppose this motion, not because we oppose protecting freedom of religion, but because we recognize that there are many minorities in the world and that many rights are unfortunately violated every day. In Canada, we have the know-how, the resources, and, more importantly, the human resources. Think of the people who work at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. They will be in a position to do this work if we, as parliamentarians, give them a mission or mandate to work on ensuring all these rights are upheld. However, we will have to focus on finding an institutional solution by establishing legal and democratic systems in these countries. This will enable these countries to uphold human rights and to continue to protect these rights once we discontinue our involvement abroad.

[Serge Allaire and Monique Couture, March 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I was saddened to learn, late last year, that the J'ai faim à tous les jours foundation would be ceasing operations.

Its founders, Serge Allaire and Monique Couture, will be taking a well-deserved rest. The foundation, created nearly 16 years ago, aims to ensure that disadvantaged children receive lunch at school. This helps children to focus on their education and take advantage of their time at school.

The foundation launched with a spaghetti supper at the École de Bourgogne, and since then, the foundation has built a name for itself thanks to its founders and its activities, such as the Karaté Don fundraiser, which I attended on Saturday.

I do want to mention that these children's needs will continue to be met. Organizations in the region will take up the foundation's cause to ensure that the mission of J'ai faim à tous les jours continues to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace the passion and dedication of Serge Allaire and Monique Couture.

That is why I pay tribute to them in the House today. On behalf of my constituents, I want to extend a special thank you to them.