Matthew Kellway

[National Defence, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, are the Conservatives claiming that the PBO has the numbers wrong? If so, what is the real cost of these ships? They are already scaling back on their promises about these ships and what they will be able to do. With their stated budget, are we going to be left with nothing but two tugboats painted grey?

If the procurement were on track, the Conservatives would not have already cancelled the program once and the delivery schedule would not have been pushed back six years. What capabilities are going to be lost because of this Conservative mismanagement?

[National Defence, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the question had been about joint support ships, the latest mismanagement in the military procurement file. The NDP supports building these ships, but nobody trusts the Conservatives with procurement.

To date, it has been about fighter jets that do not fight or jet, maritime helicopters that do not fly over water and fixed-wing search and rescue craft that somehow got lost.

Therefore, who is going to take the blame for this one? Is it the Minister of National Defence who is finally ready to stand? Is the new associate minister going to lie down on the tracks for this one, or is the Minister of Public Works and Government Services still carrying the bag on this one?

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, there is very little in the bill that would enhance that protection. The fundamental mechanism that would be used is threat. It is by lodging into the person of the commissioner, and ultimately the Minister of Public Safety, the ability to dismiss RCMP officers who have breached the workplace rules and, in some cases, have broken laws. That is all they would have. It would not go to the culture of the issue.

What we expected to see included in the bill to change the culture were such things as a mandatory harassment policy, mandatory harassment training for RCMP members and a clear, consistent, transparent, accountable investigation process.

Instead we have a patchwork of investigation processes. Province by province, they can figure out how to do this. The options would still include, very problematically, police investigating police; very problematically, it would include the RCMP investigating itself without appropriate civilian oversight, and it would fail to bring comfort to those people in the RCMP who are concerned about having a workplace that is free from harassment in any form.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the fundamental issue in what the legislation needs to do is change the culture of the institution. Clearly, there are issues within that culture. However, we have a government on that side that is effectively a one-trick pony. It knows only the stick. It knows only deterrence and punishment.

The provisions of the bill and the failure to bring about a process of an independent civilian oversight of the institution is a failure to get at the root of the problem, which is about changing the culture of the institution.

The notion that putting more power into the hands of the commissioner to fire individual officers in order to curb harassment would somehow change the culture of that organization shows a true lack of understanding of organizations and workplaces and shows a true lack of understanding for the pernicious effect of sexual harassment upon workers.

I am surprised that the member down the way would stand and begin his discussion with, effectively, a dismissal of the problem. The NDP and Canadians recognize that there is an issue . We know, of course, that there are a limited number of cases, but it is a critically important issue that needs to be addressed. Canadians understand that workplaces need to be safe and that workers, whether they are RCMP or others, need to feel that they can go to work and be free from sexual harassment. That means that the culture of the RCMP needs to be changed, and it needs to be changed through this legislation, which is why we welcomed the legislation being brought forward.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of clarification, for the record. I am not on the justice committee. I now sit on the Standing Committee on Health.

There were a couple of issues in the question. First, the member raised a hypothetical issue of an independent review body not being able to discipline or dismiss a member. I am not prepared to address a hypothetical situation. What I am prepared to address is what the government has done to redress the circumstances that Canadians surely find offensive. Whether Canadians work for the police, in retail, or the industrial sector, it does not matter; they have an expectation that they can work in a workplace where they are protected, by law, from harassment so that they can go to work and feel safe, do their jobs and return home to their families at night. For the RCMP, these days, unfortunately, that is not the case.

We know that there have been many charges of sexual harassment raised by members and former members of the RCMP. There needs to be a transparent process for handling those charges and there needs to be accountability within that organization. It is not reasonable to lodge all of that authority with the commissioner.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak about Bill C-42. The issue of enhanced accountability for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is one of great interest to Canadians and one I am glad to have a chance to speak about today.

Canadians have high expectations of the RCMP. They expect the men and women of the RCMP to serve them with honour and integrity. We need them to serve us and protect us and protect public safety. We ask them to put their lives on the line to protect us.

The RCMP officer in the red uniform, the Mountie, is an iconic symbol of Canada. The force's service to Canadians is, on the whole, exemplary. It is an institution in which we take great pride. It is a symbol of Canada around the world, known to citizens of different countries all over the world.

However, recent high-profile incidents, including complaints of sexual harassment lodged by current and former female RCMP officers and, importantly, the failure to discipline officers who step outside the bounds of the law, show that there are deep underlying issues with respect to the culture of the RCMP. It is being called, in some circles, dysfunctional. It is unanimously recognized that it is a culture that needs to be changed dramatically.

Speaking to the CBC in November, RCMP Commissioner Paulson referred to the institution as “...the culture of harassment, it's the culture of misuse of authority”. So much so is this the case that, regrettably, public confidence in the RCMP has been shaken. A change in the accountability framework for the RCMP is long overdue.

We witnessed on television, and in the news, the concerns and complaints of many former and current RCMP employees, mainly women, talking about their concerns with the culture and the lack of response to their concerns and complaints. These are clearly difficult issues that have had profound effects on the careers and lives of these RCMP officers and former officers.

Speaking of Bill C-42, the Minister of Public Safety has stated:

...Canadians' confidence in the RCMP has been tested over the past few years and this legislation will ensure that the RCMP is fully accountable for its actions and is open and transparent in its service to Canadians.

However, Bill C-42 does not lead to more independent and transparent oversight of the RCMP. It is simply the same body that reports non-binding recommendations to the minister, but with a new name.

Bill C-42 is the Conservative government's take on what accountability should look like, but on this side of the House, we have an entirely different perspective. We actually understand accountability, what it means and how valuable it is, and we believe in it. We find Bill C-42 wanting because of its lack of accountability.

Although we agree with the principle of the bill, what we find is that the bill is deeply flawed in its execution. We have a piece of legislation here that fails to recognize either the needs of RCMP officers who have experienced harassment in the workplace or the very reasonable and appropriate expectation of Canadians of civilian oversight of a police body. This is the key to improving accountability in this institution; that is, civilian oversight and transparency.

We voted in favour of the bill at second reading, hoping that the bill's flaws would be addressed in committee. Unfortunately, true to form, the Conservatives voted down every amendment the NDP proposed. The result is that we have missed an opportunity to fix the glaring holes in the bill that we identified at second reading, glaring holes that many witnesses at committee were able to identify and expound upon.

Some of the amendments we proposed at committee included these few things that I think members of the House should find critically important to a bill that purports to bring accountability and transparency to a policing institution. They included adding mandatory harassment training for RCMP members and specifically to lodge that requirement in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act; ensuring a full independent civilian review body to investigate complaints against the RCMP; adding a provision to create a national civilian investigative body, which would avoid police investigating police; and creating more balanced human resource policies by removing some of the more draconian and despotic powers proposed for the RCMP commissioner, and by strengthening the external review committee in cases involving possible dismissal from the force.

The Conservatives turned down all of those very reasonable proposals to amend Bill C-42. As a result, the bill fails to create a strong independent civilian oversight body for the RCMP such as—and this is important to note—the one proposed in the 2006 O'Connor inquiry or the 2007 recommendations of the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP.

The proposed new civilian review and complaints commission would replace the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP and would have greater authority to conduct investigations, gather evidence and materials and compel testimony. Admittedly, that is a step in the right direction.

However, the new body would not report to Parliament, not to us, but to the commissioner and to the minister, so this is most emphatically not an independent organization. It most emphatically does not bring about the purported goals of the bill, which are to bring transparency and accountability to this institution.

As well, the commission's findings would be non-binding. Indeed, this represents a missed opportunity to have a fully independent complaints commission that would be accountable to all Canadians and not just the Minister of Public Safety.

The word “accountability” is one the government loves to use. It throws it about all the time. However, I do not think it has quite grasped the concept. In fact, it has cheapened and undermined it and simply does not value it.

The bill purports to bring accountability to a police institution. That is, I think, sufficient evidence that the government fundamentally does not believe in accountability and does not act in accordance with the principles of accountability. We simply do not see it in the bill.

This new body would have observer status only in investigations of serious incidents involving the RCMP. This is evidence of not grasping the concept of accountability.

The new investigative framework for these incidents proposed in Bill C-42 is really just a patchwork system. It would differ from province to province. A province would choose to appoint an investigative body or a police force or would leave the RCMP to either refer the investigation to another police force or to even conduct the investigation itself. These provisions simply allow a continuation of the current practice of police investigating police. It is clearly a problematic practice and clearly is a practice that got this institution into the issues it is in now. That, fundamentally, is one of the key things that needs to be changed under the bill, but it is not. Unfortunately, a fully independent national watchdog agency is not part of this legislation. Although independent civilian oversight is needed, the bill fails to deliver that independent civilian oversight.

Bill C-42 not only fails to deliver that oversight, it concentrates considerable power in the hands of the commissioner, who would be granted the authority to appoint and dismiss officers and to establish a system of investigation and resolution of harassment complaints. Rather than taking responsibility for addressing problems within the RCMP, the minister has decided to simply give this responsibility over to the commissioner.

The NDP feels that a more balanced approach would involve strengthening the external review committee rather than concentrating the power to dismiss officers in the hands of a single individual. However, again, all proposed amendments were rejected at committee.

RCMP officers carry out difficult and dangerous work at considerable risk to themselves to protect Canadians. Some have died in this service, and that is a profound tragedy for all Canadians and particularly for the families of those officers.

The question for us to contemplate in this House is what those RCMP police officers are owed, in return, from us, yet we have so far even failed to create an open and respectful workplace environment for all members, which all Canadian workers are entitled to. In the circumstances of the police, who put their lives on the line and from time to time tragically lose their lives in that service, it is an absolute minimum expectation in any kind of tacit contract with members of the RCMP.

However, what we have are officers who experience harassment in the workplace and are fearful about even speaking up. They are fearful of losing their jobs, in fact. Many have even left their jobs because of these circumstances in the workplace.

For a bill that was supposedly introduced as a response to sexual harassment complaints brought forward by female RCMP officers, Bill C-42 is strangely silent on that very specific but critically important issue. We have female officers who have been serving the Canadian public in the RCMP for almost 40 years. In that time we have failed to bring about protections from this type of abuse, which is barred under Canadian human rights codes and provincial human rights codes and which all workers across the country in all workplaces and jurisdictions are entitled to.

In 2013, we have a Conservative government that is missing an opportunity to use this legislation to create a workplace in which RCMP officers, like all workers, should feel safe in bringing forward harassment complaints. NDP members on the public safety committee brought forward an amendment to the bill that would make harassment training mandatory for RCMP officers. However, just like every other amendment, the Conservatives voted it down.

The RCMP needs a clear anti-harassment policy that will set the standard for behaviour in the force. This would allow for a fair disciplinary process in cases where harassment occurs. Despite the NDP's best efforts, the government has passed up this opportunity to address that issue in the bill.

Earlier this month, the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP released its report on issues of workplace harassment within the RCMP. The report had this to say:

The RCMP bears a responsibility to foster public trust to the extent possible, and when the public perceives that the organization is unwilling to adequately protect and discipline its own employees, it is difficult to see how their interactions with the police and trust in the organization would remain unaffected. It is for this reason that swift and effective action must be taken by the RCMP in terms of dealing with workplace conflict and harassment, and taken in a manner that engenders the confidence of both members and the public.

We are not seeing swift and effective action here. We are not seeing action at all.

We on this side of the House believe that trust in the RCMP, for the officers and the public, is a critically important issue. Important legislative steps can be taken to enhance trust and accountability for the RCMP and for Canadians. However, Bill C-42 falls short of this mark. It is unfortunate that in their rush to pass this bill, the Conservatives did not even take time to make sure that the new legislation ensured that the RCMP and the public were getting the transparent and independent oversight they expect and deserve.

The men and women of the RCMP provide a vital service to all Canadians. They carry out this service in difficult and often dangerous situations, putting themselves in harm's way to protect others. Bill C-42 is a missed opportunity to protect them in return. They deserve the protection of independent oversight, and they should not be afraid to speak out about harassment in the workplace. The members of the RCMP deserve to know that when one of their own breaks the rules, that person will be held accountable. Canadians need to see this accountability to enhance the trust between the police force and the members of the public, a trust that has been weakened by recent incidents.

The men and women of the RCMP deserve better than what Bill C-42 has to offer. The Canadian public deserves better. Most certainly the women who work for the RCMP have a right to a workplace free from sexual harassment, and indeed, harassment of all kinds. They need and deserve our protection. Bill C-42 fails to adequately provide that protection and should, for that reason alone, be rejected by this House.

[Kizuna Project, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this Friday, 20 students from Malvern Collegiate are headed to Japan, courtesy of the Japanese government.

The Kizuna project is intended to promote a better understanding of Japan's post-quake recovery efforts and seal the bonds of friendship between our two countries.

To the kids, I offer my respect for embracing this opportunity to see and understand not just the devastation but, importantly, the triumph of the Japanese people over that disaster.

I offer my thanks, too, because what they learn from the Japanese people about their spiritual and political resilience in the face of adversity will be invaluable to all of us when it is the students' turn to lead here at home.

I offer my thanks to Principal Pinard, Vice-Principal Santos and Mr. Jonathan Jones for their obvious love of teaching, education, kids and adventure.

I reserve my deepest thanks for the Government of Japan and the people of the Miyagi prefecture for providing this invaluable opportunity to these young Canadians.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I confess I do not know the answer to my colleague's question. It confounds me. The government purports to be concerned about jobs and prosperity in this country, and yet we see an obvious failure to invest in Canada's largest urban economy, with clear detrimental economic effects.

It is interesting that the board of trade and its members identify public transit as the biggest problem in Toronto. That is the opinion by way of a survey of its membership.

I suggest that the Conservatives stop using the Liberals as the bar that they need to get over because that bar is very close to the ground, if not below ground, and that they start to turn some attention to fixing the economy and the real-life concerns of Canadians.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, indeed the motion calls for long-term funding that municipalities can rely on. The investments required are so enormous and the planning horizons so long that municipalities are understandably concerned and afraid about making investments in their own infrastructure in the absence of a long-term plan and partnership.

My colleague is quite correct that this is fundamentally about economics. I have seen statistics that show that businesses benefit 17¢ on the dollar for every dollar invested in infrastructure, and of course there are multiplier effects from that. One only needs to look at the appendices to the government's own budget documents to see that investing in infrastructure pays great economic dividends for job growth in this country. Most importantly, it is about connecting workers to jobs. In a city like Toronto, that is a hugely difficult thing to do with the presence of public transit deserts.

My colleague from Davenport referenced a United Way and McMaster University study talking about precarious work and the need for almost 50% of workers in southern Ontario to stitch part-time jobs together that are not next door to each other. That means workers have to get on buses and travel for two hours to a part-time job, at the end of which they get on another bus or streetcar and travel for another couple of hours. This is not good for the productivity of our city or our country.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the NDP opposition day motion put forward by my colleague, a champion of Canadian municipalities, the member for Trinity—Spadina.

The basis for the motion today is fundamentally economic, and it is succinctly captured in the submission from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to the government on this matter last November. The introduction to that submission reads in part:

Municipal infrastructure provides the foundation on which our economy rests. Small businesses need quality roads and bridges to deliver goods and services. Workers need fast, efficient public transit to connect them with jobs. And growing companies count on high-quality community services, from libraries to hockey rinks, to attract skilled workers. Yet today, those foundations are buckling under the strain.

In these terms, support for today's motion seems pretty obvious, and so it is that there is a broad near consensus outside of this House for the motion we are discussing today. As we will hear throughout the day, the call for a long-term, predictable, accountable federal infrastructure plan in partnership with other levels of government is supported by business leaders, trade unions, economists, civil society organizations, experts of all kinds and, of course, municipal leaders.

I say “near consensus” because there are still those who seem to lie outside this consensus. They are, curiously enough, the two federal parties, the Conservatives and Liberals, who have swapped power back and forth over the last 40-plus years, as they withdrew investment, indeed withdrew the federal government, and watched the foundations of our economy and municipalities crumble.

In seven years of government, the Conservatives have yet to even acknowledge the urban reality of the country we live in, the fact that nearly 80% of Canadians live in cities. They seem entirely incapable of imagining a Canadian economy other than resource extraction or a Canadian economy led by the necessarily social urban process of innovation. Thus, we get the dismantling of federal environmental framework to facilitate resource extraction, in place of a modern and environmentally sustainable economic strategy that sees cities as the place to research, develop, create, innovate and exploit the enormous opportunities to tackle climate change.

The Liberal Party is the same, having reduced infrastructure funding throughout the 1990s. It has never given more than lip service and pennies when real full dollars were called for. More than that, it downloaded federal fiscal challenges to other orders of government, ultimately to our cities, which is the order of government least able to maintain, much less build, infrastructure, collecting, as they do, only eight cents on the dollar in tax revenue.

We can watch the trend line of investment in infrastructure as it goes steadily down from its high of about 3% of GDP in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to bouncing along the bottom through the latest Liberal majority governments at about 1.5%. That difference represents about $24 billion in missing annual investment in public infrastructure, according to a recent study. That same study shows that net investment in infrastructure was actually negative for two years of Liberal government, as existing public infrastructure stock depreciated faster than new development.

Now, if all else had stayed the same, that would be one thing; that would be trouble enough. However, the technological, political and economic context has been changing as well over the last 40 years. Broadly, we call it “globalization”, but the implication is that old ways of governance have to give way to new ways of governance that recognize the political and economic importance of urban regions and economies. As one observer put it, “A practical implication is that cities have become central to the study of federalism”.

Therefore, this motion takes place in the context of Canadian federal politics that is and has been for very many years out of step with the rest of the developed world in terms of its understanding and respect for the role of our cities in a global economy in generating wealth for our country. In most other developed countries and economies, governments have become major players in the financial, economic and cultural life of their cities, and it is past time for ours to do the same.

Instead, we are left with this enormous infrastructure deficit, estimated at over $170 billion. It is a deficit that is so obvious to every citizen of my city, the city of Toronto.

We have famed urbanist and urban economist Jane Jacobs, who could say of Toronto in 1969, “Here is the most hopeful and healthy city in North America, still unmangled, still with options”. By 2004, in her book Dark Age Ahead, she described the town that she had made her home as “a city in crisis; indeed, multiple crises”. However, one need not have the keen eye of Jacobs to be frustrated and concerned. As the Conservatives and Liberals swapped power back and forth over the last 40 years, the contours of these crises, to use Jacobs' term, became increasingly obvious.

For those who have not witnessed their emergence, as Jacobs did, the transition over 40-plus years has been amply and convincingly recorded in statistics and maps by University of Toronto Professor David Hulchanski and colleagues. That could take us through 40 years of growing social and spatial inequity and economic decline in a kind of tour de force of time-lapse cartography. The final image we are left with is a Toronto that has been divided into three socially, economically and spatially discrete cities within the city, with great swaths of Toronto's geography characterized by the absence of infrastructure. These are infrastructure deserts of various kinds.

We have in Toronto what the Toronto board of trade calls “a conundrum”, a city of strong economic fundamentals, but not world-leading productivity, GDP or disposable income growth. With the Toronto region providing nearly 50% of Ontario's GDP and 20% of Canada's GDP, solving this conundrum seems imperative. The board of trade itself points to infrastructure as what needs to be addressed first and foremost. It describes it as “the biggest threat to our continued growth and economic prosperity in the Toronto region and Ontario generally”.

While the lack of infrastructure, and the crumbling infrastructure generally, poses an enormous obstacle to Toronto's growth and prosperity, it is public transit that is the top priority of the board's members because of “its outsized impact on the Toronto region's global competitiveness”. This is an analysis and priority shared by many other organizations studying Toronto's economy in the global context.

As of 2006, it was estimated that the cost of congestion to the economy of the Toronto region was $6 billion annually. That is an old figure now. However, the outlook is even more grim as Toronto continues to grow, with one of the fastest urban growth rates globally. Every year we add about 100,000 people to our city, so that within 20 years Toronto will be 50% bigger. Absent any significant action, the productivity cost of poor public transit will skyrocket to an estimated $15 billion annually. In terms that are more easy to relate to, that means Toronto commuters, already experiencing the longest commute times in North America, can look forward to spending an extra three work weeks per year stuck in traffic.

We are the only OECD and G8 country without a national transit strategy. At our economic peril, do we continue to be so. It is well past time for the government to drop its aversion to thinking ahead and put in place, in partnership with other levels of government, a long-term, predictable infrastructure plan. Join the consensus.

The crises that Jane Jacobs referred to are, in her terms, “the tangible consequences of tangible mistakes”. They need not be so forever. We can fix these problems and grasp the great opportunities that lie before us. To start, we should support today's motion.