Mauril Bélanger

[St-Albert Cheese Co-operative, February 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the St-Albert Cheese Co-operative was devastated by fire. Not only was the physical property lost, but so was a part of eastern Ontario's history. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Since this co-operative was founded in 1894, it has been a success story and a symbol of entrepreneurial pride for French Ontario. My thoughts are with the 120 employees who are now out of work. Knowing the perseverance of the world of co-operatives and the determination of the region's farmers, I am sure that the cheese co-op will rebuild, and soon.

I am filled with admiration for this vibrant co-operative, which I have visited a number of times. It has world-class professionalism and know-how.

I want to commend the firefighters from the neighbouring towns who responded quickly and helped the St. Albert station. I extend my best wishes and those of my colleagues to all those associated with the co-operative.

[Privilege, January 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to raise an issue that I think is very important. This follows on the point I raised in June 2012, which, as we know, was settled amicably.

I will give an example that demonstrates how difficult it is to get information from Public Works and Government Services Canada. After that, I will talk about a pertinent question addressed today.

In early January 2011, some members of the Vanier business improvement area called me looking for information on the grants in lieu of taxes program. As everyone knows, the Crown does not pay property taxes, but the government legislated to ensure the payment of grants in lieu of taxes to the municipalities in which government buildings are located. The BIA wanted more information—and not any privileged information—about how the program works.

I called the public official responsible for that program at PWGSC. I left a message indicating that I would like to speak with him. About 15 minutes later, my office received a call from the office of the Minister of Public Works informing us that if we wanted any information, we had to go through the minister's office.

Since we needed information, I asked for a briefing session, which took place two weeks later.

Two weeks later, in an office on Parliament Hill, I met with three public servants—the person I spoke with on the phone and two of his associates—along with three people from the Vanier BIA and two of the minister's staff members. We exchanged information. It was completely neutral information that was not privileged. It was public information on how this program works since the people from the BIA were having difficulty. However, that is not the issue here.

Here is what happened at the end of the meeting. The senior public servant gave his business card to the Vanier BIA director and told her that, if she needed any more information, she could call or email him directly.

So I said to him, “Are you saying that she can call you and you will give her the information without any problem, when I cannot get that same information without going through the minister's office?” He said that, according to the instructions he had been given, I indeed had to go through the minister's office.

I thought it was a bit much that an MP could not get information while others could get it directly. However, since the BIA got the information it needed, I did not make a big deal out of it. Perhaps I should have, and my failure to do so may have been a mistake. This creates two problems. First, it creates unnecessary work and makes communication completely inefficient. Second, it calls into question the professionalism of our public servants.

That is terrible because, if an MP requests privileged information, I would expect that public servants would not provide it. However, if an MP asks for public information, he should normally be able to get it, particularly if his constituents have access to it.

That is the situation. That is the case that we are currently dealing with. The second important issue in the riding that I have the honour of representing is the development of the Rockcliffe military base.

The Canada Lands Company has hired a gentleman called Don Schultz. He is a consultant, and over the last few months he has met with just about anybody who has any interest in this file. All community associations have been met with. The local city councillor has been met with, twice. He has met my neighbours. He has met everybody. I am not criticizing Mr. Schultz; I need that to be very clear. All I have heard about him is very good and positive. He is attentive. He follows up. He is doing a very good job of listening and getting us in.

Since this is a most important file in the riding that I have the honour of representing, I called on December 3, after he had been at this for a few months, to get a sense of how things were going. The answer was that he could not meet with me unless he had authorization from the office of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services. This is getting interesting.

I think this brings up the same kind of problems I just mentioned. Why should I have to go through the minister's office, when he is meeting everybody without any authorization from the minister's office? For the elected representative of the people, he therefore has to get permission.

Today, from the office of the minister, I got notice that a briefing would not be possible, but perhaps a conference call could be arranged. This is the question of privilege that I need to raise. As elected officials, information is our lifeblood. If we cannot get access to information that everybody else seems to be able to get without any hurdles, there is a problem. There is an insidiousness here that is frightening.

I have had a number of conversations with colleagues from the government side, and never has any one of them ever told me they have had a problem with accessing information concerning problems in the riding they represent.

Mr. Speaker, I would like you to look into this matter. I believe this is a situation which is significantly problematic. If the government has instructed public servants (a), not to speak to us, therefore not trusting their professionalism, (b), to slow things down purposefully through the minister's office so we cannot get information, what does that say? Does it say that the government is trying purposefully to put us in a situation where we will not able to defend the interests of the constituents we were elected to represent?

I think my colleagues know that I try to work positively. I try to work constructively. I have done that for a number of years now. However, this is problematic. I know that colleagues on this side and in the NDP have had the same problem.

Mr. Speaker, I believe you have a responsibility as our speaker to protect us and our privilege of having a level playing field of access to information for the benefit of the constituents we have been elected to represent.

[Housing, December 11th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I asked the government when it would address the situation of the Native Inter-Tribal Housing Co-Operative in London West. The minister's response was that it was a provincial responsibility. Well, it is not.

The urban native housing program is a CMHC program. For this co-op, there are 26 agreements under phase 1 and 2 of the program, all coming to term at different times in the next 3 years.

If the agreements are not renewed, many people now living in subsidized units in this co-op and others may lose their home and face homelessness. Again, when will the government act?

[Housing, December 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, for quite some time now, the housing co-operative community has been asking the government to renew co-operative housing subsidies that are coming to term. In London West, 20 households of the Native Inter-Tribal Housing Co-operative will soon be threatened with homelessness since its federal support will come to an end at the end of this calendar year.

When will the government act?

[Language Skills Act, December 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to what the minister said. I served on the Standing Committee on Official Languages for a year and never understood the Conservative approach. In any case, we will certainly get back to that issue eventually.

I grew up in northeastern Ontario, in Mattawa, and went to school in North Bay. A local lawyer by the name of Dick Tafel was so adamantly anti-francophone that he became one of the best allies the francophone population could have. Indeed, each time he sent a letter to the North Bay Nugget or spoke on a radio or TV show, his comments were so shocking that they really brought us together.

As a member of this House, I saw something similar happen in 1997, when the Ontario provincial government led by Mike Harris decided to shut down the Montfort Hospital, the only French-language hospital in Ontario. There was a public outcry. Less than two months later, 10,000 people gathered at the Ottawa Civic Centre. It was the start of a legal and public campaign that lasted seven years.

The former Ontario government gave in, and the Montfort Hospital is now twice the size it used to be. It even has a 20-year contract with the federal Department of National Defence. No one will ever dare attack the Montfort Hospital again, because the reaction was so forceful. So each time I talk about it, I thank Premier Harris, who lashed out at us so strongly that we stood up for ourselves, with great results.

I believe we are now in a similar situation. In 2011, the Prime Minister and his government appointed a unilingual Auditor General, even though information published in the Canada Gazette said that in order to be eligible, candidates had to be bilingual, that is, fluent in both French and English. But the Prime Minister sidestepped that requirement and announced the job would be filled by a unilingual person. We all remember how strongly the media and the House reacted to the news.

My party did not want to support the initiative in any way, not even vote against it, and the Liberal members walked out of the House. We could not stomach watching the Prime Minister and his government turn back the clock on such an important issue. A multitude of complaints were filed with the Commissioner of Official Languages, who wrote a scathing report about the government. A number of my Conservative friends—indeed, I have Conservative friends, well, Progressive Conservative—told me they were very uncomfortable with this decision, and they still are.

Again, there was legal action. The matter is currently before the courts. One of my friends, the hon. Jean-Jacques Blais, a former solicitor general and minister of national defence in the Trudeau government, brought this case before the courts because it is disrespectful of Canada's Official Languages Act, a quasi-constitutional law. This will go through because we will see that the government did indeed fail in its duty.

We have before us today Bill C-419, a wonderful initiative by the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent. I have already commended her on this, and I am doing so again. I did not mention it, but according to some media reports, the Prime Minister apparently admitted to his caucus this fall that it was a mistake to appoint a unilingual Auditor General. I wonder whether the mistake he was talking about was violating the Official Languages Act, failing to comply with the criteria that he and his government came up with themselves, or prompting a reaction, the sort of mini-tsunami we are currently seeing, because Canadians will stand up for linguistic duality whether the Conservatives like it or not. Such is the nature of people who, as my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent says, want to live together respectfully. That is where things stand today.

This all began in 1969. At the time, the Trudeau government passed the Official Languages Act in this House and in the Senate. It became a quasi-constitutional statute, in which both Parliament and the executive, or cabinet, have an equally important role to play. This is the history behind this bill. In Parliament, we must be able to obey the law, to follow the example, to add new conditions, new prerequisites to the law in order to keep pace with this evolving issue.

If this were a static issue, Canada would still be caught up in the same squabbles as in the 1930s, when francophones were fighting for the federal government to issue bilingual cheques. Imagine. That was the big battle at that time. I admit that we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

Today, the Conservatives are saying that they will support this bill, but that is not exactly what the minister is saying. They will support the basic principle of the bill. I would like to warn my NDP, Liberal and Conservative colleagues. I know the Conservative Party's tactics. In the House they cannot decide to proceed in camera, at least not yet.

The Conservatives cannot go in camera in the House. If they did so, they would have Canadians revolting against them. However, they do it regularly in committees.

So if in committee, they decide that they do not like something and that they want to amend it, they could easily require the meetings to be held in camera, since they have a majority. With all due respect, I really do not trust this government. I have seen too many situations where they manipulate things.

Today, the Prime Minister is having his Quebec lieutenant, the Minister of Industry, talk. It is also important that they tell us that they do not intend to water down the bill, to gut it, or to come up with a scheme involving in camera meetings or the Senate, since we know full well that a private member's bill can be stalled almost indefinitely in the Senate. We used to have this ability in the House but not so much any more because the committees must report to the House about a bill within a certain time frame. They can request that the deadline be extended, but they must still report to the House. However, such is not the case in the Senate.

Is the government trying to pull a fast one on us today? This is exactly is why the House must be on guard. My colleague, the Liberals' official languages critic, will ensure that that this does not happen in committee. If necessary, we will alert the Canadian public once again. There must be an outcry, since we cannot allow the government to do something like that.

I know a number of Conservative members who are in favour of linguistic duality. They are here in this House and are listening. I hope that they will also have the courage to go talk to their Prime Minister to ensure that the government will not be scheming behind closed doors to remove all meaning and legitimacy from this bill.

In conclusion, I would have preferred that it not come to this. The government announced that it was looking for a bilingual candidate, it hired a consulting firm to do the hiring and it appointed a unilingual candidate. That shows a lack of natural justice for all of the unilingual anglophones and francophones in the country who would have applied for this position. They did not apply because they thought that the government would keep its word, but that was not the case.

Now we are having a debate that I believe could have been avoided, but the government chose not to avoid it. When we tried to bring this to the Standing Committee on Official Languages, the Conservative majority totally and systematically opposed it.

That is why I am questioning the government's good faith. The Conservatives had their backs against the wall because of Canadians' desire to honour linguistic duality. They saw that in the polls. They ignored the act and their own eligibility criteria, and in doing so they were caught off guard and claimed to support the principle. So we must be careful. If they support the bill and it passes in the House, it will then have to pass in the Senate so that it receives royal assent and comes into force immediately, since these are all mechanisms that could cause further delays, which is unacceptable.

[Language Skills Act, December 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent on bringing forward this bill.

According to reports in this morning’s newspapers, the bill has the support of the Conservatives, or the Prime Minister, but it could be subject to a few amendments. One amendment that might be proposed is that people appointed to one of the offices listed in Bill C-419 on an acting basis would not have to meet the requirements set out in the bill. Personally, I think that this makes sense.

How open is the hon. member to amendments like this which could in fact threaten the fundamental principle of this bill?

[Regional Economic Development, December 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleague to focus on the one question that I raised tonight. I do not expect her to have an answer for me this evening, as that would be unfair, but I hope she will bring this message back to her colleagues and the relevant minister.

The BDC, in its participation in Quebec, which she mentioned, is restricted because it cannot invest indirectly or lend indirectly. It has to do so directly. The $10 million figure is basically a commitment to further loans. The BDC will not put money into funds. It took me a while to get that information. The answer to allowing the BDC to do this, either in Quebec or in other provinces, would be to review the mandate of the BDC.

When can we expect the government to review the mandate of the BDC, as the law requires? The law says that in 2010 a review was to be initiated. I am not expecting an answer but I hope the message will be conveyed to the government.

[Regional Economic Development, December 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my leader gave me a new responsibility in May, that of the Liberal advocate for co-operatives in Canada. One of the first things I did in that capacity was to propose the creation of a committee to the House. This committee was created once unanimous consent was given in late May.

In July, the committee held five days of hearings and, on September 17, we tabled a report in the House. We hope to have an answer from the government in mid-January.

One of the six recommendations, which were unanimously supported, involved the need to capitalize co-operatives. A short time later, in early October, I participated in the International Summit of Cooperatives, the most important event of the year for co-operatives, which was held in Quebec City. Three hundred of the largest co-operatives in the world were there, as well as nearly 3,000 participants. We had the opportunity to hear about and examine many of the challenges and great successes of the co-operative community, both in Canada and abroad.

During the summit, an announcement was made that piqued my curiosity. This announcement tied the Government of Quebec and, indirectly, the Government of Canada, to the creation of a $30 million fund for the development and expansion of Quebec co-operatives.

The Government of Quebec contributed $4 million to it, the organization of co-operatives in Quebec invested $1 million and the Mouvement Desjardins put in $10 million, for a total of $15 million. On the federal side, the Business Development Bank of Canada, the BDC, committed $10 million, and the CFDCs and BDCs provided $5 million. Altogether, that comes to a $30 million envelope.

Not long after that, I asked the minister a question, and in response to his answer I requested that the debate be extended. I congratulated the government when I asked my question, because I thought this was a welcome initiative, given co-operatives’ crying need for capitalization, which the committee had identified over the summer.

I therefore asked whether we could expect similar announcements for other provinces of Canada, since the BDC is a federal institution.

I did not receive a satisfactory reply, and so I want to come back to this issue this evening, because afterward, I met with representatives of the Business Development Bank of Canada, who were very affable and very open. They told me about certain restrictions they were having to deal with under their mandate.

And this prompts me to ask the parliamentary secretary who is speaking for the government tonight when we can expect to see a review of the BDC’s mandate.

By law, the mandate was to be reviewed in 2010. I think that if we look to the recommendations made by the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, the banking committee, we would see that there is in fact a need to amend the BDC’s mandate to make sure it is able to do in other provinces of Canada what it has done in Quebec, at least according to the announcement that was made.

That is essentially the reason why I am here this evening. I would like the government to tell me when we can expect it to be reviewing the mandate of the BDC.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 30th, 2012]

With regard to the Interchange Canada Program: (a) how many temporary assignments of core public administration employees were there to other public, not-for-profit or private sector organizations, and what were the program’s recipient organizations and the number of employees by organization for the years (i) 2007, (ii) 2008, (iii) 2009, (iv) 2010, (v) 2011; and (b) how many temporary assignments of employees of public (other than core public administration), private and not-for-profit sector organizations were there, and what were the program’s core public administration recipient organizations and the number of employees by organization for the years (i) 2007, (ii) 2008, (iii) 2009, (iv) 2010, (v) 2011?

[Marcel Beaudry, November 30th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, the mortal remains of Marcel Beaudry will be laid to rest. Thus will end eight decades of a well-lived life, a life that left its mark all around us.

As chairman of the National Capital Commission for 14 years, Marcel did everything in his power to contribute to improving the lives of people in this region and in Canada.

Before Brian Mulroney appointed him to head the NCC in 1992—his term was later extended by Jean Chrétien—Marcel was elected mayor of Hull in 1991. In a short time he forged close, solid links between the two sides of the river running through the nation's capital.

In addition, we must remember that he served on the commission on the political and constitutional future of Quebec as a federalist commissioner. Not only a proud Canadian, Marcel Beaudry was also an experienced businessman and, most importantly, a good father.

We offer our sincere condolences to his brothers and sisters, his children, his 10 grandchildren and his many friends.

Marcel, may your soul rest in peace