Mike Sullivan

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this topic, as it is a very crucial topic for a lot of people in my riding. I say “crucial” not because they are looking forward to income splitting, but because most of them, if not all of them, would not gain a single cent out of this income-splitting proposal that the Conservatives are suggesting is a great thing for the average Canadian.

The average family income in my riding is $30,000 less per year than the average for the rest of the country. Almost all of the people in my riding have incomes under the cut-off point at which income splitting would provide a benefit to them. We would have a situation in which those most in need, and I include my riding in that category, would have significantly fewer government services, because the Conservative government has been cutting back on services. They would have no additional income as they watch the cost of living and the cost of everyday items continuing to rise.

For those individuals in my riding, those rising costs mean that they will continue to fall further and further behind. Some will fall into poverty. Some are already in poverty. They will certainly fall further and further behind, while some in the rest of the country, a very small portion, will actually do much better.

We now have a situation in Canada in which the rich are getting richer fast. The various governments of the past 25 years have managed to create systems that are unfriendly to organized labour. Organized labour is one of the ways people improve their standard of living, but if the bosses who are making most of the money have governments that are unfriendly to organized labour, they do better, and the bosses are doing much, much better.

The top 1% of earners of this country paid a proportion of our taxes, and that proportion is shrinking. Since the Conservatives took over in 2006, the proportion of net taxes paid by Canadians to the federal government by the top 1% has shrunk relative to the rest. That means everybody else is paying more than the top 1%.

This proposal by the government will make that situation worse, because those at the very top stand to gain by this income-splitting proposal, while those in the middle and at the bottom would gain little, if anything. As a result, the division between the rich and the poor in this country would get worse.

In the city of Toronto, where I reside and where my riding is, a series of studies have been done by Professor Hulchanski on the city of Toronto. This professor has discovered that there has been a hollowing out of large sections of Toronto as a result of the abandonment of the manufacturing industry, something about which the current government has done little, if anything.

With the abandoning of the manufacturing industry and the replacement of those jobs by retail and other service sector industries, the average income for the middle class in Toronto has shrunk dramatically, while the income of those who are doing well has grown. We have a hollowing out in the inner suburbs of the city of Toronto. About 30 or 35 years ago, these people were considered comfortable middle class. Now those people are on the edge of poverty, on the edge of homelessness, on the edge of not doing well at all.

The proposal by the Conservative government does nothing to change this situation. It does nothing to affect the thousands upon thousands of Canadians who are near the bottom of the food chain or the thousands upon thousands of people in my riding who are recent immigrants to this country.

One of the reasons there are a lot of recent immigrants in my riding is that the housing is relatively cheap compared to the rest of Toronto. My riding ends up populated with individuals who are barely scraping by. As a result of this proposal by the Conservative government, those individuals will gain absolutely nothing. Anybody making less than $44,000 a year will see no benefit, and the large majority of people in my riding make less than $44,000 a year.

The average income in my riding for families, which is the net income of everybody in the household, is something approaching $77,000. That includes those who are doing well, and there are some in the riding. For those who are doing poorly the average is $77,000. The average in Canada is a little over $100,000. We can see that we are already only at two-thirds of the income of the rest of Canada. To suggest a largesse of the current government to redistribute wealth by creating a system of income splitting would simply make the problem worse. It would simply create an untenable situation in which the wealthy in this country would get wealthier.

Perhaps it is a vote-getter for the base of the members opposite. Perhaps that is what is going on here. It is certainly not good policy, but if they believe that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer, and if that is who they are catering to when they are trying to get re-elected, unfortunately there are not enough of those people remaining in the city of Toronto to get them re-elected. I do not think the Conservatives are going to do very well in the next election. The people of Toronto understand full well that this proposal does not do anything for 86% of Canadian families. As for the 94%, the increase in income inequality, that is what the theory behind income splitting is. It is to redistribute wealth and maybe make income inequality less of a problem, but the effect of this is to continue the income inequality because those at the bottom will continue to be at the bottom. There is no benefit.

We would take $3 billion out of the federal treasury and $1.9 billion out of provincial treasuries and give that money to those people who are already well off. Maybe that would get them a few votes, and maybe that is the key demographic they are looking for, but it would not get the votes of the majority of the people in the city of Toronto, the majority of the people in my riding, and the majority of the people in Canada, 86% of whom will see little or no benefit to this very strange proposal.

Maybe there is an anti-feminist side to what is being proposed here because there are some members in the Conservative Party who believe that women should not be working, who believe that income splitting is the way to ensure that women do not enter the workforce. Already women only make 70% of what men make and as a result of income splitting, their incomes would be the drag on the family so it would be more likely that they would not enter the workforce. Those women, who tend to be the second earners in many families in Canada, would see that their contribution would be less, as a result of income splitting.

We have situations where the government's proposal to income split would disadvantage the poorest, advantage the richest, and disadvantage the women in this country. Those are three philosophies that this party does not accept. We believe that if we are going to redistribute the wealth in this country, we should look after the poorest in this country first. We should look after seniors. We should look after women who make less than men. We should look after the middle-class people who have seen their earnings go off to the bosses and to the 1% of this country. We should look after the people who really need it first in this country.

The notion that we can take almost $5 billion in wealth and give it to the rich in this country is something that we are so opposed to. We are theoretically and philosophically opposed to taking money from everybody, because that is who pays taxes in this country, and giving the lion's share of it to those who make the most. It does not make sense. It is not something we should do. We will be opposed to that policy should it ever come forward.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, June 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in terms of the member's reference to temporary foreign workers, we learned today that the transportation safety system, particularly with regard to airlines, is not very healthy. In fact, Transport Canada is planning for more accidents on the airline side. It was an astounding revelation today.

One of the things we learned was that there are far fewer inspectors, far fewer inspections going on, and I notice that the budget contains $44 million less than last time, which is about a 20% decrease, for aviation safety.

However, we also learned that there are some airlines using temporary foreign workers as pilots, and in Canada, we do not actually check their credentials. Transport Canada has no mechanism for checking the credentials of temporary foreign pilots; it trusts the airline that is bringing them in that these people are properly credentialed.

Can the member comment on the airline safety problems this country faces?

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, June 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I asked this question of the member for Winnipeg South Centre and it was ducked, so I am hoping the member opposite will not duck it.

On the FATCA portion of the budget implementation bill, a former U.S. diplomat, James Jatras, has said:

The primary purpose of the agreement is to nullify protections under the Bank Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA), the Canadian Human Rights Code, and especially the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The people affected are not just resident Americans but at least a million Canadian citizens.

This includes, I suspect, a significant number of citizens who live in the riding of the member opposite, because his riding is very close to the Detroit-Windsor border. Therefore, those protections that Canadians used to enjoy will not be enjoyed by a number of individuals, including children of those individuals, because the U.S. has decided that those children are now subject to FATCA.

How on earth can the government claim to be protecting the privacy and the personal information of Canadians when they are ordering banks to just give it away, including that of children in his riding?

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, June 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the implementation of FATCA would have serious implications on children in the member's riding.

The implementation of FATCA, according to James Jatras, who was a former U.S. diplomat, would have the purpose of nullifying Canadian protections under the Bank Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, otherwise known as PIPEDA, the Canadian human rights code and, especially, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

These people are not just resident Americans. At least a million of them are Canadian citizens. Many of them live in her riding.

Claims that the personal data of Canadians would not be forwarded to the NSA and other intelligence agencies are laughable. Some of those persons are children.

What would the member opposite like to suggest? The bill somehow does not protect the safety, security and personal information of these people, including children.

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly my point. We are not opposed to free trade. In fact, I am actually looking forward to the details of the Canada–Europe trade agreement, because I note that a number of countries in the European Union actually have better environmental laws than Canada does, and some of them have better labour laws than Canada does. Perhaps that deal would cause us to have to raise our standards, and we would actually do better, as a result, in our environment and labour laws.

The PIPEDA law that was put in place in Canada in 2000 was a step forward and was brought in because we wanted to do business with Europe. Europe would not do business with countries that did not have personal information and privacy legislation.

That is how these trade deals should work. They should not work to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator; they should work to bring everyone up to better standards, to an improved quality of life, and to improved human rights in particular in this case.

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hamilton for the very astute observation that we have an alignment here of the Liberal and Conservative members of Parliament, who seem to think that this is one of the greatest deals since sliced bread and that maybe the way to deal with human rights abuses in the future is to just report on them. We already have examples of reporting, and it is actually not improving things. Things are not getting better.

The whole point of entering into relations with countries that are oppressive and are violating human rights is to try to change that situation. It should be to try to make that country understand that it cannot continue that way. Signing sweetheart deals with a country to give it the power to trade freely with Canada is no way to encourage that country to change its ways. In fact, it seems to be rewarding bad behaviour. When I was growing up, they did not reward bad behaviour, and maybe that is something the Conservatives need to learn.

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on Bill C-20, the free trade agreement with Honduras.

Despite what members of the government, and perhaps members of their partners, the Liberals, have suggested, we are not opposed to trade. On this side of the House, we are very much in favour of trade, and very much in favour of fairer trade, and where that is possible, then free trade as it goes with fairer trade. However, this is certainly not an agreement we can support, mostly because the partner on the other side of this agreement is not one we should be giving any credence to whatsoever.

The government in Honduras is oppressive, and it was originally formed through a military coup. It is a government that has institutions that are not working. It is the murder capital of Central America, perhaps of the world, and most murders are not investigated even by the police, yet the Conservative government has decided that it is a model deal for us to sign. I just cannot stomach how low we have sunk in search of free trade deals.

We know there is a trade deal coming with Europe, but for some reason it is very badly stalled. It was announced in the throne speech of 2011 along with a trade deal with India, but we have not seen either of them yet. We have seen an apparent signing of an agreement in principle, but we do not even know what those principles are because there have been no details.

Here we are debating, as we did with Panama, a deal with a very poor nation that has a terrible governmental and human rights record, and we are debating it under time allocation, of all things. This is now the most important thing on the Conservative government's agenda, and it has to be done now. However, the agreement in principle was reached in August 2011, which is almost three years ago. The actual deal was signed in November 2013, more than six months ago, but now we have five hours to debate it. That is ridiculous, and 68 time allocation motions are not some kind of scheduling convenience, as the Conservatives would have us believe. They are running roughshod over democracy, and we should not be proud of that record.

Both the Conservatives and Liberals are suggesting that the NDP is opposed to trade, which could not be further from the truth. In fact, we relish the thought that we are going to be able to get at more trade with more partners in this world. However, we need to do it in a way that improves the status of those other countries, and not as a reward for countries that have terrible records and terrible governments, which is in fact what is happening here.

We ask questions when it comes to a trade deal.

Is the proposed partner one that respects democracy, human rights, the environment, labour standards, and Canadian values? If some of those things are not all the way to what a Canadian standard would be, are they working to fix it? If the answer to that question is yes, then that is a partner we can see doing business with on the basis of a free trade agreement.

Is the proposed partner's economy of significant or strategic value to Canada? Apparently it may be of strategic value to some mining industries, but it is a very small player in terms of Canada's overall trade, and we do in fact have a trade deficit with this country.

Are the terms satisfactory? Well, the proposed free trade agreement with Honduras fails this test.

Honduras is a country with undemocratic practices, a corrupt government, weak institutions, low standards, insignificant strategic value, and a record of human rights abuses. When I look at the list of what Honduras is, I cannot help but think that some elements of the Conservative government are heading in those directions.

The fact is that we have had 68 time allocation motions to end debate, which are called “guillotine” motions in other countries because that is what they do. They guillotine debate and democracy. It is an indication that the Conservative government has slipped, we believe, in terms of its democratic practices, like Honduras.

The bill the Conservatives brought forward to change the electoral act disenfranchised some Canadians. That is moving backwards as far as democracy is concerned. The allegations of voter suppression are another example of undemocratic practices.

Regarding corruption in government, we have senators being given money by the Prime Minister's chief of staff in order to keep them quiet, or billing practices whereby senators bill the public for travel when it is a partisan event they are going to or bill for homes they are not living in.

All of these things are corrupt practices of a government. Maybe the Conservatives think they want to be like Honduras, and that is why they want to sign an agreement with it.

We have a Prime Minister who surrounds himself with characters who are of questionable repute. We have a government that is giving more and more power to single individuals within that government, taking that power away from institutions or Parliament and putting it in the hands of a minister. For example, there is Bill C-24, which would give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the power to individually strip a person born in Canada of his or her Canadian citizenship. We do not normally find that concentration of power except in governments that are not democratic, and that is part of what we are seeing here.

We have weakened institutions in Canada. The Chief Electoral Officer had his powers reduced in the recent bill on electoral reform. We have a fight with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. We did not have the government kicking four people off the Supreme Court, but there was a pretty public spat with the Supreme Court that had a chilling effect between the government and the Supreme Court.

We have lower standards in Honduras, lower standards in Canada, but what has the government's record been over the past few years? We have lowered our environmental standards. We have weakened our labour laws. We have taken ourselves in the opposite direction of improving environment and labour laws. We have stripped environmental protection from hundreds of thousands of rivers and lakes in this country. This is moving in the direction of a less environmentally conscious state, and perhaps Conservatives are looking at Honduras and seeing themselves in the mirror.

Other speakers have talked at length about the human rights abuses that have been legion in Honduras. Some of the human rights abuses have been perpetrated by the government and some perpetrated by others, but none of those human rights abuses have met with any kind of punishment, because impunity is the rule in Honduras. People can get away with anything because there are weak police forces and so little in the way of judicial oversight that very little is done.

What do we have here in Canada in terms of human rights abuses? It is a pretty good country, except we have a thousand or more murdered or missing aboriginal women and we have a government that is refusing over and over again to actually conduct even an investigation into those murdered and missing aboriginal women. In any other country, that would be seen as a human rights abuse. We have appalling living conditions and appalling educational conditions for indigenous people in this country. That in itself is a human rights abuse, and the government appears to want to do nothing to improve the situation. We have refugees who come to this country expecting to be treated with dignity and respect, and in some cases they are denied some or all of their medical care. They are expected to report back to their home country even if their home country is an unsafe place for them.

This is the direction this country has moved under the Conservative government, and it is looking strangely as though maybe Honduras is a comfortable partner for the government. I hope not.

In Honduras we also have the spectre of the killing of journalists. Now, I will not accuse the Canadian government of killing any journalists; that has not happened, but the government has attacked the CBC and it has attacked the CBC's journalists in the sense that it has now imposed itself in the collective bargaining arrangements with those journalists. The journalists are now having to deal directly with the government.

We on this side of the House support fairer trade. We support trade with equals in terms of environmental law, in terms of labour law, in terms of how people are treated in those countries. We support trade when standards in that other country will be raised and when we can see that happening. We do not support the free trade agreement the government has negotiated with Honduras for the reasons I have cited, and we will be opposing this deal.

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canada used to be a world leader in foreign affairs, in our relations with other countries and in our ability to help other organizations, other countries, become more democratic, freer, fairer to their citizens and have better human rights records. However, I am afraid agreements like this set us back.

Agreements like this with a corrupt government that has very little regard for human rights send a message to other like countries that it is okay with Canada to be like this. It is okay with the Conservative government and with their partners, the Liberals, to be like this. Signing agreements with this kind of country is a signal to other oppressive countries that oppression is acceptable to Canada.

What does the member think of that?

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech. The difficulty I have is apparently the Liberal members are in support of a deal with a country that is so bad. That is the part of this debate that I cannot understand. We have a government and some members to my left who have decided that the words “free trade” mean more than the words “democracy”, “human rights”, “fair and equitable treatment of its citizens”. Here we are championing a deal, an agreement, with a country that is awful. By signing such a deal, we are giving it legitimacy. We are giving a government that was put in place by a coup a legitimate place. As Canadians, we should be concerned and should take a big step back.

Would the member like to comment on that?

[Energy Safety and Security Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of oil spill examples for the member that he could maybe comment on.

One oil spill, of course, was Lac-Mégantic. The railroad that was licensed to operate by the government was licensed to operate on the basis of $25 million in liability. That is all it was required to carry to have a licence. It was clearly not enough. We know the result: the taxpayer is on the hook for the rest.

The other example is a gentleman in Fredericton, New Brunswick, who several years ago bought a home which, he discovered, had a leaky oil tank in the back yard that had been leaking through the town. The several million dollars in damages were entirely the responsibility of the homeowner. There was no liability cap. There was no government paying the bill. That is the reality of what goes on with oil spills in Canada: an individual is in big trouble, but companies are okay.