Mike Sullivan

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, that is what the motion is all about. I thank the member for getting it.

I would remind the member that these problems have not existed just over the last year or the last six years; these problems have been in existence for the last fifteen or twenty years. Municipalities have discovered that they do not have enough money to deal with their infrastructure. The previous government actually handed over a bunch of infrastructure to the municipalities without money to repair it, and I am talking about the housing infrastructure that the federal government was responsible for. That is not the way to run a society. For the federal government to hand over infrastructure without handing over the money is not sustainable.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

That is so true, Mr. Speaker. It is obvious.

The transportation committee studied public transit. In fact, the title of the study, until the very end, was the study of a strategy for public transit. Members opposite did not like having a strategy, so they deleted the word “strategy” from the study, and the same is true here. We are asking members opposite to have a strategy on infrastructure and they have said they are going to vote against it. They do not want to have a strategy. They want to bumble along with their eyes closed, but that is not going to save Canada.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the system as it is now has municipalities getting 8 cents of every dollar and the federal government getting the lion's share of every dollar of revenue. Over time, municipalities have seen their share of infrastructure grow to where they now have something like 58% of the responsibility for infrastructure with 8% of the revenue. There is something wrong with that math. It cannot be done, and it cannot be done on property taxes.

Is the answer to say to the federal government that it must transfer more money to the cities? That is one answer. However, perhaps the cities have a better answer, and that is to transfer tax points directly to the cities so they can share in the income growth that goes on in Canada all the time. That is another way of doing it.

Whatever the solution, it has to be acted on now. We cannot wait.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on this timely and appropriate motion from the member for Trinity—Spadina. I will be sharing my time with the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

First, I need to take umbrage with the comments from the member opposite just prior to mine, in that he suggested that somehow the NDP was voting against the gas tax. That could not be further from the truth.

Jack Layton was the champion of the gas tax, was the one who thought of the idea in the first place, and was the member of Parliament who brought it to fruition. Without Jack Layton, we would not have a gas tax for the other side to now crow about. Part of what goes on over there is that things get done by members on this side and then get adopted by members on that side as things that they thought of when they did not.

The other issue is in relation to the $2 billion the member pointed out as being the government's ongoing contribution to the infrastructure deficit in this country. It will take 80 years for that money to actually deal with the infrastructure deficit that this country now faces. If anyone thinks that the bridges, roadways, water systems and sewer systems are going to last 80 years, they have another think coming. It is not possible. That is way too little money, and it is not the cities of this country that are going to suffer, but the people who live in those cities.

The other part of the speech from the member opposite talked about how we voted against things. It is very interesting that none of the issues that they put forward as things they have done were ever separated out, were ever something that we could have voted for, because they were always buried with things we could not stand, such as the reductions in environmental protections in Bill C-38 and the removal of the Navigable Waters Protection Act from many of the waters in Canada in Bill C-45. Those are the kinds of things that we are forced to vote against.

If Conservatives throw a few crumbs in with that and then later say we voted against it, it is very erroneous thinking. It is not fair for the government to suggest that the NDP is not in favour of infrastructure when in fact we are pushing infrastructure everywhere we can.

The biggest infrastructure deficit facing this country will be the infrastructure deficit caused by our commitments to reduce greenhouse gases and our commitment to deal finally with the problem of global warming and climate change. That infrastructure deficit is something we all should pay attention to.

The situation now is that the previous government signed on to Kyoto and then did not really do anything about it, while the current government abandoned Kyoto and still has not really done anything about it. There have been some vague promises from the Prime Minister that we will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in this country by 2020 by 17%. Right now, by my best guess, we are actually going to increase our level of greenhouse gases by 2020 if we do not start doing things about it.

The other thing he promised was that we would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2050; 65% is a lot. It means that two-thirds of the activity in this country that is currently using fossil fuels must stop using fossil fuels.

There are basically five things that go on in this country. We heat and cool our buildings. We have industry, which requires energy. We have agriculture, which requires energy. We have goods transportation and we have personal transportation. Each of those five is roughly 20% of the use of energy in this country. Are we going to stop doing three of those five things? Are we going to stop moving people? Are we going to stop moving goods? Are we going to stop having industry? Are we going to stop having agriculture? Are we going to stop heating and cooling our houses? No, we are not going to stop doing all those things.

However, if we are to attain the goal of reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases, we have to stop using fossil fuels for all of those things. How do we do that? We do it with electricity. That is currently the only way. The only way we can actually have enough electricity to do those kinds of things is to start building the generating capacity of clean electric power now, through infrastructure programs that will allow it to be delivered across this country.

In my riding right now there is a giant infrastructure program going on to build new rail lines. Rail is good. It moves people more efficiently than cars and goods more efficiently than trucks. The trouble is that the Conservative government has not signed on to making that rail system electric. It would be a first huge step for the government to show its commitment to reducing greenhouse gases by electrifying our transportation networks across this country—by first building the transportation systems, but by building them electric.

The member for Davenport has suggested that we have $6 billion worth of gridlock in the city of Toronto every year. That means we are losing $6 billion, and these guys are throwing $2 billion at the problem.

We need to build public transit infrastructure and we need to build it quickly if we are to meet that 2050 target of a 65% reduction in greenhouse gases that the Prime Minister has set for himself. We need to have electric transportation across the country to deliver our goods and people safely, quickly and without using fossil fuels. It is the only way we are ever going to achieve that target.

We are not going to achieve that target by regulation. If we think about it, how would we regulate an industry like agriculture into not using fossil fuels? That is not going to happen. How are we going to regulate the movement of goods and people without providing a system whereby the movement of goods and people can done without using greenhouse gases? This is not something that a P3 is going to solve. It would take actual leadership from the government across Canada to take the bull by the horns to actually deliver on the promised reduction in greenhouse gases.

The way to do that is through the generation of clean electricity from the use of turbines, photocells and other forms of clean electric generation, such as tidal generation in the north and the east. That electricity could be provided across Canada for heating and cooling homes and for transporting people and goods in such a way that we could stop using fossil fuels for those activities.

We cannot meet that 2050 target any other way. If we do not start now with a real commitment to infrastructure in this country, a real commitment to transportation infrastructure, a real commitment to public transit and a real commitment to the kind of money that is necessary to do this, we are never going to meet the 2050 targets.

The Conservatives used to have a green infrastructure fund. However, what did they do in the last budget, which we voted against? They slashed the green infrastructure fund. The Conservative government used to have a home renovation credit, a renovation payment plan, so that individuals could make their homes use less greenhouse gas energy. What did the Conservatives do? They gutted it. They actually cut it off before all the money that was budgeted was spent. There was money in that budget to try to reduce greenhouse gases through infrastructure spending, but it was not spent. That was infrastructure money from the minister, but that money was never spent.

The government talks a big talk but does not actually deliver, and that is what is needed. It is what this motion is all about. It is to say to the government that we need to have a strategy to do this. It is not just because the cities need it, not just because the country needs it, not just because we say so, but because it is an absolute priority in order to create the kind of Canada that will allow our children and grandchildren to be able to breathe and to live in the kind of comfort that we now live in.

However, that is not going to happen without a significant new input in financial resources from the government. The $2 billion a year just to cover repairs of existing infrastructure is never going to do the kind of work that is necessary to build the infrastructure that this country needs to move forward into this century.

[Secure, Adequate, Accessible and Affordable Housing Act, February 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise again in support of the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot's motion to create a national housing strategy.

As we know, the Government of Canada used to be a big player in the housing market of Canada. However, the Liberal government, in the 1990s, got out of the housing market completely and left it up to the provinces and to the cities themselves. We have never really recovered from that decision by the Liberal government.

Whenever we ask a question about housing, the Conservative government likes to say that it is spending a lot of money on housing, but it is taking credit for something the NDP did. The NDP actually was the party that, in a negotiation with the Liberals in 2005, negotiated that there should be money spent on housing in Canada as part of the budget. That money is still there. However, the Conservative government is attempting to cut that money. It has also threatened to cut off money for the co-ops in Canada, which is another bad sign of things to come.

Bill C-400 would force the government to create a regime that would deal with the provinces, deal with the municipalities and deal with the territories to put together a strategy that would create affordable, reliable housing for all Canadians, not just those who have the money to do it.

In my riding, we have 16,000 seniors. Over 15% of the riding is currently over age 65. Some of those seniors are desperately afraid that they are not going to be able to find a place to live in the near future, because there is no strategy, either provincially or federally, to create housing that seniors can afford. We have a growing number of these seniors.

There are places where seniors' housing can be affordably built. In the province of Ontario, they are tearing down hospitals. They should be using those hospitals, as in my riding, as seniors' housing. They are tearing down schools. They should be using those schools, as in my riding, as seniors' housing, because those seniors deserve a better place to live. We deserve, as Canadians, to have a housing strategy put forward at the federal level, and the bill does exactly that.

[Safer Witnesses Act, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, there were 108 requests, and only 30 were granted. I would hope that this was not because there was not enough money. What this line of discussion is about is whether there will be enough money for the significant expansion of the scope of the witness protection program.

The RCMP's own website states that “[t]here are instances when the costs of witness protection may impede investigations, particularly for smaller law enforcement agencies”. The costs means budget.

Whether or not the RCMP has its hand out asking for more money, it is up to us as parliamentarians to determine how the expansion of this service, the witness protection program, will actually be funded. If it costs more than $9 million, does that mean that there are going to be fewer police officers in Esquimalt? Is that how it is going to be funded?

I would like to know where the money is going to come from. If it is not going to come from a redirection of priorities by the government, from something into public safety, then we would like to know how it is going to happen.

[Safer Witnesses Act, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it has been very difficult. As members know, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has had to go to court to try to get budgetary information from the government. It is very difficult to get actual financial details on what the government intends to spend or on how it is spending money.

We would hope that when a government puts forward a bill that is clearly going to have a cost attached to it and that clearly expands the scope of a federal program, it would come up with the actual figures on the cost of the bill, perhaps in committee, and would put those figures before Parliament so that we could all look at them.

[Safer Witnesses Act, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, clearly there would need to be proper accountability in terms of funding, both at the provincial and federal levels. I hope this is not going to be another exercise in transferring the cost to another level of government such that the federal government announces a program but makes somebody else pay for it. That seems to be a recurring theme on the other side. I hope that is not the case.

I hope that when we have measures brought forward to increase public security on a national scale that a national government will actually provide national resources for it. In a situation where we create a system that a provincial entity would have to follow, the province would have to consider those things. The bill before us deals with crimes that have national implications, and it should be nationally resourced.

[Safer Witnesses Act, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question. I would ask the member if the Conservatives have costed the bill. Do they know exactly what the bill is worth in terms of dollars and in terms of the number of people who would be able to be witness protected as a result of the bill coming forward? I do not see a costing attached to it. However, when we are in power, we will be costing everything and will be making sure that we do not overspend or spend more than what Canadians expect a reasonable and responsible government to spend.

We want enough money in the budget for measures such as these. They are such good measures that they ought to be endorsed with a financial amount from the Minister of Finance. If it means that less subsidy goes to a big oil company, that is a decision the Minister of Finance is going to have to make.

When legislation is put forward that expands the purview of the witness protection plan, the government cannot then say that it is not going to spend another nickel on it. It just does not work.

[Safer Witnesses Act, February 11th, 2013]

We are back to the bill. Exactly. We are making it easier for witnesses to come forward, but we have to provide the resources to make it easier for them to come forward. We have to provide the money.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has published a good practices document for protection of witnesses in criminal proceedings involving organized crimes. It consists of 124 pages and is well worth reading. That document talks about how best to set up one of these programs. One of the things it talks about is funding. I am going to read part of the document. This goes back to the period 2005-06 when the Liberals were in power. It states that “the Witness Protection Program of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dealt with 53 new cases involving 66 persons”. The cost of the program was $1.9 million.

There are slightly more people in Italy than in Canada, but to give everyone an idea, there were 4,000 witnesses and family members in the year 2004 and the budget was close to $84 million U.S. That is an enormous difference. That is 40 times more money for a witness protection program in a country that clearly understands that in order to defeat the omertas and try to deal with organized crime in an organized way, the funding has to be provided to protect the witnesses who come forward. Until the government actually does that in its next budget, we are going to react with some skepticism to the intent behind this bill. It is not that we do not doubt the veracity of the words. The words are there and they are good words. It says the bill should cover more people, events and crimes and the system should work better. However, it cannot work better if we starve it.

A constituent of mine has run into the starving of the RCMP in his personal dealings. He has discovered that because the amount of money involved in the crime committed against him is less than some magic number that the RCMP deems appropriate, it will not investigate. He is going to be left dangling in the breeze because the RCMP does not have the resources to investigate the crime. In his case, it is $70,000 that was essentially stolen, and the RCMP does not have the resources to investigate a crime involving that amount. It said it has bigger fish to fry. That is the problem with the government's funding of the RCMP: it is not sufficient to do the job the government has given it to do.

New Democrats agree with the government giving it this job, but it has to be given the resources. We cannot starve it and tell it to exist on the budget it has. It does not work that way. People like the constituent in my riding who is now out $70,000, plus all kinds of legal bills over the years, is being told by the RCMP too bad, so sad; it is not going to do anything about it because it does not have the budget to deal with smaller crimes. This smaller crime involving $70,000 to this individual in my riding is two years' salary for many people in my riding. It is four years' salary for some people.

This is a situation where the RCMP is under-resourced in many ways, and threatened with even smaller budgets by the Minister of Public Safety, suggesting they are overpaid. However, at the same time with this bill, there is a bigger demand being placed on those resources. We agree there is nothing wrong with this bigger demand. We like it. However, please put the money in the budget to pay for an appropriate level of witness protection that will ensure Canadians can come forward to testify safely in good conscience, and protect other Canadians from crime by making sure the bad guys, not those people on EI, but the real bad guys, are the people being put in jail. That is the whole point of this legislation, and I agree with it.

The other part of the report from the United Nations is a good disclosure of what kinds of things it considers to be organized crime. Organized crime is not just drug running. Organized crime, which is part of what is covered by the bill, includes the smuggling of persons into the country. I would hope that the bill would help police forces stop the organized criminals from smuggling people into this country. It is not done by putting the victims in jail, which is what the Conservative immigration bill has done; we do it by ensuring we find ways to catch the criminals. If the bill includes in its mandate such crimes as human smuggling, I am all for it.

Terrorism is one of the crimes the United Nations defines as organized crime. The United Nations also considers corruption to be part of organized crime. As we have seen in Quebec in recent weeks, there is enough of that to go around for all of Canada, and it is spreading to other places. Since corruption is part of organized crime, does that mean the bill will allow witnesses to come forward in the corruption investigation in Montreal and be protected by the government and the RCMP from fear of retribution as a result of disclosing the corruption that may be happening in that province, and may be in other provinces as well.

There is a lot to say that is good about the bill. However, I will come back to our central point. Unless we put the money in the program, it is not going to have teeth. It is not going to have the ability to do the job. We can say all we want about protecting witnesses, but if we cannot afford to do it then witnesses are not going to come forward. We are going to be right back where we started from and we will not be any further ahead.

Members on this side are hopeful. There may be some minor issues that we need to deal with in terms of the language of the bill at committee, but we want to see it expeditiously passed. We want this measure to reach royal assent in a hurry, so we do not have any intentions of stalling it. However, we will be paying close attention to what the finance minister will be saying in his next budget about the funding of programs like this, and other programs that are designed to make Canada a safer place.