Mike Sullivan

[Rail Transportation, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, in answer to the specific points raised by my colleague opposite, the risk assessments that were performed were actually request by the government and, therefore, those risk assessments should be in the public interest and viewable by the public, at least by the members of Parliament who have been called upon to keep the public safe.

I do not accept that when a railway company is asked to provide a risk assessment, the disclosure of that information is somehow going to prejudice its operation. That cannot contain information that is vital to the operation of the railroad in a financial or otherwise prejudicial way. That information is in fact vital to the operation of the households and communities through which the train runs.

I disagree quite vehemently with the member's assertion that somehow this information demanded by the government is somehow protected and kept secret by the railroads and, therefore, has to be kept secret by Transport Canada. Transport Canada has an obligation to keep Canadians safe and allow Canadians to observe what risks there are in Transport Canada's operations in respect of the safety of our nation's rail system.

[Rail Transportation, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Transportation Safety Board is charged with investigating accidents and making recommendations to the government on how to prevent them in the future. The Auditor General is charged with ensuring that the government is providing the services it should and that resources are being spent effectively.

Last year the Auditor General put forward a scathing review of Transport Canada's ability to properly assess and police the railways' safety management systems. He noted, among other things, that Transport Canada had not managed to perform most of the planned audits of the safety management systems. Only 26% over a three-year period, ending before Lac-Mégantic, of the audits were actually performed by Transport Canada.

For its part, the Transportation Safety Board, in its report on the Lac-Mégantic disaster, was also highly critical of the oversight of MMA by Transport Canada. The report said:

...Transport Canada's regional office in Quebec had identified MMA as a company with an elevated level of risk that required more frequent inspections. ...

In addition, although MMA had developed a safety management system in 2002, Transport Canada's regional office in Quebec did not audit it until 2010—even though this is Transport Canada's responsibility, and despite clear indications (via inspections) that the company's safety management system was not effective. Transport Canada Headquarters in Ottawa, meanwhile, did not effectively monitor the Region's activities. As a result, it was not aware of any weaknesses in oversight of regional railways in Quebec, and it did not intervene.

With all of these problems with Transport Canada happening, it is a wonder that the current government actually acted by cutting Transport Canada's budgets for rail and dangerous goods safety by at least 20%. The minister might try to claim that these are merely back office positions, but the facts tell a different story.

According to a story in Business News Network, just in December, 15% of the jobs in Transport Canada's dangerous goods and rail safety divisions are open across the country, and eight of 19 engineering positions within the dangerous goods division in the Ottawa region headquarters are unfilled. That is almost 50%. A position for the manager of dangerous goods inspection in the rail safety division is vacant. Nationally the vacancies include a superintendent of gas containment and several specialists on containment means for dangerous cargo. The records show that more than 30 positions in the dangerous goods and rail safety divisions have been vacant since 2009. Some resulted from 2012 budget cuts that forced four senior engineers into retirement.

However, Transport Canada is projecting further reductions to its workforce under government efforts to eliminate the federal deficit. It estimates the budget will shrink from $1.7 billion to $950 million within three years, including about $600,000 in cuts to the rail safety and dangerous goods divisions.

“It seems the importance of this role [of qualified engineers] was not taken into consideration when cost-cutting measures were implemented at Transport Canada”, said Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service Canada labour union that represents the engineers.

Transport Canada also publishes a watch list, and that watch list identified four items in rail safety that needed immediate attention, two of which have been on the Conservative government's watch list for the past five years. TSB found two significant recommendations for the rail sector that are now over five years old and have had no action.

One is that there are no video or voice recorders on trains. The TSB has been regularly demanding them; the Conservative government has been regularly ignoring this demand. Airplanes have managed to do it for decades, so it is not reinventing the wheel, but the problem persists.

The other recommendation is action to prevent missed signals. Most other countries on the planet have some form of positive train control on trains in their jurisdiction. Canada has simply just ignored the problem, and we will continue until there is another major disaster like Lac-Mégantic unless the government steps in and does something.

[Housing, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, 41 seniors at the Beech Hall Housing Co-operative in my riding are at risk of becoming homeless as a direct result of the Conservatives' refusal to renew federal funding. Why does the government not recognize its responsibility to ensure that the most vulnerable are not left behind and made homeless?

Why are Conservatives putting vulnerable seniors in my riding at risk by refusing to renew funding?

[Rail Transportation, December 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, more than 100,000 carloads of oil were shipped by rail last year, but citizens do not know when, where, or how risky it is because the Conservatives refuse to stand up for transparency when it comes to the shipment of dangerous goods. Now we learn that the risk assessments ordered by the minister of hazardous shipments through Toronto will be kept away from local residents and even from municipal officials.

Why does the minister think that railway companies' interests come before Toronto residents' right to know?

[Yukon and Nunavut Regulatory Improvement Act, December 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by my colleague from northern Ontario. However, one of the things I noticed that the government has done over the past few years, particularly since the 2012 budget, is to attack environmental legislation and environmental assessments, starting in 2012, when the budget implementation act eliminated the Environmental Assessment Act and rebuilt it in such a manner that it was a sham. As a result, there are portions of that bill that have not yet been enacted. There are regulations that were to come later that have not yet been enacted some two years later.

When the government did that, it said that it was just to avoid duplication because the provinces and territories would be doing their own assessments and it did not want to duplicate those with federal assessments. Of course, we know that the end result is that federal issues do not get assessed at all, because the provinces do not have the right. Now we see the government, through its own actions, taking away or diminishing the right of the territories. It is not allowing the territories themselves to amend this legislation. Instead, the government is taking it away from them and reducing the environmental assessments in the territories.

I think it is appalling that this is happening. Would the member like to comment on that?

[Persons with Disabilities, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to Canadians living with disabilities, the Conservatives have been all show and no substance. They signed the UN convention, but they have not fully implemented it; they created huge backlogs at the Social Security Tribunal; they cut home mail delivery; and they have done nothing to address housing challenges or the high levels of poverty among Canadians with disabilities. Canadians deserve better.

Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Disability to come to assess Canada's progress and make recommendations for improvement?

[Persons with Disabilities, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, today is International Day of Persons With Disabilities and New Democrats are celebrating the contributions Canadians with disabilities have made to this country.

We are deeply concerned though about how little progress Canada has made in meeting its obligations to improve access, employability and services to persons with disabilities under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

An estimated 4.4 million Canadians are living with disabilities and many suffer from income insecurity, substandard housing, limited employment opportunities and unequal access to the health services they depend on.

The UN charter sets goals to improve these conditions, but the government has no plan to get there. That is why we are asking today that the Government of Canada invite the UN special rapporteur on persons with disabilities to make an official visit to Canada to assist us in achieving the commitments that Canada signed on to.

The entire NDP caucus is committed to building a fairer and more prosperous Canada where each citizen has the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential, and this must include our disability community.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one thing this budget purports to do is reintroduce a private member's bill that was withdrawn. The private member's bill would have made it much more difficult for refugees to survive in Canada. This bill now contains that same provision, a provision that would make it much more difficult for refugees who have arrived in this country in good faith to continue to survive, because they would be removed from provincial assistance rolls. I wonder if the member would comment on that part of the bill.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I note with interest the amount of discussion on apprenticeships. It is all well and good that people with apprenticeships can have some tax credits. However, there have been four budget implementation bills since Mr. Flaherty's promise two budgets ago that have not acted on the promise to use infrastructure spending by the federal government to create apprenticeships, to actually create the jobs for these individuals who need the tax credits the Conservatives' budget may provide them.

It is all well and good to suggest that there is money being spent on apprentices, but that is once they have a job. We need to find a way to get them the jobs in the first place, and Mr. Flaherty had a great idea.

I wonder if the member could tell me why the government has not put forward that suggestion in any of the budget bills to date, and if the Conservatives will be, when we can see it.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, December 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the member opposite has to do with a promise that was made by the former finance minister, Mr. Flaherty, in his 2013 budget, which has not yet been implemented in any of the four budget bills. It was a promise to link infrastructure spending to the creation of apprenticeships for our young people.

Right now our governments, both federally and provincially, spend billions of dollars annually on infrastructure in various regions of the country, and Mr. Flaherty thought it would be a very good idea to tie that spending to the creation of apprenticeships for our young people.

I wonder if the member opposite could tell me why the Conservatives have abandoned that promise.