Mike Wallace

[Privilege, March 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the hon. member for Mississauga—Streetsville apologized to the House and voluntarily corrected the record. This is not the first time a member has had to correct the record and apologize to the House.

I am very concerned about our creating an environment in the House of punishing members. I am concerned about punishing a member of Parliament on any side of the House if that person comes forward and corrects the record and apologizes for making a mistake. Is that the environment of co-operation that the NDP has been talking about for many years?

[Privilege, March 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have been here listening to the debate this afternoon on this question of privilege. My question to the member from the Liberal Party is simple.

I recall being here in 2010, when the member for St. Paul's, which I believe is a Liberal riding, posted on her website details of a bill that had not yet been presented in the House. That is against the privileges of everybody in the House. The member for St. Paul's understood that she had made that mistake and came to the House to apologize. That apology was accepted by the House.

As for the eight and a half years that I have been here, people do make mistakes. Members of Parliament make mistakes. We are human, by the way. We do make mistakes and when we do, we come here, we apologize, and we correct the record. That is what the member for Mississauga—Streetsville has done.

If we accepted the apology from the member for St. Paul's for violating everybody's privilege by posting information about a bill that had not yet been presented to the House of Commons, why should we not also accept the apology and the correction of the record from the member for Mississauga—Streetsville?

[Justice, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is estimated that there are over 600 unidentified human remains across Canada. That means there are over 600 families that have not been able to have any closure in the loss of a loved one. Our government is standing up for victims by returning to the heart of our justice system. That is why we have announced a victims bill of rights.

Could the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness please tell this House what our government is doing to assist families of unidentified missing persons?

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Yukon for sharing his time with me today. He has done an excellent job, not only today but year-round. I want to thank him for his commitment last summer. He ran around his whole territory on behalf of diabetes disease, which I have. I want to thank him for bringing attention to that disease and for the work he does in that area.

Economic action plan 2014 is a Conservative budget. Is anybody here surprised that it is a Conservative budget? It is conservative as we move toward a balanced approach to our finances in this country. We do not use magic. We do not think books balance themselves. We have a plan. Economic action plan 2014 builds upon the plan that we have had for the years we have been in office.

Before I get into the points in this budget that I think relate very well to Burlington, my home riding, we have heard, through the questions being asked today, about not foreseeing the downturn in the economy. We had the member for Malpeque, as the previous speaker mentioned, on this and that. The Liberal Party took $60 billion out of the EI fund and reallocated it for its own use. We have the Liberals saying we are running big deficits, and then in the same breath they are talking about adding more.

Where do they think the money comes from? We would have to raise taxes, which we know is what the NDP wants to do, and now it definitely sounds like the Liberals want to do it too. They cannot complain that we have deficits. We are getting those deficits down. We are working very hard to make that happen, and we are almost there. We have another year, and hopefully we will have accomplished that goal.

We did stimulus spending in an appropriate way so that we created jobs in this country. A million jobs have been created since the end of the recession. We have been working hard in those areas.

I am fully aware that the opposition has a role to criticize. It should be criticizing what is in the budget, if it finds things it can do better. However, to criticize us for our actions to get this country back to work, to keep us as the number one economy of all of our partners, is just not accurate. I think it does not do this House or the parties any good.

I will get back to what is in this budget that we have in front of us, in economic action plan 2014.

There are a few things that I would like to highlight. The reason I would like to highlight them is that often there is the impression that a backbencher member of Parliament might not have a tremendous amount of influence. Our finance minister has an open mind and an open door to suggestions about what should be in the budget. There are things in this budget that I have advocated for, either this year or in previous years. Sometimes things do not happen overnight. I know that is hard for people to believe. Sometimes we have to keep advocating for what we believe in.

I want to point out a couple of things in this budget that I have been working on as a member of Parliament on behalf of my constituents that have made it into this budget.

The first one is very personal. I have a daughter who has just graduated from university. I know a number of her colleagues and friends. They are all looking for work. Fortunately for my daughter, she was a co-op student. The co-op has made a big difference in her ability to find employment because she has some experience.

In this budget, the finance minister, in his wisdom and under our Prime Minister, said that this kind of learning, this kind of experience, is what we need for our young people to get ahead, to get a start, and we have put aside $40 million for 3,000 full-time internships in high-demand jobs. It is exactly what we need to get young people into the workforce and moving forward in their careers.

People may say this sounds silly. I have an open door policy in my office. Year after year, there are two groups of university students, two organizations, that come to see me every year with demands. I do not agree with every one of their demands. Trust me. And I am clear with those young folks that I do not agree with them.

However, one of the items I have agreed with, and I have actually put in a submission to the Minister of Finance, is to not include vehicles in the calculations of student loans. If a student's car were worth $3,000 or $5,000, it would go against the value he or she could borrow because it was an asset that we would account for. In this budget, we would eliminate that. There are 19,000 students in this country who drive to school. In my riding of Burlington, we do not have a university main campus. We have a satellite campus for McMaster University in my riding, for MBA students, but we do not have a main campus; so people often drive to McMaster or to Guelph or to college in Oakville or to Toronto. They live at home to save money, and they drive to school every day. This is a request that has come year after year from these organizations. They thought, and I agreed with them, that this is something we should look at. I submitted it to the Minister of Finance last year and this year, and it made the budget. I am very proud that we saw the light that we need to be helping our young people in my area to pay for their education.

There is another area we get criticized on, research and innovation, which is not accurate, but the opposition members like to criticize. In this budget, there would be $1.5 billion in funding for post-secondary education research. In addition to that, we would give $46 million to granting councils that grant to individual organizations that do research. Just so people know, they are the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. All three councils would get funding from this $46 million to carry out research. We have been criticized as being very narrow on what we want to see done in terms of research. We would give a chunk of this $46 million to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I am very proud of the work we are doing in that area.

Here is another item that is close to my heart. Ford Canada has its manufacturing plant office in my neighbouring riding of Oakville, and lots of individuals work for Ford, but a lot more individuals work in companies that are suppliers to Ford in my riding. In support of innovation and an understanding that we need to move forward in this industry if we are going to stay ahead of the curve in terms of innovation, we would put forward $500 million in the innovative automotive sector over two years. That is additional money that automotive companies in this country could use to innovate and do research on the new products they are going to bring to the marketplace.

That is not the only area. We are also looking at what has been working. This is not in my riding, but transformation has been needed in the forestry industry, and we would re-fund to a tune of $90 million the forest institute transformation fund, which allows forestry companies to look at where they are now and what the future will be in terms of the products and services that need to be provided, and it would give them some funding to help them get there.

Another area is seniors. Seniors make up almost half of my riding. I think a little over 50% of the residents are age 55 and over now. Someone age 55 is not a senior, but that is the statistic I have, and I am getting there. We have a program that helps seniors, and we have been able to deliver a large number of small projects in my riding through this program. One example is that we gave $5,000 to a small organization that helps Polish seniors in my riding to buy computer equipment, so they can have access to the Internet and gain an understanding of it. They were so excited that this money was delivered to them. Our seniors centre has a new kitchen, to be able to provide a breakfast program to shut-in seniors who are not able to get out. Without our providing that money through this seniors program, they would not be out every other Sunday morning. We would re-fund that as a $5 million per year program, which is excellent for my riding.

I will finish with this. I had a private member's bill eight years ago dealing with a DNA database for missing persons, a missing persons index. It did not make it because it needed royal assent and needed money spent on it, which is not allowed in a private member's bill. Today, in this budget, the DNA-base missing persons databank will come to fruition. I thank the minister and the Prime Minister for their foresight on that.

[Committees of the House, February 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in relation to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in contraband tobacco).

The committee considered the bill and decided to report it to the House without amendment.

[The Budget, February 11th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of all Canadians, let me congratulate the minister for his work in returning Canada to a balanced budget in 2015. While other countries struggle with their finances, Canada is showing the world that strong fiscal management is the right path for job creation and economic growth.

On a personal note, I want to thank the minister for including the missing person's index in this budget. I worked on that as a private members' bill eight years ago.

I would also like to thank the minister for his work on supporting charities and on encouraging charitable giving in Canada. Given the important work charities do in every community, what will economic action plan 2014 do to help charities?

[Telecommunications, February 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, over the last 20 years, wireless services have grown into something Canadians rely on daily. As a result, we are seeing new cell towers being constructed in our communities. Their placement in my riding has been a very divisive issue. I believe Canadians deserve a say on how and where new cell tower locations are identified.

Can the Minister of Industry please tell the House what our government is doing to ensure that local voices are heard?

[Business of Supply, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good point about whether we can legislate convenience away.

The other thing the member said that got a lot of jeers from the other side was about bank profits. They look at all of their services and decide which services will attract which fees to be able to make a profit. I am 100% in support of banks making a profit. My CPP is fully invested in Canadian banks. Most union pension plans are fully invested in Canadian banks. The more stable and profitable the banking system is in this country, the better off 99% of Canadians will be in the long term, because we have a quality banking system that helps support an investment community and our retirement savings. We will have a good quality of life for many years to come partly because of the quality of the banking system we have in Canada.

[Business of Supply, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be frank. I cannot speak for rural areas. I do not have a rural area and I do not live in a rural area. It has been a long time since I lived in a rural area. I used to live outside of Brockville, in Athens, not too far from Kingston, but the fact is, I have never been to a machine that has cost me $7 to get cash out. It may exist; I just do not know that it exists. It probably does not exist in Burlington, I think because of competition, as people could go somewhere else for it.

However, the member is making a point in the sense that we need to make sure that people have an understanding about these fees. That white-label machine would not be there if the business did not think it would make money and people would use it. Although a lot of banking can be done online, people have to get their cash from somewhere, so if people stopped using it and had another alternative for their banking, that white-label machine would not exist in that particular location.

We need to do a better job of making sure that consumers make choices, and it is those choices that will force business to change its practices.

[Business of Supply, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will explain why I say that the uncompetitive piece is not accurate. I will use my own example from yesterday.

I was at a bank that was not my own bank. I am not trying to brag, but I had been at the office and doing a little banking for my office account. It is a long story. I use a different bank than I do for my personal banking.

I was having a Super Bowl gathering at my house and I needed $200. I could have done one of four things. I could have got the money from this bank while I was doing the banking. I was in a mall, so I could have walked across the mall to a different bank that charges $1.50 instead of $2 a transaction. I could have got in my car and gone across the road and got it for free at my own bank. I also could have gone to the convenience store beside the place where I was getting the wings and use a white machine, because it has a white machine there, for which I would have probably paid $3. There were four choices available to me, all within two or three minutes of each other. My decision to do it there was made out of convenience. It cost me 1%, and that was worth my time.

I do not think our system is uncompetitive. What we need to do is have people think about it and make decisions. When my younger kids go out, instead of waiting to get their cash at the white machine at the local pub, they go to their own branch and get it for free, and that is what they should be doing.