Murray Rankin

[Business of Supply, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that the list could go on. My colleague mentioned employment insurance and the securities commission the government wishes to establish nationally, despite vehement opposition from certain provinces. Perhaps if there were respectful dialogue, with listening and acting, then we might be able to find solutions to these problems, as we need to find them so desperately in the context of health care.

I would add one example; the safe injection site legislation. The Supreme Court told Conservatives that they had to do it, and what did the government do? It found 101 ways to make sure it does not happen. That is not the kind of leadership we need. If we sat down with the provinces at the highest level and figured this out, we could solve some of these pressing crises Canadians understand we are facing.

[Business of Supply, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend from Trinity—Spadina that there needs to be an accord. Whether that accord in the future is one that takes the form of the one that was signed in 2004 is what the parties will sort out in that respectful dialogue that one would expect to occur.

The 300 meetings that might happen in the course of a year sounds a lot like the lack of respect the federal government has when it negotiates with aboriginal people. Conservatives keep a log of how many meetings they have and call it consultation. I suppose if we add up 300, one might think we have had a good dialogue.

We are talking about a sit-down meeting of the kind that Canadians are famous for in finding compromise and going forward with practical suggestions, not just a number of meetings that can be counted up in some mechanical way.

[Business of Supply, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to this important measure. The motion is:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister of Canada should hold annual First Ministers' Conferences.

It is so trite. Of course I wish to say that I will be supporting that motion, but I want to go much further than that.

I am delighted to be the official opposition critic for health. In that particular context, I want to illustrate why this is so important. We have a crisis in the funding and the creation of innovation in our health care system, yet the Prime Minister's lack of leadership and lack of willingness to meet with provincial and territorial counterparts is very telling.

This is a multibillion-dollar industry. The health care program in Canada is something Canadians are justly proud of. When asked in surveys over and over again, Canadians recognize this is a signature part of our Canadian identity. The father of medicare, former premier Tommy Douglas, set up the first of these programs in the country, and of course, it has been adapted at the federal level. We have to sustain that signature program of the federation.

To do so, we need leadership at the highest level. To do so, we need to have a Prime Minister who deigns to meet with the Council of the Federation, something the Prime Minister, in his platform that brought him to power, said very clearly:

Support the important contribution the Council of the Federation is making to strengthening intergovernmental and interprovincial cooperation, expanding the economic and social union in Canada, and advancing the development of common standards and objectives of mutual recognition by all provinces.

What happened? Apparently there is a meeting of the Council of the Federation here in Ottawa, and the Prime Minister cannot find the time to go. What happened to that promise? What happened to the promise to the Canadian people, the respect, of which my colleague from Hamilton Centre spoke, for a sovereign government within its sphere? That has apparently disappeared.

We live in a vast, very decentralized federation called Canada. There are many powers that are shared, some that are given to the provinces in section 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867, some that are given to the federal government, and some that are not mentioned, health being one of them.

The Conservatives seem to think that a few meetings at the deputy level and a few meetings perhaps with the ministers responsible once in a while is okay. They seem to think that what some people have called “chequebook federalism” works, where they just do a transfer of money and suddenly that is all we need to make a dynamic system like health care function in such a vast and complicated country. All the experts say that if they believe that, they are wrong.

We need to find ways the federal government, using its spending power, can incent the kind of behaviours we need to sustain our precious health care system.

We have a law called the Canada Health Act, which was passed unanimously. It has several core principles: public administration of our health system, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility. Those are nice words. How do we make those words translate into action? How can we afford a program, with an aging population, and the need for new services, expensive pharmaceutical care, home care, and long-term care? How do we do that without having a dialogue with the provinces at the highest level to figure it out? Apparently, the Conservatives do not think we need to do so. We do.

The Leader of the Opposition has committed that no less than twice a year there would be meetings with all the premiers, not one-offs with various premiers, which seems to be the style of the current Prime Minister. Rather, in a respectful way, they would sit around the table and dialogue about these serious problems. I am simply using health as one illustration of the kinds of problems we need to solve as a country and as a federation.

The Canada Health Act is lovely, with those principles I mentioned, but does the federal government enforce it? Non-compliance is rampant. User fees and private clinics seem to be in absolute contrast to what the principles suggest, yet people are not doing much about it. Are there penalties to address those, or sanctions, as expected, as any law that should be enforced would suggest? No, there is no attempt to enforce those conditions on user fees, extra billing, and private clinics. Indeed, we have a case that is in the B.C. Supreme Court in March that will go on for months. It will deal with private clinics and whether they are okay under our Canada Health Act. Is the federal government involved? Is the Prime Minister interested?

The Canada health transfer is a block transfer that gives money to the provinces and territories to deal with the health care system. It is tens of billions of dollars. In 2004, the government made a 10-year commitment to something called a health accord. That expired last year, on March 31. It was $41 billion over 10 years.

One day in 2011, the then-minister of finance came into my community of Victoria and said that they were not going to do that anymore. They were not going to fund it the way it was funded before, with a guarantee of a 6% health care funding increase. He said that it would end in the 2016-17 fiscal year, conveniently after the next election.

The Conservatives only committed to a floor of 3% in that document. Henceforth, as the population grows, as the aging population grows, and as pharmaceuticals get more expensive, there will not be enough money. Effectively, the critics have pointed out, there will be a $36-billion cut in health care costs going forward. As I said, coincidentally it will be just after the next federal election.

This is a problem. Canada needs a national pharmaceutical strategy. We started one, but it was scrapped. We need a continuing care plan that integrates home care, facility-based long-term care, respite care, and palliative care. We need a universal public drug plan. We need adequate and stable federal funding, including the old 6% escalator to deal with the growth in our population. We need innovation.

Why am I mentioning this in the context of the debate today? It is for a very simple reason: it is one of the signature programs of our federation, and we need to sustain it. We need leadership from the Government of Canada. We need the Prime Minister to take an interest. All the premiers are fixed on this crisis facing us, the “grey tsunami”, as it is called, of the aging population.

We need innovation. We do not just need more money, although we do need a commitment to the escalator we had in the old health accord. We need a commitment to stable, long-term federal funding, and we need a government that enforces the Canada Health Act. However, we also need a Prime Minister to sit down with his counterparts at the provincial and territorial level on a regular basis for a checkup on this signature program.

Canadians are so proud of the Canada Health Act. They are so proud of our medicare system. When asked, they continually tell us that it is one of the things that makes them most proud as Canadians. We could lose all of this if we do not have this kind of dialogue at the senior level.

I hear the government members saying that they meet lots of times and that they have ministers who meet. It is called executive federalism, where the deputies get together and chat. I absolutely respect that and understand that it is a necessity in various programs, including those for health. However, we need leadership from the top.

Leaving it to a number of officials to deal with is not going to cut it. Canadians want to see their Prime Minister engaged with the provinces on this issue. I have had people come to my office from the Canadian Health Coalition, Canadian Doctors for Medicare, and other leaders in my community saying that we have a crisis coming. The Council of Canadians has also spoken passionately about this, yet what do we hear from the government? In 2011, it announced unilaterally and with no dialogue that it was going to throw the health accord out, not renew it, and no longer commit to a 6% escalator, despite everyone saying that the need is there.

People are asking if we are going to be able to sustain this. The jury is out on that question, but one thing is clear. If we had dialogue at the highest level, at the Council of the Federation, with the Prime Minister, in good faith and with the respect my colleague from Hamilton Centre mentioned, we could solve this. Canadians have rolled up their sleeves and solved things before.

We had a crisis with the Canada Pension Plan and we fixed it. We decided as a country, federally and provincially, that we would put more money into it, that we would deal with what was going to be a crisis if we did not address it, and we fixed it. We can fix medicare as well, but it needs leadership and respectful dialogue.

To think that the Prime Minister will refuse to meet, when the members of the Council of the Federation are right here, should shock all Canadians. When they look at the problems, of which this is just one example, they will see the self-evident need for us to agree with this motion to have that regular meeting between the Prime Minister and the Council of the Federation.

Our leader has committed to that no less than twice a year. The government is apparently not doing it.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 26th, 2015]

With regard to the administration of pensions by the government: (a) what is the current and total number of pension members, active and retired; (b) what is the complete listing of government institutions, with the number of members, active and retired, broken down by each institution identified; (c) what are the actual costs, including but not limited to, A-Base, B-Based, and sunset funding, for salaries and wages as well as operations and maintenance, and funding sources for the operations of administration of pension, broken down by (i) each fiscal year from 2006 to date, at period (P-9) and (P-12), (ii) service for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iii) institutions specified in (b) for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12); (d) what is the complete list of all government institutions participating in the Public Works and Government Services of Canada (PWGSC) Transformation of Pension Administration Initiative, with the number of members involved, active and retired, broken down by each institution identified; (e) what is the itemized list and the comprehensive range of all the pension services or activities that are processed, handled, administered, managed, or delivered by the Public Service Pension Centre (PSPC) in Shediac, New Brunswick; (f) what is the itemized list of all the pension services or activities that are not, in whole or in part, processed, handled, administered, managed, or delivered by the PSPC, but that are reliant, in whole or in part, on compensation advisors outside of the PSPC in Shediac and that are reliant on compensation advisors within institutions specified in (d); (g) what are the detailed rationales for each item in (f); (h) what is the complete list of all government institutions that are either excluded, in whole or in part, from having any other separate arrangement apart from the Transformation of Pension Administration Initiative, with the number of members affected, active and retired, broken down by each institution identified; (i) what are the detailed rationales for each item in (h); (j) what are the details of all framework documentation and Treasury Board Submissions (TB-Subs) related to the PWGSC Transformation of Pension Administration Initiative project life cycle, including, but not limited to, (i) business case, (ii) project charter, (iii) work plans, (iv) roadmap, (v) project complexity and risk assessment, (vi) projected schedule and timeline, (vii) projected budget tables, (viii) projected costing tables, (ix) inception/definition phase, (x) identification phase (initiation, feasibility, analysis, close out), (xi) delivery phase (planning, design, implementation, close out), (xii) preliminary project approval, (xiii) effective project approval (EPA); (k) what are the details of all documentation after EPA of question (j), including, but not limited to, (i) on-going readiness assessment reports, (ii) internal PWGSC audits, reviews, and reporting, (iii) Treasury Board audits, reviews, and reporting, (iv) external audits, reviews, and reporting from professional services providers and consulting firms, (v) subsequent TB-Subs modifications, amendments, and changes; (l) what are the actual costs and funding sources for the Transformation of Pension Administration Initiative, broken down by (i) each fiscal year from 2006 to date, at period (P-9) and (P-12), (ii) projects for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iii) service for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iv) institutions specified in (d) for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12); (m) what are the actual budgetary and cost impacts from the perspective and standpoint of each affected institution specified in (d) related to the implementation of the Transformation of Pension Administration Initiative, broken down by (i) each fiscal year from 2006 to date, at period (P-9) and (P-12), (ii) projects for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iii) service for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12); (n) what are the details of all PWGSC prequel documentation prior to, preceding, and leading to and from the earliest attempt up to the initiation of the project life cycle process defined in (j), including, but not limited to (i) all scenarios, reports, analysis with projected projects budgets, (ii) briefing notes to ministers and deputy heads, (iii) budget and costs broken down by each fiscal year between earliest attempt up to the initiation of the project life cycle process defined in (j), (iv) funding sources related specifically to the carrying out of the prequel phase exercise?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 26th, 2015]

With regard to the administration of pay by the government: (a) what is the current and total number of government employees; (b) what is the complete listing of government institutions, with the number of employees, broken down by each institution identified; (c) what are the actual costs, including but not limited to, A-Base, B-Based, and sunset funding, for salaries and wages as well as operations and maintenance, and funding sources for the operations of administration of pay, broken down by (i) each fiscal year from 2006 to date, at period (P-9) and (P-12), (ii) service for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iii) organizations specified in (b) for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12); (d) what is the complete list of all government institutions participating in the Public Works and Government Services of Canada (PWGSC) Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative, with the number of employees, broken down by each institution identified; (e) what is the itemized list and the comprehensive range of all the pay services or activities that are processed, handled, administered, managed, or delivered by the Public Service Pay Centre in Miramichi, New Brunswick; (f) what is the itemized list of all the pay services or activities that are not, in whole or in part, processed, handled, administered, managed, or delivered by the Public Service Pay Centre in Miramichi, but that are reliant, in whole or in part, on compensation advisors outside of the Public Service Pay Centre in Miramichi or that are reliant on compensation advisors within institutions specified in (d); (g) what are the detailed rationales for each item in (f); (h) what is the complete list of all government institutions that are either excluded, in whole or in part, from having any other separate arrangement apart from the Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative, with the number of employees affected, broken down by each institution identified; (i) what are the detailed rationales and reasons for each item in (h); (j) what are the details of all framework documentation and Treasury Board Submissions (TB-Subs) related to the PWGSC Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative project life cycle, including, but not limited to, (i) business case, (ii) project charter, (iii) work plans, (iv) roadmap, (v) project complexity and risk assessment, (vi) projected schedule and timeline, (vii) projected budget tables, (viii) projected costing tables, (ix) inception/definition phase, (x) identification phase (initiation, feasibility, analysis, close out), (xi) delivery phase (planning, design, implementation, close out), (xii) preliminary project approval, (xiii) effective project approval (EPA); (k) what are the details of all documentation after EPA in (j), including, but not limited to, (i) on-going readiness assessment reports, (ii) internal PWGSC audits, reviews, and reporting, (iii) Treasury Board audits, reviews, and reporting, (iv) external audits, reviews, and reporting from professional services providers and consulting firms, (v) subsequent TB-Subs modifications, amendments, and changes; (l) what are the actual costs and funding sources for the Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative, broken down by (i) each fiscal year from 2006 to date, at period (P-9) and (P-12), (ii) projects for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iii) service for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iv) institutions specified in (d) for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12); (m) what are the actual budgetary and cost impacts from the perspective and standpoint of each affected institution specified in (d) related to the implementation of the Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative, broken down by (i) each fiscal year from 2006 to date, at period (P-9) and (P-12), (ii) projects for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12), (iii) service for each fiscal year from 2006 year-to-date at period (P-9) and (P-12); and (n) what are the details of all PWGSC prequel documentation prior to, preceding, and leading to and from the earliest attempt up to the initiation of the project life cycle process defined in (j), including, but not limited to, (i) all scenarios, reports, analysis with projected projects budgets, (ii) briefing notes to ministers and deputy heads, (iii) budget and costs, broken down by each fiscal year, from the earliest attempt up to the initiation of the project life cycle process defined in (j), (iv) funding sources related specifically to the carrying out of the prequel phase exercise?

[Health, January 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I have sad breaking news. We have just heard that the first case of H7N9 bird flu in North America has been found in a traveller in British Columbia. This is obviously a very serious public health concern for all Canadians.

Can the minister update the House about what measures the government will be taking to screen travellers and identify anyone who may have been in contact with that virus?

[Health, January 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, thalidomide survivors just do not have the luxury of time. They have been suffering from their disabilities their whole lives. The Canadian government told their mothers that thalidomide was safe. That means we have a moral responsibility to provide them with support now.

In December, the House vowed to make things right, but today an important deadline has passed and the government still has not moved to action.

Will the minister act quickly to give survivors the support they so desperately need?

[The Environment, December 12th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have established that they will not show leadership. They have established that the NDP voted against bad Conservative budgets that failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What they have not established is that they are even trying to meet emission targets. Copenhagen targets simply cannot be met without oil and gas regulations, the single fastest-growing source of emissions.

For the sake of the planet, will they reconsider the Prime Minister's short-sighted announcement not to regulate the oil and gas sector?

[Committees of the House, December 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the chair, the member for Edmonton—Leduc, that this report contains much useful information. We heard from dozens of witnesses who were able to appear before the committee.

It contains, as well, a supplementary report by the official opposition, the NDP. Unfortunately, many of the committee's Conservative majority recommendations are so self-congratulatory in tone that they must embarrass the chair as much as they do us.

Few of the recommendations include the progressive measures Canadians are looking for to build a fairer, greener, and more prosperous Canada.

[Taxation, December 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Canada Revenue Agency is going after an 82-year-old B.C. man who has dementia. It is fining him $12,000 for failing to declare a small foreign pension income in his 2011 tax return. It is ridiculous. It was an honest mistake, but the CRA is telling him and his family it will take 15 months to address.

Meanwhile, the real tax cheats are stashing billions of dollars in tax havens, and the Conservatives just keep letting them get away with it. When will the minister stop targeting seniors and charities and go after the real tax cheats?