Murray Rankin

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

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today and speak on Bill C-43.

The title of the bill is rather misleading as it describes a bill to implement the budget and other measures, which is exactly what I want to start with: the process that got us to this place today. This is yet another omnibus budget bill. It is a bill that would actually do much more than what Canadians might think a budget would do.

A budget would be about economic priorities, fiscal matters, and the like. However, yet again, the bill before us is 460 pages in length with 400 clauses and would do so much more than deal with budget measures. It is misleading, in fact, to call it a budget implementation bill when it deals with matters that have nothing in the world to do with budget. Of course, that is the pattern of the Conservatives. This is number five on a long list of budget bills.

I have the honour of representing Victoria, and I sit on the finance committee where, frequently, we deal with matters that have absolutely nothing to do with finance. I have a little trouble back in the riding explaining what I am doing talking about those measures, but that, I guess, is just the way it is. However, I also have difficulty explaining why amendments are proposed and uniformly voted down by the Conservatives, even when those amendments are self-evident improvements to a bill in specific matters.

Having spoken about the failed process, the anti-democratic process that led us to this place, I would like to talk about the substance. I will speak about the things we would support and oppose in the bill, and the things that are glaringly obvious by omission in the bill.

It must be said that there are things that are supportable in the bill. One that comes to mind initially is the NDP's long-standing proposal to deal with the pay-to-pay problem. Seniors in my riding of Victoria constantly complain about paying more for a telecommunications bill if they get it on paper rather than online. They do not have a computer and they do not want to do that. Well, the government, in its typical way, went halfway. The Conservatives went along with the pay-to-pay provisions vis-à-vis broadcasting enterprises and telcos, but I guess the banks had a better lobby, because glaringly obvious in omission is anything to do with bank fees. I guess that is because the banks had a better lobby than telcos, or perhaps there were disputes elsewhere with that sector of the economy. However, at least the Conservatives went halfway, and we give them credit for that half measure.

Second, there were measures to improve the clarity and integrity of the tax code, which is something New Democrats had been proposing for a long time. However, so much more needs to be done about tax evasion, and I will talk about that in just a moment.

There are other issues, such as the implementation of a DNA data code to help solve the crisis in missing aboriginal women and girls. This is a long-standing proposal that the government has now recognized, and we accept that.

Last, there is the backlog on appeals to the Social Security Tribunal. This will be addressed by allowing more members to be appointed, which, again, is something that has been sought by the NDP for many years.

I said that I would talk about what was missing from the bill. There is $7.8 billion a year that is missing, and that could be available to Canadians if the government were serious about the issue of tax havens. It has been a passion of mine to try to get the government to take this seriously.

However, $7.8 billion is an estimate, and it can only be an estimate. Contrary to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's attempts, our attempts, and the Senate's attempts to get the government to actually measure the tax gap, as our friends in the U.K., France, and the United States have been doing for years, the current Conservative government somehow thinks it is a waste of time and cannot be bothered.

If we do not measure something, how can we manage it? Is that not public administration 101? However, the government refuses, and so I can only give an estimate, which can be accused of being high or low, but it is a big number.

Corporate tax avoidance, in particular, is a global epidemic. Even though Canada is proud, and the Conservatives are, of having the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7, we still have corporations that send their money abroad.

An example is tax shifting or transfer pricing. In order to pay even less tax, those companies that have the lowest corporate tax rates in the G7 still have their favourite trick. What is that? They sell a patent to an offshore subsidiary. Then they charge themselves licensing fees for the use of the same patent. That is a good trick.

Other countries have closed that loophole. We do not seem to care.

I have introduced Bill C-621, which would address the economic substance and require that there actually be economic substance before those paper transactions are allowed, costing the Canadian treasury billions of dollars because the government simply does not want to take the time to go after corporate friends on Bay Street.

Bill C-621 would do what Dr. Robert McMechan wrote about in his book Economic Substance and Tax Avoidance: An International Perspective. Dr. McMechan, who really helped in drafting Bill C-621, pointed out in his doctoral thesis at Osgoode Law School, having been a practitioner with the Department of Justice and doing tax litigation for many years, that the government could close this loophole if the courts could get back on track with looking at the economic substance of transactions rather than whether or not they appear to be okay on paper. That is something like going after the general anti-avoidance rules vis-à-vis corporate tax avoidance.

That is what my very short bill, Bill C-621, would do. It would basically put Canada on track, as Dr. McMechan points out, as regards our other allies whose courts seem to have stuck to economic substance. Ours, I am afraid, have gone off the rails.

There is a lot of money we are not going after. A few years ago the Conservatives, faced with 106 Canadians with secret bank accounts totalling over $100 million in Liechtenstein, did nothing. How many have been charged? How many have they gone after? Apparently they have gone after none.

Compare our woeful record of doing little to go after tax evaders with Australia's Project Wickenby or the action going on in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom to go after tax avoiders. Canadians should be ashamed of their government's performance.

Back in September, somebody from inside the department wrote us and said the minister announced that the elimination of a host of senior tax office positions at the local level, including in the international and aggressive tax planning programs. Seventy individuals, with over 1,000 years of cumulative specialized expertise in going after these intricate, complicated corporate transactions, were gone. Fifty people in CRA alone lost their jobs. That is the priority of the Conservatives in going after what could have been an enormous source of revenue. That is missing in this budget.

I have talked about what we like in this budget and what is absolutely missing. In terms of things that ought not to be in a budget but that need to be done is more action on youth unemployment and on homelessness. Homelessness is a crisis in my community of Victoria. I attended a lecture by Dr. Gaetz of York University, who pointed out that homelessness costs the Canadian economy $7 billion per year if we take into account social services, health care, corrections, and interaction with law enforcement. That is an enormous number. If investments were made to deal with that, the return on the investment—language the Conservatives would apparently like—would be enormous. For example, for the hardest to house, for every $10 we invest in Housing First initiatives to address homelessness, $22 would be achieved through offset costs.

There is a crisis in affordable housing. We are not using the income tax system to incent the creation of affordable, low-cost rental housing in communities. We have lots of condos, but we do not have housing for those people who are living hand to mouth in our communities and who are themselves just a few steps away from being homeless.

In conclusion, it is politics 011 that a budget reflects the priorities of a government. The government's priorities do not deal with the crises of unemployment and homelessness, nor fairness and equity, nor does it provide income for Canadians by actually going after money in tax havens in a more aggressive way, as so many of our allies have done.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is about redress and address. Redress is what we are here to talk about today, and we have to do the right thing for these victims, but as I said in my remarks, we need constant vigilance going forward.

At the Therapeutics Initiative in British Columbia, Dr. Wright and his colleagues are doing remarkable work. It is frankly shocking to me that there is no similar organization at the national level. This organization has to do it from British Columbia, for British Columbians. That kind of root-and-branch work where is absolutely none of what I would call cross-contamination from big pharma is what we desperately need at the federal level as well.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely appropriate that Canadians understand that we are no longer living in the 1960s, that there is a rigorous process for reviewing drugs, in which independent public servants make decisions on our behalf.

Having said that, we always have more work to do and, having said that, vigilance has to always be eternal. We can respect Vanessa's law, but it is only a starting point. We need to do more on all sides of the House to strengthen drug safety.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the thoughtful remarks of my colleague from the Liberal Party. I am thankful for the Liberal Party's support throughout this initiative, and for that of the Green Party, and I am hoping as well for the support of the Government of Canada.

I also need to talk about a very brave woman named Dr. Frances Kelsey, who is from Shawnigan Lake. She is 100 years old and was the person who was awarded the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by John F. Kennedy. Why? It is because she is singularly responsible for thalidomide not being sold in the United States market. She was working with the Food and Drug Administration there.

A school in the riding of my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan, in Mill Bay, British Columbia, was named the Frances Kelsey Secondary School in her honour, because she represents what my colleague was saying—namely, the need to show compassion.

We should all be proud of the kinds of things that have happened since in the Canadian regulation of drugs. Great steps have been made, but at the time they were not. She stood up to the drug companies in the United States; our government did not. We are here to do the right thing today to make sure those victims are looked after.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to follow my colleague from St. John's East and appreciate very much his words today.

This is a very emotional speech for me. Two years ago yesterday, I had the honour of being elected in a by-election to serve the communities of Victoria and Oak Bay. It is, as every member in this place would know, a very proud day when one first comes to this place and speaks for one's community in this chamber.

Today is a proud day as well, because I am so proud that this House appears to be coming together with compassion, reflecting the compassion of this great country in doing the right thing at last for some 100 people, now 95, who are the victims of this terrible tragedy that occurred in 1961 or thereabouts when a drug called thalidomide was first approved for use by pregnant women to treat nausea and the like.

I have never been more proud to stand up here knowing, at least from rumours in the newspapers, that all parties in this place will be giving support to this resolution that the NDP brought forward for its opposition day motion.

We all have our personal stories about this tragedy. The Prime Minister alluded to it yesterday in question period, growing up in the sixties and knowing children who were victims of thalidomide. The mother of a friend of mind was offered this drug and chose not to take it, and he looks back every day with gratitude for the fact that she made that choice. He is living in Calgary today, and I spoke with him this morning about it in a very emotional way.

I want to pay tribute to a number of people. I want to pay tribute first to Natalie Dash and Barry Campbell, who are with Campbell Strategies in Toronto. They called me a few months ago—there were 98 thalidomide survivors on that day—and said we had to do something. They were working pro bono to assist the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada, and they asked if I could help.

My colleague, the member for Vancouver East, is the health critic for the official opposition, and she took it upon herself to do what was required to make this an opposition day motion. I am so proud that the members opposite appear to be in agreement that full support for the thalidomide survivors should be provided. It is a measure of the compassion of this country that 95 people remaining today will be able to live the last years of their lives in dignity.

Many have spoken before about the situation facing the thalidomide survivors. The press conference this week with those people was so moving, and I want to pay tribute to the enormous courage of the people who were present, particularly Mercedes Benegbi, who is the president and CEO of that organization. She showed courage in coming before the Canadian people with all of the cameras on and all of the media there and telling the stories of the poverty in which victims now live, the fact that they cannot get around on their own, and that they are crying out for some sort of assistance. I am so proud of this place, because it appears we are poised to finally do what should have been done so many years ago.

The victims do not have the ability to use their limbs and care for themselves. As has been said, often they were born without legs or, in the case of Marie Olney, one of the victims who lives in Calgary, with only 15-centimetre-long arms and only three fingers. Many have serious internal organ damage. They have been relying all these years on their friends and families. However, that will not happen much longer, because time goes on. Their parents have passed away or are in homes, and the victims are now asking how they will get by.

Most of the victims live in abject poverty. Anyone who read the article that The Globe and Mail published last weekend and saw the abject poverty in which they currently live would be moved, as we all are, by their stories. Some of them have damage to their spines and their joints, and that severely limits their mobility. They do not often have the ability to maintain employment, and they depend on others for basic human tasks. In that context, they come to the people of Canada, they come to the Government of Canada asking for help, because they need help. The 95 of them who are left are crying out for some sort of assistance.

Yes, there was a payment made back in the 1990s, a one-time payment. There was no apology, but an acceptance: that would be it for these people. They have come back to say it was not enough, they cannot live, they need ongoing financial support, a pension to live on, and they need to be able to get by in the last years of their lives if they are to live in dignity. That is what they have asked for, and we ought to address that as an urgent matter in this place.

I am thrilled to be here today with the hope that this opposition day motion will receive the unanimous support of the House.

[Canada Revenue Agency, November 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have shown over and over again that they just cannot be trusted to safeguard our personal information.

This week, there was yet another privacy breach at the Canada Revenue Agency. This time, private financial information on hundreds of Canadians just got sent to the media.

The minister has a legal duty to safeguard this information, but time and time again at the CRA, there are misplaced laptops, unprotected websites, snooping employees, and the latest excuse, human error. When will the minister take real action to stop this endless loop of privacy breaches in her department?

[Infrastructure, November 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, representatives of municipalities from across Canada are in Ottawa today, calling on the Conservatives to stop ignoring the infrastructure deficit.

Decades of downloading and underfunding have left our cities struggling, with crumbling roads and bridges, inadequate water supplies, and an affordable housing crisis. The New Democrats are ready to work as partners with municipalities and provide the support they need to build livable communities for Canadians.

When will Conservatives stop shortchanging our cities and commit to investing, now, in infrastructure and affordable housing?

[Parliament of Canada Act, November 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to rise on this important initiative in the spirit of non-partisan debate, which is something Canadians expect when we are talking about fundamental reform to our parliamentary institutions. We are talking about two things in this bill: reforms to the Board of Internal Economy and reforms to the Access to Information Act.

In the very short time I have, I am going to comment mostly on the second order of problems involving the Access to Information Act. I am delighted to see that this bill incorporates something that had been promised before by the government and not delivered, and that is the need for independent ability for a court to order the disclosure of records. That is the best part of this bill, and one that I strongly support.

Indeed, Bill C-567, introduced by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, would have done just that. Perhaps members will agree with me how ironic that bill was, because it was an effort to simply and only address those things left out of the Conservative government's accountability promises. Members will recall that 52 measures were promised by the Conservatives to increase ethics and accountability of the government, and the first thing the Conservatives said they would do when elected was to strengthen the Access to Information Act. When it all came out, their famous Federal Accountability Act contained a grand total of one of the eight open-government measures that they promised in the Federal Accountability Act. What the member for Winnipeg Centre did was simply present those things the government said it would do but did not do.

Perhaps I, as a new member, was relatively naive. I thought that all we were doing was asking the government to do what it promised in an election campaign. I am sad to report that the Conservatives spoke against that bill. However, at least one principle in this accountability legislation before us tonight was in that bill, which we completely and strongly endorse, and that is the ability for an information commissioner to order the disclosure of a record if it comes within the proper rules, even if the government wishes that not to occur.

An access bill, in any jurisdiction, must have three things: first, a statement of the right to openness, which is the default, as the member for Papineaunoted; the second critical thing, a list of exceptions to that rule, which would be narrow, that being the intent at least; and third, the ability for an independent officer to be essentially the umpire in the game and say that government should not withhold a particular record, that it should be disclosed. Those are the guts of meaningful access legislation. This bill would do that, and that is one measure, therefore, that we would strongly support.

The Conservative government has made fun of legislation of this sort in the past, and that is wrong. Mr. Crosbie, who was the first justice minister to live under an access act, said that this is merely a tool for “mischief-makers” whose objective “in the vast majority of instances” is to embarrass political leaders and titillate the public. That is not an access to information act.

It is a quasi-constitutional requirement, according to the Supreme Court of Canada. It is part of our legislative regime to ensure that the Government of Canada is held to account. This bill would go some measure toward that. It needs to go a lot further, and we hope that, when we get it into committee, we can improve it for all Canadians.

[Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, November 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we spent a lot of money and endured international embarrassment for what happened in the tragedy of Maher Arar. Justice O'Connor conducted a thorough investigation, which made a number of important recommendations that have yet to be implemented

Justice Iacobucci did the same thing in the Almalki case.

We have this background. That is why the bill needs to be of particular concern. In the face of all that excellent advice we received, at great expense, none of those recommendations appear to be found in this bill. That is why the bill is even more problematic: we have no excuse for not going forward with the excellent advice that those two learned jurists provided to us.

[Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, November 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak about something that is very near and dear to my heart, oversight, in particular of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

We have before us Bill C-44. This legislation would amend a statute that is now 30 years old and obviously needs some fine tuning, which this bill would provide. I say at the outset that we would support this legislation and hope to address some of its deficiencies in detail at the appropriate committee at the appropriate time.

The thing that strikes me as wanting in this legislation is its failure to address oversight in a meaningful way. Currently, the chair of that committee is the former co-chair of the Conservative campaign. Another individual on the committee is a prominent, well-respected lawyer but is the former law partner of former prime minister Mulroney. A security person, a well-respected police intelligence person, rounds out the threesome on the committee.

I had the opportunity to be counsel to the Security Intelligence Review Committee when the first chair of that committee was established, the hon. Ron Atkey, a former Conservative minister of immigration. In those days there were five members on the committee, not three, and they were appointed after real consultation with those parties having more than 12 members in the House. That meant there were Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats on that committee, so the Canadian public could have genuine confidence that they would do their oversight work taking into account the views of most Canadians.

I had the opportunity to work with the late Rosemary Brown, a prominent member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, doing national security hearings in those days. I had the opportunity to work with Liberals. I had the opportunity to work with Saul Cherniack from Manitoba. Those days appear to be gone.

The framers of the CSIS Act, the bill that is now 30 years old, wanted to get it right. They wanted to make sure Canadians would have confidence, given the incredibly intrusive powers provided to this secret police intelligence-gathering service. It is critical for the excellent work that CSIS does that there be that oversight in which Canadians can have confidence.

The former head of SIRC, Mr. Porter, languishes in a Panamanian jail. We have three people, none of whom appear to have any connection with the opposition in the House whatsoever. That contrasts dramatically with what used to be the case when the hon. Ron Atkey chaired SIRC and insisted that there be that kind of credibility. Why are we debating a bill to modernize CSIS that does not even address these obviously patent inadequacies in that statute?

The other thing missing is that the inspector general no longer exists. That officer, the late Richard Gosse, was highly respected on all sides of the House. He did some of the heavy lifting for Canadians, to make sure they could go in and do root and branch assessments of CSIS operations and provide confidence that, as the inspector general's reports provided, it was working within the four corners of the law.

This legislation deserves support, but it needs to get it right on such an important issue as oversight. The legislation has essentially nothing to say on oversight, and that is a real, tragic shortcoming. I hope the government would be willing to address that deficiency when we get the bill to the appropriate committee of this place for further review.

This bill deals with our fundamental freedoms as Canadians. To think that it would not include that oversight function to make sure our rights and freedoms are protected shows the government's complete disdain for that kind of oversight that would give Canadians the confidence we must have when we give a police department, an intelligence-gathering operation like this, these kinds of powers. I am sad that this bill, which could have got it right and done these things properly, does not go there at all.

The idea of acting abroad, the second of the two things that this legislation would do, is fine.

It is kind of hard to know how our court would be able to issue warrants with effect outside Canada, but that has to be dealt with in terms of national sovereignty. Nevertheless, I understand the intent. It regularizes what, no doubt, is already going on and provides the cloak of rule of law over those operations.

Providing greater protection to the identity of human intelligence sources is another matter that is clearly worthy of our support. Undertaking operations overseas was a matter of great debate 30 years ago when the CSIS Act was before the House. Bill C-44 would clarify the authority of CSIS to conduct security intelligence operations abroad, but only if those operations could be demonstrated to deal with genuine threats to the national security of Canada. That needs to be underlined. In that context, I would like to go into it in some more detail.

Operating abroad to investigate threats to the security of Canada is something that many have asserted has already been undertaken. In other words, this would simply provide legal authority for operations that are already extant in Canada and abroad. Therefore, to provide the cloak of rule of law over those operations is important. We cannot have, in Canada or overseas, intrusive activities that do not come under the cloak of rule of law. Therefore, I commend Bill C-44 for providing that legal cover, so that Canadians can be sure that operations going on not only in our country but also abroad have that legal cover, if I can call it that, to provide rule of law protection, so to speak, for those kinds of activities.

The other thing that needs to be said is that CSIS uses a number of different kinds of investigative techniques that are well known. One of them is a critical one in practical terms, and that is human sources talking to people about activities for which CSIS has genuine concern because they affect the national security of Canada, such as counter-espionage, of course, and counterterrorism being one of the biggest ones now.

Providing protection for the identity of those sources is absolutely critical if people are going to have confidence to come forward to CSIS in order to address issues that could affect the security of us all. Protecting people's identities means protecting their lives and security.

Being able to facilitate the sharing of intelligence with other intelligence agencies is also what many members in this debate have talked about, because CSIS is not an island in itself. CSIS is part of an international operation with other agencies. They share information all the time. They share human source information and other information, all designed to keep us safe in this country. That is what needs to be addressed here.

The protections being sought are important. The devil is always in the detail. That is why the committee will look at this in great detail, but the objective cannot be criticized at all in this legislation.

I will now end where I began. This bill represents an enormous missed opportunity. To not address the woeful inadequacy of the civilian oversight of CSIS is something that the House ought to insist be addressed, and I hope that when the bill gets to committee, there will be that opportunity. To allow this oversight agency to wither to the extent that it has is a national disgrace. To have three part-time people who apparently have, unlike in the past, no connection with opposition politics is, to me, exactly counter to what was sought 30 years ago when we made the brave choice to create our own national security service, CSIS. No inspector general, part-time, and mostly non-NDP and non-Liberal members on an oversight body just does not cut it.