Nycole Turmel

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party's solution is to send the issue to the Supreme Court rather than having a real debate

For every problem, there is a solution. If discussions had been held, perhaps we would not be debating the abolition of the Senate here today in the House. We would be talking about the real problems that affect Canadians, such as poverty, for one. We would also be talking about the economy in general and not about abolishing the Senate. If the discussion of a problem gets held back, this is what results.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we have made it very clear in our speeches and our motion that the discussions about abolishing the Senate must be held in co-operation with all the provinces. That is our position and we will maintain it. The Conservatives have had seven years to begin discussions with the provinces. That has not been done and it must be done, for the good of all Canadians.

[Business of Supply, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that the hon. member for Hamilton Centre is a hard act to follow, given the quality of his speech and his enthusiasm. Yet, I am nevertheless pleased to speak today in the House to support the motion presented by the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth.

This motions calls on the government, in consultation with the provinces and territories, to take immediate and necessary steps towards abolishing the Senate.

The Senate is a costly, outdated and unaccountable institution made up of unelected members.

Today, Canadians have lost confidence in this institution. They know that the Liberals and the Conservatives have used the Senate to reward their friends. They also know that the Senate rarely makes things better. From the time Canada was founded in 1867 until 1992, the Senate passed 99% of the bills that were submitted without any amendments in 95% of the cases.

Things have not changed much since then, except perhaps with regard to opposition bills, which rarely receive support from senators.

When he was in opposition, the current Prime Minister swore, with his hand on his heart, that he would clean up the Senate and that he would not appoint any senators.

After seven years in office, the Prime Minister has appointed over half of the senators—58 of the 105—currently in the Senate.

Many failed Conservative candidates and Conservative Party fundraisers now sit in the upper chamber. A good example of this is when the Prime Minister appointed Josée Verner and Larry Smith to the Senate after they were defeated in the 2011 election. Everyone remembers that.

Canadians are tired of friends of the government being given preferential treatment. They are tired of paying while the government tables one austerity budget after another and keeps saying that there is no money. They are tired of making sacrifices and tightening their belts.

Canadians' belts are so tight that hundreds of thousands of them are having trouble making ends meet, despite the fact that they are working full time. That is unacceptable in a country such as ours.

Ask those people who get up early each day and work hard if they think it is normal that Senator Wallin ran up $350,000 in travel expenses. That would be enough to pay 57 seniors their old age security benefits for a year. For anyone wondering, Ms. Wallin has cost taxpayers $1,285,000 over the past three years.

Do you think Canadians think it is fair that Senator Duffy, who claimed housing expenses that he was not entitled to, simply has to apologize and reimburse the fees in order to be cleared and not worry anymore? The answer is absolutely not. Canadians find it scandalous, and we understand them.

If someone who is unemployed makes a fraudulent claim, their benefits are cut off. If a senator does the same thing, he is simply asked to apologize and pay back the amount. Canadians want to get rid of this double standard.

I remind the members of the House that Senator Duffy, an unelected, unaccountable official, like all his senator colleagues, has cost taxpayers more than $1,165,000 over the past three years.

What would our constituents say if we asked them whether they agree with paying up to $7 million so that Patrick Brazeau could be a senator until he retires? Mr. Brazeau is currently facing very serious criminal charges. He was appointed by the Prime Minister for life in 2009. If he sits until age 75, Canadians will have to pay $7 million.

Keep in mind that before the Conservatives decided to kick him out of their caucus, Mr. Brazeau was one of the Senate's champion absentee members. He missed 25% of meetings between June 2011 and April 2012. He also missed 65% of meetings of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, of which he is a member, and 31% of meetings of the Standing Committee on Human Rights, of which he was the deputy-chair. During that time, taxpayers continued to pay 100% of his salary, and the Prime Minister continued to tolerate the repeated absences of a member of his caucus.

But Mr. Brazeau was not the only one to attend the Senate sparingly. Nineteen senators missed more than one-quarter of the sitting days in 2011-12. The average number of days worked by a senator in 2011-12 was 56 days. That means a great deal of money has been spent while many people are suffering.

The Senate will now cost $92.5 million a year. I say "now" because the Conservatives have just increased the budget allotted to Senators. Over the next 10 years, Canadian taxpayers will spend some $92.5 million on the Senate. Over 10 years, that amount could be much better invested. For instance, it could be invested in health, through transfer payments to the provinces that the Conservatives have slashed. It could be invested in building social housing to support people who do not even have a roof over their head in a wintry country like Canada. It could be invested in small and medium-sized businesses, to improve their growth and their ability to hire more people. It could also be invested in ways to fight food insecurity, which is seen in a number of aboriginal communities. It could be invested to help our regions that the government is emptying and abandoning with its employment insurance reform. There are dozens of better ways to spend public money than the government's plan to spend it on the Senate.

Parties that continue to defend the Senate will have to explain to Canadians why the operating costs associated with this relic of the 19th century are justified. I hope that the Liberals, who have lately started to side with the Conservatives, will be voting with us. The hon. member for Toronto-Centre, interim leader of the Liberal Party, has already spoken in favour of abolishing the Senate. I hope he will have the courage of his convictions and vote in favour of this motion.

Today, the parties represented in this House have the opportunity to send a clear signal to the Canadian public. By voting in favour of our motion, they will demonstrate that they are serious in their intentions to avoid waste in public spending.

At least one Conservative agrees with us, and we commend him. Michael Fortier, a former Conservative minister, fundraiser and senator, recently spoke in favour of abolishing the Senate. Mr. Fortier was able to see the operations of that institution from the inside and his comments are not flattering. Among other things, he said he simply did not see the usefulness of the Senate and he felt that the practice of appointing friends of the regime is clearly not optimal: a mild way of saying that it makes the Senate dysfunctional.

It is time to move ahead and reform this country to make it better, and one necessary step is to abolish the Senate.

[Parliamentary Budget Officer, March 1st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Kevin Page's economic analyses have always been more credible than those of the Minister of Finance because, unlike the Conservatives, Mr. Page does not hide information.

In 2012, economic growth was less than 2%, which is lower than 2011. The economy shrank in December. What are the Conservatives doing? They are slashing programs and services even more. Introducing austerity measures during an economic downturn is a recipe for disaster.

Will they use the budget to fix this?

[Parliamentary Budget Officer, March 1st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, have they no shame? They get the Senate to do their dirty work, even though the Senate is embroiled in a spending scandal of never before seen proportions. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who exposed just how amateur the Conservatives are in a number of areas, had to drag the Conservatives to court just to access documents so he could do his job.

Someone ordered the submissive Senate to put an end to all that. Which member of the Conservatives gave that order?

[Clarity Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to debate Bill C-457, An Act to repeal the Clarity Act.

I should say at the outset that we will not be supporting this bill. In May 2011, 4.5 million Canadians voted for a more inclusive, greener and more prosperous Canada. Some of those Canadians live in Quebec. For the first time since 1988, Quebeckers elected a majority of federalist MPs to the House of Commons, thanks to the NDP.

Quebeckers placed their confidence in our progressive, federalist vision. They voted for a party that believes there is a place for Quebec in the federation. The message Quebec voters sent to the Bloc Québécois was very clear: we want to go in another direction; we want to work together to build a better Canada; we want to look towards the future, not the past. The Bloc does not seem to have understood the message, however.

In tabling its Bill C-457, the Bloc is clearly demonstrating its limitations. It obviously has little to offer Quebeckers. Rather than talk about the economy, combatting poverty, the social housing crisis or job creation, Bill C-457 talks about referenda.

In 2013, Quebeckers and many Canadians expect their elected representatives to work tirelessly to find solutions to such problems as the rising cost of living. They want their representatives to pressure this government to put more money into health, abandon its employment insurance reforms, ensure security in retirement for our seniors, and stop cutting the services for which they pay taxes. They also want the government to step up and ensure that big corporations pay their fair share of taxes. They do not want to hear any more talk of secession.

As our fellow citizens watch the Conservative government perform, they wonder how the next government will manage to clean up the mess it leaves behind. The NDP has practical solutions to improve the lives of all citizens.

We are fighting every day to establish a balanced 21st-century economy based on sustainable development, an economy that generates wealth, not just for a handful of industries and regions, but for every part of this country.

The NDP champions respect for democracy and for voters. On this subject, at the beginning of this Parliament my colleague from Pontiac tabled Bill C-306, the main purpose of which was to require members wishing to change sides in the middle of a legislature to run in a byelection. Unfortunately, the bill was rejected by the Conservatives. This is nevertheless the kind of commitment to respect for democracy that Canadians expect. They no longer want members of Parliament who get elected under one banner, and then change sides.

As we prepare to form the next government in 2015, the Bloc is limited to talking about referenda. Our goal is to get the Conservative government out of power, instead of trying to get Quebec out of Canada. An NDP government will implement the progressive policies that millions of Canadians supported in the last election.

With regard to federalism, our position on Quebec’s place in Canada is clearly set out in the Sherbrooke Declaration we adopted in 2006. Our approach has the merit of being firmly positive and inclusive. We want to build bridges between people, not divide them. Unlike some, we refuse to believe that secession is the only solution available to Quebeckers.

Anyone reading Bill C-457 will realize at once that it disregards the opinion of the Supreme Court, as set out in its opinion in the Quebec Secession Reference. The Supreme Court was very clear in formulating its opinion: if a majority of Quebeckers chose secession in a referendum, both parties would be obligated to negotiate.

The federal government would thus be obliged to negotiate, but so would Quebec. Now, in order to trigger an obligation to negotiate, there must be a clear question and a clear result.

Bill C-470, An Act respecting democratic constitutional change, sponsored by my colleague from Toronto—Danforth, responds to the Supreme Court opinion and the federal government’s obligation to negotiate if a majority of Quebeckers answer a clear question in a referendum.

Bill C-470 does not deal with secession, but opens the door to any question about constitutional change, because the NDP believes that Quebec’s right to decide its future may also be exercised within Canada.

Among other things, the Bill refers to the integration of Quebec into the Canadian constitutional framework, the limitation of federal spending power in Quebec, and the Government of Quebec’s opting out with full compensation from any programs if the Government of Canada intervenes in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

Bill C-470 is designed not to prevent negotiation between the federal government and the Quebec government, but to provide genuine clarification of the conditions that trigger the obligation to negotiate referred to by the Supreme Court. It also provides examples of clear questions, while recognizing the right of the National Assembly to draft its own question.

My colleague from Toronto—Danforth has introduced an excellent bill, and I wish to congratulate him on it. I should add that the entire NDP caucus is behind him in the introduction of his bill.

Unlike Bill C-470, Bill C-457 has the merit of proposing a constructive solution that moves us forward, rather than back. That is what Canadians expect: that we propose solutions for the future, rather than be content to live in the past.

We should be looking towards the future, and that is what Bill C-470 proposes.

[Employment Insurance, February 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the government needs to leave job seekers alone and take care of the fraudsters in the Senate instead.

Everyone knows that quotas and objectives are the same thing. The government also knows that its botched reform has placed regional economies in a very precarious position.

Seasonal workers do not deserve to be treated with the contempt that the Conservatives have for them. Mayors, reeves and workers have implored the minister to put and end to this risky plan.

When will she listen to them?

[Employment Insurance, February 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we are wondering where this Senate reform proposal is. We have been waiting for it for a year now.

Documents from the Department of Human Resources show that the minster misled the House, but that is not the end of the quota issue. New evidence shows that employment insurance inspectors are evaluated on a weekly basis and are given a pat on the back if they are able to cut about $2,500.

They are allegedly even getting performance pay. The way this department is run is disgraceful.

Will the minister put an end to the reform right now?

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I request that the division be deferred until tomorrow, at the expiry of time provided for government orders.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, people are tired of hearing the minister say anything and everything but the truth.

This reform is scandalous. On Saturday, people in Quebec and the Maritimes were in the streets saying no to the gutting of employment insurance, protesting this attack on seasonal workers and denouncing the fact that the regions are being abandoned.

We do not need quotas and investigators for the unemployed, we need them for the senators.

When will the minister stop attacking workers?