Pat Martin

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

My colleague from Ottawa Centre knows that it is a big fat goose egg. It is zero. If the Conservatives would walk the talk and put their money where their mouth is and do a favour for small businesses, they would eliminate the small business tax.

It is another illusion. It is a facade.

My colleague from Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, I think, supports the idea of eliminating the small business tax. He has seen the benefit in the province of Manitoba, which we call home.

The Conservatives are cutting, hacking, and slashing the big corporate tax rate for businesses that do not need a tax break. The banks and the big oil companies are the only ones that really benefit. It is only profitable businesses that would benefit from having their income tax lowered. A business that is not showing any income and that needs the support gets nothing from it, yet the Conservatives do nothing for the small businessperson.

We could have celebrated. If the Conservatives had wanted to put a 71st detail into this budget implementation act to eliminate the business tax, they would have had the support of the NDP. However, it is disingenuous and it is misleading to lump fiscal details in with non-fiscal details in a bill that is supposed to be limited to just that.

How did we end up dealing with the selection of Supreme Court justices in the context of the budget implementation act? That alone is a subject that warrants a great deal of consideration by Parliament and by committee. We would want to deal with that at great length.

What about the selection process for new economic immigrants? We have an immigration issue finding its way into this bill. There is simply no time.

The Mackenzie gas project impacts fund act is the name of the bill that I was groping for earlier.

I see that I am almost out of time. That will be the whole sum total of time that I am going to have, as the member for Winnipeg Centre, representing 100,000-some Canadians, to comment on or provide scrutiny of, or oversight to, over 70 pieces of legislation. It is a travesty.

I do not want anybody in Canada who might be watching this to think that this is normal. There is nothing normal about this abuse of the democratic process that has found its way into these so-called omnibus bills. It is completely undemocratic and contrary to all of the principles of democracy. It offends the very sensibilities of anyone who considers themselves a democrat.

The New Democratic Party will allow proper oversight and scrutiny of the legislation that we introduce in 2015.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette might want to tell the MPs assembled here what the small business tax is in the socialist paradise of Manitoba right now—

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech on the bill by my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, and I would disagree with him profoundly in virtually everything. Virtually every aspect that he raised about the bill I find great fault with.

I would like to begin by finding great fault with not just the content of the bill but the whole process by which the Conservatives are abusing our system of parliamentary democracy. Under the guise of the budget implementation act, they are introducing what is tantamount to a neo-Conservative wish list, like a catalogue for the Tea Party Republican Party. It is everything they would ever like to do rolled up into one big ball, free from scrutiny and oversight from the opposition parties and from the people of Canada.

As the representatives who represent the majority of Canadians, we will never be able to do justice to a massive tome like this. The Conservatives have stuffed 60 and 70 pieces of legislation into one. They are pieces of legislation that are not even related, things that are fiscal and non-fiscal, things that have to do with the Labour Relations Act, things that have to do with a new Mackenzie gas project.

The scope and the scale of this thing makes it so unwieldy that we simply cannot do a detailed analysis on these pieces of legislation, even though many are broad and sweeping social policy changes that we will have to live with for many years until such time as the New Democratic Party forms the government and we can restore some semblance of order and balance to the nation.

The Conservatives do not have to pack a lunch, because it is sneaking up on them. The more they abuse, undermine, and try to cut a swathe through everything that is good and decent about our parliamentary democracy, the more motivated the general public will be to show these people the door.

I do not have time—and this is the whole point, that none of us have time—to deal in any kind of detail with any of these pieces of legislation rolled up into one. However, I will mention one, just because it offends me so profoundly, and that is the fact that the Conservatives have seen fit, under the guise of a budget implementation bill, to amend the Canada Labour Code to change the definition of what is dangerous work. You tell me, Mr. Speaker, what undermining the health and safety provisions within the Canada Labour Code has to do with the budget implementation act.

I do not know if people have had time to think this through. I can guarantee they have not, because not only are the Conservatives ramming through 70 pieces of legislation at once, but they move closure at every stage of these bills. As a result, we cannot call a sufficient number of witnesses, we cannot give it the debate it deserves in the House of Commons, we cannot test the merits of their argument with informed exchange and information to see that we are passing good laws and good legislation, as per the prayer that the Speaker reads when we open Parliament every day. That is by the wayside.

The Conservatives should explain to me what it has to do with the economy, with jobs, or with good governance generally to gut the Labour Code under that particular definition of what constitutes dangerous work, specifically as it pertains to maternal care. It is doubly offensive to me that an individual no longer has the right to refuse unsafe work if she is a pregnant mother working in circumstances that she believes may be harmful to the unborn child. That reference has been entirely deleted.

The Conservatives not only amend 60 or 70 pieces of legislation at once, they create whole brand new ones within the context of their budget implementation act. They sometimes delete whole pieces of legislation. In their last omnibus bill, they deleted a piece of legislation called the Fair Wages Act. For some reason, the Conservative government is opposed to the concept of fair wages, opposed to setting minimum wages in the construction industry on federally regulated projects.

In whose interest is it to drive down the wages of middle-class Canadian workers? We do not need our government to do that for us. There are enough economic forces out there that can affect our income. We really do not elect a government to drive down our wages, yet the Conservatives saw fit to do so, singing to some tune.

I presume it was the merit shop guy, Terrance Oakey, who seems to have a revolving door to the PMO to dictate what he seems to need in his particular industry sector.

By what pretzel logic could it possibly be argued that it is in the best interests of Canadians to gut the safety provisions of the Canada Labour Code? It is simply beyond me. Regarding the changes to EI, again, if a budget implementation act is about enabling the implementation of the budget, why does it not deal with relevant issues that may in fact stimulate the economy?

I heard my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, talking about enabling small businesses to create more jobs. If the government really believed that, we would be debating legislation that would reduce the business tax for small businesses. The Conservatives argue that they would reduce it from 12% to 11%, but in the socialist paradise of Manitoba, when we were elected, the Conservatives had the small business tax at 11%, and every year thereafter the NDP lowered it by 1%, and another per cent, and another per cent to where—

[Ethics, November 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Michael Runia contacted the Deloitte auditors, presumably to strong-arm them on behalf of the PMO into changing the Duffy audit.

How can they claim that because of the so-called Chinese wall that Deloitte held, there is no harm, no foul, in attempting to interfere with the investigation into wrongdoing, the improper expense claims, and then the audit into them? How low have their ethics sunk if they do not see what is fundamentally wrong with picking up the phone and trying to interfere with the work of an independent auditor into investigation of Senate claims?

[Ethics, November 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday testimony at the Senate confirmed that Irving Gerstein contacted Michael Runia about changing the Duffy audit, and then, yes, Michael Runia contacted the auditors, asking them to alter it. That makes Michael Runia perhaps the most important witness to the allegations of interference with the Duffy audit.

What possible justification could the Conservatives have for blocking the attempt to have Michael Runia testify under oath what he knows about blocking the Duffy audit?

[Government Contracts, November 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, then Deloitte is hand-picked for this sole-source contract to investigate the improper expenses of Liberal and Conservative senators.

I want to ask the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates if he intends to conduct and schedule a hearing and investigation into the sole-source contract. Will he compel the attendance of senior officials from Deloitte? Will he use the authority of his chair to compel their attendance to answer these questions?

[Government Contracts, November 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Well, Deloitte Canada has received $135 million from government contracts, and then they were hand-picked for the sole-source contract to investigate—

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her particular insight into this situation. Excuse the pun. I know that as a medical practitioner, she has first-hand experience in observing ways of treating addiction that show results and ways that do not. New Democrats made the distinction early on in our remarks that addiction and substance abuse is a health issue and should be treated as such, not a criminal justice issue.

Even Conrad Black, who I usually do not pay a lot of attention to, said that when he was serving time in an American prison for his fraud charges, 80% of the prisoners he was in there with did not belong in jail; they belonged in a rehabilitation or detox centre for their substance abuse issues. He said it was how they got there, they were not being treated there and they would be back in again because their health issues would still be a factor.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

The only guy that has ever been convicted of electoral fraud in the Parliament of Canada is writing letters to my constituents on Government of Canada stationery and postage. It is wrong.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if my colleague would like to see a copy of some of the literature that his colleagues are bombarding my riding with. Here is one that is signed by 10 individual members of Parliament, all from Manitoba, who I guess are pooling their mailing privileges, which I thought was something we did away with. I thought the Speaker and the Board of Internal Economy prohibited this.

I hope my colleague is listening. The worst thing about it is that New Democrats believe that they are mining the Revenue Canada database to get this information. I will give an example.

A guy who works in my office received one of these letters in his mother's name. His mother only lived in his house for four months before she passed away. He filed her taxes from that address just once, and guess what? She got a personalized letter from the Conservative Party in her name at that address. Nobody in the Conservative Party should have known that Mrs. Morrison passed away living on Dominion Street. No one knew she was in that house. She was only there the last four months she was alive. How did the Conservatives find out?

Another one went to the Theule family. How did the Conservatives know? When anybody turns 18, they can change the personalized letter. It says, “Dear Gerrit and Jennifer”. Gerrit just turned 18. How do they know these things? They are misusing their mailing privileges by bombarding my riding under the signatures of Vic Toews, Merv Tweed, and eight others.