Pat Martin

[Government Expenditures, May 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, something to me feels like déjà vu all over again, because in 2002, it was the Conservatives who were going ballistic over the Liberal billion-dollar boondoggle, and it was the Liberals who were soft-selling the Auditor General's report.

Now remember this language: “The question raised by the Auditor General was [only] on the way we should report”.

It is the same old story from the same old parties. I put it to members that the only difference between the Liberals' mismanagement and the Conservatives' mismanagement is that they managed to lose three times the amount of money. The Conservatives, in those days, accused the Liberals of having a billion-dollar slush fund. In the absence of any information to the contrary, how do we know they have not created a $3-billion slush fund?

[Justice, April 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that spring has sprung and love is in the air as last night we witnessed the two old-line parties caught in each other's warm embrace once again.

When the final vote for Bill S-7 came up, it was Liberal, Tory, same old story as the Liberals and Conservatives were seen voting hand-in-hand.

Together they voted through a law that allows secret hearings and incarcerations of up to one year without charge and conviction, provisions that have proven unnecessary in the past and provisions that represent a clear violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a piece of paper that some parties in this place should understand better.

We recognize that these springtime smells can be intoxicating, but that is no excuse for shirking one's responsibility to uphold both the letter and spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, even when it takes political courage to do so.

Canadians deserve a party that will fight to protect the sanctity of the charter in all circumstances and they will have a chance to choose that change when they vote NDP in the federal election of 2015.

[Combating Terrorism Act, April 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to comment on what was a very legitimate and serious question. In my view, the way the bill is being treated on this day in the aftermath of one of the greatest terrorism attacks in North American history and the undermining of another attempt at terrorism, trivializes and politicizes the issue and does a disservice to how serious it is an obligation of a government to keep its citizens safe.

If the government were serious about doing all it could to co-operatively work with Parliament to act in the best interests of Canadians, if we were in fact under siege or under attack, there should be a war cabinet attitude where the leader of the Conservative Party, the Prime Minister, would bring together the leaders of the other parties and work collaboratively to act in the best interests of Canadians, not to rehash this flawed legislation, especially through the back door of the other place where it has no business originating.

[Combating Terrorism Act, April 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I think my friend from Kings—Hants knows full well that much of the work that he cited as being worthwhile could be done by parliamentary committees if they were given the power, the authority and the resources that were promised to us in the Reform Party days when we used to have these conversations about giving meaningful work to committees and giving them meaningful resources to do it. We do not need a senate to have a comprehensive study on the situation of mental health in our country. I too have worked with senators on various projects, and again, that work could be done by elected members of Parliament.

I think the Senate is beyond reform. I used to think that everything that was wrong with the Senate could be fixed through Senate reform, through various changes we could make. I have given up on that idea. It has been abused so egregiously in recent years. It has been stacked and stuffed with hacks and flacks to the point where it is irredeemable. Having a two-tiered Senate is only going to compound the problem and make it worse.

[Combating Terrorism Act, April 23rd, 2013]

That is my final answer. I doubt that I will prevaricate any further, and let me provide one compelling reason why.

I do not know if you know this, Mr. Speaker, but you will be shocked. Talk about an inherent conflict of interest. Senators are allowed to sit on boards of directors of companies and some sit on as many as 10 or 12 boards of directors and get paid for each one. How can they objectively deal with legislation? Some of them would have to recuse themselves from everything if they sit on the board of directors of Onex Corporation. Onex Corporation has everything in its portfolio. Senators would never be able to legitimately, objectively adjudicate and vote on any single thing. They could not even phone out for pizza because Onex Corporation, in fact, owns a whole bunch of pizza parlour chains. That is one problem.

The other thing is senators take fees for speaking. Can anyone imagine the audacity of being appointed for life a sinecure of $150,000 a year, plus travel, plus expenses, and yet when they speak somewhere, they charge a big, fat speaker's fee? That offends me. That offends the sensibility of any thinking democratic Canadian, I would think.

Also, many senators engage in purely partisan political work. Let me give an example. The head of the Conservative campaign for my home province of Manitoba was a senator, Don Plett.

If you are wondering about relevance, Mr. Speaker, I am giving my reasons why Bill S-7 should be marched down the hallway back to the Senate and presented to the senators. I am tired of getting marched down there to ask them to give royal assent to our legislation. Let them traipse down here for a change, and I will give them a piece of my mind. In the meantime, if we ever do go on another parade, we should pile up all these pieces of legislation that originated in the Senate and bring them back to them. They can keep them down there.

Another thing that bothers me is why senators would use public money to buy Obama's database. They spent a couple million dollars to buy the best political database in the world, a voter contact system. It is the best in the world, and we know this because we tried to buy it ourselves. However, we cannot buy it, because if it has already been licensed to one person or one party in a country, it will not be sold to another party. The Liberal senators used their budget to chip in and buy a database for the Liberal Party. Why would senators need a database? They are not elected. They do not to contact electors. Why are they spending public money to buy a database? Again, it offends the sensibility of any thinking Canadian.

The last thing I will say in preface to my remarks on the bill is what is really crazy. The entire Conservative war room is on the public payroll. The Conservatives appointed their party president, chief fundraiser, campaign manager and communications director to the campaign to the Senate so they could all operate on taxpayer dollars. It is not just their salaries, it is their travel privileges and their staff. They have become an organ of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The same is true of the Liberal Party. I know who the chief bagman for the Liberal Party is. I know him well. He does not apologize for it. He comes from Manitoba. It his job to raise money for the Liberal Party, but now he is paid for by the taxpayers of Canada. The Liberals do not have to pay him a salary anymore to do that; the taxpayer does. That is such an egregious abuse of any of the original intent forming the Senate of Canada as a chamber of sober second thought, et cetera.

Manitoba used to have a senate. We got rid of it back at the turn of the last century. Other provinces used to have senates, and they got rid of them too. We do not need a senate anymore. We do not need it, and not only is it not serving any useful purpose, it is counterproductive to the democratic process, because those guys are interfering. When Senator Don Plett comes to Manitoba and is paid full time to run the Conservative Party election campaign in the province of Manitoba, does nobody see what is wrong with that?

It just rubs salt in the wound to have to stand in the House of Commons and deal with legislation coming from the Senate. Nobody elected the senators to make legislation. Nobody gave them a mandate to create legislation. Why the hell is it coming to us in the form of Bill S-anything? We should make it abundantly clear that we will not tolerate it anymore. That is my view.

I see that I only have one minute left to deal with the substance of the bill. The main message that I wanted to convey today is how chronically disappointed I am in the system. It is broken down to the degree that the government of the day has to slip things through the Senate at its convenience.

I believe that the opportunism of raising this bill at this time speaks to the very worst of neo-conservative fearmongering of politics. It trivializes the tragedy of Boston and it does a disservice to the important debate that we need to have regarding the first duty of any government, which is to keep its citizens safe. This is the wrong way to go about it.

The Conservatives are probably feeling quite sheepish that most of them are better members of Parliament than that, having to be put in the situation of promoting this bill at this time and in this context.

[Combating Terrorism Act, April 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am conflicted somewhat as I begin my remarks today in that I object profoundly to the fact that this bill is designated S-7 instead of C-7, or whatever number it may get when it is introduced properly by the democratically elected members of Parliament in Canada's parliamentary system. I have never seen, in my 15 years as a member of Parliament, such a proliferation of bills originating in the other place. It used to be a rare exception. I think you will be able to back me on this, Mr. Speaker. It was the exception, not the rule.

Let us remind ourselves and make a statement here and now, and I urge members of Parliament present to make a statement today, that we should not tolerate, or entertain, or debate, or accept bills that come from the undemocratic, unelected and, we believe, ineffectual and even embarrassing other place, the Senate of Canada.

My views on this have changed dramatically. I have known you a long time, Mr. Speaker, and I think we have had this conversation. I used to be one of the only New Democrats who I knew of who did not want to abolish the Senate, even though the original Regina Manifesto that was the guiding document of the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the predecessor to my party, did. Article 9 of the Regina Manifesto was to abolish the unelected, undemocratic, ineffective, et cetera, Senate. We wanted to get rid of it back then because it was a repository for hacks and flacks and idiot nephews of some rich Liberals and Conservatives that they could not find another job for, a place-holding thing for a bunch of hacks and flacks. They wanted to get rid of it then, but I did not agree, only for one reason.

There was a time, a dark period in our history, where we lost party status and were down to nine members. The Conservative Party was down to two members. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, how wildly the pendulum swings in Canadian politics. In Brian Mulroney's second term, I believe it was, he had 202 members and by the time that term of office finished, it was down to 2. Our party did not fare that much better. We were down to nine. The difference was that the Conservative Party had two members of Parliament but 35 or 40 senators. It still had all kinds of resources, money and things it could do. Its caucus consisted of 30 or 40 people. Even though it only had two elected members, it had 35 unelected members in its caucus. The NDP had nine members of Parliament and no senators.

I thought to myself that it might be a good idea if we accepted some of the invitations to sit in the Senate. Why should there not be a New Democrat in the Senate? Some of my colleagues are objecting to my reasoning and the thought process that has brought me there. As I say, my thinking has changed once again because I have been so profoundly offended by the antics of the other place in recent years that I now fully and wholeheartedly believe and accept that the Senate cannot be repaired. It has to be abolished. A Triple-A Senate—

[The Budget, March 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by agreeing with my colleague about one thing, that since ancient times, the best way to communicate craft trade skills has been through the formal apprenticeship system. This has been true since the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, and is as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago.

My question for the member is a pointed one and it builds from the labour market strategy, or the lack of one, and the EI system. He knows, as a former apprenticeship coordinator, that when people take their school component of their apprenticeship, they are not laid off by the employer, they are allowed to go and they are allowed to collect EI for that six weeks, or whatever it is, for their annual school component.

Why then is there a waiting period, as if they have been laid off? Why is there an interruption in their income maintenance when apprentices go to community college to do their six week trade component? Would the member not agree with me that if we are trying to encourage young people to go into the apprenticeable trades, there should be no interruption in income maintenance when they leave the job to go to school and then back to the job again?

[The Budget, March 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I notice my colleague spent much of his time giving rather lofty platitudes and some very nice history about his family's service in the armed forces, et cetera, but he was soft on details when it comes to one of the major concerns that we have about the budget, which is the jobs strategy the government has put forward.

I would like to correct one thing, remind him of another and then ask his opinion on a third.

First, if the Conservatives really wanted to do something for small business, they could have done something tangible in the budget. When the NDP took power in Manitoba in 1999, the tax-and-grab Conservatives were charging small businesses 11% in corporate tax. Subsequently, the NDP reduced that every year by 1% per year. I do not have to tell the Manitoba MPs in the House today—there are five of us here at least—that the small business tax in the socialist paradise of Manitoba is now zero.

If the Conservatives are serious about making a gesture to small business in the budget, it would not be to charge them more for labour market training, as they are contemplating, but to give them a real, tangible, take-home tax break—

[Petitions, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by literally tens of thousands of Canadians from all across the country who call upon Parliament to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known. The petitioners point out that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other occupational or industrial causes combined. They also point out that Canada has not banned asbestos and in fact allows asbestos to still be used in construction materials, textile products and even children's toys.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all its forms and institute a just transition program for asbestos workers. They call upon the government to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

[Committees of the House, March 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates in relation to our study on effectiveness of public-private partnerships in the delivery of government services.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109 of the House of Commons, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.