Pat Martin

[MAIN ESTIMATES 2015-16, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I have cut the hon. parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister a lot of slack. I know he is running out of gas and running out of ideas. I think he got the short straw on who would try to defend the indefensible tonight, but he is straying wildly off the subject matter, which is vote 1 in the main estimates and whether the House of Commons should approve the appropriation of $57 million to send over to the Senate for its members to spend as they please.

He is wildly off topic. We have tried to be tolerant because I kind of feel sorry for the guy. He always gets stuck with this crappy job of trying to defend the indefensible, but he is so far off topic that he is doing a disservice to the debate.

[MAIN ESTIMATES 2015-16, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the late point of this session of Parliament, I want to make sure that we use the time we have in the House of Commons correctly. The issue we are dealing with now is a $57 million vote for the Senate of Canada, vote 1 in the main estimates. I am worried that the parliamentary secretary is going off on a tangent about the merits of the economic action plan and not speaking to this important, timely, topical issue of whether or not it is the will of Parliament to send another $57 million to the Senate of Canada for it to use or misuse as it wishes.

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 8th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the legacy of the Indian residential schools can best be described as 130 years of intergenerational social tragedy. That is why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission feels it is important that the Pope himself apologize for the role the Catholic Church played.

The Prime Minister will be meeting with the Pope this week. So far, the Prime Minister has been deadly silent on any of the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Will he or will he not push the Pope to apologize formally on behalf of the Catholic Church for the role that it played in this intergenerational tragedy?

[Business of Supply, June 4th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague from Winnipeg North speak, but not as much as I enjoy hearing two cats fighting at midnight outside of my window. It is almost as much, though.

The point that I wish to make is that people should be judged by what they do, not by what they say. I remember, back in about 2003, I took the leader of our party, Jack Layton, to a series of northern Ontario and Manitoba fly-in communities to look at the cost of food. That was at the height of the Liberal majority government, after it had imposed a 2% cap on all spending for first nations and aboriginal people. Even though their growth was 6% per year in those communities, the Liberals decided in their wisdom that they only needed a 2% cap, which I would argue has created the social crisis that we are experiencing today.

This was in the early days of BlackBerrys, but Jack had one with him and I remember him taking photographs of the appalling, ridiculous, unaffordable prices of food in Pauingassi, Poplar River, Little Grand Rapids, Pikangikum and these places where people were starving. They were starving under the days of the Liberal regime.

When we listen to the Liberal member try to say “back when we were in charge, everything was rosy”, we know that it was rotten then. They starved. For that prime minister to say he is now in conversion on the road to Damascus is like St. Paul, talking about aboriginal issues. They had nine balanced budgets, nine surplus budgets in a row, and there was not a nickel for first nations spending until he was finished.

[Petitions, June 4th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present four separate petitions today, all on the same subject. This adds to the body of literally tens of thousands of signators who have submitted petitions on this subject.

These residents of Canada draw to the attention of the House of Commons the fact that they believe that Bill C-51 is an affront to their civil rights and freedoms. They believe and maintain that Bill C-51 has less to do with combatting terrorism and more to do, they say, with the ability of the Prime Minister to snoop on their enemies. These petitioners compare the current Prime Minister to the paranoia of Richard Nixon.

They suggest that Bill C-51 would impede and undermine the rights and freedoms by which we define ourselves as Canadians. Therefore, these petitioners, among many thousands of other Canadians, call upon the House of Commons to join the New Democrats in our principled stand to defend our civil liberties and do everything we can to stop Bill C-51.

[Digital Privacy Act, June 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to me that anyone watching this debate today keep in mind that there is nothing normal about the way the Conservatives ram through their aggressive legislative agenda.

First, there is nothing normal about the House of Commons debating a bill that originates in the Senate. There is nothing normal about the Conservatives moving closure on every single piece of legislation they introduce. Sometimes the same day they table the legislation, they move closure on the legislation.

It undermines everything that is good and decent about our parliamentary democracy to see these guys systematically strip down all the checks and balances, all the controls put in place to make the Westminster parliamentary democracy one of the best systems in the world. It should offend the sensibility of anyone who calls himself a democrat to realize that these guys have not allowed a single amendment to a single piece of legislation in the entire 41st Parliament. They do not respect Parliament.

I want any Canadian tuned in today to know that this is not normal. This will not be tolerated. We have to restore everything that is good about our parliamentary democracy and stop the current Conservative government in its tracks before it does more irreparable damage and harm.

[Digital Privacy Act, June 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am less interested in the speech that my colleague was given to read into the House of Commons today and more interested in hearing his views about the fact that the bill is labelled “S-4”, which means it did not originate in the House of Commons; it originated in the Senate.

In my view—and I would like the view of the member for Elmwood—Transcona, to see if he agrees with me—senators have no legitimate right to introduce legislation. No one elected them to be legislators. In fact, they are appointed, usually because they were good fundraisers on behalf of their party. They were hacks and flacks and fundraisers, and they get rewarded with this lifetime sinecure in the other place.

For God's sake, how did we ever get to the point where we are debating legislation that they have developed? How have we slipped to this, in the status of our parliamentary democracy, that it is the House of Commons' job, that the elected representatives, the duly, democratically elected representatives in the House of Commons, have to end up debating legislation that was put together by a bunch of unelected, undemocratic, and under indictment half the time, senators?

Does he agree with me that there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture? Will he stand up on behalf of his elected colleagues in the House of Commons and say the bill has no legitimate right to be in the House of Commons, never mind the points he was making about its relative merits?

[Petitions, May 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the second series of petitions I would like to table is calling upon the House of Commons to take note that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has asked for further help to settle 100,000 Syrian refugees.

The petitioners ask the Canadian government to open more spaces in Canada to Syrian refugees of any religion and to quicken the processing time for more Syrian refugees to take sanctuary in Canada.

[Petitions, May 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I have two sets of petitions I would like to present.

The first set of petitions calls upon the House of Commons and Parliament here assembled to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known and that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial and occupational causes combined.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms, end all government subsidies of asbestos, both in Canada and abroad, and stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

[Committees of the House, May 27th, 2015]

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 its study of the main estimates 2015-16.