Pat Martin

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

That is a good point, Mr. Speaker. The Conservatives unilaterally, arbitrarily, absolutely cancelled one of the most significant and important pieces of legislation to come out of the Commons in a decade, the climate change bill.

It was Jack Layton's bill. He actually gave it to that ungrateful guy from Thunder Bay North. He let that guy from Thunder Bay handle it because he was so pouty and it gave him something to do so it was not in Jack's name, but it was Jack Layton's bill.

It hurts me to this day to see the Conservatives trample all over five years work and committed improvements. Back in the days when Parliament used to work, we worked hard to make that good legislation. They abused their authority and, I argue, lost any right to enjoy any credibility of the Canadian people.

Imagine the Conservatives appointing their party president and the campaign manager. Hacks and flacks and bagmen is what it has come down to, doing purely partisan work. The Conservatives have long strayed from any credible, legitimate function and role. They are more a hindrance than a help. They are an obstacle to democracy. They do not enhance democracy in any way. They are a barrier to democracy. We should not be—

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, the Conservatives are running roughshod over everything that is good and decent about our parliamentary democracy. They are cutting a swath through tradition, precedent and so forth by asking the Senate to check their bills.

We in the House generate the legislation. The people of Canada elected us for the express purpose of generating legislation in this chamber. The Senate is allowed to check the spelling and make sure it does not offend the Constitution in any way and can send it back for a modest amendment if it sees fit. It does not get to write the legislation. That is not normal. I do not want the people of Canada to think that is normal or right, or that it can even serve the interests of Canadians.

The other piece of legislation that the Senate unilaterally and arbitrarily killed, which is why I believe the other chamber has lost any credibility whatsoever, is the drugs for Africa bill. The Stephen Lewis Foundation and the Grandmothers Advocacy Network to get generic drugs to Africa—

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite true that the government moved hastily in getting through the analysis of this bill because its positions would not stand up to true rigorous scrutiny and oversight otherwise. Many of the amendments that we brought forward would have improved and enhanced the legislation and made it the best possible.

When we are dealing with a subject matter such as food safety, it is incumbent on the ruling party to make sure that the bill is as good as it could possibly be. The 62% of the population who voted for the opposition members had some legitimate points of view to bring to the table that they wanted accommodated.

The Conservatives are making a serious mistake, a serious oversight, by saying that no one else has any contribution to make to anything that we ever do in this Parliament, even a single amendment to a single piece of legislation. It is absurd to think that they have all of the ideas on the side of the angels on all these issues. We had a legitimate contribution to make with eleven meaningful amendments and Liberals with four, which would have enhanced the bill and made it better.

If the Conservatives learned to play nice we would have better legislation. Vigorous debate would have tested the mettle of their arguments—

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for recognizing and acknowledging the fundamental problem I was trying to address in the limited time that I had.

The problem is that those guys are running roughshod over everything that is good and decent about our parliamentary democracy. In the one case, they are sliding legislation in from the Senate or through private members' business when the convention has it, and in fact our Westminster parliamentary democracy has it, that legislation originates in Parliament with the full scrutiny and oversight of the Canadian people subject to rigorous debate and subject to amendment to accommodate the legitimate concerns of the official opposition and the other opposition parties.

I do not care who one is, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas.

The Conservatives won a razor thin majority with 38% of the vote, of those who chose to vote. Some say that in fact they stole that election through election fraud and that they have no mandate to govern whatsoever. However, that is yet to be proven and I am not alleging anything of the sort.

Tradition dictates and in fact this fragile construct of our Westminster parliamentary democracy depends on the accommodation of legitimate concerns brought forward by the opposition through amendments to legislation. We brought 11 legitimate amendments to the table at committee. How many did the Conservatives allow? Not one. In fact, they have never allowed a single amendment to any legislation in the 41st Parliament.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I intend to address the relative merits of the bill, but I wanted to first point out the origin of the bill.

The Conservatives appointed the party president to the Senate, then the chief campaign manager of their election, then the chief fundraiser and then the communications director. The entire Conservative war room is now sitting in the Senate doing purely partisan work and the Canadian taxpayer is paying for it and their staff and their travel privileges. It is an atrocity. It is atrocious that the House of Commons does not rise up and finally deal with Senate reform because it is an international embarrassment.

As I said, the Conservatives lost any credibility when they killed the climate change bill without a single witness being heard and without a single hour of debate in that chamber. It took five years to get it through the House of Commons through careful delicate negotiations and it passed at all stages in the House of Commons.

In fact, that is the direction things are supposed to go. We develop the legislation, the Senate is allowed to check it for spelling mistakes and then we get it back. We do not deal with its legislation, it deals with our legislation.

The best thing to do with legislation like this that has an “S” on the front is to tear it up and throw it in the air. That is all it is good for.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I was simply pointing out the origin of the bill by the unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable Senate. No one chose them to create legislation on behalf of the Canadian people. No one gave them the right. In fact I question what they do over there. All I ever see of them in are parliamentary friendship committees. They seem to clutter up every parliamentary friendship committee like a bunch of globe-trotting quasi-diplomats, gallivanting around the world on behalf of Canada, trying to pretend that they are actually—

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have read the bill that the government has named the safe food for Canadians act. I also took the time to read the Library of Parliament briefing notes that were made available in association with the bill for the assistance and guidance of the committee. I read the explanation of the bill through clause-by-clause analysis and also the House notes prepared by my colleague, the member of Parliament for Welland, who I should stop and recognize and pay tribute to for the work he has done in representing the interests of Canadians in the pursuit of true safe food for Canadians legislation. It might give them some comfort to know that there are committed advocates on the opposition benches who are seeking to address the lamentable situation of the food inspection regime in this country.

Having gone through those various stages of familiarizing myself with the bill, the first and most striking thing is something that has not come up at all in any of the speeches. I even listened to the rather vapid platitudes of the parliamentary secretary in the speech that he made regarding the bill, but no one has pointed out the elephant in the room and that is the front page, the cover of Bill S-11. Any member of Parliament in this place who considers himself or herself a true democrat, surely should be offended by the fact that we are standing here today at this late hour on Monday afternoon in Ottawa in the House of Commons, in the elected chamber, dealing with a piece of legislation that comes from the unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable chamber, the Senate of Canada.

No one elected senators to make legislation for Canadians. I argue they have no right to generate legislation from the other chamber. I argue that as members of Parliament if we had any dignity or self-respect, we would bar the legislation at the gates of the door here. We would ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to block them, to tie the doors and stop the introduction of pieces of legislation such as this into the chamber because it has no business being here. Senators have no right.

If there ever were any semblance of utility to that place, if we could even believe at any given time that there was some value to the Senate of Canada, they forfeited that in the last Parliament when they unilaterally and arbitrarily, I would argue, jettisoned two of the most worthy pieces of legislation I have ever had the honour to work on in this chamber. One of them was the only piece of climate change legislation in the Parliament of Canada, a western, developed nation with no position on climate change. Through five years of laborious negotiation and give-and-take, we passed a piece of climate legislation through the House—

[Conservative Party of Canada, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, for the past four years corporate tax revenues have actually been below where they were when the Conservatives took power. However, over the same four years, Conservatives collected $40 billion more in personal income tax. They shifted the burden so that individual Canadians now pay four times more in taxes than corporations do.

What has been the effect of the Conservative vision of the economy? According to the IMF, we have fallen behind the U.S. in growth. In fact, even Greece's economy is expected to grow faster than ours by 2015.

What is the Conservative response? Just make up stuff to attack the opposition. This was on display again last week when CTV journalist Don Martin aired a disgraceful clip of the Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism being coached by a PMO flunkey on how to make stuff up about the NDP.

I say to my Conservative colleagues, do not let the PMO do their thinking and substitute fibs for facts. Cast off the shackles and show some dignity and self-respect. Why do—

[Helping Families in Need Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to build on the comments by my colleague for Burnaby—Douglas.

There is an outstanding hypocrisy associated with the bill. The Conservatives have this innocuous apple pie, motherhood kind of a bill that would give leave to some poor family whose child might be kidnapped. However, on the other hand, they have declared war on labour and the left with this unmitigated assault on trade union freedoms in Bill C-377.

The Conservatives have declared war on the Rand formula which gave us labour peace during the entire post war era for the last 50 years. Those guys want to declare war on labour and the left and yet they want us to think that they are all warm and fuzzy, motherhood and apple pie because they will give two weeks leave to somebody whose child is kidnapped.

[Labour, November 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is no secret that notorious union buster Terrance Oakey is once again darkening the towels of the Prime Minister's Office. After successfully killing off the fair wages act, his next target is Bill C-377, the Conservatives' latest assault on labour.

Why are Conservatives letting the special interests of one well-connected Conservative lobbyist upset the labour peace in this country? If they do want to declare war on labour, why do they not do it through the front door instead of skulking around with a private member's bill like a bunch of cowards?