Pat Martin

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hochelaga for reminding members present of one important fact that seems to get lost in the debate around employment insurance, and she mentioned it early on in her speech, which is that it is not the government's money.

The EI fund, since 1990, has been comprised exclusively from contributions by employers and employees to provide income maintenance for those who are unfortunate enough to lose their jobs.

Where does the government even get off, making unilateral and arbitrary changes to eligibility, benefits and clawbacks, changes that it willy-nilly throws around, seemingly without much research and without much impact study. Where does it even have the right to do this without consulting the very people who pay for the fund?

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that successive federal governments have abused the EI system to such an extent that the NDP felt compelled to put forward an opposition day motion today to try to restore some semblance of order to at least some aspects of the EI fund.

When the Liberals were in power, they used the EI fund like some cash cow. There was $58 billion worth of excess revenue put in. They changed the rules so that nobody qualified anymore. Employers and employees dutifully paid into an insurance program that ceased to be an insurance program. It became another payroll tax that the government used to give tax breaks to its friends and to squander it on all kinds of purposes, anything but income maintenance. That was an outrage and had to stop.

I would ask the member to defend the Conservatives' inaction to correct what the Liberals have done. In fact, there are even fewer people eligible for EI now and less benefits.

Is this some kind of tough love, social-engineering program on the Conservatives' part to try to use the EI system to starve people into accepting jobs that are not suitable for them or that force them into moving across the country when temporary workers are needed right where they live?

[Petitions, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by many residents of my riding of Winnipeg Centre. They call upon the Government of Canada to save the Experimental Lakes Area, Canada's leading freshwater research station. Many of the signatories actually work at the ELA and live in my riding. They are calling upon the government to recognize the importance of the ELA and the Government of Canada's mandate to study, preserve and protect its aquatic ecosystems, to reverse the decision to close the ELA research station and continue to staff and provide financial resources to the ELA at the current or higher level of commitment.

[Petitions, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by hundreds of constituents of my riding put together by the Grandmothers Advocacy Network.

The petitioners point out that millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa are dying of HIV-AIDS and that Canada's Access to Medicines Regime has been stalled and is not operative.

Therefore, they call upon Parliament to pass Bill C-398, which is currently before the House, to make necessary amendments to the Canada's Access to Medicines Regime to get drugs flowing to HIV-AIDS victims of sub-Saharan Africa.

[Asbestos, September 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I know that you would be concerned to learn that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. In fact, more Canadians now die from asbestos than from all other industrial causes combined, never mind the made in Canada epidemic that we have been exporting to third world countries and developing nations.

Putting a warning label on a sack of asbestos simply is not good enough. Why does the government not join the rest of the developed world and ban asbestos in all of its forms, ban the production, sale and export of this terrible carcinogen, as the World Trade Organization, the WHO and everyone else agrees should be done?

[Increasing Offenders' Accountability for Victims Act, September 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to build on the comments or the line of questioning that I just witnessed from my colleagues with regard to the notion that so much of the legislation dealing with the criminal justice system that we have been dealing with in this 41st Parliament has really amounted to members of Parliament interfering with the discretionary judgment of the justice system, even up to and including prescribing sentences.

I am a carpenter by trade. I do not know enough about the criminal justice system to dictate what should be the sentence for certain crimes. That is why we appoint competent and capable people to the bench, so they can make that determination free of political interference.

While I am aware that the particular bill we have before us is perhaps not in that category, could the member speak to the folly associated with and perhaps, just as a precautionary tale for subsequent legislators, the danger of that kind of tampering and interference by political influences into the judiciary and the crossover of those three pillars of how we govern ourselves as a nation?

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the social conditions of our first nations, Inuit and Métis people are this country's greatest failure and, in fact, our greatest shame. The Conservatives have a blank cheque for G.I. Joe to buy all the war toys that he wants, but they cannot find any new money whatsoever to deal with the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding before our very eyes. Aboriginal people need a champion around the cabinet table, not another minister for managing poverty.

In the interest of National Aboriginal Day, will the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development do the honourable thing and shuffle himself out of cabinet to make room for somebody else?

[Petitions, June 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition calling on Parliament to recognize that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known, and that more people die from asbestos than all other industrial causes combined.

I will skip the preamble, and suggest that these petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms, end all government subsidies to asbestos and stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers.

[Committees of the House, June 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates in relation to its study on the process for considering estimates and supply.

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

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

A self-fulfilling prophecy, Mr. Speaker. That is right. I would like to know what the government's end plan is, the conclusion. Where does that lead us when we undermine the ability of governments to play an active role? I do not know who we leave it up to.

In the context of this legislation, the legitimate concerns brought forward in the previous Parliament were accommodated by committee and they were stripped away. Why should we believe the government? The Conservatives ask why we have to be up until midnight. If we are serious about moving the bill forward, we will let it go to committee. They say they will let it move forward. We do not believe them. They have not earned our trust or our confidence. There are no tacit agreements. There are no deals. There are no handshakes in this Parliament. The 41st Parliament is handshake-free. That is a real shame and a real loss.

I am starting to sound like an old guy. I lament and I miss the common sense of purpose that we enjoyed at one time when we were all elected to Parliament, yes to different parties, but moving forward, paddling our canoe in the same direction in the best interests of the country, especially in this matter, in the best interests and the well-being of our men and women in the armed forces. Surely this is one example of where we could extend the goodwill to make this particular bill work. We have been burned in the most egregious possible way.

I was wondering how I was going to use my time in this debate. To understand why we behave the way we do, we have to scratch the surface a bit and back up and take a look. I hope members can understand the level of frustration.

I represent a lot of armed forces personnel in my riding: the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry that was at the Kapyong Barracks until recently when it was moved to Edmonton and the Cameron Highlanders Reservists at the Minto Armoury in my riding. A lot of people do not realize that Winnipeg has a navy but the HMCS Chippawa is based in my riding of Winnipeg Centre. The 17th Wing Air Command is in Winnipeg. The Sgt Tommy Prince Cadet Corps, Canada's newest cadet corps named after the most decorated soldier in the Canadian armed forces, a first nations man named Tommy Prince affiliated with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, is in Winnipeg.

When I enter debates about the military I like to make reference to my own father who was a lieutenant colonel by the end of his career and secretary treasurer of a Canadian military intelligence association, what he called his spy agency. He served in Italy in the liberation of Holland. He often spoke about the veterans who came home from war and were promised so much and treated so badly. It was a recurrent theme throughout his life. He spoke of the veterans as we licked the envelopes, all of us kids around the dining-room table stuffing envelopes for the dues for the Canadian military intelligence association. That is how I started as an organizer, I think.

He often commented on the “deemed never to have served” for the 14,100 veterans of the Second World War. In the demobilization of a million-some-odd soldiers, some of them did not get to the office in the correct period of time to hand in their papers. In fact, when some went, the lineup was so long that they were told to come back in a couple of months. They went back to the farm and did not return in time, so they were deemed AWOL.

The way the government solved that problem was that instead of dispatching military police to round them up, the government passed an act of Parliament to deem them never to have served. Their military records were erased and their benefits were erased, 14,100 of them. It was a terrible injustice.

Many had to come back to try to have their service recognized now that they were not 21-year-olds any more. They were getting married and having children, and they wanted the benefits due to a veteran, whether it was housing or education. Of course, by then Parliament had deemed them never to have served.

My father was adamant that this was one of the greatest injustices to his colleagues in the Second World War. I am trying to imagine what he would have to say on this today. Colonel Drapeau reminds me of my dad physically and in the types of issues that he champions.

I believe that an awful lot of World War II veterans, were they alive today, would be of the same mind as the debate that we heard on this side of the House for the last couple of hours. The idea of the morale of the armed forces being compromised, undermined and jeopardized by a system that is simply not fair and the lack of a grievance system that meets the test of natural justice and the justice afforded to people outside of the armed forces would be galling to the sensibilities of anybody who served and wore the uniform.

I am a trade unionist. The combination of things that describe me in my CV are the things that the Conservatives probably most loathe. I am a socialist, a trade unionist and an NDP member of Parliament. I served as a union leader, to make me even more unpalatable to my colleague for Vegreville—Wainwright.

I was a union boss, I guess one could say, so I know the need for a fair system to deal with grievances in any kind of institutional setting, be it a large workforce or the Canadian military. There is not only an advantage but also a need to have an avenue of recourse for those who feel that the system has not treated them fairly.

That avenue of recourse has to meet certain tests. It cannot be arbitrary and it cannot be biased. It has to meet the same tests as our justice system. The very system that use to measure the health and well-being of our democracy is the health and well-being of our justice system.

How can anybody think that the current system is fair if it is one's commanding officer or one of his subordinates who rules on the grievance? There is no arms-length in the process.

These legitimate issues, brought forward by some of the most respected jurists in the land, led to the amendments in two previous incarnations of the bill. One was the Rt. Hon. Antonio Lamer, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and another was Patrick LeSage of the Superior Court of Ontario.

These people know what they are talking about, and their observations and recommendations deserve implementation. They do not deserve to become a political football, subject to whims and vagaries. They should be handled better. This is one example in which I urge the government of the day to perhaps try something new.

We have three years that we have to live together before the next federal election. If the Conservatives continue with their bully tactics, they are not only doing irreparable harm to the integrity of our democratic institutions, they will watch themselves plummet even further in the polls.

Canadians have pretty much had it with these guys. Canadians are getting fed up with the way they conduct themselves. That is starting to resonate. Now that people are getting some idea of who these people they elected really are and how they conduct themselves, they do not like it.

The impression is that they are a bunch of bullies and thugs. They may not realize that. Some of them are nice people. Individually, they are nice people. I am the first person to admit that. Collectively, the persona they have put forward to the Canadian people is that they are a bunch of thugs who will get their way and they do not care what they trample on or who they trample over to get it. They will never accommodate a single issue or a single legitimate concern by the opposition because they view it as a sign of weakness and that is not the way these guys behave.