Pat Martin

[Committees of the House, June 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in relation to the certificate of nomination of Daniel Therrien to the position of Privacy Commissioner.

[Public Works and Government Services, June 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Michel Fournier, the former chief of staff to Jean Chrétien, was the head of the Federal Bridge Corporation Limited when he gave SNC-Lavalin a $130-million contract for the Jacques Cartier Bridge, but the RCMP allege that $1.5 million of that found its way into Mr. Fournier's Swiss bank account as a big fat kickback.

If members are wondering what Liberal prime ministers have in common with Conservative prime ministers, both have chiefs of staff who are under investigation by the RCMP.

Given the stink between SNC-Lavalin and Arthur Porter and SNC-Lavalin and the former Liberal chief of staff, does the government intend to change the way it does business with SNC-Lavalin?

[Employment, May 29th, 2014]

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, for 14 months we have been complaining that temporary foreign workers are building the women's hospital in Winnipeg, even though dozens of Canadian carpenters and labourers have applied for those jobs and have been turned away. I provided the minister with a list of 35 of those names, but now, to add insult to injury, the three Canadian carpenters who did get hired have been laid off, while the temporary foreign workers remain, as we speak, building that project.

There should not be a single temporary foreign worker on that job if there is a single qualified Canadian available. This guy says there is change being made in the program. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, no change has been made in Winnipeg.

[Petitions, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by literally tens of thousands of Canadians who call 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 from all other industrial and occupational causes combined. They call upon the Government of Canada to ban asbestos in all its forms and to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

[Committees of the House, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in relation to our study of the main estimates 2014-15, specifically vote 1 under the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada; vote 2 under the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner; votes 1 and 5 under the offices of the information and privacy commissioners of Canada; and vote 1 under the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer.

I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in relation to its study on Bill C-520, An Act supporting non-partisan agents of Parliament.

[Employment, May 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have here a list of 35 carpenters and labourers who were denied work at the Women's Hospital, in Winnipeg, simply because they were union members. Instead, all of those jobs went to temporary foreign workers from Russia, India, and Ireland.

The member for Saint Boniface knew about this case for 14 months and did nothing about it, as did two successive ministers of employment. I know Conservatives hate unions, but the last time I checked it is against the law to discriminate against somebody based on union membership.

I want to ask, how could the Minister of Canadian Heritage possibly stand by and do nothing about workers in her own backyard?

[Access to Information Act, May 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to close the debate on my bill, Bill C-567. I appreciate the member for Victoria who seconded the bill.

I thank all my colleagues who have entered into the debate. I am surprised and disappointed that no members from the government side have seen fit to enter into the debate on this important subject.

In the few minutes that I have, let me say that this is a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy, that the public has a right to know what their government is doing with their money. The instrument by which they are allowed to exercise that right is the Access to Information Act, our freedom of information laws.

The reason I put have forward this bill is that our access to information regime is broken. It is dysfunctional. The wheels have fallen off it. If I was in Newfoundland, I would say “Da arse is out of er.” The alarm has been sounded by better speakers than I in this whole regard.

Part of the problem is that the government treats information as if it were theirs, as if it has some proprietary right to information and it will ration it out in little tidbits, only when necessary and only when it serves its purpose. The government is completely off-centre on this. It is not the government's information. It does not belong to the government. It does not belong to the bureaucracy. It does not belong to the public servants who created it. It belongs to the people, the taxpayers of Canada, who commissioned that information and whose tax dollars paid for its creation. The public has a right to know.

The government members used to profess this. Members on the government side will recognize all six points in my private members' bill, because all six points come from this very document, “Stand up for Canada”, the Conservative Party of Canada's federal election platform.

Some of the members across stood on doorsteps and promised Canadians, with this very document, that if they were elected, they would give the freedom of information commissioner the right to compel evidence and documents, the duty to document. All of the six points I put in my bill are directly from this document.

Either the government members are going to support their own promise to Canadians, or we are going to witness the outer limits of hypocrisy. They are going to push the envelop and expand the notion of hypocrisy to something that Canadians have never seen.

Never before has a government been challenged by its own words in so obvious and clear a way. It was tempting for me, as the chairman of the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, to put forward a whole rewrite of the bill. God knows, there are many clauses of the bill that would benefit from amendment. However, I used some restraint and I limited my bill to exactly the promises the Conservatives made.

How, in all good conscience, will my Conservative colleagues stand later this week and vote against their own promise to Canadians?

It was the culture of secrecy that allowed corruption to flourish in the Liberal years. A lot of Canadians believed the Conservatives who said that when they were elected, things would be different. I guess in their minority government, they could have used the excuse that it was a minority, but if they had a majority, they would fulfill all the lofty promises they made to Canadians.

Well, they have had a majority for years, and now they have the opportunity to make manifest those lofty promises they made at the doorstep by voting for this bill, at least sending it to committee, so we can, for the first time since 1983, have a serious review of the Access of Information Act at a parliamentary committee.

In my closing remarks, I will quote the former information commissioner, “A government, and a public service, which holds tight to a culture of secrecy is a government and public service ripe for abuse”. Secrecy, I could not agree with him more.

The seeds of corruption are planted in the dark, and the black shroud of secrecy will become the most lasting hallmark of that administration if it does not stand, be honest with Canadians and vote for what it promised it would do as soon as it can on Bill C-567.

[First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act, May 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the party the member represents have not only denied the ability of first nations to come forward and have their voices heard in the process of establishing this legislation, they have undermined the democratic institution that we are sitting in as we speak by repeatedly, and again, imposing closure.

How often does the Conservative Party invoke closure on bills? Every time, and on all of them. At every stage, the Conservatives shut down the ability for the voices of Canadians to be heard.

People on this side of the House represent the majority of Canadians, including many first nations whose voices deserve to be heard. The Conservatives have no concept of consultation and accommodating the legitimate concerns of all Canadians.

One thing the Conservatives never learned when they managed to achieve their majority government is that they have to be government to all the people and not just those who voted for them. There is a great section of the population who did not vote for them but who still have legitimate points of view. The Conservatives have an obligation to accommodate those legitimate points of view instead of shutting down debate like a bunch of goose-steppers. It is appalling.

For the member to characterize the speech I just gave as a “performance” just shows how truly ignorant he is perhaps of the issues facing first nations people and those who struggle on a daily basis to provide the best education possible for their people with the impossible funding mechanism that we have now.

We would support a bill that truly did lead towards equality of educational opportunities for first nations people. However, the bill before us does not do it, and the Conservatives will find very soon that there is not a first nation in the country that agrees with them. They will be trying to impose this legislation in their Eurocentric, colonial, paternalistic attitude that is an extension of the Indian Act.

[First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act, May 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for Nanaimo—Cowichan for her advocacy on behalf of first nations people during her long tenure as the official opposition's senior critic for aboriginal affairs.

The member is right, the joint council process would by no way give first nations control over their education. It would give them an obligation to administer carefully the directives dictated by the minister. The unilateral, discretionary authority of the minister has been enhanced and augmented. It is hard to believe that one could expand on the overwhelming powers that the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development has over first nations people, but the bill does. The bill contemplates an increase in support for first nations students but at the direction and control of the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and not first nations people, and again, subject to what he is able to wrest from the Minister of Finance in any given year.

The Conservatives' model is not equal funding as it would be for provincial students, and then work backwards. Their model is to seek to achieve equal funding if the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development has enough clout around the cabinet table to divide the pie to provide better resources to first nations people. That is a far cry from the rights-based approach that my colleague for Nanaimo—Cowichan says should be guiding and informing the development of this important public policy.

[First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act, May 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we do not need legislation to elevate the standards of contribution for first nations students to the provincial equivalent. The province of Manitoba is a good example. There are reserves near Thompson, Manitoba, where the funding per capita per student is $7,000 or $8,000 by the federal government. The province's funding per student in Thompson, Manitoba, right nearby, is $15,000. One could argue that the amount of money per capita in reserve schools could in fact be even higher than the provincial average because of the special needs and historical catching up that may need to be done in order for first nations students to achieve their full potential through education.

We do not need legislation to do that. It could have found its way into the 2014 budget, but even with implementation of this bill we will not see any improvement until 2016, conveniently just after the next federal election. I suppose the Conservatives will be dangling that as some kind of a carrot in front of the noses of aboriginal voters. This is the hypocrisy of it.

Then what the Conservatives contemplate is this paltry increase of 4.5% of the current 2% cap. It will be 22 years, by the NDP's calculation, before there is a catch-up to where first nations schools are funded to the same degree as their provincial counterparts, and that is without taking into account the increase in population and the increase in the cost of providing education. There is no built-in escalating formula in that model. He knows it is paltry. He knows it is cheap. I do not know what wild numbers he is pulling out of his hat now, but the total amount of money that goes to first nations people is paltry on a per capita basis. One might say it is not all about money. A lot of it is about money.