Paul Dewar

[Foreign Credential Recognition, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, for the past several years Canadians have been concerned about the issue of foreign credential recognition. The process for newcomers to Canada to receive recognition for their skills lacks coordination among different levels of government and is often unfair and fragmented.

This leads to trained professionals in professions where we have serious labour shortages not being able to work in their field of expertise. They become underemployed and struggle to achieve their earning potential, which in turn leads to unacceptable levels of child poverty.

Recently I held several forums with foreign trained professionals and local immigrant settlement workers in my riding of Ottawa Centre to engage in discussions and develop pragmatic solutions to identify the barriers faced by new Canadians.

We all must work to ensure that the credential recognition process is transparent, objective and impartial. We also should support community based organizations that help newcomers become more quickly established in their new communities.

According to Statistics Canada, new immigrants will account for 100% of Canada's new net labour growth by 2011. Yet less than 20% will find work in their profession.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have to rise on a point of order. The member is insinuating that there was some trust broken in an in camera meeting, when he was the one who brought it up. I plead to the member to apologize to Mr. Broadbent, through me. He brought up the whole subject. He is the one who is—

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to address the question the member had for me in his preamble.

I recall speaking to Mr. Broadbent about the same committee meeting to which the member was referring. In fact, he remembers it quite differently. I guess I trust Mr. Broadbent's version of events and the fact that the member was filibustering because he did not want to engage in the question of citizen consultation. I will leave it to them to settle who walked out on whom and why.

The bottom line is we had an all party committee agree, and Parliament therefore adopted it, to a consultation. Sadly, the Liberal Party decided not to engage in it. It let the date of October come and go and that was the date the committee had set to have the citizen's consultation process engaged.

I have to ask the member this. I find it strange that he would want to have citizen's consultation and support this flim-flam sham of a consultation through the Frontier Institute, which calls people like Democracy Watch to get a couple of people to participate because it does not know how to do it.

Would the member not believe that Canadians, along with Parliament, are the ones who should be the ones to decide how this is done? Why is he so afraid of the Constitution? There is an amending formula simply because the Constitution is set up so parties like his cannot come up with what they decide is best and not go to Canadians. Does the member not understand the importance of the Constitution and that he should not treat it as a suggestion list? It is the rules and the foundation of any mature country.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I laid that out. We have a motion in front of this House of what we think is the model. The Conservatives need to go to Canadians, not to their friends in the Frontier group or to paid consultants. Canadians are thirsting to contribute but the government puts up barriers every time Canadians want to be heard.

What we need is a process that all parliamentarians agreed to in the last Parliament, which is a Citizens' Assembly engagement and a parliamentary committee. We need to do our work. We should not pay consultants to do it. Canadians sent us here to listen to their good ideas.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, surely the member is not asking the New Democratic Party to support party hacks being appointed to the other place. We are the only party that has been consistent with respect to this issue. When the Conservative Party was putting its bagmen into the upper house, we were the only party before the Reform Party came around to criticize that. There is no argument here. I am not sure if the member has convenient amnesia about our party's position.

My mentor, as a kid and a hero to this day, Tommy Douglas, used to say Tweedledum and Tweedledee. That is what we have here with the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. The government is just deciding what way it can get its friends into the other place.

This is not going to work. It is not going to work because it is really not democratic. Do we need change? Absolutely. Is this the right kind of change? Absolutely not.

In the end, it does not deal with the fundamental issue of the role of the Senate. Certain senators, and I mentioned this in my comments, will be deemed as representing the people and others not. It will be utter confusion.

One day in the green and pleasant land for the Conservatives, all senators will be elected. I am sure they will have to deal with the issue of proportionality, as I mentioned to my friend from B.C., in terms of dealing with who is represented. Is the representation for P.E.I. versus B.C. acceptable right now? Absolutely not. Is that more important right now? Absolutely. It is part of the equation. That needs to be dealt with. We need real democratic change and not tinkering, and that is the problem with this bill.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Absolutely, that is our position. We have been consistent on it.

Then we have to take a look at how to represent people. I am absolutely shocked that a member from British Columbia would not address the fact that there is disproportionate representation in the other place to his region and he thinks it is okay. I am gobsmacked.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where to start as well. Let us start off with the tradition of the Westminster model. I was sad to hear the member refer to a political structure that is highly irrelevant to ours.

I encourage him to read the debates of the Quebec conference, read the debates about what the House was supposed to do. He is suggesting that we can do a little end run around the Constitution. That is not good enough for Canadians. It does not respect the history of this country. Responsible government is about being just that.

The bill says that we do not have to worry about the Constitution. We can do a little end run around it and the Prime Minister can rubber stamp it. That is not good enough.

I am sorry, but for that member to call this substantive change in that incrementally that is the way it is done, he should look at the Westminster model. No one has done this. It requires a constitutional change. If the member does not like the other place, then it should be abolished and the government could then bring forward real reform.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the hon. member brings it up because in the contract the government assigned to the Frontier Centre, it is actually talking about democratic reform, so I might table this later so the hon. member can have a look at it. It actually questions later on table 5, about how to reform the Upper House. So, I think it is entirely relevant and I will provide a copy to the hon. member.

I brought this up because it is related to Bill C-43. The government has introduced a bill to deal with the Senate. On the other hand, it is out there hiring friends of the government to talk to Canadians about democratic reform.

I want to explain that initially Conservatives hired a group that went out to find participants for this consultation and sadly, the group they had subcontracted to did not really know what they were doing. They phoned Democracy Watch and asked if it could provide participants for their consultation. Duff Conacher was none too pleased when he found out that Democracy Watch was being asked to provide participants for everyday Canadians to speak on democratic reform. So Democracy Watch was fired and another group was hired and now we have this flawed process in front of us.

We see in chapter 4 of this public consultation, which is again a bit of an oxymoron because no one can actually get the document, where it talks about Canada's Senate today, and it talks about what this group believes should be done and asks what Canadians, through its hand-picked group, what they think about it.

I bring that up because it is very important that Canadians know the agenda of the government. The agenda of the government is to pretend to be doing democratic reform. If it honestly wanted to engage in democratic reform, it would support the motion the NDP is going to put forward to do what the previous Parliament, through the procedure and House affairs committee, had committed to do. That was to have a parallel process of a parliamentary committee speaking to Canadians about democratic reform. It could engage this place and the other place, and leave it up to Canadians to decide. It could have a citizens' consultation that would be a little less biased than the Frontier Centre.

If we look at Bill C-43, it actually tells Canadians already what they should be doing. They should be supporting the government's idea of a plebiscite with the Prime Minister appointing.

Just to recap, constitutionally going back to the Quebec conference and looking at what exactly the Fathers of Confederation envisioned, because it was all men at the time, and what they thought the upper house should be doing, they said it should not be elected at the time. Even the reformers at the time agreed to that.

We are now in 2007. Most people would believe that the process, and we see it with the House of Lords in England which is being challenged right now to reform itself, needs to be more than just a half measure, more than just a plebiscite so the Prime Minister can appoint. What we need to have is real reform.

I want to emphatically underline the fact that the government is on the wrong path for democratic reform and remind Conservatives that it was one of the predecessors of the now Conservative Party who talked about a triple E Senate. Two Es have fallen off the table with their intent now.

They think that they can fool Canadians by telling them they have had real Senate reform by having a popularity contest and a rubber stamp from the Prime Minister. Canadians will not be fooled. Our party will not be fooled. This place, I am sure, will not be fooled when we hear from the other parties.

However, the issue of democratic reform should be put in front of Canadians genuinely. Our party has said we believe that the mixed member system is a good idea and we have done that deliberately because we need to have a debate in this country about democratic reform.

The Reform Party, to give it credit, believed in a triple E Senate and put an idea forward. We are not sure where the Liberal Party stands on it and I am not sure the Bloc really has an idea on the issue because it is an issue for all of Canada.

What we need is to have ideas put forward in front of Canadians, so that we can have a genuine debate. Bill C-43 does not do that. It is simply saying to let us have an end run around the Constitution, let us have a half measure and say that we have done something.

I think that would be a disservice to Canadians and even to the Fathers of Confederation, the founders of the country, because they would have wanted, and I cite George Brown from the debates during the Quebec conference, genuine reform, not this tinkering and saying that by way of a plebiscite with the Prime Minister having the ultimate power, that this would be real reform. He would be flipping in his grave right now if he say the government putting this forward and calling it real reform.

I will sum up by essentially giving our party's position. We will not be supporting the bill. It is a half measure. It does not deal with real democratic reform and does absolutely nothing to deal with the issue of the roles and responsibilities of the other place.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate.

I want to begin my comments with a historical perspective. It is interesting to go back to the beginning of our country and the constitutional debates in Quebec at the Quebec conference and the debates around the Senate. In fact, those debates were some of the longest debates, and some would say they were controversial, about what should be done in terms of that new idea, the new formation called Canada.

There had been a consensus about reforming and having responsible government. Indeed, after the rebellions in 1837, we saw it in 1841. The concept and the idea of responsible government had been born. The rebellions built on Upper and Lower Canada had taken place. In 1841 we saw the idea of responsible government after the Durham report, with all its ills, but there were some good things in it, and then in the Quebec conference in the discussion around what should be done in terms of a new country and the formation of a confederation.

In those debates, there were discussions among the reformers at the time, who were very different from the reformers of more recent times. The Browns, for instance, actually believed that an elected Senate at the time would be problematic. That is interesting to note because at the time Brown and his movement, the reformers of the time, were laying down the markers for what they believed would be more responsible and more representative government.

Yet there was a consensus at the time, after much debate, as I have said, to have an appointed Senate. The reason people gave was that they believed the two houses had to be given certain jurisdictions and responsibilities. There was a concern at the time that one house should not have dominance over the other house, notwithstanding the obvious submission of people who saw a democratically elected house as better than an appointed one.

These people shared some concerns. Many of the reformers at the time trumpeted the comments of John Stuart Mill, who said in 1861:

An assembly which does not rest on the basis of some great power in the country is ineffectual against one which does.

People consciously knew that by way of agreeing to an appointed Senate the upper house would not trump the House of Commons. They were very deliberate, because they did not want to see the quagmire. They saw the upper house as a check.

They were concerned about the experience in the United States at the time. We have to recall our history. The American civil war had just happened. People were very conscious of it. One of the reasons Confederation came together, notwithstanding the Fenian raids, was due to the concern about the Americans' creep north, so to speak.

They wanted to get it right. They wanted to make sure it was different. They wanted to make sure there were proper checks and balances. They subscribed to the idea of an appointed house.

I will go back in history to re-Confederation in terms of what the debates were at the Quebec conference, because it is very important to understand our history in order to understand where we are now and to understand this bill.

In essence what the reformers of the time were saying, Macdonald and others, was that we needed a balance. They wanted to make sure that the upper house was not going to trump the lower house, so that, as John Stuart Mill said, we would not have one “assembly which rests on the basis of some great power in the country”, i.e. the people, and one that would cause a disproportionate balance.

Because, if we look at the structure of the Senate, we see that there were senators appointed. We have to recall that it was the east and west, and the Maritimes were still discussing whether there would be a maritime union. Senators would not be appointed based on representation of exact population. It was very important that it was going to be an appointed Senate.

Delegates at the Quebec conference believed that to have responsible government, the principle that was fought for in the rebellions of 1837 and the act in 1841, there had to be responsible representation by population government in the House of Commons and oversight from the Senate.

If we fast forward to where we are now, this bill is not proposing an overview of what the Senate's roles and responsibilities are. It does not take into consideration, in my opinion, what the initial debate was in this place with the former Reform Party about the so-called triple E Senate. It is not a discussion that really deals with what the Senate's role and responsibilities are. It is simply a way to get around the obvious problem of having an appointed body in 2007. We have not evolved to having a body that is actually democratically respected and responsible.

The fundamental problem with this bill is that it is a half measure. It says that we can have a plebiscite. We have not quite decided yet how that is to be done, but let us say it is in a federal election. The plebiscite goes forward and the person who is nominated goes to the Prime Minister, who makes the appointment.

What it does not do is deal with the whole quagmire of the role of the upper house. That is fundamentally what should be dealt with. That is really what Canadians want. It is what many people believe the former Reform Party really wanted to deal with.

This bill skirts the Constitution because it does not open the Constitution to deal with the problem. It is simply a plebiscite of sorts to find out who is the most popular person to be appointed by the Prime Minister. That might sound good to some people. I am sure the governing party will say that it is a great thing, that it would be a step in the right direction and an incremental and positive step. We may see that as being the case, except when we look at what the government has done in the area of democratic reform and judge it on its record to date.

One bill that the NDP subscribed to and supported was Bill C-16, a bill that would fix election dates and will hopefully be enacted very soon. It was an idea that our party came up with. My predecessor, Mr. Broadbent, put it forward in his ethics package before the last election. The government then took it off the NDP shelf, put it into its platform, brought it before the House and everyone agreed to it. It made sense.

We agreed that we should not open the Constitution for that particular bill. We did that because it was something that could be done without affecting the structure and functions of our Parliament. It was a process in terms of how election dates are set and it did not deal with undermining the whole idea of a minority Parliament and confidence. It was fine.

This bill is a sidestep on the Constitution. For that reason alone, personally I cannot support it. If we continue to skirt the Constitution, I think we are going down a dangerous road. I submit that the government has to understand that the Constitution is not a suggestion list. It is not something for which we say, “Maybe we would like to do this”. It is a fundamental foundation of our country and of the structure of this place and obviously of the other place.

If we are going to talk about substantive change and real democratic reform, then what we need to do is have an honest debate in this country. To be fair, the former Reform Party tried to do that. It attempted to have a so-called triple E Senate.

However, the Conservative government simply wants to do an end run around the Constitution and say, “Here, we have a plebiscite, we will rubber stamp the plebiscite choice, and the Prime Minister will appoint the person”. It does absolutely nothing to the roles and responsibilities of the upper house.

In fact, we will have a house that will have some people who are deemed to have been chosen by the people and some who are appointed, those who are flying, so to speak, on different octane, and people will ask who legitimately speaks for the other place. Is it the person who is there by way of plebiscite or the person who is appointed? It creates a quagmire for the upper house and therefore for this place.

On those points alone, I believe we cannot support the bill.

I want to now turn to where the government is on democratic reform. It is very sad to see that the government has decided not to embrace what the previous Parliament put forward through the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which was to go out to citizens and have a citizens' engagement on democratic reform and also have a House of Commons committee going out to Canadians to speak on democratic reform and find out what Canadians' ideas are.

Sadly, what the government came up with has been a disaster. The government will not admit that, but I know it has been a disaster. The government has had to backtrack and reassign contracts. It has gone to so-called “non-special interests”, which is laughable, and I will tell the House who it is, to go to Canadians and have a focus group on what they believe democratic reform should look like.

The paper that has been put out is called “Public Consultations on Canada's Democratic Institutions and Practices”. I have the participants' workbook here. I did not get it from the government website but actually from a participant who recently went through the process and procedure.

Mr. Speaker, you will know the group because it is out of Winnipeg. It is the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. I will not say anything too negative about the Frontier group, but what I can say genuinely is that it is not an objective think tank. Some have said that it makes the Fraser Institute look left wing, but I will not subscribe to what those others have said.

On its website, the Frontier group says it fundamentally does not believe in ideas like proportional representation. This is the group that the government has hired, with taxpayers' money, to talk to Canadians about democratic reform. So when the government presents a bill, Bill C-43 on Senate reform and change--

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I did not say everything in Afghanistan was a failure. I said what we are doing there is not working. Maybe he needs to turn up the volume on his earpiece.

The fact is by following this mission, we are doing more harm than good in the balance of it. If we have more balance on the development and protection and security side than we do on the counter-insurgency, we might be able to effect change in the way he has submitted we should do.