House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was tax.

Last in Parliament March 2011, as Liberal MP for Mississauga South (Ontario)

Lost his last election, in 2011, with 37% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Petitions December 1st, 2009

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 and as certified by the clerk of petitions, I have two petitions today.

The first one is very timely in that the House has been considering the issue of child pornography, particularly on the Internet.

These petitioners from my riding of Mississauga South want to draw to the attention of the House that the creation, use and circulation of child pornography is condemned by a clear majority of Canadians, that the CRTC and Internet service providers have responsibility for the content that is being transmitted to Canadians, and that anyone who uses the Internet to facilitate any sex offences involving children is committing an offence.

Therefore, these petitioners call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to stop the Internet as a medium for the distribution of child victimization and pornography.

November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, the minister has the authority to call for a special investigation by a third-party accounting firm, not the existing auditors, to come in. That is the request of the chair of the board, who was appointed by the transport minister. The transport minister is authorized under section 41(1) of the Canada Marine act.

This has nothing to do now with the Ethics Commissioner or with the Minister of Natural Resources. It has to do with the chairman of the board of directors saying, “We have a problem. We need somebody to look into it to clear the air. We need to be able to do our work, but there is a cloud hanging over our head. It is interfering with our ability to do our jobs”.

The minister has the tools. There is nothing the Ethics Commissioner can do to help him. He can go in and take responsibility for this, get someone to give him the information and determine what solutions there may be so we do not have a dysfunctional Toronto Port Authority.

November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, members may recall that on a number of occasions I rose in the House with regard to, unfortunately, alleged improprieties on behalf of the Minister of Natural Resources, and in fact made a complaint to the Ethics Commissioner.

At 3 p.m. last Thursday, I received a letter from the Ethics Commissioner in which she said, “I am writing to inform you that I have completed my preliminary inquiry in relation to your request of October 5th, 2009, for an inquiry into an alleged contravention of the Conflict of Interest Code by the Minister of Natural Resources. Based on the information before me, I believe that an inquiry is warranted. The basis for my decision is outlined below”.

It is clear now that the commissioner is satisfied that there are matters which appear to be in contravention of the Code of Ethics for members, as well as under the Conflict of Interest Act, at which she will be looking. One of the things we have asked for is that during the period in which the minister will be subject to a formal inquiry by the Ethics Commissioner that she step aside until that inquiry is complete.

It gets even more complicated because consequential to this, Mark McQueen, the chairman of the board of the Toronto Port Authority, which is implicated in these alleged wrongdoings, was appointed by the current Minister of Transport, who is responsible for the port authority. He has been pleading for the government to allow the Auditor General to come in to clean up the mess, to look at the problems and to try to deal with them.

When the chair of a board of a federal agency asks the government to take action, action should be taken. This is the second time the board has asked for an investigation and an inquiry to be done and the government continues to say that it is beyond the Auditor General's mandate.

One of the things I learned in my review of this matter is this. Section 41(1) of the Canada Marine Act, which is the act under which this port authority operates and which guides the Minister of Transport, in terms of his responsibility, says that it must have a special report, a special investigation at least once every five years. It also says that the minister has the discretion to have one as often as he deems is required.

At question here are things like doctoring board minutes, political interference, gross mismanagement and dysfunction of the board to the point where it cannot discharge its responsibilities.

My concern at this point is that the Toronto Port Authority, a federal agency, is not able to discharge its responsibilities. I am asking the minister to order a special investigation to clear the mess up.

Canada Post Corporation Act November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his animated presentation because it is actually time that we became a little animated about what is happening.

We are even seeing it to some extent in regard to the CBC. The member may recall that there was a provision in the last budget, Bill C-51, whereby the borrowing authority of CBC was being increased and everybody thought that was a good thing. However, it was being increased simply because the government would not provide the resources necessary for CBC to continue to deliver services to Canadians. With that borrowing authority the government is actually cashing in the leasing revenues on buildings that it owns but does not use just to provide the cash flow that it needs. It is done just to survive. I characterize that as one of the next steps in the privatization of the CBC.

With regard to Canada Post and the re-mailer situation, I would like to ask the member if he could inform the House of a bit of the history. I ask because was told by someone, and I just want to just confirm it, how the re-mailer situation arose and what options may be available to address it either by remediation of a mistake that happened before, or by some sort of arrangement made on a one time basis to grandfather current provisions as opposed to trying to unravel what has been done.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for reminding the members about some of the specific provisions in the bill. There are still some concerns. The member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl raised a couple of the issues that were there, particularly with regard to disagreements among some of the witnesses about whether or not their privacy protection would be adequately covered.

One of the examples that she used was where reporting requirements to the CRTC would, in fact, be protected from access under the Access to Information Act. No changes are proposed to the Access to Information Act at this point. It does raise a question about whether or not the process of legislation has taken consequential implications into account. I guess that would be one example. I do not know if the member has others.

I do have some concerns that we will be dealing in an area in which the velocity of information and the kinds of technological tools that have been developed so rapidly may always be one step ahead of the legislation in this place unless we get a better process in place.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise another matter. This is a new one on me which happened this past week and it is called spoofing. Someone can actually encroach on a system and create emails representing someone else. In my case, it was representing me, and it was a direct letter to the premier of Ontario concerning a tax. I did not send the message. I had it investigated. There is now the ability for someone to send an email to someone else that looks as though it came from a third party.

I am wondering whether or not that situation came up in the hearings and consideration of this bill at committee.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl for an excellent overview of the bill and more explicitly some of the insights. It is easy to come here and talk about all the nice things the bill does, but the member raised a number of issues that the bill does not address. That is extremely important. I want to take this opportunity to thank her for thinking about the rest of us who have other responsibilities.

She raised a specific issue with regard to disclosures required for the CRTC. The hope was that they would be exempted from access to information legislation, but that provision could not be put into the bill. It does raise the point that when there are unintended consequences, a mechanism is needed.

Would the member undertake to ask the committee if it would consider writing a letter to the Minister of Justice who is responsible for the Access to Information Act to consider such an amendment to the act and failing that, to write a letter to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics bringing the matter to the attention of the committee so that the committee may consider such an amendment?

Electronic Commerce Protection Act November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to speak to this bill earlier and there was one issue I dealt with that maybe the member would like to comment on. It has to do with directing some of the attention on the ways in which small- and medium-sized businesses themselves can help to protect their own information by having best practices, et cetera.

I would refer him to the Canadian Privacy and Data Security Toolkit for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, which was produced by the Canadian Institute for Chartered Accountants and issued at the beginning of last summer. There are, in fact, audit checklists in there for businesses because if they are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

With regard to this bill, it is one thing to look at the problem and how we might deal with those who abuse the situation, but businesses themselves have to be proactive in protecting their own information. I wonder if the member would like to comment on the need for businesses to be part of the solution.

Privilege November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, the third report of the committee, I think, was misrepresented by the parliamentary secretary. He referred to it as being one line, but I think for certain that the member should be aware of exactly what it says. It is a little bit longer than one line.

It states:

On Thursday, November 26, 2009, the Special Committee agreed to report the following motion:

That the Committee believes a serious breach of privilege has occurred and members’ rights have been violated, that the Government of Canada, particularly the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, have intimidated a witness of this Committee, and obstructed and interfered with the Committee's work and with the papers requested by this Committee.

Therefore this Committee reports the breach to the House so that it can consider the matter.

A copy of the relevant Minutes of Proceedings Meeting No. 17 is tabled.

Mr. Speaker, it is not one sentence. I think the parliamentary secretary may have misspoken by suggesting that somehow the motion made by the hon. member for Ottawa South has to make all arguments and stand on its own. In fact, Mr. Speaker, any member of that committee could come to this place now, I believe, under a matter of personal privilege because his or her own rights have been violated pursuant to O'Brien and Bosc. If the member would like to check page 89 of the latter under the rights and privileges of members, this argument has been made many times in this place with regard to a member's right to freedom of expression, which has to be informed. To be informed, the member must have access to information.

That is the thrust of the matter before us, that the information was withheld.

It has not been mentioned yet, but there are other parties in addition to the witnesses who had the information or documents. These included Amnesty International, which had a press conference and was showing a CD that the documents were on.

There was Christie Blatchford, who reportedly, and it is even in today's Hansard, has had the documents and is making judgments on the commentary of other parliamentarians with regard to the matter before us today.

If we are talking about delays due to translation, why is it out in the public domain?

The rights of members have been breached. There is no question about it in my mind, but that is why it has been brought here.

With regard to one last point about the committee's activity, I have been a chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and conducted the hearings with Messrs. Mulroney and Schreiber. Early in the proceedings there were a couple of cases where Mr. Karlheinz Schreiber in fact had documents and was reading from and referring to those documents. As chair, I asked for and in fact demanded on behalf of the committee that those documents be made available. They were released to us. We did have the consent of the Bloc to circulate them in the language in which they appeared, subject to the documents being translated as quickly as possible. This committee could have done that. Nonetheless, those documents were released to us.

Therefore, there are examples of committees being able to access the necessary information to do the jobs of committee properly.

Notwithstanding that the government members of the committee do not support what this report says, I believe that even an individual member coming before this place and making these arguments and claims has a substantive basis or prima facie case of privilege. I look forward to the Speaker's decision, particularly as it relates to the requirement of what must come from committees in order to address a matter before committees. It has been a point that has come here so often, where the Speaker has had to rule that it is committee business and to take it back to committee.

However, I hope that is not case with this. I hope that the committee's report and its motion and the minutes attached to the report substantively bring this matter to the House for full disposition.

Petitions November 30th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 and as certified by the clerk of petitions, I am pleased to present a petition from constituents in my riding of Mississauga South and particularly from Nortel pensioners, retirees and particularly those Nortel long-term disability recipients whose benefits are at risk.

The petitioners are calling upon Parliament to amend the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to protect the rights of all Canadian employees, and to ensure that employees laid off by a company who are receiving a pension or long-term disability benefits during bankruptcy proceedings obtain preferred creditor status over other unsecured creditors.

They are also asking that the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act be amended to ensure that employee-related claims are paid from the proceeds of Canadian asset sales before funds are permitted to leave the country.