Paul Szabo

[Natural Resources, November 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Deloitte & Touche disagrees with the minister. The minister ran up almost $130,000 in hospitality and other personal expenses as head of the authority. Now we learn that she unethically signed her own expense reports rather than the chairman of the board of directors. Contrary to the evidence, the transport minister assures us that all policies were followed. That is not the case.

When did the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Transport, and his predecessor learn of these allegations? Why is the government continuing this shameful cover-up?

[Natural Resources, November 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Natural Resources is already under investigation by the Ethics Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner, and is implicated in violations of the Lobbying Act.

Today we learned of many new allegations of ethical breaches while she was president and CEO of the federal Toronto Port Authority. Instead of investigating, the government has done everything in its power to cover this up.

My question is for the Prime Minister. Will he finally demonstrate accountability and call on the Auditor General to investigate, without delay?

[November 3rd, 2009]

Here is the problem, Mr. Speaker.

The Prime Minister's message accompanying this code says that it complements the Conflict of Interest Act, which is the purview of the Ethics Commissioner. The Ethics Commissioner has no purview whatsoever over the Prime Minister's code of conduct for his ministers. The Prime Minister is the only one who can provide sanctions. It says that compliance with these guidelines is a condition of appointment. In other words, it is like an undated letter of resignation.

It is up to the Prime Minister to judge his own ministers. This is the rule that he has set. It complements the Conflict of Interest Act.

To suggest that we should wait for the Ethics Commissioner is irrelevant. The Prime Minister has to decide. When is he going to decide?

[November 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the story is well known. It appears the Minister of Natural Resources utilized the services and resources of the Toronto Port Authority. The executive assistant to the president and CEO sent out emails to solicit and to promote a fundraiser for the minister. The Toronto Port Authority is a federally controlled authority and its resources cannot be used for any unauthorized purposes.

The name on the flyer was Michael B. McSweeney, a registered lobbyist for the Cement Association of Canada. The fax number to send the order form for the minister's fundraiser happened to be the fax number for the Cement Association of Canada.

It is pretty clear that when a registered lobbyist does a fundraiser for a minister, whom he has registered to lobby, there is something wrong.

There are all kinds of potential breaches, but the most important has to do with the Prime Minister's code of conduct for ministers. The Prime Minister says:

I cannot stress enough that implementation of the Federal Accountability Act and associated Action Plan is not simply a matter of compliance. At least as important is our commitment to a culture of accountability in everything we do—that is, to uphold the highest standards of probity and ethical conduct in recognition of the fact that it is a privilege and a trust to participate in the process through which Canadians govern themselves.

He goes on to say that these measures complement the Conflict of Interest Act and establish the most rigorous conflict avoidance regime in Canada.

Annex H in the Guidelines for the Political Activities of Public Office holders, of which the Minister of Natural Resources is one, states:

—a public office holder should not participate in a political activity where it may reasonably be seen to be incompatible with the public office holder's duty, or otherwise be seen to impair his or her ability to discharge his or her public duties in a politically impartial fashion, or would cast doubt on the integrity or impartiality of the office.

Finally it states:

Compliance with these Guidelines is a term and condition of appointment. Before appointment, a public office holder shall certify that he or she will comply with these Guidelines.

These are the Prime Minister's guidelines for ministers. The Ethics Commissioner has no jurisdiction over these. These are the private guidelines of the Prime Minister.

We used to have an ethics counsellor who was between the Prime Minister and the code of conduct for ministers. We no longer have one. The only person who can sanction a minister under the Prime Minister's code of conduct is the Prime Minister himself.

Why is it that a minister who has so blatantly breached the Prime Minister's guidelines for his ministers not had any sanctions against her for violating virtually all of the provisions of Annex H of that code?

[Employment Insurance Act, November 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, when one considers what the government has or has not done under the tragic circumstances of the H1N1 preparedness program, all I can say is it is not getting the job done. Consider what it is doing on EI, where those who least need it are being disproportionately benefited. With regard to EI, it is not getting the job done.

When the financial crisis came about and people started losing their jobs, everybody agreed that the first thing to do was to try to save existing jobs to the extent possible. Second, was to try to invest in those areas that offered the greatest possibility for employment creation. Third, was to properly manage the resources.

What happened? The government did not get it. It let infrastructure money lapse last year. It did not get it out on time. It is always behind. People have lost their jobs and then it offers money for a project that it cannot get going for two years. Again, it is not getting the job done.

I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to have an additional 10 minutes to complete my comments for the members so they can understand clearly that they are not getting the job done.

[Employment Insurance Act, November 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member understands and he has explained it very well.

I do not have the kind of information that I wish I had to be able to do the job.

The last issue we dealt with on EI had to do with considering a base benefit requirement, a criterion of 360 hours, to qualify for benefits. The government and the minister specifically and explicitly said that it was too expensive and that we could not do that. I think it was $4.2 billion to have a 360-hour base.

Then as time went on, the government said it was only $2.5 billion, but this was after it had been pooh-poohed. Lo and behold, the Parliamentary Budget Officer finally came to the rescue of Canadians again and said that it was only $1.3 billion.

Had the government and the minister been honest with Canadians and honest with Parliament, we would have had significant EI reform, which would have been to the benefit of all Canadians fairly and equitably.

[Employment Insurance Act, November 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives inherited a $13 billion surplus. It went to pay down debt, yes, but that had nothing to do with the Conservative government. The election was in January 2006. In the Conservatives' first year of government, the House did not even start until April, after the end of the fiscal year, so the surplus for the year that ended March 31, 2006, was a Liberal surplus, not a Conservative surplus.

If the member is not going to be honest with the House, I do not care to answer his questions on anything.

However, as I have said, I will tell him that yes, some people will benefit from this measure. The point is--and the Bloc has made this point, and the NDP has made this point too--that it is not an equitable program. In fact, it disproportionately benefits some Canadians over others. That is the problem, that is the political stunt, and that is why we will not support the bill.

[Employment Insurance Act, November 3rd, 2009]

I was in the government of the day. It was my private member's item.

I appreciate the member's intervention.

Because it is all in the consolidated revenue fund, there is no money in a bank any more. It has been used to support government programs and services. It has been used to reduce the amount of borrowing that the government had to do in terms of the national debt. Because of the debt scenario, we were saving money, but the rules of the game for operating the notional EI account also said that they will keep track of not only ins and outs of cash in terms of premiums and benefits, but also of the interest, and that was still a credit. All that money belongs to the employers and the employees who put money into it.

Now the current government has decided to scrap all that. We are going to throw all this notional surplus, we are going to take away the $50 billion that was collected in excess of benefits paid out, we are going to put it in our pocket and we are going to pay for the programs the Conservatives have been spewing out the money for.

How are they going to deal with EI in the future? In the last budget they said we are going to have an EI commission that is going to get $2 billion as start-up money. It will be a separate company, and all premiums and all payouts of benefits are going to go through that commission. In fact, we will go back to the same system we used to have.

Now we have a problem. Why? The Parliamentary Budget Officer said just yesterday in his report, which Canadians can read on his website, that we are in a structural deficit and that we will remain in a structural deficit until at least 2013-14, which means that if Conservatives proceed with setting the EI commission with $2 billion and think they are going to balance the books of that separate off-balance-sheet commission by handling premiums coming in and paying out extraordinarily higher benefits, it is going to force the government to start streaming cashflow into it just to hold it solvent and capable of meeting the benefit requirements.

We have come full circle. Brian Mulroney was operating exactly the way the current government wants to go.

The Auditor General has said that is not reflective of the true economics of a government that is using taxpayers' money to operate programs on behalf of the people and that we have to put it all in one big basket. Now the government has passed legislation that is going to unravel this. It is going to pocket the surplus that it collected from Canadians and accumulated in a notional surplus over the 10 years leading up to when the Conservatives took government. The Conservatives are going to just pocket that.

The situation could have been much worse. If the government had to take the $54 billion and put it into this new commission, $54 billion would be added to the current year's deficit. Then we would have a $100 billion deficit in the current year, rather than the $50 billion that it appears we are going to have, and it is growing.

Unemployment is not going to go down very quickly. We were over 9%; we dropped to a little less than 9%. The experts are saying that we can still go to 10%, that these recoveries are fragile, and the Prime Minister is already setting us up for that.

Members have to understand EI has a history to it. EI is an important tool for the government, but EI should not be used as a political prop, and that is exactly what this bill would do. Bill C-50 would not equitably benefit Canadians who have to participate in the EI benefit program that they paid into. They deserve to receive those benefits equitably. That is the reason I do not want to support the bill. My party will not support the bill, and I know that others will not either.

I hope that explains to the member that this is not just trying to make up stories. These are the facts. The current Conservative government inherited a $13 billion surplus from the previous Liberal government and it has been totally squandered. We now find ourselves facing a $50-$60 billion deficit in Canada due to economic mismanagement by the Conservative Party of Canada.

[Employment Insurance Act, November 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate it when members stay in the House when I am speaking.

Canadians understand as well that there was a separate bank account for EI, and it was operating on an overdraft basis; it was in a deficit scenario. The Auditor General told the government that it was a government program, that the financial performance of a government should include all its programs, and that this one shouldn't happen to be set up as a separate bank account. They rolled it into the consolidated revenue fund so that if EI operated at a deficit and everything else broke even, there would be a deficit in the government's financials for the end of the fiscal year on March 31.

Then the Liberals came to power and inherited the $42.3 billion deficit in 1993 from the previous Conservative government. It took three years to balance the budget. Then, all of a sudden, we had 10 years of balanced budgets with no recession. Growth was positive, employment reached a 30-year record, and EI premiums went down for 10 years in a row, year after year. The surplus money coming in was more than the benefits being paid out, and it continued even though the rates were going down. Why? It was because the economy was so healthy and because the job situation was so good for those years between 1993 and 2006.

Yes, there was an EI surplus, but it was a notional surplus, and there is legislation that guides how to deal with it. The legislation says that if there is a surplus in the EI account, or now in the notional EI account, we must do one of two things: either we must reduce premiums paid on a current-year basis or we must increase programs and benefits under the EI fund.

Some of those things happened. As a matter of fact, one of them was my own initiative, which was to extend maternity and parental leave in Canada from six months to a full year. That cost money, and it came out of the notional surplus, but there was still--

[Employment Insurance Act, November 3rd, 2009]

That was the Conservative Mulroney government, Mr. Speaker, and--