Peter Julian

[Business of Supply, April 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor for bringing forward this motion.

I am curious. This motion on closure and time allocation the member is raising in regard to the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act we certainly support, but the problem has been far more widespread than that. As members know, we have seen omnibus budget implementation that has gutted our environmental assessments and has destroyed the independent ability of the National Energy Board to make independent decisions without being overruled by cabinet decree. We have seen huge bricks brought forward. Even though we are going to spend the whole day on this motion, and we are supporting it, I do not understand why the motion is limited to just two bills.

There is the Official Languages Act, the Canada Health Act, and a whole range of other legislation. There is the continual abuse of Parliament that takes place through the current government's omnibus budget bills. I do not understand why none of that is in the Liberal motion.

Could the member clarify why, when they have the whole day, and certainly we are supportive of putting a close to the abusive nature of time allocation and closure, the Liberal Party is limiting the motion to just two bills?

[Privilege, April 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I must say I am rising today with great exasperation and frustration on a question of privilege pursuant to section 48(1) of the Standing Orders, regarding misleading information that the Minister of State for Democratic Reform has provided to the House. I say I am exasperated because members know as well as I do that in the past few months, my colleagues and I from the NDP official opposition caucus have had to stand up many times in the House to denounce misleading comments by members of the opposite side.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to read from a statement you made yesterday in the House: “As has been suggested, the information shared in this House does hold extraordinary value as it forms the basis upon which decisions are made in the House”.

Mr. Speaker, you will recall that we raised a similar question of privilege in March 2012 with regard to the comments made by the then minister of Human Resources and Social Development, who said that there was no quota system for recovering EI payments when in fact there was.

We also raised a similar question of privilege in October 2013, when we brought to the House's attention the Prime Minister's misleading statements concerning his office's involvement in the Wright-Duffy scandal.

We raised a question on the 100% fabricated evidence from the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, who said in this House he had witnessed cases of voter fraud when, in fact, he simply had not.

Finally, just two weeks ago we raised a similar question regarding misleading comments from the minister of state for finance, who manipulated numbers to justify his party's opposition to the NDP's CPP expansion plan.

My colleagues and I do not just raise these questions of privilege for fun, far from it. I would rather not have to rise in the House and waste the precious little time that we are given for debates—which is often cut short by this government—to ask the House to look into misleading comments once again made by a minister.

However, as the opposition House leader, it is my duty to raise these questions and to hold the government responsible for what it tells the House and Canadians.

Therefore, it is with some irritation that I want to present to you today the facts concerning the specific case at hand: the comments made by the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.

During question period in this House on Wednesday, April 2, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform was asked why he was ready to disenfranchise thousands of Canadians by removing voter ID cards as possible forms of identification for voters. This is what the member replied on April 2:

There are regular reports of people receiving multiple cards and using them to vote multiple times. That, too, can be found on the Elections Canada website.

If this were true, it would indeed be concerning. As we all know, voting multiple times is a serious legal offence. That is why the NDP followed up on his statement. We searched Elections Canada's website and we asked witnesses at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, currently studying Bill C-23, if there were, in fact, cases of people using multiple cards to vote multiple times.

The answer we found is unambiguous. There is only one documented case of this, as we well know, which was a gag by the Quebec TV show Infoman. Therefore, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform is blatantly misleading the House when he said there are “regular reports” of voters voting multiple times.

We tried to give the minister of state a chance to correct the record during question period on April 3, the following day, when the leader of the official opposition, the NDP leader, asked him to give us examples of these “regular reports of people receiving multiple cards and using them to vote multiple times”. At that time, the minister of state actually changed his story.

On April 3, he replied:

In fact, there are documented cases where people received multiple voter information cards. I gave the example, which was documented by the French CBC, where two Montrealers each received two voter information cards and therefore each voted twice.

In his reply, the minister of state could only resort to citing, again, one single example that exists of voters voting multiple times, but he changed his story from “regular reports of people receiving multiple cards and using them to vote multiple times” to “cases where people received multiple voter information cards”.

In his answer on April 2, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform was referring to the reports showing that there are cases of people receiving more than one voter card. However, none of these reports say that the people in question actually used these to vote more than once. The minister of state knew this, and therefore misled the House when he manipulated the information to add, from his own fertile imagination, that people had used their voter cards to vote multiple times.

Mr. Speaker, if you are still not convinced, allow me to tell you about the many witnesses who appeared before the committee and who all told us that there was no evidence of systemic or organized voter fraud.

Harry Neufeld, the former chief electoral officer of British Columbia, said:

“There was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”, in the cases he reviewed, and that he has “only been privy to a handful of cases of voter fraud” in his entire career.

Marc Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer of Elections Canada, also said that there was no systemic or organized voter fraud.

How, then, can the Minister of State for Democratic Reform claim that Elections Canada has documented multiple cases of voter fraud?

I will not take the time here today to mention all the precedents where it was found that prima facie contempt had occurred when members misled the House. I will spare members in the House from that today, since we have talked about those cases before when other similar incidents occurred, incidents which are unfortunately far too frequent.

Let me simply remind the House that, according to the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, on page 115, “...Misleading a Minister or a Member has also been considered a form of obstruction and thus a prima facie breach of privilege”.

Moreover, and this is the essence of the matter, the Parliamentary Practice, 22nd edition, by Erskine May states the following on page 63 that “...it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity”.

Mr. Speaker, I see that you are getting tired of this, as are New Democrats, and so are Canadians. Canadians are tired of the misleading comments from the other side. We are tired of the Conservative government’s misleading the House in order to justify its wrong-headed policies.

The opposition to the unfair elections act is mounting and virtually unanimous. Conservatives stand to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters who, by many assessments, are coincidentally not usually Conservative voters. To justify this, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform had to resort to making up stories in the House because he simply could not find real evidence to bring forward. All he has is one single gag by Infoman.

The Minister of State for Democratic Reform has, one, offered misleading statements to the House; two, did so knowingly; and, three, he did so with the deliberate intent to mislead parliamentarians. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I ask you to find that a prima facie contempt of the House exists in this case.

More than that, Mr. Speaker, since the problem of ministers knowingly misleading the House seems to be becoming endemic in the Conservative government, I would appreciate receiving guidance from you as to how we can put an end to the practice of government benches providing misleading information to parliamentarians and to the Canadian public.

[Points of Order, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it was a highly inappropriate gesture, and we believe that the Minister of International Trade owes the member for Churchill an apology.

After the member for Scarborough Southwest spoke, members on the government side completely overreacted.

The member for Kelowna—Lake Country came in through the opposition lobby and attempted to “get at” the member for Scarborough Southwest, who was sitting in the House at the time. I and the member for Sudbury had to escort him out of the House of Commons and back into the opposition lobby.

I had no sooner returned to my seat when I saw the Minister of International Trade, also standing in front of the member for Scarborough Southwest—he had crossed the floor—making what can only be called threatening and intimidating gestures. I also had to escort him across to the government side.

It is highly inappropriate for that minister and that member of Parliament to attempt to intimidate opposition members.

Sadly, today is International Anti-Bullying Day.

This is not the first time that government members have crossed the floor inappropriately. It has to stop. There is no excuse for this behaviour.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read into the record your statement on decorum in the House that you made on Wednesday, December 12, 2012. You said at that time:

My task as Speaker is to ensure that the intensity of feeling expressed around some issues is contained within the bounds of civility without infringing on the freedom of speech that members enjoy. The Chair tries to ensure that our rules are adhered to in a way that encourages mutual respect.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to you today: you must ensure that civility.

Therefore, we ask you: how will you ensure that civility and what will you do to stop incidents of this sort from occurring in the House of Commons again?

[Points of Order, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order to denounce the deplorable action by some government members this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, you will recall that the member for Scarborough Southwest raised a perfectly legitimate point of order on the issue of an inappropriate gesture made by the Minister of International Trade toward the member for Churchill earlier today. The minister has denied the gesture, but given the screen shot and the video that are currently circulating in the media and social media, he may want to revise his response of earlier today.

It was a highly inappropriate gesture—

[Points of Order, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I found the point of order raised by the member for Malpeque to be very compelling. I did not find the intervention from the government House leader very convincing at all.

We would like to look at the blues, and I will be coming back in short order through the course of the session to provide any additional comments as needed.

[Democratic Reform, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's former auditor general, Sheila Fraser, who exposed the Liberal sponsorship scandal, feels that Bill C-23 is an attack on Canadian democracy.

When it came time to go after the Liberals, with good reason, the current Minister of State for Democratic Reform mentioned the former auditor general's name 65 times in the House. Today, he is acting as though she does not even exist.

Will the minister listen to Sheila Fraser and withdraw his bill?

[Democratic Reform, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should stop attacking Sheila Fraser and chief electoral officers from across the country, and witnesses as well, and he should start listening to Canadians.

The minister has been answering questions about Sheila Fraser's stinging criticism by attacking this trusted public figure. We are seeing this again now. He is trying to demonize Elections Canada and attack the credibility of Sheila Fraser.

Sheila Fraser deserves our country's thanks. She stood up against Liberal corruption, and she is getting shameful treatment by the Conservatives. Will the minister now stand up and apologize to Sheila Fraser for his inappropriate comments?

[Democratic Reform, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Sheila Fraser did not pull punches when she was investigating Liberal corruption during the sponsorship scandal. She is a Canadian hero, and she has been clear on the Conservatives' unfair elections act. She calls it an attack on democracy. She is particularly troubled by limitations imposed on the Chief Electoral Officer's independence.

Independent officers of Parliament and the government is now restricting what they can say? It's just so inappropriate.

Does the minister finally understand that his changes are inappropriate and unfair, and will he withdraw his attack on democracy?

[Privilege, April 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will not take too much time, but I want to respond to the government's response to the question of privilege raised by the member for Victoria earlier this week. Having consulted the blues—and I hope this will be part of your decision-making process over the next few days—I can say that very little of what the government actually raised is relevant or pertinent to the question of privilege that was raised by the member for Victoria.

The Conservatives cited some studies that they say purport to reinforce what the Minister of State for Finance might have said, but the reality is that we are dealing with a matter of grave importance, and it is the right of parliamentarians to base our decision-making on sound evidence provided by members from all sides of the House. That is of paramount importance.

There was precedent cited by the member for Victoria that is clear on the point of the importance and the right of parliamentarians to have sound evidence provided by ministers. What we heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, aside from citing a few procedural citations, does not in any way conclusively provide a rebuttal to that point.

The reality is that when there is a matter of debate—for example, the citation of studies that draw different conclusions—it is true that there is no role for the Chair to arbitrate. The parliamentary secretary's evidence on the CPP in this morning's intervention might fall into that category. He cited a report that we may disagree with, but it is fair for him to cite that report.

That is not what the Minister of State for Finance did, and the member for Victoria stated this. The minister clearly misstated the findings of the report done by his own department, and from the access to information request that was concluded, and cited by my colleague from Victoria, it is clear that he did so. The Minister of State for Finance clearly misstated the findings in the knowledge and with the intent to mislead his fellow parliamentarians.

We have not heard an explanation from the minister of state himself as to how he could have been so completely off the mark in citing the study that he did, and because we have not heard that response, I do not think we can reasonably dispose of this matter in any other way besides holding a hearing at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The Minister of State for Finance could come back to the House and say he was not briefed on the file properly and that is why he misled the House, or that he mixed up the facts, or even that he did not understand the conclusions of the report done by his department. It happens sometimes that the members opposite on the government side misstate facts. He could have stated that in the House. He has not done that. Therefore, the intervention this morning by the parliamentary secretary citing numbers from another report simply does not change the fact that the Minister of State for Finance stood in the House and deliberately tried to mislead it in citing a report that simply does not provide the conclusions he stated.

The government may not like the fact that the finance department study confirms the NDP's position that, “In the long run, expanding the CPP would bring economic benefits”. The Conservatives are stuck with that. Just like the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, as members will recall, could not get away with presenting false evidence to support the government's agenda, neither can the Minister of State for Finance do the same. The minister misled the House intentionally. The ATI request proves that fact and despite the intervention by the parliamentary secretary this morning, the reality is that New Democrats believe a prima facie case of breach of privilege exists.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I find it passing strange that the government House leader stood up and gave a speech, one of the few from the government side, and then promptly shut down debate for most of the government and most of the opposition members by putting in place time allocation measures, which means that most Conservatives and most opposition members will not have an opportunity to speak on the bill.

We might ask why, when it is a Conservative budget bill, the Conservatives would want to shut down debate on it. Here is one of the reasons: the foreign account tax compliance act, which is something that has been protested by a million Canadians of American origin in this country, Canadians upon whom penalties are being imposed unilaterally by the IRS.

The Conservatives said that they would stand up against this kind of unilateral action by the American government. In fact, I went to see the American ambassador myself, along with a number of NDP MPs, and we advocated strongly for those one million Canadians.

This Conservative government has sold them out. Basically it is shipping that information to the United States, even though there are constitutional issues and privacy issues.

My question to the hon. government House leader is simply this: is that why the Conservatives want to shut down debate? Is it because they are afraid of those one million Canadians finding out that they were sold out on FATCA?