Peter Kent

[Ethics, October 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister's apparent wilful disregard of the Conflict of Interest Act raises some serious questions. Did the minister intentionally mislead the Ethics Commissioner about the nature of his private interests in France? Why did he withhold details of his private corporation in France? Why does this extremely wealthy minister believe he is above conflict of interest and ethics reporting rules?

[Government Spending, September 27th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, here is another question on the Liberals' wastage of hard-earned tax dollars in trying to cover up political problems. There was $10 million in an attempted secret payoff to Omar Khadr, millions to fight indigenous children and women in court, and almost half a million dollars to a defeated Liberal candidate for a PR campaign to fight a tribunal ruling in favour of indigenous children.

Why is the Prime Minister robbing the middle class to pay for Liberal profligacy?

[Venezuela, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, when I tabled brought Motion No. 128 with the House in the spring it was to urge the government to respond more actively to the ever-deepening crisis in Venezuela. This is a continuing crisis, not only in terms of the brutal denial of democratic process, free speech, free assembly, and the rule of law, but also because of the humanitarian tragedy that worsens by the day.

Let me offer congratulations to the government for finally acting to impose targeted sanctions against some of the worst abusers of human and democratic rights in the Maduro regime, starting with President Nicolás Maduro himself. The Canadian sanctions have been properly hailed by Venezuelans living under Maduro's increasingly violent oppression, and by the thousands of Venezuelans living in Canada who contribute so much to our society while dreaming of a day when democracy will return to their homeland.

I will come back to Canada's newest sanctions and the challenge of enforcing them in a few moments. First, I remind members that the extreme socialist policies, corruption, and cruelty of President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez have imposed incredible suffering on the people of Venezuela, once the richest nation in Latin America but now overwhelmed by inflation that the International Monetary Fund predicts will hit 721% by the end of this year, and 2,000% by the end of next year if this tragedy continues.

Extreme shortages of food and medicines, the result of the Maduro regime's imposition of extreme and often contradictory socialist policies, have resulted in chronic malnutrition among children and adults. At least 125 people have died in five months of increasingly deadly street protests in the capital of Caracas and in communities across the country.

The people have been demanding a new presidential and national election that would be internationally observed, freedom for jailed politicians and pro-democracy advocates, and humanitarian aid from the international community for the sick and hungry masses.

OAS Secretary General Almagro has announced the creation of a panel to evaluate ways of taking Venezuela to the International Criminal Court. It is worth noting that our former colleague and human rights champion Irwin Cotler is one of those panel members. As noted earlier by my colleague, the United Nations potentially has the clout to intervene, but so far the democracies among its members have limited themselves to verbal concerns and calls for reconciliation.

The United States imposed targeted sanctions against individuals identified with the Maduro regime repression some months ago. The Liberals, while saying then that it was impossible to follow suit under our existing dysfunctional sanctions regime, finally announced that they could. They did so late on Friday afternoon last week, though a day after the missed opportunity for the Prime Minister to tell the world at the United Nations.

It is true that Canada's new Magnitsky legislation will soon make it easier to designate and enforce sanctions against gross individual abusers of human rights, not only in Venezuela but around the world. However, first the Liberal government needs to heed the recommendations of the foreign affairs committee's report on much needed sanctions reform and not only name sanctioned individuals but also specify the reasons they are listed, and direct government departments and agencies to devote much greater effort and resources to monitor and enforce sanctions.

With regard to potential additions to the new list of sanctioned Venezuelans, I respectfully suggest to the government that it direct responsible agencies to investigate allegations made in testimony before the foreign affairs committee of the House last November 2 of the alleged movement and laundering of many millions of dollars of fraudulently obtained Venezuelan funds through an American company Derwick Associates, and a Canadian entity known as The O'Hara Group. The testimony, along with the names of alleged perpetrators, can be found in the foreign affairs committee transcript of November 2 last year and in testimony before the U.S. Senate judiciary committee in July this year.

In conclusion, I call on all members to support Motion No. 128 calling on the government to actively work to develop a plan with our democratic allies in the Americas and around the world to provide urgently needed humanitarian aid and to support and demand free and fair elections in Venezuela.

[Venezuela, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I give my consent with enthusiasm.

[Justice, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government is very selective in its approach to the economics of justice. The Liberals spend millions fighting clearly losing battles in court against indigenous children and women, but the Liberals abandoned a principled defence of Omar Khadr's extravagant claim with a $10-million payoff they tried to keep secret. The public safety minister blithely claims that, by caving on Khadr, he saved taxpayers millions. That is an unacceptable answer while the government moves to tax Canadian small businesses literally to death. How is that fair?

[Access to Information Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend speaks to the matters of information in Bill C-58, the considerations included and not included, with the authority of his personal history. Yes, that is exactly the suggestion that has been made, not only by my hon. friend but by experts across the country that, in fact, the appeal process should be directly to the Information Commissioner who, with the authority of the position, would make a decision one way or the other.

It is true that the statistics do not show great continuing volume of frivolous and vexatious questions. However, I can say that there are times, as in our previous government, when certain interest groups will deluge certain ministries with what can only be considered frivolous and vexatious requests.

[Access to Information Act, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, two years of Liberal government should put in the past the schoolyard practices of pointing elsewhere when criticism is presented to the litany of broken promises that it is accumulating.

With regard to frivolous and vexatious questions, I agree that there is often occasion for a good number of such frivolous and vexatious requests for information. I found that in my time in government as a minister. It does represent a continuing problem. The various information authorities across the country have pointed out that in fact Bill C-58 does not have that defined right of appeal to the Information Commissioner. The appeal is not formally implanted in this legislation, and it appears that the word of the minister or the individual department will be considered as final. I am sure this will be brought up in review at the one-year point, although I hope that in committee an amendment will be made to provide for a formalized authority for appeals directly.

[Access to Information Act, September 26th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I will begin by reminding colleagues in the House and all of those watching at home that the hallmark of the Liberal government is broken promises.

To the litany of broken Liberal promises on tax cuts and government spending, electoral reform, revenue-neutral carbon pricing, indigenous matters, restoration of home mail delivery, United Nations peacekeeping, and on open and transparent government, to all of those broken promises we now add the broken Liberal promise on reform to the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.

Bill C-58 is a hefty document. It is 53 pages of amendments to the existing act, definition sections and subsections, terminological changes, and designated duties and exceptions. The President of the Treasury Board tabled a truly weighty bundle of bureaucratese, but it is as light as a feather in terms of undelivered promised content.

To be fair—we in the official opposition do not abuse the meaning of this word, as the Liberals so blatantly do when they recite their speaking points about tax fairness—Bill C-58 does give the Information Commissioner the power to order government departments to release information, but it prevents the commissioner from looking at documents if the government claims they contain cabinet confidences. That represents, in the view of all the experts, the deepest black hole in the ATI system.

When the ethics committee completed its study of this issue last year, chaired by the Conservative member for Red Deer—Lacombe, it made a number of unanimous recommendations in line with recommendations suggested by the Information Commissioner. The ethics committee—Liberal, Conservative, and NDP members—unanimously recommended that legitimate cabinet confidence should be protected. However, at the same time the committee said that much content that is too often shielded on cabinet confidence justifications should be accessible.

Recommendation 23 says:

That the mandatory exemption for Cabinet confidences would not apply to: purely factual or background information; information in a record of decision made by Cabinet or any of its committees on an appeal under an act; where consent is obtained to disclose the information; and information in a record that has been in existence for an appropriate period of time as determined by the government and that this period of time be less than the current 20 years.

All of that advice is ignored in this Liberal bill.

Bill C-58 also falls short on another important recommendation made by the ethics committee, and that involves the matter of a general public interest override. The committee's recommendation stated:

That in the first phase of the reform of the Access to Information Act, the Act be amended to include a general public interest override, applicable to all non-mandatory exemptions, with a requirement to consider the following, non-exhaustive list of factors: Open Government objectives; environmental, health or public safety implications; whether the information reveals human rights abuses or would safeguard the right to life, liberty or security of the person.

That recommendation is also ignored by the Liberals and is not included in Bill C-58.

The Liberals are making much of proactive disclosure provisions in the Access to Information Act provisions. These provisions will require the Senate, the House of Commons, parliamentary entities, ministers' offices, including the PMO, government institutions, and institutions that support superior courts to proactively disclose specific categories of information, such as mandate letters, travel expenses, contracts, documentation on the training of new ministers—and there has perhaps been a deficit in that area with the government—development notes for question period, and boilerplate backgrounders for appearances before parliamentary committees.

That is actually misleading, the so-called opening of ministerial offices to the Access to Information Act.

We remember that the Liberal campaign promise was to ensure that access to information applies to the Prime Minister's Office and the ministers' offices as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and its courts. The proactive disclosure provisions in Bill C-58 do not come anywhere close to fulfilling that promise.

The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has dismissed the so-called proactive provisions as a bizarre sleight of hand, which seems intended to give the false impression of an election promise kept. Compounding the broken promise are the conditions to refuse requests when it comes to requests for information that the Liberals themselves may rule are frivolous or vexatious. Many jurisdictions have provisions to prevent frivolous or vexatious abuses of access to information laws, but that power resides with the Information Commission, not with a minister or department that is the subject of that request.

Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch offered a measured, if critical, assessment of Bill C-58 in saying that the bill proposes good amendments, by requiring a more proactive publication of some information, by giving the Information Commissioner the power to order the publication of some information, but it “does nothing” to fill the huge gaps in the act, as promised by the Liberals.

Stéphane Giroux, president of la Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, offered the federation's assessment of Bill C-58 with droll irony. He said that the most interesting fact for them was to have access to ministers' office documents. However, he concludes it was a false alarm, too good to be true.

A former information commissioner, Robert Marleau, lamented the fact that under Bill C-58, there is no one in government departments to review what they choose not to publish. He said this is contrary to the principle of the act. It puts the commissioner completely out of the loop. If people requested briefing notes previously and parts had been blacked out, they had someone to appeal to. This would be no longer the case, and they cannot even ask in court. Monsieur Marleau concluded, “It is one step forward, two steps back”.

Members will be forgiven if they have lost track of the number of Liberal promises broken, not across the entire Liberal policy spectrum but here in Bill C-58 alone. They may have noticed recently that the Liberals are somewhat sensitive to discussion of the emptiness of their virtue signalling in policy pronouncements. I am sure that this is a phrase that was coined only in the past few years, but it could well have been custom designed for the current Liberal government. Virtue signalling has become a shorthand characterization for the spouting of superficial, platitudinous, supposedly high-minded, morally correct commitments with little intention of fulfilling or living up to these commitments. I am sure members will agree that characterization applies almost top to bottom with the Liberals' 2015 campaign promises. Much was promised, as I detailed in my opening remarks, with regard to tax cuts and government spending, electoral reform, revenue-neutral carbon pricing, indigenous matters, restoration of home mail delivery, United Nations peacekeeping, and open and transparent government; but precious little has been delivered. There have been so many promises blithely broken.

Bill C-58 is a perfect example of virtue signalling in the promises of great reform, transparency, and openness in Canadians' access to information. The reality is, as has been said so often in this debate on Bill C-58, one step forward and several steps back.

[Justice, September 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals abandoned the court of law to offer a $10.5 million settlement payoff to Omar Khadr, a confessed terrorist. The Liberals chose not to defend Omar Khadr's outrageous claim. They just wanted it all to go away. Then the Liberals tried to hide this extravagant, outrageous payoff from Canadians and Americans.

Did the cabinet follow this deceitful course while knowing of Mr. Khadr's victims' outstanding court order claims against him?

[Ethics, September 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Indigenous Services filed her public declaration of assets with the Ethics Commissioner on February 26, 2016. In that disclosure, the minister said there was a compliance agreement permitting her to continue as president, treasurer, secretary, and director of her professional corporation until August 3, 2016.

Did the minister recuse herself from any discussions involving tax changes between November 4, 2015, and August 3, 2016?