Peter Van Loan

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, March 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage of the bill.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, March 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of Bill C-22, An Act respecting Canada's offshore oil and gas operations, enacting the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, repealing the Nuclear Liability Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage of the bill.

[Business of the House, March 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I first want to say here what I said on Twitter last week; that is, I would like to thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for the working relationship that we have enjoyed over the last couple of years. I wish him well with his new critic responsibilities.

Now let me thank the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster for his first Thursday question. I welcome the hon. member to his new role as the House leader of the official opposition. I have been told by my staff that he is the tenth House leader from across the aisle with whom I have had the pleasure of working.

While I am confident that his predecessor has briefed him on our government's approach toward facilitating a hard-working, productive, and orderly House of Commons, I see that he has already fallen into one of the grievous errors of his predecessor. For a whole bunch of reasons, I would encourage him to look in some detail at the House of Commons rules and procedures.

For example, he was concerned with time allocation and referred to it again as limiting debate, yet when he reviews the rules, as I know he is going to, and I know he will do that with some enthusiasm in the near term, he will notice citation 533 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, sixth edition, which reminds us that:

Time allocation is a device for planning the use of time during the various stages of consideration of a bill rather than bringing the debate to an immediate conclusion.

That is what we have always tried to do here: schedule debates so that we can make decisions, have fair and adequate debate, and give members of Parliament an opportunity to decide questions. It is not to curtail debate; it is to schedule and facilitate decisions being made. I hope that the member will have regard for those rules, something that had escaped his predecessor.

However, I should say that I do look forward to working with him on our business in the future. That said—and I hope that he will not take personal offence to this—in our scheduling of these matters, we will continue to work off of the Gregorian calendar, not the Julian calendar.

Today, we will continue the third reading debate on Bill C-5, the Offshore Health and Safety Act. Tomorrow, we will start the second reading debate on Vanessa’s law, Bill C-17, the protecting Canadians from unsafe drugs act. Monday will see the third day of second reading debate on Bill C-20, the Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act.

That is one that I know he is a great supporter of.

Tuesday, April 1, shall be the first allotted day. It being April 1 after all, I assume that the NDP will ask us to debate one of its economic policies.

Finally, starting on Wednesday, we will debate our spring budget implementation bill to enact many of the important measures contained in economic action plan 2014, our low-tax plan for Canadians, as we make further progress on balancing the budget in 2015.

I might also add that with regard to the grain situation, Bill C-30 is now before the House. There have been very positive discussions among the parties to date. I hope that they will lead further to being able to have that bill passed through at least second reading on a fairly constructive basis. I hope those discussions will yield fruit, in which case there might be some change to the schedule I have presented to the House today.

[Privilege, March 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to elaborate a little further, because what we essentially have here, raised under the point of order, is actually a debate as to the issue that is in the legislation.

There are some very important facts, though, that have been omitted from the submission. The first fact that was omitted from the submission, and the wording was used very carefully, was that cards like this were not used by Elections Canada for identification at the time, the implication being that there were no such cards. However, there were voter information cards sent out by Elections Canada to electors at that time. They did receive them. Hence the phone call that the hon. member received.

Having been Minister for Democratic Reform in the period after 2006, I can say that the reason Elections Canada can say with certainty that they were not authorized for use as identification is that we had not yet passed into law the requirement for people to show identification when they voted, so of course they were not used for a provision that did not yet exist in the law.

The fact that they were not used for that purpose is a red herring. It is entirely irrelevant. Everybody knows what the practice was in those days. There was no requirement to show identification. What most people did was walk in, take the card they had received at their home, present it, and say that they were there to vote. There was no inquiry into whether that was who they were or not. Elections officials simply accepted the card, and people voted on that basis.

That is why the action to which the hon. member for Edmonton Centre was referring was one whereby somebody was saying that they knew a way that they could probably achieve fraud. The reason they knew this was that anybody who lived in an apartment and who threw away their card was unlikely to bother showing up to vote, so there was a good chance someone else could show up in their name, present their card, and vote.

When we look at all those facts, it is quite clear that nothing the hon. member for Edmonton Centre said was incorrect or misleading in any way. In fact, if someone is misleading right now, it is the individual who is trying to raise the question of privilege. He is the one who is misleading the House, because he is implying there were voter identification provisions that did not exist in the law at the time and he is implying that Elections Canada did not send out such cards, which at that time they did.

I would say that this is an open-and-shut case. There is no question of privilege here to be presented. This is a very different matter from what was raised earlier in the House.

[Privilege, March 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to acquaint myself further with the facts and have a further response to you.

However, I do want to point out that although the member protests greatly that there was no response, in fact there was a response to his question. He is unhappy that the response is not in the detail, and does not provide the information, that he would like.

I would point out that chapter 11, page 522, of the big green book, reads as follows:

There are no provisions in the rules for the Speaker to review government responses to questions. Nonetheless, on several occasions, Members have raised questions of privilege...regarding the accuracy of information contained in responses to written questions; in none of these cases was the matter found to be a prima facie breach of privilege. The Speaker has ruled that it is not the role of the Chair to determine whether or not the contents of documents tabled in the House are accurate nor to “assess the likelihood of an Hon. Member knowing whether the facts contained in the document are correct”.

Again, he did receive a response. His problem is that the response is not as detailed as he might have received on another occasion or that the information is not what he would have liked to have received. However, that is really a debate over the adequacy of the response, not the fact of whether or not there was a response.

We will respond after we have a few more details, as well.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, March 26th, 2014]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act, not more than one further sitting day after the day on which this Order is adopted shall be allotted to the consideration at second reading stage of the Bill; and

that, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the day allotted to the consideration at second reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the Bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

[Privilege, March 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising further to the question of privilege raised yesterday by the hon. member for Wascana on the matter of Russian sanctions.

As discussed yesterday, there were discussions held among the House leaders on arriving at an appropriate resolution for this House to consider. Therefore, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion, which will also be deemed to have been seconded by the hon. member for Wascana and the hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

I move:

That, in view of the sanctions against parliamentarians and other Canadians announced by the Russian government, this House (a) re-affirm its resolution of Monday, March 3, 2014, (b) strongly condemn Russia's continued illegal military occupation of Crimea, (c) call for Russia to de-escalate the situation immediately, and (d) denounce Russia's sanctions against the Speaker and members of the House of Commons, a member of the Senate, public servants and the President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress;

That the Speaker do convey this resolution to the Ambassador of the Russian Federation; and

That a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours accordingly.

[Respect for Communities Act, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

[Privilege, March 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to the point raised by the member for Wascana.

Like you, Mr. Speaker, I am one of the 13 named individuals in the Russian sanctions. This did not come as a great surprise to me. The Russians are well familiar with my concerns about their aggressive posture, their violations of human rights, and the threats they have posed to neighbours and to the sovereignty of neighbouring countries. They pay close attention to it.

I am not the first in my family to find myself on lists that have been prepared by the Russians. In fact, sadly, I follow a long line who have been on such lists, some of whom ultimately had their travel arrangements imposed by the Russians and ended up in gulags in Siberia where they met their end.

Obviously, I take these matters seriously. The freedom and democracy that I care so much about is a large function of that family history and that understanding of history. It is one of the reasons I got involved in politics, recognizing that freedom and democracy are so fragile and easily lost, as is now being experienced by some, and which is very much in question in terms of Russia's actions. It is the reason our government has been responding so forcefully. We feel it is necessary across the board.

The question becomes in these circumstances: what is the appropriate response for us?

Part of that response is to come from our government, and our government has been leading that very effectively. I am very proud of our Prime Minister's work in leading our G7 partners to the conclusions they have arrived at in ensuring Russia's suspension from the G8 and that other sanctions have been put in place.

While Canada perhaps would have liked to have moved faster and earlier on some of these matters, the benefit of the Prime Minister's leadership has been to ensure that we have a broader embrace and a more united front. That united front is an important part of the resolve that must be shown.

The question for us in this House becomes the appropriate type of response to have.

I think it is important that we have a response that is clear and united, and where this House really does speak with one voice. That is why we have proposed to the other parties that we meet, as we will be later today as House leaders, to discuss the potential for a motion on which this House can give unanimous consent to address a specific offence, not against Canada or Canada's foreign policy position but on the question of sanctions as they affect this House in particular, and the most appropriate way of doing so.

I would certainly like the opportunity to continue to pursue those discussions to ensure this House can speak with one voice, a clear principled voice, in favour of the democracy that we are lucky to have been enjoying here for so many years. The reason my family came to this country was to enjoy the freedom and democracy they had lost at home, and which remains at risk for many. We must ensure this is done in a fashion that is not with partisan advantage in mind, but rather one that is a clear message, a strong message, a united message, and one that can be taken seriously by all those who look at it.

I would be pleased to have the opportunity to have those discussions with the other parties, and I hope we will be able to come back to this House with an appropriate resolution.