Randall Garrison

[Rail Transportation, December 15th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things we would like for Christmas on Vancouver Island was not on the House leader's list. We would like our passenger rail service back. Four months ago, this service came to a halt. I last asked the government in November when it would commit to its share of funding for this rail bed repair. Still I received no answer. Traffic in my riding is already at a gridlock state and when the shipbuilding begins, we need alternatives for commuters and freight.

Will the government now commit to funding its share of the necessary repairs for the E&N railway corridor and to getting this project under way? Or will it continue to risk delays in shipbuilding because of growing congestion outside the shipyard gates?

[Fair Representation Act, December 6th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Papineau, with his magical solution that the Liberals have come up with of a smaller House that has no impact on representation.

I am a member who represents a riding that stretches from urban into rural areas. The obvious impact of keeping the House at 308 would be to not really recognize the geographic fact of this country, that we have some very large geography to cover, and it is not just cultural representation. Therefore, when the number of seats are reduced in provinces, like Manitoba or Saskatchewan, we will come up against some very large and difficult to represent rural ridings.

If the seats are redistributed in British Columbia without increasing the number, then we would also come up with the same kind of unrepresentable ridings in northern and interior British Columbia.

Has the member really considered the impact of keeping the numbers the same in the rural parts of the provinces?

[Fair Representation Act, December 6th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's speech and I thank him for the recognition he gave to what should be going on in the Conservative bill as nation building and not just some kind of juggling act where every time the Conservative government brings forward a bill it has a different set of numbers in it. I agree with him on the question of proportionality.

Many members in the House have been talking about the large number and extra number of politicians. For me, coming from British Columbia where we are severely under-represented, I would like to see more MPs. Would the member agree with me that one of the things we could do is abolish the Senate where both British Columbia and Ontario are severely under-represented. We could more than compensate for the number of new MPs by getting rid of the unelected Senate.

[Health, November 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives promised there would be no cuts to the Public Health Agency of Canada, but now they have said there will be new criteria and a new application process for HIV-AIDS funding. The clock is ticking, yet the Conservatives still have not said what those criteria are, or even how to apply.

HIV-AIDS community organizations are now concerned they will have to close their doors and cut community services before they can even submit applications. Why are the Conservatives putting HIV-AIDS community services at risk?

[Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, November 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-215, which, earlier today, I had the honour of seconding.

The bill would end pension clawbacks from our military and RCMP veterans and from those with significant disabilities. The bill in its first incarnation was introduced by the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore in 2005 and he has re-introduced this bill in each of the Parliaments since then. I thank him for doing that. It has been part of the member's work that he has taken on this House as being a champion for veterans in all areas. I thank him and congratulate him for the work that he has done.

The members on the other side like to say that there has been some kind of vacuum on this bill. I just want to point out that its previous incarnation, which came forward for its first debate in March 2009 and then came back in May, was passed by the House of Commons by of a vote of, I believe, 139 to 129. It then went off to committee where there was a toing and froing and machinations. It came back to the House without what is called a royal recommendation.

Stripping away all those technicalities, what it means is that the government did not support the bill. It argued that it was necessary to expend public funds and, therefore, the government would not let it proceed further.

I must say at this point that, when the Conservatives took over government from the Liberals, I thought there would be one thing that they would be better on than the Liberals have ever been and I thought that would be on the treatment of the military and veterans. On some fronts, yes, it is true that there have been some improvements, but this case is one, unfortunately, where the veterans have not received the fair treatment that I thought a Conservative government would have given them.

I will not review the list of things that I see right now that are a crisis for veterans but I do need to mention what is taking place right now with cuts to Veterans Affairs. The government has proposed taking $223 million away from the Department of Veterans Affairs and says that somehow this will not impact services for veterans. It is very hard to see how that could possibly happen.

On this side of the House, the NDP has called for exempting Veterans Affairs from the government's program review and to maintain the spending on those who served our country so well for so many years.

Now, rather than continue down this road talking about the deficiencies in treatment of veterans, I would like to treat this as an opportunity for all of us to do better by veterans, both military and RCMP. We need to remember that we are talking about those who have served more than 20 years for their country.

This brings us to one of those myths, the myth about the number of people affected by this bill. It is not hundreds of thousands as the other side likes to imply. It is not that total of more than 700,000 retired military and RCMP veterans. It applies only to the 96,000 who retired with over 20 years of service and, of course, to future retirees who will then have 25 years of service.

The bill is not proposed to be retroactive, which leads to the related myth about costs. At one point, even the government admitted that the real cost would be about $100 million a year. The member for Sackville—Eastern Shore has certainly shown us how this could be a revenue neutral process. Chief among those measures to ensure that would be true is to stop charging the premiums for unemployment insurance, which members of the military and the RCMP could never collect, and shift those premiums over to cover the cost of this fair treatment for veterans with such long service.

The second point would be to focus on the net cost to government. Certainly, by increasing pension payments, this would lead to lower costs for governments in many other areas. Both federal and province governments would save money by paying these extra pension benefits for which members of the armed services and the RCMP have already paid through deductions off their paycheques.

When the government says that it would be necessary to raise contributions to cover future costs, I am not convinced. The facts say otherwise. And, when I talk to veterans in my riding, they are not convinced.

I will now talk about some of the many veterans from whom I have heard. My friend, Doug Grant, is the manager of the Esquimalt Legion Dockyard Branch No. 172. Doug gave me permission to tell a little bit of his story. He started his story by asking me what I was doing in 1962 when he was serving in the Canadian navy in the Caribbean as part of the Cuban missile crisis that threatened armed confrontation and even nuclear war.

I stopped Mr. Grant to point out that I was in elementary school. However, since that time I have studied Canadian history and I have also been a participant in international human rights missions. I know from the field, both in East Timor and Afghanistan, the great dangers and sacrifices that the members of our military put forward on our behalf.

I know that many veterans in my riding, who continue to write to me and call for an end to this cutback, are not asking for something they do not deserve, they are not asking for something they have not earned and they are not even asking for something for which they have not paid.

I will read one last quote. I will not name this resident because I do not have his permission. He said, “As a resident of Colwood and a current serving member of the Royal Canadian Navy, I ask that you support Bill C-215. ... And now after contributing independently to both my superannuation and CPP for 34 years, I will have both reduced to the equivalent of my military pension upon turning 65. I know the country has huge financial demands but I wish the reigning government would respect their members of the military and RCMP and not use them like a piggy bank and not try to ignore the surplus in their pension funds”.

I call on members of all parties in the House, because this is a private member's bill, to vote their conscience and vote in favour of those who have given so much service to our country, more than 20 years in the military and the RCMP, correct this injustice and immediately end this clawback to their pensions.

[Rail Transportation, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, let us talk about who is actually shutting down economic activity in my riding.

Let us talk about the rail service on Vancouver Island, which was guaranteed to British Columbia as part of Confederation. That rail service was shut down in April due to a lack of funding to repair the railbed. Now the bud cars that provided that service have actually been removed from Vancouver Island. That is not a good sign.

The owner of the track, the Island Corridor Foundation, is ready to go. The province, on June 28, provided a commitment to its share of the funding and is ready to go. All we are missing is action by the Conservative government.

Will the Conservative government now commit to providing its share, the $7.5 million that is needed to get this line running again or—

[Transgender Day of Remembrance, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I stand today to recognize November 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is a day when people in communities across Canada and around the world gather to remember the victims of transphobic violence and to dedicate themselves to working to end all forms of discrimination against transgender and transsexual people.

The House will have an opportunity to take an important step toward ensuring full equality by including gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act when my private member's bill comes forward in the new year.

Other actions are needed to help end discrimination in the workplace, in housing, in health care, in the justice system, and in the provision of identity documents.

Let us remember that transgender and transsexual Canadians are members of our families. They are our neighbours. They are our co-workers. They are our friends. Canada is richer for their life experience and the many ways they contribute to our communities. On the Transgender Day of Remembrance, they also help us to understand our own humanity and the full meaning of equality.

New Democrats are honoured to stand in solidarity with transgender Canadians on this important day.

[Business of Supply, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the Liberals and Conservatives blaming each other for inaction on drinking water on first nations reserves.

I would like to take this opportunity to draw attention to the Pacheedaht First Nation in my riding. I met with its representatives last week. They have been waiting for more than a decade for a solution to their drinking water problems. Right now they run a rudimentary system of one pump and a backup. The backup no longer works.

If that fails, there will be an immediate health crisis on the Pacheedaht First Nation. It has had a proposal in to build its own filtration plant with new pumps. The proposal has been with INAC for five months. It is still waiting for an answer.

The last time the pumps broke down, it spent two years on bottled water. In that two years, INAC spent more than twice the amount of money on bottled water than it would have spent to build the filtration plant.

There is a great deal of frustration because the attitude at INAC seems to be that once again they are looking for a feasibility study from the regional district or a private company. INAC lacks confidence in the Pacheedaht First Nation to build and run its own system. This problem could have been solved years ago.

I would ask the member whether it is simply a technical problem or a coordination problem, or is it really a failure to trust a first nation and give it the resources it needs to solve its own problems?

[Justice, November 14th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, within the last month, courts on Vancouver Island had to dismiss two serious drunk driving cases due to court delays. B.C. provincial jails, like Wilkinson Road Jail in my riding, are already at more than 200% over capacity, with the result being five riots in the system in the last two years. Now the government's ineffective, high-cost omnibus crime bill would put even more strain on our justice system.

Can the Minister of Justice explain to Canadians why the government is so determined to put corrections officers at even greater risk, and can he explain why he is pressing ahead with Bill C-10 when he should know it will put courts in the position of having to dismiss hundreds of serious criminal cases due to lack of resources?

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, November 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks from the hon. parliamentary secretary. My question involves the review that was done by the hon. Mr. Justice Lamer submitted in 2003. That review contained some 88 recommendations, a few of which are covered in Bill C-16 and some in Bill C-15, but it seems the government has substituted its judgment for Mr. Justice Lamer in omitting some of those.

As well, in his report there were many things in the recommendations the government could do without legislation, including increasing resources to the military justice system which apparently the government has failed to do in that intervening time period.

Why have there been these omissions of recommendations from the bill and why has the government not acted on those recommendations which do not require legislation?