Randall Garrison

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, when the defence committee was in discussions with NATO commander Admiral Gortney, who was the commander until last Friday, he took a lot of us by surprise by suggesting that NORAD was working on a proposal that would see folding sea, maritime, and land defence into the NATO command and establishing a joint command for the defence of North America.

I asked him very clearly if this was unclassified, if I was able to make this public, and he said yes. He said that the proposal will come forward to the Permanent Joint Board on Defence at its next meeting.

Given that one of the options in that proposal being considered is to turn over the defence of Canada to a U.S. command, will the minister assure us now that he will not take part in any such plan to turn over Canada's sovereignty and its defence to an American general?

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, there is a bigger concern for me, apart from the specifics of a non-working, very expensive system in which Canada would have no voice in its command, and that is the impact it would have on the larger arms race around the world. It is certainly true that building bigger and better BMD systems can only lead other nations like Russia and China to try to increase their offensive capabilities. Canada, by even opening this door, provides some leverage for those who would like to get into a large arms race.

So, again, has the minister really considered the impact of opening this door in terms of Canadian participation in ballistic missile defence? Would it not have been better to consider whether we could not do something multilaterally to try to reduce this arms race rather than promote it?

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, we have heard repeatedly in committee from both military witnesses and civilian experts that Canada faces no imminent threat from ballistic missiles. It seems to me that, when we have many other major questions that we need to be discussing, this is some kind of diversion for us to spend a lot of our efforts on the defence review, on something that addresses a threat that does not really exist to Canada at this time.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, when the defence committee was down at NORAD headquarters, we were briefed on the meagre success rate, I would call it, of the U.S. missile defence system. It is public knowledge that only four of its eight tests were successful, and in those tests it actually knew where the missiles were coming from and what trajectory they were on and it still only managed to hit 50%.

We are looking at participating in something that might cost us an enormous amount of money, and we are investing really in a system that clearly does not work.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, if we listen carefully to the minister and Liberal members on the defence committee, the government seems very enthusiastic about getting to yes on this question, so I will ask again. Why would we reopen this question when the defence committee heard very clearly in Colorado Springs that there has been no request from the United States for Canada to join the ballistic missile defence system?

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, that leads to my next question. The biggest surprise for me in the defence review was the fact that it puts on the table another potential decision that requires both operating money and capital money at a time when both are very scarce. That is reopening the question of participation in the U.S. missile defence scheme, I guess I will call it.

Given the pressing need for capital and operating expenditures from ships to jets, to new trucks, to north warning, all of these things we need to do, why would the government put on the table another very expensive capital and operating project?

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Madam Chair, I am going to start with a brief statement and then go to questions for the minister.

I want to start, like all members of Parliament, by thanking the Canadian Forces for the job they do every day in keeping us safe, and also the civilian employees who often get left out of these debates but who make the functioning of the forces possible, and of course, the families of both, who make all of this possible with the sacrifices they make.

I also want to thank the minister for his initiatives in reaching out to members across the aisle and making himself accessible and the bases accessible. It is a refreshing change in the new Parliament and I thank him personally for doing so.

There are some other things I might not thank him for. The government appears to be continuing with some of the things that the Conservatives did. The main theme is asking the Canadian military to do more with less. We know that the dollars provided in the budget actually are not increases. They do not come near keeping pace with the inflation rate in military expenditures, and we know that there are going to have to be some cuts made somewhere in the Canadian military. I guess we will see those later.

Of most concern to me is the reprofiling, as the government likes to call it, whether it was a Conservative government or a Liberal government, of the capital expenditures. We are now to the place where $10.4 billion in expenditures have been put off beyond the next election.

Is the Minister of National Defence convinced that we have enough life left in our F-18s, our frigates, and our long-range patrol aircraft to keep the Canadian military fully functional while we wait for these important procurement decisions to be made and while we look for the money, since it has been put off to an indefinite future?

The classic way to extend the life of military equipment is to reduce the hours. Are we facing an air force that is going to have to reduce its flying hours and a navy that is going to have to reduce its time at sea because of these delays in procurement?

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, May 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I find the remarks of the hon. President of the Treasury Board interesting, because on one hand he says we do not want to impose something different on the RCMP than other unions have, and that was in response to the official opposition proposal and, on the other hand, he just stood up and said, “I want to impose something different on the RCMP than the Public Service Labour Relations Act.”

What the Liberals have done in this bill, of course, is to take some things out of collective bargaining that are quite normal for all unions to bargain, including police unions. Every other existing police union bargains on the things that have been excluded.

Obviously, we need more debate here, so that we can make it clear to the Liberals that in fact they are trying to establish something different and much more limited, by taking things like harassment out of collective bargaining, restricting the rights of the RCMP, and perhaps even causing another court case.

[Justice, May 10th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, during the election, the Liberals promised to add gender identity to the human rights code and to the hate crimes section of the Criminal Code.

In February, the Minister of Justice told us that she would introduce legislation to protect gender identity and gender expression. Last week, the urgent need for these protections was underlined when the Montreal clinic performing gender-affirming surgery, the only such clinic in Canada, was targeted by arson.

The need is urgent. Will the government bring forward this legislation now to help prevent these kinds of hate crimes in the future?

[Criminal Code, April 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the member on his very thoughtful speech today, and thank him for the work that he did on the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying along with the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot on behalf of our caucus. The committee was so ably chaired by the member for Don Valley West, whom I also wish to thank for his work on behalf of this chamber.

My question has to do with conversations I had with two constituents who are facing the issue of physician-assisted dying, and the case of my own mother last fall. This has to do with the advance consent notion.

I am going to use the case of my mother because I know it so well. She had medical conditions that were going to lead her to a position where it was going to be difficult to continue living, and she also had dementia. She wished to give consent in advance before the dementia got so bad that she could no longer give consent. When her other medical conditions advanced, she was no longer competent, so we were faced with very difficult decisions as a family, but what we did know was her very clear statements before of what she wished to have happen.

How would the bill deal with very difficult situations like this? Did the Supreme Court decision deal with these kinds of cases?