Robert Aubin

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2, October 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is with mixed emotions that I rise to speak to Bill C-43. First of all, I would like to sincerely thank my colleague from Surrey North who agreed to share his time with me so that I could rise in the House to speak to a bill as important as the budget implementation bill—or at least, that is what it is supposed to be.

At the same time, I am extremely frustrated, because not only will I not have enough time in these 10 minutes to say everything I have to say and speak on behalf of my constituents in the House on this measure, but many of my colleagues are also being muzzled and will simply not be allowed to speak—not to mention that this is the 80th time this has happened in this Parliament.

The democratic rights of all Canadians are being trampled here, not just those of the members who represent them in the House. It is frustrating. I hope the message is being heard and that in 2015, we will have a government that respects democracy under the leadership of the member for Outremont, who has proven himself in the past and who upholds the values that Canadians and Quebeckers want to see reflected in their democratic institutions.

The budget bill is without a doubt a fundamentally important tool that allows Parliament to debate the government's fiscal policies and its public policy decisions. However, the form of the bill has to be conducive to transparent debate and consistent with our democracy, as I was saying earlier.

Once again the government is introducing a mammoth piece of legislation with only one objective, namely to stifle debate and prevent us from truly discussing the scope of this bill. In this bill we find another series of features that are the hallmark of this government's bills, namely time allocation motions for the most important bills, which we should be discussing for much longer. We have spent more time in the House debating bills that are just a few pages long than this one, which is between 400 and 450 pages.

I am certainly not saying that a bill that is just a few pages long is less important, but it is easy to see how the math works. We should devote less time to studying five pages than 400 pages. It makes perfect sense. Anyone who knows basic math can figure that out.

There are also many laws that will be affected, amended or even created by this inappropriate bill that introduces new measures that were not announced in the budget. Furthermore, the bill concentrates powers in the hands of the minister and also includes some bills that, logically, should not be studied by the Standing Committee on Finance, but by other House committees that carry out in-depth studies of important issues concerning the environment, transportation and other areas.

We will have one vote on the set of measures contained in this bill, and we will say yes or no. We no longer have any illusions, and everyone figured out years ago that the Conservatives' strategy is to stuff as much as possible into one bill, including bills and reasonable amendments that deserve to be supported as well as bitter pills that obviously are unacceptable.

The ultimate and purely political objective is not to put in place the best law with the best amendments, but to rise as often as possible in the House to say that the NDP voted against it. However, the solution is quite simple: we should split this bill and study the different measures on their own merits.

If we were to do that, Canadians would see two things: the NDP will support measures that make sense and can amend bills in order to improve them, and our democracy and our system can function properly. However, the government does not seem to want that.

As my party's employment insurance critic, I want to focus on one specific proposal in this mammoth bill.

In keeping with its firmly entrenched practice, the Conservative government, through this bill, is once again using the employment insurance fund for something other than its intended purpose. This time, the government is creating a tax credit for small businesses whose EI premiums are less than $15,000 a year. The Minister of Finance claims that this measure will create jobs.

This measure for small businesses is the same one that was brought in a few months or even years earlier to grant credits to big businesses. The former minister of finance urged big business to reinject that dead money into the economy. The government does not seem to learn from its mistakes; it is taking that measure for big business and applying it to small business, even though it will get the same poor results.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is neutral and capable, has flat out denied this claim. He said that just 800 jobs will be created at the expense of workers' contributions, and he provided figures to support this statement. Furthermore, each of these jobs would cost on average $555,000.

If I were given $550,000 to create jobs in a struggling region like mine, where the unemployment rate is high, I would not be creating one job—I would be creating 10, 12, 14 or 15 stable, permanent jobs.

However, it seems that, once again, that is not the path that the Conservatives chose to take. In other words, the Conservatives are attacking employment insurance on all sides. What is more, they froze employment insurance contribution rates. That may seem like a good idea, but in reality, 10,000 jobs will be lost in 2015 and 2016 because of the current employment insurance measures and the frozen contribution rates.

I am not the one saying this. I also took this information from a report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The Conservatives have maintained artificially high employment insurance contribution rates, which means that the amount of money going into the fund will be much greater than what is necessary to cover the benefits that will be paid out under the Conservative reform.

Some might say that it is good that the fund is running a surplus. However, workers will be contributing more than necessary, which will weaken their purchasing power and decrease market opportunities for the products produced by these same companies.

I have a lot more to say, but since time is short I will just comment briefly on the measure pertaining to the Social Security Tribunal. Bill C-43 indicates that new money will be invested in hiring people to deal with the backlog of cases before the tribunal.

This seems like a good thing, and it seems as though the Conservatives have finally understood what is needed, but the problem is much more serious than that. The Social Security Tribunal has such complex measures that since it was created, many workers, who are unfortunately without jobs, have given up their right to benefits.

What is more, just this morning, a report published in Le Devoir by a research group at the Université du Québec à Montréal indicated that:

...the avenues for redress are less accessible and less effective, which is depriving even more people of their right to benefits and forcing them to accept whatever job they can get because they do not have any other source of income...

The government therefore has not fixed any problems in Bill C-43.

It is all well and good to hire a few extra people, but how long will it take to train them before they become effective? We saw how long it took to fill all the positions.

I will stop there, but there is still so much to say and there are so many criticisms I could make. Clearly, I am going to vote against this bill. I will now let some of my other colleagues speak. I hope that they will be given 10 minutes to express their views.

[Interparliamentary Delegations, October 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the reports of the delegation of the Canadian branch of the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie concerning its participation at the meeting of the Cooperation and Development Committee of the APF, held in Lomé, Togo, from April 14 to 16, 2014, and the meeting of the Parliamentary Affairs Committee of the APF, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, from April 27 to 29, 2014.

[Employment Insurance, October 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as usual, the Conservatives and the Liberals want to dip freely into the EI fund. This time, it is to finance their so-called job creation plan.

An economist called the Liberals' plans an election gimmick, while the Parliamentary Budget Officer has revealed that the Conservatives' plan will cost half a million dollars per job. In short, these are two bad plans funded with money that belongs to unemployed workers.

How can the Conservatives justify using workers' contributions to finance a program that will create virtually no jobs?

[Business of Supply, October 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Ottawa—Vanier for his speech and for his extensive and long-standing involvement in the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association. I will come back to this spirit of collegiality, since that is something I would like to hear more about if the member is at liberty to discuss it.

Over the years, we have discovered that the Conservatives have taken partisanship to new heights, not only in the House but in all of Canada's democratic institutions. My colleague and I have had the misfortune of discovering that together on the Standing Committee on Official Languages, for example.

If there is one place left where partisanship is less present and where we at least do not wash our dirty linen in public, it is likely in the friendship groups.

The question that I want to ask my colleague is quite simple: does he feel as though the members who belong to the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association because they have a great interest in Africa are effective spokespeople to their colleagues and are committed to dealing with this issue without partisanship?

I could say that I do not think that the Liberals' motion goes far enough, but that is no reason not to support it, because we need to do more, more quickly.

[Business of Supply, October 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech given by my colleague from Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert. I always appreciate the relevance of his comments, which are based on his indisputable experience and expertise, especially on a topic like this one.

My question for him is similar to one we just heard from a Liberal colleague, who said that Canada should be providing more meaningful emergency assistance to the countries struggling with this epidemic in West Africa.

The motion that we are debating today is very specific. It states that the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada and the Minister of Health must appear before the Standing Committee on Health twice monthly. However, we all know what an insatiable appetite the Conservatives have for transparency and disclosing information.

In my colleague's experience, would it not make sense for the Liberals to open the door to an amendment that would put more emphasis on what we really want, which is meaningful action on the ground, both within the country and abroad?

[Employment Insurance, October 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, many families in the regions are expecting to go through some lean months because fewer jobs are now available in seasonal industries.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are taking steps to generate an employment insurance fund surplus, but families affected by unemployment will not see a penny more.

The NDP believes that protecting the employment insurance fund is essential to ensuring that contributions are not used for other purposes.

My question is very simple. Why is the government abandoning the regions and workers in seasonal industries even though the employment insurance fund is building up a surplus?

[Red Tape Reduction Act, October 20th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time so that as many people as possible can speak to this bill, which, at this point in time, raises more questions than answers in my mind. I have a very hard time trusting the Conservative government on this issue, even though we may agree on a few fundamental points.

Bill C-21 was introduced by the President of the Treasury Board and has two key provisions. To begin, it will implement the one-for-one rule, in order to supposedly reduce the red tape that is hampering business growth and innovation.

This raises questions in my mind. It seems to me that a simple mathematical equation demonstrates that if we take one regulation away for every one we create—or one minus one—we get zero. We are back at square one, and nothing has improved. We have simply kept the situation from getting any worse. The rule is also based on the assumption that the two regulations are equal. A company will invest a different amount of time or financial resources, depending on the regulation. That is the first problem.

Second, this bill would make the President of the Treasury Board the ultimate arbiter when it comes to eliminating regulations; it would give him a monopoly on that. That is the second problem and also very typical of this government's bills, which seek to concentrate power in the hands of ministers. This is another great example of that.

This bill certainly has to be analyzed in committee because, even though we agree on some of its general principles, it needs amendments to correct its shortcomings, particularly with respect to the environment.

We also have to make sure that regulations protecting the health and safety of Quebeckers and Canadians are not gutted. We have to ensure that the health and safety of Canadians remain priorities in the debate on businesses' administrative burden.

Small and medium-sized businesses are crucial to our economy. There is no doubt that they are essential to the job creation process, especially in Quebec, but also across the country. In ridings like mine, we want to see small businesses become medium-sized businesses. They are the backbone of our economy.

Since we know how important small and medium-sized businesses are to economic recovery, we are of course ready to explore various options available to maximize their potential. Businesses could then focus on their two main objectives: growing their resources and creating jobs.

Now that we have laid out the general principles, let us take a closer look at the implications of this bill. Let us talk about the first original sin: from the bill's preamble to its provisions, the notion of environmental safety is simply absent from the spirit and the letter of the bill. The unbelievable way this bill was conceived sacrifices all environmental issues. If there is one subject on which all Canadians agree, it is the environment, and yet it is completely absent from the bill.

The Conservative approach is to allow industrial stakeholders to self-regulate. That formula has been used in the past and has led to catastrophes. Here once again, industrial stakeholders regulate their own activities without any public power looking at the risks those activities pose to the environment

Furthermore, health and safety are mentioned only in the bill's preamble, which leaves very little room in real terms for the importance that really should be placed on issues of health and safety.

Since my colleagues opposite went to the trouble of including the one-for-one rule, the question is this: why did they not allocate the resources needed to make sure there is legislation in place to also protect the health and safety of Canadians?

By all accounts, this bill embodies the Conservatives' thinking on the environment. They seem to think that environmental safety is an administrative burden that must be reduced, when environmental issues are directly related to the safety of citizens.

Our legitimate questions on the scope of this bill on health and safety will lead the NDP to propose robust amendments to ensure the long-term sustainability of regulations protecting the health, safety and environment of Canadians. The rules that are in the public's interest must be upheld. This is not a question of exerting theoretical control over the number of rules, but of determining which ones are truly useful for the public.

We must focus on tangible measures to help small business owners expand and beware of the illusions Bill C-21 might create. The critical question posed by this bill could be summed up in these terms: it is not enough to reduce red tape for SMEs in an effort to support their potential for growth and innovation. These claims have to translate into action and these reduction measures must be consistent with health and environmental safety criteria.

When it came to moving from words to action, the Conservatives refused to support the NDP motion on the regulation of credit card fees that card issuers charge merchants, for example. However, the lack of an ombudsman and non-existent regulation in this area are having a serious negative impact on the competitiveness of small businesses and constitute an extra administrative burden for these merchants.

With regard to safety standards, we need look no further than the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, which is still fresh in everyone's minds. This tragedy reminds us of the extreme consequences that drastic deregulation can have and the risk that such an approach poses to rail safety.

Furthermore, the Liberals, who are also very timid when it comes to regulation, reinforced the principle of deregulation of rail safety by continuing to implement an approach allowing the industry to monitor the safety of its own operations instead of requiring the government to set standards that the industry has to meet.

That being said, the main focus of Bill C-21 is to implement a one-for-one rule. This approach, which was discussed by the Red Tape Reduction Commission, requires the government to eliminate a regulation every time it adopts a new one. Once again, I would like to remind hon. members that there is no evidence of any reductions in red tape.

However, the bill does not explicitly state that the regulations can apply to health and safety issues. In addition, the bill stipulates that the President of the Treasury Board has the power to calculate the cost of the administrative burden and determine how the law will apply to regulations changed when the one-for-one rule came into effect.

It is clear just how much bargaining power is being given to the President of the Treasury Board. In other words, he could be granted discretionary powers over regulations affecting safety, health and the environment. Centralizing regulating and deregulating powers in the hands of the President of the Treasury Board is, without a doubt, an unsound, undesirable way to manage the public service.

We are fully aware that we need to reduce red tape by offering balanced solutions to our entrepreneurs. However, we feel that this bill needs to be examined more closely in committee so that we can address its main weaknesses, including—and I have said this many times—the ability to protect the health and safety of Quebeckers and Canadians.

[Criminal Code, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, drunk driving is a public safety issue that deserves more of our attention. That applies to our assessment of whether the legislative measures in this bill can help eliminate this scourge.

It goes without saying that enhancing road safety involves several factors, from the quality of physical infrastructure to Criminal Code provisions penalizing drunk drivers.

I would like to go over some key numbers that illustrate the devastating impact of this scourge on families in Quebec and Canada. Some 5.4 million Canadians say that they have a family member or friend who has driven drunk or caused an accident. We know that with this type of statistic, when people talk about a friend or an acquaintance, they are sometimes talking about themselves, but because they do not want to incriminate themselves, they say they know someone. That number is still astronomical.

Nearly a quarter of the Canadian population has a family member or close friend who has been a victim of a drunk driving accident. According to Transport Canada, alcohol was a factor in nearly 30% of traffic accident fatalities from 2003 to 2005.

Unfortunately, my riding, Trois-Rivières, has troubling statistics on this too. According to a study that looked at June of 2013, the Trois-Rivières police service made about one arrest a day, 28 that month to be precise. Impaired driving is still the leading criminal cause of death in Canada.

These statistics show how important it is to examine this issue. I support moving forward with the bill introduced by my colleague, the member for Prince Albert, so that the committee can look at it, study its impact on sentence length and ensure that the provisions comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canadian criminal law.

The Criminal Code of Canada has very strict laws and sanctions for impaired driving. Specifically, several Canadian provinces have in place a three-tier system based on blood alcohol content. The first tier is zero milligrams of alcohol for young and novice drivers. The second tier allows for administrative sanctions in some cases for a BAC over 0.05 milligrams. Lastly, drivers with a BAC over 0.08 milligrams are liable to sanctions under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Furthermore, new provisions were added in the Criminal Code and came into force on July 2, 2008. This means that there are now nine distinct offences related to impaired driving. Unfortunately, despite the introduction of more coercive measures, the Canadian Police Association recognizes the challenges faced on the ground in terms of combatting this scourge.

In addition to the human cost related to this phenomenon, the average cost of impaired driving accidents in Canada from 1999 to 2006 has been estimated at $1.9 billion per year. This estimate does not include any of the social costs that result from those offences.

With respect to Bill C-590, it would be interesting to explore whether reducing mandatory minimum prison sentences for impaired driving causing death is the right thing to do here. It would be useful to debate this, because these mandatory minimum sentences are shorter than existing sentences. Reducing mandatory minimum sentences for impaired driving causing death could prove counterproductive. According to the jurisprudence, minimum penalties tend to become the default penalty. In other words, minimum penalties become the norm, rather than being reserved for the least serious cases or those where there are mitigating factors.

Accordingly, it would be entirely reasonable to expect defence lawyers to ask for the minimum penalty, unless the crown can prove that the defendant's crime deserves a punishment that will serve as an example.

The federal Criminal Code is not enough to address the risks to road safety caused by impaired drivers. The duty to enforce the law in this area is shared by the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

There are a number of solutions that we can implement incrementally to deter impaired drivers from getting behind the wheel and endangering others. One of the deterrents that can be implemented is random breathalyzer tests for blood alcohol concentrations.

In Ireland, the Road Safety Authority believes that random breathalyzer testing has led to a 23% reduction in the number of highway deaths. That is something that could be considered. This last measure is just one of many options available to us to effectively fight delinquent behaviour.

To introduce an effective measure that will eradicate this scourge, we have to consider the fact that drunk driving is the manifestation of social problems that coercive measures alone cannot address. By adopting this approach, we could transform our legislative framework and make it preventive as well as punitive.

Preventing impaired driving must be based on campaigns that look at much more than just drunk driving and also raise awareness among drivers of the link between alcoholism, violence and risky behaviour.

Impaired driving is above all a social problem. We have to consider ways to prevent risky behaviours and create public policies with the ultimate objective of reducing risky behaviours in our society—including impaired driving—rather than creating a legislative framework that depends solely on coercion. Alcoholism does lead to crime, but we must remember that coercion can make it worse.

Preventive social policies, such as those that seek to address the socio-economic determinants of alcoholism, produce more effective results in the long term by taking a holistic approach to the problem, which requires the intervention of health professionals, social workers and members of police forces.

In closing, I support the bill introduced by the member for Prince Albert. I believe that sending it to committee will provide the opportunity for more in-depth analysis of how to achieve the desired results.

We should also be looking to technological advancements for solutions. For example, I am thinking about car locks that are opened with a number combination instead of a key. They make it more difficult to open the door if the driver has had one too many and is not fully coherent. Opening the door requires some thought, and the door is prevented from opening if it is not unlocked within a given time frame.

The Criminal Code, new technology and international experience in this area should all be part of our collective thought process as we determine how we can put an end to this problem, which has disastrous consequences for families in Quebec and Canada.

[Housing, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Conservative ministers from Quebec have done absolutely nothing for pyrrhotite victims. They would rather send the issue back to the Quebec courts.

The federal government is responsible for concrete aggregate standards. However, it failed to prevent this tragedy. People in the Mauricie region are calling for a public inquiry to look into this tragedy.

Will the minister listen and do what it takes to ensure that this kind of crisis never happens again?

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is a little difficult for me to answer that question by trying to get inside the head of a Conservative, which is almost genetically impossible.

Clearly, it must be because of their views and interests. I even think that, to some extent, it is part of the election strategy to get what they believe to be the majority of Canadians behind these air strikes. However, in the weeks to come, as we find that this undertaking has not been effective, I believe that public opinion will change dramatically.

It will not be a coincidence that we will re-evaluate this mission in six months when we all know that nothing will have been resolved. The government is doing this so that it can gauge public opinion about its decisions as it goes along.