Robert Chisholm

[Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act, June 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, that member is right when he says that this is a very serious problem. It is a vexing problem for all of us in this country, and we need to find the solution.

I asked the minister earlier who he had consulted with and who his department had been working with in order to try to come up with the legislation and the best strategy to implement the legislation. He informed me that he talked to a few people here and there, some police officers and so on.

I am glad he did. I was thinking about complex strategies to deal with a very serious problem, as the member's question suggested. For example, there is a leading recommendation from the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco that strongly recommended the government engage in collaboration with the provinces and first nations. Those are the people directly involved not only in enforcement but also in dealing with the effects of the distribution of contraband tobacco.

I would be disappointed if I thought the minister had not consulted with the provinces and first nations to find a comprehensive solution for these problems.

[Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act, June 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in politics now for 16 years and so I am obviously, by nature, an optimist.

The member asked if I thought the official opposition was going to be able to encourage the government to put resources into Bill S-16 so that it can do what the government claims it can do. Well, time will tell.

I know that I and other members will do their best to persuade the minister and members of that committee to recognize the fact that the Conservatives have cut money out of those departments and law enforcement agencies for what they do now. To then expect them to just carry on and fulfill these important duties without attaching some dollars to it, frankly, is naive. As I suggested earlier, it is more than just a little bit irresponsible.

[Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act, June 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill S-16. It is an important piece of legislation, as I indicated moments ago when I asked the minister a question. The question, of course, was with respect to resources, whether it be the RCMP or whichever police force is involved, and if these enforcement agencies would have the resources necessary to carry out the added responsibilities that are part of this legislation.

The minister did not answer my question with the kind of specific information I was looking for. That is part of my concern about Bill S-16. We have a piece of legislation, an act to amend the Criminal Code to deal with trafficking in contraband tobacco. It is an important issue, and I will lay out why I think it is important. It deals with an issue that is vexing, to say the least. My concern is that the Conservative government is talking tough in the legislation and in the words it uses, but when it comes to actually bringing resources to bear to support those agencies it expects to now carry out these added responsibilities, I am concerned that the government is once again falling short.

This minister, in particular, and members of the government, have been criticized for not vetting legislation in terms of whether it would be subject to constitutional challenges in the Supreme Court. The government has been found at fault for not having done that. It is a requirement of the Minister of Justice when it comes to all pieces of legislation.

That is a problem. So too is the fact that the government says that it is going to do all these things with respect to justice issues and will crack down, but it seems incapable of putting the necessary resources in place to see that whoever gets the responsibility handed to them, be it the provinces, or in this case, the law enforcement agencies, has the resources necessary to carry them out.

Let me say at the outset, as many of my colleagues have said and will say this evening, that we support moving this legislation forward to committee so that we will be able to bring some of the organizations, experts and different jurisdictions before committee to ask them some of the questions I will raise tonight.

Flaws in the language in this legislation have already been identified. I hope that, for once, the Conservative government will recognize that this is such an important issue as it relates to this country that it will be amenable to making the kinds of amendments necessary to clean up those issues.

I want to talk a bit about why this is so important from a health and safety standpoint and about the forgone revenue for the country. I want to talk about the question of border security. Where are the threats in terms of contraband tobacco?

We have heard a number of comments from government members that would seem to suggest that the sole focus of the problem is first nations in Quebec and Ontario. Is that, in fact, the truth? Is that the case, or is it an unfortunate stereotype that exists on the government side that has not been sufficiently delved into to make sure that we are not heading in the wrong direction?

I asked the minister who he consulted. One of the groups was first nations. As we know, the manufacturing sites for contraband tobacco are generally found close to the border in both Quebec and southern Ontario. Some of the transit points have been identified as first nations communities. If that is where some of the activity is focused, then my question is whether the government sat down with the first nations communities to work together to come up with a comprehensive piece of legislation that talks about the issue from the ground up in a responsible, mature, holisitic fashion.

Provincial jurisdictions have been trying to deal with this issue, as have corner store associations and many health groups. These people need to be consulted. We need to bring these experts forward so that we can talk about it at committee.

First, let me talk about health and safety issues. We have seen the studies, and we know that there is a correlation between the price of tobacco and usage. That is why even though provincial governments do not want to increase taxes, they increase taxes on tobacco, not only as a revenue source but perhaps, most importantly, as a way of discouraging tobacco use. It has been found to be very effective, and the data clearly shows that.

Tobacco seriously harms Canadians. There are hundreds of millions or billions of dollars spent every year dealing with the effect of tobacco on Canadians. That is something we need to do everything we possibly can to deal with.

Governments are using awareness campaigns and warnings and various restrictions on tobacco packaging. People can go into a store, and tobacco products are hidden from view. That has been seen to reduce usage. Keeping advertising off television and out of newspapers and magazines has been seen to be an effective measure in reducing usage.

It is extremely important that governments use every single tool at their disposal to deal with this. What a conundrum. Governments increase taxation on tobacco products and restrict advertising. They insist that warnings labels be put on the packaging by manufacturers to ensure that they do their part in dissuading people from usage.

They made it clear that minors are not able to purchase tobacco products and they try to enforce that, yet at the same time, there is a proliferation of contraband tobacco getting into this country in various ways that makes all of those efforts go by the way.

Again, the issue with respect to health and safety is clear to us. It is clear to Canadians. The government must do everything in its power to try to discourage at every opportunity the use especially in young people. That is where the focus has been and has to be in trying to prevent young people from beginning to use tobacco products.

I understand that it is difficult to put an exact figure on the revenue lost from contraband tobacco, but it has been suggested by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 2008 that governments have lost between $1.5 billion and nearly $2.5 billion as a result of illegal tobacco products. That is revenue that governments would have had in order to provide the services that Canadians so desperately need.

We talked a moment ago about a motion that was brought forward in terms of providing services to Canadians with disabilities to access employment, to access housing, to access support to services so they may contribute in their communities. Those are revenues that we forgo, that could be used in this area, as a result of the sale of illegal tobacco products. It is incumbent upon us to do something about that.

The bill goes through that in a number of respects and we are going to talk a bit more about that. As I said, the bill specifically addresses contraband tobacco. According to the RCMP, contraband tobacco is any tobacco product that does not comply with the provisions of all applicable federal and provincial statutes. This includes the importation, stamping, marking, manufacturing, distributing and payment of duties and taxes.

At present, contraband tobacco offences can only be prosecuted under the Excise Act of 2001, or various general provisions within the Criminal Code. Bill S-16 would make changes, amendments and additions to the Criminal Code so that police forces are now authorized to take action against these offences. That is extremely important and we would support this.

I want to get to the issue that I raised early on, the fact that the government once again is failing to recognize that the funding needs to be in place in order to make sure that, following these fine words and these honourable changes to the law, the law enforcement agencies are able to carry out their functions.

It has been suggested that 50% of contraband tobacco comes through one port, the Port of Vancouver, from China. As I said earlier, I know there are manufacturing facilities near the border of Quebec and Ontario and that has been discussed.

The government, apparently, has decided to ignore the fact that much more, approximately 50%, of all contraband tobacco comes not from traditional sources or other countries but from China, and it comes through one port, the port of Vancouver. The problem is that there are no inspectors left at the port of Vancouver to deal with this issue.

We know that in the past two budgets, the government has cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the Canada Border Services Agency. This means that there are hundreds fewer front-line officers in place at the borders to deal with this contraband product. That is just one agency; that does not take into consideration the cuts to the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies over the past two budgets. Tens of millions of dollars have been cut from the budgets. The budgets have been reduced for these law enforcement agencies that, as a result of Bill S-16, are now going to be expected to do more.

That is why I asked the minister that question. I will ask him again and I know he will be asked the question again when the matter goes to committee. How does he expect these law enforcement organizations to carry out the added responsibilities included in this bill? They are extremely important responsibilities, let us be clear, but they are responsibilities that are being piled on top of other responsibilities. At the same time that these agencies are losing hundreds of millions of dollars, they are losing hundreds of employees and the capacity to carry out this important work. That just does not fit. To me, that just does not make any sense and I have not heard an explanation from the government.

Let me point out a couple of things in that respect. The 2013-14 Public Safety Report on Plans and Priorities announced a decrease of $20.3 million to deal with counterfeiting crime and a $2.4-million decrease for national security. The department itself stated the following in its risk analysis:

That the Government Operations Centre...infrastructure may be unable to support a coordinated response to large-scale or multiple significant events affecting the national interest.

That current policies and strategies may be insufficient to address the evolution of organized crime.

Again, we are dealing with an important piece of legislation that tries to get at an important problem, whether it is terrorism or, in this case, contraband tobacco coming from other countries and from within, and we are not giving law enforcement organizations the capacity to properly enforce what Bill S-16 is asking them to do. That is irresponsible. I hope the minister and members on the government side are going to be able to answer some of those questions when the bill goes to committee.

[Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act, June 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will be rising shortly to expand on some of these issues.

I just want to say that there is no question that this initiative is a necessary one. It is an important initiative. It will also require some dedicated funding. I wondered if the minister could perhaps give this House some indication of the money that has been allocated to ensure that the police officials, the authorities, whoever would be involved in this, would be able to carry out these activities successfully.

[Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act, June 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minister if he would give us some indication of the organizations that he and his department consulted with in order to develop Bill S-16.

The whole question of contraband tobacco affects other jurisdictions and a number of organizations. How this legislation was conceived and how it will be carried forward are important.

In that respect, I wonder if he could give the House some indication of the consultations that were conducted in order to get to this point.

[Persons with Disabilities, June 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise and speak to Motion No. 430, labour market opportunities for persons with disabilities. This important motion was brought forward by a good member of Parliament who is a clear advocate for people living with disabilities. He is personally involved and works hard to ensure that governments at all levels are aware of the need to provide the kinds of supports necessary to ensure that people who are living with disabilities are able to contribute at the level at which they want to contribute. It is extremely important, and I thank him for the work he does. I want to make that clear. I will be supporting this motion.

The member will probably not be surprised that I am going to raise a few little points where I think the motion does not go quite far enough. I do that because I am well aware of this issue. I have many constituents and friends who are dealing with the barriers to people living with disabilities every single day. We can stand here in the House and talk about it and we can read reports that talk about the need to do this or that, but at some point we have to draw the line and put some concrete actions into place. We have to assign the appropriate funding to those actions to ensure we specifically remove the barriers that exist for people on the ground who are living with disabilities.

The “Rethinking Disability in the Private Sector” report is a solid report. It identifies challenges and success stories of employment for persons with disabilities, but I suggest that there are gaps. Persons with disabilities do not just deal with barriers existing in the workplace. They deal with barriers that are brought on by problems of accessibility to housing, education and transportation, and none of these issues were directly dealt with in the report.

In my province of Nova Scotia, and I know this exists across the country, the ability of persons with disabilities to access independent living opportunities is at a premium. There are far too many wait-lists for people who are trying to find proper living accommodations. We can appreciate that for people who are in a program that is helping them transition from school to work and trying to support them in employment opportunities, there needs to be an opportunity to live independently in appropriate housing. Not only does that create opportunities for them, but it relieves the enormous pressure on families who are the primary supports and caregivers.

Likewise, the opportunity for persons living with disabilities to access education, to get supports in the school systems, both secondary and post-secondary, is extremely important. I have evidence of the success that is enjoyed by people living with disabilities who are able to take advantage of those supports, but they are not there for everybody. Again, there are waiting lists and the disability-specific supports are not always in place.

It is the same thing with transportation, unfortunately.

Those are the kinds of barriers that we need to focus on, that we need to ensure we get rid of. We need to ensure that the funding is available.

I spoke in a debate a week or so ago about how the government is letting the provinces down on a commitment that it made in the Constitution of 1982 to provide equalization payments to ensure that the provinces are able to deliver an equal level of service. Some provinces that do not have access to the same revenues as others are facing challenges.

I will give some examples of success stories in Dartmouth—Cole Harbour because there are a few. There are individuals living with disabilities who are recognizing opportunities.

There is the ACEE program established in 2005 by the Independent Living Nova Scotia Association. It is a year-long transition program for youth with disabilities who have completed high school but are not yet ready for the workforce or further education.

There are currently and usually about 20 young adults who participate every year in this innovative program, which includes literacy and numeracy, employment orientation, career exploration and job placements in real-life workplaces. It is currently situated in the Akerley campus of the Nova Scotia Community College. It is located within a post-secondary institution. The participants benefit greatly, as do the students who are attending that community college. They learn and experience good things as a result of that program being there.

The Dartmouth Adult Services Centre, DASC, provides community employment services dedicated to providing access to employment opportunities and the support required to ensure continued and future success. It strives to obtain competitive employment in the community for its clients. It has just moved into a new facility partially funded by the federal government; the grand opening is tomorrow. I have been through the facility and it provides a wonderful suite of services to people living with disabilities and to organizations within the community. It is known for its political buttons; I have certainly bought a few buttons from DASC myself.

DASC also provides a community employment service work model made up of four components: assessment and orientation, job search, job site training and ongoing support. This is an extremely valuable support. It has a new building and is providing support and work opportunities for over 100 individuals. It has staff. It is continuing to grow in terms of demand and there is a waiting list. It needs greater funding to ensure that it has qualified staff on hand to provide support for people who are working in that organization and in the community.

Another program is called reachAbility. It operates on the basis of a culture built on the belief that we are all equal and that accommodation is simply about equalizing the playing field. The committed staff of reachAbility provide support to a wide range of clients with a focus on programs designed to build a stronger community, one ability at a time. The program provides transferable skills through training, education, job placement services and assistance in overcoming barriers.

I want to make two final points. The first is with respect to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Conservatives were supposed to report on what their commitments would be, as was required when they signed on to it a year ago. They have failed to do that. That is simply not good enough.

The member opposite brought forward a great motion, but we need more action and more resources focused on people living with disabilities so they can participate in our communities at their fullest potential.

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2013, June 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we are not actually talking about Bill S-17 at the moment. We are talking about the government's motion to limit debate so that we cannot talk about Bill S-17.

Over the last number of weeks, what we have heard from the government is that if we disagree with it, we are anti-Canadian and traitors. If members do not speak properly, then the Conservatives are going to move time allocation on these various bills.

It is not up to the member to determine how I am going to present myself in the House. It is up to my constituents. I am here because the people of Dartmouth—Cole Harbour who voted for me decided that they wanted me to come here to speak to bills, such as Bill S-17.

With its tendency to bring in time allocation, the government is suggesting that it is going to decide how much time I am going to have to speak on it, regardless of what I want to say. The member opposite now suggests that if he decides that I am not articulate enough or am not getting to the point quickly enough, as he would identify it, the government is going to bring in time allocation on that basis. I have wondered why it is that it will not agree to abolish the Senate, but now I understand that it wants to abolish this chamber. It wants to eliminate all free speech for the commoners, for the people of Canada.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question, although I do not know that I have ever been called insightful before. I do not know what I said to deserve that.

The ads the member referred to are a bit much, especially when they are advertising programs that simply exist on paper and that involve negotiations with the provinces and the private sector that have not even commenced. This is the kind of consultation the government has been doing all too often.

Let me say that I have been around a long time. I was sitting in the provincial legislature in the mid-1990s under the then-Liberal government, which was doing some awful things to provinces like ours as a result of decisions that had been made that the provinces were not particularly aware of.

This kind of autocratic behaviour by a federal government is being brought to a finer point, perhaps, under this government, but it has been around for a while.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the way the government is distributing funds across the country is affecting the capacity of provinces that do not have access to natural resources at this particular time. It is affecting the provinces' capacity to adequately deliver those resources. That is the point I was making. That is the point I continue to make.

Second, the question on Bill C-60 is whether that particular program the member mentioned is the same as the youth jobs program or the training programs the government has failed to begin negotiating with the provinces or the private sector, even to this day, to make them a reality rather than simply an advertisement or a talking point.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak for a few moments on Bill C-60.

I want to focus on how I think Bill C-60 is another piece of legislation, another action, on behalf of a government that has forgotten its commitment to equal citizenship.

I am sure all members are aware that section 36(1) of our Constitution commits Parliament and provincial legislatures to promote equal opportunities and further economic development to reduce disparities in opportunities. Section 36(2) goes on to commit to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public service at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.

All governments of the day supported those guarantees of equal citizenship when they were adopted back in 1982. There was even agreement on strengthening the language as part of the Charlottetown accord. Unfortunately, during the mid-1990s, the government of the day put debt and deficit ahead of commitment to sufficient revenues for the provinces, but at least it spread the pain more or less equally.

The current government, and Bill C-60 is a reflection of this, was elected back in 2007 on a commitment to fix the fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provinces. However, since then, it has backed away from this commitment, and in a way that inflicts greater pain on the less wealthy provinces.

The first step came in 2008 when, without any warning, the Minister of Finance imposed a ceiling on equalization, essentially scrapping a formula that was the product of several years of consultation. Frankly, it was a betrayal of the equalization-receiving provinces, which had agreed to a new per capita funding formula for health and social transfers. They believed that the new enriched equalization program of 2007 would help them deal with their differing needs and fiscal capacities and enable them to meet their commitments to providing “reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation”.

The next attack on equal citizenship took place three years later, when the Minister of Finance, again without consultation, as we have seen with Bill C-60, delivered a take-it-or-leave-it health deal. This move snuffed out any hope the provinces had for negotiating a new health accord, one that would better address the challenges of providing comparable services across the country. Instead of the open-ended 6% annual increases promised during the 2011 election campaign, the deal imposed by the Conservative government provides that some provinces will be getting less than a 1% increase in the next fiscal year, 2014-15, and in 2017, if the Conservative government is still around, the 6%, which is not actually 6%, will drop to 3%. This will be further devastating for citizens of less wealthy provinces, especially those provinces with older populations.

When we throw into that the decision on the retirement age and the plan to dismantle the Health Council of Canada and its mandate for national health standards, it is clear where the Conservative government is going.

The Conservatives not only ignore section 36 of the Constitution; they will undo the 30 years of social progress that has preceded it. It is progress that was the legacy of leaders like Tommy Douglas, John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson.

Having promised to fix the fiscal imbalance, the government has instead made it considerably worse. Since 2007, transfers to the wealthier provinces have gone up at a faster rate than to the less wealthy. This is despite the fact that commitments made under section 36 of reasonably comparable services at reasonably comparable rates of taxation have clearly not been met.

On the services side, one only needs to look at the shocking disparity in prescription drug coverage in this country. It was described not long ago by Global and Mail columnist André Picard, who wrote that, when it comes to prescription drug coverage, “there is a basic unfairness that exists in the wide provincial variations...[that] offends the principles of medicare and Canadian values”.

That wide variation he writes about can include an individual who is receiving treatment, paying up to $20,000 a year for a certain drug in some provinces while the drug is free in others.

On the taxation side, there is also a wide variation in provincial taxation that defies the definition of “reasonably comparable”. At the two extremes are Alberta and Quebec. In one province, provincial taxes claim about 9% of personal income. In Quebec, it is over 22%. Some of that wide variation, of course, is the result of policy choices, but much of it has to do with the wide disparities in fiscal capacity.

The Constitution identifies, as I said earlier, two complementary approaches to dealing with such fiscal disparities. One is economic development. The government's approach to economic development is to say that if you have oil or gas, stand aside and let the private sector develop it. In the Atlantic provinces, for example, $30 million would be cut from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency in this budget. Otherwise, they are out of luck. The second approach is equalization. The government put a ceiling on equalization. Together with the new health deal, this has left many provinces in a bind. They are looking at no-growth federal transfers and rising costs in meeting their commitments, especially in health care.

Equalization has been described as the glue that holds the Canadian federation together. The Minister of Finance decreed back in 2008 that the Canadian government could no longer afford to apply as much of this required glue. His claim was that the cost was unsustainable. However, in the fiscal year just passed, equalization was less than 1% of the country's GDP, about .86%, which is well below the historical average and lower even than in the mid-1990s, when the books were in much worse shape than they are today. Back then, when our debt-to-GDP ratio was twice what it is now, the national government was investing nearly 1.1% of GDP in equalization.

Therefore, I would argue that we can afford to increase equalization, and we must increase it if Parliament is to meet its constitutional commitments. In saying that, I am aware that equalization clearly benefits citizens in receiving provinces like mine by providing a better quality of service at lower rates of taxation than would otherwise be the case. However, equalization also benefits citizens in non-receiving provinces, not just those citizens who are altruistically inclined but those who hew to the bottom line.

Let me cite a couple of examples from Alberta economists. My first authority is Melville McMillan, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Alberta. In a recent report for Ontario's Mowat Centre, he argued that equalization enhances economic efficiency by discouraging interprovincial migration undertaken to access better services or to face lower taxes. I have seen in my own province that parents of children with autism have joined parents from other less wealthy provinces in moving to Alberta to take advantage of a wider range of services there for their children.

This, along with the disparity in drug coverage already mentioned, is an example of how we have failed to achieve the comparable level of services mandated by the Constitution.

As McMillan pointed out, differences and financial capacity can distort labour in capital markets and reduce national output, but well-designed equalization programs offer a means to correct or offset that.

For a more down to earth assessment, this is what Calgary economist and author Todd Hirsch had to say in The Globe and Mail:

Albertans...need to recognize the tremendous benefits we enjoy from Canada’s open labour market. If someone summed up every year of education that every interprovincial migrant ever brought with them to Alberta, and estimated a dollar value of those years of education, it would amount to tens of billions of dollars.... Alberta’s gain in educated workers has been other provinces’ loss, and a lot of that education was paid for with equalization transfers.

My point is pretty simple. The government fails to recognize the fact that we are a federation, that we are a country where provinces are developing at different levels.

Every Canadian, according to the constitution, deserves to receive a similar level of services at a similar level of taxation. Bill C-60 does not achieve that. It is going in the wrong direction. The sooner the government wakes up, the better this country will be.