Scott Brison

[Annapolis Valley Tartan, June 11th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honour Gordon Hansford and the Annapolis Valley tartan.

Thirty years ago the Kingscot pipe band was discussing which tartan to wear, and thought the valley ought to have one of its own. Two of its members then went to work: Mr. Hansford came up with the design, and it was woven by the late Joyce Pickwell. The Annapolis Valley is known for its beautiful landscape, and the tartan captures it perfectly. As Mr. Hansford's poem says:

There's the green of the trees and the crops, the farmers love to grow,
The blue is for the mountains, North and South,
And the silver for the two rivers, that flow down to the sea,
The red depicts the blood, that's been shed to keep us free.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the tartan's official registration with the Scottish Register of Tartans. I call on this House to recognize the great work of Gordon Hansford and the late Joyce Pickwell, as well as clan Donald Canada for its part in getting the Annapolis Valley tartan recognized.

Congratulations to all and thanks.

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am not speaking just as a legislator. As a citizen, I find this disillusioning. The Conservatives have created sort of a new normal when it comes to these things, where the media in fact are not being as rigorous as they ought to be on this. It is a government that, effectively through an abuse of power, is changing a law retroactively to make legal that which was illegal at the time and destroying information and data, contrary to an officer of Parliament saying they should not be doing that.

I say this for all members of the House, regardless of party, and members of the governing party who sit in this House. Our role individually and collectively as members of Parliament is to scrutinize the activity of government even if we happen to be of the same party. The idea that the current government has created the sense that members of its caucus, whether at committee or in the House, have to basically follow marching orders and cannot question what a government is doing is fundamentally wrong.

I have been here long enough to remember when committees actually were not branch plants of ministers' offices, when committees actually rendered reports that were unanimous and sometimes disagreed with the governing party. I can tell members that a Liberal government would respect Parliament and we would see committees actually used for what they were intended, and that is to scrutinize legislation, to develop good public policy ideas and to work hard as legislators, untethered from the PMO and from ministers' offices to do their jobs on behalf of Canadians and to hold the government to account.

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would gladly take some time to provide the hon. member with a technical briefing of the Liberal plan for fairness, and I will help her somewhat because I am a generous person. The reality is a family making $45,000 per year with two children would be $4,000 better off every year over the Conservative plan with the Canada child benefit. That is huge.

In fact, some commentators have actually referred to this Liberal Canada child benefit as the closest thing we have seen to a guaranteed annual income for children. In fact, it would start at $6,400 per child, which is actually more generous than the Canada 2000 campaign has called for. One of the authors of our plan is Sherri Torjman who is at the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. We worked with Sherri Torjman. She is a member of my leader's economic advisory council. We have worked with some of the most progressive minds in Canadian social and economic policy to design a plan that is really good for middle-class families and those Canadians working hard to join the middle class.

We are very proud of our plan, and I think Canadians will see that it is a fair plan and it is a good plan for growth as well.

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have added over $120 billion to the national debt. They inherited the best fiscal situation of any incoming government in the history of Canada, a $13-billion surplus. They actually spent through that and, through a combination of their tax and fiscal policy, put Canada into deficit even before the global financial crisis in the fall of 2008, and then went on to rack up record levels of national debt in Canada, including the largest deficits in Canadian history.

That is the fact on the Conservative's shoddy record of fiscal mismanagement.

I am rising today to speak to the government's budget bill, C-59. For years, the Conservatives have crossed the line in what is acceptable in a functioning democracy as a government in terms of respect for Parliament. It is not only how they have now normalized the use of massive omnibus bills, they regularly shut down debate in the House, they prorogue Parliament multiple times, they use committees as branch plants of minister's offices, but this legislation would go further than we have ever seen before. This legislation contains something so egregious it is shocking, even for the Conservative government.

The government, in this legislation, is actually trying to end an OPP investigation into the illegal destruction of documents. It would do this by retroactively making acts which were illegal at the time legal. It would effectively stop an OPP, or police, investigation into the RCMP, the very people we rely upon to uphold the law. The government has refused to say who in the government, whether it was the Minister of Public Safety, ordered the RCMP to break the law. With Bill C-59, Canadians may never find out.

Imagine retroactively making what was illegal at the time legal and allowing for the destruction of evidence associated with the wrongdoing. This is absolutely shocking.

I want to be clear. I believe the RCMP was given no choice by the government. It was given its marching orders. The legislation in this budget bill is actually being used by the Conservative government to try to cover up its crime.

In April 2012, the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act came into force. It called for the destruction of certain records in the long gun registry. However, it was flawed in that it made no mention of the Access to Information Act. That omission meant that the records could not be destroyed until after any pre-existing access to information cases were closed.

In April 2012, the Information Commissioner wrote to the Minister of Public Safety, in his role as the head of the RCMP, and reminded him of this legal commitment. On May 2, 2012, the public safety minister acknowledged the commissioner's letter and promised that the RCMP would abide by the access to information law in this matter.

This is the point at which the Conservative government could have gone back to Parliament to fix the legislation. It could have respected the law and our democratic institutions and sought Parliament's permission. Instead, somebody in the Conservative government ordered the RCMP to destroy the records and, as such, break the law. In October 2012, the RCMP did just that, destroying the records.

The Information Commissioner conducted an investigation and concluded that the RCMP destroyed the records knowing they were the subject of a request under the Access to Information Act. That is against the law.

In late March of this year, she referred the matter to the Attorney General. How did the government react? Instead of immediately referring the matter to an outside police organization for action, the reaction of the Conservatives was to cover up the crime.

The Conservatives' solution was this legislation, a budget bill. Imagine a budget bill being used to effectively and retroactively change the law to make the crime legal, erasing any liability for the people involved. The government has since referred the matter to the Ontario Provincial Police for an independent investigation into the matter. However, it will be hard for it to investigate when this law one past erases all liability for everyone involved and permits the government to effectively oversee the destruction of evidence of previous wrongdoing. Canadians deserve to know what happened and who broke the law.

At committee, I introduced amendments to allow the OPP's investigation to continue. My amendments would have delayed the elimination of liability and stopped the destruction of evidence. Records would have been protected from destruction “if there are reasonable grounds to believe that they could afford evidence of an act or omission that constitutes an offence under an Act of Parliament.”. These amendments were not about trying to save the long gun registry, they were about protecting only those records that provided evidence of an illegal act. The Conservatives quietly voted against the amendments and downplayed the whole affair. In their words, Bill C-59 simply closes a bureaucratic loophole.

I agree with the Information Commissioner when she says, “Bill C-59 is not an attempt to close a loophole; but rather it is an attempt to create a black hole”. The Information Commissioner has recently gone to the Federal Court to file a preservation order to stop the Conservative government from destroying evidence of wrongdoing. Members should let that sink in for a moment and think of the seriousness of what is going on here. An officer of Parliament has gone to court to stop the government from trying to cover up an illegal act.

I would like to go from this abuse of power and blatant corruption by the Conservative government in this budget implementation act to discussing some other measures in the bill that should also be considered offensive in terms of a functioning democracy.

There are measures in the bill which are almost certainly unconstitutional, such as Division 20, which is connected to the government's sick leave and disability programs. The government is using these measures to play politics and to deliberately pick a fight with the unions in the lead-up to an election. The Conservatives are circumventing the collective bargaining process in an attempt to unilaterally impose their will on government workers. They are trying to pretend that workers do not have legal rights. The government's behaviour is poisoning the well and will make it harder for future governments to achieve labour agreements and peace with labour unions in Canada.

We have also heard some very serious concerns about Division 3, which includes measures to extend privilege to patent or trade-mark agents and their clients. In the words of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, it “raises complex issues and would have significant implications not only for the patent and trade-marks system, but also for the legal profession, other professions, and for the administration of justice.”

The government is using omnibus legislation to bundle together hundreds of unrelated measures into a single bill. Many of these changes have nothing to do with the budget and do not belong in a budget bill. However, the Conservatives do not care about respecting Parliament. Instead of introducing proper legislation that allows for meaningful input from the public, the Conservatives combine an overwhelming amount of unrelated changes in legislation into a single bill. They do this in order to limit debate and scrutiny, and ram the changes through Parliament.

There are some measures in the bill which are actually related to the budget, such as the increase to the TFSA limits and income splitting, two measures that are disproportionately good for the wealthy but do not do enough for the middle class.

The Liberal plan for the middle class would cut the taxes for middle-class families. The Liberal plan for the middle class would introduce a new Canada child benefit that would provide middle-class families in Canada making $90,000 per year with two children a real break. They would get $2,500 more than they are getting from the Conservatives right now. Families making $45,000 per year with two children would be $4,000 better off than they are right now. Single parents would benefit from the Liberal leader's plan for a Canada child benefit. We would do more for the families that need the help the most. We would be able to afford to do that by doing a little less for the families that do not need the help. We do it in the context of respecting Parliament and the laws that govern our country. That is what a Liberal government would do to restore fairness and respect for the rule of law to our country.

[Taxation, June 5th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, under the Liberal plan for fairness, every family earning less than $150,000 will get a bigger monthly cheque. For example, a couple struggling to raise three kids on $70,000 per year will get an extra $380 every month from our plan.

Compare that with the Conservatives, who are giving less money to struggling families and more money to the families who do not need the help, the wealthier families.

Why are the Conservatives fighting so hard to keep the money from struggling, middle-class families who need the help the most?

[Taxation, June 5th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, Liberals have a plan for fairness for hard-working Canadian families. We are going to simplify the complex system of child benefit payments into one monthly payment for families that need the help, and we are going to make these payments bigger and tax free. A single mother earning $30,000 per year and raising her four-year-old daughter will get an extra $1,100 per year under our plan. Conservative income splitting will do nothing for her.

Why are the Conservatives fighting so hard to keep that money from single parents who need the help?

[The Economy, June 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian economy shrank last quarter. We are halfway to a recession. TD, BMO, CIBC and the OECD have all downgraded their projections for Canada.

TD is saying that while the headline growth number was bad, the underlying details were worse, yet yesterday the Minister of Finance, ignoring mounting evidence, predicted growth this quarter.

Why will he not tell Canadians the truth, that the economy has flatlined and we are teetering on recession? Why is he refusing to provide a real plan for jobs and growth? Does he think wishful thinking is a replacement for a plan?

[Committees of the House, June 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague from Victoria. He made some very good points. I hate to say it, but he makes good points in the House quite frequently on a range of issues. He is a pretty smart fellow.

On any criminal justice issue, it is really important to look at examples from other countries. For instance, if we want to talk about things like mandatory minimums, we could look at the U.S. and say that if putting more people in jail for longer periods of time created safer communities, then American cities would be the safest in the world.

However, on the decriminalization side of marijuana and some other drugs, if we look at the Portugal example, 12 years ago Portugal decriminalized marijuana and some other drugs. Since then, the rate of drug abuse and addiction has declined because the government redirected money that it was spending in the past on interdiction, jail and the whole police and judicial system on health promotion. It treated drugs as a medical issue and invested in mental health, addiction treatment and health promotion, telling people the dangers of it.

Does the hon. member agree that perhaps things could lead to less drug abuse and addiction if we redirected resources to health promotion, mental health treatment and addiction treatment?

[The Economy, June 1st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian economy has not just stalled, it is going in reverse. In fact, we are now half-way to a recession.

In response to Canada's bad job numbers, last week TD Bank said “While the headline number was bad, the underlying details were worse”. It points to a deep drop in investment, which is bad for future growth. Meanwhile, the finance minister says that to boost growth, we need to make it easier to fire workers.

How many more jobs does the minister think we need to lose before the Canadian economy can grow? How can the minister and the Conservatives be so out of touch with this slow growth economy and the challenges it is creating?

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question. I have a good understanding of our tax system. I agree with my colleague that our tax system is too complicated. Under the Conservative government, it has also become less fair.

That is why the Liberal Party has presented a plan to cut taxes for the middle class. This plan includes a new tax bracket for incomes over $200,000 a year. This will make our tax system fairer and will really help middle-class families. I think that makes sense for our economy and our society.