House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was particular.

Last in Parliament September 2021, as Liberal MP for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame (Newfoundland & Labrador)

Lost his last election, in 2021, with 46% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Committees of the House May 6th, 2016

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, “A Report on the Closure of the Comox Marine Communications and Traffic Services Centre”.

Committees of the House May 3rd, 2016

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in relation to its study of the main estimates for the fiscal year 2016-17.

Committees March 11th, 2016

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans on its study of Supplementary Estimates (C) 2015-2016.

I too would like to wish all the best to my colleagues on that standing committee as we proceed.

Canada Labour Code February 16th, 2016

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his astute comments as well, as we trade all kinds of compliments between each other.

In the spirit of this massive love-in that we embarked on, yes, we are talking about the love-in as well when it comes to these particular tripartite negotiations. That is what he talked about: the businesses, the employers, organized labour and, of course, government. He also pointed out that we want to avoid what happened last time with sweeping generalizations about who we are as groups.

Many times I have heard people say that they do not really like unions or they are all for unions. We must have a conversation that looks at and accentuates the wonderful things they do, and if we have disagreements, bring them here to the House.

My other hon. colleague pointed out the situation with sick leave. It is a valid point. We know there will be disagreements. We have to look at the books as they are and the fiscal balance that we hope to achieve, and that is why we cannot use sweeping generalizations anymore with terms like “big union bosses” or “corporate bosses”, and the like. If we go that way, we will all sound like Donald Trump, and wouldn't that be a bad thing?

Canada Labour Code February 16th, 2016

Madam Speaker, obviously, with regard to what she is talking about right now, we will let the discussions unfold. I have always had a deep respect for public sector workers. I have always had respect for them, their remuneration, and anything dealing with the benefits they receive. Yes, I do. It is a negotiation between the government and the union. I realize that. I will leave that at what it is right now and speak about it later when the time comes to vote on that particular legislation.

What I am focused on right now is untangling the mess in Bill C-4, and I thank the member for her comments about it. She supports Bill C-4, and I appreciate that support for all the reasons we do: the injustices in the particular provisions contained within Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.

Canada Labour Code February 16th, 2016

Madam Speaker, I am always in favour of transparency. I would never turn it down. Anyone who works around here should have full disclosure on this. That is my view personally. I do believe in that.

As a matter of fact, I was referring to Mr. Rathgeber's bill. I point towards his chair because that is where he used to sit. He was an hon. member, a very smart man, and he worked very hard. What he tried to do was put more disclosure on certain aspects of governance. He pointed out the hypocrisy that tends to occur in this place, small or large, and that was happening at the time. Demanding transparency of one group includes transparency for all.

Canada Labour Code February 16th, 2016

With bated breath, yes indeed, Madam Speaker.

When prorogation takes place, the bill resets and goes back to its original form. The bill in its original form then went back to the Senate, but Hugh Segal was not there, unfortunately. Therefore, it was passed in its original form, which is the reason why we are here today talking about Bill C-4 in this manner.

I want to talk about one of the situations my NDP colleague brought up earlier when it comes to transparency. I remember when a gentleman, an independent member of Parliament, Brent Rathgeber, had a private member's bill on transparency and the disclosure of salaries, and so on and so forth. He specifically went after a couple of elements within the public discussion. He went after the CBC, wanting the disclosure of CBC salaries, and so on and so forth. There were some problems with the bill when it came to the CBC being quasi-competitive in the private sector, but he also talked about divulging or making transparent the salaries of people in government, including the salaries of the people who worked in the PMO, the Prime Minister's Office of the day, the Conservative Prime Minister.

The Conservatives amended the bill. Mr. Rathgeber's bill said that anyone making around $150,000 should have their salary divulged. It was based on the sunshine list that exists in Ontario, which concerns anyone making more than $150,000. The Conservatives amended it so that only someone making more than $400,000 a year would have their salary disclosed. Anyone making less than that would not have their salary disclosed. As we say back home, “You are too cute by half, sir”. The Conservatives were trying to protect their own.

It is funny that we have massive disclosure demanded from labour organizations, but when it came to the Conservative Prime Minister's Office, it was not the same standard. That is why we are here today.

I support Bill C-4 for the reason that it untangles the effects of the two private members' bills, despite the strong efforts by the two members who brought forward these private members' bills, a process that we still uphold here as honourable for each and every individual member. However, I disagree with them and therefore I would strongly urge all of us to vote in favour of Bill C-4.

Canada Labour Code February 16th, 2016

Madam Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues who have spoken on the bill thus far.

This exercise is not so much about outlining the vision of the legislation that we have before us, but about untangling what has been tangled before. Therefore, we now find ourselves in this position where we are taking back two particular bills.

I will not specifically address the issue of private members' bills and how they are being used, whether for nefarious reasons or not. Personally, I respect private members' bills, no matter what they are. They are from a member and there is a reason they exist. However, I would like to attack these particular bills based on their policies and how they are unfair in this context.

Bill C-377 and Bill C-525 were bills that I did not support from the beginning. Therefore, we need to undo what has been done in order to proceed any further, and Bill C-4 would do just that.

Both Bill C-377 and Bill C-525 passed without the extensive consultation process traditionally used for labour relations law reform. This is what we call the tripartite way of doing things. We have the government, the union and organized labour and, of course, we have the employers, all of which need to be consulted on something as important as this, because it affects so many Canadians across the country. Changes to labour relations legislation has always been preceded by this.

I have two examples of how this was done. I would like to bring these examples to the House because they illustrate the way things should be done using the tripartite process.

In 1995, the Sims task force did extensive public consultations on part 1 of the Canada Labour Code, and included labour, employers, and government stakeholders. The name of the report is “Seeking a Balance”, which formed the basis of major changes that came into effect in 1999. Going further back to 1978, the second example I would like to use, was the Woods task force, which was another tripartite consultative process. It was used to bring about change to the federal industrial relations system.

However, with Bill C-377 and Bill C-525, there was not much consultation. I am not sure of all the work that the members did in response to these two bills, but I would assume that the opposition during the committee process both here in the House and in the Senate illustrates that a lot of consultation did not take place in this tripartite manner.

I will go to the part where the bill talks about some of the other non-labour practices of the former government. Of course, in many situations the Conservatives went against many of the unions and organized labour, and a result caused a very poisoned atmosphere over the past while. Whenever we heard the government talk about big union bosses and the like, it created a stir among organized labour and many governments, both provincial and here in Ottawa.

Here are some of the rules the Conservatives brought in: a requirement to provide information on the time spent by officers on political lobbying, which would then be made publicly available on the Canada Revenue Agency's website; and an obligation on unions to provide their financial statements to their own members for free and when they are asked for it.

This was almost a situation where the Conservatives wanted to create a solution to a problem that did not exist. They did so without the right amount of consultation and, as a result, neglected to see some of the steps that had been taken over the past 20 to 25 years by organized labour, employers and the associations they are represented by.

Bill C-377 was directed solely at labour organizations, and that was quite evident during the evidence that was given here in the House and in both House and Senate committees. It was directed at labour trusts and not at any other professional associations, which, by the way, benefited from similar treatment under the Income Tax Act, but they were not specifically told to be more transparent as well.

As hon. colleagues will recall, the Minister of National Revenue has waived the reporting requirements for 2016 in Bill C-377 knowing that we intend to work to repeal the bill.

I will go back to the debate that took place, before we get into Bill C-4. When Bill C-377 went to the Senate, a colleague of ours by the name of Hugh Segal, a Conservative senator at the time, was vociferously against the bill, to the point where he had brought amendments that were accepted at the time. I will read an editorial he did after retiring from the Senate about how he was against Bill C-377 and its fundamental principles. I will quote from his editorial:

The Canadian Bar Association questioned its constitutionality, as it sought to circumvent normal provincial jurisdiction over labour relations and trade unions by imposing Canada Revenue Agency reporting requirements via federal statute.

There he talked about the constitutional crisis that had been raised by this particular situation. We can question the constitutionality of the bill as defined by the powers directed by the provincial governments and the federal government, which are laid out quite clearly.

Former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal went on to say:

There was also the issue raised by many witnesses before the committee that reporting relationships for small expenditures being imposed on unions and union locals were not being imposed on other corporate or charitable/not-for-profit groups.

We saw this in the House of Commons testimony as well, when witnesses talked about how the same onus was not put on other associations to divulge or make transparent the activities they do and the contributions they receive, including from whom, which really would have created a balance.

The imbalance during labour negotiations was also talked about and mentioned in Hugh Segal's article and the point was made that information would be divulged by local labour organizations to the point where it would put them at a distinct disadvantage in certain negotiations.

I want to thank him for doing that, because I thought that in earnest he had put together some very viable amendments. Let us face it, like every bill of this size, there are good points and there are bad points, but Conservative Senator Hugh Segal attempted to make amendments. I should not say “attempted”, because he actually did make them. His amendments were accepted by members of the Senate, and then the bill was sent back here to the House for it to address it once more with those fixes in place. The House was prorogued.

Here, I know that everyone is just waiting to hear how this works, right? It is that type of day.

Income Tax Act January 29th, 2016

Madam Speaker, I first came here in 2004. In 2006, when the Conservatives took over, we handed them a multi-billion dollar surplus, which just ran through the cracks and madly off in all directions over the following six years. Trust me, I was here during the deficit years.

I would like to remind the member that whatever he talks about now is some fictional type of surplus. Trust me, it was fiddled away in the last 10 years of their existence.

Income Tax Act January 29th, 2016

Madam Speaker, it is a valid point by my hon. colleague from British Columbia.

We talked earlier, throughout the campaign and until now, about how the investment in benefits and tax incentives are targeted toward those who will benefit the most. That is why, when we discussed the TFSA issue and reducing the limit from $10,000 to $5,500, the whole point was that more people would maximize it. We can use those savings to give benefits to others who will also leverage that. That is the whole point of what we have been doing.

We talked about the child care benefit. The Canada child benefit contains two things targeted towards those who need it most. Second, it is tax-free. That is what we talked about during the campaign.

We received the mandate to put that forward for those very reasons. People said to us, yes, we believe it is the right investment to make and not in cases where we would be providing a benefit for those who need it the least.