Scott Simms

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague pointed out the tariff reductions, which are fine, and Liberals agree with that. However, as the member for Northwest Territories pointed out, the gist of this debate is that a negotiation took place between two entities within this country, one national, one sub-national, Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador.

I would like to point something out to the member, though, that I noticed from the very beginning. He said that this is an exercise in posturing. He said we have seen this movie before. I have seen this movie before, and he starred in it. Here is what happened.

In November 2004, that gentleman sat down here in opposition and argued vehemently, called it a crime, that then Prime Minister Paul Martin could not, wait for it, make a special deal with Nova Scotia, because it deserved it, because it negotiated, and the prime minister of the day broke his promise. That is what he said then about a special deal. Today he talks about no special deals.

I was wondering if he could comment on that, plus the fact that during the release, Newfoundland and Labrador said this was all about new marketing initiatives, fisheries research, and $400 million. It was not up to $400 million. It was $400 million. Why were they so wrong?

[Petitions, February 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, many of the residents of the town of Change Islands in my riding are deeply concerned about the community wharf, which is inoperable for commercial reasons.

The residents want to harvest seafood products, and unfortunately the wharf is not in a state in which it can be improved right now. I have since learned that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has made some improvements. We hope they can go further.

These signatures are from people in the community and in surrounding communities as far away as Gander, who want immediate action to be taken.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 26th, 2015]

With respect to the Enabling Accessibility Fund, since September 2011: (a) how many applications (i) were successful and received funding under this program, (ii) were rejected through calls for proposals; (b) with respect to successful applications, what was the location and value of each project, broken down by (i) province, (ii) federal electoral district, (iii) corresponding file and reference number; (c) what is the total cost of administering the program thus far for each year since 2011; (d) how much funding is left; (e) how many major projects under this program will go to, or went to, expanding existing centres; (f) what is the value of the successful major projects applications that went to (i) the construction of new centres, (ii) the expanding of existing centres; (g) how many of the successful Mid-Sized Projects Enabling Accessibility Fund applications went to (i) renovating buildings, (ii) modifying vehicles, (iii) making information and communications more accessible; (h) what is the value of the successful Small Projects Enabling Accessibility Fund applications that went to (i) renovating buildings, (ii) modifying vehicles, (iii) making information and communications more accessible; (i) what is the reason most often given for rejecting an application; (j) what are the reasons given for rejecting an application and what is the frequency of each reason; (k) will the program be renovated next year and, if so, when will the next call for proposals be issued; and (l) with respect to rejected applications, what was the location and value of each proposal, broken down by (i) province, (ii) federal electoral district, (iii) corresponding file and reference number?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 26th, 2015]

With respect to licenses and permits issued by government departments, related to any maritime activity for potential use anywhere within, or in the waters of, the Atlantic provinces: (a) for each license or permit issued since 2009, (i) on what date was each license or permit issued, (ii) who were the owners or operators, (iii) under what conditions concerning the use, retention, or renewal of the license or permit, was it issued; (b) for each vessel whose license was suspended, rejected, or for which a renewal was denied, (i) on what date was the license suspended, rejected, or the renewal denied, (ii) for what reasons, (iii) by whose authority; (c) what are the file numbers of all ministerial briefings or departmental correspondence between the government and all entities, departments, companies, contractors, or individuals, relating to the suspension, rejection or denial of license renewal, broken down by (i) minister or department, (ii) correspondence or file type, (iii) date, (iv) purpose, (v) origin, (vi) intended destination, (vii) other officials copied or involved; (d) what are the specific rules for the retention or renewal of any such license or permits; (e) what are all rules, files, and correspondence related to observer and dockside monitoring of these license-holders and users, broken down by (i) all relevant file numbers, (ii) entities, companies, contractors, or individuals, (iii) minister or department, (iv) correspondence or file type, (v) date, (vi) purpose, (vii) origin, (viii) intended destination, (ix) other officials copied or involved, (x) military base, asset, or facility, (xi) type of activity or contract; (f) what differences exist in the conditions for licenses or permits among different regions, zones, or provinces; and (g) what are the rules governing the keeping, as opposed to the releasing, of fish caught on boats used for recreational or touristic purposes, broken down by (i) province, (ii) number of applicable licensees or permits?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 26th, 2015]

With regard to government advertising since September 1, 2012: (a) how much has been spent on billboards, advertising and other information campaigns, broken down by (i) date released, (ii) cost, (iii) topic, (iv) whether any analysis of the effectiveness of the advertising campaign was carried out and, if so, the details of that analysis, (v) medium, including publication or media outlet and type of media used, (vi) purpose, (vii) duration of campaign (including those that are ongoing), (viii) targeted audience, (ix) estimated audience; and (b) what are the details of all records of related correspondence regarding the aforementioned billboards, advertising and other information campaigns broken down by (i) relevant file numbers, (ii) correspondence or file type, (iii) subject, (iv) date, (v) purpose, (vi) origin, (vii) intended destination, (viii) other officials copied or involved?

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 26th, 2015]

With respect to servers, including leased physical and virtual servers and cloud-based servers, owned, operated, shared, or otherwise used by the government for all platforms and protocols, broken down by department: (a) what operating system and kernel version is the server using, including, for all unix-variant systems, the output of "uname -a"; (b) in what datacenter is the server physically located; (c) who owns, provides, and operates the server; (d) what is the purpose of the server; (e) for each service provided by the server, what is the name, type, software used, protocol, and listening ports of the service; (f) what security compromises have been detected in each service provided by the server, broken down by (i) the nature of the security compromise (privilege escalation, rooting or rootkits, sniffed packets, compromised passwords, worms, viruses, trojans, lost data storage devices, unauthorised use of information by otherwise authorised users, etc.), (ii) the details of any information accessed without proper authority, damaged, or lost, (iii) the classification and designation of the compromise and the information compromised, (iv) measures taken to prevent further security compromises, (v) date the security compromise was detected, (vi) date the security compromise was believed or found to have taken place, (vii) date the security compromise was resolved; (g) of the security compromises identified in (f), what are the file numbers of any correspondence or government records related to any such security compromises, broken down by (i) relevant file numbers, (ii) correspondence or file type, (iii) subject, (iv) date, (v) purpose, (vi) origin, (vii) intended destination, other officials copied or involved; and (h) on what dates have any threat risk assessments been conducted that affected or involved the server or its surrounding infrastructure, stored data, use, or relevant department?

[Intergovernmental Affairs, December 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, here is a familiar story. The Conservative premier of Newfoundland and Labrador says, “We have a deal.” The Conservative Prime Minister of Canada says, “Oh, no, you don't.” Here we go again.

The feds say today they will only help displaced plant workers, but back in October 2013 a spokesperson for International Trade Canada said, “The program will address fish and seafood industry development and renewal as well as workers whose jobs are displaced....”

The government says it likes to be clear, so now is the time to be clear. Will the fishing industry of Newfoundland and Labrador receive its $280 million, yes or no?

[Business of Supply, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, sometimes there is a fine line between courage and stupidity, and I do not mean that in a derogatory way. I apologize if he is offended by that, but here is the problem. One cannot rush ahead and do something with bits of information that is put out to the public for people to consume.

I want to repeat what the leader of the NDP said:

The other thing that people have to understand is that even if it's not constitutional change per se, it is profound democratic change, and precisely because of that, it's not the type of thing that you can do either by just snapping your fingers the day after an election, or without profound consultation.

The courage of one's conviction must be measured in the public realm. That is how one gets people to vote for something. What if a referendum were proposed down the road? The information will have to be disseminated better than it has been so far. Luckily, there are people in organizations like Fair Vote Canada and others to do that, to help us have that debate and get through it. The courage that he is talking about is not where the courage lies in making a solid stand, if the NDP wants proportional representation in this country.

[Business of Supply, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, no, I have not received anything formally like that. I would love to have chatted about how we could study this, whether to have one of the committees, even a legislative committee or a special committee for that matter, look at this sort of thing. I would certainly be open to that.

As for some of the details that are coming out, as my hon. colleague noted, I am not quite sure about them. Some of the details about open lists and closed lists are coming out during all this. I am not sure that either would work in our country, given its size. That is part of an argument that could be had. The discussions in the academic world, to me, have been really good so far. The problem is that we have to take that from the academic world out into Main Street, to use the common phrase, and bring it to people to say that this is the system.

The system the NDP is proposing has a big element of first past the post, but also has that section that is done by proportional representation to allow smaller parties' representation. Fundamentally, that is not a bad thing, but we have to look at the fact that some things will change. Ridings get larger.

Perhaps there are other ways of doing it. Perhaps multi-member ridings would work better for a proportional system in our country. This has to be discussed.

[Business of Supply, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that. I do respect his opinion.

I do recall some of the changes to the Westminster system, such as what was done in the U.K. regarding the House of Lords. Also, we are looking at proportional representation in Australia as far as the Senate is concerned, as a playoff to that.

These experiments have good and bad parts. Again, we never really had a chance to discuss this. Some people might want to start this process in the Senate to see how it works and how we would go about doing that.

New Zealand had some time to come to terms with this in a couple of referendums. What runs through all this, as he mentioned, is that it is one of the oldest democracies around. To make a profound change like this in a two-and-a-half-hour debate, as prescriptive as it is, I would not find a responsible thing to do.

However, that being said, I am sure that a lot of people will vote to support this measure as it is right now. A lot of people have worked on this and have their opinions. I respect that, even if they do say yes to the proposal today.