Tim Uppal

[Business of Supply, March 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the procedure and House affairs committee has done some very good work and has put together a report. The government has received the report and will respond to it. However, we are not opposed to the motion before the House today.

[Business of Supply, March 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the member for Hamilton Centre. I, too, enjoy working with the member. He is a very respectful member and I appreciate his support as the critic for democratic reform.

We are not opposed to the motion before the House. The important thing is that the opposition spent millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of phone calls it made during the last election. The Conservative Party of Canada is assisting Elections Canada. I would ask why the opposition is not assisting Elections Canada in the same way. We do not need a motion for that to happen. The opposition can assist Elections Canada right now.

[Business of Supply, March 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue today's debate on the motion tabled by the member for Hamilton Centre.

I will start by saying that we are not opposed to this motion. We certainly are supporting Elections Canada's ongoing work by making available all of our records from the last election.

Though we are not opposed to this motion, we must consider that it was brought forward while the parties opposite have been conducting a baseless and unsubstantiated smear campaign against our government and our party over the course of the last several weeks. The point must be reinforced that there is nothing stopping the opposition from supporting Elections Canada's work right now. They can easily provide all of their records relating to phone calls and phone contracts made in the last election right now to assist in the agency's work right now.

The Conservative Party of Canada is doing exactly that and will continue to do so. Our government and party has been unequivocal in its willingness to make all of its records available to Elections Canada officials to assist its ongoing work. We encourage the opposition to do the same. We know they spent millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of phone calls during the last election. This information can only assist Elections Canada in getting to the bottom of the allegations being levelled. If the opposition really wants to support Elections Canada's work, they should provide all of the records relating to the calls they made in the last election.

As I said, this debate warrants consideration within the greater context in which the motion was brought forward. I would like to take a moment to touch on this briefly.

In the course of the last several weeks, there seem to be three sets of allegations being levelled, particularly toward our government and party regarding calls made in the last election. First, there are specific allegations about riding level activity, mostly in the Guelph area; second, there are complaints by voters in several ridings who received calls that their polling stations had changed; third, there are allegations of misleading calls into their ridings.

On the first point, there have been media reports about the investigation of a specific case in the riding of Guelph. The Conservative Party's national campaign has been clear that it did not organize or know about any such activities in that riding but has been fully assisting Elections Canada. If any untoward behaviour is uncovered, the Conservative Party has made clear its demand that those responsible be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

For the benefit of the House, I will restate that point here. What is alleged to have happened in Guelph, Ontario is unacceptable. Voter participation is the cornerstone of our democracy. In fact, we are proud that more than 900,000 more Canadians voted in the last election. We saw that right across the country and believe it demonstrates the strength of our democracy. However, anyone who makes an effort to suppress voter participation by providing wrong information should be held fully accountable by Elections Canada for doing so.

On the second point, Elections Canada confirmed that 127 polling locations, representing approximately 1,000 polls and potentially affecting nearly a half a million Canadians, were changed in the 2011 federal election. We have made it quite clear that the Conservative Party of Canada called Conservative supporters to ensure that they knew where to vote. In its attacks, the NDP has claimed that no polling stations had changed. This is in fact false. Even the member for Ahuntsic admitted that polls had changed. She said that in her riding, for instance, it was true that there had been changes to polls and that the Bloc Québécois had called its people to advise them.

On the third allegation, the NDP and Liberals have made a number of new allegations about calls being made in other ridings during the last election. However, when the Leader of the Official Opposition was asked eight times for hard evidence on CBC's Power and Politics, she was unable to do so. In the absence of hard facts, it is clear that these allegations are baseless smears brought forward by sore losers unwilling to accept the fact they lost the election.

As far as the motion before the House goes today, we are not opposed to supporting Elections Canada's work in the wake of these exaggerated allegations. In fact, we are doing just that. The Conservative Party of Canada has already provided all of our information to Elections Canada to assist in its ongoing work. We did this willingly.

As the Prime Minister has stated, we have been very clear about the Conservative Party of Canada's activities. In fact, all of the calls made by the Conservative Party of Canada are documented. All of those records are available to Elections Canada, and we will obviously be looking forward with great interest to see what documents exist on the telephone activities of the NDP and the Liberals during the campaign.

If the opposition needs a motion to support Elections Canada's work, so be it, but I want to underline that there is nothing currently preventing the NDP and the Liberals from giving over their own information willingly to Elections Canada officials. If the opposition will not assist Elections Canada's work by providing all of their records relating to the calls they made during the last election, then we can simply conclude that the debate today is not actually to support Elections Canada's work but yet another calculated attempt by the opposition to continue its baseless smear campaign against our government and party. This is quite serious, especially considering the casual way in which the opposition flings these accusations around without regard for fact or evidence.

We know that the opposition spent millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of phone calls during the last election. If the opposition really want to support Elections Canada's work, they should provide all of their records relating to calls they made during the last election. This information can only assist Elections Canada in getting to the bottom of the allegations being levelled.

We also know that some of the allegations made by the opposition are simply untrue. However, members should not take it from me but from their own operatives. The NDP claims that South Shore—St. Margaret's received fraudulent calls, but the NDP riding president said that was not true. As Wolfgang Ziemer, the NDP riding association president of that riding during the campaign, has said, “There is just no way that I can add any fuel to this fire, if there is a fire. I have no idea how the riding got on that list”.

The Liberals claim that Wellington—Halton Hills received fraudulent calls, but the Liberal candidate also said that was not true. Barry Peters said he did not recall hearing about any suspicious calls, either while out knocking on doors or back at the office.

It is clear that the opposition is levelling allegations against our government and party without regard for basic fact or evidence. This is irresponsible and serves to denigrate not only the millions of legitimate ballots cast by Canadians in the last election but also the very serious allegation of suppression of voter participation in the constituency of Guelph.

Again, what is alleged to have happened in Guelph, Ontario is unacceptable. Let us be categorical: voter suppression is extremely serious, and if anything improper occurred, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

If the opposition want to support Elections Canada's work, they should provide all of the records relating to the calls they made during the last election so that Elections Canada can get to the bottom of this. However, so far the opposition seem more concerned about levelling baseless, unsubstantiated and politically motivated smears in a campaign against our government and party than about supporting Elections Canada's work.

To conclude, I have to ask this. What is the opposition waiting for? There is nothing stopping the opposition from supporting the work of Elections Canada right now. It can easily provide all the records relating to phone calls and phone contracts made in the last election to assist the agency's work. In being so keen on supporting the work of Elections Canada in the next election, the opposition seems rather unwilling to provide the support for it right now. In fact, the Conservative Party of Canada is the only party that has been clear in its willingness to voluntarily make available all of its records to Elections Canada officials to assist it in its ongoing work. We encourage the opposition to do the same.

We know the opposition spent millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of phone calls during the last election. This information can only assist Elections Canada in getting to the bottom of these allegations. If the opposition wants to support the work of Elections Canada, it should provide all of its records relating to the calls it made during the last election.

[Democratic Reform, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, our government is delivering a principled, reasonable and fair bill for all Canadians with the fair representation act. It is truly a national formula. The opposition has brought forward alternatives. I thank those members for contributing to the debate, but I believe that in their attempt to score political points they are ignoring the real consequences of their proposals. It is time to put politics aside and support a truly national, fair for all Canadians strategy on representation. That is why I am asking the opposition parties to vote for the fair representation act tonight.

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals came to the table with a proposal that would essentially pick winners and losers, and pit provinces against other provinces. Their proposal would hurt the representation of rural Canadians. They have no plan for what would happen in the future with population growth or what we would do with those provinces that have already hit their seat floor. Their proposal is not an effective proposal.

Our bill that we have brought forward is fair and principled. It is upfront with Canadians as to how many seats will be available to all provinces. It brings every Canadian closer to representation by population. This is a commitment we made to Canadians and we are following through on that commitment.

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, we will commit to ensuring that the process of redrawing the boundaries continues to be independent, non-partisan, and at arm's length of the government at all times. This bill presents a formula to give seats to the different provinces.

In February the process will begin for the independent non-partisan commission to look at where the population is and to redraw those boundaries. It will be consulting with Canadians to get their suggestions. It will be consulting at some point with members of Parliament as well.

Therefore, we will commit to ensuring that this continues to be, as has been our history in Canada, a non-partisan independent process, which is a very important principle for redistribution of those boundaries.

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's question and also his work on the committee. The committee did great work on this bill.

As he said, it is important that we pass the bill as soon as possible. The commissions will start their work in February and we need this new formula in place to avoid duplication of their work. The Chief Electoral Officer has said that if we do not get this done in time, they will begin their work, and when the bill eventually passes, they will have to restart their work, which could cost more money and would definitely cause confusion to Canadians.

To avoid the duplication of work of those independent non-partisan commissions, it is important to pass the bill as soon as possible. That is why we are voting on it tonight.

I ask the opposition to support this very fair and principled bill.

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's comments and his input on debate on the bill. From the entire opposition we have had good debate on the bill.

As I mentioned in my speech, the opposition has come forward with proposals. We have discussed those proposals, including the government's proposal, here in the House of Commons. We have done that in committee. We have had good discussions at committee. The bill has come back to the House of Commons and now we are speaking to it for the final time.

We have had those discussions. It is time to vote on one of the bills, the bill that is presented here. We have a bill that is fair for all provinces. It is clear that we are following through and keeping our commitment that we made to Canadians that we would bring every Canadian closer to representation by population.

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the main problem, and the problem we are addressing, is the under-representation of the fastest growing provinces. We made a commitment to Canadians that we would address that.

Those fastest growing provinces represent 60% of the population. Those populations include women, aboriginals, new Canadians and visible minorities who happen to live in those provinces more so than the other provinces. Therefore, new Canadians and visible minorities become the most under-represented among all Canadians.

We made a commitment to Canadians to address that under-representation. That is what we are doing with this bill. This bill moves all Canadians, no matter where they live in Canada, closer to representation by population. Essentially we are making the system more fair for every single Canadian.

[Fair Representation Act, December 13th, 2011]

moved that Bill C-20, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and the Canada Elections Act, be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin the last stage of debate today on the government's Bill C-20, the fair representation act. Now that we have had the benefit of second reading debate and committee review, the value of this bill has become even more clear. There is no question that Bill C-20 represents the most practical and fair approach to improving representation in the House of Commons.

This bill would address a series of important points for Canadians. Most importantly, it would address the serious and increasing under-representation of our fastest growing provinces: Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. This under-representation means a number of things. It means Canadians in these three provinces are not represented properly in terms of number of members of Parliament. It means that the votes of citizens living in each of these three provinces do not have nearly the same weight as the votes of citizens living in the other seven provinces.

Certainly, we must strike a balance within our constitutional framework between voter equality and effective representation across the country. The principle of voter equality and representation by population is an important one. Many Canadians would agree it is the single most important principle. That is why we need to ensure we have a seat allocation formula that, to the greatest extent possible, provides equal weight to every Canadian's vote. I believe this is the fair thing to do and many Canadians would agree with that.

The seat allocation formula instituted in 1985 does not provide anywhere near the equality of vote that we need. We must change it. Not only is the current formula not as fair as it should be to all provinces and Canadians, but it is also increasingly unfair to Canadians in the three fastest growing provinces, which also happen to be three of the four largest provinces. This problem is significant now and is only going to get worse if we continue with the status quo.

Over 60% of Canadians live in these three provinces and so more than 60% of Canadians are under-represented in the House. To me, to many of my colleagues here, to my constituents and to our government, this is unacceptable. Therefore, we are addressing this problem.

We are keeping our promises to Canadians and those promises are worth repeating. In the last campaign, we made three distinct promises on House of Commons representation to Canadians. First, we would increase the number of seats now and in the future to better reflect population growth in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta. Second, we would protect the number of seats for smaller provinces. Third, we would protect the representation of Quebec according to population. We are delivering on each of those promises with this bill. We have promised to ensure that any update to the formula would be fair for all Canadians and all provinces, and we are doing just that.

The opposition has brought forth alternatives, but those alternatives would not keep our promises to Canadians. Each proposal has numerous flaws. We disagree with the opposition's approach. We promised specific things to Canadians on this issue and we are going to deliver on our promises. We are going to deliver a principled, reasonable and fair bill for all Canadians.

I would like to address the proposals from the NDP and the Liberals. Their proposals compromise the democratic representation of some Canadians in pursuit of political statements. This is something we are not doing. The NDP has proposed a bill that would add an element to our seat allocation formula that would violate the constitutional principle of proportional representation. It would guarantee a province a fixed percentage of seats in the House regardless of its share of the population. This would not be in keeping with our goal of moving all provinces closer to representation by population.

The NDP proposal would introduce a new factor that would cause further under-representation of the fastest growing provinces, the very provinces that we need to treat more fairly. Furthermore, to alter the principle of proportional representation would take a constitutional amendment that requires the consent of the provinces through the 7/50 amending formula. This change proposed by the NDP is not something this House and our Parliament can do on its own. From that perspective, this proposal is unconstitutional without that element of provincial consent.

We have seen that the NDP is more than happy to put a political statement in one province ahead of fair representation for all Canadians. What is more, the NDP cannot tell Canadians just how many extra seats it plans to provide. Canadians do not know what to expect from the NDP. It uses out-of-date numbers and cannot give Canadians any certainty on seat numbers.

We have been clear with Canadians. Canadians know exactly what to expect from our bill and our government. We made sure to use the most accurate numbers we have, and we made sure Canadians would know exactly what to expect from their government.

The Liberals present a proposal that would be a recipe for provincial anger and conflict. It would go directly against our second promise to Canadians, that we would protect the seat counts for smaller, slower growing provinces. This point was made eloquently by my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills last Tuesday afternoon, and I think he is correct.

The Liberals' proposal would take seats away from the smaller, slower growing provinces, and give those seats to the larger, faster growing provinces. Simply shuffling the deck is not as easy as it sounds. It may be the practice in some other countries, as some colleagues have correctly pointed out, but it has not been the practice here in our country.

The Liberal proposal would lead to seat losses for the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Nine seats would be lost by those provinces.

Despite the challenges put forward by the Liberal members from Saint-Laurent—Cartierville and Winnipeg North, I do not think that the people in the governments of those five provinces would happily endorse the proposal.

We make no apologies for addressing the significant and increasing under-representation of ordinary Canadians. Our bill does that, just as we promised to do. We also believe, and make no apologies for believing, that this problem should not be fixed by inflicting seat losses on other provinces. Just as we would ensure that no province could move from being overrepresented to being under-represented as a result of the formula, we would also ensure that no province loses seats through this formula.

That is consistent across the whole of our bill. We have demonstrated this consistency when making our commitments to Canadians during past elections. Consistency, however, is not a feature of the Liberal position. Let me give some examples.

The Liberals have enjoyed quoting from committee reports from 1994. What they leave out is that the Liberal government at the time rejected the very advice and principles that the Liberals are trying to promote today.

The Liberal government of the time had no interest in fixing the obvious flaws of the current formula. It had no intention of reducing the number of seats in the House, freezing the size of the House or taking seats away from any provinces.

I am certainly not going to argue that our Conservative government has much in common with that previous Liberal government, quite the opposite in fact. Our Conservative government has continued the hard work of fixing many of the problems that the Liberal government did not care to deal with during its 13 years in power.

My point is this: the Liberal proposal is not firmly grounded in our country's history or any particular principle. The Liberal position is politically convenient. That is it. What is more, we are not exactly sure how the Liberals propose their plan would work in the future.

We have been clear. Our formula is fair, nationally applicable and permanent. Rules that would be applied in this readjustment would be applied in the same way in the next readjustment.

We have been clear in our bill. The Liberals have not even tabled a bill. They only held a press conference and presented a couple of charts. The member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville has been passionate about their ideas, but they have not tabled a bill, so we do not know how they plan to solve some of the major problems of their bill. Their proposal, as with the current formula, would quickly run up against the effect of the constitutional seat force, in this case the Senate floor rule.

Their proposal would continue to take seats away from smaller, slower growing provinces and give them to the larger, faster growing ones until they could not do that any more. The smaller, slower growing provinces are all very close to their Senate floors. Quickly it would become impossible to take seats away from them to give to the provinces that deserve increased representation. The Liberals have not put forward a bill that lays out how they propose to deal with this situation. I do not think Canadians should let them skip over this problem.

The Liberals' proposal immediately brings Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia down to their Senate floors. New Brunswick and P.E.I. are already at their Senate floors. After one readjustment, no more seats could be removed from Atlantic Canada.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba have some room to fall further, but then those provinces, which are significantly larger than any of the Atlantic provinces, would have the same or fewer seats than those Atlantic provinces. That cannot be fair at all. Saskatchewan and Manitoba's combined population of over 2.3 million could have fewer seats than New Brunswick and Nova Scotia's combined population of just over 1.7 million. In fact, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have approximately the same population as all four Atlantic provinces combined. To remove seats from these prairie provinces at all is clearly unfair and unjust to Canadians living in those provinces.

I suppose the Liberals could suggest taking even more seats away from Quebec. The Liberals have proposed taking three seats away from Quebec this time around, and I can only suppose that they would not see any problem with taking even more away.

What do the Liberals propose to avoid this situation? They have no idea because they have decided these issues are not important enough to them to table an actual bill.

I come back to my point that the Liberals' proposal is simply politically opportunistic. It is an attempt to score political points while ignoring the very real consequences of their proposal. They can do this because they do not have to worry about their proposal actually becoming law and a part of our Constitution. They know their proposal is flawed, that it will not become law and that they are not responsible for ensuring fairness for all Canadians.

Our Conservative government has responsibility for all these things. We have a responsibility to govern for all Canadians and to ensure fairness for all Canadians. That is why our proposal is fair for all Canadians. It is our job to make it that way and we have done exactly that. As I said, we made promises to Canadians. These principles form the basis of the bill and we are not going to move away from them. We are confident that we have struck the right balance and that our bill provides the most fair, practical and accurate way to move forward to what is fair representation.

Earlier in my remarks I made note of the committee stage this bill went through. I would like to return to that point to emphasize some of the strengths of the bill and our approach. One point I would like to emphasize is the source of our proposal to streamline the boundary readjustment process. Ultimately, these changes would help to complete the process faster which in turn would provide clarity to Canadians sooner with respect to their riding boundaries.

With these changes, we project that it will be possible to bring forward the completion of the boundary readjustment process in early 2014, instead of late 2014 under the present timelines. During the hearings of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, both the current Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Marc Mayrand, and the former chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, noted that these amendments are consistent with previous recommendations made by them and that there would be no problems associated with the timelines.

Mr. Mayrand stated:

We are confident that we and the commissions will be able to proceed and implement the new formula and the remainder of provisions of the legislation without too much difficulty, provided it's enacted in time.

Mr. Mayrand also stated that the best scenario was for this bill to be passed and in place in time for the February 8, 2012 start date of the readjustment process. During his testimony at committee, he spoke about the importance of having the legislation adopted as soon as possible and the danger of further delay. He said:

The best date, in our mind, would be before the commissions are set up in February. Otherwise, commissions will have to start their work, the legislation will come into place later on, and they will have to restart again. That may, of course, generate additional costs, but also quite a bit of confusion, depending on what time the legislation comes into place.

It is our intention to heed the advice of Canada's Chief Electoral Officer and prevent this sort of additional cost, duplication of effort and confusion.

I will also point out the changes of data source for the allocation of seats by provinces as a strength of this bill. This is the requirement in the bill that Statistics Canada's population estimates be used to determine the allocation of seats by province instead of the decennial census figures. The population estimates are the most accurate data available because they are adjusted to account for under-coverage of the census itself. These estimates are already used to determine the allocation of funding for the federal-provincial equalization program, the Canada health transfer, the Canada social transfer, and the territorial formula financing.

As Chief Statistician Wayne Smith stated during his testimony before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs:

--it is Statistics Canada's view that the currently available estimates of population at July 1 represent the best available evaluation of the population of the provinces and territories that is available at this time or that will be available on February 8. It is therefore appropriate, in our view, that they should be used for the purposes of Bill C-20.

Mr. Smith's comments represent a strong endorsement of our government's decision to use the best available data for each stage of this process. The census numbers will of course continue to be used for the electoral boundary readjustment process because they provide a level of geographic detail that is necessary to draw the boundaries, again the best data available for this stage of that process.

To conclude, for over two decades Canadians from Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta have become significantly under-represented in the House of Commons due to population growth. They will continue to become even more under-represented if action is not taken to correct the status quo. Clearly, this increasing and significant under-representation is not fair. Every Canadian's vote to the greatest extent possible should carry equal weight. Since forming government in 2006, our Conservative government has consistently demonstrated its commitment to fighting the significant and increasing under-representation of ordinary Canadians in the House of Commons.

Given that the decennial boundary readjustment process begins February 8, 2012, tonight's vote is the last opportunity for members to say to Canadians that the status quo is unacceptable. I encourage the opposition to vote in favour of this legislation which is fair for all provinces and which moves every single Canadian closer to representation by population.