Wayne Stetski

[Business of Supply, February 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the people of Kootenay—Columbia who are opposed to Kinder Morgan are opposed for three very good reasons.

First, the pipeline was approved using a flawed, weak environmental assessment process that was actually part of the 2015 election results. Certainly in my riding there was concern with what was happening to the environment under the Harper government. Second, one oil spill off the coast of British Columbia will far outweigh any economic benefit from a jobs perspective for British Columbia, and the impact on the environment, of course, would last for many years. Third, the concern is that every time we build a pipeline or focus on oil and gas, we are taking away time and energy from moving Canada forward to a green energy economy. I would like to hear the member's comments on that.

The other thing I would like him to comment on is the discussion earlier about bringing in the army to get the pipeline through. I think a much better use of the armed forces would be to clean up our beaches and get rid of the abandoned vessels. That is what we should be using the army for. I would like to hear the member's comments.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have only been a member of Parliament for two and a half years. Prior to that, I was the mayor of Cranbrook, and I can tell the member that the municipal system needs to be fixed in two ways. First of all, we need some maximums on donations to municipal elections. Currently, at least in British Columbia, there are none. If one had the money, he or she could donate $1 million to get a candidate elected in a city of 5,000 people. Second, there are no tax donations at all from municipal elections. When people are out encouraging people to send some money their way, they really have to support them fully in order to write a cheque. I think there needs to be some changes at the municipal level.

In terms of the per-vote subsidy, again, I was not around when that was in place, but one of the aspects I like about it is that it is a bit like proportional representation but it is done through votes. If a party gets a certain number of votes, it gets a certain amount of cash back, and it is done in proportion to the number of votes the party gets. Since the Liberal government has abandoned proportional representation completely, which left many of us feeling totally betrayed, bringing back the per-vote subsidy may be one way to get a little proportional representation back into Parliament and how we do business here.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the question actually has a fairly obvious answer.

When political parties are looking for money, $1,500 as a maximum donation, or $1,550 as it currently is in Canada, sounds a lot more attractive to parties than a $200 limit, depending on who is doing the supporting. I am quite comfortable, from an NDP perspective, and again this is not a party position, but I very much appreciate donations of $200, and I appreciate donations of $25. I would not be at all averse to seeing lower limits to the maximum that can be contributed.

[Canada Elections Act, February 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have to admit that when the topic of political financing reform comes up, many Canadians' eyes glaze over. It is not the most exciting subject in front of this Parliament, and yet we have heard about 18 or 19 speakers on this topic pointing out both the strengths and the weaknesses of the bill.

I wish the House rules permitted the same level of debate on some of the very important private members' bills that come before the House. Perhaps we could work together to see that happen in the future.

Bill C-50 is important. We only have to look south of the border to see what happens when there are no controls over who donates to elected representatives or how much they can donate.

During the recent U.S. debate over net neutrality, another exciting subject, companies and groups on both sides of the issue lobbied with their wallets. According to OpenSecrets.org of the 535 members of Congress, 495 received campaign contributions from groups who lobbied the Federal Communications Commission on net neutrality. The telecoms, opposed to net neutrality, donated millions and the Republicans fell in line. The result will be a more limited, more expensive Internet experience for Americans. Thankfully, here in Canada we have largely constrained such obvious vote buying, but that has not always been the case.

In advance of the1872 election, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and his colleagues sought out campaign contributions from a Montreal shipping magnate named Hugh Allan. Allan donated what would have been a fortune back in 1872, $350,000, to Macdonald's Conservative government and he was rewarded for that donation. The Canadian Encyclopedia says:

After the election, a railway syndicate organized by Allan was rewarded with the lucrative contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway — the trans-continental railroad promised to British Columbia when it joined Confederation.

More recently, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was implicated in a scandal that became known as the Airbus affair.

My own province of British Columbia used to be the case study for what happens when there are insufficient campaign financing laws. In fact, a year ago The New York Times called British Columbia the “wild west” of Canadian political cash, citing the former provincial Liberal government for its many conflicts of interest and describing the “unabashedly cozy relationship between private interests and government officials in the province”. It cited B.C. for having no limits on political donations, and repeated criticisms that under the Christy Clark regime, the provincial government “has been transformed into a lucrative business, dominated by special interests that trade donations for political favours, undermining Canada’s reputation for functional, consensus-driven democracy.”

Thankfully, the new NDP government under Premier John Horgan immediately brought in political finance reforms, including bans on corporate and union donations and limiting individual donations to $1,200 per year. It is good to see civil reforms brought to the wild west.

Meanwhile, with the current federal Liberal government we have seen the cash for access scandal, where lobbyists were sold exclusive access to the Prime Minister by simply buying high-priced tickets to Liberal fundraising events. During the last election, the Liberal Party made a promise to "close political financing loopholes altogether”.

As we look at Bill C-50, the legislation before us today, we see only a timid attempt in that direction. This bill would force some party fundraising events to be advertised five days in advance, and it would ensure that the names of those attending the function are published.

The new rules apply to events attended by cabinet ministers, party leaders, and some leadership candidates. The NDP offered amendments at committee to include parliamentary secretaries and senior political staff but the Liberal members voted down those amendments.

Observers should note that the Liberal government's parliamentary secretaries are subject to the Conflict of Interest Act, but with Bill C-50, they are exempt from the transparency rules aimed at cash for access events. At the end of the day, cash for access events will still go ahead; we will just know a little more about them.

Is the government closing political financing loopholes and meeting its campaign promise? Not at all. What should this bill contain? A 2016 Globe and Mail editorial titled, “Money and politics: How to end the corruption and conflict of interest” said:

Individual donation limits should be low – possibly as low as $100. These rules should apply at all times, including election years and during party leadership campaigns.

While I am not sure about the amount, lowering the limit would absolutely take big money out of the political picture. No longer could wealthier Canadians expect to meet with cabinet ministers or the Prime Minister because only they could afford the steep price tag.

On another issue, a 2017 Senate report titled, “Controlling Foreign Influence in Canadian Elections” found that current law “does not sufficiently protect Canadian elections from being influenced by foreign entities, whether through direct interference or by providing funding to third parties.” Its recommendations, well worth the consideration of this chamber, include a “provision that more clearly states that any attempt made by foreign entities to induce Canadian electors to vote in a particular way is prohibited”, removal of the “six month limitation on the requirement to report contributions made to third parties for the purposes of election advertising”, and “require that Elections Canada perform random audits of third parties’ election advertising expenses and any contributions they have received”. These are provisions I would like to see examined further.

Currently in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, I am often asked about issues that constituents have learned about through media websites. Unfortunately, in many cases, these news websites turn out to be politically prejudiced, are often racist, and in some cases are heavily influenced by foreign elements. They mislead, scaremonger, and prevent fact-based political discourse.

Finally, I would like to point to Bill C-364, introduced by the member for Terrebonne. His bill would sharply restrict individual donations while bringing back a formula for public subsidies to campaigns. While Bill C-364 has not yet had a rigorous review by this House, it is certainly raising some excellent issues that I would like to have seen considered within Bill C-50.

Too often money equals power, but in this place, money should have no influence. While I will be supporting this bill as at least a first baby step in the right direction, I am disappointed that the Liberal government has missed this opportunity to truly strengthen Canada's political financing laws to truly prevent influence peddling and cash for access.

[Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act, February 1st, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her hard work on behalf of particularly middle-class Canadians when it comes to labour and contracts.

There is nothing more important than keeping our people safe on the job. There needs to be more than regulations in place. I recall that when I was regional manager with the ministry of the environment for southeastern British Columbia, we had a very active health and safety committee. If employees came to me and said that they were really concerned that there was some kind of risk associated with a job and they needed additional training or funding to help make the issue go away, it was always certainly at the top of my agenda to improve that and work through it. There is nothing more important than our workers' safety.

Absolutely, it should not have to go all the way to a minister. This needs to be handled locally. There needs to be a requirement that health and safety be a priority locally.

[Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act, February 1st, 2018]

Madam Speaker, no, it is not. In fact, it was actually done with either bad information or false pretenses when they were looking at reducing sick leave. In the parliamentary budget officer's report, the budget officer said, “the incremental cost of paid sick leave was not fiscally material and did not represent material costs for departments in the [core public administration].” That means that most employees who call in sick are not replaced, resulting in no incremental costs to departments. Therefore, the suggestion that cutting sick leave would save the government money was certainly disputed by the parliamentary budget officer.

The report went on to say that the PBO confirmed that public servants' use of sick leave was in line with the private sector. It was an average of 11.52 sick days per year for public service employees. Their counterparts in the private sector used an average of 11.3 sick days per year. Obviously, there was no abuse at all by public servants in having sick days and being able to bank sick days.

When the Conservatives proposed that sick days be limited to six, not only were they not giving exactly the right information on cost savings but they were proposing that public servants get fewer sick days than the average in the private sector.

[Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act, February 1st, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be sharing my time today with the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain.

I am very proud to speak to Bill C-62. I congratulate the President of the Treasury Board for listening to Canadians and introducing this important legislation. I would also like to thank the NDP's labour critic, the MP for Jonquière, for her excellent work in supporting the bill.

When the former Conservative government chose to go after public sector workers' bargaining rights, it was certainly not a surprise. Conservatives are long-time opponents of democratic institutions like collective bargaining and freedom to associate. They see workers as a resource to be exploited and potentially thrown away, not deserving of fairness or respect.

The NDP fought the Conservatives when they introduced legislation to rob bargaining rights from our public servants, and we promised to work to restore those rights. Today, we are helping to keep that promise.

Still, for the Harper government to attack public servants' sick leave provisions, of all things, was shocking, and in the end, self-defeating. It is well established that workers who have sick leave protection will stay home when they get sick, and conversely, workers without sick leave will go to work, spreading disease among their co-workers. There is a cost to having a sick workforce. That cost, lower productivity and lost services, is higher than the cost of paying a worker to stay home.

A 2016 study quoted in Business Insider magazine said that evidence suggests that paid sick leave is tied to increased job stability and employee retention following illness, injury, or birth of a child, increased worker productivity, decreased worker errors, decreased accidents or injuries on the job, and when used to augment maternity leave, paid leave increases healthy babies, maternal health, and the duration of breast feeding, while also decreasing infant mortality.

That is why 128 nations around the world have paid sick leave for all workers, not just public servants. In fact, Canada is one of the few nations that lacks such a provision, putting us far behind many industrial and even non-industrial nations. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research only three countries, the United States, Canada, and Japan, have no national policy requiring employers to provide paid sick days for workers who need to miss five days of work to recover from the flu.

Many states and cities in the U.S. have the same legislation as is in place in Europe. In Europe, the debate is not if a country should have mandated sick leave, it is how much the government should pay out, and nations compete to show they have not fallen behind.

I have a personal story. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, one of my staff was sick before Christmas with that flu and cold that was going around. She was off for six days. When she came back to work, she expressed how fortunate and pleased she was to have sick leave coverage included in the union contract. If we look at what the Conservatives had proposed, which was a maximum of six days of sick leave, it would have used up all of her sick leave before the year really even got going.

My daughter, Kelly, works in Vancouver at a private company where it is 90 days before employees get sick leave. She was sick last week, and in the end, will have very little money to cover her bills coming up over the next week or so. Sick leave is very important certainly to our young people, and having that in place is critical to both their job satisfaction and their financial security.

Sick leave is not the only provision the government is putting back into our public service labour laws. Conservatives also took away basic bargaining rights by giving themselves the power to unilaterally define essential services. This meant that public sector unions lost their biggest tool in negotiations: the right to strike. When an employer is not worried that their workers may walk off the job, they have little reason to negotiate fairly. The International Labour Organization, which is an agency of the United Nations, published a statement of principles concerning the right to strike. It said:

Without freedom of association or, in other words, without employers’ and workers’ organizations that are autonomous, independent, representative and endowed with the necessary rights and guarantees for the furtherance and defence of the rights of their members and the advancement of the common welfare, the principle of tripartism would be impaired, if not completely stripped of all meaning, and chances for greater social justice would be seriously prejudiced.

A similar provision in the province of Saskatchewan was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015, with the court saying:

The right to strike also promotes equality in the bargaining process. This Court has long recognized the deep inequalities that structure the relationship between employers and employees, and the vulnerability of employees in this context.

While strike activity itself does not guarantee that a labour dispute will be resolved in any particular manner or that it will be resolved at all, it is the possibility of a strike that enables workers to negotiate their employment terms on a more equal footing. What would be the result of taking away democratic and fair bargaining mechanisms? It would be a workforce that has little reason to stay, little reason to succeed. It is a policy that defeats itself and hurts all Canadians, so I am pleased to see the government repeal this provision.

Before our government colleagues pat themselves on the back too strenuously, however, I must again remind them about the terrible state of negotiations, currently, for many of our public servants. As I have said in the chamber before, Canada's border security officers have been without a collective agreement now for almost four years. These officers, who protect our nation from smugglers, illegal arms, and drugs and who provide compassion and aid to returning Canadians and refugees alike, are being treated with disrespect by the Liberal government.

I have quoted before from a letter I received from a border security officer who lives in my riding of Kootenay--Columbia, and I will repeat that now:

It is further hoped that that current Liberal Government will engage in good faith bargaining and rightly recognize that the CBSA, along with its hard working employees, are indeed legitimate Law Enforcement Officers employed by a legitimate Law Enforcement Agency. All told, we are only seeking what a reasonable person would consider fair and just, and trust that the Liberal Government will come to the same conclusion.

Like the border security officers, RCMP officers are suffering under the neglect of the government. It is losing members to provincial and municipal forces, where they receive better pay, better equipment, and better treatment. It takes incredible commitment, and I really commend any officers who stay with a force that cuts their benefits and will not keep up with critical equipment and training needs or offer them the respect they so rightly deserve. RCMP members are forbidden from taking their grievances to the public service labour relations board, and they are forbidden from engaging in negotiating tactics such as strikes.

Finally, let us look at our own Parliamentary Protective Service officers. Every day we come to work on Parliament Hill, they are here to protect us, to greet us, and to put themselves between members of the House and those who potentially wish to harm us. On top of that, they provide assistance to our visitors and to tourists, Canadians who want to come to this place out of pride and respect. Sadly, the Liberal government is not treating our House of Commons security personnel with respect. The government has refused to negotiate in good faith, and we are once again seeing these officers wearing green hats with a banner that says “Respect” to protest their treatment.

My NDP colleagues and I will support Bill C-62, as we have always supported fair and democratic workers' rights. This legislation, however, does not solve all the problems created by the former Conservative government, nor does it answer the urgent need for the Liberal government to return to the bargaining table with its law enforcement and security officers, a problem that is quickly creating a crisis across this nation and one the Liberals can solve by respecting fair negotiations everywhere.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 29th, 2018]

With respect to the consumer price of gasoline in Canada: (a) what action is the government taking to monitor the price of gas; (b) what action will the government take to control the price of gas; (c) how does the government ensure that gas prices are the result of free competition and not collusion between producers and retailers; (d) what impact does the current high price of gas have on the Canadian economy; and (e) will the government enact a plan for a gas price monitoring agency to ensure the market remains fair and competitive?

[Historic Sites and Monuments Act, December 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my friend from Cloverdale—Langley City for bringing the legislation to the House of Commons. The member and I both sat on the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. For the past three months we studied heritage issues. Our final report from that committee was recently tabled in the House.

The committee found many concerns, including a lack of attention paid to Canada's archeological sites, limited support for the owners of heritage buildings, inconsistencies with how the federal government protected the heritage buildings it owned, and critically, there was currently no federal legislation to protect UNESCO World Heritage sites in Canada.

Of all the witness testimony we heard, perhaps the most surprising and certainly the most moving came from representatives of indigenous groups.

Mr. Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, told the committee about the neglected legacy of Canada's residential school system. He told us we did not have a program for preserving the residential schools. Nor had we considered how to commemorate the schools that still stood or the ones that had been torn down.

In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, the St. Eugene Mission School in Cranbrook was transformed by the Ktunaxa Nation into a successful hotel, casino, and golf course resort. However, it also contains photos from its days as a residential school, and Ktunaxa guides provide tours to keep the history alive. As Mr. Moran told the committee, St. Eugene was a rare exception. In fact, while the federal government offered funding to tear down residential schools, it offered nothing to commemorate them.

Mr. Moran also told us about the residential schools graveyards. As we know, thousands of the children forced into the schools never returned home, and their whereabouts are unknown to this day. The schools buried many of those children, and there are at least 400 cemetery locations across the country. Many of them are forgotten and neglected.

It may surprise members in the House to learn that when I was a young child, my brother Greg and I attended a residential school in Chesterfield Inlet, about 500 kilometres north of Churchill on Hudson's Bay. The residential school and the Hudson's Bay store were located on one side of the inlet and our home was located on the other. We were able to go home every night, but my classmates, as young as five years old, did not. They were allowed to go home at Christmas and in the summertime. Even as a young child, I knew that not being able to go home when one was only five years old was wrong.

My sympathy for those kids back then extends to my heartfelt feelings today. We must commemorate the residential schools so we never forget a past that must never be repeated.

The committee also heard from two representatives of the Indigenous Heritage Circle, Ms. Karen Aird, the president; and Ms. Madeleine Redfern, a director. They pointed out something of which I do not believe the committee members were aware. Many of us consider heritage to refer to things like buildings and sites, but indigenous heritage may include intangibles, like laws, stories, and oral histories. It may mean a sacred place, or certain artifacts.

When we met with one of the chiefs in Jasper, he said something that really stayed with me. He said that the good Lord did not give them the written language, so their story was written on the land and that they could still find it today.

Ms. Aird said:

We feel that in this time, this time of reconciliation, this time when we see a new change in government, there's a need for people to start thinking differently about heritage, and moving it beyond built heritage, and thinking about how indigenous people perceive it and how we want to protect it. We do have our own mechanisms. We do have our own methods and approaches to protecting and interpreting heritage, and we feel it's really time now for indigenous people to have a voice in this.

Canadians saw an example of the lack of understanding of indigenous heritage and spirituality recently when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Jumbo Glacier in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia would not be protected from the development of a large ski resort. Jumbo Glacier is also known as Qat'muk and it is a sacred place to the Ktunaxa Nation, which knows it as the home to the Grizzly Bear Spirit. The Court ruled that a specific site or “object of beliefs" could not be protected. As a result, this important spiritual place, where the Grizzly Bear Spirit has been honoured for hundreds or even thousands of years by the Ktunaxa, is now at risk of being destroyed.

How can we solve these issues? What changes must we make, both to our thinking and to our procedures?

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission offered some solutions in its calls to action.

Mr. Moran said:

Central within those calls to action are a number of calls related directly to commemoration. Those commemoration calls relate directly to the creation or establishment of a “national memory” and our ongoing need as a country to make sure we continue to shine light into the darkest corners of our history.

Call to action 79 states:

We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal organizations, and the arts community, to develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration. This would include, but not be limited to:

i. Amending the Historic Sites and Monuments Act to include First Nations, Inuit, and Métis representation on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and its Secretariat.

This is exactly what is accomplished by Bill C-374. It goes on to state:

ii. Revising the policies, criteria, and practices of the National Program of Historical Commemoration to integrate Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices into Canada’s national heritage and history.

iii. Developing and implementing a national heritage plan and strategy for commemorating residential school sites, the history and legacy of residential schools, and the contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canada’s history.

Bill C-374 responds directly to call to action 79.i. The bill would increase the number of members of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and it would provide dedicated spaces for first nations, Inuit, and Métis representatives on the board. It would also provide the necessary financial accommodation for the additional members.

We know the bill does not address all of the sections of call to action 79, but it begins in the right place, which is ensuring there is representation on the board, so that decisions about indigenous heritage include indigenous decision-makers.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission first released its report in June 2015, the NDP leader at the time said, “Today, our country is trying to turn the page on the many dark years and to move forward toward a better future for all peoples.” We have the opportunity to take one step forward toward honouring the actions listed by the commission, and in doing so, we honour the past and those who suffered under this terrible past called the residential school system.

I am proud to support Bill C-374,, and have the NDP members in the House joining me in that support.

I would also like to take the opportunity to wish a merry Christmas to all those in the House who celebrate, as well as those back home in Kootenay—Columbia and across Canada.

Best wishes to all for a happy holiday season.

[Historic Sites and Monuments Act, December 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague across the floor for introducing this bill in the House. We sat together on the environment committee, and this was certainly one of the recommendations. I would like to give the member an opportunity to talk about two or three of the other really important recommendations that came out of the report that was tabled in the House in the last week or so.