Public Service Labour Relations Act  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise here once again to discuss Bill C-7, which would give RCMP members, at long last, the right to collective bargaining. I spoke to this bill last spring when it was first put before us here, and I must admit disappointment has been expressed by others at how long the government took to bring this measure back to the House.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from young Canadians who point out that Canada has pledged a limit to global temperature rise of much less than 2°C, that government targets are not consistent with that goal, that announced actions will not reach these targets, and that these youth want sustainable jobs.

Italian Heritage Month  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak in favour of Motion No. 64, a motion recognizing June as Italian heritage month in Canada. First, I have to admit some limitations in my ability to speak about Italian heritage. I grew up in a decidedly un-Italian household. My parents were quiet Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Business of Supply  Madam Speaker, I do not know where to begin. First, the communities in my riding are happy to get government assistance in the infrastructure projects they need. There was some money announced for my riding and people were happy to hear that. However, it was through the normal way government does business, through the government providing monies that it could get with low interest rates if it needed to borrow.

Business of Supply  Madam Speaker, I totally agree with the member. It comes back to the fact that the government seems to be rushing this through, not only putting it in a large omnibus bill that has many other parts to it, almost 300 pages long, but now advertising for the positions on the board and the CEO before the bill has been passed in the House and before it has gone to the Senate.

Business of Supply  Madam Speaker, what the member just described of providing low-cost funding to municipalities and regions is exactly what the Liberals promised in their election platform. This is not what we would get from a private infrastructure bank. An infrastructure bank is one thing; a private one is a very different animal.

Business of Supply  Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Strathcona. Today we are debating the government's proposal for a Canada infrastructure bank. In particular, today's NDP motion asks the House to remove the clauses concerning the Canada infrastructure bank from Bill C-44, the budget implementation act, so they can be studied as a stand-alone bill.

Public Safety  Mr. Speaker, a state of emergency has been declared in the community of Grand Forks, British Columbia, because of flooding. The surrounding boundary region has also been put under emergency watch, and homes and farmland are being flooded by rising water levels. The situation stands to get worse by the end of this week.

Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1  Mr. Speaker, first I will say that it is not just the NDP that is concerned about the infrastructure bank. This morning I heard one of my Conservative colleagues say that it scared the heck out of him. I would just like to point that out. Getting back to the parliamentary budget officer, I am mystified as to how this is directly related, or even indirectly related, to the implementation of a budget, unless it is to make it easier for the government to spend money without the oversight of members of the opposition, individual MPs, who will look at that spending and want to go to the PBO and say, “Can you do a cost estimate of this?”

Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1  Mr. Speaker, first I would like to say that a PBO's opinion is what we hire them for. Their function is to give us an intelligent and informed opinion on cost estimates and other things relating to the budget. I would certainly listen to the PBO before I would listen to the government on matters such as that.

Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise to debate Bill C-44, the budget 2017 implementation bill. Back in the days when I taught zoology at UBC and comparative anatomy labs at Memorial University, we talked a lot about form and function. Today I would like to begin by talking about the form of this bill and move on to its function, its contents, and what that means in regard to government priorities.

Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1  Mr. Speaker what does the member for Surrey Centre think of the changes that this bill would bring to the powers of the parliamentary budget officer, something that has no place in a budget implementation bill? I get the impression that because the Liberals saw the word “budget” in there, they thought they could slip it in, but the only reason to put in something like this which would decrease the independence of the parliamentary budget officer would be to make it easier for them to slip all sorts of other things into the budget in spending that we as individual MPs could not query.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present another petition from Canadian citizens who call to Parliament's attention the British home children. Thousands were brought to Canada over decades. They were taken from their families in Britain, many simply because they were poor, and were brought to Canada where they were, many times, put in inappropriate personal living circumstances and used as cheap labour.

Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1  Madam Speaker, I would just point out that in the last two election campaigns, in 2011 and 2015, the Liberals clearly promised to set a cap on how much can be claimed through the stock option deduction, but they backtracked on that promise once they were in power. Why did the government decide to renege on its promise to eliminate the tax loophole associated with stock options for CEOs in budget 2017?

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition from the residents of British Columbia, who point out that mountain caribou are designated as an endangered species under the Species at Risk Act, that the provincial crown lands adjacent to Wells Gray Provincial Park in the Clearwater Valley have been designated as critical habitat for that species, and that British Columbia is continuing to allow this critical habitat to be logged.