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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/25/22 12:11:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 17 petitions. These returns will be tabled in an electronic format.

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Hon. Anita Anand

Mar/25/22 12:11:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-17

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act and to authorize certain payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Mar/25/22 12:13:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place to present a petition from more desperately concerned residents of Ottawa who are appalled to find that a local decision will result in cutting down hundreds of mature trees in Queen Juliana Park within the city limits of Ottawa in order to build 17 acres of parking. It is a public-private development plan for a four-storey parking structure on parts of what are now Queen Juliana Park. The petitioners are seeking the federal government's help. They ask that I relate to the House that the undersigned citizens of Canada call on the government to restore the National Capital Commission's recommendation of a different location, Tunney's Pasture, as the ideal site for the new hospital, to preserve Queen Juliana Park and the entire Central Experimental Farm as green spaces and to support the request of an independent expert panel in order to have a public inquiry into why the National Capital Commission's original recommendation was quickly and summarily reversed.

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Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)

Mar/25/22 12:14:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-201

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to table a petition today on behalf of volunteer firefighters from Parksville, Qualicum, Bowser, Cumberland, Courtenay, Port Alberni, Sproat Lake and Cherry Creek. The petitioners cite that volunteer firefighters account for 83% of Canada's total firefighting essential first responders. In addition, approximately 8,000 essential search and rescue volunteers respond to thousands of incidents every year. Currently, the tax code of Canada allows volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers to claim a $3,000 tax credit if 200 hours of volunteer services were completed in a calendar year. That works out to a mere $450 a year, and we know they work and volunteer more than 200 hours. This is timely, given that there could be a budget announced in the next couple of weeks. The petitioners support Bill C-201 and call on the government to increase the tax exemption from $3,000 to $10,000 to help our essential volunteer firefighters and volunteer search and rescue people across the country, including in Ucluelet and Tofino, which I forgot to mention. We are all grateful for these first responders.

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Mr. Alex Ruff (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, CPC)

Mar/25/22 12:16:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am presenting a petition today on behalf of constituents and Canadians right across the country with respect to diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, an aggressive brain tumour found in the brain stem that slowly takes away all vital functions while cognitive functions remain intact, which makes a child a prisoner in their own body. It is inoperable and incurable, with a 0% survival rate. It is the second most common malignant brain tumour in children and the leading cause of brain tumour deaths in children. The petitioners call upon the House of Commons and the government to declare May 17 of every year national DIPG day of awareness here in Canada. They are hoping that this declaration will educate the public about the disease, encourage funding to support ongoing research, increase dialogue in the professional medical community and further publicize and promote Canada's involvement in the fight against DIPG.

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Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

Mar/25/22 12:17:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in this place to present a petition about an issue that is incredibly important. I have heard from many constituents who are concerned about the possibility of the weaponization of things like someone's values when it comes to accessing government services. A whole host of Canadians from across the country, specifically from the Thunder Bay area, have shared with me a petition that calls upon the Parliament of Canada to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without the imposition of another values test, and to affirm the right of Canadians to freedom of expression. These Canadians are incredibly concerned about the precedents that have been set by the Liberal government, and it is an hour to stand on their behalf and present this petition today.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.)

Mar/25/22 12:18:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to table a petition that is really important to the thousands of people who have shown up this month at the Manitoba legislature on three separate occasions to act as one in solidarity with Ukraine over what is taking place there. What the petitioners are asking for in signing this petition is for the government to encourage ongoing support for things like lethal aid and humanitarian aid, for Canada to continue to open its arms to Ukrainian refugees who are being displaced because of the horrors of what is taking place in Ukraine and for us to consider if it is possible to look into the issue of no-fly zones.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/25/22 12:19:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Questions Nos. 314 to 316.

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Mar/25/22 12:19:34 p.m.
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Question No. 314—

Questioner: Raquel Dancho

With regard to statistics held by the RCMP in relation to firearms: (a) what definition does the RCMP use to determine if a firearm is domestically sourced or foreign sourced; (b) is the definition in (a) universally used by other police jurisdictions in Canada that trace the origins of firearms; (c) does the designation of a firearm as domestically sourced (i) include firearms that entered Canada illegally, (ii) have unknown sources, due to not having a serial number or other identifying markers removed; (d) which police forces in Canada (i) use the RCMP lab services to trace firearms, (ii) do their own tracing of firearms; (e) what is the RCMP's definition of a "crime gun"; (f) are firearms seized in the course of another investigation for a non-violent crime, a mental health intervention, or turned over to the RCMP as part of an amnesty or other voluntary surrender of a firearm for disposal to the RCMP included in the definition of a "crime gun"; and (g) are the firearms seized by Canada Border Services Agency included in the RCMP reports related to the percentage of firearms sourced domestically or from foreign countries?

Question No. 315—

Questioner: Brad Redekopp

With regard to the Chinook software program operated by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), broken down by fiscal year and country of origin: (a) what is the acceptance rate of immigrants by (i) immigration class, (ii) official language of Canada spoken, (iii) ethnicity, (iv) acceptance rate, (v) rejection rate; (b) what are the criteria, keywords or phrases used by IRCC for making decisions related to (a)(iv) and (a)(v); (c) what is the process by which IRCC managers accept or reject decisions made through the software; (d) what is the rate at which managers intervene and overrule decisions made through the software (i) in favour of the applicant immigrating to Canada, (ii) in opposition of the applicant immigrant to Canada; and (e) what are the criteria, keywords or phrases used to make those decision in (d)(i) and (d)(ii)?

Question No. 316—

Questioner: Brad Redekopp

With regard to the Chinook software program operated by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), broken down by fiscal year and country of origin: (a) what keywords and phrases are used by IRCC officials to sort visa applications; (b) what is the occurrence of keywords and phrases that are used by IRCC officials to sort visa applications; and (c) based upon the use of these keywords and phrases, what is the rejection rate of visa applicants by class by IRCC officials?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Mar/25/22 12:19:48 p.m.
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Is it agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

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Mar/25/22 12:19:48 p.m.
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Question No. 313—

Questioner: Kelly Block

With regard to the 34,000 unprocessed applications at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC): (a) will the 560 temporary staff hired to deal with the backlog have their contracts renewed, and, if so, until when; and (b) does VAC have projections on how large the backlog will be in the future if the contracts are (i) renewed, (ii) not renewed, and, if so, what are the projections, broken down by quarter for the next two years?

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/25/22 12:19:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if the government's response to Question No. 313 could be made an order for return, this return would be tabled immediately.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Mar/25/22 12:19:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand. The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès): Is that agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Mar/25/22 12:20:12 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

I want to begin by acknowledging that we are all on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation and express our deep appreciation for their patience as we remain on unceded territory. Meegwetch. We need to re-establish in every speech, at every opportunity, the ongoing demands of reconciliation, and it has to be more than a land acknowledgement. Today, I stand to speak at report stage on Bill C-8, a bill I support and which I have spoken to at previous stages in this place. Report stage gives us an opportunity to look at where we are on the verge of the bill passing and going forth to the other place. Some concerns have arisen, and I want to address those because I would like to know from the government that there is a plan to address issues that surfaced from the hard work and diligence of the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I also want to reflect, as we have this opportunity at report stage, when we are more than two years into a pandemic, to perhaps look at some of the elements that are at a higher level of abstraction in the bill before us, but which are related. Nothing will be off topic, but I do want to reflect on where we are now two years into the pandemic. First, let me address what Bill C-8 is, just as a quick refresher. This is a bill in seven parts exclusively in response to COVID-19 at various aspects: its health impacts; the essential equipment that we need, such as rapid testing; and impacts on different sectors, including schools, businesses, individuals and workers. It is one more of the many, many bills we have seen since we started down this road March 13, 2020, when this place adjourned because we realized we were in a global pandemic and we could not continue meeting as we had. Since that moment on March 13, 2020, we have in this place, generally by unanimous consent, approved tens of billions of dollars of relief similar to what is in the package before us today in Bill C-8, which I support. We have things like rapid tests, ventilation for schools, delays for small business for when they have to start repaying loans. It is a package with which I think all of us in this place are now very familiar. One thing was surprising, and I want to dive into it a bit because the citizens of Canada need to know that we are paying attention to the billions of dollars we pass in this place, and that was a certain redundancy, which the sharp-eyed people at the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer noticed. It is in relation to spending for rapid tests, which again, I support. There is $1.7 billion for rapid tests found in Bill C-8. There was $2.5 billion for rapid tests found in Bill C-10, and then there was the $4 billion in the supplementary estimates that we have also passed. The question is this: Are we paying more than once for rapid tests? The answer is yes. The money is allocated, at least $4 billion, twice. I see an alarmed parliamentary secretary looking my way, yet Yves Giroux, our Parliamentary Budget Officer, has confirmed that there is in fact more money allotted than is needed. I will quote the Parliamentary Budget Officer speaking in the other place: When we asked questions about the intended use of this funding, it was to procure rapid tests for COVID-19 and to distribute them to provinces and then to Canadians. When we [the Parliamentary Budget Office] asked why try to have it go these two different routes to get to the same end, the government responded that it wants to get the funding as soon as possible, so they’re trying this through Bill C-10 and Bill C-8, as well as Supplementary Estimates (C). They will use whichever authorities come first to procure these tests. However, they have already started procuring these tests, so they are doing some risk management should the spending not be approved. That seems to be the reason why they are pursuing the two different approaches. The discussion in the Senate then went on to discuss if would we spend $4 billion twice, or would there be some way of stopping the additional approvals once the tests are purchased? I do not really feel I have an answer to that question in this place. I am still voting for Bill C-8. I want to make sure we get the rapid tests. I want to make sure we know what we are spending the money on, but I would also like to register now in this place, especially to government members, that we want to make sure there is some mechanism in place to avoid spending $4 billion twice. It appears from the Parliamentary Budget Officer's questioning of the government that this was not by accident, but I would like to flag that I have never seen it before, and I think it is quite unusual to approve spending $4 billion twice to make sure we get it once. With that, I want to turn to a key area I think is, at a higher level of distraction, a problem with our federation. I am not proposing ways to fix it, but I want to flag it. It has been the reason we failed to meet our climate targets. I do not mean just recently; I mean over the last three decades. It is a reason why, I think, we have been less effective as a country, and I am not speaking of a particular government or political party, than we could have been in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. My thread on this is that, spoiler alert, I do not think the provinces and the federal government work particularly well together. They should, and we must. I note that on COVID-19, eight dollars out of every $10 spent on COVID relief came from the federal government. We passed that in this place. Collectively, we did that. However, there was the speed with which we acted. The federal government might have been ready to act on numerous occasions, but the provinces were not, and if the action was in an area of provincial jurisdiction, we were delayed. I definitely know this is the case on the climate emergency. Ironically, the European Union, which is made up of more than two dozen independent separate sovereign nation states, has done a better job than our federal government, our 10 provincial and three territorial governments, all together in one country, being able coordinate, negotiate and come up with a shared solution. Leaving the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the European Union went back to home base and within weeks had negotiated a global agreement, global meaning all the EU countries in a bubble, on who would do more cutting of greenhouse gases and who would do less, so they could achieve the target they collectively negotiated. They are now collectively about 40% below their 1990 levels of emissions. Canada is about 20% above our 1990 levels of emissions, and I think a lot of this is because of federal-provincial tensions and a failure of collaborative leadership. I do not know how else to put it. In the case of the ventilation for schools, which is my thread here, I worked all summer of 2020 on an idea I got for how to get kids back to school safely. I thought about it, and I thought of all of these tourism facilities, as I am very committed to the tourism sector, such as convention centres and hotels, that were vacant because of COVID-19. They would like to be able to put people to work. We had schools that would have overcrowding if kids went back to school. I wondered why we could not take the places that were empty because of COVID and allow schools to take place there. Then they would have had a lot more air and a lot more ventilation. It might have worked. I started talking to people, like the brilliant Paul Nursey, who heads Destination Greater Victoria. I started talking to people who run convention centres. They said they loved the idea and that it could work. I will fast-forward to how many people and groups I got involved: People for Education in Toronto; the Tourism Industry Association of Canada; the Canadian Teachers' Federation, the union that was negotiating and talking to other levels of government; and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities gave me the time of day too. We started thinking we could put this together, and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of this nation and her staff were interested in the idea. The one place I could not get any pickup at all, where I could not get anyone to pick up the phone and call me back, was the provincial ministry of education, and no one was going to go anywhere with this idea unless the provincial minister of education signed on. Now we have here in Bill C-8 one of the things I was trying to address in my completely ad hoc volunteer way to try to get something to happen, and we are now approving ventilation for schools. That is provincial jurisdiction. We should have acted on that a year or more ago, and in my opinion, the reason we are approving it now in the federal Parliament, as opposed to much sooner, is that we could not get the provinces on board.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Mar/25/22 12:20:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise again today.

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Rise
Today

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/25/22 12:30:18 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I can appreciate the effort and the work that the member, the former leader of the Green Party, puts into her speeches. They are substantial in their content. I want to address the issue of the billions of dollars that were allocated to the government to acquire rapid tests. That is probably the most important aspect. Getting the rapid tests in a timely fashion was absolutely critical. We saw that in the uptake of the tests in late December going into January. I do not necessarily know the details as well as the member does, but my understanding, in regard to this bill, was to ensure we had them for the months of November to December, and maybe into January. That was my understanding of this specific bill. Would she not agree the most important thing is that Canada be in a position to acquire the rapid tests for circulation among our provinces and territories?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Mar/25/22 12:31:27 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his kind words. I am certain, as I am not like other opposition MPs looking for a chance to say, “Gotcha”, that this was done with the best of intentions to make sure we would have access to rapid tests and were able to acquire them. Our job in this place is to scrutinize spending and make sure that we flag it when we see something a little funny. It is Parliament that controls the public purse, or at least that is the fiction and that is our principle. I am not suggesting the intentions were not the best, and I agree with the hon. member that it is most important to have rapid tests and to be able to buy them when we can. However, I do not think we need to authorize spending for them twice.

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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Mar/25/22 12:32:20 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. She talked about Kyoto and the fact that different levels of government collaborated. A significant portion of Bill C‑8 has to do with COVID‑19 measures, and since that is basically a health issue, would it not be easier for the federal government to work with the provinces if the government agreed to their request to increase health transfers? That would be one less bone of contention, anyway.

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Mar/25/22 12:32:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. It is not surprising to hear a Bloc Québécois member express serious concerns about transfers for our public health system. However, this brings a question to mind. We have recognized that Quebec forms a nation. Why is it so difficult for the Quebec nation, which is part of Canada, to work collaboratively with the federal government, whereas France, for example, is able to work collaboratively with the European Union on common concerns and goals? It is disappointing, but this is our reality in Canada.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Mar/25/22 12:33:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I want to come back to the point of jurisdiction and remark that, coming out of 2004, Canada had a model for health funding predicated upon health accords where the federal government played not only an important funding role, but also a convening role. We had provinces that were not told what to do by Ottawa, but they came together with Ottawa to determine common priorities and then a funding structure. We moved away from that under the Harper government and this current government, despite having committed to it, has chosen to not renew that model. That means that we do not have those tables for collaboration on something as important as health funding. Could the member speak to that model and the role that engaging in that model on an ongoing basis can play when we face emergencies such as the pandemic?

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