44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 5, 2022 10:00AM
- May/5/22 10:41:37 a.m.
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According to the committee's website, it was scheduled to meet yesterday afternoon for the purpose of discussing those very drafting instructions.
The email chain originated from the chair's office. It circulates a proposal prepared by the office of the member for London West and involves, understandably, the Liberal members of the committee and their staff. What makes less sense to me is that the email chain, which originated from the chair's office, also includes ministerial staffers Vanessa Cranston, the manager of Parliamentary Affairs for the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship; Emilie Simard, an issues management advisor for the same minister; and Arielle Mantes, who has an email address in the government House leader's office and is reported in The Hill Times as a member of that minister's staff, but who the online government employee directory says is an advisor in the non-partisan Privy Council Office, also known as the Prime Minister's department, which raises a lot more questions.
Not only were ministerial staff kept informed, but there was actual participation in providing direction. Ms. Cranston, the immigration minister's manager of parliamentary affairs, replied:
I'd like to suggest that we broaden the prepared wording. I find this reads more like a recommendation and our goal for meeting today is to point the analysts in a direction, without explicitly asking for our conclusions to be highlighted.
What did she mean by “our goal”? On whose behalf is she speaking, and what conclusions is she trying to obfuscate? It sounds like not only is the minister's staff trying to direct the conclusions of a parliamentary committee, but also to manipulate the work of non-partisan analysts supplied by the Library of Parliament in getting there.
This direction was in turn forwarded to my employee by the member for London West with the instruction, “Did you take note of this?” It sounds to me like the member is rather concerned that the minister's political enforcer's word is the law.
A new, aspiring government backbencher would naturally want to be on the PMO's good side. It is an open secret around here that the Prime Minister's Office, and ministers' offices, are pulling the strings on committee proceedings: something they deny at every turn, naturally. It is something else to see in cold, hard text, the direction and instruction coming from a senior staffer to the immigration minister.
It is shocking, scandalous and absolutely inappropriate for the government to be interfering like this in the deliberations of a committee and the hard work of our non-partisan analysts. In my respectful opinion, this goes beyond disrespect of Parliament and is actually a contempt of Parliament.
Page 81 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, explains that:
There are, however, other affronts against the dignity and authority of Parliament which may not fall within one of the specifically defined privileges. Thus, the House also claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which, though not a breach of a specific privilege: tends to obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions; obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties; or is an offence against the authority or dignity of the House....
The House of Commons enjoys very wide latitude in maintaining its dignity and authority through the exercise of its contempt power. In other words, the House may consider any misconduct to be contempt and may deal with it accordingly....
This area of parliamentary law is therefore extremely fluid and most valuable for the Commons to be able to meet novel situations.
Throughout the Commonwealth most procedural authorities hold that contempts, as opposed to privileges, cannot be enumerated or categorized.
Page 83 continues:
Just as it is not possible to categorize or to delineate every incident which may fall under the definition of contempt, it is also difficult to categorize the severity of contempt.
Contempts may vary greatly in their gravity; matters ranging from minor breaches of decorum to grave attacks against the authority of Parliament may be considered as contempts.
The interference shown by the immigration minister's office in the work of the committee, which is actually supposed to be holding him and his department to account, not the other way, rises to this threshold of being found as a contempt of Parliament.
The House must stand up for its rights and its independence. These rights are ancient, hard fought for, and must never be taken for granted. Bosc and Gagnon explain, at page 62, the early part of the arc of development of parliamentary privilege. I quote:
These privileges were found to be necessary to protect the House and its Members, not from the people, but from the power and interference of the King and the House of Lords....
The House of Commons in Canada has not had to challenge the Crown, its executive or the Upper House in the same manner as the British House of Commons.... Nonetheless, the privileges enjoyed by the House and its Members are part of the Constitution and therefore are of the utmost importance; they are in fact vital to the proper functioning of Parliament. This is as true now as it was centuries ago when the English House of Commons first fought to secure these privileges and rights.
Let us not roll backwards to those days when the executive subordinated the legislator to its whims. Let us not find ourselves capable of only doing what business, or writing what reports, the Prime Minister and his cabinet give us permission to. The House must stand up against interference by the executive branch by the current Liberal government at every turn.
Should you find a prima facie case of privilege, Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to move an appropriate motion to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs so that it may conduct an investigation into this behaviour and report back to the House with its findings.
Before resuming my seat, I would ask for unanimous consent to table the emails in question.
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- May/5/22 10:48:41 a.m.
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All those opposed to the hon. member's moving the motion will please say nay.
Some hon. members: Nay.
The Deputy Speaker: I want to thank the member for his intervention. We will respond back as soon as practical on his point.
The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.
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- May/5/22 10:49:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we will be consulting the Blues of course. I would like to reserve a possible intervention on this later today.
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- May/5/22 10:49:30 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if what the member for Simcoe—Grey says is true, it is extremely concerning.
The Bloc Québécois would also like to reserve the right to intervene later in a potential debate.
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- May/5/22 10:49:35 a.m.
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I hope to have a response from both parties fairly quickly.
I recognize the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- May/5/22 10:49:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, now we are on to the concurrence amendment that the government House leader has attempted to set for the agenda today. As I have indicated in the past, one of the things I have learned over the past seven years is that, from the very beginning, the Conservative Party has been more focused on character assassination, whether it is of the Prime Minister or of other ministers, than on the different types of substantial policies. Instead of talking about substantive measures, whether it was seven years ago, talking about tax breaks for middle-class Canadians, or during the pandemic, talking about its issues, or just weeks ago, talking about the new federal budget that is being very well received by Canadians, the Conservatives are more focused on one thing, and that is those personal attacks.
We are supposed to be debating the budget implementation bill today; therefore, while I am on my feet at this point in time, I would move, seconded by the hon. member for Milton:
That the House do now proceed to orders of the day.
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- May/5/22 10:51:39 a.m.
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If a member of a recognized party in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the motion be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and please indicate it to the Chair.
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- May/5/22 10:52:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we absolutely want a recorded division.
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- May/5/22 10:52:03 a.m.
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- May/5/22 11:35:45 a.m.
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I declare the motion carried.
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- May/5/22 11:35:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
For your benefit, I just want to advise that the official opposition offered three more hours of debate. The Liberals and the NDP rejected that.
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- May/5/22 11:36:23 a.m.
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The member for Kings—Hants has four minutes and 25 seconds left.
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Mr. Speaker, I will carry on right where I left off, which is talking about how I think it is extremely important, as it relates to health care, that this budget makes clear that we will be working with provinces and territories on foreign credentialing. I know there have been a number of examples in my home province of Nova Scotia, where there are individuals who have come to our province, who want to be able to practise in their particular field of health and have not been able to do so. Yes, we have to work with provinces and territories and colleges to balance public trust in our system, but also to make sure that this process can be expedited, such that if there are people who want to help practise and help support our health care system, they are taken care of.
I also want to talk about tax credits. We had tax credits for CCUS, which is carbon capture, utilization and storage. What I would say to the House is that in 2050, there undoubtedly will still be an oil and gas sector in the global context, but estimates by the International Energy Agency suggest that the number of barrels per day will go from about 100 million down to around about 25 million, give or take.
I think we all, as parliamentarians and indeed as a country, have an important reflection to make when it comes to whether Canada is going to be a part of that market, the 25 million barrels of oil a day. I, for one, as a parliamentarian, feel that yes, we have a responsibility, but in a carbon-constrained world in which there is going to be less demand on that side, we have to make sure that our GHG intensity per barrel is as low as possible.
We took some criticism in the House on our decision on Bay du Nord, but that project was approved because it has some of the lowest emission intensity per barrel of oil in the world. We have to make sure that if we are going to be working with industry to reduce emissions in order to be able to meet our emission reduction targets, we also have to be positioning the sector to be the lowest-emitting oil and gas sector in the world, such that our products can continue to be competitive in the days ahead. I tip my cap, then, to the government on the CCUS tax credit.
Critical minerals, if we are going to be able to get to our climate targets, are going to play an extremely important role, from batteries in EV vehicles to potash to a whole host of different minerals that play a role in that. Canada has so much potential, and the fact that we had $3.8 billion toward the development of a critical mineral strategy is a really extremely important piece, as is the 30% tax credit for exploration in the country.
I think we have a tremendous opportunity on a global stage to be there and to make sure we have a role. I was in Saskatchewan, as I have mentioned. I sat down with the Saskatchewan Mining Association, along with our Minister of Natural Resources. They pointed to this as being extremely important.
The last thing I will say is on the importance in the budget of economic growth, which the Minister of Finance made very clear in the budget document. The budget implementation act talks about a number of the measures that are important in that domain. I fully support that from where I sit here in the House, particularly the Canada Growth Fund, the recognition that we need to continue to drive innovation; 15 billion dollars' worth of capitalization; the innovation and investment agency, which is focused on attracting foreign capital to the country to drive the future economy and our future prosperity; and, finally, more money for the superclusters. In our neck of the woods, in Atlantic Canada, the ocean superclusters do tremendous work. These are all really important initiatives.
I also want to emphasize the importance of reducing interprovincial trade barriers and harmonizing certification between provinces and territories to improve labour mobility. A recent Senate report noted that our economy's GDP could grow between 2% and 4% if we focused on this area.
World-class wine production is a growing sector in my riding of Kings—Hants. However, in many cases it is easier for these producers to export to Europe than to other provinces, so I was pleased that the budget mentioned working on this with the provinces and territories.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's comments about Canada's critical mineral potential were spot on. Quebec has a lot of potential there too.
The budget includes a very nice map of the minerals located in Quebec, but it says absolutely nothing about ensuring that processing will happen here, which would be consistent with the Government of Quebec's strategy.
Can the member tell me if his government has already taken steps to make sure these minerals are processed in Quebec, or will minerals be extracted here and then sent off to Toronto for the value add?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
The Government of Canada is working with the Government of Quebec on issues from housing and environmental initiatives to natural resource development and essential critical minerals.
I know our government will work with the Province of Quebec and every other Canadian province.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Kings—Hants for his talk about the CCUS. I have the only working carbon capture and storage facility, on a coal-fired power plant that produces energy for Saskatchewan. I am so glad to hear he has been to Saskatchewan, and I would invite him and arrange for him to have a tour of the CCUS facility, so he actually understands what it truly means to capture that CO2 and put it in the ground.
My question is a very simple one. Is it the industry we want to kill, or is it the emissions?
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Mr. Speaker, I think I was very clear in my remarks that there will be a role for Canadian oil and gas in the days ahead. I have mentioned the fact that the global markets are changing and that countries around the world are focused on a transition to a lower-carbon economy. We need to be serious about reducing emissions associated with the production of fossil fuels. That is going to be driven by innovation, similar to what the member has suggested with some of the CCUS innovation that is happening in his province of Saskatchewan. I think the ERP actually represents an important opportunity for Canadian industry to recognize that we have to reduce emissions.
CEOs with energy companies in Canada understand that. We as parliamentarians need to understand this is part of an important transition to fight climate change, but also to be on a competitive footing in the days ahead in global markets.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a question around the Canada disability benefit.
We are approaching a year since the benefit was initially introduced in this House, and the disability community was expecting to see it in budget 2022.
Why is the Canada disability benefit not in budget 2022?
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Mr. Speaker, I know this has been part of the discussion throughout the budget process that is under way here. I will say that I think this government has stepped up to try to provide important social supports across the board.
Members have to recognize that this is budget 2022, but we were elected in 2021 for a four-year mandate. Notwithstanding the fact that I know many members in this House, including this one, understand the importance of supporting individuals with disabilities, this was just the first budget of a four-year cycle, and I suspect we will be working as a government to address some of the challenges and opportunities that the member has highlighted.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Kings—Hants for his speech. He is a member that I have a great amount of respect for.
That being said, when the member mentioned a tip of the cap to carbon capture and storage, we need to be honest: If we want even a 50% chance of staying below 1.5°C and ensuring a livable planet, we need to do our fair share. That means, as scientists have told us, that we need to leave 86% of Canada's proven fossil fuel reserves unextracted. To do so means investing in workers.
I wonder if the member would be open to commenting on the importance of the implications of taking that same $7.1 billion, in a new subsidy, and instead investing that in workers and a just transition for them.
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