44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 5, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I would like to start by thanking all of the individuals who played such important roles in getting this legislation before the House today, up for a final vote and, hopefully, off to the Senate.
I will start with thanking the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. He worked very closely with me in drafting and putting this legislation together. I would like to also thank all of the non-government agencies and the families of victims who I had the opportunity to talk to, along with all the groups from various communities across the country and the world that have come together to signal their support. I would also like to thank Bill Browder for his support.
I have many thanks for the contributions from the members of the different parties who helped out, including the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberal Party. There were some substantial amendments made at committee. There was significant debate and long discussions. I am proud to say that I think we finished in a very good place.
There were a number of concerns. I do not think any one of our parties got exactly what we wanted out of the amendment process, but perhaps that is a signal that we got what we should get, with one exception. I thought the NDP amendment for a plan of strategy for human rights was excellent. I was sad to see it ruled out of order by the Chair.
As I said, this legislation has four critical parts that I believe would help the cause of human rights in Canada and around the world. The first of these respects prisoners of conscience, those heroes around the world who are fighting for important rights, such as for young girls to have the ability to pursue an education; for people to have the ability to live in a country free of government tyranny; and for people to pursue democracy, freedom and liberty and live their lives as they see fit without potentially fearing imprisonment or worse. The part on prisoners of conscience is critical.
The second critical part is having parliamentary oversight of Magnitsky sanctions. This is important. I am hopeful that this piece of legislation will not only allow Parliament to make its reports, but also encourage the government, maybe even future Conservative governments, to take the steps they need to make sure Magnitsky sanctions are put in place against some of the worst offenders. As I have said numerous times, it just seems shameful to me that, in this day and age, we allow violators of human rights to torture their victims in the morning and then take their private jets to fly around the world to hobnob with the world's elite in the afternoon.
Third, with respect to the Broadcasting Act, I think this is an amendment that only makes sense. Genocidal states should not be allowed to use Canadian airwaves to tout their propaganda. Just to add to that, we have seen what foreign interference can mean for our democracy and the challenges that can impose. Canadians should have a full, free and open ability to understand and give consent. We should also make sure that genocidal states are not broadcasting their hatred on Canadian airwaves. That seems to be only common sense.
Finally, with respect to cluster munitions, of course these are horrible, terrible things. Canada has had a leading role, going all the way back to the Harper government, in outlawing and making them illegal. This will reduce the ability of Canadian companies to finance the construction and manufacture of cluster munitions.
I am proud to be the sponsor of this bill and proud to be the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South.
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- Jun/5/23 2:34:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada's GDP grew by 3.1% in the first quarter of this year. That is the fastest growth in the G7. We have recovered more than 900,000 jobs since the trough of COVID.
By contrast, after 2008, the Conservatives failed to support Canadians and failed to help Canada recover from the 2008 recession. In fact, as David Dodge said, “because it was obsessively focused on reducing the federal deficit...the Harper government unnecessarily contributed to”—
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- Jun/5/23 2:54:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are constantly harping on about the deficit, but let me remind them that when the Harper government came to power, after the Liberal Party, it was left a budget surplus that it burned through. The Conservatives burned through the surplus by cutting revenues, services and programs. Every time something goes wrong, the Conservatives' first instinct is to make sweeping cuts.
We, on the other hand, have decided to help Canadians. We are asking the Conservatives to get a move on so that we can pass the budget and let Canadians reap the benefits.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-47, the budget implementation act.
I will start off by condemning the incredibly childish behaviour of Conservative MPs over the course of the last few days. We have seen in the House unprecedented adolescent, juvenile behaviour. We certainly saw that last Friday. I raise that concern because Canadians need to know that what the Conservatives have been blocking are measures that are going to benefit their constituents. I find that surprising.
What have the Conservatives been blocking over the course of the last few days? They have been throwing paper in the air. They have been trying to pretend that they are having technical problems. They have been putting forward every single dilatory motion they can think of. The member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay was able to finally put forward the emergency debate motion, after eight hours of Conservatives blocking it. They were blocking an emergency debate on wildfires at a time when Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia are consumed by fire. Firefighters are working hard, communities are threatened and there have been massive economic losses, and the Conservatives have spent the whole day blocking that motion from coming forward. I am glad they were finally overcome by the weight of more rational members of Parliament, and we will have that debate on wildfires tonight.
However, the fact is that the Conservatives are so disconnected from reality that they blocked an emergency debate that is so important for paying credit to the firefighters fighting these fires and paying credit to the communities and volunteers trying to keep people alive and safe. They blocked that for the course of the entire day, and I am unbelievably disappointed with these pyromaniac gatekeepers. Finally, the NDP persevered, as we always do ultimately, and we are now going to have this debate.
The Conservatives would justify this by saying they are blocking programs the NDP wants to bring in, and that is true. There are programs the NDP, on behalf of Canadians, wants to bring in, so let us talk about what the impact of them would be in Conservative ridings.
There is the dental care plan that the the member for Burnaby South and the entire NDP caucus forced the government to bring in after decades of commitments from Liberal and Conservative governments that they always reneged on. The dental care plan means that people with disabilities, seniors and families with kids under the age of 18 will finally have access to dental care at the end of this year. That is what is in Bill C-47. This is what the Conservatives have been blocking for two days. It is access to dental care for thousands of their constituents. It is access to dental care for seniors in their ridings, 70-year-olds who have never had access to dental care because they could not afford to pay for it.
We know that dental care is expensive. However, the Conservative MPs stood resolutely against seniors finally having access to dental care after decades. They stood resolutely against people with disabilities. I find that particularly despicable, because we know that people with disabilities are the poorest of the poor. Half the people who go to food banks to make ends meet are people with disabilities. Half of the homeless in this country are people with disabilities.
I remember during the terrible years of the Harper regime how the Conservatives steamrolled over people with disabilities, steamrolled over seniors and forced the retirement age up so that people who had worked all their lives were forced to work longer. The disrespect shown by blocking dental care, to my mind, is inconceivable.
As members know, in the recent Alberta election, the NDP swept all of Edmonton, every single riding at the provincial level, and took most of the ridings in Calgary. If I were a Conservative MP from Edmonton or Calgary, I would read the room and think, “What we are doing with the kind of mean-spirited approach we have, where we try to deny people services that can make a difference, is obviously something that people in Edmonton and Calgary have turned their backs on.”
If I was an Edmonton MP or a Calgary MP for the Conservative Party, I would think twice about doing what they have done over the last two days, which is deny basic dental care to those seniors, people with disabilities and all families that have youth 18 and under. It is not just that; the Conservatives also denied the grocery rebate. As for the average benefit to a Conservative MP's constituency, about 11,000 Canadians living in each of those ridings would benefit from that grocery rebate: $500 extra to put food on the table at a time when people are struggling.
The member for Carleton, who is the head pyromaniac gatekeeper, is saying he does not want that money to go to those 11,000 people in his constituency, and I guess other Conservative MPs are saying the same thing, that in their constituencies, they do not want those 11,000 Canadians, who are struggling to make ends meet and who have lower incomes, to get the grocery rebate. Why would they be so mean-spirited? Why would they be so entitled to deny those constituents the benefits they have? I ask, because the Conservatives have access to a dental care plan as MPs, and they have access to a good salary as MPs, but they would deny that to, on average, 11,000 constituents in their ridings. To my mind, it is unbelievable.
Then, of course there is the other element that the NDP succeeded in forcing the government to do, which is on affordable housing. The urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy financing is so vitally important. Affordable housing is finally being built. Finally, we are getting to the point where we are starting to address the housing crisis in a meaningful way. The member for Carleton likes to talk a good game. He says, rightly, that the cost of housing has doubled under the Liberal government. What he neglects to say is that it also doubled under the terrible Harper regime, one of the most corrupt governments in our history and one of the most mean-spirited governments in our history. It was an unbelievably incompetent government. It could not manage finances. It could not fight its way out of a paper bag, and all of the other things—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/5/23 8:13:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the truth hurts. When Canadians speak truth to Conservatives, we know what the reaction is. Albertans in Edmonton and Calgary certainly spoke truth to Conservatives earlier last week, and I think we are seeing that reflected in the falling poll numbers as well for the Conservatives.
The Conservatives would stop affordable housing from being built. After we have seen decades of both the terrible Harper regime refusing to build affordable housing and the Liberal government refusing to build affordable housing, the NDP is forcing the government to actually do that, and the Conservative response is to block it. They do not want affordable housing for Canadians, as they might be able to have a roof over their heads and they might be able to back to school or work. A whole bunch of things could happen from that, and Conservatives somehow find that this is something they do not want to see.
The NDP forced investments in health care, and members will recall it is the terrible Harper regime, that dismal decade of 10 awful years that Canadians had to survive, that actually cut the health care funding in the first place, so the NDP is fixing what the Harper regime and Conservatives broke. What we have in the bill—
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- Jun/5/23 8:15:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as you know, and as the hon. member has been around long enough to know, it is against the rules of the House to mislead the House, and he just completely misinformed the House in regard to the Harper record.
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- Jun/5/23 8:15:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I actually would like to make a motion for unanimous consent so that I can take another half-hour to talk about the Harper government. I would be more than pleased to get into the details.
I move that I be accorded an extra half-hour to talk specifically about the Harper government.
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- Jun/5/23 8:16:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is too bad because I would love to spend the evening talking about how terrible, how awful, how mean-spirited the Harper government was and how badly it managed finances and of course the scandals that we lived through. The scandals were unprecedented.
I will close by saying this. People, including those in Conservative ridings, need dental care. They need access to affordable housing. They need to have the grocery rebate. They need the supports that are in this bill.
For goodness sake, Conservatives should get with the program, listen to their constituents and vote for this bill.
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- Jun/5/23 8:21:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always so enlightening for me to listen to this member speak. He wanted to speak a bit more. He asked for unanimous consent and, of course, that was not possible. However, I wanted the member to talk a bit more. We know that this bill does not go far enough with regard to indigenous housing. It does not go far enough with regard to the support for the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls national action plan. It is a start, but it has not gone far enough.
The member spoke about the Harper years. I was in the non-profit sector at the time and I know how horrendous those years were for those of us in the charitable sector. Perhaps the member could talk about the impacts of the Stephen Harper years on indigenous people in this country.
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- Jun/5/23 8:21:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Edmonton Strathcona and her seatmate, the member for Edmonton Griesbach, are the two strongest members of Parliament from Alberta in this House; no question. They are incredibly strong.
The Harper government was disastrous for indigenous peoples. I can go into literally hours of description of how bad the Harper regime was. Thankfully, it is no longer there and we do not ever want it back.
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- Jun/5/23 8:48:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it felt like there was some dishonesty in the member's speech. He started out speaking about the dishonesty of the Liberal government, but then he spoke about how this was almost an omnibus bill at the end, as if the Harper government was not renowned for its omnibus bills. He spoke about how we should have learned from history, but in World War II, one of the things that we saw was the massive investment in our communities and in our infrastructure, so I want to ask him about what he would cut.
However, what actually caught my ear the most was when he was talking about pensions, about Canadian pensions. I am sure he knows where I am going with this. We just finished an election in Alberta, and the United Conservative Party, the UCP, in Alberta, was running on the idea of taking Albertans out of the Canadian pension plan and using that money for its own means.
Since the member does not agree with the Canadian pension plan being used by the government, would he say that what Danielle Smith is proposing in Alberta would be equally wrong?
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- Jun/5/23 9:22:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say I would be hesitant to accept that the Conservative Party would support that carve-out, only because of the shenanigans that the Conservatives have gotten up to in the last two days, during which they have not let anything be passed. They have not even let us have a debate on wildfires, which is so urgently needed.
However, I want to agree with my colleague on one thing in his speech. I will give Stephen Harper credit for one thing when he was the prime minister of this country: He did tell us who he was, when he was going to cut things and how he was going to decimate the charitable sector, the foreign aid and all of those things. He made it very clear he was going to do those things, and then he did them. However, the current Conservative opposition party refuses to tell us what the Conservatives would cut. The member refuses to tell us which things in this budget he would cut. Is it dental care? Is it housing? Is it health care? Is it a futures economy? Which one of those things would the member cut?
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- Jun/5/23 9:23:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me say first that, soon enough, the member will be able to refer to us as the Conservative government and she will not be spreading misinformation.
I have heard the New Democrats talk about the Harper era during the whole debate tonight, and here are a couple of things from the Harper era. The member was wrong on most of her facts, but the reality is that, during the Harper era, there were a few things we did promise and deliver. We promised regular increases. In fact, almost every single year, we increased spending on the Canada health transfer by six per cent. Members would not know that by listening to Liberal talking points.
Something that clearly differentiates the current Liberal government's approach from ours is that when we dealt with a global economic meltdown, a part of that, every step of the way, was a road map to get back to a balanced budget, which we delivered in 2015. We have not seen one since.
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