44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 30, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, to the hon. minister, this moment we have now is not about debating the substance of Bill C-18. I look forward to an opportunity to debate that, but I will not get that opportunity because time allocation is being used again.
I have to say that, on principle, I object to this. I objected to it when the previous administration under Stephen Harper did it over and over again at a level unprecedented in parliamentary history. What is now happening is the governing Liberals are normalizing the suppression of debate at second reading. Maybe we can debate this in the Standing Orders debate we are to have. Is the goal of governing parties in this place to shut down all debate at second reading and just say, “We will get to it in committee”? That is not acceptable.
This is not acceptable and I will not be voting for time allocation. On principle, I have maybe once been persuaded that there really was a case for it, but today on Bill C-18 there is no case for it.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very troubled by what has happened to journalism in Canada. I agree, as the hon. parliamentary secretary said, that democracy itself is under assault when we lose our local journalists. In fact, there have been empirical studies that show that as parliamentary bureaus of local papers across Canada close up shop, the level of voting in those communities goes down. I agree with the diagnosis, but I do not know that we have the right prescription.
What we now see in Australia are a lot of concerns after the Australian model, which we are now pursuing, has been used as a big stick to drive people to private negotiations with no transparency. There is a lot of concern about following this model.
I am not saying I am against it and I want to figure out how it might work, but surely the simplest thing is to go to the source and say to Google, Twitter, Facebook and anything that is undermining our journalism that they are publishers, just like the newspapers. They are not platforms but publishers, and they have to follow all the same rules as print journalism in Canada.
Would the hon. member comment on that?
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- May/30/22 3:12:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, understandably, Russia's assault on Ukraine has dominated our foreign policy agenda, but we know it is not the only crisis. The Taliban has declared war on women and girls. They are not allowed to go to school. They are not allowed to walk down the street. Their male family members have become their jailers. This is a regime of gender apartheid.
Will the government confirm that with a feminist foreign policy, the policy is not to stand back and do nothing? What does “feminist foreign policy” mean for women and girls in Afghanistan?
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- May/30/22 4:29:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe the hon. member just accused the member for Waterloo of perjuring herself. I do not think that is parliamentary language.
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- May/30/22 4:31:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I lament again that we are on a concurrence debate, which is likely to mean that we will not get to petitions or other Routine Proceedings today, but I want to first agree with the member that I do not think we got to the bottom of the WE Charity scandal because of the refusal to allow the RCMP to investigate further.
I also do not believe that the language the hon. member used, which I heard clearly was to say that the member perjured herself, was parliamentary. I am a former practising lawyer and the word “perjure” suggests that someone has sworn an oath and lied under oath, and therefore has committed a crime. I think the hon. member should state now that he regrets using that language, because it is shocking to me as a member of Parliament to hear it in this place.
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Madam Speaker, my friend from Winnipeg has laid bare the reasons we are debating a concurrence motion on an ethics committee report instead of what we had planned to be doing this afternoon, which is dealing with Bill C-18. I am wondering why he has contributed to the delay tactics by offering a speech at all at this time.
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Madam Speaker, I want to rise on this point because I think this debate on an ethics concurrence motion is, of course, an effort at time-wasting, but some of the issues are substantive.
I never really had an opportunity to comment on what I made of the WE Charity scandal. Having attended meetings at finance committee, and having watched the Prime Minister's testimony and the testimony of his chief of staff, I came to the conclusion, for what it is worth, that the Prime Minister's Office did not politically interfere in this at all. It was Rachel Wernick, as a chief public civil servant, discovering that the Prime Minister's favourite pet project to deliver the program for youth was not yet up and running, and civil servants who I think were embarrassed to tell the Prime Minister that the youth service corps was not up and running, who scrambled to find something to cover for an announcement that had already been made. It was the civil servants who came up with the WE Charity as a possible way to deliver the program. That was my conclusion from watching the evidence.
However, I still think we should have been able to get to the bottom of it so all Canadians would have some assurance that we knew what this was. Also, the fact that it got called the “We Charity scandal” points to some other issues that I think are important, and one of them is that we really do need to amend, reform and modernized Canada's charity laws.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I had some thoughts on the matter, but I have never had a chance to get them on the record, and for that I thank the Conservatives for raising this concurrence debate. However, my thanks are rather overwhelmed by my frustrations that we are not debating Bill C-18.
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- May/30/22 11:51:59 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, just by way of opening, I will say that I am basing a lot of these questions on testimony that we heard at the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. It is an excellent committee with a lot of non-partisan co-operation between members around the table, but I will not cite every witness in every specific question.
I am following up on an earlier question on the climate impacts of extreme weather events and the impacts on fish habitat. We know we have impacts on and threats to Pacific salmon from flooding, wildfires and the destruction of the riparian zones that used to shield the waters to keep them from getting too hot from increased water temperatures. However, I want to focus on what we are going to do to rebuild infrastructure after the November floods in B.C. We could do it wrong and worsen salmon habitat through building dikes and drudging or we could do it right. Some of the expert witnesses suggested that Washington state is where we ought to look for excellence in its flood plains by design program, which works to reduce flood risks while enhancing and restoring salmon habitat.
Can the minister update us on whether DFO is actively pursuing a flood plains by design program?
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- May/30/22 11:54:17 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will move to the problem of what people call aquaculture but my constituents insist I call toxic fish factories, and how we are going to get them out of the water, as the minister's government promised. Some of the witnesses who testified recently on the science issue questioned why the department, not the minister personally, obviously, has in certain sections suppressed science on viruses and sea lice. The conclusion was that it had to do with the fact that the Fisheries Act structurally has a conflict of interest in both promoting the aquaculture industry and regulating it.
Would the minister be open to looking at the new aquaculture act to eliminate that conflict of interest, have a different department promote aquaculture and have DFO protect wild fish stocks?
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- May/30/22 11:56:00 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, moving on, I was really pleased to hear the minister say that she recognizes that polystyrene is a real problem of plastic pollution in our coastal areas, but I was disappointed to hear that it sounded like DFO is not interested in getting it out of the ocean.
Is DFO working with Environment and Climate Change Canada to improve the regulations currently under review for ocean plastics to put polystyrene's use in the marine and coastal areas on a list so that we avoid getting it into the ocean in the first place?
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- May/30/22 11:57:10 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I am moving on to southern resident killer whales. By the way, one of my constituents whom the minister will also know, the Hon. Pat Carney, has said for many years that we do not have an oceans protection plan but an oceans protection wish list. I would like to see an oceans protection plan and not just a pile of money and a list of things to do.
In relation to southern resident killer whales in my riding, the interim sanctuary zones around Pender and Saturna have been there since 2019. Nobody has ever been charged and nobody has ever been ticketed. There have been numerous violations. The local volunteers and whale-sighting groups have now established that whales are present year-round, yet this seasonal so-called sanctuary zone is only operating June 1 to November 30.
Is the minister willing to look at the new science and recognize that whales are present year-round?
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- May/30/22 11:58:36 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, with the threat of ocean acidification as a result of the increased atmospheric carbon creating carbonic acid and threatening life in the oceans, is DFO currently measuring pH levels on all of our coastlines to keep track of ocean acidification?
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