44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 15, 2022 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, it is very encouraging to hear all parties in the House agree that this bill needs to go to committee. Over the last 10 years, there have been multiple attempts by multiple parties to address the issue of pension protection in Canada. We have seen countless Canadians impacted: They have not received their severance or have received pennies on the dollar.
Bill C-228 would do three things. First, it would allow the annual report on the solvency of funds to be tabled here in the House so that it is a matter of public record and we know which funds are in trouble. Second, it would provide a mechanism to transfer money into those funds without tax implications to top them up and restore them to solvency. That is really where we want to be. Third, in the case of bankruptcy, the bill would make pensions a priority, after source deductions and taxes and suppliers take back their goods, but before large creditors and unsecured creditors. That is where we have put the priority for pensioners to receive their due.
I thank the member for Manicouagan and the member for Elmwood—Transcona for the many discussions we have had on things we need to do to the bill to try to address concerns. I also thank the members who have spoken tonight: the member for Kingston and the Islands, members from the Bloc, my colleague from Hastings—Lennox and Addington and even the member for Whitby, who presented a petition in the House on pension protection. This just shows that the time is right for us to work together and get this right at committee.
One thing we are going to be working on and talking about at committee is cleaning up some of the clauses. There were a number of bills and each one of them had something in it that everybody did not like. When we were cleaning up some of the things we did not like in the previous bill, Bill C-405, a couple of clauses got left behind, so we got rid of them.
The insurance idea is something people want to talk about at committee. Some people like that idea and some people do not. The NDP also correctly raised the point that pensions are not the only consideration; severance pay is too. It is something people have not received when companies are in bad shape. That should go in, with the same priority as pensions. I agree with that.
In trying to make sure that we do not get the unintended consequences that the member for Kingston and the Islands was talking about, one thing of concern is whether or not businesses can get adequate credit. We have allowed a different coming-into-force time. The reporting and topping up of funds would be immediate, but we would give a number of years before the priority part of this bill comes into force. That would allow businesses time to get their house in order, and I would argue that if they cannot get their act together, they are a greater financial risk, so they should pay the associated consequences for that.
I am happy to say that there is support in the Senate. If the bill makes it out of committee and goes to the other place, there is support from multiple parties in the Senate, from Senators Plett, Yussuff and Dalphond. There is also huge stakeholder support across the country. Letters have gone out everywhere from Mike Powell with the Canadian Federation of Pensioners, CARP and the number of other stakeholders that have come forward.
I am encouraged by what I have heard today. I know this is what Canadians want us to do. They want us to work together, have the discussions and work collaboratively. As the twice-named most collegial parliamentarian, it is my pleasure to work together across the aisles. This is important for seniors in our country and it is important for people who work their whole lives. We can do something great in this moment, so I encourage all members of the House to support Bill C-228 and send it to committee. Let us work together and get this done for Canadians.
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- Jun/15/22 6:27:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, November 25, 2021, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, June 22, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.
The hon. deputy House leader.
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- Jun/15/22 6:28:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am sure if you canvass the House, you will find consent to see the clock at 6:30.
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- Jun/15/22 6:28:30 p.m.
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Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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There is one motion in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-14. Motion No. 1 will be debated and voted upon.
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moved:
That Bill C-14 be amended by deleting the alternative title.
He said: Madam Speaker, as always, it is a privilege to rise in the House on behalf of my constituents. I will try to be brief and not use up all of my speaking time. I hope that other members will be happy to hear that.
I think we all agree that no one province in our beautiful country should lose a seat when electoral boundaries are redistributed, usually following the census every 10 years. This is essentially how things have been done since our country was formed in 1867.
The last time that a province lost a seat in the House of Commons was in 1966. There was a redistribution in the 1990s, which led to the creation of a third territory, with its own laws and a distinct identity, but that was a unique situation, so I am not counting that.
In reviewing past legislation, I noted only two instances where the number of seats was reduced between elections. A lot of changes were made over a number of years, especially prior to the 1970s, when the process of amending the number of seats was very different from the process in the House today. I will elaborate on that later.
As I said at second reading, the issue was extending the 1985 grandfather clause to the 43rd Parliament. That clause promised that no province would dip below the number of seats held in 1985. That was discussed in committee, and we are now debating a small amendment that I proposed. Essentially, the government is proposing to extend this grandfather clause to the 43rd Parliament, which I agree with, of course.
The three Canadian provinces with the strongest demographic growth are British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. Even with these changes, however, they will continue to be under-represented in the House of Commons.
In 1985, British Columbia had 32 seats, Alberta had 26 and Ontario had 99. At the time of the election in 2019, British Columbia had 42 seats, Alberta had 34 and Ontario had 121. Even with these changes, Ontario will be the most under-represented province in the House of Commons.
I will call the changes proposed in 2012 the Harper formula in honour of the prime minister of the day. The current government is still using the Harper formula because I honestly think it had a lot of good ideas. The Harper formula gave my province, Alberta, and its population nine more seats in the House. That brings us much closer to the proportional representation by population that many Albertans want. I believe they are about 0.5% apart, so we are very close.
British Columbia will continue to be under-represented. It will have only 12.5% of the seats with 13.68% of the population. Even with the grandfather clause from 1985, which will be pushed to the 43rd Parliament, in the next 10, 20 or 30 years this Parliament will have to carry out a more balanced redistribution for Canadians and western Canadians, because our population is growing quickly.
Ontario, the largest province in this country, was the largest province at Confederation. It is still the largest province, and that will not change in the future. Toronto will certainly continue to be the largest city in our country. With each redistribution by the House of Commons, Toronto will post the greatest gains when we ask the province of Ontario how many seats it should have.
I also believe that each redistribution creates tensions among members representing the major cities and those representing the smaller cities and the regions.
There are several commissions that are working on it or that have already produced maps—a first draft, if you will—and they are the commissions in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. I do not think that Manitoba has returned its maps yet. Ontario has not. In Quebec, of course, the commission is waiting to see whether this bill will be passed. It is the Senate that will examine the issue and decide whether the content of this bill is to the liking of senators. In practice, I think only Nova Scotia has published its maps so far.
This has resulted in a major debate in the House, because representing a region, a territory or a group of small towns or villages is very different. I have colleagues who represent regions that have 20 mayors or 30 boards of directors to talk to. I do not even have one. As I said in the House, until 2019, I did not even have a high school in my riding. Even though I had the largest riding in Calgary, I did not have a public high school, a Catholic school, a private school or a charter school. The first school opened a few years ago, just before the pandemic. My colleagues were surprised that there could be a riding in a big city like Calgary that did not have a high school. That has changed, but I still have only one. I do not have a legion in my riding either. I have colleagues who have 10, 15, 20 or 25 events in their riding on Remembrance Day.
Representing a region is very different from representing a riding in a big metropolitan area like Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary or Edmonton. We need different strategies to represent our constituents well.
I said this during the debates at second reading of this bill, but I will say it again because I promised my constituents. On October 29, I wrote an article on a website called Substack. I sent it to the 8,500 constituents who subscribe to the newsletter I send out every Friday. I told them that, if the Liberal government proposed changes to how boundaries are drawn and seats distributed in the House of Commons, I would speak in favour of the principle of representation by population, because that really is extremely important in western Canada.
In the beginning, when Alberta joined the Confederation created by this Parliament, we had seven seats, as did British Columbia. Since then, of course, our province has grown. There are 4.3 to 4.4 million Albertans in our province. I almost said “in our country” because, as I often say, we are a distinct society. I know my Quebec colleagues appreciate that. I know the repercussions. I am thinking of the Charlottetown Accord, the great debates of the 1980s and 1990s in Quebec, and the major Constitutional debates.
I want to make sure that, once again, I do what I promised my constituents. In the future, the next time seats in the House of Commons are redistributed, Parliament is going to have to take a hard look at representation by population for the people of western Canada. This is really important. We cannot have a country where western Canadians are so under-represented. I think we can all agree to a small difference of 0.5%. That is reasonable. We can absolutely do that. However, no one knows where the Canadian population is going to go in the next few years. No one knows what the economy will look like, or which parts of the country will be more attractive than others.
Once again, I want to say that I agree with this bill. It is a lean bill that reduces changes to the redistribution of seats in the House of Commons, so I support this bill.
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Madam Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague on his speech, which he delivered in French. I think that is very much to his credit.
My main take-away from the member's speech was his reference to the infamous representation by population. I could not help but think of the Union Act of 1840. There were two nations at that time. Quebec was forced to unite with Upper Canada following the revolt of the Patriotes, and it was given equal political weight with the rest of Canada. In a way, it was recognized that there were two nations, one that was more French-Canadian at the time and one that was more English-Canadian in Upper Canada, and that they should be given equal weight. When did that change?
This changed when the weight of the population became greater in the rest of Canada than it was in Quebec. It is odd. I would like to know what my colleague thinks. That is the vision of John A. Macdonald, where, now that Quebec has less weight on a population level, we will change the rules of the game. A few years later, we had Brian Mulroney, who proposed giving Quebec a stable 25%, regardless of what happened in the future.
I would like to know whether my colleague sides more with Mr. Macdonald or with Mr. Mulroney.
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Madam Speaker, I would simply like to remind the member that the Charlottetown accord, which guaranteed that Quebec would never have less than 25% of the total number of seats in the House of Commons, was rejected by 58% of Quebeckers during a national referendum.
I would also like to quickly tell him that we cannot blame Albertans for the mistakes of Ontarians.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his speech and for some of what he has had to say about the importance of representation by population. It made me think of something more recent than the Constitution Act of 1867: the rules for the Conservative leadership race. These do not have representation by population. Each riding in the country, no matter where it is and no matter how many members there are in that region and in those ridings, is accorded an equal number of points. In fact, I believe those points are distributed on a proportional basis, which is a debate perhaps for another time.
Does he feel the Conservative leadership race should be put on hold until they have a representation by population system in place for their party?
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Madam Speaker, it is a wonderful question. I do not think they use proportional voting in the member's own party.
I will mention this: My colleagues know me to be a contrarian, and perhaps it will surprise the member for Elmwood—Transcona that I actually voted in the 2003 merger between the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. I was a young Canadian Alliance activist, and I voted no.
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- Jun/15/22 6:42:03 p.m.
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I will just remind hon. members that partisan politics are not the business of the House.
Questions and comments; the hon. member for Red Deer—Mountain View.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member has seen a lot of the country and certainly understands what is taking place. I would like to talk to him about representation by responsibility. He did mention it when he talked about the size of his riding and compared it with some of the rural ridings that we see all around the country. Certainly in Alberta, in one riding we could have 40 different municipalities that one has to be responsible for. It may take hours or days to get there and back.
Could he comment on how that also tends to affect the ability of members of Parliament to represent their communities?
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Madam Speaker, I did mention it. There have been Supreme Court decisions and lower court decisions on this. In Canada, what is most important is what is called effective representation. In court decisions, that has been the way to nuance representation by population, which were the great debates that led to eventual Confederation in 1867. The courts have found that effective representation is a concept that goes beyond that: It asks if a member of Parliament can effectively represent their communities. These are not just a number on a map, and include a whole bunch of communities. It is asking if they can they get around, listen to their constituents and then report back to Ottawa. That is the way it is supposed to work, as opposed to what is often done here, which is that someone stays in Ottawa and then reports back on how good Ottawa is to their place of origin. It should be the other way around.
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Madam Speaker, I would much prefer to be in Ottawa making these comments, but it is nice that we have the hybrid. It enables me to speak on the floor of the House while I am here in Winnipeg.
We are in an interesting debate in regard to Bill C-14. I am not necessarily surprised that we would see an amendment at this stage. One of the things that I have found over the past number of months is that, at times, we get legislation that one would naturally think would flow through the House of Commons: There would be relatively minimal debate, and we would get it through second reading and into committee.
I do not see this as controversial legislation. I am not exactly sure where the Bloc actually falls on the legislation. I would hope that it would support the province of Quebec getting a guaranteed number of seats, but at the end of the day, I like to think that this is the type of legislation that should ultimately pass through.
Was it necessary, for example, for us to have an amendment? I do not think it was for a report stage amendment. I think that when we get relatively uncontroversial legislation, where it appears that everyone is going to be voting in favour, I would have rather seen a debate on something like, let us say, Bill C-21 and the issue of guns and the safety of Canadians, which is top of mind for a lot of people.
True to form, what I have found is that, whether it is good, rather uncontroversial legislation such as Bill C-14 or if it is controversial or potentially controversial legislation, the Conservatives have one approach in dealing with the government's agenda and that is to prevent it from ultimately passing.
Having said that, I want to recognize a number of points in regard to Bill C-14. Having had the opportunity to speak on the legislation in the past, I want to be very specific on a few things.
One is the need for the legislation. I think it important that we recognize, as has been pointed out, that shifts take place in Canada's population for a wide variety of reasons. One could talk about things such as job opportunities, transfers, the allure of another area, or just people wanting to move to a warmer climate. In my case, they want to come to a nice, cool climate. People change their ridings.
Immigration is such a huge factor. Over the years, Canada continues to grow in good part because of immigration to our country. We are very dependent on immigration. Our birth rate is going down. As we grow as a nation overall, there is natural population shifting that occurs. It comes also in the form of immigration.
As a result, every 10 years, there is an obligation through an independent mechanism, and I want to emphasize that it really is an independent mechanism, that ensures that the ridings reflect the changes we have seen based on census material.
No one was surprised at all that we got a report this year. It was anticipated that we would get a report 10 years after we received the last report.
Going forward, every decade we will continue to receive recommendations from Elections Canada, through the commission, as to the need to change boundaries and possibly add constituencies or do some shifting.
That is, in essence, why we have the legislation today. It is because of the change in populations. In particular, for Quebec, there is a need for us to establish a floor, a minimum number of seats, for the province.
Doing it this way prevents us from having to do a constitutional change, where there is a 7/50 formula in order to enact a change. It addresses, for the most part, the biggest concerns that members of Parliament, on all sides of the issue, have as we recognize how important it is that the province of Quebec not lose any seats. I suspect that is the reason why the legislation would ultimately pass, hopefully unanimously, in the House.
Back in November, there was the establishment of these three-member commissions. We have a national commission. The commission establishes individual commissions of three people in a province, and through those commissions they all have a responsibility. That was done in November of last year, I believe. Those commissions then all have a responsibility to develop the new boundaries, whatever they might look like. They sit around, look at the numbers and the maps and try to provide new boundaries that we could be running the next federal election on.
Each commission operates independently. Manitoba, for example, has a three-member commission, and it operates independently of other aspects of Elections Canada, of political entities and of different stakeholders, such as community members and so forth. It is important to emphasize that it is, in fact, independent.
In developing those boundaries, the commission is tasked with a timeline. That timeline is quickly approaching, and the commissions need to provide a draft of the boundaries. One could be very concerned in regard to the dragging out of Bill C-14. The people who are paying the price for the House of Commons dragging its feet on the passage of this legislation are the people of Quebec. We know we want to see that minimum number of seats for the province of Quebec, and we have consistently said that from day one, as members will recall, when the national commission initially made the recommendation. It was an immediate response that came from not only my Quebec colleagues but from the caucus as a whole: Under no circumstances could we allow the province of Quebec not to have the 78 seats.
Until this legislation passes, that three-member commission in the province of Quebec has its hands tied, at least in good part, as other commissions continue to move forward with drafting boundaries, because the boundaries will change within different provinces. There will be tweaks in the city of Winnipeg, whether Winnipeg North grows more to the north or more in the inner city. This is something I wait for with bated breath, in hopes that we see some changes that the community will in fact support.
Once that draft is finished, the commission has to make it public. Once it is made public, it has to have public hearings that must take place before the end of October, because by mid-December the report has to be finalized.
That is why it is critically important that we pass this legislation. It is so the commission in the province of Quebec can finalize a draft so that it can go to the public, and in turn the public can provide its input so the commission can then provide that final draft by the end of the year.
It is an independent process, and that is why I am supporting Bill C-14. I hope all members would support its quick passage. I see my time has—
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- Jun/15/22 6:53:58 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.
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Madam Speaker, I was listening to my colleague's speech and, this time, it was interesting to see that he actually had something to say.
His comments were mainly directed at us and he basically told us how good, nice, and kind they are and how they are being charitable and generous, since Quebec will lose one less seat.
That is really something. I am just beside myself.
I have some questions. Parliament recognized Quebec as a nation, and that is supposed to mean something. Yet, census after census, and redistribution after redistribution, Quebec's representation in Canada drops. That just makes me wish all the more that Quebec would become independent and form its own country.
What can my colleague say to those Quebeckers who believe that Quebec should be a country when they see that, ultimately, we are going backwards all the time?
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Madam Speaker, the first thing I would say is that the Government of Canada responded immediately by recognizing that we do not want to see the province of Quebec diminished in terms of numbers of seats. That is why we have this legislation, even though other opposition parties may see fit to try to delay it or even possibly cause some confusion about it.
What the Bloc members are proposing would require a constitutional change. I do not believe for a moment that Canadians are open to having a round of constitutional debates and discussions on this issue, along with the many other issues that would come out of any sort of a discussion on the Constitution.
I think the most important thing to recognize here is that if we want to support the people of Quebec in going through this independent process, we need to allow them the opportunity of having a basic number of seats and let the commission do the work it needs to do.
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Madam Speaker, the member has such a long track record of service in this place, so I have a very broad question for him, because I know he has a lot of knowledge.
This is a complicated thing to figure out, how to best represent our neighbours, given the geography of Canada and how far spread out we are. Could he expand on the importance of ensuring that from a riding size perspective and a population perspective how that representation is important? We are representing people, but we are also representing territory.
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Madam Speaker, that is a wonderful question.
One of the things that I could add to the debate is to say that we all want to have fair representation for the people and communities which we represent. We are talking about the independence of Elections Canada. We could just as equally be talking about the important services that members of Parliament, elected officials, provide to their constituents through the resources provided to them through the House of Commons, for example, a member's allowance, travel frequency and how convenient it is for members to be able to participate. There is a wide spectrum of things that complement a member's ability to represent the communities they have been elected to represent.
This type of discussion would be very fruitful going forward.
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