44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 19, 2022 02:00PM
- Oct/19/22 3:14:42 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Hamilton Mountain for her hard work and her constant advocacy for workers.
As a cabinet minister in the Harper years, the Conservative leader actively supported anti-union legislation, such as Bill C-525 and Bill C-377, and he is still attacking supports for workers today.
Today, our government launched consultations on eliminating the use of replacement workers during strikes and lockouts. This government will always be on the side of workers, while the Conservative leader gatekeeps Canadians out of safer, good paying jobs.
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- Oct/19/22 3:54:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my mother, Brenda, my sisters, Rebecca, Jessica and Tessa, and our respective families, including my wife, Janelle, and our sons, Robert and Noah, who are here in Ottawa today, I want to thank all my colleagues in the House of Commons for taking the time to honour my father's life and work here in the House.
I want to especially thank the members for Burnaby South, Winnipeg North, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel and Saanich—Gulf Islands for their very kind words about Dad's legacy and work in this place.
Members have already heard a bit about Dad. I think it is fair to say that he was an outstanding parliamentarian, an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, an avid canoeist and hiker, a lover of all things Celtic, a husband, a father, a grandfather and dear friend. He means the world to those he leaves behind.
During his time in this place, Bill Blaikie left a lasting mark on the House of Commons and the nation.
Some may know this and some may not, but as a member of the McGrath committee on parliamentary reform, he had many tales that he liked to tell around the dining room table. As a member of that committee and a long-time NDP House leader and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, he played a key role in developing many of the procedures that we now take for granted in this place, from electing the Speaker by secret ballot to applying votes to simply enforcing an appropriate decorum in the chamber, a task easier said than done but that he often made look easy. Incidentally, he was able to use the same sense of gravitas at home to enforce decorum.
It was a very proud moment for him when, at the conclusion of his parliamentary career, his peers in this place named him parliamentarian of the year.
Some alluded already to the fact that as NDP health critic in the early 1980s, he led the charge for a proper Canada Health Act. He is credited in the memoir of then health minister Bégin for having paved the way for a much stronger act than the government of the day would have enacted if left to its own devices.
He negotiated recognition and protection for indigenous rights into the Clarity Act. He served as parliamentary leader in the initial period of Jack Layton's leadership and was sworn into the Queen's Privy Council at that time in the context of his own and other New Democrats' advocacy for the rights of Maher Arar.
In the early days of the Harper government, Bill led the negotiating team that protected the 2005 so-called NDP budget by going to what was then known as the Langevin Block to meet with the new prime minister, Harper, ensuring that hundreds of millions of dollars would go to providing housing, public transportation and post-secondary education to millions of Canadians instead of going to more corporate tax cuts.
In his work, Dad was reinforced by this faith, and we have heard a bit about that already today too. It is a faith that calls us not simply to care about what happens to souls in the next life, but to care for people, all people, in this life, and manifest the love and compassion of Jesus not only through the charity of individuals, but as a matter of justice and in the rules that structure our economy and our relationships with each other and the planet. He often saw the work of the NDP as standing in the prophetic tradition and speaking truth to worldly powers too consumed by greed, convenience and other concerns that blind us to our duty to care for the earth and all its creatures.
Despite the importance of his work in Ottawa, Dad was always happy to slip home as soon as he could. In fact, earlier, former government House leader Don Boudria came to meet with my mom, and Dad would often tell tales of him and Boudria figuring out, in the month of June, how to wrap up business efficiently in the House so that he could do this very thing. Then, especially in good weather, he could tie a canoe to the top of the van and zip off with one or more of his children to explore a lake or creek, usually in or on the way to Whiteshell Provincial Park, that he had been eyeing up from the highway for years and wanted to check out more closely with a paddle.
He carried that wonder for the natural world into his work as a parliamentarian. He was among the first to raise the problem of global warming in the House of Commons. In his time as minister of conservation in Manitoba, he created five new provincial parks and took great care and delight in directing the maintenance and repair of Manitoba's existing parks.
There are many iconic photos of Dad playing the pipes, from formal gatherings here on Parliament Hill to family gatherings down at the lake. He deeply valued tradition and family connections. Exploring and celebrating our Scottish and Irish heritage was one of the ways he connected to our family history. Growing up, Celtic music, stories and toasts featured prominently in our family gatherings.
However, these things were also an important part of his public persona. The New Democrats in Winnipeg have spent many evenings on a diet of Burns poetry and reflections on the state of democratic socialism in Canada in order to support NDP MPs from Elmwood-Transcona. In fact, the member for Burnaby South had the honour of being our guest speaker on one such occasion.
Dad and Tommy Douglas organized the first formal Burns dinners here on Parliament Hill, a tradition that was subsequently taken up by the Speaker. These dinners have served as an opportunity for politicians of all stripes to gather and relate to each other in positive ways too often drowned out by the more toxic personalities in the House of Commons.
My sisters and I will be forever grateful for the many long conversations that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning where we got to investigate the mysteries of theology, politics and history with a master of the arts who cared for us deeply. We love you too Dad.
Earlier, I mentioned Dad's fondness for Scottish culture, so I would like to finish this tribute with one of his favourite Scottish toasts:
Here's tae us,Wha's like us?Damn few,And they're a' deid!
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- Oct/19/22 6:13:44 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg North.
Before I get going, I just want to take a quick opportunity to acknowledge my parliamentary secretary assistant, Kelly, who is celebrating his birthday today. Kelly has been a volunteer of mine since he was in high school. As a matter of fact, in the summer of 2015, when we were running against the Conservative government and Stephen Harper called an election in the middle of the summer, most of us were saying to ourselves, “Why is this election so long?” It was one of the longest elections in Canadian history.
Meanwhile, Kelly was celebrating the fact that Stephen Harper had called the election on or for his 18th birthday. On October 19, 2015, Kelly turned 18, registered to vote and cast his first ballot. He has been part of my team ever since, and is my parliamentary secretary assistant. I just want to wish him a happy birthday.
I was trying to think of what I was going to talk about as the debate was ensuing this afternoon, and I was not quite sure. Then the member for Peace River—Westlock got up and spoke, and it became very clear to me what I was going to talk about. I find it very interesting and very rich that the Conservatives on the other side of this House always hearken back to the days of the good old Conservatives, who fought for climate. Indeed, if we talk about the Progressive Conservatives, individuals like Flora MacDonald, who came from my riding, from back in the 1970s and 1980s, were Progressive Conservatives who cared about very important issues.
The member specifically spoke about two issues, and I will reference them as well. First, on the protection of our ozone layer, he is absolutely right. I think it is lost on a lot of people, the incredible work, through the leadership of Brian Mulroney, back in the 1980s, when it came to the ozone depletion and our approach on how we were going to solve this globally. I will read something from CBC:
They predicted that continued use of CFCs would completely collapse the ozone layer by 2050. Without ozone protecting us from the sun's UV rays, skin cancer rates would skyrocket.
Faced with that dire outlook in 1987, 46 countries agreed, in Montreal, to dramatically limit the use and production of CFCs.
Mulroney signed the protocol. So did Reagan, often considered the ur-Republican. Even Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady of British Toryism, got on board.
If members can believe it, led by Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative, those countries literally saved the planet by protecting the ozone layer. The member is absolutely right when he hearkens back to the Progressive Conservatives and the role they played.
He also talked about acid rain. Let me read a quote, also from the CBC, about acid rain:
In 1990, Bush signed an update to the Clean Air Act that included regulations on emissions that were causing devastating acid rain in the U.S. and Canada. The Canadian government had spent a decade trying to get Washington to address the issue, but were met with resistance—until Bush.
This is the legacy of Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives. They fought for the environment. They did not care where the problem originated. They looked at it as a global problem and saw Canada's responsibility to lead the way, and on two occasions Brian Mulroney did exactly that.
Right after talking about the incredible work of Brian Mulroney, what did the member for Peace River—Westlock do? He asked why we would bother trying to get rid of plastic straws, because we are not using plastic straws; our plastic straws are not ending up in the oceans; it is other people's plastic straws. He asked why we had to use paper straws because other people are irresponsible. That is the Conservative Party of today. That is their approach. Their approach is not the Brian Mulroney approach or the Flora MacDonald approach of the 1980s. That is what we are faced with right now.
I would remind the member that Stephen Harper, the next “Conservative” prime minister to come from this place, did absolutely nothing.
I put it in quotes because we all know, and it is glaringly obvious, that ever since Stephen Harper came along the Conservative Party, the Progressive Conservative Party, that could elect somebody in Kingston and the Islands, Flora MacDonald, no longer exists. They can take the name and the colour, but what we have over there is the former Reform Party of Canada. That is what we have. We do not have the Brian Mulroney Conservative Party that cares about the environment. For the member for Peace River—Westlock to suggest that Conservatives have always been there to fight for climate, to fight for the environment, is incredibly rich because it draws no comparison to the party of today.
Then, when we think that we got to the furthest point possible with Stephen Harper, members across the aisle are even less progressive than Stephen Harper. If we will recall, it was Stephen Harper who said that pricing pollution makes sense. Why would that not make sense to a Conservative? We are literally talking about the economic model and how to incentivize market decisions through the economic model and the principles around an economy.
One would think that if anybody understood that in the House, it would be Conservatives, who purport themselves to be the saviours of the economy, the party that understands economic principles and how an economy works. Conservatives cannot even support a basic principle of understanding that, when we put a price on something, it will change and incentivize choice in the marketplace. Stephen Harper understood that. Stephen Harper is on the record having said it makes sense to put a price on pollution.
Where are we today? We get the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle who comes along as the next leader and goes completely against that. Then we get the member for Durham, who, to his credit, and I almost felt sorry for him at times, recognized that he was dealing with a party that did not support this because it is motivated from an angle of denying climate and wondered how he would work with it. He set up this Air Miles-type program of trading off options and then getting to pick a prize at the end, a bicycle or something. He tried at least to build it into an economic model of some sort.
Then, of course, we get to the current leader of the Conservative Party, an individual who, time after time, gets up and harps on and on about how pricing pollution is not the answer, despite the fact that economists throughout the world, and one would think that Conservatives would listen to economists, say that it is, and despite the fact that it is proving to be the most effective tool throughout the world. Here we are. This is the Conservative Party of Canada today.
It is not the Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney. It is not the Conservative Party that literally saved the ozone layer. It is not the Conservative Party that saved us from acid rain and that worked and pushed George Bush for a decade to do something about it. This is a different Conservative movement and it is nothing like the Conservative movement that elected Flora MacDonald in my riding of Kingston and the Islands.
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- Oct/19/22 6:40:41 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, there are many things I could say.
One of the biggest differences between the Stephen Harper government and this government is that science is a factor. Science matters. We have seen that throughout the pandemic and with many other policy initiatives that have been taken, including in Bill S-5. It is not like someone from anywhere in Canada said that something was a bad substance and needs to be added to the list and then all of a sudden it appeared on the list. No one is saying that at all.
Obviously, science is a factor. At least when the Liberal Party is in government, science matters.
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Madam Speaker, I am not questioning the motives of the member for Simcoe North, but I worry that the impact of putting forward such a narrow bill as Bill C-289 only makes it appear like the House of Commons, particularly the Conservatives, want to crack down on money laundering, when in fact this bill would make little or no contribution to the actual fight against money laundering.
The Cullen report on money laundering in B.C., made public last June, made literally dozens of recommendations for effective measures to fight money laundering, but creating a separate criminal offence for providing false or misleading information in money laundering investigations was not one of them.
New Democrats will be opposing this bill because a serious problem like money laundering requires a much more serious and robust action than the one small and probably redundant measure suggested in Bill C-289. I will continue to question why we are here talking about this narrow and probably redundant bill instead of talking about more robust measures to fight money laundering, such as those suggested in the Cullen report.
It is also important to note that the Cullen commission report clearly states that it was the Harper government that made a very significant contribution to the explosion of money laundering in Canada when its 2012 cutbacks to the RCMP caused the closing down of the integrated proceeds of crime units, which it had been operating in each province from 1990 to 2012.
Let me quote the Cullen report directly here. It states, “The RCMP's lack of attention to money laundering has allowed the unchecked growth of money laundering since...2012.” A cynic might even wonder if this Conservative private member's bill on money laundering might have been put forward as a distraction from the role the Harper Conservative government played in allowing the explosion of money laundering through its cutbacks in 2012.
The current Liberal government does not escape criticism either. The Cullen commission reports condemns the current federal anti-money laundering legislation and enforcement in simply one word, ineffective. I will cite just one piece of evidence of how ineffective the current federal efforts are.
In 2019-20, FINTRAC received over 31 million individual reports of suspicious financial transactions, yet it transferred only 2,057 of those reports to law enforcement agencies. When we compare the efforts of other jurisdictions, we find that they have many more reports. If we compare it to the United States, we get about 12 times as many reports of suspicious transactions, but when it comes to actual prosecutions as a result of those reports, we are in the tiny percentages.
The Cullen report did note that there was some progress in British Columbia starting in 2015 when David Eby became the B.C. attorney general. The previous government had very clear warnings from law enforcement and regulators that money laundering had become a massive industry in B.C., especially at casinos. A key change was finally introduced in 2018 by Attorney General Eby. It implemented a provision requiring casino patrons to present proof that the cash used in transactions of $10,000 or more came from legitimate sources, and there was an immediate drop in the amount of transactions over $10,000 in those casinos.
While the Cullen commission report and study were really focused on British Columbia, it still made six major suggestions for improving the federal response to money laundering. I will talk for just a minute about each one of those, and they are: unexplained wealth orders; corporate beneficial ownership registry; a program to fight trade-based money laundering; better and more frequent scrutiny of money service businesses; the requirement for better reporting by chartered professional accountants; and, finally, better regulation of the mortgage industry.
All of those are not things that we normally talk about in our daily lives, so let me talk for a minute about unexplained wealth orders, which has been used very successfully in the United Kingdom. This is where either FINTRAC, or possibly the Canada Revenue Agency, would be given the power to go to court where criminal activity is suspected and require those suspected to produce information about where the money used to purchase assets has come from, was the source of funds was to purchase, for instance, real estate. If it cannot be explained and proven that it came from legal sources, then the court can order that property forfeited to the government. This is essentially what happens in British Columbia through the civil forfeiture process. That is a power we do not have. It is one I would like to see us talking about here tonight, rather than this narrow bill.
The second major recommendation is for a corporate beneficial owner registry. What does that mean in common language? We have numbered corporations, which means we cannot figure out who actually owns them and we cannot figure out their links to other corporations that take place in the darkness of those numbered corporations.
We are told now that legislation is coming. I am interested to hear the Conservatives say that they are now in favour of public access to a corporate beneficial ownership registry, but I have to say that in 2018, when New Democrats put forward this kind of idea, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives were enthusiastic about proceeding with this. This is a recommendation that has already been made in the fisheries and oceans committee as a way of getting at another problem on the west coast in British Columbia, and that is the problem of not being able to find out who actually owns fishing licences because a great number of them are numbered corporations. I am happy that we appear to have a consensus growing here that we need such a corporate beneficial ownership registry. I would like to see the government come forward very soon with legislation to implement that proposal.
The Cullen commission also pointed out that probably one of the largest sources of money laundering goes completely unmonitored in this country, and that is what is called trade-based money laundering. If I understand it, it is pretty simple. People who make money from illegal criminal activities order and purchase goods from abroad which either do not exist or are not valued at the amount they are paying. That money goes to a company they own offshore and then comes back as clean money as a result of selling products into Canada. Nobody is monitoring this, nobody at all.
The Cullen commission said very clearly that the federal government should set up a program that would combat trade-based money laundering and the power to share information with other governments about suspicious trade transactions, which apparently are simply money laundering. That is another good thing we could be talking about tonight instead of this very narrow bill.
I will briefly name the problem with chartered professional accountants, which is that in a five-year period, only one chartered professional accountant was ever prosecuted for participating in money laundering. I would like people to raise their hands if they think that only happened once in five years in Canada. The Cullen commission pointed out that we need better reporting regulations for chartered professional accountants and we need better monitoring of their activities. It is not casting aspersions on all CPAs. It is saying that the lack of monitoring allows for those who are unscrupulous to take advantage of that and get involved in money laundering.
The fifth one of those is better and more frequent scrutiny of what are called money service businesses. That is where money is transferred back and forth abroad or back and forth around the country. There is a peculiar regulation that allows most of those businesses to avoid scrutiny from FINTRAC by changing their names and reconstituting themselves every two years. The final one is better regulation of the mortgage industry.
Let me close by repeating what I said. Money laundering is a very serious problem and we need serious measures, both in terms of legislation and enforcement, to crack down on money laundering. I do not believe that Bill C-289 is one of those measures. I do not think it makes a major contribution. However, both the Liberal and Conservative governments before and both Liberal and Conservative government policies before have prevented us from taking the actions we need to take on money laundering on a serious basis.
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