- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Courtenay—Alberni
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,159.67
- Government Page
- May/30/24 11:17:48 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will talk about someone who is insured. Sheila wrote to me and said that with two type 1s in the family, with one suffering from multiple complications from 50 years with the disease, their out-of-pocket medical expenses are about $18,000 a year, and that is with extended medical. Otherwise, it would be about $30,000. That is one paycheque just to keep everyone alive and well. Maybe my colleague can say a few words to Sheila on why he is blocking getting her the help she deserves and needs.
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/9/24 1:03:57 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, my colleague is grounded in experience. She worked in the field, on the front line, with young people, seeing the barriers and navigating a broken system. She also understands the importance of connection, peer support, the critical investments and having an integrated, coordinated, compassionate approach. However, that has to be funded. It has to be supported by government.
Right now, people are asking why they should pay for all of the harm reduction, treatment, recovery and housing supports. I can tell the taxpayers at home who are watching that they are paying for it, and then some, much more. This is critical when we get into prevention, especially when it comes to young people. We have to scale up prevention and education. We have to support the people on the ground doing the hard work. We have to support peer support and ensure we have a coordinated, integrated and compassionate approach.
153 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/27/24 12:13:16 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, as I was going to say, what is embarrassing is that the Conservatives continue to protect their friends at Deloitte, including their former leadership candidate, Peter MacKay, and, just like the Liberals, they do not want to talk about it. They are both corporate-controlled parties.
They are trying to mislead us again. Those votes were about allocating $4.6 billion for COVID rapid tests and vaccines. They were about millions of dollars for a national child care program and funding for affordable homes and women's shelters.
It is no surprise that the Conservatives voted against those things, because that is what Conservatives do. They cut and gut the services people rely on.
We will not take any lessons from the Conservatives, who gave over $7 million in contracts to the former owners of GC Strategies. They also created the Phoenix disaster, which was supposed to save taxpayers $80 million but cost us $3.5 billion.
We have been fighting since the beginning to get to the bottom of the ArriveCAN scandal and to reduce the use of wealthy private consultants. We will not stop, and not just on ArriveCAN and not just on CBSA.
We need to look at the whole of government. We need an investigation into all of the outsourcing, something that is being blocked by the Conservatives, a Conservative-led committee, a Conservative chair who will not allow this motion to come back so that we can look at the whole picture. They do not want to look there.
256 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/27/24 10:34:47 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to start with this: It was actually the Conservative government that cut IT staff in the public service. We saw outsourcing go up with the big six companies; it doubled under the Conservatives. We saw it quadruple under the current Liberal government. It has become unequivocally clear that the corporate-controlled parties, both Liberal and Conservative, are continuing to go to the highly paid private sector to give it taxpayer dollars to provide services that could be provided by the public service.
We put forward a motion, as New Democrats, to expand the study beyond ArriveCAN, as we know GC Strategies started doing business with the government under the Harper regime. We asked to expand it to look at all outsourcing, including Deloitte, which went from $97 million doing contracts with the Government of Canada to $275 million. My question to the Conservative leader is this: Why is it that the Conservatives will not let us expand the study? It has been a year since the motion passed. Is it because Peter MacKay is a director at Deloitte or is it because Pierre Pettigrew is a director at Deloitte? We know that it is the corporate-controlled parties that are blocking us from having a real look at what is going on—
217 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/26/23 2:50:55 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives' for-profit pet project, the Phoenix pay system, was supposed to save over $80 million. Instead it has cost over $2 billion and does not even work.
This has hurt workers like Tina in my riding, a dedicated public servant for 30 years, who has been missing pay for years. The Liberals are prioritizing going after the workers who were overpaid instead of the workers to whom they owe money.
When will the Liberal government start putting workers like Tina, who are owed what they have earned, first?
92 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, the member talked about doing business with China, but I will go back to FIPA, the agreement the Conservatives signed under Stephen Harper. It is like people have amnesia around here, because before they signed that agreement, they forgot to tell us that they brought 30 executives, CEOs, including oil and gas executives, to China, and guess who paid for it? It was the Canadian taxpayers.
Does my colleague agree that trade missions and the Government of Canada should fund CEOs going to another country before we have a trade agreement? If he does think that, does he think that labour should be invited to jump on the plane that is being funded by Canadian taxpayers?
118 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my colleague's work on this and his long-standing work in this area. He talked about the national cost-sharing program for historic places. It is my understanding that, for 2023-24, the Liberal government has only budgeted $2 million to this program, yet the environment committee, back in 2017, recommended $10 million. McLean Mill is in Port Alberni, which is in my riding, and it is cash poor. It is relying on the City of Port Alberni's taxpayer base to fund that really important historic site.
Can my colleague speak about increased funding to support sites like the McLean Mill?
108 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/1/22 11:52:37 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I will just start with the government financing oil and gas. It makes these huge investments in industries that had $147 billion in profit last year, and here the government is subsidizing building the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is skyrocketing out of control.
Outsourcing is built into this whole regime. It is a waste of taxpayers' dollars. It could all be going to help improve the lives of Canadians, so they could get access to medicine, housing and things they actually need to live.
86 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/1/22 11:41:17 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to discuss the motion regarding the ballooning costs of the ArriveCAN app.
In a time when too many Canadians are struggling just to make ends meet, it is critical that the government ensure we have sound stewardship of tax dollars. I share the concerns of Canadians and frontline CBSA officers that the ArriveCAN app has cost way too much and delivered too little.
Last week at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, we heard from the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union that frontline service workers were never consulted on the development of the app or any of the more than 70 updates that were required.
While the government continued to pour money into ArriveCAN, frontline workers were forced to deal with the fallout of a glitchy app on top of a severe staffing shortage. This has had a huge demoralizing impact on the mental health and the moral of CBSA officers.
At committee, I supported a study to provide more transparency to Canadians, which they deserve, about the costs associated with the ArriveCAN app. I also pushed the committee to go further. I believe the ArriveCAN debacle is part of a larger systemic issue of the government increasingly hiring expensive consultants, who hire expensive consultants, with no regard for delivering the best value for Canadians.
That is why I tabled a motion, which was supported unanimously at OGGO, to request that the Auditor General conduct a performance audit on outsourcing policies and practices more broadly.
Earlier this year, the Globe and Mail reported that since the 2015-16 fiscal year, government spending on outsourced contracts had increased by 41.8% under the federal Liberals, reaching $11.8 billion in the 2020-21 fiscal year alone. This trend started under the previous Conservative government and continues to cost Canadians today.
All too often, outsourced contracts seem to balloon and cost more than if public service workers were tasked with the same work. The Treasury Board has provided guidance on preparing estimates to help departments with “make-or-buy” decisions, as well as policies on the planning and management of investments that require departments’ decisions that demonstrate best value and sound stewardship. However, it is not clear how these policies are applied in practice or what oversight is involved.
A broader performance audit by the Auditor General, as I proposed and as was supported at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, could provide important insights to Parliamentarians on questions. How often are departments' cost estimates exceeded for outsourced work? What happens when a department gets an estimate wrong? How are lessons learned and shared across departments?
I want to highlight the concerning transparency and accountability issues that arise in relation to outsourced contracts.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada recently told the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates that “The procurement process to contract out work favours corporate secrecy over the rights of Canadians to know how funds are spent and how services are managed.”
Our access to information regime is broken and it is extremely difficult for Canadians to get a full picture of how funds directed to the private sector are being spent. This is a perfect example of what we are talking about today.
It is also extremely difficult for public service workers who become aware of mismanagement related to outsourced contracts to raise the alarm without fear of reprisal. Canada’s whistle-blower protection regime has been called among one of the worst in the world and cases like the Phoenix pay disaster and the ArriveCAN app show how there are real costs to the Canadian public when public service workers cannot speak up.
The blame for Canada’s ineffective whistle-blower protection regime lies with both the Conservative and Liberals parties.
David Hutton, a whistle-blower protection expert and senior fellow at the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, recently wrote in the Hill Times that when the member for Carleton, then-minister under the Harper government, introduced federal accountability legislation in 2006, “he claimed repeatedly that it would offer 'ironclad' protection, and indeed it does—but for the wrongdoers, not for whistleblowers or the public.”
Since the Liberals came into power, they have failed to remedy this situation. Instead, they have sat on a unanimous report from the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates for over five years. That report recommended sweeping legislative reforms to Canada’s whistle-blower protection law. As the Liberal government bounces from scandal to scandal, it seems to have no interest in improving protections for whistle-blowers who could shine a light on government wrongdoing or mismanagement of public funds. This is critical to the transparency for which we are calling so Canadians can trust their government.
In addition to the transparency and accountability issues that I am talking about, the government’s increasing reliance on outsourcing raises concerning equity issues that warrant discussion.
In 2018, the UN special rapporteur on poverty and human rights discussed privatization as a cause of poverty while still costing governments more.
In 2019, the Standing Committee on Human Resources tabled a report on precarious work, recommending the government, “[review] human resources policies and budgeting practices to ensure that they incentivize hiring employees on indeterminate contracts.” It is critical that the government stop the precarious work and incentivize hiring people full time.
Further, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada has written about the interplay between outsourcing and gender equity, stating:
In IT, lucrative contracts are doled out to a male-dominant industry that has notoriously struggled with gender equity. While at the same time, lower paid and precarious temporary service contracts are disproportionately filled by women. The majority of temporary workers become trapped in a cycle of persistent temporary work, defined by low pay, few if any fringe benefits, and high risk of unemployment and labour force exit.
While the government will say it is forced to rely on the private sector to deliver IT services because of skill shortages within the public service, it is ignoring in-house talent and failing to invest in building further institutional capacity in a way that promotes gender equity, and I will also say failing to work with public institutions to tap into that expertise and knowledge that lies in our public institutions, including higher-learning institutions.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada has filed more than 2,500 grievances where work was outsourced rather than assigned to existing expertise in the public service. In the last fiscal year, the government spent $2.3 billion on information technology service contracts compared to $1.85 billion on its own IT workforce. If the government is truly committed to building a strong and inclusive public service, it is essential that it maintain and build in-house IT capacity.
The government’s increasing reliance on outsourcing is not only undermining efforts to promote equity, but it is also costing Canadians more. Although it is difficult to get information on outsourced contracts, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada shared with me the following alarming examples: “one IT Technical Architect at National Defence cost Canadian taxpayers over $359,000 per year in a contract that was renewed for over 8 years. The equivalent public servant (including their pension) would have cost $147,876 – saving over $1.5M”; and “Another example: Shared Services Canada has spent over $14M over the past five years on 3 resources and posted a contract tender extension for another four years. Three public servants (including their pension) over the same five years would have cost $1,855,476 – saving over $12M.”
It is not just in IT that we are seeing these increased costs because of reliance on outsourcing, but also in other areas like cleaning, grounds maintenance, health care and access to information.
While I agree that Canadians deserve transparency on the ArriveCAN app, they deserve much more. They deserve transparency on the true costs and risks of outsourcing public services. I hope all members will agree that a broader examination of outsourcing by the Auditor General is warranted and is in the best interest of Canadians.
1397 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, it is great to see the Bloc come on board with doubling the GST, which would provide help to people right now.
What I am really concerned about, in the discussion around people who need help, are workers and ensuring seniors get the help they need. I have heard the member speak in support of getting seniors the help they need. Most seniors do not have enough money saved and they rely on CPP. We are hearing Conservatives fighting against increases to the CPP, calling it a payroll tax, when in fact it is ensuring that people who are retiring have retirement security. It is deferred wages.
Would my hon. colleague agree that it is important to increase the CPP, and that it is not a payroll tax?
130 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/29/22 1:02:53 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, we see the motion before us today and we hear the Conservatives talk about the CPP as a payroll tax, when we know that in fact the CPP is retirement security. It is deferred wages, but the Conservatives are manipulating workers to believe that they are paying a tax when their CPP goes up so they will have more retirement security. Their employer has to match it. Therefore, who benefits from the Conservative motion? It is big corporations, because they pay less money to match their employees. This is something that was asked for by premiers across Canada, including many Conservative premiers, but the Conservatives forget to mention that to their own premiers.
I think the Liberals have also dropped the ball on the OAS. They are only giving the 10% increase to those who are over age 75. Does my colleague agree that the CPP is deferred wages and security? Also, does he agree that people who are 65 and older should get the OAS increase of 10%?
171 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, I am really glad to see that everybody in this House supports an NDP proposal to double the GST tax credit to help people who have been the hardest hit by inflation.
We have been hearing from Conservatives all day about getting rid of the carbon tax, yet they forget to talk about taxing the oil and gas companies, which are having record profits while prices at the pump are skyrocketing. In Great Britain, the Conservative government there went and charged a 25% excess profit tax and gave it back to people who live there.
Does my colleague not agree that the Conservatives just do not want to talk about making the big oil corporations pay their fair share and taking a load off everyday taxpayers? Instead, they want to scrap a tax that is an investment. It goes back to eight out of 10 Canadians. We want to make sure polluters pay their fair share. Maybe my colleague can speak to that.
165 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, we know what happens when we do not look after people. If they do not have good dental care, they end up in the emergency room. If they do not have mental health supports, it drains the whole system. I was just with a first responder, a friend of mine who works for the Ottawa police department. He said that so much of his time is spent dealing with mental health issues. When we do not have a head-to-toe system or pharmacare, when people do not get the medicine they need, they get sick and end up in the health care system.
We have asked the Liberals to increase health care transfers as well, so that we can make sure that people get access to the health care support they need when they need it. We need a system, but we need to make sure that it is funded properly. We see corporations with runaway excess profits. We know we can invest in saving taxpayers' money not by straining the other systems, but by actually providing solutions in dealing with mental health, dealing with dental care and dealing with our health care system in a way that is more efficient and with the proper supports and investments. We know we can save taxpayers' money in the long run.
It is actually prudent and good fiscal policy to ensure that we have a head-to-toe system, and that is something we will continue to push for, especially when it comes to mental health. We need parity within physical and mental health. I tabled a motion around that, hoping that all parties in this House would support that motion.
282 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/19/22 7:44:34 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, given the ongoing issues with the Phoenix pay system, why did the budget not allocate necessary funding to help deal with the now years-long backlog of pay problems for federal public servants?
35 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/5/22 3:10:47 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it has been six years since the start of the debacle with Phoenix, and one in three public service workers are still having problems getting paid. These are workers who have done critical work during COVID and are now facing the rising cost of living.
Under the Liberals, the use of consultants has increased a staggering 41%. Today media is reporting that the Liberals are spending even more public money on highly paid consultants to fix the problems created by other highly paid consultants. They are paying the wrong people. Will the minister stop throwing money at consultants and properly compensate public service workers for the work they do?
111 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise and table this petition on behalf of residents of Courtenay, Cumberland, Bowser and Royston in my riding. They are citing that 83% of Canada's total firefighting essential first responders are volunteers. In addition, 8,000 essential search and rescue volunteers respond to thousands of incidents every year.
The tax code of Canada currently allows volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers to claim a $3,000 tax credit if 200 hours of volunteer services were completed in a calendar year. This works out to a mere $450 a year. They are calling on the government to increase the tax exemption from $3,000 to $10,000 to help essential firefighters and volunteer search and rescue people across this country. They are calling for the support of Bill C-201.
It is timely, because the PBO just released a report this week to cite that this would cost taxpayers in Canada $40 million for 42,000 volunteer firefighters and first responders.
169 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
