- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,927.65
- Government Page
- May/27/24 10:31:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government's expenditures are not in people; they are in bureaucracy, but I know the government likes to build up the bureaucracy. In Ottawa, 106,000 new bureaucrats have been hired since the current government came to power. Those are called expenditures. Day care with over 80,000 people in Quebec waiting on the list is called an expenditure. There are dental expenditures that have eight dentists total in Nova Scotia signed up for it; the inability of the program to actually work is an expenditure. A food care program that does not deliver food, just a bureaucracy to look at and manage food in Ottawa, is called an expenditure.
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- Nov/22/23 4:47:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the government will probably take longer than 18 months to release the contracts on the deals that have been done. I do not know why we would want to do that in the auto business. I would remind the member from the Bloc that two of the subsidies in the auto business, where replacement workers can be brought in through the agreement, unless we are shown that it is not in the contracts by releasing them, are in Quebec. One of them, in fact, is in the leader of the Bloc Québécois's riding. I would think they would want to know that the Northvolt plant has the ability, potentially, to bring in Swedish workers. If the Liberals want to dispute it, they can release the contracts. The other one, which I mentioned earlier, is for EV battery parts and is with a South Korean company. Let us make sure that it is not doing that as well.
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- Nov/22/23 4:41:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will come to the crux of the issue. I know the member had the joy of sitting and listening to my 18 hours in the finance committee, so I am sure he will appreciate these three minutes. Where do I go?
More replacement workers are a potential not only in the NextStar plant in Windsor, but also in the Volkswagen contract. I have had the privilege of reading the Volkswagen contract, and what is not in the Volkswagen contract, which is apparently a mirror of these things, is a prohibition on replacement workers being put into these taxpayer-funded plants.
I know members on the other side have been questioning this issue. The Government of Canada's website has a job bank and there are about 20 jobs advertised for Stellantis. It says on it who can apply for these jobs, including Canadian citizens and permanent residents or temporary residents, but, more important, other candidates with or without a valid Canadian work permit. It is right on the government website. The ambassador for South Korea has been telling us that there are going to be replacement workers at this plant.
I would ask about the other contracts the government has signed. A South Korean company is part of the Ford contract in Quebec to produce cathodes for the EV business. Can the government share with us that contract to make sure replacement workers are not being used and that the government got guarantees? Can the members share with us that in the Volkswagen contract there is a clause that says that replacement workers from outside of Canada will not be used for those jobs? It is incumbent upon the Liberals to come clean on those issues.
We have been asking for that clarity and transparency from the government. I do not believe it says in any of those contracts that the Government of Canada has the ability to prevent those contracts from being made public. If the Liberals are so opposed to replacement workers, as the minister said, why do they not show Canadians that they put their money, taxpayer money, where their mouth is and actually ensure that only Canadians will be employed in these unionized jobs in the auto industry? They are unwilling. In fact, Liberals voted against that in the industry committee last night.
I would like to know from the Liberals on the other side of the House what they are hiding. Is it that they have put clauses in these contracts to allow the replacement workers from other countries in these auto businesses? The Minister of Labour is so desperately trying to prohibit these replacement workers in federal institutions, but is signing contracts to spend $15 billion to $30 billion of taxpayer money to allow replacement workers from other countries in these auto businesses.
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- Nov/7/23 3:01:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the revolting Atlantic caucus and the panicking, plummeting Prime Minister now have two coalitions with which to flip Canadians the bird. There is the costly coalition with the NDP to drive the cost of everything up. Unfortunately, Canadians know too much about that. The other, according to the Quebec media, is with the separatist Bloc that committed to keep the Liberals in power for another two years.
The costly coalition Prime Minister is not worth the cost. Will the Prime Minister release his full carbon tax coalition agreement with the separatist Bloc?
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy serving on the committee with that hon. member, who does amazing work and has worked very hard on this bill.
I know one puzzling thing is that, as we are here in report stage actually debating a further amendment to the bill that we proposed, somehow, we have not heard from the Bloc Québécois on whether they believe that the minister, on his or her own, should be able to make the decisions on a foreign acquisition of a Quebec company, without any input from cabinet colleagues in Quebec. That is the change the government is trying to make to the bill, removing cabinet from the process, which could potentially remove Quebec from any input in the decision-making on a foreign takeover.
Could the member comment on why we have had such silence from the Bloc on this issue?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to give the hon. member an opportunity to comment on the issue we are debating, which he did extensively. A lot of the questions from the government and the NDP are not about what we are debating today, which is whether cabinet should be included in the decision-making process.
I would like the member to comment in particular about the members from the Bloc, who seem to think it is okay for cabinet to be eliminated and therefore have no Quebec input on acquisitions made of Quebec companies. Does he thinks it is hypocritical of the Bloc to not express itself on whether it thinks cabinet decision-making should be there in any foreign takeover of a Quebec company?
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Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the parliamentary secretary's remarks on the Investment Canada Act changes, and I would like to ask a question. What we are debating here today is the report stage and some amendments. Conservatives have put forward a particular amendment that would restore cabinet decision-making in reviewing foreign investment. This bill would actually take that out of section 15.
I wonder whether the parliamentary secretary thinks that cabinet decision-making is of value, or whether we should just have a lot of little independent ministers who could run the roost over making individual decisions on whether an investment is good for Canada or not, without the input of their colleagues, including their colleagues from Quebec or other parts of the country?
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Madam Speaker, I do not think anyone on any side of the House who has been looking at this bill wants it done in a forceful way, where the federal government is coming in to try to force a province to do that. It was not the purpose of our amendments.
I understand Quebec is more advanced perhaps than a number of the other provinces on this. The way to do that is through an interoperability agreement between the federal government and provincial government about what they are both willing to share so our citizens can have access and information truly available and our police forces have an easily searchable database so they do not need to go to lawyers and warn people when they are about to be investigated.
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- Feb/14/23 12:43:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the member from Quebec, where over 52% of Quebec's energy comes from fossil fuels from western Canada. In addition to that, natural gas burns much cleaner, which is what I said, than other forms of electricity generation like coal.
I am sure the hon. member would be interested to know that Pakistan just announced that because it cannot get enough natural gas from around the world, it is going to quadruple its coal production and burning in Pakistan. I am sure the member would like to see that coal burning going down by bringing good, cleaner Canadian natural gas to Pakistan and other parts of the world.
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- Dec/8/22 1:40:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, no, because the carbon market is basically allowing somebody to pay at the end of the day for continuing to pollute. It puts the price of everything up, even in the province of Quebec, and we have not seen carbon emissions come down as a result of that. The province with the most aggressive carbon tax in this country is British Columbia, and we have seen nothing but increases in carbon in that province for the almost 20 years that it has had a carbon tax in place.
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- Dec/8/22 1:37:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague from Kings—Hants, who represents a rural riding in Nova Scotia, will know that there is almost no institutional child care available in rural Nova Scotia. I have one institutional child care space that helps nobody in my riding, and there are over 70,000 or 80,000 families on the waiting list in Quebec for this program, and that is a mature program, so it is not going to help. I think it is highly misleading to the families in my riding to think that somehow that would help them achieve their child care needs.
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- Sep/27/22 1:35:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member is always a very entertaining member in the House.
I can say what we really need, and I applaud the innovation that is happening in Quebec. We have innovation happening in Nova Scotia too, but the federal government is ignoring that innovation. It thinks there is only one way to deal with this issue, which is a tax that is not working. The government has had this in place for almost seven years, and it has missed its carbon target every single year. That is the proof. British Columbia has had the tax even longer, and it has missed all its targets. Therefore, I would ask the government to take the blinders off and look at alternatives that work.
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Madam Speaker, I know that Quebec and the Bloc Québécois had an opportunity, with the Charlottetown Accord, to enshrine a set percentage of 25% of the seats to Quebec in the Constitution. That was an option for the country. Quebec voted 58% against the Charlottetown Accord in the referendum, and I believe the Bloc Québécois at the time campaigned against the Charlottetown Accord, which enshrined 25%. I find it a little confusing that the Bloc now is asking for something in this legislation that the members actually opposed in terms of how they voted and what they campaigned on in 1992.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague and note that his parliamentary assistant is from my riding, so I know he has a great attachment to it, even with family.
With regard to protecting proportions, as I went through in my speech, we see that Nova Scotia has dropped from 21 to 11 seats over the course of Confederation. If we had frozen in time Nova Scotia's proportion of seats at that, I think there would be a lot of members here today who would think that was unfair relative to the way the population has grown.
I do not think it is fair to set a percentage for any particular province on the number of seats it should have that would bind us totally in the future, because we see, over 100 years, the way the population shifts. We try to reflect that as best we can. We have as close as possible the quality of vote while still reflecting the fact that we see now, and will see in the next 100 years, more demographic shifts that will change the weight or influence. It would overweight Nova Scotia's seats if we were still at 21 and Quebec, for example, was at 78.
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Madam Speaker, after a few days of trying to deliver my speech in the House, I am pleased to finally rise. I am pleased that the hon. member for Winnipeg North gets to hear it. We had a good conversation about it last night.
I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-14, an act to amend the Constitution Act. It deals with how a democracy balances representative democracy with effective representation, and that is at the core of our parliamentary traditions.
Canada, as we know, was formed by compromise, as is our version of how we elect representatives in Parliament. While striving to make each vote have the same weight in a country as large as ours, with a population as dispersed as we have, we have to add other factors to how we determine an electoral district.
At Confederation, my province of Nova Scotia had 19 of the 181 seats in the House of Commons, or 10% of all seats. As the House grew to 208 seats in the late 1800s, Nova Scotia's count rose to 21 seats in Parliament, which was still about 10% of the seats. As we continued to grow again, Nova Scotia began seeing a decrease in its seats in the late 1800s, dropping to 16 seats by 1914 as we began to see the expansion of our country further west. In 1914, the Constitution, as we know, was amended to state that a province could not have fewer seats in the House than it had in the Senate. Nova Scotia has maintained its current 11 seats since 1966, one more than the 10 Senate seats allocated to our province at Confederation.
It is also important to remember that we live in a bicameral system of Parliament at the federal level where we have a legislative chamber tasked with reflecting the regional interests of the country. This is why Ontario and Quebec each have 24 senators, while the Maritimes have 24 and the west has 24. Later on in our history a number of others were added for Newfoundland and the territories.
In my home province of Nova Scotia, changes have been proposed to our boundaries, but the total number of seats will not be changing in this round of redistribution. The province has seen rapid growth, especially in the Halifax area, while experiencing an ongoing depopulation in some of the rural areas, which is not unique to our province, of course.
From end to end, my riding takes about four hours to drive, and people may be surprised by that, along the South Shore and through St. Margaret's Bay. That is only if people drive through the Trans-Canada Highway on the 103. If they take the much more scenic lighthouse route, it will take them a lot longer, but I would encourage people to try to do that.
While my riding may not be the largest in geographic size in Canada, it does highlight the tension inherent in larger ridings when it comes to effective representation. Balancing the need of a member of Parliament's ability to represent communities of interest is an extremely important part of drawing electoral boundaries.
That was reinforced by the Supreme Court of Canada in its ruling of the attorney general for Saskatchewan v. Roger Carter in 1991. In that ruling, the Supreme Court stated, “The purpose of the right to vote enshrined in s. 3 of the Charter is not equality of voting power per se but the right to 'effective representation.'” It goes on to say, “Effective representation and good government in this country compel that factors other than voter parity, such as geography and community interests, be taken into account in setting electoral boundaries.”
What this means is that for elected officials to provide effective representation, we take a different approach than the one we see in the United States, with its emphasis on representation by population. Ours is on community interest and geography. Large geography, like the north or even like my mostly rural riding, requires a different time and focus than it does for a suburban or urban member of Parliament.
As an example, I have 11 municipalities; that is 11 mayors and all of the councillors. I have more than 11 legions, and almost 12,000 square kilometres to cover. It is not as large as the riding of the previous speaker from Quebec, but it is still a large area to cover.
Indeed, in the run-up to the last election, as I was campaigning, I drove 42,000 kilometres in that campaign and walked 800 kilometres. If we compare that with a GTA riding, and I have lived part of my life in the GTA, that can be as small as five to 10 minutes to drive across or maybe even just two exits on the Gardiner Expressway. My point is that effective representation must be top of mind when it comes to this type of tweak in our electoral system and our representation. In my mind, this bill does that. I know the member for Winnipeg North will be happy to hear me say that.
The grandfathering clause of 1985 basically ensured that provinces would never have fewer seats than they had in 1985, which was 282 nationally, 11 of which were in Nova Scotia. This was to ensure that in the future no provinces would lose any seats despite the change in growth patterns. This bill essentially amends that provision of 1985 by the Mulroney government by bringing it up to the number in 2021 as the minimum number of seats.
It is great to see that in this bill the Liberals are actually protecting the essence of the Fair Representation Act, passed in 2011 under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Despite their criticism of these changes at the time, I think it is wonderful to see the government acknowledge that what Stephen Harper brought in still works and is indeed fair.
It is also wonderful to see that this bill reflects the unanimous consent motion that was moved by the Conservative deputy leader, which states, “That the House oppose any federal electoral redistribution scenario that would cause Quebec or any other province or territory to lose one or more electoral districts in the future, and that the House call on the government to act accordingly.” I am glad the government has acted accordingly. It is clear that the unanimous consent motions that are moved after question period, which we have seen a lot of lately, sometimes are not simply words but do indeed impact the tone of this place and can result in change.
The Conservatives will always push the needle in this place when it comes to advocating for the legislation Canadians want. At the end of the day, Canadians want their fair share. They want to have effective representation so they feel they are not separated from the people they sent to Ottawa to represent them. They do not want to drive for hours to the constituency office. My main constituency office is an hour and a half from one end and two hours from the other, so I had to open up a few other constituency offices in the riding for the first time, as previous members had not done that, to make it more convenient. Constituents do not want to be forgotten by the political establishment of this place in the riding just because they have a long way to go, which is why we need the tweaking under this bill.
Coming out of this pandemic, we are seeing more shifts in population from urban to rural areas. More people are moving out of downtown cores and spreading out into the suburbs and rural parts of this country. Future parliamentarians must remain nimble and always mindful, hopefully, of how these changes will impact their job of effectively representing all Canadians as reflected in our electoral legislation. These shifts are why it is so important that independent commissions are set up every 10 years and that we review and are constantly tinkering with this legislation in order to ensure that we have that balance between proportional representation, community interest and geography.
Canadians should be reminded how important their voices are when it comes to the proposals by their respective boundary commissions. In Nova Scotia, it is a panel of three people who decide the initial proposal, and it is their job to account for the views and feelings of those in our community. We look forward to those public hearings.
This legislation protects the legacy of the Fair Representation Act, ensures that no province will ever decrease in the number of seats it has, and does as little tweaking as possible while upholding, as well as it can, the balance of the principle of effective representation. These are standards that we should and must set for how the electoral map shapes up in the future.
I will be supporting this bill.
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