Building bridges between all communities
Issue link: http://publications.winnipegfreepress.com/i/100814
JANUARY 2013 DEBATES OF THE SENATE (HANSARD) 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Volume 148, Issue 130 Wednesday, December 12, 2012 Edited version full version see Hansard Report Hon. Joseph A. Day: Honourable senators, I would like to first congratulate Senator Buth on her sponsorship of this particular budget implementation bill, No. 2. As well, I would like to thank all of the members of the Finance Committee, in addition to the other committees that Senator Buth mentioned that have all taken a look at different parts of Bill C-45, the budget implementation bill. Let me remind honourable senators of what we are dealing with here. This is Bill C-45. It is 414 pages in length, with 516 clauses, and there are 60 different statutes that are amended in this piece of legislation. Honourable senators, that is what my honourable colleague Senator Buth said she was so pleased we dealt with so swiftly and expeditiously. Honourable senators, we had no choice but to move this through because the government, the elected executive, being the Prime Minister and cabinet, and the minister responsible, being the Minister of Finance, decided that the best way to get this through was to put pressure on Parliament, which is charged with overseeing the legislation, to move it through quickly by tying it into a finance bill. That is why we moved it through swiftly, and that is why we put up these defensive mechanisms, looking at how we could do the very minimum, at least, that is expected of us as parliamentarians and senators. That is why we did the pre-study. That is why we cooperated in that, so that we could not be looked upon as an irreverent, rubber-stamping institution attached to that other place. Honourable senators, I take no great pride in saying that we moved this particular bill through quickly, for those reasons. There are four parts to this bill, and Part I deals with amendments to the Income Tax Act and related regulations. That is the same for Part II, honourable senators. Part II is measures with respect to sales tax The Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act is a fairly short part of this bill. We recognize that as being an appropriate type of legislation that could be grouped with the other two parts that I have just referred to. The problem arises, honourable senators, when we get to those other matters that are included in Part IV, and there are 24 different divisions in Part IV. I will try to highlight of some of the items in here, but in the time available I cannot possibly touch on all of them. For some of them that I would like to touch on, I made certain observations and members of our committee made certain ob- servations. During our discussion, I will try to reflect on those observations so that you will have a bit of a flavour for what is there. I invite any honourable senator to pick up on any of these points and expand on them because each one of them is worth more than what we can do here now. Honourable senators, Bill C-45 continues in the same vein as many of its predecessors. I am not restricting that to this particular government. Many predecessor governments have adopted this process as well. It seems to work quickly for them; they get it all done, in this instance before the Christmas break. We will have the omnibus bill for 2013. We will all come in and pass it in two weeks, and someone will stand up and say, "That is great. We got that through in a hurry. Let us go home." Honourable senators, this is yet another example of including a massive ��� borrowing an honourable senator's adjective here ��� bill that simply did not allow the time needed for adequate study. The government knows this because we have made the point so many times. However, they continue to gain political points by bundling in provisions which we all support. There are items in this particular bill that we support. We would like to talk about those and maybe improve them a little bit, but generally we support them. However, there are many others we could not possibly support. Therefore, you bundle this all together and do not allow a separate vote and you get what comes out the other end. Referring to Bill C-45, this particular bill, the Public Service Alliance of Canada appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance said: Many of these proposed legislative changes will have a drastic impact on Canadians. They should not be rushed through Parliament in one large bill that does not allow the careful consideration, public scrutiny and debate. I happen to agree wholeheartedly with the Public Service Alliance of Canada on that particular matter. Before I get into the detail of some of the items in here, it is important for us to be aware of recurring themes. One of those is seeing provisions where power is taken away from arm's length independent boards, tribunals, organizations and given to a minister. We have seen that in the past with fewer and fewer independent boards and tribunals, more and more discretion to the minister: "Trust me, I have a big department here; we can handle all that work for you." Another recurring theme, honourable senators, is an unfortunate result of this approach to legislation. We are seeing more and more legislation coming forward amending what we did in a previous omnibus bill. We are starting to see more and more correcting of mistakes and omissions. For example, there are mistakes in Bill C-38 which we just saw in the spring. Someone is rushing to get this announcement out, put something in that bill, but the bill is not fully thought out. That is when we get these unintended consequences. There are amendments to the Fisheries Act regarding the passage of fish, for example, in Bill C-38. That had to be rectified. Poor drafting of transition provisions in the new environmental assessment law had to be rectified, as well as ambiguity around the ministerial approval process for certain investments by public investment pools. These initiatives were announced with great fanfare but had not been fully thought out, and the result is we see them back here again. We are studying them again with other pieces of legislation. Those are a few of the examples we are seeing. I will refer to another recurring event, and that is a lack of consultation. We are hearing that more and more. Why is that? It is because whoever put this package together took little bits from here and there and did not take the time to consult. Honourable senators, First Nation chiefs say they are not being consulted on the issue of navigable waters and that the government has a duty to consult them. The Minister of Transport can approve natural resource projects affecting 167 lakes, rivers and oceans but will have no responsibility to consult with the First Nation chiefs. Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo expressed his frustration by saying: We are gathered here because there is anger, and there is frustration and it is real. That which our people are faced with every single day is life and death. Together we can accomplish a greater day for our people. "Together" is the active word, honourable senators, and that is a group of chiefs that demonstrated outside the Parliament just last week. Today in the paper is another First Nation announcement. Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence announced her hunger strike on Parliament Hill on Monday. She has begun a hunger strike for the very same reason, that their rights are being trod upon and changed without any consultation with them. We are seeing that not just with the First Nations but in many different areas. Honourable senators, I would suggest that Hon. Joseph A. Day it would be advantageous for the government to remove all of these non-budgetary matters from these types of bills. First, it would allow for quicker study and passage of the budget implementation bill itself. Second, since the non-budgetary measures would receive more careful consideration, the government could get it right the first time and we would not have to continually revisit legislation in order to fix shortcomings. Honourable senators, it is easy enough to look to the summary of this bill and clearly see what does not belong. For example, Division 4 contains amendments to the Canada Shipping Act; Division 8, amendments to the Indian Act; Division 16, amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; Division 19, amendments to the Canada Grain Act; Division 21, technical amendments to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and I could go on. There are many more divisions here, but I hope that will give you a flavour for what is here.