Richard Cannings

[Petitions, April 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is with regard to physician-assisted suicide.

The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to allow sufficient time for broad and timely consultations on this issue and that any legislation passed be stringent and serve to minimize the occurrence of physician-assisted dying. They also call for the legislation to accommodate medical professionals who choose to refuse to participate in this program.

[Petitions, April 19th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to present two petitions from my constituents.

The first petition calls upon Parliament to establish a department of peace that would reinvigorate Canada's role as a global peace builder and that would have the abolition of nuclear weapons as a top priority.

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member for St. Catharines talked in various ways about how we have to help Canadians who need help the most, and yet his government has proposed tax changes that would not help almost two-thirds of Canadians. Instead of helping those who need help the most, Canadians who get the biggest benefit out of these tax changes are those making $200,000 a year. When I ask my constituents who is in the middle class, everybody put up their hands, but hardly anybody would say that people making $200,000 a year are the middle class.

I want to know why he can say his government made those decisions, when it could have made tax changes to help people who make less than $45,000 a year.

[The Budget, April 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, one of the first comments my colleague made was about care for elderly parents. In the election campaign the Liberals promised $3 billion in funding for home care for seniors. Where are those funds? They are absolutely nowhere to be seen in this budget.

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, March 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am not a lawyer, certainly not of the Supreme Court level, so I do not want to make pronouncements as to whether this bill meets those needs or not. I assume it must at some level because the bill has come to the House. However, the issues that I and the NDP feel are lacking in the bill must be discussed in committee, namely, the exclusions for the issues I mentioned previously.

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, March 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, it is a mystery to me why these have been excluded. They are essential parts of most collective bargaining agreements across the country, even in all the other police forces. I do not understand why we would not have issues around harassment, workplace safety, or staffing levels included in a collective bargaining agreement. I do not understand those exclusions.

As I said, if the collective bargaining goes to an arbitrator and the RCMP management feels we should not be discussing these certain areas, management can make a pitch to the arbitrator and make arguments, and that arbitrator can decide whether those issues are important. It is just not justified at all to exclude them directly in the bill.

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, March 24th, 2016]

No, Mr. Speaker, I do not think I need to add anything to that. I do sense a real coming together within this House in that most people, although not everyone, who have debated this issue have come up with the idea that collective bargaining would be good for the RCMP. The only difference I hear is from the Conservative side that says there are issues around card check systems or how votes would be held.

In the NDP, we are mostly concerned with the exclusions that the bill has in terms of things like workplace safety, discipline, staffing, and issues like that. I think we are pretty much all on the same page, and I hope we can work out these other differences when we go to committee.

[Public Service Labour Relations Act, March 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise here today to discuss Bill C-7, which would give RCMP members, at long last, the right to collective bargaining. Many speakers before me have talked about how the RCMP is an important and even iconic police force, underlying how critical this discussion is.

As a member from British Columbia, I am grateful for the dedicated work of the RCMP in protecting citizens across most of our province, and indeed across the country. Over the past months, I have met with members from RCMP detachments across my riding to discuss local issues and this issue of collective bargaining.

I also recently attended a public information meeting organized by the RCMP in Oliver, B.C., to discuss public safety, and I was impressed by the respectful and meaningful discussions that community members had with local RCMP members. We need to retain and nurture that mutual respect between the community and the RCMP.

I heard the member for Yellowhead lament that the RCMP had slipped in its rankings across the country. We would all like to see that ranking improve. While I thank him for that service and respect his thoughts on collective bargaining, I think that Bill C-7 will be a step in the right direction for that new and better future for the RCMP.

I am pleased to support the bill at second reading, a bill that gives RCMP members the same rights that are enjoyed by all other police forces in Canada. As we have heard, the bill is the government response to a Supreme Court ruling that struck down laws that have prohibited RCMP members from bargaining collectively. Given the court-imposed deadline, the NDP will support the bill, but we are looking for some important amendments at committee.

The Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada advocates for workplace issues on behalf of its members. In a recent press release, that association stated that “this bill is flawed by removing vital matters from the bargaining table such as disciplinary measures and allocation of resources”.

It is critical that the new collective bargaining regime that RCMP members will work under will include more than the ability to negotiate pay and benefits. Workplace safety, staffing, harassment, and discipline issues are often more important for a properly functioning organization than pay alone. I am reminded of the decade-long dispute between the British Columbia government and the BC Teachers' Federation, which revolved primarily around issues of class size.

We have all heard numerous reports of harassment in the RCMP workplaces over the past number of years. I cannot see how excluding procedures to deal with harassment in collective bargaining will improve the workplace conditions experienced by RCMP members. These are very serious situations and must be dealt with promptly and fairly. The procedure for doing that would be best created under a collective bargaining system.

While for most of my life I have lived in areas where the RCMP provides public safety services, I have also lived in Vancouver and Newfoundland for considerable periods. I can honestly say that the police forces there function very well under a collective bargaining regime. I have to ask how submitting discipline procedures or concerns about workplace safety to a collective bargaining process would undermine the neutrality or stability of the RCMP.

We were reminded of how important workplace safety issues are only yesterday, when a young man died on a work site here in downtown Ottawa. While policing safety issues are clearly different, they are nonetheless critical to the lives of RCMP members across the country, particularly in more rural areas where RCMP members often work alone. Why are staffing measures explicitly excluded from the collective bargaining system offered to the RCMP in the bill?

Since collective bargaining agreements would go to arbitration if agreements cannot be made directly, RCMP management should be able to make arguments to the arbitrator if they feel demands by members would create situations that would undermine the reliability of the RCMP in any way.

The Supreme Court decision stated that limits on collective bargaining would be acceptable if they were reasonable and justified. However, other police forces all include workplace safety and discipline issues in their collective bargaining agreements, so it is a mystery why they would not be acceptable and appropriate for collective bargaining within the RCMP.

To conclude, I would just reiterate my position that I support this bill. I recognize that it was perhaps prepared hurriedly to meet the Supreme Court deadline of May 16; so I hope the government will consider important changes to this bill in committee to ensure that, namely, issues of staffing, deployment, harassment, and discipline are included in the collective bargaining system for the RCMP that would be created by this bill.

I would like to finish by wishing everybody here in this House a happy Easter and safe travels home to their families.

[Stewardship Groups in South Okanagan—West Kootenay, March 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am fortunate to represent the riding of South Okanagan—West Kootenay, a riding full of magnificent mountains and deep valleys. Each of those watersheds has a group of hard-working citizens, almost all of them volunteers, who have dedicated themselves to the task of stewarding the natural world they live in.

These stewardship groups work to protect their watersheds, to maintain the incredible biodiversity found in both the mountains and the valleys, and to ensure that activities in their region are truly sustainable.

Whether they are trying to keep invasive plants out of their grasslands or alien mussels out of their lakes, protecting a spectacular migration of toads, or informing landowners of best practices on living with endangered species, these groups work tirelessly to keep their valleys healthy and rich in natural diversity.

From the Arrow Lakes and Slocan Valley, Christina Lake and the Kettle River, to the deserts of the South Okanagan, I salute the valuable work of stewardship groups in my riding and across Canada.

[Citizenship Act, March 10th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the clear difference is that this fraud we are talking about happens before the person becomes a citizen. They obtained their citizenship fraudulently. In the other case, a person is a legitimate, legal citizen of Canada, but as a result of their illegal actions, they would now be threatened with having their citizenship revoked. I think those are two very different things.

I would add, as my colleague previously noted, that we should ensure that any move to strip someone of citizenship, be it for fraud or whatever, should be done through the courts, so that they have proper representation and proper access to those things. It should not be done at the whim of a minister.