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¡EVENTO!

Acompáñenme este domingo 26 de Mayo a las 2PM en el Learning Enrichment Foundation (116 Industry Street, Toronto) para una reunión con mi colega Paulina Ayala, Miembro de Parlamento, originaria de Chile.

Vengan hacer preguntas y a recibir respuestas sobre los temas importantes para usted, su familia y nuestra comunidad hispano canadiense.

Nos vemos!

EVENT! 

Join me and my colleague Paulina Ayala, Member of Parliament and a native of Chile for a town hall meeting this Sunday, May 26 at 2PM at the Learning Enrichment Foundation (116 Industry Street, Toronto).

Come ask questions and get answers on issues important to you, your family and our Hispanic-Canadian community.

See you there!

Continue reading »]]> OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

Monday, April 22, 2013

Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer

GOVERNMENT ORDERS

Combatting Terrorism Act

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-7 be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak again to Bill S-7. I must agree with my colleagues on this side of the House, the timing is somewhat suspect.

The bill was reported back to the House of Commons on December 12 of last year and it was not until today, more than four months later, that it suddenly appeared. The only notice was given last Friday, by the government House leader, that the bill would be replacing an opposition day motion that dealt with Conservative backbenchers’ rights to speak here in the House.
Therefore, the timing of the bill is very deliberately political. We could not come to any other conclusion than there is a political method and madness in the timing of Bill S-7.

However, putting the timing aside, we in the NDP believe in the freedoms and rights of individuals in our country. We do not want to see unnecessary and unhelpful changes to our law that make people in our country subject to unreasonable search, seizure and detention. That is one of the core problems with the bill that the Conservatives have refused to consider amending. Every step of the way we have suggested that we could support the bill if some of the freedoms that were being taken away by the government would be put back or protected in another way. They have refused at this stage to consider any amendment whatsoever.

When the Conservatives bring a bill before Parliament they have all the right answers in their minds. They believe everything they have written is perfect and cannot be improved upon. We take considerable umbrage with that approach. In fact, there are some serious problems with the bill that we would like to correct.

We would like to work with the government in preventing terrorism. No one on this side of the House would like anything more than to prevent terrorism in our country. There has not been a lot of it in our country. Of course, we have the recent events in Boston to remind us just how close it could be. However, the police have been successful, without these changes in the law, in preventing serious terrorist acts in the country and without using its predecessor in preventing serious terrorist acts in the country.

Why then is it necessary to create this new regime? Why is it necessary to withdraw some more Canadian fundamental rights and freedoms? Fundamental rights such as the right not to be imprisoned unreasonably and the right not to have to give evidence against oneself in a trial are two fundamental rights that we believe Canadians think they enjoy. However, the government would take those rights away with Bill S-7 and in so doing remove some of the very fundamental protections that Canadians have.

Bill S-7 is very complicated and technical, so let us bring it down to a more reasonable and understandable level. When we talk about the notion of preventative detention, what the heck does that mean to an ordinary Canadian? What it means is that a peace officer, and that means a police officer, an RCMP officer, a border officer, or anyone who is classified as a peace officer, can, without a warrant, put someone in jail. That is now what the Conservatives would like us to accept if that peace officer believes that doing so might help prevent a terrorist act from taking place. It is true that after a short period of time—we do not know how long exactly, but they suggest 24 hours—that person would have to go before a judge and the peace officer would have to actually justify the detention of that individual or, in the words of the act “the preventative detention”, which means that individual would have restrictions placed on his or her ability to get around, on whether or not he or she could have firearms, for example, and whether or not her or she could leave the country.

We have a situation then, without any trial and without any conviction.

This individual is not a person suspected of being a terrorist, by the way. This is a person who is maybe a relative, maybe a friend. That person, then, would be subject, under the bill, to serious, preventative detention measures.

As it turns out, this kind of preventative detention was there in the previous act and was never used. Police have managed without this kind of measure to stop terrorism. So, what would be its effect?

I would like to refer to good, old Uncle Albert, in Moose Jaw, whose nephew, for whatever reason, is suspected of some kind of terrorist act. And so, because they cannot find the nephew, the police come to Uncle Albert’s door, put him in jail for a day, then take him before a judge and argue that Uncle Albert might know where the nephew is, so we cannot let Uncle Albert have any more guns. We cannot let Uncle Albert leave the country because we have to be able to interrogate Uncle Albert–Uncle Albert, in Moose Jaw, who has done nothing. The police do not suspect him of any terrorism. He just happens to be the uncle of the nephew they do suspect.

What happens? Uncle Albert says, because he is from Moose Jaw and because he is a farmer and has to keep the varmints off his property, “I can’t give up my firearms. I’m not giving up my firearms. I refuse”. There would be no choice, then, but to put him in jail for up to 12 months.

That is the kind of thing that could happen to Uncle Albert, in Moose Jaw, who has absolutely no terrorist inclination whatsoever. However, because he is related to somebody the police are only investigating because they suspect there might be some kind of terrorist activity, Uncle Albert would be put in jail for up to 12 months.

That is not the Canada that I want to be part of. That is not the Canada that Canadians come to expect to have as part of their rights and freedoms: the right and freedom not to be imprisoned without conviction, with a trial, without a judge.

That is exactly what the Conservatives are suggesting should happen.

That is one of the things to which the NDP said, “Whoa. That goes too far”, and the Conservatives said, “Too bad. This is the way we like it. We want this preventative detention to apply to anybody, not just people we suspect of being terrorists, but people who are peripherally related.”. That would take the bill way too far.

With respect to the timing of the bill, people can read for themselves what The Globe and Mail has to say about the timing of the bill. They can suggest for themselves what the Conservatives are doing to create the timing of the bill.

However, the bill would do what the Conservatives suggest it would and put Canada in a place where we could prevent the kinds of things that we all want not to happen. The bill would too far in a number of respects.

The NDP supports the notion that we should be giving our police forces, our border protection people, the powers and the tools they need, and the resources, to prevent crimes from being committed in Canada. The border services is having its budget cut, at the same time the Conservatives are suggesting that we want to prevent terrorism and we want to prevent terrorism from occurring overseas. We want to prevent terrorists from being trained overseas. However, at the same time we want to prevent those kinds of things happening, we are in the position of having to say our border services it has to do with less.

The border services is already having a terribly difficult time preventing the huge influx, of smuggled guns into this country, which I would suggest are doing more to harm our citizenry and to put people in a state of fear than the bill would ever solve. And so, at the same that the bill is being presented as a necessary part of the arsenal of police officers, we are taking away money from the border services agency that is trying to prevent illegal handguns from reaching this country. It is a two-faced system. We in the NDP believe that there are things we should be doing and spending more time on than this one and that this one is seriously flawed.

Mr. Craig Scott (Toronto—Danforth, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for having spent a fair bit of time on an area that had NDP members leaving the committee after clause by clause quite shocked. We had attempted to propose an amendment that would make clear that anybody who was not suspected of being involved in or potentially involved in terrorist activity could not be subject to the recognizance with conditions regime. We wanted to make that clear, because we thought that the provision had been drafted badly. It turns out that is what the government wanted.

The parliamentary secretary said the following, which I am wondering if my colleague could comment on. She stated:

I wanted to put on record what my colleague has been saying because many in the House might have thought this was a fanciful example of Uncle Albert. Maybe it is a stretch to think that anybody in Canada would do to Uncle Albert what my colleague suggested, but the possibility of that or other scenarios is very much what the government affirmed in committee.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

Mr. Mike Sullivan:

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his position in committee, having had the ability to actually hear from the government what it intends. What it intends very clearly is that the scope of preventive detention and recognizance provisions of this bill are intended to cover a very wide scope of individuals. It may be a stretch to suggest that somebody in Moose Jaw would be held in prison as a result of being related to somebody who was, in fact, the subject of a terrorism investigation, but that is precisely what the bill would permit and that is precisely why the NDP had suggested the bill goes to far.

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, I will have the opportunity to provide some comments in more detail, but I was wondering if the member could reiterate the timing and comment on the Boston tragedy and, in very few words, explain why he believes the bill is before us right now.

Mr. Mike Sullivan:

Mr. Speaker, I stated earlier that the timing is somewhat suspect. No one in the House, least of all the NDP, suggests that what happened in Boston is not something we should pay very close attention to, we should be very concerned about and that our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to the individuals who were affected by what must have been a very difficult, trying and frightening time.

The bill has been sitting in limbo for the past four months. For the government to suddenly decide it is today that it is brought forward smacks of some political opportunism, if ever I saw it.

Ms. Hélène LeBlanc (LaSalle—Émard, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech.

I would like to hear what he has to say about this government’s measures. On the one hand, the government is advocating law and order and says that it wants to combat terrorism. On the other hand, particularly in budget 2012 and successive budgets, it has made significant cuts to public safety.

Could he elaborate on this?

Mr. Mike Sullivan:

Mr. Speaker, the importation of illegal handguns is a serious and pressing problem in my riding and in the city of Toronto. There was a bank robbery just yesterday, which was probably with illegally-imported handguns, because just about all of them are, in which two individuals were shot during the bank robbery in Toronto, in my riding. That kind of thing needs to be prevented. The importation of illegal guns needs to be prevented and cutting the budget for border services officers is not the way to prevent illegal guns from coming to Toronto.

*****

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-7 be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Mike Sullivan:

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague (the Member for Compton-Stanstead) for his excellent speech. I want to ask him about the notion of the loss of our own human rights as a result of this bill in that innocent individuals can be imprisoned even if they are not being investigated by the police and have absolutely no connection whatsoever to terrorism or a terrorist act other than that they are related to or are a friend of someone who is.

Mr. Diefenbaker would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that pretenders to his party were in fact trying to put something forward that would remove such a basic human right.

Could the member comment further on that?

Mr. Jean Rousseau (Compton-Stanstead, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question.

The more we infringe on people’s liberties, the more we also limit their freedom of expression and the fundamental rights that go along with it. Will we end up with a dictatorship? Say I live in a neighbourhood where there are people who are under suspicion, for whatever reason. Will I be classified as a terrorist because I live in a neighbourhood where there may be a terrorist with whom I am acquainted and who greets me in the morning when I am mowing the lawn? Am I a terrorist because I listen to heavy metal music? When someone is classified or labelled, we have to look at the reasons why it is being done. When someone is described as a terrorist, a rocker or what have you, does that mean they are a criminal?

Freedom of expression is extremely important. When any freedom is taken away, we see dictatorship emerge, and the public is left with no way of making itself heard. But members of the public do have the right to speak out against a government or a situation they consider to be unjust.

Mr. Mike Sullivan:

Mr. Speaker, the notion that this bill is somehow defending us against terrorism is counteracted by the events that were referred to today by the member for Winnipeg North, who pointed out that the police had successfully stopped a terrorist attack without Bill S-7 in place, and that has been the case all along.

The very essence of terrorism is to make people feel afraid. Part of what is happening here is the government is trying to make people feel afraid and feel that they should have their liberties removed to allow the government to take more control over their lives to defend them against something that apparently the police have already been doing without this new law.

Could the member comment further on that?

Mr. Jean Rousseau:

Mr. Speaker, we have not needed the provisions in Bill S-7 that are meant to strengthen the legislation. We have not needed them at all. As I said earlier, both the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service work together and co-operate very well when it comes to exchanging information, even with the Americans. I would know; I live in an area close to the border. If someone is being monitored, information is shared rather quickly. During the day, officers do a very good job. We will not see better results by making cuts to budgets or by bringing in a bill that has absolutely no effect.

Bill S-7 was not needed to make the arrests today. Does this mean that the next time there is a protest here, people will be photographed and deemed to be terrorists because they protested in front of a Parliament that is supposed to be democratic and represent the people? We must protect our freedoms, and this bill is not the way to do so.

Continue reading »]]> OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

Monday, April 22, 2012

Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer

Petitions

Genetically Modified Alfalfa

Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by many of my constituents concerning genetically-engineered alfalfa. They note that this genetically-engineered alfalfa requires variety registration before it can be legally sold as seed in Canada, but it has already been approved for human consumption and environmental release. It has been planted in test plots.

Unwanted contamination from genetically-engineered alfalfa is inevitable, especially because alfalfa is pollinated by bees and that such contamination will threaten organic farming systems and the ability of both organic and conventional farmers to sell alfalfa and related products into domestic and international markets, resulting in lost or uncertain markets and low prices, new costs for testing and cleanup, and possible loss of farm-saved seed.

Organic farming prohibits the use of genetic engineering and the organic sector and Canada depends on alfalfa as a high-protein feed for dairy cattle and other livestock, as well as an important soil builder. They call upon Parliament to impose a moratorium on the release of genetically engineered alfalfa to allow proper review of the impact on farmers in Canada.

Continue reading »]]> OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

Monday, April 22, 2012

Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer

Petitions

Genetically Engineered Alfalfa

Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP):

   Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by many of my constituents concerning genetically-engineered alfalfa. They note that this genetically-engineered alfalfa requires variety registration before it can be legally sold as seed in Canada, but it has already been approved for human consumption and environmental release. It has been planted in test plots.

Unwanted contamination from genetically-engineered alfalfa is inevitable, especially because alfalfa is pollinated by bees and that such contamination will threaten organic farming systems and the ability of both organic and conventional farmers to sell alfalfa and related products into domestic and international markets, resulting in lost or uncertain markets and low prices, new costs for testing and cleanup, and possible loss of farm-saved seed.

Organic farming prohibits the use of genetic engineering and the organic sector and Canada depends on alfalfa as a high-protein feed for dairy cattle and other livestock, as well as an important soil builder. They call upon Parliament to impose a moratorium on the release of genetically engineered alfalfa to allow proper review of the impact on farmers in Canada.

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Continue reading »]]> MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2013

Statement by MP Mike Sullivan on yesterday’s bank shooting at Runnymede and St. Clair:

“I am shocked by the brazen nature of the two armed robbers and I hope they are apprehended safely and swiftly. I want to wish the two innocent shooting victims a speedy recovery. My thoughts are with them and their families and all the bystanders — bank customers and staff — who were traumatized by what transpired.

As yesterday’s incident once again demonstrates, guns have no place on our streets. I call upon the Conservative government to get serious about keeping handguns out of Canada by beefing up security at our border. It is far too easy to get guns across the border – guns that are used to perpetrate crimes like the one we saw yesterday.”

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Continue reading »]]> Toronto Star

Insurance discrimination unfair

Published on Wed Apr 03 2013

Much has been written about the high rates of insurance in Ontario. However, the biggest problem is the government’s permission for insurance companies to divide the province into smaller and smaller districts.

Toronto has 10 different districts. Accident rates are roughly the same wherever you go in Toronto, but rates are vastly different depending on your postal code. The same driver, car, and habits gets a rate that is nearly double if they live at Jane and Lawrence, in Weston versus Forest Hill, for example. Why is that, when everything else is the same?

The answer seems to be in the cost to the insurer per collision. The cost per collision in my riding is approximately $30,000. The average cost in all of Ontario is approximately $8,000. These figures were given to me by the Insurance Bureau of Canada. When all other factors are equal, this one drives the rates.

What makes the cost per collision in my riding so much higher? My riding of York South–Weston has the lowest average family income in Toronto. Many of my constituents are retired, or unemployed or employed in precarious work with no benefits. As a result, when comparing two accidents, involving individuals with benefits and without, the answer is obvious.

When a person with benefits in their employment is injured in an accident, the employer pays the sick leave and extra medical costs. The auto insurer does not, until the employer plan is maxed out. When a person with no benefits is injured, the insurance company is on the hook for wage replacement (sick leave) and all extra medical cost from day one.

Insurers often point to fraud as a driver of rates. Insurance fraud is only 1 per cent of the total cost of insurance in Ontario. It does not explain double rates in the same city depending on where you live.

The system discriminates against Ontarians based on income. If you are from an part of the province where many people are retired, unemployed or employed with no benefits, you will pay higher premiums. And the difference, even in the same city, is dramatic.

This is a fundamental flaw of the no-fault system we have here in Ontario. Insurers are able to base rates on where you live, in smaller and smaller districts. The average rate for good drivers in Ontario should be around $800 per year. In fact in my riding, it is closer to $3,000 per year.

One can understand rates based on driving record, age, habits, and the like. But to charge higher rates because you are poor, or poorly employed is completely unacceptable. I urge the province to investigate and correct this defect.

Mike Sullivan, MP, York South–Weston

Continue reading »]]> OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)
Friday, March 22, 2013
Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS

Air Passengers’ Bill of Rights

The House resumed from February 7 consideration of the motion that Bill C-459, An Act respecting the rights of air passengers, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the wonderful bill put forward by my friend the member for Laval to try to put some structure around how Canadians are treated by airlines in our country.

The Conservative government believes that the aviation system has to be protected to the point of legislating private companies back to work even before there is a labour dispute. We can only wonder why the government is not supportive of something that would protect the rights of consumers when it is so eager to protect its corporate fans.

The consumers involved here are people who take flights throughout Canada. Canada being the large and disparate country that it is, the use of airlines is necessary for some travel within Canada and is often the only way to get quickly from point A to point B. This is because we do not have the infrastructure for a high-speed rail system, as some countries do.

Airlines know that there is an oligopoly in the country, with only two major carriers. As a result, they really have Canadians at their mercy when it comes to how they treat them in the event of cancellations, overbooking or lost luggage. There is no formal regulatory system to insist that airlines do the right thing by their passengers. Some do, and we are not here to criticize those airlines, but we are opposed to airlines that treat their passengers shoddily.

We believe that the time has come to create, as already exists in Europe, a passenger bill of rights, such that when an airline treats passengers badly or when an airline chooses to cancel or overbook a flight, it is on the hook for some compensation for those people.

The airline certainly will not put back the missed meeting, the missed birthday, the missed wedding or any of the other things that Canadians rely on airlines to get them to on time. One of the reasons we use planes is that we want to get to a place on time; the airline will not replace those things, but it will offer some measure of compensation. The same is true for businesspeople, who cannot replace a missed meeting or make up for not meeting face to face with the client they had hoped to woo into investing in their company. These things will not be replaced, but they may get a few dollars out of it at least, to help them feel a little bit better about it.

The best way to speak on this matter is to offer some examples of what happens to real passengers when airlines treat them shabbily.

My family was booked on an Air Canada flight, but it turned out that an American airline was providing a portion of the travel. The American airline, which I will not name in order to avoid finger pointing, decided to cancel the flight. I was travelling with a one-year-old, and we ended up in a very stark and dismal airport for the better part of 14 hours while we waited for the replacement flight they had promised us. We were there from 9 in the morning until almost 11 o’clock at night waiting for the replacement.

All through the day, we were trying to find another way to get to where we were going. When I investigated, the airline said they had had to cancel the plane because of weather problems in the other city. Canadians will accept that weather is a big part of what we have here and that it may in fact cause problems, so I accepted this reason at face value at that point in time. However, I checked later on, and there was no weather in that city. It was a beautiful, dry, sunny, calm day in the city that they claimed had weather problems.

What was going on was what airlines sometimes do. The airline realized that it had a very light load on the plane. When a plane has maybe only 30 passengers but could seat 50 and the next plane to the same city has a similar situation, the airline will combine the two flights. This happens all the time, and the airlines do not tell us they are doing it.

If one looks at the board and sees the planes that go between, say, Toronto and Ottawa, for example, and one of them says “cancelled”, chances are that one of the reasons it is cancelled is that it has a light load and the airline wants to combine flights to save money. That is all well and good, but by bumping people off their scheduled flights, they miss their connections and they miss the meetings, the birthdays, the weddings or the funerals. How does that repay people? It does not. The airlines at the moment do not have any obligation whatsoever when they do this kind of thing. That is one example.

I have another example. When my son in Alberta was coming for a surprise visit last November, his flight from Edmonton to Toronto was going through Calgary. When he got to the airport in Edmonton, there was a big snowstorm in Calgary. Did they say anything to him in Edmonton, before he got on that plane, about the fact that the Calgary portion of his flight had been cancelled? No. They knew it, but they did not want to give him the opportunity to say that he wanted his money back and that he would not go with Air Canada but would go with WestJet. Instead, they assured him that his plane would go. He actually asked, because he knew there was a snowstorm in Calgary, and he was told that it was going and not to worry. Of course, he got to Calgary at 10 o’clock in the morning and was told there would be no flights until the next day, at which point the trip was completely wasted. There was no point in coming.

As one can imagine, there was a lot of chaos at the airport in Calgary as thousands upon thousands of people tried to make other arrangements to get somewhere when weather caused the airport to be messed up. There was only one agent on duty for a very long line of people. To add insult to the injury of not being able to get from point A to point B, people had to stand in line—there were no chairs in the line—for hours to rebook their flights, cancel their flights or go back to where they were coming from. Yes, it is true that it was ultimately caused by weather, but the airline should never have allowed him to get on the plane in Edmonton in the first place.
That is part of what this bill would do. When an airline knows that there is going to be a cancellation, it would be up to the airline to inform the passengers that there will be a cancellation. I can understand why the airline would not want to do that. It wants to keep the money and wants people to travel and use that airline.

The other issue this bill would deal with is lost luggage. I am sure that most of us here have experienced lost luggage at some point in their careers. I know that I have. What is the airline’s response when people lose their luggage? People are told to buy more underwear and send the airline the bill. There is no immediate recompense. It does not immediately provide money for people to buy underwear. For kids travelling to university with nothing in their pockets but their student cards, it is a little difficult, faced with no luggage, to keep going to school every day in the same pair of underwear. The airlines do not supply it. They simply say that people have to buy it and send them the receipts. This bill would provide some recompense.

The final part of this bill is the piece dealing with airlines charging extras when they show people the price. The airlines in Canada are very sneaky with this stuff. Air Canada has something called a fuel surcharge. Between here and London, England, it is $206 for people in regular class and $315 for people in business class. If we add up all the people on the plane and all the fuel charges, it is more than for actually filling up the plane’s tank. It charges more in the fuel surcharge than the fuel actually costs. The statement on its website is that it is to provide for fluctuations in operating costs caused by varying fuel prices. That is not the case.

It also charges a NAV CANADA surcharge, which is to reflect the fact that it is an airline and has to fly. NAV CANADA does not charge per passenger. It charges per plane. It is $5,000 or so per plane. It does not break it down per passenger. The airline does. It tries to make it sound as if these are government charges. I am sorry, but we are not in charge of this. The government is not in charge of whether there is an insurance fee to be paid or a NAV CANADA fee to be paid by the airline. That is a private matter between the airline and NAV CANADA.

This is a good bill. This is a bill that would give Canadian passengers some footing in their debates with airlines and would give them some rights. I am proud to support it.

Continue reading »]]> Olivia Chow and Mike Sullivan Call for Apprenticeship and Job Component in New Federal Infrastructure Plan

Read the open letter to Minister Lebel:

The Hon. Denis Lebel
Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
Tower C – 330 Sparks St.
Ottawa, ON K1A 0N5

March 19, 2013

Dear Minister Lebel,

While Canada is mired in 7% unemployment, almost one in five young people are out of work. Bringing in 200,000 temporary foreign workers while there are so many unemployed youth makes no sense.

There are currently 260,000 jobs in Canada that need to be filled. Clearly, it is in everyone’s best interests to give young Canadians the skills they require to fill these jobs.

You are committed to bring forward a new infrastructure program in the upcoming budget. As that program is being designed, it is a golden opportunity for the current government to create apprenticeship positions with targeted infrastructure funding.

In principle, we support direct transfer of funds to municipalities so that the infrastructure program can be predictable and long term. However, if you choose to use a grant program approach instead, then the federal infrastructure grants could provide an incentive to create a real on-going apprenticeships program. By doing so, you will create jobs and begin to train the next generation of workers and deal with the skilled trades shortages. It will be a win-win-win arrangement.

By inserting a condition or a financial incentive for on-going apprenticeship programs in the new federal infrastructure funding program, we can create employment, help ease the skilled trades shortages, and give hope to Canada’s youth.

Please consider this proposal as you prepare to roll out the new federal infrastructure program in the upcoming budget.

We look forward to your positive response.

Sincerely,

Olivia Chow, MP (Trinity-Spadina)
Official Opposition Transport and Infrastructure Critic

Mike Sullivan, MP (York South-Weston)

View the original letter here:

Continue reading »]]> OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer

ORAL QUESTIONS

Cell Phone Theft

Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, cellphone theft is a serious problem in Toronto and across Canada. It is a growing and troublesome street crime; particularly, when young people are mugged on their way home from school.
The industry is implementing a national database to log stolen cellphones to stop their reactivation. However, we need legislation to stop criminals from tampering with cellphone identifiers. Yesterday, I tabled a private member’s bill to do just that.
Will the government support this crime-fighting bill?

Hon. Christian Paradis (Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture), CPC):

Mr. Speaker, I find it rich that the member for York South—Weston now pretends to stand with cellphone users after voting against cellphone unlocking by voting against Bill C-11.

Our government has taken concrete actions to build a strong and competitive telecommunications sector. Once again, I would like to highlight the industry’s effort to address the serious issue of cellphone theft. We will continue to work with industry to protect Canadian consumers and deliver more choice through greater competition.