House of Commons Hansard #105 of the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was passengers.

Topics

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

4 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Kearl Oil SandsEmergency DebateRoutine Proceedings

4 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am proposing an emergency debate for this evening on Imperial Oil's Kearl oil sands development in the Alberta tar sands.

The reason and pertinence of this motion today is that the government twice at the Federal Court had to order Imperial Oil to produce the greenhouse gas emissions that are proposed by this $8 billion tar sands project, which is the equivalent of 800,000 cars on the road worth of pollution.

The proponents, in this case Imperial Oil and Exxon, its parent company, have not given any statements as to the amount of greenhouse gases that will be emitted from the project, which is required by law. It was ordered by the Federal Court once, it was appealed and the appeal was turned down.

The decision is now on the Prime Minister's desk. He will have until tomorrow to fast-track this project, thereby circumventing our own federal laws. This project is of a scope and scale that it will have an impact on the environment for Canadians. The request is for this evening because the decision will be taken, at a minimum, by tomorrow by the cabinet. This is a cabinet directive that is being proposed.

An $8 billion project with 800,000 cars worth of pollution needs to be governed by the House and given transparency. We ask for leniency from the Chair to seek this emergency debate this evening.

Kearl Oil SandsEmergency DebateRoutine Proceedings

4 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

I understand the hon. member gave notice yesterday but I believe it was received too late for yesterday's routine proceedings. However, I was under the impression he was going to raise this yesterday. In any event, I will take this under advisement. I believe the Speaker will return shortly to give a ruling on this. I thank the member for his submission.

Before I call for orders of the day, I wish to inform the House that because of the deferred recorded divisions, government orders will be extended by 35 minutes.

The House resumed from June 3 consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

When we last visited this topic, the hon. member for Yukon had two minutes remaining in his allotted time.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, in the short time I have remaining I want to once again emphasize a couple of points that the government could move on, whether in the budget or through supplementary estimates. Some of the points are very small and it has the authority to do it but I implore them to because it is critical for people's lives.

The first point concerns Northern Native Broadcasting, an ongoing broadcaster in my riding. Its fiscal year ended April 1 and it has had to lay off the entire television division of six people who have not received their paycheques. If everyone in Ottawa, in the House and everywhere else had not received their paycheques since April 1, they would be a little upset. I would ask the Minister of Canadian Heritage to please solve that.

The second point is that today is decision day for the 140,000 people of Burma in the refugee camps in Thailand. Rice prices have gone up three times, leaving a $1 million shortfall. Canada has funded this for 10 years with 14 other countries. The system is going to collapse because they only have half the amount of needed food and there will be chaos. The people will be cut back to rice from six or seven commodities. The prime minister of Burma, who is in exile, and all sorts of NGOs have been imploring the Minister of International Cooperation and the Prime Minister to solve this critical problem.

Another item, which I brought forward recently, is related to why it takes three months to receive a military pension and only one month for the RCMP pension. A pensioner brought this issue to me this week.

We also would like the government to reinstate money for polio. It is inconceivable that it cut money for polio.

We also want it to re-establish the oil monitoring agency, which we had established previously, at this time of oil price increases.

We also want it to reinstate the GST rebate, which is hurting my riding with regard to tourism and to--

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I must stop the hon. member there and move to questions and comments.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member's main speech and was quite interested in his concerns about the economic outlook in the budget.

As we know, in the second year it was getting to the point where there was very little latitude for any unforeseen circumstances, and that continues to be the case. Recent reports are that the economy has negative growth. It is one of those issues that deals with people's jobs and their ability to pay bills, et cetera.

I wonder if the member can provide the House with his view on the importance of fiscal management and the need for strong fiscal management at this time of fiscal pressure.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, that is a concern. It led off question period today as ostensibly the number one concern of Canadians. Thousands of Canadians have been losing their jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Since the present government came in, much to the shock of Conservatives across the country who have been calling their own members to task, it has been the largest spending government in history. It has spent so much that it has pushed the government very close to a deficit. The previous government had a $3 million contingency fund and always made sure that when things came up, like SARS and the various emergencies that always come up such as this, there was room to move. However, it seems that the present government does not even have the will to move.

The Prime Minister basically said today, to paraphrase him, that these things happen. That is not a very good answer to those families that cannot feed their children and cannot pay their rent, and the thousands of people who are unemployed. To hear that there is not even an attempt to help them at this time is very sad.

We need to put in things like the increases we put in for research; for the program for green manufacturing that would have created all sorts of jobs for exporting; and for the manufacturing equipment to make companies more efficient so they use less oil and energy, which, of course, was visionary because that was our plan even before oil and gas prices went up. Had that plan been in place for modern, efficient, competitive and green factories, they would have been much more economical and less likely to close because they would have been using less energy.

As well, getting rid of the millennium student fund, some of the research funds that were so critical in their first term and even the cutbacks in literacy, which we fought and mostly got reinstated, affect productivity and the ability to keep companies open when we get under pressure like this.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:10 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, the other issue that was raised yesterday in debate was the substantial concern about the new EI enterprise that is going to be established, instead of the current situation where there is an EI notional fund and the moneys are included, both revenue and expenses from employment insurance, in the consolidated revenue fund.

One of the concerns that I had, and I do not know if the member shares it, is that this new enterprise will only have an initial surplus of some $2 billion. As members know, the current rules prescribe that there should be sufficient reserve or surplus within the fund to allow for two cycles. I think it is $10 billion or $12 billion. That means that the EI fund could come under risk if we were to enter a sustained recession.

I wonder if the member also shares a concern about this new EI enterprise which seems to be underfunded, maybe for the wrong reasons.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:10 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, yes, I definitely share that concern as well. The purpose of this fund is to have it during the ups and downs in the economy, which happened to be doing very well in recent years. However, all of a sudden we have this downturn that could cause a huge number of people having to apply to this fund. There certainly should be sufficient latitude in that fund to deal with those types of contingencies.

I went to the briefing on Bill C-50, the finance bill, and there were a couple more esoteric points I had related to this fund and also to the changes to the Bank of Canada financing. What I am worried about is taking the investment ability and distancing it into this agency from the Government of Canada.

We have had a crisis lately related to asset backed funds. If we take the investments at more arm's length from government, how do we know what these investments might be in? How do we have government control? We, of course, want safe investments and socially acceptable investments with these funds.

It is the same with the Bank of Canada. Some provisions in this bill, which I am not sure have been talked about in the debate at all, that would increase the latitude and the mechanisms the Bank of Canada has in investing the money that it happens to have at a particular time.

I do not have a problem with modernizing the investment procedures to fit modern instruments, et cetera, but in this time, when we have had some great crises, in fact we have had a committee hearing specifically on this crisis of failures in certain types of assets, I think we should give particular concern to watching the latitude or the distancing of government investments. We need to keep that very close at hand and ensure, as people always expect, these are safe investments. People do not expect the government to be making huge profits but they do expect it to be investing in things that will never lose their money.

I think those are two important items that, as these things are implemented in the future, we should keep very careful watch of. I know members of the various opposition parties will be watching these items.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:10 p.m.

Liberal

Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS

Mr. Speaker, I want to come off a question that was just posed by the member for Mississauga South over a concern that I had with regard to this legislation.

I know the leader of the New Democratic Party addressed the CLC just recently and spoke, as well, at a couple of other public functions about how the Liberals and the Conservatives only spent five minutes on the EI legislation and the establishment of this crown corporation. He was indignant and disgusted that they were in cahoots with each other and only put in five minutes.

The member totally ignored the fact that my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour put forward a Liberal motion to the human resources committee that we would study this. We put almost four weeks into this and we were hoping to table the report tomorrow. With total disregard for the work that was put in by the human resources committee, he tried to lead organized labour and Canadians to believe that this was some covert operation by the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Does the member find that sort of discredits the party and calls into question its sincerity in its opposition to this bill?

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, being a positive type of guy, I would like to speak to the positive efforts that the Liberals have made in this Parliament in the seven years that I have been here relating to employment insurance. They have looked at all sorts of different adjustments for it. They have made improvements to it, such as things that would help the most vulnerable and help people get training. In particular, the member's colleague, the other Cape Bretoner, has an excellent bill on how to improve EI. It is in relation to people who are ill and are unable to return to the workforce.

I will not speak of the other parties, but I commend all the people in the Liberal Party who have done so much to improve this fund and to carefully watch--

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, in speaking to the bill today I want to highlight not only what my concerns are about some of the things contained in Bill C-50, but actually about some of the things that should be and are not.

I want to begin, for instance, with the millennium scholarship fund, the cancelling of the fund, and the current redistribution of the money to students.

On the surface, this seems like a very good thing, but the point is it was not made stable. The millennium scholarship fund had been there for 10 years. This new fund is now there for who knows how long. The Canadian Alliance of Students Associations said that part of the budget for students lacked any sort of long term vision. Putting in little bits and pieces that may sound good on the surface on a one shot deal quite often is of great concern, when we think that the issues of productivity and competitiveness in this country will have to do with skills and training, and an educated labour force.

The fact also that the fund will now be distributed mainly as an income-based fund and not a need-based fund makes a big difference. We cannot expect this party to understand that difference, I understand, but when we look at the millennium scholarship fund, it used to be based on cost of living, tuition, cost of books and was based on student resources and need regardless of income.

The Education Policy Institute in Quebec noted that this seemingly simple shift in language could create a loss to Quebec students of over $80 million a year since the Quebec system is based on need.

Here we have a system again that had been changed. I do not know why, but the government did not give much thought to what the consequences would be. We now have a province that is going to have a problem with its own students having the ability to access the funds.

The new student fund also seeks to increase the number of students who will get the grants that the millennium scholarship fund used to bring forward. However, we now find that this could create larger numbers of students getting perhaps $2,000 instead of $3,000, and for a student a thousand dollars less a year is a lot of money.

The other thing is that this has been taken away from the arm's length body that used to manage the millennium scholarship fund and it has gone now directly to HRSD to be looked at, and we have seen what happens when programs go directly under HRSD. The summer student program fiasco last year had the government scrambling to do damage control and it did. However, again, it was short term, one year, damage control.

This year, we see the same thing happening. I am getting letters and I am getting calls from many NGOs who cannot get students this year, never mind the fact that students are being deprived of the ability to have that apprenticeship experience in their field of studies. Once again, we see this kind of one shot deal, this kind of shiny object in the window that happens for a year but does not have any substance to it that can actually achieve a long term objective of having more students accessing education.

The MSF is only one example of how the government is very good at playing with language which is designed to fool the people. It is the old Harris trick. The problem is that citizens actually get hurt in the end.

We need to remember that the strengthened plan for students' access to post-secondary education brought forward in the Liberal fiscal plan of 2005 and the fiscal update brought in by the then finance minister was hastily tanked by the NDP who love to speak about students and its wish to help students. In its rush to get to the polls to gain a couple more seats, in spite of the fact that it had been asked to wait until February or until a budget came forward that would actually cement in place some of the excellent policies that were coming forward with the then Liberal government, such as a national housing strategy, a national child care program, the Kelowna accord, and all of those would have been enshrined in the budget, the NDP put at risk and eventually allowed the cancellation of some extraordinary programs. One of them was for students, as we can see.

Now we have proposed legislative changes, for instance, in the bill to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It is buried in a budget implementation bill. I put it to the House that this is a way of bypassing due process that would have allowed real input by the Canadian public, by trade unions, by trade councils, by business communities, and all of these stakeholders and players. We would have been able to look at where we need to go as we are poised on the brink of 2011, a year in which we are told we are going to be dependent for 100% of our net labour force on immigration.

Everyone knew this was coming. The last Liberal government, over the course of two years, had begun to plan with the provinces on how to deal with this and what the essential costs of changing the system would be, so that we could deal with the need for a labour force, at the same time remembering that immigration is far more than merely a tool for accessing a labour force.

However, we had put in an effective strategy. We had talked to the provinces. A plan was in the works. The then immigration minister had put in $700 million to help with integration, to help with retention of people in areas and helping to deal with cutting down the long waiting list, which as we hear is the reason why the bill was hastily pushed into a budget implementation bill without due process. All of those things were there. They were in the works. What happened to that? What happened to the $700 million.

The minister is putting in $60 million. Great. We used to have $700 million targeted. What happened to the other $640 million? Where did it go? These are questions that we really need to ask.

If the government really cared about the issue of labour force, if it really wanted to look at how immigration in Canada could actually be preparing Canada for the 21st century, then we would have done it the right way. The Conservatives would have been able to bring this forward as an appropriate bill under the appropriate minister. They would have been able to let the bill go to the citizenship and immigration committee. There would have been the usual travelling of the committee, getting input, getting information from all of the players, so that we could have had a substantive bill that would have been a vision implementation, building for perhaps the next 20 years in terms of a solid way of looking at immigration and refugees in this country.

However, that was not done. What we now have instead is this little fly-by-night thing, an edge through, put in with the right words and put into a sort of trap in which it is left in a confidence motion in the budget, so that nobody really has any input, but with the threat that if we do not pass this, then we will bring down the government.

This is a sort of cheesy kind of flouting of the democratic process that actually bothers some of us across the aisle because it really is not about something substantive. It is really just about cheap political tricks.

I want to speak a little bit about why the government did not go through the process. Why did it not do the proper consultation? One of the things we see is that the minister would now be the only person, the point of entry and the point of exit into the system.

The department will be the only place people can go if they seek to come here as immigrants to this country. Everyone used to know what the rules were. They applied according to the rules and then they went through a process. There were appeals built into the process. That is now gone. There is one judge and one jury, and that happens to be the minister, who will decide who will get in, with no accountability.

Again, we see, and this is a problem surfacing every day in the House, a lack of accountability of the government for the things that it intends to do, a lack of process and structure that would allow the Conservatives to explain to Canadians what they are doing and why they are doing it, and then to be accountable for whether it worked or it did not work. That has gone.

What we see now are some problems that will create issues. Suddenly we bring in labour market immigrants. They come in and they are unable to have access to jobs because it is not just getting into the country that allows a person access to a job. There are many barriers in the way and there is nothing put in place to deal with those barriers.

This is what I felt was very interesting. Currently, we have about 500,000 internationally trained workers in this country who are unemployed or underemployed with regard to work in this country. It is not because no one cares.

In 2004 I was given the job by the then prime minister to set up an immediate medium and long term plan to deal with the internationally trained workers, not only the people who were here and who could not get jobs, but the people who would come into the country in the future.

We recognize that there were a number of barriers. It was not a one shot deal. People walk in and what happens? They get a 1-800 number to call, which is the government's answer to an internationally trained worker. Give people a 1-800 number, call the government, and what will it do?

The point is, it cannot do anything because it is multi-jurisdictional. When we set it up, and we did set up a long term plan for this in 2004, we put money into the top priority, which was getting internationally trained physicians to work in this country because we realized that was a crisis situation at the time. In 2005 enough money was put in to deal with the other issues, and what were the issues?

First and foremost, the government cannot make someone have a job. One must become accredited and have one's papers assessed. This is a provincial jurisdiction. One has to work with the provinces. One has to be able to work with the credentialing bodies under provincial legislation. Do those bodies believe that the person has the right skills, has the right education to be able to do the work according to Canadian standards? These are questions only credentialing bodies can answer, so one has to work with the credentialling bodies.

Second, in some sectors language is a huge issue. If someone does not have an enhanced or an expanded access to language and an understanding of the depth of language, like a physician or a nurse or a social worker, they cannot actually deal with the Canadian population in English or in French. Language training was a huge problem and our government put forward $20 million a year under the minister to give access to that kind of enhanced language training.

What is happening to that? Where is that money? Is it happening?

The third problem that we found was that immigrants came to this country and they went to three cities: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. The jobs were not there, yet the immigrants stayed there. They could not get the jobs and we tried to get them into other provinces, working with the provinces as we did. We tried to get them into rural areas where they would leave at the end of a year, and so retention became a problem. The former Liberal immigration minister had put in a substantial amount of money to deal with the problem of retaining people in areas where they were needed.

Finally, there is the issue of apprenticeship. Some people who come to Canada may have the on-paper training, but they do not have the Canadian experience. In our plan, that the Liberals tabled, we were going to give them apprenticeship training, help them to work in areas where they could get the kind of Canadian experience that they needed.

This was not a simple thing. It was a complex plan. It took us a year to set up and we began to roll the plan out, and I am asking this question. What is the minister going to achieve by allowing internationally trained workers to come into this country without a plan that was an extremely costly plan when we put it forward?

It was the beginning of a five year plan. Without that plan in place, people would just be left, as I said earlier on, calling a 1-800 number and nothing would be solved at all, because this is not something that the federal government can do alone.

My question is this. Where is our plan that we tabled and where is the money that we had put in, in the first two years to implement that plan? We do not know where it is. Therefore, we have again this sort of sleight of hand, of bringing in what sounds like a choice piece of legislation or amendments into an act which does not really deal with the problem at all and which is done by stealth, putting it into the wrong bill.

Not only that, we talked about the labour force, which we all know is an issue that we need to deal with. However, how could the minister bypass the provinces that have a provincial nominee program, and that have been involved in deciding what they need in their diverse areas for their workforce? That has not been done. Suddenly, the federal government has taken it all over and there has been no consultation with the provinces and no ability to work with the provinces.

All the work that had been done by the Liberal government has been thrown out the window and we are starting from scratch with no plan and no money.

At the same time, immigration is not only about the labour force. Many of us who have come to this country over the last 300 years came here not merely to find work but to find freedom, to find opportunity, and to build a nation. Immigration is about nation-building and when all we do is set it up to be something that is an in and out scheme to get workers in and nothing more, we do not take into consideration that if people are going to put roots down, grow families and build a nation, they are going to need a family class. They are going to need to be able to bring their families and have a vision for this country, and truly belong.

None of that has been taken into consideration in this immigration amendment that we see.

I said that I would talk about the things that concern me. Those are some of the things that concern me, but I also want to talk about the things that are absolutely not present and that should have been done.

We know that productivity and competitiveness is a huge problem right now in this country. There is no vision for this. We see manufacturing jobs being lost. There was an opportunity here. The government had three budgets in 2006, 2007 and 2008 to set down a plan for productivity and competitiveness, for the forestry sector a real plan, an action plan, not merely words that have not really resulted in any change at all.

Workers in the automobile and manufacturing sectors are losing their jobs. Not a single idea has been put forward. There was an opportunity to do it in the budget. The opportunity was lost.

The Minister of Health stood in the House and said he was concerned about the rising epidemic of obesity in the country. In fact, the minister then said that the government had put forward a $5 million plan. The $5 million came out of the money that the Liberal government had allocated to deal with community participation.

In a $140 million budget, $5 million was taken out of it for ParticipAction. ParticipAction, as devised by the government, is a television ad and that is it. We found out that the reason young people were not participating, even though there was community program money for them to play sport, was they needed places to play. It is called sports infrastructure, like gyms, having coaches helping children to learn to play a sport that would result in better physical activity and better health for the children.

None of that was put in the budget. Our Liberal government had in place an infrastructure fund specifically for community sport infrastructure. Where is that money? Where did it go? A $5 million TV advertising program does not even hope to touch that.

Talking about immigration and the international trade worker initiative, we read in the newspapers that more and more Canadians are having less and less access to health care. We all know the Canadian Medical Association and other bodies have studied this. They tell us the reason people are being denied access to health care is the lack of health human resources such as doctors, nurses and lab technicians.

The government had a huge opportunity to deal with the health human resource crisis, with the lack of physicians. In 2005 our government had allocated money to bring in 1,000 new family practitioners. What happened to that money? Where did it go? What happened to the 1,000 new family practitioners? What happened to that plan? No wonder there is no access almost three years later and things are going downhill. It is about opportunities missed.

Government is about a vision for a nation, not just little one-shot, one-off deals where the government thinks it can fool the people of Canada. The people of Canada are too smart to be fooled. They see the results of a lack of a plan and vision. This is what we are talking about, opportunities missed, opportunities lost on the ability to build a nation, to look to the future, to protect jobs, to find new creative and innovative ways of bringing Canada into the 21st century and to compete in a global marketplace. None of those things have been in any of these budgets. In this budget there was a hope something would to deal with some of these issues, but was nothing.

We talk about all the little pieces of programs here. Government is about vision and looking to the future. With only 32 million people in our country, we do not have the ability to compete in numbers with Asia, China, India and other populous countries, countries with large populations like Europe and even the United States to the south of us. Even if we double our population by some magic figure in 10 years time, we will still be a small country, so we need to have the best, brightest and most trained workers.

We have to foster innovation and creativity in the country so companies want to come here because they can get good workers and people who think outside the box. It should be about looking at ways to deal with energy, the environment and creating a Canada that can stand tall in the world.

In 2004 we were number one in the world. We had taken a country that was almost a developing country with a huge $43 billion deficit, with no jobs, with people losing their mortgages and we built it with a vision, not just with one-shot deals, into a nation that was holding its head high above the world. We had nine balanced budgets and a huge surplus. We are now looking at a deficit and the possibility of a recession. Jobs are being lost. This is what happened in two years under the Conservative government and that is because it has no plan, no vision and it does not even understand what our country is about.

Speaker's Ruling—Kearl Oil SandsRequest for Emergency DebateGovernment Orders

June 4th, 2008 / 4:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Before moving on to questions and comments, I want to go back to deal with the request for an emergency debate tonight on the subject of the Kearl Oil Sands development.

After some consultations with the Speaker, it has been determined that this request does not meet the Standing Orders requirement for an emergency debate.

I thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, but it does not meet the Standing Orders at this time.

Before moving on, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House of the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Don Valley East, Manufacturing Industry; the hon. member for Laval, Justice.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:35 p.m.

Liberal

Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON

Mr. Speaker, I think you like I and so many of the young people who are watching this debate cannot help but have been impressed by the eloquence and the precision of the member for Vancouver Centre in elucidating the main elements of the budget bill.

She said that the bill had to be considered as a vision statement and therefore had to be judged accordingly and that all the items enumerated in the bill deserved close scrutiny. They deserve close scrutiny in the context of what the bill hopes to accomplish for all of us and for all the young people, who are here today and out there in TV land, in terms of the kind of programs that would be in place for all of us.

I was the minister of immigration and I worked closely with the member for Vancouver Centre, who was also a minister. She raised some absolutely important questions with respect to one central issue. Where did the Conservatives put the money that the previous government allocated to programs to bring life to the vision? What did they do with the $700 million designed to make the system efficient? What did they do with the $88 million designed to integrate people in terms of their credentials earned abroad? What did they do with the $1.3 billion designed to integrate and retain people whose talents were obtained in other parts of the world and brought to Canada to build a nation of which everyone could be proud? What did they do with the opportunity that was presented by my colleague and the government of which she was a part? What has the Conservative government done with the vision for Canada that seemed to be so promising and yet today seems to be begging for direction, for leadership and for attention?

Could the member give us a few more moments of her thoughtful insight in to the way the country could develop, should develop and the way it is being abandoned?

Democracy is a great thing and Canadians have a government that they do not deserve. There is an election coming up. Could the member give us the opportunity to see what we missed—

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I will stop the hon. member there.

The hon. member for Vancouver East.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, that was an extraordinarily important question.

The question of transparency and accountability is at stake here. We have to ask ourselves some questions. What happened to the plan? Where did the money that was set aside to deal with something go? What happened to it? Was it moved? What was it spent on? We deserve answers, but we have not had any. We have been asking these questions for three years. It is the government that ran on the issue of accountability. Accountability means we have to be accountable for what we do.

What is the evaluation? What occurred when the government did this in 2006? What are the results? Did it result in any difference? Were there any changes? What are the objectives? These are clear questions.

My profession was based on evidence. Was an objective set to achieve such and such a thing? Evidence based analysis has to be done on how to get where we want to go, and then we check to see whether we got there. Were the results achieved? That is accountability. That has not occurred here. Where is the money? Where is the plan? What happened to all of it?

How can we let people into the country without giving them the tools they need to get a job? We already have 500,000 immigrants who trained somewhere else, but they cannot work in Canada. Are we going to increase the number of people who cannot work here to one million? They will come to Canada, but they will be unable to work.

Those are the questions we have to ask when we see the shallow kind of budgets that we are given by the Conservative government, a one shot deal.

We only have to read the books out there, which state the original objectives of the government ought to be: win an election, look moderate, fool the people with shiny objects. When the Conservatives get a majority government, then they can do what they want, which is to dismantle the federation, get rid of any vision and leave people to their own devices.

Government is not about that. To be in government means using the tools of government to help citizens live better lives, to give them opportunities. Governance is about that.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:40 p.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to hear the remarks of the hon. member for Vancouver Centre. It is interesting to hear a rehashing of the program of the Liberal government. It is something that I was critical of in my day, and I could be today as well. However, that is not where I want to go with this question.

The member was rightly critical of the direction of the Conservative government on issues of immigration. She went through a number of them. She has been supported by the former minister in his question a moment ago.

The Liberals say that there are no answers to the questions they raise, that there is no program from the Conservatives, that there is no money, that the money dedicated to important programming under their plan has somehow disappeared, but they have no plan. Yet, when push comes to shove, the Liberals are not prepared to hold the government accountable for not having a plan, for not having any money for these things, for not having any programs. Yet the moment when accountability, which is the job of the official opposition, comes to the fore, they disappear and do not vote to bring down the government.

If immigration is so important to the Liberals, why do they refuse to hold the Conservative government accountable for all these missteps, for this lack of progress and for this terrible bill before the House of Commons?

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4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. If people believe a government is on the wrong track, if they believe the vision is not there and if they believe the decisions being made are not good ones and do not wish that government to remain, then new government should be brought in to do the right things.

It is not about what NDP members did in the last session, when they brought down a government in such undue haste that they undid all the things they said they wanted. It is not about hastily calling an election. It is about a strategy to ensure there is going to be success. On this side of the House, we think that is a government with no vision, with no plan, with no ability to move the country forward at a time when it is on the brink to be the most competitive nation in the world, given such a small number of people.

It is not about the cheap shots of saying “let's quickly call an election” without thinking of the consequences. One has to have a plan that will succeed. What is the point of having a plan of action if it is only about an empty shell, a piece of political rhetoric, which does not achieve the objective that we want?

We will achieve our objective in our time.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, in the 2006 election one of the promises made by the government had to do with guaranteed wait times. That seemed to fall by the wayside. There has been a lot of hemming and hawing, yet the Conservatives continue to take credit. Even today in question period, the Minister of Health made a statement about “we delivered on wait times”.

Could the member advise Canadians what the real situation is in terms of health care wait times for Canadians.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, as a physician, I can say that wait times was a priority for us. We did move in our government to look at bringing forward, within about two years, 1,000 new family practitioners.

Five million Canadians do not have family doctors. This is the heart of health care access. If people cannot see a physician, they cannot have access into the system. The government has been repeatedly told that health human resources is a huge issue and it is a problem that must be resolved.

We had that in our wait times initiative. In 2004 we had agreements with the provinces of bringing in health human resource changes, of bringing in the physicians, the nurses, the technicians and the technologists who would allow access to the system to occur. Again, I asked a question on what happened to that plan and the money that was set aside for it.

When the Minister of Health stands up and says that the government has been doing something, it is like his argument—

Budget Implementation Act, 2008Government Orders

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I advise hon. members that we are now entering the portion of the debate where the speeches will be 10 minutes with 5 minutes of questions and comments.

The hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River.