Brian Fitzpatrick

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal members say that they rest their case on their record. Post-September 11, the Auditor General came out with her report showing that there were 40,000 illegal refugees, people who had their claims rejected, and that the government did not even know where they were. People were arriving at Pearson Airport without any identification at all. They were just fingerprinted and released into the public.

My concern on the way the Liberals handled immigration and refugee claims at that time is that it creates a backup for 40,000 legitimate people who come through the front line. I think the Liberals have a lot to answer for in the way they mismanaged the whole immigration and refugee system when they were in power.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pursue an area with the Bloc member, and I am sure she can get lots of advice from her colleagues on the other side.

I think all of us are troubled with the issue of skilled newcomers to Canada, whether they be professional people or tradespeople. They apparently come from other countries where they have worked in those trades and so on but have difficulty getting licences and being recognized in this country.

Invariably, the issue is that the provinces control the licensing and certification. I practised law for 25 years and for me to practise law has nothing to do with the federal government. I must be approved to practise law in Saskatchewan and the association to which I belong, the Law Society, decides whether I can practise. This is also true for engineers, doctors and so on.

From the Bloc members' standpoint, would they be in favour of the federal government using trade and commerce or some area of the Constitution to override the provinces so we can get this problem sorted out and then newcomers to Canada could get on with their lives and practise their trades and professions? I wonder if the Bloc would be in favour of doing that.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a short question for the member.

It seemed to me that the last Parliament was dominated by a very controversial policy whereby the immigration minister seemed to have it as her priority to bring people like strippers into her riding so they could have jobs in bars and so on. Is this the kind of policy the member is talking about when he says he rests his case and stands behind the record of the former Liberal government, the policy of accelerating and fast-tracking strippers through the immigration system?

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member made reference to the just society. I now want to go through a few things. Pierre Trudeau was the person who brought in the War Measures Act and imprisoned hundreds of innocent Canadians without reason.

It was Mackenzie King who interned thousands of Japanese Canadians and took away their property rights and every civil right they ever had. It was Mackenzie King who rejected German Jewish refugees who sought refuge in Canada.

John Diefenbaker brought in the Bill of Rights, the first recognition in this country of protecting fundamental individual rights. John Diefenbaker gave aboriginal people the right to vote almost 100 years after Americans were freed from slavery.

I would also point out to the former professor from Harvard that it was Earl Warren, a Republican who was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, who finally brought sanity to the segregation laws in the United States and struck down its segregation laws.

The professor can try to be a professor to people in here, but he obviously was seeking refuge from this country for 30-plus years, from Liberal rule and so on. For him to come back here and lecture us about what a just society is leaves a lot to be desired.

[Anti-Terrorism Act, February 9th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I should know more about this legislation than I do. If he could, I would like the member to enlighten me as to what oversight mechanisms exist in the bill to make sure that we have a watchdog, somebody who could have a look at what is going on under this bill, a person Canadians can trust who can look at what is going on behind the scenes, who can lift the veil of secrecy, so to speak.

In some ways I would feel more comfortable if I knew there was a good system of checks and balances available in the anti-terrorism legislation. I would appreciate his comments.

[Milton Friedman, November 22nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, last week we lost a great defender of personal freedom. Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman was truly one of the great economic thinkers of all time.

To Friedman, inflation was a product of too much government and very bad government monetary policy. In the midst of runaway inflation, big spenders like Pierre Trudeau and Bob Rae ignored his advice. Fortunately, there was more enlightened leadership in the U.K. and the United States and they had positive results.

Milton Friedman was always a critic of big government, big spenders and big taxes. He was always a great defender of the individual's freedom to make his or her own choices.

Dr. Friedman coined many phrases. Perhaps his most famous was that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Today, only socialists, big spending Liberals and the foolhardy believe there is a free lunch.

[Criminal Code, November 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to some of the observations of the New Democrat members, especially the member from Winnipeg, about the bank hours, and probably the hours of the credit unions too. She talked about that creating problems of accessibility for a lot of people who then become trapped into dealing with these groups that are on the outside or the periphery of the issue of banking and availability of financial services.

I am curious. There is some speculation that Wal-Mart may be moving into Canada and providing banking services through its outlets. Knowing Wal-Mart's hours, those stores would likely be open as many hours as they can, seven days a week and in the evenings and so on. I think the Wal-Mart corporate philosophy is to increase the standard of living for people by reducing the cost of living to people. Arguably, Wal-Mart does that.

I know this is perhaps only a bit germane to the discussion about the legislation, but what are the member's views about Wal-Mart moving into this area? Would Wal-Mart be part of the solution to reducing some of the problems and some of the vulnerability of low income people who cannot access banks and credit unions? Might this be a positive?

[Canada Elections Act, November 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to be totally dismissive of the NDP's position about floor crossing, but I want to point out a few facts.

Probably one of the greatest leaders of any time was Sir Winston Churchill and he crossed the floor I believe at least two times. We would be a lot worse off if we had not had Sir Winston Churchill and his impact on history.

I want to turn to Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan Party was formed in the late nineties with eight MLAs. Four members from the Conservative side and four from the Liberal side left their parties to create the Saskatchewan Party. It was my point at that stage that the people in the constituencies would decide that issue and in 1999 they overwhelmingly put these eight MLAs back in office with large majorities.

However, lo and behold the Romanow government, which barely won that election, brought in three Liberals. There was Mr. Melenchuk, who became the finance minister, another fellow who became the speaker of the House and one other member. He needed the Liberals to maintain the balance of power. In the next provincial election after that, and Mr. Romanow was leader of the NDP government, all three of these Liberals were trashed at the polls. They lost their seats.

The voters in my opinion are the ultimate judge of these matters. They did not seem to think it was a big deal with the Saskatchewan Party. They give it a big endorsement. However, they gave Sir Winston Churchill obviously a big endorsement in British history. Obviously, in the NDP case in Saskatchewan, they were rather ticked off because they threw all three of these people out.

It is up to the voters in the final analysis. That would be my comment. If the member wants to react to it, that is fine.

[Canada Elections Act, November 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to focus on one issue about terms of elections. One of my complaints, and it is a complaint of constituents, is that premiers and prime ministers in the past have timed the market. They have the flexibility to pick the date that is most convenient for the government side.

A case in point is what happened back in the early 1990s when the Peterson government was in power for a little more than two years. It decided to call a snap election because the polls indicated it had a landslide. Fortunately, the people of Ontario saw through the game he was playing, punished him and elected an NDP government led by a person by the name of Bob Rae, who brought much pain and suffering to Ontario.

One of the parties opposite sees that person as maybe the guy to salvage its operation, which is going down. It is loaded up with lead, the boat is sinking and members think that guy might be the captain to bring the boat back up.

My real point is it that it avoids the ability of the government in power to try to time the election. Does he not see a lot of merit in having something in place, which makes it fair to the opposition parties and all concerned, by having fixed election dates and avoiding this unsavoury side of parliamentary democracy?

[Committees of the House, October 31st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will follow up on those excellent questions from the government member. I am curious because I hear the Bloc members and the NDP very often talking about subsidies and tax breaks for the oil industry and some of the big companies, such as De Beers, and other diamond companies and so on.

Is the member seriously telling us here that when it comes to major oil and gas developments in the north or mining ventures by companies such as De Beers or building the Mackenzie Valley pipeline by Exxon, one of the biggest corporations in the world, that he is actually advocating that we give them a reduced arrangement on fees for transporting products and stuff to the north? Is that what the member is saying? Is he talking about another subsidy to the oil and gas industry which his party seems to be preoccupied with? Is he talking about another one?