Rahim Jaffer

[Veterans Villa Southgate, November 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, one week ago today many of us were back home honouring our veterans and the sacrifices they made on the field of battle. While many of our vets faced their greatest challenges in foreign lands, for some veterans in my riding, their greatest challenge lies ahead of them.

On Remembrance Day the Veterans Villa Southgate in my riding of Edmonton—Strathcona caught fire causing smoke and water damage to many of the apartments. The fire also killed war veteran Walter Grocholski and left many more homeless.

Fortunately for many of the residents, Rocky Hanson and Brad Smith, both visiting relatives living in the building, did their best to pull residents out of the fire and save as many lives as possible. However, many of these residents are now without a home. I have instructed my office to take all the steps necessary to help these residents with any problems they may be experiencing, find them temporary housing and any other difficulties along the way.

On behalf of my constituents of Edmonton—Strathcona and the official opposition, I want to honour the memory of Walter, and thank Rocky and Brad for their heroic efforts. Without heroes like these men, where would Canada be on days like November 11?

[Pacific Gateway Act, November 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Cambridge for his flattering remarks and also for his very well placed concern. I think he hit the nail on the head when he talked about the idea that many of these groups--and I believe the parliamentary secretary referred to one group, I forget which--said they were thrilled to have this money come down. They really need the money for these initiatives.

Some money is better than no money. We cannot really blame these groups for wanting this money. They have been waiting to actually get going to enhance many of these projects, including the gateway project. Clearly that is a positive step, but I mentioned a number of projects that are crucial to the viability of this Pacific gateway initiative. The Kicking Horse Canyon project is a $730 million project. I also mentioned the North Fraser Perimeter Road, the Portmann highway and the South Fraser Perimeter Road. With the Kicking Horse Canyon project alone at $730 million, the government is way short of even that particular project.

I think the government has to re-evaluate what its targets are. The government has to make sure that if it is going to make announcements like those my hon. colleague asked about, they will create some differences at the end of the day.

[Pacific Gateway Act, November 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member for Victoria is confusing what bureaucracy and concrete measures for protecting Canadians are all about. When I was referring to the increased bureaucracy, I was referring to $35 million that the new Pacific gateway council is going to cost to actually re-study and re-coordinate work that has already been done by the B.C. government and a number of partners in reference to the ports. That is what I was referring to when I said there would be increased bureaucracy.

When it comes to ports police and even to an effective border strategy for protecting our borders, seeing that this is our front line of defence and protection for Canadians, we have been calling, first of all, for a significant border patrol in some of our remote areas. I believe some of our ports are no different. For potential problems, police and the RCMP could be up to an hour or an hour and a half away. This puts real pressure on our customs agents at our land border crossings in reacting to problems.

We have called on the government and said that there has to be a police force, whether we beef up the RCMP or look at an actual border patrol, to deal with protection and security at our borders. It is no different for our ports. I think the hon. member has to realize this. He cannot confuse this with more bureaucracy, which is really going into a vacuum when we look at that $35 million to pay for all these people on the council. Let us compare that to what that money could do if we actually were to put in a border patrol and bring in an aspect of it for our ports. I think Canadians would like to see that sort of security and protection. I do not think it is a duplication at all. If anything, having something like that in place would be a more effective way to patrol both our ports and our borders.

[Pacific Gateway Act, November 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to speak to Bill C-68, an act to develop Canada's Pacific gateway. As we have heard from many of my colleagues in the Conservative Party, we do support this initiative.

I would like to speak to the bill on two fronts, first, as a representative from the west, and second, as the official opposition infrastructure critic, and address some of the challenges I still see that we need to address in moving forward.

As many Canadians know, the opening of the west has been an important part of Canadian history, from the development of the railroads to the building of the Trans-Canada Highway. For the Conservative Party and myself from Edmonton--Strathcona, it is paramount that the west not only receives fair treatment from Ottawa but also the respect it deserves. Unfortunately, we have seen over a decade of Liberal rule that the federal government is really out of touch with the west.

We are looking at initiatives of how to strengthen this gateway. My colleague from Cambridge asked the parliamentary secretary about the funding and the lack of funding. The greatest accomplishment of the public safety minister, who is a Liberal from Alberta, is the gun registry, for which I think most Canadians would agree we have seen no value. The $2 billion from that program could have helped fund the initiatives required in this particular project.

The whole gun registry is a scheme to register the long guns of duck hunters while the Liberals totally ignore the underlying causes of crime, such as drugs and gangs. If the Liberals did have respect for the west, they would go after these sorts of problems instead of focusing all the feigned outrage on western hunters who simply wish to share this unique experience of hunting with their children. If the government were in touch, we would see initiatives such as this actually being funded properly.

Canadians living west of Kenora realize that the Liberals are out of touch. This is why they continually, election after election, select a majority of Conservatives to represent them here in Parliament. It is something that I think Canadians in central and eastern Canada are also realizing. In the last election, Canadians overwhelmingly moved their vote away from the Liberals to other parties, namely the Conservatives who were the recipients of that benefit in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. In the next election, I think the Liberals will finally realize what Canadians already know. They will find that Canadians do not want an arrogant, tired, corrupt Liberal government that specializes in playing regions against each other. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that the Liberals have not yet learned.

We can take this bill as an example. It is a clear, unabashed attempt to win votes for the Liberal Party in British Columbia because of the way they tried to sell the plan. The Liberals think they can buy off one region of Canada against another and they are playing British Columbians against the rest of country, telling the detractors of this bill that if they do not support this bill they do not support B.C.

This sort of Liberal trick to try to play this game has not worked as well as they think. As a western Canadian, I am here to tell them that they should be ashamed of themselves and that this sort of thing has actually created more divisions and alienation across the country resulting in Canadians feeling disconnected with their parliamentarians here in Ottawa, especially the Liberal Party.

I also want to address Bill C-68 in my capacity as the infrastructure critic, first and generally, on the issue of infrastructure and then some specifics according to the bill.

The past 12 years of Liberal rule have brought Canada many infrastructure projects meant to boost Canada's transportation networks, and yet, in many ways, these programs have failed as the infrastructure deficit continues to grow. We have seen the FCM estimate the infrastructure deficit at over $60 billion.

The Canadian Automobile Association is another one of those groups that estimates the country needs to invest about $20 billion in our roads in order to bring them up to snuff. Where does it get this figure? It gets this figure from the provincial highway ministers who said that the figure in 2000 was about $17 billion. Of course, since then that has risen due to inflation and the lack of regard by the Liberals to the roads that we drive on across the country.

This is a very serious issue and I need to underscore this point. I would like to read an action plan that was developed by the CAA and published earlier this year in February trying to warn the government of warning signs, especially when it comes to our national highway system and our roadways.

The first action the CAA talked about was that they see roads as an investment, not an expense, and that when we consider all the gas tax money collected in the country, more of that money should be going into our highway system. The federal government should make better and safer roadways a major goal and consider them as an important part of the federal productivity agenda.

The second action would be to implement a national highway strategy. The federal government must recognize the national highway system as a strategic national asset and then it must adopt the national highway policy for Canada's NHS as proposed by the provinces and territories. It must then move immediately to fund this national highway system to ensure it is safe, efficient and environmentally responsible from coast to coast.

We have to set funding priorities. The federal government must invest in the national highway strategy to upgrade it to the optimal standard and address the future needs as well. This ties into Bill C-68, especially if we are expanding the gateway. The highway system will be crucial to that. It should also include speeding up the border infrastructure program and develop a rural road safety and improvement program.

We also have to invest in the roads of tomorrow, enhance the role of technology and innovation when exploring the development of better and safer roads and highways, and finally, encourage eco-driving. I think it is interesting that even the Canadian Automobile Association says that there should be some sort of incentives in place, especially as technologies are evolving, looking at new ways to develop hybrid cars and other types of fuel cells, that there should be incentives for Canadians to change their habits and that leadership should come from the federal government.

Those are all actions that as a future government I believe we would definitely support and initiate. The question is whether the Liberals are willing to listen to the motorists of Canada and start working to address those infrastructure needs.

What I have been arguing about this particular bill is that it sometimes seems more politics than policy. If the federal government really wants to support this gateway initiative I believe it needs to finance the initiatives that were identified by B.C.'s comprehensive British Columbia ports strategy. I believe my colleague from Cambridge referred to it. It was developed jointly by British Columbia's ministry of small business and economic development and the ministry of transportation in B.C. The B.C. progress board, a provincially nominated blue ribbon panel of experts, largely supports the recommendations.

Bill C-68 would create an advisory council to help decide how to spend the $400 million that the federal government has announced in support of the specific gateway initiative. The council would have 15 members, 9 of whom would be nominated by the federal government , 5 of whom would be nominated in cooperation with the four western provinces and the final member would be the chairperson of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.

Bill C-68 is a Liberal strategy so it can be seen as doing something to help promote B.C. ports. By setting up the council as a means of subjecting current initiatives to further consultation, the Liberals can continue to postpone their financial commitments while being seen as taking a bold step to support this initiative. I believe it will cost approximately $30 million just to operate the consultation group, which, as has already been proven, consultation has been done by the B.C. government.

The B.C. government estimates that about $3.5 billion will be required to actually identify and enhance the projects that would support the Pacific gateway. The province's number one transportation policy to date was not funded by the federal government's gateway announcement. It is looking at approximately, as my colleague mentioned, $1.5 billion on average, or maybe a little higher, that would fund about 50% of what is required to make the gateway project work.

With this level of shortfall, which I believe was a $400 million announcement for future initiatives, it will not even come close to providing B.C. the money for its initiatives. I know that the costs of some of the projects that were identified were quite large. We are looking at the Kicking Horse Canyon project, the North Fraser perimeter road, Port Mann Highway No. 1, the South Fraser perimeter road and the New Westminster rail bridge. None of these projects, which will directly affect the functionality of the Pacific gateway, were even touched in any of the proposals put forward. These are all significant projects and they have all been identified as crucial to making the new project work.

I will conclude with what we would have done and how we would have approached things differently. Rather than announcing ideas or policies throughout Canada's Pacific gateway, the Liberals have announced more bureaucracy. Western ports need real solutions to their challenges, not this Liberal half-step.

As a government, we would make real policy changes that would allow the Pacific gateway to become a reality, not a Liberal catchphrase. We would eliminate Ottawa's borrowing cap on the port of Vancouver, which is a big problem. We would allow B.C. ports to voluntarily merge for competitive advantage and facilitate their access to more investment. We would streamline security at our ports, offer assistance with dredging, invest gas taxes into our infrastructure, and work with provincial governments and port authorities on high priority infrastructure projects. This would be the proper blueprint.

Canadians deserve better than Liberal catchphrases.

[Earth Water, November 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, most Canadians take clean drinking water for granted, however not everyone has access to this precious resource. Every day there are 6,000 deaths resulting from a lack of clean drinking water. That is one death every 14 seconds, totalling 5 million per year.

While most people choose to ignore this problem, there is one company in my riding of Edmonton--Strathcona that is doing something about it. Earth Water sells bottled water throughout Canada and has teamed up with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to deliver clean drinking water throughout the world. Additionally, Earth Water donates 100% of its profits to the UNHCR.

I wish that more corporations had the heart and soul that Earth Water exhibits on a daily basis. This is a corporation that all Canadians can be proud of.

On behalf of my constituents of Edmonton--Strathcona and the official opposition, I want to thank Earth Water for its contribution to help people drink safe water around the world.

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege regarding comments made by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, as well as those made by the minister's director of communications on the minister's behalf, which have not only unjustly damaged the reputation of myself and my colleagues in the Conservative Party of Canada, but I believe are part of a coordinated plan to intimidate and harass members of the official opposition.

Specifically, the minister is menacing and using intimidation against Conservative members of Parliament sitting on the Standing Committee of Citizenship and Immigration by telling the Canadian public that we are anti-immigrant and that we failed to do our proper duty when we rejected the supplementary estimates A in committee on Tuesday, November 1.

These statements, in my opinion, constitute a prima facie case that my privileges as a parliamentarian have been breached.

I would like to provide a brief summary of the background into this issue and read the exact quotes from the minister and his officials into the record, followed by the relevant Speaker rulings and passages from the appropriate text that show this to be a breach of my privilege. If you do, indeed, Mr. Speaker, find a case exists, I will then move my motion.

First let me provide some background on the vote taken on the estimates of November 1, in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. As you may be aware, Mr. Speaker, the supplementary estimates A, 2005-2006 for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration were tabled in the House last week and referred to the standing committee. The committee invited the minister to appear prior to our vote Tuesday and the minister did appear.

As provided by Standing Order 81 of the House and reinforced by a passage from the House of Commons Procedure and Practice by Marleau and Montpetit, page 870 states:

The Standing Orders provide for a detailed consideration of the Estimates, both Main and Supplementary, by standing committees.

Regarding what types of questions committee members are allowed to ask, on page 872, Marleau and Montpetit goes on to state:

The questioning and discussion at this meeting is generally wide-ranging, although the rule of relevance does apply.

When the committee has completed its consideration of the Estimates, each item is put to a vote separately.

The Conservative members of the committee followed this procedure but the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration did not.

For example, the members for Calgary—Nose Hill, Calgary Northeast, Fleetwood—Port Kells and myself asked very relevant questions to the estimates. I would assert that all questions were specific, such as the one regarding the Toronto waterfront revitalization project which $116 million of the money provided in the estimates is going toward.

However the minister obfuscated and treated committee members with contempt. He refused to give us clear and concise answers. Numerous times the Liberal chair of the meeting had to admonish the minister to try to answer committee members in a clear and concise manner. The minister refused to heed the chair's advise.

The Conservative members on the committee felt that the minister had treated us with contempt and decided that since the minister failed to answer our questions, we would exercise our right and responsibility as the official opposition and oppose the passage of the estimates.

Let me emphasize that point. It is not the role of the official opposition to blindly rubber stamp the estimates. In our system of responsible government, it is the role of the opposition to scrutinize the estimates and make sure the government stays responsible to the House of Commons and Canadians. It does not matter if this is a budget vote or an estimates vote in a standing committee, it is the job of the official opposition to scrutinize government spending.

If in our opinion the minister fails to be responsible to Parliament by failing in the simple task of answering questions, we have every right and responsibility to vote against the estimates.

In the end, the estimates were defeated by a 6-5 vote, with the Bloc and Conservative members exercising our rights as opposition. We even put out a press release the next day explaining our rationale and left the door open to the minister to return to committee to reconsider these estimates if he was willing to do his part by answering questions.

The official opposition did its job. It should have ended there but, unfortunately, it did not. The minister, instead of recognizing the will of the committee, spoke to the media the next day on November 2 and made comments which I now believe constitute a breach of my privileges.

Specifically, on page A8 of today's edition of the Toronto Star, the minister made the following comments:

The first chance they had to show support for an immigration plan that is comprehensive ... for settlement and integration programs and they said 'no.' They shut the door down.

The Conservative party's attitude to immigration is keep those people out and send them back.

They're either hypocrites or liars.

In effect, he has called the Conservative members on the committee anti-immigrant as we did not pass his estimates.

Additionally, Stephen Heckbert, the communications director for the minister, has begun a full assault to attack our reputation. I have obtained a copy of an email he sent out to Kim Klaiman of Sponsor Your Parents. I believe the existence of this email proves my contention that there is a coordinated plan to attack the reputations of Conservative MPs and to intimidate the official opposition.

I will table the email but I want to first read from it. It states:

For your information, yesterday, November 2, 2005, the Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration rejected our request for supplementary funding to help our increased processing of parents and grandparents in 2005.

If this decision stands, the government will not be able to process the additional parents and grandparents the minister committed to processing in April.

[The member for Vegreville—Wainwright] and his Conservative Party colleagues rejected the supplementary estimates after asking only one question about the additional funding the minister was requesting--funding that is essential in part to address the issues your group has raised in the past. Unfortunately, the Conservative members of the Standing Committee chose to reject your requests and to deny the government the funding it needed to address this issue.

You and others may want to ask the Conservative members of the committee why they rejected the funding we have requested to begin addressing the backlog.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen

This letter is a clear attempt by the minister to have public interest groups intimidate Conservative members of Parliament into restoring the funding.

Not only that, but the letter is clearly false in content. For one thing, the member for Vegreville—Wainwright was not at the committee meeting and did not vote. Second, as I have stated, we asked a variety of specific and relevant questions, which the Speaker can read for himself if he chooses to read the blues of the committee meeting. Finally, this was not a deliberate action on our part to deny funding to any particular group as the letter proposes.

We are doing our job as outlined to us by the Constitution. However, instead of accepting this verdict, the minister and his staff are engaging in a smear and pressure campaign. This is a clear campaign to intimidate Conservative MPs who were doing their job as committee members and, I would argue, results in a direct breach of our privileges.

The second edition of Maingot, on page 160, clearly states:

Members are entitled to go about their parliamentary business undisturbed. The assaulting, menacing, or insulting of any Member on the floor of the House or while he is coming or going to or from the House, or on account of his behaviour during a proceeding in Parliament, is a violation of the rights of Parliament.

I would submit that the minister's intimidation tactics are a direct menacing of myself and my colleagues because of an action or a behaviour during a proceeding of Parliament, namely voting against the estimates.

Pages 83 to 86 of Marleau and Montpetit specifically deal with this type of intimidation tactic. I would like to draw the Speaker's attention to one specific passage on page 84 which reads:

Speakers have consistently upheld the right of the House to the services of its Members free from intimidation, obstruction and interference.

Mr. Speaker, I believe I have outlined a clear and unequivocal case that my privileges as a parliamentarian have been breached. If you do agree with me, I will be prepared to move the appropriate motion.

[Pacific Gateway Act, October 31st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I heard a lot of hype from the hon. member across the way but not much of a concrete plan. I would like to address one particular point to which I would like him to respond.

I do agree with the hon. member on one thing. To try to enhance trade with areas like Asia-Pacific, countries with obvious poor human rights records, does put pressure on them to actually improve their records. On that basis I agree with him that this initiative and others that are underway with countries that have poor human rights records should be supported. Those initiatives do have economic benefits and, in that vein, this initiative is a positive step.

I know the member was extolling the virtues of the government investing in infrastructure and in its commitment. However it is clear to me that the money the government has proposed in Bill C-68 for Pacific gateway projects falls far short of what British Columbia identified as being required in order to build that national transportation vision and enhance that trade corridor being proposed by the government. The money that is put forward in the gateway announcement in the bill is just barely half of what is being called for to enhance our ports and roadways. A number of initiatives are completely left out under Bill C-68

In extolling the virtues of the government, how does the hon. member expect us to maintain a competitive advantage when the bill does not contain the backing required to make us more competitive? Maybe he could explain that to the House.

[Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, October 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, let us see about these consultations. The immigration minister has said that he does conduct meetings with stakeholders and other constituents over the course of hours that are beyond the normal working hours in the House.

According to the minister's own documents, he claimed 19 meals during the second quarter of 2005, but his only guests were Government of Canada employees. There were no outside consultations, no constituents and the only people with a steak were his staff.

Why did the minister invent these phony excuses?

[Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, October 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Columbus Centre dining room in Toronto offers many culinary experiences. Their signature and most expensive dish is Red Deer venison with truffle-infused liver pâté for $30. Add appetizers and all beverages and three people would pay about $150. When the immigration minister took his two political hacks there on July 31 he spent a whopping $225. Maybe Rudolph was not the only one leaving the restaurant with a red nose.

How can the minister continue to justify these outrageous restaurant expenses?

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I find it hard to believe that there is a parliamentary secretary in this place who would actually stand up and defend those kinds of expenses.

I look in front of me and I see the different expenses of various political ministers. They are fractions of what the immigration minister has spent in the same period of time. I believe, if I am not mistaken, that the parliamentary secretary to the minister of immigration used to be a minister herself. I am sure she had the prudent ability to watch her own expenses. I am not going to go back and dig out her own expenses, but is she really standing up in the House today and saying that if she were the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that she would rack up the same sort of expenses and try to justify them?

I somehow do not think so. I think she would show much more prudence. I think she did when she was a minister. How can she stand up today and defend the actions of her minister that are obviously outrageous and three times the amount that Canadians in his own riding would spend when it comes to groceries? How can she stand and defend that?