Lost his last election, in 2008, with 38% of the vote.
Petitions October 8th, 2003
Madam Speaker, I have three petitions from both my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan and Ontario. The petitioners are calling on the government that in matters of important social policy, such as the definition of marriage, that this not be settled by an unelected judiciary but indeed by Parliament and are asking that Parliament reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
Softwood Lumber September 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, that minister can say what he wants, but I have looked at the government's own guidelines for anyone who wants to access these funds. Nowhere does it say that any of this money has to go into any project which will support any displaced forestry worker. This kind of help is all smoke and mirrors.
I ask the minister again: Why has the government failed to help workers in my riding?
Softwood Lumber September 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government promised to help laid off softwood lumber workers with real financial help, so it made a big deal in announcing the community economic adjustment initiative. Almost two years later, no laid off worker in my riding has seen one single dollar of help from this fund.
I want to ask the minister responsible this. Why has the government not kept its word to help workers in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan?
Parliament of Canada Act September 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's question and observations. I think it is quite clear that if we are going to have a truly independent ethics commissioner who is going to be able to have the backing of the House and the power to do something about the breaches of ethics that may occur on both sides of the House, that person has to be truly independent.
For this person to be truly independent, there has to be a process in place before the person is appointed, a process that will not be tainted by any kind of partisan wrangling. From our point of view, the kinds of suggestions the government has put forward simply do not make that process possible.
We want to ensure that the ethics commissioner himself, even before he is appointed, is not already tainted by the process that puts him in place. We do not believe, on this side and in this party, that this bill does that. That is the simple bottom line.
Parliament of Canada Act September 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, let me say to my hon. colleague that it has been my sad observation of the governing party that much of what it does is simply window dressing to gain the support of the electors at the time of an election. Government members make some great speeches, pass some great resolutions and have some great policies, but when it comes right down to it, they are not prepared to walk the talk. We have seen ample examples of that over the last 10 years.
I am sure all Canadians remember the great promise about the GST. The ethics commissioner is another example of this.
If we as political parties are to gain the confidence of all Canadians and not simply the 63% who bothered to vote in the last general election, we will have to put forward policies and programs that we actually enact when we get into government. The ethics commissioner of course is one of those.
As long as we have a government which, seemingly at the end of the mandate of the present Prime Minister, brings in these last minute pieces of legislation to somehow make it appear as if it is fulfilling some election pledges, it simply will not be good enough.
The people of Canada are not that dumb. They will see through this. Eventually it is going to catch up with this governing party. The ethics commissioner bill, as important a bill as it is, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the kinds of reforms we need in this country to make government transparent and accountable.
Time after time in my riding I hear of people who are simply fed up, fed up with government and unfortunately fed up with all politicians of all stripes because of what the government does. They are simply opting out of the democratic process. If this goes on in this country, we are well on our way to having a process of government in which the public has little participation and little input. It simply becomes a dictatorship. Is that what we really want for this country?
Parliament of Canada Act September 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in today's debate on Bill C-34 regarding the ethics commissioner. I already spoke to the bill at second reading stage.
As members of the House know, the bill would appoint a Senate ethics officer whose duties and functions would be assigned by the Senate regarding the conduct of its members and most important to us here in the House of Commons, an ethics commissioner whose duties and functions would be assigned by the House of Commons.
All members, and indeed all constituents, are concerned with the conduct of its members and the administration of ethical principles by the members of Parliament in this place.
The return of the bill to the House of Commons for debate this week is very interesting and perhaps very timely. We all know that the bill is part of the Prime Minister's ethics initiative first announced in May of last year, a time when he and others in his caucus were increasingly under the ethics magnifying glass.
The bill was born out of public necessity, not through foresight and careful planning. Furthermore, and as is all too often the case with the government, the Liberals use the right words but shift the meanings in such a way that what most Canadians expect and what the Liberal government delivers are often two entirely different things.
They say “independent ethics commissioner” but we all know that since the prime minister would make the choice there is no real independence. The consultation process would be with the leaders of the parties in the House and then there would be a vote following in the House itself. Remember that the prime minister does not have to follow any recommendations that are made and the confirming vote in the House would undoubtedly be a vote in which all Liberals would mysteriously vote in favour of the prime minister's choice regardless of who the person is and what that person thinks about him.
The House of Commons ethics commissioner would work under the general direction of a committee of the House of Commons, presumably the committee on procedure and House affairs.
It is appropriate that the ethics commissioner would perform the duties and functions assigned by the House of Commons for governing the conduct of its members of the House of Commons. A code of standards would be established and at some point would become part of the Standing Orders by which we all abide.
I trust then that the committee responsible for drafting the code would take a truly a non-partisan and honest approach to this very important task.
I will commend one aspect of the bill that I certainly can support. I believe it is important to recognize that a ministerial investigation can be initiated by a formal complaint from a member of Parliament or Senator and the fact that the results of such an investigation will be made public.
That sounds very good and I certainly agree with it. However I am concerned that the public report could be sanitized by removing all confidential information and what power that report might have after that is a moot point.
If there has been a breach of ethics, I firmly believe that Canadians have a right to know. What I am not pleased with is the lack of clarity as to whether a minister of the crown, a minister of state or a parliamentary secretary would be held accountable under the same rules that would apply to all other members of Parliament. This is assumed but it is certainly not specific in the bill.
Many years ago the Canadian Alliance addressed the whole issue and in our policy statement we said:
We will facilitate the appointment of an independent Ethics Counsellor by the House of Commons. The Ethics Counsellor will report directly to the House of Commons and be given the mandate to investigate, and where applicable, recommend prosecution for conflict-of-interest infractions by a Member of Parliament and/or his/her staff.
I strongly favour a high standard of ethical conduct by government and parliamentarians. I believe this is a core value in our democracy and one of the main reasons why the Canadian public sometimes views many politicians and politics in general with disdain because we simply do not measure up to the mark.
There are members of the House, past and present, who have abused the trust that Canadians have placed in them. The end result is the democratic deficit that is apparent all across Canada today: voter apathy, low voter turnout and contempt for many politicians.
This is not to say that my Canadian Alliance colleagues and I are in any way opposed to a code of ethics. Quite the contrary, I believe that ethics and moral standards are at the very core of what we do, so much so that we must strive for and maintain the highest standards possible. The Liberal lowest common denominator is simply not acceptable to us.
If we truly want a code of ethics that applies to all current and future members of the House we must have an ethics commissioner who is chosen by all, not appointed by and answerable only to the Prime Minister himself. To do otherwise will do all Canadians a great disservice in this exercise.
I believe that we need to give active consideration to having a truly independent commissioner being approved not by just a simple House majority but by both government and opposition parties as well.
Unfortunately, when the final vote is scheduled for the bill the government majority will prevail here in this place and, in the end, the ethics commissioner will be nothing more than a political appointment of the Prime Minister and confirmed by the Liberal majority of the House.
The one way that this may be overcome, of course, is to make this a truly free vote. It would be most refreshing if we saw a truly free vote on the government benches, not the type of free vote that the Liberal government has shown time and time again, most recently in the vote on the traditional definition of marriage, which is so important to the country, when cabinet is whipped and pressure is exerted on backbenchers to violate their consciences and not stand up for the majority wishes of their constituents.
Once again I note that in my home province of British Columbia the ethics commissioner is chosen by an all party committee that makes a recommendation to the premier, who must then obtain a two-thirds confirming vote by the assembly in order to make the appointment. Alberta has a similar process.
Let us be clear: the bill is primarily a damage control exercise. When minister after minister was shown to be in conflict and either removed from his or her posting, and we see frequent changes on the government frontbench in this place, or shipped off to Denmark or shuffled off to be quiet on the backbenches, the Prime Minister simply was forced to act. The bill did not come out of the Liberal red book, although the Liberals made that promise back in 1993. It came from the anger of Canadians all across the country who are simply fed up with the way this government handles its ethical standards.
Like a good Liberal, the Prime Minister checked which way the wind was blowing and quickly came up with a poorly thought through plan. The result is the bill that we have before us today.
The ethics commissioner should be totally and completely politically neutral. I question whether under this bill that will ever be the case. For a government that has had a decade to draft and bring a bill forward for public debate, this is a poor, last minute approach to somehow substantiate the Prime Minister's legacy and leaves much to be desired.
If this is the best the Liberals can come up with in a decade of ministerial mishaps, then shame on them, and we really are concerned about the future of the country.
Petitions September 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on behalf of some constituents of mine in Nanaimo—Cowichan who are still very concerned about Bill C-250 in that it suppresses the freedoms of religion and free speech in our society. The petitioners are hopeful that the Senate will appreciate their point of view.
I therefore present this petition on their behalf.
Petitions September 17th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to present to the House a petition from 125 of my constituents, mostly from Duncan, British Columbia, who would of course be very upset with what happened in this House last night, because the government has not kept its promise to recognize the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. They ask that Parliament pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being the lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, which is simply common sense.
Supply June 12th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, I would agree that there has been a great deal of difficulty with the federal infrastructure program in terms of actually delivering the money to the provinces and then to the municipalities for the kinds of projects that municipalities really want.
I would certainly agree that when the NDP was the government in British Columbia there was a huge problem with this. I recall quite vividly that example that the parliamentary secretary used.
When I sat down with my local councils, one of their big concerns with the infrastructure program as it was being devolved from the federal government down to the provincial government to the municipal governments was that there was not any kind of agreement hammered out between the federal and provincial governments to streamline the actual requests so that municipalities got what they needed and did not get buses for Vancouver.
Supply June 12th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, again I want to follow up on what my hon. colleague from Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot said, and now the member who has just spoken, about the need to have a government that truly listens to all the interests across the country.
I want to suggest that the government has done more to divide the country across the nation in the last 10 years than it has to bring it together.
Why would we have in this Parliament such a regionally divided House of Commons if the government has the ability to sit down and strike deals and agreements with the regional interests of the country to actually keep it together? If the government wants to truly be seen as a conciliatory kind of government that unites the country from coast to coast, it has to work very hard at sitting down with the provinces, with the municipalities and with the regional interests of the country to truly make something like this work.
There is no reason why it could not work, but unfortunately the government has created such a culture of distrust across the country between the provinces and the federal government that it is almost impossible to do something like this.
We need a government that will truly bring the country together, not one that continues to divide it.