Lost his last election, in 2004, with 36% of the vote.
Leadership Campaigns May 1st, 2002
Mr. Speaker, it is ridiculous to expect the public to believe that Mr. Thiara used $5,200 worth of airline tickets to Winnipeg and back without filing any expenses.
How does the Minister of Industry explain the contradiction? If his assistant went to Winnipeg on government business, why was there no expense account? If the assistant went to Winnipeg to work on his leadership campaign, why the expenditure on the air tickets? How does he explain this use of taxpayer money?
Immigration April 30th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, even a Liberal must be able to recognize when someone is being honest and truthful to refugee claimants. The fact is that refugee claimants who come here from the United States are jumping the queue and there are genuine refugee claimants in UN camps throughout the world.
The minister has not answered the question. Why is the government allowing the system to be clogged with bogus refugee claimants from the United States?
Immigration April 30th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the government knows that there are more than six million genuine refugees in UN refugee camps around the world, yet it allows our refugee processing system to get clogged with bogus claimants from the United States.
Why is the government ignoring the pleas and desires of genuine refugees in order to facilitate bogus claimants from the U.S. who can afford high-priced consultants?
Question No. 125— April 30th, 2002
With respect to the seizure of registered retirement savings plans, RRSP, by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency as part of collections activity, could the government itemize, by province, for the years 1990-91 through 2000-01: ( a ) the number of RRSPs seized; ( b ) the dollar value of the RRSPs seized; ( c ) the amounts of additional taxes resulting from the collapse of RRSPs in excess of the amount required to satisfy collections requirements, and ( d ) the date when the first seizure of an RRSP for collections purposes took place?
Government Expenditures April 24th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, over the past seven years the Liberal government's technology partnerships program has doled out $947 million to the who's who of corporate welfare bums across Canada.
That is almost a billion dollars of hard earned taxpayers' money. Despite the assurances of successive ministers of industry less than $25 million, that is less than 3%, of those so-called loans have ever been paid back.
Why has Bombardier, an enormous multi-billion dollar company, not repaid the $87 million it received? Why has Ballard Power Systems not repaid the $30 million it received? Why has CAE Electronics not repaid the $32 million it received? And why were so many of these handouts given just before the 1997 election? Too many unanswered questions and not enough answers from dozens of corporate welfare bums for the handouts of public money.
It is time to stop these handouts and return the money to taxpayers in the form of tax reductions and smaller government.
Question No. 114— April 19th, 2002
With respect to the government's National Strategy on Community Safety and Crime Prevention: ( a ) what measurement systems have been used in the past, and are presently in place, to determine whether any of the 1,900 crime prevention projects funded since 1998 have produced the intended results, and whether certain types of programs are more effective than others; and ( b ) can the government identify the programs which have resulted in measurably different reductions in crime and improvements in community safety when compared with areas which have not used those programs?
An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act April 11th, 2002
Madam Speaker, anybody watching the debates today on television or perhaps reading Hansard in the future might well ask why people were talking about toothpaste selection for criminals and sniffer dogs and so on. They may ask what on earth that had to do with the animal cruelty bill that is before us today. They could be forgiven for asking that question. I think it is a reasonable question.
Why is that happening? Why is it that not a single Liberal has been up today to defend the bill? Maybe there was earlier in the day, but certainly not in the last few hours. Not a single member of the government is willing to defend the bill at this point in time. Why is that? Why is it that out of approximately 170 Liberal members of parliament not one is getting up to defend the bill right now?
Yet on this side of the House almost every Canadian Alliance MP is getting up to speak against the bill. They are being very repetitive. They are talking about twinning highways and sniffer dogs and things like that. It is a reasonable question, why is that happening?
The root cause of this is frankly the lack of democracy in this place. If people out there do not already know, it is because they are not really debates that we have in this place. They are statements that are put on the record.
Even if we convince every Liberal member that what we are saying about the bill is correct, they will be told to vote for it when we vote on it in a few days time. Even the ones who are desperately against it, who have had tons of input from their own constituents that they should vote against it, will still vote for it. It is because this place for the most part is controlled not by the debates that we have here, not by logic and reasonable discussion, but by decisions that are made elsewhere. The decisions are made by unelected people, by a few people in the Prime Minister's Office, by bureaucrats who often make incorrect decisions.
It defies logic to believe that on the government side of the House Liberal MPs are not receiving the same sort of input that we are. That there is not a single Liberal MP who has not had a letter, a phone call, an e-mail or a fax from a constituent pointing out the problems with this bill defies logic.
I have certainly had letters from the other side urging me to pass it as soon as possible. To those people I have sent letters explaining why we are trying to hold it up. It is because there are legitimate concerns about the way the bill will apply to normal farming practices, to research practices and unfairly to people who may unwittingly cause harm to an animal. These are legitimate concerns and they should be answered by the government.
When people elect their MPs and they send them here, they are hoping to see change. They are hoping that we will come here and be able to effect meaningful change. They hope that when they give us input on their concerns that somehow we will have debates and that we will convince the other side that we are correct and changes to the bill should be made.
Admittedly, sometimes there is incremental change. Sometimes we do cause the government to move slightly. Sometimes pressure groups do the same thing. But the system here remains a long way from being truly democratic. As the saying goes, there are two things people should never see made and they are hot dogs and legislation.
Students of federal politics can certainly attest to the fact that although we are supposed to have a democracy based on the Westminster model, in fact we have quite a distinctly different system here in Canada. It more closely resembles a medieval fiefdom than a democracy. Let us look behind the scenes and see what sort of situation leads to the situation we find ourselves in today.
Our Prime Minister enjoys more power than virtually any leader of any other western democracy. Look at the president of the United States. He can have his initiatives vetoed. It is impossible in this place for anybody, including the Liberals on that side, including the minister of fisheries who is standing there. If he does not like something the Prime Minister is trying to do, he has no power to prevent it from happening.
There is something wrong with that scene. It is not the way to get good legislation. It is no wonder that many of the bills that get passed in this place turn out to be disastrous.
I can remember a classic example a few years ago when we were making changes to the railways act. No one, not a single one of us in this entire House noticed that we were voting away our own railway passes. No one in this place had bothered to read what we were discussing. It was not for a month or two later that people discovered that we had voted away our own railway travel passes and the government had to rush through an amendment.
I guess we are all to blame for not reading the legislation properly. I would advance the possibility that it is not unreasonable that the opposition members, other than the critic, would not always read every piece of legislation. However there is no excuse for the government to be putting forward pieces of legislation when it does not even know what the impact is going to be. Not one of the bureaucrats, not a single member on the government side noticed that they were voting away their own railway passes.
In a much more complex piece of legislation such as the one we are discussing today, what is it that has been missed? What is it that the Liberals are ignoring? What is it that they refuse to acknowledge is wrong in this bill? There are things wrong in this bill. We can give many examples.
There is the badly formulated employment equity bill. Look at the distortions that are out there in the marketplace now. One of my constituents phoned me to complain that the public service would no longer employ her because she was not part of a visible minority. I phoned the office where she had made a job application and that was confirmed. What sort of place are we running when we pass legislation that does that to our citizens?
There is the gun registry that my colleague mentioned. What a disaster. When that legislation was coming through the House, we warned the government that it would cost 10 times more than what it had predicted. It promised a cost of $80 million. It is almost up to $1 billion now and still the commissioner of police cannot identify a single crime that has been solved or prevented by that registry. What a waste of money.
If only we could have real debates in this place with real votes at the end that were meaningful and counted.
Sadly, even our private members' business has become more partisan as time has gone by. We had an initiative a few years ago where we changed the voting process for private members' bills so that we started the voting from the back rows, presumably so that the front row would have less influence on the voting. It has not made any difference because those in the front row I guess still send their message around and make sure that they get their way.
To the average person, the behaviour and the performance that goes on in this place must seem bizarre but there is a simple reason for it. Most of us, I guess we could say almost work in a culture of fear. If we do not behave ourselves, if we do not adhere to the will of the whip, then we miss out on all the rewards. There are no travel junkets. We do not get to sit on our favourite committee. We will not get the things that we want out of this. Yet all the while the interests of the Canadian people fall into the background because of the structured nature of this place.
Even my opportunity to get up and speak today was programmed. Most of the day I knew almost exactly within 10 minutes when I would stand in this place to speak. During question period, everyone knows who is going to be next up. It is not really a question period where there is freedom for a member with an issue to jump up and catch the attention of the Speaker in the tradition that it was meant to be. We sit in our assigned places. We take our assigned times for the speeches. We lobby to get our assigned time for question period. We lobby to get our assigned Standing Order 31 one minute statement.
This is not democracy. This is not the way we should be passing legislation in this place.
We should be having meaningful debates, not trying to hold up a bill today, as we are, just by talking about anything like I am talking about democracy in this place rather than the content of the bill because there is no alternative. There is no way to convince the government that it is a bad bill. I had no option but to fill up 10 minutes so that we can delay it for another 10 minutes, so that the next colleague in my caucus can delay it for 10 minutes as he is going to do, so that we can go into tomorrow and start it all over again.
What a sad commentary on the way we run this place. Is this really the way a government should function?
An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act April 11th, 2002
Madam Speaker, the speech just given by my colleague reminds me of a previous minister of the Liberal government, Francis Fox, who many years ago banned satellite dishes. We know how effective that was during a time of civil disobedience. People as a whole knew it was a ridiculous thing to do. When Mr. Fox saw satellite dishes in the cities he tried to prosecute a few people but our rural colleagues prevented that law from ever being successful.
That case reminds me of what we are dealing with today. We have all these do-gooders and one of the things they have achieved in some places is to get rid of cosmetic pesticides and herbicides. Our playing fields are now full of dandelions and weeds and mosquitoes are everywhere. Through their naiveté, they have managed to get these left wing councils to ban the cosmetic products that used to keep these places nice to visit.
However, by banning these cosmetic products, they have created a sudden growth in the number of pests, weeds and herbs which are now spreading to people's gardens and probably out into the countryside. These do-gooders are actually indirectly threatening our food supply through their ridiculous approach in the cities.
As someone who represents a city riding, the letters I receive on this bill urge me to pass it quickly because they are oriented toward cruelty to pets. We do not want little Moggie to be attacked by somebody, hung up by his hind quarters or whatever.
Would my colleague perhaps explain to city dwellers why it is important that this bill not go through in relation to the disadvantages or benefits for city dwellers?
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act February 22nd, 2002
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-431, an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (refugee claimants or immigration applicants convicted of an offence on indictment).
Mr. Speaker, if the Liberal government had been smart enough to pass this bill when I introduced it in the previous parliament, we would not be facing some of the criminal refugee problems that we are facing today.
What the bill will do when it gets passed this time, hopefully, is it will give the crown the ability to deport in lieu of sentence for indictable crimes where they are committed by refugee claimants and the refugee claimant then has no claim to bail or to parole and can be deported from the country immediately. It is a good measure.
I know the government argues, although I do not know where it gets this from, that Canadians want people to serve their time in Canada, that is not true. The polls show people want these criminals out of the country.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Species at Risk Act February 21st, 2002
Mr. Speaker, yesterday when we finished up the opposition was lambasting the government because of its failure to bring forward a useful species at risk bill, its failure to recognize private property rights and its failure to give some sort of standard by which a landowner could judge the value of the property that would be confiscated by the Liberal government in its vain attempt to protect species at risk.
As many of us pointed out, the experience in the United States is that failure to compensate landowners who have their land confiscated simply results in a kill and bury policy whereby people who find these endangered species simply kill them and bury them because of the risks involved.
I do have an apology to make to the Liberals, though. Yesterday I was lambasting them for their $115 million waste of money on the Trudeau humanities research foundation. I have discovered that it is $125 million they are wasting.
This is a complete waste of money on a humanities research council if it does the same thing as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, for which I can give some examples: $2,267,350 of hard earned taxpayer dollars spent on the history of the book in Canada; $100,000 for the first intermediate period settlement and burial patterns at Mendes; $62,000 for an investigation of the motivations underlying undergraduates' alcohol consumption behaviour; $50,900 for cabarets, nightclubs and burlesque in Vancouver; and $35,200 for figure skating and representation of gender and sexuality in sport. What a waste of money, and they are going to blow $125 million more. This is another example of their lack of thought and their inconsideration for the taxpayers of Canada.
Bill C-5 is just another example of this. We should be voting it down.