Pierre Poilievre

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 15th, 2005]

We trust parents.

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 15th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to discuss with the hon. member the very offensive remarks that were made by the minister earlier today when he compared the sacrifice of a parent who decides to stay at home with his or her children to the luxury of tasting ice cream.

For the 47% of parents who do make that choice and for the 90% of parents who wish they could make that choice, according to the Vanier Institute study, it is not a luxury like ice cream. It is an important decision that they are making to pass on to the next generation, a life, the care, the love of a family. It is not merely the frivolity of this luxury of ice cream.

I want the hon. member to comment on the fact that the Liberal program is not universal. It excludes 85% to 90% of children: those who have a parent who stays home, those who are cared for by a family member, those who are in community based care, or at synagogues, mosques and churches that offer care, and those who are in private care facilities. All of those children are excluded under this Liberal babysitting bureaucracy.

I wonder if the hon. member would comment on the overall mentality that permeates the entire Liberal proposal and is most exemplified by the minister's ice cream remarks earlier today. I wonder if the hon. member would comment on those offensive remarks.

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the very offensive remarks were made by the minister when he compared the decision of parents to keep one parent in the home with the children to the luxury of having ice cream.

The Vanier Institute said that 90% of parents would make that choice if they could; they believe it to be the ideal choice. In fact it is a larger number of women who prefer this choice than men. I think it is deeply offensive, and I wonder if the hon. member agrees, that the minister would compare that choice, which by the way 47% of parents make, to the luxury of having ice cream or losing a few centimetres off of one's waistline.

Not only were his remarks offensive, they were actually untrue. It is not a luxury that cannot be afforded and cannot occur. Forty per cent of parents do it and the other 53% who might like to do it cannot because the government structures a tax system that makes it unaffordable to do so.

Instead of trying to enable parents to make the choice they want to make, the government is putting in a new program that forces them into the choice that they do not want to make. Would the hon. member stand in the House and address the ill-founded logic and the offensive nature of the minister's remarks?

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised that the hon. member, before getting into the substance of his remarks, did not address the very offensive remarks made by the minister earlier today when he compared the decision of parents to keep one parent in the home to the luxury of having ice cream.

[Sponsorship Program, February 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this is the third such delay. The Treasury Board President was supposed to have these guidelines before the government operations committee a long time ago. Originally, the guidelines were meant to be completed by September 30. Then it was promised for Christmas. Now the dog has eaten the minister's homework for a third time.

What is taking the king of procrastination so long? Is he worried that these new rules might get in the way of the Liberal patronage bonanza?

[Tsunami Relief, February 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, early this month I had occasion to meet with about 55 Tamil Canadians in my home community of Barrhaven and committed to take their concerns to the highest democratic chamber in the land: this House. They told me they support traditional marriage, they want the government to give child care dollars directly to all parents, including stay at home dads and moms, and they demanded fiscal accountability.

That is why today I rise to alert the House to growing accusations that millions of tsunami relief dollars have been misspent in Sri Lanka. The country's top aid distributor said government corruption has blocked aid from almost 70% of victims. Three officials have already been fired for mishandling money.

Canada should demand accountability. With nearly a million Sinhalese and Tamil victims, it is not enough to sign a cheque and walk away. I am proud to stand with Barrhaven's Tamil community in demanding accountability and justice for all tsunami victims.

[Question No. 57, February 2nd, 2005]

With regard to the potential move of National Defence Headquarters: ( a ) has the government completed a business plan for the purchase or lease of the JDS Uniphase campus in South Nepean; ( b ) if so, for which departments; and ( c ) what are the specifics of this plan?

[Transportation Safety Board, February 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Jim Walsh lost his cabinet post in Newfoundland after taking a paper bag of $4,500 from a company seeking a $2 million government contract. Now he has shattered ethics codes on partisanship when he attended a Liberal fundraising bash.

What is Walsh's punishment? He gets to keep his six-figure salary on the Transportation Safety Board. Why is the Prime Minister continuing to protect him? Is it because of who he knows in the PMO?

[Finance, February 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct in pointing out that the majority of parents who actually use the Quebec system are in the upper income level. Oftentimes it is upper income professionals with two incomes per family who use the day care system. We are taking money from working class families in Quebec. We are taking dollars out of the pockets of the assembly line workers to subsidize the CEO's child-raising at the government level. That is essentially what we are seeing.

I want to go back to the very simple principle here. This is about choice. When a government imposes a babysitting bureaucracy and forces everyone to pay for it, regardless of whether they use it, it is taking away a choice from the family. That is why I propose that we take the dollars the government is setting aside for this babysitting bureaucracy and give it directly to parents, allowing them to choose.

There is one more thing. If the government really believed in equal rights, as it claims to with this discussion over marriage, why does it continually discriminate against those families who make the choice to keep one parent in the home? Why are they in a higher tax bracket? A $60,000 a year family with two incomes pays a much lower tax rate than a family with one income. That is discrimination. It violates the very pretense of equality that the government is pinning its hopes on same sex marriage upon, and that is just plain wrong.

[Finance, February 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss this dinosaur analogy. This comes from a party that would force middle class families, whether they support the program or not, to pay higher taxes and face new strains on their own financial capacity to pay for a new government bureaucracy.

She would take away a woman's right to choose how to raise her own children by forcing her to pay higher taxes into a government run bureaucracy. I propose to give the family the right to choose. Perhaps there are some families that want to use day care alternatives. I do not have any problem with that. That is why the government should give the dollars directly to those parents and let them decide how to spend them properly.

Instead, the member across the way would coercively take those dollars in the form of taxation and force an option on that family. She calls us dinosaurs. That is one of the most retrograde ideas I have heard since arriving on the Hill.