Rob Nicholson

[Committees of the House, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise to anyone who has followed the history of the Liberal Party to see Liberals on both sides of an issue. We have been treated to the spectacle in the last couple of months of supporters of the former prime minister in the Liberal Party who have made accusations against supporters of the present Prime Minister. There are members of the federal Liberal Party who have picked a fight and have made accusations against the provincial Liberals.

I am absolutely fascinated by the parliamentary secretary's speech. He is now attacking members of his own party. For Heaven's sake, the member for Brome—Missisquoi is a member of the Liberal Party. He had his own cheering section about an hour ago on this.

This is a Liberal motion brought in by a Liberal member and seconded by a Liberal member. Now the parliamentary secretary is saying that the Liberals down at that part of the chamber are against it and the Liberals at the other end are for it. It is one thing to pick a fight with the McGuinty Liberals or to say what one wants about the Chrétien Liberals, but this is within the House of Commons itself. Which half of the Liberal Party are we supposed to be listening to and accepting?

[Committees of the House, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, that is a fascinating and interesting comment from the member. He said that these are “scattered little operations” with “no impact”. I reject that categorically. I hope he is not referring to the detachment in the region of Niagara. I am surprised that he would be referring to those detachments as “scattered little operations” with “no impact”. That is an insult to all the hard-working RCMP members. This is exactly what we are talking about: this lack of concern and a lack of appreciation for what they are doing. As for the idea that they could have had even more money for security but for the Conservatives and the opposition, as he said, it is absolutely ridiculous.

When is this government going to get out of the habit of blaming everyone else for its problems? The other day the Minister of National Revenue blamed the premier of Ontario for contributing to separatism; not Liberal corruption in Quebec but the premier of Ontario is to blame. For heaven's sake, he is in the member's political party. Okay, I appreciate that all the mess and the Gomery commission were made by members of the Liberal Party, but now they are going to tie in the premier of Ontario? They should get it straight, take responsibility for these things and quit insulting members of the RCMP.

[Committees of the House, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to try. You are quite correct, the hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi did raise this question of coalitions and marriages,

The only point I made was that the NDP members actually opposed the Liberals until the corruption really got bad in the press. When it all became public and the worse it got, the more they started liking the Liberals. Go figure that one out. In any case, I cannot figure it out. When somebody was asking me about the budget, I said that I would call the leader of the NDP's office this afternoon. I might as well have a few copies of it.

Talking about parliamentary procedure, I think the leader of the NDP should have read the budget into the House record. I do not agree with bringing in a federal budget outside the House of Commons. That is not where it should be done. But again, it is a question of priorities. I urge, even at this point, this Liberal-NDP coalition to start putting money into security. That is what this country needs right now.

[Committees of the House, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raised a number of points. He thanked me and said he was pleased about some of the things I said. I suggest that he should be happy about everything I said. Everything was correct and everything was according to the truth.

He made a couple of interesting points. I do not know if I quite got it. He talked about some sort of a marriage with the Bloc. I assume he is talking about the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport. Is that what he is talking about? I remember the Minister of Transport being one of the founders of the Bloc Québécois and now he sits beside the Prime Minister. I was talking about, in the general context, the marriage of the NDP and the Liberals, but if he wants to talk about that marriage, then he is certainly welcome to do that because I see it every day from where I sit in the House of Commons. I think he said something about the next election, that the separatists are in a hurry to have the next election.

The choice is not, in Quebec, between separatism and corruption of the Liberal Party. There is another alternative and, of course, that is the Conservative Party of Canada. He should tell those people in his constituency that if they believe in federalism say, yes, the Liberal Party has screwed up, yes, it is corrupt, but that there is another alternative, a clean alternative that supports federalism in this country, and that is the Conservative Party. He should say that it is not just a question between separatism and corruption, there is another federalist option. I have every confidence that we will be moving in that direction.

He now says it is not a question of money. Good heavens, does he mean the government has the money but does not want to commit to national security? At least I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I said maybe the government is just not giving enough cash and it has overlooked that there is not enough money. Now he says it is not about money. I hate to think that, I really do. It is very wrong. Again, and I have said this a number of times, it is a question of misplaced priorities. Security for this country has to be one of the number one concerns of this country. That is what a Conservative government would do.

[Committees of the House, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, ostensibly this is about the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. The report recommends to the government that the RCMP keep open nine detachments in the province of Quebec. These closings were an issue in hearings before that committee. The report urges the government, presumably, to provide the resources to the RCMP to allow those detachments to remain open.

It is interesting. If we check it out, the sixth report is a reminder to the government that it has done nothing about the fourth report. Members can draw their own conclusions about how serious the government is. It is curious that a government member has brought forward, in the matter of two separate reports, this concurrence motion.

Unless anyone is confused as to why this is taking place, the reason is very simple. The member for Brome—Missisquoi said that he wanted a democratic debate. He only recently has come to this conversion that this is an important item. I can tell members what is really going on here. The Liberals are trying to stall the concurrence motion of the member for Prince George—Peace River, which is a non-confidence motion in the government. According to the rules, we can only have one concurrence motion a day. By moving these concurrence motions each day and by talking more about these things, the longer it will be before they get to the motion of non-confidence in the government. Despite efforts by the government to forestall this and its new partner in marriage, the NDP, the day will come when this chamber will get to decide on these things. It is all about that.

With respect to the report, I am pleased to talk a bit about the whole question of government resources, specifically as it relates to the RCMP. It is a question of money, resources and commitment by the government and its partner in marriage as to what and how government money should be spent.

I believe it should be spent on things like the RCMP. This is a worthwhile expenditure. I want to see not less effort directed by Parliament but more effort directed toward the RCMP and other security agencies in the country. I would be very upset if there were any plan by the government to close the RCMP detachment in my riding, the region of Niagara. I have said for some time and I have urged the Deputy Prime Minister to spend more time and effort in the area of security, not less. There should be quite a bit more. I would be among those who are concerned with this.

I can understand when hon. members say that it is going in the opposite direction. That is not where the world is going. The world has become a much more dangerous place and we need security more than we needed 10 years ago. It seems to me this is a step in the wrong direction.

I have made the suggestion to the Deputy Prime Minister and I urge her to have a look at the whole question of security. In my case and across the country, it is a question of our borders. We are not doing enough. If we sit down with employees at the borders or if we sit down with police forces across the country, they will tell us the same thing. They would like to see a higher level of commitment at the national level. However, that is not happening and this report draws attention to that.

What makes me feel very bad about this is we still do not see any remedy to this coming from the government or its partner in marriage, the NDP. Indeed, a member of the press asked me this morning about the NDP budget and I said that I had not seen it. In fact, we have had very few details of the whole marriage between the NDP and the Liberals. I suppose we can leave it to our imagination as to what took place between the two of them.

One of my colleagues said that the marriage would have been conducted according to Bill C-38. I guess that goes without saying. I was not there. I have not heard the reports. I suppose Bob Rae was there to give away the bride to make it complete. I have no doubt that there would have been lots of toasts, besides the obligatory toasts to Socialist International. I suppose every toast was about more spending. All the toasts would have been about more spending.

However, in all that spending was there any money or any talk of more money for security or the RCMP? I would bet there was not. My bet is that in all those toasts there would not be any money.

I have no doubt that all the toasts would have been using foreign wine. I know those two parties do not care about the Canadian wine industry. In all the billions of dollars that the government has spent I have not seen one mention that it will go ahead and remove the excise tax for the Canadian wine industry. That would not be a huge amount in terms of the money that gets blown. There would be no mention of that.

I imagine that at the marriage of the two parties all foreign wine would have been used. Obviously they do not care about Canadian wine, as they do not care about a lot of issues. The question of security is just another example.

This is disappointing to me. It seems to me that when the government and its partners do not concentrate on security for this country or worry about where the money is being spent, then if the money is being blown, wasted or disappears into the black hole of corruption, there is no money for the important things in this country such as security.

I ask the two partners in this alliance to wake up to some of these things and re-evaluate where they are going. They must call to account the kind of corruption that takes place and recognize that billions of dollars were wasted or blown by this government.

The government wasted $2 billion on the firearms registry alone. When the government and the NDP got together, did anyone say that the gun registry would be a great way to save money? Did they recognize that they had lost money? Imagine what $2 billion could have done for the RCMP detachments across this country. They could have surely used that money. That $2 billion would be a tremendous help in my riding of Niagara Falls for security issues. That money is never spent on security.

Mr. Ouellet had $2 million worth of entertainment expenses with no receipts. What is $2 million? That could have helped security issues. That would be a better expenditure of the $2 million.

Day after day in the House of Commons, do we see these issues raised? Certainly not by the NDP. Members can check Hansard and they would see that day after day in question period the NDP was not raising issues such as spending money on national security. Did the NDP raise questions about corruption? No. The NDP talked about the United States and it talked about George Bush. That is right, it was not the province of Ontario. The NDP was not talking about problems with cities. It was not talking about issues that I think concern a lot of Canadians as to where and how their money was being spent. The NDP was not talking about corruption. It was talking about the United States.

For a long time I said that I could not figure out where the NDP members were coming from. Even among their own priorities, even if it is not national security, within their own priorities, would they not be better off taking the government to account for this corruption, for the things that they would want to spend money on, even if it is not those recommended in the fourth report?

Then I finally figured it out. The reason why the NDP members were not as upset as those of us in the Conservative Party and Canadians were about that kind of corruption is because if they attack that they were indirectly attacking big government. That is the whole thing. The problem with the Liberal Party is that, as a government, it is involved with everything and every aspect of our lives. It is fixing it, pulling it, subsidizing it, providing kickbacks, commissions, payoffs, phoney contracts, and phony invoices.

That is what it was all about. However, that is just a byproduct of big government. There could be some problems with big government, but I really think that is the reason. I think that is the reason why they never twigged on to it. What is fascinating about their latest marriage is that they voted against the first budget and then when the news about corruption got really bad, that is when they joined. They said, “We had better get together with you guys. This is really looking bad now. We had no idea of this level of corruption”.

Instead of worrying about some of the important issues like border security, the RCMP and some of the other issues, they have signed on with each other in an orgy of spending. It is hundreds of millions of dollars every single day and it will never end of course until we end this coalition. That day will come.

I can tell the member for Brome—Missisquoi that if he is worried about questions like security, a Conservative government will make this a priority. Finally, Canadians will get a government for which this will be a priority, not paying off its friends. This is not going to be a priority for this government. That will come to an end with a Conservative government. We will not be relying, as takes place now, on the local police forces having to pick up the slack, having to pick up the gap between what the Government of Canada thinks is enough for the security of the country and what the country really needs. That day will come to an end when we have a new government in the country and I think it is coming soon.

It is interesting that a government member now is bringing forward this motion. Who knows, we may see the sixth report which is a reminder that the fourth report has not been concurred in.

I urge the hon. member to go home, make sure he lets all his constituents know that the government is not spending money where it is supposed to be spending. It is spending money on the wrong things, as is evidenced by the sworn testimony before the Gomery commission, the sworn testimony that we hear at the public accounts committee, and all the other information outside of these reports that are coming to light. He should tell his constituents that instead of spending money on the right things, he is now part of a group joined by the socialists to spend money and to allow this corruption to continue.

It is a very sad thing, but we will deal with it. I think that day is coming and it is coming very soon when Canadians are going to get their opportunity to pass judgment on the way the government has wasted money.

[Committees of the House, May 2nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Conservative Party will vote in support of this important motion.

[Committees of the House, April 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I can say a couple of things. One of the things I want to say to the member is that despite all the noise we have heard this afternoon in the House of Commons, I would ask the hon. member this: where is last year's budget? The Liberals are still not through the last budget, never mind the new one for 2005.

That is how ridiculous it is. I would like to submit that as exhibit A that they are not serious about what they are telling the Canadian public. They do not even have last year's budget passed. Who are they going to blame for that? Why do they not call their friends down in the other place? They could ask them to step on it and get it passed, but they have not done that. I think that sums up the whole sorry mess that we are looking at across the aisle.

[Committees of the House, April 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell him and all mayors and provinces that they will not get the empty rhetoric they have been hearing from this government for the last 11 years, because that will be the very first change to take place with a new Conservative government. When we put something on the table, they will know they can count on it. They will not be waiting for years checking their mail every day to see whether anything arrives. That is what has been most unfair about this government.

I know the members of the Liberal Party. Their strategists are somewhere saying, “Let's cook this up one more time. Let's trot it out for another election campaign”. But it did not sell very well last year and I do not think it is going to sell in the next election.

[Committees of the House, April 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I guess I would ask those mayors what they would rather have. Would they rather have a plan by a new government, a Conservative government, where they might actually see some improvement in their financial situation or would they prefer another decade of promises from the Liberals?

I have a feeling that I know the answer. The hon. Minister of Finance talks about the minister of finance from Ontario. I can tell the minister what Mr. McGuinty, the premier of Ontario, says. He says Ontario has not been getting a fair deal from this government. He says this government is out of touch and, in particular, the Prime Minister is “out of touch” with the electorate of Ontario. That is not a Conservative talking. That is not a New Democratic. That is not somebody else; that is a member of his own party.

That is the problem the Liberals have. The Liberal premier of Ontario is unhappy with what this Liberal government has done.

Why does the minister not take Mr. McGuinty up on his offer to meet and talk about this? This province of Ontario is a great province. I am very proud to be one of Ontario's members here and it concerns me when I see the comments of the premier of Ontario in which he says how out of touch this Prime Minister is. Members can check it out. It was right there on the front page of the Toronto Star . I am not the one making it up. The Toronto Star has taken these comments by the premier of Ontario and I find it very unfortunate.

I would say to the Minister of Finance to get on the phone, sit down with the premier of Ontario, see what he has to say and see if it can be worked out.

[Committees of the House, April 22nd, 2005]

Does it go back to 1988? I stand corrected. The Liberals started promising more money in 1988 and thank goodness they did not form the government that year. However it was certainly part of their platform in 1993 and again in 1997, 2000 and 2004. Has anybody ever seen a dime?

The only expense has been setting up the press conferences and putting out the coffee and cookies for these announcements. The only thing we get are announcements on day care and other things.

The Liberals say that they are moving ahead on these things and then we wait and wait. They get buried somewhere and become part of the Liberal platform for the next election. They will have their hands full because they have a lot of explaining to do.

One of the things I want to hear them explain, which I did not hear earlier when I raised this matter, is the whole question of organization in the Liberal Party with respect to the elections in the province of Quebec. This is one of the most disgraceful things that has come to light in our democracy in a long time.

Hon. members complain and say that they want to wait for Mr. Justice Gomery's report. I want to tell the House that it is not members of the Conservative Party or the New Democratic Party making these accusations. What is fascinating about this is that it is the Liberals own organizers who are making the allegations on all of these things.

One of the things that has become very clear in all of this is the corruption that exists within the Liberal Party and specifically how it conducted the election campaign in the province of Quebec.

I want to say what is very disappointing about this. I have been involved in public life in this country for many years. People have said to me that it was too bad my party did not do better in Quebec. They would ask me why we did not elect some candidates in Quebec because it would help our party. I agreed with them.

However, after hearing the testimony that came out this past week, I have to ask what chance honest candidates in the Conservative Party have in running when the fix is in. We would be running against a corrupt political machine. The Liberals can bleat, they can blare, they can cough and they can yell but they cannot get away from it. The Liberals have put together a corrupt political machine and that is a disgrace.

The Prime Minister says that he wants the election in eight months. The Bloc Québécois and the NDP have already voted for an election. It has only been the Conservative Party that has not made a move on this. The Liberals want the election in the middle of winter in the middle of a snow storm. They would like to have it on another planet, no doubt about that. Somewhere else, some other time, is what the Liberals want. They have already told Canadians that they want the election. Members of the New Democratic Party and the Bloc have already voted against the government. They have made it plain that they want an election.

However when the election does come we will be very vigilant. The same tricks, the corruption, the misused money, the cash under the table, the cash on top of the table, those kinds of things will not work again. Our honest candidates from coast to coast will be carrying the message that this country is greater than the Liberal Party and all of its corruption. We will prevail I am quite sure of that.

I want to emphasize that this is sworn testimony, not just members of the opposition coming up with this. It is their own members, their own organizers, their own activists who have taken an oath. This is all in public. They can laugh but Canadians will have the last laugh on those people, and it may come sooner as opposed to later.