House of Commons Hansard #10 of the 36th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was farmers.
Herb Gray LiberalDeputy Prime Minister
Mr. Speaker, I invite the hon. member to look at the article in the National Post which led to all this discussion. If he looked at the extracts quoted there from the transcripts in question, he might have a different conclusion than the one the hon. member alleges in an unwarranted way.
Peter MacKay Progressive Conservative Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS
Mr. Speaker, if we wanted the Gray line, we would take the bus. The preprogrammed responses of the solicitor general and the Deputy Prime Minister are getting tired.
With the mounting evidence that points to direct political interference from the Prime Minister's Office and growing inconsistencies between him and the RCMP, will the Prime Minister himself request to testify at the APEC inquiry, or is he prepared to further undermine the confidence and credibility of our national police force to hide his own involvement?
Herb Gray LiberalDeputy Prime Minister
Mr. Speaker, it is a matter for the commissioner to decide how the commission hearings are to be run. Let us let the commissioner make these decisions.
Speaking of a bus, it is obvious that the wheels have come off the Conservative bus. If that was not the case, they would not be asking these questions that have no relationship to the lives of Canadians. The Conservatives, like the other opposition parties, must feel we are doing a wonderful job when it comes to the economy, when it comes to interest rates, when it comes to lowering taxes. Otherwise they would ask questions about these matters.
Chuck Strahl Reform Fraser Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister claims he did not directly contact the RCMP. Yet his chief of staff and his chief of operations both visited on site to talk with the RCMP about security arrangements. In fact, the Prime Minister was scheduled to go along with them to discuss those security arrangements and only cancelled that meeting at the last moment.
Throughout his career the Prime Minister has told Canadians that the buck stops with him. Now that it has been proven that his senior staff were directly involved with security arrangements at APEC, would he have us believe that they were doing this all on their own, or is he just trying to pass that buck?
Herb Gray LiberalDeputy Prime Minister
Mr. Speaker, the senior members of the Prime Minister's staff in question have testified before the commission. They have answered questions fully and freely.
I suggest the hon. member refer to what they had to say. I think if he looks at those answers in a dispassionate and open-minded way he will be satisfied with the answers.
Chuck Strahl Reform Fraser Valley, BC
Mr. Speaker, looking at the facts fairly, it looks very damning for the Prime Minister.
We have land that was leased by the federal government for what it calls security purposes. We have Jean Carle, the chief of operations, who toured the site. We have the chief of staff who toured the site at the request of the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister was scheduled to go with him.
How can the Prime Minister say that he was not intricately involved in the security arrangements at the APEC site when all of those facts point directly to the Prime Minister's Office and directly to his involvement?
Herb Gray LiberalDeputy Prime Minister
Mr. Speaker, the staffers from the Prime Minister's Office in question have testified at length before the commission.
I suggest to my hon. friend that he review their evidence and I think he will have the answers he is seeking.
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Verchères, QC
Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Canadian Heritage told us that MUC police would meet with the RCMP, officials from her department and officials from the Department of National Revenue in order to discuss the issue of television production and of subsidies given out to companies that used other people's names.
My question is for the Minister of Canadian Heritage. How does the minister explain the fact that the meeting scheduled for last Thursday with her officials and representatives of National Revenue did not take place as she had announced it would?
Sheila Copps LiberalMinister of Canadian Heritage
Mr. Speaker, for seven days now, the member has been making wide-ranging and unfounded allegations, but he does not have the courage to repeat these allegations outside the House.
That having been said, I again urge the member to contact the authorities directly, because he is well aware that an RCMP investigation is already under way.
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Verchères, QC
Mr. Speaker, it is amazing. There was an investigation in 1997 and the minister has done absolutely nothing about it since then.
Since there is a police investigation into federal production subsidies, should there not also be an investigation by the auditor general into the administrative procedures in use at Telefilm Canada in order to cover all aspects of this matter?
Sheila Copps LiberalMinister of Canadian Heritage
Mr. Speaker, I would urge the member, who is still making allegations, to listen to his leader, Lucien Bouchard, who had the following to say in Los Angeles two days ago “I do not wish to comment on all that. Unless the facts show otherwise, I do not think that CINAR is being specifically targeted”.
If he will not listen to me, please listen to Lucien Bouchard.
Audiovisual ProductionsOral Question Period
The Speaker
I remind members that they must always address their remarks through the Chair.
The hon. member for Skeena.
Mike Scott Reform Skeena, BC
Mr. Speaker, the taint of closure is already attached to the Nisga'a treaty because of the way the provincial NDP administration in Victoria rammed it through that legislature.
We were scheduled for two days of debate on the Nisga'a treaty in the House this week but we now find that we will only get one day, and that is tomorrow.
Is it the government's intention to invoke time allocation before we have even had one minute of debate in the House on the Nisga'a treaty?
Don Boudria LiberalLeader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, the question of the time allocated for debates is negotiated among House leaders. There is a question put in the House on Thursday afternoon with respect to the agenda for the following week.
I would invite the member opposite to consult with his House leader. If they are not on good terms I will gladly act as an intermediary to ensure that they can speak to each other.
Mike Scott Reform Skeena, BC
Mr. Speaker, that was a perfect non-answer, so I will try it with the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Today is the deadline. Today is the day that the Musqueam leaseholders are told to pay up their $70,000 to $80,000 leases or get evicted from their houses.
There is still time to reverse that decision. Does the minister intend to evict those people or will he revisit that decision, reconsider and tell those people that they will not lose their homes?
Bob Nault LiberalMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Mr. Speaker, I do not know of any deadline today, so I do not know what the member is talking about.
Hélène Alarie Bloc Louis-Hébert, QC
Mr. Speaker, in a letter sent recently to the Minister of Health, 200 federal experts on food quality and safety argued that significant gaps existed in research on transgenic food.
My question is for the Minister of Agriculture. Is the fact that 200 experts are telling the Minister we lack the means to assess the quality of the food we eat every day not enough reason for the government to act as soon as possible to resolve the problem?
Lyle Vanclief LiberalMinister of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Mr. Speaker, I explained to the hon. member in this place last Friday how the food inspection system works in Canada. The ministry of health sets the standards and the guidelines, the Canadian food inspection system monitors and enforces them and the ministry of health audits and monitors the work of the Canadian food inspection system. There are checks and balances between the ministries to ensure that the food provided to Canadians is safe.
Hélène Alarie Bloc Louis-Hébert, QC
Mr. Speaker, is the minister prepared to review his policy on assessing GMOs, genetically modified organisms, in response to the concerns of scientists and the public at large?
Allan Rock LiberalMinister of Health
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ensure the hon. member that all genetically altered foods are submitted to the Department of Health, and that a team of experts evaluates the situation with each product in order to determine if safety standards have been met.
Randy White Reform Langley—Abbotsford, BC
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was asked whether the Marshall decision regarding the native right to fish also affected natural resource areas. This was his response: “In my mind I think it does”.
He has magnified the fallout of the Marshall decision. Does the minister believe that the Marshall decision applies to Sable Island natural gas as well?
Bob Nault LiberalMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Mr. Speaker, I am working very closely with my provincial colleagues to get to the negotiating table with the Mi'kmaq people to come up with an Atlantic specific solution to a very complex issue. We are working very closely with them and we would like to, if we could, have this negotiation with the players and not with the opposition in the House.
Randy White Reform Langley—Abbotsford, BC
Mr. Speaker, I remind the minister that opposition parties are here to get to the bottom of it, and it is policy on the run over there.
The government has an obligation to bring clarity to the Marshall decision. The Indian affairs minister has refused to seek that clarity. The Marshall decision is bringing significant problems to the management of all natural resource industries. Thousands of jobs are at stake and the government is turning a blind eye.
Why is the government allowing chaos and the courts to define its natural resource policies? Where is the leadership and the vision?
Bob Nault LiberalMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Mr. Speaker, the answer to the question posed by the member is very simple. We in this place have had a number of court rulings on aboriginal rights defined for us in a very limited way. It is now the role of governments to go to the table and negotiate with first nations what those rights would mean in a very modern context, and that is what we propose to do.
Michel Guimond Bloc Beauport—Montmorency—Orléans, QC
Mr. Speaker, in the past the government has taken steps on several occasions to keep a second airline alive on life support, on the pretext that the country needed two carriers, in its opinion.
My question is for the Minister of Transport. Given the several occasions on which it has kept Canadian Airlines alive artificially, how can the government now be preparing, under the pretext of allowing market forces to operate freely, to change the rules in order to favour one group over another?