House of Commons Hansard #92 of the 38th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was quarantine.

Topics

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

Noon

Conservative

Rob Anders Conservative Calgary West, AB

How come Broadbent is quitting?

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

Noon

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, do you want to get a leash for him?

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

Noon

The Speaker

We will have a little order in the House. The hon. member for Hamilton Centre has the floor. He does not need all the help he is being offered and we need to be able to hear him.

The hon. member for Hamilton Centre.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

Noon

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I do not mind the heckling, but it reaches a certain point where it is a little bit much.

I was pointing out that fiscal responsibility is just as important to the New Democrats as the actual investments. We wanted to make sure that it remained a balanced budget, that there were no tax increases, and that we continued to pay down the debt. Those are priorities for us too. What we could not understand was spending $4.6 billion on tax cuts that they did not have a mandate to do.

This budget deserves to pass. This Parliament needs to stay alive long enough to get that budget through. Then we will get at the Liberals.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

Noon

The Speaker

I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised earlier today by the hon. deputy leader of the government in the House concerning the admissibility of the amendment to the motion to concur in the second report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I would like to thank the hon. minister for raising this matter, and the hon. member for Mississauga South and the hon. House leader of the official opposition for their contributions to this discussion.

I need not remind the House that the Chair took under advisement on May 2, 2005 a similar point of order and I hope to return to the House shortly with a ruling on that matter, in fact later this day. However, while there are similarities in the two cases, I believe they differ in one important respect, and that is the matter of relevance.

As hon. members know, it is well established in our practice that an amendment must be relevant to the motion it seeks to amend. I refer the House to page 453 of Marleau and Montpetit. In the case before us, the second report seems to me to be very narrow in that it only discusses the payment of legal fees of public servants called to testify before the committee during its hearings on specific chapters of the report of the Auditor General of Canada.

It is true that the hearings deal mainly with chapter 3: the Sponsorship Program; chapter 4, Advertising Activities; and chapter 5, Management of Public Opinion Research.

However, the report does not focus on the subject matter of the hearings; rather, it addresses providing assistance to witnesses testifying before the committee. In short, the report addresses process, not substance.

Now the amendment that is being proposed does not address the same issues but goes far beyond the ambit of the second report. It reaches back into the subject matter of the committee's hearings, a quite different subject than the process under which it will manage those hearings and deal with the witnesses it invites to testify.

Accordingly, the Chair concludes that the amendment to the motion for concurrence in the second report of the public accounts committee is not in order because it is not relevant to the main motion it seeks to amend. Consequently, the subamendment cannot be proposed by the hon. deputy government House leader either because it is amending an amendment that is out of order.

Debate therefore may resume on the main motion.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Conservative

Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to move a motion to amend. I would like to move that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “that” and substituting--

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

The Speaker

The hon. member cannot move an amendment on a point of order unless he gets the unanimous consent of the House. Is he seeking unanimous consent of the House at this point?

Otherwise we are resuming debate and my understanding is that the next speaker is the hon. chief government whip because I understood that there was a time split arranged.

We will resume debate with hon. chief government whip.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand today to join in this debate. I move:

That this question be now put.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Conservative

Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to seek some clarification. It is starting to get very confusing for the people in the House, let alone for people who are watching this on television at home. I wonder whether I am permitted to speak since I spoke to the original motion.

Are we actually debating the government whip's motion “That this question be now put” or are we debating the original motion?

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

The Speaker

Technically we are debating the motion “That this question be now put”, which gives the hon. member for Prince George—Peace River the right to address the House again. I know he addressed the main motion once but he may now speak to the motion that has been put before the House by the chief government whip, if he wishes to do so.

However, as the chief government whip technically made a speech, there will be five minutes for questions and comments.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Conservative

Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC

Mr. Speaker, the whip for the government seems to have actually resisted the temptation to make a speech, and I have heard her make some very lengthy speeches. In fact, it could actually be said that a lot of what we are witnessing today in the chamber was touched off by the government whip's filibuster at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This happened some time ago when I moved a motion to try to restore a single opposition day.

As most people understand, opposition supply days are those days where the three opposition parties--I should correct that. We now only have two opposition parties in the chamber. The New Democratic Party is obviously now fulfilling the role of the actual rump or the coalition partner for the Liberal Party of Canada. It is an equal corrupt partner in crime, as it were.

The reality is that what we are witnessing here--

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

You guys don't even want to talk about public opinion. It's shameful.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Conservative

Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC

Obviously the hon. member from the New Democratic Party feels quite aggrieved at my statement that it is operating as a coalition partner to the Liberal Party of Canada but that is the reality we are facing.

The sense that I get is that when the hon. whip for the governing party was filibustering my motion at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs she clearly wanted to prevent the opposition party from ever bringing a potential confidence motion to this chamber.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:10 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Just to be clear, as the Speaker announced, there were five minutes for questions and comments. We are almost at the halfway point and we have to give equal time for the hon. whip to respond. If the member would wrap up his comments or ask a question, we will turn it back to the whip.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:10 p.m.

Conservative

Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC

Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to challenge that but we have been involved in debate all morning long and it seems to me that some of the hon. members from the government side have taken up almost the entire five minutes and they were not interrupted and told to make their point.

Why does the government whip feel that it is necessary in her role as a parliamentarian to bring in a motion to effectively limit not only the debate today but also ensuring that opposition parties are prevented from exercising their democratic right to express whether they have confidence in the government?

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:10 p.m.

Liberal

Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to several issues, not the least of which is the question posed to me by my hon. colleague opposite.

Something very interesting and actually historic happened today in the House. A member of the NDP split his time with a government member. That happened as a result of a number of changes that were made to the Standing Orders, which are the rules by which this esteemed, historic place works. Those changes were made through discussions and through debate by all parties.

The Liberal government recognized that some of the heavy lifting had to be shared in a minority government, and there was a responsibility on the part of the Conservative Party, the Bloc, as well as the NDP to make sure this place worked. After consultation and agreement, the Standing Orders were changed.

We all know there are opposition days in every supply period. There are six more to come. We simply put them off because, quite frankly, the Conservatives were caught doing something sneaky.

Yesterday the Prime Minister commented on the decorum in the House. I understand that in some of the public statements the member for Ottawa Centre made when he expressed his desire not to run again he also commented on the decorum in the House.

It saddens me to hear the kind of personal attacks, the kind of smearing, the kind of unsubstantiated testimony that the Conservatives drag out and parade as actual fact when some of these people actually contradict themselves in subsequent testimony. It is a sad day when this historic place is brought to new lows by a party hungry for power.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to split my time with the member for Niagara Falls.

In the short time I have been here and have listened to the people of the communities that I represent, there is a stench in the air. People are telling me that they have never seen a government so desperate and so hungry to cling to power that it will stoop to absolutely anything to maintain this power.

It bought the NDP with $4.6 billion.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:15 p.m.

An hon. member

Bought and paid for.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

The member behind me states it correctly. It was bought and paid for.

I want to give the House a little history on what happened in the past when NDP members were bought off by Liberal governments to sustain them in the power and the position that they held.

In 1972-73 and 1974-75, spending on federal government programs with this coalition jumped by 50%. Does anybody see any correlation with that to what is happening today?

In the two day deal, which the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP cobbled together, I suspect written on a napkin in a dark room with a dimly lit candle so that no one else could see or hear what was going on, they committed to spend $4.6 billion; that is billion with a b , to emphasize how much this means to Canadians.

During that same time of 1972-73 and 1974-75, Canadians saw their overall taxes increase by 52%.

When we ask Canadians today what one of the number one issues they are dealing with, they will tell us that it is the high tax rates because of a government that is willing to go to any lengths to stay in power. It will spend whatever amount of money is necessary. It will cut whatever deals are necessary with an opposition party to cling to power. We have seen it in the past and we are seeing it today.

I also want to remind Canadians and this House that during that time the inflation rate more than doubled. It was also during that time that Canada had enjoyed for a decade a surplus that vanished overnight.

The agreement the government made with, I should be calling it the NDP-Liberal coalition, was made for selfish, self-serving reasons which the Canadian people are no longer willing to tolerate or are able to tolerate.

We have gone out across the country, as I suspect have the Liberals, and we have been told by our constituents that this is a disgraceful act, that it should be dealt with and that Canadians want to deal with this issue through this House in a confidence motion.

Again, we saw the antics of the House leader across the floor today. Her timing was absolutely impeccable. If I did not know better, it would almost surprise me as to how the exact opportunity was presented to the House leader. However I will not cast aspersions on anyone other than the government and the NDP Party that has put us in this position. The government is asking Canadians to support budget part deux even though no one has seen what it is even offering in the second part with the $4.6 billion. Yes, we have heard words and comments that it will include this, it will include that and all good things and everyone will be happy, but there has been no detail.

I would suggest that the members opposite and the government of the day are very hesitant to bring this type of bill forward and present it to the public and actually have it bear some scrutiny so people can see what the government has done in a desperate attempt to maintain the control it has in this House.

It was brought up in earlier conversations: this government is asking this of the Canadian public, after all the allegations and charges that have been brought forward through the Gomery inquiry and other inquiries and other charges. It is saying yes, we know that it was Liberals who created the problem and we know that the Liberals are going to be punished, but in the interim, for the next 10 months, just let the same Liberal group continue to manage the affairs of the country and we will get to the bottom of it and sort it out. It was very disturbing.

It is similar to the question that I put forward earlier today when I asked the question about Enron going through all of its trouble. Do we suppose the people who owned shares in Enron said, “They know there is a problem, so let us leave them there and let them fix it”?

It is absolutely abhorrent that this group of governing people would allow that and would even actually think that the Canadian public would buy into it.

I am sharing my time, but I do want to relate one little anecdote that I heard when I was out in my communities over the last week. A gentleman sat down with me. I asked him if he thought we could afford to have an election right away. His comment was, “Can we afford not to?”, based on what we are seeing spent by this government in a reckless manner.

He made another comment that I think is relevant to this entire situation where the government calls these allegations, but we call it evidence. These people are swearing under oath to what they know. People sometimes forget that. To throw out the word “allegation”; I am not sure that is the proper way to describe it. The gentleman said to me, “When you drive by a House and see smoke coming out of every window and door in the house and out the basement windows, do you go in and look for a flame or do you call the fire department?”

We are at exactly that point now in history. We have a Liberal government that is mired so deep in this scandal that it is willing to change the rules. The Liberals are willing to tell everybody in the world that “it is everybody but us”.

The fact of the matter is, it is this government. It is this government that has to face that reality. It has to ask Canadians if they now have the faith and the confidence in the government for it to continue to manage the affairs of this country. I would suggest that Canadians do not.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca B.C.

Liberal

Keith Martin LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's statements. As I said before, the reality of what is going on here, which I think most Canadians recognize, is that this is a political exercise. The role of the opposition is to get to government. We know that.

However, I think all of us recognize that there is a higher purpose for being here. Unfortunately, the opposition is trying to subvert a process that is going on to try to get to the truth. We are trying to say that we are not afraid of an election, but for heaven's sake, let us just pass the budget because there are higher issues at risk. What is at risk here is our ability to implement solutions for the homeless, for the poor, for business, for health care and for veterans.

Do hon. members think for a moment that the veterans out there who need health care, who need care because they have suffered from PTSD, care whether or not we have an election now or nine months from now? Do hon. members think that the person who does not have a home cares whether or not we have an election now or nine months from now? Do they think the person who is waiting two years for an MRI scan cares whether we have an election now or nine months from now? I would submit that they do not care.

If we do not allow the budget to go through, we are abrogating and violating the responsibility of the House to do the right thing for the Canadian people.

This government and this Prime Minister implemented a series of solutions to address the issues that have been found in the sponsorship issues of Quebec. Nobody could have done more. The Prime Minister called in the RCMP. He put in the Gomery inquiry. He implemented a series of solutions called the comptroller system, of which most Canadians are not aware. A comptroller general or counterparts in every department will ensure there is an oversight mechanism for all government expenditures. That is the right thing to do.

I would ask the hon. member from the Conservative Party about the comptroller general system my government has put forth to ensure that government expenditures of people's money will be made more wisely and effectively? Does he not think that is a very good thing and that he and his party ought to support it?

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer that question. It was the then finance minister, now the Prime Minister, who removed the comptrollers from the financial controls of the government and who allowed this spending to go crazy the way it has in the past 12 years.

It is interesting that the member identifies all the problems in Canada that are all suddenly in front of his government. Where have the Liberals been for the last 12 years? Who created most of these problems?

All the member has done is confirm to Canadians why we need to have this government called before Canadians to let them actually see what the government has done in the last 12 years and let the public decide.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Chatham-Kent—Essex Ontario

Liberal

Jerry Pickard LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry

Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to my hon. colleague across the way. I recall that when I came to the House there was a Conservative government in place that was overspending by $40 billion. The Conservatives had escalated the debt to $600 billion. They tripled the debt, as a matter of fact. Their financial policies were never met. I remember a finance minister in those days who just could not even come close. It was suggested by a Prime Minister from across the way that in Canada we would have double digit unemployment past the year 2000. The finances of the country were dragged to the bottom of the core by that group.

The Minister of Finance and the Liberal Government of Canada of the day have turned that around. We are the envy of the world. I ask that member whether he would rather face the world today, with the way Canada is structured economically, or then, when we were called a third rate country.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the hon. member that when the Prime Minister was finance minister he gutted health care by $25 billion in Manitoba alone. He was the creator of the health care crisis the country is now facing and that he now claims he wants to save.

Over 10 years he decimated health care to a point where it could no longer call on its lifelines to survive. The government had to cut a deal for $41 billion just to restore the money that it took out of health care 10 years ago. I was a part of a provincial government that suffered. This is all very ironic. Having been a provincial government, we were accused of ruining health care. Now, suddenly, as opposition to the federal government, we are being accused of ruining it here. The government cannot have it both ways.

This government in the blink of an eye increased spending in the country by $4.6 billion. Canadians will not accept it. I ask the members opposite to do the honourable thing and put the question to Canadians.

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Prentice Conservative Calgary North Centre, AB

Mr. Speaker, the motion before the House calls for there to be a confidence matter before the House on the basis that there is “widespread and systemic corruption at the highest levels of the Liberal government, spanning many years, and revealed at the Gomery commission”, and that the government immediately resign because the Canadian people have already concluded that it does not have the confidence of the House.

That is the matter that is before the House--

Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would like some clarification. I thought the motion before the House was that the report be concurred in, the named report, and the amendment and subamendment were ruled out of order.