Debates of Sept. 19th, 2006

Afghanistan

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, the previous government put us in Kandahar and committed us to the Kandahar area. It knew what we were going into and yet it held back and did not tell the public what we were going into. We are now faced with combat operations in Kandahar and those people put us in that place.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government has a mandate until 2009 for the Canadian Forces mission in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister suggested that this mandate could possibly be extended beyond 2009. How presumptuous of a Prime Minister in a minority government to even hint at this time at the possibility of extending this mission.

Does the Prime Minister realize that he is making commitments when the current mission is already such a serious challenge to the Canadian Forces?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, Canada and NATO will exit Afghanistan when we are confident that governance, development and security are satisfactory and irreversible.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has started putting his conditions on withdrawing Canadians troops in Afghanistan after 2009. He spoke, among other things, of implementing a real democracy and secure borders.

Is the government not being too quick to presume that it will have the support of the House of Commons for a mission that it might want to extend when, in fact, the current mission is already problematic enough?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, in recent months the House authorized our extension to September 2009. We are confident that the House will support the military in whatever it has to do in the future.

Softwood Lumber

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, while the Minister of Industry has no plan to help the workers, communities and businesses affected by the softwood lumber crisis, his colleague, the Minister of International Trade, has said the opposite and claims to be open to such a measure.

Can the government give us a straight answer and say whether or not it intends to implement the measures proposed by the Bloc to help the industry, including a measure to help businesses involved in natural resource processing accelerate capital equipment amortization in order to support the modernization and development of processing activities?

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the question posed by my Bloc Québécois colleague, because this afternoon in the House, the Bloc Québécois will finally vote with us to help workers.

I know that the Bloc Québécois will show, in this House, that our party is working in the best interests of Quebeckers, within the federation, and that we are very useful when it comes to fighting for Quebeckers' interests. Maybe the Bloc Québécois' own uselessness in this House will be revealed.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in the softwood lumber file, companies agreed to give up a billion dollars in duties collected by American authorities. When they began paying those duties, the Canadian dollar was worth 63 cents US. Now that the Canadian dollar is worth 90 cents, they will have lost not only a billion dollars, but also the difference in the exchange rate.

Will the government take a page from the Bloc Québécois' action plan and introduce supplementary fiscal measures that take into account the companies' additional losses due to the exchange rate?

[David Emerson, Conservative, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics]

Mr. Speaker, the softwood lumber agreement actually puts over $5 billion Canadian cash into the pockets of Canadian companies. It creates stability and it protects provincial forest management policies.

This government will be there to work with the Quebec softwood lumber industry and other sectors of the softwood lumber industry in Canada to ensure its health and prosperity going forward.

Lobbying

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in his war with the National Press Gallery, the Prime Minister used his lobbyists, like Tim Powers, Goldy Hyder, Bill Pristanski , Deb Grey, Lisa Samson and Geoff Norquay, to spin and sell the Conservative message, but all this benevolent service by Conservative insiders is not free. They use their privileged status to gain private sector clients.

Is this not a direct violation of the throne speech promise, last paragraph, page 4, to eliminate government stepping stones to private lobbying?

[John Baird, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say very clearly at the outset that I am in complete agreement with that internal Liberal Party report that was made public on September 10 where it said that the Liberal Party of Canada has absolutely no credibility with the people of Canada.

Let us look at that party's record in office. As a member of the Liberal prime minister's transition team, who is sitting among those transition team members? Registered lobbyist Francis Fox. What was the Liberals' response to that? They appointed him to the Senate with his fellow lobbyist friend, Dennis Dawson.

The member for Wascana should stand in his place and apologize to the people of Canada for those ethical lapses under his regime.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect the minister doth protest too much.

Speaking of previous governments, that is the minister who oversaw a $500 million computer boondoggle when he served Mike Harris in Ontario. That is the minister who could not even read his own power bill when he was energy minister. That is the minister who wasted nearly $2 million of taxpayer money on partisan advertising. That is the minister who approved a 48¢ doughnut expense. That is the minister who spent $5,000 polishing his own image.

When is he going to walk the talk?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

Order, please. I am sure all hon. members want to hear the answer from the President of the Treasury Board and he now has the floor. We will have a little order, please.

[John Baird, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I say to the member for Wascana that I may have been wrong but I have never been on the side of wrong, which is something the member cannot say.

Maybe the member for Wascana could stand in this place and let us know how the income trust leak RCMP investigation is going.

Government Contracts

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is obviously very desperate to be saying that. I do not know if he forgot his Ritalin today.

Last spring I asked the President of the Treasury Board why he rewarded the Conservative transition team member and friend of the Prime Minister with a big untendered contract for PR advice for the so-called accountability act. The minister said that the contract had been cancelled and that the money had been returned.

Today we learn that is not so. From access to information we now learn that the minister paid Marie-Josée Lapointe $13,462 for two weeks of work. This was for a contract that he said was cancelled.

It is time for the minister to come clean and demand that every cent of the more than $13,000 be returned to Canadian taxpayers.

[John Baird, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, if the record is checked I think it will be very clear that I stood in my place and I took responsibility for what went on in my department and the contract was immediately terminated. Case closed, black and white.

Maybe the member opposite could tell us if he agrees with Liberal Senator Larry Campbell. When the Senate committee was asked to sit over the summer he said, “Why would we want to sit over the summer?” I will tell the House why. We want to deliver accountable government to this country. We want to pass the federal accountability act.

The member opposite should not hide behind his colleagues in the Liberal Senate and tell them to get on and pass the bill.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister keeps ducking the questions. I know he picked up some bad habits when he was destroying Ontario with Mike Harris but shouting and pointing to irrelevant facts that have nothing to do with the question is not accountability.

The fact is that if he was wrong to award this contract to a Tory insider, then it is wrong for her to be paid a single penny, period.

If the minister will not ask Ms. Lapointe to repay the money, will he actually demonstrate some accountability and repay the money himself?

[John Baird, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, the minute that issue was brought to my attention the contract was terminated and no further work was done. That sets a very high ethical bar for Canada's new government.

I would say to the member opposite that perhaps he could go to the Liberal Party and return all of the cash, the thousands of dollars, $7,000 per envelope. When will he return all the cash that the Liberal Party and the Liberal government stole from Canadians? He should stand up and do the right thing and return the cash.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women tell us whether Guy Fournier, the chairman of the board of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, still has the confidence of the government, given the statements he has recently made in the media?

[Bev Oda, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Fournier was appointed as chair of CBC Radio-Canada by the previous Liberal government. He has increasingly lost the confidence of Canada's new government.

I would inform the House that I have received the voluntary resignation of Mr. Fournier effective today. This will enable this new government to make an appointment that reflects the importance that we put on the role of the chair of CBC Radio-Canada.

Maher Arar Inquiry

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, for four long years Maher Arar and Monia Mazigh have lived an unimaginable nightmare. It is reasonable for the government to take time to study Mr. Justice O'Connor's 23 recommendations but it is not reasonable to delay an official apology to Maher Arar and his family.

Mr. Justice O'Connor found that Canadian investigators made extensive efforts to find any information that could implicate Arar in terrorist activities. They found none. Now we see the Prime Minister hiding behind lawyers.

Why will the government not do the decent thing, apologize now and agree today to fair compensation?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I once again commend Justice O'Connor and all the people who worked on this report. The report was two and a half years in the making. It is 1,400 pages long and contains 320,000 words. We just tabled it yesterday.

We have had time to look at the recommendations and we will be acting on those recommendations, including concerns related to Mr. Arar and the fact that he has lawyers right now. There are government lawyers who are talking with those lawyers. We will be taking action on this matter.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, hiding behind lawyers around the question of apology and compensation is unbelievable. The government must do two things today if it is serious about righting a horrendous wrong done to Maher Arar.

First, it must apologize unequivocally, not express sadness, not offer regrets, not hide behind lawyers, but apologize for the atrocious treatment of Maher Arar and his family. Second, the government must agree to compensation.

Why not assign Justice O'Connor immediately to recommend binding compensation for the horrors visited upon Arar and his family? Will the Prime Minister do the honourable thing and agree today to--

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. Minister of Public Safety.