Debates of March 22nd, 2007

Development Assistance Accountability Act

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on Motion No. 5 stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 9. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on Motion No. 9 stands deferred.

Normally at this time the House would proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions at the report stage of the bill. However, pursuant to Standing Order 98 the recorded divisions are deferred until Wednesday, March 28 just before the time provided for private members' business.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on February 19, 2007, during question period, I asked the then Minister of Citizenship and Immigration a question.

This was my question.

Mr. Speaker, that is not all. To arrive in style at a county fair last September, the very same minister rented yet another limo, spending $862 so she could take in the sights for four hours.

The minister spent more on one four hour limo ride than her Conservative government gives to parents in one year. How does she justify that?

My ears were shocked to hear the minister's response. The minister's response was:

Mr. Speaker, where I live and where I travel there is often very limited access to public transit. Where I live there is no public transit.

No one is asking the minister to travel by public transit.

The minister, who is now the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was the minister of human resources and social development when she tabled and spent all that money.

I will give a couple of examples of the expenses of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration: $2,496.98 at the Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel for the minister, at $720 a night, and for her Conservative staffer, $285 a night, to attend the World Urban Forum which was held from June 18 to 20, 2006. Then she cost the taxpayers $805 for Canada Limousine Incorporated in Kitchener and gave a $105 tip on April 20, 2006. That is really nice.

I am sure a lot of Canadians would like to keep the so-called $100 per child under age six entirely in their pockets, but as they are doing their 2006 income tax reports, as we speak, they are finding out that the new government and the Prime Minister has pulled the wool over their eyes. The now know that the $100 child allowance per child under six years old is taxable and, guess what, the families that earn the least income get to keep the least of that $100.

However, the minister did not stop there. On the same day, April 20, 2006, her staffer rented a car from Budget car rental for $39 a day. Why could her staffer, at $39 for the entire day, not have driven the minister, instead of costing the taxpayers $805 so that she could have a uniformed chauffeur driving her in a limousine?

On March 19, 2006, there is $345 for Canada Limousine in London, Ontario--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development]

Mr. Speaker, I know I am not going to have enough time for everything I would like to say. However, Canadians will no doubt be in awe that a member of the Liberal caucus would rise in the House to cast stones in a debate on the ethical use of public funds.

Over the past 13 months, the new government has been restoring the faith of Quebeckers and the faith of all Canadians, which the Liberals broke over the past 13 years. Quebeckers and Canadians are relieved to have a government that respects them. For the member to think that they have already forgotten her and her party's arrogant abuse of taxpayers' money is completely wishful thinking.

Canadians have not forgotten the $1 billion boondoggle. Canadians have not forgotten Shawinigate. They have not forgotten Auberge Grand-Mère. Canadians have not forgotten Jean Brault, Alfonso Gagliano, or all those brown envelopes stuffed with cash being exchanged at Restaurant Frank, and certainly neither have Quebeckers.

This is the Liberals' legacy for HRSDC. Each of these scandals shows that Liberals did with HRSDC what they will do if they are ever in charge again. The corruption was on their watch. The scandals were on their watch. The culture of entitlement was on their watch.

The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine's Liberal Party orchestrated one of the greatest scandals in Canadian history. Canadians grew tired of it. After 13 years of being treated with contempt by the Liberals, Canadians went to the polls and asked us to govern. They asked the Conservatives to form the government.

We are rewarding their decision by bringing them good and accountable government. The former minister's expenses met Treasury Board guidelines. Can the member say the same for ad scam?

I must say that the minister the member is talking about replaced five Liberal ministers. Canadians will not be duped by the member into comparisons of us with the Liberals' rotten apples, but if the member prefers Canadians to look only at the former minister's expenses and compare them to the spending of Liberal HRSDC ministers, she had better be careful about what she wishes for.

Measured over the same period of one year, HRSDC ministers' spending under the Liberals was 7.5 times more than the former minister's. The Liberals spent approximately $247,000, while the former minister spent approximately $32,000.

With only a fraction of the former minister's portfolio, the Liberal social development minister spent about $62,000 before Canadians retired his number. The Liberal housing minister spent over $69,000. These ministers each spent twice as much as the former minister over the same period of time.

What do they have to show for it but a litany of broken promises, a record of scandals and 13 years of corruption?

If Canadians were asked to compare expenses of former Liberal ministers and their staff in one year to what this minister spent for one year, they would see that Liberals cost them 96 times more, and the Liberals did not have 96 ministers in their cabinet.

It may also be instructive to compare the former minister's expenses to those of the Leader of the Opposition, whom that member supported for the leadership of the Liberals. Documents show that her candidate for leader of the Liberal Party, the person she puts forward as her choice to set an example for the Liberals, who want so badly to form the government again, opted to lodge at a hotel just blocks away from his residence in Montreal when Canada hosted a Kyoto conference. The cost to taxpayers of his decision not to walk a few blocks was over $5,500. His decision to drive to Montreal and keep a chauffeur in the city was over $14,000.

By whatever brush the member wants to use, she cannot and will not be able to whitewash the Liberals' broken promises, record of scandals and 13 years of corruption that easily.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I find it amazing to listen to that member justify the use of taxpayers' money in the way that the minister used it.

I also find it interesting. Is the member prepared to justify the use of taxpayers' money and the possible misuse of parliamentary budget money by her own party and government in order to pay off a member of Parliament to resign his seat in order to make way for the member of Parliament who is now the Minister of Public Safety? Is she prepared to justify that? Is that ethical behaviour? I would like to know.

Is it ethical behaviour on the part of her own leader, who is the Prime Minister, to make scurrilous accusations in the House about Maher Arar in 2002, which are in Hansard, and then deny--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, as I said when the member first asked her question, and as I mentioned again today, the former minister's expenses were all within Treasury Board guidelines. Canadians are satisfied even if the member is not. Canadians see that the member's strategy and motives here are transparent even if her party's record was not.

This is a strategy to deflect attention from that lamentable record. It is to deflect criticism from: the $1 billion boondoggle; Shawinigate; problems with the transition jobs fund; the sponsorship scandal and Groupe Action, investigations into the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party and brown envelopes stuffed with cash; more than half a dozen bureaucrats removed from their jobs following an investigation into these projects; shuffling Alfonso Gagliano off to Denmark; federal job training grants for payments to the Liberal Party; Denise Tremblay's huge travel expenses on the Veterans Affairs board while the Liberals underfunded veterans; fake invoices for the flag flap; Frulla's renovations; Dingwall's expenses as head of the Mint; the secret national unity fund; and the George Radwanski affair.

Is the member ready to defend even--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. the member for Vancouver Island North.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity today to question the Minister for Democratic Reform further on his ill-advised process to study Canada's electoral system.

I have several questions for the minister in the very few minutes that are allotted to me.

First, I would like to know why the minister is ignoring the will of this House that adopted recommendations in the 43rd report of the procedure and House affairs committee of the 38th Parliament, including a recommendation to broadly consult with Canadians on the values and principles that they would like to see in our electoral system? Canadians expect their government to be open and accountable, but this government has hijacked the process that was agreed upon in the past.

Second, can the minister explain to us why, after saying he did not want the process taken over by special interest groups, he contracted it out to a special interest group?

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is well known as a right-wing think tank and has several articles opposing electoral reform on its website. It is hardly an unbiased group to convene a series of focus groups across the country.

Was it the only group that applied for the job of convening the focus groups? Was the process even open for other facilitators to apply for this opportunity? Those are just a couple of questions.

I would also like the Minister for Democratic Reform to tell Canadians what criteria he used to select the 40 people for the first focus group? Are they selected from certain segments of the population? Are they representative in any way? Did he put an ad in a paper or on a government website and did they apply to come to the discussion? How does one know where to go to be a part of this hand-picked, closed-door process?

Canadians are not fooled by the government. They know that real civic engagement does not happen behind closed doors. If the minister really wanted participation, he would support Motion No. 262.

I ask again, will the minister now admit that his sham process of bogus civic engagement is a waste of energy? Will he do the right thing, withdraw the electoral reform from that process and commit to full citizens' consultation across Canada?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that I reject entirely the premise that the member makes that the process we are engaging in is not open and transparent.

In fact, I find it amazing that a member of the New Democratic Party would actually bring this forward because in the procedure and House affairs committee, it was the government that presented a motion that in effect would have members of the procedure and House affairs committee travel across Canada in a parallel consultation exercise to the one that we have already announced.

Yet, do members know what happened when we put that motion? The NDP voted against it. The NDP, the Bloc and four out of the five Liberals voted against it. The only member who voted with us was the Liberal member for Vancouver Quadra.

We wanted to ensure that the committee members who represent the procedure and House affairs committee in this House had an opportunity to travel across Canada and engage Canadians in the very process that the member is suggesting, or at least she had suggested in her bill. Yet, her own party voted against that motion.

I find it, frankly, more than a little hypocritical to suggest now that the consultation process that we have started and announced on January 9 is not open and transparent.

Let us reflect again exactly what is going to happen in that consultation process. There will be meetings across Canada. There will be 12 meetings, one in each of the 10 provinces, one for the territories and a separate consultation process for what we call a youth meeting. At each one of these meetings, there will be 40 members who are selected to represent the broad demographic, cultural and other ranges of the clientele or the population within that region.

These individuals will be able to extensively study the material beforehand. Then they will be able to have a wide open dialogue and consultation, expressing their views on a range of issues on democratic reform. This is going to be as open and transparent a process as probably we have ever seen.

However, to add to that process, once again I say that we wanted to have parliamentarians engaged in the same process in a parallel stream. Yet, what happened? The member's own party voted against that.

I can only stand here in amazement and suggest to the member that perhaps if she was truly serious about engaging this consultation process, she should have a discussion with her own members who sat on that committee and question them as to why they voted against our motion.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knew in December that I had put my Motion No. 262 on the national agenda, but in January, while all the members of this House were on a Christmas break, on holidays and in their ridings, he introduced his sham of an electoral reform process and awarded the contract to his friends. Talk about an open process. My goodness, it is starting off behind closed doors already.

A little over a month later, he came to the procedure and House affairs committee and asked it to vote for something that was done behind closed doors. Of course, we voted against that process. It was bogus. It is a sham.

We support true civic engagement and that was what was put forward in the last Parliament, in the 43rd report of the procedure and House affairs committee. We will be voting to honour the work that was done in that committee by Ed Broadbent and many others to have true engagement of citizens across this country.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, once again, my hon. colleague is completely off the mark. When we made the announcement January 9 of a citizens' consultation process, it was not awarded to friends of the minister, as she suggested. If she does suggest that, I would invite her to take that outside and make that accusation. There was a request for a proposal. It was an open tendered process.

However again, the second part of her supplemental question suggested that we came to the committee with a recommendation that was rejected. That is the farthest thing from the truth.

At committee, we entertained a separate motion that would allow members of the committee to travel across Canada to engage in a parallel citizens' consultation process. This was not staged. There would be representation from the New Democratic Party, as well as the Bloc, the Liberals and the Conservatives. That consultation process would have been there to engage all citizens, but her members, members of the Liberal Party and the Bloc voted against it.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on March 2 I asked the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages how she could be satisfied with the National Defence Official Languages Program Transformation Model of October 2006 when Graham Fraser, the Official Languages Commissioner, pointed out in committee that the best a unilingual francophone soldier could hope for in the Canadian armed forces is to be an infantry soldier at Valcartier. He went on to say that evidently it is possible for a unilingual anglophone to rise to the rank of brigadier general.

The Commissioner also stated, “It is practically impossible to establish a challenging career in the Canadian Forces if you are a unilingual Francophone”.

In response to my questions about this situation, the insulting reply by the parliamentary secretary, the Conservative member for Beauport—Limoilou, was quite discriminatory for francophones in Quebec and Canada: “—the Bloc throws its little temper tantrum”. Such language truly shows little regard for la Francophonie in Quebec and Canada.

It is an insult to anyone concerned about the rights of francophones to have to endure the disgraceful attitude of the federal government regarding its obligations with respect to official languages in the Canadian armed forces.

It is even more insulting to hear the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages say in this House that she had the backing of the Official Languages Commissioner in developing this new direction. Commissioner Graham Fraser's response to this was as follows: “Neither Dyane Adam (his predecessor) nor I have endorsed this new functional approach”. It is shameful of the minister and the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent and of the Conservative government. Seeking credibility from people who are concerned about la Francophonie in Quebec and Canada by telling such a falsehood speaks volumes about the moral value of their linguistic approach to our soldiers and our francophone soldiers.

With the Canadian Forces turning around and no longer requiring its high ranking officials to be bilingual, the Conservative government is showing its reformist side from the Manning days and its Alliance side from the days of the hon. member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, and is not fulfilling its responsibilities under the Official Languages Act. This is further evidence that the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages accepts this irresponsible turnaround when it comes to the Canadian Forces honouring their responsibilities under the Official Languages Act. The Canadian Forces official languages track record was bad enough when the Liberals were in power.

Allow me to quote Yves Ducharme, the national president of the Agriculture Union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents, among others, language teachers at the Department of National Defence training facilities:

In moving to adopt these new regulations, it would seem to us that the Minister of National Defence is either unaware of the importance of the Official Languages Act, or has turned a blind eye to its provisions. Either case is unacceptable.

I heartily agree.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, allow me, first, to assure the House that the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Forces recognize the importance of official languages and are determined to improve their performance in this field.

The transformation model establishes the Canadian Forces’ official languages strategic vision, which will ensure that members of the Canadian Forces are to be consistently led, trained, administered and supported in their official language of choice, in accordance with the requirements of the Official Languages Act.

There is a myth that the Official Languages Act requires each member of the Canadian Forces to be bilingual. Even members of the public service are not all required to be bilingual.

I can assure the House that there is nothing to prevent francophone members of the Canadian Forces from gaining promotion. That is a false notion concerning the transformation model. There will be no negative impact on the professional advancement of francophones.

The transformation model will have a positive impact on the careers of both anglophones and francophones. Indeed, francophones are well represented in the Canadian Forces. In 2005-06, the percentage of francophones in the Canadian Forces was higher than the percentage of francophones in the Canadian population.

French is the mother tongue of about one-quarter of the Canadian population, while 27.4% of the members of the Canadian Forces are francophones. More than 27% of the members of the forces are francophones, including 28% of general officers and 33% of chief warrant officers and chief petty officers, first class.

Francophones are very well represented in the Canadian Forces and they will continue to be well represented in the future.

They are not only well represented at subordinate levels, but also in the higher levels of the Canadian Forces. Being a francophone in no way prevents a member of the military from advancing to higher ranks in the armed forces.

Ensuring that military personnel can be trained in their official language of choice is a priority of the Canadian Forces. That is why one of the priorities of the transformation model is to create a core of bilingual military instructors.

All training for recruits is offered in both official languages. While there is still work to be done, the Canadian Forces have made progress in offering training courses in both official languages. In 2005-06, some 21.6% of all courses were offered in French or in both official languages, an increase over the 18% of courses in 2004-05.

The new Official Languages Transformation Model will bring the Canadian Forces more completely in line with the requirements of the Official Languages Act.

It includes a new method for determining whether military and civilian personnel of the Department of National Defence are fulfilling their official language obligations in the workplace. We will thus be better able to address and take measures to remedy any problems more quickly.

I am convinced that the transformation model will enable us to resolve the issues raised by the Commissioner of Official Languages and to allay the concerns of those who have raised questions.

Implementation of this plan will ensure a fairer and more equitable environment in which members of the Canadian Forces, anglophones as well as francophones, will be able to work and learn in the official language of their choice, in accordance with the Official Languages Act.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, here is an example of my concerns. Once again, I would like to quote Mr. Ducharme:

What will happen in a future situation when a unilingual anglophone officer finds himself or herself commanding unilingual francophone soldiers? Under battlefield conditions, this becomes a matter of life and death. Organizing military units by language will deepen the isolation and lack of understanding between linguistic groups; this can only serve to increase tensions between anglophone and francophone soldiers at a time when there has arguably never been a clearer need for solidarity in the ranks.

The Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages must demand that the Minister of National Defence go back to the drawing board and create with a model that respects both our soldiers and the Official Languages Act.