Debates of June 18th, 2008

Afghanistan

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of National Defence and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency]

Mr. Speaker, that individual is a walking contradiction. He stands in the House and pretends to care about the well-being of Canadian forces instead of suggesting that we should look at these situations very seriously.

I have had a sit down with the Chief of the Defence Staff, the incoming chief of the defence staff and the Chief of the Land Staff to ensure there is absolutely no misunderstanding whatsoever. Any allegations, any suggestion that a Canadian soldier would see a misdeed, a sexual assault or otherwise, is to be immediately recorded in to the chain of command. That is in place now and it works.

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

Mr. Speaker, instead of saying one thing and then the opposite, the government should be taking the allegations before it seriously and trying to find out the truth in this whole affair.

We have another suggestion for the minister. To truly shed some light on this matter, is the government ready to support a motion, which I will move before the Standing Committee on National Defence, to invite the chaplains and the officers who saw these abuses to appear before the committee?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of National Defence and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency]

Mr. Speaker, with the greatest respect, I have a little more faith in the leadership of the Canadian Forces than the member opposite.

We have every intention of following up on these allegations. Let us not forget that these are allegations, serious as they are. We are looking into this matter. We have every intention of following up with the chaplains and those individuals who have brought this information forward.

The Canadian Forces and this government could not take this matter more seriously.

Omar Khadr

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by Canada, defines a “child” as “every human being below the age of eighteen years”.

Omar Khadr was imprisoned at the age of 15. By not bringing him back to Canada, the government is complicit with the United States, a country that does not respect the spirit or the letter of the Optional Protocol on Child Soldiers, which Canada has also ratified.

Does the government realize that by refusing to repatriate Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, it is renouncing Canada's signature—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said many times, Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges in relation to his capture in Afghanistan. However, if the member is not willing to listen to me, maybe she would listen to the former Liberal critic who said to Mike Duffy that the charges against Omar Khadr are very serious. Therefore, any questions regarding whether Canada plans to ask for the release of Omar Khadr are premature and speculative at this time.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the question was for the related minister, and I would like him to have the courage to rise in this House to defend his actions.

Although a majority report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development called for his repatriation, the Conservatives, in their dissenting opinion, claimed that he could represent a danger to Canada, but acknowledged that it was not very likely he would be convicted here.

Is the only reason for the Conservative government's inconsistency in the Omar Khadr case that it does not want to offend its friend, George W. Bush?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, I have said it before and I will keep repeating it, Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges. Any questions regarding whether Canada plans to ask for Mr. Khadr's release are premature and speculative at this time, as the appeal and legal process is still ongoing.

Ethics

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, audio experts have stated that those are the Prime Minister's unaltered words on the tape where he talks about offering financial considerations to Chuck Cadman in exchange for his vote.

Stevan Pausak, one of Canada's leading audio experts, says that he was hired a long time ago to analyze the tape in question, but his report was never released.

We know it takes 67 Conservative candidates to launder over $1 million in advertising costs, but how many audio experts did they need to cover up this Conservative Cadman scandal?

[James Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics]

Mr. Speaker, the two audio experts we hired, Messrs. Owen and Gough, both tabled their expert opinions before the Ontario Superior Court. Here is what they said in their conclusion:

The tape has been edited and doctored and does not represent the entire conversation that took place.

They are audio experts. They say the tapes have been doctored. But the Liberals have ignored the facts from the very beginning. They ignored Chuck Cadman when Chuck Cadman said there was no inappropriate offer. They are ignoring the audio experts. They ignored the RCMP when the RCMP said there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.

They can ignore the facts all they want, but they will not be ignoring the date that we see them in court.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we cannot ignore the sworn affidavit that the Conservatives have distributed from Dona Cadman, who is the Conservative candidate in Surrey North. In the affidavit, she states that Conservative Party officials offered her husband a $1 million insurance policy on May 17, 2005. The Conservatives do not want to talk about the May 17 meeting; they only want to talk about May 19.

Why are the Conservatives trying to cover up the May 17 meeting that Dona Cadman is so anxious to talk about?

[James Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics]

Mr. Speaker, again, as I have said time and again in the House of Commons, there was the one meeting between Doug Finley, Tom Flanagan and Chuck Cadman that happened on May 19. May 19 was the one and only meeting. But, again, the Liberals can ignore the facts all they want. They can put them aside all they want. The facts will be seen in a court of law and the Liberals will again be proven wrong.

Canada-U.S. Relations

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government continues to blame the bureaucracy for NAFTA-gate, saying that there were too many emails on the distribution list for the leaked memo. It sounds easy, but where is the motive?

It was the Conservative Party and its Republican masters that had the most to gain from this leak.

The NAFTA-gate investigation cost taxpayers $140,000, but was, “unable to determine who leaked the report, to whom it was leaked or whether there was only one leak”.

Could the Prime Minister tell us why this investigation failed to achieve its objective?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, earlier in this session, when we were oddly not hearing any questions about policy from the Liberals, and we continued to have no policy from them for the past year, I quoted from a play, Little Women, where the lead actress said that the problem with doing nothing is that one is never really sure when one is finished. We see that from the Liberal Party right now.

The Liberals continue to come up with these imaginary scandals. In the case of the false accusations they made in the NAFTA leak, of course, this is one of many cases where the investigation determined that the government was clear. The Clerk of the Privy Council found no wrongful disclosure by the Prime Minister's Office. It is one of a long list of similar situations.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is still a leak in the government, one that has hurt our international reputation.

On February 27, two PMO officials, identified in the report only as official one and two, were given the memo, a day before Ian Brodie had access to it. Oddly enough, these officials are not identified by either their names or titles, unlike the others in the report.

Who were these officials and why did the report go to such lengths to conceal their identities? Why the cover up?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, there is none, but there is a long record of Liberals inventing imaginary scandals, only to smear the government and smear the reputations of very good people. However, all they are doing is demonstrating their own vacancy and tarnishing their own reputations.

We have this NAFTA case where the Clerk of the Privy Council cleared the Prime Minister's chief of staff, and it was another false Liberal accusation.

We had the false Liberal accusation of intruding into a mayoralty campaign cleared by the OPP. It found no wrongdoing.

Following that, we had the false Liberal accusations that there was actual interference in the police investigation. That too was cleared by the OPP Complaints Commissioner.

We had the false Liberal accusations of interference--

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member for Brandon—Souris.

The Environment

[Merv Tweed, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, no matter what we call it, a carbon tax is a trick.

It will raise the price of everything, including food, electricity, home heating, and gas at the pumps. It will devastate young families, seniors and people on fixed incomes. Jobs will be destroyed and Canada's traditional industries will be impacted.

Despite warnings from premiers, industry members, and climate change experts about the perils of this massive carbon tax on everything, the Liberal leader will supposedly unveil the details of his plan tomorrow.

Can the minister tell the House how punitive a carbon--

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity)]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Liberal slogan for its carbon tax will be: shift happens.

I suppose that means that Air Canada workers who just lost their jobs because of high fuel prices, the Liberal message to them is: shift happens.

If auto workers have lost their jobs because people are not buying SUVs and trucks, the Liberal message is: shift happens.

If rural Canadians heat their home with oil, the Liberal message is: shift happens.

If the Liberals succeed with their carbon tax trick, Canadians will be: shift out of luck.

Public Safety

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, last summer, Canadians were shocked to learn that, in the context of the Shiprider program, armed U.S. officers were arresting Canadians on Canadian soil. We now learn that not only is this government abandoning Canadian sovereignty in matters of public safety, but the RCMP wants to expand the Shiprider program and make it permanent.

Why do the Conservatives allow American officers to enforce the law on Canadian soil? Why are they abandoning Canadian sovereignty?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member, who has raised the question, had been paying any attention at all, which he has not been, over the last two years the Shiprider project has been extremely successful.

We have officers from both sides of the border who cooperate together under very clear protocols in terms of who is in whose jurisdiction and who has command.

The particular Shiprider projects have been very successful in interdicting drug transports across the border, illegal arms, and a variety number of activities.

It is a very successful program. We plan to continue it and expand it.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, paying attention is why we know that the RCMP and the U.S. coast guard want to permanently implement Shiprider, and they are negotiating now.

This is following other agreements to deploy American troops on Canadian soil in the context of deep integration as part of the SPP agenda.

Internal documents, dated June 4 of this year, show that the RCMP is seeking to allow more armed U.S. coast guard agents to patrol Canadian territory.

Why are the Conservatives allowing more armed American agents in Canada, and why are they contracting out Canadian public safety to the U.S. coast guard?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, only the NDP, and at times the Liberals, can take a very successful program that is protecting Canadians and see it come to something ridiculous like the hon. member is talking about.

Picture this, Mr. Speaker. We have officers in pursuit of drug dealers. They come to the actual border, let us say on a river crossing, and they have to come screeching to a stop and let those criminals escape. When we have joint border teams, working together under clear protocols, the pursuit can continue, sovereignty is maintained in each country, and criminals are apprehended.

It is a successful program. The NDP just does not get it.

Conservative Party of Canada

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in the Cadman scandal, the Conservative cover-up involved frivolous lawsuits and paid opinions to hide the Prime Minister's own words.

In the in and out scandal, the cover-up was nine months of dirty tricks at committee and stonewalling Elections Canada.

In the O'Brien scandal, the cover-up was a refusal to examine OPP allegations against Conservative operatives and the Minister of the Environment.

When will the cover-ups end?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, the real question is, when will the false Liberal accusations end?

There were false Liberal accusations in the mayoralty campaign. We were cleared. There were false allegations with regard to the police investigation. We were cleared. In fact, it was the Liberal member who was accused by the OPP of having engaged in political interference. There were false accusations with regard to contracts that, once again, were cleared by the Ethics Commissioner. There were false Liberal accusations on NAFTA. Once again, we were cleared. There were false allegations in the affair he mentioned at the very start. Once again, we were cleared by the RCMP.

Will the Liberals once, just once, acknowledge when they have made a mistake and made false accusations?