Debates of Oct. 1st, 2009

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first, in response to the last point raised by my hon. colleague, we discussed this between us earlier. I indicated to him then that we believed opposition days were the appropriate time to hold such debates. Indeed, today would have been a great opportunity to have the debate about the fisheries industry. I would think that it should have been done today rather than try to bring forward an opposition motion to force an unnecessary election onto Canadians. That is what we have been spending all day debating.

In reply to the fact that if our government does survive this reckless and unnecessary motion that the official opposition has brought forward today and the House were to continue, then obviously today we will continue to debate the opposition motion.

Tomorrow, provided the opposition motion of today is defeated, we will begin debate on Bill C-51, the second budget implementation bill, which has all sorts of great things in it to help Canadians even further.

Following that, we will schedule for debate Bill C-23, the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, Bill C-37, the national capital act and Bill C-44, the Canada Post Corporation Act. All these bills are at second reading and have a long way to go.

We will continue with this lineup of economic legislation next week and add to the list any bills that are reported back from committee.

If I could, I would like to end this week's reply to the Thursday question by paying tribute to someone who I considered a very close personal friend.

It was little more than a year ago, July 2008, while in my riding, that I received an email from Rick Wackid explaining he had been diagnosed with ALS. The news hit like a blow below the belt. That a young man, so healthy, so active and so full of life could leave us so quickly serves as a wake-up call to all of us of how fragile our existence can be.

Although Rick Wackid, like Jerry Yanover, was always a very worthy political adversary, he was also a passionate believer in this, our House of democracy. When one party loses someone of his quality and integrity, we are all the poorer for it. He is and will continue to be greatly missed.

On behalf of the Prime Minister and our entire Conservative government, I offer my sincere condolences to Rick's wife Danielle, his daughter Stephanie and all of his friends and family.

Comments by Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw to your attention that at approximately 12:40 p.m. during debate, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine on two separate occasions accused government members of lying. Clearly, in anyone's definition, this is unparliamentary language. I would ask you to review the blues and make a ruling on this matter as quickly as possible.

To her credit, the member said that if these remarks are deemed to be unparliamentary she would gladly apologize. I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to make a ruling quickly.

Oral Questions

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask you once again, further to a previous point of order I made, to make a ruling in an expeditious manner on what I believe to be unparliamentary remarks offered by the member for Wascana, on June 10 of this year, when during question period he stated to the Minister of Natural Resources that “she cannot tell the truth”.

Although we all know that the member for Wascana offered a very tepid apology on September 18, approximately five minutes before the House adjourned for a week, he did not qualify what he was apologizing for or what remarks he was withdrawing.

In order to have the decorum that we want, and I think all members want in the House, we need clear direction from you, Mr. Speaker, as to whether that language used during question period on June 10 was unparliamentary, since we have no clear direction of that yet.

I would urge you to please consider my intervention once again, Mr. Speaker, and make a ruling as quickly as possible.

Comments by the Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the first point of order raised by the parliamentary secretary. I simply want to say that I said every member of the Conservative Party was repeating a lie. Mr. Speaker, should you rule that it was unparliamentary language for me to say that the Conservatives were knowingly repeating something they knew to be untrue and therefore were repeating a lie, I will apologize with no reservations.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I can assure the hon. member that it is unparliamentary to suggest that members are lying or deliberately telling an untruth. Therefore, she might properly withdraw the remark and we will solve this problem now.

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

Mr. Speaker, I properly, wholeheartedly and unreservedly withdraw the statement I made that the Conservatives told a lie and repeated the lie. I apologize with all my heart for having made that statement. I will not repeat it again in the House.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I thank the hon. member.

Just to cheer up the parliamentary secretary, I will give the ruling now. I was going to wait, but I will give it now on the other matter.

Comments by Member for Wascana—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

On June 10, 2009, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons raised a point of order with regard to the use of unparliamentary language by the hon. member for Wascana. On September 28, 2009, the hon. parliamentary secretary reiterated his request for a ruling, noting that he did find the withdrawal of the remarks by the hon. member for Wascana on September 18 to be sufficient.

I am now prepared to rule on the point of order concerning unparliamentary language.

In first raising his point of order, the parliamentary secretary noted that during question period the member for Wascana quite clearly accused the Minister of Natural Resources of not telling the truth, which in his opinion was unparliamentary language.

Making reference to sections of House of Commons Procedure and Practice and Beauchesne's, concerning unparliamentary language, the parliamentary secretary stated that what he found distressing was that the member for Wascana had used this language in a direct question in a deliberate and premeditated mode. He asked that the opposition House leader apologize and withdraw the remarks. He asked that I review the blues of the debates.

In speaking in reply to the point of order, the member for Wascana also asked me to review the blues and argued that he had chosen his language very carefully and that it was not beyond the rules of parliamentary procedure, a position he maintained when he later rose to withdraw his remarks.

I had the opportunity to review the debates of Wednesday, June 10. In his preamble to a supplementary question to the Minister of Natural Resources concerning medical isotopes, the member for Wascana made the following remark, “Mr. Speaker, the minister cannot give the numbers and clearly she cannot tell the truth either”. That is on page 4419 of the Debates. These comments created disorder in the House and as I pointed out to the member at the time, such comments were unnecessary.

When the point of order was raised, I reviewed the section on unparliamentary language contained in Beauchesne, and I noted that there are a number of expressions that are very close to what was used, but none is precisely the same. I have also looked at other more recent uses of similar language in the House. There are numerous instances where my predecessors and I have had to rule unparliamentary such phrases as the “member deliberately misled”, “the member lied”, “the member is a liar”, or calling on a member to “stop lying”. In these cases, the use of such language is clearly unparliamentary.

Similarly, the use of expressions such as “a member made an untrue statement”, “a member did not tell the truth”, “the minister did not tell the truth”, “a member was not telling the whole truth”, have always been considered unacceptable and met with requests from the Speaker to withdraw the remarks. In one instance, on September 25, 1985, in the Debates at pages 6955-6, in his question, a member had asked the Prime Minister “to tell the truth to the House of Commons”. Mr. Speaker Bosley noted that there was an improper implication to the question and asked the member to rephrase it. Unsatisfied with the rephrasing of the question, the Speaker interrupted the member and stated that making such accusations with regard to the character of a member was improper in the House. He asked the member to withdraw and put a simple question of fact.

As Mr. Speaker Lamoureux stated in a ruling on October 13, 1966, Debates, page 8599:

My limited experience in the house indicates that it is not, per se, unparliamentary to say of another member that the statement he makes is false, untrue, wrong, incorrect or even spurious, unless there is an improper motive imputed or unless the member making the charge claims the untruth was stated to the knowledge of the person stating any such alleged untruth. [...]

I do not believe that saying a statement made is spurious is unparliamentary, or that a statement is incorrect, wrong, or untrue, if no motives are imputed by the person making such a statement.

In his comments, the member for Wascana stated that he had chosen his words very carefully and that it was not beyond the rules of parliamentary procedure. Nevertheless, it appears that in stating that she could not tell the truth, the member for Wascana was challenging the truthfulness of what the minister was saying and the Chair can only conclude that the remarks were unparliamentary.

The Chair notes that the member for Wascana did rise in the House on Friday, September 18 to withdraw the remarks and that the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has since pointed out that this still leaves open the question of whether or not the remarks were or were not unparliamentary. Let me remove all doubt on the matter: the words used were unparliamentary, they have been withdrawn and the Chair considers the matter closed.

I thank the House for its attention.

Oral Questions

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, obviously I accept your ruling on that particular point. I might not agree with it but I accept it.

However, on a similar point rising out of question period today, I would ask you to review Hansard and to rule on the following point. When the member for Parkdale—High Park was asking a question earlier today, he stated, “He has the same problem as the minister before him. He says 220,000 jobs next year, not right now. In fact, the Prime Minister and his ministers have been deliberately hiding the truth”.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to review this and, because he has used the word “deliberately” in connection with the truth, I believe that is unparliamentary and that he should withdraw that.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I will be glad to look into the matter. I think I may have heard the words at the time and did not think that hiding the truth was necessarily bad, but I will check the precedents on this point for sure and come back to the House in due course.

The House resumed consideration of the motions.

Opposition Motion—Government Policies

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of my Bloc Québécois colleagues on this important motion introduced by the Liberal Party. This motion could be called a non-confidence motion. Its wording is relatively clear since it says that the House has lost confidence in the government.

We Bloc Québécois members agree with Liberal members that this Conservative government can no longer have our confidence, especially the confidence of Quebeckers from all regions of Quebec, whom we proudly represent here. I will have the opportunity to explain why this government does not deserve our confidence.

Quebec's motto is, Je me souviens, I remember. Sometimes, we may seem to forget things, but Quebeckers clearly remember that exactly one year ago, all of us here were actively campaigning. Indeed, the election was held on October 14, 2008. At that time during the campaign, but also after the election, what was the government doing? It was denying the existence of any economic crisis. This Conservative government was telling us that there would be no deficit. Obviously, it misled us. What are we to do when a government misleads the House and the public? We must state that we no longer have confidence in that government.

Even though we, the Bloc Québécois members, support the Liberal motion, we feel that we have in front of us and beside us two parties with the same vision, two different parties but with the same outlook, two parties, one Liberal and one Conservative, that deliberately ignore the needs of Quebec and its citizens.

As the former Quebec lieutenant—the member for Bourassa—confirmed this week, the Liberal Party is controlled from Toronto. The Bloc Québécois has been saying for a long time that the Liberal Party is controlled by the Bay Street establishment. However, whenever we would say so, the Liberals would accuse us of engaging in doom and gloom and witch-hunting. Yet, the Quebec lieutenant who just resigned confirmed it.

The Liberal Party is controlled out of Toronto, but the Conservative Party is controlled from Calgary, because the decisions affecting that party are made in Calgary.

It can safely be said that in both cases these two parties, which have the same outlook, ignore the interests of Quebeckers. The Bloc Québécois is the only party that fights for the interests of Quebeckers and of Quebec's regions. That is why, since 1993, Quebec voters have always given a majority of seats to the Bloc Québécois. That is also why each Bloc member works very hard to be present in his or her riding, to be present here in Ottawa, and to listen to people's needs.

The Conservative government is totally out of touch. I am going to provide a few examples.

Consider the sectors of the economy that are in trouble. In Quebec, the manufacturing sector has been hard hit by the current crisis. Yesterday we had the announcements by Pratt & Whitney in the riding of my colleague from Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher. The forestry industry has been affected in all regions of Quebec, and even the Montreal region, because there are paper companies that have their head offices in Montreal. There have been cuts in the forestry industry in Montreal. In the regions, we have a genuine disaster.

In my riding, the sawmills owned by Kruger have closed down. There were three sawmills, two in my riding and one in the riding of my colleague from Manicouagan. The main employer in the municipality of Longue-Rive in the Haute-Côte-Nord region, the Jacques Beaulieu sawmill owned by Kruger, has closed down, taking jobs away from 100 people. Those people are experiencing an economic disaster.

Quite recently, on September 17, AbitibiBowater announced that it was eliminating 120 positions at the Clermont plant and also 340 positions in my riding at the Beaupré plant on the Côte-de-Beaupré. And the Saint-Hilarion sawmill, which depends directly on those two pulp and paper plants, is threatened with closure too.

Therefore, it is clear that for the people affected by this crisis, and given the government’s inaction, we cannot continue to have confidence in the Conservatives.

We could also recall that in the last Conservative government budget alone the modest sum of $170 million over two years was allocated to the forestry industry and the manufacturing industry across Canada. At the same time, the auto industry in Ontario was given $10 billion. That may be why our colleagues in the NDP who represent ridings in the Windsor, Ontario, region are a little lukewarm about our effort to stand up against the inequitable treatment of the forestry industries in Quebec and the auto industry in Ontario.

Another group that has been hit hard and directly by the recession is workers who have suffered job losses. These workers have no choice but to resort to employment insurance. The only action plan presented to the government by one of the opposition parties was proposed by the Bloc Québécois. We presented our first action plan in November 2008, and in February 2009 we attached an addendum to include other elements. The only party that has made the effort of presenting concrete proposals to help families, industries, regions and individuals is the Bloc Québécois.

That is why one of the things we called for in that action plan was for the waiting period to be eliminated. When you are unfortunate enough to find yourself without a job, the credit card bills, the mortgage payments and other everyday expenses, electricity bills, heating bills, whatever, keep coming in. Desjardins is not going to propose that you start paying your mortgage again when you feel like it just because you have lost your job. That is not how it works. That is why we called for the waiting period to be eliminated, to ensure that money continues to be injected into the economy, that people who are waiting for the situation to improve, who are waiting for someone to find another job, can continue to have an income.

I am almost out of time, but I would have also liked to talk about the situation of seniors. Sadly, again, the only party taking up the cause of seniors is the Bloc Québécois. Today, again, there was a question about the guaranteed income supplement, asked by my colleague from Châteauguay—Saint-Constant. Seniors are also experiencing income losses and are having more and more trouble making ends meet.

Some seniors have even reached the point of wondering whether they should eat or buy prescription drugs. That is unbelievable, and it is totally unacceptable. That is why the Conservatives no longer have our confidence.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague’s speech. He did not manage to get to employment insurance in the short amount of time he was allowed.

In Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord and in Manicouagan, we have fishers, forestry workers and seasonal workers in the tourism industry. There are also some people who work in winter or summer, depending on the season. It is as hard to harvest berries on the North Shore in February as to ski on the Massif de la Petite-Rivière-Saint-François in July. These people often find themselves on employment insurance.

The government's Bill C-50 will not help the people of the North Shore.

I would like the hon. member to tell me whether many seasonal, occasional, temporary or vacation replacement workers in his riding and all over Quebec will receive any employment insurance benefits at all under Bill C-50.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

We sometimes tend to speak of seasonal workers when we should call them seasonal industry workers. It is the industry that is seasonal.

As my colleague rightly said, the bill before us will help 190,000 workers across Canada. There is nothing in it, though, for seasonal industry workers, absolutely nothing according to our studies. We asked the government to provide us with a province by province breakdown of these 190,000 workers.

Where can these 190,000 workers be found? The program is tailor-made for workers in the automobile industry in Ontario. I agree they may have been affected, but Bill C-50 does nothing for our seasonal workers. The entire question of eligibility in this employment insurance program should be reviewed. We agree about this with the Sans-Chemise and Action Chômage movements, which want the threshold to qualify for employment insurance reduced to 360 hours.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, our colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord made a very good speech. I would like to remind him about what is happening now in Quebec, where there is a lot of controversy about the state of public finances and people are starting to realize that we are very short on money.

Our excuse for a premier in Quebec City wants to start increasing everyone’s taxes and is thinking of all kinds of things to get money, including raising electricity rates, when the real money is in Ottawa, in the funds owed to Quebec.

My colleague mentioned the oft-cited $10 billion given to the automobile industry while virtually nothing was given to forestry industry, even though more people have lost jobs there than in the automobile industry.

I would like to tell him and make him realize—I am sure he already knows—that this is a double loss for us because it is money we do not have and because we are paying 20% of the $10 billion given to Ontario. That means $2 billion is coming out of our pockets to go there.

I would like to hear what he has to say about that.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord has one minute to answer the question.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is the problem with the current situation. With this Conservative government, and this was also the case with the Liberals, there is always a double standard. Today, our leader opened question period by talking about harmonization of the GST.

Former Prime Minister Mulroney made an agreement and the current Conservative Prime Minister is refusing to honour that agreement. When the time came to harmonize the GST in Ontario or in the Maritimes, they found the money. But when it comes to Quebec, there is always a different standard that applies.

For that reason, when Quebec is sovereign, we will stop begging Ottawa for what is rightfully ours. Decisions will be made in Quebec, for Quebec. As Maurice Duplessis said, “Give us back our loot.” It is our money.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my distinguished colleague from Prince Edward Island, the man who probably more than any other member of the House fights for fairness for Canadian farmers, the member for Malpeque.

Today we debate a very concise motion. Its language is simple and its message is direct; unusual for this place, it is stunningly clear and without pretense. It simply states that we do not have confidence in the current government.

We should be clear that this opposition has lacked confidence in the government for some time. However, as a responsible opposition, we have put the country first, tried to work with the government and pressured it to make changes when possible. We have acted responsibly and we have sustained this Parliament. We have not supported the government, but we have sustained it. While others have called for an election on dozens of occasions, we have not. That is not because we have had faith in the government, but because we saw it as our duty to try to make Parliament work. However, that has not been easy.

Since the election of the government in early 2006, we have seen actions and attitudes that we believe are out of line with Canadian values. We have seen disregard for those most vulnerable. We have seen distortions, exaggerations and fabrications. We have seen a government that specializes in dividing Canadians. It sees policies and programs as political chess pieces designed to advance its own cause, not the cause of Canadians. It is a government that has abandoned fairness and compassion, thereby damaging our reputation at home and abroad.

Particularly distressing for me, we have seen a government which in large part has abandoned the social infrastructure of Canada, which had been constructed by Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments over a number of decades. Canadians have watched as we saw cuts to programs, even after directly inheriting the largest surplus in Canadian history.

We have seen programs diverted for political advantage, hurting many in Canada's population who need help the most. We have not supported the government for those reasons, but there have been times when we have sustained the government, allowing Parliament to continue and avoiding an election. Most recently in June, when the NDP and the Bloc voted for an election, Liberals agreed to one last opportunity for the government to show good faith.

As part of the deal, the decision was made to form a group of Liberal and Conservative members whose goal was to look at two specific aspects of employment insurance to see if progress could be made. EI is not the only issue on which we have lacked confidence in the government, but this is a clear example and a particular interesting case study of why we have lost confidence in the government. I want to go through this summer project, on which I had the honour of working.

On June 17, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition agreed to set up an EI working group, a blue ribbon panel to study EI. There were two issues: regional fairness, the issue which the Leader of the Opposition had insisted on; and bringing self-employed into the employment insurance system, which the government suggested was a priority for itself. On that day, the Leader of the Opposition appointed three panellists, including me and my colleague, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine. The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development was appointed on that day, but it took almost two weeks before the other Conservative panellists were appointed.

On June 28, we had a teleconference. We heard that the minister could not meet because she was going away for two weeks. We decided to meet on July 7 for a technical briefing. That had to be changed to accommodate the summer plans of the parliamentary secretary, so we could not meet until July 14. We had a technical briefing on the 14th without the minister.

The Liberals submitted a number of questions to the secretariat that had been set up. We asked what the costing would be for a national qualifying standard of EI based on 360 hours. We also asked what the costing was for 390 hours and 420 hours. We asked about the cost to people of the revolving rate of unemployment, which means that people in some areas who lose their jobs before others in that area lose their jobs do not qualify for EI.

We talked about the extension of weeks benefit, citing the United States model. The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine mentioned the United States model and what was happening in states such as California, where EI was being extended. We asked for information on the self-employed.

Members should keep in mind that the first full meeting could not be held on June 17 because of the Conservative members. It could not be held until July 23, when we had a meeting.

Although we had agreed in advance that all information would be provided in advance, it was not. We got the information at the meeting. In the discussion I had with the minister, the Liberals were asked to present a plan on regional fairness and the Conservatives would present one on the self-employed.

We did that. For over an hour and a half we talked about the Liberal 360-hour proposal, not a proposal advanced only by us, but advanced by many, regional fairness being a pretty important issue for many Canadians, not the least of whom is the current Prime Minister. When he was the pen for the Reform Party document, he indicated why should somebody in one part of the country not get access to employment insurance based on the same number of hours as somebody else. The current Prime Minister indicated that back then.

We talked about that proposal, the four of us plus two staff members. The four elected members, two Liberals and two Conservatives, asked the director to study our proposals. They asked him to study those two proposals.

On the self-employed, there was nothing. Members should keep in mind that in the last election the Conservatives had in their platform a plan to bring self-employed in for maternal parental benefits. It was in their platform.

We asked if the government at least had that, and we were told it could not give us that. That belongs to the Conservative Party of Canada not to us. The government would not even give us a cost on that proposal. On that very proposal the Conservatives could not give us any information to substantiate what they wanted.

On that day we agreed to meet three times in August, which we did. On August 6, again, information was thrown on the table when we got there, violating the protocols established by the committee and agreed to by the Conservative members as well the Liberal members. We went to that meeting and they threw information on the table, including a document marked “not for distribution” where they allegedly costed the Liberal proposal. They costed it at over $4 billion which we knew did not make any sense. By the way, that document marked “not for distribution” had been given to the media before we even saw it.

There were no answers to our other questions. There was no information on the self-employed, nothing. That was another week wasted.

On August 13, again we got the information at the last minute. They produced a new costing for 360 hours, but refused to substantiate it. They refused to say how they came across those numbers. They refused to say what made up the numbers in the costing of that plan.

There was no costing on a 390-hour national standard or a 420-hour national standard.

We looked at other issues. The western premiers had come up with some ideas, and we looked at that proposal. We looked at reducing regional rates. We looked at what other countries are doing on the self-employed. However, there was no information or any proposal from the government and the department that works for that government, on the self-employed.

At this point in time I was getting calls from my colleagues, many of whom may be in this chamber now, saying, “They are not serious about this. Why do you continue meeting?” The leader said, “We are going to continue meeting because something may come out of it. We are going to be the ones that try to get something done.”

I understand the frustration people have when they look at a group like that. People say that it is just more of the same, members get together but nobody is serious about it. It is not that way.

This was an opportunity for Parliament to work outside of this chamber, for us to get together and say, “This is what we believe. We can back it up. Tell us what you believe. Give us something. Let us talk about it and see if there is some common ground”. There was nothing from the government.

On August 20, two months after the group was set up, we put forward our ideas and had nothing from the Conservative government. It was the last scheduled meeting of the group. This was when we spoke to the Parliamentary Budget Officer saying that if we were not going to get accurate information from the government, perhaps he could help us.

We asked him to cost our proposal. The proposal that the Parliamentary Budget Officer looked at was the proposal that the government had costed at over $4 billion. The Parliamentary Budget Officer came back with a cost of under $1.2 billion. He said, among other things, that the government's total cost estimate overstated the costs, that the government's dynamic cost estimate was flawed.

We tried very hard to act in good faith in this meeting.

It is not with joy or excitement or even trepidation that we bring forward this motion today. It is the cold eye of recognition of a simple, clear fact, that we have no confidence in the government and that in spite of numerous opportunities provided to the government to make Parliament work, it has chosen not to.

Canadians do not want a government that thinks it has all the solutions. Canadians do want a government that recognizes there are challenges and that it can help with those solutions.

It is the foundation of this country, of the ethic that holds together this large and diverse land. It is the ethic that brings us together.

The government does not see it that way. We do not see politics as the Conservatives do. We do not see government as they do. We do not see Canada as they do. We have no confidence in the government.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the hon. member across the way. It was very interesting. The speech was actually a commercial of why Canadians cannot trust the Liberal Party.

He stands in his place and says that for three years they sustained the government. They did not agree with things, but they sustained the government. Yet, he got up in his place and voted for things that he did not believe in. Here is the underlying problem with the Liberal Party and why Canadians can never trust the Liberal Party to govern. It has no principles, it has no substance and it will fight for nothing.

When that party was in power, it attacked the provinces. The Liberals took some $25 billion out of the provinces' hands. Who did that impact? It hurt health care. It hurt people on social assistance across this country. They did not ask the provinces how they could do this together. They simply unilaterally took a hatchet to health care, to social programs and social services.

We put forward an economic action plan to help our unemployed. What did they do? They voted against it. We brought forward an action plan to help Canadians who want to renovate their homes. How did they vote? They voted against it. We put forward $200 billion in tax cuts for Canadians, for working families. We brought forward initiatives on crime. How did these people vote? They voted against it. They should be ashamed of themselves for trying to force an election that nobody wants.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, I recognize that the hon. member is new to the House, but he was surely alive in the 1990s. Surely he recalls the deficit we inherited the last time. It was $42 billion. This time it is over $50 billion.

He talks about cuts to provinces. Members of his own party who were in the House at the time said the cuts did not go far enough. They said in the House that we should have cut more from the social infrastructure of this country. They said we should have cut more. That is the hypocrisy of the government.

Yes, times were not easy in the 1990s, but I am awful proud to stand here as a Liberal member of Parliament and say that we invested in the child tax benefit, that we invested in guaranteed income supplement, and that we did things for students and for Canadians that they needed.

The social infrastructure of this country that was built by the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservative Party is being ignored and disbanded by this Conservative Party, and the hon. member has the gall to stand in his place and call us hypocrites. That is an absolutely, unbelievably hypocritical statement and I am sure he is very sorry about it already.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague gave a brilliant speech on why we should have no confidence in the Conservative Party. Quebeckers realized this a long time ago. The Conservatives' ratings have been spiralling downward in Quebec for a number of weeks. We do not know where they will end up.

What my colleague forgot to say is that the Liberals are just as badly off, both in the polls and in terms of what Quebeckers think of them, and there are some fundamental reasons for that. Today, the Liberals are criticizing the Conservatives for the state of employment insurance when it was they who created the situation by siphoning off $57 billion from the fund and leaving it empty for their successors.

Quebeckers consider the Liberals and the Conservatives to be two entities with the same outlook and they will relegate them to the same position in the next election.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, let me give as cogent an answer as I can because I respect the position of the Bloc members on issues like EI. They support great changes to employment insurance and I understand that. They never have to pay for them. They never have to be the government. They never have to balance the books. They never have to do anything like that.

On employment insurance, for years the Bloc and the NDP have brought private members' bills to the House, and I have supported them and even encouraged members of the Liberal Party to support them, and they have supported them, but they have added not one person to the EI roles, not one person. That is why, in the last couple of years, labour leaders from Quebec have come to the Liberal Party. I have been in those discussions and they have said, “We need you because we need an alternative to the Conservative Party”.

Somebody has to stand up for Canadian workers who will actually have their hands on the levers of power and do something good for this country. Labour leaders in Quebec, the member for Honoré-Mercier and people from other places, have fought for that principle. I respect their position.

We have a balanced approach. As a future government, everything we say today we know we will have to live with when we form government and the people of Canada give us that privilege. We measure that and we will do what we think is right for Canadian workers.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to our party's motion of no confidence in the Conservative government and build on the substantive evidence. Other speakers before me have put forward why the House should show no confidence in the government and, especially, in the Prime Minister.

Simply put, it is a government Canadians cannot trust and cannot believe. It has actually squandered our nation's potential away. The biggest cost of the government's incompetence will fall on our children and grandchildren, not only by the increased debt that the government has laid on their backs but also by the decreased social and economic programs that lead to our children and grandchildren's potential, such as research and development, early learning and child care, education, and the list goes on.

As the member for Wascana said earlier, the current Conservative government has squandered the surplus of the previous Liberal government that Canadians worked so hard to attain. It moved Canada from being best of the G8 to the bottom of the G7. However, instead of admitting to their failure, the Conservatives use taxpayers' money to advertise. Their basic purpose is to mislead and confuse.

As our leader has said, they have spent six times more promoting their own inaction plan than on warning of the dangers of H1N1.

Let me give the House one small example out of the thousands of examples of waste by the government.

I have here a picture and I know I cannot use a prop, but this is a picture of a sign that was put up in front of the Jean Canfield Building and it talks about Canada's action plan using stimulus to create jobs.

The member for Charlottetown announced that building in 2004 and the member for Kings—Hants was the minister of public works at the time. It was built before the current government came to power.

Why would the Conservatives put a sign like that there? As our the leader said, they are “using public funds to promote untruths”. That is what the current government is all about: using public funds to promote untruths.

President Obama, in an August 5 email that he sent out when he was taking on the Republicans over the health care issue, said, and I quote because I believe it is the same problem in Canada:

So we've got to get out there, fight lies with truth and set the record straight.

That is what we have to do in Canada. Because the government over there is using false promotion, trying to confuse the Canadian public, trying to leave the impression that it is doing something when it is really doing the very opposite, and it is tearing down the social and economic structure that Canadians have spent their lives fighting for. It is driving this country into deficit. That is why we can no longer support the government.

Nowhere is the government's record of failure worse and nowhere is the hurt deeper than in rural Canada. Rural Canada is where the great economic potential of this nation lies: in agriculture, in fisheries, in forestry, in mining, and in energy. Those industries are the generators of wealth. However, most are being undermined and left to drift on their own because of the government's inaction.

Forestry was sold out in an agreement with the United States. It still pains forestry workers and plants are still closing to this day. In fisheries, while the east coast lobster fisheries faced disastrous prices, the minister promised help, in March. However, to this date, not a dime has been spent in that help for fisheries. Again, it is lost hope and lost dreams, announcements, and nothing delivered.

The Fraser River fisheries is facing a disaster. Instead of the Prime Minister listening to one of his own, the member from Delta--Richmond East who knows the fisheries, the Prime Minister fired him from the fisheries committee, and now, we are losing the salmon industry in the Fraser River.

Why did he fire him? Because the member was asking for government involvement that would have helped the industry. This is a Prime Minister that is in charge of governing but does not believe in government. That is why the member for Delta--Richmond East is not on that committee.

One of the government's worst record is in the area of agriculture. Remember the Prime Minister's promise in 2006 on cost of production for the farm community? Farm debt has soared to four times that of United States farms and we have lost an average of 3,600 farmers per year. How many dollars were spent under that cost of production program? The answer is zero.

In fact, in the last budget the cost of production program was dropped. What does that tell us? It tells us that the Prime Minister broke his word, not for the first time and probably not for the last.

What about hog producers who are facing the worst financial crisis ever in Canadian history? We have a Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food who announced a few things in the spring, but during the worst crisis ever to hit our industry, he decided to give one press release on top of another and thought that this would do the trick. No, it did not.

The scheme he came up with at the end is almost like a Ponzi scheme, which ensures that farmers can borrow money from a bank that is guaranteed by the government. However, the first condition is that farmers must pay back the government for the unsecured money they received from the government the year before.

Really, what is happening is farmers are now obligated to the banks and they pay off Treasury Board. The minister from Manitoba sitting here, where hog production is the highest in the country, should be ashamed of himself. The minister's department is getting paid while producers acquire more debt. How can farmers in this country have any confidence in a government like that?

What about the beef industry? The minister announced in the spring he was going to challenge country of origin labelling. October 9 is an important date. If the consultations are not completed by October 9, then the investigation cannot get started and that means the investigation will not get started until well into 2010.

What are the consequences to the beef industry without action? The result is this. Our closest market is the United States. Hog exports are down 50%. Slaughter cattle exports are down 20%. Feeder cattle exports are down 50%.

As a farmer in my province told me, five years ago he was getting an average of $1,500 for an animal that went to slaughter. What is he getting in 2009? He is getting an average of $1,106. How can farmers survive that? Who can have confidence in the actions of the government and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food?

Let us look at AgriFlex, which the party over there committed itself to during the last election. Liberals did as well, but we would have kept our word. All the Conservatives did with AgriFlex was put less money in over more time and did not allow the flexibility to do what farmers wanted it to do. In fact, the applications have now come out.

I believe it is designed to be a slush fund for the minister. Maybe the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has learned from the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities that he could use a slush fund catered to people who support him and to Conservative ridings. However, that has nothing to do with the economic crisis in the farm community.

Then there is AgriStability. Conservatives promised in 2006 that they would get rid of that awful CAIS program, that they would cancel it. They changed the name and replaced it with AgriStability. The only problem is that last year they changed how the calculations would be done and the cheques are now rolling out. They are 60% of what CAIS would have paid. How can people have confidence in the government? The fact of the matter is they cannot.

In Prince Edward Island, producers were promised by the government $12.4 million for weather-damaged crops. However, that money did not come out until it finally got delivered a year later. It was promised at the height of an election. As a result, a number of farmers did not get their crop in this spring. Worse yet, the government promised $6 million for the Atlantic beef plant for all of Atlantic Canada, and that money has not been delivered yet.

How can Canadians, how can farmers, have faith in a government like that? I say vote no confidence in the government.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member talk about rural Canada and talk about taxes.

It is interesting that he also talked in particular about the beef industry. I would like to ask the hon. member a question to do with taxes and that industry.

He and the Liberal Party have already said they support harmonized sales tax in Ontario. As the hon. member probably knows, beef cattle change hands three or four times before they go to market. There is no tax on them right now. Now they will have a 13% tax every time those cattle change hands.

I would like to know from the hon. member, who aspires to be in government, and I am assuming aspires to be the minister of agriculture, how he can possibly say that he will help farmers when he is happy to charge them 13%, 13%, 13% and 13% again.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I talk about the HST as the Harper sales tax. I know there is great effort on the government side to try to blame it on the governments in B.C. and Ontario, but that is in fact what I call it because the Minister of Finance is promoting going to that harmonized sales tax.

In Prince Edward Island, members will know very well that the Prince Edward Island government, which is also being forced and basically bribed with more money to go that avenue, has said that it will not go that way. The connection is there that Ontario, B.C. and Prince Edward Island have all been pushed by the Minister of Finance to go to the harmonized sales tax.

However, the member's information on how it would affect the beef industry is wrong. It would not be--