House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2006, with 54% of the vote.
Trade October 24th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, if the softwood lumber dispute were a measure of the minister's competency, I would suggest that the 6,000 employees of CAE have much to be fearful about.
I ask once again, what specific steps is the minister taking to assist CAE and Canadian defence contractors through difficult times caused by the government?
Trade October 24th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, recently, CAE, a Canadian firm, lost out on a $1 billion U.S. defence contract despite the fact it was the low bidder by 16%.
Derek Burney, the firm's president, fears that his company will have a very difficult time securing future defence contracts in the United States because of the damage caused by the Liberal government's anti-Americanism.
I ask the Minister for International Trade whether other Canadian defence contractors are now suffering the same fate?
Children of Deceased Veterans Education Assistance Act October 24th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, I want to summarize this matter. If I understand the minister correctly on this point, he has said that they are in agreement on the objective. Therefore, I presume the objective is to provide justice for the widows and to overcome this problem. In question period I heard him say that the cupboards were bare and that the resources were not there.
I have many problems with that. The Governor General's budget went up dramatically in the last few years, by millions of dollars. The trip to Russia alone would pay for a lot of widows' pensions.
I think of some of the cronies that we have heard of lately, like Mr. Radwanski. I did some calculations on his budget. We could probably cover 2,000 widows just with what he has squandered away through excessive overspending. Then something like $20 million went to the former finance minister's Canada Steamship Lines. That would probably fund this program for its duration.
Could the member accept the argument that there really is not any government resources to fund the pensions?
Supply October 23rd, 2003
Mr. Speaker, the member referred to the Kim Campbell-Brian Mulroney transition. I would remind him that there was a transition from St. Laurent to Pearson, there was a transition from Mackenzie King to St. Laurent, and there was a transition from Pearson to Trudeau that definitely reflected the principle that my colleague referred to.
It is unprecedented in Canadian history that this could carry on. Quite frankly, to ridicule other parties or refer to Kim Campbell and Brian Mulroney, the member should look at the precedents set in his own party. This is unprecedented. He should look at the history of his own party before he makes rather quick, sharp comments like he just did.
Firearms Registry October 2nd, 2003
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government is busy naming institutions and landmarks after Pierre Trudeau. I recommend that the Liberal government officially consider naming the firearms registry after Pierre Trudeau. In so many ways it represents the Trudeau legacy.
Here is a short list. The gun registry is a symbol of arrogance. The gun registry is a symbol of elitism. The gun registry is a symbol of incompetence. The gun registry is a symbol of big government and wasteful spending. The gun registry is a major interference in the day-to-day lives of ordinary Canadians.
If the Liberal government were to name the firearms registry after Pierre Elliott Trudeau, I am sure it would find much support among opposition members. Unfortunately, the legacy will be short lived because the Canadian Alliance, upon forming the government, will repeal the gun registry.
Canadian Firearms Control Program September 24th, 2003
Especially in Saskatchewan, where we have a similar type of government. The government in that province plays the political game like the federal government. It passes politically correct laws and the execution and performance of what goes on falls flat on its face.
I think this is an extraordinary failure on the part of the government. I am going to give the members on the other side of the House some political advice. This will be their Achilles heel. They can keep on pouring more money into it. The more they persist with it, the more their arrogance, their elitism and their politics show up. It will be their Achilles heel, and probably some of the other legislation that they have rammed through lately will be too, but this one is going to get them. They are going to pay a price for it.
The former finance minister, the democratic deficit man, has his fingerprints all over this. A billion dollars has been wasted on this and the foolishness behind this thing is all over him. He is not going to be able to shake it and nobody where I come from is going to forget about this law.
Canadian Firearms Control Program September 24th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, rather than entirely focus on the costs and waste, I should commend the member who introduced the bill, the member who has the holy seat of the two saints.
Rather than dealing with the costs and waste involved in this, I would like to approach it from another standpoint. I believe that the firearms registry was an ill-conceived plan from its very inception. People did not strategically work their way through this concept and try to figure it out. That is the fatal flaw with the whole system. It was never conceived and properly thought through to begin with. I would like to zero in on a couple of areas that bring this home.
Back in my home province of Saskatchewan we pioneered something called the personal property registration system 15 years ago, which every province in Canada has now adopted. It is a tool for lenders, credit unions, banks, trust companies and private lenders, to secure personal property. Personal property, as hon. members would know, is anything basically other than real estate. It is moveable property: automobiles, fridges, stoves, etc.
The big dilemma in creating that system was to create a registration system for people dealing with property. For example, if I bought a new piece of property for someone, I could do a search and determine whether I would get clear title to the property. We looked into whether we should make it a serial number search system or should the property be described?
We looked carefully at that concept and spent a lot of time figuring it out so that we would have a good system that would work. The personal property registration system is a solid system. We looked at the question carefully and came to the conclusion that the system would fail if we were to use a serial number registration system because personal property would not have a uniform consistent serial number registration system. Only motor vehicles have a uniform consistent serial number registration system.
The world has a uniform standard serial number registration system for motor vehicles and there is only one serial number for every vehicle on this planet. There are no duplicates. However, when we get into fridges, tractors or any other type of personal property, the serial number system is full of flaws, and that includes firearms.
A policy choice was made that the personal property system would be a failure or defective if we were to create a registration system based on serial numbers. The founder of that system probably knows more than anybody on the government side or in this bureaucracy about all the problems that exist in trying to register something by serial number, least of all firearms.
Once we get the firearms system up and running, and presumably get everything registered, if we were to do a search on a serial number on some of those firearms, I would not be surprised if we got 289 call-ups on it, all with the same number. What service will that provide to law enforcement, the courts or anything else?
As a former lawyer, I think defence lawyers will look on this as a loophole and a technicality to get their clients off because we have to prove things in a criminal court beyond a reasonable doubt. We are only creating all sorts of loopholes for defence lawyers. That is another problem with the whole firearms registration system.
I have a number of other objections. People in the other House call themselves charter fundamentalists. They believe in a charter of rights. The Auditor General has pointed out serious violations of our privacy rights with the legislation. I am not a charter expert like my Liberal friends on the other side, but I would think privacy rights are something fairly important which should be part of our charter. However the Liberals total ignore that. Privacy means nothing. They have made some serious intrusions into our private lives in this country with the firearms registration system.
When they pass a law on which they have spent over $1 billion and they let off a lot of hot air about the system, surely they intend to enforce that legislation. Why would they pass a law and spend all those resources on it if there is absolutely no intent to enforce that law?
I have folks back in Saskatchewan who are prepared to play the game of civil disobedience. They want to be charged under this law because they feel it violates their constitutional guarantees under the charter. They have lawyers lined up and so on. They want to be charged in order to test this law. They have tried everything under the sun.
But we can guess what is happening. The government will not charge them. It spent a billion dollars creating this monster and then it does not even have the guts to try to enforce the law. I cannot think of anything so stupid. We should not be passing laws in the House that the government is not prepared to enforce. If that is what it is playing at, it is playing a billion dollar political game with people. That is what the government has to admit.
Let us talk about national priorities. Members on the other side of the House used to say “if this would save one life”, but I can tell those members that a billion dollars would have bought 350 MRI scanners in this country. I think I could bring in doctors and medical people who could talk about thousands of lives that would have been saved with MRIs in cancer treatment alone. The government cannot prove one single case of where anyone's life has been saved with this billion dollar firearms registry, not one single person.
The government can come up with some sort of bogus justification for it. It might have conned someone in some organization to back it up and give testimony on it, but if we talk to the rank and file people who work in those organizations they totally reject the whole concept. It is a total waste of their time and effort.
In the private sector there is an old saying, “When you've made a mistake and it's not working out, you cut your losses”. Bankers would always say that the first loss is the best loss, that we should cut it and back out of it. But this government, despite hundreds and hundreds of solid arguments for why the firearms registry is a total absolute failure, insists on pushing ahead and throwing more money into this hole. The government should admit that it screwed up. This is a totally flawed concept. It is poorly conceived.
Quite literally, for a lot of informed and knowledgeable Canadians who have taken the time to actually analyze it and not play the politics of the game, this is becoming nauseating. What the government is doing with taxpayers' dollars compared to all the things it could be doing with that sort of money bothers their stomachs to no end. We have roads falling apart in the country. People are being killed because the infrastructure is falling apart. Accidents are happening because the roads are falling apart, but there is no money to fix them.
Income Tax Act September 24th, 2003
Madam Speaker, I would like to raise the same concern, the targeting of the oil and gas sector, and probably Alberta in turn.
Under the equalization system in Canada we are talking about $10.5 billion. I believe the member's province has been receiving about $5.5 billion in equalization and transfer payments, and that has been going on for a considerable period of time.
On the other hand, the province that has been carrying the ball on equalization to the tune of about $6 billion a year has been the province of Alberta. It just seems to me that the winner in this scenario, a healthy Alberta economy, means $5.5 billion for the province of Quebec in its equalization program.
If the Alberta economy is not healthy and it is not able to pay this $2,000 per capita every year into the equalization fund, and the oil and gas industry is in trouble, where in the world does the member expect this $5.5 billion to come from that they take for granted in the province of Quebec?
Income Tax Act September 24th, 2003
Madam Speaker, the question for the parliamentary secretary is could I have his undertaking to provide an answer to that question? Obviously he does not have the answer right now and I do not think that no comment is an answer. If he could give that undertaking to provide that information, that would be satisfactory.
Income Tax Act September 24th, 2003
On a point of privilege, Madam Speaker, I asked the parliamentary secretary a question. I think it was a straightforward question, not complicated and the answer I received, if I am correct, was no comment. At the very least, I should be entitled to an undertaking from the parliamentary secretary if he is not familiar with this area to provide that information in due course. As a member of Parliament I think I should be able to get an answer.