Rahim Jaffer

[Member for Calgary East, February 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to inform the House that our colleague from Calgary East has experienced a small setback on his road to recovery. As all members must know by now our colleague recently had heart surgery to correct a weak valve.

This past weekend in Calgary he joked that most of his colleagues were surprised that he even had a heart. Most of us in this place know very well that he has the heart and the soul of a lion.

The member for Calgary East and I were both elected in 1997 and we have our origins in East Africa. Over the years, and I am not sure how, we have been mistaken for one another but what cannot be mistaken is his ability to crack a joke and make us smile.

To his wife Neena and his family, all of us here in this place wish them well and wish a speedy recovery for our friend. He is a fighter and I look forward to his return to the House.

[Immigration, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is so far from the truth. Not only is the government losing track of phoney Tunisian tourists, it is breaking its promise to the U.S. to require visas from Saudi Arabia.

Fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were Saudis, as are the 100 of the 150 al-Qaeda terrorists being held by the U.S, yet Saudi nationals can enter Canada without visas.

How can we expect the United States to allow easy border access to Canadians when the government's immigration policies put out the welcome mat for terrorists?

[Immigration, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of illegal immigration.

We have learned that two years ago, 1,600 other Tunisians entered the country and that the government has no idea as to their whereabouts.

Will the minister stop bragging, go back to Dorval, and announce a new investigation into his department's poor management?

[Infrastructure Program, February 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the fact that the Liberals always use their friends to give out those sorts of grants does not change anything. That is what Canadians dislike.

The government did not cut one dime of waste in the last budget. It already blew $1 billion in HRDC grants and last week it was revealed that it had lost $3.3 billion in an Enron sized accounting error.

Why should we trust this cabinet with discretionary control over $2 billion more in taxpayer money?

[Infrastructure Program, February 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on a number of occasions in the past in Quebec, Human Resources Development Canada has been caught getting its projects approved by Liberal cronies in opposition ridings. The government has just abandoned a transparent approach to return to its old questionable methods by letting the Deputy Prime Minister decide.

Will he make a commitment to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to keep certain Liberal activists from stepping up to the trough and taking advantage of the infrastructure projects?

[Foreign Affairs, February 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister knows full well that we are not asking for confidential information. We are asking for who knew what, when.

By his own admission, he presented two contradictory versions of what happened to the House. We cannot take the minister's word for it and now the minister will not tell us what the proper reporting procedure was.

How can we evaluate which of the minister's stories were true if he will not inform us of the protocol as to how he is kept informed?

[Foreign Affairs, February 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, they are doing the job in spite of this government.

Yesterday, the minister said that he would not table the chain of command for incidents regarding JTF2, but we are demanding that the House determine whether the minister misled the Commons as to the exact moment when he was informed of the incident.

If he refuses to table the chain of command, how can we determine exactly what happened?

[Immigration, February 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, last week he called himself the minister for immigration. We learned last week that hundreds of Tunisians, some possibly connected to al-Qaeda, were allowed to disappear into Canada. This week we have learned that blank visa documents have gone missing and that there are no fewer than five ongoing investigations underway.

Will the minister now tell Canadians, is he the minister of missing immigration forms or the minister for missing immigration forms?

[Immigration, February 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Immigration must shed some light on the theft of hundreds of immigration forms. We now know that the government has known about this for two years. Nonetheless, last week, the minister told us that we should not let it worry us.

Will the minister stop playing this political game once and for all, tell us the truth about this situation, and explain how such important documents could have been stolen from his department?

[Minister of National Defence, February 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague has just mentioned, you obviously agree that there has been some concern here to send this issue to the committee. The government is not taking it seriously at all.

The Minister of National Defence has too much responsibility and too many lives resting in his hands for questions to linger about his judgment. Will he rise in this place today and explain to Canadians how they can continue to believe he has the judgment to determine what the Prime Minister should or should not know?