Brian Pallister

[Canada Post, May 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, every burglar needs a good inside man.

The rules are tough for Canadian taxpayers, but they are easy for patronage pals of the government. According to Revenue Canada rules, we are guilty until proven innocent. If we do not have receipts, we do not get a claim, except apparently André Ouellet.

The minister has been hiding behind this smokescreen audit now for a running time of eight months. For eight months, he has been an accomplice in Mr. Ouellet's tax avoidance.

Why should every other Canadian be subjected to a different set of rules than André Ouellet?

[Canada Post, May 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this week in the operations committee, former Canada pork-master general and CEO, André Ouellet, admitted under oath that he had failed to forward almost $200,000 in receipts to Revenue Canada auditors. Any other Canadian who claimed expenses without receipts would be immediately assessed a taxable benefit by Revenue Canada authorities.

I would like the minister to tell the House today why there are different rules in place for Liberal patronage appointees than there are for all other Canadians?

[Canada Post, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is as evasive today as Mr. Ouellet was yesterday.

The Liberals are not interested in getting to the bottom of this issue. For every other Canadian, tax rules are straightforward: no receipts and we pay a taxable benefit. Mr. Ouellet claims he lost almost $200,000 worth of receipts and “the dog ate my homework”.

The same rules that apply to everyone else must apply to Liberal fat cats in this country. Or is “I lost the receipts” now an acceptable excuse for Revenue Canada tax officials?

[Canada Post, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it does not appear that the government has any interest in solving the case of André Ouellet's missing receipts. As recently as March of this year, the Canada Post minister told this House that he still did not have the receipts. Yet yesterday, before the government operations committee, Mr. Ouellet testified under oath that he sent the minister the receipts in December of last year.

Will the minister now admit that his department has had the receipts since December of 2004?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would relish the opportunity to clarify with respect to some of the remarks that he has made.

He made the comment that the leader of the Conservative Party said that he was supportive of the budget. We did not vote for the budget. The NDP voted against it.

I think we should make the point here that if the budget is as good as the member says it is, then why does it now require changing? Why does it require an additional commitment of over $22 billion by the government in addition to the budget commitments made earlier? The government is laying out additional spending every single day. It is not interested in running on the budget.

For the member's edification, I will read from an article. I have many to choose from but I will start with an article in today's Globe and Mail entitled “Liberal Spending Blitz”. Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond said:

Because we've had almost as many spending announcements since the budget [as] were...in the budget, it would seem to be almost incumbent on the government to produce an update where we are fiscally.

The government is not interested in running on the budget. It is interested in spending enough money so it can be popular with every basic category of special interest group it can find in the country.

This is a one and a half page bill. The member asked how we can be opposed to spending money in each of these broad categories. We are not. We are opposed to spending money willy-nilly without a plan. A one and a half page document, such as Bill C-48 is, outlines no constructive use for the money. It simply allows for a slush fund for cabinet to dip into. In a variety of scenarios they may or may not spend money under various headings. There is nothing in the bill about a plan to use this money intelligently.

What Canadians want is for the government to operate transparently and with some sense of accountability. That has not been evident with the government for a long time.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my comments on this spending blitz bill, I want to make reference to a very important and historic accomplishment this past weekend.

Those members of the House who are familiar with the sport of basketball will have noted a Canadian, Steve Nash, received the award of the most valuable player in the National Basketball Association. It should be acknowledged in this place the tremendous dedication that Mr. Nash has shown, not only to his sport but to his country, his humble and hard-working approach to the game of basketball and his triumph over adversity that typifies the Canadian spirit.

I know every member of the House and every Canadian shares in the accomplishments of Mr. Nash. We look forward to watching his future success, not just of course in the NBA, but on the international stage as he leads Canada on to a medal in the next Olympic Games.

Now back to the debacle, which is Bill C-48. The bill stands in sharp contrast frankly to Mr. Nash, who has never tried to take credit for something he has not done. The bill is indicative of the government's haphazard approach to money management. It is a departure from what could have been a legacy for the Prime Minister.

The Liberal Party keeps promoting the Prime Minister as a man with fiscal prudence in his heart. What the bill indicates is more desperation than fiscal prudence. This unholy alliance between socialism and corruption is a subset of the government's spending spree.

In the last three weeks alone the Liberals have committed to spending over $1.24 billion of new money per day by my calculation. It is not their money to spend. This is Canadian taxpayer money. It shows a complete back to the future approach to money management. It is a complete departure from the spending approach to which the Prime Minister claims he adheres.

Frankly, I think it is eating the Prime Minister's legacy alive. It is showing the desperation the government has in its heart and it is showing to what it will sink. In an effort to buy support to divert attention away from a vote buying scandal, the Liberals are engaging in another vote buying scandal. This disrespects not only the intelligence of the Canadian people, but it disrespects the fiscal responsibilities that the government should be demonstrating.

There is an old adage that says it is better to do what is right, not what is easy. It is very easy for a government to commit to spending more money in the hopes of buying popularity at the polls, but that is not what is right.

What we need here is an approach that demonstrates clear thinking and better planning. The New Democratic Party joined with the Conservative Party in supporting an initiative that our finance critic, the member for Medicine Hat, promoted and we supported. We thought the New Democratic Party supported it as well.

The initiative called upon the government to be more accurate in its fiscal forecasting. It also called upon the government to set up a mechanism whereby each of the other parties could bring in experts to evaluate the government's numbers, and produce what we call Parliament's numbers.

The New Democratic Party supported that initiative, basically on the assumption that it would help to get a better handle on the government's projected surpluses. Before the last election, we know the government projected a $1.9 billion surplus. Ultimately the reality was the surplus was $9.1 billion. Canadians were deprived of a debate about how that money should have been spent, or should have been applied to the debt or should been allocated to lower taxes.

The NDP appeared to be concerned about that accuracy or lack of accuracy in supporting our quest for Parliament to have more accurate numbers.

However, that quickly went by the wayside when the NDP had a chance to encourage the government to continue to spend money. The NDP members sold their souls for a few billion dollars of additional spending commitments by a government that has not kept its commitments. It has not kept its promises. It has a legacy of making promises and breaking promises. They showed how easy they were when they sold out for that.

The bill is one and a half pages of broad general statements about how the government will spend money, but there are no specifics to it.

What has that given us in the past? Commitments to spend more money on aboriginal housing. How did that help the people of Davis Inlet? There are no ideas coming forward about how to spend money more intelligently and how to money to effect better results. Simply put, the government is making the same mistakes that put us into the debt position we are in as a country today. Back to the future.

The Conservative Party offers a striking alternative to what the NDP and the Liberals offer. We want a plan and we developed a plan. The difference that we see between the coalition and the Conservative Party is that we are not interested in throwing money at problems and we are not interested in adhering to the false belief that it will somehow solve those problems. We understand it takes a plan. It takes a commitment. It takes belief that intelligent spending will move toward positive results.

The government on the other hand believes that if it engages in conspicuous spending, somehow that demonstrates that it cares. However, it demonstrates that it cares about itself more than any caring for the Canadian taxpayer and the Canadian people.

Liberals have abandoned their fiscal framework. The bill will not be supported by members of our caucus. It simply allows for a further slush fund to be established and used and abused, with no strings attached, by the cabinet of the Liberal government. That is vote buying of $1 billion a day. The Liberal government says that we should not support an election because it will cost one quarter of a billion dollars. That is one-fifth as much as the government is committing in additional spending every day.

Liberals make the case with their promises that there needs to be an election and that they need to be kicked out of office.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the very exciting and prominent new member of the House of Commons, the member for Edmonton—Spruce Grove.

In my four minutes I would like to refer to a Toronto story. I know the Toronto Star is hardly a bastion of conservatism, but it has an article that says, “PM's spending spree smacks of desperation”. It certainly does, but it also should strike fear into the hearts of anyone who understands fundamental money management.

We are talking about $1.25 billion a day for the last three weeks that has been committed by the government opposite in contravention of the most fundamental principles of money management, without due regard for the process of evaluation, and without a plan. The Liberals are so desperate for ideas over there that they have gone to the NDP for help. It is pathetic. If Canadians wanted an NDP budget, they would have elected more than 19 members of Parliament for that party. They did not.

An article in the Globe and Mail today was entitled “Liberal spending blitz hits $19.5 billion”. It said:

Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond said he believes the Liberals are obliged to table an economic update to tell Canadians how all this new spending fits in the fiscal plan.

It went on:

To tell you the truth, I would think everybody's sort of lost track.

The fact of the matter is that the government is desperate. It is corrupt. It is indecent and dangerous. It is selling this country's fiscal future down the river as it will do anything to cling to power. It is trying to cover up a vote buying scandal with another vote buying scandal. It is trying to buy its way out of trouble. One thing is absolutely for certain, Canadians are on to it. Canadians understand what got the Liberal Party into this mess and Canadians are not interested in being bought by their own money.

Here is another comment from another article today. This is interesting. This is from Michael Murphy, senior vice-president of policy for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He said:

The government has clearly made a decision to spend its way to the next election. They've now basically said: “To heck with that budget, here's new stuff”.

It's back to the future for the Liberals. This is what got us into the massive deficit financing of the past, the whole principle of concentrating benefits, making promise after promise regardless of the legitimacy of the spending or regardless and disrespectful of a plan of any kind.

They threw it around in a one and a half page bill that the NDP members sold themselves out for. We knew that the NDP members would prostitute themselves, but they did it cheaply in this case because this is a one and a half page bill with no commitments on the part of the government other than to do orders in council in broad general categories.

For example, the Liberals claimed to care about aboriginal housing. They are going to address aboriginal housing, but without a plan, how can they possibly do that?

[Canada Post, May 9th, 2005]

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been trying to shift the responsibility for wrongdoing on to virtually everyone, rogue bureaucrats and especially his predecessor. However, the wrongdoing at Canada Post came to light on his watch and he has done nothing about it.

It has been more than a year now since André Ouellet was first asked to provide receipts to validate $2 million in lavish expenses. Yet any objective observer would have to say the Prime Minister has done nothing but swept this issue under the carpet.

He claims to be a wire brush. Why does he keep acting like a feather duster?

[Canada Post, May 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister was aware of the Liberal corruption at Canada Post for a long time, yet did nothing about it. Millions of dollars in illicit contracts were given to Liberal friendly firms. In addition, former Canada Post President André Ouellet received in excess of $2 million for expenses without receipts.

Could the Prime Minister tell us why the rules of ethics that apply to Canadians do not apply to the Liberals?

[Points of Order, April 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, in response to a question regarding post office closures asked by my colleague adjacent, the minister denied that post offices were closing. I referred to him as the “Forrest Gump of the postal service”.

Mr. Speaker, you did not admonish me for that comment but you did for my comment “Stupid is as stupid does”. Despite the fact that in the minister's response he proved my point, I do withdraw those comments as I expect they were offensive to fans of Forrest Gump.