Gary Carr

[An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member may know, I was Speaker of the Ontario legislature. I definitely know the rules and I was going through you, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. member. I will always say “through Mr. Speaker”.

Mr. Speaker, through you, I ask the member, and I want to be very clear, Mr. Speaker, through you, what part does the member not agree with in Bill C-48?

[An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the hon. member that people believe we will do it because of the things that we said in the last election, thinks like health care, with $41 billion, and the child care program with $5 billion, which we said in the election campaign we would do and we have. Tomorrow there will be an announcement in Richmond Hill, close to my area of the country. The Prime Minister will announce the money for the gas tax. That is what we said we would do in the election. Those are three of many things.

What part of Bill C-48 does the member not agree with? Is it the $1.6 billion for affordable housing? Are you against affordable housing? Is it the $1.5 billion going to post-secondary education? Can you tell me how you can go against giving $1.5 billion more to post-secondary education? There is $1 billion for the environment. Is the member opposed to helping the environment? Finally, there is the $500 million for foreign aid. I say very clearly to the member and all members, what part of that do you not agree with?

[Privilege, June 2nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my name was one that was taken as well.

I think the problem is that what happens with this is that it looks like a real site. If people were to go to that site they would see that my picture from the House of Commons was stolen to make it look like a real site. What they have written down in the very corner is, “This is not the official site of Gary Carr”.

As the House knows, I was one of those who voted against the bill. Most of the people who are on those websites are people who voted in favour of the bill. They have also taken the names of people who were opposed to the bill.

The trouble is that when people look at this site they think it is an official site. I am .ca. All a person has to do is make one mistake, and people do that very readily, they hit .com instead of .ca, with my name. What happened I guess is that a lot of us did not think we needed to protect our names against those people out there.

Quite frankly, when they stole my House of Commons picture, which actually is a very good picture of me, and put it up on that site it has my phone number and my constituency address. If someone were to go to that site they would be led to believe that it was an official website. This is the problem I have. Down at the very bottom they then have their association. I find it very troubling that they are doing this.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to your ruling and would be guided by your ruling.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is right. I have heard nothing but good things from all of the municipal leaders right across this country. In my area, the municipal leaders have supported it with letters. The hon. member will know too that right across this country municipal leaders, including the mayors of the big cities of Toronto and Vancouver, have said we have to continue with this. The Liberals said in the last election that they would do it. Now we have the opposition parties giving the “me too” politics. They know how popular it is and are now saying they will do it, “Me too, me too”.

The people who can be trusted are the people who put this in place and negotiated the agreements. People who change their position halfway through the game cannot be trusted because they have absolutely no credibility.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 16th, 2005]

No, I am going to follow this up and say what they did.

They were opposed to it in the beginning and when the Conservatives found out we were investing $100 million, they changed their opinion and said that now they were in favour of it.

I said to my Conservative candidate that I supported it. I did not say what the Prime Minister was going to do. I immediately said it was good because it would create 5,000 jobs and 25,000 spin-off jobs. I did not need to check with anyone. I said I would support it.

I know what happened with the two Conservative governments because I was there. My candidate in Halton said he was opposed to it as did the NDP candidate. At the next all candidates meeting he said, “Oh no, my leader is now in favour of it because the money has been given and you signed it”. I asked him why we needed him if he has to run back to his leader to see what he is saying. Let us just cut out the middle man. We do not even need MPs. Let us just go to the leaders of the parties and say, “You're in charge, what do you say?” There are going to be occasions when I am going to agree with the leader of the party and some days when I disagree, but I am going to make that decision.

The hon. member seems to be confused that there is an Oakville member and a Halton member. My Halton member did not support it and then reversed himself and said he did. That is not acceptable to the people of this province. We cannot flip-flop on these issues like the Conservative Party is doing and expect to have any credibility. There must be consistency. That party must be consistent. That is why we are going to be rewarded with another mandate.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to clarify what happened with the Ford Motor Company announcement. The government announced it was going to put in money. I immediately said that I was going to support it. Both of the Conservative candidates in Oakville and in Halton said they were opposed to it at the time, as did the NDP.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 16th, 2005]

No credibility whatsoever.

I saw what the member did, but I will ignore it. The hon. member should not be doing things like that with his fingers to other members in the House. The member knows he did it. I will ignore it, but members should not be doing that. We need to have a level debate. I will fight honourably. I will say that we should not be giving fingers to members on the other side of the House.

My final topic is the Ford Motor Company. On the local level, I made a commitment to invest in the Ford Motor Company. I was proud to stand with the minister who was involved at the time and who is now the minister of immigration, to commit that money to the Ford Motor Company. We stood out there that day along with all the Ford workers and the Ford management. The premier of Ontario and our colleagues, including my colleague from Oakville, were there as well.

That day Buzz Hargrove said he was glad we did not have a Conservative government because if that happened these jobs would have been lost, 5,000 jobs and 25,000 spin-off jobs as a direct result. He was very clear in saying that if the Conservative government was in, we would have lost them.

We made commitments and we followed through on those commitments. We are balancing the budget. We are putting money back into social programs. I am proud to stand with the Prime Minister because he is the best leader in the country today. We are going to continue to make this country prosperous based on the policies of this--

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, there are five areas in the budget which I would like to talk about.

There are five commitments that I made in the last election. Members will remember during that period, which was not that long ago, the number one issue facing Canadians. Right across the country, in Atlantic Canada, including the riding of my hon. friend from the Edmundston area, Quebec and every other province, health care was the single most important issue in the last election.

The Prime Minister made a commitment in that election campaign to deal with the health care issue. I was very proud to stand with him in Oakville at a meeting with people from Cancer Care Ontario when he said he was going to tackle the issue. It was a very moving dialogue. We talked about the problems with cancer. The Prime Minister gave them a commitment that he was going to put money into health care.

There is a lot of cynicism about the political process and politicians keeping their promises. The Prime Minister when he was the finance minister cleaned up the finances left by the previous Conservative government. He brought us back to being able to invest in the social programs. He made a commitment to people that he was going to put money into health care, some $41.3 billion. He had an agreement with all political parties. All provincial leaders representing every political party signed it, as did the territorial leaders.There were premiers from NDP governments, Liberal governments, Conservative governments.

The Prime Minister got the deal in the single most important issue facing Canadians. He did it not two years down the road, not three years down the road, not four years down the road. He did it after the election, which was on June 28, 2004, and by September he had a deal signed by every premier and every territorial leader of every political stripe.

That was the single largest reinvestment in health care since the introduction of medicare. On that particular issue the Prime Minister came through and did what he said he was going to do.

There are four other areas I want to talk about and explain how they relate to building on the priorities in Bill C-48.

On cities and communities, in the last budget we had already put in $7 billion in the GST rebate. We then promised we were going to increase it by $5 billion more and we came up with that commitment. Agreements were signed with Alberta and B.C. recently.

Child care is a very important issue as well. We have put $5 billion over five years into child care. We are very proud to have an agreement with the Ontario government to virtually double the number of child care spaces in the province of Ontario. That is a phenomenal record for a government that has been in less than a year, in making a commitment to the people on the child care issue and doubling it in the province of Ontario to $5 billion.

On health care we met our commitment. On cities and communities we met our commitment. I have met with mayors and the regional chair in my riding. They all want us to pass the budget, along with Bill C-48. On child care we have met our commitment as well.

I want to talk about the balanced budget provision. There was a lot of talk on the other side that we have to be fiscally responsible. It is a little rich coming from the Conservatives. At the end of their mandate when they left government after eight years there was a deficit of $40 billion. In the year that they were booted out and left with only two seats in the House, the deficit was actually heading toward $50 billion. A deficit of close to $50 billion was left for the Prime Minister when he was minister of finance to clean up. He had to clean up the mess left by Brian Mulroney. The Conservative government destroyed this country economically, politically and socially for many years to come.

When I look across I see some of the members who were part of that Brian Mulroney government. They are now back again. I say to them that the people of this country are never going to let them ever have control of the finances after what they did to this country and bankrupted us to the tune of $40 billion.

This Prime Minister when he was the minister of finance made a commitment to the people of this country to balance the budget. My hon. friend the parliamentary secretary will know that we have had eight straight balanced budgets. That is the first time since Confederation that we have had balanced budgets.

The people on the other side whose party gave us the largest deficit in the history of the country are trying to say that we do not know how to run the finances of the country. I look across the way and obviously there are some very young members who may not have been around in 1990 in terms of political careers, but there are some members over there who actually sat in the cabinet of the government that created a $40 billion deficit after eight years in government. And they are trying to tell us that we do not know how to have fiscally responsible budgets, when for eight straight balanced budgets we have done it.

It is not only a commentary to the current Minister of Finance and his parliamentary secretary, for whom I have a deep respect, but also to the Prime Minister who as the former minister of finance set that in place and cleaned up the mess. He did what he said he was going to do and balanced the budgets. Every other major country in the G-7, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Britain and the United States, are all running deficits.

All the members opposite, the right wing group that came out of that reform ideology, who like George W. Bush and the tax cuts in the U.S., I will remind them that President George W. Bush is running a $1.4 trillion deficit over the next five years. I did not say billion; I said trillion. The U.S. cut taxes too much and ended up with huge deficits, to the point where in U.S. magazines some people are saying that is a bigger impediment to the security of the United States than some of the security measures in the rest of the world dealing with terrorism. That is how fundamentally difficult it is for Americans.

Members opposite have come out of that right wing reform ideology, including their leader who came through all that process. Those members have changed their party's name so many times it is as though they are in the witness protection program. They do not want anyone to know who they are. We all remember they were the reform party. Then they were the conservative-reform-alliance party, and I do not mean to be impolite, but it was known as CRAP in those days. Then they changed the name to the alliance party. Those members have changed their party's name so many times it is as though they are in the witness protection program. They want to hide their past.

The Conservatives look to George W. Bush and the Americans as the be-all and end-all. I say to those on the other side, look at the deficit he is running. It is an absolute disgrace with a trillion dollar deficit which will affect us. It is affecting the dollar and interest rates. The men and women on the other side who worship George W. Bush and his fiscal policies should be embarrassed for advocating the same thing that is literally bankrupting the U.S.

I will not even get into social security. We have a pension system that is well funded and will be there when I retire. When Emily, my hon. friend's baby daughter retires, the money will be there. In the U.S. the social security is not even secure. People say there will not be money there.

When I hear members on the other side say that Bill C-48 is not fiscally responsible, I say to them that they have absolutely no credibility whatsoever.

[Sports, May 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate and recognize a great athlete in my riding of Halton. Ed Whitlock is a truly remarkable man.

At the age of 74, Mr. Whitlock, a marathon runner from Milton, participated in the Rotterdam marathon in the Netherlands on April 10. Not only did Ed complete this race but, for the third time since turning 70, he broke the three hour barrier in the marathon, crossing the line in 2 hours, 58 minutes and 40 seconds, and was one of 9,000 runners to complete the race. This is truly a remarkable achievement.

Ed Whitlock is a hard-working, dedicated trainer who enjoys his three hour daily runs in Milton. He is a member of the Milton Runners. I would like to extend my congratulations to Ed on a well-run race and on being a dedicated and courageous Milton runner.

[Committees of the House, May 12th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member as well. Some members may not know but that fine member chairs the internal caucus immigration committee on which I sit. The hon. member has been very helpful to me as a new member who does not have the years of expertise that she has in that area. My constituents and I have benefited from her guidance and I appreciate it very much. She certainly is well respected in this House, on all sides I must say, including our friends from the Bloc, for the fine work that she does.

The committee had an opportunity to go across the country and listen to people. I heard the member's very sage advice and expertise. I was wondering if she could give us some indication of what happened during that period. The committees are very important. I wonder if the member could give us some of the feedback that we were hearing from the committees.