Bill Blaikie

[Sponsorship Program, April 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, all this House and all the Canadian people ask of this Liberal government is one ounce of humility, one ounce of collective responsibility, one ounce of realizing that what is at stake here is not just the Liberal Party but the face of federalism in Quebec and across the country.

For the sake of Canada, for the sake of federalism and for the sake of integrity in Canadian politics, will someone get up and accept the collective responsibility for what has gone on and promise to repay the money, put it aside and put it somewhere where we can get access to it when we know what finally happened?

[The Environment, April 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, at a time when so many other issues dominate the domestic and Canada-U.S. political scene, I rise to ask the House to focus for a moment on the fact that an entire Canadian ecosystem is in imminent danger because of the Liberal government's failure to get the American government to refer the Devils Lake diversion project to the International Joint Commission on Boundary Waters.

Premier Gary Doer has been working all out on this issue but he needs a federal counterpart who is fully focused on this issue.

The Prime Minister came back from Texas empty-handed. Time is short. Lake Winnipeg, our sixth great lake, is in danger of being permanently contaminated and soon.

I urge all MPs to join in the campaign to save Manitoba from this disaster. It is not a regional issue. It is an issue of national environmental integrity. Security is a two-way street. Violating Canada's environmental security by trans-boundary water pollution is not an example of what good neighbours do to each other.

[Oscar Romero, March 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, 25 years ago today Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was gunned down by a hired assassin while saying mass for a community of nuns. Archbishop Romero had developed a reputation for the faith and the courage to criticize El Salvador's American backed military for various murders and disappearances.

For defending his people and for engaging in such biblically prophetic activity, he paid the price that sometimes tragically befalls those who speak the truth to brutal power. Indeed, there were many Christians, and particularly Catholic clergy and activists, who suffered a similar fate for their commitment to social and economic justice in Central America.

At this time the NDP joins all those in El Salvador, and the tens of thousands of Salvadorans in Canada, who celebrate the memory and sacrifice of this great disciple of Jesus Christ. He continues to be an inspiration to all who seek justice and resist evil.

[The Budget, March 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the minister would care to comment on when we are going to get the defence policy review. I remember, as a member of the defence committee, being told that we would have it by mid-November. I thought at the time the government meant mid-November 2004, but I must have been mistaken because we are now in March 2005 and we still do not have the defence policy review.

Yet, the budget has laid out considerable changes and expenditures in the Department of National Defence. This has all been done in a context in which we do not have the promised policy review. Earlier in the day we were talking about promises made and promises broken. We have had the promise of a policy review for a long time.

In terms of the 5,000 new peacekeepers, does the department have a plan for ensuring this happens in a hurry? I say in a hurry because we have a lot of senior, experienced and very capable peacekeepers in the Canadian army right now, but they are not going to be there forever. They are going to retire. It is critical that this happen as soon as possible so that the new peacekeepers can have the benefit of the experience of those who have been peacekeepers in Bosnia, Cyprus, Afghanistan, Haiti, or wherever. That is another concern I want to put on the floor for the minister.

I happen to have a very high opinion and great expectations for the new chief of defence staff. I noticed at the time of the budget that he was out in the foyer in uniform commenting on the budget. I am not raising this in any particular antagonistic way, but he was commenting on the budget like he was from a chamber of commerce or the CLC or some other NGO. Presumably he was saying nice things about the budget.

I wonder if the minister of defence would have been so content with the presence of the CDS if he had been out there slagging the budget. I am a bit concerned about the politicization of the role of the CDS. I wonder if the minister has given any thought to that as well.

[National Defence, February 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, there is a point at which dithering morphs into deception and duplicity.

First, we have not been asked. Then the president asks us. Then we have not made a decision. Then Frank McKenna says we are part of it. Now the Prime Minister seems to be announcing that we are not part of it. The government's position has not changed. It is still trying to have it both ways.

I ask the Prime Minister, when is he going to put himself out of his misery, announce what he is going to do about this and show some respect for Parliament and the Canadian people?

[Foreign Affairs, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, there have been a number of occasions on which the Prime Minister sent the Minister of Foreign Affairs in various incarnations outside to explain himself and to retract what he had to say, most of the time when he was saying the right thing.

Why does the Prime Minister not apply a little of his own discipline to himself, do what he often asks the Minister of Foreign Affairs to do when he says things that are contrary to government policy, and retract what he had to say about Syria being in Lebanon to keep the peace?

[Foreign Affairs, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, anything I said I have heard said before and I never heard it ruled out of order. Some of the things the Prime Minister said about Syria should be ruled out of order and he should get up and retract those things.

[Foreign Affairs, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we just want to say to the Minister of Foreign Affairs that we support the kinds of things he was saying in the Middle East. We just wish his Prime Minister was supporting the kinds of things he was saying in the Middle East, instead of saying dumb things, then being even dumber and not retracting them. Instead of digging himself deeper, why does he not just get up and say that he misspoke and withdraw it?

[Supply, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, no one has ever suggested that any one particular sector by itself, even if it was completely removed, could meet the Kyoto target. To me, this is kind of a straw man set up by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters or anybody else who simply does not want to engage in the kind of change that is required in order to prevent climate change.

In the end, those people's children and grandchildren are going to live in the same screwed up environment as the rest of us. Why can they not see that? Why are they caught in this paradigm paralysis that they cannot see beyond the way they have always done things to see that we have to change our way of doing things instead of coming up with these rather petty reductio ad absurdum arguments that are supposed to lay us to waste. We are supposed to listen to them and say, “Oh, wow, let us forget it then. Let us just go on doing things the way we have been doing them”.

The fact of the matter is that we can meet our Kyoto commitments by having the kind of comprehensive plan that the NDP itself has put on the table. It is a combination of things, from very simple things like having a tax system that would allow people to deduct the cost of their bus passes, to massive retrofitting of buildings, to building the east-west hydro grid that has been waiting to be built for so long, to getting serious about public mass transit. The list goes on of things we could be doing. We could invest in renewable energy, solar and wind power, instead of continuing to subsidize the oil and gas industry. No one thing is going to do it. We need to do all these things together.

To do that, we need to have a government that has the will and a government that has a plan. So far we have neither.

[Supply, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member is right in that our motion is based on a perception of failure. It is based on a perception of persistent failure on the part of the government to do its job, and the persistent failure on the part of the corporate sector to do its job. Yes, we do not have any confidence in the people who are negotiating on behalf of the government.

The parliamentary secretary may have confidence in the people who are negotiating on behalf of the government, but that says something about his gullibility, not ours.