Bill Blaikie

[Foreign Affairs, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is a funny way to deal with the democratic deficit to have the Prime Minister willing to talk outside the House for half an hour to reporters but not answer questions inside the House from members of Parliament.

I have a question for the Prime Minister. No doubt some Liberal prime minister will one day want thanks for wanting to get to the bottom of how we helped to weaponize space, but it strikes me that both the Prime Minister and President Bush both have trouble being wholesome when it comes to the question of weapons.

Therefore I ask the Prime Minister this. Mr. Bush lied about why he went to war in Iraq and now he is talking about weapons again. I have one very simple question. Does the Prime Minister trust President Bush?

[Foreign Affairs, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the right hon. Prime Minister, whose excuse on both corporate and government scandals is that he is blameless because he is clueless.

The NDP has told him what is really going on with star wars and it is in the public record in the United States, but the Prime Minister still pretends that he has no clue that missile defence is in fact star wars.

Is the Prime Minister not coming clean on star wars because he believes that there are 14 clever rogue employees in the Department of National Defence who are not asking cabinet's permission to weaponize space?

[Auditor General's Report, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, everybody else knows what I mean, including the member for Winnipeg Centre.

We have drug investigations in B.C. The Quebec wing of the Liberal Party may have been operating on the proceeds of crime. At this rate Flat Mark will be up for investigation before we know it.

My question is for the Prime Minister. It is not just what is happening in the Liberal Party, it is that coziness with the corporate elite in this country. Will the Prime Minister do the right thing and fire every corporate lobbyist in the PMO right now before he sells out the country to them?

[Auditor General's Report, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.

I thought I had seen it all during the Mulroney Conservative years but I want to assure the Liberals that they have regained the title when it comes to scandals.

The Prime Minister says that he wants to get to the bottom of it. We agree.

Will the Prime Minister announce a retroactive amnesty for all civil servants who may have something to say about Liberal troughing, yes or no?

[Auditor General's Report, February 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is singing on his former colleagues now, but he was part of the gang that did this, and the Canadian people are not going to let him get away with this.

The Prime Minister says that he knows a little about how government works. That is probably true, but he also knows how the Liberal Party works. In fact he was able to know the Liberal Party so much that he could take over the leadership without anybody else having a chance. This was a Liberal Party operation. This was not a government operation. Does he really expect us to believe that he did not know what his own--

[Auditor General's Report, February 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this might be a bad day to be a Liberal, but it is a sad day for Canadian politics all around. They wonder why people get cynical. The reason is that the Liberals spend more time figuring out how to funnel money to their friends than they do working on the environment, on poverty, on smog, name it. If they paid as much attention to the real problems of this country, we would have an entirely different country.

Does the Prime Minister really expect us to believe that he did not know this was going on?

[National Defence, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the information does not need to be gathered. It is plainly on the record in the United States. The Prime Minister seems to be as good at avoiding the truth on star wars as he is at avoiding taxes in the Barbados.

I want to say again, Paul Wolfowitz said:

Space is the ultimate high ground. We are exploring concepts and technologies for space-based intercepts.

In the 2005 U.S. federal government estimates, they mention, and I quote, “Space-based interceptor test bed...beginning in 2005”.

This plan is dangerous and destabilizing. It does not reflect Canadian values. Why is the Prime Minister afraid to say no to George Bush now?

[National Defence, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.

The Liberals have attacked the NDP for saying missile defence will weaponize space and, therefore, constitute star wars.

Here is what Lieutenant-General Ronald Kadish, director of the missile defence agency, told the Senate armed services committee, “There will be at least 300 space-based interceptors”.

In light of these comments, I wonder how the Prime Minister can cling to the absolute fiction that missile defence is not star wars.

[Canada Steamship Lines, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, there was government money involved. It is the Prime Minister who gives orders to the Minister of the Environment, not the government House leader.

I am asking the Prime Minister a question. Is he willing to have the Minister of the Environment look into all the ways in which CSL is implicated in the fossil fuel industry? Why is the oil patch happy? Why are those who opposed the Kyoto accord happy with the election of the Prime Minister? What is, after all, happening to the Kyoto accord?

[Canada Steamship Lines, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a three line whip on applause for the Prime Minister today no matter what he says.

The Prime Minister has asked the Auditor General to look at the government spending with respect to CSL. Given what we have now come to know about the $21 million related to Hibernia, would the Prime Minister be willing to ask the Minister of the Environment to investigate all the ways in which CSL is involved in exploration of fossil fuels? Perhaps this is the reason we do not have a plan for Kyoto yet.