Bill Blaikie

[The Environment, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on another environmental issue, the Canadian Medical Association has released a study which says that there are 5,800 premature deaths a year in this country as a result of smog.

My question is for the Prime Minister or the Minister of the Environment. Does the government not think that it is time for some real action on this? We have had 12 years of talking about voluntary this and voluntary that. Does the government not think it is time for mandatory emissions standards, a strong Kyoto plan, and doing something about smog because people are dying? People are dying. Let us get some action from the government.

[Natural Resources, June 14th, 2005]

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

Canada Day is approaching and yet Canada Day is the day that North Dakota, in a perverse sense of what it means to be a neighbour, has decided to turn on the tap of the Devils Lake diversion.

The Prime Minister has talked to George Bush. When does he expect to hear back from the White House as to whether or not we are going to celebrate Canada Day from here on in as the day the United States chose to ignore the boundary waters treaty?

[Natural Resources, June 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we want to know not what the government has done but what the government is going to do and when it expects to hear back from the President.

This does not just have to do with Manitoba. This impacts on everything that would have been formerly treated by the IJC. If this is allowed to go ahead without the IJC being involved, then things could happen to the Great Lakes down the road on both sides of the border without any IJC reference.

This will be a terrible precedent not just for Manitoba's ecosystem but for boundary waters disputes in general.

[Natural Resources, June 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the right hon. Prime Minister. It has to do with the very serious need for a full-court press on Washington with respect to the Devils Lake diversion. We only have a few weeks left. The Prime Minister has said that he has been in touch with the President. I wonder if the Prime Minister could tell us when he expects to hear back from the President or Condoleezza Rice. We need to know because if they are not going to say yes to the IJC reference, we need to be able to develop an alternate plan.

Could the Prime Minister tell us what is happening on that file?

[Points of Order, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I had hoped to raise an independent point of order, but I think there are a number of points of order on the floor, particularly this one, which might permit me to raise with you concerns that we had arising out of question period.

I want to make it clear, Mr. Speaker, that I welcome your effort in trying to get the House to respect the regulations with respect to inquiries under the auspices of the Ethics Commissioner. We also feel though that there is a need for greater certainty or greater clarity, as the case may be, as to what is permissible in the House and what is not. It may be that there is a bit of a conflict between the section of the Parliament of Canada Act which established the Ethics Commissioner in the first place and the regulations. The part which you quoted to us in your advice comes from the regulations, I believe, under section 27(5), where it states:

Once a request for an inquiry has been made to the Ethics Commissioner, Members should respect the process established by this Code and permit it to take place without commenting further on the matter.

By and large that is good advice and if we had been able to adopt a similar attitude, although not by regulation but with respect to other inquiries going on, Parliament might actually pay attention to its own business from time to time instead of what is going on in other venues.

Having said that, the Parliament of Canada Act, which established the Ethics Commissioner, states under section 72.05(5):

For greater certainty, this section shall not be interpreted as limiting in any way the powers, privileges, rights and immunities of the House of Commons or its members.

Therefore, on the one hand we have the act which says that our privileges and our abilities presumably to raise questions in the House will not be limited in any way. On the other hand we have advice which advises us that we should behave in a particular way; not that we shall, but that we should. That is perhaps a critical distinction, particularly in light of what happened in question period.

I certainly was prepared not to ask a question having to do with that, Mr. Speaker, after you said what you did at the beginning of question period. However, then it followed from there that the leader of the Bloc Québécois was able to raise a question anyway in the context of the Prime Minister's chief of staff, even though when one talks about the Prime Minister's chief of staff doing whatever he was doing along with the Minister of Health, it is a little hard to separate them.

I noticed, Mr. Speaker, that you did then permit questions, perhaps out of respect for the fact that all you advised us to do was based on a should rather than a shall, I am not sure. I think greater certainty from you as to what you expect of us in this matter would be very helpful. I would ask you to consider the matter and perhaps, as soon as you feel it is possible, to come back with some further advice for us on how you wish us to conduct ourselves in respect of this investigation.

I want to make it clear that I do not think it is a bad thing for you to lay out guidelines with respect to this sort of thing. The House would be well advised to have such guidelines, but what we have so far, I would submit, is not enough and I would ask you to provide further clarification as soon as you are ready.

[Audiotaped Conversations, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it does not really matter who initiated the conversation and whether the tapes have been altered. It is a question of due process now that we have a problem.

It seems to me that we all have a problem here. The Minister of Health and the Prime Minister could do democracy a favour in this country and its image by simply doing what many cabinet ministers have done in the past, not doing anything incriminating just stepping aside until the process has completed itself. Why can that not happen?

[Audiotaped Conversations, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we certainly have every intention of respecting your ruling, but I wonder why it is possible to do indirectly what is forbidden to do directly.

We have all been back in our ridings and we have all learned the extent to which these conversations have brought the whole place into disrepute. I want to ask the Prime Minister, who has said he also intends to respect your ruling, whether or not he thinks it would not be good for everyone, for the whole place, and everyone associated with this to step aside until the Ethics Commissioner has done his work?

[Supply, June 2nd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, let the record show that today, when we had a debate about employment insurance and about what the country could do for the unemployed, the Bloc Québécois, instead of attacking the Liberals and the Conservatives who are not going to vote for this motion and who have a history of not being willing to do what needs to be done for the unemployed in this country, spent the whole day attacking the NDP.

To me, this shows a kind of collective small mindedness when it comes to politics. There are a lot of people in the rest of the country who think that the Bloc Québécois is some sort of social democratic party. We get this on the left in the rest of the country that the Bloc Québécois is progressive and social democratic.

However, when it had a chance to work together with a real social democratic party to really do something for the unemployed in this country, what did it do? Its members spent all day huffing and puffing against the NDP. I thought the House leader of the Bloc Québécois was going to explode there at one point.

We are like the little pigs that made their house out of bricks because Bloc Québécois members can huff and puff all like they like, but long after they are gone, there will still be a real social democratic party in this House fighting for the unemployed, just like the NDP was doing before the hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine ever knew where the Parliament Buildings were.

We have been fighting for the unemployed in this country for the last 25 to 26 years that I have been here, and long before I got here. To have to sit here all day and listen to the kind of cheap political rhetoric that is coming from my separatist friends has been certainly an emotional challenge.

I take it the time has expired because otherwise I would love to go on, as you might imagine, but out of deference to your body language, Madam Speaker, you seem to be telling me that we have arrived at the end of the day, so I will sit down.

[Supply, June 2nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it strikes me that in the last few weeks in this House, or perhaps even the last month or so, we have seen an awful lot of rage, some of it simulated, some of it genuine, but all of it directed toward the alleged and sometimes obvious flowing of great sums of money in inappropriate ways. Yet, here we are talking about something that should be the appropriate object of moral outrage. There are many families in the riding of Acadie--Bathurst and in ridings all across this country who are struggling to make ends meet.

It must be, for them, a source of legitimate outrage that the sums of money that we talk about here every day as having gone to this bagman or that ad firm or this Liberal Party hack or whatever the case may be, are beyond their wildest dreams. All they are asking for is for a change in the regulations having to do with employment insurance that would enable them to collect a meagre sum of money on a monthly basis, a sum of money that would not even register on most people's fiscal graphs around here.

Yet, this is scoffed at by the government and by the official opposition. We cannot tell where the Bloc Québécois members are because they are so blinded by their own rage that when they finally have an opportunity to cooperate with the NDP to do something about EI, they cannot see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest, whichever metaphor is appropriate. I wonder if the hon. member would want to comment on that.

[Privilege, June 2nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I sympathize with members on the opposite side of the House that sometimes things that should be taken seriously are not by the government when it does not affect its members. I also appreciate the viewpoint of the member for Elk Island that this may be, like many other things on the Internet, impossible ultimately to enforce or to do anything about.

However, I do not think that two wrongs make a right and because somebody ignored or did not treat seriously a serious concern of the hon. members in the past does not mean that I would want the Speaker to let that be the deciding factor in judging whether or not there was something here that should be the appropriate concern of Parliament.

I am not sure whether that which impinges on our personal name is ultimately a matter for Parliament or not but I think it is worth thinking about. I would just urge members who in the past were not taken seriously when they raised this matter, to not throw out the baby with the bath water. Maybe it is time they should welcome the fact that people who otherwise or earlier did not take this seriously now do and maybe it is worth having a look at in some fashion. That is my only point.