Lost his last election, in 2004, with 36% of the vote.
Question No. 92 January 27th, 2003
With respect to tax debtors who reside in British Columbia, would the government provide a list of references to statutory provisions and court decisions which the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency relies upon for its authority to seize Registered Retirement Saving Plans and Registered Retirement Income Funds?
Question No. 84 January 27th, 2003
With respect to office space occupied by the Department of National Defence in downtown Vancouver on West Pender St.: ( a ) what amount of rent is being paid for the space used by the Recruitment Centre at 1070 West Pender St.; ( b ) what amount of rent is being paid for administrative and/or other offices on the eighth and/or other floors of 1040 West Pender St.; and ( c ) why is it necessary to rent high cost space in downtown Vancouver for these functions?
Question No. 76 January 27th, 2003
With respect to Canadian stocks of smallpox vaccine, what is the total number of undiluted doses presently held under the control of Health Canada, how old are those doses and what percentage can be considered to be still viable, what other governmental and private stocks are available and in what amounts, where are the various stocks located, and what is anticipated to be the total number of doses available in Canada by the end of December 2003?
Question No. 44 January 27th, 2003
With respect to Health Canada's colony of breeding and research monkeys held at Tunney's Pasture and elsewhere ( a ) what is the total number of monkeys in captivity at this time; ( b ) how many are still housed in cages; ( c ) what are the sizes of those cages and how many animals are kept in each size of cage; ( d ) what other type and size of housing is being utilized; ( e ) what foods are provided to the monkeys, and; ( f ) why are Members of Parliament refused access to inspect the facilities?
Petitions December 12th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, since I cannot present the one with 4,000 signatures, I will present one with 48 signatures which basically says the same thing but in slightly different words.
The petitioners point out, as the member for Burnaby—Douglas did, that it is a violation of the intention of voters when a member of Parliament changes parties. Therefore the petitioners call upon Parliament to enact legislation that would require all members of Parliament, who wish to change their official party designation in the House of Commons, to resign and run in a byelection.
Petitions December 12th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by more than 4,000 people calling on Parliament to request that the member for Richmond resign and run for re-election. Unfortunately, the clerk of petitions determined that the petition did not contain a clear and respectful--
Kyoto Protocol December 9th, 2002
One of my colleagues has just mentioned the minister of SUVs from south Vancouver who still has two SUVs and is driving them around, emitting plenty of carbon dioxide.
I made a promise to my constituents in writing, in both of my north shore newspapers. I said:
During the parliamentary debates I will continue to ask the Prime Minister to show us a scientifically sound proposal with specifics on what we want to accomplish, why we want to do it, how much it will cost and what the impact will be on our economy and our environment. If the proposal makes sense I will support it wholeheartedly, but I will not support what we appear to have right now--an illogical, expensive, vague, politically correct, and emotion based proposition which seems to have been designed to appease noisy special interest groups.
We should not even be voting on this, and I wish the Prime Minister would delay the vote.
Kyoto Protocol December 9th, 2002
If that is the case, what a sad commentary we have in the country, where the dictator in Canada, the man who can do anything he wants, is forcing this through and he does not even have the basic understanding of the science of this issue.
Almost every day in question period, I see the Minister of the Environment wave his book around saying it is his plan for the Kyoto thing. He always says that if only we on the opposition side would read it. I have read it from cover to cover. It is the most vague, meaningless piece of nonsense that I have ever seen in my life. All he is doing is posturing when he waves it around.
Do we know what he suggests in the book? This is his plan for the people of Canada. Each of us has to reduce our emissions by one megatonne for the next year. How are we going to do that? We are going to drive our cars one day less each week and catch public transit. Duh again: We tried all that back in the 1960s. It did not work. It still does not work. This plan is a load of nonsense.
I promised my constituents, in writing--
Kyoto Protocol December 9th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the most frustrating thing about this debate so far, perhaps even the most pathetic thing, is the wilful ignorance that has been displayed by many of the members of the House who are supposed to be intelligent people representing their constituents.
Over and over I have heard urban myths about things like extreme weather events, for example, like blaming the ice storm on global warming when in fact Canada's most severe weather events happened between 1935 and 1965. If any one of these members bothered to take the time to go to any one of the weather related websites that show meteorological events for the last 100 years, they would see for themselves that there is nothing unusual happening now. In fact, it is a very calm period in terms of weather events.
Then we hear these other myths coming from the other side. I heard one member saying that she wants to get rid of her asthma, so this Kyoto accord is the way to get rid of her asthma. With every breath that she breathes out she is breathing out carbon dioxide, so how does she think she will lose her asthma by getting rid of the carbon dioxide? She would have to be dead. It is absolutely ridiculous and, as I said, it is pathetic to hear that sort of nonsense coming from people who are supposed to be representing Canada. It frustrates me greatly to hear that sort of nonsense.
The Prime Minister put out a press release two weeks ago urging his frontbenchers to get cleaner burning engines in their cars, to get cars with better gas mileage and fewer emissions. That is a great goal, but how does the Prime Minister think that he is going to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by adding 30 more cars to the population of Canada's cars? It is just ridiculous. It is nothing more than an excuse for the ministers to get themselves brand new cars at taxpayers' expense.
Then the Prime Minister had them all trot down to the Sunoco gas station to fill up their cars with 10% ethanol gasoline. Well, duh, what happens when ethanol is burned? We get carbon dioxide and water vapour. Those are greenhouse gases.
The real message in this is that the Prime Minister is either deliberately trying to deceive Canadians or he does not understand the science himself.
Kyoto Protocol December 2nd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I listened to another canned speech from upstairs, lecturing us on science but it is not even scientific. Does the member know, for example, that approximately 10,000 years ago there was a period called the optimal medieval period when the temperatures were significantly higher than they are today? In fact, they were warm enough for Greenland to be colonized. How would the member explain the global warming that occurred at that time? It was not humans emitting greenhouse gases then.
Does the member know, for example, since she wants to talk about science, of the solar magnetic cycles from the year 1750? There are plenty of studies out there which she can access on the EPA website to see for herself.
Thousands of scientists feel with confidence that there is a much closer correlation between solar magnetic cycles of the sun than there is between CO
2
and fluctuations in global climate, whether it is cooling or warming. For example, 3,000 years ago we had a mini ice age. It is normal for our atmosphere and our climate to vary in that way. We may be having an impact but it is completely irrelevant if the major contributor is out of our control. We should then start making an intelligent approach like talking about pollution instead of CO
2
. Let us talk about cleaning up pollution. We do not need Kyoto to do that.
Does the member know, for example, that last year in Indonesia a peat bog fire that burned for the whole year emitted more CO
2
in one year than Canada's man-made emissions?
To stand there and try to give us a science lesson in 10 minutes is almost insulting. There is tonnes of information out there with reputable scientists who completely disagree with what she has just said.