John Reynolds

[Business of the House, October 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, would the government House leader tells us the business for the rest of today, tomorrow and the first week we are back?

Would he also assure us that he will advise all his ministers not to make any statements outside the House in the break period so the House learns first what is happening from the Government of Canada?

[Code of Conduct, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague the Conservative House leader on many things and this is one on which I certainly agree with him. This is a government that is in deep trouble. Members know it and they are looking to their spin doctors to see what they can do to convince the public they really have a concern about something.

I know my colleagues from all parties in the House, even some Liberals, were wishing the government had some answer for the softwood crisis. We are leaving here to go home for the summer at a time when over 50,000 people are unemployed and struck hard because of government inaction on softwood lumber. We are going home at a time when there are people in the agricultural industry suffering because the announcement today is mainly a rehash of many old things for agriculture. It will do nothing to help farmers.

All opposition parties, although we are going home, will be spending a lot of time this summer at barbecues telling Canadians exactly why we are there and what is happening in this House. From my trips just in the last few weeks, all Canadians have had an interest in what has happened with the government that prided itself on integrity and a Prime Minister who said he would do certain things. They still have not forgotten the promise to get rid of the GST or to do something about free trade. He has lived with these, he is happy and he has used all the tax dollars. However, they are starting to think that this is a Prime Minister who has talked about integrity and has always bragged about ministers not having to resign. In the Liberal Party no one has had to resign, they just have waited for a cabinet shuffle.

It is like the member for Vancouver Centre who should have been fired for what she said in the House. He just let her sit there for awhile, then shuffled her off to the backbenches so he could still brag that he had never lost a cabinet minister for any reason. The story is getting old. Canadians are getting tired of the fact that for about three Sundays in a row new scandals have broken on grants, or loans or contracts and documents that have gone missing. People do not expect that from their government. They expect much more openness. They expect that mistakes will be made, but in this case there are too many of them. There are too many of them going to the same basic firms. The government should call an independent judicial inquiry. That is what Canadians need.

I was smiling at the government House leader today when he was shaking his head at the questions. I read Hansard like others do. I remember those days, and he should, when he was in the opposition. He was up demanding, yelling and screaming for independent judicial inquiries on issues against the former Conservative government. He should not be surprised that we are doing that.

When we come back in September, I can guarantee that there will be questions again on these same issues. We will be demanding answers to these issues and we will keep that up until we get some.

[Code of Conduct, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by congratulating our leader for his fine speech earlier today on this subject.

I also want to say to my colleague across the way that I listened intently to his answers in the last few minutes and I certainly agree with him that the authors of the previous report did excellent work. However he never did answer the question of why the government has totally ignored that excellent work for five years. The report has been collecting dust somewhere in the House of Commons.

He also did not answer my question about forming another committee so the government can show it is concerned about corruption and ethics. Will the government adopt the report? I doubt it. It will sit for another five years on a shelf. Hopefully by then there will be a new government in this House and we will enact some laws with some real strong ethics in them .

I want to extend my sympathies to all members opposite who are cringing because their leader suddenly had to order up a committee to tell him what constitutes ethical behaviour.

Canadians will remember that the Liberals were so vague on what constituted ethical or unethical behaviour for holders of public office that they suddenly had to do what we have been demanding for years.

Most people learn from an early age the definition of ethics or ethical and an act by instinct as if what they learned is carved in stone. What we have here is perhaps a late childhood.

And late indeed it is. Why has this report languished on a shelf gathering annual layers of dust for years? Why was it not brought forward when it came out five years ago? Is it because there was no panic back then because the horror stories about scandals and corruption had not started yet? Is it really because of all the scandal in the last few weeks that the government has finally dusted off that wonderful report and decided to look at it again in the hope the public will think it really cares about ethics in the House of Commons?

We recall back in 1993 how this Prime Minister promised to restore integrity and ethical behaviour to Canada's parliament. He tossed out those promises like wedding guests throw confetti. As it turned out, the promises were just like confetti. They littered the ground for a while and then slowly dissolved or were flushed into storm sewers.

Now, in panic and desperation, searchers from the Prime Minister's Office are being sent out to fetch this dimly remembered document that was buried somewhere on a shelf. The Liberals said that they must convince Canadians that they are ethical. How can they do that when Canadians know full well they are not? They will dust off that report from way back when their reputations were still intact and hope they will be able to con Canadians one more time.

It will not work. The jury went out and it is back. The verdict is that the Liberals lack ethics and integrity. They should not be surprised that the verdict was guilty. Year after year of scandals and stories, hundreds of millions of precious dollars spent or wasted on cronies and Liberal friendly companies would bring even the most patient or gullible Canadian to only one conclusion. It turns out that 70% or more of Canadians are of a similar mind. They believe the government is corrupt.

Canadians are asking some tough questions. They want to know how any member on the front benches or even way in the back can claim to be ethical if they did not object to all this unethical behaviour. The same can be said of those who sit silently while corrupt things are being done. If members do not object to corruption, then are they not just as corrupt as the individuals they are observing?

Another point has to be made. The Prime Minister tried to justify corruption and missing millions by saying that even if it did happen, his heart was in the right place. He said that mistakes might have been made but that his motivations were pure.

Let us examine that logic. Let us consider the case of a bank robber apprehended just as the teller begins handing over the cash. The robber explains to the arresting officer that he intended to give a portion of the stolen money to one of the Prime Minister's invisible homeless friends, and further, that he planned to give another small portion to building imaginary shelters for the Prime Minister's imaginary homeless friends. The police officer, struck by the simple logic and generosity of this defence, orders the teller to hand over the money to the robber and escorts him to the door.

There are those who would not accept the robber's defence or condone the police officer's choosing to wink at the apprehended crime. Those people are in a majority. The rest are part of that lavishly rich minority who cough up thousands of dollars when the Prime Minister calls and sells them a ticket to get through the door of the Prime Minister's residence.

Then again the members of that minority are the same ones who think that delivering millions to companies for work that was never done is perfectly acceptable behaviour for a government.

This is probably a good time to give those opposite a refresher. On page 355 of the Concise Oxford Dictionary they can find the word “ethic”. The words after it say it means “relating to morals, treating of moral questions, morally correct and honourable”. None of those are really big words even for a Liberal. I am certain if the Liberal members try very hard they can come to some understanding of what it means. “A set of principles”, is another phrase.

No, we do not mean the people who supervise schools. The principle referred to has another meaning. On page 880 under the word “principle” we find the phrase “personal code of right conduct”. After that comes the word “principled” which is defined as “based on or having praiseworthy principles of behaviour”.

I hope those opposite are not finding it a struggle to keep up with me. To simplify it, if people have ethics, integrity and principles, they know right from wrong. If they have ethics, integrity and principles, they know what behaviour is acceptable and what behaviour is unacceptable. They are not people who would rob a bank or the taxpayers and say that they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They would not do that because they would know that it is unacceptable behaviour.

If one is a person of principle and ethics one would not follow a Prime Minister who attempts to justify the theft of millions, as the Prime Minister did not so long ago. Nor would one sit quietly and condone certain practices such as paying inflated advertising contracts with public money on the understanding that the overpayment would be returned somehow in the next election or prior to that in donations to the Liberal Party. Sadly and tragically there are those who do or did sit quietly and watch this sort of thing happen.

As the smell spreads outward from the source, much like swamp gas, everyone in the vicinity takes on a certain unfriendly odour. As has been said before, there should be an amendment to the endangered species legislation which would specifically offer protection to one of the nation's most endangered species; the honest Liberal. Liberal numbers dwindle by the day as they refuse to stand and be counted and to say that this has to stop.

Perhaps the temptations are too great for the species. Perhaps some still imagine the day when they will be transported from sullen and glum wilderness of the backbench to the glorious front. We know how the species communicates. The cry is “keep your head down and your mouth shut and your integrity, ethics and principles under wraps and you too might find the road out of the wilderness”.

Who will be next? The member for Richmond would be a good candidate, no doubt highly recommended by all of the people in all the parties he has portrayed. However Canadians are wondering about those who litter the front benches as well. Over all these years why did they, whether leadership aspirants or not, sit quietly while the treasury was plundered or were they waiting for the imaginary ethical guidelines to magically appear so they could have some idea of what was right and what was wrong?

Now that they have a code of conduct, will they ask if it has retroactive application? If so, do they intended to blow the whistle or will they continue to follow already established practices?

We suspect they have been told to wave the code of ethics around like they were fanning embers at a barbecue for the next three months. Do not use it to start the barbecue, just wave it and know in their hearts that the authors wrote the simple text as a public relations tool. Know also that the authors would tell them that the first rule for any Liberal is do not get caught. If they do get caught, fall back on the Prime Minister's strategy. Explain that their ethically challenged behaviour, their toleration of scandalous practices, their participation in those practices all have a simple explanation. They did it, or let it happen or did not object to its happening because their hearts were in the right place even if their souls were not.

I will close by repeating what I said earlier, that this is a phoney motion today put forward by a government that is ethically challenged. It needed something for the summer barbecue. Even when I gave the minister an opportunity to say to the House that, yes, if this report were passed by the House and the Senate, the government would accept it, he would not say that because the Prime Minister would not let him. This will just be another committee that meets, sits and comes up with a report just like that last glorious report written by those two intellectuals, one in each House. However it sat there for five years collecting dust. This report will probably sit there for another five years collecting dust.

That is not good enough for Canadians. They want some real action. I have not seen any clamour from my constituents about a code of conduct for MPs, but they certainly would like to see one for the cabinet. They would certainly like to see an independent ethics commissioner who reports to the House and who could answers some of these questions we have asked a lot sooner and a lot quicker.

I thought it very interesting today when the Deputy Prime Minister attacked my leader because he raised his funds during the election, well within the Canada Elections Act and within the law of Canada. He violated no rules whatsoever. Yet the Deputy Prime Minister was trying to make a phoney issue by saying, “Give us a list on all their leadership races in the past”. No list is there. It is not the law. We have said quite openly if the government brings in a law, we will comply with it. We will vote for that. We have been asking a long time for that law. At the same time the government has the nerve to say that, we know that certain cabinet ministers have been collecting money over the last few years. Nobody knows who gave that money.

Even the Deputy Prime Minister had a fundraiser sending a letter to people asking for $25,000 and indicating that they might be able to get a tax receipt for it. It is certainly not deductible under the Canada Elections Act unless they call it a business expense. They might get away with it with this government because it seems if someone donates money it is part of doing business.

We have cabinet ministers who have been receiving money over the last few years from Canadians. We do not know who made the donations and the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister forget. I might remind all those backbenchers that neither they nor we sign legislation or give out grants. It is done by the cabinet. That is why there are special rules for people in a cabinet. We should know immediately, and we will hopefully in a few days, where all the money has been coming from for these individuals.

I can remember Brian Tobin out in British Columbia having a dinner at $1,000 a plate and 100 people attended. He said that the money was going to Newfoundland to help the Liberal Party in Newfoundland. He was a minister of the government at the time. Where is all his money? He is no longer in the cabinet. He will not fall under the same rules. Will we get him to indicate how much money he still has sitting in the bank for his leadership race? Will we get the list of the former minister of finance showing where the money came which he raised?

The public will understand this. Remember that the cabinet ministers who have been doing this are the ones that make the rules, make the laws and sign the cheques. The rest of us speak on legislation and vote on it. We do not have control of the purse. That is why there has to be special rules when we are in a cabinet.

Other members in the House have been in a cabinet. I have. I know what the blind trusts are like. I know what we can or cannot do. I believe in openness and always have. That is the way it should be. We do not have that from the government.

The motion today is a scam to try to cover up what has been happening in the cabinet of this government over the last few months. Now we are finding that it goes back to 1996. Next we will find that it started in 1993. It has been reported and documented that this has been going on since 1996. There have been problems with grants, loans and scandals. It is time we have an independent ethics commissioner. It is time we have an independent judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of this mess so that it never happens again.

We believe our amendment is a very good and legitimate one. We believe it is one that all Canadians want. They want an independent ethics commissioner who reports to parliament. That is what our motion says. When the government can guarantee me that it will accept the report that comes from committee, for which it will have the majority, and implement it immediately, we will be quite happy to vote for it and do whatever we can to speed it along.

[Code of Conduct, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the House leader's speech. Some of it was quite interesting. He said our amendment would slow things down for the fall. It would speed things up a little because the committee would not sit all summer and would not sit when we came back. We want to speed things up a little.

My real concern is that the government had five years to bring in the program. The report was finished five years ago. It was written by two well respected Canadians. The government waited until today to bring in a motion, the day before we leave for the summer.

The minister must agree that members of parliament per se are not the problem. The problem in the last few months has been ministers of the government, yet we do not have an independent ethics commissioner who reports to parliament.

The House has been looking at the issue of private members' business for a long time. We finally got the agreement of a subcommittee and a committee. The issue was referred to the House. I thought we had a deal yesterday but it obviously fell apart. I am not blaming the minister. It may have been other people. Nevertheless he could have brought it in and passed it so private members' business could be votable in the House.

The minister has told me he does not like what is in it. He says the committee did not do it the right way. If a committee of the Senate and the House of Commons issues a report that calls for an independent ethics commissioner who would report to parliament and cover everyone in parliament including cabinet ministers, what assurances can the minister give us that not only that issue but every issue in the report will be accepted by his government as soon as the report comes back to parliament?

[Business of the House, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the government House leader what the business is for the rest of today and Friday.

I would also let him know that if he would like to sit next week the official opposition is prepared to keep working for the good of all Canadians and, we hope, to get some answers out of the minister of public works.

[Government Contracts, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the minister makes it sound like the public works department is the victim of all this ad sponsorship scamming. I contend that the only victim is the taxpayer of Canada.

The previous public works minister is in hiding. The Prime Minister, the former and current political ministers for Quebec, other ministers of this government who are buddies with the ad companies and the Liberal Party are all perpetrators of this corrupt scheme.

I would just like a simple answer. Why does the minister keep refusing to call a full public judicial inquiry? Let us have it and get this out in the open.

[Government Contracts, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the public works minister seems to agree that something bad happened but he does not seem keen to expose who is at fault. While he only refers the most serious matters to the RCMP and salutes the auditor general for the good work she does, he also does not really want the whole truth to come out. Only a full independent judicial inquiry will reveal the genesis of this corruption. Such an inquiry would expose the roots of this scam. The minister refuses to call for such an inquiry and Canadians wonder why.

Is it because all the cash for contracts arrangements began with the Prime Minister's authority and his encouragement?

[Code of Conduct, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order regarding the records of our publications of May 29.

Private Members' Bill C-415 was adopted on division yet the journals recorded it as being “agreed to”.

The members for Elk Island and Dewdney—Alouette were on duty and clearly said “no”. As well, Mr. Speaker, if you review the speech of the critic, the member for Provencher, you will see that we clearly opposed the bill. I bring this point up today to ensure that the record is clear.

[Petitions, June 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to introduce a petition signed by residents of my constituency calling for the repeal of section 13(5) of Canada Post Act, which would allow for collective bargaining rights for private sector postal workers.

[The Media, June 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, there is still no yes or no.

Let me quote from a friend of the Prime Minister's, the former leader of the Liberal Party in British Columbia, Gordon Gibson, who said:

Let me make it very clear. I have...no criticism of the owners. I think we have a situation here where...CanWest has four billion dollars worth of debt, debt that has to be serviced or you'll go broke, where the federal government has power of life and death over the television interests of the empire, and where we have, as Jeffrey Simpson put it so beautifully this morning, an extreme vengeful and increasingly paranoid prime minister--

The Prime Minister has not given us a yes or no. Were calls made? Tell us, on Gordon Gibson, his friend, my friend, were calls made?