Deborah Grey

[Ethics Counsellor, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is funny; the weaker the point, the louder they yell. We have some pretty basic questions about the evasion and deception that is going on.

Yesterday, Howard Wilson sat through an entire committee hearing on this subject, dodging questions like a well trained seal. It was only at the very end of that meeting that he quietly slipped the committee chairman a copy of the lawyer's letter.

I would like to ask the Prime Minister or the industry minister who told Wilson what to say and when to say it.

[Ethics Counsellor, March 19th, 2001]

That is good news, Mr. Speaker. We await the results. The minister was wrong, though, when he said originally that the golf course was in a “blind trust” and he admitted that in the House.

Now he is wrong again. The case is not closed but perhaps it is just beginning. Very soon the minister's department in the investigation will learn the identity of that fourth secret shareholder between the years of 1996 and 1999, not now and not away earlier but between 1996 and 1999.

Because it is just a regular review, will the Minister of Industry say that he will stand and say who that shareholder was as soon as he learns it?

[Ethics Counsellor, March 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I know Liberal members certainly use their imagination a lot because the Minister of Industry said that the case was closed. He said that an objective analysis of this issue was already done. He said that a definitive statement had been made and that everyone “has closed the file” on it, but that file has been pried open again.

The ethics counsellor obviously did not look at the books. The minister just said that. Has the minister instructed him to do a “corrected return” on that?

[Petitions, March 16th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am pleased to present a petition.

The undersigned residents of Canada, many of them from the Edmonton area, draw to the attention of the House of Commons that rural route mail couriers often earn less than the minimum wage in working conditions reminiscent of another era. They have not been allowed to bargain collectively to improve their wages and working conditions like others. The private sector workers who deliver mail in rural areas have collective bargaining rights, as do public sector workers who deliver mail for Canada Post in urban areas, and they have a problem with that.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon parliament to repeal section 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act.

[Ethics Counsellor, March 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, how do we even know that? As for the ethics counsellor, what do we expect him to say except that his boss is the best?

We are not getting straight answers here. The government obviously has something to hide. Again, we know that there were three shareholders. The Prime Minister claims that he was not a shareholder and the ethics counsellor says “yeah, you bet”, although why in the world would they have this conversation in 1996 then? That is a moot point. There would have been no need to even have that discussion if it was in fact in a blind trust.

The industry minister, through this investigation, will soon know who that is and the Canadian public demands to know—

[Ethics Counsellor, March 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the blank that the Deputy Prime Minister talks about is 1996 when the Prime Minister talked to the ethics counsellor and told him that he had a problem because he still owned the shares.

The Prime Minister talks about the shares as being in a blind trust. If those shares were in a blind trust, he would have no idea whether he got those shares back or not. That is the issue. There is an ethical obligation here to find out if the Prime Minister actually owned those shares in 1996 and was in a conflict of interest when he was lobbying for grants and loans.

The Minister of Industry, hopefully, although he is trying to protect his boss, will get to the bottom of that. The question is, who is that fourth secret shareholder and will he name that person?

[Ethics Counsellor, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, that is nice to know.

The Prime Minister just said that the ethics counsellor looked into that and it was a closed deal. The Minister of Industry has been going on for weeks saying that the file is closed. In fact, that file is open again. The ethics counsellor just said that he is looking into it again.

The Prime Minister could get over this in a heartbeat by just tabling his bill of sale for those shares in 1993. Will he do that?

[Ethics Counsellor, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is just unbelievable that the ethics—

[Ethics Counsellor, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, those shares might have been sold in 1993, but it is a gift that just keeps on giving. They came back to him again some time later.

I think the ethics counsellor has raised a very important point in response to the letter from the Leader of the Opposition. He said that those corporate records are “an important issue.” You bet that is an important issue, Mr. Speaker. Canadians need to know just exactly who is in charge there and who owned these shares.

Now it was mentioned earlier that there were four shareholders. Three of them have been identified. Who was that fourth shareholder between 1996 and 1999?

[Immigration, March 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, now it has gone from the end of January, to the end of February, to the middle of February. The problem is that Amodeo and his wife ran a business in Canada. They were very visible in Montreal since 1996. They owned a home. If Amodeo was hiding out it was in plain sight, yet the minister comes up with all kinds of fictional dates. We need to get to the bottom of it.

When did her department know—the Minister of Justice or the Solicitor General of Canada—that they were harbouring a criminal in Canada and why did they wait two full years until he was arrested?