Benoît Tremblay

[Business Of The House, June 12th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I an seeking the unanimous consent of the House to defer debate on Motion M-169, which was to be debated this evening under Private Members' Business, and to place it last in the order of precedence.

[Sales Tax, April 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in view of the importance of this issue, which has been under discussion for years, could you once more ask the House for unanimous consent so that the hon. member can speak to this?

[International Child Abduction, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, on January 17, 1993, Mrs. Micheline Tremblay, who resides in the riding of Rosemont, learnt that her son Karim, then three and a half years old, had been abducted by his father and illegally taken to Egypt, his father's country of origin.

In spite of three years of relentless efforts, Mrs. Tremblay never saw her son again. Every legal recourse undertaken proved virtually ineffective, because Egypt has not signed any international convention or bilateral agreement with Canada on international child abduction.

But Egypt could enter into such an agreement with Canada, as it did with France. What is missing is Ottawa's political will to act on this fundamental civil rights issue. I call upon the support of all members of this House to demand that the Canadian government remedy this situation and make sure that Karim is reunited with his mother as soon as possible.

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I must begin by congratulating my neighbour, the hon. member for Papineau-Saint-Michel on his election. If he has been elected, it must mean the campaigning is over now, something I think he has forgotten.

During that entire campaign, the minister who was then a candidate refused to take part in an open debate. Now he is in the House, and here there has to be debate. He cannot make just any old statement without some reaction. Those are the rules here. When a person claims to be an expert in international affairs, he has to be able to prove it. I want to give him the opportunity to do so.

The minister is dazzled by Canada's performance, with an unemployment rate that has gone from 11.2 per cent to 9.6 per cent since 1993. Could he explain to us how our American neighbours, with whom we do 80 per cent or more of our trade, have managed during that same time to have an unemployment rate of 5.5, 5.6 per cent? If this is lotus land, it must be an absolute paradise on the other side of the border.

There are other things that more important, or equally important. We are told that people found this to be a wonderful budget. Does that go for the tens of thousands of people who moved from unemployment insurance to welfare while the federal government was cutting benefits and increasing contributions to such an extent that it created a $5 billion surplus in the unemployment insurance fund, shifting tens of thousands of people onto welfare rolls and then washing its hands of its responsibilities to the provinces? The federal government has traditionally paid 50 per cent of welfare costs. That is no longer the way things are, however. The federal government abandons the unemployed to the provinces, but no longer assumes part of the costs.

As for political matters, I am obliged, unfortunately, to recognize that the member for Papineau-Saint-Michel truly represents Liberal Party tradition in this House. Perhaps his speech was prepared before last weekend's meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec, because they just buried the constitutional debate by a sort of unanimous motion, which was also approved unanimously by all the federalist allies of the Liberal Party of Canada.

So we are in a position where a little knot of Quebec Liberal members-thanks to the Bloc now, we can show that it is a little knot of federal Liberal members-alone is right. This reminds us of something. They alone are right. They are open minded. They represent Quebec's identity.

Well, I think the minister is going to have to take reality into account. The reality is that nearly 50 per cent of Quebecers voted for sovereignty. This is major progress. The minister adds "sovereignty-partnership". Of course, of course, we are modern. We are modern my friend, and we know it.

The minister should remember that it is thanks to Quebec that Canada adopted free trade. More than anywhere else in Canada, we are open to things modern and to international trade. It is very clear. It is also clear that we are open to partnership.

I welcome him. It is a welcome that promises vigorous debates, because it is clear that, on this side of the House, we very definitely do not share the vision of the member for Papineau-Saint-Michel.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the member for Vaudreuil arrived long after the voting had started. Perhaps he should be reminded of the rules.

[Petitions, May 10th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am submitting two petitions signed by over 500 people from my riding and from neighbouring regions.

Given that seniors are generally at a loss when faced with voice mail technology, and considering that they need personalized service, especially regarding their enquiries on guaranteed income, these petitioners demand that the government suspend implementation of voice mail for seniors' services and maintain the personalized services that they so require, as the Bloc Quebecois has already demanded several times.

[Readjustment Act, 1995, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, a little while ago, I heard the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell read a letter concerning the October crisis. He did not read it all and did not say who wrote it. We know that it can only have been signed by the Premier of Quebec at the time, Robert Bourassa. I am very sad to hear the member recall these events as if they were something Canada and the Canadian Parliament should be proud of.

I believe that everything that has come out regarding the Cabinet discussions at the time clearly shows that if ever there was a dark time in Canada's recent history, it was then. I can assure him that now that we have a Premier with a backbone in Quebec, we will not see such a letter in the months to come.

[Readjustment Act, 1995, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I think there is some laxness in the negative turn of phrase used to avoid using unparliamentary language. There is a lot of laxness in the content of the hon. member's speech; I hope there will not be as much in his vocabulary.

[Maintenance Of Railway Operations Act, 1995, March 25th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member did not retract what he said, although a mistake was clearly made.

[Maintenance Of Railway Operations Act, 1995, March 25th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, could the hon. member be asked to retract what he said, since the facts were wrong?