Andrew Scheer

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

He may have brought a press conference to a small town, Mr. Chair, but he is certainly not providing any sort of support for rural parents across the country for their own child care choices.

There is a statistic out there which says that less than 10% of parents in Saskatchewan choose to send their children to institutional day care. Right now they are choosing to use other forms: family based day care, neighbourhood nannies or faith based day care. Why does the minister want the 90% of parents who do not want to send their children to a bureaucratic system to have to pay twice, once for their preferred choice and once for the scheme that the minister wants to impose on them?

This is not about choosing ice cream flavours. It is about choosing what is best for their own children. We know the statistics show that the vast majority of Canadian parents want the ability to provide their own forms of day care and have their own preferred choice, not the one size fits all program that the minister is imposing.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time this evening with the member for Nepean—Carleton.

I want to jump to some questions for the minister. I want to talk to him specifically about certain forms of discrimination that maybe he has not taken into account in his bureaucratic babysitting program. These hastily announced spending initiatives do not take into account the needs of rural based families. Most of the money, actually I think all of the money, is going to urban based institutionalized day care. Rural families, who count on informal and seasonal day care arrangements and who do not have access to urban programs, are left out of this.

Could the minister tell me why he is creating a system that provides rural parents with no support for their own child care choices?

[Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on an excellent summation of why anyone who works hard for his or her paycheque should be concerned with the amount of money the government takes out of their pockets and about the NDP deficit spending amendment to the budget.

We in Saskatchewan have seen what Liberal programs mean. We have heard the huge announcements of spending, the billion dollar promises to help with BSE and the money to help with drought. We have heard that it will put more money into CAIS and more money into loan loss programs or any number of things.

However, not only does the money never get to the farm gate or any of the people who need the money, but oftentimes the forms are not even available for months and are often not even available for people who need the money to even apply for it.

We have heard many ministers say that we had better get the budget passed because all this money is on the hook for that and yet we know that there is a long way between a Liberal announcement of dollars for a program and anyone ever actually getting any money out of it.

Would the member agree with me that directly putting money back into a taxpayer's pocket immediately in the form of a rebate is better than some vague promise that we have heard for 12 years that consistently never actually gets to the people who need it?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is always a bit confusing when we hear the latest spin coming from Liberals regarding the budget. On the one hand, we hear all these desperate pleas that the budget has to pass and that all these groups are waiting for the funds. They paint the picture that the lights will shut off, the buses will stop running, the hospitals will shut down if the budget is held up. Yet, we know that last year's budget is only now finishing up its journey through the Senate, which is a bit of a contradiction.

We also know that many of the provisions in the budget are all back-ended. They will not take effect until 2008-09. Therefore, this much touted aid to the various groups the hon. member has mentioned will not even be seen this year. They will have to wait three, four years to see it.

Then we have the finance minister, if he is still the finance minister after the deal with the NDP, telling us that it is not $22 billion worth of promises because, again, it is all back-ended or it is repackaged spending.

When will Canadians see this money if the budget is successful in passing? As far as I have read and have heard from the finance minister, most of this is back-ended to 2007-08. If we defeat the budget, what would the difference be because most of the government's spending initiatives would not take place for three or four years anyway?

[Government of Canada, May 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government is not respecting this House. The institution of Parliament is built upon the principle of democracy which is intended to ensure that the views of Canadians are represented by this House.

Over the last few days it has become apparent that confidence is no longer possessed by the government and yet, in the words of John Ibbitson, “the government is still testing the limits of its legitimacy by refusing to face the House and settle the matter”.

Will the government confront its democratic mandate to rule by committing to a confidence vote, not on Thursday but on Monday, right away?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the leader of the socialist party, waxing eloquent of his new deficit spending deal with the Liberal Party. I would like to ask him a specific question about agriculture. That member, before the flip-flop occurred, when the original budget was presented, asked how Conservative members of Parliament could support that budge. He said:

How can the member from Saskatchewan stand and support a budget that gives nothing for farmers when they are living on the edge?...How will that help any of the farmers living on the edge. They are producing food for us and the world virtually for free? In fact, they lose money.

He chastized us for not defeating the budget by voting against it. Then he cuts a deal with the Liberals, the corrupt ad scamming government, and still does nothing for farmers. He sold out his support without a dime in that deal for Saskatchewan's farmers, a group of people who are on the edge, who need some assistance. Why has he left them out in the cold after chastizing us for not defeating the budget? Now he comes in and props it up without doing anything that he said he would do.

He has done nothing to secure an equalization deal for Saskatchewan, a deal that would see billions of dollars remain in Saskatchewan instead of being clawed back from natural resource revenues, money that could be reinvested for farm safety net programs. We know the NDP in Saskatchewan does not fund programs such as CAIS like other provinces do. Its excuse is that it does not have the revenues. The Conservative Party urges the government to have an equalization deal, to get those dollars back to Saskatchewan so they can be put into those agricultural safety nets. There is not a word on this in the new Liberal-NDP coalition budget.

What does the member have to say to farmers in Saskatchewan who he has left in the cold, his betrayal of them by not standing up for them and not trying to negotiate a single new cent for them?

[Sponsorship Program, May 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Honoré-Mercier was vice-president of Gervais-Gagnon from 1993 to 2003. His company paid more than $46,000 to the Liberal Party in exchange for some dubious contracts, some of these with Canada Post. The member was also involved in the Prime Minister's leadership bid.

How can the Prime Minister still claim to have seen nothing and heard nothing, when one of his organizers was involved in the sponsorship scandal?

[Petitions, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and privilege today of presenting a few hundred signatures from concerned voters across Saskatchewan from the Qu'Appelle and Regina areas. The petitioners call upon the House to enact Bill C-420, which will ensure that dietary supplements and other traditional natural health products will not be arbitrarily restricted as drugs.

They call upon the House to ensure that the freedom of Canadians to explore health care remedies remains with individual Canadians. They encourage all parliamentarians to enact Bill C-420 as quickly as possible.

[Airports, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, because of Liberal dithering, airports across the country have seen their rents hiked to record levels. The finance minister has known for years that the rent formula is unfair. His delays are costing travellers millions. Taxpayers already paid to build the airports. Now they are being gouged by having to pay exorbitant rents.

The Regina airport has already lost Air Canada's service and will see its rent soar to over half a million dollars next year.

When will the member for Wascana stop the gouging, or maybe I should ask the new NDP finance minister instead?

[Civil Marriage Act, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I also would like to recognize the great work done by many grassroots organizations across this country, groups such as the Christian Brethren and the many groups that are very active in my riding and throughout Saskatchewan and all of Canada. Several of these grassroots organizations are really trying to let the Canadian people themselves decide this issue. Some have been very active in contacting my office and the offices of other MPs, encouraging them to listen to the majority of Canadians on this issue.

I would like to continue in that vein, because I am confident in the knowledge that I am speaking on behalf of the majority of the members of my riding. My job, first and foremost, is to make sure that I am an effective representative for the views and wishes of my constituents.

I would like to read for members an argument that was put forward in 1998. It states:

--the definition of marriage is already clear in law in Canada as the union of two persons of the opposite sex. Counsel from my department have successfully defended and will continue to defend this concept of marriage in the court...I continue to believe that it is not necessary to change well understood concepts of spouse and marriage to deal with any fairness considerations the courts and tribunals may find.

That is not my argument. That is the argument of the current Deputy Prime Minister in a letter she wrote to a concerned constituent. Note this phrase: “Counsel from my department have successfully defended and will continue to defend this concept of marriage in the court”.

We know that she is not continuing to defend this concept of marriage, nor is anyone from any government department. Despite a promise to her constituents and to all Canadians, the Deputy Prime Minister and many of the NDP-Liberal alliance are forging ahead with plans to change the definition of marriage.

There is another section I would like to read for the House:

[There is] a universal pattern of marriage that has existed historically and across cultures. This universal pattern demonstrates that the raison d'être of marriage has been to complement nature with culture for the sake of the intergenerational cycle. Across world religions and throughout small-scale societies, the universal norm of marriage has been a culturally approved opposite-sex relationship intended to encourage the birth and rearing of children....Preserving the definition of marriage as the descriptor of this opposite sex institution is not discriminatory....

Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron, because it lacks the universal or defining feature of marriage according to religious, historical, and anthropological evidence. Apart from everything else, marriage expresses one fundamental and universal need: a setting for reproduction that recognizes the reciprocity between nature...and culture....

The legal definition of the word cannot be changed without creating “an unacceptable cleavage between ordinary usage and the legal meaning; moreover, such redefinition is in conflict with the normal use and development of language”....

In sum, the definition of marriage does not infringe s.15(1) of the Charter...because the distinction it draws does not amount to “discrimination.” While the definition distinguishes on the basis of sexual orientation, the distinction is not the product of stereotypical categorizations or assessments of the relative worth of individuals. Instead, marriage differentiates only on the basis of capacity or need, and thus it does not come within the range of invidious distinctions which s.15(1) was designed to eliminate.

Again, those words come from the Deputy Prime Minister of this country. They come not from someone on this side of the House but from a Liberal cabinet minister when she was the attorney general. This is quite a flip-flop. This is a far cry from her current position, which is to demean and degrade those who argue in favour of maintaining the traditional definition of marriage.

Today, the Liberal-NDP coalition calls people who advocate this view, who advocate the views the Deputy Prime Minister herself once had, bigots and un-Canadian, insensitive, hateful people. The rhetoric coming from that side is very shameful as we try to conduct an honest debate about an issue that is so important to many Canadians.

What has prompted such a reversal of opinion? Many Liberals point to the idea that the courts have forced them to change their position since the Supreme Court has ruled that traditional marriage is against the charter, but we know that the Supreme Court of Canada did not declare the current definition of marriage unconstitutional. I have read the reference questions. I have read what the Supreme Court submitted. If government members would only take the time to read this, they would see that section 4 was not answered. This means that the current definition of marriage was never rendered unconstitutional.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has never recognized that extending marriage to include homosexual couples is to be considered a human rights issue. No governmental human rights body has ever claimed that marriage is a human rights issue.

Those arguments about traditional marriage being unconstitutional should end right away since it is clearly no such thing, but unfortunately these people still hold on to that idea and still perpetuate this myth to Canadians that traditional marriage, something that society has recognized for generations, for thousands of years, is unconstitutional and discriminatory.

It is an idea that many current cabinet ministers once rejected and once went to their constituents about. They looked their constituents in the eye and told them they would never allow the traditional definition of marriage to be changed. They told them that they would continue to uphold the traditional definition of marriage and continue to fight this in the courts. They looked their voters in the eye and then came back to this place and reversed their position. It is shameful.

There is also a huge problem in this bill regarding the protection of religious institutions. I had to point out to those members that question number four was never answered, and I think I also have to point out to them that the one area that was ruled ultra vires of this House was the issue of protecting religious institutions, since that fell under provincial jurisdiction.

It is unbelievable that on the one hand those members tell us they have to do what the courts tell them to do, while on the other hand they do the one thing that the courts told them they could not do. They look at us and bash us for our position on it, yet it is their position; it is their members who do not understand what the court reference decision actually means.

We in Saskatchewan have seen the NDP allow marriage commissioners to be fired for their religious views and their views of conscience. These are civil servants. These are people who are being forced to go against their own personal convictions. We already know that the religious protection is not there. Marriage commissioners in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, under NDP governments, are being fired for their views on this. We know that this Liberal fig leaf of protecting religious institutions will not hold up because the courts have already told us that they are not able to uphold it.

I am proud to be able to be here in this House today as a representative for Regina--Qu'Appelle to vote against this bill. I know that I am doing so on behalf of the vast majority of constituents in my riding. I know that my party is taking the position that the vast majority of Canadians want to see taken on this. They want a respectful debate with the Government of Canada upholding the traditional definition.

I think it is important to note that the Prime Minister is not acting on behalf of the majority of Canadians. He is not doing what is in the best interests of Canada. He is going to have to answer to Canadians and explain his actions on this matter.