Blaine Calkins

[Ethics, February 23rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is hardly surprising that the government House leader knows the address all that well.

The Minister of Justice is directly responsible for projects that are funded under the federal government's aboriginal justice strategy. That means she gets to decide which groups receive taxpayer funding.

Given that her husband is now a lobbyist for the Westbank First Nation and the First Nations Finance Authority, will she recuse herself from any decision with respect to aboriginal program funding?

[Ethics, February 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the bar the Prime Minister set was about the perception of a conflict of interest. Does the Prime Minister not see this as a problem?

The Minister of Justice sits on six cabinet committees, including one responsible for examining initiatives designed to strengthen the relationship with indigenous Canadians. This is exactly the issue that her husband will now lobby the government about. The justice minister will now deal with legal matters involving first nations. Her husband's lobbying work is in direct conflict with this.

How can the Prime Minister justify this obvious conflict of interest?

[Ethics, February 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government, time after time, has already faced questions about its ethical behaviour, and here we go again.

The justice minister is in partnership with her husband in a private company. He has not been a registered lobbyist for years, but as soon as his wife was appointed to a Liberal cabinet, he dusted off the old laptop, put new ink in the printer, and signed up as a lobbyist. Is this the ethical standard that the Prime Minister approved when he said his ministers must avoid not only the conflict of interest but even the appearance of a conflict of interest?

[Business of Supply, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to ask a question during this debate. I want to thank all members of the House today for their thoughts on this. I would like to thank my colleague for his eloquent speech and all of the work that he has done.

I am going to use a couple of clichés before I ask him a very obvious question. We hear these things from time to time. People say that wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it and right is right even if no one is doing it, and all it takes for bad to triumph in this world is for good people to stand by and do nothing. We know that from our history. My wife is a Polish immigrant to Canada. I have taken her and my family to Auschwitz-Birkenau and have seen the effects of what the Holocaust did in those Nazi concentration camps in Poland. My children were horrified to see what actually happened, with the mounds of hair, luggage, and things that are on display there. People thought they were going to a better place and, ultimately, perished in the Holocaust. It was absolutely atrocious.

We know that there are people in this world who like to foment hatred and create this type of environment. It does not take the majority of a population to do this. The majority of Germans in 1939 were not Nazis, but the Nazis had enough people thinking the way they did to intimidate and badger the rest of the population in Germany, to whip them up into a frenzy, and to do these atrocities.

My question for my colleague is this. Why does he think it is so important that virtually every member in the House takes the opportunity right now to head this off at the pass, to send a clear message by all of us unanimously supporting this motion that is before the House today?

[Ethics, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that was not an answer.

Since the Liberals have been in office, the House leader has been tied to questionable fundraising practices; he has tried to intimidate judges and tribunal members. Now the Ethics Commissioner has told him that he needs an ethical wall between himself and the Irvings.

We have seen these so-called ethical walls put in place before with this member. How realistic is it to expect the Liberal government minister from New Brunswick not to deal with the Irving family when it is the biggest economic influence in the province? It just does not add up.

[Ethics, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, recently media reports have surfaced indicating that the Irvings and members of the cabinet met in Moncton, New Brunswick last week. The government House leader is very familiar with Moncton and the Irving family.

Given the recent sanctions brought down on the government House leader, can he explain to the House what role he played in facilitating these meetings between the Irvings and the Liberal government?

[Government Appointments, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this is outrageous. This is political interference in the courts. Is there any court in Canada that can escape the reach of the new Liberal government? No one has ever done this before. No one has even had the gall to attempt something like this before.

Every minister in the past who has interfered with these tribunals has resigned. When is he going to get to it?

[Government Appointments, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada website states:

The reappointment process for IRB members will continue to reflect a performance evaluation consistent with the merit-based competency criteria. The Minister will continue to recommend the reappointment of members...after taking note of the IRB Chairperson's recommendations concerning performance and operational needs.

Could the government House leader tell us this? For the reappointed IRB members he has politically intimidated to resign, what specific problems with their performance were identified?

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member does not seem to appreciate the fact that I am talking about my private member's Bill C-525. Bill C-377 was a transparency mechanism that was brought in by one of my colleagues. He would be better served asking my colleague about that, but I support the notion of transparency.

Taxpayers subsidize union dues being paid to the tune of $500 million a year. That is exactly the budget of running the entire Parliament and democracy of our country. That is a lot of money and union members have a right to know where that money is being spent.

I do not think there was anything wrong with a $5,000 threshold. It is a mandatory tax if one is a union member. Union members have to pay it. That is the deal and that is fine. I do not disagree with that deal. I think union members ought to know where it goes.

After all our celebrations on democratic rights for women getting the right to vote in Manitoba, and references to Irene Parlby, one of the Famous Five, who is from my riding and came from Alix, Alberta, is the hon. member going to wear as a badge of honour the fact that when he passes this legislation proposed by the Liberals, he is going to take away the right to vote of every woman worker in this country?

That is the badge that he and the Liberal Party are going to wear because every woman, who is part of a union or not part of a union, has just lost the right to vote. I would be ashamed of that record.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, remember the part of my speech when I said that if you yell louder, you are somehow going to make your point better? The member who just asked me the question is a pro at this.

It was my bill. I brought it forward. I am a member of Parliament. I do not have the vast resources of government to engage. My job is to represent my constituents and I brought the bill forward on behalf of my constituents who had concerns about how they were being represented by their union.

I cannot interfere with what unions do, but I can at least put an accountability mechanism in on behalf of my constituents that would allow them to make this choice free from the prying eyes of both their employer and their union representatives.

While the member wants to go after and repeal secret ballots, he is doing it through secret meetings. We all know from the articles that appear in the media that the Prime Minister and a number of senior Liberals, I can only imagine, have met behind closed doors with union leaders who say one thing in that meeting and say another thing when they are testifying at committee in front of all Canadians. We know that union donations played a factor in the last election campaign on behalf of the Liberal Party.

No one on this side of the House, at least myself, is surprised that the Liberals can be bought. I am just surprised at how cheaply they let themselves go for.