Bob Rae

[Human Rights, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence still does not appear to be able to use the word “gay”. That is the question I am asking and that is what I am relating to. I would like—

[Human Rights, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the spokesman for the government could indicate clearly whether the Prime Minister will be telling his colleagues in Perth at the Commonwealth conference that as far as Canada is concerned, human rights include gay rights and the Prime Minister will be using precisely that language to describe the situation.

[Auditor General, October 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is incorrect. I told the Prime Minister in my correspondence with him that I had no basis upon which to judge the qualifications of the individual in question and that it was going to be up to the House to make that decision. Members can look at the official correspondence if they want.

We were never told that the candidate was unilingual. That remains a fact.

Is it the position of the government that there is no competent, qualified and fully meritorious candidate in this entire country who is bilingual? Is that the government's position? It is a ludicrous--

[Auditor General, October 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government has put the House in a difficult position. When the Prime Minister asked the leaders of the opposition parties for their views on this particular candidate, the government did not disclose the fact that he was unilingual. It did not tell us that fact. Now we are facing a situation where we find that this is the case.

We had assumed that because it was in the Canada Gazette, the government was going to meet the criteria which it itself had set out in the Canada Gazette when it was advertising for this position.

For the last 20 years, the Auditor General of Canada has been bilingual. Every single officer of this Parliament has a working capacity in both languages. Surely the government--

[Auditor General, October 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General has been an important officer of Parliament for 20 years and has always been bilingual. Even the new position description published in the Canada Gazette stated that proficiency in both official languages is essential.

How does the government explain that its nominee is not bilingual?

[National Defence, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister was a member of a different party in 2001. Allow me to simply ask a question, once again. The fact is that the Government of the Netherlands, other European governments, the Japanese and the Koreans have all made different arrangements with the suppliers of this aircraft. Our problem is that the government is taking an obstinate, ideological position when it has another opportunity. It demonstrated last week that we can have a competitive system.

Why—

[National Defence, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, a fatal technical error on my part; I should say the reactionary government which took office in 2006.

The fact is, nothing in that process in which Canada participated required Canada to buy a single jet at any price whatsoever. That is the truth, and the government House leader knows it. He is raising a completely bogus argument when he talks about breaking a contract. There is no contract to break.

[National Defence, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, we are actually going to be able to have a discussion about facts. The government House leader's description of the process prior to the Harper government coming into office is in fact not correct.

[National Defence, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the government House leader and the Minister of National Defence, one is inclined to ask the question, exactly what new piece of information will it take for the government to realize that an open tendering process is now required to make sure we get the best possible plane at the best possible price?

I would say in praise of the Minister of National Defence that the process that was run on shipbuilding was tremendous. Why not do the same thing for the F-35s?

[National Defence, October 20th, 2011]

There was no answer there, Mr. Speaker.

I have another question for the Prime Minister. If he can have a fairness officer rendering an opinion, if he can have a competition which is non-partisan, if he can have a process which is generally seen as being fair and objective when it comes to the shipbuilding contracts, why can the government not see the logic of doing the same thing with respect to the purchase of several billion dollars' worth of new fighter jets for this country? That contract is a fiasco. The government has numbers which no one believes. There is no fairness opinion. There is no objective opinion, and there is no--