Bradley Trost

[Criminal Code, October 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with pleasure to the speech of my colleague. It reminded me of a constituent who has won the nomination and will seek a seat in the provincial legislature. This constituent worked for many years as a police officer with the Saskatoon police force.

When I had a conversation with her, she told me that she highly endorsed raising the age of protection. She told me that frequently what happens is a person builds a relationship with a 14 year old girl and pretends to care about her and love her, et cetera. Then the person uses that relationship and requires the 14 year to earn money, thereby allowing the 14 year old to be sexually exploited. This is what the current police officer, hopefully soon to be an MLA in our provincial legislature, has told me.

Would the hon. member comment on this since she has a family member who serves on the police and deals with similar situations? It seems to me quite a horrible thing for someone to turn a relationship of trust into pure deception and sexual exploitation. I understand why moving the age of consent from 14 to 16 would protect people in such situations.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague's remarks. I must first note that calling other members and their motions “meanspirited and dishonest” lowers the decorum of this place. I would exhort my hon. friend to use less controversial language so the decorum of this place may be improved.

My question for the hon. member is on the point that he continually criticizes these things. We are in a minority government. There may be another election next spring.

I have two basic questions.

First, by some miracle, if the hon. member's party happened to form the government again, would he guarantee to reverse the cut to the GST and bring it back up? Would the hon. member guarantee that the Liberals would reverse the tax credits?

Second, if in the next budget the government presents next spring, there were across the board income tax cuts, broad categories, raising the basic deduction, would the hon. member then commit to supporting that? This seems to be the thrust of his objections to the current budget.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. friend's comments. It almost seemed for a point there that he was arguing for the Canadian Alliance's old single rate income tax. He was getting to that point.

The hon. member owes it to the House, if he is opposed to all these tax credits, to indicate what he would push for in the next election when his party puts forth its platform. Would the member and his party unequivocally commit to repealing all the tax credits that he has criticized, the tax credit for sports, the tax credit for employees, the tax credit for pensioners, et cetera? Since he is opposed to them, would he be willing to commit that the Liberal Party would definitely repeal all these tax credits should the Liberal Party some day become the government?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the statements of my colleague from the New Democratic Party and I realized that with the New Democrats we can never spend enough. More, more, more is always their call.

She said that all our tax benefits were for the rich. Cutting the 1% GST helps people with their utilities, gasoline, and all their basic living costs. The thousand dollar income tax credit for pensioners that we have implemented, the thousand dollar tax credit for apprenticeship trades, and the thousand dollar tax credit for workers all across the country, these are not aimed at the rich. They are aimed at working class Canadians.

Why is the New Democratic Party opposed to simple direct tax measures that help working class Canadians?

[Canadian Wheat Board, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, knowledge is power and this Conservative government wants to empower western Canadian farmers. We gave farmers the power to oversee how their wheat dollars are spent by the Canadian Wheat Board. We did this by including the Wheat Board in the federal accountability act.

In this act we gave farmers the power to use access to information to investigate whether or not the Wheat Board was spending its dollars for the benefit of farmers. We did this by wisely allowing farmers access to information and yet we still protected commercially sensitive information. It is, after all, supposed to be the farmers' money and not the Wheat Board's money, something that is sometimes forgotten.

Shamefully, unelected, unaccountable Liberal Party hacks had the act amended to remove the Wheat Board from this scrutiny. What are the arrogant Liberals afraid of? What are they trying to hide? Why are they afraid of farmers? Why are they afraid of the truth?

[Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague's speech with interest and he noted that the government's funding in the last budget had increased for the Department of Justice, the Border Services Agency, the RCMP, et cetera. It brought to mind that this is in an overall context when we deal with terrorism and crime.

I would like the member to comment on a couple of things from a general policy perspective because they end up dealing with terrorism. The first one deals with drug smuggling and the associated activities with it. We look at how it funds terrorism in places, particularly Colombia, and we see that the Taliban are now getting a lot of its funding through the heroin trade.

The other question I would like him to comment on is how the government's overall package on law and order in totality is helping to deal with the issue of terrorism in general, things such as more RCMP, et cetera, even if they are not directly targeted at terrorism, how they are helping the justice agenda on this file.

[An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed in my hon. friend's speech that he brought in some analogies to the rather disastrous federal long gun registry. One thing he did not note was the difference in costs between this DNA registry and the long gun registry which cost approximately $1 billion. This registry will be considerably more reasonable in its overall costs.

I wonder if he might comment on the costs since the original cost for the long gun registry was supposed to be $2 million. Now that we have a different government in place perhaps this registry will not experience the same cost overruns as the previous attempts at a registry.

[Natural Resources, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, since lighting accounts for about 5% of Canadian electricity consumption, would the Minister of Natural Resources please inform this House what he is doing to promote the development of clean technologies for Canadian homes and businesses?

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed in the hon. member's speech that she neglected to mention a very positive initiative that the government has brought forward to help all women across Canada.

The government does not support elitist programs. We want to reach out to everyone. In particular, there is our child care program, which has delivered benefits to all Canadian families. I know the hon. member will talk about her party's alternative, but since the Liberals had 13 years in government and never implemented it, one has a hard time taking it realistically.

I want to ask the hon. member why she does not support a program that helps all Canadian families and all Canadian women, helping them to raise and support their children.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, September 26th, 2006]

--that is $5 billion Canadian. Does the hon. member not agree that this is better than zero? With the promised litigation, even after we win a couple more rounds, this would have continued on and on.