Charlie Angus

[Ethics, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Prime Minister tried to avoid answering straightforward questions—

[Ethics, October 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, on Halloween, I am sure his daughters are going to have a wonderful time, and my daughters are wonderful too, but I would never use them to hide behind corruption.

Let us find out why they are not being forthright. Is it because the Prime Minister told his base that he would clean up Ottawa, that instead he took the cushy Conservative insiders and gave them lifetime appointments, that he sat on a cover-up in his own office, and that he allowed these Conservative to break all the rules?

What happened to that man who promised Canadians that he would make a better country and clean up the corruption of Ottawa? What happened to that man?

[Ethics, October 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it was not all that difficult a question. How many cheques were there?

Let us try a quote from the Prime Minister when he was taking on Liberal corruption. He said:

My difficulty with the prime minister at this point...is that I don't think that he's been...honest on fairly simple questions when there appear to be contradictions. [...] when somebody doesn't answer questions...in a straightforward manner, there may be something else.

Let us talk about that “something else”. Will the government tell us when the Prime Minister last spoke to Arthur Hamilton to find out the nature of Mike Duffy's legal fees and whether it was appropriate to use the money of Conservative donors?

[Ethics, October 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it has been five months since Canadians learned about the secret deal between Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright. We learned in May that there was one cheque. Then in the past week, we learned that there was a second cheque, from Conservative Party donors, to cover off Mike Duffy's legal fees.

Does the government know how many cheques Mike Duffy received and how many cheques were handled by the Prime Minister's Office? It should be a simple question to answer.

[Ethics, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we know that the RCMP affidavits have certainly painted a picture that the Prime Minister is not telling Canadians the truth on this issue, and we cannot get a straight answer; so let us try another one.

Last May, the Prime Minister said that Nigel Wright resigned and that he was sorry he was resigning and he was going to receive full severance. Now he is claiming that he fired Nigel Wright.

Well, when average Canadians get fired, they are not entitled to EI; so why are the taxpayers being stuck with the bill to pay off the severance for Nigel Wright?

[Ethics, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, with an answer like that, I call shenanigans.

We know that Arthur Hamilton is a regular fixer for the Conservative Party. He helped it on the robofraud investigation, he helped it on the Helena Guergis affair, he helped it on the in-and-out scheme, and now it seems he is involved in the PMO cover-up.

I will ask again. What role did Arthur Hamilton play, and will the Prime Minister confirm that Arthur Hamilton's office was used to transfer the money to Mike Duffy?

[Ethics, October 28th, 2013]

I think, Mr. Speaker, the standard Canadians are expecting is that the Prime Minister will apologize for what has happened.

It seems that the Conservatives are having difficulty keeping their story straight as the story changes daily about who was involved, so let us now talk about the baker's dozen. In Mike Duffy's epic speech last week, he referred to negotiations between his lawyers and a Conservative Party lawyer. Will the Prime Minister confirm that Arthur Hamilton was involved in this deal, that he was the one representing the Conservative Party?

[Ethics, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday the government leader in the Senate, Mr. Claude Carignan, admitted that he had approached Patrick Brazeau about a secret plea deal. Do the Conservatives not get it? It was a secret deal with a senator that got them into this mess.

My simple question is this: Was the Prime Minister's Office aware that Senator Carignan was offering this side deal with Senator Brazeau on behalf of the Conservatives, and were Senators Wallin and Duffy offered the same deal?

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have such great respect for my hon. colleague's work.

We have a prime minister who is an economist. My father was an economist. He went back to school in his forties, because he had never finished high school and then he became an economist. My father thought numbers mattered.

However, he also told me “Son, they can say anything they want with numbers. Don't ever believe them”.

What we see with the government is it just makes up numbers. What it is saying is that permanent jobs are part time and what we are seeing are thousands of temporary foreign workers coming in, being given the jobs and then being deported.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I had a grandfather who died in the mines and another who had his back broken underground.

We live in resource communities. I have never met a person in a resource community who said, “Let's poison our rivers to get a few quick jobs”. I have never met anybody in northern Ontario who said, “Let's pull the Ring of Fire out as fast as we can and ship it to China without value added”. I have never heard anybody in Timmins say, “Let's push the bitumen through as fast as we can, and if it blows out on the Mattagami or any other river, well too bad, so sad”.

I do not know what world my colleague lives in, but the people I live with in resource-based communities believe that development has to be sustainable, and it has to be something that is there for future generations.