Charlie Angus

[41st General Election, November 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yes, but what he has not done is explain why he is blowing all this money in his riding like he has not explained about his campaign spending. The member is like a poster boy for why we need stronger laws at Elections Canada. Let us get on to that.

This past week, Elections Canada praised the New Democratic Party for pushing for stronger powers for the Chief Electoral Officer to deal with voter fraud. Meanwhile, we also learned from new affidavits that it was the Conservative Party headquarters that had the call list that went out for voter suppression.

What are Conservatives doing? Are they going to sit and wait for the next RCMP raid against Conservative Party headquarters, or are they going to come clean with the taxpayers?

[Ethics, November 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we are really trying to help the minister from Labrador, but he is not really doing much. He gets a limo, a driver and lots of staff. He gets a very generous pay from the taxpayer and for that he is supposed to be able to stand and explain himself. However, we will go with something simpler.

Why was 79% of the travel expenses as minister spent in his own province? That is on top of the $18,000 in free flights from his campaign. We have a simple question. Is he using his ministerial dollars and taxpayer dollars to perpetually campaign around his riding?

[Media Literacy Week, November 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the digital world offers an incredible opportunity for free expression, social engagement and learning and yet, along with this unprecedented access come serious issues, particularly for young people who are navigating the world of chat pages and social media. This is why privacy online is a right. Privacy matters.

This is the message of the National Media Literacy Week. The New Democrats are very proud to support the seventh annual Media Literacy Week that was launched by MediaSmarts which, along with the Canadian Teachers' Federation and 70 other organizations, are working with young people, teachers and community leaders to raise awareness and understanding of digital literacy online.

We call on the government to get proactive, to ensure that the rights of young people online are protected and to ensure that the Privacy Commissioner has the tools she needs to protect the rights of Canadians in the digital realm.

[Ethics, November 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, he has not quite earned his limo and driver yet because if he were going to share these stories from coast to coast to coast, he would actually have to go there. Let us now see if he can answer these other questions.

We have one convicted minister, one parliamentary secretary on ice, we have eight in and out charges, we have four convictions. We have a $52,000 conviction. We have the largest voter fraud investigation scandal in Canadian history. We have the minister from Labrador who is being investigated for buying an election. I would like to ask him now to stand again and explain his role.

[Ethics, November 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, sorry to burst the bubble of the bard of the backbench, but there is nothing patriotic about defending illegal spending and ministers who do not show up to do their job, which brings us to the member for Labrador.

Yesterday we learned that as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs he had only been west of Toronto once. In fact, almost all his ministerial travel is so he can fly home. I do not know if he knows that he works for the Canadian taxpayers and they expect results, but would he stand in the House and tell us when he will come clean with Canadians?

[41st General Élection, November 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, he needs to stop waving that cardboard sword or he is going to hurt somebody over there.

We all knew the Conservatives were under investigation for voter suppression in Don Valley East, Nipissing—Timiskaming, Elmwood—Transcona, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Vancouver Island North and Yukon. It is a veritable who's who of the no-names on the Conservative backbench. Now court affidavits show that a Conservative-paid phone bank deliberately sent people to the wrong polls on election day. This was a coordinated scheme that goes all the way back to Conservative Party headquarters.

When will the Conservatives get serious about dealing with election fraud on election day?

[Protecting Canada's Seniors Act, November 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague from the Liberals to this discussion. It is now between us and the Liberals to discuss these important issues. The Conservatives have all gone to sleep over there.

We need a national Alzheimer's strategy. It is very important. Instead of Conservatives wasting time with attack ads and misrepresentations, I would invite them to actually get serious about some of these issues for a change.

[Protecting Canada's Seniors Act, November 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for the excellent question.

I want to say to the folks back home, “Get used to it. This is what it is going to look like in 2015 when we have finally gotten rid of the Conservatives. They have abandoned the field to discussion.”

The Conservatives cannot get up and make misrepresentations, so they really do not know what else to talk about. We could be talking about, I suppose, flying limousines for the Prime Minister, hanging out at the Taj Mahal. We could talk about their priorities of taking $50 million in border infrastructure money and blowing it in a slush fund. That is their idea of priorities.

We could talk about the F-35. Well, we are not supposed to talk about the F-35 because they are not sure if it is the F-35 anymore. They were going to have a $10 billion overrun on 65 planes, and then they were going to try to keep it from the Canadian people.

Meanwhile the Conservatives are not interested in the real priorities, for example, getting the transfers for home care for seniors. The hon. Jack Layton, before he died, in the election of 2011, made his one commitment to seniors, that we would pass a bill to get every senior in this country out of poverty. The cost was $700 million. That might seem like a lot, but that is probably not even the cost of replacing the engine in one of the F-35s, because I hear they are not coming with engines.

It is a question of choices. This is what politics is about. It is a question of choices. We have a government that uses its choices again and again to blow money on its friends, to give breaks, to misrepresent facts, to use its time in the House of Commons, not to discuss important issues but to try to misrepresent and fool the Canadian people.

The New Democratic Party has been talking about these issues consistently and coherently. Canadians know that when we are talking about the issues of senior citizens, it is not just that we are going to bring in a mandatory minimum sentence and change the Criminal Code.

We have to have a coherent vision to ensure that, not only can we address criminalization against seniors and their victimization, but that we will have a strategy for fraud that is proactive. We will have a strategy for home care. We will actually have the transfers to the provinces, to ensure the Canadian health system remains something that we can all be proud of, and that it does not continue to deteriorate, as has happened all too often across this country.

[Protecting Canada's Seniors Act, November 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for London—Fanshawe for being such a passionate advocate on seniors' issues over the last number of years that I have been honoured to work with her.

We have a number of shortfalls in the overall system. Part of it is federal and part of it is provincial. There is the issue of a lack of access to home care. When people do not have the proper home care they need, they have accidents, such as a broken hip, and end up in emergency. However, there is no place to put them and the emergency rooms are backed-up.

When I go into my communities of Englehart, Kirkland Lake, Larder Lake, Cochrane, Timmins and Iroquois Falls, I hear from seniors all the time. There is no housing for them to move into. They cannot afford the places they are staying in and they cannot move into places with dignity. We see this issue of the need to have enough qualified staff to be there to work for them when they are no longer able to stay in their houses.

Yes, this is a big issue and I am glad that we are debating it within the House. Obviously, it seems to be a discussion only among New Democrats, but we have always been the party that has said that seniors are a major priority. No wonder my grandmother was such a strong New Democrat.

[Protecting Canada's Seniors Act, November 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I find that to be an interesting observation. I was noticing it myself all day. Earlier, when dealing with a bill addressing the danger of nuclear terrorism, I could hear the sounds of sleeping on the Conservative benches. Nobody was getting up to speak.

The issue of elder abuse is a serious issue but we are hearing radio silence from the other side. It is as though they have misunderstood the role of this Parliament.

Parliament exists to debate serious issues. We are all to come together to debate and find a better way forward. The Conservatives tend to use Parliament as a way of putting out spin, misinformation or whatever the latest lie is that comes out of the PMO's talking points. They think that is the role of Parliament. It is not. It is actually an abuse of the parliamentary tradition.

I thank my hon. colleague for pointing out that, once again, when we get a serious issue here, all the Conservatives take a pass. However, if it is some kind of idiotic speech that is given by the backbenchers, they just cannot wait to get in queue.

To bring up the level of debate, I would encourage the Conservatives to get a little more involved.