Charlie Angus

[G8 Summit, November 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that, after 145 days of practice, big bad John has done a pretty good imitation of the Muskoka minister.

[G8 Summit, November 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, in the latest release of emails about the Muskoka minister's involvement in the summit centre boondoggle, he made some disturbing comments about his intention to personally intervene in the spending process.

He wrote to the mayor, "I'm going through Treasury Board to flow funds....I should have the money for you within three weeks. I know your credit card is maxed."

This is not how it is supposed to be done. Where is the paper trail? Where were the bureaucrats? If this were really arm's length, why would he be sending Blackberry messages promising to get cash in person?

[G8 Summit, October 31st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I know it is Halloween, but the member does not look dressed up at all, like the beleaguered President of the Treasury Board.

I will go back to the President of the Treasury Board who, on day 144, showed up to work today dressed as the invisible man.

This project did not come in under budget. The government dinged the town for an extra $9 million.

My colleague from foreign affairs keeps saying this was an arm's-length project. There was nothing arm's-length about it: the minister was up to his neck in pork-barrel partisan politics.

Will the minister explain why he was using Treasury Board to get money for a bogus project like this, which had no justification or paper trail? Where is the paper trail?

[G8 Summit, October 31st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, new documents show that the Muskoka minister used the G8 as a cover to promote a white elephant vanity project called the Summit Centre. It was sold as a dorm for the media that never came.

One email is particularly disturbing. In it the minister says:

I'm going through Treasury Board to flow funds.... I should have the money to you within three weeks. I know your credit card is maxxed!

Where is the paper trail for this vanity project? If the minister does not have the paper trail, then he is going to need to explain why he used Treasury Board as a partisan cash machine.

[Business of Supply, October 31st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. I worked in the removal of asbestos from buildings in downtown Toronto. I remember one day an entire site was shut down because a young woman who was hired was using a vacuum. She was not even in the asbestos zone, but when workers saw she did not have a mask, they shut the entire work site down because of the immediate threat to her health from just being on the floor without a mask.

The science exists. We know the devastating effects of asbestos, yet we also know that it is being imported into third world countries and put into cement mixers and being cut as tiles. There is no protection for workers. It seems to me that the government has made a decision that it is okay, in the interest of a few jobs, for people to be murdered in the third world because they somehow do not count as much as Canadian workers.

I would like to ask the member about our being an ethical nation and what it says about Canada on the world stage when, in order to maintain an industry that should have died long ago, we knowingly dump this level of carcinogen into third world countries without the protection that workers need.

[G8 Summit, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am hurt because I think we all know what we are really dealing with here, which is the wasteful, inefficient and ineffective President of the Treasury Board.

After 140 days of dodging the facts, the facts have indeed not changed, because the infrastructure minister did not choose the projects. He rubber-stamped the list that was handed to him by the Muskoka maverick. The reason he cannot get up now is that if he stands up, he is busted for explaining why his fingerprints are all over the file.

Will he stop hiding behind the backbench, get up and be accountable to Canadians?

[G8 Summit, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Muskoka minister said that if he were caught setting up a parallel process that kept the Auditor General in the dark that he would turn himself over to the cops.

Local mayors were told that all projects would be vetted by civil servants, but he broke that promise and set up a parallel process run by the three amigos: the mayor, the hotel manager and the minister. He then hid the documents in the office, which meant that the Auditor General was left in the dark.

When will he do the right thing and check himself into the old crowbar hotel?

[G8 Summit, October 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, if the big game hunter on the backbenches is going to take down this scandal, he is going to have to put a little more ammunition in his pop gun.

The facts are that since the Muskoka minister has to hide behind members like him to answer, I will do him a favour and I will speak for the Muskoka minister. He said “If set up a parallel process where the Auditor General did not know, I would be resigning right now and turning myself in to the local police”.

The question for my good friends on the Conservative backbenches is this. Will someone volunteer, do the right thing, help this verbally challenged minister, put up a hand and call 1-800-Huntsville PD.

[G8 Summit, October 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, 139 days and the Muskoka member is still hiding behind the backbenchers and not explaining why he hid the paper trail in his office.

The Auditor General said that he broke the rules and called on Parliament to investigate. That was before we learned about all the other cabinet ministers who were taking his lead and going to the pork buffet as well.

How many other ministers circumvented the rules, took this man's lead and used the taxpayers' Treasury Board as their own personal cash machine?

[G8 Summit, October 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, after 130 days the fig leaf that the member is hiding behind is looking a little frayed over there because this is about the fact that he got his buddy hired. It was his idea. He called the mayor and said, “hire my buddy”. Then what did his buddy do? He started calling the other ministers to get his hands on the cash.

Buddies were hired by the minister, contracts were given on tender and the Auditor General was misled. The minister's fingers are all over this file. Will he release the documents that show who was in the meetings where it was decided how to carve up the money to get his hands on the G8 slush fund?