Charlie Angus

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, he is sitting on $60 million of appropriations, while it is starting to shut out the lights in the regional bureaus. Those are the facts, but this is typical of the kind of games he has played around CBC. He has misrepresented its request for bridge financing. He has played games with its request for a reasonable plan to get through this. The results are now massive job losses across our regions.

Why will he not just be honest and say he is using the pretext of the economic downturn to attack the public broadcaster because his government and his base have been fundamentally and ideologically opposed to public broadcasting from the beginning?

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, massive cuts to CBC funding are the result of this government's conservative ideology. The minister refused to work with the CBC. As a result, 800 jobs were lost and local, regional and national services will be scaled back. This is the Reform Party's revenge.

Why is the minister attacking the rural and francophone communities that need local service from the CBC?

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, that is an example of the Pinocchio principle. He is sitting on $60 million that is owed to the CBC and he is refusing to bring it forth.

Communities across Canada depend on the CBC.

But the minister refuses to work with the CBC to come up with a long-term plan to support the public broadcaster.

This will lead to job losses and the loss of local, regional and francophone services across Canada.

Why is this minister using the economic crisis as an excuse to attack the CBC?

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed my colleague referred many times to his surprise at the government's intransigence on this issue but it would speak to a very clear pattern. This is the wrong government at the wrong time. We have a Prime Minister who is habituated to conflict and not working together.

When this $3 billion fund was first raised and opposition members said what kind of accountability, what kind of oversight will there be, the Prime Minister's initial response was not to say that he would talk about it and explain it. He said that he would bring Parliament down and go to an election immediately unless the opposition bowed down. That is the wrong kind of messaging in a time of economic crisis and yet that is the pattern we have seen again and again.

The Prime Minister broke his own election law in September and said he could not work with the opposition because it would not work with his agenda and yet he had not met with any of the opposition about the agenda. He came back after the election for about five days and then he had to prorogue Parliament because his so-called economic stimulus package was so ideologically toxic that we were almost in a constitutional crisis.

Now we are here once again with the Prime Minister who uses buccaneer-style politics to say that if he does not get his way, if he is asked for any accountability, any oversight, if opposition members do any of their work, which is what they are supposed to do, he threatens to bring down the House.

Does my hon. colleague think the Prime Minister is even capable of taking us through a crisis like this given his predilection for conflict?

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we have dealt with the largest economic meltdown in 80 years and it is a time when Parliament should work together. Yet we have seen the government ridicule and attack anyone questioning it.

The fact is we knew the recession was coming. The government said that there was no recession, that we had missed it and if there were a recession, it would have happened by now.

There was a complete lack of planning from the finance minister right up into November when he presented his motion before the House, which attacked pay equity. He had no plan for an economic stimulus.

Suddenly now there is a sense of urgency. Now we are being attacked for asking the government to tell use what its plan is. How will we know that this is not just scattershot spending of money? How are we to know that this $3 billion fund is not just a pork barrel project? We have not seen anything from the government that instills confidence.

Could the hon. member tell us what she thinks of a government that has misread the economic signs so badly and so continuously? How can we trust it with a $3 billion fund that is seen as a slush fund?

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, there is a habit the government has that if opposition members do their job, we are attacked as traitors, as being seditious, and called 21st century Neville Chamberlains, anything it can throw at us. However, our job is to ensure accountability.

When it comes to accountability, in November the government told us there was no recession. It was going to have a surplus. It said that if we voted for the coalition, we would end up with $30 billion in spending and how could we justify that. Two months later the Conservatives said that not only do we have $30 billion in spending they need to get out right now, but they will have another $3 billion fund that is not going to have any oversight and it has to get out immediately. What happened to the great surplus that was supposed to have been there in November? It disappeared.

We are being asked to trust the government on blind faith, yet its record, in terms of its partisan spending is, as the Toronto Star said, extremely shoddy.

There is no confidence in terms of the government. The Conservatives attack us every time. They do not want to work with anybody. They seem to prefer to play to their base. Yet the issue at hand is whether or not we give the government a blank cheque to spend $3 billion without any accountability to Parliament. At the end of the day, our responsibility is to go back to our voters and tell them how that money was spent. That money has to be spent accountably.

If the member cannot deal with the fact that there has to be accountability, I think he has a problem and he probably does not deserve to be in government.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I do not see why the member should be subjected to that personal attack. We are talking about a motion regarding accountability and what the government is going to do, and the member is using cheap partisan tactics to deflect from his speech. I would ask him to stay on point and speak to the issue at hand instead of dragging up everything he can from the past.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, as has been stated by many journalists, accountability on how this money is going to be spent will be the acid test of the government's credibility. We are being told that if we do not hand over a blank cheque for the government to spend in whichever way it wants, which is a slush fund, we are somehow failing Canadians.

Does my hon. colleague not think that the fundamental obligation of members of this House is to ensure that the government is accountable in how it spends taxpayers' money?

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, what is really concerning is we have a finance minister who barely two months ago stood up in the House and said that he had a surplus. Before that, he said that if there was going to be a recession it would have already happened and that we missed this recession.

Now we are not only $30 billion in the hole but we are being asked for an extra $3 billion unaccountable slush fund that the government should be able to spend however it wants, how quickly it wants and under whatever circumstances. We see no pattern with the government of any form of accountability on a long list of pork-barrel projects.

As parliamentarians how can we sit back and entertain this kind of $3 billion slush fund without accountability when we know what the result is going to be six months or a year down the road with the Conservative government?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, March 23rd, 2009]

With respect to on-reserve educational facilities for First Nations in Canada: (a) what requests for capital building expenditure funding, for the purposes of acquiring, building, expanding, improving or replacing educational facilities have been made from April 1, 2005 to present; (b) which of these requests have been granted by the government and why; (c) which of these requests were denied and why; (d) what funds have been committed by the government for capital building expenditure for the purposes of acquiring, building, expanding, improving or replacing educational facilities on-reserve, in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 to 2009-2010, broken down by region; (e) how much of the funding allocated in part (d) has been spent as of December 31, 2008, broken down by region; (f) how much of the funding allocated in part (d) was diverted for other projects, either within Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) or to other government departments, broken down by region; (g) what projects are currently under way; (h) what projects are slated to begin work in the 2009-2010 fiscal year; (i) what are the values of each of these projects; (j) what portion of the total cost of these projects is being funded by INAC through capital building infrastructure; (k) how many projects included additional money from First Nations to complete the construction or equipping of an educational facility; (l) what projects are slated to begin work beyond the 2009-2010 fiscal year; (m) how many communities with projects identified by INAC as priority capital projects have received letters of approval issued to them; (n) since 2005, what amounts from the "Community Infrastructure" line item have been reallocated either within INAC or to other government departments; (o) how has this reallocation of funds affected on-reserve educational facilities; (p) how was this money otherwise spent by the government; (q) which projects, specifically, are the government referring to on page 147 of the 2009 budget document as 10 new school projects and 3 renovation projects; (r) if these 13 projects are not yet determined, what projects are currently being considered for funding; (s) what is the status of the Attawapiskat elementary school construction; (t) how many schools are considered a higher priority by INAC than Attawapiskat; (u) does the government consider the construction of a school in Attawapiskat to be “ready to go” in the same way that the phrase is used on page 21 of the 2009 budget document; and (v) what is required from First Nations communities by INAC and the Treasury Board Secretariat to have their school construction projects considered “ready to go.”?