Charlie Angus

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 3rd, 2008]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague. I think he will agree with me that he and I have sparred many times on many different issues. We represent different parties and different viewpoints. My colleagues from the Bloc will agree that I have sparred with them on many occasions. However, we came to this House at a time of economic crisis to work together, to put our partisan interests at the door, which is why we are willing to work together.

I would like to refer to the antics we are seeing now from reform unleashed. It started on Thursday night, and what do we see from the Edmonton Sun? It says that the government's attempt Thursday night was “--a mean-spirited, petty, dangerous document designed to antagonize the opposition and destabilize the country”. The Montreal Gazette of course just simply wrote it off as a “disastrous economic update”.

I would like to ask the hon. member about the fact that it is being identified already by major media sources that this document was designed to antagonize and destabilize the country. Would he not agree with me now that the reform rump is launching an attack against the people of Quebec, the francophones of our country? We hear it from the hate messages that their reform members from western Canada are phoning into our offices. They are actually continuing with this agenda that they started Thursday night, which is an attempt to destabilize Parliament in order to hold onto power for a leader who has obviously lost the support of his own backwoods coalition.

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, what we have seen over the last number of days is the collapse of a coalition, the Reform coalition. Now we see Reform unleashed with its deep hatred toward the people of Quebec. I hear it from the Conservative supporters in western Canada who phone my office with their insulting attacks.

This all goes back to the economic statement which was where we started from and which the Toronto Star referred to it as “irresponsible”, a based “leader obsessed with destroying opponents”. The “result is needless and irresponsible”.

The Calgary Herald today speaking of a lame economic update that was an “obscenity” that was delivered by a “leader who is "plain arrogant”.

The Globe and Mail said the “economic update completely missed the mark - it was a narrow, partisan document that failed to give Canadians the true facts”.

My hon. colleague's present leader has lost the credibility of the House. Will he work with us to restore Parliament so we can continue working, work with us who have left our partisan interests at the door, and perhaps find a new leader who will now be the leader of the opposition?

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I did not want to interrupt my hon. colleague, but it does sound to me more like a political speech. I would rather just hear the motion and move on. We have obviously been debating this in public. I do not think we need to have this time for introducing motions be turned into a platform for him to start a debate.

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I really think the children of Attawapiskat deserve something better than this kind of PMO platitude from the war room.

The fact is that the education leaders of Canada stepped into the vacuum because they have seen the long paper trail of commitments that were made to these children, commitments that were broken arbitrarily in the fall of 2007.

The minister can show some leadership here. All he has to do is restore the negotiations that were supported by his predecessor to build these children a school.

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this week hundreds of students and education leaders are coming to Toronto for the historic Education is a Human Right conference that is being hosted by the children of Attawapiskat. Their fight for a school has led to the largest youth-driven children's rights movement in Canadian history.

I know that the children have invited the minister to participate and be part of the solution. I think it would be a little odd if the only no-show was the federal government. So, will the minister attend?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Speaker in his position once more in the 40th Parliament.

I would like to congratulate the member on his election. We sat together in one of those notoriously fractious committees in the last Parliament. I am hoping that in the new spirit of parliamentary conciliation our new committee structures will be much more open and workable.

I listened with fascination to my colleague's speech. I think we all agree that innovation and education are absolutely essential for building a 21st century economy. However, I was struck by the enormous disconnect between the language that I am hearing from the member and the reality that I am seeing in my region.

This month the Conservative government made an announcement that it was sending a wrecking ball to the community of Attawapiskat, which has sat with toxic school grounds for 30 years. For 10 years it was without a school. The only solution the government has is to send in a wrecking ball to leave 400 children with no school facilities. There are similar situations in Kashechewan, White Dog and Fort Severn.

In communities where there are no schools, dropouts begin in grade four. The failure rates of first nations' education are below standards that we see in the third world.

The people of Attawapiskat have been pushing for a school for 10 years. Next week they will be meeting with the education leaders of Canada at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education to discuss the need for an appropriate strategy to ensure that first nations children in isolated reserves are guaranteed just the most basic education rights: the right to attend clean, safe schools and the right to ensure that within provincial jurisdictions on which isolated reserves exist the children are not being unfairly discriminated against.

I would like to ask the member, what concrete steps will the government take to make sure that a young generation of incredible potential is not just tossed away on the toxic junk piles? Will the government make sure there is actually a strategy to ensure that communities like Attawapiskat are given great schools so that we can actually develop a 21st century agenda that we can be proud of as Canadians?

[Committees of the House, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I had the great honour to be raised by my grandmother, who grew up in the Hawkhill slums in Dundee, Scotland. Again and again, my grandmother used to tell me the stories of the British army coming in and taking her cousins, her neighbours and every boy in her neighbourhood. She said they all went to the Somme and never came home again. From day one, she said, “If anybody tells you to rally around the flag and ask no questions, that is the time to start asking them”.

I raise that story because I was in the House the night of the debate on Afghanistan. We asked simple questions, such as, “Where are the allies?” The Conservative government called us 21st century Neville Chamberlains. They chanted slogans like “boots on the ground”. They said that they did not “cut and run”.

With the member for Central Nova coming from Nova Scotia, which has a good maritime tradition, I thought he would understand the meaning of the term “cut and run”. People cut and run when their ship is anchored and they are in a storm. They have to cut the anchor and run before the wind. Otherwise, they run onto the rocks. Therefore, a captain who says he will not cut and run is a captain who is not fit for command, because he is running his crew straight onto the rocks.

When we were asking simple questions about Operation Enduring Freedom, we were hearing “we don't cut and run”, which obviously means the government was running into a very bad situation but was too bullheaded to turn around. When we ask questions, which is part of our job as opposition members, we are denounced and shouted down as being unpatriotic and not willing to rally around the flag.

We asked those questions. We asked where the allies were. Six months later, the government asked, “Where are the allies?” We asked questions about Operation Enduring Freedom, its search and destroy mission and how it is destabilizing the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. The government said we were all friends of the Taliban.

Now we are seeing it. When the member spoke with the president of Afghanistan and asked him about the search and destroy mission, the president shared the same concerns we have. Why is it, does the member think, that the Conservative government continues to move in such a wrong-headed direction, one that is actually sending the ship straight toward the rocks?

[Privilege, June 20th, 2008]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is a question of privilege, the privilege of serving in this House under you, Mr. Speaker, and I am thankful for that.

[Privilege, June 20th, 2008]

Yes. It would take us into mid-July and I think people want to get home.

I am asking the question of why he is taking up the time of Parliament in raising an absolutely irrelevant point? You know well, Mr. Speaker, that I am a great student of the rules of Parliament. The point of order has to be taken through the committee. It is not for him to cry to the principal that the teacher did something wrong in his classroom. The rules are very clear. They say:

Unlike the Speaker, the Chair of a committee does not have the power to censure disorder or decide questions of privilege. Should a Member wish to raise a question of privilege in committee, or should some event occur in committee which appears to be a breach of privilege or contempt, the Chair of the committee will recognize the Member and hear the question of privilege, or in the case of some incident, suggest that the committee deal with the matter.

This is to be dealt with by the committee and if the committee rules that there was an issue, the member quite rightly can bring it to the committee. Then it is brought to the Speaker and then the Speaker rules.

We have been seeing a bizarre filibuster in Parliament since 10 o'clock this morning where very important issues of parliamentary law have not been debated. The issue of nuclear liability, which the New Democratic Party is absolutely opposed to, has been completely shunted to the side. The bizarre airline safety bill, that the government has been trying to push through, has been shoved aside by the government and it has been bringing up irrelevant issues.

The question that we are dealing with is why the member is taking up the time of Parliament to cry foul over the government's filibustering techniques in a committee? Its track record has been that it basically shuts down committee after committee with the same kinds of shenanigans and, finally, a chair has to rule that there is a question of absolute irrelevancy in what it was speaking about.

I am sorry if his feelings were hurt, but this is the big boys' chamber. We are paid to be professionals, to stand and do our job. He knows full well, Mr. Speaker, that he cannot appeal to you to intervene. This is not the way Parliament works.

Perhaps there is a need for some parliamentary lessons over the summer. Maybe, through the wonderful clerk's office, members of Parliament could be offered, especially the Conservative backbenchers, a summer course where they could learn some of the basic rules of Parliament.

It is a very good thing for all of us to learn. As someone who is into his second term of Parliament, I found the clerks to have been excellent at being able to show us, so we do not stand in the House and embarrass ourselves or our constituents.

At the end of the day, what has happened in the House has been a bizarre and useless filibuster by the Conservatives, keeping important and very controversial bills from coming forward at the end of a session.

However, it also undermines our parliamentary role here because we are seeing attempts to create ad hoc rulings, to change the hundreds of years of tradition in terms of how things are reported through the committees and then to the Speaker, and then asking the Speaker to unilaterally override the committee tradition, especially on a point where the committee was trying to do the work of Parliament. That is what I have to keep getting back to. This committee finally said that enough was enough, that it had heard all the irrelevant banter of the party that fundamentally was an opposition party, and that it needed to get down to the work of Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, you know the rules and you respect the rules and I do not think you will be swayed by such a maudlin display as what we have just seen from the member from Edmonton.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage you and your staff to have a wonderful summer. I know my colleagues in the Bloc also want to wish you a wonderful summer because you do take the brunt of having to listen to many parliamentary debates that are--

[Privilege, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I want to commend you for your great years of service in the House, and how frustrating it must be to have to sit and listen to such irrelevant topics day after day that come from these members.

I am actually astounded that time is being taken up in the House listening to someone cry such sad crocodile tears. It is like two kids in the sandbox and one saying, “He took my toy”, and the other saying, “No, I didn't”. Canadians expect better of us.

The issue that we are dealing with is the ability of a committee to deal with the government's business. The member talked about how he was shut down because the chair said it was irrelevant. Committee members sat and listened to 20 minutes of absolutely irrelevant testimony from him about how his feelings were hurt. I say it is irrelevant because he must know the basic rules of Parliament.

The Speaker is not in a position to intervene, hold his hand, and take him back to the classroom and say, “Bad chair”. That is not the role of the Speaker. The member must know that there are certain rules of Parliament that go back hundreds of years that establish fair debate, so that a government party that is still, in his mind, a rump opposition cannot undermine the rules of Parliament. It cannot block committees day after day; it cannot filibuster week after week.

We are talking about an unprecedented situation where a governing party has tried everything it can to shut down the work of Parliament. It keeps coming back to the fact that this is also a party that has been charged, after an RCMP raid, so questions have to be raised about the ethical nature of what was done.

I do not think I need to get into the whole very dubious and dodgy past of the Conservative Party with election spending. That is not the issue.