David Christopherson

[Canada Post Corporation, May 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is Bill C-14 is going to result in either higher postage rates or decreased rural mail delivery and neither is acceptable to Canadians.

The minister is also slashing rural mail services as we stand here today without even consulting communities or CUPW. In the words of Ottawa Citizen columnist Randall Denley, “The stupidity of the program is exceeded only by the cost”. That is because the Conservatives are spending $.5 billion to reduce services.

Will the minister immediately impose a moratorium on cancelling rural mail delivery until the workers delivering the mail and the citizens that receive it are properly consulted?

[Canada Post Corporation, May 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the government has finally announced a review of Canada Post's mandate. In the minister's words, the review will “make sure this public institution has the right tools and means to fulfill its mandate in the future”, but at the same time, the minister is continuing to ram through Bill C-14, legislation that will take those very tools and means away.

Can the minister explain why he is undermining not only Canada Post but his own review?

[Petitions, May 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present to the House a petition with regard to the tragic land claim situation in Caledonia. Over 1,000 Hamilton area residents have signed this petition, which calls on Parliament to halt development of those lands currently under dispute until the claims are justly settled.

I will be forwarding copies of the petition to the Minister of Indian Affairs and the Prime Minister for their response.

[Canada Post Corporation Act, May 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, as much as the Liberals do not want anyone to think this has anything to do with rural mail delivery, privatization or deregulation, the fact is that it speaks to the very heart of the ability of Canada Post to remain the entity that it is, to provide the service it provides and to do it in a manner that does not cost the taxpayer, through any extra subsidies, any extra money. It is a stand-alone, self-sustaining organization that employs 55,000 proud Canadians.

The Liberals would have us believe that they will be supporting this, but even if it is the unions that are supporting this position, we should not let anyone say that this has anything to do with rural mail delivery.

The fact is that if we bleed away Canada Post's ability to be financially viable, we ultimately will deny it the ability to provide the service. Is that just CUPW, which, I am sure, is very proud of their former member?

It is not only the NDP. I want to ask the member a question with regards to what Justice MacFarland said on May 8, 2007, one year ago, on behalf of a three panel judge after Canada Post had won the first court case. The private enterprises that the hon. member mentioned appealed and at the appeal court the justice said:

The purpose of the statutory privilege can only be to enable CP to fulfill its statutory mandate or realize its objects. It is meant to be self-sustaining financially while at the same time providing similar standards of service throughout our vast country. Profits are realized in densely populated areas which subsidize the services provided in the more sparsely populated areas.

If we deny Canada Post the revenue it needs to be viable, rural service will be affected and the ability of Canada Post to exist as a crown corporation will be at risk.

[Officers of Parliament, April 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General, the Ethics Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officer, the Privacy and Information Commissioner and others are independent officers. This should be an easy concept to grasp. Demanding that they vet their work through PCO is an attack on their independence.

The Auditor General said yesterday, “My communications strategies aren't going to PCO”. It appears we have a standoff.

Does the Prime Minister of Canada really want to pick a fight with the Auditor General of Canada?

[Officers of Parliament, April 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, while meeting with the public accounts committee yesterday, Auditor General Sheila Fraser told us that she and other independent officers of Parliament were ordered to have their communications material and media releases vetted by the government. This is an unprecedented attempt to violate the autonomy of these independent officers.

Will the Prime Minister today withdraw this order and acknowledge that the independence of officers of Parliament must be respected and protected?

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I hoped that question would come up since it would not cut into my 10 minute speech.

I can only figure one of two things. Either the government knows there is a serious economic downturn coming that will really hurt Ontario and it wants as much as possible to deflect the criticism from the Conservatives to the provincial government and/or it is the opening salvo in the hon. finance minister's run to succeed the current leader of the Ontario Conservatives. Those are the only two things that make sense. This does not.

The member speaks to economic competence. Let us remember the finance minister was part of a government in 1998-99 that sold the 407, which was publicly owned and publicly built, and it would not tell anyone how for much money or the details of the contract. It used all that revenue in one year, which happened to be the election year budget. It took a provincial asset, the 407, sold it, took all the money to put it in its election year budget and after that one year, it was gone.

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to stand. If the member wants to talk about jobs, take a look at the track record of the finance minister while he was the finance minister in Ontario. From January 2001 to April 2002, we lost 90,000 jobs, youth unemployment was up by 31,000, agricultural unemployment was up by 25,000 and manufacturing unemployment was up by 29,000. Those are jobs we lost while that minister was the finance minister of Ontario.

My hon. friend's comment that no business investment, no business person would listen to the issues I talked about, he should get with the times. The reality is if we talk to the board of trade in Toronto, it is the first one to say that poverty needs to be addressed if we are to continue to create an investment climate that works. It will tell us that infrastructure needs investment. Those are the kinds of things Ontario needs, not a national finance minister—

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Parkdale—High Park.

I am pleased to join in the debate, and I thank the official opposition for putting the motion forward. It is a shame that the most the Liberals can do is be a paper tiger, which is what they have done today. There is paper but no claws. There is a little roar now and then, but they are not really doing anything about holding the government to account. I want to say from the outset that the official opposition owns in large part the agenda that is currently under way in this place as much as the governing Conservatives because without the Liberals, the Conservatives could not govern. Let us be clear about what is really going on here. It is an attempt on the part of the official opposition to hold off the criticisms that are coming, but obviously, it is far too weak to achieve that.

One has to ask why the national finance minister would step forward and literally attack not just any province, but the one that is the engine of the national economy, which the minister has acknowledged. It is the largest province in the country. Not only that, it is the province from which the finance minister hails. I am one of those who suffered through the speeches about what Ontario ought to do and I watched what the provincial Conservatives did. I am going to comment on the results of what happened as a result of eight years of that kind of agenda in the province of Ontario.

Before we get lost in the notion that this is all just politics, this is very serious. It is incredibly serious for our nation, for Confederation, and the minister knows that. Chantal Hébert is very quick to give the unvarnished truth about all of us, the NDP included, but what has she said about this? I am saying this to provide the context that this is not just politics, that this is dangerous, a danger that we ought not ever see again in the history of Canada. Chantal Hébert wrote in today's Hill Times, “His government is equating the leadership of the Canadian economic union with a licence to dictate the fiscal ways of other levels of government”. She also wrote, “It will not lead to the breakup of the country, but the conflict has the potential to seriously distort the practice of federalism”.

Yet, this was supposedly a government that came into office wanting to repair the damage that had been done to Confederation and to strengthen the bonds that had been stretched over the years. Obviously it was all just talk.

I was quite interested to hear the minister say that he was going to be an honest friend. Well, as honest friends go, maybe what Ontario needs is a few more lying enemies because if friends are going to be saying things like, “If you're going to make a new business investment in Canada, and you're concerned about taxes, the last place you will go is the province of Ontario”. That is what the national finance minister said on February 29 to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce. How is that supposed to help Canada? How is that supposed to help Ontario? Some honest friend. There is no friendship in that and there is no honesty in it.

The reality is that Ontario is still the greatest place to invest, make no mistake about it, and we will do it over the objections of the finance minister, I might say.

It is not just about the damage to the dynamics of Confederation. It is also about whether or not the minister has any moral authority to tell any other finance minister anywhere how to run his or her jurisdiction.

I want to remind members that the current finance minister was part of a provincial government which, within the first few weeks of coming to power in 1995, cut social assistance to the poorest of the poor by 21.6%. If we add inflation in, that is 37% less buying power for the poorest of the poor. The finance minister has no right to tell anyone what ought or ought not to be put in a budget, in that he voted for an outright attack on the poorest of the poor.

The members on the government benches who are moaning and groaning and rolling their eyes should check the facts. I have never seen any member in the House take a 21% cut in pay nor advocate it for anybody else, but for the poorest of the poor.

In my city of Hamilton, 20% of people are in poverty. I am not proud of it but I am here in the hope of doing something about it. Remarks like those by the finance minister are not going to help. One-quarter of all the children in Hamilton are in poverty. Children cannot be in poverty unless their moms and dads are in poverty too. That is the kind of agenda the finance minister would tell other ministers they should have for the Canadians they are responsible for.

I remember when the same minister was going to fix Ontario. My friend, the metro Toronto chair, is here and I see him nodding as I review what happened in the past. He knows full well the kind of damage that was done to our great province.

The Conservatives were going to straighten out all the difficulties in the relationship between the municipalities and the province, much like they talk about how they are going to fix things between Ottawa and the rest of the provinces. They were going to do it in such a way that it was revenue neutral, a term of the finance minister and the Harris government, revenue neutral.

My community of Hamilton has had to go to Queen's Park cap in hand every year for the last five years to beg for $12 million of lost neutral revenue as a result of the government. The infrastructure damage and the lack of funds to repair it can go right back to the Harris-Eves government.

Because of the lack of revenue neutrality, municipalities had to spend more and more of their own scarce dollars on infrastructure and co-payments for cost sharing programs with the province. At the end of the day, every municipality in Ontario had less money than they had before the process started. Again, I see my good friend, the former regional chairman, nodding his head. That is what happened.

Much of the infrastructure crisis was caused by a minister who said, “We are not in the pothole business”. He did all kinds of damage in Ontario when he was the finance minister. Now he is here and that is what he thinks about infrastructure. On November 22 last year he said, “We are not in the pothole business”.

You can appreciate, Mr. Speaker, why we were so incensed, me in particular, having sat there and listened to that right-wing nonsense for over eight years and the government gutting my province's ability to make life better for its citizens. Regardless of what party is in power in Ontario, it has a huge job to dig us out of the hole that the finance minister's government put us in.

For the minister to stand in this place and condemn Ontario, to attack Ontario and to damage its ability to recruit investment is unacceptable and we will be voting unanimously for—

[The Budget, February 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I seek your assistance, Mr. Speaker, as to whether or not it is in order for us to be debating a budget when there are no members of the official opposition present in the House. Is that still within the rules, or do we have to have at least one member of the official opposition to have a proper budget debate?