Denis Coderre

[Division No. 425, May 13th, 1999]

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

Hon. members are well aware that we do not have to put up with the state our colleague is in. One is not allowed to do indirectly what one cannot do directly. When someone's papers are mixed up, and it takes a minute to get them straight, and that same person was the one who asked just now for a minute of silence, we are nobody's fools, at least not on this side of the House.

I would like us to continue, because I want to hear the speeches.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order. I am quite prepared to respect everybody's ideas, but there is no thief here. Nobody has stolen from anybody. We can exchange opinions, but I believe the word “stealing”, as the member used it twice, is unparliamentary.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We heard nasty words last week. We heard the word “collabo”, and now we hear the word “agitator”. I am concerned for the members opposite.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Like you, I am only too pleased to follow procedure. Once again, if the member does not stop doing this, I will keep getting up. He has no business saying what he said. How is it that the leader of the Bloc Quebecois is never here at the noon hour?

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member knows very well that we are not to mention which members are or are not present for votes. If he wants to start that, we will list all those in the Bloc Quebecois who were not here for the voting yesterday.

[Bloc Quebecois, May 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, last Thursday, the Bloc Quebecois member for Trois-Rivières expressed outrage at the presence of Mayor Guy Leblanc at consultations currently being held in all regions of Quebec by our party.

I wonder how the Bloc Quebecois can explain that, at their May 15 forum on globalization, Carl Grenier, Deputy Minister in the Quebec Department of Industry Trade and Commerce, is going to be the guest speaker at a partisan assembly of the disciples of Parizeau.

One might well wonder whether, as in 1980 and 1995 with the last two referendums, the separatists are again putting the Quebec governmental machinery to work in the service of separation from the rest of Canada.

Will the taxpayers of Quebec find that acceptable, I wonder.

[International Relations, May 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the latest separatist strategy is to provoke refusal on the part of the federal government. Their new trick is playing on the international stage.

The Parti Quebecois government is spending millions and millions of our tax dollars to strut about on the international stage trying to wage flag wars, obviously because of their obsessive drive to come up with the so-called winning conditions. We are still wading through a pre-referendum campaign.

In their paranoia, it is the fault of the federal government that Lucien Bouchard will not be meeting with Mexican President Zedillo.

The leader of the Bloc forgot to say yesterday that President Zedillo would simply not be available during Mr. Bouchard's visit there. The worst part is that the separatists already knew and nevertheless raised questions regarding the trip of their venerable leader.

There is a limit to considering people fools. Lucien's lackey must be really desperate. The polls reveal again this morning that, in Quebec, the Liberals lead the Parizeau faithful 49% to 36%.

If this trend continues, he will lose the limousine he took from his leader not long ago.

[Points Of Order, May 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am not afraid to call a spade a spade. If the member says he heard things, he must have heard them, but if he wants us to identify every member who called somebody names as the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot and most members who are here did, we can do it. But we should not start playing that kind of game, we could be here a long time.

[National Horse Of Canada Act, May 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will not take long. I could not let the rubbish spouted by my friends in the Bloc pass once again. Most importantly, I wanted to support, with vigour I hope, my colleague from Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey and his important bill.

A bill can be said to be not important, but when the Bloc talks on and on about recognition and symbols and tries to claim for themselves as a Quebec horse the French Canadian horse that has been proven historically to be the Canadian horse, we have problems.

I do not know what the interpreters will do with this one, but let me put it this way: the Bloc is blathering again. They said that all my colleague wanted to talk about was national unity and that, in the end, he had started another flag flap.

A lot of things go on in Rimouski. They still do not know whether Céline Dion is a Quebecer or a Canadian, and the same goes for a breed of horse.

And the PQ, the Bloc's head office, finally decided during the last general council, that it was absolutely necessary to have a resolution recognizing the French Canadian horse as the only breed in the world that is part of Quebec heritage. The avowed objective was to act before the federal government. Bill C-454 seeks, how shocking—to quote an article written in Le Soleil by my friend Michel David on Thursday, April 22, 1999—recognition for the national horse of Canada. One can see the reason for this sense of urgency.

If there is one inane debate within Bloc Quebecois, it is the one on identity. It never fails. They always try to find some issue and turn it into a flag flap. We should be proud that a French Canadian horse is a symbol of Canada.

Canada includes Quebec and the rest of the country. There are French Canadians everywhere in Quebec. Again, they are trying to cut themselves off from symbols and say that it is only in Quebec that worthwhile things are happening.

As a Quebecer, a French Canadian and a Canadian, period, I fully support my colleague, because I think it is important. We need symbols, and we need to recognize them as such.

It is through recognition that we begin to solve problems. Once again, they are making a big fuss and saying “No, no, it is a Quebec symbol”.

We should unanimously support the hon. member in saying that the French Canadian horse is the national horse of Canada.

[Member For Québec East, May 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, there comes a point in life when it is time to fight injustice and vicious attacks. Our role is to knowledgeably inform and serve the public.

I could have remained insensitive to this rubbish. With the Bloc, as with the Parti Quebecois, we have become used to personal attacks. Their flawed arguments and especially their constant crises over their identity force them to haul out all sorts of tricks and gimmickry.

How should we react when a member of the House of Commons asks a service he is entitled to use, doubtless, for information, paying for it, I would point out, with our taxes, and when the information attacks individuals et certain members of parliament.

We can debate the continued existence or the abolition of a House. We can use a tool put at our disposal to attack certain ideas, but we cannot viciously and wrongly attack certain members of parliament.

Insults are for the weak. I would ask the member for Québec East to offer a public apology, withdraw his publication on the Senate and rectify the facts.

I would remind the House—