Madam Speaker, I am not apologizing for the point of order. I am quite sure I heard the hon. House leader refer to the presence or absence of another member in the House and I think that is out of order. He should recognize that. He should know it.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2008, with 59% of the vote.
Business of Supply March 17th, 2010
Madam Speaker, I am not apologizing for the point of order. I am quite sure I heard the hon. House leader refer to the presence or absence of another member in the House and I think that is out of order. He should recognize that. He should know it.
Business of Supply March 17th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I would agree that frequency of use of prorogation is the issue here.
I would ask the leader of the New Democratic Party, is not the real issue the reason for the prorogation, given that Parliament's purpose is to hold the government to account and given that our Constitution takes this so seriously that it even has a provision that says Parliament must be called at least once in a year?
This is very important to the people of Canada. Would the member not agree that it is the purpose of the prorogation, and in this case the purpose of the prorogation seemed to be so conspicuously for the purpose of shutting down Parliament and avoiding that accountability?
Business of Supply March 15th, 2010
Madam Speaker, I was just doing the math on this. There are 10 million pieces a week of these ten percenters and the Conservatives are just squirming to get up and give more examples of how MPs are abusing these ten percenters. I made a call last year and the guy who mails this stuff said that it is mailed by the kilogram and by the pallet. There is a special deal with the post office: $10 million for printing and $10 million for postage, but it is paid for by the kilogram and pallet. Does she not think that there is a whole lot of savings that could be—
Business of Supply March 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member ended her comments dealing with the issue of ten percenters. When I was first elected to this place just a few years ago, I recall that the ten percenter was a communications mechanism that allowed the member of Parliament to communicate with his or her constituents on an ad hoc basis.
At some point, it expanded beyond the riding. One could mail it to any riding. At some point, the bylaws were changed to allow party whips to do what they called regrouping which opened the door to virtually unlimited mailings of ten percenters. I do not think it was an unwitting expansion. It was an advertent expansion on the part of the party whips of all the parties in the House and suddenly we had this mushrooming.
Would the member not agree that this is the effective conversion of an MP communication mechanism by all of the parties in the House to the use of the political parties? Because it is unlimited, is it not a little bit like letting somebody else use our credit cards? Are we, the individual MPs, not letting somebody else use our credit card on an unlimited basis? I can see the numbers here guesstimated by our research, but it is over $10 million a year for these worthless ten percenters.
Points of Order March 5th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the minister has addressed the subject in the House today; had he not, someone else might have.
There are two or three things missing and I think the House should be aware of them. I realize we are not in a debate, but I want to point out to the minister and the government that at no point in his remarks today, as far as I could tell, has the minister acknowledged the power of the House to subpoena these documents, to send for persons, papers, and records. At no point did the minister acknowledge that.
Second, in asking a third party to do the government's work, no one could take objection to that, but I would have thought the government would already have people capable of determining which documents needed protection before or after a parliamentary procedure.
The government has not asked Parliament to do this. The government has not asked Parliament to ask Mr. Iacobucci to do this work. There is a very important element missing in this. I invite the government to come forward with something that has a bit more permanence and is more parliamentary.
From my point of view, the minister's statement this morning does not address the fundamental problem of the government having failed totally to acknowledge the power of the House and its committees. If the third party doing this administrative review of the documents that are in need of protection is not informed of this, and it is not made part of his mandate, members will end up having the same problem during and after the exercise.
I invite the minister even now to rise and acknowledge the full, unabridged power of this House to send for persons, papers, and records, the way it has always been for over 300 years.
Business of Supply December 10th, 2009
Find another way to say it. You're not the only game in this town. You never were. Your're not going to be.
Disposition of an act to amend the Excise Tax Act December 7th, 2009
Madam Speaker, I crave some clarity and some objectivity in this debate. I hear references to a new tax, and the member can comment on this.
First, it is not a new tax. The GST is still there and the PST in Ontario is still there. This is a harmonized tax base, so it is not a new tax.
Second, the $4.3 billion has been called a bribe. What actually happens when there is a transition in taxation like this is all the little pieces of tax that were taxed as PST, for example in Ontario, get added into the price of the product and the manufacturer will send those tax payments to the government. In this case the tax payments will not be sent because under the harmonized sales tax these are called input tax credits. What the manufacturer would have sent in as tax, he or she will simply credit against what is owed, what is received as a credit.
Therefore, all that taxation gets stuck, buried down inside the price of the goods and it is the consumer at the end who will pay the tax, and then it is remitted. Somebody has to cover off the cost of running government over the interim. In large measure, that is what the $4.3 billion is for, to cover off the huge drop in revenue that the provinces will experience in the front end of this new tax.
Last, those members call it a new tax, but the government will to end up collecting less taxes. They should figure that one out.
Sri Lanka December 4th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, I want to draw the attention of the House again to the difficult situation in Sri Lanka following the conclusion of the military conflict there in May.
Over 100,000 Tamil civilians had been held in detention camps maintained by the military in the north. The camps presented huge challenges in terms of shelter, nutrition, human rights, and access by international and UN aid agencies which were severely restricted.
Earlier this week, happily, Sri Lanka opened the camps for all to leave at the time of their choosing.
Now is the time for Sri Lanka to invite and accept international assistance for this huge resettlement. Many have lost their homes, but resettlement is an essential part of post-conflict reconstruction. A successful reconstruction process is necessary for Sri Lanka to ensure that its minorities fully participate in a peaceful and prosperous citizenship. This is vital to Sri Lanka's future.
I call upon Sri Lanka to publicly embrace these goals and proceed quickly to resettlement, post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation with its minorities.
Points of Order December 1st, 2009
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order that relates to the privileges of the House.
During question period today the Minister of National Defence indicated to the House that the Canada Evidence Act obstructed or impaired the ability of the government to provide information to the Standing Committee on National Defence in connection with a matter it is studying now.
As members know, the House has the power to send for persons, papers and records. That power delegated to committees is unimpaired by any statute, unless the statute explicitly mentions the parliamentary power, and the Canada Evidence Act does not in this case.
In this particular case, the general view is that it is contemptuous to mislead or obstruct the House in relation to its privileges, and it is quite possible that the minister has inadvertently or advertently misled the House with respect to this matter of privilege.
Therefore, I would invite the minister to come back to clarify this. If he is suggesting that the Canada Evidence Act prevents the government from disclosing documents, it is my view that it obstructs the House and is wrong in law, and that the matter must be taken up as a matter of privilege.
The reason I am somewhat familiar with this is that eight years ago it almost happened. The House was considering amendments to the Canada Evidence Act, and through inadvertence a lawyer somewhere in the Department of Justice actually inserted a reference to Parliament. Those words were removed before the amendment was made, with the specific objective of ensuring that Parliament's powers in relation to persons, papers and records remained unimpaired and unencumbered.
The minister's answer today left me with no other conclusion than that the government was using this section to avoid making disclosure and that he may have inadvertently misinformed the House and the public. If he has done so advertently, then it is clear to me that it is a matter of privilege and I would be prepared to take it up forthwith.
However, I think we should allow the minister an opportunity to clarify this and he could do so directly with members in the House or he could give me a phone call. In my view, it should be done.
I am putting the House on notice now that I do see a potential serious matter of privilege here.
Points of Order December 1st, 2009
Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief about the simple logic being applied by the parliamentary secretary to this issue.
It seems to me that if a ways and means motion were required, the legislative matter might also require a royal recommendation. I do not think that is what is being argued here.
Second, I do not think that the measure being proposed here would create a new tax or a new tax measure. All it would do is to take steps that would make a person or an entity liable to an existing tax measure. If I were to use the same logic the government is using in this matter now, but to legislate in the House a promotion or to create an office whereby a person took that office and thus entered a higher tax bracket by virtue of earning more money, then a ways and means motion would be needed because the legislation, if passed, would ultimately result in that appointed person being subject to additional taxation on his or her income.
My point is that the legislation being proposed here merely sets up a circumstance where the entity would be subject to existing tax measures, not new tax measures.