Dick Harris

[Taxation, November 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition continues to make reckless and uncosted spending promises, reckless spending promises like a 45-day work year.

Who would pay for reckless Liberal spending? Hard-working Canadian taxpayers, that is who. Canadian families would be forced to send more and more of their money to fund Liberal schemes and bloated government. It is no wonder the Liberal leader calls himself a tax and spend Liberal and publicly demands that federal taxes must go up.

Our Conservative government believes in lower taxes that help create jobs and economic growth. That is why we lowered the family tax bill by over $3,000 under our Conservative government. That is why we helped create over 430,000 new jobs since last July.

While Liberals talk about massive new spending and higher taxes, we are looking out for Canadian families by getting back to balance and lowering taxes.

[Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would first like to thank the Liberal opposition members for leaving the new Conservative government a 750,000-file backlog because of their ineptitude in running the immigration system.

I have to make this comment. The member for Don Valley West is trying to draw a comparison between this latest ship that came over, run by human smugglers, and the 1939 St. Louis and the Komagata Maru. For him to do that is very deceiving. It is misrepresenting the facts between the ships we are talking about now and the two incidents, one in 1939 and one in 1914. He should be ashamed of himself for trying to draw that conclusion.

[Taxation, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, our Conservative government delivers over and over again for Canadians. Whether it is providing solid economic leadership through Canada's economic action plan or our principled foreign policy positions, this government does what is needed and it does it right.

Further evidence of our getting things done for Canadians is today's announcement of two new bilateral agreements with Switzerland.

Can the parliamentary secretary inform the House about the two special and very important agreements that we signed with Switzerland today?

[Israel, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberal leader accused Israel of war crimes, Canada's Jewish community knew it had no friend in the Liberal Party.

Yesterday Liberal Party candidate Andrew Lang said Canada needs to stop placating Israel. He said Canada should instead criticize Israel for being insufficiently non-violent.

Israel faces relentless attacks by terrorists who want to drive the Jewish people into the sea. If it were any other country facing that kind of threat, the Liberals would support its right of self-defence. But not Israel. The Liberals want to judge Israel by a different standard, by a harsher standard.

Our government will always defend Israel's right to exist. We will not take a neutral position between democracy and terrorism. We will support our friends and allies. What we will never do, unlike the Liberals, is try to score political points by hectoring it from the sidelines.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure anybody watching these deliberations this morning is, at best, getting some humour out of the rhetorical rantings of the member for Timmins—James Bay as he paints his storybook pictures for Parliament today.

I want to make two points. These are actual facts. I say this to the House and to all the people who are watching, particularly those in his riding of Timmins—James Bay and the other NDP ridings.

Fact number one is that when this government presented its economic action plan, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs all across this country, including hundreds of jobs in the ridings of these NDP colleagues across the way, when we presented that action plan to put workers back to work and to keep families together and able to make their payments, that party, that member, those NDP MPs voted against that plan. They voted against putting laid-off workers back to work. They voted against projects in their communities that would help the social and economic structure of their communities.

Fact number two is that the member for Timmins—James Bay talks about brazen acts. Here is a brazen act: a member who goes to his constituents over the years at every election and tells them, “When that long gun registry comes up for a vote, I am going to vote against it because it is useless and ineffective”, a member who says, “Folks, you vote for me and I am going to vote against that registry as soon as I can. I promise you”, and then he stands and brazenly votes to keep the long gun registry that has cost us billions of dollars and is costing us tens of millions of dollars every year and does exactly nothing to fight crime in this country and put the bad guys away.

These are two facts. The NDP voted against the economic action plan, jobs for laid-off workers and families; and the member for Timmins—James Bay promised his constituents during the elections that he would vote against that stupid, ineffective, costly gun registry the first chance he got. What does he do? He stands and votes to keep it.

That is all I want to say.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

That would be the oil sands.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. While all of us are enthralled by the fact that the member stayed up all night writing this novel, it has little relevance to the issue that is being discussed today. Perhaps he could force himself to get away from his fairy tale and get back on the subject.

[Leader of the Liberal Party, October 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, while Canadians are concerned about the economy and jobs, the Liberal leader clearly has other priorities.

On Wednesday when Parliament was debating employment insurance, an important issue to Canadian workers and business, the Liberal leader bizarrely announced that the issue was the census, not EI. In the same week that Statistics Canada reported on the country's economic growth, the Liberal leader said that his priority was to make it easier to possess and use marijuana. The census, marijuana, it seems like everything is a priority for the Liberal leader, except the economy.

There is little wonder that the Liberal leader does not want to talk about the economy. His economic agenda includes increasing taxes on Canadian business, lowering the EI qualifying period to 45 days, increasing the GST back to 7%, and throwing in the Liberal leader's iPod tax.

There is quite a brain trust going on over there.

[Firearms Registry, September 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, when the public safety committee considered the long gun registry, it heard from real front-line police officers who told them that the registry was wasteful, ineffective, and potentially dangerous to officers. Front-line officers at committee said the registry targets millions of law-abiding gun owners and can do nothing to prevent criminals from getting their hands on illegal firearms.

Would the Minister of Public Safety tell the House why the NDP and the Liberals should have listened to their constituents instead of flip-flopping on this issue?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

And a lot of dreaming in Technicolor.