Dick Harris

[Committees of the House, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With all due respect to the member for Oakville, her comment toward the member for Nepean—Carleton was in fact a personal comment when she said that when he walked into the House of Commons the behaviour deteriorated. He is an hon. member.

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc member said just a few moments ago that our goal should be to provide concrete assistance to reconstruction and humanitarian activity. I am a little confused by that statement.

I want to ask the member this. Does she not recognize that our soldiers are preventing the Taliban from killing the humanitarian aid workers, the people engaged in rebuilding the infrastructure, the people engaged in training the police forces, and the people engaged in training the new government in forms of democracy?

Does she not think in any way that this is some type of concrete assistance to the rebuilding of Afghanistan? Does she not understand that this is an integral part that must be accomplished, that must be carried out, in order to assist aid workers and the Afghan government? Otherwise, the Taliban insurgents would kill them.

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, would the Taliban not just love this Parliament voting in favour of this NDP motion? Would they not love the Canadian troops, who are making such significant gains in the rebuilding of Afghanistan after the murderous regime of the Taliban, to be pulled out? Would they not just love the other countries to take a similar path like the NDP are suggesting and pull their troops out?

Would the Taliban not love the ease with which they could return to their murderous regime, murdering anyone who was of any assistance trying to rebuild the country and the women and children indiscriminately returning to the gross and obscene oppression that they forced upon the people of Afghanistan?

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the member for Ottawa Centre and quite frankly, listening to his arguments, his naiveté on this issue is almost beyond belief.

First of all, the NDP members set themselves up somehow as experts in the military field giving us all a lesson on what our troops should be doing, where they should be, and just how much action they should be in. That is an embarrassment to listen to the member for Ottawa Centre trying to portray himself as some sort of military expert and then the band of Taliban cheerleaders who are encouraging him on, saying that he is doing good stuff.

Do they not understand that if Afghanistan is ever going to be rebuilt after the scourge of the Taliban, after they have destroyed that country during their term in power or dictatorship, that it has to be rebuilt and we cannot simply walk in there with the equipment and men and workers, and rebuild it while the Taliban are shooting at--

[Special Olympics, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, June 15 will mark the 14th year for the Dick Harris Special Olympics Charity Golf Classic. At the conclusion of this great event, we will have raised over $350,000 in support of Special Olympics programs in Prince George and the B.C. Central Interior.

These Special Olympics programs continue to be of huge benefit in helping our athletes improve their motor skills, their physical well-being and of course their self-esteem.

We truly have been blessed with an abundance of citizen and corporate support over the last 14 years.

I am totally shameless when it comes to raising money for Special Olympics, and yes, even to the point of asking politicians of all political stripes to support our tournament.

I want to invite all of my colleagues in the House to bring their money and their golf clubs and take part in this great Special Olympics fundraising event. They can see me for details.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the member for Vancouver Quadra speak, I understand why he will not be seeking re-election again. It must be very embarrassing and very difficult to stand in the House and defend the record of the previous Liberal government and compare it to the progressiveness and the moving ahead steps that this new Conservative government is taking.

I hearken back to 1993 when I came to this House and, unfortunately, had to sit through three successive majority Liberal governments that had all the opportunity in the world to make whatever changes they wanted as to how government was run and pass them through and yet we saw zero, nada.

We then had a period of a minority government under the member for LaSalle—Émard who basically dithered away his year and a half in office without even attempting to do anything. Now we have this government trying its best to make this place more democratic and those members have the audacity to stand and try to criticize it. My God, where does the embarrassment stop?

The member said that we had disregarded public consultations with respect to recommendations to the Senate. A province-wide vote was held twice in Alberta to identify who the people of Alberta wanted to represent them in the Senate. The first person was Stan Waters who was appointed, and rightly so, by the prime minister of the day. Now we have Mr. Bert Brown who is about to be appointed to the Senate after having gone through two votes by the people of Alberta. How much of a more purer public consultation is there than to have hundreds of thousands of people voting for that person?

The last thing I would like to mention is the access to information. One of the first steps we took was to include certain crown corporations under access to information. The former Liberal government could have done this so easily but it refused because it had a closed little cadre of puppets working in some of the crown corporations. The Liberals did not want to give any information out.

This government is getting things done. The Liberals had 13 years to do things and they did not get the job done. Now they think it is just not fair that we are getting things done.

[The Budget, March 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal leader was complaining again yesterday about our 2007 budget.

Let us look at just some of what he claims is unfair: $39 billion in new funding for health, education and infrastructure to restore the fiscal balance; $4.5 billion to clean up Canada's air and water, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change; cutting taxes for 3 million families with a new $2,000 tax credit for every child under 18; a working income tax benefit to help 1.2 million people over the welfare wall; a tax fairness plan that reduces taxes for seniors by more than $1 billion every year; and $1 billion for the Asia-Pacific gateway and corridor initiative.

Our budget cuts taxes for working families, pays down the nation's debt, and invests in the priorities of Canadians. That is much better than fair. That is simply awesome.

[The Budget, March 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am listening to the member and wondering where was his party when it was the government. For 13 years, the Liberals neglected to pass any type of legislation. They governed in such a way that was discriminatory to seniors.

Seniors were penalized for making sacrifices in their early working years and going into retirement with additional pensions other than CPP only to have this onerous tax burden of the Liberal government placed upon them. They found out that by making sacrifice to provide a little extra for themselves, they faced the wrath of the tax department. The Liberals did nothing to help seniors for 13 long years.

We acted to help seniors. We increased the age tax credit. We allowed for the splitting of incomes for seniors. We brought in a GST cut for seniors. We brought in a lower tax rate for seniors. This government is doing things that the Liberals never did when they were the government and when they had the chance. They are seeing all the great things that our Minister of Finance has done in the budget. The Liberals are displaying budget envy. That is why they are over there now. They never did anything in 13 long years when they had a chance to and this is just budget envy that is going on here.

[The Budget, March 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out an error made by the member for North Vancouver. In British Columbia we are very proud of the fact that the entire western side of the majestic Rocky Mountains lies firmly in the province of B.C. We are proud of that.

[The Budget, March 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party and the member are guilty of perpetuating the myth that the institutionalized child care scheme of theirs was somehow going to be free. The Liberals have never ever attached any type of individual family cost to their scheme. They have simply laid it out among the general public as though it were going to be some freebie for parents of young children. I would love to hear what their estimate of cost per family would be for this government-run child care system of theirs.

At the same time, I would like them to tell me exactly how they would get this government-run child care system into every little rural spot of the country so that Canadian families who do not live in the big cities where the Liberals' friends are would be able to take advantage of some child care benefit that would have been offered to them by the failed Liberal government.

The new Conservative government child care system, the universal one, on the other hand, reached out to families in every single part of the country. Whether they lived in the far Arctic or in the rural areas of British Columbia or Ontario, every single family would benefit, not like the mythical, government-run, badly explained, so-called freebie of the failed Liberal government.