Dick Harris

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I do not usually discriminate among youth or seniors or middle aged people. Every opinion is as important to me as any other. I will tell the member that of all the emails, letters, phone calls and visits to my office, the percentage of people in my riding that are opposed to this bill is in the high nineties. I feel very proud in representing that consensus of my riding. Of the number of written surveys I have done since 1999 that were returned to me, it was quite a substantial number every time, over 80%, opposed same sex marriage.

Whether it is youth or seniors or in between, I can tell the member that in my riding the opposition to this bill is overwhelmingly strong. I also suggest to him that across Canada opponents of the bill are in the majority compared to those who support it.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, marriage is of course understood as a heterosexual and procreative institution existing independently from the state. It always has been an indispensable bastion of freedom in our civil society, going back 140 years.

I believe, of course, that marriage is fundamental to our society. People of the opposite sex marry, bear children, and nurture those children in the best way they can. That is the way this world has been. It cannot continue to exist without that process taking place, that union of a man and a woman.

I believe that Bill C-38 really has nothing to do with the rights of minorities. At this point same sex couples are pretty much granted every legal right we can imagine. They are recognized for taxation purposes, for pensions and for everything else that heterosexual married couples are.

I believe that this is the beginning of a slippery slope. Notwithstanding what the supporters of the bill claim, which is that everything is going to be okay, I believe that if Bill C-38 passes it is going to have a direct impact on our society. It is in direct conflict with the traditional way civilization has grown. It is in direct conflict with the traditional foundation of society: man, woman, children, jobs, mortgage, bills, the way our society was built and built to a strength. It seems to me that Liberal prime ministers of the past and present have for some unknown reason done everything they could to break down the strong foundation that built our society.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, from all across my riding, and across Canada for that matter, I have been receiving letters, emails and phone calls that have been asking me these questions. With all the other problems, concerns and disparities that we have in Canada, what on earth possesses the Liberal government to be so obsessed in its drive to put through Bill C-38? Is this more important than our health care system which is practically in a critical condition itself? Is this more important than the poverty that we have in our country, and the families who are living on less than poverty levels of income trying to raise their families?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was just here and she spoke. I must ask her, is it more important to talk about Bill C-38 than the fact that despite the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been put into aboriginal programs over the last 30 years, the quality of life among aboriginals in our country, particularly on the reserves and in the cities, is at a worse level than it was 30 years ago? Is it more important than that?

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Palliser.

I think the people who have been sending me these questions have a right to ask them and the government has not answered. Why is this so important to the Liberals? What is their hidden agenda?

I want to talk about three issues. I want to talk about intolerance, religious freedom, and how the government has abrogated its responsibility to uphold decisions that are made by Parliament.

I watched the debate today and was appalled at the way that the word intolerance fell from the lips of government members who are supporting the bill. They were calling anyone in opposition to the bill intolerant because of us in the House, who dared, by reason of our own personal conviction, by reason of our own faith based belief, or by reason of the input we have had from our constituents, stand in the House and defend the traditional definition of marriage. Or, in the case of our citizens, who dared to send emails to the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP members who are supporting the bill, they too were branded as intolerant.

The hypocrisy of it is appalling after seeing the greatest display of intolerance, perhaps if I can use that word, by the Prime Minister himself when he showed that he was and is intolerant of any of his cabinet members who would want to have a free vote, threatening that they would be dismissed from cabinet if they dared to vote against the bill.

The proof came today. The intolerance of the Prime Minister was shown today when one of his cabinet ministers, because he was so convicted that he had to speak and vote against the bill, took the personal step to resign from cabinet in order to do so. Otherwise, he was not permitted. Those members over there who want to talk about intolerance just have to look around their own caucus and in particular at the Prime Minister's Office. There is the intolerance.

There is, being perpetuated by those who support this bill, what some have referred to as the big lie when it comes to religious freedom, the big lie that is being used to convince people that there is some protection for religious freedoms in this bill.

The government is using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to say that of course religious freedoms will be protected because they are protected in the charter. I would suggest that one has only to look at the case of Chris Kempling from Quesnel, who is a constituent of mine and who, because of his deeply held religious beliefs, decided that he wanted to speak out against the same sex marriage issue.

He dared, because of his personal beliefs, to write an article in the local paper saying that same sex marriage, in his opinion, was wrong and that this country should uphold the traditional definition of marriage. He was, for his efforts, given a three month suspension by the B.C. Teachers' Federation, which he appealed in a courtroom.

He said that he was protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it says in there that it guarantees him freedom of religion and freedom of speech. His appeal was lost because, the judge said, notwithstanding that the charter guarantees freedom of religion and freedom of speech, he felt that society was able to place--and by society he meant the court--a reasonable restriction on my constituent's fundamental rights of freedom of religion and speech.

The Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP are telling us not to worry about it, that we do not have to specifically put it into Bill C-38 because, after all, the charter is going to protect us. Let us ask Chris Kempling from Quesnel, B.C. whether the charter protected him. It did not, in the same way that the charter will not protect one's freedom of religion or, in this instance, freedom of speech, no matter how the big lie is perpetuated by the supporters of this bill. It will not.

Let us just ask Bishop Henry of Calgary about it. Because he dared to speak out against the same sex marriage bill, Bill C-38, because he dared, he got a visit, not from any of the Liberal members as they are too sly for that, but from the Revenue Canada people, saying in essence that he might want to calm down his talk about his opposition to same sex marriage because he represents a charitable tax organization, after all, and quite frankly there might be some members of the Liberal Party and some in government who might think that he is using his tax status in an inappropriate political way. Freedom of speech is not there in the charter.

I said that the government had abrogated its responsibility in defending parliamentary decisions. It did. The lawyers over there will know about the 1919 Nickle case, which was successfully used by the Chrétien lawyers to block Conrad Black's quest to become a knight. The Nickle resolution says that no Canadian citizen can be made a knight of the British Empire.

Lawyers argued that it was a duty to defend the decisions of the Parliament of Canada in any court where an issue conflicted with parliamentary decisions.

The decision stood, by a vote in 1999 and one in 2003, that this Parliament recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. When the lower provincial courts made their decisions, the government did not challenge them. It was the government's responsibility to challenge those lower court decisions at the Supreme Court. It did not. The Liberals walked away from it. They abrogated their responsibility to the people of this country and to this Parliament. Shame on them.

[Age of Consent, June 27th, 2005]

Did you share part of your speech with him, Paul?

[Extension of Sitting Period, June 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-43 has passed through this House and is in the Senate right now at the finance committee. The Conservative senators want to expedite the bill and get it through so the government can carry on with business. However, the Liberal senators have stalled the clause by clause on it. They are holding up the Bill C-43 royal assent passage, I suspect at the direction of the House leader or the Prime Minister.

I would ask the government House leader why he and his government are using Bill C-43 as a ransom to get Bill C-48 and Bill C-38 through. The Liberal senators have said that they will deal with Bill C-43 next week when Bills C-38 and C-48 have been passed. Why this sneaky, sleazy manoeuvring in the Senate, using their Liberal senators to hold up the 2005-06 Liberal budget just so they can get the others, and holding up the Atlantic accord as well? I would like the hon. government House leader to explain that.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I implore the Liberals to be transparent with Canadians, to be accountable to Canadians, to be honest with Canadians when they put spending amounts forward in the form of legislation. Bill C-48 contains nothing of that. The Conservative Party and I will not vote in support of it, ever.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the three or four areas of spending that appear in Bill C-48 as a result of the hotel room deal that was made with Buzz Hargrove and the NDP may have some merit in the essence of them, but there is no defined commitment or detail on where the money will go.

The government and the member for Yukon are basically asking us to accept that the ministers would be given a blank cheque of $4.5 billion to develop some programs on whatever the flavour of the day might be. Business is not done that way. If they thought those programs were so important, then they should have been included in the original budget. When the finance minister was creating the 2005-06 budget, which became Bill C-43, those items should have been included in it and defined in a way that would show how the money would be spent and what the results of that spending would be. Then it could have been sent to the finance committee for debate and amendments rather than trying to ram Bill C-48 through the House as a result of a deal made on the back of a napkin with people who are not even politicians. This deal was made with the NDP to help the Liberals keep their sinking government ship afloat.

There is a procedure to introduce spending in the House and it must be accompanied by a defined plan on how the money will be spent and how it will be accounted. That is not present in Bill C-48. We will never support a bill like that in the House. It is absolutely irresponsible. The Conservative Party is not an irresponsible party. We are responsible and we will show that when we form the government in the next election.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I know all Canadians who are watching the debate today are looking forward to the next five minutes.

About three years ago in a speech to the House I made the statement that the Liberal government would go down as the most corrupt government in the history of Canadian politics. Little did I know in saying that just how prophetic that statement would be.

We have seen corruption through the ad scam issue, payoffs to Liberal friends and payoffs into party coffers to run campaigns. We have seen deals made with the socialist NDP in the corner to allow the Liberals, despite their corruption record and despite their record of mismanagement and lack of priority spending, to keep their political Titanic afloat. I am just amazed how it goes on and on.

Today we heard from the member for Ahuntsic and our member for Calgary West. An accusation was made by one of the Bloc members that in the riding of Ahuntsic the Liberal government appointed a former Liberal president as the returning officer in the last election.

One wonders what can the Liberals do next to demonstrate to the Canadian people that they will go down in history as the most corrupt government we have ever known in Canadian politics.

Bill C-48, the deal with the NDP, brokered by Buzz Hargrove, promises to spend an additional $4.5 billion over and above the Bill C-43 budget, which we were willing to support it in about three or four different areas. However, like so many of the previous Liberal budgets, they outline vague spending plans without any real and solid facts about how they will spend that money.

I do not know how the NDP could accept such vague promises from the Liberal government given the fact that so many of their members have sat here for 12 years and have seen promise after promise broken by the Liberals, going back to 1993 to the famous red book and the promises broken then. The NDP itself continued to chastise the Liberal government about those broken promises. Now the Liberals say that if the NDP supports them and keeps them afloat, they will promise to spend another $4.5 billion dollars on things the NDP members want. I am sure they know it is not slated to kick in until some time next year.

I would have to be pretty darned hard up to accept a promise from the Liberal government about money that may be coming next year sometime, given the record of broken promises about which the NDP know. We have seen the record of broken promises.

I want to sum up with some promises that I think the Liberals have demonstrated they are capable of keeping. I have a list of 10. I call it the top 10 of probable promises that could be kept by the Liberals.

Promise one is they will continue corruption, graft, payoff to their friends and their party campaigns.

Promise two is they probably will keep continued high taxes and mismanagement.

Promise three is the reckless spending, with no plans.

Promise four is they will continue to support the same sex marriage in spite of the fact that a vast majority of Canadians do not want that type of legislation.

Promise five is likely they will keep continued loopholes in the child pornography laws that allow perverts and pedophiles to possess certain types of child pornography for, as the Liberals term it, artistic purposes.

Promise six is they will to continue their discrimination against single income families.

Promise seven is they will continue the slap on the wrist penalties for violent criminals in our society and they will continue to use conditional sentencing when dealing with convicted violent criminals in our society.

Promise eight is they will continue to oppose raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16. They have demonstrated that they are not going anywhere on that.

Promise nine is they will continue pouring millions of dollars into the useless gun registry program. They clearly have said they will do that.

Promise ten is the Prime Minister will keep his ship in the Barbados tax haven that he himself helped to create.

My Blackberry went off. I have it set on corruption alert. I think we had better have someone check the government out to see what is going on right now.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to review the events that led up to the introduction of Bill C-48 and how our socialist friends in the NDP down at that end have reacted with the corrupt Liberal government.

In weeks prior to the deal being made in some hotel room with respect to Bill C-48, the NDP stood up on a daily basis in the House reflecting and railing about the corruption that was being made public through the Gomery commission. This corruption was not being made known through arbitrary allegations, but through sworn testimony and sworn confessions by key Liberal Party members who had participated in the biggest corruption scandal that we have ever had in the last decade.

The NDP knew that. It acknowledged that on a daily basis. Those members criticized the government over and over again, every single day, for the corruption and the ripoff of taxpayers' money. Those NDP members cried about the Liberals scooping that money for their own campaign coffers when it could have been used on things such as affordable housing, the environment, and helping students with tuition fees. Those members talked on a daily basis about the nasty corrupt Liberals.

Then came the time when the corrupt Liberal minority government was possibly going to go down in political flames through a non-confidence vote. We have to perhaps forgive the leader of the NDP for being a little naive about the honesty of the Liberals, but then again maybe not because several people in his caucus have a lot of experience dealing with that crowd over there.

The NDP leader and some of his party members knew the Liberals were corrupt. They knew the Liberal Party stole tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers and had given it to their friends or used it on their campaign. However, the NDP members felt the Liberals were in a real tough spot and were going to go down in flames on a non-confidence vote, so they thought they would see what they could get out of it. The NDP members thought they could scoop some of the money for some of their projects.

In the blink of an eye NDP members went from calling the Liberal government corrupt, which it is, to being best friends via a deal made in some hotel backroom brokered by Buzz Hargrove, the new Liberal finance minister apparently. They came up with a deal. The NDP knew the Liberals were corrupt. That party knew the Liberals did politics in a very suspect way. The NDP members told the Liberals that if they received about $4.5 billion for some of their projects, they would forgive them, sleep with them, and everything would be fine. I did not say this, but that type of arrangement has been described by some as basic political prostitution. I did not say it, but I tend to agree with that statement.

Here is what happened. The Liberal finance minister presented a budget in February 2005, Bill C-43. The Conservative Party proposed some amendments to the legislation because we did not quite agree with it. The Conservative Party wanted to make this Parliament work. We were committed to making this Parliament work, so we decided to propose some amendments. We decided to support the legitimate budget, Bill C-43, for the 2005-06 parliamentary year.

Suddenly, because of the sinking ship fiasco, this new deal came along with $4.5 billion written on a napkin with Buzz Hargrove's signature on it. The NDP made a deal with the Liberals to provide them with support for the non-confidence vote.

This is $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money that came out of the sky, 23 floors up in a hotel, that the Liberals want us to accept when there is absolutely no plan for spending attached to it. There are some vague areas, but there is no plan. The areas that they describe are ones that have been criticized soundly by the Auditor General and we cannot support them.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, earlier, the member for Mississauga South told the House that the Liberal government had paid the debt down by $66 billion. While the debt may have been reduced by $66 billion, it has not been paid. In fact, it has been the result of the lowering of interest rates and the fact that we do not have as big an obligation of debt service that we had prior to the interest rate adjustment.

I would like the member for Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam to comment on the misrepresentation by the Liberals that they actually paid down the debt by $66 billion.