House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 61% of the vote.
Government Expenditures October 2nd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, to the minister it is a numbers game but to taxpayers it is about priorities; which one do we actually need? Let me quote from Deputy Minister Cochrane's memo:
If the federal government cannot afford more for funding health care, how can it afford new planes while the old ones are still operational?
How could the minister possibly justify the extravagant purchase of new jets to the growing number of Canadians on waiting lists for health care?
Government Expenditures October 2nd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Public Works said that the purchases of Challenger jets and maritime helicopters are “quite different transactions”. I guess they are, because one is done and the other one is not.
However today we have learned his officials briefed the minister weeks in advance of the Challengers being ordered, that in fact the two purchases were definitely linked; linked in such a way that could result in more legal action against the questionable purchasing methods of his government.
Will the minister now admit that he has no idea about proper procurement practices or was he simply misleading the House yesterday?
Government Contracts June 19th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, that sounds just great but he must have sent them through Groupaction because I have not seen the reports yet. They got stalled in the photocopier, I guess.
If the minister is now in this new era of joining with us to get to the bottom of this, will he also announce today a public independent inquiry to really dig to the bottom of this fiasco?
Government Contracts June 19th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, we are still waiting patiently for the minister of public works to provide us with some specific information. He promised to provide that same information during committee of the whole two weeks ago and again a week ago after a question of privilege. Nothing has come forward yet and we are wondering how long we have to wait. His claims of being transparent and accountable really ring hollow.
I would like to ask the minister at this time, who sat on the cabinet communications committee that made these self-serving decisions that cost taxpayers millions of dollars?
Government Contracts June 18th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, that is all wonderful but a lot of this goes back long before the 2000 audit brought some of it forward. It goes back before the Prime Minister's silly scheme to buy Quebec loyalty.
Cabinet documents from 30 years ago show this system of filling Liberal coffers through Quebec firms was implemented under Prime Minister Trudeau at that time. The present Prime Minister sat at that same cabinet table. I want to know from the Prime Minister, was he simply complacent about this abuse of taxpayers' money for 30 years or was he complicit?
Government Contracts June 18th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has spent its past three terms fine tuning the questionable system of handouts and kickbacks. It is obvious that the Liberals could never truly be trusted or interested in cleaning up a system that has served them so well.
Canadians can have no confidence at all in getting to the bottom of the latest ad scandals unless there is an open public judicial inquiry. When will the minister do the right thing and implement one?
Government Contracts June 12th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the minister calls these audits courageous and says what a great job these folks did. We do not argue with that.
Regardless of what the minister says, these audits are really standard procedure. They are done all the time. The public works department maintains a complete audit branch that also does work for other government departments, so they know what they are doing.
Our concern is not with the audits. Our concern is what the government does with the results of these audits. It brings out more rules but more rules do not help when everyone breaks them anyway and no one is forced to adhere to them.
Why will the minister not be truly accountable and table the complete audit with the names attached? Who is he still hiding?
Government Contracts June 12th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the government has done its best to cover up the sponsorship program scandal by trying to hide it in plain sight. The minister claims everything was transparent because an audit was posted on the website, a full two months after it was delivered to the department. They were a pretty hectic two months spent planning the damage control with the full participation of the top five ad companies.
Why is the Minister of Public Works and Government Services waving around a copy of a sanitized audit that does not name names? Who is he really hiding?
Privilege June 11th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I rise under Standing Order 48 to bring to the attention of the House a situation that is impeding my work as a member of parliament and the work of other members of parliament as well.
On the evening of June 4, as you will recall, Mr. Speaker, we were convened as a committee of the whole to examine the estimates and priorities and planning for the Department of Public Works and Government Services.
With all due respect to the minister who never hesitated that evening to remind us that he was only nine days into his new portfolio, he nevertheless made a number of promises to provide members with information relating to questions on the estimates that had been raised that evening and that have been raised in question period since. I would like to reiterate the questions which have gone unanswered over the past week.
The Communications Canada organization states that it is headed by an executive director reporting to a cabinet committee. On June 4 I asked who chairs the committee, is the minister on the committee and who else in cabinet sits on that particular committee. In response the minister admitted that he chaired the cabinet communications committee but he also said he could provide to the committee of the whole later on that same evening the membership of the committee.
After a week we have received nothing. I do not think the minister made those promises lightly. After all, he is open and accountable.
In order for us to understand the process that was involved in signing and tendering contracts, we have to know all the players who oversaw the process. Therefore we need to know who are the members of that committee.
We assume that Mr. Gagliano chaired the cabinet committee in 2002 and prior when many suspect contracts were approved, but is he exclusively to blame or were there other cabinet ministers on that committee as well and who are they?
Again on the evening of June 4 I asked the minister to break down the dollar value of contracts that had passed through the process before he arrived to conduct the review. Two hundred of them had snuck through. They are in the pipeline and are supposedly beyond the reach of further scrutiny.
I asked him of the $18 million value he said those 200 contracts were worth that had gone through, how much had gone to Groupaction, Groupe Everest, Lafleur and other companies that were on their preferential list. The minister said:
Perhaps it would be acceptable to the hon. member if I filed it with the committee in writing rather than taking the time to read through all the statistics.
He later added:
Later on this evening, I will advise exactly when, Mr. Chairman, in just a few moments.
Those are his words. We have not seen this to this day. We have yet to receive that information.
The member for St. Albert asked if we could get a regional breakdown on a province by province basis of the $200 million spent on government advertising on those contracts. The minister told us that he would “provide the best breakdown I can as soon as possible”.
That evening the minister said he was interested in creating a more equitable distribution of this questionable program across the country but apparently he does not know what the distribution is now. He has had a week to look into it. He knows these questions were on the list that night.
The member for Edmonton Centre-East asked for details concerning the acquisition of Challenger aircraft. He asked when did the preliminary project review go to cabinet to be reviewed before it was taken out to industry for quotations let alone before it was being ordered. The minister said “I will see if I can find him further information”. Another week has gone by, the order is in process, but we have heard nothing.
Many other questions remain from all opposition parties. I would be glad to provide the minister with a list but I am sure his own minions are capable of going through the manuscript.
In Erskine May, 22nd edition, at page 63, under “Ministerial Accountability to Parliament”, the reference includes the following:
--ministers have a duty to Parliament to account, and be held to account, for the policies, decisions and actions of their departments...; ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament--
Under committee of the whole, Mr. Speaker, that is parliament:
--refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest,--
None of those issues would be outside of that public interest.
Accounting for the expenditure of taxpayers' money is of course the public interest. That is what we are trying to do here and what we were trying to do in committee of the whole for five hours.
Preventing embarrassment to the governing party as many recent disclosures are doing by withholding information--that is not being transparent-- or delaying disclosure--that is not being accountable--or hoping the opposition will go away does not serve the public interest.
Mr. Speaker, if you find this to be a prima facie question of privilege, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.
Government Contracts June 11th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, those companies handle a lot more than sponsorship money. We see $250,000 more going to a company that photocopies improperly. What the minister is trying to sell here just does not hold up.
We know that even the auditor general raised serious concerns about one firm's work and referred it to the RCMP herself, saying she had to go there. The minister continued that $250,000 shovelled into that company.
Until the minister comes clean and tells Canadians how many files he has referred to the RCMP, how can we be sure that tax dollars are not still flowing to those disgraced firms?