Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to thank the member for Toronto Centre for raising the point of order, and thank the minister for withdrawing the comment. At least he was far more sincere than his withdrawal yesterday.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2019, with 47% of the vote.
Points of Order June 13th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to thank the member for Toronto Centre for raising the point of order, and thank the minister for withdrawing the comment. At least he was far more sincere than his withdrawal yesterday.
National Defence June 13th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, I am not sure why the minister would avoid acknowledging he is stopping documents from going to the commission and other documents are heavily censored. The commission counsel knows it. The Fynes family knows it. The minister's own lawyers know it. Has the Fynes family not suffered enough?
A board of inquiry done by DND and presented to the family blamed the death of Corporal Langridge on his own mother. Why is the minister holding documents back from the commission? Is he afraid of more facts coming to light?
National Defence June 13th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, the case of Corporal Stuart Langridge at the Military Police Complaints Commission is a litany of failure by the Department of National Defence.
The family was not told about the existence of his suicide note for 14 months. Corporal Langridge put himself in to psychiatric care, but was not allowed to remain there even when he said he was considering suicide. He was put onto menial cleanup duty when he should have been on suicide watch.
Why has the minister chosen to intervene to stop documents from going to the commission?
Search and Rescue June 13th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the government has cut in half the number of rescue coordinators available in the area of responsibility for the joint rescue coordinating centre in Halifax from six to three, plus it has eliminated the three person on duty search and rescue crew in Kitsilano Beach. In fact, the department's policy has been criticized for a lack of policy, being no standard of service by which performance is getting measured. As quickly as possible is not a standard of service.
The problem is that the actual performance is based on the availability of assets, not on a standard that is determined to be met. To say blandly that we have a most effective service is to ignore the fact that we lag far behind international standards and we have not given it the priority that it requires.
Search and Rescue June 13th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, it being 12 o'clock at night, this is the very late show. This is a question I raised on March 12 this year regarding the adequacy of search and rescue services in Canada. The question at the end was this. When will the Conservatives finally make search and rescue a real priority in this country?
It is after 12 o'clock at night, but there are ships at sea on the west coast of Canada, on the Great Lakes, in the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There are ships at sea off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. There are fishermen fishing as we speak off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. There are approximately 600 workers working on oil platforms and drilling rigs off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador as we speak. Not only at this hour of the night but 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, there is a need for search and rescue services in Canada.
What we have seen from the government in recent times, including in this budget, are changes to Coast Guard search and rescue services, for example, in my home city of St. John's, Newfoundland, in Quebec City and in Vancouver harbour. We have seen the cancellation of a search and rescue coordinating centre in St. John's and one in Quebec City, and we have seen direct front-line search and rescue services in the port of Vancouver cancelled by the government. What kind of priority is search and rescue receiving?
We had a motion before the House. It has not been voted on yet, but the motion for the House to vote on tomorrow, at least in theory, is to bring Canada's search and rescue response time standard up to international standards. The method chosen was a 30-minute response standard from tasking to getting airborne. It is known as “wheels up”. Every indication is that the Conservatives will vote against that. In their speeches they said they would vote against it, but nowhere in their speeches was there any rationale as to why we could not have the same standard of 30 minutes wheels up for helicopters and fixed-wing search and rescue as the United States or Australia do, not even the 15-minute one that Norway, Ireland and England have for the majority of the day.
The only response we received from members opposite was that Canada is different, is unique, and we should have our own standard, our standard being 30 minutes from 8:00 to 4:00 on weekdays and two hours thereafter, and that is at the time when 83% of the taskings occur, outside this window of 30 minutes. However, there was no explanation given as to why they could not support that.
We have an inadequacy of helicopters for the Trenton area. They were supposedly temporarily put there in 2005. They are still there. We have an inability to work in the Arctic and gain access to the Arctic fast. We have a fixed-wing SAR program, which is based on developing airplanes to meet the status quo with no improvement in service expected, and that has been criticized by the government.
Therefore, we do have an inadequacy of priority. The question is this. When will that be changed? Is the government serious at all about search and rescue in Canada?
National Defence June 12th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, there is another troubling sign in the government's handling of the suicide of an Afghan war veteran. Canada's top soldier personally ordered seniors aides to search for errors in a newspaper article about the suicide of the soldier. This very unusual move was to find mistakes that could justify demanding a retraction from the newspaper, mistakes that were never found.
Why is the government so focused on minimizing embarrassment rather than trying to fix a broken system to help soldiers deal with mental injury?
Privilege June 11th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, that was probably the least apologetic apology I have ever heard in this Parliament.
Privilege June 11th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege arising from question period, the comments of the Minister of National Defence and his personal attack unleashed on me in response to a question.
On this side, we are used to the practice on the other side, which has become commonplace, of attacking the party by saying that we did not vote for a particular measure, even though we all know, as parliamentarians, that when an opposition party votes against the budget, it is a matter of confidence in the budget. We are used to that.
However, when the minister in this case launched a personal attack on me and went so far as to use unparliamentary language in his attack on me, that goes beyond even just the use of unparliamentary language, which I hope he will apologize for and withdraw, but it also goes beyond that into a personal attack on a member, suggesting, in frankly a deceitful way, that when we vote against the budget, we are voting against a particular measure, one or another.
We all know that there is $250 billion in the budget and there are many things in it that of course we support, but this practice and this personal attack is unparliamentary and is a matter of personal privilege.
National Defence June 11th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, we hear the minister's comments, but what we want and what Canadians expect is for the government to keep its promises.
Shipyards have been selected for the national shipbuilding strategy, but no contracts have been signed. Meanwhile, spending is out of control, and we still have returning soldiers struggling with mental health issues and lacking adequate support.
Can the minister gain control of his department to make sure priorities are met and our soldiers are looked after?
National Defence June 11th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, a whopping $3.8 billion was reportedly spent in one month alone. The minister's talking points do not explain the 55% hike in his department's March madness spending. At the same time, a majority of shipbuilding projects are being pushed back, with a three-year delay expected in the delivery of ships for the Arctic.
Managing things properly, on time and on budget is out the window with the Conservatives. What concrete measures will the minister be taking to reign in the out-of-control spending in his department?