Jack Harris

[Afghanistan, October 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I still have to come back to the disconnect between the Prime Minister and his own Minister of National Defence.

Particularly on Afghanistan, reacting to the Prime Minister's 2008 announcement that all troops would be out of Afghanistan by 2011, this minister said to a journalist, and I quote: “I don't know. I heard it the same time you heard it”.

How is it that our defence minister heard about a major change in military policy through the media? How are Canadians supposed to put their trust in him when even the Prime Minister does not?

[Afghanistan, October 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, while the Minister of National Defence was jetting around in the Challenger, the Prime Minister was keeping him out of the loop on Afghanistan.

When asked if he and the Prime Minister discussed the idea of a blue ribbon panel on the war, the minister said it was not put before cabinet and admitted, “I didn't know all of the specifics”. Canadians are being asked to swallow a lot from the minister, from his jet-setting lifestyle to his judgment on over-priced fighter jets.

How can Canadians trust the minister when the Prime Minister does not even trust him with important decisions?

[Minister of National Defence, September 29th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps some facts can help the Prime Minister answer the questions more accurately. Most of the flights were not for repatriation of fallen soldiers, only nine of the thirty-five. There was a flight from a fishing trip at camp Crosbie to a lobster festival in Halifax and Challenger trips to photo ops for government spending announcements. He even took a jet to Vancouver to the same event to which another minister flew commercial.

When will the Prime Minister tell members of his cabinet that ethics rules apply to them too? When will he crack down on this out of control, jet-setting Conservative lifestyle?

[Minister of National Defence, September 29th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, as Canadians brace for another recession, we learn that our defence minister continues his ethically challenged ways. He has racked up nearly $3 million jetting around the country.

The government will not invest in infrastructure, in health care or jobs, but it will invest millions in making that minister the frequent flyer champion of government jets.

When will the government ground that high flying minister?

[Search and rescue, September 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the minister had been warned there were barely enough helicopters to meet basic search and rescue requirements.

Our search and rescue response standard of two hours is the worst in the world. Replacing our 50-year-old fixed-wing SAR aircraft is stalled because of government mismanagement. The government is closing down rescue centres in Quebec and St. John's, and the closest SAR helicopter to the Arctic is in Ontario.

Why will the minister not fix search and rescue in Canada instead of using SAR assets as personal transportation?

[Search and rescue, September 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, we now know that the Minister of National Defence was visiting a fishing lodge so that he could meet with some of his well-connected friends. The chair of Marine Atlantic, Mr. Crosbie, obtained his job from his Conservative connections and now he is hosting the minister at his fishing lodge.

Does the minister really think it is appropriate for him to use valuable military search and rescue resources to visit Conservative appointees?

[Afghanistan, September 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, of course it is no secret. The Minister of National Defence acknowledged that combat in this House on Friday.

The idea that the government has been clear, which is what the member said just now, is exactly what the Prime Minister said in 2010. In January and June, he said that the government could not have been more clear that the military mission would end and all of our soldiers would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2011.

That is the kind of language that the Conservatives use when they try to assure Canadians that they are being perfectly clear. Every time the Prime Minister or the government says that they are being clear, we need to watch out, because sometime down the road we will find out that the exact opposite might happen.

That is the point of this question. We were given assurances as far back as 2003 that the primary objective of our mission in Afghanistan was to provide training and that it was expected that the Afghan national army would take over all operations in 2005. Here we are in 2011, and the government wants us there until 2014.

[Afghanistan, September 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on the adjournment proceedings to follow up on a question that I asked in the House on June 6 of this year, submitted in the usual way.

The notice stated that I was not satisfied with the answer received, in this case, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of National Defence, concerning my question about the government being forthcoming, first, on its plans to continue the mission in Afghanistan and the fact that throughout 2009 and most of 2010 up until November, the Prime Minister had repeatedly told Canadians that our forces would leave Afghanistan at the end of July 2011 in accordance with the motion of the House.

This was repeated again and again over the course of time. In fact, I remember one time the Prime Minister saying that maybe there would be a couple of soldiers guarding the embassy in Kabul, the embassy where the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence once resided.

This was the notion and the comfort Canadians had from the Prime Minister that this would happen.

We know what happened in the fall of 2010. Without even a vote in the House, there was a unilateral decision by the government to continue the mission in Afghanistan. It was stated that it was a non-combat mission that would all happen behind the wire. In fact, on November 16, the Prime Minister said in the House, in answer to questions, that the answer was yes to all those questions, as the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and others had said, that the government was looking at a non-combat mission. It would be a training mission that will occur in classrooms behind the wire on bases.

By suggesting this was a non-combat mission, the Prime Minister said that there did not have to be a vote in Parliament.

We had a vote just now about the continuation of a mission, and that was part of the promises that the government gave to Canadians when they ran for election and part of the commitments that were made that whenever a Canadian Forces mission was in operation there would be a vote in Parliament. For the most part, the government has respected that.

However, it is about whether Canadians are being given the whole truth. We have another example of it now. After hearing about this behind-the-wire story, which was told to the Canadian public by the Minister of National Defence and by the Prime Minister, we learned the other day in the defence committee that we had a dozen places in Kabul where training was going on, involving transportation all over the place. We are not behind the wire. In fact, Canadian Forces were engaged in combat when the attack took place on the U.S. embassy.

There are Canadian forces there. They are exposed to significant risks. We were told this was supposed to be behind the wire in classrooms. In fact, Canadian forces, up to a maximum of 950, for three years are going to be engaged in this combat training mission in Afghanistan, exposed to risks.

Canadians are not being told the whole truth. That is the point of my question. I was not satisfied with the answer I received because we were not given the full facts.

[Points of Order, September 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, if the member was misquoted by me, I certainly apologize and take it back.

[National Defence, September 26th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it has also been reported that the Department of National Defence is losing public affairs officers because Conservative political staff are berating those in uniform and pushing them to keep a lid on bad news stories.

Why is the minister and the Prime Minister's Office trying to make these officials tools of the Conservatives? What are they trying to hide?