Jean Chrétien

[Somalia Inquiry, September 25th, 1996]

Let me finish. I do not abuse the time of the House.

All who are inside are doing their best to keep the armed forces in good shape and everybody hopes that the inquiry will be completed as soon as possible.

[Somalia Inquiry, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the inquiry has a mandate to look into what happened in Somalia when the Progressive Conservative Party was in government and it has to finish its job.

The question of an interim report or no interim report is not for me to ask. It is for the commission to decide. I hope that it will complete the work as quickly as possible. It will be in the interests of the armed forces and everybody that the file be completed, the report be handed in and the government act on the recommendations, if need be.

An interim report will not deviate from the reality that when the inquiry goes into the second phase there will be discomfort for some people because nobody likes to have an inquiry. It is the first time in the history of the armed forces that there has been a public inquiry. I understand that it is difficult. In the meantime the soldiers are doing their job very well, in Haiti and elsewhere. From inside it seems that those who are in-

[Government Contracts, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, all that is within the budget of the Minister of National Defence and within the guidelines of Treasury Board.

Every department uses people from outside to help sometimes. Members of Parliament have a budget to use people from outside and it is within the guidelines of the House of Commons and Treasury Board.

This hiring is exactly in that category, the right to hire people within the budget of the minister and the budget as a member of Parliament.

[Canadian Armed Forces, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have replied to all these questions. I urge the leader of the third party, if he has any respect and he wants the army to have good morale, to try to find something else to talk about.

It is very easy for me to answer. I said that I have full confidence in the Minister of National Defence. Why? Because the previous administration had seven ministers in nine years. That was the cause of the drop in the morale of the armed forces.

I am committed to giving them stable leadership. That is why the Minister of National Defence will remain the Minister of National Defence.

[Canadian Armed Forces, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my answer is no. I am not about to cancel the inquiry either.

[Canadian Armed Forces, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I stated yesterday that we have confidence in the leadership of the armed forces at this time. This period of reductions is a difficult time for the armed forces. The fact that there is a public inquiry which will analyse all the operations of national defence, something which has never happened before, is delicate and complicated for everybody.

I urge members of Parliament to let the commission look into all matters and report to the people of Canada. After that we will make the proper decisions. At this time General Boyle, the minister of defence, General Baril and all the others are working to make sure that the armed forces are ready for the tasks they have to do today, tomorrow, next week and next year.

[The Constitution, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, at the time, the minister said that, if the government of Quebec did not intervene, we would perhaps not have to intervene. But the provincial government did intervene and the ruling was not favourable to the provincial government.

I imagine that if the ruling had been favourable to the government of Quebec, it would not have withdrawn from the case.

[The Constitution, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should know that the Canadian Constitution dates from 1867 and that it was a law of the British Parliament. So, even back then, parliamentarians were unable to vote.

It has only been since 1982 when we patriated the Constitution, so that Canadians would finally have a Canadian Constitution, that we could change Canada's Constitution to reflect the wishes of the people of Canada. I know that the members of the Bloc Quebecois would have preferred to see us remain a colony of Great Britain, legally speaking.

[The Constitution, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the government has not officially taken any such decision. When we are ready, we will so inform the House.

A ruling by the Quebec Superior Court raised some very important questions to do with Canadian constitutional law as well as with international law.

Even the Leader of the Opposition said in an interview that the international law aspect should one day be clarified, and obviously one day it will be.

[The Deficit, September 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should know that we have a deficit reduction plan and we are ahead of the plan. In the last three years in every budget we had a figure of what would be the deficit and we have managed to operate the government in such a way that the deficit was always lower than predicted. This year we have predicted that it will be 3 per cent of GDP. We said at the beginning of our administration that it would go from 6 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent in three years. Not only will we achieve that, we will do better than that.

I thought the hon. member was going to get up to applaud us. I think that now he will.