Kevin Sorenson

[Norad, May 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the government for the steps that it has taken to give Canadians the security and stability that they look for.

Would the minister enlighten us a little more with regard to how the review will work? There is the fact that we are now tied to Norad on a permanent basis, which I think most people understand the importance of, but how will the review work? Is this a review that will come before Parliament every four years? Is this a review that is just an automatic grandfathering? What type of mechanism is there to review in four years?

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I just want to acknowledge the work done by my colleague across the way. This has been an issue he has brought to the House many times.

First, we recognize that there is a mechanism in chapter 7 that says that if a country is unwilling or unable to protect its people, it then becomes the responsibility of the United Nations and other countries internationally to go in and ensure those things happen.

However, when do we move in? I know that Canada in the past has talked about providing troops, police, people and resources. In some cases Africa itself has said that it wants to ensure it does it in the most effective way but that sending white soldiers into Sudan may not be the most effective way.

Speaking for myself, I believe the first thing we should do is put pressure on every country we can to make things happen in that part of the world. If the United Nations believes that chapter 7 is the way to go, then Canada will stand there. However, until then, Canada needs to step up and, as the minister said this evening, it needs to pressure other countries as well, countries that might be able to have more of an impact than we do at the present stage with our two Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the other limited resources we have.

The second question was with regard to the extra dollars. Tomorrow is budget day and we will wait and see. From what I understood, the minister came forward tonight with $10 million specifically for that. In speaking with the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers on this side of the House, we are very much aware that Canada can do more, that Canada can have a greater impact and that Canada can respond in ways like providing dollars.

We have talked about the 0.7% in the past. All parties have talked about moving those dollars up, ensuring more is available and ensuring they are targeted to countries like Sudan and Darfur. I certainly would be supportive of moving in that direction.

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time tonight with the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

Tonight, across the country, most Canadians are sitting in their living rooms, enjoying National Hockey League playoffs. They are cheering on their favourite team. In my province they are hoping to see a battle of Alberta. They are quite taken up with what is happening in the NHL.

Tonight, in the House of Commons, a number of people from all parties have gathered, and I am pleased to see that the majority of the ones here tonight are on the same page. We are debating perhaps one of the greatest disasters this planet has at this point in time.

In 1995 we watched as an atrocity took place in a country that perhaps in some ways was not a lot different than Sudan. Most of the world stood by and watched as 800,000 Tutsis were massacred in Rwanda. We talked about the atrocity. We talked about how horrific it was. We saw the pictures and we heard the stories of murder and ethnic cleansing. We said that somebody ought to do something about this. We felt agencies, such as the United Nations, should step forward, buy nobody did anything. We all recognized that someone should do something.

Tonight, we debate another slaughter, a slaughter of innocent people, again occurring in Africa. This time it is in the Darfur region of Sudan. Again we hear Canadians and members in the House of Commons say that we should do something, that we have agencies in place to make a difference and to respond in times such as this.

Before the carnage really began in the area of Darfur, prior to 2002 or 2003, some reported that close to 200 million people were murdered in that region and upwards of three million or four million people were displaced. They have been driven from their homes in a country that, for all intents and purposes, is oil rich and should have all the resources to help its people. Yet we say that someone should really do something.

In the past three years the death toll in Darfur has reached between 300,000 and 400,000 people, depending on which statistics we look at. Men, children and women are being killed, and many other atrocities are taking place. We are watching people being moved, not just around the country, not just from one region to another, but into countries. They are migrating to Chad and other areas, looking for help.

We have put a great deal of hope in the people of Africa, that they would be able to respond to the disaster in their own continent. Perhaps too much has been put on the African Union troops. We see that effective answers to the crisis has not been forthcoming. Violations of international law and humanity are everywhere.

What needs to be done? Canada has played an integral role. We have brought dollars forward. We have made offers to that continent. However, the issue is still there.

It has been said that the world needs more Canada. Canada must step forward now.

I welcome and applaud the minister for appearing tonight and offering another $10 million immediately to help offset the starvation that is going on right now. I know that the former foreign affairs critics brought this to our committee time after time. Our foreign affairs minister spoke tonight about this being one of the priorities, not only for the government but for other governments around the world.

I just want to say that we are prepared to step forward. We want to ensure that Canadians understand exactly how dire this is and put forward every resource we have.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member has asked that question a number of times today.

I am one who has brought forward requests for access to information. I have been very dismayed when after years have gone by the documents come forward with white-out over the whole page, with maybe a little paragraph at the bottom of one page and another paragraph somewhere else.

That is one of the reasons I am very pleased with the accountability act, that there will be changes to the Access to Information Act and to a number of other acts as well.

We want to be able to hold governments to account. Canadians want to be able to hold governments to account. They expect openness and transparency in their government.

Legitimate concerns are still there with access to information. We also have privacy laws. Some things perhaps may have to be kept secret for legal reasons. There are other commercial confidentialities. There is the protection of intergovernmental affairs which is very legitimate.

However, pages 24 and 25 of the accountability bill lay out a very comprehensive strategy for making government more transparent.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I remember when I was growing up that the punishment always came after I got caught. When I did something wrong as a young child there would be a very quick and just punishment, but there was also something else. There were the laws and the rules of my little home that were put in place and I knew what was right and what was wrong.

I watched the previous government carry on for 13 years. I wonder if it even had any idea of the difference between right and wrong.

When we watched during the last number of elections that took place the things that were happening, the political donations, the brown envelopes, the sponsorship scandal and others, it was modus operandi of that party. After the Liberals got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, they came forward with a judicial inquiry, the Gomery commission, and he said, “Shame on you”.

The Conservative government said that we will clean up the mess. This bill brings forward changes that will clean up the system.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House to speak to Bill C-2, an act providing for conflict of interest rules, restrictions on election financing and measures respecting administrative transparency, oversight and accountability, otherwise known as the federal accountability act.

Before I begin my remarks, I want to thank the citizens of the federal riding of Crowfoot, Alberta for their confidence shown in me on January 23 when they re-elected me for the third time. I appreciate very much their continued support for the work that I am doing in Ottawa and at home on their behalf.

I am in support of the federal accountability act, Bill C-2. This is the first bill introduced by the new government. It will make profound changes in the way the federal government does business. Bill C-2 would move the federal government toward an open and accountable government and address the government corruption, mismanagement and waste that had been allowed to take root over the past 13 years of Liberal rule.

From the campaign trail to the Speech from the Throne, my colleagues and I in the Conservative Party have pledged to clean up government. The federal accountability act, Bill C-2, marks the beginning of change for which Canadians voted.

As a government, we are committed to doing a number of things, but predominantly we are committed to respecting taxpayer dollars. We are committed to respecting the independent offices of Parliament, like the Auditor General and others, as well as the institutions of Parliament.

The bill contains at least 13 major reforms, major ways that we are going to change the system, and 60 distinct initiatives. It is about 270 pages long. This is a very large piece of legislation that will affect many offices in the Government of Canada. Great attention has been paid to try to ensure that it does not duplicate, overlap or conflict with existing accountability measures.

Canadians are asking, why now? Bill C-2 represents a big change in the way we govern ourselves. Canadians have asked, in the wake of the previous government's difficulties, that the system be changed. The Auditor General reported in 2004 that there was large scale corruption, the loss of $100 million, and that “every rule in the book” had been broken.

Further investigations uncovered the fact that the unethical behaviour had been going on for years in the country's political leadership. The former Liberal government did not stop it. That is why Bill C-2 is here. We are saying that the buck stops here. We asked Canadians to allow us the power to do something about corruption and they gave us the opportunity.

Our first piece of legislation is to lead the way in trying to prevent in the future anyone, any party, any government from engaging in the kind of corruption and scandal that occurred in recent Liberal governments. Canadian taxpayers have simply had enough.

In the hours of debate on the bill so far, I am pleased to see that there appears to be support for Bill C-2. I think the Bloc has shown that it supports it in principle. The NDP member for Winnipeg Centre, a long time member of the public accounts committee, spoke eloquently about the changes proposed in the bill. The Liberals have said that they will support the bill, while they are busy trying to mend their own ways on the other side of the House, and those ways should be amended, we all know. We are here to fix the system, to create systemic change.

Let us look at what Bill C-2 does. Let us look at what we have to do to prevent future corrupt behaviour with taxpayer dollars. Listen to this.

Bill C-2, if passed, will reform financing of political parties. It will ban secret donations. It will strengthen the role of the Ethics Commissioner. It will toughen the lobbyist laws. It will ensure truth in budgeting; $1.9 billion is not the same as $9.1 billion. The list is not finished yet. It will ensure that government appointments are based on merit. It will clean up government contracting, polling and advertising by preventing the government in power from abusing this information for its own political purposes. It will protect whistleblowers. It will strengthen the power of the Auditor General, auditing and accountability systems in departments. It will create a director for public prosecutions. That is quite a long list.

The government is not holding back. The government will deliver what Canadians have asked for and what was committed in the last election.

We need to get the bill to committee. Together we can work on it in detail and ensure it gets the job done once it is passed into law. That is not beyond us. I know there were some recommendations that may be amendments coming from colleagues from the NDP, the Bloc and the Liberals. Let us get it to committee and let us take a look at those amendments. With political will, we can try to have Bill C-2 protect taxpayer dollars from being abused, misused, even lost or stolen.

The bill gives life to countless recommendations made by the Auditor General over the years. This follows her requests. The bill includes what Justice Gomery recommended in his reports, after months of testimony and tens of thousands of pages of evidence.

I want to refer to the remarks made a couple of days ago by the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert. He has for many years served the House extremely well as the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. His committee heard testimony on many chapters from auditor general reports down through the years. He is also the chair of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. He stated in his speech that he had a real concern for the intergovernmental community and the governmental corruption in many other parts of the world, which thwarts development assistance and causes suffering and hardship for millions of people. In other words, he was very concerned about governance in other countries.

As a result of my service as vice-chair on the foreign affairs and international trade committee, that was a major concern which was brought forward in our committee as well. The feeling of the member for Edmonton—St. Albert was that this was a comprehensive enough bill that he believed many nations would look to the bill as a grid, as a guideline, as a standard, that could help in their countries for their own purposes.

When we talk about building democracies around the world, we do not simply talk about having a free election. We talk about ensuring that a strong government is in place, a government of integrity, a government that is not going to misuse or misappropriate public funds for its own political purposes. I appreciated his comments.

I truly hope this document does not only change the system, a systemic change that Canada so desperately needs, I hope it helps other countries as they look to making their democracies stronger. I hope we can all benefit and bolster the efforts to combat corruption.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 26th, 2006]

You guys are all crooked. That is why you are over there.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague across the way touched on a number of points within his speech and I have a couple of questions for him.

Before I ask the questions, I would like to say that when the government came forward with the federal accountability action plan, the whole purpose of the government's ideas were to bring forward accountability to government, not because of the former government, not just to the present government but to government, period, the government as a whole.

I know the government and the Conservative Party certainly have wanted to promote a whole culture of accountability. They wanted to ensure that Canadians across this country would be able to gain again confidence in government, not confidence in the Conservative Party or in any other party but confidence in government because across this land we are seeing more and more people lose confidence in politicians, politics and government.

I will now go to the question that the member caused me to bring forward. I had not thought of it, but he talked about the tenure of deputy ministers. He mentioned in his speech that the average deputy minister would spend approximately a year and a half in that position. I want to tell a quick story.

I jumped aboard one of the green buses on Parliament Hill once. There was a new minister who had been appointed after one of the famous four from the past government was asked to leave office by the then Prime Minister. As I talked to this new minister, I asked him if he would consider one or two things in the ministry that he might achieve while he was there. He had great plans. He had great ideas of what he could do. About two weeks later, I spoke to the same minister and he said that the bureaucracy basically was running his department.

My question is in regard to the year and a half. If ministers were to have the ability to request the Prime Minister to remove a deputy and to have someone in the position that they can work closely with, why then would they not be in favour of ministerial accountability and ensure that their ministry is set up the way they would like to see it set up? Why would ministers not do that?

[Goods and Services Tax, April 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party of Canada stands up for Canadians paying high prices at the gas pumps. Unlike the Liberals who did nothing to address high gas prices, we will cut the GST.

Last year the former Liberal transport minister told the Montreal Gazette that the government cannot give rebates to Canadian drivers. The Conservative government is reducing the GST for Canadian drivers.

The former finance minister told the Toronto Star that he does not see any way for Ottawa to ease gasoline prices for consumers. The Conservatives are reducing the GST for consumers.

The former environment minister told the Calgary Herald that high gas prices are actually good for Canada in the medium and long term. They are not good for Canadian farmers with the highest input costs ever. They are not good for Canadian drivers. They are not good for Canadian families.

This Conservative government will reduce the GST to 6% immediately and to 5% in the long term for all Canadians.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I congratulate you on your position.

This year my family will celebrate its 100th year on the family farm. In 1906 my grandfather moved here and cleared a lot of the land. He cleared the brush, the trees and everything else. He worked extremely hard. We are celebrating our 100th anniversary. As hard as he worked to make a go of it, I just do not know whether anyone else in the same position that we are right now would be able to make it after 100 years. One would think that by the fourth or fifth generation the family farm should be able to make it. It is very difficult.

I sold 3,000 bushels of wheat when I was home just before Parliament opened at around $2 a bushel. Last fall was a very wet year and the elevator ended up having to dry some. It was tough. I sold it for around $1.70 or $1.80 a bushel. I am receiving all kinds of calls from farmers who are very frustrated with this and see no light at the end of the tunnel.

The calls that I get are in respect of a CAIS program that is not working. The calls that I get are in respect of a transportation system that is not working. We have bins full of grain and railways that seem very slow in moving the grain.

We had a previous government that built a program that we had high hopes for. I remember standing in the House together with other members and the parliamentary secretary saying that this program would not work. Even some of the people here tonight were defending it as being the answer to the crisis.

I would ask the new member of the Liberal Party across the way, luckily not the government any more, who just spoke and who is from a rural riding in Saskatchewan if he would stand with the Conservative government in a non-partisan way and agree that the CAIS program is not working, we need to split it, we need to have the income stabilization plan, and that he recognizes what was said in the past is correct and that we also need a disaster component? Would he stand with us and support us when it comes before the House?