Malcolm Allen

[National Defence, April 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the government's handling of the F-35 file is a disgrace and no minister is willing to stand up and take responsibility. The Auditor General made it clear that for too long Conservative ministers have kept parliamentarians and, indeed, the public in the dark.

Getting to the bottom of this fiasco is in the best interest, not only of our armed forces but of all Canadians. Will the government agree to immediately hold open, full and public hearings on the F-35 fiasco at the public accounts committee, yes or no?

[National Defence, April 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, today the Auditor General once again showed how the Conservatives are mismanaging the public purse. They have misled Parliament on the F-35's costs, mishandled aviation safety, and failed to safely manage the border.

The Conservative government has simply not gotten the job done. Its solution is to gut public services further and to let us hope for the best.

Given this scathing report from the Auditor General, why will the Conservatives not acknowledge what they did wrong and tell Canadians the truth?

[Employment Insurance, March 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, not a day goes by that I do not hear from another frustrated constituent in my riding waiting, like so many across this country, for employment insurance benefits. Many let me know that they have waited up to four months to receive a single benefit payment, benefits they have paid for and have a right to receive. These are the same folks who have played by the rules and worked hard their whole lives to raise their families and put food on the table. Now they are being told by this government, “Sorry, you'll just have to wait”.

The Conservative government is so out of touch it cannot see that unemployed workers cannot afford to wait the two months to pay their bills. I have heard from members of my community who cannot pay for food and medications for their kids and cannot even pay the rent. Families in Niagara deserve better. Without a job creation plan, high unemployment rates in Niagara have left families feeling abandoned. Just when they need the government most to live up to its end of the bargain, they are once again let down by the Conservative government.

I strongly urge the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to take the necessary steps to restore service levels so that Canadians can get the benefits they have paid for and so rightly deserve.

[Committees of the House, March 28th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as the official opposition, it behooves me to speak to this particular report and point out a couple of things that the Auditor General said about the G8 legacy fund, the border infrastructure fund. One is that the Auditor General said, “rules were broken” during his investigation of the G8 legacy fund, which was money that was pushed into the border infrastructure fund.

What we heard was Parliament saying one thing about where the money was but the reality of what happened to the money was altogether something else.

Even when some money was moved later on into the estimates, the Auditor General said, “...this is still not clear because it suggests that these projects were somehow related to border infrastructure, which was not the case”. So, even after he had moved it once, he actually moved it again and still could not get it clarified.

More important, perhaps I should quote what the Auditor General said about documentation. One of the things we heard from the minister was that there was no documentation. We found out later on that there was a trail at the municipal level. The Auditor General said, “We did approach the minister's office to request any documentation that was available in the minister's office or in the constituency office to explain how the projects were selected. We received a small amount of documentation which wasn't directly relevant to the question of the project selection and we therefore concluded, as we did in the audit, that it didn't exist”.

We then found out that was not true. There was some sort of trail of documentation and that ended up being what we found out through access to information at the municipal level.

I have been on the public accounts committee since the last Parliament and it is really disappointing that, in this particular case, we did not have the opportunity to interview the Auditor General personally on this particular chapter. Every other chapter we have ever done we have had that opportunity. That was denied the committee in this particular case, which is extremely unfortunate.

One of the recommendations we have, and we have a few, is to go back and revisit that chapter and have the Auditor General present so we can get a fulsome report and fulsome answers to all the questions we still have.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, March 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, let me give the parliamentary secretary a hand. Two-thirds foreign-owned control is not in Canadian interests.

Not only will we lose control over the grain trade, but we will create a near monopoly in farm supply. I wonder how Canadian farmers in the west, which I have visited numerous times this year, really feel about that one.

This deal poses a huge risk for Canadian farmers and needs to be reviewed. We are calling on the Competition Bureau to review this deal. The deal also needs scrutiny under the Investment Canada Act.

Will the Conservatives stand behind us and support our calls for a transparent review of this diabolical deal?

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, March 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when the Conservatives launched their anti-Wheat Board agenda, we warned it would hurt Canadian farmers. Now Viterra's sell-off will leave the majority of Canadian grain handling in foreign control. These are world-leading assets built by Canadian farmers.

This is a shortsighted sellout that will strip us of a leading Canadian company and leave farmers vulnerable to foreign interests. Why will the Conservatives not realize their misguided priorities are hurting Canadian farmers?

[Air Service Operations Legislation, March 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as someone who has been through the bargaining process over a number of years, I see this intervention by the minister as actually making the bargaining playing field unlevel. Bargaining is typically set up so that when a strike or lockout occurs, it is a difficult situation for the general public, who may indeed need the service. However, more important, it is actually a huge sacrifice by workers. It is not just an easy piece for them to go on the picket line and all will be well; it is an extremely difficult decision. The decision on whether they want to go on strike or not was actually taken by the workers who voted to do that.

Is the minister suggesting that somehow every time we get into a situation like this, regardless of the industry, whether federal or private, we will see this type of legislation? In fact, in this particular case there is actually some federal regulation but it is not a federal crown corporation; it is actually a private company.

Are we going to see this type of legislation every single time we have some labour negotiations that are not going well or may result in a strike of a lockout? Is the government simply going to say, “Well, we're not going to let you go down that path even though it is legal“? Will it say, “We are simply going to tell you that we'll enact the settlement, we'll push you to the wall, and at the end of the day we'll simply disrupt the bargaining process and we won't have bargaining at all”? If that is the case, maybe the government should help the employers and unions understand that there is no sense in negotiating, that they should just apply for binding arbitration and never bother negotiating because the negotiations will not come to a conclusion.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, March 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing how quickly the dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board has attracted foreign multinational agribusinesses. The foreign takeover of Viterra would put 50% of Canadian grain handled under foreign control.

This industry was built by Canadian farmers and it is now threatened by foreign multinational corporations. How is that a net benefit for Canada's farmers? How does this help Canadian communities? Does the minister really think that multinational corporations are better handlers than Canadian grain farmers and handlers?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, March 2nd, 2012]

With respect to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA): (a) how many new full-time meat inspection staff were hired by the CFIA between July 2009 and December 2011 and what positions and titles do these inspectors hold; (b) how many inspection staff and field inspection staff were hired by the CFIA to work on work-related food safety, as opposed to work related to plant and animal health between July 2009 and December 2011 and what positions and titles of these inspectors hold; (c) what is the total number of full-time equivalent meat inspectors employed by the CFIA currently and annually since January 2006; and (d) what was the total amount of funding allocated to the CFIA during 2010 and 2011?

[Questions on the Order Paper, March 2nd, 2012]

With respect to the July 2009 “Report of the Independent Investigator into the 2008 Listeriosis Outbreak” (Weatherhill Report), what progress has the Canadian Food Inspection Agency made as concerns each of the report’s 57 recommendations?