Mark Holland

[Government of Canada, May 8th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, while the Prime Minister snubs the premier of Canada's largest province, it seems he has time to sit down and talk governance with U.S. republican pollster Frank Luntz. In fact, the pair met this weekend at the national conference of the radical right wing Civitas Society.

Why is the Prime Minister taking direction from republican pollsters? Why are they more important to him than the elected premier of the province of Ontario?

[Government Appointments, April 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about the qualifications of an oil executive. We are talking about somebody who can be impartial as a guardian of public trust.

We have seen Senator LeBreton crowned the queen of Conservative patronage. Now it seems Gwyn Morgan wants to be the crown prince. His best qualification for the job is a $100,000 donation in December 2003 when the Conservative-Alliance swallowed the Progressive Conservatives, and he keeps on giving. This is not the person Canadians want overseeing Conservative patronage.

When will the Prime Minister start to do as he says, overturn this appointment and end another example of hypocrisy?

[Government Appointments, April 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we are starting to see past the Prime Minister's selective accountability act with yet another flip-flop.

On Friday, the Prime Minister announced the appointment of Conservative bagman Gwyn Morgan to oversee, of all things, patronage appointments. Yes, the new guardian of patronage appointments by the Conservative government is in fact a loyal, long-time fundraiser for the party.

Will the Prime Minister actually demonstrate some accountability, reverse this appointment and name someone impartial to the position?

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely proud of the record without going over all the details of it, but that is not the point today. The point today is that we have a new government and we need to hold that government to account to ensure the programs and services that we care about, and the priorities of Canadians that we represent get articulated and taken care of.

Fundamentally, my focus, sitting here as a representative, is not to be a historian, but instead to focus on the new government and to ask how it is going to answer the priorities that need to be redressed for Canadians.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the House about the experience of the municipalities in my riding. The fact of the matter is that the city of Pickering, over the next five years under the plan that was signed, will be getting $7.9 million, the town of Ajax over $6 million, and the region of Durham $41 million.

By the way, once the agreements were signed with AMO, the first year's funding flowed directly to those municipalities. For the first time, not only were they receiving money but they had a predictable source of new revenue that they could work with. What an accomplishment. It was not just a one time cheque or a one time action or announcement but ongoing, sustainable five year funding that they could look at and base their projections upon. That is a real accomplishment.

I was also a councillor with the city of Pickering and the region of Durham for a period of seven years. For the longest time I watched at the provincial level as we got dumped on and ignored. One of the reasons I was so excited to run as a member of Parliament was because we finally had a leader who took up the cause of municipalities, who recognized that they deserved a place at the national table, and finally, in a real and tangible way, delivered.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this chamber again, now back for the second term. While it is not my first time to rise and speak in this session, now that I have the opportunity, I do want to thank the electors of the riding of Ajax--Pickering for the tremendous privilege of being in this House and getting the opportunity to represent them in this different capacity as an opposition member.

Certainly, I share some of the sentiments I heard from hon. members around the need to work collaboratively, to discuss issues, to hopefully find consensus, and to the best of our ability make this minority government work.

However, with regret, there are some issues that do need to be raised as a number of issues were simply missed in the throne speech. I hope that the fact they were missed does not mean that they are going to be ignored because they are extremely important issues.

I would start with early childhood development but more broadly on the issue of education. Fundamentally, what the throne speech misses, what the Conservatives as a party miss, is the fact that early childhood development is not about day care. It is not about simply taking care of children. It is about creating a continuum for learning that starts from the youngest age, goes into post-secondary, and then into lifelong learning.

It is about the fact that when children are in those most formative years, they need nurturing and caring environments. Whether those environments are provided at home or in an early childhood learning environment, the fact is parents need real choice.

Simply providing something in the neighbourhood of $3 a day is not going to achieve that. If we were to say to parents, “Instead of providing public school, we are going to give you $3 or $4 a day and good luck to you”, would Canadians think that was appropriate? Absolutely not.

In the same way, it is totally inappropriate to treat early childhood development in that way. It is a lazy policy. Instead of trying to deal with creating spaces, creating nurturing environments, and creating real choice for Canadian parents, the government is going to send them a cheque in the mail and say good luck. That is not good enough and we need to do a lot more.

In my constituency we have a huge preponderance of families. The vast majority, where both parents are working, require high quality child care facilities, and this is an issue that must be redressed. It is simply not acceptable to scrap the agreements that we entered into as a government in the previous session, toss them out the window, and say, “Here are a couple of bucks. I hope things work out for you”.

On the issue of post-secondary education, I was extremely disappointed in the document. We recognize that our competitiveness and our strength as a nation is dependent upon the type of education that we are able to receive and upon the quality of that education. We have been making great advancements, not only on the education side but also in research and development with the partnerships we have been working on with post-secondary institutions. This document ignored that. It simply said it is not one of the priorities and that is not acceptable.

Our future and our strength as a nation are very much dependent upon our ability to invest in the education of young people, in post-secondary education and in those facilities, whether it is our fifty-fifty plan or, more importantly to me, the idea that we make post-secondary education accessible for all. That is not just about tuition. That is about saying that regardless of their background, they have the opportunity to go. If they are coming from extremely wealthy families, reduced tuition may not be the smartest thing to do. Maybe what we need to be doing is focusing on those individuals who come from less fortunate circumstances who need the assistance to get the education they need to thrive, have a successful and happy future, and contribute to our economy.

Perhaps the most tragic oversight in this document though, the one that perplexes me to the greatest extent, is the environment. The reality is that our environment is in mortal peril. If we were go to our Arctic, we would see the dramatic changes that are occurring. We would see what is happening to our climate when the ice continually recedes and turns into water which then absorbs more energy and fuels that process even more. We would see permafrost give way and the carbon then be released. We would see the fact that our planet simply cannot sustain the carbon that we are putting into the atmosphere. It is reaching a point of saturation and there is a recognition that we as a globe have a crisis that we must face.

What do the Conservatives do in the wake of this crisis, at this time of great need and leadership? They say they are going to abandon Kyoto. They are going to slash funding to environmental projects. They are going to ignore it as an issue and not reference it as something that we need to put front and centre.

The environment deserves to be put front and centre. It is an area that we have taken leadership on and we need to continue to do that. We need to go back to our Kyoto commitments. We cannot say we will not bother because it is difficult. Instead, we have to find out how to get there, how we can be leaders in this area. We need to find out how we can get to the point where we can lead the world in terms of what we are doing with respect to the environment.

We as parliamentarians must be the voices for those who do not have a voice, whether it is a child in the back of a classroom who has been forgotten and needs additional help, whether it is a person who has been forgotten on the street who no longer has any hope, whether it is somebody in a neighbourhood where they do not feel they have a future, or whether it is young people who say to themselves that this society does not have a place for them.

Beyond just speaking for our constituents, it is our role as parliamentarians to also speak for people who do not show up, whose problems have major implications for this nation but who do not have the ability to articulate for themselves.

Citizenship to me in Canada must mean hope and opportunity. It must mean hope and opportunity for all of our citizens, whether they are an aboriginal on a reserve, whether they are a young person in a difficult urban environment, whether it is someone who is homeless, or whether it is somebody with a learning disability. Every level of government has a responsibility to ensure that we do not leave Canadians behind. We really must do more to improve on this.

Another oversight is cities and communities. I am deeply proud of what we were able to do in the last session of Parliament. We were finally able to recognize that municipalities deserve a seat at the national table. They deserve to have their issues taken seriously. They deserve to be recognized as the engines of growth in our economy. Municipalities have been under-resourced, ignored, and dumped on, and for the first time they were taken seriously, given resources, listened to and brought to the table.

How disappointing for those municipalities to look through the Speech from the Throne, that flimsy document, and see virtually no reference to the cities and communities agenda. After all of that progress, the government is going to let it slip away because it is not a big enough priority. I submit it is a priority and it should be put front and centre.

Some of the issues that the Conservatives have chosen to deal with are half measures and I will take accountability as one example as we dealt with it today. The truth is it is selective accountability. The Conservatives talk about restrictions on lobbyists, but they have a lobbyist on the front bench as the defence minister.

In my opinion, if the government is going to deal with the issue of lobbyists and say that once someone leaves government they cannot become one, it should also deal with the other side. If a lobbyist has been lobbying for a certain company and then gets elected as a parliamentarian, the notion that they would sit as a cabinet member is ridiculous. This is a clear example of selective accountability.

With respect to tax cuts, the Conservatives have said on the one hand that they are going to give Canadians some money back. That is great. Canadians are going to get 1% back on the GST. On the other hand, the government is going to take away the tax cuts that would actually give more to low and middle income families. If someone is looking to buy a jet this is great news, but it is not great news if someone is going to buy groceries.

We need to take a look at this document and ask two questions. How do we really make a difference in the lives of Canadians? What are the real priorities of Canadians? I can tell the House that this document did not speak to the priorities of the constituents of my riding. I will fight with all my effort to ensure that what we work on in this session of Parliament is a reflection of the true needs and priorities of Canadians.

[Child Care, April 11th, 2006]

One thousand, two hundred and three, Mr. Speaker, that is, 1,203 spaces will be eliminated in my region if the Liberal agreements on child care are eliminated.

This underscores the truth of the Conservative plan on child care. It robs choice from Canadians. It steals it from Canadian families. It means less spaces. It means poorer quality child care. It means less accessibility.

This cynical, lazy plan will replace a national system of early childhood development with little more than $3 a day.

I urge the government and all members of this House to stand up for a national child care plan, to stand up and ensure that Canadians have real choice in child care and to support what the previous government has done.

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Prime Minister directly, when was this decision made, after the hand was caught in the cookie jar or before?

Fundamentally the point is that the Prime Minister made a promise, he broke it, he was caught, and now he is changing his mind. There is a pattern here that is totally unacceptable.

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the Conservatives are so proud that when they--

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the trend of the Conservatives to do as they say, not as they do continues.

It seems the government has rewarded the Prime Minister's friend and key member of his transition team, Marie-Josée Lapointe, with an untendered contract to reform, of all things, the tendering process. While I am sure her consulting firm is ecstatic, Canadians are not.

Now that the Prime Minister is in government, will he keep his word, undo this contract and end sole-sourcing for his friends?