Michael Ignatieff

[Infrastructure, October 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, 55 Conservative members of Parliament tried to pass off $600 million of taxpayers' money as though it belonged to the Conservative Party. The key here is that we are talking about 55 MPs.

My question is simple. How are Canadians to believe that the Prime Minister himself is not responsible for this dubious strategy?

[Infrastructure, October 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, this is part of a wider pattern. More than 50 Conservative MPs have handed out $600 million in cheques with their own signatures on them. The Prime Minister walks around and his spokesman says, “We're shocked. We're shocked. Let's round up the usual suspects,” but everybody knows nothing is authorized by the government unless it goes through the Prime Minister's Office.

Would the Prime Minister tell the House whether he personally signed off on this strategy? Did he or did he not approve these actions?

[Infrastructure, October 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, there are some questions that must be answered.

At what point did the Prime Minister's Office learn that Senator Housakos was the vice-president of a firm looking for government money?

Did Senator Housakos lobby the Prime Minister's Office or other departments in order to obtain infrastructure money? Why does this government believe that this conduct is acceptable?

[Infrastructure, October 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, a pattern is becoming all too clear. The Conservative government is using stimulus spending to buy votes and reward its friends.

This morning, we learned that one of the Prime Minister's newest senators works for a company that has just won $1.4 million in infrastructure spending.

At a time when the middle class is struggling, would the Prime Minister explain why infrastructure spending that is needed by all Canadians ends up in the hands of a member of his own--

[Employment Insurance, October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the same economist says, and I quote, “The EI premiums fall disproportionately on lower-paid workers, so it's perverse in that equity sense as well”. This will kill jobs and we still do not see any way out of this deficit.

If the Prime Minister is so sure that he is right and most economists are wrong, will he at least allow the Parliamentary Budget Officer to get to the bottom of this question and find out where our public finances are and whether this plan will help or hurt the unemployment situation?

[Employment Insurance, October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, that means yes, the government is going to raise taxes.

This is about the credibility of the government. A year ago the Prime Minister promised we would never run a deficit. Now we are in the largest one in history and it began before the recession even began. Yesterday, Dale Orr said that the Conservative increase in EI premiums, a whopping $15.5 billion, is a tax on workers and employers.

Will the Prime Minister admit that his way out of his own deficit is to raise taxes and to do so in such a way that it kills jobs?

[Employment Insurance, October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, according to leading economists, the Prime Minister's decision to increase EI premiums will discourage employers from hiring new employees. Dale Orr said that under this Conservative plan, companies will see their taxes rise by $884 per employee.

Will the Prime Minister admit that he is going to raise taxes and that these tax hikes will kill jobs?

[Foreign Affairs, October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on another subject, Suaad Mohamud is a Canadian citizen who was wronged and abandoned by her government.

Yesterday, the parliamentary secretary told the House that her case did not reach the political level but that contradicts the Prime Minister's own assertion that he found out about it around August 10. However, email traffic, we found out, makes it clear that as of July 1 media lines were being prepared by the Prime Minister's Office for the Prime Minister himself.

Could the Prime Minister please tell us who is telling the truth--

[The Economy, October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the winner of the brokerage award that year was Lehman Brothers.

What the Prime Minister is saying is that all the country's independent economists are wrong.

I therefore have this question for the Prime Minister: if he is so sure of his figures, why does he not want to give the Parliamentary Budget Officer appropriate funding so that he can conduct an independent assessment of the current status of this country's public finances for Canadians?

[The Economy, October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, for months, senior economists have been saying that the government's deficit numbers are off the mark by billions of dollars and that we will be in a hole much longer than the Prime Minister is prepared to admit.

These economists assert that the government has led us back into a structural deficit, one that will persist long after the stimulus spending has been exhausted. Yesterday, in this House, the transport minister denied it, so I will ask the Prime Minister: Are we or are we not heading into a structural deficit?