Pat Martin

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague for Mississauga South made some thoughtful remarks. He introduced his speech by acknowledging his family first and then the people from Mississauga South and expressed his gratitude. I share his sentiments in that regard.

I would like to ask him about something that his government failed to do, and it is still not in the Speech from the Throne. I would like to ask him his views on what is technically called tax motivated expatriation. That is a fancy phrase for a sleazy, tax cheating loophole whereby one can put a paper company offshore and avoid paying taxes in Canada, otherwise known as tax havens.

The Liberal government ignored offshore tax havens. The Liberals actually tore up 11 tax treaties with 11 different countries and left one significant tax haven where the former prime minister had 13 paper companies situated.

Would my colleague agree in the interest of tax fairness that the current government should do what his government failed to do and plug these sleazy tax cheating loopholes where corporate Canada can act as tax fugitives and avoid paying their fair share of taxes?

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

Mr. Speaker, even though the Speech from the Throne talked about taxes, I noticed that it did not deal with tax fairness. Nowhere in the Speech from the Throne did it talk about the tax loopholes that exist for Canadian companies that can headquarter their companies offshore, such as Canada Steamship Lines, and avoid paying Canadian taxes. These companies are tax fugitives. Corporate Canada is laughing at us. We lose $7 billion a year. These dummy paper companies can be set up offshore and avoid paying taxes in Quebec or in Canada or wherever else they would be paying taxes.

Would my colleague care to comment on tax fugitives and the inability of the Conservatives to rein in corporate Canada?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc for his continuous commitment to the environment and to working for the well-being of the environment. I share his concerns about the language being used by the new Minister of the Environment. There is a code being used that is very worrisome. As she dances all around the issue of Kyoto, she has never said that she will tear up the accord, but she has certainly said that the Conservatives do not see themselves to be bound by Kyoto.

I would like to ask my colleague if he agrees with me that the newly elected Conservative government should know that it was Canada that has stipulated to or is bound by Kyoto, that it has nothing to do with the Conservative Party and its policies. On behalf of the Government of Canada, we entered into the Kyoto accord. It is binding and it stipulates that we have a certain code of conduct and code of practice for the coming years.

Would he agree that there is a worrisome disconnect between the minister's obligation as the Minister of the Environment for Canada and her own party's reservations about the Kyoto accord?

[Federal Accountability Act, April 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to say a couple of words on behalf of the NDP caucus.

We are very pleased to hear the confidence the President of the Treasury Board has that the bill he is tabling today will change the culture in Ottawa. We would welcome that. We would be the first to compliment the government if it were to end the corruption that we suffered through for many years under the Liberal government.

We observed that the Liberals viewed Canadians the way P.T. Barnum viewed circus-goers for many years and we are sick of that on behalf of the NDP government.

I also caution that our name is Tucker not Sucker and we will not be led down the garden path if this is not all it is cracked up to be. If this is destined to fail or it has a poison pill in it we will be the first ones to be there to criticize it.

[Government Accountability, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am not calling the President of the Treasury Board a liar, but I sure do not want anybody here to think I believe him when he says that sending that stuff to committee was anything more than a stall and delaying tactic.

It was the culture of secrecy that allowed corruption to flourish when the Liberals ran things around here. The only way to stem that culture of secrecy is by access to information law reform. All the rest of the accountability act pales in comparison to that meaningful thing.

I would like to ask the President of the Treasury Board if he would consider a trade. I will trade him meaningful reform to access to information for all of the other tinkering that is--

[Government Accountability, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, if it is true that freedom of information is the oxygen that democracy breathes, I think we are having another smog day here in Ottawa. Even though the Conservatives ran on open government, they seem to be running away from meaningful access to information reform. Access to information was supposed to be the cornerstone of their accountability act.

I want to know from the President of the Treasury Board, who was it who got to him? Was it the PCO? Was it his own senior party people? Was it the crowns? Who was it who got him to change the principles on which he was elected about open government?

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps he more than anyone, being from the Bloc Québécois, would agree with me that it was the culture of secrecy among the Liberals that allowed corruption to flourish, especially in their operations of the sponsorship scandal in Quebec. Even though the Speech from the Throne spoke a great deal about accountability and transparency, in actual fact the Conservative government has pulled the access to information reform components out of its accountability act.

How would the member react, as a member of Parliament from Quebec, to this idea that access to information laws will not be part of the accountability act? They will be relegated to a committee where they will probably die a natural death and the culture of secrecy will continue.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have three brief questions for my colleague from Vegreville—Wainwright.

I first want to recognize and acknowledge that it must be satisfying for him to see the pending accountability act. I recognize and pay tribute to the dedicated work he contributed as the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

I have a question for him about the new accountability act. One of the major irritants in the Auditor General's report of 2003, the infamous big, fat Auditor General's report, was chapter 5 about polling, which was not dealt with by Gomery. Could he indicate to me if his government plans to plug this outrageous opportunity for abuse, which the Liberals took advantage of to do their own private politically motivated public research?

Second, in the interests of tax fairness, is it the government's intention to plug the overseas tax fugitive loopholes that the former Prime Minister used to avoid paying Canadian taxes, such as tax havens in Barbados? Does he know if his government plans to finally do something about that?

My third question is on behalf of the farmers in my province of Manitoba. We have a terrible problem with Richardson's ground squirrels. Would he commit at this time that his government will do something about allowing prairie farmers to buy strychnine at a greater concentration than 2% so we can do something about this biblical plague of Richardson's ground squirrels which we suffer on the prairie provinces?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the tragic legacy of Indian residential schools probably stands as Canada's greatest shame. I state for the record that the previous Liberal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to paint victims as liars rather than compensate them so they could get on with their lives and deal with the reality of the abuse that they suffered.

I want ask my hon. colleague a question on a different issue. The centrepiece of the accountability act that the Conservatives plan to introduce was to be access to information legislation, meaningful access to information changes to allow us to shine a light on the inner workings of government, so we would have 30 million auditors instead of just one overworked Auditor General.

I know my colleague earnestly tried to introduce similar reforms in the previous Parliament. What is his view on the fact that this piece of the accountability act is being stripped out at this late date?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Trois-Rivières made an excellent speech. I must say I am sympathetic to her very well crafted arguments, in that the province of Manitoba finds itself in a situation similar to that of the province of Quebec. We signed an agreement with the Government of Canada--not with the Liberal Party and not with the Conservatives, but with the government--with the expectation that we would have five years of stable funding to begin to put together a day care system like the one the province of Quebec already enjoys.

Our problem is that we used the money to raise the salaries of all of our day care workers in the public sector, because they were terribly underpaid, and then to open a bunch of new spaces. Now the federal government has unilaterally torn up that agreement. We are in a terribly difficult situation. How do we ask these people to now roll their wages back? We cannot. How do we close these spaces that have filled with children already? We cannot. The province of Manitoba is going to have to come up with this money, as will the province of Quebec.

Does my colleague believe there is any hope of convincing the federal government to change its mind and fulfill the commitments made by the Government of Canada?