Pat Martin

[Canadian Wheat Board, November 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the government is taking its ideological crusade against the Canadian Wheat Board too far. Now it seems it is withholding initial payments to producers as a cheap and irresponsible way to interfere with the election of Wheat Board directors.

It does not take Treasury Board eight weeks to get initial payments to grain producers, except when the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Gerrymander, does not want nice, big, fat cheques from the Canadian Wheat Board winding up in the mailboxes at the same time as the ballots for Wheat Board directors. It may give farmers a warm and fuzzy feeling about this great Canadian institution that is providing big, fat initial payment cheques to itself.

I do not understand why the minister, Mr. Gerrymander, does not give up his ideological crusade to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board. It is the largest and most successful grain marketing company in the world. It is a great Canadian prairie institution and there is no business case for destroying the Canadian Wheat Board. He should stop his vain and failed attempts to bring down this great institution.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, November 1st, 2010]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-588, An Act to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act (members of the board).

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today to introduce this private member's bill regarding the Canadian Wheat Board. This bill finds its origins in the fact that there is no business case for abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board. In fact, it is the largest and most successful grain marketing company in the world and yet the government has been on an ideological crusade to bring it down.

This bill would enhance the powers of the board of directors of the Wheat Board. It would change the way the board of directors is chosen and selected. It would reduce the number of directors appointed by the government. It would diminish the arbitrary discretionary powers of the minister to interfere with the activities, administration and operation of the Canadian Wheat Board, and it would reaffirm the fact that the Wheat Board is not a government institution or agency. It is in fact a wholly owned co-operative enterprise operated and owned by the grain producers of the prairie region, and their success is paramount. The government should get its hands off the Wheat Board, and this bill would codify the powers of the directors to chart their own destiny and their own control of this great Canadian institution.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Public Works and Government Services, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, nobody should be able to buy a government contract in this country but yet, days before the closing of the West Block contract, Public Works amended the tender to give special favour to one rinky-dink contractor who, by some happy coincidence, gave $140,000 to a well-connected Conservative lobbyist. Now the current government seems open for business but only if one pays to play.

Who specifically ordered the West Block renovation contract to be rigged in favour of Sauvé construction and what Conservative minister ordered him or her to do so?

[Government Contracts, October 21st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative riding association of Bourassa financed itself almost entirely off a single cocktail party financed by grateful contractors who dutifully coughed up a tithe to the Conservative Party, the maximum allowable tithe. The minister's own riding association finances itself from donors who get government contracts.

People should not have to wait for the RCMP to raid ministers' offices to find out the extent and the scope of this problem. Will the government finally just own up to the fact that its fundraising tactics are immoral and in fact corrupt?

[Government Contracts, October 21st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives keep saying that they cannot be bought for a measly $500, so it begs this question. What is their price?

Nicola Papiccio gave $1,500 to the Conservatives and his company got a $36 million contract with the Minister of Public Works and Government Services. We now learn that Camille Villeneuve gave to the riding association of the former minister of public works. His company got a $293 million untendered construction contract. It seems greasing the wheels of commerce is a time honoured Conservative tradition.

If $500 is not enough, what does it cost to buy contracts from the Conservatives?

[Government Contracts, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the renovation of the West Block is turning into a multi-million dollar fiasco: RCMP investigations, illegal lobbying, kick-backs and corruption. That is not good enough for one of our nation's finest heritage buildings.

Will the Minister of Public Works follow today's recommendation of the government operations committee and impose immediately an absolute moratorium on all contracting associated with the Parliament Buildings until our committee can determine that there will be no more corruption or influence peddling associated with the renovations of this building?

[Minister of Natural Resources, October 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Natural Resources has achieved a rare trifecta of sleaze: first, tampering with access to information requests, second, shaking down contractors for juicy plum contracts on our own Parliament buildings; and third, pure patronage pork in appointing his campaign manager to the trade tribunal that oversees the very government contracting that got him into trouble. That is three strikes. Surely the Prime Minister knows he has his next ambassador to Denmark right here or maybe even Hans Island.

Why is that minister still in cabinet?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's contribution to the case that we are making, which is that this particular initiative falls short of meeting the goals and objectives that we could have achieved with this massive spending.

The one thing I will comment on is the EI system. We squandered the fiscal capacity to have a healthy and robust EI system when they took the $57 billion surplus from the EI system. By legislation, they ripped that money right out of there. Now that we are in an economic crisis where we need EI, the cupboard is bare.

Again, they had no right to take that money. That money was employer and employee contributions. Not one penny of that was federal government money and yet they took it and misused it for other applications.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that even a broken watch is right twice a day. There are measures in this bill that we support. There are some gestures toward that.

Overall, it is the tone and the big picture of this massive undertaking that we are critical of. We feel it is a missed opportunity. Well, it ranges from a missed opportunity in one regard, in that I believe we could have done something truly transformative with that massive outpouring of billions of dollars of stimulus spending instead of just the old bricks-and-mortar projects, which I am not criticizing.

It ranges from that missed opportunity to the sheer perversity of borrowing $6 billion or $7 billion to give corporate tax cuts at this point in time. I appreciate my colleague's pointing out the flip-flop perversity position of the Liberals, too, who do sound an awful lot like New Democrats when they are in opposition, and as soon as they get into government they sound an awful lot like right wing neo-conservatives.

In fact, with respect to the cutting and hacking and slashing that took place under their watch, in my riding at least, we still have not recovered from the consequences of the virtually cruel actions of that party.

Let me give one example. The cuts to the EI program in my riding alone resulted in $20 million a year less federal money coming into my riding. We cannot bounce back from that very readily. We could not afford a Liberal government much longer, in my view.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

No, no, rich people do not go to jail because the jail is too full of young aboriginal kids. There is no room for them. They can go to the country club and play golf.

Now we have a member of the board of directors of Onex Corporation as the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister. We can just imagine the kind of bugs that are being dropped into the ear of the Prime Minister behind closed doors and under the shroud of secrecy that the Conservatives like to create. They can help us solve our deficit problem. They can privatize the prisons, privatize this and contract out that and get government out of all of these areas, which has been, as I said, the dream objective of the neo-conservatives since their beginning.

We have another contradiction or irony here that I do not think the public will be very pleased about. It will come up on the doorsteps in the next federal election, but in the context of Bill C-47, the budget implementation bill, it contemplates corporate tax cuts to the extent of $6 billion or $7 billion.

The astounding thing is the reasoning that goes into this. It is not as though we are in a surplus situation where we will be sharing some of the bounty through private sector tax cuts, personal tax cuts and corporate tax cuts. We are not in that environment. We are in a $50 billion deficit situation. To give this $6 billion or $7 billion more in tax cuts, we have to borrow that money. We will be borrowing money on the open market to give tax cuts to profitable corporations.

The irony about giving tax cuts in this way is that it rewards the most successful businesses. It does not give a hand up to a struggling business that is about to close its doors. They are not paying any income tax anyway because they are struggling. So this is not some kind of initiative to assist small and medium-sized enterprises. I could support that to ensure that we avoid plant closures, et cetera.

This will reward those most profitable businesses in the country, the very people, maybe the only people in the country, who do not need our help right now. It is the struggling small and medium-sized businesses that actually, legitimately need assistance to get them through these turbulent economic times, but by some convoluted pretzel logic, the Conservatives have decided to hand over this massive transfer of wealth to corporations instead of an option that I suggested, raising the old age security by $100 a month and bringing seniors out of poverty.

I wish I had more time to go into the tax-motivated expatriation, which is actually sleazy, tax-cheating loopholes that exist within our tax system, but the Conservatives have decided to leave that money on the table and not go after it, even though we are in a $50 billion deficit situation.