Pat Martin

[Government Contracts, February 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, there are at least two things wrong with the $120,000 untendered contract that the Minister of Finance handed over to his buddy from Queen's Park.

The first and most obvious problem is that it is a gross violation of Treasury Board guidelines to give such a contract away without a fair tendering process.

Second, what kind of finance minister, what kind of guardian of the public purse, would squander $120,000 on a single speech? That is two years' salary for the average family of four. It is an obscene, offensive, cavalier waste of money. It is a wildly irresponsible abuse of the taxpayers' money and an abuse of the public trust.

When a Liberal defence minister gave an untendered contract of one-third the size to a former girlfriend, he was dropped from the cabinet and banished to the Senate.

Those guys over there are now gorging themselves on the public purse and running roughshod over all the rules and regulations that we put in place to protect us from the Liberals. The government loses all credibility. If the Minister of Finance is not hauled up on the carpet and disciplined sternly--

[Lobbyists, February 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it was the culture of secrecy that allowed corruption to flourish during the Liberal years and it is worse than ever on this second anniversary of the Conservative cabinet.

There is still no access to information reform. There is still no public appointments commission. There is no parliamentary budget officer.

Corporate lobbyists are running amok all over Parliament Hill in a revolving door between the Conservative Party and the big lobbying firms. Now $120,000 to write a lousy speech.

Nothing has changed since Brian Mulroney's days. The boys still need to make a living.

How much longer do the Conservatives intend to perpetrate and maintain--

[Ethics, February 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, former justice minister Alan Rock said that if he knew then what we know now, he would never have paid Brian Mulroney the $2.1 million settlement in the defamation lawsuit.

He was duped, he was bamboozled, he was outfoxed, and he rolled over way too early. Now we want our money back.

What concrete steps is the government taking to recoup the $2.1 million defamation lawsuit settlement that it paid out to Brian Mulroney that it never should have paid?

[Canadian Grain Commission, February 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is not just the Canadian Wheat Board that the Conservatives have in their sights. They also have the Canadian Grain Commission in their crosshairs as well.

In a breathtaking example of pure political patronage, the Conservatives have appointed a former Reform MP, Elwin Hermanson, as the chief commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission.

Will the agriculture minister admit to the House his personal connection to Mr. Hermanson, that he was a worker and a fundraiser in Mr. Hermanson's campaign and that he was appointed because of being an ideological soulmate, not because of his qualifications?

[Canadian Wheat Board, February 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, we could almost hear the jackboots on the corner of Portage and Main on Friday as the Conservatives stormed the offices of the Canadian Wheat Board and arbitrarily whacked another top official whose only crime was to defend that great prairie institution. It is getting to be a defining hallmark of the Conservatives to silence their critics with thuggish tactics.

Is it not true that the vice-president of communications, Deanna Allen, was fired simply because she would not fall lockstep into their mad crusade to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board?

[Ethics, February 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder what Justice Gomery is thinking as he watches this latest saga of the abuse of power unfold, especially as the dust gathers on the recommendations of the report that he tabled two years ago today.

There is still no Access to Information Act reform. There is still no public appointments commission. There is still no parliamentary budget officer and still no curbing of corporate lobbyists.

PMO insiders would not be able to run roughshod over fair contracting rules if Justice Gomery's recommendations were implemented when the Conservative government promised it would implement them. What is the holdup?

[Ethics, February 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have not cleaned up Ottawa. In the fine tradition of Roch LaSalle and Chuck Guité, PMO insiders are still trying to interfere with Public Works contracts and even when they are before the courts.

In a new twist, Montreal city councillor Marcel Tremblay denies that he ever asked Dimitri Soudas to intercede on behalf of the claimant in the lawsuit. There are gaping holes in this story.

If the government has any self-respect whatsoever, will the Prime Minister agree to relieve Dimitri Soudas of his duties until the Ethics Commissioner can determine the extent of his wrongdoing?

[Half-Masting of Peace Tower Flag, January 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add a point of view from the NDP caucus as well as my own point of view to Motion No. 310 from the member for Kitchener—Waterloo, which states that in the event a member of the Canadian armed forces in a peacekeeping, peacemaking or humanitarian mission is killed, the flag on the Parliament buildings should be lowered to half-mast.

I have made this point in the past. I feel strongly that it should be Parliament, not government, that decides if and when the flag on the Peace Tower should be lowered to half-mast. In fact, in April 2006 I made this point on a question of privilege in the House of Commons. I maintained that the privileges of the House as a collective had been usurped and undermined by the government when it took that role away from Parliament and gave it to the executive branch.

I argued that the House of Commons is not a department of the Government of Canada and that Parliament should have control over all aspects of the parliamentary precinct, including the flag on the top of the Peace Tower. I argued that government had overstepped its authority by having the Prime Minister dictate whether or not the flag on the Peace Tower should be lowered, thus usurping my privileges as a member of Parliament to participate in this decision.

Unfortunately, the Speaker of the day ruled against my question of privilege. He ruled that the Senate and the House of Commons are only tenants of the government and that the administration of this property falls under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Public Works. That, I might tell members, rubbed me the wrong way. The House of Commons only has the “right to regulate”, he said, its own “internal affairs”. “The essential question”, then, he said, “is whether half-masting of the flag on the Peace Tower is an internal matter falling within the privileges of the House, or an external matter under the jurisdiction of the owner of the building”, our landlords.

The Speaker decided that because Public Works as our landlord is responsible for the physical act of raising or lowering the flag each day on the Peace Tower and because the Department of Canadian Heritage makes the rules concerning protocol of flying the flags, then these rules and their application are a matter for the executive and not matters for the Speaker or the House. I profoundly disagree, on a number of levels.

The half-masting of the Canadian flag on the Peace Tower is not simply a technical function on par with raising and lowering it every day with the rising and setting of the sun. The flying of our nation's flag at half-mast on the Peace Tower is this country's greatest expression of national grief and respect. This matter should never be tainted by political considerations. Leaving it in the hands of the ruling party makes that unavoidable.

Most Canadians, and indeed most members of Parliament, support lowering the flag on the Peace Tower to honour members of our armed forces killed in the line of duty, yet for its own political reasons the government does not want to draw attention to these losses in a conflict that is increasingly unpopular. That is precisely why it should not be the government's decision to make.

If the government can defend its participation in the conflict in Afghanistan, it should be able to defend the casualties and the losses. Refusing to lower the flag on the Peace Tower is seen by many as an attempt to soft-sell or downplay those harsh realities of war.

The Speaker's ruling and the reasoning that underpins it give rise to a larger question. How and why did our Parliament ever lose jurisdiction over the operation and control of Parliament?

Canada's Parliament is based on the Westminster model. Both the Parliament of Canada Act and the act of Confederation of 1867 require that Parliament's structure reflect all the rights, privileges and authorities of the British Parliament in Westminster.

The control of the Palace of Westminster and its precincts was in fact exercised by the Queen's representative, the Lord Great Chamberlain, until, by agreement with the Crown, the Lord Great Chamberlain formally ceded jurisdiction over both Houses to the British Parliament in 1965.

I argue that this flag debate graphically illustrates that Canada should do the same thing. The Queen's government should pass control over both Houses of Parliament to Parliament itself. Until that time, Parliament is just a tenant in the Parliament buildings and does not enjoy the same rights and privileges as our colleagues in Westminster.

This is a matter of the independence of Parliament. It is pivotal to our system of government. Its history goes back to the English revolution in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1672, when Charles II and his troops marched into Parliament and demanded to know the whereabouts of five MPs accused of treason, the Speaker of the day, William Lenthall, said famously, “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here”.

In other words, the Speaker proclaimed himself as a servant of Parliament, rather than of the king, and that independence is as important today as it was then.

Let us say for instance that a future government decides the Centennial Flame, which was lit on December 31, 1966, should be removed and a tourist souvenir shop should built on its site. The public would be outraged, MPs would protest, but it would be ruled that Parliament is only a tenant and therefore the government of the day has absolute control.

Let us say a future beloved prime minister dies and Parliament wishes to have a state funeral. The prime minister of the day, a political enemy of the deceased, would say “No, Parliament is only a tenant and government has the control”.

A third example would be, let us say a future government decides it wishes to expand the PMO many times over, but it does not want to spend tax dollars building new office space, so it decides to use the East Block instead, telling senators to get out and telling MPs they will have to double up. Both the House of Commons and the Senate would protest, but Parliament would only be a tenant and the government would have the control.

If the House thinks these are foolish examples, consider this one. At the start of an overseas mission, several Canadian soldiers are killed in the line of duty. Parliament wishes to have the flag on the Peace Tower flown at half-mast to express the nation's profound grief and appreciation to those men and women who made the supreme sacrifice in the service of their country, but the government of the day does not want to focus the country's attention on the fact that our sons and daughters are dying overseas in a military mission for which support at home is dwindling.

Parliament wants the flag lowered on the Peace Tower. The government of the day does not. This is fundamentally wrong, that government can override and trump the will of Parliament in this way.

It is time for Parliament to stand up to the government and declare its independence in the same spirit Speaker William Lenthall declared the independence of the British Parliament in 1672.

If the government considers Parliament only a tenant in its own Parliament Buildings, then it is time for a tenant's revolt.

If the Prime Minister is going to ignore the will of Parliament and refuse to lower the flag on the Peace Tower out of respect for the men and women who are being killed in the service of their country, then he will return to a tenant's uprising because many of us in this Chamber will not tolerate it.

Today, I speak on behalf of the NDP caucus, but I also speak on behalf of the many Canadians who are sincerely grieving the loss of members of our armed forces. In recognition of that national grief, it seems to me that we should be lowering the flag.

If a senator passes away in the service of his or her country while in the job, the flag goes to half-mast. If a member of Parliament passes away during service or if he or she is a member of the Privy Council, the flag goes to half-mast. How is it any less significant if one of our sons and daughters serving overseas is killed in the line of duty?

I feel very strongly and I appreciate my colleague from Kitchener—Waterloo for bringing this motion before the House of Commons today. I feel profoundly strong that this is a motion that should succeed and should pass, and that the government of the day should cede control over parliamentary precinct to the House of Commons.

[Canada Transportation Act, January 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for her interest and concern in this issue. I was looking at a play that was written recently by a friend of mine. Bruce McManus wrote Selkirk Avenue, a quite well-known work. Two babushka-wearing Polish grandmas are talking on Selkirk Avenue in the riding of my colleague from Winnipeg North. One asks, “What are you doing today?” The other points at the Arlington Street Bridge and says, “I go to Canada. I go over the bridge to Eaton's today. I am going to Canada”. That is how dramatic the divide is that has developed in my city of Winnipeg, because in 1882 it was decided to run the tracks right down the centre of Winnipeg and cause that great social and cultural divide.

From an urban planning point of view, my colleague is exactly right. There is a host of good reasons to tear up the tracks. There have been spills, derailments and explosions many times over the years. There has been contamination and environmental degradation. It has been an ongoing challenge to build and maintain bridges, overpasses and underpasses to go over and around these huge yards. And they are huge, we are talking hundreds and hundreds of acres of rail yards.

Finally, we desperately need the land for new housing, more green space, more recreation space. We want to use that land in the inner city of Winnipeg properly and not have it as an industrial blight. I have no objection to industry or development, but there are appropriate places for that kind of development, and the heart and soul, the core of our city is not the place.

The report that my colleague made reference to, commissioned by the Minister of International Trade, opens the door. It was finished in May 2007. I am wondering why it was only released a couple of days ago. I personally have approached the minister twice asking him for copies of it because we are all waiting for it. It is what opens the door for us and contemplates clearly a series of inland ports to accommodate this massive flow that we contemplate of shipping containers from all around the world converging, I hope, at the hub of North America, the very heart and soul of the continent, which is Winnipeg, Manitoba.

These container terminals are an awesome thing to see when they are well designed. If someone is trying to find a container with furniture from his factory, it might be 200 rows down and 100 rows over and up high. A computerized gantry will go and find it, pick it out and deliver it to him, so that no train and no ship is waiting more than 24 hours to offload or to reload.

That is the kind of vision we have to have if we are serious about attracting attention and being this distribution network. The railways will pick up freight and drop off freight if they do not get bottlenecked in a downtown core. If they can get in and out in 24 hours and pick up revenue, then they will come. Build it and they will come.

It is just a dream. It is just a vision. But it is exciting people because we are talking about the revitalization of the inner city on a scale--

[Canada Transportation Act, January 28th, 2008]

Or Timmins, Ontario, as it were, connected by rail, of course.

What we are saying is we have to think outside the box. Because of congestion, a terminal such as Vancouver is not going to be able to handle the millions and millions of containers that we anticipate flowing here from Asia and containers flowing out of here back across the Pacific Ocean full of Canadian commodities for export.

This is going to take a rethinking of monumental proportion. This is going to take some vision. The only vision we have seen in the transportation network in the last 30 years is how to tear up tracks, not how to build them.

The reason I raise this today is to serve notice to the House that there is a movement afoot in the city of Winnipeg to tear up the tracks in the inner city of Winnipeg and build a great inland port on the outskirts of Winnipeg that in fact will be a state of the art shipping container distribution terminal.

I have seen some humdingers. I have been to Shanghai. I have been to Indonesia and seen that state of the art container distribution terminal. I have been to Vietnam, and Fuzhou, China. Those terminals do not look anything like we have seen in this country. Those container terminals are like something we cannot even imagine. But this 40 page report shows us the way. It gives us a road map. It whets our appetite to investigate the enormous potential if we want to get with it and get into the 21st century in terms of an integrated shipping system.

As a member of Parliament representing the inner city of Winnipeg, I welcome this opportunity. If we do tear up the tracks that have divided historically the north end and the south end of Winnipeg with all the predictable social and economic consequences which flowed from that, and put those tracks outside the city where they belong, the opportunities would be enormous.

From an inner city point of view, the inner city of Winnipeg desperately needs new housing stock, new green space, new recreation facilities. This would be 250 acres, a subdivision in the heart of the city. If people would just dare to dream how wonderful it could be to meet these urgent needs and also to avail ourselves of this wonderful economic development opportunity of being the terminus, taking advantage of our geographic advantage as the very centre of North America, we could be the distribution hub for the continent.

Let me remind members that the full title of the Asia-Pacific gateway is the Asia-Pacific gateway and corridor initiative. It contemplates the input of the shipping containers from Asia through Vancouver and Prince Rupert, from Europe and Russia through Churchill, from South America and Africa through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes, all of it coming toward the true geographic centre of North America, which is Winnipeg, to be received, off-loaded and redistributed on a north-south corridor.

The Red River corridor goes north to south from Churchill through Winnipeg straight down to Texas, into Mexico, into South America. This is the vision of a great distribution network in which we could play a role and it starts right here. This is how these things begin, in the House of Commons with a little red report of 40 pages that was released without any fanfare. It is loaded with such potential that I can hardly convey it to you, Mr. Speaker.

Winnipeg has been a tale of two cities for many years. It is divided socially, economically and culturally by this great industrial scar right through the heart of our city. I am saying that we tear up the tracks, that we heal that scar, that we put in housing, green space, recreation. Let us get the tracks out of the city and rebuild a great distribution network, something that you as a railway man, Mr. Speaker, would be proud of.