Paul Dewar

[Public Service, May 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we have examples of public servants who, through their disclosures of serious wrongdoing in past governments, have saved taxpayers millions of dollars. Yet we continue to harass these men and women through the courts, causing them serious financial hardship and emotional stress for simply being ethical.

Is the President of the Treasury Board prepared to give assurances that the government will compensate past whistleblowers whose claims are proven correct?

[Norad, May 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of things I would like to clarify with the member. Much has been said tonight about the events of 9/11. One of the things that occurred to me is that at the time Norad was not the kind of command and control operation that really had any efficacy with regard to what happened to the twin towers. Indeed, one could think back to the Maginot line in terms of what our capacity is. We are dealing with a very different kind of war. That has been mentioned many times.

With regard to the fact that we now have a nation talking about pre-emptive strikes using nuclear capabilities, is my colleague not concerned in terms of the arrangements we are entering into with the United States that this could put us in some jeopardy and in fact in some danger?

[Petitions, May 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition on behalf of my constituents regarding child care cuts by the government and the fact that they will not receive the child care they want.

The Conservative government proposed a taxable $1,200 allowance as an income measure, which does not support child care. Even as an income measure, it will discriminate against families with employed mothers by giving them less financial assistance after tax than families in which one parent stays at home. I submit this on behalf of my constituents.

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, before the debate tonight I asked an expert, Bo Cuit, what he thought of this situation. Bo is an expert on this because he is a Sudanese refugee. Bo lives with my mother in the house where I grew up and has lived there for the last two years. He walked out of Sudan with his brothers, one who was a child soldier and saw things that we would never think of seeing nor experiencing.

I told Bo about this debate tonight and I asked for his advice. Bo is a young man of few words and he basically said, “Tell them that they do not want to have the same mindset and the same guilt that Bill Clinton has over Rwanda”.

I wonder what the hon. member thinks of those comments. We are perplexed as to what to do but does the member not believe that this is a time for action and not to sit by and wait?

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I want to direct my comments and questions around our capacity to respond, and it is twofold. One is in the way of human resources, which has been referred to a bit tonight, and the other is in the way of financial capacity.

I turn to the estimates in the so-called blue book. On the pages that deal with foreign assistance, we see on page 1-17 that we are looking at an increase to CIDA and we are looking at a decrease of 38% in our international assistance to the transfer payments. That has to do with the fact that we had made some payments in forgiveness to the countries of Iraq and Montenegro.

What I do not see here, notwithstanding the fact that Sudan is referenced in the comments on CIDA, is the kind of commitment that we have seen to some of the other countries in terms of debt forgiveness. I have to question that and I look to tomorrow's budget.

However, we have a real dilemma as bystanders. We are bystanders in some ways because we do not have the human capacity and, what I see from the estimates document, we might very well not have the financial capacity.

I would like his comments on that, particularly on our financial capacity. Does he feel, having gone over the estimates in the blue book, that we are in a position where we can respond financially? Quite frankly, $10 million is not enough.

[International Bridges and Tunnels Act, April 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I took some interest in my colleague's points around who builds this infrastructure and who owns this infrastructure. Recently we have had many years in which we have seen the so-called P3 arrangement not work for the best interests of Canadians, particularly in infrastructure, particularly when we are building infrastructure that is for the public yet there are certain people who are making profits on it, notwithstanding the fact that we know it is private companies that actually do the building.

What I am talking about is seeing a private consortium that takes over the infrastructure and then turns around and asks the citizens of this country to pay yet again. I certainly would not like to see that happen. I wonder if the member would comment on that.

[Public Service of Canada, April 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the public service creates jobs in Ottawa the same way that the car industry creates jobs in Oshawa and the steel industry creates jobs in Hamilton. With all due respect, no MP from those centres would stand idly by while their communities were at risk of political job losses.

The people of Ottawa demand to know the government's plans with respect to the public service. Will the President of the Treasury Board give us those clear assurances?

[Public Service of Canada, April 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the government has pledged to find $22 billion in savings in its upcoming budget. This has led many to speculate on where the cuts will occur.

Public servants in Ottawa have been left in the dark about whether they will be asked to shoulder the burden of these cuts like they were with the previous government.

Will the President of the Treasury Board give his assurances to our public servants that they will not lose their jobs to pay for Conservative promises?

[National Day of Mourning, April 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in 1991 NDP MP Rod Murphy sponsored an act respecting a day of mourning for persons killed or injured in the workplace. It proclaimed April 28 as National Day of Mourning.

According to the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Canada's rate of workplace fatalities is now among the worst in the industrialized world. Employers and governments are failing on this front and working people are paying for this failure with their health and their lives.

In 1984, when the National Day of Mourning was initiated, 744 workers were listed as having died from workplace injuries. Twenty years later, in 2004, that number stood at 928. In 2003 the Westray bill finally gave courts the right to hold corporations criminally responsible for unsafe working conditions.

Today, the NDP recommits our efforts to create safe workplaces where employers take full responsibility for the health and safety of their workers and where the government enforces the rules that are in place.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her pristine analysis on what is generally missing and lacking in accountability with government. Specifically, one of the areas that I have concerns with is what happens now with a bill that does not have the accountability that we ask for in terms of things like democratic accountability. I think that is clearly lacking.

We asked for fixed election dates. We hear that there might be some movement there. We asked for making sure that when we are looking at accountability to Parliament that voters get the member of Parliament for whom they voted and they do not end up a couple of days later after the election with a member from a different party. It would be interesting to see how Canadians feel about that. I know that in my own office people have been contacting me about that issue.

The other issue is lobbying. There are some measures that are moving forward in the accountability act on lobbying, but one that is missing is what happens when somebody who had been lobbying government turns around and then is a recipient of government contracts. Will this be something that the government is going to act on and change in the bill because there seems to be a void?

Finally, the whole point of probity of the government into be it port authorities or crown corporations is the provision in the bill to allow the Auditor General to have scope into those areas. It would be important for us to know what resources are going to be afforded and particularly how much money is going to be afforded to the Auditor General to allow her or him to do that job.