Peter Kent

[Ethics, November 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is blaming everybody but the finance minister or himself for the scandal that is before us. The Prime Minister is all but directly blaming the Ethics Commissioner, blaming the Ethics Commissioner for the finance minister's several inexcusable lapses of judgment and for the Prime Minister's own willingness to look the other way.

Why is the Prime Minister misleading Parliament about other ministers' actions?

Is the Prime Minister's Office calling the Ethics Commissioner a liar?

[Ethics, November 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister told the House yesterday that Liberals trust and honour the work of the Ethics Commissioner. The Prime Minister has been telling us all week to trust the Ethics Commissioner. Now the Prime Minister's Office is telling us she is wrong about the number of Liberal ministers using conflict loopholes.

We trust the Ethics Commissioner.

Just how many ministers have gamed the spirit of the Conflict of Interest Act?

[Ethics, November 1st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we have become accustomed in this House to Liberal ministers violating the written and unwritten laws and rules of the House. In every case, after obfuscation and stonewalling, there is an admission of wrongdoing, with various excuses and justifications.

We have photographic evidence that the Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities improperly used parliamentary resources, campaigning for his dad in a recent Calgary election.

Does the Prime Minister support what the minister did, or does the Prime Minister think the minister should follow the rules?

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 31st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his remarks. It is fitting that we are talking about Bill C-49 today, on Halloween, because it is a real Liberal horror show.

It is a horror story, not only because of the rudely imposed time allocation, which the Liberals opposed so passionately in their days as the third party in this House, not only because it is a monster of an omnibus bill, but because the contents of the omnibus bill have nothing in common, piece by piece, except for the fact that they involve, one way or another, the word “transport”.

The Liberal government has made much of the fact that there are six amendments proposed by the opposition. I would like to ask my colleague whether six amendments on a bill this large represent anything of significance.

[International Development, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there is yet another example of the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza using a school, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, to provide cover for a terrorist tunnel to use Palestinian children as human shields, though UNRWA claims it closed the school when the tunnel was discovered.

The Conservative government delivered humanitarian aid to Palestinians around UNRWA, but the Liberals insist on handing UNRWA millions, despite the risk to children, despite the curriculum of hate and terror still taught to children in UNRWA schools. Why?

[Canadian Heritage, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, first the Liberal government left mention of Jews off the National Holocaust Monument dedication plaque and muted the horrors of the extermination chambers with euphemisms, but now we learn that the Liberals, who doubled their modest deficit with their runaway $20 billion, Liberals who spent almost a quarter of a million dollars on an artsy budget cover, are economizing by not clearing snow at the National Holocaust Monument. The death camps operated year round. Why should Canada's commemoration not?

[Foreign Affairs, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has, for decades, been a petri dish of corruption, financial mismanagement, and political bias. Instead of honouring education, science, and history, UNESCO has denied Jewish history on Temple Mount and across Jerusalem and outrageously proclaimed Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs to be a Palestinian world heritage site.

The United States is withdrawing from UNESCO, as is Israel. When will Canada and the Liberals take a stand?

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, as we continue in a few moments with debate on the opposition day motion calling on the finance minister to apologize for failing to live up to the Prime Minister's mandate letter's ethical standards and for breaking trust with Canadians, there are a couple of still unanswered questions, again.

When did the finance minister advise the Prime Minister that he was neither establishing a blind trust nor divesting his stock holdings? Again, has the finance minister been served notice by the Ethics Commissioner of his violation of the Conflict of Interest Act?

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, my hon. friend and his counterparts on the benches opposite may consider this a contrived debate, but the public voice defending liberalism in the country, the Toronto Star, in its lead editorial had this to say. Remember, the Toronto Star, by its founder, elected to speak only support for the Liberal Party.

As the finance minister attempts to justify the ethical morass of his personal finances, he is showing himself again to be tone-deaf and out of touch, the exact frailties that have jeopardized his government's vital push for tax fairness.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for a couple of very important and relevant questions to this debate. It is true that in 2013, the Ethics Commissioner made quite a few recommendations in her annual report for improvements that might be made to the Conflict of Interest Act, which was at that time about nine years old. The reason it was not acted upon was that there was no clear and pressing need to block attempts, such as we have seen by the current finance minister, to exploit some of those imperfections in the original act. To my knowledge, going back decades, there has never been an instance where a minister of government, Liberal or Conservative, has tried to avoid either placing their holdings into blind trusts or divesting those interests.

I agree with the previous speaker's suggestion that this is in some ways more serious than some of the previous instances where we have seen ministers who had to be disciplined, in a variety of ways, for impropriety.