Peter Van Loan

[Foreign Affairs, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I know the Liberals are very interested in people's personal lives. I know the Liberal member for Markham—Unionville has said that the important question concerns who Julie Couillard has been sleeping with and that is why we must have a public inquiry and why we need to have them at the legislative inquiry.

With the greatest of respect, this government does not believe that is what Canadians are interested in. They might be interested in the big new tax plan from the Liberals. I know the Liberals do not want to talk about that but we do not think they want to have public resources spent learning about people's private lives.

To the extent that something serious in this matter is occurring, we are conducting a review through foreign affairs and we think it will do fine work.

[Foreign Affairs, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, earlier on in question period, after the Liberal leader said that he was happy to debate this serious issue of the carbon tax, we were finally hearing, after a year of questions and avoided policy, some questions on policy. The serious Liberal debate lasted 15 minutes.

Now we are back to where the Liberals love being, in the gutter asking silly questions about people's private lives. We will invite them to return with some serious questions, perhaps about their carbon tax policy, but I suspect they really do not want to talk about it that much.

[The Environment, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, if members of the Liberal Party learned from their mistakes, they would be geniuses in Mensa today, but instead they are sitting on those benches because they refuse to learn from their mistakes, and they have done it again. Once again they think the answer to solving Canadians' economic challenges is to massively increase taxes on everything: shipping goods, diesel for trucks and home heating oil. How will that help the economy? How will that help Canadians?

It may be really good with the special interest groups that like high taxes but it is not very good for the poor Canadian families and the senior citizen at home at -20° in the winter trying to stay warm with a little bit of heating oil in the furnace.

[The Environment, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member who says that a carbon tax plan is crazy and who that says a carbon tax is bad policy. On November 25, 2006, a quote in The Toronto Star reads, it is “simply bad policy”, he says of a carbon tax. Who said that? It was the Liberal leader who, apparently, thought it was crazy. I do not know what has happened to him after a year and a half under siege in his caucus but I guess it is getting to him.

[The Environment, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member the economists who object to the Liberal leader's tax plan. It is the economists who sit around the kitchen table at the end of the day trying to balance that chequebook and pay those bills. They are the ones who the Liberal leader insulted when he said, “well, if you have computers you need to change your behaviour”. When he said, “if you have two residences”, that would be a house and cottage, “you need to change your behaviour”.

It is ordinary Canadians who are being insulted because the Liberal leader has decided that they need to change their behaviour. People cannot go to the cottage any more and they should not be on the Internet any more. They should just be gathering up their dollars and sending their taxes to him in Ottawa.

[The Environment, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, what is crazy is telling Canadians that the way we are going to solve the environment problem is with a plan that includes a raft of taxes that hits every single Canadian but proposes not one ounce of reduction in greenhouse gases.

That is crazy. That is not a green plan. That is not an environmental plan. That is a tax plan. And it might be the biggest tax plan Canadians have ever seen in their lives. That is why we are not fearmongering. Canadians are afraid of the fearmongering that is being spread by the Liberals with their tax plan.

[The Environment, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, our plan is quite clear. It would result in an absolute reduction in greenhouse gases of 20% by the year 2020.

However, I will agree with the hon. member on one point. It is true that it was the Liberals who allowed that throne speech to pass, thereby endorsing our environmental plan. That is why they have not put forward a contrary environmental plan.

All the Liberals put forward yesterday is a tax plan. It has one objective, which is to find a way around all those tax cuts that we brought in, such as reductions in the GST, because the Liberals need a lot of tax revenue to pay for the billions of dollars in promises they have already made. That is why they have such an ambitious tax plan.

[The Environment, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is right. This House did endorse the government's policy on addressing the greenhouse gas challenges with our plan to reduce greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. We did that when the whole House of Commons endorsed our throne speech laying out that plan.

It is a plan that is going to work and it is going to ensure that we see real reductions. It is a plan that is very different from the Liberal plan released yesterday, which talks an awful lot about how the Liberals are going to raise $15 billion in taxes but does not have one figure, not one ounce, of greenhouse gas reduction included.

That is why we have done something that delivers real results and takes real action.

[Ethics, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the Bloc member's question, it is now clear that the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals have decided to join forces. The new Bloc Québécois strategy seems to be to align itself with the Liberal Party and push for centralization.

[Ethics, June 20th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, the member for Beauce, in this particular circumstance when he was found to have left documents in an unsecured place, tendered his resignation and took responsibility for that act. That resignation has been accepted.

That is the kind of ministerial accountability that I think Canadians want to see and want to expect from their representatives. That is the kind of responsibility that the member for Beauce took in this regard.

What is more, he recommended to the Prime Minister that the Department of Foreign Affairs conduct a full review of the matter. That is exactly what is happening.