Pierre Paquette

[Henri-Paul Rousseau, June 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Henri-Paul Rousseau, who has announced he is leaving the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec after more than five years of service.

Mr. Rousseau has been president and CEO of the Caisse since September 2002 and will step down next August. Under his presidency, the Caisse has changed a number of its governance rules and has achieved excellent financial results. Representatives of Quebec's political, financial and economic sectors have all commended Mr. Rousseau's service to the public, and say that his departure will leave a void difficult to fill.

I had the opportunity to spend some time with Mr. Rousseau during the 1980 referendum when he was president of the Comité des économistes pour le oui. Whether as an economist, a financier or a professor, this secretary general of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission has always worked hard for Quebec's development and interests.

My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I would like to thank him for his contribution and we hope that he will continue to promote Quebec's economic and social development.

[Foreign Affairs, May 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this is a public security issue, not a privacy issue. The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons did not give us a straight answer.

Did Julie Couillard, as the spouse of the former minister of foreign affairs, have a diplomatic passport or a special passport? Yes or no?

I am not asking him to tell us the rules, but to simply answer the question.

[Foreign Affairs, May 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, whether Julie Couillard was issued a red diplomatic passport or a green special passport when she travelled with the the former minister of foreign affairs is a matter of public interest. Why? Because if she had such a passport, that means that an investigation was carried out and that, contrary to what the Prime Minister has said, he knew about Ms. Couillard's shady past.

Will the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons give us a straight answer: did Julie Couillard, as the spouse of the former minister of foreign affairs, have a red or green passport? Yes or no?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, I understand that the former minister of foreign affairs, the member for Beauce, is taking all the blame for this and that nobody has any intention of changing a thing. This could happen again anytime.

There is absolutely no guarantee that between April 15 and the day the documents were returned to the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Couillard or other individuals did not use the documents for other purposes. It seems to me that in this case, the government was negligent at best, and at worst, attempted to hide the truth in order to mislead Canadians and Quebeckers.

Not only am I extremely disappointed, but I believe that tomorrow and every day after that, the Bloc Québécois and the other opposition parties must continue to force the government to reveal the truth, given that the government is incapable of disciplining itself. Fortunately, the opposition, particularly the Bloc Québécois, is here to help.

I would like to use the few minutes I have left to talk about Omar Khadr. As we all know, Omar Khadr is a young man who was taken by his family, particularly his father, into al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Nobody is disputing that. He was 11 years old at the time.

My question is this. If an 11-year-old Canadian is taken by his father into an al-Qaeda camp, is he responsible for the decision to be in that terrorist camp? My question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Well, how about that—with the Prime Minister gone, there is just one minister in the House: the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, something is not right about what the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons told us. Everyone agrees that the member for Beauce made a mistake. But how does the government explain the fact that if Ms. Couillard had not revealed on TVA that the documents had been at her home since mid-April, we probably would not even know about it today?

If I speed—and it happens from time to time, as I imagine it does with other MPs—a police officer with a radar gun could pull me over, tell me that I broke the law and that I will have to pay. In this case, I am hearing that within the machinery of government, there is no police force and no way of ensuring that the rules are followed.

Once again, if Ms. Couillard had not revealed this information on TVA, the document could very well still be at her home. It could have been used for other means, and—from what we have been told—the minister would not have even known it was missing. I do not believe any of it.

I have one more question about this issue, and if I still have time, I will ask about the Omar Khadr affair.

What guarantees can the government give us that these classified documents—as the Prime Minister called them—did not constitute a danger to public safety, that they were not used by Ms. Couillard for other means, and that they did not end up in the wrong hands?

What guarantees can the government give us? Has it investigated? Are they just trusting in the good faith of Ms. Couillard, in spite of her unfortunate past connections? How has the government investigated to back up its statement that there were no leaks?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, again, everyone here will agree that what has been told to us, and no one has questioned it, is that Ms. Couillard said she had the documents at her home, according to her account, since about mid-April. The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons told us on several occasions that the government was not made aware of the disappearances until Sunday, and the Prime Minister only learned of it on Monday. For a period of five weeks, documents were missing from the Department of Foreign Affairs. Yet, they tell us that the rules are strict; that there are standards that were not respected by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he has paid the price. Yes, he has paid the price; but how will they ensure that it does not happen again the next time a minister forgets documents at someone’s home, or loses them or puts them under the mattress and forgets that they are under the mattress? I am not just talking about the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It could be the Minister of International Trade or National Defence or any other minister.

How can they guarantee that the departments concerned will quickly identify those documents as missing,so that we do not relive the situation we have been through in the past few weeks?

They are not answering our question. What I understand is that the government does not intend to correct the situation and the events that we have seen in recent weeks with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the former Minister of Foreign Affairs could happen again at any time with this government. Unless it wants to be irresponsible, the government must correct the situation.

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, once again, my question has not been answered. I understand very well, and I share, the discomfort of the government and all members of Parliament in the face of the mistake by the member for Beauce. However, that does not excuse the failure by the government bureaucracy—for a period of five weeks—to notice the disappearance of what the Prime Minister describes as “classified” documents, which is what the Leader of the Government is telling us from the government side.

I put this question to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons or perhaps to the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. What steps will be taken by the department and by the government to avoid a repetition of a situation such as this? I believe that everyone here will agree that when documents disappear for five weeks without anyone noticing—which is what they are telling us—that is a situation that must be corrected. What measures will be taken to correct the situation?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, I thank the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons for his answer; except that he did not answer my question.

How do documents disappear? How can documents, identified by the Prime Minister as “classified” disappear for five weeks and the department does not notice; the minister’s office does not realize it, the minister was not aware of it and the Prime Minister was not informed? There is something there.

Is the reason for this mistake—I am not referring to the mistake by the member for Beauce, but rather the administrative apparatus—the incompetence of bureaucrats in the Department of Foreign Affairs, or quite simply a somewhat causal approach on the part of the offices of the minister and the Prime Minister? I am asking him the question. If it is not the fault of the minister and not the fault of the Prime Minister, is it the fault of the Foreign Affairs department and its public servants?

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, like the House leader, the new foreign affairs minister and former international trade minister must expect that we too, like our Liberal colleagues, will want to clarify certain aspects of this saga between the hon. member for Beauce and Ms. Julie Couillard. It is for the purpose of keeping the people of Quebec and Canada informed.

Everyone knows that when the hon. member for Beauce was the foreign affairs minister, he forgot some documents at Ms. Couillard's place. She has said that they were forgotten around the middle of April, or shortly after the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Originally, the Prime Minister said during his press conference that the foreign affairs minister resigned because he had left classified confidential documents—those were his words—in non-secure places. This is what led to his resignation because it was a serious mistake.

I would like to ask a question, and I suppose that it will be the House Leader who answers and not the new foreign affairs minister. If they have strict security rules at the Department of Foreign Affairs, how is it possible that the neither this department nor the office of the minister at the time, the hon. member for Beauce, noticed that the documents had disappeared over the ensuing five weeks?

This all seems very nebulous to me and I would like a clear answer. It has nothing to do with the private lives of the hon. member for Beauce or Ms. Couillard.

How could documents, some of which the Prime Minister has described as “classified”, possibly just disappear for five weeks from the radar screens of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the office of its former minister?

[Foreign Affairs, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said yesterday that security regulations were to be strictly followed. It is completely impossible that the Prime Minister did not know the documents had disappeared and that he had not questioned the former foreign affairs minister on the subject.

If the Prime Minister knew, why did he hide the truth, if not to cover up his own government's incompetence?