Pierre Paquette

[Public Works and Government Services, February 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the political interference and wheeling and dealing the Prime Minister's Office is being taken to task for occurred while the Prime Minister was boasting that his Accountability Act would protect whistleblowers in the public service. Today, he is looking for those who told the truth about these goings-on, and about those in his office in order to punish them.

Is that not a fine example of the window-dressing ethics, duplicity, and hypocrisy of this Prime Minister and this government?

[Public Works and Government Services, February 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this week we found out about two cases of political interference involving the Office of the Prime Minister and his press secretary, Dimitri Soudas. What was the Prime Minister's reaction to these troubling revelations? He started a witch hunt to find those responsible for the leak.

Instead of waging an internal political vendetta, should the Prime Minister not realize that he must address the problem at the source and put an end to such wheeling and dealing, including in his office?

[Points of Order, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak in this debate. It is very important because we are establishing a precedent.

It seems very clear to me that, pursuant to Standing Order 56.1 of the Annotated Standing Orders of the House of Commons, page 209, this type of government motion can only be put under Routine Proceedings, under the heading “Motions”. It states:

In relation to any routine motion for the presentation of which unanimous consent is required and has been denied, a Minister of the Crown may request during Routine Proceedings that the Speaker propose the said question to the House.

Pursuant to Standing Order 56.1(2):

The question on any such motion shall be put forthwith, without debate or amendment.

Pursuant to Standing Order 56.1(3):

When the Speaker puts the question on such a motion, he or she shall ask those who object to rise in their places. If twenty-five or more Members then rise, the motion shall be deemed to have been withdrawn; otherwise, the motion shall have been adopted.

It clearly states “during Routine Proceedings” under the heading “Motions”. We were no longer there.

In my opinion, the point made by the House Leader of the New Democratic Party is valid. We would be creating a precedent that would allow a minister of the government to make a motion at any time during a debate and if there were not 25 members of the opposition present to oppose it, the motion would be adopted.

In my opinion, this decision should be reviewed. I am counting on your judgment, which is not only practical but eminently fair, to correct the situation.

[Olymel, January 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on January 19, the Olymel company, located in the Lanaudière region, donated 60,000 kilos of pork and poultry, worth an estimated $500,000, thus allowing 16,000 poor families and 5,000 underprivileged children to receive this food, through Moisson Lanaudière, in Joliette.

The hon. member for Montcalm and I wish to congratulate the company's CEO, Réjean Nadeau, his unionized employees and their president, Mario Maisonneuve, who agreed to work long hours during three weekends, out of solidarity with all these people. The Lanaudière families in need and the entire community are proud to acknowledge the solidarity displayed by everyone in that company.

On behalf of all my Bloc Québécois colleagues, thank you for your generosity, and congratulations on your fine humanitarian action.

[Privilege, January 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the question of privilege raised by the member for Mississauga South.

The Bloc Québécois has no reason to disbelieve what he has told us; the facts he shared seem to show that the machinery of government now distinguishes between elected members who are Conservatives and in power, and opposition members.

He described his experience, and I completely agree that this is a breach of his privileges as a member. He supported his question of privilege with quotes from House of Commons Procedure and Practice. For the benefit of Quebeckers and Canadians, I would like to read an excerpt from page 67, which states:

Thus, the House also claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which, though not a breach of a specific privilege, tends to obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions; obstructs or impedes any Member or Officer of the House in the discharge of their duties—

That is on page 67. In this case, it is quite clear that Health Canada's procedure discriminates against the member. In my opinion, for the past several months, if not the past several years, the government has been taking steps to impede the work of opposition members, and this can be seen in all sorts of situations.

Yesterday, a point of privilege was raised about the fact that the Minister of Foreign Affairs had not informed the House that Canada had stopped transferring Afghan prisoners to the Afghan authorities on November 5, I believe, even though this House had been told the opposite.

I also know that in many of our ridings, Conservative candidates are being presented as though they were already sitting members of Parliament. I would like to draw my colleagues' attention to the aerospace announcement made by the senator and Minister of Public Works and Government Services. He was present along with all the candidates for the island of Laval, even though there is no Conservative member in that area. The message was that if people voted for the right party next time, these ridings and the people in them would reap the benefits. I find this very damaging to democracy.

I would like to tell another anecdote that shows how this government behaves. Recently, a Conservative member was in Rivière-du-Loup along with our friend from Repentigny. Some seniors were protesting the Conservative government's failure to keep its promise to make retroactive guaranteed income supplement payments. The Conservative member implied that if the seniors voted for the right party next time, they could expect to receive the retroactive payments they are entitled to, which the Conservatives had promised.

In my opinion, this sort of behaviour is widespread. That is why the Bloc Québécois members take the events reported by the member for Mississauga South extremely seriously. We would like you to rule on this point of privilege, Mr. Speaker. With this attitude—in this case, we are talking about Health Canada, but there are other cases as well—the government and the whole government bureaucracy are truly impeding the work of opposition members, who form an essential part of democracy, even Canadian democracy.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 28th, 2008]

With respect to transfers of medical files on military personnel and former military personnel: (a) where at this time are the medical files on the personnel treated at the military’s Deer Lodge Hospital from 1973 to 1976 inclusively, which were transferred by the Hospital to the Department of National Defence and to the Department of Veterans Affairs; and (b) what steps must be taken so that military personnel and former military personnel can prove their pension entitlement when their medical files have been lost in the course of a transfer?

[Petitions, January 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am presenting today a petition that I am very pleased to table in this House. It was signed by more than 750 young people from the Thérèse Martin high school in Joliette. During their training, these students have become aware of today's environmental challenges and the actions that citizens and governments alike can take to make a difference, especially with respect to climate change.

These young people from the Lanaudière region have taken the time to raise their own awareness, to mobilize, and to circulate and sign this petition calling on the federal government, this Conservative government, to assume its responsibilities and, please, honour the agreement concerning the Kyoto protocol, which Canada has already signed. I am very proud to present this petition.

[Point of Order, December 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a brief point of order.

On behalf of my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, I am appealing to you with regard to a decision made by the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on December 6. The chair deemed that an amendment introduced by my colleague on behalf of the Bloc Québécois was out of order.

I will explain very quickly. This has to do with Bill C-3 concerning security certificates. The bill already allows an appeal, but only in very restricted circumstances. An appeal can be made only if a judge believes that a serious question of general importance is involved. Only then can the case be re-examined.

Since the bill opened the debate on appeals and in light of the serious consequences of security certificates, we amended this appeal process to broaden it. People can be detained for several years on the basis of these security certificates. We therefore wanted the appeal process to go beyond what the bill allowed and be governed by more or less the same provisions as in the Criminal Code.

When my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin introduced his amendment, which we felt was in order because it amended an existing part of the bill—namely, the appeal process—the amendment was ruled out of order because it was considered to be outside the scope of the law. Consequently, we were unable to discuss the amendment in committee, and our colleague was not even able to present his arguments.

I would like to bring to your attention the French and English dictionary definitions of “scope of the law”, which in French is rendered as portée de la loi. The English term is found in the eighth edition of Black's Law Dictionary.

It states that “scope of authority” is:

The range of reasonable power that an agent has been delegated or might foreseeably be delegated in carrying out the principal's business.

The French term “portée”, or scope, is defined in the third edition of the Dictionnaire de droit québécois et canadien:

Scope: term used to refer to the area of application or effects of an act, agreement, legal decision, etc.

Consequently, in our opinion, the amendment introduced by the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin was completely in order because it pertained to an existing clause of the bill. Certainly, it broadened that clause, but in our opinion, when a bill is being studied clause by clause, nothing prohibits a member from introducing an amendment that broadens or restricts an existing clause of the bill—in this case, the appeal clause.

We are therefore calling on you to rule that this amendment was in order, so that we can introduce it here, in Committee of the Whole, when we discuss Bill C-3 regarding security certificates.

[The Environment, December 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, setting the economy against the environment, as the Conservatives are doing, is totally outdated. The Conservatives need to understand that the Kyoto targets are business opportunities that could improve the economy and the environment at the same time.

Does the Prime Minister realize that he must abandon his polluter-paid approach, set emissions caps and set 1990 as the reference year so that the carbon exchange in Montreal can really get off the ground?

[The Environment, December 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Montreal Exchange, which has expertise in derivatives, is ready to launch a carbon exchange. For this exchange to succeed, the federal government must adjust its regulatory framework immediately to recognize the past efforts of companies in Quebec and require polluters such as the oil companies to make absolute reductions.

Will the Prime Minister recognize that he is responsible for establishing that framework by selecting 1990 as the reference year instead of 2006, as is the case in his tailor-made plan for the oil companies?