Pierre Paquette

[Softwood Lumber, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in the next few minutes I will fax over to the minister the agreement in principle that I have in my office.

Does the government realize that by refusing to implement loan guarantees thus far, it has put the entire softwood lumber industry in a position of weakness and that if the rest of the negotiations fail an aid package will be needed more than ever? Will an aid package for the industry be announced tomorrow morning if the negotiations fail?

[Softwood Lumber, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, one of the requests made by the Quebec Forest Industry Council for improvements pertained to Quebec obtaining a larger share of Canadian softwood exports as a result of basing the calculation of the quotas on the last five years rather than just 2005.

Does the government recognize that this is a reasonable request which it should immediately carry out?

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

I totally agree with the hon. member, Mr. Speaker. All programs of the public appointments commission, which is responsible for overseeing appointments made by the Prime Minister, come under him, because appointments are generally made by the Prime Minister's Office.

We end up with exactly the same kind of situation as previously, when the Ethics Commissioner was appointed by Prime Minister Chrétien and responsible for monitoring ethics within government. This is very much like asking the fox to guard the hen house.

I believe that all these very important players in our parliamentary life ought to be selected by the House.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.

I think we have all been able to see that the Conservatives in power do not have quite the sense of ethics and good governance that they had in opposition. This is a little disturbing, for we would have expected more consistency on the part of that party, even though, as I mentioned, the bill is a step in the right direction.

There have indeed been actions on the part of the government that are incompatible with sound ethics and good governance. The hon. member has just mentioned one. The appointment of Michael Fortier as senator so that he can be in Cabinet and represent the Montreal region is another. The fact that, two weeks after the election, the Minister of International Trade crossed from the Liberal Party to the Conservative Party is another major ethical issue.

In no way has the Ethics Commissioner cleared this affair. He has said that it is the responsibility of parliamentarians to tighten the law so as to avoid this type of situation. For what happened between the election on January 23, 2006 and the decision by the Minister of International Trade to move from the Liberals to the Conservatives? Probably a telephone call from the Prime Minister. If so, it was not the political environment that caused the Minister of International Trade to change his plans.

I always give the following example. When Lucien Bouchard, who was a Conservative, decided to go independent and found the Bloc Québécois, something fundamental in Canadian history happened, namely the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord. That was justification for leaving one party and creating the Bloc Québécois.

In the case of the Minister of International Trade, opportunism and his political career were probably the only criteria for his decision. In that sense, I am in complete agreement with the hon. member. One does not sense a political will on the part of the government to make a real change to ethics in this Parliament and this government. In my view, the weeks ahead will be very telling.

To close, I would mention that the Prime Minister’s relations with the media are also worrisome. The fact that the Access to Information Act is being brushed aside is consistent with his refusal to work with the media toward better publicizing the analysis and political directions of his government. This is prompting a great many questions and is inconsistent with Bill C-2.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be taking part in this debate on Bill C-2, the federal accountability act. To start with, like a number of my colleagues, I will point out that the title of the bill is not correct in French, and that an amendment which should be unanimously agreed to by this House would make the French title of the bill the Loi sur la responsabilité.

Our spokesperson on this subject, the member for Repentigny, said at the beginning of his speech that the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-2 in principle. Obviously, the entire question of ethics and good governance has been central to our debates in recent months, starting from the specific point when the Auditor General submitted her report on what is now commonly called the “sponsorship scandal”. In the last months of the session preceding the election, we therefore had ample opportunity to discuss all aspects of that scandal in this House.

I would remind the people listening that the Bloc Québécois did not wait for the Auditor General’s report. In our 2000 election platform, we had already identified the advertising agencies that had obviously benefited from the diversions of funds resulting in the sponsorship scandal. In recent months, we have spoken at length about the question of ethics.

The recent campaign was an opportunity, particularly for Quebeckers, to punish the Liberals for their negligence in managing public funds, and particularly for the fact that a portion of those public funds ended up in the coffers of the Liberal Party of Canada. And so Quebeckers punished the Liberal Party very severely: it now has 13 members in Quebec, when Mr. Trudeau once had 74 of the 75 members. This is an indication of the extent of the harm that this scandal caused in terms of public trust in the Liberal Party of Canada, but also to politicians as a class, unfortunately. It was therefore entirely appropriate that one of the first bills introduced by the minority Conservative government deals with ethics. I think that we are all very glad to see this.

The Bloc Québécois participated in the Gomery commission, and submitted a report that included 72 recommendations, some of which have been incorporated in Bill C-2. We are very pleased with this. On the other hand, there are things missing, gaps that we want to address over the course of the parliamentary process that will lead to passage of this bill. I would reiterate that the Bloc Québécois supports it in principle, for the very obvious reasons to which I have referred.

We are very pleased to see that returning officers will be appointed by Elections Canada based on merit, under Bill C-2. Of course, we would hope that, as in Quebec, returning officers will be selected after a public competition is held. We will have an opportunity to come back with this proposal and argue its merits to all of the members in this House.

Another thing we are pleased to see in Bill C-2 is that the Registrar of Lobbyists will be independent. It seems to us that it is extremely important that the person responsible for registering lobbyists be totally independent of the government and have the resources to do that job.

We know that the practice of lobbying is growing. I imagine that all our new colleagues who were elected in the last election of January 2006 must have been a little surprised to see the number of pressure groups who wanted to meet with members of Parliament to express their concerns to them and the solutions that they had to offer for the problems they identified.

I consider that it is absolutely proper, in a democracy, for hon. members to receive input from groups of lobbyists. However, we must avoid the excesses that we saw with the previous government.

For that reason, the independence of the registrar is important. Moreover, as in the case of the Ethics Commissioner, it is essential to ensure that the registrar has the resources to fulfill the mandate that the House has established.

Concerning the Act to regulate the funding of political parties, the Bloc is pleased to note that the suggestion from Quebec and from the Bloc Québécois has been included. That suggestion dealt with a prohibition on corporate donations. It has been part of the Quebec legislation from the very beginning. In reality it is a step forward to ensure that there is no blemish on the independent judgment of hon. members and parties. Personally, I do not believe that corporate donations could buy the consciences of some of our colleagues but they have created negative impressions among the public. Once those donations have been eliminated, the public image of all politicians should have a higher standing among the population.

There is a last element with which we agree and that we are pleased to see in Bill C-2. That is the strengthening of the powers of the Auditor General, in particular, the fact that in future she will be responsible for overseeing the administration of crown corporations. I recall that the Bloc Québécois had introduced a bill for that purpose. The government’s decision to adopt that measure is good news.

However, there are a number of elements that we do not agree with. As a result, I will take some time to analyze and comment on the bill. The amending of the Access to Information Act has been put off to a later date. A draft bill was introduced—if I may call it that—and yet we have been discussing amendments to the Access to Information Act for decades, to make it more accessible and to broaden its application. So it is not something new.

It is a shame that the Conservatives, who had promised—in fact, it is in their election platform—that the recommendations of the Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner concerning amendments to the Access to Information Act would be implemented, have now decided to put that off until later. They made a promise and the Bloc agreed with that approach. In spite of that, they have decided to delay, while the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, during the previous session, rejected a proposal by the then Minister of Justice who wanted to postpone any changes in order to further study the recommendations of the Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner. The committee, including the Conservative members, rejected that position and unanimously accepted the commissioner’s report as the basis for legislation. The committee also called on the government to introduce legislation without further delay.

It is amazing to see how the Conservatives are in a lot less of a hurry to give the media, the legislators and the public in general a means of gaining access to government information than they were when they sat on the opposition side. This is very strange.

As I pointed out at the beginning, during the study of this bill, the Bloc Québécois will want to improve the proposed legislation by adding the items I have just mentioned.

The Bloc has also identified some flaws, such as the idea of a financial reward to public servants who disclose wrongdoings. The Bloc recognizes that the strengthening of the law protects those who report questionable or dishonest practices. We believe that this is extremely important.

In closing, I will remind members that, with regard to the Access to Information Act, the bill proposes that only three of the nine foundations be subject to that act, and I did mention how unfortunate it was that the Conservative government did not keep its promise. This is very strange. Why these three foundations and not the other six? There is no logic to this decision.

As a political party that cares about democracy and the strengthening of democracy—and this is true for Canada as well as for Quebec—we will have an opportunity to bring forward amendments to this bill. I am convinced that all members will support the suggestions from the Bloc Québécois. They will aim at making the bill better and more complete, which has always been our goal as a constructive and vigilant opposition.

[Softwood Lumber, April 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, does the Minister realize that if the softwood lumber industry feels so vulnerable and concerned it is because the previous government refused to take action and provide loan guarantees to this industry, as it had requested, and that this government is doing exactly the same thing, that is abandoning our Canadian and Quebec softwood lumber industry?

[Softwood Lumber, April 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Frank Dottori, formerly with Tembec, confirms that the lumber industry has everything to lose by being forced to negotiate with the Americans under unnecessarily tight deadlines. Michel Vincent, of the Quebec Forest Industry Council, has stated that Quebec producers will accept nothing less than full repayment of countervailing duties illegally collected by the Americans. Clearly, the industry is very concerned.

Can the Minister of International Trade guarantee that he and his government will absolutely not negotiate a watered-down agreement with the Americans at the expense of the Quebec and Canadian softwood lumber industry?

[Softwood Lumber, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, can the Prime Minister assure us that the gaffe made last week by his industry minister—who said that the moneys held in trust by the Americans in the softwood lumber dispute were lost—will not result in negotiations that endanger the gains we have made through the NAFTA panel rulings?

[Softwood Lumber, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we hear that Washington has made an offer to settle the softwood lumber issue that fails to comply with the NAFTA rulings but that the government has nevertheless deemed attractive enough to resume the negotiations.

Can the Minister of International Trade explain what has changed to make what was unacceptable a few weeks ago suddenly acceptable?

[RESUMPTION OF DEBATE ON ADDRESS IN REPLY, April 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague on his excellent speech and also on his election. It warmed our hearts when he was elected, both in the Bloc Québécois and in Quebec as a whole. This now demonstrates that the idea of Quebec sovereignty is indeed felt throughout all regions of Quebec.

My colleague has addressed the question of employment insurance. I would like to ask him why, in his opinion, the Bloc Québécois has placed such emphasis on the importance of a program to assist older workers. As we know, the subamendment to the Speech from the Throne proposed by the Bloc Québécois refers to this. The subamendment was unanimously passed by this House. I would like the member to remind us of the importance of this program to the Bloc Québécois and to the region of Gatineau.