Pierre Poilievre

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, February 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his answer. He deserves our congratulations because he really does work very hard for his constituents. And that is why I congratulate him now.

The hon. member misses the point. It is true that his government raised ever so slightly the basic personal exemption, which means that the average taxpayer will save a whopping $16 this year. This means that Canadians can buy a doughnut once a month. If they want to have a doughnut once a week, they can carve it into four pieces. They can have a quarter of a doughnut once a week with the money that has been saved for them by this tax relief. What an insult to the working families in his constituency.

Furthermore, he is right about one thing, working families do not have the choices. They do not have the options. This system will take even more options away.

What I propose is a refundable tax credit that would go into the pockets of every family, regardless of their income and would be refundable. Would that not be the way to give real choice to working families in his own riding?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, February 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I was originally going to pose a query here in adjournment proceedings resulting from the Treasury Board President's insult against Canada's youth when he said that I was too young to serve in the House of Commons even though 30,488 constituents in my riding decided to replace the existing defence minister with me. However I have decided to take this discussion one step further and deal with an issue that is important to many young families that I represent in the constituency of Nepean—Carleton.

In particular, in places like Nepean, Greely and Riverside South we have thousands of young families with toddlers running around. The government will be interested to know that Nepean has 23 hockey teams in the same age group, which is why it is so important for me to represent the interests of young families.

Further to that point, the government has announced $5 billion for a national babysitting bureaucracy over the next five years. I find it difficult to understand why those dollars should be taken out of the pockets of hardworking taxpayers, hardworking women and families, so that the government can send those dollars to a bureaucracy and ultimately to a group of unionized staff to set up a brand new babysitting bureaucracy, a brand new day care administration run by the government.

In representing the views of my constituents, I would rather see those dollars go directly into the pockets of parents to deal with child care needs directly. We could cut the bureaucracy out of the process by just giving those child care dollars directly to the people who care and know most about the interests of their children, those of course being the parents. We have millions of child care experts all across the country who already exist. They are called moms and dads.

I wonder why the government refuses to trust parents. Why does it continue to take billions of tax dollars out of the pockets of middle class working families and force on them a national babysitting bureaucracy which those parents did not choose and do not want? Why will the government not put the child care dollars directly into the pockets of parents? Some might choose to use those dollars for day care. Others might decide to keep one parent in the home. Still others might hire a neighbour, a family member or a community based option to deal with their child care needs while they are at work. However that should be a choice for parents. It is not the right of the government to take that choice away.

Why would the government want to take away a fundamental right of parents to decide what is best for their children by forcing on them a day care system that is not universal, excludes stay at home mothers and fathers, excludes community based care, excludes faith based care, excludes family based care and excludes 90% of options? It only provides funding for a small minority who will end up choosing a government run facility to institutionalize their children. Why would the government want to take away choices from women and families?

[The Budget, February 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, one thing that this budget failed dramatically to address was the nation's failure to provide treatment to those children who are suffering with autism.

We have a Prime Minister who rails that he will solve the health care problem for a generation. Meanwhile, this budget did absolutely nothing to address the very serious concern that there are children in this country with autism for whom basic ABA treatment is not provided, leaving families to cover this essential medical requirement to the tune of as much as $50,000 or $60,000 per year. This is unacceptable in a democracy that purports to support the universality of health care under a government that claims to be its defender.

Why has the government continued to fail to provide basic treatment to those children who are suffering with autism?

[Petitions, February 23rd, 2005]

Second, Mr. Speaker, it is an honour, as a friend of democracies of the world to introduce a petition, which calls upon the government to note the following. The appointment of Yvon Charbonneau as Canada's Ambassador to UNESCO has caused great concerns to Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Mr. Charbonneau has made numerous comments and statements publicly against Jewish Canadians and the state of Israel and has never recanted these anti-Semitic statements or beliefs. The appointment of Yvon Charbonneau as Ambassador of Canada, a man who has expressed anti-Semitic and anti-Israel and even anti-American views, sends a message to Canadians and the global community that such views reflect the policies of the Government of Canada. They state that these views are not acceptable to Canadians.

It is an honour indeed to present both of these petitions.

[Petitions, February 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise and present two petitions before the House. The first petition deals with juvenile type 1 diabetes research which was presented to me by a number of students in my constituency who have identified this critical ailment as being a problem that friends and neighbours of theirs have experienced at a very young age.

These youngsters have put together a splendid petition which calls upon the federal government in the 2005 budget to invest $25 million per year for the next five years in research targeted specifically for juvenile type 1 diabetes.

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made an impassioned plea for accountability and I cannot help but agree with him. He was extremely eloquent in making that case.

I want to speak to the broader issue of accountability here today. The revenue minister stated in the House recently that he wants to spend millions of dollars by moving major government departments out of the capital region to shore up Liberal support in other regions. This reminds my constituents of the time when Jean Chrétien and David Pratt moved the taxation processing office from Bell's Corners to, let us guess where, Shawinigan, killing Nepean's jobs in order to save Jean Chrétien's jobs.

I wonder if the hon. member would stand in this House and agree that the jobs of public servants are more important than the jobs of Liberal politicians.

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the report goes on to quote the revenue minister saying:

I think the lesson that we learned...is regional balance is crucial and the vividness of their (Atlantic MPs') view on that has to do with the experience and also the election of 1997.

In other words, he wants to make decisions on reallocating government departments based on the 1997 election results. This is an issue of accountability, and here in the national capital region it reminds us of when Jean Chrétien and David Pratt moved the tax processing office out of Bell's Corners, killing jobs in my constituency.

I have a question for the hon. member. Why is it that Liberal politicians' jobs are more important to the government than the jobs of my constituents?

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, what we are really talking about today is accountability. I want to address a somewhat related issue to accountability and have the hon. member comment on it.

There is an ongoing discussion about moving government departments out of the city of Ottawa, out of the national capital region, to shore up Liberal support in other regions. I will just quote a report that came out of the Regina Leader-Post :

Liberal MPs from Atlantic Canada have made it particularly clear that he shouldn't repeat the kind of cuts that hit their region very hard a decade ago and led to the loss of 20 Liberal seats in the 1997 election, said McCallum.

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 15th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to point out that the members from the Bloc Québécois are always interested in provincial jurisdictions, but they do not appear to see any importance in family jurisdictions. I think that is very interesting. They contradict themselves by taking this position.

It is clear that the Bloc would like to speak constantly about the jurisdiction of the provincial government, namely in Quebec, but never about the jurisdiction of families to make their own decisions. It is an enormous contradiction for that party to stand in the House and constantly speak about the need to take power out of this place and give it to another level of government, but never to take the power out of the hands of both governments and give it directly to the parents themselves.

Would the hon. member stand in the House and explain to us from which funding envelope the government is going to find the billions and billions of dollars that this new babysitting bureaucracy will cost?

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 15th, 2005]

Canadians do not want a system.