Ralph Goodale

[Ethics, June 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, no amount of obfuscation will change the channel. As the Prime Minister—

[Ethics, June 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the issue is the dirty deal in the PMO. Mr. Perrin's public statements about this matter have been very narrow and very precise. He says he did not know of Nigel Wright's personal cheque, but he does not deny participation in the plan to bail out Mike Duffy, whitewash the audit and soften the consequences of Duffy's wrongdoing.

When did Mr. Perrin discover that Mr. Wright had cut that $90,000 cheque? Did he notify the law society, and did he call the police?

[Ethics, June 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the issue—

[Ethics, June 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister claims that he knew nothing of the secret deal between his office and Mike Duffy until May 15. However, his chief of staff, his communications shop and his lawyer were all engaged on this file well before that date trying to cover up Mr. Duffy's wrongful claims and the audit that was about to expose them.

Will the Prime Minister confirm that his lawyer, Benjamin Perrin, may not have known the wrongful source of the $90,000 but was aware of the terms of the Duffy deal, because he helped to negotiate it?

[Questions on the Order Paper, June 3rd, 2013]

With regard to the Agroforestry Development Centre: (a) have any studies been conducted, either internally within the government or by external consultants or advisors, to identify the costs or benefits of the proposed divestiture of the Agroforestry Development Centre at Indian Head, Saskatchewan, including any possible continuation of any science or research activity at the existing site or elsewhere; (b) who prepared the studies; (c) when were those studies completed; and (d) what were the detailed results of any such study?

[Ethics, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Duffy's reputation has been destroyed, but not his bank account. He remains $90,000 better off. Duffy took taxpayers for that amount, but he did not pay it back. Nigel Wright paid it.

Duffy keeps the $90,000, while the Receiver General gets $90,000 from an illicit deal that was so wrong it cost Mr. Wright his job.

Will the government repudiate the dirty money and instead garnishee Duffy's wages and seize his assets so he pays for his wrongdoing, not some deal maker in the PMO?

[Ethics, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in a news conference from Peru, the Prime Minister made it clear that when Nigel Wright cut the $90,000 deal for Mike Duffy, he was acting in his official capacity as chief of staff. That is exactly what the Prime Minister said. Therefore, all documentation, paper or electronic, is the property of the Government of Canada and not Mr. Wright.

There is the February 20 email, for example, outlining Duffy's expectations. There is Mr. Wright's transfer of funds and more. Canadians are entitled to see all of this. It is going on three weeks now. Will the government produce that paper trail?

[Emergency Medical Services Week, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this is Emergency Medical Services Week across Canada, and Canadian paramedics have a message that we should take to heart: defibrillators save lives. Every year, over 35,000 Canadians die of sudden cardiac arrest. Having quick access to a nearby defibrillator can help save them, and the chances of survival can go up by 75%.

The Government of Canada owns, operates or regulates a vast array of facilities. However, there is no consistent national policy on defibrillators. Some departments and agencies have them, but about half do not. The RCMP cannot say how many it has, and neither can Public Works Canada.

Paramedic Chiefs of Canada asks that all federal facilities be properly equipped with defibrillators, and The Heart and Stroke Foundation agrees.

Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone at any time. The Government of Canada should be a role model, adopting one consistent national policy and putting life-saving defibrillators in every facility under federal jurisdiction.

[Fair Rail Freight Service Act, May 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the issue with respect to what historically was called the “Crow's Nest rate” is that it ran into a serious impediment in the mid-1990s with the new World Trade Organization, which explicitly ruled that this form of structure in our freight rates constituted an illegal subsidy for the future. Accordingly, the government had to react with changes that provided a period of compensation for the loss of the subsidized rate and it tried to put the system on a more commercial basis for the long term into the future.

That was a very difficult transition for farmers. Those in the farming community in our country deserve a great deal of credit for having the strength and ingenuity to work their way through that period of great change and emerge successfully at the other side. However, they now need fair legislation that will give them the service they are paying for, and that is why Bill C-52 should be better than it is.

[Fair Rail Freight Service Act, May 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, I will get the hon. gentleman a calendar if that would help.

The focus in the 1990s was the costing review. The focus in 2006-2007 was the level of service review. The nature of the issue had transformed in the intervening years.

Quite frankly, the issue of private ownership or public ownership of the railways is, in these circumstances, entirely irrelevant. The shippers have had complaints about both sides of the equation, both the privately-owned railway, and while it was still in the public domain, the publicly owned railway. The point is that the ownership structure of the railway has proven to be irrelevant on the question of level of service.

At the moment, if we asked the shippers, they would be discrete in answering, but they would say that they are getting a better level of service from CN than from CP. There were times in the past when that was flipped around, but at the moment I think they would give CN credit for actually having tried to address the issue more effectively than CP has.

The bottom line is that shippers on both types of railways do not believe the level of service is up to snuff where it should be, which is why they were hoping for more effective legislation.