Serge Cardin

[National Defence, March 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should update his information. The report points out that the army paid bills without checking to ensure that the shipments had made it to their destinations. It adds that if the army had managed funds more effectively, savings of close to $1 million could have been made.

How can the minister condone the fact that the army has wasted over $1 million, considering that his government does not think twice about cutting millions of dollars in social programs, for purely ideological reasons?

[National Defence, March 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, an internal report from the army points to some serious flaws in the management of transport contracts, including the shipping of munitions and explosives by civilian companies, and the army is not even sure that these companies have the required permits to do so. The Minister of National Defence is obviously out of his depth and has lost control of the management of his department.

What does he intend to do to ensure that munitions and explosives are shipped safely?

[Raynald Fréchette, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is with sadness that we learned of the death of Raynald Fréchette, former MNA for Sherbrooke and retired judge.

A lawyer by training, he was the founding president of the Société de criminologie de Sherbrooke. He got involved in politics in 1966, first with the Union Nationale in the riding of Sherbrooke, and then with René Lévesque's Parti Québécois team. He returned to practising law after being defeated in the 1985 election, and was appointed a judge in the Superior Court of Quebec in 1988. Justice Fréchette also co-authored a book published in 1989 called Les députés de Sherbrooke au Parlement fédéral et au Parlement provincial 1867-1989.

The Bloc Québécois pays tribute to this politician, who was known for his mastery of the French language, and offers its sincere condolences to his family, friends and former colleagues.

[Aerospace Industry, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there are people who truly do not understand the questions, who understand absolutely nothing.

Workers in Sherbrooke are calling on the government to intervene in order to get assurances from Boeing that the Quebec companies will get 60% of the industrial benefits from the C-17 procurements.

Do they have to be any clearer, or will the minister finally understand what the people of Sherbrooke and Quebec are asking for?

[Aerospace Industry, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in Sherbrooke, in Jean Charest's riding, people are mobilizing in order to tell the government they deplore the lack of guaranteed spinoffs for Quebec in the C-17 procurement contract. Some 75 people who work for AMF, the Machinists Union, ICP Sherbrooke and Sherwood-Drolet have sent letters in which they speak out against the lack of commitment by the Conservative government in this matter.

Can the Prime Minister explain to this House why Quebec will not receive the 60% of spinoffs it deserves?

[Canada Pension Plan, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague. Once again, she has shown just how much she cares for society's most vulnerable members.

I would like to revisit the issue of seniors who almost never received the guaranteed income supplement even though they were entitled to it. In some cases, they were entitled to the full amount. My colleague was not in this House when our colleague who has since left us, Mr. Gagnon, began his crusade to identify seniors who had not received the guaranteed income supplement they were entitled to.

In my previous life as an accountant, my regular clients sent me their parents' or their old aunts' tax returns, and I noticed that those people were entitled to the guaranteed income supplement. Lots of seniors were entitled to the guaranteed income supplement, but they never asked for it. And the government never pointed it out to the people who sent in their tax returns. Even though it knew that these people should have been receiving the guaranteed income supplement, the government never gave it to them.

I had the opportunity to hold a meeting in my riding. Nearly 400 people—either seniors or people caring for seniors—attended. We did the math, and in some cases, we found that people would have been entitled to the supplement from the time it was created up until about four years ago. This would have been a lot of money for these people, as much as $90,000 in today's dollars. The government took away these people's rights.

Do you know what this means to seniors who are only collecting old age pension but who should be getting the guaranteed income supplement? It means isolation and a life of poverty. They cannot go out because they cannot afford to. They live shut in, especially if they do not have any family. This is an injustice.

Despite the $13 billion surplus, the Liberal and Conservative governments have not agreed to give these people back everything they sacrificed to directly finance the government. The $13 billion was used to pay off some of the debt. The real debt we owe is to these seniors who were cheated of their guaranteed income supplement.

I would like to ask my colleague why the Conservative government is doing this. Perhaps they are just following the example set by the Liberal Party when it was in power. Why do these people not want to pay the debt they owe our seniors?

[Business of Supply, March 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on the clarity of her remarks even though our Conservative colleague opposite does not seem to get what it is all about.

There is something that I do not quite understand and I hope my colleague can help me with this. This government—a very temporary government because it is walking a tightrope and I am convinced it will make a false step—protects different industries such as the automobile industry in Ontario. However, in the case of the aerospace industry, which is mainly centred in Quebec, it does not follow through with what I would call the tradition of protecting the industries where they are located. What motivates the government to act this way? I simple cannot understand it, unless we are dealing with pure political partisanship. I wonder if my colleague could elaborate on this.

[Softwood Lumber, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Americans are abusing the anti-circumvention clause of the softwood lumber agreement to once again harm the forestry industry in Quebec and Canada.

Will the government drop its laissez-faire attitude and be firm with the Bush administration to prevent a new war on softwood lumber from starting up? Enough is enough.

[Softwood Lumber, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, according to United States Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, Quebec and Ontario are in contravention of the softwood lumber agreement.

In July 2006, the Bloc Québécois and the Quebec Forest Industry Council supported the agreement, but issued some concerns about the anti-circumvention clause in the agreement.

What does the Minister of International Trade intend to do in response to the allegations by the Americans?

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, I have been through eight elections. During my first election, I must admit that I was a little naive and I did not believe that fraud existed. If I had looked at the Chief Electoral Officer's reports and they indicated there had been one or two cases, then I could have said I was right. But since 1982, in the last eight elections, in which I have taken part, I have seen for myself that, unfortunately, a lot of people have tried to abuse the system.

What matters is that the people who have the right to vote can vote and those who do not have the right to vote cannot. With more specific pieces of identification, we will ensure that people have the right to vote. After that, we want to ensure that the people who do not have the right to vote, do not vote. There is no point in thinking that fraud does not exist, because it does.

The hon. member from the NDP who asked this question has probably been in the House of Commons longer than I have. He said earlier that he obtained and read information indicating that there is practically no fraud. Fraud statistics are based on the number of charges that have been laid. Therein lies the problem.

When the deputy returning officer was not able to ask for identification and someone claimed to be Joe Blow, it was difficult to know whether that person was telling the truth or not. Sometimes, the deputy returning officer or the clerk knew this was not true because Joe Blow was their neighbour. However, not much could be done about it.

I believe that Bill C-31 will prevent people who do not have the right to vote from voting and will allow those who do have that right to go ahead and vote. As the Conservative Party representative was saying, those who have the right to vote have a small responsibility to ensure they are on the list. Protecting the integrity and accuracy of an electoral list and the integrity of an electoral system to defend democracy is a shared responsibility.

Quebec has been using the date of birth for a long time. As far as I know, the problems related to the date of birth appearing on the electoral lists were few and far between, even fewer than the cases of fraud the hon. member from the NDP was talking about.