Stephen Harper

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Ethics Commissioner found that 98% of the rushed permits went to Liberals. Nobody is fooled that this is not on a partisan basis.

Members will remember that in the lead-up to May's confidence vote, the government staged a phony complete exoneration for the former minister here in the House. The Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and the communications director of the Prime Minister all sang the former minister's innocence, which is not exactly what the report says.

When did the Prime Minister learn that this so-called complete exoneration was in fact a fabrication?

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, let me explore my first question a little further. The Prime Minister has consistently defended the actions of the former minister. In fact, he stood up for her actions 100% up until today, and I guess including today. Can the Prime Minister tell us when he became aware that the former minister was distributing ministerial permits on a partisan basis?

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it has now been confirmed that the former immigration minister was caught in a serious conflict of interest. During last year's election, the former minister rushed through ministerial permits to the benefit of campaigning Liberal MPs. In fact, she signed off on some 74 of them during the campaign and 19 in a two day period leading up to the writ.

Will the Prime Minister tell the House if anyone in his office was aware of this policy at the time?

[Child Care, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the difference is that parents so far have not seen anything from the government and from this party they would have seen something by now.

Parents and the provinces want to be able to decide which child care system suits them best. With regard to the child care model that the minister wants to impose, Bernard Lord, the Premier of New Brunswick, said that he did not appreciate the federal government dictating what the province had to do.

Why is the minister continuing to ignore the provinces' demands for greater flexibility?

[Child Care, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we should have known that not passing the budget would not stop announcements but passing it will not guarantee any results.

At best, the minister's plan to give all the money to bureaucrats and advocates will benefit a tiny group of children. It will leave most parents behind, including, obviously, those who work shift work, and those who use non-institutional options.

Why not give at least some of the $5 billion to parents and children themselves, as New Brunswick proposes to do?

[Child Care, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as with so many Liberal promises, the details and results of the government's child care scheme remain a mystery.

The Minister of Social Development has admitted that $5 billion over five years will not create a system. He further admitted that he does not know how much money it would cost to create a system.

Now that the government has given him several hundred million dollars, could he at least tell us how many more child care spaces parents will see this fall?

[National Security, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, those are non-answers to a serious question of security and national sovereignty. We should be getting answers and they should be coming from the leader of the country.

It is a matter of public record that a foreign government is spying on the activities of Canadian citizens and engaging in industrial espionage. Would the Prime Minister tell us whether his government plans to do anything at all about this in the future?

[National Security, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, judging from that answer, the Prime Minister did not explicitly raise this issue. Not only does a foreign spy network undermine our security, it is in this case damaging our economic interests.

Today the former head of the CSIS Asia desk has said that the Chinese government is engaged in industrial espionage that costs our economy $1 billion a month.

Would the Prime Minister tell us whether he or anyone in his government has ever issued a formal protest of any kind for this type of activity in Canada by the Chinese government?

[National Security, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, for some time there has been growing evidence of a large spy network being operated in Canada by the Chinese government. Today the former head of the CSIS Asia desk confirmed reports from defectors that close to a thousand Chinese government agent spies had infiltrated Canada.

The Prime Minister has been evading answering this. I want to ask him very directly. Did the Prime Minister explicitly raise this violation of our sovereignty when he met with leading Chinese government officials in Beijing earlier this year?

[Sponsorship Program, June 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, these answers by the Prime Minister are simply not factually correct. Here is what the Prime Minister is doing. He had an exchange of letters, call it what they will, behind Justice Gomery's back. Justice Gomery was not even informed about this. It was contrary to the undertaking the Attorney General had made.

Now Justice Gomery is demanding, in his correspondence of June 6, very specific action by the government. Is the government willing to take that action or is it going to continue to work hand in hand with Chrétien's lawyers?