Stephen Harper

[The Budget, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what planet the Prime Minister is on as his career spirals down the toilet.

This party was not part of that budget deal and it would never be so fiscally irresponsible.

Will the Prime Minister continue to play hide and seek with his budget? When will he hold a vote here in the House on his new NDP budget?

[The Budget, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has announced $8 billion worth of new budgetary measures sponsored by the NDP. There is $4.5 billion in spending and $3.5 billion in tax cuts removed.

When will the Prime Minister bring his new budget to Parliament for a vote?

[The Budget, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister himself knew this was not the right budget when he tabled it less than two months ago.

[The Budget, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Prime Minister did the unprecedented. He ripped up his own budget. He has a new NDP budget, a budget which Parliament has never approved or voted on. Yet in the past 10 days the Prime Minister has spent over $7 billion promoting this budget.

When will the Prime Minister face the House and have a vote here in the House on his new budget?

[Committees of the House, April 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this has been a remarkable week that began with an unprecedented decision by the government to cancel opposition days, one of the fundamental rights in this House. During the rest of the week, we hardly saw the Prime Minister, here or in public. Last night, the Prime Minister delivered a public address, as if in a national crisis, but it was solely for partisan reasons. It was a partisan speech broadcast on television to the entire country.

It is remarkable when the Prime Minister does not appear here in the House or in public and communicates with the public only via a tape recording. It is incredible.

It has been a remarkable week. Even more remarkable were some of the things in the Prime Minister's speech last night. The Prime Minister effectively went on the air to give a partisan speech and to launch an election campaign. It is a campaign which he says he wants to set for some 10 months out, if I calculate correctly, that is if the Gomery report is ever tabled, since half of the Liberal Party is going to be before the federal courts trying to quash the Gomery report within the next month.

We have a Prime Minister who has already decided we should have an election at a time of extremely unusual choosing, a Prime Minister who has acknowledged corruption in his own party. The question that we face as the official opposition, the question that all Canadians face, is can a corrupt party remain in power while all this is going on? Can it remain in power month after month? The question we have to face as the official opposition is, can we prop up that party in power? Can we prop up a corrupt party at this time, particularly when, as my colleague the House leader has pointed out, that the two other opposition parties have already voted non-confidence in the government?

I do not use the term “corruption” lightly. What we are hearing at the Gomery inquiry is sworn testimony, in many cases sworn unrefuted testimony that certainly points to widespread corruption, but we have incidents outside of the Gomery inquiry that are not even subject to the Gomery inquiry. We have illegal lobbying done by the Prime Minister's Quebec lieutenant. We heard once again evasive answers today. There was improper contracting done by the Prime Minister's campaign manager at Earnscliffe. The campaign manager and the chief of staff just happen to be common law partners. We have investigations going on into that. We have the accusations, allegations of the partisan use of judicial appointments.

I would point out that a Liberal member said to me that people do not believe it. Virtually all of these allegations are coming from senior members of the Liberal Party. I repeat what I said earlier this week. If each group of Liberals says that the other group of Liberals is a group of crooks and liars, what does it really matter which group we choose to believe?

We have a principle in our parliamentary system. That principle is that the government must maintain the confidence of the House of Commons to remain in office.

We all know what the supply day manoeuvre was about earlier this week. Late last week the government removed Bill C-43, the budget bill, from the notice paper. I smelled right away an attempt to avoid a confidence motion at all costs, so I moved that our supply motion would make sure supply days would exist. That is what the government cancelled. Clearly the government has in mind, and it will do more manoeuvres, to avoid any kind of confidence motion in the next month.

This is not an option. This is a violation of the principle of our democratic system. If the government cannot maintain the confidence of the House, it must seek the confidence of Canadians. It cannot circumvent this fundamental principle through procedural manoeuvres. We will do whatever we can to ensure that when we return and have heard from the population of Canada that all options are available to us.

With that in mind, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “that” and substituting the following:

The 3rd report of the Standing Committee on Finance, presented on December 20, 2004, be not now concurred in,

But that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Finance with instruction that it amend the same so as to recommend that the government resign over refusing to accept some of the committee's key recommendations and to implement the budgetary changes that Canadians need.

[Sponsorship Program, April 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, a former director general of the Liberal Party of Canada admitted that people from the Liberal Party are there to take power, stay in power, and regain power. And what is the result? We have fraud, illegal lobbying, theft, threats, extortion, falsified election reports, money laundering, campaigns run with dirty money, and now they are rewarding volunteers by appointing them judges.

Is it any surprise that the Prime Minister is terrified at the thought of explaining all this here?

[Sponsorship Program, April 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the former director general of the Liberal Party now says that the party exists “to take power, keep power and win back power”.

The result is that we have stories of fraud, theft, illegal lobbying, filing false election returns, money laundering, campaigning with dirty money and kickbacks. Now we can add to the list paying off campaign workers with an appointment as a judge.

Is it any surprise that the Prime Minister is afraid to come to the democratically elected chamber and show his face?

[The Prime Minister, April 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, apparently today the Prime Minister will not appear in public. Instead, tonight he will issue a tape from his den, like some kind of fugitive leader.

I have spoken to the other opposition leaders and I think there would be unanimous agreement that if the Prime Minister wants to address Canadians at 7 p.m., he could do so here with the televised hearings of the House of Commons. He could do so in a public setting, as is our democratic custom.

Would the government be willing to give unanimous support to such a motion?

[Sponsorship Program, April 20th, 2005]

Okay, Mr. Speaker, it was a social meeting after which Cossette Communication got a $100 million contract.

Let me ask a second question. Was Cossette Communication a client of the Prime Minister's Quebec lieutenant? By client I mean did he ever receive money--he was a radio talk show host--from Cossette Communication?

[Sponsorship Program, April 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, may I just remind the government, if it continues to violate the will of the majority of the House, it does so at its peril.

The Minister of Transport keeps answering about his views on Alfonso Gagliano and his own definitions on lobbying.

I would like the Minister of Transport to just be clear. Today a number of articles describe a meeting between the former minister of public works, Alfonso Gagliano, himself and François Duffar of Cossette Communication Group. Did that meeting take place, yes or no?