Stephen Harper

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister asked the ethics counsellor on June 11 to provide him with a comprehensive report of his activities and advice on September 30 of this year. It would be surprising to find out that this incident was not in there on September 30.

However I want to refer to one other incident. On May 28 the Prime Minister told the media in this country that he was not going to ask the ethics counsellor's opinion on the Holland College matter, yet he has asked his opinion on just about every matter that has been raised in the House.

Is he not going to admit to us that the reason he did not ask for the advice was that he already knew what it was; that it was unethical behaviour?

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says last week. I will ask him to clarify that answer.

We know from testimony that has been given elsewhere that the ethics counsellor advises the Prime Minister and briefs him on question period responses. This matter on the Holland College dealings was raised in question periods last May and June.

Is he saying that he was never advised by the ethics counsellor before he answered questions in question period?

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the Prime Minister's defence is not simply that he does not know the difference between right and wrong even when his own ethics counsellor tells him so.

I return. The Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister and the former solicitor general all assured the House that there was no conflict of interest in the Holland College case. We know now that the former solicitor general knew otherwise and the ethics counsellor had told him in 1999.

When did the Prime Minister become informed of the ethics counsellor's position?

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister knows that is playing very tightly with what the ethics counsellor said.

The government knew the Holland College dealings constituted a conflict of interest three years ago. It knew that when the Holland College dealings were raised in the House last May and June by several members of the opposition and yet the former solicitor general, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister assured the House that no conflict existed.

Why did the Prime Minister mislead the House on this critical matter?

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister accepted the resignation of the former solicitor general after the ethics counsellor said that he had violated rules in the Holland College matter. Yet we now know that the government had advice from the ethics counsellor on this matter since 1999.

What good are any ethical guidelines if the Prime Minister allows his cabinet ministers to override them?

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I guess we are establishing a new tradition that the members of cabinet remain secret unless we ask about the latest changes.

This scandal dragged on for three weeks with considerable damage to the government. Does the Prime Minister admit that we could avoid this kind of thing in the future if he would agree to the opposition's longstanding demands, to his own 1993 election promise, and agree to have a fully independent ethics commissioner?

[Solicitor General of Canada, October 22nd, 2002]

We would think, Mr. Speaker, if they had a ministerial resignation to announce, it would be announced, not heard back in the lobby on Newsworld .

My question is simple. Since this is, according to the Prime Minister, the most honest minister in cabinet, would he agree to table the report on the former solicitor general's activities by the ethics counsellor?

[Solicitor General of Canada, October 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we just had the highly unusual exercise of being informed indirectly about the resignation of a minister, a minister we are now told was the greatest and most honest minister--

[Kyoto Protocol, October 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that answer was so typical of the minister, to insult the knowledge of the questioner and then have absolutely no information himself.

The government is admitting that at least one-quarter of our CO

2

reductions will not actually be made but will have to be paid for out of so-called emissions trading permits from other countries. Since no market for such permits exists, how can the government have any idea what they will cost?

[Kyoto Protocol, October 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, since the government does not have any idea where it is going, instead of a plan on Kyoto, all the government has floated is a roomful of hot air trial balloons.

It has been forced to admit that Kyoto would cost between $5 billion and $25 billion and eliminate between 60,000 and 250,000 jobs. That was while it was claiming we would get credit for clean energy exports to the United States.

Now that the minister has finally admitted we will get no such credit, will the minister tell us how much higher he projects the cost of Kyoto will be?