Stockwell Day

[Government Of Canada, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is the auditor general said that the company should not have been selected.

I am certain that after two years of our questions about Shawinigan, the Prime Minister knows that there are a great many suspicions about the Prime Minister himself. There is only one way to eliminate all doubt. Why does the solicitor general not set up an independent inquiry?

[Government Of Canada, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, if the ethics counsellor says something positive about the Prime Minister, then it is accurate. If he says something that is not positive, then it is speculative. That is very interesting.

It was yesterday that we saw the first signs of the government starting to cry uncle as we continued on this particular file. It does not want us to ask questions. I need to ask questions on this because it was the auditor general who said that the contract that Mr. Gauthier had should not have been given to him. The auditor general that the company should not have been selected.

Why is the Deputy Prime Minister so quick to defend a contract that the auditor general was quick to condemn?

[Government Of Canada, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, if he believes the Liberal pollsters he would acknowledge that the Prime Minister has the lowest ratings. It is quite interesting that he has mentioned that.

We keep asking these questions. For the last couple of years every week there has been another question and every week there have been more excuses. We are seeing that today as this goes on.

While the Prime Minister was arm-twisting some $600,000 out of the president of the Business Development Bank, a federally funded regional development program was ponying up another $200,000 for the Auberge Grand-Mère. That brings the total of the bailout to $3.4 million.

Why were millions of taxpayer dollars spent to bail out a business that even the ethics counsellor is now saying the Prime Minister had a financial interest in?

[Government Of Canada, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, getting to the issue of accountability, which is what health care funding, education funding and all the other areas are about, if there will be more referees on the ice, it is important that there is a system of monitoring. That system has to require at least three things. It has to very clearly set out the goals of the program. It has to have a system in place to monitor the progress of the goals and then something to show whether the goals were achieved.

I would like to know if the President of the Treasury Board has consulted with any of the provinces that have these award winning systems in place to monitor a similar program because the auditor general says that they do not have this program. Or, is she just concerned with accountability as far as it goes and ends where the Prime Minister—

[Government Of Canada, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is one of the responsibilities of the official opposition to give credit where credit is due when the government appears to be doing something responsible.

It seems that there is at least one person over there who is concerned about the mismanagement of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. We hear that the President of the Treasury Board is now saying that she will be hiring and assigning 150 new auditors. We give credit for that. That is good news.

Since we have been asking questions for two years about the shenanigans in Shawinigan, how many of those new auditors will be assigned to the Shawinigan file?

[Grants And Contributions, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister deals with material that may be up to four years old. It is the ethics counsellor who finds the Gauthier case questionable. It is the auditor general who has brought questions about receiving these funds. It is the ethics counsellor and the auditor general. Why will they not deal with this basic question of conflict of interest?

It is very clear that as the items continue to pile up on this file the questions continue to pile up. I would like to know if there is actually some other information that the Prime Minister is aware of that he does not want us to know about, and that is really the reason he will not allow the solicitor general to move ahead with an independent investigation.

[Grants And Contributions, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, he does not agree with either the ethics counsellor or the auditor general. I want to remind him that Claude Gauthier bought the land from the Prime Minister that helped boost the value of his shares in the neighbouring golf course. He then donated $10,000 to the Prime Minister's election campaign. During that same period of time, Mr. Gauthier received $7 million from federal government programs, nearly all of which the auditor general says he was not entitled to.

How many millions need to go to Mr. Gauthier before the solicitor general will call for an independent inquiry into this?

[Grants And Contributions, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the official opposition believes that Canadians want governments to be above suspicion but not above the law, and so as the Shawinigan file continues to grow we continue to demand accountability.

Members will remember Mr. Claude Gauthier as the man who bought the piece of land from the Prime Minister back in 1996 and then donated $10,000 to his 1997 election campaign. He was also the gentleman who got the $6 million government contract, even though he was not qualified, and another $1 million from the transitional jobs fund. Now it turns out that Mr. Gauthier also lucked into $9 million worth of immigrant investor funds after the Prime Minister met with those investors.

Why would the Prime Minister not be concerned about this conflict of interest?

[Agriculture, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I advise you that I will be splitting my time with fellow opposition members.

I would like to take at face value the high sounding noises that we heard from across the way from the Secretary of State for Rural Development, but it is of grave concern to me that when we have a member asking the minister if he can ask some questions related to the dissertation which the minister just gave on agriculture, the minister says no. We cannot even ask some basic questions related to the crisis our farmers are facing.

I would have been more assured about the sincerity of the government if at some time between now and going back to last November or October we had heard some kind of assurance from the Prime Minister, from the secretary of state or from the minister of agriculture that their Liberal candidate in Regina was misspeaking when that candidate informed farmers who were waiting in Regina for the Prime Minister—and who would not meet with them—that because they would not vote properly they might not get the help they needed. We have never heard a denunciation of that particular comment.

I am trying to accept at face value the sincerity, but I have nothing to back it up. Questions will not be answered today and horrendous statements are not refuted or not reprimanded.

The Secretary of State for Rural Development has also said that the government is looking for strategies. I do appreciate his honesty from that point of view. The suggestion is that the government does not have the strategies but is looking for them. I appreciate that openness.

It is important to note, as we look at the immediate crisis upon us, that funding is needed. It is important to note that farmers in Canada from coast to coast, our producers, are able to do incredible things. They are able to feed the world. They are not simply asking for subsidization. They are not simply asking for more money.

The strategies that have been formulated by the Canadian Alliance have been based upon numerous meetings with producers from coast to coast. There were some 76 meetings with thousands of farmers, as compared to the government committee that trotted around some time ago. I think it had nine meetings. We are talking about 76 meetings with thousands of producers.

Those producers said some things in terms of direct strategies. They asked that their input costs be lowered. We have offered a number of ways to do that. There was a proposal in the House to lower costs of fuel, including diesel fuel. Liberal federal MPs voted against that. There was a strategy. We were offering some hope.

We have talked about the ability to lower user fees. Our estimations through Agriculture Canada are that user fees related to fertilizer purchases alone hit the farm community at something to the tune of $300 million. We have asked for a reduction of that to help with their input costs. The answer is no.

We have talked about value added. If we increase the value added areas of this part of our economy there will be more demand for the product, whether we are talking about the ethanol capabilities and possibilities that are there in Ontario or the pasta producing plants throughout the west. We have suggested that the government lower business taxes, lower costs of those businesses and increase the incentive to invest. We have offered that as very specific strategies. What do we get? No action.

I am having trouble with the sincerity in terms of wanting to help our agricultural sector. We have said that we should look aggressively at negotiating downward the horrendous subsidies faced by our farmers. Members know quite well that European grain farmers are subsidized to the tune of something like 56% of their income; U.S. farmers, something like 36% to 38%; and Canadians farmers, something like 8% to 9%. This is not a case of our producers saying that they simply need huge amounts of increased subsidies, but they do need some help now. We have offered some very specific strategies and we do not seem to be getting any.

We have offered the very clear strategy of giving producers, especially our grain producers, marketing choice related to the wheat board. These are specific strategies. We are not saying that we should crater the wheat board. There may be a place for it for those who choose it. Again we get no response. We have been asked for the strategies and we do not get them.

Our members have done significant detailed work in terms of improvements to the grain handling and transportation system. We have offered those as specific strategies. We are even willing to say that if members opposite in the Liberal government pick up those strategies we will applaud them. We will even give them credit. This has now gone beyond partisan concern. We have producers right now who are saying that they do not think they can get into the ground this spring. Something needs to happen now.

The AIDA program has been identified for two years. There is something like $1.7 billion sitting there on the cabinet table when it should be on the kitchen tables of our farmers. Almost half of that has been refused for those who are applying. In many cases it is on technicalities.

What is the problem with the federal Liberal government? We have farmers and producers who are saying they need those dollars now. They are sitting on the table. We approved those dollars to move ahead, and still we see no action. There are farmers who do not know if they can make it through this spring.

In terms of reducing downward these subsidies, there is great capability on behalf of our government to do that if it had a will to do it. It could marshal the power of other trading nations and use that collective buying power in terms of being significant on these reductions.

This is not simply a western problem or an Ontario problem. Let us look at the situation with P.E.I. with the potato shipments shut out at the border. We know through the people who had done the research related to the potato wart that this was not a problem. We understand the minister was globetrotting somewhere when these issues should have been dealt with. We had P.E.I. farmers either putting their product into the bins or ploughing them into the ground.

We need to do something and we need to do something now. They have asked for strategies and we have given those strategies. My colleagues will go into these in even more detail.

This is not a time for partisan positioning. It was only a few weeks ago that I met a group of farmers. One farmer held his hand out and as I shook his hand he held on to mine. He said that he was holding on but that he did not know if he could hold on through the spring. He said that they needed those dollars to be released to them now, the dollars that were on the table.

Politics aside, we are talking about enabling and empowering our agriculture community to do what it does best, which is to be the most innovative in the world. Canadian producers and farmers have proven that they can be the hardest working and most constructive in the world. Our agriculture community has proven that it can be number one in the world when it comes to conservation policies. It is time they had the support of a government that would clear the obstacles and allow them to be that.

It is time we had a federal government that set and maintained a vision for agriculture, a vision for our agriculture community to literally be able to feed the world and, at the same time, feed their own families while they are doing it. That is the position of the Canadian Alliance, the official opposition. The government has asked for strategies and we have given them strategies.

We are asking the government to act on those strategies because time is running out for too many farmers. It is time to move for the family farm.

[Ethics Counsellor, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, he should consult yesterday's and today's confirmation from the ethics counsellor.

The official opposition continues to bring forward ideas that will bring democracy and freedom to the House of Commons which will be good for all Canadians.

Tonight there will be a vote on a motion that I tabled last week, a vote asking for support for a promise from the red book that we would have an ethics counsellor who reports to this House. That was a Liberal promise, but we understand that the Liberal members of parliament will be whipped into opposing their own promise.

What is it about this motion that the Prime Minister thinks will hurt the country?