House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 44% of the vote.
Government Contracts February 7th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, there are rules in place. They are clear. They were flouted by a minister.
Instead of sending one of his backbenchers to protect him, why does the Prime Minister not have the courage to rise in this House and discipline his minister, who gave $122,000 to one of his buddies for a 20-page speech, a flagrant breach of the rules? Why are there no sanctions for these ministers, although they insist that the public obey the law?
Government Contracts February 7th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, there is a clear rule at Treasury Board requiring multiple bids above $25,000. The Minister of Finance breached that rule. He gave a contract to one of his buddies for $122,000.
It is a fundamental issue of public trust. In the last election the Conservatives, in the wake of Liberal scandal, promised even higher ethical standards. What we have is a Prime Minister who refuses to apply the rules. Does he realize that by putting themselves above the rule, the Conservatives are signalling to the public that the rules do not count when it comes to the government and they are breaching the trust?
Prebudget Consultations February 7th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, I will answer in English to be sure my colleague understands.
The biggest problem of course is the fact that with its massive tax giveaway to corporations that made huge profits last year, especially the banking and petroleum sectors, the government has compromised the leeway that could have existed in our economy.
What is interesting is that the current Minister of Finance-- and we should always remind people every time we mention his name that the current Minister of Finance, without any consequence, broke the rules for the attribution of contracts recently--was encouraged by the Liberals. It is always worth reminding people that the Liberals do not believe anything. One morning their leader woke up and said, “We need more tax cuts for businesses”. That gave the opportunity to the Minister of Finance to say in so many words, “I didn't think I would be able to cut so much with regard to corporate taxes. Thanks to the Liberals who are pushing me to cut even more, I am going to give the deepest tax cut in Canadian history to the corporations that made the most profits last year”.
My colleague is quite right that the tax cuts the Conservatives gave to the oil companies and to the banks removed a lot of the room to manoeuvre economically in Canada, but not all is lost.
The government is continuing to destabilize what had been until quite recently quite a balanced economy in Canada by heating up the oil sector even more by giving tax breaks. Of course the government could not be helping the companies that lost money last year because they did not pay taxes, so they did not get a cent from the $14 billion in tax breaks, but individual companies like EnCana got cheques for $50 million, $60 million, $70 million, a little windfall for its buddies in Alberta from the current government.
If that is the vision the Conservatives have of Canada, to throw everything they can at companies that are already making huge profits and destroying the environment in Alberta, they are going to be allowed to do that until the public throws them out.
Prebudget Consultations February 7th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, if ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers' hands.
My colleague is talking about a vote that took place in the House before I was a member. I have a lot of skills and experience, but I cannot say what I would have done in such a situation because I was not there. However, if the member looks at the past 15 years, he will see that I fought hard every time I had the opportunity to do something for Quebec and its key industries, including the aerospace industry.
One of my two sons is an aeronautical engineer, and I know how important the industry is to Quebec. All I can do is reassure the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber that we will no doubt have future opportunities to discuss this matter. I can assure him that we understand Quebec's economic priorities, particularly in the aerospace sector.
Prebudget Consultations February 7th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, I would like to let you know that I plan on sharing my time with the member for Halifax.
We are seeing the result of the enormous amount of work that was carried out across Canada. Individuals and groups were surveyed on the vision they would like to see in the next budget, and the direction they would like our economy to take in the coming years.
I worked with the member for Halifax and the member for Victoria on this. It is an extraordinary opportunity to remind people that the NDP, unlike the Bloc Québécois, represents all of Canada, and has representatives from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. This image of the breadth of the country is important, because people tend to forget that to properly represent the economy, we need a balanced vision.
This is the main point of my speech today. I want to talk about the work that has been done in recent months to try to rebalance the economy. This can be seen in the New Democratic Party minority report, appended to the committee's report. There are points that we completely disagree with, because of where the Conservative government is currently taking our economy.
Looking back, we can see that the end of the second world war marked the start of attempts to build a Canadian economy that still existed two or three years ago, a balanced economy in which forestry and mining were dominant in the primary sector. Our country's natural resources, which are non-renewable in the case of mines and renewable in the case of forests, need to be used sustainably, in a way that respects future generations, which has often not been the case.
Canada also needs a processing sector. Too often in its history, Canada would cut its trees and ship them to other countries, including our neighbour to the south. It would also extract its mineral resources and ship them to other countries for secondary and tertiary processing. This vision also needed to be changed. Canada therefore developed ways of doing secondary and tertiary processing here whenever possible. It did not always do enough of this sort of processing, but things were improving.
Lastly, the Canadian economy was based on a strong service sector centred mainly in Montreal and Toronto at the time. Today, it is unfortunately based less and less in Montreal and more and more in Toronto. Of course, I am speaking as a member from Quebec.
Once in office, the current government stepped up a process aimed at making Canada a subsidiary of the American economy. I am referring, for example, to a project known as Keystone, which is a way of exporting not only unprocessed crude oil, but also 18,000 jobs to the United States. That is the Conservatives' record.
The boom in the oil sector in western Canada has had adverse effects on other segments of the economy. As the oil sector heated up, the value of the Canadian dollar, our loonie, rose to unprecedented levels. This had a direct impact on our manufacturers' export capability. It is a simple equation: the higher the value of our dollar, the harder it is for an American company, for example, to buy goods produced in Canada, because the American company has to pay in Canadian dollars and the Canadian dollar is much stronger than it was not long ago when it was worth much less than the American dollar. As a result, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector.
Jobs have also been lost in the forestry industry for two reasons: first, we have the overheating of the oil industry, which is also affecting the manufacturing industry; and second, we have the softwood lumber agreement with the U.S. under which we handed over $1 billion for no reason. Under NAFTA, we were totally right to do what we did. Unfortunately, our hands were tied. They kept pushing and we foolishly signed. The NDP was opposed to that agreement, while the Bloc was in favour of it.
Two industries have suffered the consequences greatly: the forestry industry and the manufacturing industry. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. That is what we call imbalance.
Has this government been able to correct the situation? Not at all.
Last week—I am not talking about before the holidays, but just last week—the very first question I asked the government was whether, before the budget, it could hand over the $1 billion it promised in the form of a trust.
The response from the hon. member for Pontiac and Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was rather shocking. He said, from his seat here in this House, that what I was asking for was impossible because it was an expenditure and it needed to be passed with the budget. According to him, it was impossible to do so.
What happened a few days later, this week? Precisely what he said was impossible to do last week. That is the Conservatives' logic when it comes to the economy.
We have a real challenge before us. There are things that Canadians agree on, such as having a public health care system that is accessible, universal and open to everyone. What are the Conservatives doing? They are rendering the system meaningless. The NDP is proud to remind Canadians that it was Tommy Douglas who was the precursor to our health care system. He was a member of the CCF, which became the NDP.
Canadians are proud of having a better health care system than the Americans, but we are worried. This system is not adequately funded.
There are many things the government can and must do something about, but to which the Conservatives are ideologically opposed, except when they have no choice, as was the case with the $1 billion to help the manufacturing and forestry industries.
I said at the outset that I would be sharing my time with my colleague from Halifax and I propose to do just that now.
I remind people that the NDP, in the process that led to the budget consultations and all through it, was able to hear from Canadians. In Halifax for example, 15 of the 18 groups that came in were very clear that they shared our vision and not that of the Conservative government. The Conservative government, by favouring the petroleum sector in the west, by giving over supposed tax breaks that are supposed to help the economy, is only helping companies that made profits and paid taxes, so manufacturing and forestry companies that made no profit last year benefited nothing. Who got the money? The big oil companies and the banks. Did they need it? No.
The Conservative government has been destabilizing what was up until now a very balanced Canadian economy and in a couple of years it has actually made the situation far worse. So much for good fiscal management by Conservatives. It is a little bit like the situation in the United States where the most catastrophic economic times in recent memory are now taking place under the governance of another right winger, George Bush, a good friend of Steve, but we here in Canada are going to stand up and fight for what is right.
Mr. Speaker, in Quebec, we have an expression that applies to people who think they are someone they are not. My Conservative government colleague seems to think he is a member of cabinet, but he is not at all.
My simple question for my colleague is, since he is not a member of cabinet, how could he possibly know what has been discussed in cabinet?
I think that is typical of the Conservatives. When they are faced with moral and ethical challenges, they deny, even when their denial lacks all plausibility, because they are not in a position to know the facts that their supposed denial is based on.
Suffice it to say that when there is a finance minister who has broken the rules on contract attribution and there is absolutely no consequence, as we saw again today, the Conservatives are not in a position to give lessons to anyone.
The member talks about supposed scandal. There is a real scandal and it is just one example.
With regard to Schreiber there is no way for the member to know if it was discussed at cabinet. All we asked is that he recuse himself. He was in a conflict.
Mr. Speaker, this adjournment debate gives me an opportunity to go back to a question that I asked the government before the holidays.
I would like to begin with a few comments for the member who just rebuffed our Bloc Québécois colleague. I have to say that it takes some nerve for someone who cannot speak a single word of French without reading a prepared statement to blame a member who is just doing his job by trying to defend the French language in Canada.
He has nothing to learn from a government that, on the one hand, talks about recognizing the Quebec nation, and on the other, sends someone who has to read his responses in the House to tell us that we do not even have the right to talk about promoting the French language. I have found that a few months in Ottawa is all it takes to understand that recognition of two official languages is nothing more than a theory. The reality of the situation is something else entirely. The French language needs the support of all parliamentarians and will always need that support. The government has nothing to teach us in that respect.
And now for the question I asked the Minister of Public Safety in November. My question was actually for the Minister of National Defence, but he refused to answer, so his Public Safety colleague rose. The answer was very interesting.
My question was for the Minister of National Defence, who worked for Thyssen, a German company. If that name rings a bell, that is because it is one of the companies that the now-notorious Karlheinz Schreiber worked for. The Minister of National Defence worked for Thyssen, and I believe that his father, who was a Conservative member of Parliament and even a minister a while back, paid $100,000 to bail out Karlheinz Schreiber.
The question was a simple one about government ethics. I wanted to know whether the current Minister of National Defence had taken part in cabinet discussions about Bear Head, Thyssen and Schreiber. He refused to answer. Ethically, he should have disclosed the conflict of interest and should have abstained from participating in those discussions in light of the close economic connections that may have existed not so long ago between the current minister and Mr. Schreiber.
We did not get an answer. Instead, the Minister of Public Safety said that we would have to be patient and wait for an answer from David Johnston, who would provide what they are still calling the terms of reference for what they promised. The Minister of Public Safety made that promise formally in the House. He promised a full inquiry into the Airbus affair and the actions of Messrs. Mulroney and Schreiber.
What did we get instead? We got the Prime Minister's theories during his year-end interviews. He spoke to the journalist, but it sounded more like he was thinking aloud. He said that maybe now that Mr. Mulroney has testified, there would be no need to pursue all of these questions. What did we get a few days later in Mr. Johnston's report? He said that now that Mr. Mulroney has testified, there may be no need for all of that. Again today, they are saying that the final touches will probably be added once Mr. Johnston gives the terms of reference to the inquiry commission.
The second part of the question was about how to ensure that taxpayers would get their $2.1 million back. That is the question we asked again today.
I would like to conclude by saying that when the Minister of Finance cavalierly breaks the rules for awarding contracts, when the government does not punish him as a result, and when the minister is not forced to face the consequences of his actions, we can see that there is many a slip—
Government Contracts February 6th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, the illicit contracting question went to a Conservative loyalist and long-time political organizer for the finance minister.
We do know that Mr. MacPhie was not the finance minister's ex-girlfriend, but surely the Conservatives will want to be at least as ethical as the Liberals who are responsible for the sponsorship scandal.
Just last week the same finance minister publicly attacked his own local town council for a similar untendered contract for $134,000, saying “heads should roll”.
When is the Prime Minister going to get rid of his finance minister?
Government Contracts February 6th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance broke the rules and he admits it. He awarded a contract to a friend to write a lame speech on a bad budget. Even Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister of sponsorships, fired Art Eggleton for paying $36,000 for 14 pages. In this case we are talking about $122,000 for 20 pages.
Does the Prime Minister realize that if he does not dismiss his Minister of Finance, he is proving that he has an even lower ethical standard than the sponsorship gang?
Business of the House February 5th, 2008
Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. With respect to the same issue, last week in this House, in response to a question I asked, one of my colleagues, the member for Pontiac, said the following:
—there is a process to follow for appropriating new amounts of money. This process is called a “budget”.
That was his response, and there is a principle of parliamentary law that says we must take members at their word.
Last week, the member for Pontiac, who is a government minister, said that it was not possible to pay out the billion dollars now, which is exactly what we, the opposition, were asking him to do.
Now, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is telling us the same thing: trust him, even if he will not give us any details. I am sorry, but the opposition members are not the ones contradicting themselves. We have been very clear about what we want for months now. The problem is with the government. They are the ones who have to provide explanations.
I invite our colleague, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, to take the Speaker's suggestion to meet with us, and to at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that there is a blatant contradiction, and to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak about this important bill.