Tom Lukiwski

[Sponsorship Program, May 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard confessions that Richard Mimeau, one of the top aides to the current Minister of Transport, received $6,000 in dirty money for working on Liberal election campaigns. What is very troubling is that Mr. Mimeau was not part of a parallel group; rather, he was another top supporter of the current Prime Minister. These revelations show that the current ministerial staff of this administration were directly involved in ad scam.

Will the Prime Minister have us believe that he was so inept that he was unaware of his key supporters being involved in swindling ad scam money?

[Petitions, May 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition on behalf of the wonderful people from Semans, Saskatchewan, who are extremely concerned about the potential closure of rural post offices.

[Committees of the House, May 9th, 2005]

Get an arsonist to put out the fire.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I am a little torn on the issue of citizen referendums. In certain cases that is an excellent way to gauge the pulse of the nation. It certainly has its place. I cannot say that we should engage in citizen referendums on every issue. Parliament would be relatively ungovernable if we were to have a referendum on every single issue that came before this assembly.

However, this assembly should take an initiative and make a concerted effort to examine the whole concept of citizen referendums to see how it could be incorporated into some of the business that we do here. Let us all be honest, there are certain pieces of legislation that, while important, need not be whipped by any party.

What we are trying to accomplish as a Parliament is to ensure that the majority wishes of Canadians are heard. Some will argue and we have heard it before, particularly in the civil marriage debate, that the majority wishes cannot dictate the minority rights situation. Leaving that aside for a moment, I am suggesting there are many issues that have come before us as parliamentarians that are not perhaps that controversial and do not impact the personal religious views or morality issues.

We deserve to examine the possibility of how we can incorporate citizen referendums into the voting patterns of the House because in many cases we absolutely want to know what Canadians feel on issues. I am doing as much as my hon. colleague is doing in his riding in terms of surveys. I am doing it by Internet, by phone calls, by 10 percenters, and all of the various communication avenues that we have.

On almost every piece of legislation that comes down, I am trying to get that information out to my constituents and ask them a very simple question, “What do you think of this piece of legislation? Here are the pros, here are the cons. How do you wish me to proceed?” I cannot do it in every single case, but on the majority of pieces of legislation that this government has brought down, my constituents are aware of the legislation and are aware of my views. I encourage them to contact me if they want to express their thoughts. I do that. We should all be encouraged to do that and this assembly should be taking some very serious steps in making that a preferred method of voting.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I am not exactly sure where the member is coming from. Our party does have a policy that we are allowed to vote freely. We have stated, our leader has stated, that if in government, when we form government, even cabinet ministers would be allowed to vote freely, with the exceptions that I gave, such as the budget and major money bills.

Consistently we have seen on this side of the House our members stand and vote according to the wishes of their constituents, sometimes frankly to the majority opposition. We have seen on the same sex marriage bill, as the member well knows, four or five of our members have opposed. I applaud the members opposite. The member is right in that many members of his caucus have stood and voted their free will, but beyond that, on critical bills I have seen nothing but whipped votes on that side of the House.

We need to encourage members to vote the wishes of their constituents, not discourage them. That is the only way we can truly represent our constituents in this assembly. What we are trying to do here is to be totally representative of all Canadians. How can we do that if we are voting against their wishes?

Again I will go back to the example where the Minister of Finance absolutely fundamentally knows that the majority of people in his riding are opposed to same sex marriage. They are opposed to the gun registry. Yet he has consistently voted against their wishes. What kind of democracy do we have here?

Perhaps this is just my sheer idealism but I have told my constituents very clearly, and I will continue to do so in the next campaign, that if I know the majority wishes of my constituents on a certain issue are to the left, and my personal views are to the right, I have basically two choices. I can either try and convince the majority of people in my riding that my viewpoint is correct and have them agree with me so that I can vote the way I wish to vote. If I cannot, and I know that they are fundamentally opposed to my personal conscience, my personal wishes, if I do not vote in favour of the majority wishes of my constituents, I should resign and I will resign, bottom line, pure and simple.

Perhaps that is not the most effective way of governing, but I will say one thing. I can sleep at night and I can look at myself in the mirror the next morning, because I know that I am being honest to the wishes of the people who elected me. That is the bottom line. That is what we need to do fundamentally in this House to ensure that there is true engagement and true connection between members of Parliament and their constituents.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, it is a pleasure to stand in the assembly tonight to speak to the issue of citizen engagement. To me it is another euphemism for either voter connect or voter disconnect.

I would like to speak for the next few minutes on that, because it is, quite frankly, a serious problem with all political parties. It is a shame that we have a situation now in Canada where politicians are looked upon with such cynicism and such disrespect by the electorate that sometimes we are almost ashamed to go to public meetings. Certain folks figure that if one is a politician, one cannot be respected or trusted, and that is a pox on all of our houses. I will particularly focus on a pox on one house in my presentation tonight, and that is the house opposite.

I want to go back to 1993, the start of the government's regime. One of the main reasons, in my view, that the government was elected back in 1993 was the unpopularity of the incumbent government at the time, which was a Conservative government. There are two issues in particular that I believe really turned the election in favour of the Liberals. One was the free trade agreement, which the Liberals, the opposition of the day, campaigned against, and the other one in particular was the GST.

I recall the famous Liberal red book of the 1993 election where the opposition leader of the day, Jean Chrétien, was standing up with the red book in all of his television ads saying, “If elected, we will get rid of the GST, axe the GST”. We still have it. That was the first indication that the government was losing the connection with the voters. That was a fundamental and very key issue, because no one liked that tax. That was one of the most unpopular taxes this country had ever seen and the Liberal Party of Canada campaigned strongly on the fact that if elected, it would eliminate the GST. That was 1993. Today is 2005 and we have not even seen one effort by the government to get rid of it. That is not to say that the GST is an unfair tax. It is not to say that we should get rid of the GST. The fact of the matter is, however, that party, which is now the government of this country, campaigned that it would eliminate the GST and it has done nothing to do just that. Broken promises. That is the type of thing that makes all Canadians so suspicious, so cynical and so distrustful of politicians.

Beyond that, there are some other things we could be doing to try to regain some of that trust. At least our party on this side of the House is doing a few things which resonate well with the voters of this country. I want to highlight some of those things and perhaps illustrate why our party has a little different stance and a little different approach when it comes to dealing with the voters and how we plan to connect more with the general public and the voters.

The first thing of course is free votes. I am a firm believer in free votes because I honestly believe that members of Parliament are elected to represent those who vote for them, those who represent their constituency, the riding population. Whether or not, I should add, the people vote for me or against me, if I represent them in my riding, I think they are my bosses. I have to take my direction from them. Normally, that seems like an easy thing to do, but in this environment, it is a little different.

The members opposite have a different view of that. Of course, they are government and they might advance the argument that they cannot always represent the total view of their constituents, because if the party line is for the greater good of Canada, they have to follow that party line.

Perhaps my idealism is shining through and I have not been elected long enough to be a complete cynic about the political process, but honestly, the opposite is true. I believe that we have to represent our constituents first and foremost. I am pleased to say that a Conservative Party would honour that commitment.

We have seen this party and individual members within the House speak freely and frankly in opposition to the majority view of other members. However, on the opposite side of the House, I have seen members whom I know personally vote against the direct wishes of their constituents. I know that to be a fact. I want to give a couple of illustrations.

Obviously I am most familiar with Saskatchewan. In March of this year in the federal riding of Wascana there was a fairly comprehensive poll taken on the issue of same sex marriage. The overwhelming view of the respondents to that poll suggested that the majority of all the voters, of all the residents in that riding were opposed to the government's position on civil marriage. In other words, they were opposed to same sex marriage. However, the member representing those constituents, the Minister of Finance, has consistently voted in favour of the civil marriage act and in favour of same sex marriage.

My point is I know that is the government view, but it is one of the most controversial and divisive pieces of legislation that this country has seen. People are divided. They are divided to the point where some individuals are leaving their church. They are divided to the point where some people are fighting among themselves in community groups and religious organizations because they want their voice to be heard. They want their voice to be heard and through their voice, they want their elected representative, their member of Parliament to represent their views in this assembly. It is not being done. The case in point with the Minister of Finance, is he has consistently voted in favour of same sex marriage against the express wishes of his constituents.

Another example is what is probably one of the key election issues in Saskatchewan, the national gun registry. Again, without exception the vast majority of individuals, of all voters, of all residents in Saskatchewan, whether they be urban or rural, whether they be male or female, whether they be professional or blue collar, are adamantly opposed to the national firearms registry. Yet again, a Liberal member, the Minister of Finance, knowing the views of the majority wishes, has consistently voted in favour of the national gun registry.

I can absolutely assure the House that if a poll were taken in the finance minister's riding or any other riding in the province of Saskatchewan, we would find that at least 70% to 80% of the people would be against the national gun registry. What do they get from their elected representative? Someone comes to Ottawa and votes in favour of the national gun registry, something that is diametrically opposed to the majority wishes of the people of not only the minister's riding, but the entire province.

What we need to do here is allow all members to vote freely on issues such as that. I can certainly understand that if the government of the day wants to instruct its members of Parliament to vote in favour of major money bills or the budget, that has to be adhered to. Members must vote in favour of those key pieces of legislation. However, on almost every other issue, is it not the democratic way to allow members to represent their constituents so we have a full and complete knowledge of the feelings of all Canadians in this assembly? Should we not be here to represent the views of all of our constituents? I think we must. To do otherwise is not only unconscionable, it is undemocratic.

The party across the aisle does not see that as a priority. I think that is shameful. We have to start changing the way we do business in this assembly before any Canadian will start to view us as reputable and trustworthy.

Unless we do that, we will continue to be looked upon by the majority of people in this country as dishonest, disreputable politicians. The term politician will be looked upon as a dirty word and a slang word. That is something I cannot stand. I did not stand for election to be viewed in that light. We have to clean up our own house and it starts in this assembly.

In conclusion, in order for voters to become more connected to MPs, we have to start representing the views of our constituents on a regular and consistent basis with integrity and with honesty.

[Sponsorship Program, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the minister opposite speaks the talk but he does not walk the walk, particularly with respect to his other colleagues. Here is what one of the other colleagues he is talking about says in today's Globe and Mail in reference to Gomery. The member for Victoria said that this is rather small potatoes. He said, “Other countries have serious problems...and we worry about a seven-year-old ripoff of government money”.

Will the Prime Minister finally admit that he has an orchestrated campaign to besmirch the reputation of Justice Gomery and divert Canadians' attention from the real issue, the issue that this is a corrupt government desperately trying to cling to power?

[Sponsorship Program, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in this week's Hill Times , the Liberal member for Lambton--Kent--Middlesex called the Gomery commission “stupid”. We all know that the daily confessions of corruption have not made the Liberals across Canada very fearful of Gomery, so here is my question for the Prime Minister. Does he agree with his Liberal colleague that the Gomery commission is in fact stupid or is this not in fact merely a smear campaign to try to besmirch Mr. Gomery's reputation before he has a chance to table his final report?

[Airline Industry, April 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, sky high airport rents are sending our airline industry into a nose dive. Last Friday the Liberal chair of the transport committee said, “The disadvantage being heaped upon Canadians is breathtaking”.

Because of the government's failure to address this problem, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and now even Calgary are among the most expensive places in the world to land a plane. The government continues to fail to address the problem and is failing the industry.

When will the transport minister recognize that this is serious and simply fix the problem?

[Supply, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened intently to the member opposite. I must say on a personal note that I find the minister a very engaging individual and a very compelling speaker. I would like to ask the minister to indulge me and answer a hypothetical question, because the minister has been stating continuously that it may have happened, that these are allegations, and that perhaps if it had happened there would have been a small group of people involved.

Hypothetically, how can he reconcile this? I am having trouble figuring this one out. If some of the allegations were true, hypothetically, and if in fact, as has been alleged, many members, Liberal organizers, were on payrolls being paid by Groupaction and others, but still doing work for the Liberal Party of Canada, would not the Liberal Party of Canada have been able to recognize it and say, “If these are full time organizers and we are not paying them, something is going wrong here”. Would it not?

How could it be contained to a small group of people, isolated people, without others within the organization knowing? If the allegations contained in the sworn testimony of the Gomery commission are true, to me it seems to be just inconceivable that only a few people would know about this. It has to be a larger problem than the minister is suggesting.