First Nations Financial Transparency Act  Mr. Speaker, the member for Nickel Belt is a fantastic member in the House of Commons and is one of the most effective local representatives across the country. He does a great job on behalf of his community. The difficulty is that the intent is the same. The government's proven complete lack of accountability to the Canadian public, ongoing secrecy and lack of transparency is unbelievable.

First Nations Financial Transparency Act  It is not, Mr. Speaker. Conservatives are financially strangling first nations, as they are financially strangling democratically-elected labour movements. Both of those approaches are bad and they need to walk the talk. Conservatives need to be accountable to Canadians. It is about time they actually started setting an example.

First Nations Financial Transparency Act  Mr. Speaker, I am a little saddened to rise in this House and speak to this bill, particularly in the context of what we see in first nations communities across the country. Just a few months ago, members of the NDP caucus went up to Attawapiskat where we saw the appalling state of housing.

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, that is no answer. That is no transparency, no accountability, no respect for Canadians. Canadians deserve better because Canadian jobs are on the line, including jobs in downtown Calgary. Conservatives and Liberals are all in favour of letting CNOOC and Chinese state-owned companies buy a controlling interest in our oil industry.

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, today Canadians found out through anonymous leaks that CNOOC has agreed to meet the federal government's request. What request? This is the first time Canadians have heard of any request coming from the federal government on CNOOC. The government refuses to be transparent, refuses to be accountable, refuses to have respect for Canadians, so what is the government respecting of CNOOC and why is it doing it in secret?

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, the problem is the Prime Minister and the Conservatives are not credible on this issue. The Conservatives allowed Falconbridge to—

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, the truth certainly does hurt. The Conservatives allowed Falconbridge to be taken over by Xstrata with the promise that there would be no job losses. The result was that hundreds of jobs were lost, with zero consequence and no action from the government. It was the same thing when Inco was taken over by Vale.

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives can try to shut us down but they will never shut us up. They just will not do that. We will speak for Canadians. Will the Conservatives now agree to start respecting Canadians and start consulting them on the CNOOC takeover of Nexen?

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, no answers, no transparency and no accountability means no respect for Canadians. Canadians deserve better than what they are getting from the government. There are concerns about CNOOC's human rights record, the possible job losses at Nexen's head office in Calgary and concerns about CNOOC's description of itself as a foreign policy arm of the Chinese government.

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, we have more secretive midnight deals from the Conservatives. Petronas submitted a modified deal last week but Canadians did not hear about it from their government. They had to hear about it from the Malaysian media. There was no transparency and no accountability from the Conservatives and people are noticing abroad.

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, the problem with rules is that the Conservatives do not seem to be able to manage them effectively, and they have badly mismanaged this file from the start. Breaking news: now we learn from Canadian Press that the Conservatives have missed a key deadline to examine the impact that the CNOOC-Nexen takeover will have on Canadian national security.

Foreign Investment  Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Conservatives seemed to have trouble understanding their new investment agreement with China, and maybe they should actually read it. Under this agreement, if the CNOOC-Nexen takeover is approved, CNOOC will have the same rights as any Canadian company to buy up new oil leases and expand operations.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I will at least recognize the hon. member’s courage in standing up here in the House. The other Conservative members do not appear to want to talk about the government’s record in terms of budgets. And they have their reasons. Just think of the G20, the F-35s, and the whole issue of renovating the West Block.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the speech by the member for Louis-Hébert. As usual, he did a very fine job. The Conservatives do not seem to agree with a report to which they contributed. At one point they said that they agreed. A planning process is now included, which could prevent the kind of problems we had with the G20, the F-35s and many other matters where the budget process failed miserably.

Protecting Canada's Seniors Act  Mr. Speaker, the reality is that we are dealing with another bill that the government has brought forward that deals with a particular reality, and certainly we support it, but there is quite another reality out in the streets of our nation. Across this country we have seen the government gutting programs to seniors, reducing the services that are available to seniors, raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 and making seniors more vulnerable.