Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, this is unbelievable, really unbelievable. We have moved forward a concurrence motion on a report that comes from the agriculture committee and which very clearly talks about the need for action. Members in three corners of the House have moved this concurrence motion forward because of the importance of the issue and the importance of action, but what we are seeing again, in an appallingly abusive way, is the Liberal government trying to shut down action on an issue that cost British Columbia, to take the farm gate receipts and the secondary economic impact, nearly $400 million, nearly half a billion dollars.

Gasoline Prices  Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to motion M-165 by the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou. This motion calls for the creation of a petroleum monitoring agency and amending the Competition Act so that the Competition Commissioner would have the power to launch investigations, summon witnesses and ensure confidentiality.

Wal-Mart  Mr. Speaker, recent revelations about the former head of Wal-Mart's U.S. operations have indicated that he used improper methods to finance secret anti-union activities. This is not the first time Wal-Mart has done this. In the U.S., the management of Wal-Mart is paying $11 million in fines after using illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

Agriculture  Mr. Speaker, it is about time the government did something for B.C. It has been 13 years. There is mounting evidence and concern that the United States has been hiding its cases of mad cow while keeping its border closed to Canadian beef. These concerns have been raised by the U.S. department of agriculture inspectors themselves.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about an ideal world. It is very clear that the ideal world is an ivory tower right now within the Liberal caucus. We are talking about $5 billion that was given out to the corporate sector to reduce even further the corporation tax rates, and they are already much lower than in the United States.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor West and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill. I would like to start by flagging what is obvious to all of us. The games that were being played around this budget implementation bill have certainly changed in the few weeks since it was introduced.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, clearly it is not a budget of hope; it is a budget of despair and it creates an economy of despair. When we look across the country, we see homelessness numbers growing day by day. We see increasing child poverty which is shameful after 12 years of Liberal government.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that he thought this budget was balanced, so I have a series of questions for him. How can he say the budget is balanced when we have increasing homelessness across this country? How can he say this budget is balanced when poverty is growing, particularly child poverty, which we were supposed to eliminate by 2000?

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech from the member opposite, particularly when he referred to the ad scam scandal as being the biggest one since the railway scandal. I imagine he was talking about the previous century. However, as I am sure he is aware, the biggest scandal that we have had until ad scam, which I agree is a deplorable abuse of taxpayer money, was in the 1980s with the Mulroney government.

Criminal Code  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-361, an act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal interest rate). Mr. Speaker, more than 1 million Canadians each year regularly use payday lenders and another 1.4 million use high interest rate lenders at a great cost to their families and to their standard of living.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present, on behalf of my constituents and Canadians, two petitions. In the first petition, Canadians from a number of regions of Canada call upon the House to protect the rights of children with autism, who are among the most vulnerable members of our community.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by several hundred people from Burnaby—New Westminster and throughout Canada and focuses on the Copyright Act. Petitioners want the House to maintain the balance between the rights of the public and the rights of the creators. They demand that the government not extend the term of copyright and preserve all existing users' rights to ensure a vibrant public domain.

Civil Marriage Act  Mr. Speaker, I rise proudly in support of Bill C-38. It addresses the issue of equality of gay and lesbian Canadians in our country by entrenching the right to civil marriage. The courts have consistently and repeatedly found that laws which excluded same sex marriage were in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Air-India  Mr. Speaker, the former senior minister from British Columbia has publicly stated that slamming the door on a public inquiry to find out what happened in the Air-India bombing would be a betrayal of the Liberal Party's commitments to Canadians. The current Minister of Health has publicly stated that CSIS treated the Air-India crisis in a casual manner because it involved people from the South Asian community.

Air-India  That is another weak answer, Mr. Speaker, and another betrayal of the victims' families. It is unbelievable that the government would show no respect to the 329 families and refuse to ensure that this never happens again. We know what the families are calling for. They have been calling for a public inquiry for 20 years.