Questions Passed as Orders for Return  With respect to the Mountain Pine Beetle disaster: (a) how much money has been designated by the government to address this issue; (b) when, where and which government official announced these allocation of funds; (c) to date, how much has been spent; (d) in which provinces and m

Questions Passed as Orders for Return  What is the total amount of government funding, since fiscal year 2004-2005 up to and including the current fiscal year, allocated within the constituency of Vancouver Quadra, listing each department or agency, initiative, and amount?

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by Canadians who support changing an existing tax loophole that provides and unfair advantage to large retail cooperatives and harms small to medium size retailers. At present, large retail cooperatives can avoid paying corpo

The Environment  Mr. Speaker, last Thursday, changes were revealed in the Canada Gazette that will undermine environmental protection in this country. Environmental assessments are a critical tool to ensure that environmental damage is anticipated and prevented or mitigated when development is b

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, that is a difficult question to answer. If the member were to ask me why I think the government members are hiding something, my answer would be that they have a consistent track record of hiding things from the Canadian public and from opposition members. Whether i

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, it is a very interesting question coming from a member of the Conservative Party that voted against the very motion put forward by the Liberals, which would have enabled municipalities to have access to these funds and to make the decisions as to how to spend them. I

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate. We are having a very critical discussion for several reasons. One reason is that the stimulus package coming out quickly and efficiently is very important to Canadians. It is very important to changing the climate of concern and fear

Science and Technology  Mr. Speaker, Katrin Meissner is an accomplished B.C. climate scientist, but now she is packing up and moving her family to Australia, where better opportunities await. Katrin is not alone. It does not take a scientist to realize Canada will lose many more talented researchers, th

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present two petitions signed by several thousand Canadians who support increasing Canada's foreign aid commitments to combat HIV-AIDs, tuberculosis and malaria, along with increasing the flow of affordable generic medicines. These peti

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Westmount—Ville-Marie for pointing out the woeful and unfortunate absence of vision on the part of the Conservative government when it comes to a technology-based future economy for Canada. I want to ask a question about the brain d

House debate  Mr. Speaker, that self-congratulatory tone over there is a little rich considering it was our former leader who announced a major infrastructure spending program as a response to this recession at a time when the members opposite were still pretending that Canada was in a surplus

House debate  Mr. Speaker, I asked the Minister of Transport a question a couple of weeks ago that was not well answered. In fact, his answer was very dismissive. I asked about the seven out of seven infrastructure projects that had been announced in British Columbia that were all in Conservat

Public Safety  Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about the recent explosion of gang crime in metro Vancouver. Crime has always been part of human society but that does not excuse government ineffectiveness in controlling and reducing it. On the contrary, we must continuously improve and strengthen t

Public Safety  Mr. Speaker, the minister is obviously strong on spin, though weak on crime. At a time of escalating gang violence in B.C., unfortunately we do have a Conservative government that is weak on crime. On the Conservatives' watch, the situation has become worse. They have been three

Softwood Lumber Industry  Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Southern Governors' Association has passed a motion attacking the already crippled Canadian softwood lumber industry. It calls on President Obama to take new extraordinary measures to punish a sector that has done nothing wrong and is hanging on by a thread.