Sir John A. Macdonald Day and Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day Act  Mr. Speaker, I rise to strongly support the official recognition of Sir John A. Macdonald Day and Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day. I want to address the first half of my speech to the school children of Yukon. Other members may find it interesting because nothing I will say today has be

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I have to return the compliment to my colleague because in the late night debates he is always the last one to speak, if I am not, and is a great participant here. I like to listen to his statements on the economy because he does a lot of research. I hope someone wi

The Budget  That is good for the record too. Finally I would tend to agree with the member that the fundamentals of the economy such as taxes, the debt, the innovation agenda, the learning agenda, the poor, and aboriginal children are all very important for a solid economy. That is why I em

The Budget  Madam Speaker, I have listened to much of the debate, a lot of it in December and a lot of it now, and I would like to summarize the reasons for the success of the budget. I am sure that the fact the finance minister is brilliant will not be enough in itself to convince my hon. c

House of Commons  Mr. Speaker, as this is the last sitting day before we adjourn for the holiday season, could the Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons please review for us what we have accomplished in this place?

Committees of the House  Madam Speaker, I thank the member for that intervention because it allows me to re-emphasize the point I was making. I am glad he started on a small list. A great example is that the member would choose to sacrifice the thousands and thousands of poor who received the home heati

Committees of the House  Madam Speaker, I found it interesting that the first intervention suggested that my colleague had trouble with relevancy in his point, since we had about an hour-long speech from the first speaker that was not even on the topic which was the report of the Standing Committee on Fi

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I and I think all my colleagues are quite proud of the fact that the member opened his speech by saying that in the budget we have increased foreign aid to the poorer countries of the world by $1 billion. He then went on to ask what country has CIDA helped, as if th

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, my colleague suggested at the beginning of his speech that he was depressed because so much money had gone into security expenditures that some other items could not be covered, particularly the environment. However, I want to pleasantly surprise my colleague. This

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Richmond for his speech. I thought it was a great compliment of the budget and the government in that he did not deal with any of the new announcements but just talked about two items relating to payroll taxes which have been announced bef

The Budget  Madam Speaker, the short answer is, no. I have a great deal of respect for my colleague. I think we are probably in general agreement on debt reduction. I too think that when the resources are available, when we are not in a terrorist tragedy like this one and when the recession

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I have already tried to emphasize in my speech the fact that when the infrastructure program first came out from the government years ago, I do not think anyone could argue about the number of people it put back to work. In o

The Budget  Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from the Northwest Territories and the strong position she made earlier today. I will not repeat all the excellent points but I did want to say that the three northern MPs have been working very well together for those peop

Competition Act  Mr. Speaker, I was also a member of the committee and I supported the bill and the amendments. The amendments improve the bill tremendously. I support the bill but perhaps for a different reason than the member who just spoke. I support it because I believe competition is the fo

Volunteerism  Mr. Speaker, today, December 5, is International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development and the official close of the International Year of Volunteers. It is a great day for Canada because at 1 o'clock this afternoon at the General Assembly of the United Nations the h