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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 295

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 8, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 295 - Apr/8/24
Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)
  • Apr/8/24 5:19:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is rather ironic to see certain elected members, who spoke a few minutes ago about dealing with issues in a non-partisan manner in order to get to the bottom of things, now replying to people from other political parties that this also happened in their government. We need to move beyond that, and I will give the member the opportunity to do so by asking her a fundamental question, which I asked my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou earlier. We are going to bring these people in, and that is good. We will get to the bottom of this and find out the truth about this scandal, which I think is quite serious. However, as I noted earlier, it will probably not be the last. I do not want any more scandals. This is sadly reminiscent of WE Charity and other previous incidents. My question to the member is this. Once we get to the bottom of this scandal, what does she think needs to be done to ensure that it never happens again? When friends give each other contracts and millions of dollars are thrown around, it is ordinary people's money that is being squandered. It makes no sense, and we have a duty to do something to ensure that this never happens again.
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Context: House Hansard - 295 - Apr/8/24
Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)
  • Apr/8/24 9:11:59 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, in British Columbia, we know that we have fibre supply issues that are impacting our mills. What did the B.C. NDP Premier David Eby do? He created a new minister of state for fibre supply. Andrew Mercier got the appointment, and it is an entirely new portfolio, the first time in the history of British Columbia. He already delivered a report, on March 31, to start implementing action to help deal with that. We talked about the full-court press in here earlier and the need for it. However, I am not dismissing or disputing that my colleague and friend across the way is not working hard. He is the parliamentary secretary for export promotion, international trade and economic development, which is a lot to carry. Is this government going to take this issue seriously, like British Columbia did, and actually create a minister responsible to deal with the softwood lumber dispute or a parliamentary secretary dedicated just to this issue, someone on point and not dealing with anything else, just like the Province of British Columbia did. We are in a crisis, and we need to have someone completely and solely dedicated to this. Is the member going back to the Prime Minister and saying that this portfolio is wide and that they need to hone it down and put someone just on this to work with members of Parliament across the aisle, like me and other MPs who are here tonight, so that we can do a full-court press in the United States and work with state governments and the federal government in the U.S.?
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