Tar sands, Christian Paradis, F35 purchase debacle and Aveos layoffs dominate news.
by Ish Theilheimer
and Samantha Bayard with YouTube video
OTTAWA, Straight Goods News, March 27, 2012 — The House of Commons did not sit last week, the Budget is due Thursday, and with Stephen Harper away until tomorrow, the main item of interest this week is the NDP's new leader Thomas Mulcair.
Mulcair spoke in and outside the House on environmental concerns over the tar sands, ethical breaches of Cabinet minister Christian Paradis, the unfolding F35 fighter jet purchase debacle, and the mass layoffs of Aveos aircraft maintenance workers.
In his first post-Question Period scrum as NDP Leader, he took tough questions on his stand on tar sands pollution.
"The number one problem is we are not enforcing existing legislation," he said. "That failure means we are not including the environment costs, which is a basic principle of sustainable development — the internalization of cost. That has driven up the value of the Canadian dollar, made it more difficult to export our own goods, killing our manufacturing sector. We are leaving a triple-whammy debt to future generations. They are inheriting the largest ecological, economic, and social debt in our history. We've got change the way we are doing things."
Thomas Mulcair talks about the tar sands
Workers in Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver suddenly find themselves out of work, despite what Mulcair points out is a legal obligation for the government to maintain their jobs.
"It's an unbelievable situation," he told Straight Goods News, "With 2,700 jobs being lost like this. This is the law-and- order Prime Minister. Those jobs can't be moved elsewhere," he said, under the Air Canada Act, which requires that maintenance of the Air Canada fleet be done in Canada.
"Cabinet is supposed to enforce legislation under Canadian laws," he said. "It's not a question of choice."
Regarding conflict-of-interest allegations concerning industry minister Christian Paradis, Mulcair called on Stephen Harper to clairify whether Paradis' actions, such as moving a government call centre from a non-Conservative riding to his own, are acceptable. "This is 1950s style patronage," Mulcair said. He also questioned Paradis' involvement in the corruption case of former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer case.
Muclair raised again the proposed F35 fighter jet purchase. News reports this week have revealed the plane does not even meet the defence department's own requirements. "Nothing we've seen from them so far has made us believe they are responsible stewards of the public purse," he said. Instead, Canadians have seen a "bogus bidding process… They tried to rig the process by defining something only one plane could meet. It's a very old strategy. Even now we're finding the F35 doesn't meet the bogus requirements they set out." He accused the government of playing a "shell game."
Thomas Mulcair talks about AVEOS, F35s and Christian Paradis
eMail: ish@straightgoods.com
About Ish Theilheimer
Ish Theilheimer is founder and president of Straight Goods News and has been Publisher of the leading, and oldest, independent Canadian online newsmagazine, StraightGoods.ca, since September 1999. He is also Managing Editor of PublicValues.ca. He lives wth his wife Kathy in Golden Lake, ON, in the Ottawa Valley.
eMail: ish@straightgoods.com
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