Opposition

March 05, 2010

Mr. Richard Harris (Cariboo—Prince George, CPC): Mr. Speaker, listening to the Leader of the Opposition's comments, I am astonished at the hypocrisy that the Liberal Party is showing.
    The Leader of the Opposition can be forgiven a little because he spent more than 30 years outside of Canada and perhaps he does not know the legacy of the 13 years of Liberal government, a majority government I might add, when it had a chance to do every one those things that the Leader of the Opposition just said that we should be doing. Liberals had 13 years to do it. What did they do? They did none of these things. They did nothing to return the security of seniors. They did nothing to expand the CPP.
    This government has made the largest investment in infrastructure in this country in the history of any government. We have made the largest investment in young people, so they could learn, get an education and job training and helping youth at risk obtain the skills to get jobs in the history of this country.
    We have made the largest tax reductions for working Canadians all across this country in the history of any government. We have taken more people off the tax rolls in the history of any government of this country.
    What are the Liberals talking about? It is too bad the Leader of the Opposition was away so long. Maybe he would know a little about this.


Mr. Richard Harris (Cariboo—Prince George, CPC): Mr. Speaker, once again the hypocrisy of the Leader of the NDP is astounding. It never fails to amaze me.
    This is the member, this is the party that voted against the economic action plan before they even read it when it was introduced in the last budget.
     They voted against the Conservative government making $3.7 billion in loans available to Chrysler Canada that they could draw from to keep auto workers employed. They voted against a $10.8 billion loan to General Motors to help protect auto workers' jobs. Let us be clear, these are loans needed to mitigate the job threats to the auto industry caused by the global recession.
    The NDP and their leader voted against it. I need to have an answer from them about why they would vote against a program that protected 52,000 jobs in the auto sector. Why would they vote against it?