Green Party Leader Elizabeth May speaks in the House of Commons on June 2, 2011.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
Elizabeth May asked her very first question Thursday in the House of Commons while the NDP stopped just short of asking for Tony Clement's resignation.
Ms. May had to be patient. As a caucus of one and with no official party status, the Green Party Leader had to wait until the very end of the 45-minute Question Period to ask about the budget.
"The budgets of 2009 and 2010 in the Budget Implementation Acts, as we all know, became omnibus bills in which unrelated measures were included," Ms. May said. "I would be very grateful if the Prime Minister could rise today and assure this House that there will be no hidden Trojan horse efforts to undermine other legislation when we see the budget implementation bill next week."
The Prime Minister didn't rise up but Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did. And although Ms. May's serious question demanded a serious answer, Mr. Flaherty couldn't help but joke around at first.
After congratulating her on her election victory, he said he regretted that "it means we do not have with us any more our dear friend Gary Lunn." Ms. May defeated the former sports minister in the B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands.
"I do not know what the member opposite has against munchkins but I am a member of that brotherhood," he joked, being of similar short stature to his defeated cabinet colleague.
Then the Finance Minister became a little more serious. "I can assure the hon. member that the budget implementation act will of course reflect items from the budget that are referenced in the budget. The GIS payments for seniors in particular are very important. We want to get those cheques out in July."
That exchange aside, Question Period was dominated by the Auditor-General's report on the G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund. The auditor came down hard on the Tories for not being transparent in the way they spent $50-million in Tony Clement's Muskoka riding, which hosted the G8 summit last year.
Mr. Clement is now the Treasury Board President and as such responsible for finding $4-billion in annual savings to government spending. The optics are not good.
"Considerable amounts of money were provided and allocated. ... There was no accountability, no transparency and no justification for decisions that were in most cases made without any connection with the objective," deputy NDP leader Thomas Mulcair charged. "How can the government, the Prime Minister, have given carte blanche to his minister and why is that minister still there?"
Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed Mr. Mulcair's assertions.
"These allegations by the NDP member are totally false," Mr. Harper said. "All the money, every dollar has been accounted for. As I have said the Auditor-General made a number of suggestions as to how to improve the process and we will do that and accept those."
NDP MP Charlie Angus dug even harder, demanding how Mr. Clement was allowed to "set up a $47-million slush fund for pork-barrel projects" in his riding.
"Here is how it went down: There was the minister, there was a mayor and there was a hotel manager who dished out the loot. There was no oversight. There was no documentation. There were no questions asked. This is just one step up from cash in a brown paper bag. So, is this how the minister will plan to run the Treasury Board?".
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who at the time of the summit was in charge of signing off on the projects, accused Mr. Angus of lacking civility and then dismissed his allegations.
"I completely reject the premise of the question by the member opposite," he said, saying that he - and not Mr. Clement - made the decisions about the 32 infrastructure projects.
More than that, however, were questions by Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae as to why a fund that was ostensibly for border infrastructure projects to reduce congestion was used for the G8 summit.
"The simple fact is, the government used that money for a completely different purpose," Mr. Rae said. "Huntsville is 300 miles away from the closest border in Niagara Falls. How does he explain this bait and switch?"
Easily, according to the Prime Minister.
"If the leader of the Liberal Party had looked at the border fund he would realize that it is frequently used for projects that are not in border communities," he said. "In any case, this program was announced publicly by the government. It was well known by Parliament. In fact, it was debated several times here in the House of Commons."
And so it went with the opposition accusing the government of throwing around taxpayer dollars to plump up Mr. Clement's riding and the government denying it did anything wrong.
Thus ended the last Question Period of the first full week of the 41st Parliament; the House is not sitting Friday because of the Conservative policy convention.