MP Mike Wallace presents Standing Committee reports in the House of Commons - fibs on the kind of job created by the federal government.

By Pepper Parr

May 9, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

Question period in the House of Commons is that occasion when Members of Parliament get to hold the government accountable by asking questions.

Each party is allocated a specific amount of time – the Leader of the Opposition party asks the first question and then the Speaker of the House recognized different members.

Burlington MP Mike Wallace has a piece of art explained to him by AGB Curator of Education Leslie Page during one of his weekend trips to Burlington.

Last week Burlington’s MP Mike Wallace asked a question and presented two reports.

The question was to the Minister of Finance of his own government. These are basically set up questions where a member of the government party asks a question of a Minister who then gets to stand up and tout the government line
Wallace asked:

Mr. Speaker, the strong leadership of this Conservative government has steered Canada out of the global recession. It has created over 1.2 million new jobs. They are overwhelmingly full-time private-sector jobs, in high-wage industries.

Would the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance please tell the House the next steps that this government will take in this year’s budget to create more jobs?

Someone needs to have a chat with Wallace – the jobs created were not “overwhelmingly full-time private-sector jobs, in high-wage industries.”

Questions like this then allow the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance to add to what is basically an exercise in parliamentary

Burlington MP Mike Wallace preparing for a funding announcement at Memex Automation.

Wallace later presented two Standing Committee reports. On this occasion he was speaking as the Chair of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. This is an important Standing Committee and while there have been occasions in the past when Wallace was a little more partisan than he perhaps should have been – the committee does some very good work.

On this occasion Wallace was presenting the report on Bill C-35, an act to amend the Criminal Code (law enforcement animals, military animals and service animals).

The committee has studied the bill said Wallace and has agreed to report it back to the House without amendment.

Wallace continued: I also have the honour to present, the 19th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in relation to the study on the subject matter of Bill C-583, an act to amend the Criminal Code (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder).

All in all a good days work for the Member for Burlington.