Gillani paid and he and his guests went to the parking lot. There was much talk at the dinner that some would head off to Club Paradise.
A diligent officer, she activated her mobile radar detector as she drove south through Palgrave on Highway The speed limit in the small town was 50 kph.
She told Sgt. Walking up to the car, the female officer shone her flashlight in at the driver. Rahim Jaffer looked back. Stapleton smelled alcohol and asked Jaffer several questions. Pulling a roadside breathalyzer unit from her cruiser she administered the test, which showed positive for alcohol. Stapleton radioed for a male officer to join her because she was arresting Jaffer. Stapleton called for a tow truck to take away the Ford. The officer searched Jaffer and found a bag in his pocket, which turned out to be cocaine.
They drove Jaffer to the Caledon East OPP detachment and administered a blood alcohol test, which showed a level above the legal.
Officers at the OPP detachment conducted a strip search of Jaffer, which police say is standard protocol when drugs are found on a person. Stapleton charged Jaffer, 38, with driving over the legal blood alcohol limit, speeding 93 kph in a 50 kph zone; and possession of cocaine. He was released from the station around 6 am on Friday, Sept. The morning Jaffer was charged, Gillani sent out an email to investors that was full of positive bluster.
Tory insiders say Jaffer has no such access. Toronto lawyer Howard Rubel was hired to defend Jaffer. Jaffer told associates that the cocaine was in his jacket pocket, which was hanging in the back seat of his car, which he said meant he would likely get off on a technicality. The police maintain the cocaine was in his pants pocket. OPP officer Stapleton, with the realization that this high profile case was likely coming to court during her Olympic duties, prepared her notes and understood that if needed she would fly back to testify.
Meanwhile, York Regional Police detectives charged Gillani, Mihelic and several others in November with fraud in connection with a deal Gillani allegedly orchestrated. Jasmine, the Cachet Ladies escort, was with Gillani in his bedroom when detectives arrived to make the arrest.
Sobbing, she pleaded with them not to take her boyfriend away. Two of those accused have said they will plead guilty in return for providing evidence against Gillani. No findings of guilt have been made and the case continues in Newmarket court later this month. Gillani has previously faced charges of carrying a handgun in B. Neither of these cases have been resolved. Jaffer had four brief court hearings on the cocaine and driving charges last fall and early winter.
A year later, interim Canadian Alliance leader John Reynolds named him his deputy. Conservative insiders say Jaffer lost the unlosable through sheer laziness. A few months later, Jaffer asked the Conservative party to stretch a nomination deadline; he was rebuffed. Others believe Jaffer had every intention of getting back into the game. That moment now seems far away. Before Jaffer spreads the vast wilderness beyond the Hill. Perhaps Jaffer, who achieved so much so early, has been at loose ends.
That was one of the inner demons he was trying to shake. The officer pulled the SUV over and allegedly smelled alcohol. The highway system will be crucial to that. It should also include speeding up the border infrastructure program and develop a rural road safety and improvement program. We also have to invest in the roads of tomorrow, enhance the role of technology and innovation when exploring the development of better and safer roads and highways, and finally, encourage eco-driving.
I think it is interesting that even the Canadian Automobile Association says that there should be some sort of incentives in place, especially as technologies are evolving, looking at new ways to develop hybrid cars and other types of fuel cells, that there should be incentives for Canadians to change their habits and that leadership should come from the federal government. Those are all actions that as a future government I believe we would definitely support and initiate.
The question is whether the Liberals are willing to listen to the motorists of Canada and start working to address those infrastructure needs.
What I have been arguing about this particular bill is that it sometimes seems more politics than policy. If the federal government really wants to support this gateway initiative I believe it needs to finance the initiatives that were identified by B. I believe my colleague from Cambridge referred to it. It was developed jointly by British Columbia's ministry of small business and economic development and the ministry of transportation in B.
The B. The council would have 15 members, 9 of whom would be nominated by the federal government , 5 of whom would be nominated in cooperation with the four western provinces and the final member would be the chairperson of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
Bill C is a Liberal strategy so it can be seen as doing something to help promote B. By setting up the council as a means of subjecting current initiatives to further consultation, the Liberals can continue to postpone their financial commitments while being seen as taking a bold step to support this initiative.
The province's number one transportation policy to date was not funded by the federal government's gateway announcement. I know that the costs of some of the projects that were identified were quite large.
None of these projects, which will directly affect the functionality of the Pacific gateway, were even touched in any of the proposals put forward.
These are all significant projects and they have all been identified as crucial to making the new project work. I will conclude with what we would have done and how we would have approached things differently. Rather than announcing ideas or policies throughout Canada's Pacific gateway, the Liberals have announced more bureaucracy. Western ports need real solutions to their challenges, not this Liberal half-step. As a government, we would make real policy changes that would allow the Pacific gateway to become a reality, not a Liberal catchphrase.
We would eliminate Ottawa's borrowing cap on the port of Vancouver, which is a big problem. We would allow B. We would streamline security at our ports, offer assistance with dredging, invest gas taxes into our infrastructure, and work with provincial governments and port authorities on high priority infrastructure projects. This would be the proper blueprint. Earth Water November 16th, Speaker, most Canadians take clean drinking water for granted, however not everyone has access to this precious resource.
Every day there are 6, deaths resulting from a lack of clean drinking water. That is one death every 14 seconds, totalling 5 million per year. While most people choose to ignore this problem, there is one company in my riding of Edmonton--Strathcona that is doing something about it. Earth Water sells bottled water throughout Canada and has teamed up with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to deliver clean drinking water throughout the world.
I wish that more corporations had the heart and soul that Earth Water exhibits on a daily basis. This is a corporation that all Canadians can be proud of. On behalf of my constituents of Edmonton--Strathcona and the official opposition, I want to thank Earth Water for its contribution to help people drink safe water around the world. Privilege November 3rd, Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege regarding comments made by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, as well as those made by the minister's director of communications on the minister's behalf, which have not only unjustly damaged the reputation of myself and my colleagues in the Conservative Party of Canada, but I believe are part of a coordinated plan to intimidate and harass members of the official opposition.
Specifically, the minister is menacing and using intimidation against Conservative members of Parliament sitting on the Standing Committee of Citizenship and Immigration by telling the Canadian public that we are anti-immigrant and that we failed to do our proper duty when we rejected the supplementary estimates A in committee on Tuesday, November 1.
These statements, in my opinion, constitute a prima facie case that my privileges as a parliamentarian have been breached. I would like to provide a brief summary of the background into this issue and read the exact quotes from the minister and his officials into the record, followed by the relevant Speaker rulings and passages from the appropriate text that show this to be a breach of my privilege. If you do, indeed, Mr. Speaker, find a case exists, I will then move my motion. First let me provide some background on the vote taken on the estimates of November 1, in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
As you may be aware, Mr. Speaker, the supplementary estimates A, for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration were tabled in the House last week and referred to the standing committee. The committee invited the minister to appear prior to our vote Tuesday and the minister did appear. The Standing Orders provide for a detailed consideration of the Estimates, both Main and Supplementary, by standing committees. Regarding what types of questions committee members are allowed to ask, on page , Marleau and Montpetit goes on to state:.
The questioning and discussion at this meeting is generally wide-ranging, although the rule of relevance does apply. When the committee has completed its consideration of the Estimates, each item is put to a vote separately. The Conservative members of the committee followed this procedure but the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration did not.
However the minister obfuscated and treated committee members with contempt. He refused to give us clear and concise answers. Numerous times the Liberal chair of the meeting had to admonish the minister to try to answer committee members in a clear and concise manner.
The minister refused to heed the chair's advise. The Conservative members on the committee felt that the minister had treated us with contempt and decided that since the minister failed to answer our questions, we would exercise our right and responsibility as the official opposition and oppose the passage of the estimates.
Let me emphasize that point. It is not the role of the official opposition to blindly rubber stamp the estimates. In our system of responsible government, it is the role of the opposition to scrutinize the estimates and make sure the government stays responsible to the House of Commons and Canadians. It does not matter if this is a budget vote or an estimates vote in a standing committee, it is the job of the official opposition to scrutinize government spending.
If in our opinion the minister fails to be responsible to Parliament by failing in the simple task of answering questions, we have every right and responsibility to vote against the estimates. In the end, the estimates were defeated by a vote, with the Bloc and Conservative members exercising our rights as opposition.
We even put out a press release the next day explaining our rationale and left the door open to the minister to return to committee to reconsider these estimates if he was willing to do his part by answering questions. The official opposition did its job. It should have ended there but, unfortunately, it did not. The minister, instead of recognizing the will of the committee, spoke to the media the next day on November 2 and made comments which I now believe constitute a breach of my privileges.
Specifically, on page A8 of today's edition of the Toronto Star, the minister made the following comments:. The first chance they had to show support for an immigration plan that is comprehensive In effect, he has called the Conservative members on the committee anti-immigrant as we did not pass his estimates.
Additionally, Stephen Heckbert, the communications director for the minister, has begun a full assault to attack our reputation. I believe the existence of this email proves my contention that there is a coordinated plan to attack the reputations of Conservative MPs and to intimidate the official opposition.
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