No lobbying on hunting trip, Christian Paradis says
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is defending Industry Minister Christian Paradis following revelations he spent time at a hunting lodge owned by the former owner of the Quebec Nordiques.
Mr. Paradis said he paid all of his own expenses on the 2009 trip and was not lobbied at the lodge by Marcel Aubut, who at the time was seeking public funding for a $400-million NHL-calibre arena project.
“As far as the information I have, this was a private trip and there is no link I’m aware of to any government business,” Mr. Harper said in Seoul, South Korea, in response to the revelations reported by CTV News.
The Conservatives declined to provide federal funding for professional arenas and even campaigned in the 2011 election against using taxpayer dollars to support professional sports franchises.
“I have done several hunting trips in my life,” Mr. Paradis said in the Commons, facing a barrage of questions from NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus and other opposition MPs. “I covered my own costs. I took my own car. I got there by myself with my own equipment…. Never did Mr. Aubut attempt to lobby me before or during this trip.”
Liberal House leader Marc Garneau and Liberal ethics critic Scott Andrews have written to the federal ethics watchdog, Mary Dawson, asking her to investigate the matter.
The revelations come days after she found Mr. Paradis was in a conflict of interest in another case when he arranged for former Tory MP Rahim Jaffer to meet with government officials and lobby them about a business proposal.
Ms. Dawson reached this conclusion a few days earlier in a March 22 report that was released following a two-year investigation.
She told a Commons committee Tuesday that the investigation was lengthy because she needed time to analyze the case and faced delays in getting documents and doing interviews with witnesses.
“There weren’t any people who refused to come, it’s just that it takes time,” she told reporters after appearing at the committee. “Sometimes you’re over a summer, or sometimes you’re over a break.”
She also confirmed that she had launched another investigation on Mr. Paradis’s alleged involvement in the transfer of a federal Employment Insurance office from an NDP-held riding in Rimouski, Que., into the Industry Minister’s riding.
Ms. Dawson, who was appointed in 2007, said she could not remember having to do so many investigations on a single Cabinet minister.
While she said she hoped the current investigation regarding the office transfer would not take as long as the last one.
Mr. Angus urged her to use her powers to subpoena witnesses, if necessary, to speed up the process.
Mr. Angus also suggested that Mr. Harper should remove Mr. Paradis from Cabinet because he doesn’t buy the minister’s explanations.
“It is kind of hard to follow his logic because he says that getting busted for Rahim Jaffer is part of his ethical education,” Mr. Angus said in the Commons. “So was his hunting trip part of his summer camp experience? How about moving all those government offices over to his father-in-law’s building? Is that about a family togetherness exercise? There is not a rule the Conservative government is not willing to break. When is it going to teach him a proper lesson and kick him out of Cabinet?”
No lobbying on hunting trip, Christian Paradis says | News | National Post
