Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition to provide our beloved police service dogs with the veterinary care in retirement that these valued police partners deserve. The petitioners recognize that these dogs serve faithfully alongside police officers right across Canada, providing protection, detection and life-saving support to Canadians and members of law enforcement. It is support that often r…
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There used to be a promise here in Canada, Mr. Speaker, that if a person worked hard, paid their taxes and followed the law, they could afford a home, groceries and a decent standard of living. Now, after 10 years of the Liberal government, for most Canadians that promise no longer exists. According to a new survey from the United Way, 60% of Canadians now feel anxious about their finances, 38% st…
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Mr. Speaker, I can tell the House that most people on Vancouver Island know one thing, which is that the economic policies of the Liberal government have been hurting young Canadians the most, young people who can no longer afford homes in the communities they grew up in, whose jobs have been shipped overseas or taken by temporary foreign workers, whose streets on which they play have been flooded…
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Mr. Speaker, I always thought the role of the media was to hold the powerful accountable and to unapologetically seek the truth. Apparently, however, the CBC views it as trying to deceive and trick individual Canadians into bizarre and intentional traps. A new TV series from the CBC lied and used fictitious production companies, aliases and made-up stories in an effort to dupe Canadians for the pu…
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are outraged to learn that taxpayer dollars went to deceive and lie to individual Canadians, including RCMP veterans. A CBC production used fake websites, fake names and fake companies to lure them into supposed interviews about their lives after retirement, but it was all just a front, a set-up for some sort of twisted humiliation ritual in front of a live studio audience. …
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Mr. Speaker, the mayor of Richmond is simply stating the facts as they are. The federal government and the provincial government in B.C. failed to make legal arguments to defend private property. That is a fact. However, what may be even more inexcusable is that after that court decision was made, they continued to go out and sign agreements, whether they were treaties in British Columbia or the M…
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Mr. Speaker, the first thing to do is to remove these legal guidelines that have restricted our Crown counsel from defending private property rights with all of the tools in their tool kit. There should be no further agreements or treaties made with first nations without explicit protections for private property embedded within. As far as what comes beyond that, my position, which I believe is als…
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Mr. Speaker, members can imagine waking up one morning in beautiful British Columbia. The sun is out. The birds are chirping. We can see the mountains, the forest and, if we are lucky, maybe even the ocean from our home. Life on the surface is actually pretty good, but that scenic reality masks a much deeper and darker anxiety. The title to that home, that deed that was signed however long ago, ma…
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member across the way. It does not mention private property, and that is the problem. There are no explicit protections for private property in the agreement and we are currently in a legal scenario. We are in legal limbo as we await the appeal process of the Cowichan decision. As we said, as the Conservative Party, we have demanded that every new agreement, every new…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise once again in this House to submit yet another petition on behalf of the people of North Island—Powell River opposing ongoing attempts by a Bermuda-based company, Brookfield Renewables, to receive an unprecedented 30-year export permit to send Canadian hydroelectricity out of Powell River to the United States, in the middle of a trade war I might add, with no benefit to the peo…
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Mr. Speaker, what a a colossal and grotesque waste of taxpayer money. How else could one describe the deliberate Liberal decision to double the size of Canada's deficit and add $1 trillion to Canada's debt? It will increase the amount of taxpayer money wasted on interest payments to $80 billion every single year. That is $5,000 per Canadian household not going toward health care, education or road…
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Mr. Speaker, there used to be a political consensus in this country that government, like the rest of us, had to live within its means. This was a shared understanding that money does not grow on trees and that eventually all bills come due. Liberals shattered that consensus, borrowing more money over the past 10 years than every other government in the history of our country combined. The Prime M…
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Mr. Speaker, more spending and more debt seems to be the Liberals' solution to every problem they create, forever increasing the size of government and using Canada's credit card to foot the bill. However, all this deficit spending comes with an inflationary cost: the worst grocery inflation in all of the G7, the worst household debt in all of the G7 and the worst housing costs. When will the Prim…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Dufferin—Caledon. Why do we get involved in politics? Why do those in this chamber put their names forward to stand for an election and all that it entails? The answer, of course, varies and is undoubtedly different for different people. Some run for office to seek change in their local community. Others are motivated by matters of princ…
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Mr. Speaker, the truth is that this is a question Canadians would like to have answered. I do not have the answers. We do not know what conversations were happening behind closed doors. We do not know what was offered or what enticements were made. That is the very essence of the problem. Is the balance of power in this chamber, in this House, about to be upset because of conversations that Canadi…
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Mr. Speaker, I was elected to the House to voice my opinions. This is not a quote from me. What I can tell the member, which I totally pointed out in my speech, is that there have been many floor crossings in the history of Canada, but never in 159 years has a government openly courted a large number of MPs to cross the floor to try to change the balance of power in Ottawa and give them a majority…
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Mr. Speaker, Parliament and the workings of the House should reflect the democratic mandate given during the last election. The Liberal Party and the Prime Minister sought, and did not receive, a majority government from Canadians. What they have now done, through backroom deals and who knows what else, is manufacture a majority government. Their first order of business is not to try to do somethi…
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Mr. Speaker, over the past 10 years, we have seen violent crime on our streets increase dramatically under the Liberal government. That is an issue that needs to be addressed, and it is not a surge in speech crimes that needs to be dealt with. It is the fact that the government keeps releasing repeat violent offenders back onto our streets over and over again, such as those who assault people and …
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Mr. Speaker, it is simply because Conservatives on this side of the House believe in free speech. We believe in free expression, and we believe in freedom of religion. These are the foundational values and principles on which our entire country, the entirety of western civilization, was based upon. Once we start ceding that authority to government, we allow government to control what we can or can…
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Mr. Speaker, further to the point that I just made, the choice is a simple one. As soon as we start placing these restrictions on free speech and free expression, the question becomes who gets to define where the limits are. Where do we draw the line on what we can or cannot say? The bill proposes that it is the government that would have the right to look over its citizenry and decide how we are …
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Mr. Speaker, I know it might be hard for my hon. colleague across the way to understand this, but those of us on this side have deeply committed beliefs when it comes to charter rights, free speech and free expression. We are not making a political calculation. This comes down to a simple question: Do we want to live in a country where the government has the right to decide what we can or cannot s…
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Mr. Speaker, what kind of society and what kind of country do we want to be? Is it one where the government has the power to decide what we can or cannot say, to decide what religious texts we can or cannot read and which opinions we can or cannot hear, or do we want to be a country where citizens are allowed to express themselves freely without fear of persecution or intimidation from the state, …
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Mr. Speaker, three weeks ago, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed that the decision to allow Brookfield Renewable Partners to send Canadian hydroelectricity out of Powell River to the United States, with almost no benefit to Canadians, was out of his hands and instead rested with the Canada Energy Regulator. The only problem is that the regulator told me that it made its recommendation to re…
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Mr. Speaker, working together is great, but the question was about jobs. In the real world, Liberal rhetoric and platitudes do not create a single job. GDP was flat in November. Real GDP is projected to decline. The Bank of Canada says that business investment will remain weak. Meanwhile, 5,400 forestry workers in coastal B.C. are already out of a job. The government promised to build nation-build…
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Mr. Speaker, it was 16 years ago this month when Canadians from coast to coast came together to celebrate the most dominant performance in winter Olympic history, with 26 medals, 14 of them gold, and nothing more iconic, of course, than Sidney Crosby's golden goal, which eliminated the United States and reclaimed Canada's rightful place as the undisputed hockey nation of the world. It was a moment…
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Mr. Speaker, devastated, anxious and fearful of what the future may hold are just some of the emotions, I am sure, that the 25,000 Canadians who lost their jobs last month undoubtedly feel. These are individuals, like all Canadians, who, even when working, were already struggling with the cost of groceries, the cost of rent and the cost of just getting by. Now, not only are they dealing with a cos…
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Mr. Speaker, I have good news. The Canada Energy Regulator has rejected Brookfield's plans to send Canadian hydroelectricity to the United States with almost no benefit to the people who live here, and has instead recommended a full licensing process and review. However, the final decision still rests with the Minister of Natural Resources. Will the minister commit to accepting the Energy Regulato…
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Mr. Speaker, I have a suggestion, and it is to drop the ideological 30 by 30, which stops forestry workers from doing their jobs. I appreciate my colleague's comments on this issue, and I appreciate the government's promises of support, but forestry workers in my riding and across B.C. cannot eat Liberal promises and they cannot pay their mortgages with a Liberal speech. They need action. They nee…
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Mr. Speaker, last week was a devastating one for forestry workers and their families on Vancouver Island. Just outside Port McNeill, the Atli Chip plant announced it would be permanently closed, and curtailments were announced at the Ladysmith and Saltair locations of the iconic Chemainus sawmill, where my grandfather worked for 30 years. These were good-paying jobs, the type of jobs that built co…
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Mr. Speaker, what constitutes a free society? What are the identifying characteristics that separate nations whose people live in freedom from those whose subjects live under tyranny and fear? I can think of no guiding principle more fundamental to this question than the existence, or lack thereof, of free speech and free expression: the legal ability to express oneself without fear of government …
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Madam Speaker, look, the point the Liberals do not understand is that we should not even need an MOU in this country to build things. A private proponent proposed a pipeline and got the project approved by the National Energy Board. The project met all the requisite requirements but was killed for political reasons by the Liberal government. One should not need to go on bended knee to the Prime Mi…
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Madam Speaker, I cannot predict the future, but I will tell the House one thing: It needs to be built. It needs to be built for the national interest of this country. We cannot continue to be an economic dependant of the United States, an economic colony of the United States. We need to take control of our own future and start building things again. Whether it is mines in Saskatchewan, pipelines i…
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Madam Speaker, what it comes down to is that we should be getting the top price for Canadian oil that is possible. We are going to get that top price only if we have access to world markets. If we allow ourselves to be backed into a corner for the Americans to have ultimate leverage over our number one export, we are not going to be able to get the top price. This is why we need to get pipelines b…
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Madam Speaker, on July 20, 1871, British Columbia became the sixth province to sign on to the audacious vision that was Canada as laid out by the fathers of Confederation, a vision that was as bold as it was courageous, which was to create a new nation, one that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the Rockies, across the Prairies and over the Canadian Shield to unite these smal…
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Madam Speaker, I was 21 at the time, if I am doing the math correctly, so I am not familiar with all the ins and outs of what was or was not in the platform back in 2011. What I can tell the member is that we support a pipeline. We support getting top dollar for Canada's number one export, expanding our trade markets, becoming less dependent on the United States, actually getting things done, foll…
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Mr. Speaker, devastated, gutted and heartbroken are just three of the emotions I felt after learning that 375 Canadians would be losing their jobs with the closing of the Crofton mill. These are Canadians with mortgage payments and with young families, Canadians who were already struggling with the rising cost of living before receiving this terrible news. The government promised to support our wo…
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Mr. Speaker, Canada used to be a country that built things and got things done. It built the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rockies and across the Canadian Shield. Today, we are governed by Liberals who spend more time building fake backdrops for press conferences than on nation-building projects to secure our sovereignty from the United States. A new pipeline to the Pacific was already appr…
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Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister promised to build Canada strong, yet when it comes to a pipeline to the coast of B.C., a pipeline that could end the U.S. monopoly on Canadian oil and bring billions of dollars into Canada, he transforms into a helpless bystander, hiding behind the NDP premier in B.C., ceding responsibility and abdicating leadership. The Constitution is clear: National pipelines ar…
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Mr. Speaker, maybe if Brookfield proposed a pipeline we could actually get one backed by this Prime Minister. Let us be clear: a majority of Canadians support this pipeline. A majority of British Columbians support this pipeline. As long as the world needs these resources, as long as the world needs oil and gas, until that last barrel comes out of the ground, as much of those resources as possible…
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Mr. Chair, “Who cares?” is what the Prime Minister said when asked when he had last spoken to the U.S. President about Canada's ongoing trade negotiations. The Prime Minister claimed that he had no “burning issue” to discuss with the United States at the moment and that he would speak to the President again “when it matters”. To the over 200,000 Canadians who earn their living in forestry, who har…
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Mr. Chair, while it would be great to boost some domestic demand for softwood lumber, that is not the problem. This is an export industry. About 90% of Canada's softwood exports go to the United States. That cannot be replaced with domestic demand. We can build all the homes we want, and we are all in favour of building homes here on the opposition side of the aisle, but if we do not fix the issue…
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Mr. Chair, I thank my hon. colleague for the question; that is a great question. The truth is the Prime Minister promised that he would have a deal by July 21, and he did not get one. Instead, the Liberals have gone around poking the U.S. administration in the eye. Their solution to everything seems to be to print and hand out more money. The truth is that this industry in British Columbia, and on…
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Mr. Chair, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the question. I am sure he knows, in talking to forestry companies, especially in British Columbia and right across this country, that other than the trade issues with the United States, access to fibre is the number one issue that these companies face. It is the number one issue facing the industry and preventing it from going forward and bei…
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Mr. Chair, as I said earlier, this industry on the coast of B.C. is one sawmill or pulp mill closure away from total collapse. It is barely hanging on. It is losing money at this moment. It has been struggling for a while. If we do not get a trade deal soon, if we do not get access to fibre soon, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and thousands of additional jobs are at risk.
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Mr. Speaker, in Powell River, one of the local communities I represent, two hydro dams provided a clean, reliable and cost-effective source of electricity for over 100 years. Their electricity powered the local pulp mill, created thousands of jobs and quite literally built this amazing and beautiful city. That was until the mill fell into financial trouble and was forced to sell the dams as distre…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague raises a very good point, which is the fact that what the government is trying to do, and we have seen it happen in corporate Canada before, is move money around into different pots and try to mask the top figure, which is the massive amount of new debt. What matters is that the government is planning to borrow $321 billion over the next five years and put that money on…
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the Liberal budget, a budget put forward by the government that I believe to be fiscally reckless, utterly immoral and lacking any kind of grand unifying vision that Canada, at this moment in its history, so desperately needs. I speak first and foremost, as always, on behalf of my constituents of North Island—Powell River. However, I also feel duty-bound to …
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for giving me the opportunity to point out something that needs to be raised in this House, and that is how bad the deterioration of the fiscal situation has become in this country. The truth is, and I believe my hon. colleague will know this, that Canada's federation is structured differently than other countries in the G7. We hold massive amounts of what …
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Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the Liberal government. Over the past 10 years, it has doubled Canada's national debt. In that same time, unsurprisingly, it has also doubled the amount of taxpayers' money that it has wasted on paying interest on that debt. In fact, today, we now spend $55 billion a year just on interest payments. That is more than we collect from the GST. That is more th…
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Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of the Liberal government, young Canadians are struggling. They are struggling to afford homes in one of the least affordable housing markets in the world. They are struggling to find jobs in an economy that is increasingly slowing down, and they are struggling just to afford food after some of the highest food inflation in more than 30 years. The budget was an opportun…
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