Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I will have a speech in a few minutes. Before I get there, I would like to ask my friend and colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue a brief question. The member seems to have temporary amnesia with respect to all the progress we have made collectively, and I think he should take credit for some of that. We have agreed that abuse in sport ought not to be a partisan issue and that, when w…
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Mr. Speaker, I support any member who wishes to stay home and use the virtual aspects of the House, but I think it is against the rules, as has been stated before, to call out any member who is currently not in the House—
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Mr. Speaker, frankly it is beneath the member to be accusing me of such things.
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, we have been in committee talking about these issues over the last couple of weeks. Jasperites have written to me. They have sent messages to me, and they have asked us to tone down the political rhetoric on this because it is reopening old wounds. Instead of trying to estimate the number of trees that still stand in Jasper, I know there are very many trees that still stand, thankfu…
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Mr. Speaker, an investigation is under way in the very concerning case that my colleague has referenced. It is unacceptable. That form of cheating is absolutely unacceptable. Our Minister of Sport rescinded funding and demanded an immediate investigation with Canada Soccer, which is currently under way. Performing a concurrent study in committee would be a distraction to that important independent…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend and colleague from the New Democratic Party for her interest in safe sport. I know that this is not new for her. She was a volunteer at my first Olympics in 2004 in Athens. We have discussed that before. I sincerely appreciate her support for team Canada beyond just the women's soccer team. Athlete mental health is of sincere and genuine importance to…
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Mr. Speaker, it is a real honour to stand in the House this morning to talk about an issue that is so close to my heart. I have been an athlete my whole life, although, when I was a young boy, I did not believe in myself. I did not think that I could become an athlete. The great coaches at the Burloak Canoe Club gave me the skills and the confidence necessary to achieve my dreams in athletics. Tha…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to say thank you and congratulations to my colleague and friend. He has been an active part of the progress made over the last two and a half years. It has been a team effort. It has been challenging. The testimony has been hard to listen to and hard to read, but we have made extraordinary progress together. The one place where I will disagree with my friend and colleague…
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Mr. Speaker, that is absurd. It is false and it is defamatory. I am disgusted that, in the House, I would be accused of something like that. I attended the committee meetings as a participant to ensure that we were listening to survivors' voices. This is challenging for all of us. It is challenging for somebody who has been a part of the sport system, although I recognize that it has had its chall…
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Mr. Speaker, I will not stand for it. I refute those allegations, if the member wants to call them that. She made them up.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a personal ambition of mine. It is a professional obsession, in fact. I love sport. I love community sport, high-performance sport and international sport, summer, winter. Yesterday, I was the keynote speaker at the Ottawa Special Olympics Festival Breakfast and I had a great time. The athletes there were amazing, as always. They were articulate, kind and generous. They wore the…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the only place in the world where it seems like it is okay to never talk about climate change, commit to doing nothing about climate change and commit to actually increasing our carbon emissions seems to be the Conservative campaign room because the world knows that climate change is real. We just had a horrific hurricane sweep across Florida, one of the most powerful ever. Wildfires …
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Mr. Speaker, the Jasper wildfire was started by lightning, and the people who live in Jasper underwent an incredibly difficult summer. To politicize this issue is unacceptable. Arctic Fire, the organization that my colleague mentioned, is a private for-profit company under direct contract with Alberta Wildfire. It had no direct relationship with Parks Canada, but it did supply Alberta Wildfire wit…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My friend and colleague's comments were very well considered and well put. To be honest, I had not really considered the gender implications of the insults from the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes earlier. However, I am struck with the reality that when people run out of arguments in this place, they resort to personal attacks. …
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his collaboration on the environment committee, where we have been hearing about the circumstances that led to the Jasper wildfire situation. I would like to point out that the overpoliticization of this issue, the tabloidization of it, and what the Conservatives are saying on social media have been absolutely unacceptable. As a result of some of…
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Mr. Speaker, the blatant climate denial from the other side is absurd and childish. It is literally in grade 3 when kids learn about greenhouse gases. The more you put into the environment, the hotter our planet gets. The hotter our planet gets, the hotter the oceans become and that causes more extreme weather, and it also dries out our forests, which makes our forests more susceptible and vulnera…
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Mr. Speaker, as a reminder to the constituents in my colleague's riding in Saskatchewan, they will be receiving $376 on October 15 for a family of four. That is good news for affordability, and eight out of 10 families across Canada get more back from the Canada carbon rebate than they pay. It seems like the Conservatives do not want to talk about the economy anymore, and it is probably because Ca…
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Mr. Speaker, the member did not read the report. It is obvious, because, on page 1 of the report, it says Canadians “will see a net gain, receiving more from the Canada Carbon Rebate than the total amount they pay in the federal fuel charge”. Let us flip to page 7. It is a bit long, I know, and the member of Parliament might have a bit of a difficult time with a document like this. The meaningless…
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Mr. Speaker, do members know how we can tell that the Conservatives know they are losing the argument? It is when they resort to useless, meaningless, ad hominem attacks on people's appearance. That is unnecessary, unparliamentary and childish. It is childish, just like their slogans. The Conservatives do not want to cheer on Canada's economy. They do not want to acknowledge that 47,000 jobs were …
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Mr. Speaker, it is on page 1. The Conservatives clearly did not get past the table of contents. It says clearly that the PBO estimates the average household in each backstopped province will see a net gain, receiving more from the Canada carbon rebate than the total amount they pay in the federal carbon charge. October 15 is next week, and that is when Canadians will receive their next installment…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, today is World Mental Health Day, which is an opportunity to shine a light on crucial yet often overlooked aspects of our lives, one being mental health at work. This year's theme reminds us that our workplaces must be safe with respect to our collective and individual mental and psychological well-being. Our work environments are ever-evolving and more dynamic than ever before. As le…
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Mr. Speaker, we all have a role to play in stopping the spread of misinformation, and the Conservatives, over the last couple of years, have made a tabloid of a lot of things they read in the ecosystem. Perhaps news is not as reliable as it used to be, or perhaps some of the Conservatives are getting their news from less trustworthy sources. The truth is that, on May 17, 2024, we refused a request…
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Mr. Speaker, it is nice to be here in adjournment debate with you and some colleagues. I would like to thank my friend and colleague for the question and the opportunity to talk about the Government of Canada's continued commitment to helping build sustainable, inclusive and climate-resistant communities. I understand that public transit is a foundational element to a thriving community, and I joi…
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Mr. Speaker, as my friend and colleague pointed out, the PBO released today an update on his analysis for the impact of the federal fuel charge on Canadian households, because unfortunately there had been a mistake made. The PBO report confirmed just recently that when we look at the direct costs of pollution pricing and the amounts actually paid by households, in terms of the fuel charge versus t…
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Mr. Speaker, carbon pricing has been on the agenda in the last two elections. In fact, my colleague got elected on the promise of a carbon tax with the former leader of the Conservative Party, Erin O'Toole. The Conservatives turned their backs on climate action. They decided they were not going to be a climate-forward party. We hardly ever hear of climate action or climate change from members of t…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, inflation is down, interest rates are down and our emissions are going down too. Our economy is growing and the Canada carbon rebate is making life more affordable. Today the PBO released a report that clears the air for Canadians and calls out the Conservative campaign of misinformation. Big polluters pay and more money goes back to Canadians. On October 15, Canadians will receive th…
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Mr. Speaker, it is more than that, actually. I have been working with my member of provincial Parliament on a plan for two-way, all-day GO trains. This is an important priority for both the member for Kitchener Centre and for me. The federal government has committed the funding. Then, at various times, the provincial government commits funding, but only when it seems to be politically expedient. I…
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Madam Speaker, as I have said many times before in the House after debating with the hon. member of Parliament for Victoria, and generally, with any non-Conservative member who would like to talk about fighting climate change, lowering our emissions and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, it is heartening to be able to discuss how we fight climate change, not if we fight climate change. It does…
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Madam Speaker, I was going to avoid talking about the NDP's recent backtracking on climate action. It is 100% backtracking when one says that carbon pricing is not as important as another party wants to say it is. Our emissions are down 8% since 2005. We are making remarkable progress and that is due in part to carbon pricing. The speaker opposite just said that we are not doing anything on the in…
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Madam Speaker, as I speak, I am being heckled from the other side. We are doing a lot on climate. The NDP want to claim that its platform was somehow stronger. That was refuted by all of the environmental non-government organizations and research groups. It does not have a climate plan. When the going got tough, the Conservatives turned their tail and did exactly what the Conservatives said the ND…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands spoke of transparency and has been in the media lately. For transparency, Canadians would like to know about that. The member has supposedly been on an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida on an anti-abortion speaking tour at southern churches. That may or may not be true, because when other members of Parliament stood up in this House to say tha…
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Madam Speaker, to go back to my point with respect to transparency, if someone wants to talk about transparency, they should also demonstrate some. Has the member of Parliament for Cypress Hills—Grasslands been to Florida for all-expense-paid anti-abortion tours or not?
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, today is “sneak it in” day, so Participaction is here in Ottawa to remind us all to make room in our busy schedules to sneak in some movement. Movement is medicine. It is preventative medicine for our minds, our bodies and our communities, keeping us all happy, healthy, connected and strong. A little exercise every day is also great for our mood, productivity and focus. I am proud tha…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the hon. member's question. The Government of Canada shares the member's concerns about alleged wrongdoing in our procurement process, as do all parliamentarians and Canadians across the country. This is why we voted in favour of the motion to call Mr. Firth to appear in the House to answer questions, and we trust that his testimony was ful…
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Madam Speaker, like I said, all parties are troubled by the circumstances surrounding contracts awarded for work on the ArriveCAN application. Canadians and Parliamentarians deserve and demand answers, as does the government. There are many inquiries and investigations into the ArriveCAN contracts issue, and we fully support all of that work. It is important that we allow these activities to concl…
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Madam Speaker, I take exception a little bit to the suggestion that we have not taken note of what oil and gas executives and the mega corporations have been doing. They were at the environment committee, and I demanded answers from some of the CEOs. Frankly, what I heard back from the CEOs was inadequate. It was a demonstration that they actually do not know where they are invested and the impact…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by correcting the record. We have not lost the support of the House. There has not been a confidence vote that the government has lost. In two days, on Wednesday, there is going to be a confidence vote, and all parties have stepped up to say they are just not buying what the Conservatives are putting out there. It is based on false premises. They are, frankly, …
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. friend and colleague from Kitchener Centre for his continued advocacy on this important issue and policy step. It is important, and our government firmly believes that at a time when middle-class Canadians are struggling to get ahead, and when it feels to so many like their hard work is not paying off as much as it used to, it is necessary for the gover…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand to talk about one of our most successful policies in the last nine years. When our government took office in 2015, Canada's carbon emissions were rising fast in multiple sectors. It was not just the oil and gas industry, but it was particularly in oil and gas. Since then, they plateaued and are now starting to come down. They have been coming do…
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Madam Speaker, Canadians were proud to celebrate the exceptional performances of team Canada athletes this summer as they won a record number of medals and inspired the next generation of Olympic athletes. Through budget 2024, our Liberal government boosted the athlete assistance program that supports Canadian athletes. The carding checks directly support over 1,800 athletes across more than 94 sp…
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Madam Speaker, thanks to the CBC/Radio-Canada, Canadians enjoyed open and equitable access to countless hours of amazing sport from the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. Canadians cheered on our incredible athletes as they won medals, broke records and pushed the limits of human performance. The role the CBC plays as a public broadcaster in connecting Canadians to the Olympic and Paralympic Game…
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Madam Speaker, it is pretty rich for the Conservatives to be talking about pensions as they are actively committed to cancelling Canadians' pensions, while their pensions and the leader of the Conservatives' pension are worth more than $2 million. As always, the three-word slogans coming from the Conservatives do not make sense. They are not even true. Inflation is down. Interest rates are down. G…
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives will never let the truth or good news get in the way of their shameless exploitation of the challenges that Canadians are facing these days, and their three-word slogans are not solutions, are not policies and are childish. They are also fake news. Inflation is down, interest rates are down and gas prices are down, and thanks to our environmental policies, emission…
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Madam Speaker, it is pretty rich for the Conservatives to stand up in the House when they introduced legislation when they were in government to raise the retirement age to 67 and gut Canadians' pensions. We are the party that reformed CPP and brought forward more senior supports. We are working to ensure that Canadians' pensions are strong. I have to mention that the member from British Columbia …
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Madam Speaker, we have been here before and we have talked about this before, with the member opposite and with many other members. The last I checked, Kelowna—Lake Country, a beautiful place, is in British Columbia. There is no federal price on pollution in British Columbia. In fact, it was a Liberal government in British Columbia that brought forward Canada's first carbon pricing system. It has …
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to stand in the House today for the first time after a summer break and speak to a policy proposal from the New Democratic Party on something I have always been very interested in looking at. I am always enthusiastic about any policy proposed in the House that aims to reduce or eliminate poverty in Canada. This project to bring forward a universal bas…
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Madam Speaker, it is a shame that the Conservatives keep using the words of the food banks completely out of context. When the food banks propose these things, they also make recommendations. None of the recommendations is to use any of the tired three-word slogans or eliminate a program which is actually supporting low- and medium-income housing. The Conservatives also like to completely ignore t…
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Madam Speaker, I would reiterate that Canada is committed to lasting peace in the Middle East, which includes the creation of a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. That two-state solution needs to be a priority for anybody who is committed to lasting and sustained peace in the region. Unfortunately, I did not hear the term “two-state solution” in my colleague's…
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Madam Speaker, I will start by restating, and will continually state, that Canada unequivocally condemns the attack by Iran against Israel. This attack only serves to destabilize the region and further escalate violence, which is disproportionately killing innocent people: women, children, the elderly and the disabled. This violence achieves nothing. It is completely unacceptable and it must come …
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House of Commons on this important issue with my friend and colleague from British Columbia. Our government has repeatedly committed to supporting indigenous peoples in their efforts to reclaim, revitalize, maintain and strengthen indigenous languages. We recognize the important work that has been accomplished by indigenous communities acr…
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