Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for Surrey Centre for raising what I believe is a very important subject. He mentioned during his remarks about 250-300 LMIA temporary foreign worker cases. My riding is very similar to his in that respect. One of the big concerns, when those applications come to my office, is the reality of abuse with foreign workers. Many of them have to pay their …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, it has now been eight months since a wildfire completely destroyed the community of Lytton in my riding. My constituents still need help to get back home. Nearly two years ago, the government provided blank cheques without applications to select cities for housing projects under the rapid housing initiative in the major cities stream. What specific assistance will the minister provide…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Ottawa Centre for some good points. I disagree with some of them, but he is debating in a strong parliamentary fashion. I disagree with some of the things he said. As mentioned, under the Emergencies Act, the key test is whether or not existing laws in Canada can solve the problems we face. In the case of Ottawa, and I have been in and out of the city since th…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, I liked the points in the member's speech that focused on section 58 of the Emergencies Act. However, I disagree with the member based on the fact that adequate evidence has not been provided to the chamber to determine that no other law in Canada could deal with this. I encourage the member to look at the Emergencies Act NOA submitted by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, es…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, one of the problems I had with the member's speech is that he seemed to assume that the implications we are dealing with in respect to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its relationship to the Emergencies Act have somehow already been tested. I would encourage the hon. member to look at the Debates from April 1988, when MP Blackburn, a former NDP member from Brant, stated that …
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, for my constituents in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, today we are debating the Emergencies Act and the motion for confirmation of a declaration of an emergency, pursuant to section 58 of the act. There is a lot to be said and I cannot cover everything in 10 minutes. Under section 58, the government is required to provide a motion for confirmation of the declaration of an emergency an…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite raised a valid point about extremism, having confidence in our institutions and what Canadians see and read online and how that applies to our jobs as parliamentarians, but I think he missed the points raised by the Government of Canada, which largely focused on infrastructure, on the economy and on protecting our supply chains. There is no justification for u…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix for her question. The government decided to use the act for several reasons. I agree with the hon. member that one reason is that the government wanted to change public opinion about its actions and about the bad decisions it has made over the last four weeks.
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, I think she missed the quote of Peter MacKay saying that the Emergencies Act might be a push too far. The quotes I gave from previous members of Parliament related to the actual debate taking place in here. There was all-party consensus in this chamber when we decided to pass the Emergencies Act: Members of Parliament from all political parties were concerned about government overreac…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, on the day the Prime Minister called a federal election, Afghanistan's capital fell to the Taliban. In the chaos of that evacuation, many of our brave Afghan allies were left behind. My constituents call on the Government of Canada to partner with the Veterans Transition Network and others to launch an immediate evacuation effort for our remaining allies left in Afghanistan and to saf…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting today is from Canadians who also hold citizenship in the U.K. Approximately 127,000 Canadians receive state pensions from the United Kingdom. While British expats living in some countries, notably the United States, receive annual inflationary increases, the pensions of those residing in Canada are frozen. My constituents are calling on the Governme…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. minister for her work on this file and the agreement in the House of Commons. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fact that we are only here today debating a motion of closure because the government screwed up. It is because the government did not allow for the due process of committee. We rushed through legislation, and now we have to make up for the mis…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, on a point of order, we are debating in the House the closure of a bill. We are debating whether we are going to move forward with this legislation or not, yet the minister, in all of her responses, continually refers to a policy decision made over six years—
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, almost eight months ago, Canadians watched in horror as a devastating wildfire destroyed Lytton. Sadly, there are still no permits issued to rebuild homes or businesses. We are still waiting on debris removal. Residents are still waiting to hear if the land they once called home is ready to rebuild on. Many are worried that the living expenses covered by their insurance companies and …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, throughout the member for Calgary Skyview's speech, he said that the minister held a consultation. During the minister's remarks throughout the debate, she talked frequently about the previous Conservative policies. The first policy she failed to mention was that fixing this mistake was actually in her platform. It is the second time this week that the government has invoked closure o…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Nunavut, because I learned something tonight in this debate. That was one of the best speeches I have heard this entire evening. It goes to show what the member outlined in terms of the miscommunication from the government on what programs were accessible to Canadians and speaks to why I wish closure had not been enacted on the bill. I do support…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, this is such a riveting debate. I especially enjoyed the at-length comments from my friend from Battle River—Crowfoot on diversity and how we represent 338 unique corners of this world. I happen to think my riding is the number one riding in Canada. I have glaciers, ski hills and all sorts of great things. One of the things that we all come here to do as members of Parliament is go …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I have to say that the member for Kingston and the Islands is misrepresenting what I said. For much of the pandemic, when someone got COVID or thought they had it, they had to take time off work to get a PCR test. Frankly, we should have had rapid tests then, when that was the requirement of the Province of British Columbia. We are past that, but now the government is coming forward t…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I have a little more of a serious question. Members of all parties have outlined in the House that British Columbia will need additional funds to recover from the recent disasters and to plan for future disasters. B.C. is appreciative of the collaboration with the federal government thus far. Will the upcoming federal budget include specific line-item funds for dike and flood infrastr…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, before I begin debating this motion, I will briefly comment on the opposition motion we just voted on. In my riding of Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon and across this country, Canadians are losing hope. They do not know what to do anymore. They have been triple-vaxxed, they have followed all the rules and they are just looking for some transparency from the federal government so they ca…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it would be irresponsible of me not to look at what happened in the House earlier today with this motion for closure the Liberals put forward. For two years, Canadians have been living with COVID-19 restrictions. There have been two years of lockdowns, of not being able to visit loved ones and of not being able to travel. There have been two years of isolation that has inflamed a ment…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the New Democratic Party really does not think independently anymore. They just side with the Liberals on every single piece of major legislation. What is also important to point out is that Dr. Bonnie Henry in British Columbia is not even counting the number of COVID cases anymore because it would not be accurate, for some of the reasons I have already listed. …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the Liberals have done everything in this pandemic to avoid accountability. I would be remiss if I did not recall one of their first acts in March, when the pandemic started two years ago. They wanted to shut down the House of Commons, because they did not want us to hold them to account. They threw it out there in the public, seeing what they could get away with. …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I met with one of the largest sound companies in British Columbia. It was ranked the number one sound company in North America, Kian Sound and Universal Show Services. Two years ago, it had to lay off 280 people. It has lost 99% of its revenue. It has taken advantage of every single government program and said to me that our government is helping our private industries into…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, let me begin by saying this is one of the most informed, incredible debates I have seen in the House of Commons since I was elected. I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Peterborough—Kawartha. A lot of the statistics I wanted to raise and some of the points I wanted to raise have been shared already. I have been focused recently on the Parliamentary Budget Officer wh…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, regarding a safe supply, I know for a fact, when I spoke to Jesse at 5 and 2 Ministries today, that his organization and other similar ones are often called by Fraser Health and told about this new illicit pill that is being passed around. People can literally watch people being brought into hospitals who are having overdoses because our police officers and the Canada Border Services …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, at the very least, organizations working with people experiencing the effects of opioids must be given the tools. I also believe we should give the provinces more money through health transfers to improve the situation.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, I have not had an opportunity to review this recently tabled legislation, so I cannot comment on a bill I have not read. That said, the Province of B.C. already has de facto decriminalization, yet the deaths and the challenges are still present. I am not opposed to decriminalization necessarily or even a safe supply, but I would need to do more research and look at the bill. I would w…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, it is a real honour to be able to follow up on some questions I had of the government related to infrastructure in the context of disaster recovery in the number one riding in all of Canada, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, and the number two riding in Canada, that of Abbotsford. Everyone in the House knows the challenges my constituents have faced, the challenges the constituents of …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, what a lovely night it is to be debating in Parliament. Yesterday, I had another exchange with the member for Kings—Hants, and I asked him why, since the government has spent so much money on supporting Canadians through COVID-19, we have not increased our ICU capacity or the number of hospitals we have in Canada to help treat COVID-19 and address the consequences of COVID-19 more b…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure to be speaking tonight. I am going to be totally honest with members: Given all the great and wild events of today, I am going to be doing this speech extemporaneously and sharing my time with the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. When I look at the bill, Bill C-8, in the context of where we are today in Canada, I have a number of key concerns. B…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the Province of British Columbia was able to handle its vaccination certificates just fine. That clause in this bill is a political clause more than anything else. We already have the technology in every province to implement that system. What we need to look at now is when we can move past that so that people can get their lives back to normal.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix. I agree with some of what she was saying. We need to let the provinces do what they want when it comes to managing our health care and education systems. The federal government needs to respect the provinces' jurisdictions.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I have two quick points, and I thank the member for Edmonton Griesbach for the question. I believe that the Government of Canada should not be choosing which provincial program it wants to support. Provinces are better off making those decisions on the ground. They know where to allocate their resources most effectively. Secondly, on housing, the government could have done what the …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, on a point of order, the member is inferring that I am opposed to wearing masks when my question had to do with vaccination status in—
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Ottawa Centre for acknowledging that we need to make very real and very targeted investments in British Columbia right now to keep our population safe, update our infrastructure and account for these natural disasters, and we need to do so quickly. When does the hon. member think we are going to hear something from the joint committee? Has t…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, today I am tabling two petitions. The first petition relates to the U.S. Department of State's 20th Trafficking in Persons Report, which indicates that Canada meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. It also indicates that governments at all levels have failed to collaborate on a solution. My constituents are calling on the federal government, as the report urge…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting today relates to Afghanistan. On the day the Prime Minister called a federal election, Afghanistan's capital city fell to the Taliban. In the chaos of the evacuation, many of our brave Afghan allies were left behind. My constituents call upon the Government of Canada to partner with the Veterans Transition Network and others to launch more evacuatio…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure to be in the House today. I thank my hon. colleague from across the aisle, the member for Surrey Centre, for his remarks today and for the collaboration we have had over the last few months as we dealt with the devastation impacting British Columbians. As the member knows, my riding is the heartland of agriculture in British Columbia. Right now, blueberry farme…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his discourse here today, and I have to say that I do miss him at the human resources committee. The member talked a lot about some of the positive things that we have seen or that he has seen coming from the Liberal housing strategy, but Prince Edward Island, like most other regions of this country, has seen drastic increases in the cost of…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to Pacific Economic Development Canada (PacifiCan): (a) how many projects have received funding through PacifiCan since the announced creation of the agency in August 2021; (b) what are the details of each project in (a), including the (i) date of the announcement, (ii) project description, (iii) project location, (iv) funding recipient, (v) projected total project cost, (vi) amount of…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, earlier today, on my way to the agriculture committee with the hon. member, I spoke to some police officers from the Ottawa police force and the Toronto police force in town. I asked them how the weekend went and how things were going today, and they said that there were definitely some bad apples. As the grandson of grandparents from the Netherlands who suffered under Nazi occupati…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for Kitchener South—Hespeler on her very first speech in the House of Commons. One thing she said really stuck out to me, and that was that we need to work together in the House. Under the Liberal government, the cost of housing in her community in the fourth quarter of last year went up 36.2%. Is the hon. member willing to work with the Conse…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé for the good questions he asked this morning about the crisis taking place in my riding, in British Columbia. I agree with him today that there was not much in the throne speech about the housing crisis across Canada. Can the hon. member give us some ideas for improving the situation of young Canadians with regard to the housing crisis?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, on August 15, Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban. The Government of Canada was completely unprepared to evacuate its own citizens as well as the thousands of Afghan allies and their families who supported our nation's military and humanitarian efforts, leaving them in country and at risk of Taliban retribution. The Veterans Transition Network, non-profit organ…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the Insurance Bureau of Canada declared the B.C. floods the most costly severe weather event in the province’s history. The quote for insured private damages is $450 million, but the actual cost is much higher because many affected were uninsured or under-insured. This also does not account for public infrastructure lost. As well, $155 million in insured damage was incurred by wildfir…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member for Ottawa Centre into the House of Commons in his new role as parliamentary secretary. I would ask him to answer a couple of my questions very specifically. First, the funds announced under the DFAA are for this fiscal year. Will they still be available in the following fiscal year? As the member mentioned, some of the requests coming from the province are still …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the devastation impacting Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon and all of B.C. is unprecedented. Farmers in the blueberry sector are especially terrified about the consequences of another flood and its impacts on food security and the economy of B.C. Will the Minister of Agriculture commit, especially for Matsqui, British Columbia, to funding the dike repairs and enhancements throughout the …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, it is incumbent upon the Government of Canada to meet the targets set by Stephen Harper a long time ago now and to see Canada move forward. Related to climate change, what my constituents want to see, and what the village of Lytton wants to see right now, are concrete actions related to climate resiliency and adaptation in the reconstruction of their homes and of their communities. …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, yes, I did vote against the budget, and there is one big reason I voted against it. Just the other day, Bill Curry in The Globe and Mail said there was $600 billion of money that has not been accounted for. To function as a government, the government needs to be transparent and it is not, with more money spent ever than in the history of Canada. I welcome that line item in the budge…
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