Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, no, we have been focusing on strengthening the bill, not weakening the bill, which is why Conservatives put forward so many positive amendments. Thankfully, some that were entertained are now going to become law, should this bill pass through the Senate, but we are going to leave aside bills that would put the priority of convicted criminals above that of victims.
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Mr. Speaker, as this is my first opportunity to rise in the aftermath of the terrible murders at Tumbler Ridge, I want to add my voice to the chorus of sorrows. As a father, and like every other parent, I am sure all we could do as we watched that news was to hug our own children a little closer and offer our prayers to the victims' families and the entire community with regard to the devastating …
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that impassioned speech, and I appreciated his bringing light to the issue through a wonderful Christmas float this year, putting the Grinch in jail properly. I want to highlight what he said, because I have seen it in my rural communities too. The social fabric of our community is changing because people are petrified. We are seeing violent carjackers. W…
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Mr. Speaker, I have received more emails, phone calls, and stops in the grocery store than I ever have on any other issue about the amendments to remove the freedom of religious expression, which the Liberals cooked up with the Bloc Québécois. That is the problem. Of course, acts of hate are the problem. We should have a country where our prosecutors and police act on the laws that we have to prot…
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Mr. Speaker, this is why we repeatedly say the Liberals are soft on crime. We have seen from them, for so many years, this deference to the accused and the convicted instead of their listening to victims. When we get a chance to talk to somebody who went through, in particular, the parole process, or any of the court processes, we hear their stories and their frustration with the lack of informati…
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Mr. Speaker, that did not instill any confidence for Canadian canola growers. The Prime Minister's deal with Beijing opens our streets up to 49,000 Chinese EVs annually, jeopardizing our security and our auto jobs. He assured Canadians that everything was fine, telling us that we would have canola tariffs dropped by March 1. However, with yesterday's announcement that China is pushing back its dec…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister once called called China our biggest security threat. Now he tells us that it is a strategic partner. He told Canadian canola farmers to expect lower tariffs by March 1, yet just yesterday we learned that Beijing is delaying its decision until at least March 9. Last time I checked, partners keep their word. Our farmers deserve better than uncertainty, shifting timel…
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Mr. Speaker, not to get too far into the weeds, but the committee is the master of its own domain. The committee members could have decided that Bill C-14 was the priority. Canadians decided that Bill C-14 was the priority. They have been demanding bail reform for eight years, since the initial changes by the former, well the same, Liberal government that caused this entire mess. The Liberals deci…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has a recent track record of taking our good ideas, and we are giving them a whole pile of good ideas that, if implemented, would get this country back on track and have our economy thriving. We have heard a whole lot of empty promises, empty words and, unfortunately, a continuation of terrible results. That is why I am sure, when all of us went back to our ridi…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's reviewing the important staples of production in my riding. I am an extremely strong supporter of international trade and of diversifying markets, and that is why I am so surprised it took the Liberal government this long to realize the importance of this. I look back to the Harper government and all of the trade deals. We signed trade deals with nearly two…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a great opportunity. I want this country to have an economic boom again. The last time that happened was when our oil and gas and our resource sectors were booming, because all of those little people are the ones who reinvest in those companies. They reinvest in their pensions. We should be investing in ourselves. We should be darn proud of the people who are unfortunately now…
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place on behalf of the fine folks of Portage—Lisgar. After weeks in our own constituencies, all of us got the chance to come back with the country's pulse. The reality of what I heard from so many folks is that they are hurting. Their demand was that the time to act is now. Families are anxious about tomorrow. Seniors are feeling incredibly squ…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is like the Liberals cannot help themselves and it is in their DNA to try to control what other people think. Canadians are sick and tired of it, and I think they wish they could just share that message with a few more Canadians on social media.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna. It is an honour to rise today ahead of what I guess is an early Festivus miracle to air some grievances on how committees are functioning in this place. I can assure members that in my experience at the environment committee, things are not going well. As my colleague so ably stated, we are watching, in …
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Mr. Speaker, Brookfield is a very reasonable guess, and if only the minister would come and answer, maybe we would know whether it is Brookfield or someone else. All I know is that it seems as though the minister just hoped that nobody would notice that Canada went along with trying to impose this massive tax on the import of every good that we bring into this country. Unfortunately for her, thoug…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the acknowledgement of the stats that have been kept by my colleague and the report undertaken about the lack of appearances. It would be one thing if it was just the odd camera-shy minister who was not very confident in their portfolio and did not want to show up, knowing they might get rung through the ringer a little. However, we are seeing a consistent pattern across …
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Mr. Speaker, that was just such a Liberal question: “Why would they not just do what we want them to do?” It reminds me a lot of Bill C-9 actually. The Liberals are trying to control what people say and how they express themselves. It is a continuous track record for people who do not agree with the Liberals, as they then do their level best to silence them. The Liberals try to control everything …
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Mr. Speaker, a nearly $80-billion deficit is most definitely enough. I also have real questions about where the government is spending its money because, clearly, it is not reaching the people it needs to. I am a firm believer in investing in local infrastructure. In my rural communities, we have much aging infrastructure in need of renewal. Too often, though, as with everything else from the Libe…
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Mr. Speaker, I have had a number of conversations recently with some folks back home. We have a helicopter training facility there, as well as some veterans. Folks have said that the top-up on salary is appreciated, but their concern is about the cuts and what impact those could have on veterans' services. Again, the idea of investing in our military is a very sound one, but there are structural, …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is riddled with conflicts of interest, and companies like Brookfield are raking it in while he is at the helm. Not only did the Prime Minister help his company avoid paying $6.5 billion in taxes, but it is now also Canada's greatest tax-dodger. Is it a bike shop in Bermuda? That is no problem. Is it a couple of tax havens in the Cayman Islands? It will use anything …
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned in his excellent speech that the GST collected is now going to be less than the entirety of the deficit interest payments we are going to have this year. Should the Government of Canada change the title of the goods and services tax to the debt servicing tax?
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place on behalf of the residents of Portage—Lisgar, those who proudly call south central Manitoba home. I would like to start today with a glaring example of Liberal incompetence buried in the budget implementation act. The government is sheepishly backtracking on its so-called anti-greenwashing rules in the Competition Act, rules that it rammed …
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Madam Speaker, I would like my hon. colleague to continue a bit in this vein. It has clearly touched a pressure point for the government. We talked a lot about how there is a blind trust, but the fact is that we know the shares remain in Brookfield. That is why policies that directly impact and benefit Brookfield, we know, are helping the Prime Minister. Therefore, I am wondering if the member cou…
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Mr. Speaker, let us look at the root word in “Conservative”: “conserve”. We are conservationists at our core. What we believe in is taking care of our natural landscapes. People in polling consistently care about clean air, clean water and protecting our natural landscapes. I represent a whole bunch of people who live, work and play on the land. They are the best conservationists and the true envi…
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague worked in business. I would like to get his understanding of this: If a business were to be run in a way that adds $10 million in debt every hour, as the government is set to do with this inflationary budget, how long would it be able to stay in business?
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Madam Speaker, it is always a humbling privilege to rise on behalf of the residents of Portage—Lisgar, particularly on such an important issue. Before I get into the substance of today's matter, I would like to give a little shout-out of pride to my beautiful wife Cailey. We welcomed our second daughter into the world last month. She has been an absolute rock star. Today is the 22-month birthday o…
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Madam Speaker, the easy question to ask is what took so long. The system has been broken for years. Yes, there is a so-called new Prime Minister. The member was part of the old government that broke the system. I can assure him, having talked to victims and frontline police officers, that there have not been consultations for the last 10 years. They have been ignored. This has been an academic exe…
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Madam Speaker, it is important to highlight the insane number of promises the so-called new Prime Minister of the lengthy, 10-year Liberal administration has made, how few he has kept and how few he possibly could keep. The member mentioned my community. When Kellie died, it shook our community. My hometown has 13,000 people. Within hours, everybody knew, and then they heard what had actually happ…
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Madam Speaker, I suppose it is par for the course. The Liberals break it, promise they can fix it and fail. It is a vicious cycle. Bill C-242 is a solution. The Liberals stole enough Conservative ideas in the last election. They should take this one, run with it and make this country a safer place.
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Madam Speaker, just like the Prime Minister, that is an avoidance of an answer. Since day one, the Prime Minister has dodged public disclosure of his financial holdings. He has flipped through every excuse in the book, but he is finally running out of pages. This week, 163 Liberal MPs tried to protect their leader from scrutiny, but they failed. The Conservatives passed a motion to investigate his…
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister told young Canadians that they need to sacrifice more. However, when he ran Brookfield, he did anything but that. He hid money on a Caribbean island to dodge Canadian taxes, not in a bank but through a bike shop in Bermuda. If this is the kind of sage financial advice that we are meant to follow, I wonder if we can expect the owner of that bike shop to be appointe…
Read full speech →Statements by members
Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister told us to judge him by the prices at grocery stores, so let us do just that. Food inflation has blown past the Bank of Canada's target. Canadians are paying over $800 more for food this year than last, and 39% of Canadians have experience food insecurity over the last 12 months. However, the Liberals are plowing ahead with measures that will make groceries even m…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' reckless bail laws are destroying lives. Kellie Verwey of Portage la Prairie was just 28 years old. She had a bright future and friends and family who adored her. All of that was ripped away when she was killed because of the actions of James Lorne Hilton, a repeat offender who should have never been free. Hilton had a long criminal history. He broke his bail conditions …
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been racking up the air miles lately and Canadians are only seeing postcard pictures to show for it. I am starting to wonder if he is travelling to the U.K. so much just to pick up the extra clothes that he left at home. If we measured success by jet lag and passport stamps, the Prime Minister would earn top marks, but here are the facts. He promised to remove t…
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With regard to the Canada Border Services Agency Asset and Revenue Management system, since December 1, 2016: (a) what are the total expenditures related to the program, broken down by year; (b) what is the breakdown of (a) by type of expense; (c) what are the details of all contracts signed by the government related to the system, including, for each, the (i) date, (ii) vendor, (iii) value, (iv) …
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With regard to warrants under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, broken down by year since 2015: (a) how many warrants were approved by the Minister of Public Safety; (b) how many warrants were denied by the Minister of Public Safety; (c) how many warrants were informally canvassed with the Minister of Public Safety and subsequently not approved; (d) for those warrants referred to in …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, last week, I asked the minister a pretty straightforward question: Why can the Liberals not get anything built on time or on budget? It is a reasonable question that most taxpayers ask, unfortunately, on a far too regular basis. His answer at the time was nonsensical. He completely ignored the question and gave some typical government gobbledygook answer. Today, I am going to take the…
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Mr. Speaker, just for frame of reference, the question that was read, but certainly not answered, was whether anyone ever lost their job or received a bonus despite these failures. I am not exactly sure what I just heard, but I know it was a canned response. This is why people get so frustrated with government. The Liberals sit here and they want to look at Parliament. They want to hear what we ha…
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place. I will first say that I will be splitting my time with our excellent leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. Let me begin by saying this. It is something that may come as a surprise, at least to some of my colleagues across the way. I am not opposed to electric vehicles. If a person wants to buy …
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Mr. Speaker, I will always stand up for the rights of the people I represent to heat their homes and to get where they are going with a little heat in a vehicle of their own choosing. This member might want to try to distract from the motion we are talking about today, but it is simple. Should the government mandate the end of the distribution and sale of gas-powered vehicles, and should the gover…
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Mr. Speaker, that still exists. If someone wants to do that, they still can. That is the beauty of freedom. We do not believe in trying to impose our beliefs on everyone else. That is up to the Liberals, and I hope they learn from Canadians, because that is not what people want. If someone wants to take a cart and buggy down the gravel road I grew up on, they can do so. That is okay, but what the …
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Mr. Speaker, I do not recall the Liberal candidate in my riding openly saying people shall all soon be buying electric vehicles because that is what they must do. I do not recall that coming up. The reality is, again, that if someone wants to buy an electric vehicle, I do not care. I think that is great. I hope it works out well for them. If someone wants to toot around downtown X, that is fine. T…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have flip-flopped on pipelines more than a fish out of water. The Prime Minister claims he wants to make Canada an energy superpower, but talk is cheap. If he is serious, he must repeal a decade's worth of the Liberals' anti-energy laws: the no new pipelines act, toss it; the shipping ban, send it out to sea; the job-killing oil and gas production cap, scrap it; and the i…
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Mr. Speaker, that sounds a lot like the cheap talk that I mentioned. The Prime Minister said that he will support a pipeline if there is consensus, but his environment minister is spinning an entirely different story. This week, I asked her point-blank to define “consensus”, and she shrugged her shoulders and said, “what consensus”. I am happy to tell the minister what it means. Polling shows that…
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is a quick study, with a booming voice, so I think he is going to do just fine in this place. Unfortunately, he will come to learn that, yes, this is far too regular. It does not have to be, but under this current old corrupt Liberal government that we have had for 10 years, it has become far too regular. I will go back to what I said earlier. The numbness that the a…
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Mr. Speaker, as always, I appreciate the opportunity to rise in this House. This is my first time of any length to offer my sincere appreciation and thanks to my friends and neighbours across our region, the riding of Portage—Lisgar, for once again placing their trust in me to be their representative here in Ottawa. It is an incredibly humbling experience. It does not matter the party; when member…
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Mr. Speaker, does the member know how I know it is not a new government? It is the deflection and distraction, the best tactics to try to avoid accountability for the failures. Yes, they happened in the past. That does not mean that there should not be a course correction going forward. There should also be accountability for the policy failures that led to this and the lack of respect for tax dol…
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Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if my colleague could expand on some of the consulting costs we have seen rising under the government. He rightfully outlined the fact that we have seen a massive increase in the number of public servants and, simultaneously, under the Liberal government, a massive increase in consultants being used. If we had a budget, I guess it would be in the budget, but from the m…
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Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of today being that, and I will say, perhaps surprisingly but not shockingly, that in my riding, many of the businesses actually buy a ton of products from Quebec, namely steel, an industry that we support because we are vitally ingrained in manufacturing across North America, and I will try some of those pickled eggs another time. The Liberals cannot just keep saying …
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Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General proved what Canadians already knew: The Liberals cannot run a lemonade stand, let alone the government. They funnelled tens of millions of dollars to their friends at GC Strategies, with nearly half of the contracts delivering little to no result. With respect to the Liberals' federal lands housing initiative, after seven years, they have not delivered even 8% of w…
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