Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of petitioners who have asked that the government recognize the very real pain that is being inflicted upon Falun Gong practitioners by the repressive government in Beijing. Recent events include a bomb and shooting threats targeting Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance and music performance presented globally by the Falun Gong community that showcases tr…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, for whatever reason, the Prime Minister has told us affordability is the best it has been in decades. Perhaps if he spent less time in Europe, he might be aware that we now have full-time workers living in RVs and trailers. Families who do not have the benefit of luxury, million-dollar inflight catering are spending over 120% of their income on food and rent alone. Some Canadians, who…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, Westbank First Nation is one of the indigenous communities in my riding. It obviously has its own governance agreement. Would the member enlighten us and say what he believes is a good message for people, not just in the Okanagan but right across B.C.? What would they like to hear from the Conservative Party right now?
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the good people of Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna. It is also a pleasure to be speaking today about Bill C-267, an act to establish a national framework to promote the durability of electronic products and essential home appliances. In a former Parliament, I served as the critic for the environment for the Conservatives. One of the big cr…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the minister covered a lot of ground, but ultimately Bill C‑26 is a sham of a process. Why? It is because the minister and the government already have the ability to come to provincial agreements. He could go to the NDP government in our home province of British Columbia and do a deal, and then go to the Minister of Finance and have it funded through the estimates process. To be wasti…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I care about this place, and I hope you do too and that you can listen to what I have to say. If you are going to be cutting someone off because they did not put an inflection at the end of a question or they did not deliver a question properly, if you do that to the leader of the official opposition, it could happen to any of us in this place on the opposition side. When previous Spe…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I will just take a moment of time. I am not bringing this up for any other reason than that I am concerned about this place and one of your rulings. I have seen on a number of occasions now that you have cancelled one of the leader of the official opposition's questions because he did not put a question in it.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Province of Nova Scotia leases the Maritime Launch Services land for approximately $13,500 per year, yet through the federal agreement that we are going to be debating tonight, Maritime Launch Services receives $55,000 a day. That is a 400,000% increase. Does the member think that is really, truly good value for money?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we are here to talk about $20 million that would be allocated from the Department of National Defence and given to a private company. As much as I appreciate the member's concern for seniors, the fact is that if we as an opposition, whether the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, the Greens or the Conservatives, simply talk about anything other than what the government is actually doing, it is t…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for bringing this debate to the floor. It is a deplorable situation where people are exploited, particularly in their golden years, out of everything they have made and hope to pass on to their children. I appreciate the member doing that. One of the challenges is that bank officials do not necessarily understand, and when someone comes in who seems to have full use…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals talk about the Maritime Launch Services lease they say it is an investment, that somehow it is giving us space sovereignty within Canada. When Norway sought to create its own spaceport, it partnered with the private sector. However, for approximately $60 million of today's Canadian dollars it was able to own 90% of the asset and partner with a private sector proponen…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes. I want to begin where we should always begin, with judgment. Archibald Lampman, a Canadian poet who worked right here in Ottawa, once wrote, “The pulse of the great machine goes on forever, dead and blind, and no voice or sound of human will disturbs its deep and ceaseless grind.” T…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we are debating $20 million, one of 20 years' worth of payments that are going to a private company for an asset that we would never own. As I mentioned, in Norway, when they wanted to create sovereign space capacity, for approximately $30 million, they did it themselves. Here, we would be giving $200 million. I would ask the member opposite what $200 million could do in this economy.…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I understand what the member is saying. The government has gone completely radio silent when it comes to transparency on this. It is claiming that MLS answers a problem it has not properly defined. As I said, in Norway they spent about $40 million to create their own infrastructure, which the people own. The Liberals would be giving $200 million of taxpayer money, financed by bondhold…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member opposite is not being relevant, neither he personally nor with respect to anything in particular regarding the motion. I would ask that he come to order and maybe talk about Maritime Launch Services, the lease, and the Department of National Defence—
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Canada is the only G20 country that is in a recession. Shirley is a senior from my riding who lives alone in Summerland. She tells me that she does not drink, smoke or gamble. Her only luxury is a swim pass to the local public pool. Every time I speak to her, her tone is increasingly dire. Shirley and her friends do not see anything getting better, and they believe that the Liberals h…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to note the departure of the hon. member for North Vancouver—Capilano, who will be leaving this place to serve Canada abroad in a new capacity. The member and I have spent a good deal of time on opposite sides of some very important debates, such as on net-zero legislation, the 2 billion trees initiative and broader Conservative concerns about the government's environment…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith for standing up in this House on the very important topic of air passenger protection regulations and the government's absolute mess of it. The member mentioned that we are in a recession and the economy is contracting. What is not contracting? It is the backlog of the CTA. It has around 97,000, perhaps even 100,000 cases in backlog. Th…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, maybe the minister is less touchy about this, so I will turn to airport policy. The government is expanding its information-gathering powers under division 6 of Bill C-30 to include every single airport authority in Canada. What are our national airports worth today, and has a full valuation been provided to Parliament, yes or no?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, during question period, you suggested that I should be using the proper title of a minister or a member. In my comments, if you review the tapes, I did quite rightly refer to the Minister of Transport. I understand you did not like, or maybe the Liberals did not like, the term “part-time”, but had I said the “effervescent” Minister of Transport, that would have been an adjective, the …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, I thought I asked the minister a good question. I guess the minister has a different impression of what answers mean to someone else. If the public takes all the financial gambles on surplus land assembly, and the private sector takes all the development guarantees, what risk is actually private in this partnership? Maybe the minister can answer that.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, when Canadians go through airport security, they submit to invasive screening. Medical implants are flagged. Personal items are confiscated. They are even emptying their baby bottles, yet a worker at Pearson says someone could bring a cruise missile through without detection. Canadians have already been detained abroad because of security failures here at home. Will the part-time Mini…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, I realize the minister has been here for a couple of hours, but he has not answered very many questions, if any. I am hopeful he will answer this one. Internal documents outline a strategy for massive station area land assembly stretching up to two kilometres around a station, explicitly based on the Hong Kong “rail plus property” real estate model. Since his bill, Bill C-15, fails to i…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, the government is already spending money on land acquisition for the Alto project while public consultations are still active. Why are taxpayers paying for the real estate before consultations are even finished and before the final route is even locked in?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, can the minister provide a total land acquisition cost today or confirm that the Department of Finance does not really have a final number because it is busy appraising entire urban neighbourhoods for real estate portfolios?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, since the proceeds of these alternative ownership models are earmarked to be stripped away from local operators and siphoned to the Canada Strong fund, how will our airports maintain their infrastructure when they are being left unintentionally undercapitalized while travellers are hit with massive fee hikes just to satisfy a private investor's ROI?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, I am not looking for a generational answer. I am just looking for an answer. Under this public-private partnership, do taxpayers carry 100% of the expropriation and route change risk while the private consortium carries zero per cent of that risk? I would like just a simple yes or no.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, who is minding business at Pearson right now? That answer of 1,000 members someday is not going to work. If these gaps exist at Pearson, our largest airport, why would Canadians believe they do not exist somewhere else? Will the Liberal government commit, yes or no, to conducting the same security audits at every major airport in Canada and tabling those findings here in Parliament fo…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, a Pearson ramp worker said, “I walk right out through the terminal doors.... Nobody checks you”, and “We joke that you could walk out carrying a cruise missile”. That is from a W5 investigation exposing organized crime using travellers' baggage to traffic drugs through Pearson airport, a scheme that has been happening for a very long time. Given the transport minister's silence on thi…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place to speak on behalf of the good people of Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna. I have the honour of sharing my time with the hon. member for Richmond Centre—Marpole. This past week, Canadians, particularly British Columbians, received deeply troubling news. A new survey from the Business Council of British Columbia found that nearly three-quart…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, as I said, Liberal members continue to throw out any concerns as misinformation. What is not misinformation is that in 2019, the Liberals adopted litigation guideline number 14, telling federal lawyers to avoid defending property rights. That directive is still enforced today despite multiple calls by Conservative members for the Prime Minister to show Canadians that he means what he …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, all throughout today's debate, Liberals continue to say that it is Conservatives who are being divisive and creating misinformation, among even worse items. Now, the mayor of Richmond, Malcolm Brodie, wrote in a letter from the city to all the landowners who were affected that the “City of Richmond was the only party at trial arguing that the Crown grants of fee simple necessarily ext…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, if members read any newspaper in British Columbia, they are going to read about the mayor of Richmond, who has broadly raised this issue while the province and federal government said nothing. They made clear representation on private property rights. All we are asking in this motion today, and of Liberal members, is to start listening to British Columbians and those they have elected…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, many British Columbians are afraid and they do not have certainty right now. In 2019, the Liberals adopted litigation guideline number 14 telling federal lawyers to avoid defending property rights. That directive is still in force today. The Prime Minister likes to talk about things that we can control and focusing on them. Would the leader of the official opposition maybe tell the Pr…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, British Columbia land title certainty is foundational. Families buy homes, secure mortgages and plan their futures on the strength of our land registry. Today, homeowners in Richmond are being told that certainty no longer exists because of the Cowichan decision. That ruling followed a federal choice. The Liberal government instructed its lawyers not to defend private property rights …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we have Liberal members rise to talk about this all being part of reconciliation, but a judge in New Brunswick had a very different interpretation. In fact, when there was talk in a court case in New Brunswick about extinguishment and how it related to private property rights, the judge identified that the one way to dial reconciliation back in a negative direction would be to put the…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the minister of employment, in response to the member for Calgary East, was clearly reading off notes that had a member's picture on both sides, clearly making it a prop and making it very easy to be seen on the screen. This is something that I think you need to take a look at, Mr. Speaker. It is obviously a planned practice by the government, by that minister, to again present, as sh…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Canadians were promised change after a decade of a costly Liberal government under Justin Trudeau. Yesterday, they did not get change; they got more of the same. The Liberals are asking every Canadian household to shoulder roughly $3,400 of new debt from a Prime Minister who said he would be different. This costly credit card budget delivers more debt, more costs and more taxes, and i…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the only thing the government delivers is more recycled talking points. Even The Globe and Mail says that, in this upside-down Liberal world, a spending increase of $26.8 billion is not a spending cut. For every $100 in new revenue, the government spends 97% of it. Will the government admit this costly credit card budget proves nothing has changed, or are Canadians now supposed to bel…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I am going to paraphrase the New York Times saying that democracy dies under darkness. When we have darkness and opaque processes, and the discretion of one particular minister who has market-distorting—
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the member's big contribution on this topic today, particularly about the uneasy relationship the government has with MLS. It seems crazy to me that something that is rented for $13,500 per year is effectively receiving $55,000 a day from the Government of Canada. Bear in mind that this property is owned by the Province of Nova Scotia. There are other key elemen…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, this is how far down the government has gone, that the members are referring to a launch pad. In a competitive market that is well-regulated, there could be multiple launch pads, but we have only one. We have only one because the government has given a $200-million lease over 10 years, $55,000 a day, to a company that had a lease for the same property from the Province of Nova Scoti…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, one might say the question is whether the speaker is working properly. I would simply say that if we have a competitive market with a proper regulatory structure, good things will happen, but right now, insiders and those who would exploit our national security gaps put us at risk.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is important for us to acknowledge what the minister himself said. He said that the world will want what Canada could have here. Well, the world is a lot of people, and some of them do not align with our values or our goals as a nation, so it makes sense that, if there is a gap where there is no screening over who owns what technology and what that technology is used for, that co…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate this member's intervention here today because it highlights that the government has a penchant for giving itself ultimate discretion at the expense of someone else. There is no greater sign of this than the government's actually removing access to a tribunal. Tribunals are there for administrative fairness. Let me give an example. If a space firm that is opera…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned Marc Garneau. I think this is important, because many of us in the House knew him. In addition to his successful career in the navy, he ended up leading the Canadian Space Agency. Later on he became a Liberal member of Parliament and eventually a minister. I remember Mr. Garneau very well. When I first came to the House, we may have had our political differences, …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North mentioned his admiration for what the U.K. has done, in terms of its space program. In fact, the outer space program act of 1986 established very clearly under the U.K. model that the licensing authority must be satisfied that an activity will not impact national security. There is no statutory duty to consult DND or CSIS in Bill C-28 and no defined nat…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I homed in particularly on the fact that the member has mentioned the administrative, arbitrary nature of the minister's power. First of all, it would all be concentrated in the minister. He would actually be taking it away from the transportation tribunal that usually handles these things. Again, there is very little specificity as to what is in the public interest. The minister coul…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, when I questioned the minister earlier this morning about the gaps in the bill when it comes to national security, he said not to worry and that we would be working with the Canadian Space Agency. However, the Canadian Space Agency does not do national security or intelligence, nor does it have a mandate to do so. CSIS is not included in the bill, and neither is the RCMP. Does the mem…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I think that the member has raised, in his comments today, a very good example. If the oil and gas sector was regulated the way that the Minister of Transport is suggesting Bill C-28 should be regulated, it would be all-powerful and it would be for arbitrary reasons. I think industry participants would say it would not be fair if certain companies were insured and certain companies we…
Read full speech →