Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the next two petitions I am tabling both deal with human rights issues in Afghanistan. Some of the particular issues cover a slightly earlier period. The petitioners on the first petition highlight the persecution of Hazaras that goes back well over 100 years, sadly. There are instances of Hazaras being targeted and facing all kinds of genocide and persecution. That persecution was …
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Madam Speaker, I will table my last petition on forced organ harvesting and trafficking in support of Bill S-223. This bill would make it a criminal offence for persons to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. It has been before the House in various forms for 15 years and petitioners are hopeful this Parliament will be the one that gets it done.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Edmonton Strathcona seems to be unaware of the fact that we can watch a speech from outside of the chamber itself.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to speak today on Bill C‑9, right after my friend, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot. I want to begin by entering this debate midstream and responding to some of the comments that I was hearing in the questions and comments period immediately prior to my speech, before shifting into some of the other comments I want to make specificall…
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Madam Speaker, there are aspects of the House calendar that should reflect the rights of individual members to bring forward issues of concern, but there are also many aspects of the House calendar that are shaped through dialogue among House leaders and an effort to have give-and-take in negotiations. We all understand that there are some tools available to the opposition that the opposition some…
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Madam Speaker, on the final question of when I would like to see this go to committee, I think it will depend on the wishes of other members speaking to the bill. I clearly do not intend on speaking to it again having spoken to it now, which is the way this place works. Members only speak once to a bill. I have had the opportunity to do so, but there may be other members who wish to have an opport…
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Madam Speaker, the member mentioned what some of his legislative priorities would be for discussion in the House. We are both members of opposition parties, and it is the government that decides which legislation to present and bring forward. I would have opposed the early election, the prorogation, the grand suspension during the pandemic and some of these other circumstances that have made it mo…
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Madam Speaker, it is a very important question. Judges obviously have to think about the wider aspects of the context. I profoundly disagreed with that decision on multiple levels. I also think decisions like that just underline the importance of the legislature stepping up and asserting its role. At times, when it has been convenient, the government tries to treat the Supreme Court as if it is so…
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Madam Speaker, if there are other members, maybe I could be given a signal when there are three or four minutes left in the time, and I will stop there. I do have a few petitions, but I am happy to stop partway through to ensure others have an opportunity. This petition does not specifically use the phrase, “triple, triple, triple”. However—
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Madam Speaker, I was going to say that I think it is a reasonable summary, insofar as the text of the petition specifically notes that in the 2019 federal election the then Liberal environment minister said the carbon tax would be frozen at—
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moved: That the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Monday, April 4, 2022, be concurred in. Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a very important issue of international human rights, a subject on which we may even find some rare agreement with my friends in the corner. In the context of this motion, I want to say that we have the honour of recognizing the pre…
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Madam Speaker, yes, absolutely. I said that earlier and I will repeat that call. I hope we will hear from more members adding their voice to that. It is very much appreciated that Mrs. Evgenia Kara-Murza is in Ottawa. It is really powerful for members of Parliament to hear a personal story directly from someone. I salute the courage of Vladimir Kara-Murza and of the many others who are speaking ou…
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Madam Speaker, Canada has a lot of work to do when it comes to strengthening our cybersecurity response and our response to foreign state-backed interference in general, recognizing the complexity of that. Sometimes it is state actors and sometimes it is state-backed actors. We are being told by our security agency that we need to improve our sophistication there. This is one of many examples wher…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his excellent work on the immigration committee, which adopted this motion, and always for his hard work on the file. When it comes to the issue of energy security, the government has it backward. It is granting a waiver to our sanctions to allow Canadian work to be done on a turbine for the export of Russian gas to Germany. We should be focused on building th…
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Madam Speaker, the House has sat for three weeks thus far this fall, and the government did not call Bill S-5 on any of the days in those three weeks. The government has clearly demonstrated that Bill S-5 is not a priority, and I suppose the member could talk to his House leader about why the government has not chosen to prioritize this bill. This issue of supporting the Russian opposition is crit…
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Madam Speaker, the member made a lot of bizarre and unrelated procedural comments. I will just observe for his benefit that immediately after I spoke, the parliamentary secretary for international development got up and made what I thought was a very thoughtful intervention with respect to the issue at hand and thanked me for moving the important motion. Maybe this parliamentary secretary could co…
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Based on the comments of the parliamentary secretary, I suspect there would be unanimous consent of the House to agree that Bill S-5 be called for debate immediately after question period today.
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Madam Speaker, indeed, when this issue came before the immigration committee, the member's colleague was very supportive of it, and we had all-party support in moving it forward. It was a pleasure working with his colleague and with other members on the immigration committee on that. I wonder if the member could share more about specific things that he thinks Canada can do to support the Russian o…
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Madam Speaker, I think it is important to pick up and follow the comments made by the member for Timmins—James Bay. The Conservative Party has been very clear in its support for Ukraine and in pushing the government to do more. Certainly, our focus is on federal politics and on Canada's need to engage internationally in a principled way when it comes to supplying the weapons that are required. I t…
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Madam Speaker, I have a follow-up question for my colleague on something he was discussing earlier. He was speaking about diplomacy and dialogue. At the same time, we know there are security threats to Canada that are associated with the presence of the Russian embassy here in Ottawa. There was an incident, for instance, where a bike painted with Ukrainian colours was in front of the Russian embas…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member is certainly creative in her reimagining of comments that I and others have allegedly made. Fortunately, those comments are on the record and anybody can go back and review them to realize how nonsensical her paraphrase of them was. However, it is an important discussion and question to ask. My view is that unilateral nuclear disarmament is not an effective way of pu…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his speech, which I think underlined the importance of the debate we are having. One important point that the member alluded to is maybe the folly of presuming some kind of “end of history” and that in the 21st century we are dealing with the same kinds of problems that reflect the human condition that we have been dealing with for a long time previously. In t…
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Madam Speaker, I should ask the member, given the presence of my colleague from Northumberland—Peterborough South, about Bill C-281, which is a private member's bill that my colleague put forward to strengthen the Magnitsky act by creating a mechanism by which a parliamentary committee can effectively nominate someone to be sanctioned under the act and require the government to respond. The existe…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to request a recorded division.
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Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions I want to present to the House today that deal with a variety of issues. The first petition raises the concern of petitioners with respect to a commitment made in the Liberal Party's 2021 election platform. That was a commitment to, in effect, politicize charitable status determinations and deny charitable status to organizations that take positions on i…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling is about the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. The petitioners note the various forms that persecution has taken over decades, as well as the work done by the late, great David Kilgour, as well as David Matas and others on exposing the persecution and the organ harvesting and trafficking component of that persecution. The petiti…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is in a way similar. It relates to organ harvesting. The petition is in support of Bill S-223, a bill proposed in the other place by Senator Ataullahjan, which is currently in the House before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. It is currently stalled before that committee, and petitioners want to see this Parliament be the one…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition relates to another human rights issue involving the People's Republic of China. It deals with the ongoing, arbitrary and illegal detention of Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil. The petitioners note the significant amount of public conversation and government conversation, rightly so, around the arbitrary and illegal detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. They…
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Madam Speaker, this next petition highlights the concern of petitioners about the government's plan to triple, triple, triple the carbon tax. The petitioners note that in the 2019 federal election, the federal government said that the carbon tax would be frozen at $50 a tonne annually and—
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Madam Speaker, I will certainly triple my efforts to stay true to the rules of this place. Petitioners are concerned that the Liberal government has repeatedly claimed that the carbon tax would be revenue-neutral, whereas in many cases that is not the case. These petitioners say that low- and middle-income Canadians are already overtaxed. Specifically, they are asking the government to keep its pr…
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Madam Speaker, it is a bit entertaining that I have received, in the middle of the same petition, objections to both not sticking to the text of the petition—
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Madam Speaker, I do, but I am finished with the petition respecting the carbon tax. I would not want to go into it for a third time. The next petition is one that is very dear to my own constituents. It is expressing support for Alberta's industrial heartland as one of the most attractive locations for chemical, petrochemical, oil and gas investment. Petitioners note the role of Alberta's industri…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition deals with the issue of energy security. Petitioners note that the demand for oil and gas in Canada is still very significant, that Alberta and western Canada in particular produce the most environmental oil and gas with the highest labour standards compared to other countries, and that Canada should be only using oil and gas from within Canada, rather than importi…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition raises concerns with respect to Bill C-7 from the last Parliament and the fact that the bill would allow euthanasia for those with a mental illness as their sole medical condition. This petition quotes the Canadian Mental Health Association in saying that CMHA does not believe that mental illnesses are irremediable and it supports recovery. Petitioners also note th…
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Madam Speaker, the framing of this debate by the member is to say that, if we want people to have access to a particular thing or service, it necessarily follows that the government should provide that, and that if people oppose the idea of federally mandating and controlling dental care, somehow they oppose children having dental care, which is ridiculous. I do not support, for instance, the gove…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-22 and, more broadly, to the situation confronting Canadians living with disabilities. Bill C-22 proposes a new federal financial benefit for Canadians living with disabilities, however, it does not actually define many aspects of the structure of this benefit. I will be voting in favour of the legislation, because I agree with the pri…
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Madam Speaker, I will continue to exercise the rights I am given by the House to speak about this pertinent issue, which fundamentally relates to this legislation. The government does not want to hear the many concerns raised by Canadians living with disabilities. This is critically linked to their quality of life. The structures the government has put in place are denying vital supports to Canadi…
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Madam Speaker, I expect better when it comes to ruling on the rules. You know that there is broad latitude. I have a 20-minute speech. I spent the first half of the speech discussing financial benefits, and I said that I would spend the second half of the speech discussing—
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Madam Speaker, it is very clear that members of the government, like members of the Bloc, do not want to hear about the subject that is a pressing priority for Canadians living with disabilities. They would prefer to talk about how they are introducing generic framework legislation with no particulars. They do not want to talk about the fact that they have been called out by every disability right…
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Madam Speaker, I am not prepared to name a specific number on the fly, but I do agree in principle with my colleague that it would be legitimate to submit recommendations from parliamentarians to try to provide parameters around the appropriate numbers. I think that should be done in the context of not just saying a specific number for a benefit, but prescribing how the federal benefit would inter…
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Madam Speaker, I wish the member was more offended by the realities on the ground in this country and by the impact they have on the lives of Canadians with disabilities than he is by the fact that I have raised those issues in the House. He did not like the fact that I referenced killing children. Dr. Louis Roy, from the Quebec College of Physicians, gave testimony before a committee of this Hous…
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Madam Speaker, I was with the member for most of the way. I agree that all the things she spoke about in terms of accommodations are important. The House of Commons has within its Standing Orders provisions that allow any standing order to be abrogated in order to accommodate a member with a disability, and that is important and positive. I believe there are ways to achieve that accommodation with…
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Madam Speaker, this is an important opportunity to talk about how legislation is scheduled in this place. The government has most of the days and the government schedules when legislation takes place. What the government has done with Bill C-22 is scheduled it for one day of debate, and then did not schedule it for weeks and weeks. Then the Liberals wondered how come the legislation has not passed…
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Madam Speaker, the member raises many important points, in particular recognizing the diversity of disabilities that exist. When we talk about disabilities, they could include many different kinds of things that in a particular social context make it harder for people to do a job that they could otherwise do. We need to recognize that not all forms of disability fit with what our expectations migh…
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Madam Speaker, look at the facts. This fall, the House has sat for about three weeks and the Conservatives have given unanimous consent to expedite two pieces of legislation, Bill C-29 and Bill C-30. That is a pretty impressive, breakneck speed for the opposition to agree to the option of certain pieces of legislation. This is only the second half day that we have debated Bill C-22, and yes, it ne…
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Madam Speaker, there is some irony today in the NDP's signing a deal to support three years of Liberal budgets, sight unseen, and then putting forward a motion to call for additional measures that were not contained in the New Democrats' coalition agreement. For the Liberal member who just spoke, is not the best way to address affordability simply to allow people to keep more of their own money? W…
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Mr. Speaker, I have only one petition to present today. I am pleased to be presenting a petition in support of an initiative from my colleague that we just voted on. Unfortunately it was voted down, but I was pleased that all Conservative members stood strong in support of protecting conscience rights. This petition recognizes conscience protections that exist in our charter and, at the same time,…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member spoke about the carbon tax. What he did not acknowledge is that his government has a plan to triple, triple, triple the carbon tax. For Canadians who are already struggling with affordability, tripling down on this failed policy—
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Madam Speaker, the member for Kingston and the Islands is saying, “triple”. He is listening for once. The Liberals are tripling down on this policy that has not achieved any kind of improvement in terms of the environment. The Liberals have not met any of their targets, and the member spoke about provincial premiers. We are seeing now that in some cases, like in the case of Newfoundland, we have p…
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Mr. Speaker, one thing the families have made very clear is that they want to see the IRGC listed as a terrorist organization, so that it can no longer operate here in Canada. This can cease to be a partisan issue as soon as the government comes along with us and does the right thing by listing it. The fact is that the families of the victims have been harassed by the IRGC even here on Canadian so…
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