Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I have great respect for my friend from Beauport—Limoilou, but I would like to ask her a question. I imagine she was always a great supporter of the Bloc Québécois, which was founded in 1990. How did she vote in the 1992 referendum? What was the Bloc’s official position on that referendum? I myself voted “yes” in the referendum, but I am certain that many of the members of the Bloc …
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Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise today in the House to share my perspective, not only as a member with official duties here in Parliament, but also, more importantly, as a Quebecker. I am speaking today as a proud member of Parliament from Quebec, my home province, the place I grew up in and the place my parents immigrated to. They settled and started a family in Quebec. Quebec is where I have had…
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to answer the question asked by my friend from Winnipeg North. I agree with him wholeheartedly. Immigration is truly an extraordinary tool for our culture, our demographic growth and our economic development. As they say, more immigration is always good news. When immigrants arrive here, they create jobs, use fewer social services, establish companies and help diversify o…
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Madam Chair, I would like to thank my colleague from Edmonton Griesbach for his speech and his point of view. I put this question to my colleague from Montarville. I am sure my colleague from Edmonton Griesbach also agrees that we need to push back against the idea that might makes right in international relations. Does he agree with me that economic sanctions are more effective than military forc…
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Madam Chair, I thank my colleague from Montarville for his excellent speech. I also thank him for his show of solidarity on behalf of all parliamentarians in the House and certainly on behalf of his political party. I was planning to offer him some time to finish his speech because I thought it was good. However, he was able to add a few words at the end. I have a question for my colleague. If the…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in my hon. colleague's comments. I found that his speech was supported by several arguments. That said, I have a question for him about what he said at the end of his presentation. Is that a good enough excuse to do nothing about what he too described as the far right that exists here, that has the money and the tools to do damage? In 50 years' time, we may regre…
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Mr. Speaker, that was just a real “Tour de France” style of speech. I would like to offer the member the chance to sum up his support for the motion.
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, what I really like about this piece of legislation, and I would like to congratulate Brian Mulroney and his government for having introduced it, is that the Charter of Rights applies to it at all times. It is fixed for a certain amount of time and parliamentarians have to come together to talk about it. I have every confidence because it is targeted, it is appropriate and especially i…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his speech. I appreciate his candour in voicing his concerns. I also appreciate the fact that he is open to the opinions of others. I too am not 100% certain that this is the absolute best course of action, but there is one thing I sincerely recognize. I hope my hon. colleague can tell me about it. I do not want to trivialize the decisions…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Ontario for his excellent speech. I would like to ask him a fairly simple question. Is he, like me, prepared to conduct an inquiry to get to the bottom of this matter, understand what happened and why the situation was misjudged, and find ways to ensure that this never happens again?
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. Again, the answer is yes. In the news, we clearly saw a trucker who was part of the blockade here in Ottawa saying that he had to leave because he had received a notice from his bank informing him that if he did not leave the illegal blockade, his assets could be seized. He added that he employs 55 people. It has worked. It will …
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With great ease, Mr. Speaker, because this money is not going to normal political speech. Let them give donations to those who want to support this, but they are giving money that is anonymous, that is unverified and that can come from foreign sources to get to politics through the back door as opposed to the front. Who were the people collecting and distributing this money before it was shut down…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to say hello to all of my colleagues on this Saturday morning. It is unusual for the House to sit on a Saturday, but our entire country is dealing with a situation that is quite out of the ordinary. We are here to participate in a very important debate on the use of these emergency measures. I am not a lawyer. I do not know and cannot figure out all of the little details, but i…
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Madam Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. I am sure it was an oversight by the person who wrote the speech for the hon. member, but it is the common practice of this House to refer to members by their constituency or by the title they hold and not by their proper names.
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, earlier today, the Canadian women's hockey team won the gold medal, but I would like to talk about the next generation of players here in the Outaouais. The Intrépide, a peewee AAA team, is made up of 17 of the best players from my beautiful region. The team has qualified for the Quebec international peewee hockey tournament. To be invited to this prestigious tournament, the Intrépide…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Scarborough—Agincourt. I am very pleased to participate in this debate, but I must admit that I am wondering why we are debating this motion tonight when we could quickly take action. If there is one time when members should be unanimous, it is this evening on this bill. We are here to debate Bill C-12,…
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Mr. Speaker, we are not perfect, but we try our best. We came up with many innovative ways to help support Canadians. I would like to thank the opposition parties, because during the beginning of the crisis, they were also there and Parliament did its best in supporting Canadians. I am very pleased to be part of a government that proposed these ideas and took on the best ideas of the opposition. W…
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Mr. Speaker, I am a really big believer in the parliamentary process. Usually, when we come to this place, we examine very complex pieces of legislation. It makes sense that we cannot always consider things as 338 people, so we send them to committee to be looked at. Those 12 people look very carefully at legislation. The bill is just five lines. It is not going to take us a long time to figure th…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Trois-Rivières for his question. We work together at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and it is a pleasure for me. I agree, we must be very diligent. However, we are talking about five lines here. It is not complex. It is very simple. Not only do we all agree on the principle, but I am sure that we all agree on the text itself…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, every February, I normally rise to encourage parliamentarians and Canadians to celebrate Black History Month. These are not normal times. This past weekend, a small minority thought it acceptable to bring swastikas and Confederate flags to Parliament Hill. Let us not mince words: The Confederate flag is a symbol for slavery. Whips deformed Black bodies. Forced labour mangled limbs. To…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the following is the response by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, TBS, on behalf of the Government of Canada. In response to (a), each fiscal year, TBS collects data on the number of requests received, completed, closed and responded to according to legislative timelines, 30 days; extensions taken, broken down by length of time taken, 30 days or less, 31 to 60 days, 61 to 120…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, last Saturday, the parliamentary community lost one of its most beloved members. Nicole Beaudin worked at the House of Commons for more than 50 years, 20 of them in the office of the Speaker, serving speakers Milliken, Scheer and Regan, as well as our current Speaker. Nicole was a cherished friend and colleague, a woman filled with energy, generosity and joie de vivre. A fan of Elvis,…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-5. This bill was introduced during the previous Parliament. It is very important for all Canadians, but especially for Black Canadians and indigenous people. It is also important for the safety of Canadians in general, because Bill C-5 seeks to address two problems with our system. First, it is important to do away with minimum ma…
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Madam Speaker, first of all, let me thank the member from Edmonton for her work and support on these files. I certainly have heard her throughout the last Parliament advocating for this. I will be very, very quick. We do not all start off with an equal playing field. We do need to make sure that we invest in ways that can respond to the individual needs of the people and not a cookie-cutter approa…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou. We had the opportunity to work together before this past election and I truly appreciate her wisdom. We agree on the basic premise of her question. We want to reduce mandatory minimum penalties, so I commend her on that. We also want to increase funding for the community groups that help these people; we do not want to needlessly incarcer…
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Madam Speaker, first I would like to congratulate my colleague for being elected to the House of Commons. From the comfort of our living room at home, wherever we might be in Canada, we believe that incarcerating people and toughening sentences will magically make Canadians safer. However, that is just not true, as the data collected over a generation has shown us. We need to focus on another appr…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her excellent speech. I have a simple question for her. Minimum sentences have been in place for more than a generation now, and in that time we have seen an increase in the use of guns and in the incarceration of Black and indigenous people. Is it time for something new? Should we try a new approach to really address the problem?
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Mr. Chair, I would like to thank you for allowing me to participate in this session of the committee of the whole of the House of Commons. In the recent federal election, Canadians made it clear: Housing affordability is one of their top issues. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and worsened Canada's serious housing challenges. Far too many Canadians cannot afford an adequate and affordable place …
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I think it is important in my riding of Hull—Aylmer. It was very clear that we needed to make sure that businesses were able to keep their doors open and that the government had their back. We said we would do anything necessary to do that. Opposition members have said they would not have supported Canadians through this pandemic. I find that very troubling, because programs like the CRB, the CERB…
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Madam Speaker, I just want to mention that I will share my time with the member for Scarborough Centre, a colleague I respect deeply, like very much and have had the pleasure of knowing for six years now. Before I begin my speech, I would like to congratulate you, Madam Speaker, on your appointment to the position of Assistant Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. I appreciate the dignity and wi…
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Madam Speaker, again, I want to thank and commend my friend from the Bloc Québécois. I can easily answer his question: The answer is yes. The government is already doing that. We are working with the Taliban government to ensure that we can safely repatriate these Afghans who want to leave and settle in Canada. These discussions are currently under way.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to acknowledge my friend from the opposition, with whom I had the opportunity to work on a private member’s bill. He asked a very simple question, but life is rarely so simple, and simplistic solutions rarely work in complex situations. We saw a very unusual situation with the fall of the Afghan government and the return of the Taliban, which very few serious people saw…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague from Vancouver is asking an important question. I do not have an answer for her at this time, but I can assure her that I will raise her question to get that answer. We all want the same thing: to provide help to the Afghans swiftly and effectively.
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Mr. Speaker, my question will be brief, but I imagine the answer will be long, and I would like to stress the nuance. Could my colleague tell us about what happened in the past when Mr. Harper, Mr. Duceppe and a third person, whose name I forget, found a way to study such a file?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Milton and commend him on the quality of his French. He has worked very hard these past two years, and I congratulate him for the progress he has made. As members of Parliament, we have an obligation to deal with this issue in a non-partisan way, especially when discussing matters of life and death. The best way to achieve this objective is to…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, the great William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” Unfortunately, we see that reflected in the scourge of slavery. Today is the United Nations International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. Slavery still exists today. Its modern forms include sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced marriages and the recruitment of children in armed conflict. Slavery wa…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate you on your appointment as Assistant Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. Once again, it is an honour to work with you, as well as with all of the members and my colleagues in the House. Before I start my remarks, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Steveston—Richmond East in British Columbia. He became a…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques on his re-election and thank him for his question. I know he supports diversity. It is very simple. First, I would like to congratulate the Prime Minister for having the courage to admit that unconscious discrimination, systemic racism, exists in all institutions, whether in government, the priv…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the member for North Island—Powell River on her re-election. In answer to her interesting question about oceans, I would say that I am proud to be part of a government that has its own oceans protection plan. When we took office, very few of the oceans around Canada were protected. However, we have already managed to protect 20%, and we have a…
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Kenora on his re-election. I have had the pleasure of visiting his riding a number of times. I am particularly proud of our record on reconciliation. When we were elected in 2015, there were 105 boil water advisories on reserves. By 2021, this problem has been addressed in more than 110 of these communities. My colleagues are probably wondering how w…
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Madam Speaker, before I speak for the first time in the House in this 44th Parliament, I would obviously like to thank my constituents and congratulate all the members. I also congratulate you, Madam Speaker, along with the new members. To them I say welcome, because this is the experience of a lifetime. My question is for the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. Over his career, whic…
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