Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am still grappling with your first ruling. So I can understand the ruling and its application, and the rules in the House and the decorum that is required for the House, when someone makes a comment about the Prime Minister that he should hold hands with another individual of the same gender and go into the bathtub together, it is within order in the House and that we should not tak…
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are appalled by the Liberals' failure to help family members in Gaza get to safety and reunite with their loved ones here in Canada. From the beginning, the government's initiative was mired in red tape and roadblocks. Precious time was wasted and loved ones continue to be killed. Israel's brutal siege and bombardment continue and there is further escalation in the region. W…
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Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that is very prevalent in the broader community, of course, is the issue of disinformation. It is happening more and more now, and it is more urgent than ever for us to tackle this issue. Taiwan has been very proactive in dealing with this. Of course, there is an intersection of this issue with foreign interference. What the government in Taiwan has done is create a …
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Madam Speaker, what has become clear is that the Conservatives are refusing to acknowledge that Bill C-71 would restore the rights of Canadians that were taken away from them unconstitutionally 15 years ago by the Conservatives. That is what we are talking about. These are not immigrants. They are Canadians. They were deemed to be a lower class of Canadians by the Conservatives. The Conservatives …
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Madam Speaker, that is an outrageous response. The member is talking about the very Canadians who have been denied their rights as though they are not Canadians. They do not have their Canadian citizenship because of an unconstitutional law created by the Conservatives. Will the member recognize that second-generation family members born abroad are in fact Canadians, as recognized by the courts?
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. I wonder if he actually realizes that, under Bill C-71, what we are talking about is restoring the rights of Canadians that were taken away unconstitutionally by the Conservatives 15 years ago. This is what we are talking about. We are talking about Canadians having lost that right. The courts have said that it is a violation of their charter right…
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague's dad for making the choice to come to Canada and establish Canada as his family home. To the question around the lost Canadians bill, interestingly, yesterday, after the debate in the House, we went to committee. At the committee, there was a similar motion calling for the committee to support that Bill C-71 be deemed read through all procedures at secon…
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Madam Speaker, the heart of the question is this. Bill C-71 would effectively make Canada's immigration law, particularly for the class of what we call lost Canadians, charter-compliant. It would mean that family members who have not been able to pass their citizenship to their children because their children were second generation and born abroad would have those rights restored. These are not ne…
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Madam Speaker, the simple answer is that the Conservatives want to mislead families. In fact, the leader of the official opposition, in a reply to family members urging them to take action to fix this injustice, said that the Conservatives supported passing Bill S-245. However, what did they do? They did everything they could to delay and obstruct its passage, to the point that they are even refus…
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Madam Speaker, I would also like to acknowledge Don Chapman, and, of course, the family members who took the matter to court and the legal team that fought this issue so we can now have this rectified. The Conservatives, on eight occasions, moved the debate for third reading on Bill S-245. They did it in 2023 on October 16, October 25 and November 6, and then in 2024 on January 29, February 15, Ma…
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Madam Speaker, the very member who said no to my motion has asked this question. This very member was part of the Conservatives who created this unconstitutional law, which said that some Canadians are less Canadian than others. They are the very same Conservatives who had been told by the courts that their law was unjust. It is time for the government and all parliamentarians to bring in a law th…
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Madam Speaker, I think it is shameful, because justice delayed is justice denied. It has been 15 years already. Canadian families have suffered from this punitive, unconstitutional law created by the Conservatives, and now they want to delay it even further. We have debated this ad nauseam. I have lost count of how many times I have made speeches on lost Canadians. It is time to act, and it is sha…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the Greens, Bloc members and the Liberals. We all stood together to say that we have to do this in a non-partisan way. Let us make sure that we restore the rights of Canadians. The only party standing in the way of that right now is the Conservative Party.
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Mr. Speaker, this is also my first opportunity to make an intervention. I heard the member's speech. The reality is this: He can rattle off some dollars and then say that the government is doing something. The truth is that it is not doing enough. The truth is that the action is not yielding the results. In fact, there has been very little action. We already know that the implementation of the Tru…
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With regard to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the temporary public policy creating permanent resident pathways for Hong Kong residents since 2021, broken down by month and year: (a) how many individuals of Hong Kong origin have immigrated to Canada, broken down by immigration stream; (b) how many individuals of Hong Kong origin have applied for permanent residency on human…
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With regard to the $36 billion in planned spending reductions for the Canada Health Transfer announced in 2011: what services were impacted by the spending reduction, broken down by (i) province and territory, (ii) year, (iii) health field?
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to re-enter into debate on Bill C-71. What is this bill about? It is about a group of Canadians whose constitutional rights were stripped by the Conservatives 15 years ago. Bill C-37 was brought in by the Harper administration. Through that process, the government tried to fix some of the issues of lost Canadians, which Bill C-37 did in part. However, in that process, the…
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Madam Speaker, the truth of the matter is that the Conservatives actually filibustered Bill S-245 for 30 hours at committee. Even after it had gone through the committee and had been referred back to the House at third reading, they traded down that bill in the order of precedence eight times so that we would not get to debate it at third reading in the House and vote on it. The leader of the offi…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his collaboration and co-operation at committee on Bill S-245. I was delighted to work with him and to see that he supported the NDP amendments. That is the right thing to do, to restore the rights of Canadians, the rights that the Conservatives took away. I want to ask the member a question. He may not have been elected at that time, and neither was…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for bringing Bill C-71 to the floor. The New Democrats have fought for this ever since John McCallum. It has been more than a decade, at least for me, in this fight. With Bill C-71, the minister touched on the issue around royal assent. In the bill, there is the commencement provision which confers discretion on the Governor in Council, meaning the cabinet, to d…
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to enter this debate on Bill C-71. Because the House will be getting ready for statements and question period, I will be interrupted in my speech, so I am going to put a few things on the public record. To the member from the Bloc's point that this is not about partisanship, I think it is important to put on the public record the history of what happened with respect…
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Mr. Speaker, I sent you a notice of my intention to raise a question of privilege related to the revelation contained in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians' “Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada's Democratic Processes and Institutions”. The committee reviewed over 4,000 documents, including over 1,000 intelligence products. The NSICOP report is an alar…
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With regard to Rent-Geared-Income (RGI) subsidies and operating subsidies funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC): (a) how many housing projects and units are currently receiving RGI subsidies funded by the CMHC, broken down by municipality, province or territory; (b) how many are receiving operating subsidies funded by the CMHC, broken down by municipality, province and terri…
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Madam Speaker, Conservatives, of course, say that they are against the carbon tax. Last week, the NDP called on the big oil CEOs at committee to answer to Canadians for their corporate greed. Those CEOs told the committee that they support carbon pricing. The Conservatives spend so much time defending the oil and gas industry, so why are they fighting against a policy that even the CEOs say is goo…
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Madam Speaker, the truth is that Conservatives are only focused on slogans. They somehow think that the slogan “axe the tax” will actually fix the housing crisis. It will not. What we need, to address the housing crisis, is for Canada to be, at the very minimum, on par with the G7 countries with respect to our community housing stock. Right now, at 3.5%, it is less than half of where they are. We …
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Madam Speaker, today's debate on this motion is an entire waste of time for members of Parliament and a waste of the resources required to keep the House running, because the information the Conservatives say that they want has already been tabled. It makes the entire motion completely irrelevant to this debate today.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives say that they want to support Canadians on the question around affordability of oil and gas, yet the Conservatives voted against the NDP's motion to take the GST off home heating. Why?
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Madam Speaker, let us be very clear about the housing crisis and what has caused it. Successive Liberal governments and Conservative governments have helped to create the housing crisis we are in by allowing for the financialization of housing and for big developers to use renovictions to displace people so that they lose their homes. Under the Conservatives, we already know that Canada has lost m…
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-398, An Act to amend the National Housing Strategy Act. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce my private member's bill to amend the National Housing Strategy Act. I thank my colleague and friend, the member for Hamilton Centre, who is a champion for human rights, for seconding this bill. While the act states that “the right to adequate housing is a fundamental …
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Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by over a thousand people across the country. They are calling on the government to take immediate action to address the humanitarian crisis faced by refugees from Gaza by treating them equitably and increasing refugee admissions to Canada. They call on the government to, one, accept applications from within and from outside Gaza, inclu…
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in this House to enter into this debate. However, I must say that the debate before us is really a colossal waste of the House of Commons resources and the valuable time that we have in this chamber to debate urgent issues and situations. Why do I say that? The motion the Conservatives tabled is effectively calling for the government to table a set of …
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to thank my colleague for her tremendous advocacy and for using a human rights-based lens with respect to everything she does. On addressing the situation of the housing crisis and how climate relates to it, people are being displaced. We had a heat wave in my community of Vancouver East, in British Columbia, and 600 people died. There are people who are unhouse…
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-399, An Act to establish the Office of the Ombud for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce a private member's bill to establish an independent ombud's office for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, with a mandate to examine the department's policies…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There have been consultations with all the parties and I—
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Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am. Actually, I had not even said what I was going to say. I am not quite sure how members would know pre-emptively what I was going to raise.
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Mr. Speaker, there has been consultation with—
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Madam Speaker, I would absolutely agree with the member that those who knowingly, intentionally, wittingly work with foreign states should not be sitting here as members of Parliament. They should not be running in the next election. There is no question about that. At this time, though, because the NSICOP report has exposed that there are elected officials sitting around this table who are collab…
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Mr. Speaker, the NSICOP report noted that the foreign interference actors, particularly those from China and India, are most pervasive. The implications are significant to Canadians, to our democratic institutions and to our processes. While the government knew about this, and has known about this for a long time, our system is deficient in addressing the issue. Paramount to the motion today and t…
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Madam Speaker, the NSICOP report noted that the government was aware of the extent of foreign interference activities since 2018. In fact, the unredacted information was received by the Prime Minister about a year ago. Therefore, it is not like the Prime Minister did not have the information. It is not like the Liberal government did not know the extent to which foreign interference activities wer…
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Madam Speaker, the NSICOP report indicates that the Prime Minister already knows who these individuals are. When I say “individuals”, we are talking about elected officials, members of Parliament, who knowingly, intentionally, wittingly collaborated with and worked for foreign states to undermine Canada's democratic processes and democratic institutions. In light of that, we have not seen the Prim…
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Mr. Speaker, consultation has taken place, and I believe that if you seek it you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. That notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practices of the House, Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, be deemed to have been read a second time—
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Bloc for putting the motion forward today. I think it is an important one. It needs to be done, and it needs to be supported. In the member's speech, she highlighted the point that there have been many failures of the government to act and to take foreign interference seriously. In fact, the NSICOP report raises a litany of examples of the government's failure to d…
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Madam Speaker, according to the NSICOP report, “foreign actors covertly supported or opposed candidates by exploiting vulnerabilities in political party governance and administration.” It goes on to say, “This included interfering with nomination processes or attempting to influence or control electoral district associations. CSIS considers the nomination process to be a particularly soft target”.…
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Madam Speaker, the reality is this: The commissioner is not able to get access to unredacted documents. In my view, that is impeding the ability for the commission to do its work, to rebuild trust in the hearts and minds of Canadians and all parliamentarians. Again, is it not time for the government to do what is necessary and give the commissioner unfettered access to unredacted cabinet documents…
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Madam Speaker, there is a question in my mind about why we even have to be here to debate the motion. Right now there is an inquiry on foreign interference. Commissioner Hogue has been given the mandate to do exactly that work. Should the government not just give all the documents, unredacted, both those within cabinet and what NSICOP received, to Madam Justice Hogue for review so we can have fait…
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Madam Speaker, one of the areas the member touched on is the timeline of the issue. Aside from the fact that the government, the Prime Minister, knew of foreign interference activities for a long time and did not take the necessary action to counter this threat to Canadian society, to our democratic system, the other issue that the NSICOP report highlighted was that a former member of Parliament e…
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Madam Speaker, in the NSICOP report, the committee noted that NSICOP tabled its first report indicating concerns around foreign interference activities back in 2018. Of course, since then, there have been two other reports with this latest one. The government said that it would take action, but there was a huge gap when no action was taken. As a result, we saw leaks that surfaced in the media, whi…
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Mr. Speaker, today is the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. What is unfolding in Hong Kong is what many Hong Kongers call the “Tiananmen massacre 2.0”. There have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: That, given that, (i) the Hong Kong 47 stands for so many of the values shared by Canadians, mo…
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Madam Speaker, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order, or usual practice of the House, in relation to the consideration of Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference: (a) during the consideration of the bill by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, (i) the c…
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Mr. Speaker, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have heavily relied on migrant workers to support Canada's economy. They are often underpaid and racialized. They can easily fall through the cracks, leaving them undocumented through no fault of their own. They live here and contribute to our communities and they pay their taxes, yet without permanent status, they are often subject to e…
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