Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago I was in Fort Frances attending a municipal event. When I arrived at the Super 8 hotel, the very sheepish attendant apologized profusely, telling me there was a hockey tournament on and that it might be a little bit noisy. Yes, there was an under-13 AA tournament. Sure enough, it was noisy at times, with a bunch of raucous 12-year-olds playing floor hockey in the stair…
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Mr. Speaker, today is World AIDS Day, a day to remember the 42 million people who have died: our neighbours, friends and relatives. AIDS is an ongoing pandemic. It used to be a death sentence, but the discovery of antiretrovirals has really changed everything, turning AIDS, when treated, into a chronic disease. Making these drugs affordable to millions of people worldwide has been one of the great…
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Mr. Speaker, is it a time to invest or a time to be frugal? Maybe the right answer is that it is a bit of both. First, we are in the fortunate financial position of being able to invest, create jobs, build infrastructure and stimulate the economy. According to the IMF, Canada's net debt-to-GDP ratio in 2025, if we look at all levels of government, is by far the best in the G7. In addition, our def…
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Mr. Speaker, I think I know what my colleague is referring to. When there is a trade dispute with the United States, particularly with respect to forestry and dumping, and companies have paid money, which is sitting in the United States Congress, they would like to access that money. I can certainly appreciate that, but I think our government has announced a whole range of measures allowing compan…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for mentioning two things. One is Afghanistan. I, too, have worked a lot on that file. I think it is still an open file, and we have a lot more to do on it. A lot of people in Afghanistan who worked with our forces are still trying to get into this country, and I would certainly like to work toward that. In terms of the people, especially Canadians, …
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Mr. Speaker, we get it. We do not agree on the issue of spending, but does the member not agree that the reality is that President Trump is going to be here for a while? The tariffs exist, much as we are trying to fight them. They are going to affect our economy. There is going to be a downturn in the economy. There are going to be more people on EI and more people relying on social assistance, wh…
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Mr. Speaker, overwhelmingly, what our government wants to do is come to an agreement with the United States in order to reduce the tariffs on softwood lumber. That is absolutely critical. However, in the meantime, I think we have put a lot of measures in place, including some of the things that were announced by the Prime Minister today. For example, one thing the Prime Minister announced today wa…
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Mr. Speaker, I know tariffs have really affected the auto sector in the member's riding. In my riding, tariffs have really affected the forestry industry. She talked specifically about the regional tariff response initiative and how businesses and employees in her riding had benefited from this. Can the member give us some more specific examples of how that has benefited people in her riding?
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Mr. Speaker, the member talked about believing in people. She talked about the importance of the creativity of our ancestors when they came to the country and about how they created this country. I agree with all of that, but what does she think of the fact that our budget would provide $1.7 billion for a suite of recruitment measures to recruit top-level scientists, innovators and doctors to our …
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives seem to have a great deal of trouble finding anything good in this budget. I would point out that, in the budget, there is $5 billion over seven years, starting in 2025-26, to Transport Canada to create the trade diversification corridor fund. I, too, have a large bit of the Trans-Canada Highway running through my riding. Does the member not see a possibility that so…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, many years of underinvestment in affordable housing for indigenous people and northerners has resulted in a serious gap in affordable housing for both of these groups. Can the Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs tell the House how the new government is working with indigenous leadership to close the infrastructure gap, and how Build Canada Homes is turning that partnership into ne…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of the organization We the Nuclear Free North with 817 signatures. The signatories express their serious and heartfelt concerns regarding the safety of the transportation and storage of nuclear materials through and in their communities in northern Ontario. Although the decision has already been made, the signatories asked me to present thi…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, yesterday was World AIDS Day, a day to remember the 42 million people who have died from AIDS, to remember our relatives and our friends. I remember in 1982 as a medical student seeing a poster about a mysterious outbreak of a deadly pneumonia in the gay community of San Francisco. Four years later, we were seeing a lot of cases of AIDS in Toronto. In the late 1980s, when I was workin…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise today to recognize and honour the life of a good Canadian, Michael Robert Ellchook, who everybody knew simply as “Hoss”. Like the Bonanza character, Hoss was a gentle giant of a man. A good Ukrainian boy, he grew up on a farm in Murillo. Hoss loved cooking. He worked as a chef in Europe and various places in Canada before returning home to open up his own restaura…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a step toward universal health care. Yes, it does not bring us to that point yet, but it is a step. With respect to the committee that is going to be involved in this, I thought the member was going to ask me about the fact that those two people were not consulted in the process. That is too bad. However, I agree with the member that how we do this is really important. If we h…
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Mr. Speaker, I welcome the very perceptive question by the member from Ottawa. This is a very important point. We heard from a lot of people, and there was a lot of concern about having a basic system. What if we needed more expensive medications for certain things? Would we be getting rid of private drug plans? That is not necessarily the case. There will be a public plan, but I think there would…
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Mr. Speaker, the member's question is very pertinent. I have some background in this. Once upon a time, years ago, I worked in a tiny country in the South Pacific, Vanuatu, on its essential drug list, which was its first essential drug list. The WHO is trying to do this with a lot of countries. Similarly in Canada, this act calls for the creation of an essential drug list. On that essential drug l…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this issue and this bill, finally. As others have already pointed out, Canada is the only country with a universal health care system that does not provide some sort of universal drug coverage. Under the British, Australian, New Zealand, French and Belgian systems, basically to some degree or another, people's medications are paid for by the government…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate his father on behalf of the Liberal Party. We will share a beer in his honour tonight. The member at least implied in his speech that he took part in ensuring that young diabetics in Saskatchewan have the cost of their medication paid for. Maybe he could speak a little more about that. I would also say, is that not what we are trying to do with our bill he…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the passionate speech by the member from the NDP. I agree that this is really a milestone. There are medications for rare diseases, which are very expensive. There are medications for cancer treatment, which are very effective but cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. How would this national pharmacare program help to ensure that these medications are affordable t…
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Madam Speaker, under the statute, there would be a requirement for the government to come up with an essential drug list within a year of its getting royal assent. It would seem to me this would be a difficult process. I am sure all kinds of doctors are going to want different things to be part of the essential drug list. What does the member think about our ability to do that and to do it within …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, last Saturday night, Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk defeated much bigger fighter Tyson Fury to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, the first in 24 years. Ironically, Fury himself first became a champion in beating another Ukrainian fighter, Wladimir Klitschko, the brother of the current mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine. As Ukraine continues to defend itself against a much l…
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Mr. Speaker, I have been truly blessed in life to have been able to have six children. They are absolutely one of the best parts of my life, but unfortunately not all Canadians have the same good fortune. In fact, one in six Canadians, at some point in their lives, has some sort of fertility problem. I would like to present a petition on behalf of Fertility Matters Canada, with 5,300 signatures. T…
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Madam Chair, I would like to thank the member for his compassion for the Ukrainian people. As to what Canada has to do at the moment, certainly, it has to hope for a good result in the upcoming election in the U.S. We certainly fear what is going to happen should Trump be re-elected. What the member said earlier about the effects on children was very apropos for me, because the harm caused by this…
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Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the Minister of International Trade. I think it is really unfortunate that I am here yet again to talk about Ukraine and the war and using those two words in the same sentence. I wish, when I thought about Ukraine, my thoughts would be limited to growing up with my baba in Fort William. We would sit on the front steps of her corner store. She would bribe…
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Madam Chair, to tell the truth, I went through the whole agreement, but I did not see anything on medical assistance. However, that is exceedingly important. In fact, I know that Canadian surgeons, as part of teams with American surgeons specializing in plastic surgery, orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery, have gone to Ukraine to assist people who have been injured in the war. They try, as much a…
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Mr. Speaker, I can understand the argument that the carbon tax would be inflationary. The problem is that the experts do not seem to think that. For example, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, in September, said that the carbon tax only contributed about 0.15 percentage points to inflation. A Policy Options review in 2023 estimated that carbon taxes increased consumer prices between 2018 to 2023 …
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Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, the experts seem to think the carbon tax only minimally contributes to inflation. Let me quote a few of those experts. The Governor of the Bank of Canada in September came to the conclusion that the carbon tax only contributes 0.15% to the inflation rate. In a recent review in Policy Options, a couple of Alberta economists calculated that the carbon tax increased cons…
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Mr. Speaker, I can certainly comprehend this argument that the cost of the carbon tax is going to be passed on to consumers and this is inflationary. It is a good story that the opposition is trying to sell. The problem is that it does not seem to be true or, at least, a lot of experts seem to think that the carbon tax—
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Mr. Speaker, I am not against MAID for physical illnesses. That is a totally different situation. The problem with MAID for mental illness is the inability to determine who is not going to get better. The unfortunate reality is that there are a lot of doctors who have a very cavalier attitude toward taking someone's life, and that there are people who could or would get better with a little time a…
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Mr. Speaker, let me start by apologizing to the four or five people who might have listened to my last speech and who are here listening again today, because this is going to sound a little repetitive. I certainly support the legislation, and I know there are a lot of people out there who are really worried about allowing MAID for mental illness. There are people who are worried about their friend…
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Mr. Speaker, I would approve of that. However, as a medical practitioner, I would not volunteer to become a MAID practitioner. If this position is going to be created, the only people who are going to take on the job are people who believe in MAID, believe that it is all about personal autonomy and believe that it is not for others to question a person's suffering. Whatever they are going to be ta…
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Mr. Speaker, I absolutely support that. What a humane society does when someone who is suffering comes before it is that it tries to help them. Maybe that means better psychiatric care, but maybe it means addressing their socio-economic problems. Certainly I do not think that a humane society's first response to that person ought to be to offer them death. That is an absolute failure and a solutio…
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Madam Speaker, I absolutely have comments on that. Sometimes court decisions deal with difficult ethical problems that involve balancing competing interests. They say these sorts of difficult decisions should be left to the elected representatives who are held accountable to the people, not left to the non-elected courts. That is absolutely right, and with respect to this issue, it ought to be us …
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Madam Speaker, as the member knows, I am not free to discuss what I did or did not say in caucus. However, we did delay this for one year and a further three years. Obviously there are the considerations of what the Senate is going to do and what the courts are going to do. The issue will come back. Yes, I would have liked to have seen the pause be indefinite, but it is what it is. Let us go one s…
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Madam Speaker, let me start by saying that I am sharing my time with the member for Sarnia—Lambton, which, I have to say, is a little bizarre. I support this legislation, a further three-year hold on allowing MAID for mental illness, and, in addition, imposing a requirement in two years' time to reform the MAID committee to re-examine this question. I know there are a lot of people out there who a…
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Madam Speaker, I am not in too much disagreement with a lot of what the member had to say. As a long-time doctor, I certainly know that one ought to be cautious, and I think our government has been pretty cautious. We first put a one-year pause on this; now we have a three-year pause. I hate to get political in this political place, but the reality is that one of the reasons we should hesitate to …
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Madam Speaker, the member mentioned people in the disabilities community. I too have heard from the disabilities community about its opposition to MAID within that community. I wonder whether she could comment on what she has heard from people with disabilities regarding MAID and whether she thinks perhaps we need to have more safeguards for MAID for people with other forms of physical disabilitie…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his excellent speech and hard work on the MAID committee. He talked about the problem of irremediability. I think it would be an absolute tragedy if legislation we pass led to a situation where a MAID practitioner took the life of someone who would have actually gotten better had we given them some more time. How are we going to know? The person …
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Montcalm, who sits with me on the Standing Committee on Health. I am worried about something. I was a doctor and I still practise medicine, but now I am here in the legislature. We make the rules, and I think one of our responsibilities when we make rules is, like a doctor, to do no harm. If we implement this legislation, I am genuinely concerned that, alth…
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Madam Speaker, the member opposite from Nova Scotia is a fellow doctor. The legislation would put a hold on implementing MAID for mental illness. A year before the legislation would come into effect, the committee would have to be re-formed to reconsider the matter and call the experts again. Do you think that in two years' time there is going to be any more of a consensus on the issue than there …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, Ukraine is running out of ammunition. President Zelenskyy was in the United States this past week, pleading for more military assistance. However, he was blocked by politicians on the American far right. It is important to realize that Russia did not just attack another country; it launched a full-scale assault on the international legal order. That is because the heart of that order …
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke of the principled approach of the Conservative Party to the agreement, so let us talk about principles. This is not about the carbon tax, but today the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. Today, President Zelenskyy is in Washington, D.C., desperate to get military support from the United States that is being blocked by the American far right. Today, more than …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, this week, the Conservative Party voted against the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, supposedly because it imposes a carbon tax on Ukraine. What is this? There is, in the agreement, a tangential reference to carbon pricing. However, Ukraine has had carbon pricing since 2011, so what is the real reason the Conservative Party voted against this agreement? Perhaps it is because oppos…
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Mr. Speaker, Seven Generations Education Institute is an Anishinabe-led organization that provides secondary and post-secondary training to indigenous and non-indigenous people in the Treaty 3 region of northwestern Ontario. It all started in 1985 in the backs of pickup trucks going from community to community. Now it has campuses in Fort Frances, Kenora and Sioux Lookout. The institute teaches pe…
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my friend in the opposition on a lot of things, but I do disagree on this point. In terms of talking points, I refuse to use the party's talking points. I write all my speeches myself. I do believe in the carbon tax. I believe that by not continuing this carbon tax, which has been shown to be one of the most effective ways of dealing with climate change, the Canadian pe…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for pointing out the very disturbing fact that so many people in society seem to be willing to question the scientific empirical method that basically has led, in many ways, to the advancement of society. I am not going to point the finger at anyone here, but the fact that so many people are willing to subscribe to conspiracy theories rather than follow science,…
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Madam Speaker, we all remember, in the spring, when the smoke was so thick in Ottawa that we could not see more than a couple of blocks away. In other areas, flooding is a problem. Flooding has been a problem in B.C. West of my riding, we had record flooding at the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake areas last year. The list goes on. The polar ice caps are melting. Permafrost is melting. Island stat…
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Madam Speaker, the CPC motion is to drop the carbon tax not only on oil temporarily but also on all heating fuels temporarily. Believe it or not, I actually have friends in the Conservative Party, who I think like me through my sometimes philandering political ways. My friends in the Conservative Party may be surprised to hear I actually approve of the carbon tax, and I am in favour of the announc…
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Madam Speaker, I am from a different part of Ontario, northern Ontario, where I think the carbon tax is very different. Can the member tell us what the carbon tax exemptions coming out of the Atlantic mean to people in Toronto, and how they see this?
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