Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-15, an act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP. The purpose of this legislation is to align Canadian laws with UNDRIP. The road to reconciliation has been a long and difficult one, with many ups and downs. Underlying it all is an understandable level of distrust on the part of indigenous peoples.…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, in response to the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, I have a great amount of respect for Romeo Saganash. It was a great privilege to have the opportunity to serve with him in the last Parliament. That being said, Bill C-262 was a flawed piece of legislation for many of the same reasons that Bill C-15 is a flawed piece of legislation. I was unable to support Bill C-262 and I am …
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, last Thursday, a massive fire swept through the Citadel Mews West continuing care facility in St. Albert, displacing more than 100 seniors. Despite the massive scale of the fire, there was no loss of life. That is as a result of dedicated caregivers, firefighters and other first responders as well as several good Samaritans who acted quickly and fearlessly to evacuate residents. More …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, as a starting point, the government should abolish the wasteful Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is very helpful to the Chinese Communist regime but very unhelpful to Canadians. As for all of this spending, this budget projects $40 billion in interest payments on the debt by 2026, which is significantly more than the government spends on EI and the Canada child benefit. T…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the Conservatives believe in lifting up all Canadians by reducing taxes, getting Canadians back to work, attracting investment and making Canada more competitive. When it comes to everyday Canadians, life is becoming less and less affordable, in part because the government is printing money and—
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, with respect to the member's latter point about health, it is disappointing that we have seen zero dollars in the way of new transfers to the provinces for health, despite the fact that all 10 provinces have been begging and pleading with the government. I note that under the Harper government, health transfers increased by 6% annually. With respect to the Parliamentary Budget Offic…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my friend, the hon. member for Elgin—Middlesex—London. It took the government two years to table a budget, this in the midst of a social, health and economic crisis that this country has not experienced in generations. In the face of that, one would have expected the government to put forward a comprehensive economic plan to get Canada out of this cr…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, in an earlier intervention, the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands spoke about the U.K. It should be noted that the U.K. has had some of the most restrictive measures in Europe, yet it has fared much worse than most European countries in terms of cases, hospitalizations and mortality. I want to look at some preliminary figures published by the Office for National Statistics in the U…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my friend from Cloverdale—Langley City is absolutely right that carbon sequestration is key to reducing Canada's GHG emissions. I know my province of Alberta had called on the federal government to step up to the plate and provide real leadership. We saw a mere pittance in the budget toward supporting carbon capture and storage. By contrast, the Conservative Party has a real plan, inc…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver Kingsway is absolutely right. The current government has missed the mark time and time again. As I noted at the beginning of my speech, one of the problems with this bill is that the first target is set in 2030, nearly 10 years from now, roughly three elections or four elections away. Very simply put, the government is not serious when it comes to transparency…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle that under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper, Canada actually saw a real reduction in GHGs. The Chrétien government signed the Kyoto accord and did precisely nothing. The current government signed on to the Paris agreement and we have gone backward, not forward. With respect to the Conservative Party, we have put forward a com…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-12, an act respecting transparency and accountability in Canada's efforts to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. The legislation before the House is nothing more than more virtue-signalling from a virtue-signalling government led by a virtue-signalling Prime Minister. The Liberals talk the talk when it comes to reducing GHGs, …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, in what has been characterized as a full-blow assault on freedom of expression, the Liberals amended Bill C-10 to give the government the power to control the social media content of everyday Canadians to ensure that it matched “the government's vision”. This is nothing short of Orwellian. Why is it that when it comes to freedom of expression, the government's approach is that it can …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, in what countries do the governments control what people post on the Internet and what they can see, and punish content that does not match “the government's vision”? They are China, Russia and soon to be Canada, because that is precisely what the Liberal government's Bill C-10 would do. Comments about matching the government's vision are not those of a Chinese communist official, but…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Calgary Rocky Ridge for his very accurate speech of this complete failure on the part of the government in so many different areas with respect to the budget. One area that our province of Alberta has been hit particularly by is the government's anti-energy policies over the last six years. In the budget, there was almost no mention of the oil and gas se…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary, in her speech, said that the government has the backs of Canadians. One group of Canadians that the government has not had the backs of are men and women who have opened new businesses, who have been completely shut out of the government's emergency support programs. These are men and women who invested considerable capital and risk before COVID. Why has…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the Liberals' so-called municipal handgun ban has been widely criticized by law enforcement. For instance, former OPP commissioner Chris Lewis characterized it as “ridiculous”. The hon. member accurately noted that it would create a confusing patchwork from municipality to municipality. Does the hon. member agree that the effect of this measure would be to target law-abiding firearm…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, Canada is in the middle of a third wave of COVID. It did not have to be this way, but for the catastrophic failure of leadership on the part of the government. From the outset of this pandemic, the government failed to close the border until it was too late, failed to secure PPE and failed to secure vaccines. In December, the Prime Minister had the audacity to say, “we ended up in suc…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, with respect to the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, it appears he did not listen carefully to my speech. I noted, yes, that I had concerns with the terms “practice”, “treatment” and “service”, but I also noted concerns about the definition including the reduction of sexual attraction or sexual behaviour. There were many LGBTQ witnesses who appeared before committee who sai…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would seek unanimous consent to split my time with my colleague, the member for South Surrey—White Rock.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier is absolutely right that it is important that we get the definition right. Surely, we want this legislation to pass constitutional muster, and a piece of legislation that has a definition that is vague and overly broad is at risk of a charter challenge, at risk of being found to contravene fundamental justice and at risk of being found to cont…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, with respect to the member for St. John's East, I voted for this bill at second reading. I heard the testimony of witnesses at the justice committee, in which there were significant concerns expressed. We worked to include language to provide that clarity. I do not know why the government did not support such language because, had such language been incorporated, I believe we could …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is absolutely essential that, when we draft legislation, we ensure that it is targeted toward demonstrated harms. We should not wait for a judge to interpret it or hope that a judge will interpret the law the way we hope a judge would do in the face of vague and overly broad language, and on a matter that can involve five years behind bars upon conviction.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-6, an act to amend the Criminal Code to ban conversion therapy. Let me say at the outset that conversion therapy is absurd. It is wrong, and it is harmful. Conversion therapy should be banned. Individuals who perpetrate such harmful acts and seek to coercively change someone's sexual orientation or sexual identity should be held accountable to the …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to government expenditures related to Twitter since January 1, 2020, broken down by department, agency, Crown corporation or other government entity: (a) what is the total amount of expenditures related to Twitter; (b) what was the total amount spent promoting tweets; (c) what are the details of each tweet that was promoted, including the (i) handle or account, (ii) description of twee…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, it has been four months since the Court of Appeal of Quebec found consecutive sentencing to be unconstitutional, thereby reducing the sentence of the mass murderer who killed six people and attempted to kill six others at a Quebec City mosque from 40 years to 25 years. After four months, when will this government do the right thing and join Quebec's attorney general in defending thi…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition signed by my constituents and other Canadians who wish to sound the alarm about the systemic eradication campaign being perpetrated by the Chinese Communist regime against peaceful Falun Gong practitioners. In this regard, there is substantial evidence of gross human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial killings and massive organ …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would say respectfully to my colleague that I disagree with the premise of his question that mandatory jail times do not work. Mandatory jail times have always been part of Canada's criminal justice system. If the hon. member talks about prevention with respect to, for example, firearms offences, surely that hon. member would recognize that 80% of firearms offences in Canada occur…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I am speaking this afternoon to Bill C-22, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Liberals have advertised this bill as a response to the disproportionate number of Black, indigenous and other marginalized Canadians caught up in Canada's criminal justice system. They have advertised this bill as removing what they have characterized as unf…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I apologize to the hon. member unreservedly for my error with respect to his vote, but it is unfortunate that his colleagues did not take his lead.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, as I said in my previous answer, mandatory jail times have always been part of our criminal justice system. It appears that the Liberal government would not agree with the statement of the hon. member because the government is not rolling back all mandatory jail times. However, I would submit it is rolling back mandatory jails times quite inappropriately for a number of serious offe…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, in response to the hon. member, I do not accept that eliminating mandatory jail times in any way helps persons in marginalized communities when we are talking about offences as serious as the ones provided for in this bill regarding mandatory jail times.
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Madam Speaker, last night the Liberals rammed through a radical expansion of medical assistance in dying to include mental illness, demonstrating the height of recklessness on the part of this government. After all, only months ago, the Minister of Justice said that such an expansion would be fraught with risks, yet the Liberals proceeded anyway, absent a meaningful parliamentary study, absent a c…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, the Liberals are seeking to target law-abiding firearms owners with onerous new rules, all the while eliminating mandatory jail time for serious firearms offences, including weapons trafficking and robbery with a gun. Why is it that when the Liberals talk about getting tough on guns, they mean getting tough on law-abiding Canadians while going soft on criminals?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, in short, I have concerns about providing for advance consent. I say that because people do change their minds. The expert working panel of the Council of Canadian Academies said there was a lack of consensus, so I think that at the very least this deserves a lot more study.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I am rising to speak on Bill C-7. The legislation illustrates the dangers that arise when a government puts blind ideology ahead of evidence-based decision-making. The nightmare of this bill and that road that has led to it today began when the Quebec Superior Court judge issued the Truchon decision. In that decision, that lower court judge determined that the most important safegua…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I concur with the hon. member for Victoria that the Senate has exceeded its mandate in going far beyond the scope of Bill C-7. I have to say that I am shocked that the Attorney General did not reject outright the amendment with respect to mental illness being a sole criterion for eligibility for medical assistance in dying. Despite the fact there are a lot of things we do not know, …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I want recognize the contributions by the member for Montcalm to the debate and to the justice committee during the study of Bill C-7 as well as Bill C-14. With respect to the Conservative position, it is one of a free vote both on Bill C-14 and Bill C-7. I did oppose Bill C-14, because I had some significant concerns at the time that it did not go far enough to protect Canadians wh…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, the government has smashed records when it comes to deficits and debt, but when it comes to jobs, the government gets an F. Canada lost nearly 300,000 jobs in December and January. We have the highest unemployment rate in the G7, at 50% above the G7 average. For all of the spending and all of the debt, where are the jobs?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we have seen overwhelming evidence of a systematic attack against the Uighur people and, quite frankly, the Chinese Communist Party has not hidden from that reality. In 2019, a Communist official stated with respect to the Uighurs, “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.” Then we saw the shocking tweet from the Chinese embassy in Wa…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition respecting forced organ harvesting. The petitioners wish to draw to the attention of this place the lack of a legal prohibition for Canadians travelling abroad. They call on Parliament to pass Bill C-350 and Bill S-240.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member for Berthier—Maskinongé is right that there has been a lot of uncertainty. He is also right to suggest that the government has no reason to brag when it comes to supply-managed sectors. The government, after all, did not get a deal on that. All it got was an extension of the current terms of CETA. With respect to the government's record on delivering compensation to supply-…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, in short, yes, I am concerned about the absence of a sunset clause. Although this agreement is being billed as a temporary transitional agreement, a carry-over agreement, and the government has gone to pains to emphasize that fact, there is no guarantee. It could in fact be a permanent agreement; hence, the need for the government to focus and get back to the table so that we do reach…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-18, an act to implement the Canada-United Kingdom Trade Continuity Agreement. I will say at the outset that I support the passage of this legislation so that the agreement can be studied at committee. I will also say, in unequivocal terms, that it is absolutely vital for Canada to achieve a permanent comprehensive trade agreement with the United K…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Kingston and the Islands is right that continuity and certainty are important to Canadian businesses that do business in the United Kingdom. That is why it is unfortunate that we have this 11th hour agreement that left Canadian businesses in a precarious position, not knowing until the 11th hour that there would in fact be, at this point, an interim agreement, a carr…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would concur with the member's assessment of the PBO that the government has been less than transparent. This problem with transparency has been a long-standing one we have had with the government. It does not just relate to fiscal and economic issues, but also includes their being straight with Canadians on where Canada is with the vaccine distribution plan. Where does Canada fit…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, given the brief time I have to answer the member for Elmwood—Transcona, let me simply say that he speaks of a reckoning: We will face a fiscal reckoning if we stay on the current course.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, let me acknowledge first of all that this is an extraordinary time and there has been some spending that has been required. I do not dispute that. Conservatives have tried to work with the government to get dollars out to workers and businesses and Canadians who need it, but that being said, it is also true that out of the $375 billion deficit, only about $175 billion relates to dir…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, happy new year. I speak on Bill C-14 this afternoon, which is legislation that, among other things, increases the federal spending authority from a staggering $1.1 trillion to an astronomical $1.8 trillion. For a government that spends tens of billions of dollars here, hundreds of billions of dollars there, racks up a debt of more than $1 trillion, it is tough to keep track of exact…
Read full speech →