Parliamentary Speeches
935 speeches by Michelle Rempel Garner — Page 15 of 19
Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the world is not investing in Canada, because the Prime Minister chases away investment in our ethical sources of energy. Frankly, I think that his record on this is abysmal. I want to remind the Prime Minister of something. Good jobs are ethical, regulated jobs in Canada's natural resource sector. Bad jobs are those that are done by children in cobalt mines in oth…
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Mr. Speaker, it seems like unanimity is breaking out in the opposition ranks. I also look forward to working with my colleague from Timmins—James Bay on this matter because he is right. We should be ensuring that we are not offshoring jobs in natural resources and we are not being priced out of competitiveness because of our failed relationship with the Americans that has happened under the govern…
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Mr. Speaker, we are participating in a take-note debate tonight, which is designed to allow members to give their opinion on policy development on a matter of urgency. Today, the government has taken a delegation to Washington, D.C. ostensibly to talk about the softwood lumber dispute. I want to briefly, in the time I have, outline what the problem is and two ways to fix it. We have to start by la…
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Mr. Speaker, exactly. The point I am trying to make in my intervention tonight is that it benefits both Canadians and Americans for us to have strong relationships so that we are not going through escalating trade wars, but that is the job of the government. We have had five foreign ministers in six years, I think, and four international trade ministers. How can there be a continuity of relationsh…
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Mr. Speaker, I very much look forward to working with my colleague on natural resources because I understand how important that sector is to his riding. I think we actually have a lot of commonality on what we can work on together. I very much agree with him that the federal government should be doing more to support value-added processing of forestry products. At the same time, it has to make sur…
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Mr. Speaker, I think the agreement we have for Canada right now under the government is pretty bad. I mean, they doubled the tariffs. Given that the most noteworthy trade event the minister has been involved in was an ice cream parlour in Beijing, can she please let the House know if she intends to give the Americans notice that we intend to litigate under chapter 10 of CUSMA regarding the tariffs…
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Mr. Speaker, I think that is code for zero negotiations. After six years of inaction, countless jobs lost and a doubling of tariffs in spite of a positive WTO ruling on our behalf, last week the finance minister said that she was finally considering retaliatory tariffs against the Americans on the softwood lumber dispute issue. However, she has provided no details on what those measures would be, …
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Madam Speaker, it is nice to see you in the chair again. Since my colleague is talking about safety on the Hill, I was wondering if he could comment about his role in steering an allegation of sexual misconduct against former MP Raj Saini to mediation as opposed to a formal complaint, and then trying to ensure that process did not see the light of day. I was wondering if he would take this opportu…
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Mr. Speaker, if a doubling of tariffs is what defence looks like from the government, I would hate to find out what its definition of success is. It is just crazy. The tariffs have been doubled. It has been six years. I think the Liberals have gone through five foreign ministers and four international trade ministers in the last six years. They have not been able to get anything done, and it was d…
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Mr. Speaker, something very puzzling just happened. President Biden just doubled the tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber in spite of two things: the World Trade Organization, which came out in favour of Canada, and the Prime Minister of Canada just meeting with President Biden days ago. This will undoubtedly hurt Canadian forestry workers, who are already struggling during this difficult time. Has…
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Madam Speaker, I would love to discuss that with my new colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam. However, she is about to vote for a motion that would prevent us from interacting here, so she has kind of burned herself.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I will take this opportunity to remind Canadians that vaccines are safe and effective. I am fully vaccinated, and I encourage any Canadian who is not vaccinated to avail themselves of that opportunity. Every member who is in this place is compliant with COVID-19 rules that are set out by the House of Commons by virtue of their presence here. Every member of the Conservative Party is…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would remind my colleague that if he is standing in this place he is complying with the House of Commons rules for COVID-19 which were put in place to keep us safe. That is number one. Number two, I highly doubt that my colleague across the way, even in his role as a member of Parliament in the back benches, has ever asked a question to hold the government to account. I doubt it i…
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Madam Speaker, today we are debating a motion put forward by the Liberals that would take away several vital components of the functioning of Canada's democracy. With this motion, the Liberals are suggesting that members in this place should not be attending this place, and that to me is very unreasonable. I am going to lay out why. First of all, the Prime Minister called an election in the middle…
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Mr. Speaker, the price of everything has increased under the Prime Minister's watch, including housing, which is more unaffordable. He does not have the courage to put together a plan. He does not have the courage to stand up for Canadian workers as he sends our jobs offshore. He does not have the courage to stand here and come up with smart economic policies to drive down the cost of goods and ge…
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Mr. Speaker, the number of day care spaces created in Alberta by the Liberal government is zero. The number of jobs lost in my province under the Prime Minister is hundreds of thousands. The Prime Minister earlier talked about housing costs. He thinks that sending tax dollars to fancy think tanks and increasing debt, which increases inflation, is going to somehow lower the cost of basic building g…
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Mr. Speaker, earlier in question period, the Prime Minister used the phrase “even in places like Alberta” in a derogatory way that is frankly unbecoming of the Prime Minister of this country. For shame. We know what the Prime Minister thinks of workers in western Canada, but at a time when fuel costs are rising out of control, he needs to stop his attack on the workers in western Canada, who provi…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, I am rising on the same point of order. For what it is worth, I think you may have a point on perhaps not reiterating the entirety of the allegations that have been reported to the CBC. However, I would ask that you understand that these are material to the case that is about to be made. I am not a member of the Board of Internal Economy. I would like to speak to this question of priv…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, I would like to add to my colleague's argument with additional evidence. It is not allegations, but additional rational. I would like to argue that the Board of Internal Economy is not, in fact, the place to have this happen. Adding to the argument of my colleague from Barrie—Innisfil, I would argue that my privilege as a member has been breached here, because it is arguably not safe …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, I do not feel the Board of Internal Economy, which is largely a closed-door process, is appropriate to deal with the breach of privilege that I am raising today. My privilege is breached because it is not safe to work here by virtue of other people not finding it safe to work here. Frankly, I have raised this issue in numerous forms over the entirety of my decade in this place. A deca…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your role. I would make this argument. Allegations have come to light about somebody who is serving in this room's capacity to serve the House. Those allegations speak to our privilege as members, in that some of the allegations that I believe my colleague will address speak to investigations that did not come to light. These did not happen at the Board of Internal …
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Mr. Speaker, he is right. We would not have let vaccine manufacturing capacity atrophy. We would not have raided vaccines from the COVAX fund. We would not have sent PPE abroad, putting our doctors and nurses at risk. We would not have given contracts to cronies while Canadians suffered. Now, while our tourism and airline industries suffer, the Prime Minister is still pretending like everything is…
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Mr. Speaker, to inform the Prime Minister, on behalf of the tourism industry, the airline industry and families who are separated across borders, the hotel quarantine program, which is unsafe and unscientific, still remains. Instead of staying at one of them, the Prime Minister went to his own special place. It is this sort of double standard and lack of accountability that is putting Canadian bus…
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Mr. Speaker, it is easy for the Prime Minister to take personal shots at people. It is a lot harder for him to have empathy for Canadians who need jobs that are dependent on the tourism sector or for families who are separated across the border. He kind of flaunted that lack of empathy when he was taking pictures with Stella McCartney. We need benchmarks for lifting COVID-19 restrictions, not snar…
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Mr. Speaker, when a significant Ebola outbreak happened in Africa, a Conservative government took decisive action and closed Canada's borders to keep us safe, in spite of protests from the Liberals. We did not send vital PPE away when we needed it, say that border measures do not work or have a WE Charity scandal. When the Prime Minister said this morning that Canada would have reacted very differ…
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Mr. Speaker, wow, that was awkward. The Liberals have a panel of scientists that provided clear advice on benchmarks for lifting federal COVID-19 restrictions. Families who are separated across the border, tourism operators, and hotel, airline and airport employees all need these benchmarks in order to work and have hope. Many countries around the world have already done this. There is anger in th…
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Mr. Speaker, the answer from the parliamentary secretary was really disrespectful to families who are separated across borders and to airline and airport employees, who just want a plan. They want benchmarks, and there is science to support those benchmarks. In fact, the government's own expert panel provided these benchmarks. The hotel quarantine program is not scientific. It is not based in any …
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Mr. Speaker, on this matter, I would also like to add to the body of evidence you are considering in this matter, as we had Mr. Stewart in front of our Standing Committee on Health on Friday, where he was questioned on this issue. It was very apparent in his testimony he understood the terms of the order and had decided not to abide by the second component of the order, which was the production of…
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Madam Speaker, the minister is not accountable to Thomas Juneau. She is accountable to this place. NSICOP is not an official parliamentary committee and it happens in secret. What is happening here is the government provided documents to that committee so that we could not look at them and we could not fix these issues on behalf of our constituents and the people of Canada. That is wrong and that …
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Madam Speaker, the role of Parliament is to hold the government to account. The National Microbiology Lab saw a significant security issue happen earlier this year, and Parliament needs to determine what happened so that it does not happen again. In order to do that, we need to see the documents that are related to this incident. There have been numerous orders for the government to provide them t…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I would like to echo my colleague's compliment back at him. It has been a pleasure to serve with him and work with him on the health committee over the last several months. He has a shared commitment to serving the interests of Canadians in the best way possible and to work across party lines to get that done in a time of need. His question relates to the severity of the situation at …
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Mr. Speaker, Parliament is supreme. I would love to get the vaccine contracts that were promised under a House order and a subsequent order of the health committee. We have spent billions of taxpayer dollars on them and we do not understand what recourse is available to us regarding the contractual obligations that have clearly not been followed up. The Canadian public has the right to know that s…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I am going to start my speech by saying that the ultimate role of any member of Parliament is to hold the government to account. If a member of Parliament does not hold a government appointment, such as parliamentary secretary or minister, and is not part of the executive branch of government, the member's job is to hold the government to account regardless of political stripe. What w…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, “sunshine is the best disinfectant”. Parliament should review what happened because we need to understand what happened and how to fix this problem to ensure it never happens again. That is our duty to the Canadian people. We need these documents so we can propose policy to move forward, ensure that if protocols were not followed those who were in charge of that are censured and not p…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, there are members with their cameras on, but they are not in the shot of the camera. They are clearly not present in debate, so I think you also need to rule on whether or not they count for quorum, because their cameras are on, but they are clearly not in their chair, they are clearly not in the video and they have not come back during this discussion.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the government's use of Switch Health for post-arrival coronavirus tests for travellers: (a) what are the service standards in terms of distributing, picking up, and processing tests; (b) what are the service standards for responding to client inquiries or complaints; (c) in what percentage of cases did Switch Health meet or exceed service standards; (d) for cases where standards we…
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Mr. Speaker, earlier in debate, the member opposite raised the relevance of the Liberal Party's vetting process for Canada, calling it rigorous. I will note that in 2019, the member for Kitchener South—Hespeler was green-lit by the party in spite of substantiated harassment allegations. To read from a CBC article, the allegations included “unwanted touching and lewd comments aimed at [a] female st…
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe that less than 10 years ago the only way to get around, if people did not own a car and they wanted something outside of public transit, was a taxi. Then all of a sudden, something called Uber came along and it disrupted the taxi industry, so there was a large change in the market. The taxi industry reacted. Its members lobbied municipal, provincial and even the …
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Mr. Speaker, I can reference one specific part of this bill that I have a great issue with. It is the fact that the government removed the provisions under proposed section 4.1, which specifically protect users of social media platforms, creators or influencers from being regulated by the government. Tonight, in rhetoric through the debate, we just had the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith talk about h…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague should understand that AI algorithms within social media platforms are not run by Mark Zuckerberg. That is just preposterous. Algorithms are built based on user-generated data. We could have a whole conversation here about data ownership policies, which are non-existent in this country. In terms of the member's question, it is patently preposterous to the level of America…
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Mr. Speaker, what the bill would do is make the lever of control that guy who just spoke up, and that should send chills through the heart of every Canadian. Do they really want that guy and Liberal hand-picked appointees telling them what they want to watch? No. Again, it is the propping up of a system that is 40 years old, a system that has completely disrupted this. Who is the lever on this? It…
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Mr. Speaker, we are sitting here talking about who should control the levers on content viewing in a disrupted industry. What would have been a much better piece of legislation would have been frameworks to prevent big data companies from using algorithms that could be racist or sexist. We could actually open up those algorithms so they learn based on a user's wants and needs rather than what the …
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Madam Speaker, there were only five people who had their cameras on that we counted. I believe your ruling was wrong.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Joe Biden has not listened to the Prime Minister on KXL. Joe Biden has not listened to the Prime Minister on softwood lumber. Joe Biden did not listen to the Prime Minister on Line 5. There is no indication that Joe Biden has been given any reason by the current government to listen to the Prime Minister on the border. This is not a slight on the Americans: The Prime Minister's approa…
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Mr. Speaker, today the Prime Minister announced the indefinite continuation of the unsafe and unscientific hotel quarantine program. Even for fully vaccinated Canadians, no firm date was announced as to when they would be able to forgo staying at federal facilities where sexual assaults, worker abuses and COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred. Will the Prime Minister listen to the advice of his expert …
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Mr. Speaker, while other Canadians are doing their part and avoiding travel, the Prime Minister is about to travel internationally to go on a cocktail-party-loaded photo op trip to London. Upon his return, he will not quarantine at the same facilities that every other Canadian has because he wants to personally avoid all the problems that Canadians have experienced. That is despicable. Worse, toda…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister will not be staying at the same facility that every other Canadian is, and that is just ridiculous. This week, prominent Democratic and Republican congresspeople have been musing about how the United States may unilaterally open its side of the land border to Canadians. This comes as prominent Liberals such as Bob Rae have also been musing about the border. The Prim…
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday the health committee heard that the Prime Minister is using his unscientific and unsafe hotel quarantine program to discriminate against women and persons of colour. An overwhelming number of Pacific Gateway's long-term workers are women and persons of colour, but they were laid off under the auspices of this program in order to hire lower-paid workers. They have now filed a…
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Mr. Speaker, it is the federal government that is paying Pacific Gateway to run an unsafe, unscientific hotel program that is allowing for these abuses. At these hotels, there have been worker abuses, COVID-19 outbreaks and sexual assaults, yet the government persists in propping it up. However, the Prime Minister himself will not stay at one of these facilities, and to me, that says it all. There…
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Mr. Speaker, in spite of repeated requests, the Liberals have never produced evidence to show that their hotel quarantine program stops the spread of COVID over other measures. However, there is evidence of COVID-19 outbreaks at these facilities and there is also evidence of sexual assaults occurring there. Now the government's own expert panel of scientists has called on the Liberals to scrap the…
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