Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I get as equally excited as they do talking about the Harper record. When the world dealt with the global economic meltdown, we laid out a seven-year plan, we followed that plan to a tee, and by 2015, we balanced the budget. In contrast, as this government faced a significant global challenge, what it did was bring out the chequebook and responded by just cutting cheques with no eye…
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Madam Speaker, I have a couple of comments. First of all, during the Harper era, we increased health transfers by about 6% per year for almost every year that we were in government. In the plan that our leader has laid out, he has simply said that, after a 70% increase in program spending over the last eight years, and an endless succession of spending plans and massive deficits, we would have a s…
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Madam Speaker, like so many Liberals, the hon. member was very excited to list off all the spending that the government is doing. I want to ask a question about the Trudeau legacy. There is a lot of economic disaster in the Trudeau legacy, which gets confusing at times, but back in the 1970s and 1980s—
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I understand the Liberals' confusion when I mention “economic disaster”. They have a hard time understanding which Liberal government we are talking about, but—
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we can debate all day which Liberal government was more of an economic disaster, but right now I am talking about the former Trudeau government of the 1970s that ran deficits 14 out of 15 years, and then a generation later had to slash tens of billions of dollars, $35 billion in fact, in health care, education and social services funding. It also had the lowest level of internationa…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the real effect of Liberal economic policy. The original Trudeau spending legacy was 14 deficits in 15 years, an inflation, housing and energy crisis for Canadians at the time, and, as a result of the crippling debt, devastating cuts to health and education transfers a generation later by another Liberal government. It is the classic Liberal economic one-two punch: s…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
moved that Bill S-203, An Act respecting a federal framework on autism spectrum disorder, be read the first time. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce Bill S-203 in this House, seconded by my hon. colleague from Don Valley East. The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Leo Housakos, who has long been a tireless advocate for autistic Canadians. It was seconded there by my good friend…
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Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister answers every question with mock bewilderment that we dare question her record levels of spending and the increasing taxes to pay for them. She seems obsessed with Stephen Harper, whose record is clear: In 2015, just seven years after a global economic meltdown, the Liberals inherited a balanced budget. Our Conservative government had lowered virtually every …
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With regard to the current Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance and the government's new labelling requirements for beef and pork products: (a) what specific steps, if any, has the minister taken, or will the minister take, to prevent the labelling requirements from having a detrimental impact on Alberta beef and pork producers; (b) has the minister or his office sent any communic…
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Mr. Speaker, the utter chaos experienced by Canadians simply trying to obtain a passport from their own government is a crisis solely of the Prime Minister's making. A summer that should have provided much-needed relief after two years of significant stress has instead turned into an endless nightmare of dangerous passport office all-nighters and infuriatingly long hold times, often ending in abru…
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With regard to Health Canada's application process for medical devices under the Interim Order No. 3 Respecting Importation and Sale of Medical Devices for Use in Relation to COVID-19: (a) what are the different stages each application must go through; (b) for each stage in (a), what are the (i) stated service standards, (ii) processes, if any, in place to measure and report on the department's pe…
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With regard to ongoing or planned government IT projects with a budget over $1 million: what are the details of each project, including the (i) project description and summary, (ii) total budget, (iii) estimated completion date?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it was interesting to hear the hon. member's response to my last question. First of all, I like the hon. member. I like the way he carries himself in the House. I take issue with his characterization of my raising mental health as an issue as “a tantrum”. The hon. member talked about the priorities the NDP negotiated into the spending of the government. It was one of the highest-spe…
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Madam Speaker, what we saw there was like a WWE fight. That last exchange was not real because, while the hon. member stands and talks about his disappointment in the government, the reality is that the only reason the government is able to do any of the spending he decries is because his party is supporting the government. I will ask a very specific question in an area that the government is not …
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Madam Speaker, in our previous interaction, the NDP member for Elmwood—Transcona was pretty clear that the NDP was unable to negotiate or, at least, he implied that the NDP was unable to negotiate the Canada mental health transfer into their agreement on the budget. The Liberal platform clearly promised $250 million in 2021-22 and $625 million in 2022-23 for a Canada mental health transfer. I am w…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, on a point of order, just based on the conversation, surely if you seek it, you would find unanimous consent to allow me to table page 75 from the Liberal platform, which promises for a Canada mental health transfer under new investments—
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, as we look to make progress on this issue, I am banking on the fact that Canadians who just heard my question and that answer will recognize that the response had nothing to do at all with the question I asked. I am going to ask it again, and I am hoping the parliamentary secretary will put away her notes and just answer the question. In the Liberal platform that she ran on eight mo…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here tonight to follow up on a question I asked the Prime Minister on May 18. I think it is important in these late shows to give a little context for people who might be seeing this live, but more likely on social media after we post the clips from this. The late show is our opportunity to have a conversation in which we follow up on something where we feel l…
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Mr. Speaker, four times in the past two weeks I have asked questions about the Canada mental health transfer, an election commitment quite obviously broken by the Liberal government. The minister never even pretended to attempt an answer. Page 75 of the Liberal platform clearly promises immediate funding of $250 million and then another $625 million in this year's budget. There has to be an explan…
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Mr. Speaker, then why did they make the promise? The Prime Minister recently stood here and actually said, with a straight face, “We will not simply fall back on slogans and easy solutions....” Instead, with the current government, it is always only slogans and no solutions. More than 30 times this year, including a couple of times today, the Prime Minister has responded to legitimate questions by…
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Madam Speaker, it is fitting that the member is talking about being heard. My constituency has 209,000 people. It is roughly the same size in population as P.E.I., which has four Liberal members of Parliament. It does not matter how hard I work or how hard my staff work. I can come in here and debate all day long. I could even debate as much as the hon. deputy House leader. Still, when it comes ti…
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Mr. Speaker, that did not even come close to answering the question we actually asked. We have asked consistently very fair, straightforward questions on the issue of the Canada mental health transfer. Last week, the minister dismissed them as “annoying” and “despicable”. If the minister is annoyed with anyone, perhaps it should be with her own Prime Minister, who has put her in such an awkward, i…
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Mr. Speaker, while it was trying to get elected, the Liberal Party used the words “mental health” 66 times in its platform, but we are losing 11 Canadians every day to suicide, and we still do not have a three-digit suicide prevention hotline. We are losing 19 Canadians every day to a raging opioid crisis that continues to worsen, and now the Liberals have broken their cornerstone mental health co…
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Mr. Speaker, just months ago during the election, the Liberal platform made a firm commitment of $4.5 billion over five years for a Canada mental health transfer, very specifically including $250 million in 2021-22 and $625 million in 2022-23. This promise was clearly broken in the budget. What happened between the election and the budget? It was, of course, the NDP-Liberal agreement to cling to p…
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Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about the 2022 budget, and several things are very clear. During the election, many parties made substantial commitments on mental health. The cornerstone of the Liberal commitment was the Canada mental health transfer, beginning with $250 million for 2021-22. The Liberals made an agreement with the NDP, and many elements of that agreement remain highly secret. Su…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, this week is Mental Health Week, and this year's theme is empathy. Of course, this is an interesting place and time to be making a statement on empathy. How do we, not just politicians but all Canadians, passionately debate critical issues in a way that does not relentlessly chip away at our collective mental health? For starters, I would argue that we all need to scale down the verba…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, last Saturday was World Autism Awareness Day and 24 years since my son, Jaden, was diagnosed. Jaden would normally be in Ottawa with me, but last week, he tested positive for COVID. He has bounced back quickly, but sadly is not able to travel. As the years go by, we learn more about autism and both the strengths and challenges that come with the label; still, so much remains unknown. …
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Mr. Speaker, the health minister talks a lot about numbers. I am wondering if he can tell us whether mental health, particularly the mental health of Canadians who still today cannot work or travel to see loved ones because of the mandates, is one of the metrics being considered in regard to lifting the mandates. If so, what specifically are those mental health metrics?
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Mr. Speaker, even after the imposition of vaccine mandates, some Canadians chose to remain unvaccinated. Many of them sacrificed jobs and their ability to travel to see loved ones because of their authentic anxiety about COVID vaccines. The Prime Minister's response was to go on television and proclaim that many of those Canadians were “racists” and “misogynists”. What does the minister have to sa…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, the last few years have been incredibly tough. For most of us, our mental health is not where it should be and many around us are really struggling. Everyone should remember the name BeThere.org. It is the award-winning Canadian brain child of jack.org and, quite simply, a tool the world needs to know about right now. Its five golden rules are a must for anyone who loves someone who m…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, a year ago this week, I made a one-minute statement in the virtual House of Commons from my basement in Edmonton. I have reflected on that statement a lot over the past few weeks. Yesterday, as I listened to the debate and monitored my very active and animated social media feeds, I decided to work that statement into my speech this morning, if for no other reason than to anchor my o…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member because it might be the first time I have heard a Liberal member mention Alberta in the House. She has to recognize, first of all, that among my constituents, almost universally, the feedback we have gotten back has been opposed to the Emergencies Act. My staff tell me probably 95% of the feedback we have gotten has been people asking me to oppose t…
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Madam Speaker, to be clear, Conservatives have been unequivocal in denouncing the clearly negative aspects of what happened outside this place, while at the same time clearly supporting individuals from across the country who have legitimate concerns about the approach the government is taking. In regard to the plan the hon. member mentioned, I would point out that her party supported the plan. We…
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Madam Speaker, let me be 100% clear. This party, every member on this side of the House, is 100% against the issues he is talking about. We are against violent white supremacy, white supremacy of any kind, racial bigotry of any kind, and other bigotry of any kind. What I actually said was I will not be afraid to have conversations with people I do not know as I am walking from my apartment to the …
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Madam Speaker, I am pro-vaccination, but I have friends and constituents who are not. They have made a different decision. We have had conversations about it and I cannot convince them. Many of them have reached out. Some of them who were working for the public service are not anymore as they lost their jobs. I talked to more than one person who had to give up their house because of it. They are c…
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals seem almost giddy today when talking about the effectiveness of what is going on out there. There was never any question that it was going to be effective. The question is whether it is justified. That is the question. I listened to the hon. member's speech and I appreciated his tone and what he had to say. If we are using the Emergencies Act today for this, in what oth…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend talked about this going off the rails right from the very beginning. If one talks to many of the folks who have been expressing their concern about vaccine mandates, this went off the rails for them when the Prime Minister said that many of them were misogynists and racists. There has never been a retraction of that and there has never been an apology. I am going to giv…
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Madam Speaker, today and throughout the day, at different times we have seen the self-congratulatory attitude of the Liberals as they talk about the measures being effective. This might be partly because effectiveness is a new concept to them and they are not used to that in their caucus. I would argue that effectiveness is not the measure by which we should be looking at the situation today, but …
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Mr. Speaker, there are kind members of Parliament on all sides of the House. The House is full of kind individuals, and there is none more kind than the member who has just spoken here, so I think it is absolutely regrettable that the Liberal and NDP strategy today has been to label every Conservative member of Parliament with the acts of a few individuals that we all unequivocally agree are unacc…
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Madam Chair, we are having yet another debate on this issue, saying some important things with lots of great sentiment. The member has been a member of Parliament for a long time and was a minister at one point in time. One would think she would have influence within her own party, especially with her credentials. I am wondering what specific action her government has taken that she can point to a…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. On April 29, 2003, I got a call at home from my brother Dan. I remember everything about that moment, exactly where I was in the House, the fact that I just finished an episode of 24, then in its second season. It was a beautiful spring day and there was a light breeze coming in through the patio…
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Mr. Speaker, I am broadly supportive any time we can bring experts together to discuss issues as important as this one. We are at such a unique time right now in our parliamentary history. We have just gone through an election campaign where every single party had major promises and a lot to say about not just the opioid crisis but mental health in general. I look forward to working with members o…
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Mr. Speaker, there are a few things. One of the things that is not talked about enough in this country is the concept of recovery. I know for some people there are all sorts of different connotations when we start talking about recovery, but more than anything, I would love to have my dad able to be up in the gallery as I am giving a different speech in this conversation because he was able to rec…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, it is now 420 days since Parliament passed a unanimous motion that referenced the “alarming rate of suicide in Canada”, called it a “national health crisis” and demanded the House take “immediate action” to institute a nationwide three-digit 988 suicide prevention hotline. My question for the minister today is simple. What is the current number that Canadians should remember so that i…
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Mr. Speaker, if the government does not know the number, how can Canadians be expected to? A Google search will eventually tell us that the 24-7 number for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service is 1-833-456-4566. Since the December 2020 vote, more than 4,500 Canadians have tragically lost their lives to suicide. We have so much work to do together on mental health in this country, but this is a re…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, tonight I am following up on a question I first asked on December 7, eight days ago. For the context of my question, it is important to note that in the eight days since I asked this question, according to the statistics, 88 Canadians will have died by suicide. In that time, in those eight days, we will have lost 88 Canadians to suicide. It was 370 days ago that the House came togethe…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful this is an issue that members of all parties can agree on. I will point out for those watching who are interested right now that if they do a Google search and wade through all of the documentation on the government website eventually they will find that there is a 24-7 number for the Canada Suicide Prevention Service. The number is 1-833-456-4566 for those who need that…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a national crisis. Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of a unanimous House of Commons motion to take “immediate action” on an easy-to-remember, 24-7 three-digit suicide prevention hotline: 988. Since that unanimous vote, 4,000 Canadian lives have been lost to suicide. In their darkest, most desperate moment, Canadians should not have to do a Google search to find help th…
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Mr. Speaker, 361 days ago, the House came together to vote unanimously on the motion put forward by the member for Cariboo—Prince George to take immediate action to establish a nationwide three-digit 988 suicide prevention hotline. In a world where we can hold a $600-million election in the midst of a global pandemic, surely we can activate a three-digit telephone number that nobody is using and w…
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Mr. Speaker, I would not have risen on this, but I will because the Liberal whip stood up on it. Precedence is important. I was on the government side for many years and while I was trying to answer questions, I could not hear because the Liberal whip was one of the people yelling at me. The precedent at the time was that sometimes the Speaker would stand to ask people to be quiet, but never once …
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