Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the primary function of government is to protect its citizens from external harm and to ensure that Canadians are able to live freely and safely in their communities. I do have concerns about the gatekeeping aspect of this bill. I am concerned that if this bill does not get the balance of the regulation and the ability of commerce to continue, we will lose businesses and we will lose …
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Mr. Speaker, that may be a better question for the government to answer, but I do not believe this is the intent of this bill. This bill is about cybersecurity. The government has another bill before the House, Bill C-27, which is a bit closer to privacy changes. The government has not proposed changes to the Privacy Act or the Elections Act, so I do not think this bill is relevant to the question…
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Mr. Speaker, with respect to the first question, I will set it aside and await more testimony and discussion at the defence committee about that. With respect to the second point, about the overclassification of information, that is a good one and I am glad the member raised it. It actually speaks to the overall culture of secrecy that exists in the Government of Canada. This is a real problem tha…
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Madam Speaker, the intervention just before the last one was unusual, where the member for Winnipeg North said that any time a Conservative debates a bill, we are somehow obstructing it from getting to committee. However, right before the minister's speech, a Liberal member spoke. Therefore, when Liberals speak, they are debating, but when Conservatives speak, they are obstructing. The debate on t…
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Madam Speaker, if this bill does not affect what Canadians will post, why did the government choose to remove the amendment that would have explicitly said that? We, the Conservative members, have been accused repeatedly throughout the debate, of misinformation, and yet they have refused to explicitly exclude content posted by Canadians. Why?
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Madam Speaker, I would just as soon see the bill pass right now, but I would request a recorded division if there is no agreement to pass the bill at all stages.
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Madam Speaker, that is an interesting question, and the member may well be right. The bill certainly has a lot to catch up with. It has been, as has been pointed out, a long time since the existing law was updated. It seems to me that so many questions remain unanswered about problems that have been well identified by all sides in this chamber, yet they are not clearly and definitively solved by t…
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Madam Speaker, privacy is important, and I think nearly all Canadians agree on this. I presume that all members of the House agree on that as well. A generation ago, the Supreme Court also agreed; it said that privacy was something upon which our most basic and ancient expectations of liberty depend. The security of the person depends on privacy, and without a basic expectation of privacy, it is d…
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Madam Speaker, while it is true that this bill contains the provision for substantial fines, who is going to be fined? Who would it apply to? Will the tech giants, with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers, figure out the loopholes within all the ambiguity in this law? For a small business owner, who is not in the business of harvesting data but nevertheless must collect information to complete a…
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Madam Speaker, if I was convinced the bill would do no harm, at a minimum, perhaps I would be inclined to send it to committee. I am not sure of that. If we send a bill that has this many holes in it and this many items that need to be fixed, I am not sure that can be done at committee. I am disappointed the government did not table a better bill.
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Mr. Speaker, in the questions and responses, I think there has been some confusion about what this bill addresses, which is investment by foreign state-owned enterprises as opposed to foreign investment that is private and not from authoritarian state-owned enterprises. I wonder if the member could use the remaining time to ensure that we understand the difference.
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, today I rise to talk about Bill C-295 and the new offences it would create in cases of neglect of seniors. The neglect of seniors and vulnerable people is a serious problem in Canada, and abuse is endemic. Ensuring the protection of vulnerable seniors is a very personal matter for me. My grandfather and his companion were defrauded by a caregiver. They were vulnerable seniors who were…
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Madam Speaker, I think this debate is a wasted opportunity to demand better service from the government for Canadians. It is up to the member's party and his caucus colleagues as to what they want to debate in the chamber, but no, I will stand by my comment that I think we could have done better in making the case and, through the debate process, arguing the shortcomings of the government and the …
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the average rent in Canada’s 10 largest cities has doubled. After eight y…
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to join debates in the House of Commons. Here we are today. It is a Bloc opposition day, which is a day when the Bloc can choose anything it would like to put into a motion, and it is a bit of an unusual one today. The Bloc has chosen to spend our day and have a recorded vote on this motion, which purports to simply remind the federal government…
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Madam Speaker, this Manitoba MP is quite something. He gets up and demands that I, as an Alberta MP, weigh in on Ontario provincial politics while the government avoids accountability for the issues it is responsible for. It is the perfect example of the type of deflection that the government engages in. Do members know how many times I have been asked by constituents to weigh in on the Ford gover…
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Madam Speaker, there will be a provincial election soon in Alberta and I invite this member to contest that provincial election, because all she does is come here and raise issues about provincial politics. This is the federal Parliament. Let us focus on federal issues and let this member run in the provincial election if she wants to debate Danielle Smith on the sovereignty act.
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Madam Speaker, I think I was quite careful and precise in what I said, but I will repeat it. I said that if the foreign buyer is a Chinese state-owned enterprise, the threshold should be zero. The threshold for the dollar amount of a transaction by a Chinese state-owned enterprise should be zero.
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Madam Speaker, I hate to have to do this, but in the time since you ruled on the previous point of order, we have not had any connection yet to the bill. Perhaps, through you, Madam Speaker, we could remind the member to tie this to the bill, because we are actually talking about Bill C-34 and not a laundry list of funding announcements by the government that have nothing to do with the bill.
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent point, which I did touch on, but it bears repeating. The government failed to use the existing tools under this act in the past, so here we are, debating the creation of new tools and stronger tools with a government that would not use the tools that already existed. Its credibility on this issue is a problem, and we need to get really serious about this, not ju…
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Madam Speaker, I am going to share my time with the member for Abbotsford. Conservatives have been calling for changes to this act for years. For nearly eight years, the government has ignored the growing role of state-owned and state-controlled enterprises in Canada’s economy. For nearly eight years, the government has failed to take seriously the threat posed by the government of Beijing. For ne…
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Madam Speaker, as I said both in my speech and in my remarks to the government deputy whip, if the buyer is a state-owned enterprise of an autocratic regime like the People's Republic of China, the threshold should be zero. With respect to the preamble to her question regarding the increase to the threshold in general, I think that was made to be compliant with regulation under the WTO. I was not …
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Madam Speaker, that is what this is all about: debate to get the best ideas out there. That is why it is important to go to a zero-dollar threshold when we are talking about a state-owned enterprise from the People's Republic of China. They buy a series of small businesses that in aggregate can actually distort markets. Buying a single fishing boat or buying a single wharf is perhaps not going to …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Madam Speaker, this week's interest rate hike means that the prime rate of Canada's chartered banks is 6.45%, the highest in 22 years. Half of Canadian homeowners with a mortgage are worried they will not be able to afford their own home when their mortgage comes up for renewal. A typical homebuyer from five years ago, renewing a $400,000 mortgage, can expect their payments to go up by $400 or $50…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to speak in the House of Commons, and it is my honour to do so tonight on this bill. I will begin by saying that I was pleased to enjoy the remarks of the member for Winnipeg South Centre in the first hour of third reading. I look forward to his participation in this debate. He should know that he has my best wishes and my congratulations for bringing this b…
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Madam Speaker, the member may not have had enough time, but perhaps he could comment on the government's tax policy. He got into it a little with Nova Scotia and the carbon tax. However, the government would have us believe that adding a tax to provinces is a good thing, and people should be excited and pleased about it. I do not think that is the case in his province. We have a carbon tax that in…
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Madam Speaker, I followed the debate and I did think extraordinary the amount of patting on the back the Liberals wish to do over this economic statement. I know the member touched briefly on the debt service charges for this year, but in the years to come, according to the statement, by 2029 there will be up to $50 billion a year in interest charges with rising interest rates and endless deficits…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan): (a) what is the total amount of project funding announced by the agency since its inception; (b) what is the total amount of project funding where the funding has actually been transferred to the recipient since the agency's inception; (c) what is the breakdown of (a) and (b) by year; and (d) what are the details of all projects wh…
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Madam Speaker, I am going to focus on a couple of elements of the member's speech where we have some agreement. The member talked about the need to take the GST off of home heating, which is a great idea. I would go further and also remove the carbon tax. I would remove it altogether, but if nothing else, surely we could at least remove it from home heating. I wonder if the member would agree with…
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Mr. Speaker, cold kills not often by direct exposure but quietly. People who are stuck in cold homes are more likely to die from high blood pressure and cardiac events resulting from their body's struggle to maintain circulation. Reports say that 150,000 people will likely die from the cold in Europe this winter due to soaring energy costs amid Putin's murderous war on Ukraine. While Germany resta…
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Madam Speaker, I note that this bill is an improvement on some of the earlier iterations that have come around and that it is not quite as prescriptive as others we have seen in the past. I wonder if the member could comment on PSPC, as this bill creates a new piece for PSPC to consider. PSPC has been a broken department. It is broken under the government. I will say, though, that successive gover…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to table this petition on behalf of my constituents. This was brought to my attention by one of my constituents. We have dozens of signatures from people in Calgary Rocky Ridge who are concerned about the ongoing situation with trafficking in organs obtained without consent, the scourge of organ transplant tourism and the need to deal with this in Canada by way of crea…
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Madam Speaker, I would bring to the member's attention the studies we undertook at the ethics committee, where it was reported that agencies of the federal government, including the RCMP and PHAC, did not follow the existing Treasury Board guidelines on the adoption of new technology. I think all parties agree that we need updated legislation, but the government is not even following the rules tha…
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Madam Speaker, the very fact that we are having this debate is disappointing enough, but it is even more disappointing to hear once again how the New Democrats have completely surrendered to the Liberal Party and become literally the lapdogs of the Liberal government. I was on the finance committee—
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I will spare you the research and I will withdraw the term if that would please you, Madam Speaker. I was on the finance committee with the House leader of the New Democratic Party and I remember a time when he took seriously his obligation as a member of the opposition to oppose legislation where necessary and actually to take seriously parliamentary norms and the parliamentary duties and respons…
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Madam Speaker, I will let that part of it speak for itself. That is the extent to which this costly coalition is imposing itself on Canadians. With respect to getting back to the bill itself, we heard an absurd speech from the government House leader last week on Motion No. 22, where he completely dismissed the idea that members should speak to legislation and justification of the draconian action…
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal government offers Canadians more debt, more taxes, more spending, more inflation and higher interest rates. Its out-of-control spending added $100 billion in debt before COVID, plus $205 billion in non-COVID debt that triggered an inflation crisis, which leaves Canadians unable to afford basic necessities. When will the Liberals end their inflationary spending and cancel…
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Madam Speaker, that answer is cold comfort to the millions of Canadian families that are going to struggle to heat their homes this winter. The Liberals said that inflation was transitory and that interest rates would never go up. Now interest rates and mortgage payments are through the roof, and millions of Canadians are going to struggle to make their payments. The Liberals are also going to rai…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to add my voice to the debate on the fall economic statement. The bill is a disappointing but unsurprising continuation of the high-tax, high-inflation policy that we have come to expect from the Liberal government. The bill offers Canadians more debt, more taxes, more spending and the prospect of more inflation and higher interest rates in the months and years …
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Madam Speaker, it pains me to so thoroughly disagree with my friend from Saint John—Rothesay. I thank him for putting on a tie and participating in the debate today, but he is completely wrong. The financial crisis that existed when the Conservatives were in office was at the time the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression. Canada came out of that firing on all cylinders with the stro…
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Madam Speaker, I am sorry I did not catch a third question there with all his talk about tripling the carbon tax. With respect to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, I would hope that all Canadians would expect him to return to the core mandate of limiting inflation to 2% and not devalue Canadian currency. We are very frustrated. I share his frustrations with the lack of responses from the governm…
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Madam Speaker, I think resource extraction offers some of the best opportunities for remote indigenous communities to have access to jobs and the core services that the revenues these projects produce. We heard that earlier in the leader's speech. It is very important for indigenous communities, and indeed all northern and remote communities, that resource extraction can happen in Canada. Canada h…
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With regard to the public service, and broken down by department, agency, or other government entity: (a) as of September 23, 2022, how many employees were working (i) in person, (ii) at home, (iii) in a hybrid situation; (b) of those employees working in a hybrid situation, what is the breakdown by the number of days per week in the office versus from home; and (c) excluding those who normally wo…
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With regard to consultations undertaken by the government further to the “Just Transition” for energy workers, since 2021: (a) how many unique submissions were received; (b) how many and what proportion of submissions were from (i) energy industry workers, (ii) human resources or skills training professionals, (iii) environmentalists; (c) of the submissions received from environmentalists, what pr…
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With regard to Canada’s subscription to shares of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: (a) how does Canada measure return on investment for the shares; (b) what is the value of dividends received by Canada further to its ownership of shares in the bank; (c) what is the resale value of Canada’s shares on September 27, 2022; (d) how many and which projects has the bank funded to date; (e) of th…
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Mr. Speaker, some of this goes to the general approach of the government. We have a bill that purports to have noble objectives, which we might agree to as objectives, but there are all kinds of problems with the bill. The member talked about how much of this bill is left to future regulation. We have seen before where bills lack details or give the minister future powers, and we do not know what …
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians have never paid more taxes than they do now under the Prime Minister. The inflation rate is the highest in 40 years, which means that Canadians pay more for gasoline, groceries and home heating. Some say that it is just inflation, but inflation means higher prices for Canadians and more money in the Liberal government's pocket. It is the inflation tax. It is the cruellest ta…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, the ArriveCAN app caused chaos from the moment it was launched. It did nothing to improve efficiency at the border or to protect Canadians from COVID. Over 10,000 healthy vaccinated Canadians were arbitrarily ordered to quarantine and subjected to threatening emails, phone calls and home visits, all because the government clung to this useless piece of technology it knew was prone to …
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Madam Speaker, it is a shame that it seems my colleague is required to deliver such an eloquent education on some of the basics of the Constitution of Canada, including the Canadian monarchy. I am glad that he did so and had a chance to wax Walter Bagehot. I felt he did not quite get to the end of where he wanted to go with that part of his speech, so I will give him a few moments to expand on any…
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Madam Speaker, I really like the approach the member has taken by framing policy questions in terms of choices. There are always trade-offs, and there is a tendency from the government to label something as a solution, while ignoring the reality of the trade-offs. I thought that was a fascinating approach, and I ask him to use whatever time he has left to continue on and explain that process.
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