Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, last week, I was in Washington meeting with U.S. lawmakers, business leaders and other stakeholders, and I heard a blunt message from our U.S. friends. Canada has a reliability problem. I have been told that Canada cannot be counted on as a major supply chain partner. The government's public policy failure to combat supply chain shortages and other trade disruptions has inflation at a…
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Mr. Speaker, this past weekend I visited with a federal corrections officer who just lost his job because he refused to reveal his COVID-19 vaccination status. His hope is to be rehired at the Prince Albert penitentiary without loss of seniority and pay grade. With COVID-19 mandates now being lifted in Saskatchewan and other provinces, could the minister please inform Parliament when all mandates …
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It is nice to see some enthusiasm over there, Mr. Speaker. Canada's duty-free access to the U.S. market, our largest and most important trading partner, is under threat like never before. Tariffs on softwood lumber, punishing buy-American provisions and now the possibility of highly integrated auto supply chains will be disrupted by more U.S. tariffs. In Tuesday's state of the union address, Presi…
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Mr. Speaker, that is an interesting question in regard to the NDP. I am not in the NDP camp. I am not sure what is going on in the backs of their minds. Maybe we have to talk to a member of the NDP. I will say that the former NDP member for Regina—Lewvan said he could never support this type of act, and this is somebody who had been very heavily involved in the union world before his career as a m…
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Mr. Speaker, that is a pretty rich question, when we look at the member from the NDP. I am not getting in bed with the separatists at all. I agree on one issue with them: that this is reaching far and beyond. However, we are the party of law and order, and we have been very clear that we thought these protesters should have left earlier. In fact, if the member was in question period he would have …
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Mr. Speaker, we have to ask ourselves why they overstayed their welcome. Why did they stay there? When we have a Prime Minister who refuses to acknowledge they exist, who shows no respect, who has been basically thumbing them every time they turn around, and who is basically looking down his nose at them, why do we think they are mad? Why do we think they are angry? I agree with the member's analo…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be a member of Parliament here in Canada. It is an honour to represent the people of the riding of Prince Albert. I am going to do the best I can to do that here tonight as I talk about this emergency debate and the emergency measures that the government is calling for. One thing that has been missing from this Parliament and from this debate is respect, respect all…
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Mr. Speaker, provincial governments in Alberta and Saskatchewan have dropped the COVID-19 mandates. Both Manitoba and Ontario announced they would lift the vaccine passports on March 1. They too are following science. Will the government stop speculating and reassure truckers that they will not face new federal mandates when they cross provincial boundaries?
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party has been open to ideas from Quebec in the past. I think of the example of a nation within a nation. That is an example of the Harper government actually agreeing to see that go forward on behalf of some of the people from Quebec who wanted to see that. There are examples in the past of Conservatives working with people from Quebec, and we will continue to work…
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up in the House for the first time this year to talk about my home province and the importance of this motion to the province of Saskatchewan and its people. To make my colleagues in the Liberal Party aware, I will not take the full 20 minutes, because, as one of the sayings I had in my previous life in sales goes, when everybody is saying yes, maybe we are b…
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Madam Speaker, will someone pinch me? He agreed with me twice. I want to thank the member for showing that goodwill, and I want to bite my lip, because we always want to come back in the House of Commons with some sort of jab. I just want to thank him. I appreciate the goodwill that his party is showing toward the people of Saskatchewan. The $330 million staying in the people of Saskatchewan's poc…
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member on the point that when companies are cheating, they are cheating, and we have to go after them. If they are breaking the law, stealing or taking money out of our pockets and hiding it in Panama or somewhere else, then we need to do everything we can within the rule of law to get those funds back, because they belong to the people of Canada. I also think we ha…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Regina—Lewvan for his tenacity in making sure he continued on to get this done and pushed it through. I appreciate that. STARS is a really good example, and again it is another example people do not know about where parties worked together in the background to make something succeed. I remember when STARS's Rod Gantefoer, a retired MLA, approached the Saskatch…
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Madam Speaker, the member is right. Again, as a farmer, I have a love-hate relationship with railways. When it is 40 below and they do not run, I am really mad. I will use the example of CP right now. There are cattle producers in southern Alberta who are low on feedstock. CP has stepped up to the plate and I believe has allocated four or five trains of corn to make sure they have enough cattle fe…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to thank the constituents of my riding of Prince Albert for giving me the honour of serving as their member in Canada's 44th Parliament. As we all know, no one gets elected by themselves: it takes a team, and I had a great team. My success is a result of their hard work. I thank my EDA president and campaign manager, Ralph Boychuk, for his tireless work and solid advice. …
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Madam Speaker, in the last election, constituents in my riding of Prince Albert wanted to see us get tougher on gang crime, criminal activity and rural crime. It appears this legislation would do the opposite and would send the wrong signal. I am curious what the member's constituents would say to him with respect to what the priority should be when dealing with criminals, illegal guns and things …
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Madam Speaker, I know my colleague spent time as a police chief. His time in the House has been extensive and he has a lot of experience to share. Does he see anything in the legislation that would actually prevent, restrict or reduce crime?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, it sounds like they are just going to watch and listen and do nothing. The government has a terrible record with the Biden administration in responding to trade irritants with our most important trading partner, whether it be softwood lumber, electric vehicles, Keystone XL, aluminum, potatoes, Line 5 and now beef. This government's failure on trade relations continues to cost Canadian…
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Mr. Speaker, this government's relationship with the United States continues to deteriorate. The latest example is the American Beef Labeling Act in Congress. The act calls on U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to make country-of-origin labelling WTO-compliant. If this does not happen, it automatically comes into force. This has a devastating impa…
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Mr. Speaker, in promising these critical elements to our best friend and trading partner, the military in the U.S. definitely wants them. They want to work with us, yet there is no game plan in Canada to make it achievable. What is the game plan moving forward to actually join our supply chains and do things like critical elements together so that North America can benefit?
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Mr. Speaker, again, the U.S. has a reshoring program in place. It is actively going throughout the world to shore up their supply chains and bring back the critical manufacturing goods into the U.S. When we talked to members of Congress and the Senate, they would love to include Canada. In fact, we talked about critical elements and the development of them. They do not want to buy them from China;…
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Mr. Speaker, the minister understands that the $17 billion investment in one project in Texas is more than all of Canada's investments in the manufacturing sector last year. She must have a strategy for bringing investment into Canada. What is that strategy and what is she putting forward in resources in our trade commissioner service to do exactly that?
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Mr. Speaker, the United States is leading Canada on so many things throughout the world, and one is reshoring companies back into North America. Just yesterday, there was a $240 million investment in Virginia by Toyota. A couple of weeks ago, there was a $17 billion investment by Samsung in Texas. We were not even in the running. What is the minister's plan to actually bring business into Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honesty from the minister. However, this is actually a foreign affairs question, because it was foreign affairs and GAC that did not relay the information. Now what has happened in that sector is that this congressman has put forward legislation that, in the future, would bypass Victoria and Vancouver and all the cruise ships that are now required to stop there. What …
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Mr. Speaker, let us back up. Congressman Young from Alaska asked the minister last year about the issue with cruise ships going up the west coast. The Jones Act requires them to actually stop in Vancouver and then move on to Alaska. All they wanted to do was tie up for 10 minutes, not leave the boat and proceed on. Why did the government not answer his call?
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Mr. Speaker, that is a great point. That was not even mentioned in any of the briefings while we were in Washington last week. In fact, we did not even talk about Line 5. This is a line that involves tens of thousands of jobs in Sarnia and it was not even on the agenda.
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Mr. Speaker, again, President Biden released reserves of oil and gas to lower gas prices and asked the OPEC nations to supply more fuel. Why would he not turn to Canada, our best friend, to get those resources?
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to know that myself, because I was not included in any of her meetings. The only things I was included in were the round tables with the home builders and labour unions. All four of the labour unions asked why we did not stand up for jobs with Keystone. They said that they lost so many jobs because of the cancellation of Keystone and they asked me where we were.
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Mr. Speaker, Senator Marshall was not aware of it when I talked to him. In fact, his biggest concern was the cancellation of Keystone. He lost a $1-billion investment in that refinery. His question to us was why we did not fight for it.
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Mr. Speaker, that is interesting. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of International Trade, plus two other ministers were in Washington talking about the relationship. However, this past week I was in Washington talking about electric vehicles and they were not even aware of it. In fact, the Minister of International Trade made that comment in Bloomberg. Wh…
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Mr. Speaker, you have heard a lot of issues we have with the United States and my first question is who is actually in charge of the relationship with the United States. Is it the Deputy Prime Minister, is it the Minister of Foreign Affairs or is it the Minister of International Trade?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, U.S. trade representative Tai has been waiting since May to start negotiations on softwood lumber. Yesterday, the Minister of International Trade stated in the House that the softwood lumber industry will provide her with a mandate on negotiating with the United States. U.S. tariffs on softwood have been in place since 2015. It has been six years. Please do not tell me the minister do…
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Mr. Speaker, during question period last week, the hon. Minister of International Trade told the House that she raised the issue of softwood lumber with the U.S. trade representative. As we have heard previously in questions, the response from the USTR is quite different. Regardless, it sounds like Ambassador Tai is ready to negotiate. Therefore, could the minister tell us how many actual negotiat…
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Mr. Speaker, these actions by the United States are a serious threat to Canadian jobs and the Canadian economic recovery after the pandemic. These unfair duties hurt Canadian businesses and workers. The government must take a clear and strong stand with the Biden administration to defend Canadian workers and the Canadian industry. Softwood workers want to know what the Prime Minister's plan is to …
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Mr. Speaker, this government has a history of making promises to Canadians and not following through. An example of this behaviour happened last week when the Prime Minister travelled to Washington. If the Prime Minister did mention softwood lumber in his meeting with President Biden, it is obvious the President does not care what the Prime Minister has to say. Following the Prime Minister's trip …
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