Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I am here to speak to the question of privilege that was raised yesterday by my colleague, the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola and shadow minister for public safety. It is my responsibility to ensure the well-being of Canadians, including those behind prison walls, so why was I stymied from entering the Fraser Valley women's prison freely this past summer? What are they hiding beh…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister swaggered in promising a massive surge in homebuilding, with half a million new homes a year. After all that hype, Vancouver families are still staring at million-dollar price tags. That surge has not even made a ripple. Projects are stalled and permits crawl through red tape, and the only thing going up faster than prices is the bureaucracy he is building. …
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Mr. Speaker, how many women have to be beaten half to death before the government stops giving repeat offenders a free pass? Hugh Mason is 34 years old with a violent history that reads like a warning label: assault, assault with a weapon, uttering threats, resisting arrest, theft, breaching probation. Over and over again, in just three years, he has been hauled into court and released 37 times, a…
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Mr. Speaker, I am wondering what my esteemed colleague thinks is the cause of all the broken promises we have seen from the new Liberal government. Does he think it might have something to do with the ministerial musical chairs we have seen going on in the Liberal cabinet? Who on earth promotes failed team leaders in the real world and expects better results?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the message the government is sending is that struggling Canadians, trauma survivors and those battling depression, schizophrenia or PTSD are being told that death is a solution we are now willing to offer in response to a life of suffering, often compounded by harm this very society has caused them. That is not health care. That is not compassion. It is abandonment. Mental illness is…
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-218, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying). Mr. Speaker, imagine that someone's son or daughter has been battling depression for some time after losing their job or maybe due to a broken relationship. Imagine they feel a loss so deep that they are convinced the world would be better off without them. Now imagine this. Starting in March …
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister just voted to ban gas-powered vehicles, adding up to $20,000 to the cost of a new car. Families are already drowning in bills, and now he is making it even harder to get to work or drop off the kids. Is it just a coincidence that Brookfield stands to profit off this mandate? When will the Prime Minister stop treating public money like his personal investment portfol…
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Mr. Speaker, it has been over 100 days and the Prime Minister still has not set up an ethics screen to deal with his business interests. Just imagine a local school board trustee voting for a multi-million dollar contract, then going to his business partner to build a school without telling anyone he is going to profit from it. Canadians would be outraged, and they should be. When will the Prime M…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the housing minister is not starting with a clean slate. His record in Vancouver is well known. As investigative journalist Sam Cooper documented in his book Wilful Blindness, his city hall was part of what he calls the Vancouver model, where laundered crime money, foreign cartels and offshore investment fuelled skyrocketing housing prices while honest families were locked out. Now he…
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Mr. Speaker, the housing minister claims to have the most robust housing agenda in the history of the House, but Canadians have heard this story before. The man making that claim was also the mayor of Vancouver during one of the most disgraceful chapters in Canadian housing history. Under his watch, Vancouver became a global hot spot for money laundering, shady real estate deals and housing specul…
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Mr. Speaker, I attended the public safety forum in Surrey this weekend. I have to say that I felt like we were living in a violent video game: the Reflections banquet hall, shot up; Hub Insurance, shot up; strip mall, shot up. Now, in Fleetwood, an honest businessman was gunned down in his office in broad daylight, which was possibly tied to extortion. The message from these criminals is clear: “P…
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Mr. Speaker, extortion is up 357%, and those are the ones we know about. In Surrey, criminals are shooting up businesses and bragging about it online because they know they will not face serious jail time. People are terrified, and these gangsters are running the show. What did the Liberals do? They voted against mandatory minimums for extortion. They made it easier for violent criminals to get ba…
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Mr. Speaker, we have been asking constantly to finally have a budget. It is with a budget that we would better understand where the money is going and how we are going to pay for it, and it would let Canadians truly understand the actual situation that we are facing.
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Mr. Speaker, we have been watching the legislation come through the House. It has harmed the entire Canadian economy, and we have asked over and over that the Liberal government, this old Liberal government, actually reverse those painful and destructive bills. The hon. member is absolutely right. We need to get rid of the tanker ban. We need to make sure that we can build pipelines. We need to ge…
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Mr. Speaker, I can tell members where Canadians are making cuts. I have had conversations with families in my riding who are cutting back on groceries, skipping meals and putting off their bills. The government wants them to believe that a few tweaks to these policies are going to make the difference, but the truth is that the pain is still here. The carbon tax is still driving up prices. The debt…
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Mr. Speaker, Bill C-4 is being presented to Canadians as a solution, a path toward affordability and relief in a time of real struggle, but when we peel back the layers, it becomes painfully clear that this bill is not a bold plan but a political strategy. It is a collection of half measures cobbled together from Conservative ideas, watered down and repackaged by a government that has spent the la…
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Mr. Speaker, it was the previous Liberal government, which is now the new Liberal government, that turned away eight countries when they asked for LNG, so, no, I am sorry, we do not have what we need. We have been turning away many dollars, and we need to actually get our resources to market.
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Mr. Speaker, according to yesterday's AG report, the government built nearly 40% of its so-called affordable homes in the wrong places. We cannot make this up. Here is the truly shocking thing: It did not base affordability on income, not on what people actually earn. Instead, it used current market rent in the middle of a housing crisis. That means low-income families, seniors and newcomers canno…
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the AG delivered a damning report that exposed the truth. After 10 years of the Liberal government's housing promises, only 309 homes have been built under the federal lands initiative. It set a target of 4,000 and what Canadians got was smoke and mirrors: inflated numbers, misleading reporting and a government more focused on press releases than people. Can the minister ex…
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Mr. Chair, the remaining $270 billion is new borrowing, fresh deficits on top of old. Does the government plan to stop adding debt to the pile, yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, the PBO confirmed for me that the amount is $3.27 trillion. Over $2.8 trillion of that is just to refinance old debt we have never paid off. Is this sustainable, yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, can the minister tell me how much federal debt needs to be refinanced over the next five years?
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Mr. Chair, it is a simple question, Finance 101. How much will need to be refinanced over the next five years?
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Mr. Chair, again, the question is simple. Is the answer yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, the federal government plans to divide the budget into two with operations and investments. Is that correct?
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Mr. Chair, can the minister explain what exactly will qualify as an investment?
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Mr. Chair, ArriveCan was called an investment in digital innovation. Would that be on the investment budget?
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Mr. Chair, the $1.4-billion boost to CBC was called an investment in culture. Would that be on the investment budget?
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Mr. Chair, would the minister agree that the bond markets we need to borrow from do not care about political word games, but want real numbers like debt-to-GDP?
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Mr. Chair, can the minister tell me how much the current debt-to-GDP ratio is?
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Mr. Chair, can the minister tell me how much the federal debt is?
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Mr. Chair, I am just looking for the number.
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Mr. Chair, the number is around $1.3 trillion, but how much does our debt servicing cost?
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Mr. Chair, the question was, what are the debt-servicing costs?
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Mr. Chair, it is around $60 billion. How much is the current deficit?
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Mr. Chair, it was a simple question: yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, is this not just creative accounting to give the illusion of a balanced budget?
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Mr. Chair, the GST holiday, which the former finance minister admitted was unaffordable, was also labelled an investment in affordability. Would that be on the investment budget?
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Mr. Speaker, while I appreciate the question, I ran out of time to spotlight another huge issue, red tape, which is really impacting food affordability. Maurizio Zinetti, owner of Zinetti Foods in Cloverdale, recently approached me regarding an issue that will seriously impact food affordability. He reached out to share just how serious the impact of the new front-of-package labelling rules are fo…
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Mr. Speaker, while inflation continues to drive food prices higher, the government still has not taken the one step that could start to restore confidence. We are coming perilously close to summer, and Canadians still do not have a budget. Parliament voted unanimously for the government to bring a budget forward in April. Instead, all the Prime Minister says he will do is take note of the vote. Th…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said he would be judged by the prices Canadians pay at the grocery store. Well, Canadians are holding him to that, and what they are seeing is shocking. Grocery prices are through the roof, food banks are overwhelmed, and more and more families are skipping meals, not because they want to but because they have to. In Cloverdale—Langley City, seniors who once relied …
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the story about growing up on farmland. The costs being driven up by red tape are absolutely astronomical. In my speech, I specifically talked about inflation rates. That is such an incredible extra cost on every farmer that we cannot afford. If we continue to spend with recklessness, we will continue to see inflation rates rise.
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Mr. Speaker, this is a great question. Every family in Cloverdale—Langley City knows what it means to budget. Parents sit at the kitchen table every week deciding what they can and cannot afford. Meanwhile, the government racks up half a trillion in spending without even producing a budget. The more the Liberals borrow, the more it drives up interest rates, and that hits mortgages and grocery pric…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague says that the Liberals ran on a plan but Canadians are still waiting to see it. The new Prime Minister came in with the weight of big promises, fiscal discipline, economic competence and leadership in uncertain times, but since then, spending has jumped 8%. There is still no budget. Canadians are facing real struggles and they deserve more than campaign slogans. Canadia…
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Mr. Speaker, we can debate distractions all day. My job is to stand up here for families that are falling further behind while the government delays in delivering a real plan, and that starts with a real budget, a responsible budget. It is plain and simple: We cannot fix affordability without fixing the books. Every day that the government delays tabling a responsible budget, inflation keeps hurti…
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Mr. Speaker, the real question Canadians are asking right now is whether the Prime Minister will deliver a budget that finally shows he understands the cost of living crisis. What Canadians are desperate for is a budget, not another glossy brochure of recycled promises. While the government pushes press conferences and platitudes, families are maxing out their grocery budget and skipping summer pl…
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Mr. Speaker, it is not just from my voters; it is actually also from my own experience as a businesswoman. Never, ever, did we work without a budget. The reason we need a budget is so we can see whether we are on track. If we are not on track, we will never know. Things will go off the rails very quickly. Even the bank requires that we be disciplined by having a budget, following the budget and ma…
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Mr. Speaker, we absolutely need to make sure that we are working to ensure that this tragedy is taken care of, and we will be providing as much support as we can.
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Mr. Speaker, this is what it looks like when a country is flying blind: no budget, no plan and millions of families left in the dark. Parliament was shut down for half a year, and then came the snap election. Now, the new Prime Minister wants to spend half a trillion dollars but is refusing to deliver a budget. There are no answers, just smoke and mirrors, while real people are struggling to stay …
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment first to congratulate you on your first sitting; that is wonderful. Before I begin, I would also like to take a moment to say thanks. It is hard to put into words how grateful I am to the people of Cloverdale—Langley City. They worked so hard to help me return to Ottawa. The volunteers gave up evenings and weekends to knock on doors, make phone calls and …
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