Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I recently talked with a young fellow who said that unless his parents die and leave him their house, he will never own one. That is a reality for many young Canadians, so imagine their shock when they heard the new housing minister say that home prices do not need to come down. Under the former mayor of Vancouver, house prices shot up 179%, rent went up 50% and homelessness went up 4…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the final petition I will present today addresses Bill C-6. As I have always said, I support banning conversion therapy, as do these petitioners. The petitioners recognize, however, that the poor and imprecise definition of conversion therapy in Bill C-6 will cause this bill to ban more than just conversion therapy, including counsel from religious leaders on sexuality and the right…
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Madam Speaker, the third petition I will present today calls on the government to provide sector-specific support to the airline sector, with the conditions that airlines expeditiously issue refunds to passengers. Many of my constituents have been in touch with my office for well over a year and still have not received a refund. The government has a responsibility to ensure that the support it pro…
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Madam Speaker, the second petition calls on the government to take meaningful action to address the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Civilians are being subjected to human rights abuses and are being blocked from accessing humanitarian aid. The petitioners are asking the government to immediately work with the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments to end the violence and promote democracy a…
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Madam Speaker, it is my honour to rise in the House today to present petitions on behalf of constituents and Canadians across the country. The first petition has to do with the abdication of responsibility by Health Canada under the Liberal government when it comes to issues with the marijuana framework. The petitioners are asking the government to immediately close the loopholes that allow facili…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, 21 years ago, a little girl named Heather was playing in her front yard in Cloverdale. Her neighbour, 24-year-old violent pedophile Shane Ertmoed, sexually assaulted and brutally murdered her. He stuffed her in his hockey bag and dumped her in the lake. Shane was sentenced to life in prison. Recently, the parole board approved his early day release, even though he admits that he con…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the Canada-British Columbia Early Learning and Child Care Agreement and the $10 per day Child Care Prototype Site Evaluation: (a) when did the Government of British Columbia share the results of this evaluation with the Government of Canada; (b) what were the findings of the evaluation; (c) what were the recommendations; (d) how can the public access the full report, including the w…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe that my colleague from Banff—Airdrie was suggesting that the app did not allow a change. We are allowed in the app, during the 10 minutes, to change our vote, and if it is not working, it is a technical difficulty. I wonder if maybe that is a better explanation. The app, within that 10 minutes, was not allowing her to do it and that makes this a…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, today I have the privilege of presenting three petitions to the House. The first petition is calling on the Government of Canada to respond to the violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Petitioners are asking the government to call for an end to the violence in the region and to help to ensure that the innocent victims of the violence are able to access humanitarian aid. Canada ha…
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition I will present today relates to Bill C-6. Just like every member of this House, these petitioners want to see conversion therapy banned. No Canadian should be subject to a harmful and degrading practice that seeks to change their sexuality against their will. They also recognize, however, that the definition of conversion therapy used in Bill C-6 is a poorly written…
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Mr. Speaker, the second petition I will present today calls on the government to use the Magnitsky act to sanction the perpetrators of the persecution and violence against the Falun Gong in China. There are credible reports of appalling human rights abuses against the Falun Gong, including forced organ harvesting. The petitioners call attention to the former Chinese Communist Party leader, Jiang Z…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his commitment to stand against coercive and abusive therapies on behalf of vulnerable Canadians. As 72% of Canadians who were polled support a wait-and-see approach for counselling young people, that means the support is for the right of parents to delay medical treatments for a gender transition until the child is mature enough to understand th…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we all know that this is not the first time we have seen the Liberal government refuse to allow parliamentary oversight on very serious issues of the day. It has refused repeatedly to submit unredacted documents at many committees. I have been on the health and finance committees. Does my colleague think this constitutes transparency by any stretch of the imagination?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, in an OPQ that I put through last year on this exact topic we found out there was no other institute that asked for this transfer, only the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Twelve strains of Ebola and three strains of the Nipah virus were authorized for transfer. No compensation was received. No conditions on the transfer of the material were in place. I am curious how my hon. colleague f…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. have had 54 scientists resign or be fired as a result of non-disclosure of financial ties to foreign governments. Of the 189 scientists investigated to date, 93% had not disclosed that China was the source of their support. Seeing how prevalent this situation is in the U.S. makes it all the more imperative that Canadian parliamentarians ar…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, this is not the first time that we see the current Liberal government refusing to allow parliamentary oversight on very serious issues of the day and refusing to submit unredacted documents to committee. Does my colleague find this serial cover-up behaviour in any way transparent, as the Liberals insistently claim they are?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the final petition I will present today draws attention to the human rights abuses Uighur people are subject to by the Community Party of China. Petitioners recognize the credible reports of genocide against the Uighur people. Uighurs are being subject to forced abortions and sterilizations, organ harvesting and arbitrary detention. I imagine the Canadians who signed this petition are…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present three petitions to the House today on behalf of Canadians across the country. The first petition is with respect to Bill C-6. Petitioners recognize the need to ban conversion therapy. Harmful, coercive and degrading practices have no place in Canada. Their concern is with the fact that Bill C-6 would go much further than that, because the definition of conve…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his commitment to standing against coercive and abusive therapies on behalf of vulnerable Canadians. I wonder, however, what he thinks about the earlier assertion by the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader that this bill includes a protection of parental rights to allow parents to follow a wait-and-see approach for their children who are s…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the word “promotion” was added at the justice committee to the ban on advertising conversion therapy. Unfortunately, this wording encompasses simple verbal communication, meaning that even private conversation among family members would be included. Because of the government's broad definition of conversion therapy, which is not used anywhere else in the world, private conversations…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I agree with my esteemed colleague that coercive therapy does not work. According to a Nanos poll, 72% of Canadians support a wait-and-see approach for counselling young people, meaning they support the right of parents to delay medical treatment for gender transition until the child is mature enough to understand the repercussions. Does the member believe parents should preserve th…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting today calls on the government to take action to end the violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Credible reports indicate that war crimes, such as the indiscriminate shelling of civilian towns and villages, extrajudicial killings, at least one large-scale massacre, looting and sexual violence, have all occurred in Tigray. Petitioners are asking t…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, it is with utter sadness that I rise today in the House of Commons to speak on the current issue of femicide in our country. Unfortunately, the treatment of women as non-human and therefore not worthy of protection is not new. In ancient Athens, it was very common for couples to take newborn baby girls out to the wilderness and leave them to die: an act they called exposing the baby…
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Madam Speaker, last week, representatives of Restaurants Canada came to the Standing Committee on Finance. They mentioned that half of restaurants faced the risk of closure if subsidies were scaled back too soon. They are calling on the government to immediately introduce a sector-specific restaurant survival support package, with one of the things being an exemption from the scheduled scale back …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the Liberals' national $10-a-day daycare is not income tested, which ensures we would be delivering huge benefits to high-income parents, as opposed to targeting those who need it most. Is the member disappointed that we are not looking to the needs of low-income working moms?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, this past week, Restaurants Canada came to the Standing Committee on Finance and stated that half of restaurants face risk of closure if subsidies are scaled back too soon. The vast majority of food services businesses have been operating at a loss or barely breaking even throughout the entire pandemic, with nearly half consistently losing money for more than a year. They have been …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I wonder, then, why anyone would put a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayers' money into a study about the problem of housing wealth if they are not planning to tax that wealth, which is supposedly getting in the way of housing affordability. Will he agree that the problem of housing affordability is, in part, caused by the government's reckless monetary policy and the red tape …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, as we all know there are two things in life that are inevitable: death and taxes. Unfortunately, as the government has been overspending on poorly targeted pandemic programs, and plans to continue to add enormous amounts of debt over the next five years, higher taxes in the near future are inescapable. As the Liberal government looks around for ways to raise funds that are not print…
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned seniors. He also mentioned how it was a promise made, promise kept. In actual fact, the Liberals have changed the eligibility. I have had many calls in regard to changing the age to 75. I understood from two of his colleagues that the reason the government did that was because it had limited finances and it wanted to be fiscally responsible. Does the member…
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Mr. Speaker, the PBO has said that the provinces are not in any position to take on new permanent spending. Since they do not have the required 50% of the funds, it looks like this will be yet another failed Liberal program. How exactly does the member think the provinces will come up with the money?
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Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more that choice is what parents are looking for in their day care. If we want to keep mothers working, it would be important to ensure they have choice and have day cares that are flexible, rather than very set, stringent nationally run government day care systems. We need to look at how we can ensure that women will be given choices that fit their complex schedules…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate my answer from the previous question. It is very important that the programs instituted actually work, and that we are not spending more than we should be spending. We have seen many, many programs not work well, but I agree that we need to ensure that those with disabilities and seniors are well supported. Absolutely. As the member mentioned, they are not we…
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Mr. Speaker, I did not quite hear the end of the question, but what we have mentioned as Conservatives over and over is the fact that obviously programs were absolutely necessary during the pandemic, but they needed to be targeted programs that actually helped those in need. We still do not have well-targeted programs, and many people are falling between the cracks. Look at the HASCAP: Very few pe…
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Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the hon. member look at the numbers again that I mentioned in my speech. Our deficit last year was $352 billion, and $302 billion of debt was bought. This year, our deficit will be $154 billion and lo and behold, as I mentioned, the Bank of Canada will buy $156 billion of debt. It cannot be mere coincidence. These numbers look eerily similar and this is a massive …
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Mr. Speaker, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” That is a quote from the great Charles Dickens in his novel David Copperfield. It was published way back in 1850, but is just as prescient as ever 171 years later. It is this basic principle of the ne…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I am a big fan of The Pioneer Woman, who blogs about life on the ranch in Oklahoma. I was scrolling through my Instagram and I saw the gorgeous photos of her daughter's wedding, held last weekend, and the pictures of people dancing and having a great time. Then I wondered why no one was wearing a mask or self-distancing. It turns out that back in January, Oklahomans were vaccinated by…
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Mr. Speaker, considering how poorly the Liberal government has managed the pandemic for Canadians, I am wondering why they should have any confidence that the government can manage the environment, something that is so much more complicated.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, as a farmer, I have been in the business of carbon sequestration all my life and it is pretty exciting to see what kind of things we can do. If we take a look at the greenhouse, we pump CO2 in there. We go from 400 parts per million to 1,000 parts per million and we get a 21% to 61% increase in crop yield. It is amazing. I wonder if my colleague could talk about the Conservatives' pla…
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Mr. Speaker, Nature Energy just put out a study from the University of California that states roughly 20% of electric vehicle owners in California replaced their cars with gas ones, with the main reason being the length of time to charge. Does the member recognize the serious problem of discontinuance due to the technological challenges we still face at this time?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the government’s response to e-petition e-2760 stating that, “the Gender-Based Analysis Plus [GBA+] framework was used in the development of Bill C-6 to assess its expected impact on diverse groups of women, men, and gender diverse people”: (a) what parameters of the GBA+ were used; (b) who was responsible for administering the GBA+; (c) who was consulted in conducting the GBA+; (d)…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, if there is one group of Canadians that has been hard hit during the pandemic, it is small business owners, men and women who risked everything to build a dream, maybe a small boutique grocery store on main street, a specialty bakery featuring grandma's secret apple pie recipe, the butcher who was taught by his father how to make sausage like they did in the old country or a unique …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am rising today in response to the point of order made by the member for Don Valley West. As I said to the member on Friday, the Bible verse I quoted was in reference to hypocrisy, which has been a common interpretation of that passage as the member for Don Valley West himself acknowledged this morning. Last week, I called to apologize to the member for the misunderstanding. I would…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am honoured to present a petition today concerning Bill C-6. The petitioners recognize the need for a ban on harmful, degrading and coercive practices that seek to force people to change their sexual orientation. They also recognize, however, that the definition of conversion therapy used in Bill C-6 is not used by any medical body in the world and it is so imprecise that it will …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I am so glad that my colleague invoked the words of the prophet Micah, so I am going to invoke the words of the Apostle Matthew, who stated: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. I have had so many people reach out t…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, from what I can see, Bill C-14 is designed to allow the government to operate without a budget by giving itself huge new borrowing increases. The Liberals assure us they have our backs over and over ad nauseam, while every new COVID support program keeps rolling out with major flaws. So many programs gave much more money than necessary to those who did not need it, so much that the …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to present a petition from people across the country who have serious concerns about Bill C-6. The petitioners recognize that the overarching definition of conversion therapy used in Bill C-6 will end up causing harm to some of the very people the bill intends to protect. At the justice committee, members of the LGBTQ community have called the forms of co…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, does the member have any explanation as to why the HASCAP, a program that took forever to happen and was supposed to support those in highly affected industries, is yet again another massive failure? Why on earth would the government allow banks to deny HASCAP loans to small businesses because they cannot provide a revenue statement? How can they provide a revenue projection when th…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, my colleague gave a very exciting presentation. I have to say, as a farmer, I know how important it is to produce without causing harm and also how important it is to be good stewards of our precious planet that we are living on. It is of paramount importance. New Canadian technologies that help reduce our impact on the environment are super exciting, so can my colleague share with …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it appears that Bill C-14 is specifically designed so that the government would be able to operate without tabling a budget, which seems to be how it seems to keep working. We have watching unhinged borrowing by the Liberals, which the finance minister described as pre-loaded stimulus, to cover up the fact that COVID support programs by far overpaid those who did not even need the h…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we have been watching unhinged borrowing by the Liberals, which the finance minister has described as pre-loaded stimulus to cover up the fact that COVID support programs by far overpaid those who did not even need the help. Part 7 of Bill C-14 is an alarming black Amex card for the Liberals. Does the member believe that Canadians should be concerned about the undisciplined spending t…
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