Parliamentary Speeches

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, here is the thing: The Cowichan Tribe decision introduced uncertainty around how aboriginal title interacts with private property in B.C. While the Supreme Court declined an appeal in Wolastoqey, a refusal of leave is not a decision on the merits and does not create binding national precedent. This leaves Canadians with competing legal approaches on a critical legal question, all whil…

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, I suppose it is useful to know that instead of reports, we are going to get consultations. Maybe we will get an answer to the next question. CPP disability applications are supposed to be decided within 120 days, 80% of the time. Last year, the Liberals managed only 49.3%, less than half. Why are disabled Canadians being left for months without income while the minister misses her own…

Private Members' Business

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S‑201, the national framework on sickle cell disease act. The bill deals with a serious, painful and lifelong illness. Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder that affects hemoglobin. It can cause chronic pain, severe infections, organ damage, stroke and shortened life expectancy. It affects roughly 6,000 Canadians. Bill S‑201 would require the…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I have lost track of the number of times I have stood in the House in the last few days to talk about the government's again ramming a bill through the House. In this case, the bill has not had the benefit of second reading, committee study, third reading or report stage. It has not been to the Senate. It has not had the benefit of being studied in either House. It concerns an extreme…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, hate is real, and it is doing damage in communities across this country. No Canadian should be intimidated because of who they are, how they worship, what they look like, where they come from or what they believe. The question before us is not whether hate should be taken seriously. The question is whether Bill C-9 would actually make Canadians safer. The problem we hear about again a…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a variety of arguments from this side of the House as to why cutting debate off on this bill is short-sighted, but perhaps one of the most important reasons is because, as my hon. colleague explained, it does not just cut off debate in the House; it also means this bill will never go to committee. What that means is that the experts, the constituents, the members of civi…

Private Members' Business

Madam Speaker, as my colleague described, waste heat to power is a well‑established technology that captures excess heat from industrial processes and converts it into reliable baseload electricity, while producing no additional emissions or fuel use. Can my hon. colleague explain how this pan‑Canadian opportunity would be especially beneficial to the forestry sector and other resource sectors in …

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, I will remind that member that today the Prime Minister is at the G7 summit as the only leader in the G20 who has caused a recession in his own country, technical or otherwise. He says the data can be uneven. What is not uneven is the pain. Food bank use is at record levels, while two in five Canadians struggle to eat and full-time workers live in people's driveways because a paychequ…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, Bill C‑30 contains measures that allow cabinet to grant exemptions to certain rules on food and agriculture for up to three years with a possible extension. Does my colleague agree that such powers should be debated rigorously and thoroughly rather than being rushed through in committee?

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member.

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Regina—Lewvan. If the motion before the House, which we are considering today, is passed unamended, it will force a major fiscal bill through committee, cut off clause-by-clause review after only 30 minutes, deem amendments moved without meaningful debate, skip real report stage consideration, limit third reading to only a handful of spe…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, actually, all I need to do is look at what happened in this House with Bill C‑3. It is a bill that went to committee. The committee treated it seriously and amended it. The bill came back to the House, and the government showed what it thought of committees. It rejected all of the amendments and used its majority to ram it through. Now we have a situation where there are advertisement…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, I had the privilege of being at the finance committee over the last week or so for a number of the hours the member is speaking about, and I can say that it has not been about filibustering. It has been about asking questions in the only venue that has been made available to us to examine this bill. I have received many emails, phone calls and comments from constituents who are conc…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, when we sit in a committee with members opposite and officials who are unwilling to answer questions, we make whatever analogies we can to try to convince them to answer those questions. What we were talking about in committee, which was very important and very serious, was how we explain to Canadians what we are doing with CPP. That is very important to those in this country. Follo…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, all members in the House want to combat anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate in all of its forms. Our concern is that the bill is performative and that it is more words in a space where there are already too many words. I would like to know if the minister can tell me who can be arrested the day after Bill C-9 passes who cannot be arrested today and that it is going to result in the e…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I have lost track of the number of times I have risen just this week to talk about why the government's inability to plan a legislative agenda should not become an emergency in the House. This is yet another move toward time allocation. I want to remind everyone in the House that the rush the Liberals did with Bill C-3, when they rammed it through the House and undid the amendments th…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I was in committee when the first vote happened after the government received its majority. Members can look at the tapes. I sat there and said, “We are going to go upstairs, and when we come back down here, the government is going to use its majority to end the conversation in this committee,” and that is exactly what it did. This is not a government that is starting conversations. I…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I brought up two examples in my speech, and here is another one. There is so much substance in this bill to consider. There are recommendations. There are experts whom we need to hear from, but we will not have the opportunity to do that. As every member on the opposition side has made the point, over and over again, that this is a bill that requ…

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked a serious question and she deserves a serious answer. The position of Canada's independent ombudsman for responsible enterprise has sat vacant for a year. Open cases have stalled, and as a result, victims of modern slavery and exploitation are blocked from justice. Can the minister tell then House the date for when this important position will be filled, and by whom…

Private Members' Business

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the chance to finish my remarks about Bill C-265, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act regarding a list of therapeutic products pre-approved for special access. In the interregnum between the first and second half of my remarks, members of my community sought me out to discuss how the bill would apply in complex cases. They reminded me of some things that should be…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, we have just received this report that the House has adjourned or maybe will adjourn in the near future. I wonder if the member can comment on what the consequences of that would be for summer by-elections, particularly if this bill is not passed, but even if it is passed, in terms of issues that Canadians really care about, like foreign interference?

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, as the parliamentary secretary explained in her very clear speech, Bill C-25 would create new rules around knowingly false or misleading election information. I have been doing some reading because the Prime Minister is a fan of Václav Havel. I learned that his first full-length play that was ever publicly performed is quite relevant to this debate. It is entitled The Garden Party. It…

Private Members' Business

Mr. Speaker, when I was growing up, my childhood home backed onto a ravine. It sat near the end of a long street, with no houses for the first few hundred metres. In the winter, I would get off the bus in the dark and walk that stretch home alone. As a teenager, every sound felt sharp and every shadow felt close, because I knew, thanks to the nightly news, that there was a man out there attacking …

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, the member from the other side goes back to the question before and suggests that I was being insulting, when someone was trying to tell me that my community does not need mid-market housing and below, and that we are just fine with market housing. I am sorry, but that is another member who does not understand what is going on in British Columbia or in my riding.

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, that is a very timely question, because just last night in my community, our local city council was holding a special meeting about the need for sober housing specifically. All kinds of housing in our communities came up. The provinces, especially provinces like mine, are really struggling in the context of this economy. Of course, this means that municipalities are struggling as well…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, if the member believes market housing is working well in Nanaimo, he really does not understand British Columbia. We are the missing middle. We have the missing market housing and the missing supportive housing. We are in the throes of an addictions crisis. Last night, we heard testimony about how hard it is for someone to resist the lures of addiction when they are down, homeless and…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, among other things that I am continuing in my speech from the other day, Bill C-20 aspires to help Canadians build more homes faster and to promote innovative and efficient building techniques in the housing sector. That goal matters deeply in communities such as Nanaimo—Ladysmith. Across the mid-island, families are facing the same housing pressures we see across the country. Young p…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, for his benefit, I would like to share with the member opposite what I am hearing on the ground. We are also concerned about the fact that there are multiple bureaucracies already in place. We are very concerned about Build Canada Homes and making sure that it does not become another Ottawa-driven program that overlooks the builders and manufacturers already solving problems on the gr…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-20 aspires to help Canadians build more homes faster and promote innovative and efficient building techniques for the housing sector. The goal matters deeply in communities like Nanaimo—Ladysmith. As I said at the beginning of my original speech, I am splitting my time today. Across the mid-island, families are facing the same housing pressures we see across the country.

Private Members' Business

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of Bill S-228, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to forced sterilization procedures. This is a short bill, but it deals with a grave wrong. It speaks to bodily autonomy, consent, human dignity, the equal worth of every person and the duty of the state to protect those who have been harmed by the systems that should have protected them. B…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has a lot of expertise in the area of trade. I, of course, come from a riding and a place in this country that is heavily dependent on resources, on trade, on forestry and on north-south exports and imports. Unemployment in my riding is now at 8.5%. I wonder if the member could talk about how the economy is not being felt the same in different parts of the country and,…

Statements by Members

Madam Speaker, in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the addictions crisis is not an abstract policy debate. It is on our streets, in our parks, in our shelters and in the lives of families who are praying their loved one gets one more chance. Too many people are trying to get clean while living next door to the very thing they are fighting to escape. That is not compassion. That is setting people up to fail. Nan…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate that my colleague has taken the time to talk about the importance of having targets, measures and accountability in bills, and also about how important it is to have different kinds of housing. I know that the member comes from Vancouver East, which is, like my riding, suffering very much from the addictions crisis. I am wondering if the member could talk about t…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, as the member pointed out in her speech, there is already the CMHC. Ottawa does not lack agencies with housing powers. On top of that, there is also the Canada Lands Company, which already has the power to develop federal land. There is Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, which already manages federal housing funding and agreements. There is the Canada Infrastructure Ban…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, when it comes to housing, bureaucrats count starts. They count units. They count dollars. They count funds, programs, agencies and promises, but in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we count something different. We count the months our adult children have been living in the spare room because rent has eaten the down payment they were trying to save for. We count the number of graduates who cannot …

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois members are great at defending the provinces in the House. I think I heard my colleague say that he thinks the federal government's only role in housing should be to transfer money to the provinces. If that is the case, then what would he do with existing federal agencies, like CMHC? Does he think that the federal government should get out of the housing business …

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada is the only G20 country in any kind of recession. Maria from my community worked her whole life but lost her home because she and her husband could not make ends meet. She needs help because CRA made a mistake on her file, but she needed to know we could help her before making the drive to my office, because the cost of fuel is so high that she…

Mr. Speaker, were those pages not wonderful in singing O Canada? They have created such a sense of harmony in the House. There have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practices of the House, the deferred recorded division on the opposition motion scheduled for …

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, of course, we support the Red Seal program. The issue is that it is one thing buried in a 330‑page bill that we have only had three and a half hours to debate, and which this government has just tried to shut down further debate on. The challenge is that we have already seen bills come through with sloppy drafting that infringe on the rights of Canadians. Unfortunately, we have to t…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, the big challenge is that we have had three and a half hours to debate 330 pages. Especially at this time when Canadians are struggling, it is obligatory upon us to give them the time that they deserve.

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, the member spoke to one aspect of the 330‑page bill, which has 16 divisions plus the Defence Investment Agency. He was just asked a question about a different part, presumably, of the bill. Could my colleague speak to the difficulty for members of the House to be able to address the bill in a meaningful way when we have only had three and a half hours of debate, and the government i…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, this is a 330-page bill that is divided into 16 divisions, plus the defence investment agency act, as the minister pointed out. It would amend things as diverse as the Bank Act, the Tax Court of Canada Act, the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Canada Labour Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act, and the Pest Control Products Act, a wide variety o…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, when I was first elected, I could not speak one full sentence in French. I spent time learning French so that I could treat my francophone colleagues with respect. We have pointed out that the government does not want to debate the bill. Not only does this minister not want to debate this bill, but he also does not want to get into what he calls an identity-based debate about Quebec…

Government Orders

Madam Speaker, the member opposite asked about the Red Seal program, which, I would note, was brought in by a Conservative prime minister, John Diefenbaker, who brought the provinces together to recognize credentials across Canada, which is, of course, something that the Liberal government is currently having some trouble with around being able to ship wine across provincial borders. Frankly, we h…

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, on World Hunger Day, food security organizations came to the finance committee and told us that more people from more demographics are using food banks more often in Canada. Forty-three per cent of Canadians now say that the cost of groceries severely affects their ability to access food, and food inflation in Canada remains the highest in the G7. The Prime Minister promised to lead, …

Oral Questions

Mr. Speaker, two quarters of negative growth mean we are the only G7 economy in a recession. Excuses and deflection will not cut it. StatsCan has the receipts. Liberals chose to add more debt, more spending and more people. By doing that, they created more pressure on housing, health care and food costs than the system can bear. Every dollar the government adds to the national credit card eventual…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. The Prime Minister has spent much of the last year arguing that Canada faces a more dangerous, more competitive and less forgiving world. He is absolutely right. Trade relationships are more fragile, supply chains have become matters of national security, and energy, minerals, data, defence productio…

Statements by Members

Mr. Speaker, as graduation ceremonies take take place in Nanaimo—Ladysmith and across Canada, new grads are facing one of the toughest job markets in years. Unemployment in the Nanaimo census metropolitan area hit 8.7% in April, which is a whopping increase of 2.3% over this time last year. Youth unemployment is up half a percentage point to 14.3% nationwide. Statistics Canada revealed this mornin…

Private Members' Business

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-222, the relieving grieving parents of an administrative burden act, also known as Evan's law. The bill is called Evan's law because it was inspired by the experience of a grieving family whose son Evan died while they were receiving parental benefits. After his death, the family had to deal not only with their loss, but also with the bureauc…

Government Orders

Mr. Speaker, a central problem with tribunal systems, and I have had experience with them, is they are intended to make life simpler for Canadians. They are intended to be a process that is outside the court. However, as anyone who has dealt with any of these tribunals knows, people inevitably need a lawyer and inevitably need to navigate all kinds of complicated case law. If the government is ser…