Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston asked this question of the member earlier. One of the great debates of Confederation between Canadians in Upper Canada and Lower Canada at the time was about representation by population. In a Supreme Court decision regarding a case out of Saskatchewan, the Supreme Court talked about effective representation. The member represents quite a lar…
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Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 62, I move that the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot be now heard.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on Bill C-210. This is a difficult bill to debate because it is a responsibility of citizenship and that is the fundamental question before us. What is a citizen? What are their duties and responsibilities? Often times, people talk about what rights they have as a citizen. They rarely address the responsibilities of a citizen. I, like many Canadians, …
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Madam Speaker, I am glad to be joining the debate on Motion No. 11. Ahead of time, I am going to inform you that I am going to be sharing my time with the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley. I have to look at him just to remember his riding name, so I recognize it is difficult to memorize all of the members' riding names here. I want to start by saying something for constituent…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Montcalm addressed several issues and problems he had with the various paragraphs in the motion. I would like to hear what he thinks about subparagraph (c)(B)(iv), under which “a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, September 19, 2022...and that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or a…
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Madam Speaker, I hear them heckling me and chirping away. I appreciate they do not like it when I bring up these facts, but I want to make sure that my constituents back home understand what we are debating here and what we are going to be called to vote upon. I look forward to questions from their side. “He that cannot pay, let him pray.” I love Yiddish proverbs. I know there are members of the l…
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Mr. Speaker, let me quibble first with the number. Obviously, when a time allocation motion is moved, there is a difference between having a 24-hour notice that debate will be shut down versus having two weeks to debate the matter. I know the member for Hamilton Centre is heckling and would perhaps like to jump in and correct what I am trying to say, but again, there is a huge difference between i…
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Mr. Speaker, I hear the member heckling me again.
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Mr. Speaker, I will always be happy to be corrected by the chair of our caucus and one of the longest-serving members on the Conservative side in the House of Commons. He is right. The end person, the person who decides who is the government House leader and who is supposed to be responsible for the government's agenda and making sure it goes through the House if not smoothly at least assuredly, w…
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Mr. Speaker, I will agree with the member's concerns about the culture of this place. That is probably unusual for a Conservative, to agree with the former leader of the Green Party, but I have sat at many prayer breakfast tables with her, so I know her heart is in the right place. However, the culture of this place has gone in the wrong direction over perhaps the last 40 to 45 years, and I do not…
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Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Her Majesty's official opposition, I ask for a recorded division.
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Mr. Speaker, I hear the member for Kingston and the Islands heckling me again. I am happy to take another question from him.
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Mr. Speaker, to finish what I was saying before the heckling drowned me out, only a minister of the Crown can move it. Only a cabinet minister can move said motion. These Liberal members have ensured themselves the vote of the NDP. They bought the vote. Therefore, it is a guarantee that this will happen. They will have a majority, so it is a guarantee that they can shut down the House at any momen…
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Mr. Speaker, apart from correcting the member on the rules of the House, where we cannot impugn another member for intentionally misleading the House, which is against the rules in the Standing Orders, I will remind the member that it is his own government's motion that says the following: “that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment”. It can only be moved by a mi…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Michael Wilton, who tragically passed away in a plane crash on April 22. He was a pilot, entrepreneur, adventurer and proud father of two twin boys. He often introduced them as his junior sales associates. I got to know Mike over the imposition of the new and unfair tax on small aircraft. He was an entrepreneur who refurbished planes, creating aerospace jobs i…
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Madam Speaker, on behalf of Her Majesty's official opposition, I ask for a recorded division.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Dr. Roopinder Kharay went to the passport office to get expedited service for her family's passports. Passport Canada made her wait four hours. It took all of the family's passport applications, but not the application for her husband, Amandeep, because he was not there in person. Amandeep was working a full day shift as a radiologist, despite having stage four colon cancer. The passp…
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Mr. Speaker, I am tabling a petition on behalf of over 18,500 Canadians who are calling on the government to abolish the domestic vaccine passport requirement for Canadian citizens and permanent residents taking domestic flights in a safe and orderly manner. They are asking for this and citing the fact that there are multiple studies showing there is very limited transmission on aircraft. This wou…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the minister. Truthfully, I am glad he explained how the electoral redistribution in Canada will be carried out with the commissions, because now I do not have to do so in my speech later in the House. I would like to ask the minister to comment on two rulings handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada. The first ruling, handed down in 1991, deals with provincial electoral b…
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Madam Speaker, I hope the minister does not agree with me too much publicly, because I still have a caucus to go back to. If members see that the minister agrees, I do not think I will make it out of the caucus meeting in one piece. I want to recognize the minister for also providing me with a briefing session with Privy Council experts on this piece of legislation, and for the fact that he basica…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. As a francophile from Alberta, my answer to his question would be no, because our country's population is represented proportionally. I remind him that there was a referendum in 1992 and that Canadians voted against this. Furthermore, 58% of Quebeckers voted against the Charlottetown accord, even though it contained this provision to allocate 25%…
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Madam Speaker, yes, I believe this is entirely constitutional. It preserves the idea of effective representation in our country, and it kind of looks to the past this time. It takes the representation formula of 2011 to its logical conclusion, which is basically an increase of 34 seats and preserving one seat for a single province that is about to lose one. The total number of seats the Harper leg…
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Madam Speaker, there is already a rule that the boundaries commission uses. It can either increase by 25% or decrease by 25% when it is making the final determination on what the map should look like. I will raise this interesting point. Many of my rural colleagues have schools in their ridings. I did not have a high school in my riding until just a few years ago, which would be shocking for most …
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Madam Speaker, I wish I could provide a much longer response, but I do not have enough time. This was done by Stephen Harper's government in 2011. It added the representation rule that applies to any province that would lose seats in the House. The rule applied only to the province of Quebec. As a result, Quebec received three additional seats in Parliament after 2011, so I think the demographic a…
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Madam Speaker, the member briefly talked about rural representation and the fact he was able to reach two members of Parliament in one of Canada's major cities, but representation by population was part of the great debates of Confederation from Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine. Their statues are right here on Parliament Hill. That debate, in colonial Parliament, is basically the deba…
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Mr. Speaker, there is a tradition in the House to have the Thursday question done by the House leader, so in his stead, I will do so. There is a two-week break coming up for Easter. It is also the month of Ramadan and it is also Passover. Upon our return, I am wondering if the government House leader could inform the House how he plans to budget the time of the House of Commons.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be entering the debate on this subject. I am glad the minister covered basically how redistribution works. That way, I do not have to explain how it functions to residents back in Alberta. One difference of opinion that I have with the minister is that he said this was a substantive piece of legislation. Actually, I would say that it is not a significant piece of leg…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the government member for his question. I simply want to remind him that I am not the one who said that. Fifty-eight percent of Quebeckers voted against that in the referendum on the Charlottetown accord in 1992.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am also tabling a petition on Bill S-223, which seeks to fight the really unjust, unfair practice of organ harvesting that is being done in different parts of the world and to make it a criminal offence to go abroad to receive an organ without the consent of the donor. Again, like other members have done, I am just going to rise also to recognize David Kilgour, his family and his …
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, the federal vaccine mandates are hurting real people. In my riding, an aspiring young astronomer, Chloe, cannot go to the NASA space camp. She is not vaccinated, but the camp has a no-vaccine requirement. Another is Patrick, who followed public advice and got the very first vaccine available in Kazakhstan, the Russian Sputnik vaccine. He has confirmed he has antibodies and the best me…
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With regard to the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund (RRRF): (a) which businesses and communities have applied for funding; (b) for each business and community that have applied, was their application accepted or rejected, and if it was accepted, how much funding did they receive; (c) for each successful application, how many jobs were (i) initially meant to be saved by receiving funding through t…
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With regard to losses of public money and property as listed in Volume Ill of the 2021 Public Account of Canada: what are the details of each instance where the loss involved an item with a value in excess of $1,000, including for each (i) the item description, (ii) the item value, (iii) whether the item is considered lost, damaged, or stolen, (iv) the government department or agency which owned t…
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With regard to the government's promise to plant two billion trees by 2030: (a) what is the breakdown of the number of trees planted to date, by riding and by province or territory; (b) what is the total number of trees planted to date; and (c) what is the breakdown of where the two billion trees will be planted by 2030, by riding and by province or territory?
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With regard to government contracts with a value of more than $1,000,000 and the proposals received related to Requests for Proposals (RFP) for those contracts, since 2018, and broken down by year: (a) how many proposals related to such RFPs were received; (b) how many of those RFP proposals came from (i) Canadian companies, (ii) foreign companies, broken down by country of the vendor; and (c) wha…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join this debate as a francophone from western Canada to speak to Bill C‑246, which the Bloc Québécois member has introduced. He certainly has the right to have a debate. During his speech I heard him say that a nation clause would be added to our Constitution. It is always interesting to see a Bloc Québécois member make an amendment to the Canadian Constitution. I know …
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be here for this debate. Our country was founded in 1867 on the principle of the linguistic duality of two groups: anglophones and francophones. Of course, francophones do not exist only in the province of Quebec. We exist across Canada, and I am one of them. I would like to know what my Bloc colleague thinks of our country's linguistic duality. Does he think his bi…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to wish Canadians of Kurdish, Persian and Central Asian heritage a very happy Nowruz as this week marks the start of their new year. Nowruz is an ancient new year celebration adopted by many Central Asian peoples. For Kurds, this new year will be 2722, and the word “Nowruz” literally means a new year, marking the first day of spring. It is celebrated through a variety of …
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to remind the member for Vancouver Granville that it is the government's responsibility to set the hours of debate on the motion. It could have done this last week. It could have done this Monday. It could have had evening sittings on the motion in order to ensure that it passed. When we do bad-faith negotiations, like I believe the government House leader has done, this is…
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard to follow the whip of one's own party when joining debate on this issue. I do not want to re-thread the same ground that he has already covered. I have already basically chopped off half of what I wanted to cover, but I want to specifically focus now on the actual parliamentary review committee. I have heard all types of things being debated in this House on what will actua…
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I am not the one who is saying we should not look at anything that happened before. It is clear in the act and the motion what is supposed to happen. The motion specifically refers to February 14 to February 23, and in the act in section 62, and I invite the member to read the sections of the Emergencies Act I am referring to, it says: 62(1) The exercise of powers and t…
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Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct in her reading of the act. It is actually the same reading that I have, and I referred to “Meetings in private”, which is in subsection 62(4) of the act. What I was basically implying, and will say now, is that the best portion of the committee, the one I think the public will be most interested in, will be the discussion of the orders and regulations …
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Madam Speaker, I am not sure how that is related to the redistribution of seats in Canada. However, I will thank the member for Timmins—James Bay. He does not have to tell a Canadian of Polish heritage, someone who was born behind the iron curtain as the son of a member of the Solidarnosc movement, about the behaviour, aggressiveness and military aggression capable by the Kremlin. Absolutely, he i…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Rivière-du-Nord for his question. Canada was founded as a binational and bicultural country. The two founding peoples of our country were the francophone and the anglophone peoples. As my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord knows, I am a Franco-Albertan, but I am also a child of Bill 101. I lived in Montreal for a while. I think we need to recogn…
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Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North is correct that immigration, historically for the last 150 years, has been the main driver of demographic growth in Canada. In successive waves, we have seen immigrants from eastern Europe add to the mixing pot that is Canada and add to its distinctiveness. I am one of those people and so is my family, who came from different regions and settled in Cana…
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Mégantic—L'Érable. I am pleased to be joining the debate on this motion. I would have much loved to have been there, but members can probably hear that I sound a bit ill. I have a cold, so I cannot fly there and take part in this debate in person. I want to outline to my constituents, Albertans, westerners and Canadians how the process w…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I rise in recognition of Rare Disease Day. The theme of this year's Rare Disease Day is “Share Your Colours”. I offer this limerick in honour of this special day: Millions in Canada, two-thirds of them youth Battle rare disease daily, a sad, sombre truth These diseases touch families and count several thousand From MS through Alport and von Recklinghausen They are tough on their child…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member, who is a parliamentary secretary, the following question: When will the implementation of the Emergencies Act end, since the protesters in Ottawa have been dispersed and the blockades at the border were removed before the act was even invoked? When will the special powers that the government is asking for end?
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Madam Speaker, the Emergencies Act allows the government powers without judicial oversight. That is what is going to happen. The Emergencies Act removes judicial oversight regarding the freezing of bank accounts. Earlier today, members on the Liberal side mentioned 73 bank accounts have been frozen. Andreas Park, a finance professor at the University of Toronto, expressed alarm at the scope of the…
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Madam Speaker, if this was an honest attempt by the government to include the official opposition and convince us that the use of the Emergencies Act was warranted and met the threshold, I would have thought the government would have given us all the briefing materials, the evidence and the facts. It would have released them and made the judicial opinions from Justice Canada officials public. It d…
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Mr. Speaker, what I liked about my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île's speech was the way he summarized the events leading up to the current situation. He talked about the Prime Minister's lack of leadership and about how the PM hid in his cottage for three or four weeks and made only one public appearance where he insulted the people who had come to Ottawa to protest. It seems as though that is w…
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