Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, Steve Van Raalte in my riding texted me. He is a heavy-duty mechanic who is frustrated with the price of diesel. It has been cutting into his bottom line. The Liberals are out of touch, and Canadians like Steve are out of money. There are at least two companies in Alberta that are working to develop diesel fuel out of natural gas, and this would reduce our reliance on American diesel fuel, yet because of the Liberals' lost decade, banks will not fund them, insurance companies do not insure them and there is zero support from the Liberals. Will the Liberal government adopt our Conservative action plan so Steve can finally afford diesel fuel?

Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, I rose in this chamber to move a motion that would require Parliament to investigate the public health impacts of sexually explicit material on kids and adults. Thanks to the support of my colleagues, this motion passed unanimously. The following health committee study revealed what experts had been saying, that exposure to pornography is harming our youth. Exposure was increasing the risk of victimization, harming emotional and mental health, rewiring the brain and increasing support for rape culture. The number one recommendation that came out of that committee was to require porn companies to enact meaningful age verification. Today, this House will begin debate on Bill S-209, a bill that would help ensure kids are protected from exposure to sexually explicit material and predatory porn companies. I want to thank my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake and Senator Miville-Dechêne for their work on this bill. This bill passed the Senate three times. I call on my colleagues to help pass Bill S-209 once and for all. Kids deserve a childhood free from sexual exploitation.

Madam Speaker, Conservatives are winning the argument. When Stephen Harper took office as prime minister of this country, he argued that we needed to diversify our market away from the United States, so he went on a tear to sign 43 free trade agreements around the world. Now we see that the Liberal government has finally come to its senses and has started to adopt the Conservative narrative, at least, on these things. What would the member like to see done?

Mr. Speaker, the journey of this bill started back in 2015 with Motion No. 47, which came before this Parliament and was unanimously passed. That caused a health committee report that recommended exactly what the bill before us would do. It has been over a decade since that report come out. Canada was kind of a first mover back then, but efforts have kind of stalled. I wonder if the member could talk about what other countries have done in this regard.

Madam Speaker, it is my honour and privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-218, a bill that would repeal the coming into force of MAID for mental illness as the sole underlying cause for concern. Canada is becoming a parable. It is becoming an example of what not to do for the world. The United Kingdom recently had a discussion about introducing euthanasia or MAID to the country. It looked at Canada and said, “That is not what we want to do”, and it actually rejected it. I remember back in 2016-17 making arguments in the discussion about introducing MAID into Canada and calling it a slippery slope. I can say that I was wrong when I said it was a slippery slope. It turns out that it was a cliff. We had no idea that we were going to fall off this cliff. One-fifth of people who die in Canada die because of MAID. This is a major cause for concern. We can look to other jurisdictions that are very similar to Canada. California has demographics similar to Canada's, has similar political understandings and has a similar population, yet in the same time frame, we saw that 13,000 people in Canada used the MAID program and only 300 people used the assisted suicide program in California. Something is seriously wrong with our system. When MAID was brought into Canada, there were two criteria for it. Someone had to have a reasonably foreseeable death, something that we argued against. We said that was nebulous; we did not know what that meant. Most people's death is reasonably foreseeable. We will all die. That was one criterion for MAID, along with the fact that a condition had to be grievous and irremediable. That was then challenged in the courts. I recall that we had just passed the MAID regime through Parliament. Parliament had spoken as to what the law ought to be in Canada. Just a couple of years later, it was challenged by two people from Quebec, and it was overturned at the first level of court in Quebec. David Lametti, the justice minister at the time, refused to defend the work of Parliament. His personal opinions on MAID and the direction it should go were well known, but as the justice minister of Canada, it was his responsibility to defend what Parliament had put in place, and he refused to or was negligent and did not do that. He did not challenge the lower court decision in Quebec. Therefore, that decision stood, and that then placed an arbitrary deadline upon Parliament to come up with a solution. That is how we got the so-called track 2 MAID, and along with that came the idea, which they put in in 2026 and then extended out to 2027, that MAID for mental illness should become a thing here in Canada. There has been a committee study since then that looked at this. I tried to answer this question: Is Canada ready for MAID for mental illness? We heard over and over from people who said that if somebody is suicidal and wants to die, we cannot determine who will get better and who will not get better. There is no test for this. That is reason it was extended for one more year, because they said we had to continue to work on it. Here we are, about a year out from that, and there is still no test today. When somebody calls the suicide prevention hotline, there is no test to say that someone is going to come around, that we can put them into treatment, they will recover and have a desire to live again and we should put them into a suicide prevention program. There is no test for people to say they will send one person to the suicide prevention program and another person will be offered MAID. There is no test to say one person is going to recover and another person is not. We just do not know. The default should be that people having suicidal ideations will get better. We will give them treatment, support them and try to remove the things in their lives causing the suicidal ideation. I would point Canadians to the work by my colleague, the member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, and the many speeches he has given on this, saying that, if this had been the law several years ago, he would not be here today because he would have availed himself of it. Today, he is a member of Parliament and a high-functioning individual. He is laughing at that. It is a true story. I thank him for being vulnerable with us, sharing these stories over and over again, telling this story and being a champion for Bill C-218. Bill C-218 would make it so that we have suicide prevention in this country and only suicide prevention in this country. It is not for the Government of Canada to set up a program where some people get suicide prevention treatment and some people do not get suicide prevention treatment. That is not a country any of us want to live in, where we say suicide prevention is good for one person but not good for another person. We heard over and over again at committee that there is no test to determine the difference. With that, I look forward to voting on this bill. I will be voting for it. I am very hopeful this bill will pass and we will once again restore suicide prevention in this country.

Madam Speaker, before the government's summer vacation, I asked the government why it was putting trade talks with the United States in jeopardy to protect the Prime Minister's corporate friends instead of fighting modern-day slavery. The reality is that since 2021, the Canada Border Services Agency has seized only two shipments of goods that were made using forced labour: a shipment of textiles back in 2024 and a shipment of frozen seafood in 2025. Both of these shipments were subsequently released back to the companies. That is it: these two shipments suspected of slavery stopped in five years. Meanwhile, the United States' border security stopped over 7,000 shipments, valued at over $75 million, for suspected forced labour violations in just the first six months of this year. The Prime Minister and his government, including the member opposite, love to point to Bill S-211, the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act, as evidence of how tough Canada is. However, I would point out that this law only exists because of the hard work of former Liberal member of Parliament John McKay and Senator Miville-Dechêne, along with the support of the All-Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. In fact, the government dragged its feet for years before being forced to take action, so we had to bring in a private member's bill, Bill S-211. Then we found out last December that the government had quietly changed the directive of Bill S-211 to create an exemption not found in the original legislation, stripping reporting obligations from distributors and retailers who could be profiting from forced labour in their supply chains. Human rights advocates and anti-slavery groups are asking why. The only answer that could be is that it would benefit the Prime Minister's corporate friends. In fact, I wonder how many of these elite corporate friends were at the Prime Minister's pre-summit fundraiser last week. We also know that China has been using Canada as a transhipment hub to get its products into the United States because it knows how weak our enforcement has been and how strong the American enforcement has been when it comes to products made by forced labour. It is no wonder the United States is launching a forced labour investigation into our country. We have only stopped two shipments in the last five years. Our supply chain law is secretly watered down to benefit Liberal friends, and the Liberals have been turning a blind eye to China's use of Canada as a transhipment hub. I and many of my Conservative colleagues have been raising these concerns for years in the House, and former Liberal member of Parliament John McKay has also been urging the government to take more action to fight slavery, but we have seen no action from the government to do anything. The Prime Minister and his government ministers have insisted that Canada's measures were robust, that they were strong. Really? Then why, after years of declaring that Canada had what it needed to fight slavery in the supply chains, did the government suddenly introduce Bill C-35, an act respecting the prohibition of importing goods produced by forced labour? Perhaps, as with other issues like crime, immigration and housing, the Liberals are suddenly realizing that Conservatives have been right all along. Perhaps Canada needs to fight slavery abroad, and perhaps temporarily stopping one shipment suspected of using forced labour every two to three years is not a robust system. I do not have the time to go into the abandoned CORE office, but the government's absolute failure to tackle slavery in supply chains has put our CUSMA talks in jeopardy. Did the Prime Minister walk away from the table because the United States demanded we take real action on slavery? Did the Prime Minister walk away from the negotiations because he was not able to get supply chain exemptions to forced labour for his corporate friends? We do not know, because the Liberals will not release the deal that they rejected. What we do know is that Canadians are paying the price for the government's inaction on modern-day slavery. In my riding of Peace River—Westlock, increased software lumber tariffs are threatening entire—

Madam Speaker, I would note that there is a lot of “we will” in the response. The government has been in place for over 10 years, and I have to say that if history is any indication of trying to get forced labour out of the government, it is like pulling teeth. It is incredibly difficult. Attempts to get Bill S-211 across the line took a very long time. Then, once we had it passed, the coming into force took an eternity, never mind the office of the corps, which was a thing the government bragged a lot about, and then it took eons for it to set it all up. What assurances can this member give us that, in fact, the Liberals will take this very seriously, and will Bill C-35 be able to be implemented in the short term?

Madam Speaker, the member mentioned folks who drive Hummers, and I would just point out to him that the new Hummer is actually an EV, so he might actually be in favour of people who drive Hummers. I want to congratulate the Liberal government on implementing the Conservative agenda, albeit maybe at half speed or a dollar late and a day short. Nonetheless, this has been something that we as Conservatives have been calling for, and this is just part of a growing trend of the Liberal government adopting our agenda and promoting it. Would the member not agree that the Liberal government is, although it may be at half speed, definitely implementing the Conservative agenda?

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the hon. member could reflect a little bit on the history of how we got to this place today and perhaps on the fact that the Liberals seem to be taking our good ideas and running with them. This particular bill would be another example of that. I am wondering if she could talk a little bit about the history of this idea of reducing the gas tax over the last couple of years.

Mr. Speaker, this has been quite a debate this evening. I know that over the last number of years, we have watched the Liberals lay burden after burden upon Canadians, particularly with the deficit spending. We now see a reversal of a whole number of these things, whether it is this idea or some of the major project announcements that we have heard. I am just wondering if the member has seen a change in the rhetoric. I am just wondering if the member is seeing a change on the ground back home.

Mr. Speaker, this feels like déjà vu. It was not that long ago that we were here debating nearly the exact same issue as we are today. Today, we have in front of us a bill. As opposition members, we get to propose ideas through opposition day motions, which are not necessarily binding upon the House or the government. Back in April, we were debating virtually the exact same thing. I would point out that the Liberals voted back in April against removing the tax on gas and diesel fuel. I reluctantly must compliment the Liberals on this bill. Another thing about this bill is that it is quite brief, which is amazing for the Liberals. Generally, the Liberals say they are doing one thing, then come out with a bill that does three to five things; some of the things we like and some of the things we do not like. They have made it very easy to support this bill. Perhaps the bill is a day late and a dollar short, but nonetheless, it is a good bill. This bill would remove the gas tax going forward past January. I think that is something that we have been calling for for a long time. This is an idea that the Conservatives put forward. What is becoming a trend in this Parliament is that we have the good ideas and the Liberal government steals those ideas, plagiarizes those ideas and implements those ideas. We will continue to do that. We will continue to propose good ideas that the government can then take and run with. I just want to talk a bit about what this means for people who live in northern Alberta. The further away from Edmonton someone lives, the more their average driving per year happens to be. The average person in Enilda, which is a couple of hours north of where I live and about three and a half hours north of Edmonton, drives probably 28,000 kilometres a year. If someone lives in Keg River, which is about three hours south of the Northwest Territories border, they are driving 38,000 kilometres a year on average. If someone lives in Edmonton, they are driving about 14,000 kilometres a year on average. If someone lives in Vancouver, they are driving about 10,000 kilometres a year. I say that to show that when people live outside major city centres, they are generally driving significantly more. This is why we have been proposing this type of legislation. This is something that would definitely help those folks. The savings may be modest, but they would impact those at the bottom much more. When they save $500 a year on fuel, that is 10 tanks of gas, essentially. For someone from Keg River or from Peace River, that neck of the woods, it could translate to approximately $500 a year in savings with these fuel reductions. I argued back in April about the fact that we are coming into harvest season, and the farmers use a lot of diesel fuel when they are bringing in their crops. That is the reality. Diesel fuel makes our economy work. Diesel fuel makes it so that the farmers can take the food off the field. It makes it so they can truck it to a terminal. It makes it so they can take it from the terminal to the processing facility. If it is flour, that flour is then trucked to a bakery, which is then baked into bread. Often, that bread is then trucked to a grocery store. Every step along the way takes diesel fuel. When the diesel fuel price is reduced just marginally, it can have a big effect because of all those steps along the way, and it makes a big difference. That is one of the cases that we have been making and we will continue to make. The other thing that we want to talk about in this session is about putting Canada first. We want to make sure that we have a government that takes care of Canadians first. Some of the ways to do this are around changing the tax structure, and we support this particular bill. However, other things are just around ensuring that Canadian industry and business have the tools and that they have a government that is ensuring that Canadian businesses are taken care of. We have seen just recently in the United States, Donald Trump has put tariffs on our Canadian honey producers. This is a major challenge, particularly for western Canada and Alberta, as 70% to 90% of our honey, depending on the year, will cross the border and go to the United States. What is very interesting about that is that we import more honey into Canada than we export into the United States. This tariff is just driving the cost of our honey up, as a 50% tariff as it crosses the border going into the United States makes it kind of unaffordable for Americans to buy our honey. We are bringing in honey from around the world, and we are bringing in more of that than we send to the United States. We could perhaps displace that foreign honey with our own honey, provided we were to protect the border a bit more. People would say, “We have free trade agreements and that would allow for the importation of honey from other parts of the world” and that is all true. The challenge that the honey producers have in Canada right now is that there is stuff called adulterated honey or fake honey. It is stuff that just says “honey” on it but actually is not honey. It is made from corn syrup, rice syrup or a different sugar product and it is made to look like honey. In the past, we discovered this was happening. We would test the product that would say “honey” on the bottle and it would turn out that there was no pollen in this product. That was a pretty easy test. We could just test for the presence of pollen. If there is no pollen in honey, it obviously was not made by a bee because bees collect pollen and they tend to accidentally drop it in the honey, generally. Based on that pollen, they can actually tell where in the world that honey came from. There was this product sitting on the shelves here in Canada that said “honey” on the bottle, and there was zero pollen in it so we knew that it was not honey. Honey producers in Canada said this was a problem, so we started to test for that. Lo and behold, pretty soon, this stuff had pollen in it. It turned out that players around the world were buying pollen from Canada, dumping that pollen into the sugar water, essentially, and shipping it back, calling it honey. I tell this entire story to say that there are mechanisms in place, things that we can do, to help our honey producers to ensure that our honey is consumed here in Canada. If we work hard on protecting our consumers from this adulterated honey, if we work to control the border around this adulterated honey, that will reduce the competition of our honey producers against stuff that is not honey. We have been calling for this for a very long time, but now it seems like there is a big opportunity to fix this problem. I am looking forward to seeing some action from the government on this topic, particularly because our honey producers are being disproportionately penalized by the 50% tariff that the United States has placed on honey. We have put a countertariff on the honey from the United States, and I anticipate that will have some effect. Instead of 80% to 90% of our product heading across the border down to the United States it will be diverted left and right across this country to other provinces. I am sure some of the honey was coming from the United States and different places. Honeybees in Canada are extremely important. Approximately one-third of our food production relies on the bees to do their pollination, so it is incredibly important that our beekeepers remain viable in this country so that we have a stable food supply.

Mr. Speaker, Stephen Harper, back in 2007, pursued an agenda of decoupling us from the United States because, he said, we were good friends with the United States at that time, but it was a great risk to Canada that 90% of our commerce went to the United States. He worked on signing 42 free trade agreements around the world. He worked very hard to diversify our markets for our energy, given that we are an energy superpower. We had 14 pipeline projects on the books. We had several LNG projects on the books. All of these things came to a grinding halt when the Liberals came to power over a decade ago. The Prime Minister now has kind of taken up that torch, albeit in a different fashion, but when he is willing to take our good ideas and willing to follow the mantra of Stephen Harper, we will continue to support that.

Mr. Speaker, Steve Van Raalte texted me just the other day. He is a heavy-duty mechanic. He is on the road often, driving from one job to the other. He was complaining to me about how the cost of fuel was really affecting his bottom line. He lives in a competitive environment and has to set his rate based on the other mechanics in the area. He lives kind of far from town and therefore is stuck paying this diesel price. He was saying that it was affecting his ability to make a living because he is on the road a lot with his mobile mechanic service.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member knows this, but northern Alberta produces about a quarter of Canada's honey. Alberta produces about half of Canada's honey, and northern Alberta produces about half of that, so about a quarter of Canada's honey comes from northern Alberta. I always say that my riding is the promised land. It is literally flowing with milk and honey. Particular places in the world are of concern when it comes to this adulterated honey. One of the things we could do is block the border to some of these products coming in. There is a biohazard risk with some of the mites that may come in with the product. Also, some players have been bad actors in the space. We could just say that the door is shut to those places, particularly right now.

Mr. Speaker, I know that the 10 years that Stephen Harper was the prime minister of this country are finally looked back on as a golden age in Canada, and I know that the Liberals have been taking our good ideas and running with them. Perhaps the Prime Minister will continue that legacy of Stephen Harper of signing free trade deals around the world, moving our economy away from the United States, building pipelines to both coasts and building LNG projects so we can feed the world the energy that it needs. If the Liberal government continues to do those kinds of things, will we support those kinds of efforts?

Mr. Speaker, the carbon tax happened during the election, but in this Parliament we are at a really explicit point in time where the Liberals are taking our ideas and running with them. Now, I just want to bring us back a couple of decades to where Stephen Harper started an ambitious agenda of making it so we were not so reliant on the United States. He probably started that back in 2007 or maybe prior to that. I am wondering if the member can just reflect on some of those great ideas that Stephen Harper had, and if we can push the Liberal government to pursue some of those great ideas.

Mr. Speaker, one of those really great laws is Bill S-211, which requires companies selling or distributing goods in Canada to produce an annual report. The Liberals, contrary to the law, revised their directive and exempted a bunch of their corporate buddies from having to file the report. Now the U.S. is investigating Canada for not fighting forced labour and is threatening us in the CUSMA talks. Why is the government putting the CUSMA talks in jeopardy so that it can pad the pockets of its corporate buddies instead of fighting slavery?

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned executive bonuses, and I just want to point out that the company also gave some great bonuses to its executives, while it has built zero kilometres of rail line. I just thought I would put that on the record as well. I want to ask my hon. colleague a bit more about the interest rate and the value of our money, how that affects homebuilding, and what the government is doing to affect those things.

Mr. Speaker, $200 million is what we are talking about with this launch pad. In my riding, a sawmill was recently shut down, with 190 jobs lost. That $200 million would have gone a long way there. The member for Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park and I were debating this earlier, and he talked about how we needed a Canadian Cape Canaveral. I wonder if the hon. member could do a bit of a comparison between Maritime Launch Services and Cape Canaveral.

Mr. Speaker, I assure members that I only have one petition to present today. I rise to present a petition on behalf of Canadians who are concerned about human rights protections in India. The petitioners are saying that, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, various actors are supporting and enforcing sectarian policies that seek to establish India as a Hindu state. The petitioners say that Christians in India are being targeted by extremists vandalizing their churches, attacking church workers, and threatening and humiliating their congregations. They also note that Indian Muslims are at risk of genocide, assault and sexual violence. The petitioners are asking that the government ensure that any and all trade deals with India are premised on mandatory human rights provisions, that extremists are sanctioned and that the government promote a respectful human rights dialogue between Canada and India.

Mr. Speaker, it is fascinating to me. As Conservatives, we believe Canada is one of the greatest countries in the world, and we should be the wealthiest country in the world. We have unlimited natural resources. We are the envy of the entire world when it comes to our energy resources, yet here we are in massive deficits run for 10 years by Liberal governments. Where does the member think the wealth should come from for this so-called wealth fund?

Mr. Speaker, as I rise here today, I would like to congratulate Maria Gainey, who used to work for me. She got engaged on the weekend to her fiancé Toby, so I would like to congratulate them. My question for my hon. colleague is around sovereign wealth funds. Alberta has a heritage fund. This is a thing that has been done already in Canada. This happened at a time when Alberta was making record profits through the oil patch. It has continued and grown to $32 billion today. I am wondering if he has any comments about that.

Madam Speaker, I am wondering about the lack of specificity in this bill. One of the things the member talked about is planned obsolescence, or programmed obsolescence. These things are very frustrating to consumers. I am wondering why he did not bring a bill that would have targeted that specifically through legislation rather than in this broad framework bill, which is like trying to boil the ocean.

Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to add my voice to the debate on Bill C-267. As I mentioned earlier, this bill seems to be trying to boil the ocean. It is a framework bill. It attempts to do a laudable thing, to make it so the products that we buy have a shelf life that lasts a long time and they do not quickly end up in the landfill. Now, I have a cousin. I have a lot of cousins, but I have a particular cousin who has an expression, and I always think it is interesting. He says, “That is pure landfill.” Basically, he is saying that something is a poor quality product, and if someone purchases it, they might as well just take it straight to the landfill because, by the time they put it to work, it will not do the thing they need it to do or it is poor quality. I always think of that when we talk about this particular bill. Life is generally a series of trade-offs. Particularly when people are purchasing a consumer product, there are a lot of trade-offs. It is an interesting thing to me. Earlier today we heard the Leader of the Opposition say that, when Liberals see something moving, they tax it. When it is still moving, they regulate it, and when it stops moving, they subsidize it. This is essentially the subsidizing part of that equation. Over the years, we have seen Liberals pile on requirements, one after the other, whether it be around water use, energy use or products that can be used. Now we see that products do not necessarily last as long as they used to. Take a dishwasher, for example. With all of the energy requirements and all of the water requirements that have gone into them, it seems that, when someone buys a dishwasher nowadays, it does not advertise how well it does the dishes, it advertises how little water and how little energy it uses. I actually want a dishwasher that does the dishes. The other thing is the dishwasher that my mom had seemed to last for 30 years, and the dishwashers I buy seem to last for 10 years. Members can see the issues that we have now. Here we are. Consumers are frustrated with the fact that they have an expectation that the products they buy do not seem to be lasting as long as they expect them to last, nor can they get the parts for them. This is reality. As the government has layered on regulation after regulation, or this or that code, it has not necessarily been the market that has driven that. It has been regulation. Now we are seeing that the government is going to put a solution for all of these created problems on the back end of it and say, “Oh, now manufacturers have to make sure their product lasts a particular length of time.” There is another bunch of problems around this as well. Planned obsolescence is something that drives me crazy. I come from the automotive world and am an auto mechanic by trade. With older vehicles that had the 12-valve Cummins, for example, there was no planned obsolescence for it. It outlasted the vehicle they put it in by a factor of three or four. If the car or truck that engine was in rusted away, which would be after about 10 years, that engine was taken out and moved into another vehicle. They can often been seen for sale, and the pickup truck that it is in is very worn out. They take the engine out and put it in another piece of equipment, because that engine did not have planned obsolescence. It was built it to last, and it lasts. Again, we see more concerns around efficiency and other concerns. On the flip side of it, these other products that do not last long end up in the landfill. That Cummins engine, probably designed in about 1990, is still operating, and because it is so good, it will be taken out of the pickup truck it is in and stuck in another piece of equipment, saving it from the landfill. Members can rest assured, it will continue on. I have a lot of expectation and no concern, because that technology has been around probably since the 1970s, that the engine will do another 30 years in whatever piece of equipment it is in. Because it is so well built, it is very well supported. There are a dozen companies that support it with aftermarket parts. Because it is so popular and well known, there are a dozen companies that copy it, build other pieces for it, build attachments and these kinds of things. These are all great things. We see this also with airplane technology. A lot of airplanes are flying around today with 1930s technology in their engines, because the industry figured it out. The progression of aircraft went from 1912 to the 1930s, and that is when it really dialed in on what an airplane engine ought to look like. Since then, only minor tweaks have been made to that. Because of that, there are a host of companies that work hard on creating a product that is well serviced and lasts a long time. It does not ever really end up in the landfill, because they just keep rebuilding it and keep working it over. The two examples I gave, airplane engines and Cummins engines, are of things that were designed entirely by the market. They were not constrained by a lot of government regulation whatsoever. That reality does exist. We see the bureaucratic growth of the government. I am going to talk particularly about the appliances the bill is trying to capture. I do not necessarily think there is opposition to putting in place a mandatory minimum on how long they should last, a benchmark for warranty, essentially. That has been done in the automotive industry. There used to be a regulation on small collision repairs. If someone ran into a pole at less than 30 kilometres an hour, there was a test for that. If that happened and the repair had to be made, it had to cost less than $2,500 or less than $300, depending on where one was in the world. It was helpful that the government made this benchmark saying that as a result of a certain kind of a collision, it should not cost more than a certain amount to repair a vehicle. There is the capability of doing that kind of thing. I wish the bill had contemplated many of those kinds of things. We can put in law, and the House can be responsible for it, that a certain product should last a certain length of time. We did that with the airlines. We debated whether that was a good idea or not, but we could have done it with this bill as well, saying what the timelines for consumer products ought to be, and we could have built a schedule for that. We can do all that in the House. However, this bill is much like the Liberals' approach to a lot of things. They get a great idea, such as going to space, or whatever it happens to be, but then they do not put the details in the bill. They do not do the hard work of governing the country. They say to just trust them; they will get the minister on it. The minister will use their pen and decide all the things that need to go into it, working with this or that particular stakeholder. Parliament is dedicated to building the laws of this country. I understand that a bill to regulate a whole bunch of particular products might be a large bill, but that has not stopped the government before from introducing large bills. That could be, but I do not understand. Last, sometimes the government gets out of its lane a bit when it comes to provincial jurisdiction. I know that a number of colleagues have raised concerns around provincial jurisdiction, that this bill would perhaps cross some of those lines. We are concerned about that as well. Perhaps the issue should be left to the provinces. I know that in particular when it came to tractor regulations, there was—

Mr. Speaker, this morning I gave notice with respect to the question of privilege I am raising today. The question arises from the reporting obligations of the Minister of International Trade, specifically the requirement under the order in council that annual reports be tabled in each House of Parliament by the minister. I am honoured to be one of the co-chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. We just held a parliamentary briefing with the International Justice and Human Rights Clinic from UBC. At that briefing, we learned from the former ombudsman that the Minister of International Trade has failed to fulfill this obligation to table annual reports from the Canadian ombudsman for responsible enterprise. Not only was one report not reported, but three reports have not been reported. I want to be clear. What we are discussing here is the annual reports of an entity empowered by the Crown to respond to potential victims of exploitation, forced labour and modern slavery being committed by Canadian companies operating in other countries. I went to the CORE web page to verify this for myself yesterday, and the last annual report tabled in Parliament was the 2021-22 report tabled on March 22, 2023, by the minister. The former ombudsman confirmed that she sent the 2022-23 annual report to the minister in November 2023. She also confirmed to me that she provided a draft report to the interim ombudsperson at the end of her term in April 2024. That report has never been tabled in Parliament, nor has the 2024-25 report that would have been completed by the interim ombudsperson. Furthermore, the minister has left this position unfilled for over a year, and I doubt we will see a report later this year. In accordance with Order in Council P.C. 2019-1323, dated September 6, 2019, which establishes the mandate of the CORE, section 13 states: (1) The Ombudsperson is to submit an annual report to the Minister on their activities. (2) The Minister is to table [that] annual report in each House of Parliament. (3) The Ombudsperson is to publish the annual report after it is tabled in Parliament. This raises concerns regarding the compliance with this order in council, which imposes a clear legal and fiduciary obligation on the minister to table these reports in both Houses each year. If the minister does not table these reports in the House of Commons, the CORE cannot release them publicly. Furthermore, the failure to ensure timely tabling of these reports limits our ability as members to access this information, required for effective parliamentary oversight of an entity established by the Government of Canada. It also prevents members from engaging the House's established process for scrutiny of these tabled documents. I recognize that orders in council are not statutes, but they do have force in law. Orders in council are indeed a form of subordinate legislation, deriving their power from a statute, an act of Parliament. In other words, they are legal instruments made by the Governor in Council pursuant to a statutory authority and take legal effect when signed by the Governor General. There is a clear precedent in supporting this proposition that the failure to comply with the statutory tabling obligations may engage the privileges of this House. On February 3, 1992, a question of privilege was raised concerning the failure of a minister of finance to table order in council appointments in the House of Commons required under the order of the Customs Tariff. In the ruling on February 5, 1992, at pages 6425 to 6427 of the Debates, Speaker Fraser affirmed, “It is through tabling that Members are officially apprised of the existence of a document....it is not done lightly but is done for a serious purpose.” Speaker Fraser went on to state that “the tabling of documents...is one of the procedures on which hinges the ability of Members to discharge their functions” and recognized that the failure to table these required documents may impede both members and the standing committees in carrying out their mandate under Standing Order 108(1). Speaker Fraser also noted that the House is the appropriate forum to address the deficiencies arising from non-compliance with statutory tabling requirements. In that instance, the Chair declined to find a prima facie breach because the matter had already been taken up by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. That circumstance does not exist in the present case. No committee has been seized, however, with the failure to table the CORE annual reports. As a result, members have been deprived of access to these reports that would have otherwise been subject to parliamentary scrutiny through the House's established procedures, including the referral mechanism contemplated under Standing Order 32(5), which depends on proper tabling in the House. A further ruling, in 2001, similarly addressed a failure to comply with statutory tabling obligations. In that case, the Chair observed that where statutory deadlines exist, the prima facie finding of contempt would be more readily supportable, as the members' ability to scrutinize the government's action is directly affected by compliance with tabling requirements. The Chair also emphasized that the tabling obligations are central to Parliament's ability to function. Unlike that circumstance, the present case involves a recurring statutory obligation to table annual reports. The concern here is not an isolated delay but an ongoing failure to ensure that Parliament is kept informed through the mechanism that it established. In this situation, I would remind members, we are discussing annual reports addressing potential situations of exploitation, forced labour and modern-day slavery being committed by Canadian companies operating in other countries. I am sure every member of the House would agree that we need to have access to these annual reports, which the minister is obligated to table in the House of Commons and has failed to do for three years. The effect of this failure is to limit members' access to information required for effective parliamentary oversight of an entity established by the Government of Canada and to frustrate the operation of the House's own procedures for examining these reports. It is on this basis that I submit that this matter engages the privileges of the House, Mr. Speaker, and I respectfully ask that you find a prima facie question of privilege, at which point I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member from Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park for sharing his time with me today. I am surprised the Liberals have chosen to bring up space exploration today, given the fact that over the last week, we have seen the concrete pad out in Nova Scotia. I am sure we have all seen the picture by now. I want to thank Marie Lumsden from the Hamilton Examiner for the great article that has given me the information for this speech here today. The Liberals are true to form. We have seen over and over again where they have worked very hard to enrich their friends. We have seen the clam scam. We have seen the ArriveCan app. We have seen the WE Charity scandal. We have seen the Chuck Rifici and the marijuana “pump and dump” schemes. We have seen the Brookfield stock go up over time. We have seen the green slush fund. We have seen the Randy Boissonnault scandal. We have seen this over and over again. In the fallout of the news being reported around this gravel driveway and a concrete pad out in Nova Scotia, and a government contract for $200 million, the government decides this is the week we should be talking about space exploration, or participation in space. I am excited that Canada participates in space. I remember growing up being super proud of the Canadarm. Does everyone remember the Canadarm? I remember being excited about that, going to the Edmonton Space and Science Centre, watching the spacewalk on the IMAX and things like that, and also about the International Space Station and our participation in that. The Liberals want us to talk about that today, about our Canadian participation, how we should be so proud that Canada participates in space and that we should have our own Cape Canaveral. What we saw in the news last week is no Cape Canaveral. It is a concrete pad. Now, I poured a bit of concrete last summer, and I can say that concrete is pretty expensive by the cubic metre. It was about $300 a cubic metre back home. I can imagine that is a pretty expensive place, and the company is paying $13,500 a year to lease the land that this pad is on. We know that. I would give them a generous amount. I have paid a few contractors in my time for concrete as well, so I will be generous with it. Let us say some Caterpillar work was done there and some gravel trucks came and brought some gravel. It cost maybe $1 million. I think that is a pretty generous amount. Everybody made some good money building that pad. The Canadian government could have done that. The Canadian government could have leased the land from the Nova Scotia government, spent $1 million and built the concrete pad. I think that would be an acceptable thing for us to have done, given that the Canadian government owns most of the airports in Canada. I do not know if everyone knows this, but most of the airports in Canada are owned by the Canadian government. Then private companies, generally not-for-profits, operate these places, and they pay the Canadian government for the operations. Members can imagine being flabbergasted that this has been brought up here, that we are paying for the privilege of being able to maybe one day use this concrete pad to launch a rocket somewhere. We are paying $20 million a year for the privilege of maybe being able to use that concrete pad. That is not all. The Liberals really know how to make their friends happy: by backdating this contract a whole year and paying them back an entire year. Marie Lumsden looked into some of the people involved. Lo and behold, a Liberal premier is on the board of directors of this company. Wow, look at that, Liberals feeding their friends. Members may think that is kind of interesting. There is a partnership. All of this was brought up by the partnership from—

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to share an experience that I had today at committee. The Liberals are actually filibustering a motion that we moved at the veterans affairs committee to bring some scrutiny to the spending that is being done in the veterans department. The Liberals are filibustering our motion there and they are taunting us with the fact that, very shortly, they will have a majority on the committee and will be able to shut down our motion at committee. I am just wondering if the member has any comments about that. We are seeing the Liberals taunting us. What does the member think is going to happen in the coming days?

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on becoming a grandfather. Is there a time when the Liberal Party would think it appropriate to use the notwithstanding clause? Some of the things around the IP address could have been addressed by the government just using the notwithstanding clause. I am just wondering if there is ever a time that the Liberal Party would use the notwithstanding clause.

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22 comes as an answer to two Supreme Court decisions about requiring a warrant to get IP addresses. There were a number of ways the government could have reinstated the ability of law enforcement to get access to IP addresses, and it seems to have developed quite a cumbersome one in Bill C-22, so I am a little concerned about that. We have also heard a number of other things about Bill C-22 when it comes to lawful access, and I am hoping we can get a bit of clarity on this. Bill C-2 was originally introduced, and I am wondering why the government chose to pick some of the pieces from Bill C-2 and put them in Bill C-22.

Mr. Speaker, Easter is the most important celebration, because it marks the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the son of God. Humans are not perfect. We sin, and this sin requires justice. That is why it is an incredible act of love that our Creator descended to earth to bear our punishment and rise again on the third day. As Jesus himself said in the Gospel of John, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die”. This promise was fulfilled on Easter morning when the tomb was found empty. In the Gospel of Matthew, the angel declared, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” This is the good news. We are truly forgiven through the death of Jesus, so whether it is legal or not, I will always proclaim, “Christ is king. He is risen, risen indeed.”

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition brought by constituents from across Canada who are concerned about Bill C-9. They are concerned that this bill could be used to criminalize passages from the Bible, the Quran or the Torah. They call on the Government of Canada not to pass this bill. They want to ensure that the Government of Canada protects religious freedom, upholds the right to read and share sacred texts, and prevents government overreach in this matter.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today on behalf of the good people of Peace River—Westlock and to talk about the accession of the U.K. and Northern Ireland to the CPTPP. As a bit of background, it has been frustrating for me to watch the government let one opportunity after the other pass us by as it governs Canada. It speaks on our behalf around the world. When Brexit happened, I thought that there was a major opportunity for Canada to fill in the void that was going to come from the lack of that EU agreement that had been in place, the free trade that Britain had with the EU. There was going to be a void of product that was going to be able to get into the U.K. from the EU, and there was an opportunity, given the fact of our shared heritage, that Canada could step up to fill the void immediately. All we needed to do was have that relationship nailed down and sorted out, coming into it. We could see for a number of years that this Brexit thing was coming. We could have seen that we could have had a free trade deal with the U.K., and when it did happen, we could have been the first at the table. This was something that we talked about as Conservatives. We said, “This is happening. Get on it, Prime Minister.” That was 2020. That was five or six years ago, so we could have had a robust relationship. I want to talk about a number of products that come from northern Alberta: beef in particular, but also softwood lumber. Many people do not know that Canada, for hundreds of years, was a major supplier of lumber to the U.K., and we have lost that position over the last number of years to the point that we are a minimal supplier of lumber to the U.K. We should be able to maintain that relationship. Many of my colleagues have spoken today about beef, and I am going to talk about that as well. We apparently have this agreement with the U.K. to trade with them, yet we are happy to compete. Many of us talk about the difference in how much beef comes into Canada from the U.K. and how much does not get into the U.K. Actually, in a free trade system, we should not be too concerned if beef is only running in one direction and not the other, but when the beef is not running in the other direction, to the U.K., because the country is blocking it with particular regulations, that is when we get a little frustrated. We could make the case that their farmers are more efficient, that their winters are less harsh than Canadian winters, that it is a little easier for them to make beef and that their beef is a bit cheaper than Canadian beef, hence it is coming into Canada. We might say, okay, but we are allowed to at least ship our beef into the U.K. We could say, okay, those numbers are not reciprocal, but we understand there are other reasons. However, when particular rules in the United Kingdom are preventing our beef from getting in, that is what gets us quite upset. That is the reality. This has been a problem going back for a very long time, and I would point out that we have had Liberal governments for over 10 years that have failed to address this issue, even though they have had multiple opportunities to address these issues. Every time there is a change in the relationship, there are opportunities to say that, by the way, this beef issue or this pork issue continues to be a challenge for Canadian producers. We say that we have this free trade agreement with the U.K., yet the U.K. is using other mechanisms to block our beef and our pork from getting in. Softwood lumber is a different story. We are being out-competed by the Scandinavian countries to get our lumber into the U.K. That is kind of understandable. It is not that they are blocking our lumber from getting in there. It is just that the Scandinavian countries overproduce for their own countries. They are much closer to the U.K., so shipping costs are less. All of that kind of makes sense. We have this free trade deal, and I think there are some tweaks that the Canadian government could do. Building code changes in the U.K. would allow for our style of dimensional lumber to get into the U.K. a little more easily, and there are a number of these things that the government could be working on to ensure that Canadian lumber can get in there. On the beef side of things, there are blatant regulations that the U.K. has put in place that specifically block our beef and pork from getting in. This is a major frustration. We hear from the Liberal government all the time that it is a new government and has a new Prime Minister. The Liberals are not wrong in saying they have a new Prime Minister who has a great relationship with the U.K. He was the governor of the central bank in the U.K. Certainly, he would have some contacts over there. It feels to me like this beef problem that we are having and this pork problem that we are having with the U.K. would just need a text message or a phone call for a guy who has a contact list like the Prime Minister does, who has been the Governor of the Bank of England. Certainly he would be able to sort this out in about five minutes. I have pointed out the multiple opportunities along the way where we have had opportunities to change this. To be fair, that was under a previous prime minister, who may not have understood pork or beef production, who liked his fancy socks and things like that. Today, we have a Prime Minister who is very integrated with the U.K., who knows a lot of people over there, who carries a passport from that side of the ocean and who calls himself a European. Certainly, if there was a Prime Minister of Canada who could get this done, it would be the current Prime Minister. It is a total failure. Today, we are being asked to accept the U.K. and Northern Ireland into the trans-Pacific partnership, which is something that we support, but this would have been another opportunity to fix some of the frustrations that we have. We hear over and over again about concerns about unity in this country and frustrations from, particularly, Alberta, that Ottawa never listens to what their concerns are. Here again, we have another one. Alberta beef is the best beef in the world. Alberta produces a lot of beef for this country. Beef in Canada and Alberta beef are quite synonymous. Again, here we have one of the sticking points, one of the reasons that folks in Alberta get frustrated with the Ottawa government, which is that when the priorities of central Canada are a concern, if there is a risk to jobs in central Canada, the Liberal government bends over backwards and burns down the phone lines to get a resolution to these things. When it comes to western Canada's concerns, to get a pipeline to the east coast or to fix some of the trade friction around beef products or other agricultural products, canola exports and all these kinds of things, suddenly the government seems to say that there is nothing it can do about it. It seems to sit on its hands or just to completely forget about it. Maybe that is the case. Maybe, when the Prime Minister is going over to England, he just fails to remember that there is the beef problem, which is an interesting thing, because he also says to us all the time that he is an Alberta boy. Alberta and Alberta beef are quite synonymous. One would think that, coming from Alberta, he would remember to bring up beef. Those are some of the major frustrations with the Liberal government that we have around a free trade agreement with the U.K. I look forward to the U.K.'s accession and the agreement being brought in. I know that there are mechanisms within the bill for the resolution of some of these issues. I hope that the government is prepared and that, the moment the U.K. is recognized in the trans-Pacific partnership, we will start using some of these mechanisms for these dispute resolutions, so that we can get reciprocal agreements on beef and pork across the country. I also hope that we can sort out some of the U.K. citizens' pensions here in Canada. This is another thing that was brought up. I know that many of my colleagues have brought that up. I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned it for the number of constituents in my riding who are facing this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what to say. I do not think the member even listened to my speech. I made the exact opposite case. I said there are sentiments that Ottawa does not listen to Alberta. Once again, this here is an example. When trying to get our beef into the U.K., we see the dissimilar rules around beef coming into Canada or beef going to the U.K. They are different. Again, it does not feel like the government is listening to Alberta.

Mr. Speaker, I love the topic of free trade. Canada's Conservatives are the party of free trade, and we have been advocating desperately for free trade between the provinces. We have been calling on the federal government to stand on the provinces a little bit to ensure that the barriers between provinces are also eliminated. While we are excited to be assenting to the free trade agreement with the U.K., we also call on the government to eliminate free trade barriers within Canada.

Mr. Speaker, we see that the Liberals would set up another bureaucracy, the board of which they would then stack with their friends. Where have we seen this before? We saw this with the green slush fund. I know that the member was here before, when this broke, when directors of the board of the green slush fund were handing their own companies money. There were over 180 conflicts of interest in that decision-making. Does the member not see that this would also be a place where the Liberals would be able to enrich their friends?

Madam Speaker, our motion today is about people whose asylum claims have been rejected. I think the member would have to acknowledge that the government recognizes that this is a problem, because it has put the copay mechanism in place. We are talking specifically about those who have had their request rejected. Would the member not acknowledge that the government's copay plan acknowledges that this is indeed a problem?

Mr. Speaker, our motion today calls on the federal government to review the federal benefits that have been given to asylum claimants, in order to find some savings for the taxpayer; to restrict benefits being given to asylum claimants who have had their asylum claims rejected; and to provide transparency on federal spending on this whole thing. We have put in Order Paper questions and found that in 2020 alone, there were 86,000 rejected claimants. These people have had their application to be a refugee in Canada rejected, yet in some cases they have spent up to four years in Canada after that rejection, getting premium health care services that even Canadians are not eligible for. What does the member have to say about that?

Mr. Speaker, we put forward this motion to close a billion-dollar loophole in our health care system and to restore order to our broken immigration system. Our motion is about fairness and protecting people who need emergency care. It would stop the government from giving top-tier health care programs to non-citizens who have had rejected refugee claims, while six million Canadians cannot even find their own personal doctor. I am just wondering if my hon. colleague has some more comments about that.

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to present a petition today on behalf of Canadians from across the country who are concerned about human rights protections in India. The petitioners are stating that according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, various actors are supporting and enforcing sectarian policies to establish India as a Hindu state, and they are concerned about the treatment of Christians in India. They are concerned about the targeting of churches, attacks on church workers and the threatening and humiliation of congregations. Petitioners are also concerned about the crimes against the Dalit groups, including Dalit women and girls. They say that crimes are increasing in that respect. They are also concerned about the treatment of Indian Muslims and say that they are at risk of genocide, assault and sexual violence. The petitioners are asking the government to ensure that all trade deals with India are premised on mandatory human rights provisions, that extremists are sanctioned and that the government promotes a respectful human rights dialogue between Canada and India.

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could comment a little more on this adding of bureaucracy. We already have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we have the Canada Lands Company, and we have the first-time homebuyers' programs. We have a number of federal government programs in place already. What we said during the election was that it was oftentimes municipalities that were standing in the way. I am wondering if the member has heard anything from the government on what it is going to do to incentivize municipalities to get out of the way so we can build more homes in this country.