Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. The first petition is on behalf of Canadians from across Canada who are concerned about the Liberal Party's platform promise to revoke charitable status for pro-life organizations such as pregnancy crisis centres. They note that the Liberal government tried this once before with the Canada summer jobs grant program. They aim to raise awareness an…
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With regard to Canada’s participation in Interpol’s notice system since November 4, 2015: how many green notices were issued by Canada, broken down by (i) year, (ii) type of criminal activity referred to, (iii) the country to which the notice was issued?
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Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present today. The first petition is in support of Bill S-223. The folks who have signed this petition, who are from across Canada, are concerned about international forced organ harvesting that happens around the world. The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to ensure that Canadians cannot go abroad to get organs that have been forced …
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is from folks from across Canada who are concerned about the ease of access for young people to sexually explicit material. There is significant concern that sexually explicit material is being targeted toward children, giving porn companies full access to children. The petitioners are calling on the government to ensure that sexually explicit material for commercial…
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is in a similar vein. Petitioners from across Canada are calling on the Government of Canada to eradicate the use of forced organ harvesting against practitioners of Falun Gong. There is an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 transplants that have happened in Chinese hospitals since 2000, and hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered for their organs over the l…
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition comes from Canadians from across Canada who would like a review conducted by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which found no information regarding the transmission of COVID on airplanes. They also note that WestJet's chief medical officer, Tammy McKnight, noted that there were no known cases on board Canadian aircraft. They note as well that an Intern…
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition comes from Canadians from across Canada who are concerned about the health and safety of firearms owners and users in this country. Highly damaging noise levels have repeatedly reached the ears of firearms users despite traditional hearing protections. Section 7 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes an individual's right to health and safety. The use of a…
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Mr. Speaker, today, several petitions were presented on combatting forced organ harvesting around the world. Does the hon. member have any thoughts or opinions about the passage of Bill S-223 through the House?
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member across the way for his work on the Subcommittee on International Human Rights and for his work in passing the report through this place, calling for the government to recognize the genocide that is happening there. I note that this member is very active on it, but my question for him is this. If we continue to wait for the government to take action on i…
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Madam Speaker, the final petition today is from the folks from Fox Creek and Swan Hills. These are two towns in northern Alberta that are just below the northern living allowance cut-off. They are within 15 miles of that line, yet they are some of the most remote communities in northern Alberta. They are calling on the government to extend the intermediate prescribed zone in Alberta down to their …
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from across the country who are looking for age verification software. The petitioners are concerned about vulnerable Canadians who are not adequately protected on social media platforms and online platforms from potential exploitation. The petitioners note that age verification can determine the age and identity of users and prevent exploitation.…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I want to present is from Canadians across Canada who are concerned about the Liberal Party of Canada's election promise to revoke charitable status from pro-life organizations such as pregnancy crisis centres, which counsel young women and men and save countless lives every year. Revoking the charitable status of pro-life organizations is the first step to the pol…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I want to present is from Canadians from across the country who are in support of Bill S-211, the supply chain reporting bill. They state that modern slavery is deeply embedded within our Canadian economic supply chains. Approximately 152 million children are in child labour and 20 million adults are in forced labour. Approximately 20 billion dollars' worth of good…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from coast to coast who are concerned about the government's overreach during the times of COVID. They are asking for an end to all COVID-19 mandates, for everyone who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 mandates to be reinstated in their jobs and a return to prepandemic life.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member for Timmins—James Bay listened to my speech on Bill S-5 from the other day. I talked about how the ozone layer was fixed, how the acid rain stuff was fixed and how the automotive industry had really contributed to that. I am concerned about this bill. The right to a clean environment is like boiling the ocean. It is not very specific. I wonder if he has comments a…
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Madam Speaker, I know that the forced organ harvesting that is happening in these communities is something the member has been raising awareness about for as long as I have known him. I am just wondering if he can outline a little the situation around the forced organ harvesting that is happening in northern China and just how the airports are participating in that.
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Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present today. The first petition I want to present is from people across Canada in support of Bill S-223, a bill that seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. This bill has been before this place for over 15 years, and the petitioners are urging the Parliament of Canada to move quickly on proposed legislation so as to amend the Crimin…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for highlighting the work I do in combatting human trafficking both here in Canada and around the world. Human trafficking for the Uighur population mostly looks like forced labour. It is a big challenge for Canada to identify who is being trafficked and forced into labour in some instances. In some places, it is not at all. In some instances, people who have worked…
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Oh boy, do I ever, Mr. Speaker. I think I would need a whole other speech just to address that. What I would point out is that there is currently a bill in front of the foreign affairs committee, Bill S-211, that deals with supply chain reporting. It deals with big companies that operate in the west or in Canada. In particular, they would have to do a report on the impacts of their companies on hu…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the basic idea of human rights. What are human rights? Do all human beings get human rights? Those are my questions. For me, human rights come to us because we are created in the image of God. Therefore, all of humanity is equal and worthy of dignity and respect. Particularly when it comes to children, that is definitely the case. Regardless, innocent human life s…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise to speak to this motion. Way back in the day, in 2015, just after I was elected, I was invited to a Christian embassy Christmas dinner and was seated at a table with a gentleman named David Kilgour. David Kilgour was a former member of Parliament when I met him, and he had represented a riding in Alberta. Interestingly, he had been a member of the …
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Madam Speaker, here we are, once again seeing these trade-offs that we have to make. We want to ensure that we have a healthy environment, but we also want to ensure that we have a healthy economy. In some cases, allowing consumers to make their own decisions on a lot of these things would ensure that we can get to where we need to be on many of these things. We have to take Canadians along on the…
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Yes, Madam Speaker, again, I was pointing out that perhaps we should tackle some of these issues more in relation to specific issues. I mentioned reproductive toxicity. That is a noble cause to tackle, and I would like to see us tackle it. If there are environmental impacts that are causing that, let us get to the bottom of it. If it is the BPA in our plastics, let us prove that. Let us work on it…
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Madam Speaker, that was precisely my point around the banning of plastic bags. We make that trade-off between having plastic bags not end up in trees, but we then have greater CO2 emissions. That is the trade-off we are making, and that was my whole point. We have to see these things as trade-offs. In the same way, when we were fighting the pandemic, we saw the trade-off between fighting the pande…
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Madam Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to speak to Bill S-5. This is a bill coming out of the Senate, but it is a government bill nonetheless, and it contains some amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. I would like to talk a little about the history of environmental protection and some of the good work governments have done over the years in environmental protection. Membe…
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Madam Speaker, I have a question for the member opposite about this right to a clean environment. Most of the rights that we have in Canada are what are deemed to be negative rights, to be free from something. This is more of a positive right. How do you see that working out over time as the government has not really fleshed this out and will leave it to regulation? What is your thinking on where …
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Madam Speaker, my second petition is from people across this country who are calling on the government to pass Bill S-210. The petitioners are concerned about how easy it is for young people to gain access to sexually explicit material online, including violent and degrading sexually explicit material. They comment on how this is an important public health and public safety concern. They note that…
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Madam Speaker, Canadians who signed this petition are concerned about legislation related to a universal basic income. I have received countless messages from my constituents on this. Petitioners are calling on the government to ensure that paycheques can continue to feed families. They are concerned that billions of dollars have been poured into our economy and about the rising costs of everythin…
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Madam Speaker, in some ways I was trying to outline the difference between Conservatives and progressives, which is that progressives tend to fall on the side of solutions, whereas we tend to fall on the side of trade-offs. There are many examples of how that rolls out, whether they be how we deal with crime, how we deal with the environment or how we deal with taxation.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for that comment, because I had that written down as another thing to talk about. Not only did members not support our colleague's bill, but one of the very first actions the Liberal government took back in 2015 was to approve the dumping of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence Seaway. That seemed to be something counterintuitive. The government that seems t…
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Madam Speaker, we do have concerns about the bill. I imagine the bill will pass and go to committee, so we will look forward to working with the government to ensure our concerns are alleviated. We would love to be able to support the bill.
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Madam Speaker, yes, I agree with the hon. member that I do not think we can trust the government to get it right. I know the Liberal members were hopeful. I would tell them to make a definition of what they deem to be toxic and maybe put out a schedule of toxins. That would have been nice to see. They could have defined the “right to a clean environment” and put that in the bill. Then we could be …
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Madam Speaker, just to dispute the facts, Alberta Health Services has a dental program for those in financial need. I do not know what else the member is referring to. It is available for everybody who needs dental care in Alberta. While I am talking about folks in Alberta, what they really need is the economy to be thriving. What they need is pipelines to be built so that we all have good jobs an…
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Madam Speaker, one of the interesting things here is that there are many things I think the government can and needs to do, without spending money, to encourage the building of houses. I do not have a really clear grasp on that, but I would say that when it comes to the border crossing at Roxham Road, to go to an example I know a bit more about, the Liberals have always accused the Conservatives o…
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Madam Speaker, I want to inform the hon. member, who is not from Alberta, which I will forgive him for, that we have a great system for ensuring that everybody who needs dental care gets dental care. I think that is a fact across the country. Many provinces have in place a system to ensure that the people who need dental care get dental care. That is a fact. If there is concern around the funding …
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Madam Speaker, we are broke. That is the state of this country. We are $1.3 trillion in debt and we are having trouble keeping the lights on, so to speak. Now is not the time for expensive new government programs, particularly when we have a government that is negligent on all of the other things that it is in charge of. I do not have to point very far. Have members had constituents trying to get …
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Madam Speaker, I am just wondering, as the member said that he put aside his partisanship. I would argue that perhaps he is trying to look for relevance at this time. At the top of his speech he was talking about how this is an NDP initiative. This is definitely a government bill, so I am wondering, as the NDP seeks relevance in this place, what its next initiative will be.
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Mr. Speaker, the new Conservative leader will put the people first: their paycheques, their savings, their house and their country. He will put farm families first, which have been busy harvesting in the fields. Rain or shine, hail or snow, these folks measure their time in acres and not hours. Farming is not a job; it is a way of life, it is a heritage, it is a calling. From before the sun gets u…
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Mr. Speaker, my aunt was actually one of the residents of Bethesda, so he may have run into her. She passed away a number of years back, but it was interesting to hear that in his speech. One of the big concerns I have and that I hear from the disability community is around access to MAID and approval for MAID. Over and over we are hearing of people who are in distress, but not necessarily termina…
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Madam Speaker, once again I want to mention to the hon. member that similar to Quebec, Alberta has a dental care program for children across the province. Again, as we have been pointing out, this is true across the country. One thing I would note, as I disagree with the member's assessment of the way things are, is that Alberta pays an exorbitant amount into the equalization program. Quebec is ge…
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Madam Speaker, I share with the member the frustration over how the government seems to think this place is a complete afterthought and how debate is not needed. As we have seen over and over again, when the government brings things forward, we have concerns about them. We have said they are not going to work and are not going to do what it intends them to do. We have ideas for improvement, and th…
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Mr. Speaker, I have a petition in support of Bill C-230. The petitioners, who come from across Canada, are concerned about doctors and health care professionals who might be coerced into engaging or supporting euthanasia against their conscience. They want these conscience rights and second options to be protected. The petitioners note that doctors deserve freedom of conscience and that the Canadi…
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Madam Speaker, next I am presenting a petition on behalf of my constituents living in Fox Creek and Swan Hills, two rural and remote communities in northern Alberta. They are calling for the extension of the intermediate prescribed zone for the northern living allowance to be used for their communities. Currently there is an arbitrary line that runs across northern Alberta, from which they are 15 …
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Madam Speaker, finally, I want to present a petition on behalf of Canadians who are concerned that certain charities would be targeted based on their views. The petitioners call on MPs to ensure that charities that hold views that differ from the government's views are not harassed, or criminalized or have their charitable status removed. They call on the government to not enforce the judgment tha…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to correct the record a bit. The Conservative Party has been opposed to the corporate welfare that the Liberal government has been handing out for a very long time. Why does the member's party continue to support the government when the member is obviously very opposed to what the government is up to?
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Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member talk about regulatory reform and things like that. One of the things that is costing the economy dramatically is the tripling of the carbon tax. I wonder if the hon. member would say that perhaps now is not the time to increase the carbon tax, never mind triple it.
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Madam Speaker, it is my honour to present a number of petitions today. In the first petition, petitioners are concerned about how easy it is for young people to access sexually explicit material online, including violent and degrading explicit material. They note that this is a public health and public safety concern. The petitioners note that a significant portion of commercially accessed sexuall…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition comes from people across the country concerned about legislation related to universal basic income. I have received countless messages from across the country about this. The petitioners note that people who would get paycheques regardless of whether they helped or worked in their communities would cost our economy billions of dollars. They state that universal inc…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from across the country who are supporting Bill S-211. They state that modern slavery has deepened in the last two years. They are looking for the Canadian government to pass a bill that would ensure Canadian businesses are not participating in child forced labour. Approximately 50 million people around the world are currently stuck in forced labo…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians across the country who want an end to the ArriveCAN app, vaccine mandates and all COVID-19 mandates. Currently, the government has only suspended some of these mandates. They are looking forward to having all these mandates removed. The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to finally and permanently end all federally regulated regulations …
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