Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, there are many things. He mentioned the environment and that is a key one. We need to be able to work together. We need to be able to recognize our unique situation with agriculture being so key and our ability to store so much carbon in the ground. Agriculture needs to be recognized with the federal government. That is something we need to work on. Also on the agriculture file, we ne…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, of course, rail is, as I mentioned, very critical to many of the things we do in our province. Our province is a resource-based province, whether we are talking about oil, minerals, potash or agriculture. All of these things require various forms of transport. The best way to transport oil is, of course, through a pipeline if we can. We would love to have pipelines built to allow us t…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure, as always, to speak to this important motion today, and I am proud to be speaking on behalf of Saskatoon West. Saskatoon is the economic engine of Saskatchewan. For example, in January, there were 6,000 jobs in Saskatchewan and 4,000 of those were created in Saskatoon. My riding is west of the river in Saskatoon and includes the downtown commercial district with all…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, my heart was saddened to hear the news of four people from India losing their lives last month after becoming lost in -35°C weather during a blizzard. This is a tragedy made worse by the news that it was allegedly human traffickers who put these people in harm’s way. Human trafficking causes real harm. No matter what someone may say, it is never safe to cross the border illegally. Hum…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am not saying that we should not follow public health measures, but I am giving a perspective from Saskatchewan. We have taken a bit of a different approach. We have had fewer lockdowns and fewer restrictions, and the results have been similar, so there are ways that we could manage through this by using our creativity. We can do this.
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to get up and speak in the House on behalf of the constituents of Saskatoon West. Nearly six months ago we had an election call, and the Liberal Party leader said that this was the most important election since World War II. It has taken him months to swear in his cabinet and recall Parliament. It has been 69 days since the throne speech, and MPs are still her…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, the protests we saw in Toronto were about denouncing Israel, and unfortunately we never saw anything about that on the news. Apparently that is not important to our media. The real question is, will this end? Is it possible to make this end? I would submit that large problems require creative solutions. If we do nothing, then the member is exactly right: This will never end. We will r…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that our health care workers and our health care providers in this country deserve medals of honour. They have been working extremely hard. I think all of us in this House would salute them. What it is really showing is that we have a deficiency in health care in our country. Our budgets need to get higher in this area, because we do not have enough resources. Our…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the impact of inflation on the Market Basket Measure (MBM) and the poverty line: (a) what is the current, or latest, MBM for the reference family and various poverty lines in each of the MBM geographic areas in Saskatchewan; (b) what was the 2018-base MBM for the reference family and various poverty lines in each geographic area in (a); (c) what percentage of individuals living in e…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, broken down by province and territory, and fiscal years from 2018 to present: (a) how many Labour Market Impact Assessments has Employment and Social Development Canada (i) undertaken, (ii) completed; (b) what was the average processing time for the applications in (a); (c) how many jobs has the program filled within the heavy trucking sector b…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, broken down by province and territory, and fiscal years from 2018 to present: (a) how many work permits have been processed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and are expected to be processed for 2021-22; (b) of the permits in (a), how many of those migrants have come to Canada to fill jobs; (c) what employment sectors have those …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I also have the honour to rise today and present a petition in support of Bill S-223. The petitioners are excited about this bill because they want to see forced organ harvesting and trafficking stopped. This bill would make it a criminal offence to do that. It has passed the Senate unanimously three times before, and this bill has been put forward for over 13 years. The petitioners…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we have talked a lot about increasing the rental supply. As I said before, we need to look at all the different ways of increasing that supply, whether it is through the private sector, the public sector or the not-for-profit sector. All of these areas can contribute to the solution. The sad part is that 50% of young people today have completely given up on the hope of even owning a…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, today I will be speaking to the housing affordability crisis in Saskatoon and to our motion, which attempts to get something done on housing, compared with six years of Liberal inaction. This is my first speech in the 44th Parliament, and I would like to give some quick thanks. I want to thank the residents of Saskatoon West for choosing me to represent them here in Ottawa. It is my…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, land is one way to look at this, but the way we are looking at it is actually through buildings. Buildings are what our concern is. There are ways to take underused buildings and convert them to residential areas. They are often in places where we can use them in the city and that are close to transit. We know that the government has underutilized resources, underutilized buildings,…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I think that we need to look at all options for investing into housing. Of course, the government can invest in housing, but we also need to look at having the private sector and other organizations invest in housing. There are many charitable organizations that want to do this work. There are a lot of options. This is a case where, as the member pointed out, we need 1.8 million new…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, on August 15, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, endangering thousands of Afghans who worked and fought beside Canadian Forces. It is the same Taliban that has hunted and killed our soldiers over the past 20 years. The government has committed to taking in 40,000 Afghans but to date has taken less than 10% of that number. In the meantime, another 10,000 Afghans are frantically wondering…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, first, I would like to thank the wonderful people of Saskatoon West for once again putting their trust in me to represent them here in Ottawa. Many of those people, by the way, are seniors, and they have spoken to me many times about the difficulties they are facing. Of course, most seniors live on a fixed income, and the government has made it very difficult for them. Inflation is …
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