Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, let me take members back in time a few years. When the Liberals introduced Bill C-69, they told us that the new process would make project reviews more efficient, predictable and timely. Now, eight years later, that sales pitch has not aged well at all. Now we have Bill C-39, and the government's own explanation says its approval system suffers from lengthy timelines that delay projects and create uncertainty for investors. That is quite an admission. What matters now is whether Bill C-39 would actually fix them. This, of course, is after the Liberals brought in Bill C-5, which was going to bring in sweeping legislative changes to allegedly build at speeds not seen in generations. We now have a Major Projects Office that has issued no new permits, built no new projects and created no new jobs other than government jobs, of course, over the past 18 months. In terms of Bill C-39, the first thing we should understand is the government's promise of a one-year federal review. That sounds simple, but it is not. The clock would not start when a company first brings forward a project. There could first be up to six months of planning. Then, the company would normally have up to a year to provide the studies and information government requires, and even that period could be extended. Only after government officials are satisfied that they have the information they need would the main review clock start. From there, the assessment report would generally be supposed to be completed within 300 days, followed by up to another 65 days for the final decision. Therefore, when Canadians hear “one-year approval”, they should not assume that means one year from the day a project enters the federal system to the day it actually gets an answer. A company considering a $10-billion mine wants to know something simpler: How long will it take from entering the process until it has enough certainty to put billions of dollars on the line? I will be splitting my time with the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. What happens if the government misses its own deadline? The project would not be automatically approved and the government could simply keep reviewing it. The only penalty for the government's delaying all this is that the minister would have to explain why the deadline was missed, and publish another proposed timeline. If the purpose of a deadline is certainty, how much certainty would it really provide if missing it simply produces some bureaucratic gobbledygook and yet another deadline further down the road? The second major change would be what the government calls “one project, one decision”. Today a company could spend years completing an impact assessment and then discover it still needs another round of federal permits before construction can begin. Bill C-39 would allow the environment minister to issue certain permits at the same time as the final impact assessment decision. For a mine that needs Fisheries Act, Canadian Navigable Waters Act or Species at Risk Act approvals, that could remove some back-to-back processes, but it would not initially include every federal permit. That leaves me with questions. Which permits are actually delaying projects today? How many would be covered properly by the bill? Which important ones would still remain outside it? If a company gets its impact assessment decision but still waits months for another approval, would we have achieved one project, one decision? The bill also would allow certain construction to start before the final decision where doing so is in the “public interest”. Anyone who has built something in rural Canada understands why that can matter: If they miss a construction season, a project could lose many months. If construction could happen while the rest of the assessment continues, time could be saved, but companies need to know early what qualifies. The nuclear changes would be more substantial. For nuclear projects, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would become the lead assessment body. Environmental review, public participation and indigenous consultation would remain. What would change is who would run that process. Instead of having the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada run one process while the nuclear regulator runs another, Bill C-39 would put the CNSC in the driver's seat, and the minister would no longer be able to send the project into another separate federal review. Instead, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would run the assessment, and once the project is approved, the conditions imposed during that review could simply become part of the nuclear licence the company must follow. In other words, rather than creating one set of conditions through the environmental review and another through the licensing, the bill would try to bring the two processes together. That could reduce duplication, but does the CNSC have enough people and expertise for this new and expanded role? Would projects get decisions faster, or would the bureaucracy simply look cleaner on an organizational charge? Changes for the Canadian Energy Regulator raise similar questions. Bill C-39 would make the CER the sole assessor for pipelines, designated power lines and offshore renewable energy projects. For pipelines, the bill creates two tracks based on how much entirely new corridor has to be built. If a pipeline requires less than 300 kilometres of new right-of-way, the CER would generally make the final decision itself. Today, the regulator can spend up to 450 days reviewing a major pipeline and making a recommendation, only for the file to then go to cabinet for a final decision. For projects below the new threshold, that extra cabinet step would generally disappear, but for pipelines requiring 300 kilometres or more of new corridor, cabinet would still need to make the final call. The CER would have up to 180 days to complete its review and recommendation, and then cabinet would have another 60 days to decide, followed by another 125 days for the CER to issue the final certificate and conditions. Those are significant changes, but where did these numbers come from? Why is it 300 kilometres? Why should a pipeline requiring 290 kilometres of new corridor be decided by the CER, while one requiring 310 kilometres still has to go through a cabinet approval process? Is that the threshold based on environmental risk or project complexity, or is it simply where the government just decided to draw the line? The same question applies to the timelines. Why is it 180 days? Why is it 60? Why is it another 125? Has the CER confirmed that applications can realistically be handled within those periods without stopping the clock more often? The 300-kilometre threshold is also not in reference to the total length of the pipeline. Let us imagine a 500-kilometre pipeline where 350 kilometres follows an existing corridor. If only 150 kilometres requires an entirely new right-of-way, the project would fall below the threshold, even though the pipeline itself is 500 kilometres long. The bill is measuring how much new ground the project must break, not simply how long the pipeline is. Then we get to the fine print. These clocks, they are not absolute. Parts of the process can still be excluded. Additional time can, and I fear most likely will, be added. If the CER or government misses deadlines, the project is not automatically approved. We need to determine whether these timelines will shorten the approval process or whether the clock will simply stop when the difficult parts begin for government. Another idea that deserves attention is the creation of the regions of national interest. Cabinet could designate an entire region and identify categories of projects that may qualify within it. This could matter in an area chock full of critical minerals or a major energy corridor. If government has already completed a regional assessment of water, wildlife and cumulative effects, later project reviews should not have to start from zero. This would not create an immediate fast track. Before a region can get such special treatment, the government would first have to complete a broader regional assessment. If the bill were to come into force, if it were to pass, the list of regions that qualify would be empty. The faster process would only become available later, after government has done the groundwork and designated a region. Who knows how long that will take, given the Liberal government's track record. Once again, implementation will determine whether this changes anything. After years of being told that the old system was efficient and predictable, we should not just accept that a new set of promises from the Liberal government is going to be the solution. We need answers because we cannot afford to get this wrong. Our country, our future and our prosperous nation are simply too important. Bill C-39 should be judged by a simple standard: Can a company with a project get a clear answer in a reasonable amount of time and then get to work? That is the test. Before Parliament passes this bill, we should be sure this legislation will pass that test.

Mr. Speaker, the government is correctly identifying the problems after we point them out. They are self-imposed problems, but the problem with the government is that all it ever sees is a nail to hit, and it always seems to hit it with a new bureaucracy. As my colleague outlined, whether it be housing, energy or anything else, all the government tries to do is build new government bureaucracies. It turns out, given that housing starts are down and that our oil and gas sector is struggling under this regime, it is time for a change. It is time for a Conservative economic agenda to get this country going.

Mr. Speaker, for millions of families, payday is no longer a chance to get ahead. It is simply the day to hopefully pay the bills. The National Payroll Institute says that more than half of working Canadians are spending every dollar they take home, leaving absolutely nothing to save, and only 18% say that their pay is keeping up with the cost of living. The Liberals seem to insist that their plan is working, but they are so clearly out of touch, and Canadians are out of money. Families are working harder and harder and falling further and further behind. When will the Liberals stop the pain and embrace our Conservative economic plan so that Canadians can afford to live again?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise for the first time in this fall session. I would like to talk about what it means to be an average Canadian. We all know there is a moment that has become so familiar for so many Canadians. Someone pulls up to a gas station, they get out of their car, they put the nozzle in their tank and they just stand there watching those two numbers race each other. One number shows how many litres they are getting, and the other shows how much money is disappearing out of their bank account. For a lot of families, there used to be a point where filling up was almost an afterthought. If someone needed gas, they stopped and got gas, but today, people notice every single dollar. There are two ways to measure the cost of living. The government looks at it like a speedometer, but families live with the odometer. Let me explain that. The speedometer tells us how fast prices are rising today. That is the inflation rate. The odometer tells us how far prices have travelled from where they started, and that is the number that Canadians cannot simply reset. We hear that inflation is now around 3%, and that sounds like good news. Slower inflation is certainly better than faster inflation, but Statistics Canada tells us that grocery prices are still 29% higher than they were five years ago. The speedometer has slowed down, but the odometer has in no way gone backward. That is what Canadians are feeling right now. We could put a hundred-dollar bill on someone's kitchen table and ask what that $100 bought for that family five years ago. We can then ask what that $100 would buy for them today. Nobody buys groceries with the consumer price index. They pay with real dollars, and those dollars simply do not stretch as far as they used to. That is the context in which we are debating Bill C-38 today. The regular federal excise tax is 10¢ a litre on gasoline and four cents on diesel. Under this legislation, those rates would remain at zero until January 31. However, then something curious would happen. On February 1, half of that tax would come back, and on April 1, the whole thing would come back. We are debating tax relief today, while the date for taking that relief away is already printed on the calendar. Our Conservative caucus has indicated that we will support keeping this relief in place, but this debate did not begin just this week. In April, Conservatives brought a motion before the House calling for the federal fuel excise tax to be removed for the rest of 2026, along with broader relief from federal costs on gasoline and diesel. That motion was unfortunately defeated, 192 votes to 134 votes. The issue was again raised in May. Members can disagree about how far relief should go or how long it should last, but the record is there. I think there is something else we should understand about fuel, particularly for those of us who represent rural Canada. There is a tax that people pay that never appears on any government form. It is the cost of distance. If somebody lives in a major city, there may be days where driving is simply an optional activity. That is not the reality for folks living in rural Canada. There is no subway running past the farmyard. The specialist for medical appointments is probably an hour or more away. The hockey rink one plays at is in the next town, and the away games are even farther, in the town beyond that. The hardware store might be 30 miles down the highway, and the part needed to get a combine moving again is most likely farther than that. There may as well be a line in the family budget called “the driving tax”. It is not because the government literally charges it, but because geography does. Every appointment takes fuel. Every grocery trip takes fuel. Every trip to work takes fuel for the vast majority of the folks I represent. For many seniors, a car is not just a luxury; it is independence. It is church on Sunday. It is seeing their grandchildren on the weekend. A senior cannot move the hospital closer because gasoline got too expensive for them to go to their appointments. A farmer cannot move the field closer to their home farmyard. A trucker cannot make Winnipeg and Calgary neighbours all of a sudden. Distance does not negotiate with the household budget. We can also think about one litre of diesel put into a tractor in Manitoba, the tractor that helps produce the crop. Next, the combine is running at about $250 an hour during harvest just to get the crop off, then another litre goes into the truck to haul the crop once it is off. There is fuel used again to get it to the processor. A truck takes the finished product to the distribution centre, and then another vehicle eventually delivers it to a store. Much of that cost is actually borne and eaten by the farmers themselves, but the consumer is ultimately paying the rest of it when buying the finished product. That is what makes fuel different from so many other household expenses. The cost moves through the entirety of the economy. A contractor's truck carries tools to a job site. A delivery van carries somebody's order. A semi carries food right across this great nation. Fuel is buried inside the cost of moving virtually everything that we enjoy day to day. That does not mean that a 10¢ tax reduction magically cuts 10¢ off the price of bread. Of course it does not, but the cost of moving those goods adds up. Even the government's own announcement points specifically to trucking, agriculture, food, housing, construction and delivery businesses when explaining who would benefit from this tax relief. Earlier this year, the government conducted what was almost a real-world economic experiment. For years we had to hear the Liberals argue about whether taxes at the pump really made much difference at all. Then, in April, the excise tax came off, and according to the government's own figures, gasoline prices fell by roughly 11¢ a litre on the very first day: tax off, prices down. Nobody thinks that the Government of Canada controls the world's price of oil. It cannot control every refinery shutdown, war, or international disruption, but government does control the taxes that it adds on top of those prices, and Canadians can tell the difference. What worries me about the larger affordability debate is that we sometimes talk as though inflation's having slowed down has repaired the damage from the inflation that came before it. It has not. Inflation works a little bit like a ratchet. Prices can move up very quickly, and they rarely return all the way to the place where they began. We can think of an elevator as another example. Over several years, the cost of living has taken the elevator up. Now the government points out that the elevator is moving up a little bit more slowly, but the family standing several floors above where it started may be forgiven for not celebrating just yet. That is why the same things that Canadians complained about being expensive a few years ago are still expensive today: food, housing, repairs, travel, fuel and just about everything in our day-to-day lives. The crisis changes shape, but the accumulated bill remains, and that brings me back to the April 1 date day etched in the calendar by the government and feared by Canadians. There is something odd about telling people that relief is needed today, while at the same time scheduling the tax to return just a few months from now, April Fools, except it is not a joke for Canadians. That is essentially where this policy, as drafted, leaves the country. The relief does last a little bit longer, but then the meter begins running again. Meanwhile, the grocery bill does not have an expiry date, and neither does the mortgage. The farmer will not just get to suspend planting next spring until diesel becomes cheaper for them. The senior does not get to postpone a medical appointment until the price at the pump improves. Families have to live in the economy every single day. There is a broader principle here that we should all remember: When the cost of living becomes difficult, governments instinctively start looking for something new to create, such as a new program, a new benefit, a new application or a new bureaucracy to administer the new program that they dreamt up. Sometimes that may be necessary, but sometimes there is a much simpler question worth asking first: Could government not just take less? A dollar that never leaves someone's pocket does not require an application form from the government to get it back. It does not require some administrative department in Ottawa, and it does not require somebody to qualify. It is simply still their dollar, as it should be. Bill C-38 would provide temporary relief from one federal tax. The larger affordability debate is nowhere near finished, though, because Canadians do not experience the economy through a monthly Statistics Canada release. They experience it when they open their wallet. They experience it when they know that $100 simply buys less. They experience it when the drive to town costs that much more. They experience it when a litre of diesel works its way through a farm, a truck and eventually to their grocery store shelf. The speedometer may tell us inflation has slowed down, and that is a good thing, but families are still looking at the odometer, and they know exactly how far we have travelled.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians should be happy that we have His Majesty's loyal opposition to put forward good ideas that have been at times embraced by the government, such as the extension of the excise tax, or putting it on to begin with. I wish I had the Hansard record to count the number of times that the member defended the carbon tax as neutral for families and said that everyone was better off. He stands here and takes some sort of credit, like it was his idea. Give me a break.

Mr. Speaker, for all of us, one of the best and the worst parts of this job is hearing people's stories, because it is important that we know them, but sometimes they are very difficult to hear. I am sure we have all heard those seniors who say they are making $20,000, and we wonder how on earth they are living and how they are eating. We all go to grocery stores. We all try to drive to medical appointments, and there are things I outlined in my speech. It is heartbreaking to hear the challenges that these people are living with. We should be doing our level best, and this is one small thing. We need to control what we can control. We cannot control wars in the Middle East or the Strait of Hormuz being closed. We cannot control any of that. The only things that we can control are the taxes that we put upon Canadians and the way that we waste money here out of Ottawa. It is time that we do better for both, and lower taxes for Canadians so we can improve their quality of life.

Mr. Speaker, I support seniors living on fixed incomes, families and anybody who lives in my riding or across this country having the highest possible standard of life. We have vastly different views. As I outlined in my speech, the government sees any problem as an opportunity to create some big new bureaucracy, spend a whole bunch of money and then, when asked about the results, say, “We spent x amount of dollars”. People are struggling out there. Press releases saying they spent this much money do nothing to help feed Canadians, house them or keep them warm in the winter.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has said affordability is the best it has been in decades, but normal, hard-working, everyday Canadians know that is simply not true. Meat Loaf famously once sang Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, but, surely, three out of four is not good. That is certainly true when it comes to economic decline, but that is exactly what the Prime Minister has given us. He has given us three out of four quarters of negative economic growth, making us the only G20 nation in a recession. What is the Liberals' response? They are downplaying it as nothing more than just a technicality. Will the Prime Minister reverse his costly policies that caused this crisis so that Canadians can afford to live again?

Mr. Speaker, we have a new top export out of this country. It is announcements and MOUs. Not that long ago, Canadians used to dream of buying a home. Now, under the Liberal Prime Minister, many are starting GoFundMe pages just to pay for essential items for life. In the last five months, 15,000 Canadians had to ask strangers online for help to pay for basic things. Food banks are overwhelmed and families are one emergency away from begging people for help. If the Prime Minister thinks his plan is working, he is badly out of touch with those paying the price. Will he finally admit that his affordability plan has failed, or does he now think GoFundMe—

Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the minister was not here during the last Conservative government. There are members across the way who were here, and they may recall the outrage whenever the Harper government used time allocation. If we look at the number of sitting days the Liberal government has had in place since it got its majority, it is on a vastly higher pace in the use of time allocation. I would like to read a quote from the debate on Bill C‑38. It said that the government has consistently demonstrated a lack of respect for democracy and the parliamentary process when discussing the use of time allocation. Who said that? It was the member for Winnipeg North. I am wondering if the minister could explain to us how the glass house he lives in is different now than it was 12 years ago when the member for Winnipeg North was yelling about the same issue.

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech. She talked about unintended consequences a lot, which was a bit strange for somebody who, just months ago, told Canadians that it was the Liberals making her communities less safe and that it was their “bail not jail” policies and legislation that favoured criminals over victims. In fact, that member said that criminals are making out very well under the Liberals. She was right. These policies have not changed. The only thing that has changed is where she sits. She also said that MPs who cross the floor should go back to their constituents for a fresh mandate. If she truly believes the principles she spent years defending, including that Liberal soft-on-crime policies have made her community less safe, when is she going to go back to constituents and find out who they want to elect to represent them?

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals did not drive our economy into the ditch by accident. They took every wrong turn and ignored every warning sign, and now they want to blame everyone else. After more than a decade of inflationary spending, red tape and anti-development laws, Canada is now the only G20 country in a recession. Families are not reading this in an economics textbook. They are living it at the grocery store, the gas pump and the kitchen table. A new United Way survey found that 60% of Canadians are anxious about their personal finances and 38% are struggling with food insecurity, and one in five say that all the food in their home was gone with no money to buy more. That is not a talking point. That is an empty refrigerator. Last year, a record 2.2 million Canadians lined up at food banks in a single month. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister spent nearly $1 million on luxury catering over 14 trips, enough to feed a family for 55 years. The Liberals can blame the mud, the road or the weather, but everybody knows that they have been behind the wheel. Canadians deserve a government that stops—

Madam Speaker, when a truck is stuck in a ditch, there are two ways to make the problem worse. One is to keep flooring the gas while pretending that spinning the tires means we are getting somewhere. The other is to just simply blame the mud, the road and the person who told us to take the turn in the first place, but to never admit that the driver could be the problem. That is where Canada's economy is today. The government has been spinning the tires for years, throwing mud in every direction and telling everyone that if we wait just a little bit longer, the country is finally going to start pulling ahead. However, now we can see what is really happening: We are not moving ahead but are in fact falling behind. The motion before the House says what millions of families already know: Canada has been driven into the G20's only recession. Scotiabank and the Bank of Montreal have both downgraded growth expectations. The Parliamentary Budget Officer's latest report shows slowing growth, a weakening financial outlook and a bigger-than-promised deficit. Those words can sound very far removed from real life, but that is exactly where this bad news lands. It lands on the mortgage renewal, the grocery bill, the repair that cannot wait and the credit card bill that was supposed to be paid down but is, in fact, bigger than expected. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has now put numbers to what Canadians already feel. She projects real GDP growth of only 1.1% in 2026 and 1.6% in 2027. That is not an economy that is charging ahead. She also says that the deficit is expected to rise from $36.3 billion to $72 billion. That is not simply a rounding error. It is the fiscal equivalent of promising to back out of the driveway but ending up going through the garage door. The government did not miss its promise by just a little bit. It missed it by billions and billions of dollars. It told Canadians that spending was under control, but eventually the bills come due. The numbers are a lot harder to spin than the speeches the Liberals offer are. Canadians were promised one thing, but the numbers now show something completely different. As usual, Canadians are of course stuck with the invoice. Then there is the fiscal anchor that used to be a point of discussion. That is the government's own promise to keep the deficit from growing out of control. It is supposed to tell Canadians that someone around the cabinet table still knows when to stop borrowing, stop spending and stop pretending that the budget will balance itself. The PBO says that there is less than a 1% chance the government will meet that promise. That is not a fiscal anchor; that is a lottery ticket, at best. No person could walk into a bank with a 1% chance of making their household budget work and call that responsible. No small business owner could tell their employees that there is only a 1% chance that the paycheques will clear and call that a plan. A weak economy shows up long before anybody gives it a name. It shows up when the job sites get quiet, when the bay sits empty at the shop, when the truck stays parked in the yard and when a young worker who was supposed to start Monday is told he cannot because there is not enough work. That is what slow growth means when it reaches the real world: fewer hours, fewer raises, fewer orders and fewer chances for young people to get started in their career. The government wants us to believe that this was all just unavoidable. It says there have been global pressures. Of course there have been. Every G20 nation has faced interest rate hikes, supply chain challenges, inflation, war, energy shocks and global uncertainty. The difference is that Canada is now being described as the G20's only nation in a recession. When everyone faces the storm but only one boat starts taking on water, maybe it is time to see what the captain has been doing. A country does not get rich based on how much the government spends. A country gets richer when people can build, invest, produce, hire, export, take risks and succeed. It gets richer when a welder can leave the shop on Friday and start his own business on Monday, or when a mine with Canadian mineral workers can be approved before the opportunity moves somewhere else. We have all the ingredients of an incredibly prosperous country. We do not have a shortage of ability. We have a government that keeps turning that ability into delays, higher costs, and smaller paycheques for Canadians. Imagine someone who wants to build something in this country. Imagine a shop in a small town, a mine up north, a grain terminal, a processing plant, a power line or an energy project. They start with an idea, workers ready to go, suppliers lined up and a belief that Canada is still a place where real effort can become something real. These investors then meet the process that the government has built. First comes the permit delays, then some new rule and the consultation that leads to yet another consultation. Then the financing gets more expensive throughout the time that passes. Investors then ask why the same project could move so much faster somewhere else. After a while, the question is no longer whether the project makes sense; the question is how long people are willing to bleed money before they simply give up. That is why the government's own consultation paper on getting major projects built is so revealing. After years of Conservatives, provinces, workers, industry and investors warning that Canada had become too slow and too uncertain, the government is now admitting the same thing but in writing. Its own paper says major projects could “face a complicated and time-consuming” process. It points to duplication and poor coordination between departments. It says, “mines, ports, pipelines, nuclear facilities, and transportation infrastructure [are] often slow, expensive, and confusing.” It even admits that “it has often taken more than five years for a project to receive the federal decisions” needed before construction can even begin. Bill C-69 was passed in 2019. The Liberals sold it is a way to restore confidence, to protect the environment and to help good projects move forward. In reality, it became simply a symbol of delay and uncertainty. The Supreme Court later of course made clear that the problem was not only in the delays that it caused. The act went too far, by allowing the federal government to turn limited federal interests into a much broader review of projects that often mainly fell under provincial jurisdiction. The Liberals amended the act and then claimed that the problem was somehow fixed, yet here they are again admitting that major projects still face a process that is slow, expensive, confusing, poorly coordinated and too often takes longer than five years. The Prime Minister wants to sound like a man who can get Canada building again, but the system he is now allegedly trying to repair was built, defended and celebrated by his own Liberal Party. Canada does not need weaker environmental standards. It needs clear standards, real timelines, and decisions that actually get made. Money goes where it is welcome. Jobs go where projects can move forward. Opportunity goes where people are allowed to build things. If the government keeps making Canada slower, more expensive and more uncertain, it should not be shocked when investments start looking for a different address. What Conservatives are saying is not very complicated: Reverse the costly and inflationary decisions that helped put Canada in this position to begin with; restore discipline and federal spending; stop treating borrowed money as a substitute for private sector growth; make Canada a place where major projects can actually get approved and built again; lower the cost of work, investment, energy, transport and homebuilding; stop punishing the sectors that pay the bills; and focus on paycheques, production, homes, food, energy, exports and opportunity. Canada is not poor, Canada is not weak, and Canada is not doomed. The country has everything it needs to succeed, except a federal government willing to stop making excuses and stop making success harder. We could be a country to which investment comes because approvals are clear, taxes are competitive, energy is reliable, workers are respected and projects move forward. We could be a country where the next generation inherits more than debt and more than just excuses. It starts with admitting that the current approach has failed miserably. The government made the bills bigger, the economy weaker and the deficit worse, and now it wants us to be impressed that it found some gentler words for its own failure. Canadians deserve better than a government that asks them to settle for less. We were not handed a small country, a poor country or a country that is running out of promise. We were handed one of the greatest nations on earth, blessed with resources, talent, courage, and people who still believe tomorrow can be better than today. What we need now is a government with enough faith in Canadians to let them build, work, dream and prosper once again. It is time to stop spinning the wheels and calling that progress. It is time to change course.

Madam Speaker, Canadians are thriving, despite the government. The member talks about this being just a technical recession. Are collectors just technically calling, asking for their money that has been loaned out? Is a mom just technically skipping meals so that she can afford to feed her daughter? Are these just technicalities? No. The crisis facing this country has been clear for many years. The government not only caused it, but refuses to accept that it is to blame for it. It is time to change course and recognize when the government is spinning its wheels and failing Canadians. Life has not been good for everyone. It is time to accept that and change direction. We can and must do better for the people we are here to represent.

Madam Speaker, I want to believe the Liberals have that in them. The last 10 years have not shown me that they have an ability to accept things as they are. It is like they do not talk to people who live in the real world and see the cost pressures they are facing. One thing that really bothers me is that in government, just like in life, it is okay to sometimes say, “We were wrong. We messed up.” We do not have to continuously hide behind the fact that things are not going okay and try to blame everybody else. The government should take a bit of responsibility. The other day, I heard a minister try to blame Stephen Harper. It is 11 years later. It is time to accept that things have not been going well because of the policies and accept the ideas that are coming collaboratively from the Conservatives to try to move this country forward. Change the policies and change course so that we can all be better off.

Madam Speaker, Canada led the way with this idea that we could borrow our way to calling something wealth. The idea of a sovereign wealth fund is a good one, if we are a country that is in a position to create wealth and has executed on the idea of creating wealth. Instead, we decided to keep our oil and gas in the ground as much as possible over the last decade. The idea of investing in projects in Canada is a good one. Financing it entirely based on debt and calling that progress is just another example of how the government seems to refuse to accept that things have not been going well for Canadians and that its policies are to blame. We can and must do better.

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister said he was going to build at speeds not seen in a generation. He knows that Bill C-69 and other terrible Liberal environmental policies are still on the books, yet the Liberals are taking their sweet time to fix the mess that they themselves created, so now they are bogged down in endless consultations and more of the same old gabfest. The Prime Minister has been in power for more than a year, and he still has not fixed any laws that prevent major projects from moving forward. When will the Prime Minister do what is necessary to scrap the Liberals' antidevelopment laws so we can once again build big things in this country?

Madam Speaker, our businesses thrive despite Liberal taxes and over-regulation. The Liberals know exactly why we cannot build big things in this country. They critiqued themselves in their own discussion document, finally admitting the truth. It states, “federal laws have rules that can make regulatory processes slow”. Simply put, it is the Liberals' own antidevelopment laws that are the problem. It is clearer than ever that this is all just a Liberal illusion. The Prime Minister wants to keep our oil and gas in the ground just as much as Justin Trudeau did. Does the Prime Minister have the courage to fix the mess the Liberals have created, or does he just hope that empty promises will get things built again?

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the legislation from my Conservative colleague from Manitoba, Bill C-263, the silver alert national framework act. I want everyone to imagine a cold winter evening in rural Manitoba. The sun has gone down in early evening yet again, and somewhere between the house and the road, or between a personal care home and the street, a vulnerable senior has gone missing. Maybe it is the father who has farmed the same land for 50 years, or maybe it is the grandmother who has raised children, helped raise grandchildren, volunteers at the church and still knows the names of half the people in town. One day, because of dementia or another vulnerability, that person walks out the door and does not come home when expected. For the family, the world changes in an instant. The shoes are gone, and the door is unlocked. Someone checks the garage, and someone checks the street. Someone drives the road that they know someone would take into town. Someone phones the RCMP. Neighbours start looking. People shine headlights into ditches, down lanes and around farmyards. In that moment, time is not a number; it is the space between what can still be done and what may never be undone. Hours matter. Minutes matter. That is why this bill matters so much. Bill C-263 would require the federal government to develop a national framework to support a coordinated silver alert system across the country. A silver alert is an emergency notification used to inform the public when a vulnerable older person, including someone living with dementia, has gone missing and when public assistance may help locate that person as quickly as possible. It is much like an Amber Alert, and having this system in place is common sense. The bill could help save lives. It is the kind of measure the House should be able to support across party lines. It deals with the safety and dignity of vulnerable Canadians and the peace of mind of the families who love them so much. The bill begins from a reality that every province is facing: Canada's population is aging, and dementia is becoming more common, unfortunately. More families are caring for parents, grandparents, spouses and neighbours who may still live with independence and dignity but who can also face moments of confusion and disorientation. Any of us who has had or currently has family members battling dementia recognizes how important that independence is, and the worry that comes with knowing how difficult it can be for them. The bill notes that nearly one million Canadians will be living with dementia by 2030, and more than 1.7 million by 2050. Those numbers are large, but behind every number is a family trying to keep someone safe. The bill also points to a rather terrifying fact: If a person living with dementia is not found within 12 hours of going missing, there is a 50% probability that they will be found dead by drowning or will suffer severe or fatal hypothermia or dehydration. In Manitoba, we understand what the cold can mean. We know what cold weather does to a person. We know how quickly a person can disappear from sight on a gravel road, along a highway, around a farmyard or at the edge of town. In Portage—Lisgar, our communities are unbelievably generous and neighbourly. When someone is in trouble, people will show up. When crisis strikes, they will bring trucks, flashlights, side-by-side, snowmobiles, local knowledge and whatever else is necessary to help. They know the roads. They know which yard has an old shed. They know the area somebody might turn to if confused. That community instinct is one of rural Manitoba's greatest strengths, but instinct needs information. Good people cannot help find someone if they do not know whom they are looking for, where they were last seen, what they may be wearing and whether or not a vehicle was involved. A silver alert is not a replacement for police. It is not a replacement for family. It is a tool that helps them move faster and together. One of the strengths of the bill is that it does not try to invent a new bureaucracy. It would direct the minister to develop a national framework that uses existing infrastructure for public alerts. Everyone already understands that when an emergency alert comes through their phone, they should pay attention. The bill says that we should coordinate when a vulnerable senior is missing and when the public can help make a difference. That is just common sense. The clock does not care which level of government owns which responsibility. When the risk is real, the response must be fast and coordinated, without unnecessary delay. The bill also respects the role of provinces. It would require the minister to consult provinces, and with police forces that issue the alerts. That is the right approach. The people closest to these cases must help shape the system in order to protect the people in need. Police know how missing persons investigations work. Provinces know their own emergency systems. Care providers understand the realities of dementia. The federal role should be to help coordinate, not dominate, provinces and municipalities. This is an important Conservative principle. We should not pretend every answer can be fixed by the federal government. The best answer here will come from coordination, standards, sharing best practices and respect for the people who are already on the ground doing the work. The bill also understands the need for safeguards. Public alerts are powerful tools because they are rare, targeted and credible, and Canadians take them seriously. If they are overused, people start tuning them out. If they are poorly designed, they can violate privacy or create confusion. Bill C-263 would make sure there is one clear, consistent set of rules for deciding when a silver alert should be issued so families and police are not left dealing with a patchwork system. That includes whether there are reasonable grounds to believe the missing person's health or safety is at risk and whether sharing information with the public is likely to help locate them. Importantly, the bill also calls for geographically targeted alerts as well as interprovincial alerts, because both are necessary. In a large country, a targeted alert can be more effective than a blanketed alert. If someone goes missing in southern Manitoba, the most useful alert may be directed just to a particular region, highway, town or a surrounding area. However, we also know that people do move. Vehicles cross borders and highways connect communities. A person missing in Manitoba could be headed toward Saskatchewan or anywhere along a route familiar to them. A coordinated system must account for that. The bill would also require privacy guidelines for the personal information that may be disclosed for the duration of the alert. An effective system must disclose enough to assist with the search, but not more than the situation requires. There is also a public education component. An alert is only as effective as the public response it creates. Canadians need to know what a silver alert means, what to look for, what to do and how to report information. In small communities, this can be especially important, because people notice the little details. They notice a person walking alone in the cold, thinking it is a little strange. They notice a vehicle stopped in an unusual place they would not normally see one parked. They notice when something just simply is not right. I also want to speak about the seniors at the heart of this bill. They are not just statistics. They are the people who built this country in very practical ways. In Manitoba, they are the people who raised families. They volunteered at legions, churches and community halls and kept our small towns alive. They are the people who showed up for others when it mattered most. When they become vulnerable, we should do our minimum and show up for them. I know MPs may come at this issue from different perspectives. Some will think of large cities where a person can disappear into crowds, a busy transit station or a bustling hub of the community on the street. Some will think of more northern, remote communities where terrain and weather can be absolutely unforgiving. I think of rural Manitoba, where distance can become a danger very quickly. The fear of losing a vulnerable parent or grandparent is not partisan, is not urban and is not rural. It is simply human. The bill would give us a chance to do something useful, not just symbolic, but useful. It would require a framework within one year. It would require the framework to be tabled in Parliament and published publicly. It would require a review of the effectiveness within two years. That would give Parliament a way to hold the government accountable for whether the framework is working, whether it needs updates or whether it is helping in the way it was intended. That accountability matters, because families do not need just another vague promise. They need a system that is well thought out, coordinated and ready for use. When a vulnerable person disappears, the first question should not be whether the system knows what to do. The first answer should be action. I will be proudly supporting this bill because it is the right thing to do for vulnerable seniors, for police and for our communities, like the one I represent in Portage—Lisgar. I urge all members across party lines to support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, there is a time of year on the Prairies when the alarm clock is mostly just for show because the work starts long before it rings. In Manitoba, the last few weeks have thrown just about everything at us, including snow, sleet and wind that tried to relocate about half of the province. The plan can be made, the equipment ready and the fields waiting, and they will still end up in a fight with the weather. Farmers do not get to press pause; only the weather can do that. That is farming. They repair equipment, seed, spray, fuel up, pray for rain, pray for sun and then get up the next morning and do it all over again. Through it all, farm families just keep going. That is just what they do. It may surprise some to learn that food does not magically show up on the grocery store shelves. It starts with families that take risks most people never see. It is parents, kids, siblings, grandparents and neighbours trying to pull together through long days and late nights for the kind of work that simply needs to get done. We thank the farm families who feed our country and keep rural Canada thriving. I wish them all a safe and prosperous season.

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured that my colleague from Kitchener Centre asked me to speak on her legislation, Bill C-240, the offender rehabilitation act. Before I begin, I would like to congratulate her hometown team, the Kitchener Rangers, on winning the Memorial Cup last night. Well done, lads. The hon. member's opening speech on the legislation is worth watching for anyone but especially for someone struggling with addiction right now. I commend her for her courage in telling her own personal story of recovery. The fact that she is in this place is a testament to her as a person but also highlights what can be achieved in recovery. Bill C-240 starts with a common-sense idea that I think all Canadians can rally behind. Prison should protect the public, and prisons should hold offenders accountable. Prisons should also require that people do the work needed to change before they are released back into our communities. Canadians can see the problem quite plainly. The person who broke the law gets endless second chances while the victims in the community are left paying the price. Repeat offenders cycle through the system, with trauma not healed, addictions getting worse and too many people leaving prison no better prepared for life outside than the day they entered. That helps no one, not the victim, not the community and especially not the offender. A serious justice system tells the offender the truth. They caused harm. They are responsible and now they must do the work to change. To the victim, it has to say something just as clearly: that what happened to them matters and that their safety should come before the offender's convenience. The legislation would give judges a new tool. When a judge sentences an offender, they would be able to order that offender to take rehabilitative measures during their time in jail. That could mean job training. It could mean apprenticeship or technical skills. It could mean education and, most importantly, it could mean treatment for drugs and alcohol addiction. Right now, too often, prison is treated like a waiting room. The offender serves their time and waits out the clock. They then return to the same streets, the same addiction, the same lack of skills, the same broken life and the same risk to public safety. Too many Canadians are tired of this revolving-door justice system. When someone is released from jail, they move into a neighbourhood full of people who have every right to expect that our justice system has done more than simply count down the days on a calendar. The bill would help change that. It says that if a judge orders an offender to take training, education or treatment, that order should not just be forgotten once the offender actually enters jail. The order should be sent to Correctional Services Canada. It should be reflected in the correctional plan. When parole is being considered, the parole board should be able to look at whether there was progress made. The bill does not pretend that every offender will change. It does not punish someone because the program is full, unavailable or delayed. It does say that if help is offered, if training is available, if there is a path to a better life, the offender has a responsibility to take it. If someone wants early release, Canadians are entitled to ask what they have done with the time they were given. Did they learn a trade? Did they put in work to overcome their addiction? Did they show any sign that they are any safer today than when they entered prison? Release should be earned through progress and should not be automatic. It should not be detached from behaviour, effort or rehabilitation. I come at this from a Manitoban perspective. In my province, these problems are very real. Families in Portage la Prairie, Winkler, Morden, Altona, Carman and communities right across our great province know what repeat crime looks like and what it does. They see the addiction, the stolen trucks, the break-ins, the violence and the heartbreak that follows. In 2024, Manitoba's crime severity index was far above the national average. People do not need a chart telling them that something has gone badly wrong. They feel it when they check two or three times whether the garage is closed or the car is locked. They feel it when a business owner replaces a broken window yet again. They feel it when parents wonder whether their community is safe for their kids. They especially feel it when police are arresting the same person over and over again. Manitobans are now being told that the answer to addiction is a drug consumption site in Winnipeg. It is absolutely not. Let us be honest about what many families and businesses fear. They worry that it will become another drug den, another place where government manages decline instead of enabling recovery. They worry that the neighbourhood will be asked to carry the cost. Local concerns will be brushed aside by people who call themselves compassionate, while ignoring the fear of the grandmother, the shop owner, the student, the young family and the police officer dealing with the fallout. They base this on what we have already seen take place across the country where this experiment has been tried. The answer to addiction is not to build a system around permanent dependency, but recovery through treatment, because we know it can work, the kind of treatment that helps those suffering with addiction find purpose and meaning in life. They need treatment that helps them deal with trauma and understand what they are trying to escape and why. They need treatment to recognize, through whatever modality that works, that they have a problem, that it can be solved and that recovery is possible. The answer is a justice system that separates the addicted person who needs help from the fentanyl trafficker who profits from death and misery, and that deals firmly with both problems. Bill C-240 does just that. It says that people struggling with addiction should be directed toward treatment and rehabilitation. It also says that those who are trafficking fentanyl on a large scale deserve tougher sentencing consequences. That distinction is necessary. The person trapped in addiction needs a path out. The person selling poison on our streets needs consequences. That is why this bill is both tough and humane. It is tough because it refuses to accept a justice system that releases people without asking whether they have actually changed in any way. It is humane because prisons should not just hold people for a while and then send them back out broken, addicted and dangerous. Many offenders enter custody without the basic education or skills needed to find and keep stable work. Many have never had the discipline, support and structure needed to build an honest life. None of that excuses crime in any way, but if we ignore those facts we guarantee more crime. Someone who cannot read well, cannot hold a job, cannot manage their addiction with coping skills and has spent their sentence learning absolutely nothing about recovery is not safer nor rehabilitated because a date arrived on a calendar. They need to put in the work while incarcerated. The public deserves more than a release date. The public deserves evidence of effort. Some will say that this is too hard on offenders. I say it is more cruel to leave people trapped in the same spiral that they are in and call it mercy. Nobody wants to be addicted to drugs or alcohol. Let us make sure they have a way out. Some will say that we need more programs before judges can order participation. Then let us expand the programs. Let us fix prison education and make sure training matches real labour market needs. In Manitoba, we understand the trades. We understand work. We understand the dignity in people showing up and earning their way. If somebody in custody can learn and go through addiction recovery, then that should not be treated as an optional extra but as the goal. It should be part of the sentence when the judge says that it is needed. We should want people leaving custody with clear eyes, a plan and a reason to not go back; to have hit rock bottom and started the work to claw their way up to a life filled with meaning, purpose and service. The bill sends a message to offenders that their time in custody must not be wasted. It sends a message to Correctional Service Canada that rehabilitation must be planned, tracked and taken seriously. It sends a message to parole boards that progress matters. It sends a message to fentanyl traffickers that if they profit from addiction and death they will face real consequences, as they should. Most importantly, it sends a message to victims and communities that their safety and peace of mind matters. The justice system exists for the protection of the public, not for the convenience of the offender. We need a justice system that is serious enough to punish crime and honest enough to say that rehabilitation only matters when it is real. Some offenders absolutely can change, but they should not be rewarded for just saying the right things. They should be expected to do the very hard work that change requires. Bill C-240 is not the final word on earned release, public safety or recovery, but it is a serious step in the right direction. It follows the offender from courtroom, to custody, to parole and asks a fair question at every stage: Are they doing the work necessary? The bill forces the justice system to take rehabilitation seriously. If we are going to release people back into our communities, then it is fair to ask what they have done with the time they were given on the inside. Canadians want a justice system that remembers the victims, protects the public and expects and enables more from the offender than simply waiting for the calendar to run out. That is why I will be supporting this important piece of legislation. I urge every member of this House to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, despite strange denials from the Liberals, the breaking news this morning is that, thanks to the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. Due to decisions like spending $200 million on a small concrete pad and a gravel road, it is all starting to make sense. What are taxpayers getting? Insiders getting rich and the potential to maybe launch rockets in the future, but only if taxpayers continue to hand money over, hand over fist. What is worse is the private company that owns it has yet to put a single rocket into space and has lost $7 million in two years. I am no rocket scientist, but it is clear someone is getting rich. The question is, who is it?

Mr. Speaker, immediately after the Liberals funnelled $20 million to Maritime Launch Services for no work to a nearly bankrupt company, the board chair sold previously worthless shares and pocketed $1.8 million. That is what we are against: insiders getting rich while taxpayers get fleeced. No wonder Canada is the only G7 nation in a recession. The Liberal Prime Minister has led us straight there. The Liberals are willing to burn $200 million, or over $50,000 a day, on a concrete pad, a gravel road, a hope and a dream. Will the Liberals finally come back to Earth and stop wasting taxpayers' money?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to table the Conservative dissenting report on the study of fresh water. Let me be clear: The problem with this report is not that it takes water too seriously but that it confuses ambition with action. It recommends more federal strategies, more federal frameworks, more federal tables and even legal personhood for the St. Lawrence River. That is a dangerous legal theory that will end in disaster. Conservatives believe that freshwater policy should be grounded in results, not more government bureaucracy. Conferences do not fix pipes, global declarations do not end boil water advisories, and no farmer ever irrigated a field, drained a ditch or protected an acre with a stack of federal forms. Canada does not need a bigger bureaucracy. We need water systems that work, rules that are enforced, and respect for the provinces, municipalities, indigenous communities and farmers who actually know their watersheds. Conservatives support clean water, clear responsibility and real results.

Mr. Speaker, I will start by saying that there are many ways to describe the latest CRTC ruling on streaming services, but I will start with the obvious one: This is wild. However, it is not all that surprising. Conservatives warned that this would happen. We warned that the Online Streaming Act was never just about making Netflix and others pay their fair share. The real issue was always much bigger. The government handed the CRTC broad new authority over the Internet and then asked Canadians to trust that the regulator would not go too far, but here we are. The CRTC has decided that streaming services such as Netflix, Disney, Amazon and others must spend or contribute 15% of their Canadian broadcasting revenues towards Canadian programming. That includes the 5% payment already imposed in 2024, which several major streaming companies are still fighting in court. If the government believes , like the Conservatives do, that this ruling has perhaps gone too far, it does have options at its disposal. It can direct the CRTC to change course. It can bring forward legislation to narrow or repeal the powers that it gave the CRTC. It can stop pretending this is someone else's problem. However, what it cannot do is hand the CRTC a blank cheque over streaming and then deny responsibility when the bill is passed on to Canadians. Let us be clear about what is happening. The government is taking the old Canadian broadcast model built for cable boxes, rabbit ears, licences and cable packages and is trying to stretch it out over the entirety of the Internet. The CRTC says this is going to create far more money for Canadian content. On the surface, that sounds absolutely wonderful. Why would we not want more money flowing to Canadian content? No member of the House, including me, is against Canadian stories, artists, actors, writers, directors, musicians and all the people behind the scenes who make the industry work. We all support Canadian creators, but this is not the debate. The question is whether supporting Canadian creators requires another unnecessary and costly tax while Canadian consumers are paying more for their services. Make no mistake. As much as the government likes to claim it, this is not just free money becoming available. Streaming companies are not charities. When the government makes it more expensive to operate in Canada, there are only a few places the money can come from. It can come, which is most likely, from higher subscription services and prices. It can come from fewer services, less choice or reduced investment in Canada. The money will come from somewhere. That is the part that defenders of this scheme always seem to skip. They talk as if the government had discovered a new cultural oil well: Lower the bucket, haul up the cash and sprinkle it around, and everything is going to be fantastic. What they have really done is impose a new cost on platforms that Canadians already pay for and then pretend that the cost is never going to show up on anyone's bill any time in the future. This is the loony-tune type of rhetoric the government likes to project on taxpayers. Costs are never costs, and taxes are never taxes. It is always a framework, a contribution, a modernization or a flexible approach, but flexible for whom? It is flexible for the lobbyists who know how to work the system at the expense of citizens. It is flexible for the established players who know how to fill out the forms, meet the specific definitions, hire the right consultants and navigate the maze that is the CRTC. However, for a family watching the cost of its monthly subscriptions go up yet again, it is not that flexible at all. People are leaving and have left cable for a reason. They wanted choice. They wanted control over what they consume. They wanted a service that could bring a little bit of joy at the end of their busy days. The Internet is not cable with Wi-Fi. It is a completely different world. The old broadcasting system was built around scarcity. There were only so many frequencies, channels, licences and time slots available. That is why the old system was built around quotas, licences, mandatory contributions and rules about what had to be shown. The Internet functions entirely differently, as we all know. It is built around abundance: endless shelf space, choice and competition, with millions of creators reaching audiences directly without needing permission from a broadcaster or a regulator. A small creator in Winkler with a camera can reach an audience. A musician in Portage can create a song and put it online. A podcaster in Morden can speak directly to listeners anywhere in the world. They do not need to wait for a broadcaster to discover them. That is not a loophole in Canadian culture. That is Canadian culture in the modern world, and it does not stop at money. The CRTC is also getting involved in something called “discoverability”. Discoverability might sound harmless, but on the Internet, discoverability is everything. It is about what appears on someone's home page, what gets recommended to them, what shows up in their search, what gets suggested next, what becomes easy to find and what gets buried. When the government starts saying that certain content must be made more discoverable, the question becomes simple: Is something more discoverable because viewers asked for it, or is it more discoverable because the regulator nudged the platform into pushing it? This is no small question. On streaming platforms, the recommendation system is the store. It is the shelf. It is the front window. It is the clerk saying, “Hey, you may also like this.” When government starts directing how content should be presented, promoted, searched and surfaced, it is no longer just funding Canadian creators. It is getting involved in what Canadians are nudged to watch. That should make people uncomfortable, because that should not be the job of the government. The Liberal government has already pushed through enough censorship legislation and has advocated for more control in the lives of Canadians. Nobody wants the government to further interfere in what they watch at home alone or with their family. I believe that culture is strongest when people choose it freely. It is definitely not when the government puts its thumb on the scale and then congratulates itself for creating demand. The more government regulates online culture, the more it starts deciding what counts as Canadian culture in the first place. A show is treated as Canadian not simply because Canadians like it or because it is a Canadian story. It has to pass through a maze of ownership rules, spending rules, rights rules and points for approved jobs behind the scenes. The entire purpose of streaming was for people to watch what they wanted, when they wanted it, and definitely without the government's interfering in it. The government will say it is about fairness: Canadian broadcasters have had to contribute to the system for decades, so foreign streamers should contribute too. That is, frankly, the strongest argument. However, Netflix, Disney and Spotify did not break Canadian broadcasting. The Internet changed, as did its its viewers, its advertising and its technologies. People got used to choosing what they wanted instead of paying for a bundle of things they did not want to watch. There is also, of course, a serious trade issue with this. Companies such as Apple, Amazon and Spotify have already challenged the 5% ruling from the CRTC, and it is still before the courts. The United States has raised trade concerns regarding the decision. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has criticized the CRTC's move, arguing that the rules target American streaming services and interfere with platform operations. These are not some fringe organizations on the sidelines. This is the organized voice of major American businesses looking at the Canadian regulatory system and raising concerns. This lands, of course, at the worst possible time, because, as we know, we are heading into a CUSMA review. Our economy depends heavily on keeping access to the American market stable and predictable. At a time when our trade relationship with the United States is already uncertain, the CRTC has handed the American negotiators a fresh grievance to use. Why are we making Canada look more complicated, more expensive and more hostile to digital investment? The Liberal government should be trying to attract investment instead of giving reasons to scare it away. The defenders of this scheme will say it helps Canadian creators, which is partially true. Some established producers will benefit: the people who already know how to navigate the system and exactly where to line up. However, what about the independent Canadian creator building an audience on YouTube, Spotify, Patreon, TikTok or a podcast? What about the Canadian filmmaker who gets global backing but does not fit neatly into the CRTC's preferred category? What about the next generation of Canadian creators who do not want to wait at the gate? They want to build, they want to publish, they want to stream, they want to sell, they want to perform, and they want to compete. There is a much easier way to support Canadian creators: Make it easier to produce content here, attract more investment, keep our taxes competitive, remove barriers, and open markets. We need to let Canadian stories reach audiences in their living room, at home and around the world. We cannot build a cultural industry by giving government more power over the Internet. I strongly support Canadian content, and we should absolutely celebrate it, but Canadians are not children. They do not need the government hovering over the remote control. Canadian culture and Canadian wallets would be better served if government got out of the way.

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is usually here, but he must have stepped out, because he has not listened to the speech I just gave. My point is that the government should not be picking winners and losers. I have absolutely no faith when it comes to the Liberal Government's efforts to previously censor what we see and say online. In fact, I would love it if my local news creators could share any of their news stories on any Meta platform, but thanks to this government's terrible legislation, they are no longer able to do that. My point is this: Let all of us, Canadian content creators of all types, the up-and-comers, not just the established creators who know how to operate the maze of CRTC rules to get special funding, have the opportunity to succeed, share our stories loudly and proudly, not just in Canada but around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with my Bloc colleague on how bad the Liberals have been on their trade negotiations with the United States for the master negotiator to have achieved absolutely nothing so far except giving up elements of Canadian sovereignty and wealth. However, the member raised the issue of the money that the CRTC says it is going to create. Of course, that is what a tax does, but I fail to understand why it is believed in the House, or why any rational person would believe, that this is free money and that all of a sudden these big companies are just going to voluntarily not pass those costs on but say, “You know what, we should help out Canadian content. We'll just do this out of the goodness of our heart because we're a charity.” They are not charities. They are private enterprises. As much as I want Canadians to compete on the big streaming services, I want to give every content creator across any platform who wants to educate or to offer entertainment around the world the same opportunity, and not just let the big players take advantage of a system that is so confusing for everybody who tries to deal with the CRTC.

Mr. Speaker, I think we should all be so proud. I heard the names of a few bands shouted out. However, this is not about not supporting Canadian artists. I think there is a role to play. This is about the CRTC's being handed a suite of powers by the Liberal government, saying that there is no chance, as a regulator, that it is going to overstep its boundaries, but then it went ahead and did that. The CRTC has imposed, at a terrible time, this new tax upon Canadians that is ultimately more likely going to drive away investment than create the opportunity for another Hallmark film to be made in Morden. This is about common-sense policy and making sure we are protecting the affordability of entertainment made by Canadians for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate some of the claims of facts. I can assure the member that when I was in my riding, gas was more like $1.83 and rising. It was fluctuating, but rising. Over this last two-week period back in our ridings, a number of seniors came up to me and said, “I can't keep doing this. I thought I did everything right; I worked hard, raised my family and gave to my community. Now I can't afford to live. Gas prices are making me choose between whether I go to an appointment or put food in my fridge.” Did the member have any experiences like that in his riding?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of the constituents of Portage—Lisgar. I rise today in support of our Conservative opposition day motion, which calls on the government to give immediate relief by ending all federal taxes on gas and diesel for the rest of the year, including the GST. The motion is very straightforward. For the millions who are being squeezed at the pump, at the grocery store, on the farm or simply when buying the essentials of everyday life, it is badly needed. Let us start with the fact that Canada cannot control everything happening around the world. We cannot control instability in the Middle East or just snap our fingers and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but that does not mean we are powerless. A nation is judged not by whether it can prevent every storm abroad but by how wisely it prepares for and adapts to the storms that it cannot prevent. As the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus stated, “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.” The government can and should do more to help. It can stop taxing people every time they fill up their vehicles, and it can stop making a bad situation worse. Families were already in a cost of living crisis before this latest spike at the pump. Groceries were already too expensive. Rent and mortgages were already too high. Utility bills were already eating up more and more of the family budget. Food banks had countless people walking through their doors for the first time. This is something that is happening in every corner of our country, and now the price at the pump is pouring fuel on that fire. What did the Minister of Finance have to say about it? He said, “We have already acted.” Excuse me, Mr. Speaker, but I am surprised he did not tell my constituents to go and eat cake while he was at it. I can assure him that the family filling up their minivan does not think that the federal government has acted enough on this issue, and it will come as news to the farmer who needs diesel to seed, to spray, to harvest and to haul everything. Canadians do not fill their tanks with Liberal excuses, but boy, I bet they wish they could. The government says it has acted already, but Canadians are still paying more. Gas prices are 13% higher in Canada than in the United States. That is about 22¢ more per litre on average. Many folks from my region, from the southern part of my riding, regularly head across the border to save those dollars and fill up their tanks, but they wish they did not have to. Life is simply so expensive that it is worth committing the extra time to travel internationally to fuel up. Gas now costs 50¢ more per litre than it did when the global oil prices were at the exact same levels in 2014. That is the point. It is not just global oil markets. It is not just events happening half a world away. It is about deliberate choices made right here at home by a government that kept adding costs and kept ignoring the consequences. The government has layered taxes, regulations, costs and waste upon everything else, and then, when people ask for relief, the Liberals just shrug it off and say they have already done their part. I represent a whole bunch of good, honest, hard-working folks who call rural Manitoba home. In rural Manitoba, driving is not optional. There is no subway from Winkler to Morden. There is no LRT from Carman to Portage. There is no magic electric bus that takes a farmer to the parts counter when he needs something, a nurse to a night shift or a senior living on an acreage to the nearest grocery store. For rural Canadians, the vehicle is not a luxury. It is simply how life works. When gas goes up, rural people do not have the option of just driving a little less. They have to eat the cost. They have to absorb it, and they have to cut somewhere else. That is why our Conservative team will continue to push on this issue. I think about the seniors who are on fixed incomes who have worked hard their entire lives. They have paid their taxes. They have raised their families. They have built our communities. They did what was asked of them and tried to follow the promise of Canada. I had the chance to speak with so many of them over the last couple of weeks back home in the riding, and a staggering number told me just how hard things are right now, that they are struggling to get by, that they cannot absorb yet another increase in the cost of living. They are looking at the price of meats. They are looking at the price of fruits and vegetables. They are making choices that no senior should have to make in our advanced first world country, in our beautiful nation of Canada. Do they fill the tank, or do they fill the fridge? Do they go to that appointment, or do they save the money on gas? Do they buy the healthier food, or do they just buy what is cheapest? Do they risk the perceived pain to their pride in asking their family for help if they need it, or do they visit a food bank for the first time? That is not dignity. That is not the Canadian promise. It certainly matters for parents. Every parent knows the feeling. The kids are growing, eating everything in sight, and the clothes they were hoping they could wear one or two more times simply do not fit anymore. Now the grocery bill looks like a car payment, the car payment looks like a mortgage, the mortgage looks like something from another planet, and we are faced with higher and higher fuel costs. These costs are baked into every product on every shelf. This is the part that the government does not seem to understand. Fuel is not just something that people buy at a gas station. Fuel is inside the price of absolutely everything we buy. It moves the seed, the fertilizer, the crop, the cattle, the potatoes, the groceries and the parts. It moves our economy. When diesel goes up, the price of food goes up. This is partly why we have the highest food inflation in the G7. When transportation goes up, the price of everything goes up. When the government taxes fuel, it is not just taxing the person standing and looking at the pump, wondering when it will ever stop. It is taxing the entirety of the supply chain, and our farmers are hit especially hard. Farmers do not have the option of just parking the tractor because the price of diesel is too high. The crop has to go in, crop protection products have to be applied, and the harvest must take place. The grain then has to move, and the bills just keep coming, and this was when fertilizer prices were already sky high. Farmers have faced huge increases in input costs. Fuel, equipment, repairs, parts, interest rates, transportation and taxes are all piled on, to over $160 billion in debt, with the government continuously piling on more red tape. Every extra cost eventually shows up somewhere else. Now, in my hometown of Portage, we have major food processors like Simplot and McCain. They are part of a food supply chain that reaches far beyond Manitoba. When fuel and diesel costs rise, their costs rise too. Those costs do not just simply vanish into thin air; they move down the line, and the consumer pays. That is why tax relief at the pump is not some narrow little measure. It is a broad measure of affordability relief for the entire economy. Let us talk about the hypocrisy of the carbon tax, but before I do, I would like to indicate I am splitting my time with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot. Members might recall that for years, Liberals told Canadians that the carbon tax had made them better off. They said the rebate covered it and more. They said anyone who disagreed was simply spreading misinformation. Then, when they finally removed part of their carbon tax, they bragged that it was saving families money. Well, which one is it? If removing the carbon tax saves families money right now, then it was costing families money before. The Liberals would never admit that, but both things cannot be true at the same time. For years, Conservatives said the carbon tax was making life more expensive. For years, this Liberal government denied it. Now the Liberals want credit for partially admitting what everybody else already knew intuitively. Canadians are not asking for a miracle; they are asking for relief. This House can give it to them today. If the government simply adopts our idea, it will immediately put money back into people's pockets. Every MP in this place has a choice. They can defend keeping all of these taxes on, or they can stand with people, who are the ones paying the bill. Nobody is saying that this motion is going to solve every challenge in the country or our world. It would not, but it would lower costs and give people some breathing room that they so badly need. It tells Canadians that their government is not completely deaf to what is happening in their lives. Let us stop pretending that everything is outside of our control. There are things in our control that we can do to make a difference in the lives of the citizens we are here to represent: suspend the federal taxes on gas and diesel for the rest of the year, and give Canadians real relief, not another lecture. That is what this motion says. It would lower costs, it respects taxpayers, and it puts families first. That is why I am proud to support it.

Mr. Speaker, only a Liberal could stand up and say that a tax cut providing relief on gas and fuel that is so important to not only families but the entirety of our economy is going to be a problem. Perhaps the government has a spending problem that it refuses to address. The government is so out of control with its bloated bureaucracy, paying for consultants, paying for everything that families are meant to provide, it forgets who we are sent here to represent. I will always stand up for lower taxes of any type for my riding and for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, it seems as though Conservatives are the only ones who will ever stand up for lower prices and more affordability for the people we are here to represent. We should proudly do that. There are things that are outside our control. We can acknowledge them, we can accept them, but we do not need to focus entirely on them. When the problem is homegrown in this nation and the cost of living crisis is due to our own policies, we should seek to address them. This is one small measure that would do just that. It would have a tangible impact on the people we are sent here to represent, and we should vote for this motion today.

Mr. Speaker, it really is astounding. I am not sure if the Liberals do not go to grocery stores, do not go to gas stations or do not talk to people, or all of the above. The people I represent always tell me that the cost of living is the number one issue of concern to them. They tell me that gas prices are blowing their minds. As they are watching the prices go up, they are deciding that they cannot fill up the whole tank or that they will have to skip the soccer game that afternoon. It is an absurd reality when the government forgets something is so integral as the taxes it is imposing on people, and not only the impacts those taxes have on the individual buying the fuel, but also the ripple effects across the entirety of the economy. We wonder why we have the fastest-growing inflation of food prices in the G7. This is a huge part of it. The inflationary spending the government has undertaken over the past 11 years, combined with its irrational refusal to take common-sense decisions that are in our control, like the one we are proposing as Conservatives today, is why the government needs to go.

Mr. Speaker, I would encourage my friend to consult a map. No, they are not driving 10 hours to Minneapolis to get gasoline. They are driving right across to Walhalla or some other closer place, where they are seeing a tangible difference between what their credit card says they pay for gasoline north of the border and what they pay south of it. People are not stupid. The member should not treat them like they are. They know what they are doing. I wish they did not have to drive to America to get more affordable gas. We can fix that today.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians were told the Prime Minister was a financial mastermind, but it turns out he is just more of the same. He is simply Justin Trudeau with a better LinkedIn account. He found the government credit card and treated it like a hotel mini-bar, grabbing whatever he wanted and sticking Canadians with the bill. The Prime Minister acts like the government can spend endlessly without consequence, but it is clear that families are paying the price through higher taxes, higher inflation, higher interest costs and higher prices for gas, groceries and housing. When will the Liberal Prime Minister stop running up the tab so Canadians can afford to live again?

Mr. Speaker, I wish the minister would come to my riding to talk to the people who are sick and tired of the government overreaching and spending more money than it has year over year. The reality is that the Prime Minister is just the same, except he is a sequel. We all know what sequels are; they are worse than the first. This year, Canadians will spend over $58 billion just to pay interest on our national debt. That is more than the GST brings in and more than the federal government transfers to provinces to deliver health care. When will the Liberal Prime Minister stop making excuses for higher bills, stop the government bloat and stop driving up the cost of living for Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, for many people living in big cities, a dropped call is an irritant, but then they dial again and it works just fine. For rural families, it can be dangerous. It can mean a farmer cannot connect to the equipment that keeps his or her modern operation running or, worse, cannot make a call if the combine starts on fire. It can mean a family driving on a lonely stretch of highway in a snowstorm has no way to call for help if disaster strikes. For a first responder, it can mean the difference between getting there on time and getting there too late, and the trauma that can follow. In Canada, cell service should not be a luxury or simply a perk. It is basic infrastructure in an advanced nation like Canada. When it fails, people notice, and sometimes, particularly in rural Canada, they pay for it. That is why this issue matters so much. “Spectrum” may sound like something regulators just talk about, but it is the invisible infrastructure behind every call, text, emergency alert and wireless connection that people rely on. It is also a public resource. The public owns it. Companies are licensed to use it, but government is supposed to manage it in the public interest. When spectrum policy works, people get better service, stronger competition and fewer dead zones. When it fails, families pay full price for half service at best sometimes. Signals drop, towers do not get built, smaller companies get squeezed out, and consumers get fewer choices to purchase from. Worst of all, prices stay high, and the same companies continue to call the shots on how this process works. Bill C-268 would require the CRTC to verify the mobile coverage data it gets from Canadian carriers. That matters because every rural resident knows there can be a huge gap between what the coverage map says and what the phone actually delivers for them. On paper, an area may be completely covered and may appear served, but it is not. In reality, that service may mean one weak bar at best, or a call that drops halfway through, or a signal that disappears the moment the road dips or the weather changes. I bet every single rural member of Parliament in this place knows exactly what I am talking about. We know instinctively where the dead zones are in our ridings. We know where we can make calls on the road, where we simply cannot and where, unless we have downloaded it, an audiobook or podcast is going to cut out, too. What matters is not just the stretch of highway where we know service is awful. We know that people stand outside their houses holding their phones up in the air hoping they might get that one bar. People live there, and despite being told they are served, they know they are not. That is why accurate coverage data matters. Rural folks do not need someone or some big company telling them they are covered when their own experience shows them that is not the case. They need a system that measures service as it actually exists in the real world. This bill would force Parliament to take another look at Canada's spectrum policy framework. That matters because the bill's own preamble makes a pretty remarkable admission that Canada's spectrum policy framework has not been updated since 2007. That is not just a long time ago; in the world of telecom years, that is ancient history. This framework predates the smart phone in the world we live in. It predates the app economy. It predates connected farms, remote work and the expectation that people should be able to bank, work, run a business and stay connected from almost anywhere in this great nation. Canada's public airwaves are being managed under a framework that has been sitting on the shelf since the flip phone era, thinking back to when we had to press enough characters 14 different times just to say hello and to have the patience of a saint. Since then, the world has changed immensely, as we all know, and the framework governing our public airwaves was written for a very different country than the one we are living in today. Bill C-268 would require the Minister of Industry to review that framework, report back to Parliament and hear from people who understand the stakes, such as rural municipalities, first responders, the CRTC, telecom providers and spectrum licence-holders, who would all to come to the table to help us understand what the challenges are and how they can be fixed. In plain English, Parliament would finally have to ask whether Canada's public airwaves are being used to connect people or if we are letting an outdated system limp along while rural communities are left buffering and paying full price for next to no service at times. It is amazing that we have become accustomed to this issue. In any other part of life, people would be furious to pay full price for a service if it only worked half the time at best. Imagine buying a new truck and it randomly just stops working while driving down certain roads. Imagine ordering home Internet to be told that it works wonderfully, except if someone tries to use it. Nobody would accept these services, yet with cell service, too many people have been trained to just shrug it off as if that it is just the way it is. People know where the call will drop, so they avoid making calls, and if they live in that area, I guess they just do not make calls from their own house without a land line. They know where they cannot send a text, they know what corner of the house gets that service consistently, and they know that stretch of road where they are just out of luck. Simply, they have adapted to bad service, but that does not make it okay. Even worse, they are expected to accept this from some of the biggest and most profitable telecom companies in the country. At some point, we have to stop treating bad cellphone service like bad weather, as if it just happens and there cannot be anything done about it. This is the conversation that Parliament is long overdue to have, and it is why Conservatives believe this bill should go to committee for study. At committee, members should hear from those rural municipalities and from our first responders, who understand the public safety risks. They should hear from industry stakeholders about the barriers to deployment and from the regulators about how coverage is measured and, most importantly, verified. We need to make sure this work leads to the problem being fixed, however. The last thing we need is another taxpayer-funded paperweight. A spectrum policy that only works on paper does not work, at least for the people I represent. A coverage claim that falls apart the moment someone leaves town is not good enough. For Conservatives, the test is simple. Does federal spectrum policy help get service to people who need it, yes or no? That should be the starting point of this conversation, not whether the consultation process checks every box or whether the department can point to another strategy, another target or another dashboard on some website. The question is whether the person on the rural road, the farmer in his field or his yard, the family at the lake and the small business owner heading through bad weather can connect when it matters most to them. Does it support competition? People are tired of being told to be grateful for whatever service the few companies decide to provide us. Competition is supposed to mean more choice, better prices, better service and a real reason for service providers to have to fight for their customers. If spectrum policy lets the big players sit comfortably on public airwaves while new entrants struggle to gain a foothold, then the system is not working. Does it encourage investment in our country? At the end of the day, speeches do not build cellphone towers, and press releases do not expand coverage. People need this infrastructure. The rules should reward deployment, reduce unnecessary delays and create confidence for companies willing to build, especially in places where the business case is harder. A serious spectrum policy should help to get service built where it is needed, not simply where it is easiest. Does it make better use of a public resource? Spectrum belongs to the public and should not be treated like private property for companies to hoard, because communities will continue to go without the service. If public airwaves are licensed out, people should expect public benefit in return. Finally, does it recognize that rural Canada cannot be treated as an afterthought? Rural people pay many of the bills for this country. They run businesses. They grow our food. They move the goods we all need across this country. They volunteer in fire halls. They drive long distances, they face tough weather, and they keep our rural communities going and our nation going. They should not be expected to accept second-class service. Those are the questions I believe this committee should examine. At second reading, we are voting on the principle of the bill. We believe that coverage data should be accurate and rural and remote connectivity should be taken seriously. That does not mean every word in the bill, as I see it, is perfect. It means the issue is real enough, serious enough and urgent enough that it deserves proper study. We can support sending this bill to committee so members can hear from the people closest to the problem, test the evidence, ask the hard questions and make sure the focus stays where it belongs: on better service, accountability, more competition and public safety. We will also be clear that the government has had years to deal with these problems. Rural dead zones did not appear yesterday. The framework did not suddenly become outdated just last week. People have been raising these concerns for a long time. The bill opens the door to greater scrutiny. The question now is whether Parliament will do more than wring its hands, because in 2026, nobody should have to wonder whether their phone will work when they pick it up to use it and need it most.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister needs to understand that the public purse is not his personal travel rewards card. I know that he likes to fly but there are no Aeroplan points when the government spends billions of dollars that it does not have. There is no free checked bag for the next generation. There is no lounge access for taxpayers, and there is definitely no complimentary upgrade when the country is stuck at the back of the plane with a maxed-out credit card. Since taking office, the Prime Minister has added $90 billion in net new spending and the cost of running government is up 9% in under a year. The Liberals are now spending more to service our national debt than the government collects in the GST, or, as it should soon be called, the debt servicing tax. That should set off alarm bells for everyone in our country, and anyone who thinks this can continue should give their head a shake. When interest payments eat up more of the budget, there is less money for health care, defence and infrastructure. Canadians do not need a Prime Minister asking for a higher credit limit. They need a government that remembers that taxpayers are the ones footing the bill.

Mr. Speaker, it takes a special kind of spending problem to make Justin Trudeau look fiscally responsible, yet the Prime Minister has done it. His budget 2025 added $90 billion in net new spending, and the government is now paying over $55 billion this year just to service our debt. Canadians are being told to tighten their belt, yet the Prime Minister cannot even find his. Next week's fiscal update is the moment of truth. Will the Prime Minister finally get serious, rein in his out-of-control spending and stop pouring inflationary gasoline on families and seniors who are struggling to survive?

Mr. Speaker, serious leadership looks like understanding what Canadians are going through. The Prime Minister says affordability has never been better. If that is true, I would hate to see what he thinks expensive looks like. When was the last time he actually went into a grocery store and bought groceries for himself in Canada? I highly doubt it has been in this millennium. Let me remind him of reality. After a decade of Liberal spending, families are paying 42% more for groceries than they were in 2015. Everything costs more. Canadians are struggling to stay afloat. If life is so affordable, why are more Canadians lining up at food banks than ever before?

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals want applause for knocking a few cents off at the pump for the next few summer months, yet they keep the rest of their fuel taxes in place. That is not relief. That is a coupon. Canadians have already been getting squeezed by higher oil prices, and then the Liberals pile on with yet more taxes. That is why people in this country are paying far more at the pump than our neighbours to the south are. Families do not fill up their tank with talking points. They fill it up with money, and right now they simply do not have enough of it. However, Conservatives have a real plan. We will axe the fuel excise tax and the GST on gasoline and diesel for the rest of the year. We will also axe the industrial carbon tax and the clean fuel standard permanently. That means 25¢ less per litre and over $1,200 back for a family of four. Now the Liberals are celebrating as if they had scored the golden goal at the Olympics, even though they are still down by five. They call it relief. Canadians call it too little, too late.

Mr. Speaker, I am hoping my colleague can expand upon what is a failure in negotiations. At the time of the announcement, Canada was going to be the first country to pass legislation enabling Britain's accession to the CPTPP. Looking forward, beyond this, we have seen the Prime Minister go and sign a number of agreements. While we support the diversification of trade, what other opportunities, particularly for the livestock sector, are we potentially missing in these negotiations, as we could have enhanced imports from other countries and not have reciprocal exports going back out the door?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague for what was an excellent speech, highlighting the fact that Canada does indeed have what the world wants, but through a suite of Liberal policies over the last 10 years, as he described, we have become an unreliable trading partner and had our port infrastructure and major trade-enabling infrastructure fall apart. In fact, Vancouver was recently ranked 347th out of the 348 most effective ports in the world. We now have a government using the powers under Bill C-5 to name the Alto project, a $90-billion, turning into a how many billions more, boondoggle. Could the member talk a little about how the priorities of ports and trade-enabling infrastructure, whether that be Vancouver or, rightfully so, Churchill, contrast with other government policies, like a marine protected area and a national park proposal, which would get in the way of any of the infrastructure that, even if we built it, could actually get trade to market?

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating more than a procedural motion. We are debating the principle of how laws in this country are supposed to be made. What the Liberals are asking Parliament to do today is not simply to move a bill along. It is asking Parliament to cut short the process of scrutiny that exists for a reason. It is asking us to do that while amending the Criminal Code of Canada, the law that determines when speech crosses the line into criminal liability, and that matters. Once criminal law becomes regulating speech, the line between protecting Canadians and policing belief becomes dangerously thin. Our parliamentary system was never designed to make passing legislation easy. It was in fact designed to make passing legislation difficult, and it was designed that way deliberately. The founders of our democratic system understood a simple truth that every generation, it seems, eventually has to relearn: When governments can change the laws too easily, the balance of power rarely remains with the people. Our founders therefore built safeguards into the legislative process: multiple readings in the chamber, committee study, witness testimony, and amendments debated line by line. Members raise concerns on behalf of the people who sent them here. We ask whether we have thought this through. Have we heard the arguments? Have we tested the consequences before the law is imposed on millions of Canadians? That process is not a flaw in democracy. It is the safeguard that protects Canadians from bad laws. That safeguard matters even more when Parliament is amending the Criminal Code and touching freedoms protected by the charter. Difficult does not mean dysfunctional. Difficult means careful. Difficult means thoughtful. Difficult means Parliament takes the time to get the law right. However, the motion before us today would do something very different. It would instruct the justice committee to immediately resume clause-by-clause consideration and vote through the remaining clauses and amendments without any debate. It would prevent the committee from adjourning until the bill is finished. It would limit debate in the chamber to a single day at report stage and a single day at third reading. In other words, the motion would sharply compress the opportunity for Parliament to examine the consequences of what we are doing in this place. Some members have suggested that members raising concerns are simply trying to delay the bill, but there is a difference between delay and diligence. There is a difference between obstruction and representation. Members of Parliament do not arrive in the chamber carrying only their own opinions. We carry the voices of the people who elect us to be here. Over the past weeks, members of Parliament from every party have been contacted by Canadians via emails, letters and phone calls. There have been hundreds if not thousands of them to each of us, all expressing concern about the proposed removal of the religious good-faith clause from Bill C-9. These Canadians are asking serious questions about freedom of religion, questions about freedom of expression and questions about where the line would be drawn when sincerely held beliefs are discussed in public. Those questions deserve to be heard in Parliament. That is not obstruction; that is representation. It should also be said that there was a constructive path forward. Conservatives proposed splitting the bill. The provisions protecting places of worship and cultural centres could have passed relatively quickly. There is broad agreement across the chamber that Canadians must be able to practice their faith without intimidation or obstruction. Those changes could have become law quickly. The remaining provisions affecting freedom of expression and the removal of the religious defence could then have been studied separately with the care that they deserve. That approach would have protected religious communities immediately, while still allowing Parliament to carefully examine changes to the Criminal Code. The government, shockingly, rejected this compromise. Instead of co-operation, it chose speed. Instead of scrutiny, it chose closure. Instead of debate, it chose control. Part of what has raised these concerns is a decision made during committee. The government supported a Bloc Québécois amendment to remove the religious expression defence that has existed in the Criminal Code for more than 50 years. That safeguard was not inserted casually. When Parliament created Canada's modern hate propaganda laws in 1970, lawmakers understood a fundamental truth that the power to criminalize speech is one of the most serious powers that a state can exercise. They built safeguards directly into the law. Truth was written into the Criminal Code as a legal defence. Public interest discussion was protected. Good-faith religious expression, grounded in sacred texts, was protected. Those protections were not merely afterthoughts. They were part of the balance that Parliament deliberately created. The problem is not only with what the law could punish but also with what people began to fear saying at all. When criminal law moves into questions of belief, interpretation and moral conviction, the chilling effect spreads far beyond the courtroom. Faith leaders begin to wonder what can be safely said. A pastor quoting scripture at a sermon or a priest answering a theological question should not carry the shadow of a potentially criminal liability simply because someone disagrees with the belief being expressed. For more than 50 years, Canadian law has tried to preserve that balance. Removing that safeguard is not merely a minor technical adjustment. It is a significant shift in how the law interacts with freedom of conscience and expression. When Parliament removes a protection that has existed in criminal law for more than half a century, the burden of proof should be clear. The government should be able to show Canadians exactly why such a change is necessary, yet the amendment was not part of the government's original bill. It appeared late in the committee stage. Parliament is now being asked to accelerate the legislative process before Canadians have had the chance to fully understand the implications. What is striking in this debate is that the government has not provided a single concrete example explaining why this change is necessary. After weeks of discussion, no one has pointed to a prosecution that failed because of this clause. There is not one case, not one failed prosecution, not one real-world example. When Parliament removes a safeguard that has existed in the Criminal Code for more than half a century, Canadians rightfully deserve to know why. They deserve to see the problem the government is supposedly trying to fix. That explanation has so far not been provided. Some will say that other protections remain. They will say that the charter still protects freedom of religion and freedom of expression, but that misses the point. When Parliament removes an explicit safeguard from the Criminal Code, it narrows the zone of certainty for Canadians. It sends a signal that a protection once considered essential is now considered unnecessary. This is not a decision Parliament should make lightly. Across the country, religious leaders, civil society organizations and all sorts of diverse groups are raising concerns. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and those not of faith are saying the same thing, which is to slow down, listen and get it right. These are not radical voices. These are community leaders who care deeply about the freedom of Canadians to live according to their own conscience, to their own values. When so many Canadians from so many different backgrounds raise the same concern, Parliament should take the time to listen. Instead, the government is choosing to move faster. Strong laws should not and do not fear debate. Good ideas grow stronger when they are tested. When a government limits debate and accelerates legislation, Canadians inevitably begin to ask the simple question, why the rush? They ask this question especially when there are no real examples of why this change is necessary. Parliament is not a rubber stamp. It is the place where the voices of Canadians are heard. It is the place where our laws are tested before they are imposed. It is the place where freedom is protected, not only by the words of legislation but by the care with which they are written. The question before us today is not simply whether a bill moves forward faster. The question is this: Do we still believe in the purpose of Parliament? The duty of Parliament is not simply to pass laws. It is to guard the freedom of the people who live under them. It is to restrain power, and when those laws touch belief, conscience and expression, that duty becomes even greater. Let us take the time to get this right, because history teaches us a hard truth. Freedom is rarely taken all at once. It disappears gradually, one safeguard at a—

Mr. Speaker, it is quite the opposite. He should have been prosecuted. People cannot stand up and say things like he said in a public space, talk about exterminating certain types of people or incite specific violence against specific types of people. That is already in the Criminal Code. He most definitely should have been charged. He should be in prison for such vicious language and vicious incitement of violence. That is the problem. This bill would not change that. The government needs to stand up. The prosecutors need to stand up and actually pursue the laws on the books and put people who are spreading hateful language like that behind bars.

Mr. Speaker, it absolutely is. I am glad my colleague touched on this. We are censoring a censorship bill. There is limited time for parliamentarians to discuss this particular amendment, although it is not the entirety of the bill itself. As I mentioned in my speech, the bill could have been split between elements that could provide protection for people of faith going to their religious institutions and cultural centres and this removal of a long-standing legal defence. To me, this is an effort to continue to censor what people see and say online and, frankly, what they believe. There is no good reason to move forward with such an amendment to the Criminal Code, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court time and time again while it defended those very charter rights that my colleague rightfully pointed out are the primitive nature of our nation.

Mr. Speaker, I have not been in this place as long as my colleague and many others, but in my two and a half years as a member of Parliament, there has never been one single issue on which I have received so much correspondence, whether handwritten letters, emails or phone calls, yes, from my riding but from right across the country. People are concerned. Government members have a lot of gall to sit there and say, “Well, you're all wrong. You just don't understand what we're trying to do. Sure, we haven't laid out why on earth we might need to make this change, but you are all wrong, so please just don't worry about it. Trust us.” People are sick and tired of trusting the Liberal government when it comes to censorship.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honour the life of a great man, Ron Russell. Ron was a farmer and a founder of AgWest equipment in Portage la Prairie, building a brand and reputation across western Canada for quality products and great service. He loved agriculture, making deals and supporting his community. More importantly, Ron was a husband, father, grandfather, friend, mentor and a man whose presence left a lasting impression on everyone fortunate enough to know him. He was always quick with a smile, and that booming laugh of his was always just a split second away. People could not help but smile when they were around Ron. Ron saw every interaction as a chance to make a friend, of which he collected an uncountable number across North America who will miss him dearly. May his wife Joan, son Murray, daughter Denise and her husband Yuri, his sisters, nieces and nephews, and his grandchildren whom he adored, be blessed with strength from the memories of the way he lived and grateful for the many years they had with him, even through his long battle with cancer. We will miss him. Rest easy, Uncle Ron.