Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition signed by the law-abiding property owners of Carleton, Kanata, Nepean, Nipissing, Timiskaming and my great riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke. The petitioners are raising awareness over the lack of legal protections for homeowners and landowners when they try to protect themselves, their property and families. Violent criminals have been emboldened by a decade of Liberal soft-on-crime policies. That is why Conservatives have introduced Bill C-270, the stand on guard act, which will clarify the legal standards around self-defence on one's property. That targets crime where they would not be punished for fighting back to protect what they cherish.

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite went on and on about socialized dentistry and Maoist food programs, but it used to be that Canadians could afford to pay for their own dentistry, and they could afford to buy groceries and feed their children what they wanted. The Liberals have not paid down any debt since 2015, when they were first elected, and that interest keeps on accumulating. It results in taxes, more taxes and unaffordability for Canadians. Why does the member opposite want Canadians to be dependent upon government for everything?

Mr. Speaker, I recently received a handwritten letter that I would like to share with the Canadians. It reads, “Hello, I'm 11. Yes, I'm young, but my mom said I can voice my future economy concerns to you.” This young girl's letter shared some of her family's experiences in struggling with rent and food. Her family is spending $2,000 a month to rent a one-bedroom apartment. She ends by writing that all she want is for prices to go down so t-shirts and sweaters are $5 combined and pants and socks are $6. She just wants to go to school without repeating her outfits the same week. It is important to hear directly from Canadians on the front lines of the Liberals' war on affordability, but it is heartbreaking to know that all the government has to offer this young girl is more debt to fuel inflationary spending. Renaming the GST does nothing to put clothes on her back.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of my hard-driving constituents in the expansive riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C-38, an act to amend the Excise Tax. Yesterday, the finance minister told the House that the Liberals would take no lessons from the Conservatives. Today, class is in session, and the lesson plan is lower taxes. Conservatives have been calling for gas tax relief for months, while Liberals enjoyed vacations in Tuscany. They left the decision to extend the gas tax holiday until the last minute in an effort to maximize uncertainty. The Liberal decision to end this tax break in the middle of winter is perplexing. The Prime Minister has claimed he speaks to the United States President regularly. Does the Prime Minister have secret knowledge about when the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz will end? Based on the legislation before us, it appears the Liberals think the oil shipments through the strait will be at 50% of pre-war levels by January 31, and the entire strait will be open by the end of March. Of course, the Liberals have no idea when the conflict will end. The government wants to provide as little relief as it can get away with. Hiking the tax by 50% on February 1 is its way of boiling the frog slowly. It takes a certain level of Liberal arrogance to call a bill that schedules tax hikes the Canadian fuel affordability act. This is all part of a plan with the Liberals. They call the bill, which would hike taxes, affordability. They call inflationary spending affordability. They call doubling the deficit fiscally responsible. Despite their elbows up rhetoric, the Prime Minister is adopting the exact same form of state-led capitalism we see coming from the White House. The fact that the Prime Minister copied the U.S. President's plan to launch a sovereign debt fund is very telling about how both view the economy. The U.S. President has often compared himself to a mall manager, while the Prime Minister acts like a bank manager. Neither of them should be so intimately involved in the operations of any particular business. This is exactly why Norway's actual sovereign wealth fund does not invest in Norway. It is the exact opposite of the sovereign debt funds in Canada and the United States. These debt funds are specifically designed to pick domestic companies. The temptation to politically interfere in the operations of companies or on behalf of the companies is too great. We have too many examples of this already happening in Canada, even without the sovereign debt fund. The company formerly known as SNC-Lavalin is a perfect example. The last prime minister tried to bully his justice minister into letting SNC off the hook for bribery and corruption. When that did not work, he fired her. Then he replaced her with a man whom the current Prime Minister made our UN ambassador. Now SNC has a new name and new business partners who together have formed the consortium Cadence. When the Liberals released a request for proposals to build Via's high-frequency rail system, Cadence submitted a proposal that called on the Liberals to scrap this popular plan and replace it with a much more expensive high-speed rail line. One of the partners in the consortium is the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, whose former president just so happened to be the Clerk of the Privy Council. Together they cooked up a secret plan to privatize the most profitable parts of Via while taxpayers pay for the rest of Via. If the Liberals are going to hike taxes, the least they could do is not actively make every alternative form of transportation more expensive, yet that is the plan they cooked up with their billionaire buddies last week, to privatize our airports and to privatize Via Rail. Now, their first bill back proposes to hike the gas tax in the middle of winter. To defend these choices, the Liberals have already started to point to examples of Europe. The Liberals want Europe's private airports without its robust airline competition. They want a French company to build their high-speed rail, without France's transparency laws. They want European levels of gas taxation to force us all into Chinese cars running on an electric grid powered by Brookfield. What the Prime Minister really wants is to partner with Europe to impose carbon tariffs. The legacy media may have memory-holed the fact that the very first policy the Prime Minister ever proposed when he was just a Liberal leadership candidate 20 months ago was to impose carbon tariffs on Canadians who dared to purchase products from countries without a carbon tax. Is it any surprise the carbon tariff Prime Minister appointed the only Liberal MP to acknowledge carbon tariffs are coming as his parliamentary secretary? This is all part of the Liberals' war on affordability. From their ban on plastic food packaging to their inflammatory deficit spending, everything they touch becomes more expensive. When the U.S. President endorsed our Prime Minister, he said it was because they agreed on many things. When President Trump attacked our Conservative leader, it was because we did not support the President's agenda. What the Liberal Prime Minister and the Republican President agree on is that they should be at the centre of every consequential economic decision in the country. They both agree that the government should serve the interests of the investor class. Now the Liberals even have one big, beautiful omnibus bill to make Bay Street great again. Even Liberal-funded reporters are calling this latest move Trumpian. We would think they would have caught on to the similarities when the Prime Minister literally borrowed an oversized novelty page from the U.S. President's playbook on his first day in office. Fortunately for Canadians and Americans, there is still one political party on this continent that actually believes in freedom. As our leader ably demonstrated last week, there is a clear path to long-term sustainable economic growth, and that is to empower the free people in a free market. The Prime Minister and the U.S. President have a faith-based approach to running a country's economy. They have the faith that their business acumen is more than enough to pick winners and losers. Conservatives put our faith in the Canadian people. We trust Canadian entrepreneurs to out-innovate and out-compete the world. We trust Canadian consumers to buy the products and services that work best for them. We reject the tired idea that a president, a prime minister or even a king can decide who we can trade our property with. We believe in cutting red tape for all businesses, not just the ones that hire the best Liberal lobbyists. We believe in cutting taxes for all businesses, not just for the ones that invest in projects that Liberals find politically acceptable to support. Conservatives trust and believe in Canadians because we have confidence born of true patriotic love. The Liberals and Republicans have succumbed to the siren song of economic nationalism and protectionism. That is rooted in insecurity. It saps confidence. It breeds corruption. It makes life less affordable. Is it really any coincidence that the sectors of our economy protected from foreign competition are the most expensive, such as domestic air travel, cellphone bills, insurance rates and broadband Internet? Canadians can reasonably blame the U.S. President's actions for the high price of gas, but Canadians have only the Liberal Party to blame for the high cost of everything else. While the finance minister can pretend not to copy our policies, he cannot ignore reality for long. Canadians are being squeezed, and the Liberal plan to hike the gas tax in the middle of winter is not the solution. The Liberals are already raking in GST windfall from higher gas prices. They do not need to compound the pain with a frosty tax hike on February 1. Instead of teasing Canadians with temporary tax relief, the Liberals could do the hard work of committing to substantial tax reform. Of course, this would actually force the Prime Minister to spend time in Canada rather than hitting the globalist gala circuit. It is clearly more enjoyable for the Prime Minister to spend all his time in Europe re-reannouncing our partnership strategy for a new future alliance for a strategic future. Instead of introducing a bill to raise gas taxes and calling it a fuel affordability act, maybe the Prime Minister could use some of his international rizz to negotiate an end to the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz. With any luck, that would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize, which we could trade off for tariff relief, or instead, he could spend his time helping his former colleagues at Brookfield partner with a Crown corporation he controls to launch a new maple-flavoured investment fund. Barring any attempt to subvert the fixed elections act, Canadians will get to render a verdict in October 2029 on how they think the Prime Minister has spent his time in office.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. colleague for his comments, but I did not enter the chamber or the House of Commons at all in my life before I became a member of Parliament. Unfortunately, he must have me confused with someone else. I have the right to speak on behalf of the people I represent, and they are telling me they cannot afford to live. The grocery store is almost out of bounds. It used to be a place to socialize, but now it is a place they dread. I believe that my speaking on behalf of the people who are trying to get the message that they need more affordable prices to government is duly acceptable.

Mr. Speaker, the expansive size means they need to have transportation to go to work or to the grocery store. We do not even have a bus system. We have no public transportation available, save for a new start-up service in the city of Pembroke, which helps no one living outside the city area. In fact, there are people living in rural areas who cannot even afford to get a car to get a job or to keep their job. They are having to give up their jobs because they cannot afford to get there. Seniors have to be masterful at planning their week out to get groceries or to see the doctor, because every cab ride costs them a minimum of $10. When one is on a very low fixed income, that takes up the entire month.

Mr. Speaker, to bring back the spirit of former prime minister Harper in the House, he used to be reviled, but now he is seen as one of the best prime ministers we ever had in Canada. Like Prime Minister Harper, who made decisions based on what was right, this party does also, and we will do our job in Parliament in looking at each proposal that is made. If, like Mr. Harper, he supports certain things and we support certain things, we will vote in favour of them.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the constituents struggling to make ends meet. I want to begin by congratulating the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance for responding to my question without engaging in personal insults or cheap partisan attacks. This is a significant improvement over his last response, yet he declined to answer the actual question. Still, the response to my question was illuminating. Given the Prime Minister's central pitch to voters was that he alone could save the Canadian economy, the news that economic growth is near zero is devastating to his brand. Canadians thought they were getting a technocratic central banker. Instead, we got an investment banker using taxpayers' pensions as leverage to catalyze a growing debt crisis. The parliamentary secretary's answer reveals the dilemma the Liberals find themselves in. Unlike some of the more fanatical colleagues who describe the economy with unrealistic exuberance, the parliamentary secretary spoke about “signs of progress” and “building foundations”. A shrinking economy destroys the Prime Minister's brand. A booming economy destroys the justification for deficit spending. An anemic economy is just what the Liberals want. It was Justin Trudeau's justification for turning Canada back into a deficit country. It is this Prime Minister's justification for doubling Trudeau's deficit. Unfortunately, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer made clear in June, there is just a 1% chance Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio will go down. This public debt is being used for the largest corporate welfare spending spree in Canadian history. This debt binge is happening at the exact same time investors are demanding higher interest rates for government debt. The Liberals want us to ignore the slow growth, the job losses and the debt spiral. At the same time, they accuse us of ignoring the May jobs report. I looked at the jobs report, and it is not as rosy a picture as the Liberals would have us believe. The headline claims 88,000 jobs were created, yet Stats Canada hired 33,000 people to conduct the census in May, and 17,000 of the remaining jobs were in construction, which sounds great until you realize this is Canada, where we build more in the spring and summer and less in the winter. When compared year over year, there has been no job growth in construction. We cannot say the same for retail. In May, 35,000 Canadians lost jobs in the retail sector. In fact, since May 2025, over 61,000 retail jobs have been lost. Despite what the Liberals would have us believe, Donald Trump cannot put a tariff on the mall. The other big sector with job gains was in culture and recreation, because camps, resorts and other seasonal tourist businesses began hiring for the summer season. I know Liberals think they can control the weather with taxes, but they cannot claim credit when the sun shines. For 11 long years, the Liberals have been promising their deficit spending would turbocharge growth and investment. It has not. Recently, the Prime Minister said that they are investing tremendous amounts of money in the country like we have never seen before. Oh, my apologies, that was a quote from President Trump. Here is the Prime Minister's quote: “We’ve secured new investment in the country of a size not seen, arguably, before.” Well, set aside the hyperbole and the Prime Minister's narcissism, Canadians can see the truth for themselves. Liberals love low growth. Only Conservatives are fighting for a strong economy.

Mr. Speaker, the latest Liberal talking point is to claim Canada is the second-fastest-growing economy in the G7. This is like your teenager claiming they were the least drunk person at the keg party. What the Liberals do not like to mention is that the fastest-growing economy in the G7 is the United States. That means the U.K., Germany, France and Italy are all growing slower than us. Despite the slow growth in Europe, the Prime Minister has spent two-thirds of his overseas travel in Europe. He even enjoyed a family vacation in Tuscany while telling Canadians to vacation more at home. It is easy for the Prime Minister to fly to a nice privately owned European airport and give the same speech announcing the same new partnership strategy for a future alliance, for a new strategic future with the EU. Talk is cheap, and fancy speeches in foreign capitals do not put food on the table for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the big-hearted constituents in the caring riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C‑9, the Liberal bill to ban symbols of hate. The bill is back here because the other place has amended the legislation to include a new symbol to the Liberal hit list. The Senate used to be called the chamber of sober second thought. Unfortunately, under the democratic reforms by Justin Trudeau, that chamber has come to resemble a critical studies faculty lounge. It is less sober second thought and more quick hot takes. While the Senate had sufficient sobriety to reject one amendment on so‑called denialism, the decision to include the symbol of a noose highlights a broader problem with the Liberal approach to combatting hate. As I said during the debate at second reading, the rise in hate is real under the Liberals. The measures in this bill to protect places of worship and cultural centres and add penalties for obstructing or intimidating people from entering those places are a step forward. The removal of the safeguards around religious expression is vile. The criminalization of specific symbols would be less alarming if the Liberals were not the ones pursuing it. They have a long track record of engaging in bad‑faith attacks and outright fabrications when they see a chance to smear their political opponents. I would encourage the Canadians watching this debate at home to listen to the powerful speeches given by the member for Terrebonne and the member for Hull—Aylmer. Both spoke of the legacy of lynching in the United States and how the noose became a symbol of terror and violence. They both cited specific, well‑documented historical facts about the history of the noose in the American context, yet when it came time to speak about Canada, the specificity stopped and they moved to speak in generalities. I am in no way suggesting the members were engaged in a repeat of the outlandish claims made by the Liberal member for Vancouver Centre when she claimed crosses were burning on the lawns of Prince George residents. There have been at least three documented cases of nooses being left at workplaces since the summer of 2020 and the death of George Floyd. Prior to the summer of 2020, there had been only one documented case. All four incidents generated considerable media attention and widespread condemnation. In one of the three cases, a person was arrested and charged. Hanging a noose on someone's workplace locker is unambiguously a death threat, regardless of ethnicity. If the intent was to foment hate, then the act is already a criminal offence. If this bill becomes law, the police and the Crown prosecutors will still need to prove that the display was intended to promote hate to lay a charge under this act, yet to hear the Liberals speak, one could easily be misinformed into believing that the simple act of displaying a noose is now a hate crime. Given the Liberals' own recent history of bad‑faith claims of noose sightings, this should concern Canadians. During Justin Trudeau's 2021 superspreader election campaign, the Liberal war room found a pliable journalist to publish the Liberals' pathetic lie that I had depicted the prime minister being lynched. University professors wrote op-eds condemning the so‑called depiction of political violence, except it was a fake noose news story. There was no noose. It was a picture of Trudeau pulling on a thin red lanyard while mugging for the camera. Having had the recent experience of the Liberal Party of Canada lying about a noose and then having it reported by the Liberal‑funded media, I can speak from my own experience about how troubling it is for the Trudeau Senate to add something as vague as the word “noose” to the list of prohibited terror symbols. This example of the Liberals seeking to ban the symbol of the noose so soon after engaging in a bad-faith attack on a political opponent by claiming a lanyard was actually a noose does not stand in isolation. During the “freedom convoy” and the protests, we saw the Liberals deploy this exact same technique. Some protesters had likened the public health restrictions to Nazi‑era policies. Some had even desecrated the Canadian flag with the Nazi hooked cross as a way of illustrating their point that the Liberals were acting like Nazis. When one of those protesters walked behind a Conservative MP doing an interview with the CBC, the Liberals pounced. They accused us of supporting Nazis. Trudeau literally accused a Jewish MP of standing with people who wave swastikas. The Liberals were more than happy to deploy misinformation and disinformation around the use of a hate symbol to score cheap political points. The CBC worked hand in glove with the government to push this fake narrative. No one needs to agree with protesters' views comparing the Liberals to the Nazis, but if we want to keep our democracy, we have to protect the right to express those views. Instead, the Liberal‑funded media, in close coordination with the Liberal government, sought to discredit the protesters as hate‑mongers before a single truck had arrived in the city. Before my Liberal colleagues reach for their favourite talking point, I just want to remind them that the Liberal staffer emails to the media are all available online on the evidence page of the Public Order Emergency Commission website. These two recent examples, the fake noose and the protesters who were labelled as Nazis for calling the Liberals authoritarian, are precisely why we cannot trust the government with this much power over expression. Even last night during debate, the member for Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas engaged in a bad-faith attack on my colleague for highlighting the different history between Canada and the U.S. That member provides an example of a type of affliction common to Liberals, what we might call the progressive man's burden. They see it as their moral duty to defend those they view as weak while educating the uncivilized among us. If this bill was a one‑off viewed in isolation, a reasonable case could be made to support it. However, when placed in the broader context of decades of Liberal political strategy that sought to paint all Conservative opposition as motivated by hate and the Liberals' continued desire to construct an entirely new bureaucracy to monitor Canadians' digital expression, this bill looks like a dangerous expansion of authority. Layer that atop the Liberals' decision to support the separatist motion to eliminate the religious defence, and the expansion of state powers starts to look threatening to many Canadians. I agree with my Liberal colleagues when they say hate has grown under the Liberal government. Before the Liberals were elected, there had not been a documented case of a noose in a workplace in decades. Now the Liberals claim it is so common the symbol must be banned. Between 2021 and 2023, there were 238 recorded arson attacks on churches. There are regular hate marches through Jewish neighbourhoods. Liberals even claim their own communities are hotbeds of hatred, where white supremacist rallies are held on a regular basis. Ever since the Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker introduced the Canadian Bill of Rights and restored voting rights to indigenous Canadians, which the Liberals had removed, this country had been on a steady march toward greater inclusion. That all changed in 2015. The decision by the Liberal government to abandon Canada's multicultural approach in favour of an imported American ideology of racial essentialism is at the root of the problem. When combined with out-of-control immigration and soft-on-bail policies, we see the inevitable result. We see the Iranian Revolutionary Guard agents hiring contract killers to shoot up synagogues. We see hate marches in our streets. We see places of worship burned to the ground. Stubbornly, the Liberals still refuse to admit their mistakes on this file. They have admitted they were wrong about carbon taxes. They have admitted they were wrong about the need for tougher bail. They have admitted they were wrong about the need for adult supervision of our immigration system. What will it take for them to realize their approach to combatting hate has only created more hate? The positive elements in this bill that would protect people attending religious places are completely undone by the decision to remove the religious speech defence. We have recent examples of Liberals spreading disinformation about fake nooses and Nazi supporters. They have cut off debate on this censorship bill. Now they want to create a new bureaucracy to monitor harmful content, yet they tell Canadians to trust the cabinet to determine what is and is not harmful. If Canadians did not even trust the Liberals with a majority, we definitely do not trust them with the power to decide what is and is not hate.

Madam Speaker, I can say that since the bill has been introduced, I have received more mail with reference to the bill and that particular amendment and the removal of religious freedom than for any other bill. In fact, it almost comes to the level of the firearms registry back in the late 1990s, Bill C-68. There was such upheaval that it changed the course of the election in my riding, where lawful firearms owners felt that the legislation the Liberals were bringing in was unjust. They feel the same way about this.

Mr. Speaker, I have not seen such public upheaval over legislation since the gun registry was introduced in the late 1990s. The fact of the matter is that we have had anti-hate legislation on the books since the 1970s, and under former justice minister Vic Toews it was more clearly defined; that has been in place. The real problem is that the government does not want to enforce this and law enforcement is not enforcing what already exists. When we see protests, right outside this building, with people screaming at the top of their lungs that they want to see our Jewish population annihilated, there is a refusal to act on that, even on the grounds of the House of Commons. Is this bill not really about trying to make it look like the Liberals are doing something about combatting hate instead of really doing it and having it enforced?

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' pay raise for the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces is a farce. The Liberals are slashing the housing benefit by up to 72%, while upping the rent by 5%. CAF members in the national capital region will see their housing differential cut by up to $4,200 a year. In Kingston, they will see their housing differential cut by up to $7,200 a year. When will the defence minister reverse these harmful changes?

Madam Speaker, the annual report from housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle, who is also a cabinet adviser, says that “the current pace of building deeply affordable homes is so slow that it [will] take over 1,000 years” to get to where we need to be. Housing is a provincial and municipal jurisdiction. All these agencies are working as fronts for private interests. What we need is for the government to cut taxes and just get out of the way so that we can get the homes built.

Mr. Speaker, Bill from the valley is a home renovation contractor. He called me to tell me that, by the end of May, he is usually fully booked for the entire season. It is June, and he has just two projects booked. People are more worried about putting food on the table than about fixing a leaky roof or a broken porch. He thinks he may have to take on an extra line of work. Will the Prime Minister tell Bill that Canada is in a recession, or is he going to tell Bill that he is just technically running out of work to do?

Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that a far more common-sense alternative to using up steel in Canada would be to have Via Rail acquire its own dedicated line, the Prime Minister's rupture, which he wants to be permanent, with the United States has come with his suggestion that we do more business with Europe. Could the member explain to me how much steel Europe and our new strategic partner, China, might take from us instead?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the answer-seeking Canadians in the riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke. Last week, I asked the government if it would end the corporate welfare spending spree and balance the budget. The response from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance was a misogynistic personal attack. This has become a recurring talking point from the Liberal bro caucus. The Liberals cannot defend their terrible policy, so they resort to invoking the “hysterical woman” trope. This sexist pattern comes straight from the top. The Prime Minister does not like to be questioned by women. He gets chippy and condescending when pressed. He even deployed a classic gaslighting technique when he told Rosemary Barton to look inside herself when she asked about his conflicts of interest. Let us be clear. I am not raising a question of privilege. This is no place for a thin skin. I am happy to throw partisan haymakers, and I can appreciate a sharp, devastating rejoinder. The secretary's ad hominem attack was just blunt and boring. It was less Cicero in the forum and more Archie Bunker in the La-Z-Boy chair. After 11 years of failure, all the Liberals have left are tired, worn-out personal attacks. This should not be a surprise, considering their policies are just as tired and worn out. The Liberal sovereign debt fund is just repeating the failure of the clean growth fund. The clean growth fund is just repeating the failure of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank. The Infrastructure Bank is just repeating the failure of the supercluster strategy. The supercluster strategy was just the Liberals' doubling down on the failure of the cluster strategy. The Liberals continue to fail over and over again yet never learn a fundamental lesson: One cannot beat the market. It does not matter if one has a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford. No one is smarter than the collective decision-making of 40 million Canadians. Unfortunately, while no one person can outsmart the market, someone can outsmart a government. Call this the Enron-Brookfield business model. Rather than compete in the market, they lobby the government to regulate a market into existence and to then regulate out the competition. They do not need a secret cabal to execute this strategy. They just need to put the word “sovereign” before our business pitch and watch the CBC lobby for them. They can rebrand their concrete slab into a sovereign spaceport and wait for the government to give them a 10-year exclusive, sole-source contract. Unlike the arrogant Liberal approach, our Conservative economic plan is based in humility. We cannot know the future, so we let a thousand flowers bloom. We create the conditions where anyone with a sound business plan has a chance to build a successful venture. We do not pick and choose who gets special political exemptions from Liberal red tape. We will cut the Liberal red tape and lower taxes for everyone equally. This is the same approach millions of Canadians take to investing. They do not try to pick individual stocks. They purchase exchange-traded funds to buy the market. This agnostic approach to economic growth has proven to be superior to the Liberals' faith-based approach. Unfortunately, Canadians are stuck living in the church of climate socialism for the next three years. This is a choice Canadians will face next time: our Conservative approach, rooted in reality and humility, or the Liberal approach, based on economic arrogance defensible only through personal insults.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear from this old Liberal response that the Liberals are incapable of rising to the occasion. They have become a broken record of vapid slogans. The Liberals are spending more, leaving Canadians to invest less. They are growing the economy from the heart out, the elbows up, the eyes down, but always against the fight for freedom. If one dares to question them, they suggest that person is mentally ill or, like the national “spend more” minister, will accuse them of hating their country. This illustrates the choice Canadians have: They can choose the nationalism of the Liberal Party, which treats criticism as treason, or choose the patriotism of the Conservatives, who seek to repair what is being broken in the country we love. That is the choice. We choose patriotism over nationalism. We choose humility over arrogance. We choose Canada strong and free.

Mr. Speaker, once again the Prime Minister is taking a page from President Trump's playbook. It is not enough for him to sign fake executive orders or hype a memo and call it a trade deal. Now he is importing an American-style sovereign debt fund to enrich his friends. Norway and Kuwait use their national oil revenues to fuel a sovereign wealth fund. Unless the Liberals plan to steal resource revenues from the provinces, the only thing feeding this fund is more debt. Another Crown corporation just means more bureaucracy. This is the same failed approach we saw with the Infrastructure Bank and the Trudeau growth fund. They give corporate welfare to well-connected Liberals to build solar panels, while Canadians' energy bills go up. Under the Brookfield government, corporations can claim an investment tax credit for spending a government grant. Which former colleague or friend will the Prime Minister appoint this time?

Mr. Speaker, Liberal spending is out of control. Liberal overspending means higher inflation today and more taxes tomorrow. The money is not getting to Canadians who need it. It is going to well-connected Liberal companies and corporate welfare queens, like Brookfield. Canada has the highest grocery inflation in the G7, the worst household debt, the highest housing costs and the second-highest unemployment in the G7. Will this Liberal Prime Minister end this costly credit card budget so Canadians can afford to live?

Mr. Speaker, we saw in Bill C‑11, the military justice system modernization act, that even though the committee had unanimous agreement on amendments, when it came to report stage the amendments were all stripped out. The government is already all-powerful in here, in what it wants to get done. What other aspects of committees will the government now control, besides amendments and the other things we do in committee, for example, scrutinizing bills?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the brave women and men in the Canadian Armed Forces who call the Ottawa Valley their home to speak to Bill C-11, the military justice system modernization act. Before we get lost in clauses, subclauses and government talking points about modernization, I want to centre this debate where it belongs, which is with the people this legislation is supposed to support and protect. Bill C-11 is not abstract, theoretical or merely administrative. It is about whether a woman who is sexually assaulted while serving her country can expect justice, dignity and protection, or if she will be left to fight alone against the very institution that failed her. That reality is embodied in the experience of retired corporal Elvira Jaszberenyi. Ms. Jaszberenyi did exactly what we tell service members to do. She reported her rape. She co-operated with investigators. She trusted the system that promised to protect her. Instead, the system closed ranks. Her assailant was already known to military authorities for sexual assault. Evidence went undocumented or disappeared. Key decisions were shielded from oversight. The Military Police Complaints Commission was denied access to critical prosecutorial briefing notes, despite clear recommendations from Justice Fish that this information be disclosed. When the military declined to proceed, Ms. Jaszberenyi did something few victims can afford to do, emotionally or financially. She pursued a private prosecution in civilian court. That trial did not vindicate her; it exposed her. Her credibility was questioned. Her advocacy was used against her. The fact that she continued to demand accountability was reframed as an agenda. She lost. For the government, that may be a completed file. For women watching from within the ranks, it was a reminder. For those looking to join, it was a warning. That is the context in which we must judge Bill C-11. The government tells us this bill would restore trust by transferring jurisdiction for sexual offences committed in Canada over to civilian court. Conservatives agree that this change was necessary. It was recommended by justices Deschamps, Fish and Arbour and reflects the years of advocacy by victims and experts. However, jurisdiction alone does not equal justice. Bill C-11 would remove cases from the military justice system while leaving untouched the very accountability gaps that failed Ms. Jaszberenyi in the first place. It would not require the military police to preserve and fully disclose investigative records to civilian authorities. It would not guarantee that oversight bodies would finally receive the information they need to do their job. It would not ensure that civilian prosecutors or judges are properly equipped to understand military power dynamics, chain of command pressures or the realities on base. Crucially, it would not address what happens after a civilian conviction. A service member could be found guilty of a sexual offence in civilian court and yet face no court martial, no automatic consideration under the code of service discipline and no transparent process to protect others still serving alongside them. That is not a survivor-centred system. This is administrative offloading. We heard this repeatedly at committee. Victim advocates warned us that Bill C-11 risks creating a jurisdictional void. Military police leaders told us civilian police services lack the capacity to absorb these cases. Prosecutors cautioned that removing concurrent jurisdiction might mean that fewer cases, not more, actually proceed. Ms. Jaszberenyi herself warned us that changing the forum without fixing the evidence handling, oversight and accountability would simply shift the harm from one system to another. If we want women to serve, we must give them reason to trust. That trust is already fragile. Canadians recently learned the Canadian Armed Forces is not on track to meet its own targets for recruiting and retaining women. The numbers are not just disappointing, they are damning. Women are not choosing to walk away from military careers because they lack patriotism or resilience. They are walking away because they do not believe the institution will protect them when it matters most. Ms. Jaszberenyi is now retired. After her attack, she was removed from her unit and tasked with painting walls. She was not given work commensurate with her skills and training. She was effectively forced out of service when the Canadian Forces was facing a retention crisis. Imagine the kind of message that sends to our serving women and men. Now she has to deal with Veterans Affairs. After giving testimony on this bill last fall, she was informed by Veterans Affairs that her paperwork had been lost. She needed to resubmit her application. There was no pension and there were no benefits, just more process and paperwork. No recruitment campaign, no slogan and no equity strategy will overcome a justice system that retraumatizes victims and shields decision-makers from scrutiny. That brings me to the procedural context of this debate. How this bill has been handled matters almost as much as what is in it. Committee members from multiple parties worked in good faith to strengthen Bill C-11. Amendments were adopted to improve oversight and support the accused fairly, and to address long-standing gaps identified by survivors and experts alike. Those amendments were passed after the committee overruled the chair's initial rulings, exercising its legitimate authority as a master of its own proceedings. Then, nearly 10 weeks later, the government asked the Speaker to intervene, not to clarify drafting but to strike down amendments, including amendments supported unanimously by committee members. The Speaker ruled them out of order. I respect the ruling, but I do not accept the government's conduct. Committees exist to do the hard, detailed work that the House does not have time to do, clause by clause. When the government invites committee members to engage, votes against them and then asks the Speaker to erase that work after the fact, it undermines parliamentary accountability. This matters because those amendments were not abstract procedural tweaks. They dealt with real issues, including access to trauma-informed training, independent oversight, support for both the victims and the accused, and ensuring key positions within the military justice system could not sit vacant indefinitely. The government chose not to persuade the committee. It chose to erase its work. On Monday, in debating Bill C-22, I spoke about the government's new-found majority and the choices it faces: to govern and to govern collaboratively or to rule by decree. Bill C-11 gives us the answer. This is not collaboration. It is control. When that instinct is applied to legislation dealing with sexual assault, oversight and victims' rights, the consequences are profound. The Conservatives believe that reforms to military justice must do three things. First, reforms must protect the victims, not just symbolically but procedurally and substantively. Second, reforms must preserve fairness for the accused because a system that cuts corners will not survive constitutional scrutiny. Third, reforms must strengthen, not weaken, institutional accountability. Bill C-11 would make progress on the first step by removing jurisdiction over sexual offences committed in Canada, but it would fail on the second and third by refusing to fix the structural flaws exposed by cases like Ms. Jaszberenyi's. A justice system that forces a survivor to pursue a private prosecution because internal accountability failed is a system already in crisis. A system that responds by narrowing scrutiny and striking committee amendments is a system interested in optics, not outcomes. If the government truly wants to rebuild trust, it must do more than move files between systems. It must control the culture of defensiveness, information control and procedural gatekeeping that allowed known predators to remain on the base and allowed victims to be discredited for demanding better. Women are watching this debate, as are their families and as are potential recruits who want to serve their country without sacrificing their safety or their dignity. They will judge us not on the title of this bill, but on whether its substance reflects reality. Bill C-11 is incomplete. It is not beyond repair, but repair requires humility, transparency and respect for Parliament. The experience of Elvira Jaszberenyi deserves more than a legislative shrug. It deserves a justice system that learns from failure rather than papers over it. Canada's armed forces cannot recruit its way out of crisis. It must legislate its way out of it, honestly and courageously. That is the standard this bill must meet, and that is what Canadians expect.

Mr. Speaker, we respect the recommendations made by Justice Arbour. However, while Justice Arbour listened to the victims of sexual assault, she did not have as much breadth as we did in listening to the testimonies of law enforcement, of people who are in the military and of people who had direct involvement in those proceedings, such as former judges and former lawyers in the system. We heard more testimony, and that is why we proposed some amendments, which have been rejected.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, who does yeoman's duty with different cases serving the armed forces. We heard from many people, but we need to listen to what the victims said that did not align with what is in the recommendations. It is not fair to them, and it is not fair to accuse people who are named in a snitch line and then have to face a court. When a case is taken out of the military system, there is no support for the accused, and there is no guarantee that there is going to be any sense of justice for the victim, because their case may never be heard. The Jordan framework may require that the case be put aside altogether.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of security conscious Canadians in the vigilant riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C-22, a bill respecting lawful access. The Conservatives support giving law enforcement the tools it needs to combat crime and keep communities safe. At the same time, these powers must be accompanied by strong safeguards, clear limits and independent oversight to protect Canadians' rights and freedoms. Conservatives support sending the bill to committee for careful review. The bill represents a major test for the Prime Minister and his ill-gotten majority. Had Canadians collectively decided to actually elect a majority government last year, we would not even be debating this bill. The Liberals would have used their majority to force through Bill C-2, which was the Liberals' first attempt at a lawful access bill. It was only because of a minority government that the Conservatives were able to prevent the Liberals from passing it. If the Liberals had gotten their way, they would have had the power to limit Canadians' use of cash. Bill C-2 would have allowed the Liberals to open people's mail without a warrant. The bill would have allowed Liberals to demand any data from any service provider, without a warrant. That would have applied to telecoms and companies, as well as to hospitals and banks. Even Canadian dry cleaners would have been subject to this law. Bill C-2 was an obvious overreach. The absence of those provisions in the new bill proves only that Conservatives were right. Just as with the first bill, the new version is not perfect. There are troubling issues related to metadata retention and the legal thresholds for asking for Canadians' private information. It may be possible to address or correct those issues in committee. Whether or not the Liberal MPs on the committee will be willing to adopt those corrections is the test. Will this be a typical Liberal majority under a typical Liberal prime minister? How the bill is handled will provide Canadians with the answers. By the time Jean Chrétien was in his third majority, journalists were writing books with titles such as The Friendly Dictatorship. After Justin Trudeau was given a blank cheque by Jagmeet Singh's NDP to govern as if he had a majority, he illegally invoked the Emergencies Act and violated Canadians' charter rights. The only thing worse than a Liberal prime minister with a majority government is a Liberal prime minister who has convinced himself he is serving in a time of a unique crisis requiring new powers. Jean Chrétien nearly led us to the breakup of the country. He used that to justify emergency spending on Canadian flags in Quebec. He told himself that he did not need oversight. He was saving the country. When the pandemic finally arrived in North America, Trudeau's first instinct was to seek two years of unlimited spending power without parliamentary approval. He told himself he did not need oversight, because he was saving the country. Now we have a new Prime Minister claiming we have a new crisis. He told himself that only he could solve it by answering fewer questions than any prime minister in history. Rather than hiding on YouTube, the Prime Minister should be giving his forward guidance advice to Canadians from the floor of the House of Commons. That the Prime Minister's instincts are to hide from the House makes me think he will fail the test the bill represents, but the test falls onto the shoulders of every so-called Liberal member of Parliament. Too often, they seem to think they are Liberal members of government. During the last election, we knocked on, collectively, hundreds of thousands of doors. Not a single voter told me that their first priority was ensuring that telecoms retain a year of metadata on all their customers. I bet that is true for every Liberal member too, yet even before new MPs had a chance to find the bathrooms, the government was tabling extensive legislation to give the state vast new powers. The bill was tabled for the same reason we have a fentanyl czar: The Liberals thought it would appease the Trump administration. The former bureaucrat, turned Prime Minister, asked the federal bureaucracy to draft legislation to make America happy again. Before his ministers could staff their offices with the type of people who might ask what stakeholders such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association would say about the law, it was tabled. It was only the opposition's holding a majority that prevented this first rushed and flawed legislation from becoming law. Thanks to unprecedented acts of self-interest, Liberals have a hair's breadth of a majority. Will the newly empowered Liberal members use this opportunity to work collaboratively, or will they force the bill through quickly to rack up a political victory? Do the so-called Liberal MPs think provisions in the bill that would require service providers to retain all metadata for a year are justifiable? Metadata information about the file itself is contained within many computer files. Emails that Canadians send contain extensive metadata, including who sent the email, the time it was sent, the software that was used to send it, the type of hardware used to send it, the sender's IP address and every IP address that every server in an email was routed through. People's cellphone calls create metadata that includes who called, who answered and the time and duration of the call; the cell towers used during the call; and even the GPS coordinates for the caller. Telecom companies retain this data for billing purposes, but they do not keep it beyond that point. Canadians, collectively, make 100 million cellphone calls every year. Forcing companies to maintain databases containing information on over 36 billion phone calls would present a systemic privacy risk. Beyond maintaining this vast secret database for the government, the companies would also be required to maintain systems that allow government to easily search and collect this metadata. This is often referred to as a back door. The concern has always been that creating a back door for the government also creates a back door for criminals and hostile foreign states. The Liberals will tell Canadians not to worry. They will point to language in the bill that says the government would not be allowed to ask for any back doors that company officials believe would create a hacking risk. Unfortunately for the Liberals, they tabled the bill just weeks before the world learned that the AI company Anthropic had built an AI model so advanced and so dangerous that the company has limited the access to it. The danger was that this new AI model had discovered thousands of new vulnerabilities in some of the most popular code. One of the most widely used operating systems for routers had a vulnerability that had been undiscovered for 27 years. The government is asking Canadians to trust Bell, Rogers and Telus to know in advance if the government is putting our privacy at risk. I should clarify something. I do not know whether Bell, Rogers and Telus would be covered by the bill. It is a reasonable assumption, or in the language of this bill, I have a reasonable suspicion, that the big three telecoms would be included. The actual list of providers can be found under schedule 1 of the bill. That page is currently blank. It would be left to cabinet to decide which companies would be covered. Cabinet would decide what measures companies would have to take to provide access to the company's information. In making these regulations, cabinet would be required to consider the cost of the regulations, the feasibility of the regulations and the impact of the regulations. However, just in case those factors ended up limiting the government, cabinet would have the power to also consider any other factor cabinet thinks is relevant. How convenient that is for the Liberal cabinet. That is just one example of one loophole in a substantive bill. This is why Conservatives support moving the bill to committee. The intent of the bill is to allow police and CSIS to do their jobs. The committee must be given the time it needs to hear from witnesses. It needs the time to provide the level of scrutiny that such a bill demands. We know that the Prime Minister is impatient. He is used to people just following orders. We have already seen how he mis-characterizes legitimate opposition as wasting time. Even the Liberal-friendly Toronto Star is allowing expressions of concern that the Prime Minister has an authoritarian streak. That is why the bill is such an important test for the ill-gotten Liberal majority. It could be an example of parties' listening to each other and to Canadians to improve the bill, or it could be that desperate Liberals grasping for accomplishments will jam it down Canadians' throats. The Prime Minister has already failed the test he set for himself. There is no comprehensive deal with the U.S. Food prices are the highest in the G7. We do not need forward guidance to tell us the deficit is already higher than he projected six months ago. We need a prime minister who will pass the test of democracy.

Mr. Speaker, during the last election, the member who just spoke accused his Conservative opponent of threatening to cut the public service should his opponent, who is also the leader of the Conservative Party, get elected. The fanner of joyless news actually has more cuts in his riding than would have ever been anticipated any other way. Could he let us know how many more of his constituents are going to be cut from the public service?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the law-abiding Canadians in the compassionate riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke and speak to Bill C-238. This private member's bill proposes to allow community organizations to seek restitution for drug crimes or human trafficking crimes. Making criminals pay for the consequences of their crimes has an undeniably popular appeal. The member for Sudbury's intentions with the bill may be honourable, but they are certainly misguided. It is an overused cliché to say that all good intentions lead to the fiery pits of damnation. Sometimes good intentions just lead to an endless bureaucratic maze. At other times those good intentions lead nowhere at all. Those two options are juxtaposed in the bill. Either it would never be used because the legal hurdles are too high, or it would be used but the accumulated costs would outweigh the benefits. My colleagues with actual lived experience in courtrooms explained how the wording of the bill makes it unlikely the bill would be of any use. First, the expenses incurred would have to be directly linked to the criminal offence. A convicted drug trafficker cannot be ordered to pay for all overdose costs. The organization would need to show that the specific individual who overdosed purchased a specific dose from a specific trafficker. Second, the organization would have to prove the marginal cost to treat that overdose. Most organizations get naloxone kits from the provinces for free. Given the nature of the work that many of these organizations do, it just might be impossible to disentangle the routine expenses from the marginal expenses resulting from a criminal offence. The bill lists the types of expenses an organization could claim. Not included on the list is the cost of accountants to ascertain the eligible expenses. One example of an expense perfectly highlights the problem with the bill: “expenses to implement or strengthen security measures, including expenses for security services and equipment”. This expense makes no sense, especially since the bill would limit restitution to cases of drug trafficking and human smuggling. We could follow the lead of the Supreme Court and create a hypothetical case to highlight the absurdity, or we could look at the tragic events surrounding the death of Karolina Huebner-Makurat, a 44-year-old mother of two who was killed by a stray bullet on July 7, 2023, while walking near the South Riverdale Community Health Centre in Toronto. The shooting occurred during a fight between drug dealers outside the supervised consumption site located within the health centre. An employee of the health centre aided one of the drug dealers in fleeing the police. If this bill had been law, and if the Crown had brought additional trafficking charges against the killers, the health centre would have been allowed to seek restitution for any strengthened security measures. Any security measures taken after the fact, such as installing a security camera, cannot be attributed to a specific crime. The crime has already happened. The camera cannot undo the crime. It may have been the impetus, but it is not the direct cause. The camera may reduce the likelihood of another crime, but that means it cannot reasonably be assigned to the initial crime. The criminal act would also have to be so unusual or so impactful that it resulted in a permanent degradation of the security environment. While the murder of Karolina would certainly qualify as an example, murder is not on the list of crimes covered by the bill. The South Riverdale Community Health Centre staff were well aware that drug trafficking was occurring outside. The organization had a long history of ignoring community concerns about the criminal activity centred around a safe consumption site. The organization acted as a magnet for traffickers. An employee of the organization fell in love with a drug trafficker and helped him hide from the police. Measures taken after the fact are not driven by the last criminal acts but are intended to avoid liability for the consequences of any subsequent criminal acts. Proving that a specific criminal act resulted in a specific marginal expense to an organization is so onerous that it likely would never be pursued. If this bill were passed and never used, that would be the best case scenario. If it were used, it could have only one result: It would lengthen the sentencing hearings and further tie up scarce resources in the courts. Defence attorneys would have economists and accountants on speed-dial to contest every expense. While drug traffickers are having their charges dropped because the cases take too long, the worst thing we could do is add to the delays by passing ill-considered laws. I doubt it is the intention of the member for Sudbury to add further delays to the criminal justice system, but that would be the impact. At best, this bill is useless. At worst, it will help criminals get off scot-free. As I said in the beginning, the motivations seem to be coming from a good place. The member for Sudbury wants to make criminals pay for the harms they cause. I think that is something all Canadians can get behind. There should be some way to connect the harm caused to an organization by the person or people causing the harm. For example, when the government decided it would copy the playbook used by opioid makers and flooded our streets with narcotics, it caused harm. Giving out free hydromorphone like candy had the predictable result of creating new drug addicts. This bill would seek to help community organizations impacted by the surge in drug addiction, yet it is the government's harm production policy that is at the root of many of the problems those same organizations are experiencing. Since crime rates peaked in the 1970s, they have been on a steady, 50-year decline. The year that mandatory minimums for gun possession were repealed was the last year we saw a decline in crime. The Liberal government saw those same statistics and proceeded to knowingly repeal mandatory minimum sentences for the very crimes this bill would cover. Again, those crimes are drug trafficking and human trafficking. We know the Liberal government is quite literally trafficking in hydromorphone. The damage the Liberals have done to our immigration and asylum system was also a boon to human traffickers. Ending the visa requirement for Mexico was essentially a two-for-one deal. The cartels would fill up their drug mules, fly them to Canada, unload the drugs and then smuggle the people across the U.S. border. After Justin's “all are welcome to Canada” tweet, the RCMP had to set up welcome centres for all humans smuggled across the border at Roxham Road. The additional costs being borne by community organizations on the front lines are directly tied to 11 long years of Liberal policies. This bill is like trying to put a band-aid on a machete wound, and the Liberals are the ones wielding the weapon. I do not blame the member for Sudbury for bringing forward this kind of band-aid bill. She is following the Prime Minister's lead. The Major Projects Office is another band-aid for the Liberal impact assessment machete. The Liberals prefer band-aids over doing the hard work and announcements over results. They prefer these types of performative bills. Making criminals pay has popular appeal, but this bill is the wrong approach. As my colleagues have pointed out, Canada already has mechanisms for victims of crime to seek restitution. If a criminal burns down a safe supply clinic, the Crown attorney can seek restitution for the organization, yet only 1.6% of criminal cases involve a restitution order. Of those, few are ever successfully collected. There is a reason why drug dealers are more likely to live in their parents' basements: Crime does not pay. Drug pushers and human smugglers belong in jail. While the Liberals prefer that dealers and modern slave runners serve their sentences from home, they still cannot work. This bill would try to squeeze water from a rock. It is clear that the member for Sudbury has heard from many of the same types of community organizations that I hear from in Renfrew County. They are under increasing financial pressure. Homeless shelters are filled with international students who now claim to be refugees, treatment centres are overrun, our food banks are overwhelmed and businesses are forced to close public washrooms due to rampant drug use. It was not like this before the Liberals were in power. This is the inevitable and predictable result of Liberal bad policies, including free opioids and open borders with no security checks. The Liberals have spent the cupboard bare, and now they are firing public servants while handing billions to Brookfield. Canadians and the community organizations they support are being squeezed by a Liberal vice of bad policies and out-of-control spending. Now all they can come up with is this policy that would shake spare change loose from drug dealers. If the member really cared about the community, she would urge her caucus to cancel the Brookfield clean electricity investment tax credit and put the money toward drug addiction treatment. Canadians deserve better than Liberal band-aids because they do not stick.

Mr. Speaker, higher prices are the official policy of the Liberal Party. The results speak for themselves: 100,000 jobs lost this year, a shrinking economy, the second-highest unemployment in the G7, the highest household debt and the highest food inflation. Canadians cannot eat empty Liberal slogans. Broken promises do not put a roof over Canadians' heads. Spending is out of control. The Brookfield government has already broken its deficit target. The Prime Minister can hide overseas for only so long. Canadians are waking up to the consequences of 11 long years of bad Liberal policy. The government's only solution is more of the same: more corporate welfare for well-connected insiders, more new bureaucracies to slow development, and more recycled announcements and reused talking points. Now they will reap a gas tax windfall, but Canadians will not see a dime. The bill for these bad Liberal policies will come due, but it is Canadians who will pay the price.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition signed by the law-abiding property owners of Carleton, Kanata, Nepean, Nipissing—Timiskaming and my great riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke. The petitioners are raising awareness about the lack of legal protections homeowners and landowners have when they must protect themselves, their property and their families against violent criminals emboldened by a decade of Liberal soft-on-crime policies. They support the Conservatives' stand on guard act, Bill C-270, which would clarify the legal standards around self-defence and defence of property so that those who are the target of crime would not be punished for fighting back to protect those they cherish.

Mr. Speaker, given all the plant closures, not only those that have happened but those to come, the massive layoffs and the anxiety and hardship that go along with that, all the Liberals have to say is, “Well, let them do something else. Let them manufacture defence vehicles.” Even if we could find the companies, even if we could re-skill the workers and retool the plants, I would like to ask the member from Windsor, how realistic is it to have these workers and plants just do something else?

Mr. Speaker, the questions and the comments from the opposition clearly illustrate why we are opposed to this bill. People who disagree with what we say or our point of view want us to be accused of committing a hate crime. Just saying what we think, even though it is counter to what they think, does not necessarily mean it is an act of hate. We were here when the original hate law was put into place. We were very careful about how we constructed that. The problem is not with the definition of hate. The problem is the enforcement of what is already on the books.