Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, oil and gas production in Canada is at record highs, up 34% in the last 10 years. We have managed to do that while reducing emissions in our country by 6%. We have found a way to sustainably grow and meet the growing needs of the world, including diversifying needs from allies that are increasingly requiring lower carbon emissions. We are building strong. We have approved Ksi Lisims, …
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Mr. Speaker, the opposition is picking up the same lines like a soon-to-be-gifted kettlebell, but these repetitions will not get them the gains they seek, because they require Canadians to forget everything before yesterday. We are in a trade war, and in that trade war we are performing very well. We are getting more jobs than the United States. We have foreign direct investment at the highest lev…
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Mr. Speaker, I feel sad for the members opposite, who look through the good news to find the bad news every day and bring their misery to the chamber. Here is the absolute reality. There has never been a better time to be in energy in Alberta. There has never been a better time to be in energy in Canada. We are building, and we are building strong. We welcome the Conservatives to get on board.
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Mr. Speaker, as the member opposite well knows, oil and gas production in Canada is up 34% over the last 10 years. Compare that to global production, which is up only 6%. These are record production levels that we are seeing. We are seeing new infrastructure coming all the time. Obviously, there is Trans Mountain. We are now talking about optimizing that. We have Ksi Lisims. We have Taylor to Gord…
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Madam Speaker, I agree with all of my colleague's first three reforms. I think they are all worthy of exploration. I will say, as a father of three young children, an 11-year-old, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old, and also as the son of aging parents, that I have really appreciated the flexibility that hybrid sittings have allowed on those unique occasions when it was necessary. My father was …
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Madam Speaker, I think that would be very challenging to do without getting into matters of debate on a regular basis. I do want to note though that it would also be nearly impossible to answer some of the questions. Here are some samples from QP just yesterday. There were multiple questions about whether we would please adopt Conservative policies. That is very difficult and broad. There was also…
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Madam Speaker, the United Kingdom, I understand, does a version that is somewhere between written and oral, in which a question has to be put on the Order Paper. The Order Paper gets very long; there might be 300 questions on it at some point, but a minister knows the questions. This allows the minister to prepare and to get the answers ready. I think something like that could be explored. I do ap…
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Madam Speaker, I do believe that one of the things we should explore is mixing up who is up and for what duration on each day, and I think that having Wednesday PMQs is a good idea. One of the challenges we saw in practice was that it then became a question of, “Why is the Prime Minister working only one day a week?” The challenge with implementing anything like that is that we are going to need t…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise today to speak to the Standing Orders. I have not been a member of Parliament for very long, but this is a venerable institution. Our regulations, procedures and practices are part of a parliamentary tradition dating back to the Magna Carta. They were adopted by thoughtful parliamentarians who came before us to respond to Canada's unique …
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Madam Speaker, I completely agree that the forestry sector is a vitally important sector for Canada. It is part of our Canadian identity. It is, of course, part of our Canadian economy, and the tariffs and duties that are being levelled on us are completely unjustified. It is true that we are seeing mill closures. We are seeing strain across the entire system, whether that be in primary saw millin…
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Madam Speaker, I will action those when I receive them. I appreciate the member's advocacy. I want to cap this all by saying we want to grow. We want to build. We want to have the strongest economy in the G7, but some of that requires the plans we have put into motion actually being allowed to be put into motion. That includes passing the budget implementation act. It is vitally important for this…
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Madam Speaker, I am glad my colleague has been visiting university campuses. Members of the House may not know I was vice-president at the University of Calgary before being elected. Youth employment and youth education are issues near and dear to my heart, and I am very happy to have the privilege of answering the member's question. Students certainly face challenges they did not face in years pa…
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Madam Speaker, I would invite members and anybody watching to look at the statistics themselves. Of course, someone can pick month-over-month numbers, but if we look at the trend line, we see that it is very clear: Progress is being made, and that progress is absolutely contrary to what the United States is seeing, where the trend is going in the other direction. I think that speaks very well for …
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Mr. Speaker, what can we say about the motion? It includes a few things we are already doing and a few things Canadians rejected. It feels like the Leader of the Opposition found it in a jacket he has not worn in a while. It is time of new ideas. We have some like the MOU with Alberta. It is an exciting time to be an Albertan. We are getting things built, and we invite the members opposite to get …
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Mr. Speaker, this is obviously occurring; I do not begrudge it. I welcome anybody standing up to do the right thing, even if it is in private, but I do hope they will join us by doing it in public as well.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. It is great to be back in Parliament. I think it is important to begin by taking stock of where we are right now, because a lot has changed since we were here in December, debating another opposition motion, this one on the Canada-Alberta MOU. Since then, the Prime Minister has given a landmark speech, which the Lea…
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Mr. Speaker, we are trying to be a pragmatic government. I do not agree that we have weakened environmental regulations, but we are looking to streamline them, run them in parallel in many cases, so rather than there being a waterfall of regulation A and regulation B, we are exploring both at the same time. We do know the world has shifted. We know Canada can meet this moment. We do know the Canad…
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Mr. Speaker, we have seen the Building Canada Act, which the members opposite supported. We have seen new trade deals with every continent in the world, and we have seen significant momentum on the acquisition of capital, including major acquisitions, deals with the U.A.E. to bring in over $70 billion. I understand that does not meet or match the narrative the opposition is trying to forward here,…
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Mr. Speaker, I sincerely appreciate the question. This is a topic that is of course near and dear to my heart and, I hope, to the hearts of every Albertan member of the House. Separatism in Alberta has been a pervasive background thing my whole life, at around 20%. We have not seen major changes to that in the last while. However, we are certainly hearing much more loudly the 20%, and that seems t…
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot think of a more out-of-touch comment than talking about 30 by 30. They are clearly not talking to people on the ground. These are not the challenges the sector faces. We need solutions, not obstruction, from the members opposite. I am welcoming them to work with us. We want to help them out. We need their help because they are the people on the ground representing the Conserv…
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to follow through on the general thread of my colleague's questions because it provides a pretty good framework to go through them bit by bit. The Prime Minister did, in fact, talk about feed, fuel and defend, things that Canada does very well. We are an energy superpower. Our oil and gas production from 2015 to 2024 went up 34% when, across the globe, it only went up 6%. W…
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Mr. Speaker, speaking of recycling, we have the 2015 playbook here in 2026, and it is just not going to work. Canadians know that the environment, economy, trade and reconciliation are all related. Canadians in Conservative ridings expect better than obstruction and speak-and-spell politics, where we get one of five answers to every problem. On this side, there are new programs for affordability, …
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Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right that this is not abstract. This is livelihoods, which is why we cannot get into sound bites. We need to do the hard work and maintain the best deals possible, which is what Canada has right now. The CUSMA negotiations will be difficult. We know that, but we also know that Canadians are anticipating and expecting government to work with opposition and get the …
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Mr. Speaker, the government stands with forestry workers. We have announced $2.5 billion in supports. We have a task force active right now looking at additional supports. I was in Prince George last week. Members in Conservative ridings want results, and I want to tell members of the House a little bit of a story. The last time we talked about this in the House of Commons, we got suggestions from…
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Mr. Speaker, we support a pipeline. We support the whole MOU, which is a careful balancing of the economy and the environment and gets us away from the United States as a primary trading partner. This is great news. It is also an MOU that balances the interests of indigenous peoples and other jurisdictions. We do not support, and we are happy to vote against, games played by the opposition that ma…
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Mr. Speaker, Albertans are steady people and sensible people, and they know imaginary taxes are imaginary. They know there is no packaging tax, and they know that wages are growing in this country. While there is much work to do, we are managing a very difficult storm very well. We welcome the members opposite to help us with that storm, instead of whatever this has been today, because this has be…
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Madam Speaker, this government would be very happy to support a motion for the entire memorandum of understanding. The memorandum of understanding is a balance that makes sure we are striking interests from coast to coast to coast and doing it in a way that strengthens our economy, strengthens our environment and makes us less dependent on the United States. It is an excellent memorandum of unders…
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg North. Before I entered politics earlier this year, I was a regular commentator on political strategy. One thing I tried to do in my appearances, particularly on a popular political podcast, The Strategists, was to lift the hood and show how and why political strategic decisions get made. It was my belief that by identifying and…
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Madam Speaker, the member made comments about the differential. I agree that it is important to manage the differential between WTI and WCS, or presumably between Brent and WCS, given that he is talking about a pipeline to the west coast. The differential is driven by quality differences, such as the sulphur content and the gravity of it, as well as transportation costs. I wonder if the member cou…
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Madam Speaker, I welcome the progress made in the amendment, but I am very curious as to how it did not mention industrial carbon pricing and the increase of the industrial carbon price as part of this amendment, one of the most important parts of the MOU. Would the member be willing to consider further amending his motion to do the entire MOU rather than, again, cherry-picking the things that his…
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things that struck me about the Conservative amendment that was moved recently was that it expresses support for the Pathways project. However, the Leader of the Opposition emphatically told me that they do not support a price on carbon. I am wondering if the member has any thoughts on how they could possibly reconcile that without creating a subsidy of tens of billions of …
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Madam Speaker, that is simply not the case. I was a senior official for the Government of Alberta at the time. While I cannot go into confidences, the reality is that nothing there approximates reality.
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question. One thing that struck me about the Conservative amendment was that it had carbon capture and sequestration as something they could support, but it did not talk about a price on carbon, which is essential for carbon capture and sequestration to work. Otherwise, what happens is that we are subsidizing oil companies instead of making oil companies pay a c…
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Madam Speaker, there are a couple of ways to look at that. There is recklessness in how we might approach getting a project built, and there is recklessness in the balance between the environment and the economy. I will speak very briefly to both. First, it would be reckless to not consult with people. It would be reckless to just say we can will these conditions into fruition. We saw what happene…
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Mr. Speaker, of course, this is a case that we are following very carefully. I will note that this is probably a question better targeted toward the justice minister, but I will say that in terms of the view of the case, one of the things that we are aware of is that while this is a lever that the President has used in the United States, there are other levers, so we should not assume, just based …
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Mr. Speaker, it was heartening to hear the member opposite say he wants the MOU to proceed. I hope he does realize that includes strong industrial carbon pricing, moving the effective price of carbon in Alberta from approximately $25 a tonne to $130 a tonne. I welcome that kind of environmental commitment, but it is very inconsistent with what I have heard in the House before. However, this gets u…
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Mr. Speaker, I personally believe that more is required. It is not enough, and we are going to need to figure out new ways to address emissions as we move forward. Some of those technologies are in infancy, and some do not exist yet, but it will require significant investment to get us to where we need to be and, in fact, push beyond that to start taking carbon out of the air to allow us to undo t…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question. Of course, our government is always ready to listen to Canadians, and of course, budgets are always moment-in-time documents. We did engage with Canadians in our pre-budget consultation, and the insights gathered through these consultations and online submissions played a vital role in shaping the budget. This is a plan to build major infrastr…
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Mr. Speaker, I completely agree. That is just the simple reality of it. However, I do think it would put additional pressure on the United States to potentially come to the table. Hopefully that is something that could be leveraged by our negotiators to get strong deals for our affected sectors. It is just very painful to see, and of course, the government needs to be there for them as those secto…
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Mr. Speaker, I worry that the follow-up betrays a bit ignorance of Canadian jurisprudence and the operating of the oil sector. I have worked on many pipeline projects in my career, and it is not just building a pipeline; it is building the product to get into that pipeline. That is going to take some time. Those things need to be aligned. Now, Alberta will not even submit a case until the spring. …
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Mr. Speaker, obviously, the unjustified trade war that the United States has brought on softwood lumber is unacceptable. We are working hard to resolve it. Today, the United States Chamber of Commerce called on the Trump administration to drop tariffs on lumber. We are seeing that the pressures are beginning to build. We will continue to work at all levels to resolve this, and we will continue to …
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Mr. Speaker, obviously, we stand with the affected communities. It is terrible to see the job losses. The minister has talked to Domtar and the B.C. minister of forestry. We want those jobs back, and we are going to work very hard to get them back.
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Mr. Speaker, we stand with them. We stand with them with supports that allow them to keep those jobs. We stand with them when they lose those jobs and are in those unemployment lines, with more supports there as well. We stand with the companies by investing in them heavily. We will always stand with our forestry communities. I invite the member to work with me to bring even more supports to those…
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Madam Speaker, indigenous treaty rights do not need to be spelled out in MOUs; they are inherent, but I do want to talk a little about the MOU and what it allows. The MOU allows us to have a durable climate plan, one that moves the effective price of carbon in Alberta from $25 to $130. It allows us to reduce methane emissions by 75%. It allows us to take carbon out of the air through carbon captur…
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Madam Speaker, the far-reaching memorandum of understanding with Alberta includes a number of timelines. I invite members to read it. By July 1 of next year is when a pipeline proposal will come from the Province of Alberta. There are timelines, and we are seeing that there is not just talk about pipelines, but talks about AI data centres, nuclear energy, and many ways we can grow the Canadian eco…
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Madam Speaker, we are in a trade war. We are in a very difficult situation, and in that situation, this government is standing with affected workers. We are moving heaven and earth to help them. We just announced another $500 million of supports two days ago. The member is fully aware of this. We are open to more ideas for more supports. We had a take-note debate the other night. I asked the Conse…
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Madam Speaker, yesterday was a great day for Canada because it got us onto a better course of action and a more common ground and confederation between Alberta and Canada, which will also lead to a better course of action across the entire country. Part of the agreement was that we would work with British Columbia, that we would work in a tripartite table, and of course, that we would all respect …
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Madam Speaker, tinfoil is actually made of aluminum, so I would like to thank the member for his first act in supporting that sector in the House. The fact of the matter is this: Yesterday, we announced an MOU with Alberta that increases economic prosperity for this country, increases environmental sustainability and the durability of environmental action in this country, and makes us less reliant…
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Madam Speaker, helpful ideas like “Just get a deal done” are not going to get the deal done. We need ideas. We need support for workers, the workers the member and I both care about. How about we work together to help this industry, instead of these histrionics in the House? How about that?
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Mr. Chair, my colleague's question touches on a couple of important points worth highlighting. First, any support of the forestry sector is going to require collaboration with the provinces, because it is simply not going to work otherwise. When we look at tenure in particular and at economic access to fibre, that really is in the provincial hands primarily. There are things the federal government…
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