Dominique O'Rourke

Mr. Speaker, recent global events have shown that Canadians cannot take secure supply chains for granted. In my riding of Guelph, we know all too well that food security is national security and that Canada's producers are an essential part of our food sovereignty and our national sovereignty. That is why investments in infrastructure that moves Canadian food from farm to market are so important. Can the minister explain how the $1 billion food-link fund will strengthen Canada's domestic food system, support Canadian producers and ensure that we are less vulnerable to global disruptions?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of many Guelph residents, highlighting the important role Canada Post plays in communities across our country. The petitioners are calling on the government to continue supporting a strong, reliable and accessible postal service and to ensure that Canada Post can continue serving Canadians well into the future.

Madam Speaker, this is my first time speaking to legislation since we came back in the fall, so I would like to take the opportunity to welcome the pages, who are from all over the country, to this House. They are in for a spectacular year. I myself sat where they are in 1991, but do not do the math. We congratulate the pages. What an honour this is and what a full-circle moment it is to welcome the pages and to be here speaking to legislation that is transformative in this country. I also want to thank everyone in Guelph for the conversations, meetings, site tours and community events over the summer. It is a real honour to represent Guelph in this House. As we approach Thanksgiving, I am so grateful for the privilege, the responsibility and the honour of serving my community and this great country at this historic time. Guelph is the fourth-largest exporter to the U.S. per capita. This means we engineer, we make things and we ship things primarily by road and rail. Did members know that the city of Guelph is one of the few municipalities that owns a railway? In the 1880s, businesses in Guelph were frustrated with the freight rates and service provided by the Grand Trunk Railway, which held a monopoly on rail transport in the city, so local merchants and civic leaders decided to build their own. They believed competition was essential for economic growth, and they created the Guelph Junction Railway to connect Guelph to the growing Canadian Pacific Railway network, providing local industries with an alternative route to markets across Canada. Now, 142 years later, the GJR owns approximately 38 kilometres of track. It connects with both Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the CN network, serving local manufacturers and industries. As Guelph heads into our bicentennial year, I want to celebrate those early industrialists and civic leaders who I think would agree with the building canada strong act. They wanted to give themselves more certainty. They built a stronger, more resilient and more independent economy. Everyone in Guelph I have met and have been working with for the past 18 months, including some of the largest employers in advanced manufacturing, agri-food, clean tech, packaged goods and consumer products, wants predictability and certainty. I heard this all the time when I was on city council. Of course, it is at a micro level, but people will tell us that they want faster processes, because sequential approvals and multiple reviews, and sometimes a change in municipal or provincial government, can derail a project. It definitely increases costs. It can delay a store opening. It can threaten the viability of an entire project. A lot of money and time can be spent in this churn that is not productive, and it is magnified when multiple jurisdictions are involved. This is what Bill C-39 seeks to address. We are in a trade war with our largest trading partner, which is something the opposition has sought to minimize repeatedly. We did not ask for it. We do not deserve it. It is illegal and it is unjustified, yet here we are. We will not be complacent. We will have our own plans. We cannot control what other countries do, but we can take down our interprovincial trade barriers, which the federal government has done and provinces are working on. We can control our own processes and regulations at home to get big things built, people working and goods to our own projects and to an expanding list of international markets. We can make sure federal reviews and decisions are completed within one year of a proponent submitting a completed comprehensive application, while upholding Canada's rigorous environmental standards and respecting indigenous rights. We can and we must do so. How? It is by removing duplication and conducting reviews and consultations concurrently rather than sequentially. We can accelerate these processes. In fact, already since December 2025, Canada has achieved co-operation agreements with seven provinces to advance a one-project, one-review framework to reduce existing duplication between federal and provincial assessments. To be clear, the building canada strong act would make no changes to federal environmental standards. It would be a change in process. All factors would still need to be taken into consideration, including climate impacts, species at risk, ecological and nature implications, and more. I know this is really important to folks in Guelph. Let us remember that major projects, like electrification, massive hydro and wind projects, and critical mineral extraction and processing, also support our climate goals. They support Guelph businesses like Hammond Power, which makes the transformers that keep our industries humming and is key to cleaner energy and transportation, and Hitachi Construction Truck Manufacturing, which makes a partly electrified 150-tonne rigid-frame mining truck using Hamilton steel and manufactured in Canada by highly skilled workers. Canada's new government has set an ambitious vision of major projects, electrification, nuclear, a defence industrial strategy, homebuilding and massive investments in infrastructure. Who is going to build all this? Who is going to fabricate the steel we need, make the moulds and build the ports, roads and towers? Canadian workers are. This government is so invested in our skilled tradespeople that we are investing $6 billion in the team Canada strong initiative. Working with unions, we have set a goal to recruit, train and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal trades by 2031 and to support them financially along the way. We are a government that believes in labour, and we consulted with labour on this bill. Bill C-39 would modernize the federal labour framework and strengthen protection for workers in federally regulated industries. Changes to the Canada Labour Code will strengthen collective bargaining by helping parties address issues earlier, reach negotiated agreements and resolve disputes, while fully protecting the right to strike. Section 107 has been in the Canadian Labour Code for nearly 50 years. This bill would create guardrails around its use, adding transparency and predictability while ensuring that it is reserved as a last resort tool for exceptional circumstances in which both parties have reached an impasse. Any decision to invoke section 107 would require the federal government to demonstrate significant national, economic and social risks. The government will also be adding new health and safety officers to increase inspection capacity by 70%, hiring new staff at the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to clear the backlog of complaints by workers against employers and cracking down on worker misclassification with more inspectors. Together, these changes will ensure workers are treated fairly, are protected on the job and have greater income security, and they will promote stable labour relations. This is important to the workers, to their families, to people in my riding and to all Canadians. Bill C-39 would also formally designate strategic trade corridors, remove bottlenecks and establish a transportation project office to coordinate federal permitting and advance priority transportation projects within one year. Guelph is a manufacturing hub. Advanced manufacturing is Guelph's largest employment sector, accounting for $4.5 billion in exports every year. Getting raw material in and finished products out faster and more predictably improves productivity, reduces business costs and makes Canadian business more competitive. This includes logistics and shipping companies such as PDI and Traxxside, which use the Guelph Junction railway, and multiple trucking companies. Since last spring, Canada has signed 20 new economic and security agreements. We want to export to the world. To do that, we need modern border crossings, including ports and trade digitization. When I spoke with people from UPS operations this summer in Guelph, they told me that digital trade processes will reduce costs for exporters, improve supply chain resiliency and help small and medium-sized enterprises participate in international markets. These small and medium-sized businesses sometimes get lost in the conversation on major projects. They seem far from Guelph, but these faster supply chains and trade corridors are for small and medium-sized businesses too. They account for approximately 99% of all employer businesses in Canada. There are 444 CFIB members in Guelph alone. I am so excited. I am so proud to be on the industry committee and the transportation committee at this moment in time. It is an awesome intersection. This is the most ambitious reform to how Canada builds in a generation. We are modernizing regulatory approvals, maintaining rigorous environmental standards, upholding indigenous rights and ensuring workers are treated fairly. We can all work together to build Canada now, keep Canada moving and ensure Canada is strong for all.

Madam Speaker, I believe my colleague from Calgary Confederation began to address it. First of all, when we are talking about linear infrastructure, it can take some time to assemble the land, to do the engineering, to get the partners onside, etc. That may be why. I would encourage my hon. colleague to support the bill and get it to committee, where we could have a more fulsome discussion.

Madam Speaker, first, I would remind the House that no environmental legislation will be amended and that all existing requirements must be met. Second, thanks to oil and gas pipelines, our exports will not necessarily be going to the United States anymore; they may go to Asia and Europe instead. Given the geopolitical situation in Europe, our allies are very eager to access Canadian energy to heat their homes.