Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join the debate briefly and ask my friend from Richmond a question. This entire debate around the environmental impacts is as though Bill C-5 never passed. Bill C-5 says the government can break any law it wants to, including the Species at Risk Act or the Impact Assessment Act, if a project is of national interest. I know my Conservative colleagues may not agree with me that this is a bad thing, but I wonder if the Conservative caucus has noticed that Bill C-5 would be on top of Bill C-39.

Mr. Speaker, watching the recent investment summit, I had a sense of déjà vu. At COP26, then UN special envoy on climate finance, our current Prime Minister, announced the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. The world's largest banks and investment firms committed over $100 trillion for the transition to net zero. Five years later, the only net zero is the investments promised by these firms. How will the investments promised at the recent Toronto summit differ from the Glasgow promises?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually in the House to present a petition of deep concern to constituents. It relates to the very pressing issue of the critically endangered population of southern resident killer whales. The petitioners note that with the expansion at Roberts Bank, which is a very devastating ecological project, as well as the increased oil tanker traffic, there is a need to protect whales. Their habitat shrinks when they are in an acoustic environment, when there is noise and there are vessels too close. I know I have summarized. However, unusually, the key action component of the petition I am presenting has been acted upon, so I now add a note of thanks. The petitioners ask for the same distance requirements that Washington state put into place: that recreational and whale-watching vessels stay 1,000 metres back from this threatened population. In fact, the Government of Canada has now adopted the same regulations as Washington state. It is a rare occasion to present a petition and also thank the Government of Canada for acting on it.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today in the House to present an e-petition that was originated by someone concerned that Canada is the only G7 country that provides a fully funded home for the leader of the official opposition. I am presenting this, obviously, without any thought to any particular person. Given the rules around petitions, I do not take a position on the petition. I would just say that this e-petition has attracted over 20,000 signatures of Canadians who would like the House to examine whether we should continue to provide a fully funded home for the leader of the official opposition.

Mr. Speaker, “getting products to market” is a repeated phrase, and one thing that shakes my confidence in the government was in the Canada Gazette. On August 1, when it posted about the west coast oil pipeline, it did not accurately describe, in a very short description, the product that will go in the pipeline. Similarly, as the Liberals talk about the product going to China in the pipeline, I will note that the diluted bitumen, which is actually the product used mostly in China, is the tar in the bitumen to pave roads. I wonder if the member would comment on the level of familiarity of the government benches with the products that are being shipped.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Seniors for Climate Action members who came across Canada on the Seniors Climate Witness caravan and raised the issue of the climate crisis, just as scientists are raising it. The Prime Minister, on the floor of the House, committed on October 17, 2025, to meet the Paris targets. Ever since then, he has been galloping in a different direction. My question is simple: Before committing to spending tens of billions of dollars to build a climate-killing pipeline, will the government at least present to the House a cost-benefit analysis, a pretense, even, of a business case that this has any place in our strategy?

Mr. Speaker, this bill is an abomination. I want to go back to Bill C-5 along with Bill C-39. All of the language in these statutes rests on the assumption that cabinet can pick a project of national interest or a region of national interest without any criteria and without any cost-benefit analysis or proof of a business case. Will the minister commit that before naming any such project or any such region, we actually have some facts presented to this House?

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a question about, not just how much bureaucracy, but whether it troubles him as it troubles me that the government creates new agencies that are not transparent. Rather than creating Crown corporations or entities within departments, we are looking at special operating agencies, like the Major Projects Office, that are not as accountable as other types of bureaucracy. I wonder if the leader of the official opposition has any comment.

Mr. Speaker, I fully agree with my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. She gave an excellent speech. She clearly outlined the democratic setbacks regarding the environment and workers' rights. What does she now think of this government and the Prime Minister, who, in the past, presented himself as someone concerned about climate issues and the threat of climate change? Why is he moving so far away from those values?

Mr. Speaker, I also welcome the member for North Vancouver—Capilano to the House. I suppose I could also welcome him to North Vancouver. I also was up and down the hills of North Vancouver quite a lot through the by-election, and I may have heard different things from the voters there. I do want to help the hon. member. This question was asked to my friend the member for Joliette—Manawan by the hon. member for Hull—Aylmer: Where in the bill do we find retrenchments and abandonment of endangered species? It is riddled throughout the bill. It is changes in the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, it is changes in the Fisheries Act and it is changes in the Species at Risk Act all around the idea that before conditions can be set, they would have to be examined for their practical feasibility and economic impact. This bill is nothing but a disgraceful abandonment of environmental regulation across Canada and decades of work. Since the hon. member references the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, how can he ignore, and does he ignore, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation court case against the dredging of Burrard Inlet, which would destroy habitat that the federal government committed to protect?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour today to present a petition with collected signatories from beyond my riding, but including my riding. The petitioners are very concerned about what we know about bottom trawling, in other words, pulling enormously heavy draggers along the ocean floor, removing everything in their path. It is a non-selective fishing method and the term “nets” hardly describes it. They are heavy implements that actually do enormous destruction. The United Nations and various international agencies have called for an end to bottom trawling. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has provided data on specific ground fish species, but has not yet acted to protect the entire ecosystem. Therefore, the petitioners are asking the House of Commons to implement the 2011 United Nations convention that calls for a moratorium on bottom trawling, otherwise known as clear-cutting the ocean floor.

Madam Speaker, the Minister of Finance will already know, because of the earlier negotiations between parties for unanimous consent on various aspects of the bill, that I will support it. I do have some misgivings, and I am glad for the opportunity to debate it later today. However, since the minister mentioned the investment summit, I will say that there is a piece of legislation I desperately want from the finance minister, which is to amend the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act. He will know that the investment board was set up in 1997 with only one rule: Invest Canadians' pension money where it gets the greatest rate of return on investment, which means we are invested more outside Canada than in it, more in the United States than in Canada. I would like my pension dollars to go to the school down the road, to the hospital in my community, and to help for small business, not for Petco in the United States, not for Grok to build deepfake—

Madam Speaker, not to be too pointed about it, but does it ever occur to the Conservatives that they should sue the Liberals for plagiarism? The Conservative platform is now being implemented point by point by the current government. I would add another one, and I do not agree with these changes. I know the Conservative caucus would have reason to cheer, but why would the Conservatives promise to cut overseas development assistance? The Liberals promised they would not, and then they did by $2.7 billion. There have been many promises. Certainly the Liberals promised to meet our Paris agreement targets. They are clearly not meeting them. I ask my hon. colleague from Barry South—Innisfil if the Conservatives have considered getting a lawyer.

Mr. Speaker, I find when I talk to constituents, and I do hold a lot of community meetings, that, yes, there is a huge amount of concern with affordability. As the hon. member will know, I will vote for the bill as well. However, I also hear a lot of concern from my constituents in British Columbia about how this summer we had a province-wide state of emergency over wildfires. I know that certainly there is deep concern within Skeena—Bulkley Valley about the changes in the lower water levels and impacts on salmon. I wonder if he has any comments on this other aspect of a crisis we are seeing. We cannot really deal with one at a time. We have to deal, with urgency, with both.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place for the first time to give a speech since our summer recess. I spent much of the time since I last saw members in this place, as we all have been doing, travelling through my riding. It may look like a small dot on a postage stamp to people who are looking at it quickly, but actually, given that it is five separate small islands, Saturna, Salt Spring, Mayne, Pender and Galiano, ferry transit between them makes it difficult to get to all parts of the community. Certainly, it takes a lot of time to travel with B.C. ferries. I am certainly supporting the motion from my colleague just down the way here, from Courtenay—Alberni, to find ways in the next budget to provide some funding to assist and have some equity between the way Atlantic Canada ferries are subsidized and B.C. ferries. I am detracting from my main point, which is that on the Saanich Peninsula, as the name of my riding, Saanich—Gulf Islands, suggests, I represent quite disparate areas geographically. Getting to nine different communities, as I do twice a year, to make sure I hold community meetings as conveniently as possible for all my constituents, means that I have just been on a very inspiring and constantly humbling experience of listening to my constituents in each of the five small southern Gulf Islands and throughout the Saanich Peninsula, from the very tip of it at the very northern part of the peninsula, near Swartz Bay and the airport, all the way down into areas that are covered by the MP for Victoria. We share some territories there. The concerns from constituents in Saanich—Gulf Islands are not unlike concerns from constituents I imagine my colleagues have heard across the country. There is a lot of concern about the cost of living, particularly around housing. There is a lot of concern about access to medical care, access to a family doctor and provision of health care services. In my communities, everywhere I went, there was the concern of the climate crisis. This summer, British Columbia had a state of emergency declared for the whole province as fires burned out of control. It was terrifying to see the sights out of Peachland and the areas around the Okanagan. We also had extreme weather events throughout British Columbia this summer. As a former Cape Bretoner, my heart broke to see the roads washed out and the floods and the loss of life in Cape Breton from the floods there. In other words, whenever I am travelling through my community of Saanich—Gulf Islands, I know that what I am hearing resonates with Canadians across the country. There is no question that Canadians are concerned about the cost of living, and I will be supporting Bill C-38, which we debate now, but I do so with some misgivings, because it, once again, piles on the notion that we are heavily taxed, which some Canadians are and some Canadians are not, and that a temporary relief measure like this will make a real difference. I also have a long memory, and I remember that back in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the fuel excise tax permanent in the 2008 budget, which was one of the better things he did in terms of public policy. Again, in the 2013 budget, he confirmed and committed that the municipal order of government would be able to access those funds as a predictable, reliable source for public transit. This has changed over time in terms of where that funding comes from. For municipal orders of government across Canada, one of the concerns I have is, as we temporarily suspend the excise fuel tax, not only does it have impacts on our overall debt and deficit, because that is just money not coming in to the general federal revenue at a time when we have unprecedented levels of deficit already, but it also creates confusion for municipal orders of government. I have spoken to mayors who say that yes, they are told by the federal government that there are other infrastructure funds and they can apply through those, but they are not as transparent, not as predictable and not seen to be as reliable for helping people who are looking for public transit. I do have a number of points to make about this, but while we look at fuel taxes in today's bill, let us just for a moment focus on public transit. This country, for a wealthy industrialized country, a member of the G7, has an embarrassingly poor public transit system, particularly in rural and remote areas of Canada, particularly if we are looking for an affordable form of transportation like a bus or a train. If a person owns their own vehicle, yes they can mostly get from A to B, but if they do not, they can be in some peril, recalling that the findings of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls included a strong recommendation that Canada commit to a ground transportation system that was affordable and reliable in rural and remote areas, because it is the vulnerability of the poor that places indigenous women and girls hitchhiking on the Highway of Tears. For people trying to get from Prince George to Vancouver, are within rural interior B.C., or for that matter, are in Saskatchewan or Alberta, we used to have a bus service that was quite reliable in most provinces, but it retreated everywhere and all at once. We used to have many more routes on Via Rail, and they used to be more affordable. I have heard Alto mentioned a few times in this place. However, the Green Party thinks that Alto needs major overhauls to become what it could be, but in the meantime, it does absolutely nothing for Canadians who do not live in the Windsor-Quebec corridor. It does nothing for people in rural parts of New Brunswick where medical care can be a five-, six- or eight-hour drive from a hospital. If it is winter and the roads are icy, or for a senior, there are no alternatives to get there except to get in a car and drive. Again, while we are talking about this fuel excise tax, because of its historical connection to transit, I wanted to use this occasion to make a few points on that. I am hoping that the federal government brings it forward in its next budget. I had begged the Prime Minister before the 2026-27 budget. When I met with the Prime Minister in early October 2025, I made this very point that we need affordable ground transportation in this country. We do not have it particularly for rural and remote Canadians, but we are also looking at a lot less predictability around the funds for urban public transit. Going to this piece of legislation and the focus on a temporary suspension of fuel excise taxes, there will be some ways in which that assists some Canadians: those who are buying gas. Again, if a person cannot afford to own their own car, they are not buying gas for a car. According to Statistics Canada, one out of 10 Canadians right now is living below the poverty line. That should command our attention. There is a growing gap in this country between the wealthiest and the poorest. I remember when I used to feel sort of complacent or self-satisfied as a Canadian thinking, “Well, that gap between the rich and the poorest is in the United States. It is not so much here.” We actually are going through a very significant shift. The middle class is feeling the crunch. When we talk about the affordability crisis, we are largely talking about the fact that, as some of my colleagues from other parties have already mentioned, we have families with two incomes who still cannot make ends meet. There is that crunch in the middle class, and affordability has become increasingly difficult. What has happened to the income distribution in this country? We may be in a class war where the upper class or the billionaire class has already won, and we did not even know there was a war. Again, one in 10 Canadians lives below the poverty line, but what is happening to the wealthiest? According to Forbes, in 2000, it could track 15 billionaires in Canada. I am not against billionaires. Well, actually, I kind of am. I think that billionaires should be taxed so that we can reduce them to mere millionaires so that they have to count their pennies like the rest of us mere millionaires. I am kidding, obviously. I am not in that group, but it does strike me as something that should command our attention that, right now, there are 76 to 82 billionaires in Canada. Again, 26 years ago, there were 15. Now, there are somewhere between 76 and 82 billionaires. Some Canadians are doing quite well. Some Canadians do not worry about the fuel excise tax. In fact, they do not worry about their income tax either. We are not taxing their wealth, which we really need to look at. We need to look at taxing assets. For what it is worth, in the last election campaign, thanks to the Parliamentary Budget Office and the act that oversees it, political parties had the right to ask for the Parliamentary Budget Office to give all political parties access to an analyst to look at budgetary planks that the party was looking at to see what the PBO thought of budget proposals. It happens that the Green Party platform, of all the party platforms in the 2025 election campaign, was the one that brought us closest to balanced budgets. I do not think anyone saw that in the news because, despite our efforts, we did not get any news coverage of the fact that we had the platform that brought us closest to balanced budgets. We did that through a combination of measures. One that was very successful was a tax on financial transactions. It used to be called the Tobin tax. In the late 1990s, the House of Commons passed a motion in support of Canada pursuing the Tobin tax. We applied it domestically and looked at what would happen if we put a 20¢ tax on every $100 of transactions in the stock market or currency transactions. Now that is not going to affect those people who are struggling in the middle class, nor does it have any impact at all on the one in 10 Canadians who are below the poverty line. However, applied to stock market transactions and currency transactions, it could bring in $55 billion to Canada's general revenues. That could really make an impact for Canadians who are struggling. That could provide the transit that people need to get from A to B when they are in the group of people who either cannot afford to own a car or find it much more convenient not to have to operate one, particularly in urban areas. Again, rural and remote Canada also needs ground transit. When we look at the current situation and the price of gas being one of the main drivers of inflation right now due to the decision in February of this year by the United States and Israel to launch attacks on Iran. These violate the United Nations charter. I suppose I could be charitable and say the Prime Minister misspoke when he initially said that Canada was supportive of what the U.S. was doing in bombing Iran. Regime change has never actually occurred through foreign countries violating international laws to bomb them. In any case, ever since that occurred, the price of gas has been spiking, especially since the Strait of Hormuz started being blocked, which was entirely predictable, although somehow Trump and his advisers did not predict it. The effect of higher gas prices has been devastating on inflation and the cost of food. It has had a real impact, certainly for North Americans, and globally it has created a lot of instability in markets. It has created a lot of concern. One thing it has also created is a windfall level of profits for the oil and gas industry. Here we are debating a minor change that will affect the Treasury of Canada by increasing debt and deficit, but why are we not talking about the need for an excess profit tax on the industry that right now is essentially war profiteering? The oil and gas sector has, in the last year or so, had an extraordinary increase in profits, and some of it has certainly been to the benefit of Canada's economy. Our government books and the Alberta provincial government books are better off for high fuel prices, but it certainly has not helped the average Canadian or for that matter the average American or people around the world who are struggling. They are also struggling, as I mentioned earlier, because of the climate crisis and the impact of having to become climate refugees, sometimes several times in the same year. I think of people in northern Ontario, near Wabakimi Provincial Park, in first nations communities that burned to the ground and had inadequate preparations for such events because the November 2025 budget gave scandalously scant attention to the need to protect communities and to build up a national firefighting force to buy water bombers. What we had was a commitment to lease water bombers and that was it. We were going to lease three water bombers over four years. There was nothing for what we need to do for flood protection and for building up. By the way, firefighters in this country are not even classed under occupational health and safety rules as first responders. They are at the back of the bus in terms of the protection for their own lives, their own salaries and their own pensions. I will go back to the issue of windfall profit taxes. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, if we applied windfall profit taxes on the oil and gas industry, that could bring into the coffers of the Government of Canada between $18 billion and $48 billion. Again, that could assist us quite a lot in paying down the debt. With respect to the $34 billion, for some reason, I like to convert billions back to millions so we can think about what it really means to be a billionaire and what it really means for the Canadian government to spend the money it takes in through taxes. One billion dollars being 1,000 million dollars, we spent $34,000 million, without a single vote in this place, to build the Trans Mountain pipeline through a Crown corporation that we are now proposing would build a second pipeline. This is an outrageous waste of money, where the public purse is paying for something that the private sector does not think is worth investing in because there is no business case. However, if we brought in a windfall profit tax on the oil and gas sector and brought in $18 billion to $48 billion there and if we brought in, as we are advocating, a financial transaction tax to bring in $55 billion there, yes, we could start paying down debt and deficit. I meant to mention one thing about the pipelines that I forgot. The hon. Minister of Energy and Natural Resources was in British Columbia earlier this summer, and he actually said that the Trans Mountain pipeline was making “oodles” of money. To correct the record while I have a chance, in fact while the Trans Mountain pipeline in its year-to-year operations is more than breaking even and making some money, the revenues returned to the Government of Canada by the Trans Mountain pipeline have yet to be sufficient to pay the interest on the debt Canadians incurred to build it. If someone is making money in a normal business context, if they have spent $34 billion to build their business, personally I do not think they are making any money until they pay that off. They have a $34-billion debt and not one penny has been paid down but are under the assumption that pipelines are like something the tooth fairy leaves under one's pillow and there is no actual cost to them. However, it is $34 billion and now the government is proposing to spend $40 billion for a project that has no private sector proponent. Regarding this bill, if we are going to provide real relief to Canadians and real measures for affordability, we do need to look at excess profit taxes on the very monopolistic small group of grocery store chains that we have in this country. We need to help farmers. Desperately, we need to help farmers so they can get food from their farms to the tables of Canadians, healthy local Canadian food. I applaud the measures the government has brought in for making greenhouses more accessible, but we need to make land accessible to young farmers and we need to do everything we can to ensure that the grocery store chains buy local and promote local so that our farmers can continue to provide healthy food to Canadians. We would not do much in Bill C-38 to actually deal with the affordability crisis. Yes, the Liberals have taken a page out of a position advocated by the Conservatives last year. Yes, I will vote for it, but I am concerned. Where is the government in really helping Canadians with affordability? Where is the help for remote and rural Canadians to get transit that is affordable? Where is the help to ensure that the poorest of the poor are not bearing a larger tax burden than the richest of the rich? It is time to actually consider tax fairness in this country, taxing wealth and excess profits of transnational corporations.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Les Pays-d'en-Haut. I know him well; he was once my neighbour in the House. Before the Liberal majority, I sat sit with them on the other side of the House. I know that his riding depends a lot on the ski industry. We had better do something about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Otherwise there will be no ski industry in the country because we will not have enough snow to sustain it. Meanwhile, I am voting for this. I take his point that we want to be sure that we are reducing stresses for people today who are spending too much on gas, no question, but if we really want to invest in a future for Canada, it is time to act on the climate crisis and reduce excess profits to the big oil and gas industries that are making out like bandits at both ends.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have to really be bold. We need a guaranteed livable income to eradicate poverty in the country. Poverty costs our whole society. It is not a matter of charity. A wealthy, industrialized country like Canada should not have one in 10 Canadians living below the poverty line. We should not have people setting up tent cities. We should be able to ensure that every Canadian has what it takes to live, and that allows people to not fear clawbacks if they start making money somewhere else. If we are really serious about it, end the class warfare and declare that Canada wins by bringing in a guaranteed livable income.

Mr. Speaker, we have a very active anti-poverty caucus that is all-party. It includes members of Parliament and senators. We have had lots of expert witnesses. We would be the first. Honestly, there is tons of research that shows that it would save our health care system. Poverty is the number one social determinant of health. It would save our criminal justice system and make our society fair. It would reduce costs everywhere. With the advent of AI coming for people's jobs, putting in place a guaranteed livable income is the best way we can protect ourselves for the future. We would be the first.

Mr. Speaker, I like it when I can agree with my friend from Calgary Nose Hill. It does not happen all the time, but I always like it when we agree. One of the things I found maddening was when I discovered that the target for immigration of half a million people a year adopted by the previous government was a recommendation that came out of the blue from McKinsey. We are hiring management consultants. We never had a debate in this place about it. Canadians might think that if a target was set of half a million people a year, we must have had a committee study and it must have been in Parliament. Does my friend from Calgary Nose Hill have any updates on how we are doing in getting rid of consultants?

Mr. Speaker, during members' statements, the S.O. 31 section, the hon. member for Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay was valiantly trying to make an important statement about what had happened in her community this summer. I could barely hear her for the noise from the general hubbub. It was not malicious noise; it was just noise. I know you try Mr. Speaker, but really I felt so badly for the member for Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay. I do not know if she wants to try again, probably not, but please, when someone is talking about a heart-wrenching situation where people are running for their lives from wildfire, people should show respect.

Madam Speaker, it is a very difficult problem, for those of us who are committed to basing policies on science, to watch the Liberal Party squander what it had, which was basically a puffed-up, false reputation on climate in the first place, and then have the Conservative Party prop the Liberals up at the very moment when the Conservative Party should also say that not only is the Liberal Party driving up the fiscal deficit, but that it is also driving up the climate deficit. Canada now has a worse record on climate, and let this sink in, than the United States does, after one and a half terms of Donald Trump. It matters to Canadians, because affordability also includes running for one's life from wildfires.

Mr. Speaker, this is an awkward question to ask the hon. member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. I am distressed. When he asks the Liberal members why they do not support all of the Conservative platform, I do not think it is just a rhetorical question. I wonder why the Liberals do not, because they have abandoned their own platform. Almost all of the people across the way ran on a platform that mentioned climate change 38 times, and as Steven Guilbeault pointed out, it did not mention pipelines once. I am in a House where people on both sides of the aisle believe that we can throw stones at glass houses and glass never breaks. I do not think that is credible, but I wonder if my hon. colleague has any comments.

Mr. Speaker, I am perhaps asking the hon. member for Mississauga—Lakeshore to turn back and reflect on some of his previous background. I think he was the minister of finance in the government of the province that did the most to reduce greenhouse gases when the province of Ontario shut down its coal-fired power plants. I think he may know something about reducing pollution and saving lives, reducing greenhouse gases while also saving people money in that province. I wonder if he has any reflections. I am disappointed that all we would be doing is a temporary relief on an excise fuel tax instead of taxing major oil and gas companies on the excess profits they are receiving right now, but perhaps the former minister of finance has some thoughts.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek cited some relatively small amounts of money that have been sent overseas to the poorest of the poor. I do not know if he is aware that the Liberals broke their election platform promise to not cut foreign assistance, and they took another page out of the Conservatives' platform by cutting $2.7 billion from overseas development assistance. Does my colleague agree that we should make sure that the Canadian pension plan, the over $714 billion that we have contributed over our working lives, is invested in Canada? The majority of it is not invested in Canada. A great deal is invested in the U.S. Should we not repatriate that with a change to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act?

Mr. Speaker, I too support Bill C-10, but it is galling to hear the words that the government respects the rights of indigenous people, when it is forcing the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to go to court to try to stop the dredging of Burrard Inlet after years of effort and the fake commitments from the government to use stewardship and science to protect that area of the traditional territory of the Tsleil-Waututh. One of the concerns of the Semiahmoo and Chief Harley Chappell is that it is going to destroy Roberts Bank with its new giant deepwater pipeline port. What do words mean when the actions are so very different?

Mr. Speaker, Canada lost one of our greatest scientists. Globally respected environmental scientist and leader, Dr. Jim Bruce, died in his 89th year, as ever, with his wonderful, dear wife Ruth of 77 years at his side. Jim led the way in water policy science in this country and globally, served with the World Meteorological Organization and was one of the founders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We have lost his voice, but we have not lost his words. He wrote, in June 1988, as the consensus statement of our first international scientific conference in Toronto, “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.” In his memory, it is not too late. We must redouble our efforts. In the name of Dr. Jim Bruce and all he stood for, we must save all we can while we can.

Mr. Speaker, today I have the honour of rising to present a petition. The petitioners asked that I present this petition on behalf of residents of Newfoundland and Labrador who are seeking one simple thing from the Minister of Fisheries, which is a new classification for a lobster fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador for personal consumption for local residents. They point to the fact that there is a sustainable population of lobster in the region, that this is a traditional cultural part of the life of people in Newfoundland and Labrador and that, if the Minister of Fisheries so chooses, they could create a conservation-focused lobster food fishery for traditional food resources to be utilized within Newfoundland and Labrador.

Madam Speaker, there are two quick points I wish to make to the hon. member for Winnipeg North. This bill was originally tabled as Bill C-77. It was introduced long ago in the previous Parliament and died on the Order Paper when the previous prime minister, Justin Trudeau, prorogued. I wrote the Prime Minister on March 9, after he became Prime Minister in 2025, and said that a lot of bills died on the Order Paper and that we should get them back. The government waited a long time to introduce this one. My colleague from Winnipeg Centre is not here, but when she speaks of ignoring treaty rights and when government members keep telling us that Ksi Lisims is an indigenous project, please know, as the member for Winnipeg North must know, that it is a project being promoted by a Texas-owned company. It is the primary proponent and will make the money out of the project. We respect that there is an agreement with the Nisga'a nation, but it is a Texas project called Ksi Lisims.

Mr. Speaker, I will briefly summarize my three petitions. Constituents and others have asked that this petition be tabled here and that the government take action on an issue that we rarely hear about, which is the looming threat of the commercial farming of cephalopods. These are octopus and squid. Commercial industrial farming operations in other countries are threatening to come into Canada. The petitioners ask that large-scale aquatic farms of cephalopods be banned in Canada, that we take action to ban the importation of farmed cephalopod products and that we prohibit the breeding and raising of these sentient beings within farms in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting is an e-petition with over 1,181 signatures. The petitioners call on the government, in the effort to make Canada an energy superpower, to support renewable energy at least as much as it supports fossil fuels. They call on the government to commit to protect our biosphere while becoming an energy superpower and, in order to do that, ensure that renewable generation receives at least dollar for dollar the same kinds of subsidies that flow toward fossil fuels. The petitioners ask Parliament and the government to provide a legislative foundation that will provide financial support for renewable energy at least as much as fossil fuels and ban, by legislation, coal-fired electricity generation.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary is a friend, so when I say a friend, it is not just rhetoric, but I am disappointed. When Bill C-30 was first tabled, I asked the hon. parliamentary secretary for finance if it would not be wise to remove division 8 from an omnibus budget bill, so that the pesticide provisions would not just be studied by the finance committee, but go to the appropriate committee of environment or health. At the time, he said he would get back to me. I do not blame him that he did not have time and, certainly, I know those decisions are not necessarily made by the parliamentary secretary for finance at all. However, does he now not regret, having heard how significant the concerns are from across this country that this bill was not properly studied, that division 8 received no expert review at all?

Mr. Speaker, I am really impressed, hearing the member for Elmwood—Transcona talking about his personal background. I have been impressed when travelling in Winnipeg, with the co-op work and housing and building using prison labour by Shaun Loney. I wonder if the hon. member, as someone experienced in the trades, thinks that holds promise for getting tradespeople into a field where we have a lot of skills gaps right now.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour, not just a pleasure, to rise today to speak to Bill C‑30, an act to implement certain provisions of the spring economic update tabled in Parliament on April 28, 2026. We are told that this bill is absolutely necessary to implement the spring economic update. Before I get too far into discussing Bill C-30, because it is my last chance to speak in this session of Parliament until September, I do want to acknowledge once again, and recognize, as I think we all do, that we are on and are honoured to be on the lands of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. We give them enormous thanks, a huge meegwetch, for patience and tolerance with us. I do not get many opportunities to thank the people I need to thank the most. We are the only party in the House that does not receive a penny of support from the parliamentary budget, being both unrecognized and unfavoured. I am glad my colleagues from the NDP received funding to make up for what they lost when they ceased to be a recognized party. I have less money, but I am here, and I am not alone. We present more amendments on more bills than much larger parties do, not because we want to be meddlesome but because we want to do the work. I particularly want to stop for a moment to thank my chief of staff, Debra Eindiguer, and my legislative director, Steven Parkinson. They work harder than any team, and they are non-partisan. I have never even stopped to ask the people on my staff team if they joined the Green Party or not, because our job is to work for the people who elected us and for the people of Canada. In the same vein, I am very grateful to everyone on my MP team here in Ottawa, Michelle and Anna; and also, of course, in my Saanich—Gulf Islands constituency office. They all work very hard, and it is their work that allows me to stand here before us today to speak to the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-30. I have two objections to the bill. There are reasons I find this process an offence to democracy, and reasons I find the bill offensive, but there are two big categories. The first is that it is an omnibus budget bill. I would suggest it is even improperly considered an omnibus budget bill. There is also the fact that it has been subject to bulldozer practices to accelerate it to the point that it has not been properly studied. What is an omnibus bill? “Omnibus” is from the Latin. “Omni” means that it is a lot of things. An omnibus bill is a lot of things all at once in one package. It is the good, the bad and the ugly. It is all in one bill. This makes it difficult for members of Parliament, because inevitably and invariably, as is the case for me right now with Bill C-30, there are things that I like. I will call those the good, and I will discuss what those are. Then there is the bad, and there is the ugly. What is really offensive in this kind of process is when the bill is not split up so it could be studied by committees with expertise. We do not actually have committees called the “we will study all the bad things committee” and the “we will study all the ugly things committee” so we could send the ugly things to the ugly committee. If there are changes to the environmental standards in this country or to health standards, from my point of view as a parliamentarian, those should go to the committees that have expertise in environmental health. That is not the case here. Everything in the bill, whether it was about privatizing airports, getting skilled workers, getting rid of the excise tax or really drastically reducing protection from dangerous pesticides, went only to the finance committee, and the finance committee was given very little time. How did the bill get to the committee? After first reading of the bill, which was on April 29, the day after the spring economic statement was tabled, there were only three hours of debate in this place before the government brought forward a motion for time allocation on May 25. I had not been able to get a speech in at second reading, and then the bill was passed on division. There was no recorded vote. Off the bill then went to committee. Which committee did it go to? It went to the finance committee. I have nothing against the finance committee. I have spent a lot of time with it these last few weeks, hoping to be able to speak to my amendments. However, it was quite wrong, in principle, to send it to a committee that does not have any expertise and that did not have the time, because of the rush, to hear from a single witness in key areas where scientific knowledge, background and independent expertise could be brought to bear. Let me just go back to the theme of the good, the bad and the ugly and take that apart. For the good, I was very pleased to see in the spring economic statement and in the funding, funding for endangered species, particularly the southern resident killer whale. My pleasure in seeing that in the spring economic statement was somewhat, or profoundly, undone by a May 8 discussion paper that suggested that the provisions of the Species at Risk Act would be lifted to allow the extinction of species. Particularly at threat are the southern resident killer whales because they are in the way of more tankers and pipelines and such, but it was good to see reference to whales in particular in the spring economic statement. I am also relieved, having mentioned the May 8 discussion documents, and I will not mention them again, that the discussion period has been extended from June 7 to July 22. I urge Canadians who are concerned to get their thoughts in to the government. Let us hope that we do not see legislation in this place implementing anything that was in those discussions documents when we resume the sittings of the House in September. Also good in the spring economic statement, which is also found in the legislation, is the re-establishment of incentives for electric vehicles. There are few things for which I would say, “Yes, I would certainly vote for that, and I am pleased to see it.” However, we do not see any details here. One line in the spring economic statement says, “Flexible pathways for automakers to meet Canada's climate objectives”. We have not seen any details on that yet, but we hope to. There are other things. Certainly we are in favour of protecting auto workers with a worker retention grant and anything to do to help with housing, and that makes it difficult. We have to vote against Bill C-22 because the bad and the ugly are thrown into the same pot, and we have to vote on that one pot. Now, I mentioned casually a moment ago that I do not think this is a legitimate omnibus bill. To be a legitimate omnibus bill, all the measures in the bill must relate to the budget in a fundamental way. I suggest that it is pretty sketchy that there is only one quite anodyne line to be found in the whole spring economic statement as a justification for the worst thing I have ever seen in an omnibus bill, which is the deregulation of pesticides. That is found on page 96 of the spring economic statement, and it only says, “Announces the government’s intention to amend the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act and the Pest Control Products Act to include consideration of food security and cost of food”. In reading that on that day, on April 28, I certainly did not say, “Oh my goodness, ‘consideration of food security and cost of food’ must mean that the government is about to put something in that will allow cabinet as a whole, with political consideration, to overturn a decision of the minister and the department responsible after they have done a study on the danger of a pesticide.” It does not leap out at one. In fact, it is hidden. Not only does it not leap out; it is hiding, as it is in Bill C-30 in division 8. That is not the only thing I want to concentrate on, although I will take most of the time, and I am grateful for the chance to speak to this bill now, finally, in this place. Regarding the removal of the excise tax, I have asked before about this in question period. The excise tax, I realize, is announced as a way of alleviating pressure and helping Canadians with affordability. Greens really recognize the affordability crisis. We see it as absolutely connected to the climate crisis. The cost of food goes up when crops fail because of climate disasters and extreme drought here in Canada and around the world. There is an affordability crisis. The cost of housing is increasingly out of reach. With respect to the cost of energy and electricity in our homes, we could have virtually free electricity once we install the infrastructure. It is easy to roll out solar panels, except that our provincial utilities get in the way. In any case, the cheapest source of electricity, reducing the cost for everyone, would come from focusing on renewable electricity. I do think there is some promise, although it needs a lot of work. There is a discussion paper out on an east-west electricity grid, but to build that out, we really need to shift off of fossil fuels and on to renewables. Another point I want to make about the excise tax is that, and this goes back to 2009, former prime minister Stephen Harper took the gas tax, which it was then called, and decided to make that fund permanent and at the disposal of municipalities for transit and infrastructure. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities never ceases to point out that municipalities need predictable, stable funding. One of the best things Stephen Harper did was to say that the excise gas tax was a permanent source of funding for municipalities for transit and infrastructure. Bill C-30 and the spring economic statement does away with that. The Liberals say, “We are going to have this municipal fund. We are going to help with infrastructure for municipalities.” I was just in Edmonton at the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. They do not find the pathway to be clear. There is no map. It is not an easy route to navigate for local governments to figure out if it really replaces what they had in the transit funding and how they get from here to there. While they are building housing, and by the way, we cannot build a house unless we can flush the toilets in that house, municipalities are crying out for predictable funding for water and waste water. I would love to have seen that clearly in the spring economic statement. We are getting rid of a predictable fund, created under Stephen Harper for municipalities for transit and infrastructure, and we have replaced it with press releases. I really hope the government means it and the money will be there for municipalities. I also hope that the Liberals will very quickly start to recognize that the local orders of government are the strongest and best partners we are going to find. They are more reliable than the Prime Minister's friend Danielle Smith. They show up, they have shovel-ready projects, they are ready to go, and they keep their promises. I was in Edmonton. I cannot quote any mayor in particular, nor what I want to, as it would not be fair, but they certainly do not feel the love right now. They do not feel that they are engaged as partners, and they do not know where to find municipal infrastructure funding. We will move along to division 8 of Bill C-30, which is the most hidden and ugliest part of this omnibus budget bill. It is the reductions of protection for Canadians' health and the environment in the regulations made under the Pest Control Products Act. All of this appears to rest on one unproven, untested assumption. There is not even a link in the language used within the spring economic statement, the budget itself or Bill C-30, but it clearly, by inference, rests on this assumption: More pesticides are going to reduce food prices and help the economy. That is a leap. Let us say that is wrong, based on the evidence, in two ways. It is wrong on trade and on ecosystems. On trade, our partners and allies have stricter pesticide laws than we do. As a matter of fact, historically, Canada has the weakest pesticide laws of our allies. By the way, just as an example, we were the only country in the world, well, certainly the only country in the G20, that never banned Agent Orange. We never banned 2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, or 2,4,5-T, which was half of Agent Orange. It remained legal in Canada until there was an agreement between the U.S. EPA and Dow Chemical to not allow it to export it anymore because it was too dangerous. Canada kept saying it was okay, but Canadian buyers could not get any because Dow Chemical was not, by law, allowed to export its remaining stocks anywhere. I am thankful for this because we would have kept it registered forever, as far as I can see. We continue to use glyphosate while the EU is restricting it. We also continue to use neonicotinoid insecticides. In terms of trade, it means that Canadian food exports, grain exports, have been rejected at the border in France and in other EU countries because the residues of pesticides that are legal in Canada on our food crops are not legal in the EU. We should strive to have the same high standards as the highest standards found around the world, so there would be no country where Canadian exports would be rejected at the border because they have too many toxic chemicals in the residues. That would be, I think, a good place to go to ensure that we are providing good trade links and reliable export markets for Canadian farmers, but we do not. Of course, the reason Canadian beef is not allowed in many EU countries is that, years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, found that the hormones injected into Canadian beef increase the risks of human cancer. That is why we lose markets there. We should strive to ensure that we have reliable and certified organic markets for the growth and production of food products so that we have markets in countries that have stricter standards for health protection than we do. We are not doing that; we are going in the other direction. It is astonishing to me that, when we think about food security, we are not talking about indigenous communities. Food security often means being able to access food off the land. I will use as an example the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in Burrard Inlet in Vancouver, which has been doing extensive work on restoring the ecosystem health of Burrard Inlet. It has been planting eelgrass and doing much work in what had been an industrial setting to get it clean and healthy enough to produce shellfish that can be harvested for human consumption, which is a right the Tsleil-Waututh Nation has. Quite casually, we keep hearing from government ministers, both in British Columbia and Ottawa, that we can dredge the Vancouver harbour. This has been thrown about as if it were a great idea, without any consideration. They have not talked with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. If we dredge the Vancouver harbour, we are going to stir up 100 years' worth of heavy metals and toxic chemicals. It is not going to be possible to harvest shellfish from an area where 100 years' worth of industrial waste was stirred up so we could move bigger tankers loaded with dilbit, which is a mixture that cannot be cleaned up if it is spilled. This is all madness. It is not food security for first nations if we keep contaminating the territories where they harvest their food. I will come back to the ecosystem issue. I think it is nonsense that this would help food production because food production in agriculture needs pollinators. The reason the EU has reduced neonicotinoid insecticides is that the insect pollinator population is going down, which is related to the use of pesticides like neonicotinoids. Bill C-30 has now gone through clause-by-clause and has received all of the amendments it is going to get. It says that, if the government agency decides it is too dangerous for the environment to use this particular pesticide, and it does not set out the criteria but gives the vaguest of language, cabinet, if it decides in its political discretion to “protect national economic security, regional economic security or national food security”, would allow a dangerous pesticide to be used. So be it. There is no appeal. That is it, and an extension can last up to nine years. I am incensed that this is happening. If people think there has never been a time in Canada where anyone would ever put the economic interests of an industry ahead of human health and safety, let me quote from 1976 and the then minister of natural resources for the province of New Brunswick, Roland Boudreau. When it became clear that children were dying of Reye syndrome in New Brunswick because of forest aerial spraying by the forest industry. He stated, “I don't like to see people dying. This is one of the things I really wouldn't like to see. But at the same time, knowing the forest as it is, my decision will have to be with the forest and with the future of New Brunswick.” We are opening the door and going backwards. Is there any other country on earth going backwards on pesticide regulation? Members have guessed it. It is the Trump White House. This story is from the New York Times on May 7. It states, “Trump Administration Lifts Ban on ‘Cyanide Bombs’ on Public Lands”. It did that so it could kill coyotes. In this country, even without Bill C-30, the PMRA reversed itself to allow for liquid strychnine to kill gophers on prairie lands. We need more protection for human health, not less. If the government tells us that it wants to build Canada strong, then it must stop and think twice. It is killing the precautionary principle and running the risk of killing Canadians. This is not hyperbole. It has happened in the past. The government and the right hon. Prime Minister are opening the door to the most regressive policies Canada has ever seen to protect human health and the environment. It is not even helpful for the economy, but they do not bother doing the studies. They just make the assumptions and issue the press releases.

Mr. Speaker, I think that my colleagues have thanked everyone already. I hope that no one was left out. I would like to send everyone my best wishes for the summer. May they all take good care of themselves and stay united for Canada. We will be back in September. Let us stand united across party lines. This country is a country that has more in common than in difference. What makes this country the best place in the world to live in is that we take care of each other and love our neighbours. No matter what may be going on around us, know that we are blessed.

, seconded by the member for Courtenay—Alberni, moved for leave to introduce Bill C-291, An Act to amend the Department of Industry Act (small businesses). She said: Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured today to introduce a private member's bill that seeks to amend the Department of Industry Act with regard to the promotion of small businesses. I want to thank my dear friend, the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, for seconding this bill. I think most members here agree that small businesses are the backbone of Canada's economy. They employ the most people. In every one of our communities and across Canada, they are responsible for more than half of the economic activity. I presented this bill before, but it failed to get past second reading. Let me give some context. I first heard about what gets called the “think small first” bill from friends of mine who are in the Green parties in the European Union and the European Parliament. It was adopted in the European Parliament in 2008. The basic principle is that before any law passes a Parliament, there is screening to see whether there will be unintended consequences of a piece of legislation or regulation that are negative for small businesses. It is an advanced review that looks through a lens to see whether a law is going to create more unnecessary hurdles for small businesses to succeed. It calls on the government and the Minister of Industry to protect and promote the role of small businesses within the Canadian economy. I certainly hope all of my colleagues here will see this bill passed unanimously, because small businesses matter. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Madam Speaker, I am rising at this hour to speak to the programming motion on Bill C‑22. I have heard the speeches of a number of colleagues in this place with whom I agree, particularly my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party. As I explained earlier, in an answer to an earlier discussion with the hon. member for Vancouver East, the position we were in was not as members of the committee but as members of Parliament with the right to participate in the development of amendments. As we were not full members of the committee, our participation in the public safety committee, and when I speak of “we”, I mean the member for Vancouver East and me, was more limited than that of members who are full members of the committee. I have been very concerned, from the very beginning, which was June 2025's tabling of Bill C‑2, the so-called strong borders act, there was an astonishing, broad, deep coalition of groups, over 300, that came together to oppose the bill on many grounds relating to human rights, as well as to privacy and overreach. Again, I just want to preface my discussion of Bill C‑22 by placing it, for citizens watching this, in the context of how we moved away from Bill C‑2, the strong borders act, which was strongly opposed, in June 2025. I do not think I have ever seen quite a diverse coalition. Certainly there are some bills that invite a lot of organizations to get involved and individual citizens to get involved. There was a breadth and a depth here that was certainly unusual. The government realized it was in trouble. There was so much opposition to Bill C‑2. When we came back in the fall, I thought to myself that the bill, over the course of the summer, had been dumped and replaced as we now had Bill C‑12. It is not a completely different bill. It is largely the same chunks of language that were in the strong borders act, Bill C‑2, taking out the parts that were an overreach into privacy, for instance, the sections originally in Bill C‑2 that said that postal workers could open the mail and such things. There were a number of examples that got dropped. The thing that is unusual about this, and I know it is complicated and I know the hour is late, but why would a government introduce a bill, which is widely panned, and then bring in a different bill, as opposed to amending the bill it already had on the Order Paper? I have not seen this before. It then brought in Bill C-12, which had most of what was in the strong borders act, and left Bill C-2 on the Order Paper while continuing to force through Bill C-12. Time will tell when Bill C-12 will be challenged in the courts globally because it violates our charter commitments to the protection of refugee rights. I speak of that in terms of the global convention on refugees. It may also offend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but I am speaking globally. It pulled that protection out from under people who had expectations. They had expectations of being in Canada but did not know their access to claiming refugee rights would be taken away so abruptly. In any case, this has been bizarre. We had Bill C-2 staying on the Order Paper, and we had Bill C-12, which was largely language from Bill C-2, being pushed through. The whole time we were thinking that at least we had avoided the surveillance concerns, the privacy concerns and the overreach concerns that were evident in the original Bill C‑2, the strong borders act, but come March 12, 2026, we had the bill that is before us tonight, Bill C‑22. Again, it is the government's, at this point, third run at crafting a bill that deals with lawful access. I will give them this: Bill C‑12 actually avoided the lawful access sections and just focused on the portions that affected refugee rights. That one still grieves me, the fact that we had Bill C‑12 pushed through to final stages on a unanimous consent motion in this place last June. I really still regret it very much that it was pushed through. This is a phrase we will hear from the opposition members tonight, and we have it heard it often: pushed through, rushed through. This is not hyperbole from opposition members. I am an experienced member of Parliament. I have been here 15 years, and I am honoured to have been so, but to my hon. colleagues in the government party on the other benches, it has been a shock to see how often we see these things. When mistakes are identified, previous governments have been more willing to say, “Ah, we have a mistake and we are going to have to rethink this. This is a mistake, and we are going to amend the bill. We are going to say where we made the mistake and how we are going to change it.” The government is quite unusual in not admitting mistakes, but it will bring in a different bill that does some of the same things. In this case, it is taking its third run at it. This lawful access regime has many improvements over the lawful access regime of Bill C-2. There is no question and no doubt. There have been significant changes, and I think every group that was in the original coalition opposing Bill C-2 has said that Bill C-22 is much better. We have fewer problems with it, but there are still very serious problems, which is why it is lamentable that we were not able to have the kind of conversation one would have with a government that was more comfortable in its skin to say that it made a mistake with Bill C-2. Such a government would say, “We pushed too hard, too far, too fast. Now we are going to listen to people. As we craft a lawful access regime, we are going to really listen and we are not going to assume we have it right because we are right, or because we have the majority, so we are right.” This has been very difficult to observe. Certainly, in committee, I have to say that I was surprised. I was taken aback when a reasonable request to have before the public safety committee the Privacy Commissioner, who had raised concerns, was rejected. We had a lot of witnesses there who represented government agencies and law enforcement to provide technical background. I try to be as non-partisan as possible, but I could not see any problem with getting the expertise of the Privacy Commissioner in the room as members were discussing and debating the impact of Bill C-22 and whether some amendments should work and how they should work, but the idea that the Privacy Commissioner should be in the room was rejected. I could not see, in any world, where that would not have been seen as helpful, but it was rejected. I had some amendments before the committee. We will get to them later this evening. I do not think it is anything but a foregone conclusion that the motion before us is going to pass, but I lament that we have seen the government, and it is a pattern, moving very fast and passing legislation despite significant concerns from significant quarters. A significant number of respected law professors and experts in privacy law and constitutional law wrote, as recently as last month, to most of the cabinet to express their deep concerns about Bill C-22. I think it is important to say that people are not just partisan here. Certainly law professors are not, and they acknowledge that they see the improvement over Bill C-2 in a number of areas. I will read from the letter, which was signed by 20 or 30 law professors from across Canada, and it is dated May 4, so anyone who is looking for it can find it. It reads: We write as lawyers and law professors who teach and practice in the areas of privacy law and constitutional rights.... I will skip ahead to their conclusion, which reads: ...provisions of the bill as currently drafted raise serious constitutional concerns and fail to strike a reasonable balance between the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the privacy rights of Canadians. Again, these are not the voices of people who have been misinformed through social media. These are people of depth, knowledge and experience, and they are very concerned. One of Canada's premier policy wonk magazines is Policy Options, and I do not speak of it pejoratively here. Policy Options is not something one would pick up in the supermarket, such as “inquiring minds want to know”. Policy Options is serious. There was an article just yesterday by Professor Cynthia Khoo, who is a professor at University of Toronto and a senior fellow at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. She is an expert in both technology and privacy areas. Her conclusion was that “Ottawa should reject any data-sharing arrangement that allows U.S. law enforcement to access Canadians' personal information”. This is based on recent research within The Citizen Lab that the regime for surveillance being established by Bill C-22 could provide easy access for, for instance, U.S. homeland security to the private information of Canadians. I know the government benches have heard, and do not want to hear anything more, from Professor Michael Geist, who is, again, a prominent critic of Bill C-22, starting with his opposition to Bill C-2. He pointed out that what he sees being spread by the government benches could be described as misinformation, mischaracterization, overly broad definitions and a failure to be precise in areas where one really has to be precise. I am just going to quote from a blog he posted recently: “The political pressure against Bill C-22 has been steadily mounting, with the opposition parties,” as we can see, all the opposition parties in this place, “tech companies, and privacy experts, all increasingly” concerned about the need to amend this bill, increasingly concerned that all the government seems to have in response to the criticisms are, in his words, “misleading or inaccurate claims with little in the way of an actual defence” based on the facts. His conclusion is that “the government’s disregard for facts and privacy is fast becoming Bill C-22's legacy.” Now, the criticisms come, again, from a broad sweep of legal, privacy and tech experts. They are not all the same. I practised law, and technology is not my area. I would not put myself out there as an expert in technology, though I read deeply. I am concerned about constitutional rights and privacy as a former practising lawyer, but it would seem to me that anyone with a background in the various areas that are touched by Bill C-22 would want to take the time to get it right. There have been things claimed, like that all our Five Eyes partners have legislation just like Bill C-22. That has been debunked by numerous experts. We have been told that it was wrong to take a long time in committee. Obviously, as my hon. colleague on the other side the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance knows well, we had a very lengthy filibuster on Bill C-30 in the finance committee. I sat through those evenings waiting for the chance to speak to my amendments. As I mentioned earlier, motions are passed by committees as if they are normal, and they are not normal at all, but the longer they are used, I guess, the more that future committees will just assume, as every committee did after this last election, that it is just normal to take away the rights of the smaller parties so that the larger parties do not have to fuss with them at report stage. That is the case. If it were not for the motions that were passed by committees, without thinking about them, taking away the rights of smaller parties, I would have the right to put forward amendments at report stage. I do not have that right at report stage only because I have been given this so-called opportunity to work really, really hard to bring forward amendments that give me the ability to sit in a room and not speak for days at a time, hoping for the chance to speak to the one or two amendments that I had brought forward. I want to thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East, from the New Democratic Party, because she is in the same boat and she brought forward many more amendments to Bill C-22 than I brought forward on Bill C-22. I think I was too busy trying to write amendments on Bill C-30. In any case, what we have here is not just an imperfect bill but a potentially dangerous bill. We are now down to the final moments. The clock is ticking, and the words of experts from across Canada are being shut out because the government has determined it will move forward with Bill C-22. That is why we have a programming motion, to make sure that we do not have any further debate on the amendments that have been put forward by members of the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the Greens and the New Democrats. We are in a hurry. Again, I have to push back and ask why. What is the hurry? What is the rush? As a reminder, the first attempt the government made to bring forward lawful access was in the very outrageously overreaching Bill C‑2 a year ago. A year has passed. One would have hoped that year would have been used well by allowing a real discussion and continually striving to have the best possible surveillance architecture to protect privacy, to give law enforcement what it needs, without tests of access that are so low, the reasonable grounds to suspect, which we do not think the courts will find to have been an adequate ground to seize personal information. We are hearing concerns, again, from tech companies, constitutional and privacy law experts, those who work in the field and others, like OpenMedia. I am honoured to claim that the executive director of OpenMedia happens to be one of my constituents, so I also speak on behalf of my constituents when I stand here at this hour. We are hearing concerns, yet those voices seem to have just gotten annoying to the members of the government. They do not seem to be concerned, despite all the work and the full year that has gone by, that we could get this right. Again, we hear that we have run out of time. Well, we have not. I do not think any of us are going to expire in any particular moment. We could meet next week. We could get together again and have more time for witnesses to actually discuss without a clock ticking, for witnesses and experts to share with the members of the committee in a respectful way how we can improve this. I saw that the hon. member for Barrie South—Innisfil mentioned it earlier, but we are seeing news across the news wires that the Minister of Public Safety is about to make a step. Who knows, but certainly it was not the National Enquirer saying this. It was at least the CBC, saying that the Government of Canada is prepared to fundamentally change one aspect of this, which is not having to hold Canadians' private data for a year but maybe bringing that down to six months. Is that going to be presented? I do not know. We will be going into committee after the programming motion is passed. There will be an opportunity for new amendments to be tabled, but not, of course, from me or the member for Vancouver East, because we had a deadline some time ago, and we either had to bring it in by that deadline or could not bring in something new. There may still be that opportunity to improve the bill. I certainly hope so, because what we have in front of us may violate our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, open up personal data, surveillance data, and do serious damage. If, good heavens, the Citizen Lab research is right and Canadians' private data would be available to the U.S. homeland security folks in large tranches, none of us are going to feel particularly happy about that. Our government should be making sure that our privacy is protected. It is an inherent right that we have. I would like to say it is a right in the same way first nations have the right to clean drinking water, although we have now been informed that they do not have the right to that but only the hope of a gradual or eventual “realization” of a right. That term is just so extraordinary. Well, we have a right to privacy, and I do not want to hear that it is dialed back to a gradual realization of a right. We have a right to privacy. We can reasonably expect it of our government to ensure that our private data is not left in an architecture of surveillance that allows it to be accessed by foreign governments, any foreign government. The Citizen Lab research that was just published in Policy Options yesterday talks about U.S. homeland security as an example, but I do not want my government asking tech companies to save, store and access private data about Canadians that is then available to foreign governments. We have certainly learned a lot about foreign interference, and we are waiting for the foreign interference registry to actually be established since we passed that law some time ago. At this late hour, and I know I'm out of time—

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague for Drummond said, I have been a member of this place for 15 years. What an honour it is to represent the communities of Saanich—Gulf Islands and Sencoten- and Lekwungen-speaking indigenous peoples. The fact that I represent a very small party always causes problems, but right now things are worse for me than ever before. Mr. Harper's majority government from 2011 to 2015 was an awful time for me. Now, however, too much is being done too fast. Right now, I do not get a sense that the current government respects Parliament or Canada's institutions. In my opinion, it may be because of our Prime Minister's experience. He is a brilliant man who is respected around the world for his experience in the banking sector, but not for his experience in Parliament at our level, because he does not have one day of experience in Parliament. That is what frightens me. He has things to learn. As brilliant as he is, however, he does not understand that he has things to learn.

Madam Speaker, as the hon. parliamentary secretary knows, I believe that if we followed the rules of this place, we could far more easily come to consensus around how long each bill should have at second reading before going to committee and so on. The rules of this place say we cannot read a written speech. Knowing that a member cannot deliver a speech unless they have the knowledge in their head to stand up and speak would winnow down the number of members that a House leader uses to negotiate with the other parties. “We have 100 people ready to speak.” Really? Without written notes? I do not think so.

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed nice that we have seen the clock at midnight. I cannot break the legal fiction, while we are all here together, but it is time for Adjournment Proceedings. I am raising a question I initially raised April 20, two days before Earth Day. I had, on a previous occasion, witnessed an exchange between the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona and the Minister of Energy, in which he was dismissive of the concerns of the most recent oil spill from Imperial Oil on the Cold Lake First Nations territory. I asked on that occasion if there might be an interest on the part of the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources in amending his answer to reflect deep concern for the fact that it is not just one oil spill or one leaking tailings ponds in northern Alberta in the area of the oil sands, it is multiple.