Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually today to present a petition from constituents in Saanich—Gulf Islands and elsewhere who are calling on the government to recognize that we are entering an age where human impact is approaching many ecological system boundaries, threatening survival. They mention boundaries in terms of freshwater usage, atmospheric pollution and extinction of species…
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Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to represent the extraordinary population of Saanich—Gulf Islands in presenting a petition that deals with a convergence of a number of really critical issues facing Canada today: issues of indigenous reconciliation, the climate crisis and our forests. Petitioners note the linkages here, that respect for indigenous peoples and their territorial sovere…
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Madam Speaker, I am grateful that my hon. friend from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan has raised this. There has been an increase in conflicts in a region of the world where we have seen ethnic cleansing or, at least, accusations of ethnic cleansing from the Armenian population. We have deep concerns for the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh. We always find it unfortunate in opposition benches, and I suppo…
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Madam Speaker, given my earlier intervention to the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, I also agree with much of what the parliamentary secretary to the House leader just said. I do not doubt for one minute that the motivation of the Conservative back rooms is to hijack debate this morning. That does not take anything away from my earlier comment that this is an important matter that…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary, and I congratulate her on this new role. This is the last place in the world we need partisanship. Everybody in this place will know that I have been talking about the threat of the climate crisis for about 40 years. I have watched it and had a front-row seat to failure after failure. We need to avoid the worst of the climate crisis…
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Madam Speaker, my friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke anticipated my question, because the hon. member for Simcoe North mentioned co-operative housing, and that is also a large priority for Greens. We see it as a very successful form of housing. The comments from my hon. colleague from Simcoe North are encouraging. I know he is speaking only for himself, but does he have a sense of how other membe…
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Mr. Speaker, I am resuming a question I that initially asked in question period on May 29 of the former minister for emergency preparedness. I have to say that I mentioned in my question at the time that I thought he was working very hard and doing quite an exceptional job. However, my plea tonight to the hon. parliamentary secretary, and through her, to our new Minister of Emergency Preparedness,…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually in the House today to present a petition on a subject of keen interest to many of my constituents. To cover it briefly, this relates to the ongoing crisis for west coast wild salmon and the need for action to reduce their exposure to viruses and disease, as well as infestations of lice, that come into the wild salmon population from locations in marin…
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Madam Speaker, there are a number of things that could continue to reduce prices for Canadians and continue to open up more housing. There are literally thousands of ideas, but there is one I am attracted to. New York City has recently taken action, which others have been afraid to do, with taking on Airbnb. We know a substantial portion of Canadian housing is now taken up in short-term vacation r…
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Mr. Speaker, this legislation is incredibly important to people in my constituency. The issue is not just container ships, which have been mentioned in the supply chain, but bulk carriers, particularly of coal and grain. I would like to put it on the record that the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is massively inefficient and incompetent, and the result is we have a backup of a virtually permanent…
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Mr. Speaker, the speech from my hon. colleague for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon nicely dovetailed with mine on the concern for prairie farmers. The member mentioned pulse growers in Saskatchewan, but wheat growers in Alberta and barley growers all face the same problem: the massive inefficiencies at the Port of Vancouver where bulk carriers sit idly, which costs everyone. It costs prairie farmers…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually today on behalf of petitioners in Saanich—Gulf Islands who are concerned with the fate of old-growth forests. The petitioners have identified and raised to the House assembled the need to pay attention to a risk to a specific endangered species of plant, specifically of lichen that is found only in the old-growth forest of yellow and red cedars. It is…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Rivière‑du‑Nord for his work at the Standing Committee on Justice and for the speech he delivered today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have been trying to get in, as you know, to ask a question since the minister spoke, so I will speak very quickly. It may be my only occasion to say that the Green Party will be supporting Bill S-12. My only concern is that I real…
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Mr. Speaker, for my colleague from Miramichi—Grand Lake, I had not heard over the course of the summer that he faced health challenges. I had a stroke in June and this is my first opportunity to speak of it in this place since we resumed. I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, all the members from different parties who sent me notes of encouragement. As they can see, I am recovering well, b…
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Madam Speaker, to the hon. colleague for Tobique—Mactaquac, I cannot move to my question without personally thanking him for his really kind email this summer sending prayers after my stroke. I am so grateful. In the debate all day today I have heard Conservatives say that they do not like C-49. I have been specific about the thing I would like to see changed, which is to go back to the original C…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to present a petition that deals with the pressing issue of the climate crisis. Specifically, the petitioners zero in on the government's commitment to ban the export of thermal coal. Coal, and particularly thermal coal, is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. As Canada has, unfortunately, a sorry record of increasing greenhouse gases since we pledged to cut…
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Lakeland is probably the only one in the House who will not be surprised by what I am going to say, which is that Bill C-69 was not in the interests of environmental assessments in Canada. It was so poorly designed. It was all discretionary. There were no timelines. The only thing that made environmentalists think it was a good bill was that Jason Kenney calle…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate that it is important we move rapidly to develop our offshore wind resources, but I dispute the minister's statement that it is a matter of opinion how fast we move in transition. I ask if he has looked at the most recent report from the United Nations. The climate summit is occurring there tomorrow. It is very clear the world is not on track and that what we will experi…
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Madam Speaker, I would say to my hon. colleague from Sarnia that it is important to distinguish the measures that reduce emissions, or at least provide a break with respect to growing emissions, from the global phenomenon. Overall, Canada's record is one of failure under successive governments to reduce emissions. In Copenhagen, the previous government under Stephen Harper promised to reduce emiss…
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Mr. Chair, it is an honour to rise in this place virtually to join the debate. I want to start by thanking members for the opportunity to have this speech but also to say that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Edmonton Griesbach. Canadians from coast to coast to coast are grappling with something deeply shocking. It was only yesterday that the Prime Minister stood in this place.…
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Madam Chair, in forming my thoughts, I find this a very difficult topic because we have had allegations of foreign interference and now nothing could be more disturbing, troubling and unacceptable than the murder of a Canadian on Canadian soil. However, we have obligation as parliamentarians to stay calm and to allow the investigation to take place. We must, and I think we all are united in this, …
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Mr. Chair, information came to light from the hon. Minister for Emergency Preparedness, speaking to CBC News. He said that the Prime Minister told us what he told us yesterday because he had reason to expect that this was going to come out in the media, and he wanted to make sure the House was notified before it came out as a media leak. I find this aspect of what we are debating tonight deeply tr…
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Mr. Chair, I have a question for my colleague and friend from Rivière-du-Nord. The matter is clear. We now understand that the victim of this terrible murder, Mr. Nijjar, had been warned by police and by CSIS that he was being threatened and was not safe. I am going to say this in English. It is late. I am very troubled that our security forces and the RCMP were unable to keep Mr. Nijjar safe. As …
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Madam Speaker, Bill C-49 is welcome. The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board and the Canada-Newfoundland & Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board have long had embedded within the legislation aspects of the Atlantic accord that make it a duty of these offshore boards to increase offshore petroleum production. I do not see those sections being removed. It is certainly welcome to see a focus that…
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Madam Chair, the question is, what is our role as members of Parliament? That is one thing I put that lens on in trying to figure out what I was going to say this evening. We can always comment on what we know about Prime Minister Modi and his anti-human-rights record and so on. However, what do we really know, and what, as parliamentarians, should we have a responsibility to oversee? I think we n…
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Madam Speaker, Tip O'Neill once said all politics is local, but in the case of Newfoundland and Labrador and the climate crisis, it is rather the crucible of events. We have the extreme traumatic event of hurricane Fiona that impacted Newfoundland and Labrador so strongly. People from that province now take a different view about the climate crisis; it is personal. This is a really exciting opport…
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Madam Speaker, I am so happy to see my friend from Battle River—Crowfoot. I am going to hone in on something he said in his speech about transportation needs, because it is critical. Because of having a stroke, I could not take a plane to Ottawa, and as I needed to pursue foreign interference, I took the train. I thought of him while crossing the trestle bridge over Battle River. I thought, “I kno…
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Madam Chair, I want to thank the leader of the official opposition for taking the tone he has taken, as did the hon. member just now, that we need to see more evidence and that we need to know. These charges are grave. I am as alarmed and aggrieved as any member in this House. I would have liked to have, right away, in response to the Prime Minister, extended condolences, support and deep sympathy…
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Madam Chair, as the leader of a much smaller opposition party, for me it is a moment for solidarity. I really appreciate the fact that I am able, through great good luck, to immediately follow my friend from Burnaby South, the leader of the New Democratic Party, to echo his words that we need to show solidarity, and that every Canadian from every ethnicity and every part of the world who has found…
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Madam Speaker, I hope my hon. colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo had a good summer. I know his area was also affected quite heavily by smoke. I heard the exchange with the hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. I know it is tempting in this place to paraphrase what another member has said, and in some way, make their comments seem less responsive to public will. I just know that when my co…
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly wish to add my congratulations to the hon. member on his joining cabinet in his very critical position as Minister of Justice. I have also seen, as my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke and others have said previously, nothing but really strong relationships and non-partisan and strong collaborative efforts from the member. I know that the public is very alarmed by peo…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I seek unanimous consent to join my colleagues in response to the horrific and chilling news that the Prime Minister has shared with us. I was particularly grateful for the tone taken. The first person to speak after the Prime Minister was the Leader of the Opposition. I heed his words to link arms and join hands in the quest for justice, which was so passi…
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, as someone who knew Monique Bégin, I ask for unanimous consent to add some words to the tributes that have been made so eloquently by my hon. colleagues, the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, the member for Vancouver Kingsway and all those who have spoken about the extraordinary legacy of a champion woman, parliamentarian and trailblazer, the Hon. Monique Bégin.
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Mr. Speaker, I did raise, with the minister, the same issue that my colleague has raised, which is the lack of services in pretrial detention. We should attend to that issue. I want to know if he has more clarity than I do on the position of the official opposition. I appreciate he is exhorting us not to be partisan, but I am frankly confused. I thought the hon. leader of the official opposition s…
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Madam Speaker, to the best of my information, it has not been passed to us to consider whether we are in favour or not. We would require—
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Madam Speaker, as is the usual practice, I would have assumed the right to have unanimous consent for non-contentious motions as the previous two times the Conservatives just blocked me from speaking in honour of Monique Bégin.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, to the hon. member for emergency preparedness, we have to do far more. We know that, not only as the member for Kings—Hants says, the cell service is inadequate, cell service goes down even where we have it during climate emergencies. We lose power. We lose land lines. We need a national firefighting force, a national water bomber fleet and a permanent national task force for climate …
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Madam Speaker, I am much in sympathy with what I have heard from the Conservatives around Bill C-18 to the extent of whether it will solve the problem. I am not hearing us identify the problem of social media outlets like Google and Facebook and the others having eviscerated the news media in this country, not necessarily by putting their content up without paying for it but by actually getting ri…
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Madam Speaker, I am very entertained by my hon. colleague's speech, but I was wondering when he might discuss Bill C-18.
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, as we approach the recess for the summer months, I usually look forward to a time of peace and reflection and to enjoying good weather, but this summer will be different. Due to the baked-in increase in temperatures resulting from our addiction to fossil fuels and our failure to act, we are going to have a rough summer. To all of my colleagues and everyone in their constituencies, I h…
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Madam Speaker, I know this might more properly be a continuation of a point of order, but in response—
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Madam Speaker, I wanted to point out to my friend from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame that there are many things in the Standing Orders that are actually known as rules; they are not guidelines. In the old days, Speakers who found somebody heckling, or violating the Standing Orders in other ways, would throw them out of the chamber for six months or more. This is not censorship; this is called d…
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Madam Speaker, I am going to put the hon. parliamentary secretary out of any sense of suspense over how I will vote on this bill. I will probably vote for it. The reason I waffled was that I was so impressed the other day by the speech from the hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, who took us through, as a collective, what it was like to be in committee and to have the evidence from Tran…
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Madam Speaker, I take it my hon. colleague from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon is persuaded there is enough good in this bill in having a beneficial ownership registry that he will be voting for it. I ask him to comment on how he sees the use of this reducing money laundering, which has been a scandal, particularly in our home province.
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Madam Speaker, I want to come back to something quite shocking the hon. member told the House. I know it is true because it happens on the B.C. coast too. We have a fleet separation in B.C. that is more extreme than what happens in Nova Scotia. The people who are fishing do not own their own business. They are essentially employees in a vast machine. In British Columbia, billionaire Jimmy Pattison…
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Madam Speaker, I certainly am as disturbed, I think, as anyone in this country about Paul Bernardo's being moved to a medium-security prison, but I do think the hon. parliamentary secretary raises a good point. I am sure the hon. member for Fundy Royal was not the architect of this strategy, but when we have repeated concurrence debates in this place, we certainly do lose time to debate legislatio…
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Madam Speaker, I have to say I agree that this debate takes attention away. As my hon. friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke just pointed out, we are debating a concurrence report with which we all agree. This means that we are not really debating the topic at all. We are not talking about victims' rights. The report focuses on specific recommendations, so the debate today, lest anyone be confused, …
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Mr. Speaker, I want to provide an opportunity for my hon. colleague and neighbour from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke to explain more fully what we are debating today and why we would be better served to debate other issues that we have to resolve in the few days that are left before, we hope, a parliamentary recess will occur, and not because we want to be on vacation but because we need to get some bil…
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Madam Speaker, I am very strongly in favour of Bill C-35, but I think we had better not ignore the concerns that we are “Not Done Yet”. That is the title of a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, co-authored by economist David Macdonald and Canada's leading champion for early childhood education Martha Friendly. We have child care deserts in this country. We have areas where ch…
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Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the point made by the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona. We should recognize that, when we talk about refugee protections in this place, we are normally talking about protecting people who need to come to Canada. There is an option in this legislation, which is good for humanitarian exceptions, if somebody is otherwise inadmissible but has a profound case fo…
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