Government Orders
Madam Speaker, of course, I empathize, but I cannot understand. I do not like our rules' being abused constantly to bring in forced closure on debate to speed things along. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands will know that I think the solution lies in applying all of our rules. It is against our rules in this place, as it is against the rules of the Parliament of Westminster in the U.K.,…
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place to speak to Bill C-34, which has been before the House for some time. I must state my great regret that time allocation has been applied to it before any member of the Green Party has been allowed to speak to it. People know that when someone rises on the government's side and says it has had 20 speakers, 20 witnesses and so on, it sounds exhaus…
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands concerned about equal rights for women. One would not think we would need a petition in November 2023 to point out that, after all this time, women are not receiving equal pay for work of equal value. Canadian women still receive 21¢ less on the dollar than men for substantially the same kind of work. Petit…
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising briefly on a point of order, because I believe the point of order made by the hon. member for Gatineau may have been missed in the furor over other issues. Being a virtual participant, I find it very distressing when, during votes, there is so much heckling. That was the point raised. It had nothing to do with anything visual we observed. However, auditory interruptions in…
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Mr. Speaker, this debate is not on the merits of Bill C-34, but on the use of time allocation once again. On principle, I will vote against time allocation always because this is the place where legislation gets debated. Many members of the House are not members of the industry committee. I am not allowed to be a member of the INDU committee. I have very strong views on Bill C-34 and national secu…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that we need to have a sensible discussion in this place. The climate emergency is not going away; it is galloping on and threatening lives. When we talk about affordability, we need to recognize that climate emergency events make life less affordable for everyone. In fact, they threaten our very lives, livelihoods and communities. We need to take the climate…
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Mr. Speaker, as we have gathered here for the last hour or so of question period, I have wanted to engage in the debate and talk about the climate crisis, but all I can think about is that, while we are sitting here in such safety and security, the children of Gaza are terrorized and terrified. Children in Israel remain terrorized and terrified. We need a ceasefire, and we need it now. I want the …
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Madam Speaker, in the debate on home heating, sometimes people express a belief that natural gas is more environmentally friendly than heating oil. That is not true. For the most part, natural gas is shale gas. The method for producing shale gas leaves a bigger carbon footprint than heating oil. It is not a good choice for our climate. Can my colleague comment on the issue of the carbon footprint …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the petition, signed by residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands, starts by recognizing that Canada is legally obligated, under the terms of the Paris Agreement, which was signed and ratified by Canada, to the goal of attempting to hold the global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5°C. We are now at 1.1°C, and we are already seeing dramatic and devastating impacts of the climate…
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot thank my colleagues enough for allowing me to rise today with the other parties in the House to pay tribute to our veterans and to take a moment to mark Veterans' Week, from November 5 to 11. All of us are, at this moment, thinking of how we will mark Remembrance Day in our own communities and how we will, in the week leading to Remembrance Day, mark and honour veterans' extr…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to join in the tributes to Veterans' Week and Remembrance Day, and I ask if I have unanimous consent to proceed.
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this evening's adjournment proceedings. I am pleased to be able to rise to pursue a question I originally asked on June 7 of this year. It was in question period and I had the honour to address my question directly to the Right Hon. Prime Minister. We could actually feel the smoke in Parliament that day. I do not know how many of my colleagues remember that,…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful for the opportunity to put a question to the hon. member. There are heartbreaks beyond heartbreaks, and they seem to be unending since October 7. One of them is the dreadful irony of Hamas's brutal attack on Israel, which has taken the world's attention, for obvious reasons, off Ukraine. It has been described, and rightly so, as a gift to Vladimir Putin. I will read…
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Madam Speaker, I want to particularly thank my colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam for bringing the focus back to treatment of travellers dealing with disabilities. It is an important point. To the member for Nepean's point, I think we may have the beginning of an aircraft noise caucus to take amendments forward on Bill C-52. We need to do much more. There are serious health impacts from aircraft …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand today to table a petition. The constituents in my area continue to be very concerned about the logging of old-growth forests. The petition demands that the government pay attention to its obligations to protect migratory birds at risk by moving to curtail logging in critical habitat areas for endangered migratory birds, particularly the marbled murrelet.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, with the Liberal climate policies increasingly looking like Swiss cheese, the Greens have practical solutions, and one of them is motion M-92, from the member for Kitchener Centre, to have an excess profit tax on big oil. This was just costed out by the Parliamentary Budget Office, confirming there would be $4.2 billion available, if the Liberals move to tax the big polluters. When wi…
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Madam Speaker, the bill before us, as well as anything that provides transparency toward the operation of airport authorities, is welcome. Airport authorities and harbour authorities operate at arm's length and unaccountably across this country. I am concerned about something that we have not seen yet. The former minister of transport took a stab at it. I wonder whether there is any progress on im…
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Mr. Speaker, one of the acquisitions that I wish had been reviewed, which I do not think Bill C-34, even with amendments, would catch, was Paper Excellence buying up the pulp and paper mills of this country: all of Catalyst, all of Resolute and, in the member's home province, starting with Northern Pulp. It looks like it was all financed by the China Development Bank. What does the member think ab…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the substance of this petition is the dependence of the marbled murrelet on the specific and unique nesting in the old-growth forest. I am sorry for adding a personal anecdote of having seen this in person. I do not think it was overly political, but I take the hon. member's point. As a succinct petition, the petitioners require that the government pay attention to its obligations, wh…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to, a little later than I had anticipated, present a petition on behalf of nearly a thousand residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands who are very concerned for the fate of the endangered little bird, the marbled murrelet, which is protected under the international Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds. The Government of Canada is ignoring its obligations to protect t…
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Madam Speaker, as ever, the member for Elmwood—Transcona is brilliant and absolutely right. There is a chilling effect. When the Government of Canada acts to ban a toxic substance, as it did to ban a gasoline additive called MMT, it is found to be very bad and naughty, and it has its hand slapped. By the way, this was because the Chrétien government decided to settle this before there was a decisi…
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Madam Speaker, in the generic category of investor protection agreements that damage Canada's sovereignty, I would point more to what used to be called NAFTA, where we had decisions taken by Parliament that were reversed because of complaints by U.S.-based corporations. Canada has lost out over and over again in those agreements. In the case of the one with FIPA and China, since all those decision…
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Madam Speaker, I would agree with the parliamentary secretary. There is language about climate. There is language about labour rights and language about indigenous rights. The difficulty here is that we can put in all the language and pretty words we like, but if the effect of the supremacy of trade deals and the World Trade Organization remains untouched, then anything we put in pretty words is u…
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Madam Speaker, I begin the discussion today on Bill C-57, which is the updated Canada-Ukraine trade agreement. We have had some conversation already this morning on the subject of the differences between trade agreements and investor protection agreements. I would like to approach that topic again and talk about the updated Canada-Ukraine trade agreement. I would also like to put a frame around th…
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Mr. Speaker, I am really pleased to get in on this round, because there has been a very interesting discussion between the member for Courtenay—Alberni, the member for Abbotsford and the hon. member for Danforth about investor protection agreements. They are not trade agreements, so the member for Courtenay—Alberni is correct that the previous government under Stephen Harper executed a secret agre…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition of great concern to residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands. People throughout this region have a deep concern for the fate of our wild Pacific salmon. The subject of the petition is the report of Mr. Justice Cohen on the fate of the salmon. The report came out during the time it was commissioned, when Stephen Harper was prime minister; it has been in fron…
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Madam Speaker, as this is my first chance to comment on Bill C-57, I would put this question to my friend from Nepean. It is heartening to see some reference to climate in trade agreements, but we know that for over more than a decade, since the creation of the World Trade Organization, the WTO has wrongly put itself above international climate agreements with respect to its authorities. I think t…
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Mr. Speaker, I must say, at this great distance, that I speak to you acknowledging that I am on the territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, who held this land on the southern Vancouver Island and the islands I represent, whom I have the honour to work with. I try constantly to remember that I am in a nation-to-nation relationship with five different first nations that are on this territory. Although, as…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually today to present a petition on behalf of newer constituents who are concerned about Canada's public transit policy and, specifically, sustainable public transit funding. The government's initial 10-year transit plan, and the funding that municipalities can count upon, will end in a few years, in 2027. The petitioners are calling on the government to f…
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Mr. Speaker, given that my hon. friend's speech this morning is the first time a Conservative Party member of Parliament has spoken to the issue, it seems that there is an intention to vote for the bill at second reading and fix flaws later at committee. Is that something we can count on? It is a shame to see debate so often where it looks as though we might all be voting for something to get it t…
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Mr. Speaker, I regret that I have to put this question to the parliamentary secretary. We speak of reconciliation, and today we are debating a baby step in Bill C-38 and, to add to the adjectives used by the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay, the racist law. However, the actual day of statutory recognition of the day for reconciliation, October 2, was the day the Liberal-owned, and now publicly ow…
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Mr. Speaker, I am afraid the hon. Minister of Labour's speech would have been well informed if there had been some reference to already broken promises to workers in the fossil fuels sector. We talk about how workers do not like to hear this language. I was in Paris with the member's friend, the minister of the environment at the time, Catherine McKenna, was working with Canadian labour unions, an…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise virtually this morning to present a petition from constituents who are very concerned about the galloping climate crisis. The particular approach of these petitioners, physicians, is to cite the health impacts of the climate crisis and to draw the attention of the House to the scientific consensus as represented in the Paris Agreement, that global emissions must …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I hate to disillusion the parliamentary secretary in terms of the levels of support the government is giving to water, but on the notion that $650 million is historic for the Great Lakes, back in the days when former prime minister Brian Mulroney made real strides in protecting the Great Lakes, that would be a small amount compared to the billions a year that was being spent. We had…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise this evening in Adjournment Proceedings to discuss the question that I first raised on May 18 of this year. It was a question for the Minister of Environment on the topic of the Ontario Greenbelt and the potential for water policy and water governance to provide assistance and additional tools to the minister. As many members in this place will know, since I …
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Mr. Speaker, the incredible irony here is that the portions of the impact assessment law that the Supreme Court found were in excess of federal jurisdiction were the sections created by Stephen Harper in wrecking our previous, predictable, strong environmental assessment legislation and the so-called designated project list, which was a very bad idea. The expert environmental law panel created und…
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Madam Speaker, I want to go back to something that the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands was discussing, and that is the impact of the carbon tax on inflation and the numbers that have been found. I noted, as to the member's comment, that the impact of carbon pricing has been up to two cents a litre, but the impact due to war profiteering from the oil and gas sector has been up to 18¢ a lit…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually today to present a petition of deep concern to residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands. The petitioners note that the Paris Agreement, which Canada negotiated back in 2015, calls for, in its language, a “just transition” for workers in the fossil fuel sector in the transition to end the addiction to fossil fuels. The petitioners go on to point out that the …
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Mr. Speaker, this debate is difficult and emotionally wrenching because this week has been emotionally wrenching. Hamas's crimes are horrific. I cannot say strongly enough that Hamas must be eliminated. I know this is dangerous to think out loud in a debate among colleagues, but as this debate has gone forward, I have been thinking this: How can we ensure the safety of the civilian population of G…
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Mr. Chair, I completely agree with everything that my dear colleague from the Bloc Québécois said. A humanitarian corridor is essential. I especially want to thank him for underscoring the role of our country. That may be a bit hard for him to do, as a sovereignist, but he underscored Canada's historic role and leadership as a country in favour of peace and international law. For that, I thank him…
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Mr. Chair, as it is my first opportunity to take the floor on this issue, let me first say that the Green Party stands with all other parties in this place in condemning, unconditionally, unequivocally, Hamas as an organization and its quite horrific assault on innocent Israeli civilians on October 7. I think we stand with a lot of commonality here. I hope my hon. colleague for Wellington—Halton H…
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Madam Speaker, I did oppose Bill C-69. Some of the hon. member's colleagues have said that anyone who voted for it obviously did not understand environmental assessment. I do support Bill C-49. The Canada-Nova Scotia and Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador offshore petroleum boards need to have an expanded regulatory capacity to approve offshore wind. I want to know if he would not agree with me that…
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Madam Speaker, I noted earlier in debate that some members incorrectly said that the findings of the Supreme Court of Canada in the reference case on the impact assessment meant that there would be overreach in this bill, Bill C-49. As a formerly practising environmental lawyer who did not think Bill C-69 was constitutional, I would like to say that Bill C-49 is absolutely constitutional. There is…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it would be to state on the record the solidarity of members in this place, from all different parties, to condemn Hamas, and to make a very short statement.
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to take the floor this afternoon to recognize four extraordinary Canadians, all of whom were Parliamentarians and all of whom passed away between when we adjourned in June and resumed in September: the Hon. Stephen Owen, the Hon. Pat Carney, Hugh Segal and the Hon. Monique Bégin. I particularly want to pay tribute to Pat Carney, who has not had a round of speeches in t…
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Mr. Speaker, to my hon. colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets, let us just distinguish on the last point that was being made between who started a fire, whether it was a lightening strike or somebody who threw a cigarette butt out a window, and the fuel load in place that causes the wildfires. He knows this perfectly well because we have talked about this. We share many things, including a hist…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to present a petition of great concern to the constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands. The petitioners put to the House that indigenous peoples have, from time immemorial, shown stewardship for the lands and waters of what we now call Canada, and that indigenous knowledge is an important, critical component in responding to the climate crisis. They also poin…
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Mr. Speaker, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation is still waiting to find out from the Canada Energy Regulator the reasons it gave in to the TMX pipeline and approved a new route that violates a key commitment to enter the territory of the first nation. Without reasons, the first nation cannot pursue its court remedy. One thing they do not have to wait for is construction to begin through the …
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Madam Speaker, it is an emotional time for everyone. We know full well that our deputy clerk has worked hard for everyone and for the good of our Parliament. For myself, as leader of the Green Party, of course we are not on the Board of Internal Economy, but, Michel Patrice's work has not gone unnoticed. We are all so grateful. My colleagues have already said it. I want to acknowledge the tributes…
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Madam Speaker, I am originally from Nova Scotia, and I look at a history lesson that I think we can all learn from. The private sector does not build housing when we really need it and does not build it in a hurry. The first public housing ever built in Canada was in the wake of the Halifax explosion in 1917, when thousands lost their homes, and governments, including as far away as the U.K., crea…
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