Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for all the tributes that have already been made. Your own words were profoundly moving. It is in this place, in moments like these, that we are united with exactly the same sense of shared humanity in paying tribute to someone we universally loved and admired. I know Chuck Strahl to have been, throughout his life, an honest man, doing an honest day's work every single d…
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Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking members in other parties, and in particular the Minister of Immigration for bringing Bill C-71 forward. The hon. member for Vancouver East has been tireless, as have many citizen champions, including, as mentioned by the minister, Don Chapman. The work to restore the rights to lost Canadians is urgent. With all due respect to the minister, I would like to…
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Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. The Northvolt plant is going to be built on the contaminated land of the Canadian Industries Limited former explosives plant and could end up polluting the Richelieu river. There are impacts on areas of federal jurisdiction and 4,000 people have signed a petition calling for a federal assessment. The mayors of Saint-Ba…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today with a petition of great concern to many of my constituents. I heard about this issue all summer, the need for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to have removed from its statutory mandate the promotion of aquaculture in order to put the priority for DFO to be on the protection of coastal ecosystems. The petitioners note that for British Columbians, t…
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Madam Speaker, yes, indeed, and I recall attempts by the hon. member for Vancouver East to put this through by unanimous consent before we adjourned for the summer. One would have thought that reflection over the summer might have changed the automatic chorus of nays from across the aisle, because this is a matter of restoring rights to Canadians, not inventing new rights and not expanding a class…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Edmonton Manning says he wants Canadians who believe in Canadian values. Certainly one of those is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; this is why the courts ruled that the cut-off rule for second-generation Canadians was unconstitutional. How does the hon. member imagine that Canadians of convenience so cleverly plan ahead to choose their parents so that they ca…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Ben Perrin.
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for splitting her time with me. Second, I did not want to interrupt. I think it is the first time I have ever yelled anything out in the House, but I remembered the name Benjamin Perrin. He is doing fantastic work in looking at the evidence and realizing things about the policies he used to espouse when he was in Stephen…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleagues who are here tonight. First, I would like to sincerely thank the member for Nunavut. I want to thank my friend, the member of Parliament for Nunavut, for bringing this forward for an emergency debate. It has been an emergency for some time. That is why I was relieved when the Speaker decided that it met the definition of an emergency for debate. Howeve…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Nunavut for always being a shining example in this place of how to lead with love. I want to recognize that it is not one or two examples. As she was speaking, I was thinking of Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, who was attacked by the RCMP in a parking lot. What we can do is remember the first calls for justice of the Nati…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue. I am deeply moved by his words about our friend, my old friend Jonathan Pedneault, who has now stepped down as my deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada. As my colleague put it so well, Jonathan always makes decisions with human rights issues front of mind. I think my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue is rig…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the parliamentarians who serve on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians have done an amazing job and deserve the thanks of all Canadians. In the face of foreign interference, we need to put Canada first and commit to working together. My question for the Prime Minister is this: Is the Prime Minister open to working over the summer with all members of Par…
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Mr. Speaker, I would also like to add a few words to say a big thank you to all the teams at the House of Commons. I would like to thank the Speaker, the clerks and the pages, who have done great work while also studying. These young people from across Canada continue to inspire me. They work so hard. When we work long hours, we sometimes forget that our pages are here working hard too. They then …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
,seconded by the member for Willowdale, moved for leave to introduce Bill C-408, An Act to amend the Referendum Act. She said: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to put forward this private member's bill. This private member's bill seeks to amend the Referendum Act. We rarely use referenda in Canada. One reason a referendum is so difficult to use, which my private member's bill attempts to remedy, is th…
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Mr. Speaker, please forgive me. Before my petition, I just have to say, “Go Oilers”. Now I will turn to my petition. The petitioners are very concerned for the habitat of the threatened marbled murrelets. These are birds that are covered by the Migratory Birds Convention Act. To summarize the petition, the petitioners call on the government to immediately protect all the critical old-growth habita…
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Madam Speaker, I also want to add a few comments and thank our colleague from Vancouver East. The matters raised, as we all know, are of critical importance. I have listened carefully to the member for Vancouver East. I want to read her question of privilege. It is clearly pressing and urgent that Parliament come together. At this point, I would like to reserve further comments, as other represent…
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Madam Speaker, I am rising to present a petition from concerned residents of Nova Scotia, so not my riding, but they have reached out to me concerning a land-based testing facility being built by the Department of National Defence. It threatens a forested area where there is a bird observation site, which is the nesting and feeding ground for thousands of migratory birds. The public consultation w…
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place to speak to Bill C-70. A foreign influence registry is something we have wanted to have, but we also recognize that there are concerns that overbroad application of such a registry could in itself inadvertently result in stigmatization of diaspora communities within Canada. The bill needs to be carefully administered, and much of what remains of…
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Madam Speaker, whenever we have a CSIS report that makes earth-shattering accusations, and parliamentarians assume CSIS is right, I always remember that CSIS is sometimes wrong. The accusations and information provided to members of cabinet in one era in this country told them that Maher Arar was a bad actor and that it was okay to allow extraordinary rendition, where he would be tortured in anoth…
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Madam Speaker, it is important to be able to have periodic reviews, but I will not forget what we did in the Harper era, when we gave CSIS kinetic powers that it had not had before. That was a mistake, but we have left it that way. The RCMP was supposed to act on intelligence; intelligence-gathering was the exclusive job of CSIS. We still have silos in this country between intelligence-gathering a…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise this evening in Adjournment Proceedings to pursue a question I initially asked the Prime Minister on February 28. Although the topic of the rubric announced earlier today was climate change, I was really asking about a series of related issues in terms of Canada's preparedness to respond to extreme weather events, such as extreme wildfires and flooding, as well…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that I have to express deep distress that the hon. member thinks that we are moving to clean electricity regulations. One cannot have clean electricity when the federal government is allowing Ontario to bring more fossil fuels online to fuel an electricity grid that had been largely decarbonized by the previous Liberal government under Kathleen Wynne. It is a terrible sham…
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Mr. Speaker, debate is moving at a rapid clip, and I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-20. I will pick up on the point of the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby that, my goodness, this bill has been in front of us for a long time. First reading was more than two years ago. The bill is long overdue. I will also put on the record early that I will vote for this bill. I am very …
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford made reference to Bill C-70 on a foreign interference registry, which we fast-tracked and which I supported. I have since heard from many concerned groups, and I wonder if he has as well, that in our collaborative spirit, which is so rare in this place, to get the bill through and be heard so that we would have a foreign interference reg…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Madam Speaker, I rise today heartbroken at the loss of St. Anne's Anglican Church on Gladstone Avenue in Toronto. As a fellow Anglican, I have worshipped in that space, and I do not think there is a more beautiful church in Canada. I guess I should use the past tense. It was an extraordinary architectural gem, a national heritage site lost forever. When people read that there were works of the Gro…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, now that I have received confirmation from the Privy Council Office that I am to read the full, unredacted report of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians later today, I would like to ask the hon. Minister for Public Safety if he would be willing to meet with me tomorrow to discuss ways that we can, within the letter of the law, work together to ensure g…
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Mr. Speaker, the Greens agree to apply the vote and will be voting in favour as well.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of my constituents, who express deep concern about the level of poverty in Canada. The petitioners point out that poverty affects more than 10% of Canadians, disproportionately impacting indigenous peoples, racialized people, recent immigrants and the young, especially children. The petitioners ask for the House of Commons to adopt a national povert…
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Madam Speaker, I just want to stand first to say that I have tracked the work of Sustainable Development Technology Canada over a 22-year history, in which there were leading entrepreneurs from my own riding, people like Juergen Puetter from the wind energy sector, who was active as a member of the board. In those days, we would look at a track record of extremely effective, targeted support that …
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Mr. Speaker, it is World Environment Day. I am so honoured that visiting Ottawa the next few days are British Columbians who work night and day to protect our southern resident killer whale population, yet the government makes decision after decision after decision that further threatens their survival. There are only 75 whales of this population left in the Salish Sea. The approval of the Trans M…
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Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition from a number of constituents who are concerned about the use in Canada of a herbicide called glyphosate, or a trade name often known as Roundup. The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. The petitioners are concerned and ask that the Government o…
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand to ask the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley a question. I do support the motion, but I want to ask him if he agrees that the complexity of food prices is more than corporate greed and gouging. Yes, that is a factor, but the climate emergency is also a factor. The 2005 book The Long Emergency explained then that we were going to see food scarcity and foo…
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to present a petition from my Saanich—Gulf Islands constituents. They are concerned about threats to our old-growth forest. There is one last unprotected intact old-growth valley on all of southern Vancouver Island. Constituents asked—demanded—that the government take action against clear-cut logging. I do not want to say something in English or joke arou…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. When this controversy was first brought to our attention by the hon. member for Lethbridge, I rose to speak in deep concern about the possibility that the words that were spoken, which were in the initial blues, had been changed without the member's knowledge because this is an essential piece of how this place works, that we are confident that there is no …
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon, colleague, the parliamentary secretary, for endorsing the Speaker's generous impulse, because I do get up and down a lot. Then again, I am an Anglican, so I am used to it. I want to ask my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary this. I know the topic of this debate is about the summer tax break, which I oppose for many reasons, and he has admirably summed up most of …
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Mr. Speaker, I had the great honour of participating yesterday in a symposium sponsored by Senator Marilou McPhedran, from the other place. It was attended by many brilliant young people arguing that the voting age should be 16 years. The #Vote16 movement includes a bunch of people over 70, like myself. Well, I am not over 70, but I am almost 70. However, my point is, all of us, regardless of part…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary referred earlier in his speech to the origins of the B.C. carbon tax. Having been involved, I was amazed to find that a fairly right-wing premier in British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, came up with a letter-perfect, academically rigorous, revenue-neutral carbon tax, driven, as he was, by the disaster of the loss of the forests of interior B.C. due to …
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Madam Speaker, when we adopted by unanimous consent that we could meet until midnight, I did not put on the record, but I would like to now, that I think there should be nursing stations available for those of us who work until midnight night after night, and that there should be very available places for at least quick naps to be able to continue our work. We do get elected to work, and we work h…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a very painful, difficult point and one of which the government is aware. A Canadian citizen, a much loved member of Fredericton's community, Frederick Mwenengabo, has been in the hands of brutal kidnappers in Goma, in Congo, since mid-December 2023, for five long months. Freddy is a much-loved member of the Fredericton community, a human rights advocate, a human rights acti…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by members of the constituency of Saanich—Gulf Islands who are deeply concerned about the actions of Canadian companies overseas that do not reflect our values or our respect for human rights. Petitioners point out in this petition that there are companies based in Canada that contribute to human rights abuses around the world and environmental dama…
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Madam Speaker, it is a great honour to rise today on behalf of many constituents, with a petition directed to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and to the Parliament assembled. The concern of the petitioners is the very perilous state of the southern resident killer whale population. These killer whales are an endangered population under Canada's Species at Risk Act…
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Madam Speaker, forgive me, but it was distressing to hear heckling. Petitions are not the voices of the members here, as a member of the House of Commons representing a riding. Presenting a petition is presenting the voices of our constituents to this place. We are neither for nor against the petitions we present. We are speaking for our constituents and, in particular, it is offensive that they s…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening in Adjournment Proceedings to pursue a question that I asked on February 5 of this year. It relates to a very key issue in our democracy, and that is our voting system, the winner-take-all system known as first past the post. We are one of the very few democracies on this planet that uses a system that separates the popular vote from the Parliament that is created …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the Liberals did not put out an election platform in 2015 that said, “If we can find consensus, we'll change the voting system.” No, it was unequivocal. The promise was that 2015 would be the last election under first past the post, not “if we can find consensus”. That was invented ex post facto after they won the election. Good MPs, like Craig Scott for Toronto Da…
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do something. The canvassing of issues this evening has been extraordinary and, I am afraid, all too often, superficial. I want to dive into a couple of things and just ask the minister for his reflections because this is tough stuff. I do not think there is a single Canadian who is not grieved whenever somebody “out on bail” commits a crime and some innocent pers…
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Mr. Speaker, I think all these specific examples that are exploited end up leading people to doubt some of the fundamentals of our British common law criminal justice system, which is that one is innocent until proven guilty. People out on bail are essentially legally innocent people. They have not been found guilty of crimes. We can take the example, recently, of Umar Zameer, who was involved in …
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Mr. Speaker, it seems that the bail supervision programs, which are cost-effective, are quite underfunded. Am I correct that those are funded through provincial and territorial governments?
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Mr. Speaker, I mentioned what is cost-effective because it is about $120,000 a year per inmate to keep people in jail, and there are currently more legally innocent people awaiting trial, who are still legally presumed innocent until proven guilty, in the jails of our provinces and territories than there are people who have been proven guilty. Does the minister understand that to be the case?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I have never practised criminal law, but members of my family have been prosecutors. The question that occurs to me often, and one of the things that seem outside the jurisdiction of the federal government, is whether it would not be salutary to find some way so that, when someone violates bail conditions or their surety is not observing them, bail would actually be collected. As a ge…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn to Bill C-63. I support Bill C-63, the online hate bill, but I do not think it adequately gets to some of the questions of algorithms. I think we have a real problem with rage farming. Some of the examples I have raised tonight are specifically useful because they raise ire and quick reaction and can be used to change public opinion through the manufacturing of a …
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