Routine Proceedings
With regard to the government’s efforts to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions: (a) what levels of greenhouse gas emissions were produced as a result of (i) the Prime Minister’s travel and work, (ii) publicly funded travel or official engagements by members of the Prime Minister’s family, (iii) the travel and work of staff in the Office of the Prime Minister, to date this year and in each …
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With regard to a list submitted to the government in September 2021, containing 650 names of Afghan Ahmadi Muslims on the Taliban’s hit list: (a) has the government allowed any of these people on the list to come to Canada under special immigration measures implemented for Afghanistan, and, if so, how many; (b) does the government intend to allow all or some of these people to come to Canada under…
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With regard to Export Development Canada's (EDC) forgiveness of loans worth $822,161,848 in the 2021-22 fiscal year: (a) how many businesses received loan forgiveness; (b) what is the breakdown of (a) by province or territory; (c) what were the names of the businesses that received loan forgiveness; (d) what was the total value of loan forgiveness that each business received; (e) which of these bu…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, one of the trends we are seeing, which has really been accelerated by the pandemic, is flexible work. People are working from home and looking to be able to combine family life with work in different ways. Therefore, they are still very much needing child care, but they are looking for more creative options, which may be in their neighbourhood, may be at odd hours and may reflect th…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, over the course of the parliamentary break, we have all had an opportunity to talk to people in our communities and across the country, and it is clear that, after eight years of the Prime Minister's economic and social policies, many people are hurting. There are many people who are struggling in various ways, especially under the profound weight of inflation, and they are asking for…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, Canadians have never had it so bad while Liberal insiders like Dominic Barton have never had it so good. Dominic Barton was running a government advisory body while at the same time his company was collecting over $100 million in contracts on the side. Barton and his cronies at McKinsey had privileged access to the Prime Minister and were using…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be tabling 104 petitions in the House today. Members will be pleased to know that I will not be offering a unique description of each one. They are all on the same subject. I have, for some time in the House, been tabling petitions related to forced organ harvesting and trafficking. Every single one of these petitions follows immense work done by community members wh…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague spoke about many important issues, including reciprocal access, human rights, the middle way approach, the whereabouts of the Panchen Lama and other human rights abuses and language and cultural rights. I am pleased that in the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet group we have been able to work collaboratively and talk about many of these important issues. One important piec…
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Madam Speaker, I have observed over the last few years that the last two Canadian minority Parliaments have been able to play a significant leadership role in the world, when it comes to confronting human rights abuses being perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party. While Canada's Parliament has led in the world, though, the Government of Canada has been a laggard. Canada's Parliament was the fi…
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Mr. Speaker, I move that the second report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, presented on Tuesday, May 10, be concurred in. It is always an honour to rise and speak in the Canadian House of Commons on behalf of my constituents, and also as a free Canadian speaking of my own convictions. Debate in the House expresses the freedom we have and the blessing we …
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member could have done a bit more research regarding the record of the previous government when it came supporting Tibet. Many important steps were taken in regard to engagement with and support for Tibet. One of them was the former prime minister hosting and meeting with the Dalai Lama. In a constructive spirit, if the current Prime Minister of Canada would be prepared to …
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could also talk about the specific concern we are hearing from the Tibetan-Canadian community about how the Chinese Communist Party seeks to threaten and intimidate the Tibetan diaspora outside of Tibet. It has been well documented in various reports that this is a strategy of the Chinese Communist Party. We have had the case of Chemi Lhamo here in Canada and …
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Madam Speaker, I think it is important to identify one distinction, and that is the distinction between speaking of human rights issues in Tibet and speaking of the political status of Tibet. These are both important questions, and they are distinct questions. We should speak about religious freedom and human rights for Tibetans, but we should also discuss the reality that Tibet was taken over thr…
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Madam Speaker, with the greatest respect for my colleague, her implication that this concurrence debate is interfering with the business of the House seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of the fact that there was extensive dialogue among party House leaders about negotiating the ending period of this week and how we would wrap up before Christmas, in particular how this concurrence debate…
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Madam Speaker, the member's point that sometimes we maybe focus on certain human rights issues and not others for a variety of reasons that may not have pure motives is important to reflect on. Sometimes we have been particularly reluctant to criticize violations of human rights by the Chinese Communist Party because clearly the Chinese Communist Party is very powerful relative to other smaller en…
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Madam Speaker, if the member wants to take it in a partisan direction, as he clearly does, I will just say that for this Prime Minister, who clearly loves photo ops, this would be a case where a meeting and a photo would actually be quite meaningful. I would encourage the Prime Minister to take that opportunity, which is one that, as far as I know, he has not taken at any point during his premiers…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the member is trying to constantly shift this into a debate about whether or not the emergency benefits were a good policy. As he pointed out, all parties supported providing emergency supports during COVID. However, the question is not whether these emergency benefits were required and were valuable. The question is whether the government was right to pay tens of billions of dollar…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, on Tuesday last week, the Auditor General released an absolutely damning report on the government's COVID-19 programs. This is report 10 from the Auditor General. This report chronicled mismanagement, waste and a lack of focus leading to tens of billions of dollars in government waste. Let us be very clear: We are not talking about the policy of the COVID support programs. This was …
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Madam Speaker, the second petition I am tabling raises concerns about calls by Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec to legalize infanticide in certain cases. People who signed this petition were horrified that someone from that college would openly, before a parliamentary committee, call for legal changes that would allow the killing of children, the killing of innocents. The petitioner…
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Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. The first petition is in support of Bill S-223, which is a bill to prohibit forced organ harvesting and trafficking. The bill would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. It would also create a mechanism by which a person could be deemed inadmissible to Canada if they are involved in for…
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Madam Speaker, we request a recorded vote and seek the unanimous consent of the House to defer the vote to tomorrow following question period.
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Madam Speaker, I always appreciate my colleague's sincerity. I do not always agree with the particulars he notes, but I think highly of his motivations and intentions. I want to ask a question about this particular concurrence debate. This concurrence debate came up at this time as a result of conversation and negotiation among House leaders. It seems that some members were not fully briefed on th…
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Mr. Speaker, I have one petition to present today from Canadians who are in solidarity with the Hazara community and the violence it has experienced in Afghanistan over decades. The petitioners call on the government to formally recognize the 1891-93 ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Hazaras as a genocide and to designate September 25 as Hazara genocide memorial day.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, while today the government is asking the House to expedite its spending, we have the Auditor General revealing tens of billions of dollars in inflationary waste associated with the government's past spending. Tens of billions of dollars went out the door to people with clearly identified risk factors for not actually being eligible for the programs they were receiving money for: The…
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Finally, Madam Speaker, I am tabling a petition from people who are concerned about the government's intention to bring in another values test associated with charitable status, to use charitable status determinations to discriminate against organizations that hold different views from the government on the issue of abortion. The petitioners call on the government to preserve and protect the appli…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling highlights the horrific human rights abuses that have been inflicted on the Hazara community in Afghanistan over generations. They are abuses that have been ongoing but have significantly worsened since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The petitioners call on the government to recognize the violence and the genocide the Hazaras have faced, and to d…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling responds to recommendations from the Minister of National Defence's advisory panel on systemic racism and discrimination that published its final report earlier this year. The petitioners are concerned about the fact that this report calls for the exclusion of chaplains on the basis of the views of their faith community on issues of gender and sexualit…
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling is in support of Bill S-223, a private member's bill seeking to ban forced organ harvesting and trafficking. This bill proceeds to its second hour of debate at third reading stage tomorrow and a final vote next week. The petitioners want to see this bill passed, making it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without c…
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Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions I want to present. The first is similar to that presented by my colleague. The petitioners highlight, with horror, proposals from the Quebec college of physicians to legalize euthanasia for babies. They find this proposal deeply disturbing. Infants cannot consent. Killing children is always wrong. Infanticide is always wrong. There is no justification fo…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the government is attacking the Auditor General's independence in order to cover up its own incompetence. More than $30 billion went to ineligible recipients; that is, people who did not meet the criteria of the programs. When the Auditor General called this out, the government's response was to criticize the work of a strong, independent professional whom the Liberals, in fact, appoi…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am rising tonight to call out the hypocrisy of the government. In the way it treats Canadians and the way it treats itself, there is, needless to say, a profound dissonance between those two things. On the one hand, we have a Prime Minister who clearly loves to travel. He went to London this year and he or a member of his entourage spent $6,000 a night on a hotel room. We have act…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I think the member thought he was answering a different question. I, of course, spoke about the government's carbon tax, but primarily about the ArriveCAN app, about the hypocrisy we have seen from the Prime Minister and about the Prime Minister's spending. There was no response whatsoever on any of those issues. Clearly, the government cannot explain why it spent $54 million on a g…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker,'Twas the night before Christmas and no one could afford a house. Some people were blaming a fellow named Klaus.The Prime Minister said he would have people's backs. But it turned out his real plan was to triple the tax.The holidays are here. There is a gift shopping tradition. But things are more expensive, thanks to the costly coalition.So instead just rest, stay home and take a nap.…
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Mr. Speaker, I have one petition to table today. The petitioners are deeply concerned about a proposal from Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec, who recommended expanding euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes”. This proposal for the legalized killing of infants is deeply disturbing to many Canadian…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, this bill would create a mechanism by which those involved with forced organ harvesting and trafficking would be inadmissible to Canada. In terms of broader sanctions, Magnitsky-style sanctions, it is important that we also pass Bill C-281, which would create a mechanism through which a parliamentary committee could recommend people for Magnitsky sanctions. That would help us move f…
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Madam Speaker, there are different kinds of cases of forced organ harvesting and trafficking. We often speak of the situation in China, where forced organ harvesting and trafficking are part of the persecution of dissidents or minorities. Falun Gong practitioners have been significantly targeted for decades. Now we are seeing an increase in the targeting of Uighurs as part of a state-directed and …
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, we have seen many initiatives before the House, including my friend's Motion No. 62, and these initiatives deal with different parts of the genocide: recognition, sanctions, immigration measures and forced labour. There are many different pieces to it that require a response. This bill seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. We have been hearing more and more report…
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Mr. Speaker, I think there would be agreement for the motion to be carried unanimously.
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
,seconded by the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard, moved that the bill be concurred in.
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
,seconded by the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard, moved that the bill be read the third time and passed. He said: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking today to Bill S-223, the next, and hopefully the last, in a long line of bills that have been proposed here and in the other place to begin the fight against the horrific practice of forced organ harvesting and trafficking. I want to thank t…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member asked what we would do if we were in government. We would make the right decision on every one of those. With respect to the particulars the member raises with respect to what powers the federal government would have in intervening with provinces, this is an important issue for the committee to look at. I am supporting this legislation because we need to have a cybersecur…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in the House today to a very serious subject, cybersecurity and the security of our country in general. I will say, on a lighter note, that my friend from Peace River—Westlock spoke about snowmobiling companies and cyber-attacks. I have some personal experience with snowmobiling at his house, and I would say that the government's approach to sec…
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today. I have a number of petitions to present to the House. The first petition comes from Canadians living with disabilities who have a number of asks regarding policies within the ambit of the federal government and Parliament that relate to Canadians with disabilities. The petitioners note that inflation has increased the cost of living and is having the gr…
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is about Bill C-11, a bill currently before the Senate. The government has now admitted that it is seeking to give itself the power to regulate social media algorithms. The petitioners are opposed to that bill. They call on the Government of Canada to respect Canadians' fundamental right to freedom of expression and call on the government to prevent Internet censorsh…
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling deals with the case of the ongoing arbitrary detention in China of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen of Uighur origin. Mr. Celil is a Canadian Uighur rights activist. He was originally detained in Uzbekistan for supporting the political and religious rights of Uighurs and was then illegally rendered to China. The Chinese government continues to deny his …
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition deals with a proposal in the Liberals' 2021 election platform to politicize charitable status and make charitable status determinations not on the basis of the work that organizations do but on the basis of what their convictions happen to be with respect to the pro-life question. The proposal to exclude organizations with pro-life convictions from accessing charitab…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a petition in support of Bill S-223, a bill that would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. This bill also has a provision whereby someone could be deemed inadmissible to Canada if they are involved in forced organ harvesting and trafficking. This bill has been before Parliament in various forms for the …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member is correct that this is not a new issue. That is precisely why I think the government is very late in coming to the table. The issue of foreign interference, which is part of the context of the cyber-threats we face, is also not a new issue. Again, we have been calling for action from the government, but we have not seen other action from it. The member says that the Libe…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, that is an excellent point. I did not have a chance in my remarks to talk specifically about the transparency issues. Again, we need to support this bill through the second reading stage out of agreement with the general principle that we need to do more on cybersecurity, recognizing how far behind the government has been. However, there are significant issues with respect to ensuri…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I invite that hon. member to read the NSICOP report that was tabled by a member of her own government, which was, in fact, scathing about the government's failure to respond to the persistent problem of foreign interference. We know that the Prime Minister's secrecy and refusal to answer basic questions about foreign interference is putting this debate on its back foot. He is putting …
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