Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, this question underlines the problem with the Liberals in regard to whose side they are really on. We can compare the way they treat elite insiders who have abused the rules and taken money from taxpayers versus what would happen to everyday Canadians who might have a dispute with CRA, for example, about what is owed. The gentleness with which the government approaches elite insider c…
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Mr. Chair, does the minister think that people who work for the public service should be able to work as external contractors at the same time as they are employed by the public service?
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Mr. Speaker, what is going on here? We have a 10-year-old government that is neck deep in corruption. It is another week and another Auditor General report denouncing the actions of the government, a government that really wants to profess to be new. It is a new government, but not new people. It is the same people, but they have changed. They have found religion. They are going to do things diffe…
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Mr. Chair, the minister did not listen to the question I asked. He repeated his non-answer from the previous question. I invite him to come up with a new non-answer to the new question. The new question was this: Does the minister think that companies that do work for hostile foreign regimes should be able to simultaneously do work for the Government of Canada?
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Mr. Chair, with all due respect to the minister, this is embarrassing. I would be embarrassed. I am almost embarrassed for him. Is the government planning a major overhaul of the indigenous procurement program?
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Mr. Chair, very respectfully to the President of the Treasury Board, there is nothing virtuous or public service-minded about ignoring serious questions from members of the opposition and repeating lines that have absolutely nothing to do with those questions. This is not a “gotcha”; this is a basic question of government policy. Is—
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Mr. Chair, the minister referred a number of times in his testimony to the 2024-25 estimates as being what he is testifying about. I wonder if he wants to clarity that or if he is—
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Mr. Chair, am I to infer from the answer that the minister thinks there are some instances where it is okay for a public servant to also be an external contractor?
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Mr. Speaker, the member continues to claim that he represents a new government, but it is a new government made up of the same people. My question is simple. If this is truly a new government, will it immediately demand reimbursement of the funds that were spent? Will the Liberals support our motion? Will they try to correct the situation? Will they demand a reimbursement? I want a yes or no answe…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a hypothetical, and a ridiculous hypothetical, but ridiculous hypotheticals are required to demonstrate what has actually gone on in government procurement. For example, someone hires me for $100 to paint the fence. I hire someone else for $50 to paint the fence. I collect $50 for doing, you guessed it, nothing. If this happens over and over again to the tune of tens of millio…
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Mr. Chair, it is just a really simple question about the minister's philosophy in terms of how he thinks things should work. Does the minister think a person who is employed by the public service should be able to simultaneously work as an external contractor? It is the third time I have asked the question. Could the minister answer it? Does he think that is appropriate, yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, I think it is pretty clear from that answer that the minister thinks there are some cases where it is acceptable to double-dip as a government employee and a contractor. If he does not think that, he can say so, but I think that is pretty troubling. I have another question: Does the minister think that companies that do work for hostile foreign regimes should also be able to simultaneou…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals clearly get excited when they are talking about their own jobs, but half a million unemployed students this summer are concerned about theirs. The CBC is reporting that Canada faces the worst youth unemployment crisis in decades. Students need jobs to pay for their education and gain vital experience and skills. Liberal inflationary spending and immigration failures are c…
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Mr. Speaker, I have one petition to table today. This petition relates to recommendations 429 and 430 in the finance committee's pre-budget consultation report, which aim to remove the advancement of religion as a recognized charitable purpose and revoke charitable status from organizations with pro-life convictions. This would have the effect of stripping charitable status from vital faith-based …
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Mr. Chair, I have a very simple question for the minister: Does she acknowledge, now that she has had extra time to think about it, that the Trudeau government made mistakes on immigration?
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Mr. Chair, it seems, listening to the discussion tonight, that the minister is acknowledging that the Trudeau government made mistakes on immigration. Is that correct?
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Mr. Chair, did the government consider the impact on employment before setting its immigration numbers?
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Mr. Chair, the minister does not appear to want to answer that question either way. However, Friday's job numbers paint a really dire picture for Canadians. We have 7% unemployment, particularly growing in large urban centres. It is the highest it has been in Toronto in well over a decade. Does the immigration minister think high immigration numbers have contributed to high and rising unemployment…
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Mr. Chair, that is not an answer. These are important questions, and the Minister of Immigration has an obligation to answer them. Does she agree with experts that the large influx of foreign workers has depressed wages for young Canadians, yes or no?
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Mr. Chair, it is a yes-or-no question. Does the minister believe that the large influx of foreign workers is depressing wages for young Canadians? It does not take time. It is just “yes” or “no”.
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Mr. Chair, we are at zero answers so far in my round. Ilona Dougherty, co-creator of the Youth & Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo, told CBC recently that evidence shows that a large influx of foreign workers depresses wages for young Canadians. Does the minister agree with these findings, that a large influx of foreign workers depresses wages for young Canadians?
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Mr. Chair, every single one of my questions could have been answered with a yes or no, and none of them have been. Did the government consider the impact on employment before setting the current immigration numbers?
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Mr. Chair, we have not gotten any answers from the minister so far. I asked if she recognizes that the Trudeau government made mistakes on immigration. She did not answer that. I asked if she recognizes that high immigration numbers have contributed to rising unemployment, which has been rising steadily for the last three years. I will try again. I have a simple question for the minister: Does she…
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Mr. Chair, I wonder if the minister could just give a clear answer. Does she think the Trudeau government made mistakes on immigration?
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Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Windsor West on an excellent speech today and on his advocacy. My heart goes out to his community, because I noted in Friday's release from Statistics Canada on labour market numbers that there is sadly a very high unemployment rate in Windsor. Numbers are high throughout southern Ontario. Unemployment is 7% nationally and 8.8% in Toronto but 10.8…
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Madam Speaker, the job numbers are out, and they are bad. Failing Liberal policies have now caused a full-blown unemployment crisis: 7% unemployment overall. Ontario alone has shed 25,000 manufacturing jobs, and one in five students cannot find a job this summer. When will the government reverse its job-killing policies so that Canadians can get back to work?
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Madam Speaker, the fact is that unemployment has been steadily increasing under this government for two years. This week, I spoke to Josh, a hard-working and experienced labourer in his late 30s. Josh has been unemployed for more than a year and has now put in over 1,000 applications. StatsCan's numbers show that unemployed Canadians like Josh are searching longer and becoming more desperate. By r…
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Madam Speaker, it is a bit of an odd combination of provisions to see these things together. I will let our shadow minister for democratic institutions speak in more detail about that later, though. I want to give him the opportunity to comment on those provisions specifically. I just want to extend my best wishes to the people of Nunavut. In looking at the unemployment numbers in parts of the cou…
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Madam Speaker, if the Liberals had a plan, the typical way they would put a plan before the House of Commons to address unemployment is in something called a budget, and yet we have no budget. Their response to terrible unemployment numbers is to blame others, blame external events, and to fail to present the House of Commons with a budget. The Liberals said that a plan beats no plan. They have no…
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question from my colleague, the famous chair of the government operations committee, where we have worked so hard to dig into the outrageous sums of money the government has paid to well-connected consultants. Those who are following these issues of corruption and waste closely will be interested to know, and the member can correct me if I am wrong, that next Tu…
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Madam Speaker, what I said was that the Liberal government needs to stop doing the things it is doing and take a very different approach. In response to what the member said, I want to draw her attention to her region. Maybe she has not seen it yet, but as she talked about what people in Kitchener-Waterloo are saying and thinking, I note that her region's unemployment is substantially above the na…
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal Party, according to petitioners, has been attacking the charitable status of various Canadian charitable organizations. Recommendations 429 and 430 in a finance committee report regarding budget consultations recommended stripping charitable status from any organizations that are effectively from any houses of worship and also separately from any pro-life organizations. …
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member spoke about slogans, and I reflect on the slogans used by the Prime Minister. One of the most absurd is his slogan to “spend less and invest more”. He is supposed to be the man with the plan, but he is the man with no budget who says that the Liberals are going to spend less but invest more, which means they are going to spend even more. We see in the Liberals' spend…
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Madam Speaker, I rise today in the House on what is, in fact, a very sad day for our country. I am quite surprised, flabbergasted really, to hear members across the way say that it is an exciting day. Today is a very sad day with the devastating unemployment numbers that have just come out. Statistics Canada released unemployment numbers for today showing that unemployment in Canada has risen to 7…
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Madam Speaker, what worries me most about that question is to hear the members say the Liberal government “will continue to”. I think what Canadians want to hear is that the Liberal government “will stop doing”. Canadians want to hear that the government will stop doing what it has been doing, because it is not working, and they would rather do something different. Frankly, during the election, th…
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke about how, in the process of the elimination of the consumer carbon tax, there was a dissonance in the timing. I think we can clearly see that this was very political. The government wanted to be able to have things look as good as possible during the election and then not worry too much about the consequences afterwards. When it comes to regional accounting, there …
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Madam Speaker, this whole discussion around the carbon tax is interesting. I was in this place for 10 years listening to Liberals talk about how great the carbon tax was and about how it was either the carbon tax or the apocalypse. Well, if they really believed that, then they are now talking about bringing on the apocalypse, I suppose. However, they never believed that. It was always just somethi…
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Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the rules are, as I think the member knows but misstated, that members cannot read an entire petition. Members are to summarize the petition, and in the course of that, reading from prepared notes that one has that relate to the petition is perfectly allowed. Historically, there was a time when members could not read anything in the House of Commons—
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to present petitions in the House today. The first petition comes from the last Parliament, but I think it is one that is still very much relevant. The petitioners point out that Canada made us all a promise, a promise that anyone from anywhere could do anything. They say that, after nine years, the promise of Canada has been broken, that we have seen a lo…
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Mr. Speaker, the petitioners have observed, and I share their views without comment, that Canada has fewer homes per capita than any other G7 country, and that there is too much red tape. Just to generally summarize, they are suggesting that we incentivize municipalities to allow the construction of more homes. They also express concern about the need to cap population growth and about the out-of-…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Respectfully, I was having a look at the clock during the repeated interruptions and points of order from the government.
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Mr. Speaker, I must confess that it has been a difficult six months for me not being in this place. I missed everyone, but especially the member for Kingston and the Islands.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is with respect to the human rights situation in Eritrea. The petitioners note that Eritrea has been ruled by an authoritarian, brutal dictator, under a totalitarian system for the last 30 years, with no constitution, no elections, no parliament, no freedom of press or freedom of movement and association. There are many different points made in the petition about the…
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling deals with a bill that was previously named Bill S-210 and has been reintroduced in this Parliament as Bill S-209. The petitioners are calling for meaningful age verification for those accessing sexual material online. They note that the consumption of sexually explicit materials by young persons is associated with a range of serious harms, including the…
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Mr. Speaker, I am doing my best to summarize. People have put a lot of work into a fairly lengthy petition on a very serious international human rights issue, and they were waiting throughout the government's—
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Mr. Speaker, having concluded the Venezuela petition, I have one more petition to table, and this is with respect to proposals to extend euthanasia to include minors. The petitioners raise concern about a proposal to allow babies from birth to one year of age who have come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes to have euthanasia. The petitioners say that the proposal fo…
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Garnett Genuis Mr. Speaker, I am reading the names of political prisoners. I did not have them memorized. Can I read off the page?
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The government House leader does not want to hear this, but it is an important petition. I hope he will take note of it and support this important bill. The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to adopt Bill S-210, which is now Bill S-209, the protecting young persons from exposure to pornography act.
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It is a point of order. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the clock was continuing to run during those points of order, but the clock should have been stopped to have 15 minutes for petitions. I would be concerned if the government whip were able to stop members from presenting petitions by repeatedly running out the 15-minute petition clock with these spurious points of order. I wonder if we can review…
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