Government Orders
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—
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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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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?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Chair, I wonder if the minister could just give a clear answer. Does she think the Trudeau government made mistakes on immigration?
Read full speech →Government Orders
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?
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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?
Read full speech →Government Orders
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?
Read full speech →Government Orders
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, did the government consider the impact on employment before setting its immigration numbers?
Read full speech →Government Orders
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?
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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. …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, it was not difficult for me. I got two-thirds of the votes of my constituents, so I have a strong mandate to share—
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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-…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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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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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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling deals with euthanasia, or medical assistance in dying. The petitioners are concerned that allowing medical assistance in dying for those with disabilities or chronic illness who are not dying devalues their lives and tacitly endorses the notion that life with disability is optional and, by extension, dispensable. They note in this petition that many disa…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling deals with the human rights situation in Venezuela, a situation that many members of Parliament have spoken about over the years. The petitioners say that the current government is aware of crimes against humanity by the Venezuelan government and has created a family-based humanitarian program for Colombians, Haitians and Venezuelans suffering under curr…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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—
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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—
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I will finish summarizing this one, and I am almost done. I know that we do have limited time here, and there are a number of other members who will table petitions. The petitioners note that at least three of 257 political prisoners have close family members here in Canada. The petitioners call on the government to advocate for the release of political prisoners in Venezuela with clo…
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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?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, if the member for Kingston and the Islands had run for Speaker, he certainly would have been somewhere on my ballot. I will not say where, but he would have been somewhere on my ballot. I believe that it is important to summarize petitions and that we can read individual words, but we cannot read the petition into the record in its entirety, and that is precisely the rule that I have …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on his excellent work on this. One of the things I noticed while talking to people in my riding and in other places during the election was how frustrating it is for people who work in law enforcement when they see the failures on crime of the Liberal government. There are people who go out and work hard every day, risking their lives to try to keep t…
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Madam Speaker, this is an important public safety bill before the House. I do want to ask a question about money laundering and foreign interference. The fact is that a lot has been written about foreign interference in the member's riding in particular. Kenny Chiu, a Conservative member of Parliament in the 43rd Parliament, championed the adoption of a foreign influence registry. Much has been wr…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to comment on this very important debate on the forest fires this country is facing. It is interesting, listening to those in the Liberal government talk during this debate. They try to focus in on the things over which they have the least control, and they do not want to talk about the things that are actually their responsibility that have gone very badly…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, I welcome the new member to the House. For his benefit and that of others who are new, I want to do a quick walk down memory lane. There have been Conservatives in the House who have been warning about the problems of bad forest management for a very long time. I will give as one example Jim Eglinski, former Conservative member for Yellowhead, who asked a question on June 16, 2017. Hi…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition about the very important human rights situation in Tibet. The people of Tibet have a unique and distinct cultural, linguistic and religious heritage that has been increasingly endangered since Tibet was annexed by the People's Republic of China in 1951. Reports from human rights organizations have documented serious and ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet, …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, on this point of order, we frequently have reason to object to the responses we receive from seasoned government ministers, given the fact that we ask questions in the House and government ministers who have been elected for a very long time stand up and say things that have absolutely no relationship to the topic or the question being asked. Therefore, I find it a little surprising t…
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