Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, this is a very important debate that we are undertaking here today. A very serious situation is unfolding in the region. I am happy to speak in this debate today, but I want to start by taking a moment to say that, as many have said before me in this place, this is not how we should be engaging with this topic. I was informed about an hour ago that this debate was going to be happen…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, today, on the International Day of Peace, New Democrats are taking real action to promote peace and justice. This week I brought forward Motion No. 95, calling on the government to finally commit to nuclear disarmament. As Ukraine valiantly fights for its freedom and for a more peaceful and just world for all of us, nuclear disarmament is needed more than ever. It is clear that we mus…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has spoken to the New Democratic caucus about this legislation and has raised some serious concerns. The legislation was drafted completely ignoring the recommendations that were brought forward by the national supply chain task force and the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. In its report on railway safety, there wer…
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Mr. Chair, the reason we are here today is that Mr. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered. We have now heard that CSIS knew there were threats against his life for some time. I wonder what next step we need to take as parliamentarians. What does the government need to do to make sure that this same incident and horrific tragedy does not happen to other members of the Sikh community and other members o…
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Mr. Chair, we are hearing from diaspora communities that they are afraid. They are afraid of violence being perpetrated against them and their loved ones. The threat against this particular individual was known, yet this individual still lost his life, was still murdered. I am just wondering what the government can do to reassure members of the diaspora community. What can the government do to mak…
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Honestly, Mr. Chair, I wish I could answer that question. The people of Edmonton, the people of Calgary, the people of Alberta deserve to have their representatives engage in this debate, and that is not happening. I expect that it has to do with the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, Stephen Harper has said that Modi is a great leader. He is a good friend of Stephen Harper, and he was the prime m…
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Mr. Chair, that is a very important question. I am a member of the Canada-China committee as well, and at that committee we have also heard members of the diaspora telling us time and time again that they are afraid, that they need more action by the government and that they need more steps taken to protect them. This is not something that is new. In fact, one of the things that I mentioned in my …
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Mr. Chair, this is an incredibly serious issue we are discussing tonight in the House of Commons. My colleague has brought forward some very compelling arguments and some very compelling facts. One of the things I find interesting is that the official opposition is not participating in the debate today. I have to ask why that is the case. I wonder whether it is because Stephen Harper in fact calle…
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Mr. Chair, as this is the first time I am speaking in the House of Commons since this session started, I want to take a moment to say that it is always a great honour to stand up and represent the smart, caring and kind people of Edmonton Strathcona. I also want to take a moment to express my deepest sympathy to the family of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It is incredible to have to have a debate like thi…
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Mr. Chair, it has been a belief of mine for a very long time that Canada has moved too far away from our core values when it comes to our role in the world. We cannot put trade in front of human rights. Trade cannot be the priority instead of human rights. We are looking at the Indo-Pacific strategy, which is a strategy that the current government has brought forward. Making sure we are not engagi…
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Madam Speaker, it is my first time standing in the House this session, so I just want to welcome you back and welcome all of my colleagues back. My colleague's speech was entertaining. I have to say that he spoke more about goats than he did about climate change, so I have a bit of concern about the priorities there. He did talk about reducing red tape and about costly delays, and he did talk abou…
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Mr. Chair, I would like to first congratulate my colleague on his new appointment as parliamentary secretary. I also want to thank him for bringing forward a more personal story and perspective on Mr. Nijjar. That is very important. Tonight we have talked a lot about how shocking it is that a Canadian citizen was killed on Canadian soil. I know that the member has been on the foreign affairs commi…
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With regard to Development Finance Institute Canada (FinDev Canada): (a) broken down by fiscal year, starting with fiscal year 2018-19 to the present, what is the total amount of funds that the government, through all departments and agencies and available funding streams, provided to FinDev Canada; (b) were fund transfers publicly reported; (c) how would a member of the public find such public re…
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With regard to funding from FinDev Canada for CASEIF IV, a regional private equity fund managed by LaFise Group in Central America and the Caribbean: (a) how does FinDev track the specific companies and projects that CASEIF IV and similar financial intermediaries fund with FinDev’s contribution; (b) how do CASEIF IV and similar financial intermediaries report to FinDev about the results of the end…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I found it very interesting. While Alberta's oil and gas companies were making record profits, workers were being laid off. This year alone, 14,000 workers in Alberta have been let go. Does my colleague think that one way to balance the budget would be to stop subsidizing highly profitable companies and to introduce a windfall tax?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, rising food prices are putting pressure on families. Edmonton's Food Bank has had to cut the amount of food in its hampers by 25% to meet demand, and 40,000 Albertan kids who get lunch at school will go without once the school rises for the summer. Grocery CEOs are making millions in surplus profits, and the government is doing nothing to help Canadians. While the Prime Minister and t…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I just wanted to make a point that the New Democratic Party would like to reserve the right to come back to speak to this issue at a later date.
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am standing today representing my constituents and the constituents of Alberta. I want to tell a bit of a story. In May 2020, amid COVID-19 shutdowns, on the Friday afternoon before the May long weekend, Alberta's United Conservative government quietly revealed that it was rescinding Alberta's coal policy that had protected the Rocky Mountains and the eastern slopes from exploration…
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Mr. Speaker, I have three additional questions from that response. One is this: Does the minister not understand the damage coal mining does to the mountains, whether it is metallurgical or thermal? The minister before the current Minister of Environment and Climate Change promised they would assess every single coal mine. We also know that there is no way of him knowing what the selenium outcomes…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, the international development sector in Canada is led by incredible women like Lauren Ravon and her team at Oxfam Canada, who shared their work on how to improve the lives of paid and unpaid care workers in Canada and around the world; Anna Vogt and the international program representatives from the Mennonite Central Committee, who are in Ottawa to share MCC's work building peace glob…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for keeping us abreast of many situations happening around the world. The member raised the issue of first past the post, and I obviously agree wholeheartedly with her. She also brought up an interesting idea that maybe we should sit alphabetically. I was in Finland this year, and Finland's parliamentarians sit geographically; they do not sit by party. I t…
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Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Alberta on being able to bring the issue of guns into the issue of a hybrid Parliament. Well done on his speech. I listened to his speech and he talked about what is being lost with a hybrid Parliament. I recognize that he feels that this is the case, but I want him to consider those things that are being gained and I want him to perhaps cons…
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Madam Speaker, I apologize very much to my colleague that I am not speaking French, but it is late in the House tonight, and my French is not up to the task. However, I work very well with the member on the ALS caucus, and I appreciate the work she does in the House very much. Obviously, I do not agree with some of the things that the member has brought forward, but one of the things I am worried …
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, it is 2023 and we are in the House again debating something that should not be up for debate: Bill C-311. While the member for Yorkton—Melville claims that this bill is about protecting women from violence, no organizations that actually work to support and protect women from violence are endorsing this bill. Why is that? It is because the people who care about violence being perpetra…
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Madam Speaker, my problem continues to be on the implementation of our sanction regime. Of course, there should be no one in this House who wants people who have been sanctioned to be able to come to Canada, such as people who have committed human rights abuses or perhaps taken part in the illegal war in Ukraine and the genocide against the Ukrainian people. However, the problem is that the bill w…
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Madam Speaker, one of the things I have been very concerned about is whether our sanction regime is actually being enforced. The easy part of sanctions is to put people on the list. The hard part is to actually enforce those sanctions and to make sure that they are transparent and enforced, as well as that we are following through with action. We know, because we heard testimony from the RCMP at t…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to compliment my colleague. He has a beautiful suit on today. One of the things he spoke about was making sure that people can participate in this Parliament. I think about representatives in the Yukon and representatives in rural and remote northern communities and how difficult it is for them. It is a very different reality than when we have, for example, people repre…
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Madam Speaker, this is the first time I have been able to stand up and speak since one of the member's colleagues brought up time allocation. Therefore, I want to make the point that, when the Conservatives were in power, they used time allocation 115 times. In fact, they made a cake to celebrate the 100th time. I just wanted to make that clear. However, the member talked about a lot of hypothetic…
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You did it 115 times.
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Madam Speaker, one of the concerns that I had with the hybrid Parliament is the idea that the government would not necessarily send ministers and have people on the front bench here to answer the questions of parliamentarians. That, of course, is very important. That is how we as parliamentarians hold the government to account. I know that this process has certainly improved over the last several …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I have enjoyed working with my hon. colleague on a number of different things and I want to echo his concerns. I was prepared to debate Bill C-40 today. I think it is very important legislation and something that we really should be discussing at this point. I also want to go back to some of the discussions the member brought forward with regard to Bill C-41. The member would know t…
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Madam Speaker, I have worked very well with my colleague, both in and out of the House. We have had meetings together on Zoom. We have been very effective that way, too. Even today, we were able to talk in the lobby together about some of the work that we are doing to push the government to bring Afghan MPs to safety in Canada. What I want to say to the hon. member is that it is hybrid Parliament …
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Mr. Speaker, I want to tell members a little bit about our foreign affairs committee. It is an interesting committee. Of course we have people from all parties. It is probably one of the most important committees that we have in the House of Commons, particularly considering the war in Ukraine, what we see happening in Afghanistan and Sudan; conflicts that we have around the world that Canada coul…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Albertans have made it very clear that they do not want coal mining in the Rocky Mountains. Coal mining in the eastern slopes threatens our land and our water, it is not good for our planet and it is not good for Albertans, yet the minister is fine with an Australian coal mining company carving out more than 500 hectares of Grand Mountain. Based on my private member's bill, this gover…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is correct that we worked very well together on this legislation. I will be speaking to it directly after him. As he mentioned, I have worked in this sector for over two decades, and one of the main concerns I have with this bill is that, in effect, it criminalizes international development work. Instead of saying that we will tell organizations when we do not want them t…
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Mr. Speaker, we hear from the Liberals that they think they are back. I was not a member of Parliament or a politician in 2015 when the Prime Minister stood up and said that Canada was back. He tapped his chest and did that little thing he does when he is trying to make people think he really means it. We all thought he did. The Prime Minister said all of the right words, all the right things that…
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Mr. Speaker, this is the difficult challenge that we found this sector in. This is in fact exactly where we are at, with millions of people who are dying and millions of people who are at risk. There are also principles of humanitarian development and humanitarian aid that are core principles under which we need to do this work and this bill pits those two things against each other. That is the pr…
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Mr. Speaker, this comment goes back to what I was saying before. As much as I think all of us in this place want to get aid to the people of Afghanistan as fast as possible, and I honestly believe that all of us in this place want that, the difficulty of being a lawmaker is that we have to look at the long-term implications of the laws we put forward. What happens if this means there are women and…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from British Columbia is absolutely right. She really could not be more correct about these burdens added to organizations that are already underfunded. Remember, these are organizations facing a 15% cut in official international development assistance. These are the same organizations that have lived through decades of neglect, starting with Stephen Harper and continuing…
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Madam Speaker, it is an excellent point. It made me a little sad after COVID, after we were recovering from COVID economically, and that was when people were paying attention to child care. People have been saying for decades that child care is a vital piece of our economy. The fact that it took a global pandemic for people to say that this is what will restart our economy was a little sad, but it…
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Mr. Speaker, the back and forth is entertaining me, at any rate. I wanted to bring up something around the environmental disasters that we see happening time and time again. Interestingly enough, I met Linda Duncan, who was the member for Edmonton Strathcona before me, when we were both working on cleaning waterfowl that were impacted by a derailment right outside of Wabamun Lake, one hour west of…
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Madam Speaker, like the hon. member for Winnipeg North, I am very worried about the people in northern Alberta. I am very worried. I think of my friend, Chief Allan Adam and the people in Fort Chipewyan, who have been evacuated from Chipewyan Lake. I am very concerned about them. I appreciate the concern the member expressed. However, I do have to say that my worry, always, with the Liberals is th…
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the member is going to be upset when I quote another politician to him. He is a member of Parliament from Alberta, as I am, so I just want to flag for him that in 2021, Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, wrote before she was premier, “‘How could we sign a deal like this?’.... It's not too late to change course”. Of course, after she was in the election campaign rece…
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Mr. Speaker, I have some concerns, and I think my colleague from the Bloc just addressed some them. It is the access and the workers that I am most concerned about. What would the member suggest should be done for northern and rural communities where access to child care staff is not available, where child care workers are not available and where we have seen that there is a lack of access to qual…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for highlighting the changing reality of the working lives of women in this country. One thing I do want to point out to the member, gently if I could, is that she brought up the idea that we had used closure or that closure had been used to shut down debate on the bill. However, I am sure she knows the difference between closure and time allocatio…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank all of the members who are in the House today contributing to this very important debate. I am delighted to be here, representing the people of Edmonton Strathcona. I come to this debate from a place that I think many of us do. I am a parent. I am a mother. I know exactly what it was like to try to get child care for my children. I remember going to centre afte…
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Madam Speaker, I wanted to point out during my speech that, when Rachel Notley was elected as the premier of Alberta in 2015, she put in a pilot project for $25-a-day child care. That contributed to cutting child poverty in half in the province of Alberta during the time she was the premier. It was a pilot, and I think $10 a day is a much more reasonable cost. We heard from chambers of commerce an…
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Madam Speaker, boy, that is quite a question. I spoke about the importance of protecting the workers who work within our child care centres. I talked about how this is fundamental for allowing women to go back to work or letting them go back to work. When the member brings up a question like this, what he is really trying to ask is why there is not money for the for-profit centres. He is asking wh…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-338, National Indigenous Teachers Day Act. Mr. Speaker, today, during Indigenous History Month, it is my great privilege to table this very important piece of legislation, the national indigenous teachers day act, which would designate February 22 of each year as national indigenous teachers day. I want to thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for seconding this …
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Madam Speaker, to be clear, I was only throwing shame at one party in the House of Commons. I was not passing it around equally. I have children; I have teenagers. One of the things I want desperately is for them to want to stay in Alberta. I want them to want to raise their families in Alberta. I want Alberta to have a strong economy, a strong health care system, a strong education system and a s…
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