Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member referenced the potentially devastating effects of expropriation, and in her speech she spoke about fairness and respect. I could not help but notice that she has afforded none of that in her fanatical drive to steal firearms from law-abiding firearms owners in Canada. I wonder, with police associations rejecting her gun grab, would she apologize to them today?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the minister enjoys illusions, as the Major Projects Office has not given approval to one project yet. Let me give him some other news. BNN Bloomberg reported that my home province of Ontario is the sick man of Canada, with lower standards of living than anywhere else in the country. In fact, by every objective measure, Ontario is doing worse now than it was when the Prime Minister wa…
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Mr. Speaker, economists said yesterday that the Canadian economy is on life support. While the Liberals may clap like trained seals for lower rates, those lower rates are not resulting in more growth. Respectfully, a GST rebate will not revive this patient. The emissions cap, the shipping ban and other anti-development laws are binding the hands of Canadians who would build our country. Why will t…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, as a follow-up, the Minister of Public Safety reported that importers owe the Government of Canada in excess of $2.3 billion in customs duty. The purpose of the CARM system, the CBSA assessment and revenue management system, was to simplify reporting at the border to make it easier for the CBSA, the Canada Border Services Agency, to collect and account for goods. Instead, outstanding …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition today on behalf of members of my community, Canadians who are concerned with Bill C-9 and the attack on religious freedom and freedom of expression proposed by the Liberal and Bloc members, and in particular their proposal to amend the Criminal Code to remove long-standing safeguards for the good-faith expression of sincerely held religious beliefs and the p…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am increasingly concerned that the government views the current logjam and the acrimony that seems to exist between Canada and the United States as beneficial to its political fortunes. Every time the U.S. enters the news cycle, it distracts from the Liberals' record of failures here at home: the highest food inflation in the G7 and a shrinking economy in the last quarter. Despite i…
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Okay, penthouse boomer, maybe you can share one of your homes.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, maybe the Minister of Housing can share one of his homes with the Canadians who do not have one. A study by Canadian fintech KOHO Financial Inc. said that, at the end of the month, gen Z has just 16 bucks left to spend. The Prime Minister told young Canadians that his solution for them was to sacrifice more. There is nothing left to give. KOHO said that gen Z is in survival mode and, …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, every week I hear from young Canadians who have been priced out of their neighbourhoods. In fact, the Missing Middle Initiative reports that half of young Canadians will have to leave the very community they grew up in. I am not hearing very much from the four youngest Liberal members of Parliament, who were all born in this century and who represent parts of Canada that are being hit…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am presenting a petition from concerned Canadians today. They are concerned about the Liberal government's assault on freedom of expression and freedom of religion contained in Bill C-9, particularly the Bloc and Liberal amendment to remove protections for people of faith to have open discussions about truth in this country. The petitioners remind the government that it has no pla…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we support the government's modest efforts to open new markets for Canadian exporters. More trade is good. I support free trade. Unfortunately, despite our efforts to work co-operatively with the government, yesterday the government House leader went into the lobby and did an interview with CTV where he spread misinformation about the Conservative Party, saying that we were simply obs…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, what hubris from the other side, from the member for Winnipeg North. The Leader of the Opposition, even before that interview, made an offer in good faith to the government to work with it on trade-related matters and others, and we are doing that. The Liberals do not have to give us credit for that. Canadians will judge. However, I would ask the government, and especially government …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, it is a new year, but it is the same old story for Canadians trying to buy a home. They cannot. The Missing Middle Initiative reported this week that while the vast majority of gen Z and millennials want to buy a home, only about half can realize that goal. Home ownership for them has decreased from 60% to 52%. Their ambition to buy a home has turned into uncertainty, and that uncerta…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we certainly do live in an alternate reality, because what I hear from people is that they are struggling to find their next meal. The 2.2 million Canadians at food banks would also agree with me on that. Investment is fleeing our country. Times are tough. Instead, the member seems to live in an ivory tower of elitism, suggesting that things are fine and things are great. Things are n…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member is talking about John A. Macdonald in the House. However, I think it is shameful that he represents our former founding father's home yet has refused to take a position on whether the city council should put his statue back up in City Park. I will give him the opportunity today: Does he believe that John A. Macdonald's statue should be returned to its rightful pla…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I will direct my comments to the member who should be representing John A. Macdonald's history and who has unfortunately and shamefully failed to do so. I ask the member to tell me when the statue will be put back up in the park in his riding. Tell me when and where, and I will join you in raising that statue to John A. Macdonald again, but I suspect he will not.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I believe I heard my hon. colleague refer in his speech to projects being fast-tracked. I wonder if he could clarify that for me, because my understanding is that all the government has done thus far is refer projects to a new bureaucratic office and that no decisions have yet been made. In fact, no projects have been fast-tracked today; they have just been shoved to a bureaucracy to …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I did not hear a question in that, so I will take it as simply a comment. What I would say to the hon. member is that Canada has had great men and women, both French and English, in our history and we should celebrate all of them. We should not do as the Liberals have done, which is tell our country that those great men and women were racist colonialists and tear down their statues, e…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon. Our motion today requests that the House call on the government to adopt what we have proposed in a Canada sovereignty act. A sovereignty act is our proposal to re-establish Canada as a competitive and world-class nation, confident in its ability to build national pipelines, projects and ports and all other …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate a quote that I took to heart when reading John A. Macdonald's speech from 1881, where he said, if they could not complete these national projects, “that we should become a bundle of sticks, as we were before, without a binding cord, and that we should fall, helpless, powerless, and aimless, into the hands of the neighboring Republic.” I fear that is the case …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, this week is the anniversary of the final report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference. I want to quote two conclusions from that report. First, the report states, “the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions. The PRC views Canada as a high-priority target.” The report goes on to say, …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I do not say this often, but unfortunately this is the problem when parliamentary secretaries come and simply read prepared remarks. Nothing in the response addressed my question about why the government has decided to move from considering China as a geopolitical adversary and our greatest threat to now forging a new strategic partnership. I will generously interpret the member's res…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition today on behalf of Canadians who are very concerned about the assault on religious freedom and the assault on freedom of expression contained in Bill C-9, particularly the possibility that people who express their faith and read their sacred texts will be subject to criminal prosecution. The petitioners remind the government, and particularly the Liberal mem…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, here is a resident the Liberals are not supporting. He wrote to me and said, “I have lived in the same neighbourhood for more than a decade, and almost every essential cost of living has increased dramatically.” He had the receipts for his groceries, which went from $200 a month to $600 a month. What did the Prime Minister say? He said we should judge him by the price of groceries at …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, if bureaucracies built homes, after 10 years we would all be living in a penthouse like the minister. What he fails to understand is that behind the numbers behind the crisis are real Canadians of the next generation, shut out of the Canadian dream to earn, to save and to own a home. In the GTA, housing starts are down 43%, and sales are down 65%. When the Prime Minister told young Ca…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, while a deal with the U.K. is certainly better than no deal at all, we have been put in this position because the Liberals, frankly, failed to maintain a better deal that we already had, which was the CETA agreement, the agreement that the Harper government negotiated with the European Union and that we had been trying to maintain with the United Kingdom. CETA is a much more liberal…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, yesterday when responding to questions about the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on housing, the Prime Minister lectured Canadians, saying, “they do not know numbers.” Then the housing minister said that the Parliamentary Budget Officer was just wrong on his numbers. Let me give them the numbers again. Can they solve the following equation? The Prime Minister promised 500,000 ne…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, there are promises, and then there is reality. The Prime Minister's promise was a so-called generational investment to rapidly scale up housing to meet his target of half a million homes a year. The reality is, as the budget watchdog said this morning, that the new bureaucracy will actually build only 5,200 homes per year. This means the Liberals are more than one million homes short …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, we know who is responsible for this: It is the Minister of Public Safety. That is how our system works, with ministerial responsibility. Unfortunately, the parliamentary secretary is woefully misinformed. It is not just CARM. That is one of many systems that the CBSA uses at the border, and many of them have experienced outages. Even if it were CARM, the CBSA has been working on CARM …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it seemed to me that the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader wanted some sort of pat on the back for some small, minuscule relief measures in Bill C-4, when at the same time and with the other hand, they are taking and stealing from the next generation with a generational debt binge. I wonder if my hon. colleague from Kenora—Kiiwetinoong could give his comments on t…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise again this evening to speak about the Canadian border. Let me recap last week. On Monday, there was a CBSA outage at the border; on Tuesday, there was a CBSA outage at the border; on Wednesday, there was a CBSA outage at the border; on Thursday, there was a CBSA outage at the border. Let me remind everyone what that means. That means goods are not being cleared for import, good…
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House and speak on behalf of my constituents in York—Durham. While I am from York—Durham, which is a riding in the greater Toronto area, what people may not realize is that I actually represent two first nations communities: the Chippewas of Georgina Island first nation and the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation. Both were included in my…
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Madam Speaker, part of what the bill would do, as I understand, is imbue the commissioner with maintaining the honour of the Crown, which is an integral legal principle in indigenous-Crown relations. Is the member comfortable with having the government delegate to a bureaucrat part of its responsibility to maintain the honour of the Crown? Should that responsibility not stay with the minister and …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, Canadians and Conservatives care about the integrity of the highest office in the land, the Prime Minister. Conflict of interest rules are clear for members of the House. They are to arrange their private affairs in a manner to avoid real or apparent conflicts of interest. An $80-billion nuclear deal for Brookfield, $500 million to the European Space Agency to benefit Brookfield and…
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Madam Speaker, to get elected, the Prime Minister promised to negotiate a win, but now that the election is over he says, “Who cares?” Canadians were promised a Churchill, but what we got was a Chamberlain. He appeased the U.S. President by dropping the digital services tax. He appeased the U.S. President by withdrawing our softwood lumber challenge. However, appeasement did not get us any trade p…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we should all strive to be honourable members in the House. I think that the actions of the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, his ad hominem attacks, simply will reveal more about his character than about the strong character of our leader, the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we know it would not work, because we have the history to prove it. The government has been in power for 10 years, and not one modern treaty has been moved forward. However, the previous Conservative government moved forward five or six modern treaties, not to mention the settlements in my community that I described: the Coldwater-Narrows settlement and the Williams Treaties settlem…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, it is of course an honour to speak to this very important bill from my colleague. I want to focus members' attention back on why the bill is important and why the changes should be made. I will reiterate one of the horrific instances of something the bill would seek to address, and that, of course, is the murder of Tori Stafford, from my neck of the woods. I will remind members what…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I of course question the ethics of the Prime Minister, because the facts lead me to do so. The Prime Minister is so conflicted, and there is evidence before us: an $80-billion nuclear deal to Brookfield; $500 million to the European Space Agency, which will benefit Brookfield; and undisclosed meetings with Brookfield executives, which is a direct violation of what the Ethics Commiss…
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Madam Speaker, ad hominem attacks—
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is very well noted from the member for Waterloo. I appreciate that. As a new member, I am still learning the rules. I am happy to take the Chair's direction on this. I would have hoped that, after over a month of time, the Speaker's office would have reviewed the transcript to confirm what has been said. I am wondering now that you are in the chair again, if you would ask the mem…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary mentioned the Westminster system in Parliament. Let me remind him that, in the Westminster system, it is Parliament that is supreme. While we respect the judiciary, it is Parliament that makes laws. He also mentioned that Supreme Court ruling. I would like him to tell me where in that Supreme Court ruling the court said that we had to have unfettered chain …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I have been waiting for an opportunity when you are in the chair and the member for Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas is in the chamber. I am rising on a point of order to follow up on the point of order I raised on September 26. You will recall, as you were in the chair, that following question period, I raised a point of order that the member for Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas accused …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, every dollar the Liberal government spends comes out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians in the form of higher taxes and higher inflation. Let us take the hidden fuel standards tax, which will raise the price of gasoline by 17¢ a litre and diesel by 16¢ a litre. A tax on the trucker who delivers the food is a tax on the mom or dad buying that food in the grocery store aisle. It i…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I know I have been here for only a short time, but I have already discovered that the member opposite has a very fragile disposition. Perhaps that is why he suggested that when the government signs an agreement, we should not criticize it or ask any questions about it. He suggested that the only options were that we accept it or, if we did not accept it, that we were somehow capitulat…
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Mr. Speaker, in my view, the hon. member is absolutely correct. We are settling for something, when we could have had a generational opportunity to redefine our trade with one of the most dynamic and largest economies in the world. Instead, the Liberals walked away from that and said that they are not going to negotiate anymore. They let parts of the TCA, the trade continuity agreement, expire, to…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my colleague in the Bloc raised a very valid point: the lack of transparency the government has brought to the House with respect to trade negotiations. The Liberals' lack of transparency in the TPP is not the only example. We have very little insight into any of the negotiations the government is undertaking. It is getting to the point where we have to ask ourselves what the strategy…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the flow of ideas in the House is actually from the opposition side to the government side, not the other way around. To the extent that the Liberals want to borrow from our institutional knowledge, wisdom and ideas, they can have at it. We will support those. What I really want to see is a good deal, not a bad deal, and a win, not a loss. I want to see Canada pla…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House to speak, especially on an important topic close to my heart, that being trade negotiations and free trade in Canada. I just want to start by reminding members of the House what exactly we are doing here today. There has been some discussion that we are talking about accession, or letting the U.K. into the TPP. I am going to call it the TPP.…
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North mentioned the so-called expertise of the Prime Minister. I have to disagree with that. If he were such an expert, we would have negotiated a win with the U.K. and we would have gotten to a bilateral agreement, instead of having to settle for the TPP agreement, which would provide Canadian businesses less access. It has been 18 months since we allowed part…
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