Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the government should have initiated a completely independent public inquiry. It should have engaged all party leaders in the House to agree to a process and a commissioner, so there would be no question about who would be leading this work and the mandate related to it. There would need to be interim reporting of this work so we would put an end to it. All this bickering about who kn…
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Mr. Speaker, with respect to what is happening, it is clear there is an ongoing tit-for-tat situation of she-said-he-said-they-said without getting into the central issue, which is to take partisanship out of this debate and for the Canadian government to make a course correction regarding the action that needs to be taken by putting in place an independent, public inquiry. Aside from the points i…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals abandoned their responsibility to build social housing, and Canadians are paying the price. Under this Prime Minister, the cost of a home has nearly doubled. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments allowed corporate landlords to buy up affordable housing stock and jack up the cost of housing for renters and homeowners alike. Will the Liberals stop treating housing…
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to engage in this debate today about housing. In fact, I could talk about housing all day long. The motion before us today is indeed an interesting one. In the Conservatives' approach, per usual, they focus only on issues where they could actually put out buzzwords to rev up the community about a situation. The solutions they provide often have tremendous gaps and, …
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Madam Speaker, the member just made the comment of having “all hands on deck” in a crisis. What is missing, of course, over all these years with the housing crisis is the fact that both Liberal and Conservative governments have given a free pass to corporate landlords. Real estate investment trusts walked away without paying their fair share of taxes to the tune of $1.7 billion for the seven large…
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Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct in saying we have a housing crisis from coast to coast to coast, and that no matter what community one is part of, big or small, this crisis is significant. The federal Liberal government cancelled the national affordable housing program back in 1993. As a result, Quebec and British Columbia are the only two provinces continuing to try to address the…
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Mr. Speaker, the motion talks about housing and not industrial land. There is another whole debate I would love to get into about industrial land, but for the purpose of this discussion, what we need to focus on is the housing crisis. I call on the Liberal government to do the right thing and show leadership by investing in social housing back to the level when the government was doing it in the s…
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Mr. Speaker, what I am saying, and the member knows this, is that real estate investment trusts should pay their fair share of taxes. They should not be given special tax treatment and not pay the corporate tax rate. They should be paying the corporate tax rate. Canadians are losing close to $2 billion in taxes that should have been collected and could have been invested into housing. No wonder th…
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Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with the member that we need the federal government's leadership in investing in housing. That is why the NDP calls for the government to build at least 500,000 units of social housing, co-op housing or community housing, because the community deserves housing and housing is a basic human right. As long as the approach by the Liberal government or the Conservatives …
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Madam Speaker, part of the immigration problem is that the government has decided to continue to use temporary foreign workers to address our skilled labour shortage, including in the construction sector. What the government should do is regularize people so they have the status to come to Canada, and ensure that those who are already in Canada have full status. Would the member support the regula…
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Many of them do because they don't have a pathway.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say what we need is for the federal government to show the kind of leadership that is necessary. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has been calling for a national acquisition fund for a couple of years. The government has been talking about this and consulting about this. NGOs in the community have been calling for this. The NDP has been calling for this. However, …
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Mr. Chair, I believe that in her heart, the member really wants to move the issues forward. Most recently, with the Coalition on Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls in B.C., in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, our community has been talking about this issue. In fact, it was in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside where the first memorial march was led back in the day, so many years ago, when I …
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Mr. Chair, one of the issues the member raised was about indigenous children who have been brought into care, and far too many of them have. In fact, in my home community of Vancouver East, our community call this the modern-day residential school where indigenous children have been taken into care. What is worse is that when they come out of care, they have zero support whatsoever, and many of th…
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Madam Chair, one issue is of particular concern for indigenous peoples. The minister talked about education as a key component in supporting opportunities. In British Columbia, one of the first acts of the former minister of advanced education, Melanie Mark, was to ensure that children in care and coming out of care would have access to free education in British Columbia. If the minister really be…
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Madam Speaker, the issue around how money laundering is impacting real estate is very significant. In fact, a special panel did a review on this in British Columbia, and one of its top recommendations was to have a beneficial ownership of land registries across the country. B.C. did that, and I believe we need to do that, given the housing crisis we are faced with. The conservative estimate on the…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, in terms of eye care, the member is absolutely correct to say that it is critical. However, the cost of eye care is increasing and, oftentimes, what we are seeing is that it is getting delisted in terms of coverage under the health care plan. That certainly is the case here in Ontario. From that perspective, what does the member have to offer in ensuring that coverage is provided so…
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Mr. Speaker, on the issue of money laundering, the impact on housing has been significant. In fact, in British Columbia, it has been indicated that it has contributed to inflating the cost of housing as much as 5%. With this piece of legislation, could the member advise whether or not it would be effective in addressing the issue particularly on the land registry perspective?
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, before I begin my speech on the bill today, I want to take a moment to recognize today as the National Day of Mourning, to honour every worker who goes to work, and to say very clearly that they deserve to return home safely at the end of their workday. I would also like to take a moment to remember those who have been injured or lost their lives, and to recommit ourselves to fighti…
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Madam Speaker, it is important for the federal government to show leadership with a national affordable housing initiative. To that end, we need to cut the red tape. The member knows very well that the federal government's CMHC is not ensuring that programs are delivered. As it is said, projects go to CMHC to die, and that is not good enough. We have to cut the red tape. Investment needs to be com…
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Madam Speaker, in my riding of Vancouver East, we are actually struggling with a series of crises. We have a homelessness crisis, and we have a drug poisoning crisis; we have a mental health crisis where people need mental health support and are not able to access it. I wonder whether the Conservatives would support an approach whereby all levels of government are brought together, including feder…
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Madam Speaker, I am delighted to rise and enter into debate about budget 2023. There are many issues I want to touch on with the budget, but first and foremost, I must speak about the situation with the housing crisis that Canadians are facing from coast to coast to coast. It does not matter if one is in a large or a small community; there is a housing crisis all across the country. There are enca…
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Mr. Speaker, in committee, we found out that the former chief of staff to the past minister of defence provided a senator an altered official government document to bring Afghans to safety. We found out that the minister was copied on all communications. Shockingly, the minister said he was too busy at the time to check his personal government email account. Almost two years later, he says he stil…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for her excellent work in advocating for the community, not just on housing but also on disability issues. I will say this, just so that everybody understands. For every one unit of social housing or co-op housing built by the government, 15 units are lost. That is a significant number. We can never build enough to make up for that loss. That is why we have to sto…
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Madam Speaker, there is no question that we have a housing crisis in Canada from coast to coast to coast. It does not matter if it is a small community or a large community, there is a housing crisis. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have failed to tackle the issues sufficiently. The reality is that corporate landlords are making a killing. Real estate investment trusts are not paying their…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, we have seen that the federal Liberal government has not stepped up to do what is necessary. We just saw it in budget 2023, where the government has cut humanitarian aid at a time when crises are erupting across the globe, and at a time when we need Canada to do more to support these kinds of measures. We are not there. We are not showing up. I make this plea to the government in the …
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Mr. Speaker, yes, we need to help people to get to safety. Yes, we need to get Canadians to safety. Equally important, we also need to build up the region where they are having those struggles We need to do what we can to broker a ceasefire. I think that at this time Canada can do better. The United States is doing that work. Allied countries are doing that work. We need to get in there as well. I…
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With regard to the processing of immigration applications at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, for all streams, broken down by stream and by country of origin: (a) what are the current application processing service standards; (b) what are the actual current application processing times; (c) what percentage of applications are meeting the processing service standards; (d) where standar…
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Mr. Speaker, immigration backlog and processing delays continue to have a detrimental impact for people who want to reunite with loved ones and for those who need to get to safety. As the crisis in Sudan worsens, Canadians with loved ones in Sudan are worried sick about their safety. The Liberals must get a fair deal for the PSAC workers to restore all immigration services. The longer the governme…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for her comments and some of the updates that I think many Canadians want to hear. On the issue around immigration, there are many Canadians who have loved ones who are Sudanese. Some of them may have an application in to sponsor them to come to Canada for permanent resident status, and others may have an application for a temporary resident visa. However, there a…
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad we are all here tonight talking about the emergency situation in Sudan and the horrific violence that is taking place on the cusp of, as my colleague and many other members have already indicated in the House, a civil war. The violence and harm that is taking place right now is devastating. As indicated, it is women, civilians, who are getting caught in the crossfire and are…
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Mr. Speaker, absolutely we should list the Wagner Group as a terrorist entity, which is something that my colleague moved a motion on in the House. It is something we should all be moving forward on, but listing a group as a terrorist group and sanctioning against it is only as good as the actions taken to enforce the sanctions. Again, I will say that we have seen this over and over again. In the …
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Madam Speaker, I just heard the member say again that he is in support of ensuring the lost Canadians issue is addressed. The Conservatives say that, and I hope it is actually true. If it is true, we have an opportunity to do it. It is a rare moment when all the parties in this House say they want to do this, and we can seize this opportunity to make those necessary amendments, through Bill S-245,…
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All you need to do is talk to your members. They also said they support it.
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Madam Speaker, this has come up numerous times. I was not actually going to get into conversations that I have had with the senator and conversations that I have even had with Conservative members. The truth of the matter is this. When this bill came before us, the scope was narrow. I had already mentioned it to the senator that the scope is very narrow and that we need to actually look at broaden…
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Madam Speaker, on the substance of the issue that is in question, the Conservative members keep saying that we cannot do this because it is going to take too long. Of course, it has been 14 years since the Conservatives passed the legislation to strip the rights of second-generation-born Canadians to pass on their citizenship to their children. By doing this, we now have an opportunity to fix that…
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Mr. Speaker, I am just going to build on that last question. Here we have the Conservatives, who say that they want to fix this problem once and for all. We know that the Bloc is very sympathetic and wants to ensure that people's dignity is recognized. The NDP wants to address this issue, and I have been wanting to do so ever since I was elected as a member of Parliament. The government side wants…
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Mr. Speaker, a situation with the cut-off rule for first-generation born Canadians has been in place for 14 years now, and many families have suffered during this period. It is true that the government could have brought in legislation to make that change, but that has not happened. With that being said, we now have an opportunity before us through a Senate bill, Bill S-245, to fix the lost Canadi…
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Mr. Speaker, I asked a question, but the parliamentary secretary did not have a chance to respond. We then went to another government member's question. Somehow, I think we had a gap in the situation here.
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Mr. Speaker, if a person is stateless, that means they do not have status in the country they were born in because their parents do not have status there. Therefore, their child does not have status in that country. Back here in Canada, they also do not have status, so the child is in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, if the parents were to move to Canada, which is what they want to do, they canno…
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Mr. Speaker, of course I have been working in collaboration with government members on this, including the minister's office, because the situation is such that the lost Canadians who are impacted by these rules are suffering. They are suffering to the point where people are in such distress. Can one imagine having a newborn baby to two Canadian parents who is stateless? That is the reality they a…
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Mr. Speaker, when Senator Yonah Martin intended to table this bill on addressing the age rule, the “28-year rule”, I did actually have conversations with the senator and indicated that it would be really important to address other lost Canadians as well. I know that Conservative members, including this member, have had conversations with people like Don Chapman and others to talk about the implica…
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Mr. Speaker, it is because committee members had the time to do exactly that. That is exactly what I did. I tabled a bunch of amendments that I wanted to see adjusted and amended in this bill, worked with legislative counsel and tabled them with the committee's clerk in time for the deadline established for all committee members. The Conservatives, of course, could have done that, but they did not…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank Bloc members for their kindness and understanding on the issue, because they are exactly right. Stripping immigrants of their right to pass on citizenship to their children born abroad is wrong. It creates a second class of citizens, and it is wrong. By doing that, we are breaking up families; families are being separated. Can members imagine a Canadian's child born abroad bei…
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moved that the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, be concurred in. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this important motion before the House, the concurrence motion. What we are dealing with is essentially seeking authority from the House to expand the scope of Bill S-245. Bill S-245 is a Senate bill that is before the House to a…
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Madam Speaker, I want to go back to the comment about Don Chapman. Don Chapman came to committee and said very clearly that he wanted to see the scope of Bill S-245 be expanded to incorporate amendments for lost Canadians and the first-generation cut-off rule the Conservatives brought in be rectified so that the families of lost Canadians would not be lost anymore and be supported through this pro…
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With regard to the processing of permanent residence applications of overseas dependents of protected persons in Canada and DR2s: (a) are processing resources within Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada allocated in accordance with the immigration levels set by cabinet; (b) if the number of applications for overseas dependents in a year exceeds the high range of the level, what happens to …
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Mr. Speaker, I just got back from a two-week cross-country tour, hearing from Canadians who are struggling to find a home that they can afford in the city where they can work and raise a family. From Victoria to Toronto to Hamilton to Halifax, renters and people who want to own their own home are having to compete with corporate landlords, who buy up affordable housing stock and drive up the cost …
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to table a petition calling on the Government of Canada to urgently end the legislative poverty that 1.5 million disabled Canadians live with every day and to establish a Canada disability benefit that upholds human rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Two Vancouver East constituents, Harris Taylor and Jan Nathanson spoke with their neighbour…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals secretly negotiated a deal to shut down the entire Canada-U.S. border with an invisible wall. This will only drive persecuted asylum seekers on a more dangerous pathway. Seidu Mohammed, an LGBTQ man, nearly died crossing irregularly to Canada in the dead of winter. His asylum claim was found to be valid, and he got his Canadian citizenship just this year. If this policy a…
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