Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate you and your family on your 15 years of public service. You have been a leader in our caucus for many decades. Last night, I caught your retirement speech, whenever that retirement comes. You reflected very well on your years of service. You have done our country very proud and I want to wish you all the best when you do leave that chair and you leave this place…
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Mr. Speaker, it is funny that the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway asks that question, because my wife is a former teacher and both my kids are teaching, one in Saskatoon and one in Lethbridge, and I spent 10 years as a school board trustee. Yes, education is first and foremost in our province of Saskatchewan. In fact, it should be in Canada. It is funny that we do not even have an education min…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona for all the work she has done on this bill. I am interested to find out if the NDP is going to support the Bloc and the Liberals on this gag bill, because that is what we are debating here tonight with the motion. As far as the summers are concerned, I was not the only one who said no. The Liberals have mismanaged every committ…
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Madam Speaker, this is a Canadian issue; this is not a Quebec issue. I can say to the hon. member from the Bloc that we talked to Mr. Péladeau, who owns several stations and media outlets in Quebec, and he is as disturbed about Bill C-10 as anyone in Quebec. The member may have talked to certain groups that like this bill because they want the money to roll out right away, but this is a Canadian i…
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Mr. Speaker, I should know better, and so should the Minister of Canadian Heritage. He made the statement that they made one mistake back in 1990 or 1991 when there was no Internet, and now 30 years later we have this bill. It is garbage, really. I talked for two full days. We sat the last two days in committee and we did nothing. The committee chair asked if an amendment should pass but no one kn…
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to the motion at hand, which concerns the government's desire to force through the disastrous bill, Bill C-10, to modernize the Broadcasting Act. I will step back 40 plus years, when a young Kevin Waugh got into the broadcasting business. There were a lot of opportunities from coast to coast. I started as a midnight disc jockey in Yorkton. I came to S…
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member from Quebec was on the committee when this bill was discussed, along with another member from the NDP: the member for Edmonton Strathcona. This is an important bill. The member mentioned in his speech that there was good intention behind it. As legislators in this country, we all have good intentions, but this is the worst bill that I have seen in six years. I am embar…
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Madam Speaker, the Minister of Canadian Heritage was right when he admitted this bill could be improved. The last two days in committee, we rammed through everything. There were no amendments and no discussion. There was nothing. Forty per cent of this bill was never talked about in the heritage committee, yet now we have another gag order thanks to the Bloc's support of the government. How can th…
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Mr. Speaker, last week the Keystone XL pipeline was the latest casualty in the Prime Minister's assault on Canada's energy sector. This follows the cancellations of energy east, northern gateway and several other projects that would have meant thousands of well-paying jobs, along with significant economic growth, across western Canada. When will the Prime Minister just admit that he wants to see C…
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Madam Speaker, I would say to the House leader that freedom of speech is big in this country. It is democratic and it is fundamental to why we exist. We have seen some awful incidents in Canada in the last month and a half that show there is a lot of hate speech we need to talk about. We know as Canadians that it is not acceptable. On both sides of the House we know that. I want to thank the hon. …
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Mr. Speaker, this week the Liberals, with the help of the Bloc, pushed through their gag order to shut down debate on Bill C-10 at the heritage committee. Several academic and legal experts have been clear. Bill C-10 leaves the door open to a massive abuse of power and the regulation of what Canadians can or cannot post online. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in any democratic society…
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg North knows in this province, and in his too, the agriculture sector has deep questions about the carbon tax. We know that in the fall they have to dry their grain, and we know they are not getting a lot of credit for the carbon sequestration that is going on in this country. The carbon tax is talked about a lot in this country, and for very good reason. R…
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Mr. Speaker, Quebec is no different than any other province in this country. We have seen a massive downturn in the last 14 months due to the pandemic. What has the Liberal government done? It has done very little. I am just going to point out, because I was a sportscaster, it would have been nice to see in the forum in Montreal, during the last two games against the Toronto Maple Leafs, with mayb…
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to join you from the confines of my office in Saskatoon to speak about the budget implementation act. Canadians have spent the last year and a half struggling under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic. When COVID reached Canada's shores early last year, millions of Canadians lost their jobs. Those working in retail and service industries, anyone working in a r…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona for all her work she does on the heritage committee, where we are currently studying Bill C-10. She is right. There is no help at all for the oil and gas industry in Saskatchewan and Alberta. We need to diversify. Both provinces know that, particularly Alberta, because of its situation it is under right now, but the government ha…
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Mr. Speaker, for weeks, the Liberals have continued their attack on freedom of speech online. As it currently stands, Bill C-10 would grant the CRTC the ability to regulate content that is posted online by individuals who are not even considered broadcasters. This is not disinformation; these are serious concerns that have been raised by former CRTC chairs and highly respected academics. Will the …
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Windsor West for all his support going forward with this bill. Unfortunately, his bill in the last Parliament did not pass, so we are here again, trying to push it across the finish line. The member for Windsor West is correct. We heard in the justice committee testimony that a lot of this money is going to organized crime, fuelling drugs and fuelling …
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Madam Speaker, that is happening in the industry now. In 2018, in the United States, New Jersey challenged the bill, because the only place people could access single game betting was in Nevada. New Jersey took it to the Supreme Court and won. Therefore, what we have right now, two or three years later, are states like Michigan and New York, which are bordering Canada, offering single game betting…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Kingston and the Islands for his support on this bill, Bill C-218. He is absolutely correct. All the federal government has to do is take a single line out of the Criminal Code to give the provinces and territories the much-needed support to move forward with single event sport betting. This is just the first of many processes. If we can get it passed …
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed. Mr. Speaker, what a day we have today. It is certainly an honour for me to speak to this legislation once again. Now we are in our third reading, after a robust study at the justice committee. It is worth noting that Bill C-218 returns to us with a slight amendment, supported by all parties, to ensure that proper protections are in place for C…
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moved that the bill be concurred in.
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Madam Speaker, the prohibition on single-event sports betting is one where we are all well behind the rest of the world, including our neighbours to the south. I believe, and others believe, it is time that we simply catch up with the rest of the world. Instead of strong regulations and consumer protections, right now we have a system run by criminals and offshore companies. Instead of profits goi…
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Once again, we see the member without a headset. We all know that translation in the House of Commons is very tough. Clearly, the member does not have a headset today. How do you allow a question without a headset?
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Mr. Speaker, this month Canadians were hit with a 33% tax increase to the carbon tax. Now media reports suggest that the Liberals are planning to implement a home equity tax. In fact, the CMHC is already studying elimination of the capital gains exemption on principal residences. The last thing that families need is their life savings to be wiped out overnight. Why are the Liberals increasing taxe…
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Mr. Speaker, April marks the Canadian Cancer Society's daffodil campaign, an opportunity for us to show support for the over one million Canadians living with and beyond cancer, and to remember those we have lost after their own courageous battles with this disease. This year, the daffodil campaign has gone virtual. Canadians can go to cancer.ca to donate and create their digital daffodils to hono…
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Mr. Speaker, yes, today we are supposed to be talking about the financial situation of the elderly. They built this country; we all know that. We all door knock here, all 338 of us, and we see some desperate situations when we do. Seniors are hanging on, especially single ones, in their homes and do not want to go to the food bank. They are too proud, but unfortunately this situation is facing a l…
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Mr. Speaker, when the Liberal government came out with the $300 payment last May and it finally reached the doorsteps in July, our office in Saskatoon had hundreds of calls each and every day. We have a high concentration of seniors in Saskatoon—Grasswood. The one group that maybe we have not looked at are senior singles. They have been left behind. Couples of course are on fixed incomes. The expe…
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Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan is home to nearly 1.2 million people, but unfortunately only 43,000 have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. That is less than 4%. Meanwhile, in the United States the number is around 12%, and we know in Israel it is nearly 50%. Why is our government so far behind our allies in providing vaccines to those who want them?
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Mr. Speaker, a government's number one priority should always be to keep its citizens safe. This is why it is so confusing that the Liberals are attempting to demonize the law-abiding firearm owners in Bill C-21, while simultaneously introducing new measures that reduce sentences for criminals charged with illegal gun offences. If the Liberals were focused on protecting Canadians, they would not h…
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Madam Speaker, I request a recorded vote.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to conclude debate at second reading on Bill C-218, the safe and regulated sports betting act. First, I want to thank all the members from all parties who have risen today to support this important legislation. It is not often we get members from the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and the Bloc all rising in favour of a given initiative, but that is what we have this af…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Drummond. He is a valuable asset on the Canadian heritage committee. Yes, we have seen drastic changes made in 11 months to the arts and culture industry in Canada. I am fearful it will never recover, or that if it does, it could take up to a decade. We are going through the changes proposed to the Broadcast Act in Bill C-10 at the heritage …
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Madam Speaker, what is interesting is that it took the government a year to finally realize that international flying was one of the major issues facing COVID–19 in this country. Then it cherry-picked the closures of international flights. We still have flights coming in every day from Florida, Arizona, California and other parts of the world. The government took almost a year to shut down interna…
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Madam Speaker, I am joining members today from sunny Saskatoon, and it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-14. It's not news to anyone in Canada that we have been in an unprecedented situation in 2020 and 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the way Canadians live their lives, run their households and businesses, manage their finances, pursue their education and so much more. …
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Madam Speaker, the member for Edmonton Strathcona is absolutely right about artists. Saskatoon piggybacks on anything that her community does. We also have a fringe festival here in Saskatoon, or at least we did in 2019. These are people who were vulnerable from the start. They are looking for an opening to make a big name for themselves. I am very worried about the arts and culture community in t…
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Mr. Speaker, Saskatoon—Grasswood is home to thousands of seniors living in retirement residences and care homes, communities that, as we all know, have a greatly increased risk due to COVID. My office receives calls every day from senior residents in care homes and other institutions who are wondering when the vaccines the government insists are abundant will arrive. When will the government give …
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With regard to government advertising campaigns launched since January 1, 2020: (a) what are the details of all campaigns, including the (i) title and description, (ii) total budget, (iii) start and end date; and (b) for each campaign, what is the breakdown of the total amount spent on advertising by each type of media (radio, television, social media, etc.)?
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With regard to the Emergency Support Fund for Cultural, Heritage and Sport Organizations: (a) what is the total amount dispersed through the fund since March 1, 2020; (b) what are the details of funding provided through the fund, including the (i) recipient, (ii) location of the recipient, (iii) amount?
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Mr. Speaker, I present a petition today in the House of Commons formally recognizing that Uighurs in China have been and are being subjected to genocide. We talked about this earlier in question period, and I want to salute the two members from the Conservative Party who brought this up yesterday in a news conference. All Canadians should be ashamed of the government for not standing by Uighurs in…
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