Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.
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Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 768 to 770 and 772.
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Madam Speaker, one thing the government should focus on actually comes from a comment I heard from a colleague of the member for North Island—Powell River. We need to do more to find out where homeless veterans are. The reality is that there are many homeless veterans out there, but we just do not know there physical location. We know they are unaware of a lot of the supports that exist. I underst…
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Madam Speaker, I will not admit to anything about which I am unaware of the details. However, absolutely nobody should be discriminated against in our country. In particular, when we talk about veterans, if there is one issue that all members of the House should be able to get behind is that the safety, security and supports for our veterans are of absolute paramount and we should spare no expense…
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Madam Speaker, I was unaware of this incident, although I have heard about it today in this debate. If I can accept what the member is saying to be factual, trusting that he has done his research, I will respond to that. I certainly do not believe it is anybody's business to discuss medical options with any individual other than the person's doctor and, in this case, somebody who is qualified to m…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lac-Saint-Louis today. Normally, I am very critical of the opposition, the Conservative Party in particular, moving motions of concurrence like this. I usually feel as though it is an opportunity to try to slow down government legislation, but I am grateful the opposition moved this today. It is very important that we have this discussion …
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member for Edmonton Griesbach that we should allow nothing to stand in our way to house, in particular, these 5,000 veterans who are homeless. It would be very easy to put money to this, and I do not think anybody in the House would disagree with that. However, as indicated by the member for North Island—Powell River who spoke before the member, one of the real chal…
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Mr. Speaker, the member for North Island—Powell River's intervention was quite insightful. She really hit the nail on the head with her comment toward the end which talked about how there are many veterans out there who just do not know that services are available to them. I think the government needs to play a stronger role, quite frankly, in getting in touch with these veterans. I know that in m…
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the passion of the member. There are not a lot of people in this room who can get more vocal than I can at times, but he is certainly one of those members. He brought up a lot of interesting and I think debatable points about affordable housing. This government has done a lot, and even though he says that nothing has been done and nothing has been built, that is…
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to hear the member for Barrie—Innisfil speak about Homes for Heroes. This is an incredibly ambitious project that is being led by individuals who genuinely care about making housing available for veterans. He indicated some of the challenges that they face. However, one of the biggest challenges they face is finding land and very quickly getting this land rezoned for the pu…
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Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 17 petitions. These returns will be tabled in an electronic format.
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Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting today relates more directly to my riding of Kingston and the Islands. One of the islands is Howe Island. There is a ferry service to access the island, but in recent weeks, the number of vehicles on the ferry has been reduced pretty much without warning. The petitioners understand that there are some requirements of the Ministry of Transportation to…
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that Swiss Chalet was an excellent choice by the member's mother at 94 years old. I would love to know the secret to living that long, and maybe he could share that with me later. Maybe it is Swiss Chalet. In all seriousness, I have heard this argument from the other side of the House a number of times, about plastic straws versus paper straws. Member…
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Mr. Speaker, yes, I have a question for the member, because I always get a kick out of when the Conservative plan for dealing with the environment is to talk about dumping sewage into our rivers and lakes. It is a very important issue; I will not dispute that, but I will forgive the member if he does not understand how the sewage system works. Basically, we have pipes in a municipality, and they a…
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. The first is a common petition that has been presented over the last number of weeks with respect to some of the atrocities we are witnessing in China. The specific requests of the petitioners are that Parliament pass a resolution to establish a means to stop the Chinese Communist regime from systematically murdering Falun Gong practitioners for …
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Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at the appropriate time to start Private Members' Business.
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Madam Speaker, I am looking for a little clarification and perhaps the member could help. The very first clause in the motion says, “the cost of government is driving up the cost of living.” When I asked the New Democrats about this, they said that this referred to oil subsidies. However, what I heard the Leader of the Opposition and the finance critic say this morning was that more and more gover…
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to this opposition day motion introduced by the Conservatives. From the outset, I do not have an issue with the fact that the Conservatives are seeking accountability by asking the Auditor General to conduct some work. The premise of my concern is with respect to the preamble and the rhetoric that preludes the call on the Auditor General. That…
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Madam Speaker, do not worry about being in disbelief. Welcome to my world for the last seven years. The member asks about the app and the way the app was being applied. The Conservatives were calling on the government to do something about this. I read direct quotes by the member for Durham when he was the leader of the opposition, and there are quotes from the member for Carleton. They were deman…
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Madam Speaker, I am sorry that I disappointed the Bloc by not bringing up health care transfers because that is the only thing its members ever really want to talk about in here. I will say that my concern for the NDP was laid out very clearly. I am concerned that the NDP would vote in favour of a motion that has a whereas clause basically saying that we have too many public servants working for t…
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Madam Speaker, I am being lectured on not protecting public service jobs while the member is about to vote in favour of a motion that criticizes the government for having too many public sector employees. Maybe he should go back to read the motion again.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard the member talk about the requirements for being vaccinated, and I was thinking back to when I was speaking earlier and was quoting the former leader of the opposition, the member for Durham, when, back in November 2021, he said that the best way to protect our economy, the best way to protect our country, was to get vaccinated and he was calling on everybody to get vaccinated…
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Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I sincerely apologize to the member if she thought I was heckling her, but I was actually talking to my colleague. Obviously I was talking too loudly, and I will try to keep it down, but I certainly was not directing anything at her.
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Mr. Speaker, I have been trying to clarify something with respect to this motion, because I have been getting different and conflicting answers from Conservatives and the NDP today. The very first clause in this motion, the first “whereas” clause, says “the cost of government is driving up the cost of living”. What we heard the Leader of the Opposition say today is that he was referring to the fac…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition, like so many others who have stood before the House, asking the government to establish a resolution to stop the Chinese communist regime from systematically murdering Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, to amend Canadian legislation to combat forced organ harvesting and to publicly call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong i…
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Madam Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition raised a very acute and real reality that many Canadians are facing right now. They are facing extreme hardships as a result of global inflation and as a result of what is going on throughout the world right now. I will put to him the question that he has been asked several times in the House by the Prime Minister: Why did the Conservatives choose not to…
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Madam Speaker, one thing I find most fascinating about the Conservative motion today is that it about ArriveCAN. The minister responsible for this is here and the Conservatives let their first question go by. They were entitled to the first question and they let it go to the Bloc. They did not even bother asking the minister a question. Meanwhile, the member for Abbotsford was chirping away in the…
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Madam Speaker, I love when we talk about the sponsorship scandal. I was in high school at the time, so forgive me if I do not remember the details of that. On the topic of the last question asked, about trusting the Liberals, I wonder if the member from the Bloc could tell us how Quebeckers feel about trusting Conservatives. They must trust Conservatives more than they trust Liberals. Is that corr…
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Madam Speaker, I understand that the NDP will be voting in favour of this motion. The first clause in the preamble says, “the cost of government is driving up the cost of living”. Could the member comment on what cost of government he thinks is driving up the cost of living?
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Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, given what was raised by the parliamentary secretary plus your contribution to that, I would strongly encourage you to go back and review this given that you are not being asked to interpret the member's intention. He made his intention very clear. You should go back and consider that and come back to the House at a later time, perhaps, with a ruling on that.
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Mr. Speaker, I entirely and completely agree with the first bit of the speech of the member when he talked about much more pressing needs and that people were not coming into his office to talk about the monarch. However, he then went on to talk about electoral reform and tried to convince me that people were coming into his office to talk about that. I will leave that aside for a second. Let us a…
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but wonder why this is the most important issue for the Bloc Québécois. There are so many other things going on right now, and it has very limited number of opposition days. Between now and last spring, it has had a total of three, and it has consumed two of those supply motions on, one, a motion that we remove the prayer from the beginning of our daily proceedings and, …
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Mr. Speaker, I have no problem telling the Bloc my position. I have no issue with the prayer. We can continue doing it because it does not affect anything, other than using up about 15 seconds of the House's time. I have no problem with the current form of our parliamentary system, which includes a monarch in it. Quite frankly, I do not see life being any different. Let me ask my previous question…
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Madam Speaker, today, I will be sharing my time with the member for Hochelaga. I want to start off today's discussion by reflecting on exactly what we are doing here today. Those who are watching, perhaps who do not tune in regularly and may have happened across the channel today displaying the parliamentary proceedings, might wonder what is going on. In a calendar year, based on the composition o…
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Madam Speaker, no, I have not brought it up with any of my colleagues, nor have they, in seven years, brought it up with me, because every time we get together to talk about issues, there are many issues that are so much more important than this. There are issues so much more important than this that we get together to talk about. Forgive me and my colleagues for not having stood up and asked, “By…
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Madam Speaker, the NDP are now using the politicization of this issue to politicize its own issue of electoral reform. There is an irony in that. Just for the record, I am not saying that there are no good arguments. I am pretty much indifferent to the position of the monarchy and how that continues on. However, it is not going to be resolved with a supply day motion presented to the House. The su…
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Madam Speaker, it is making sure that we can properly take care of Canadians in their time of need and making sure that, when we have inflation at the rates that we do now, we can do everything to support those who are struggling the most. The impacts of inflation right now and the impacts of the pandemic, generally speaking, certainly drove the division between the haves and the have-nots—
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Madam Speaker, we heard in the preceding question and answer period that the Bloc's preferred model in Canada is not to have a monarch but, instead, to have another elected head of state. In essence, the member before this member was suggesting that we should be electing a president, so we would have a prime minister and a president. Could this Bloc member confirm that is indeed the position of th…
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Madam Speaker, wow, it is always nice to hear and see people come in here carrying the receipts. The member from the Bloc Québécois who just made the comment that the member for Perth—Wellington was not actually addressing the motion should really review the Hansard. In the second half of his speech, he literally shut down every argument for this motion. It is incredible. Sometimes, the stars alig…
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Mr. Speaker, the member said that when it comes to extracting critical resources like the products required for lithium batteries, Canada would somehow be standing on the sidelines. I think those were his words. I would encourage him to talk to his Conservative colleague, the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, who had a pretty big smile on her face last summer when the Prime Minister showed…
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Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the way the member opened up his speech this afternoon. He talked specifically about the difference between the current Conservative Party and the Conservative Party that it likes to identify itself with, which was the Brian Mulroney Conservative Party. Brian Mulroney did some pretty incredible things. He brought 46 countries from across the world to Montreal to estab…
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Madam Speaker, the member talked about the wildfires in his area and the weather events that happened on the east coast. I am genuinely unsure where the Conservative Party is when we talk about that being a result of climate change. I wonder if the member could share with the House if he believes that climate change is real and that those events are a product of climate change.
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Madam Speaker, much has been said in this debate about the Progressive Conservatives of the seventies, eighties and early nineties, and the incredible work they did to protect our environment. As I listened to the member speak, I could not help but reflect on the fact that she was actually a senior policy adviser to the then minister of environment back in the mid-eighties, when Brian Mulroney tac…
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Madam Speaker, the member was speaking about plastics and the need to curb our usage of those plastics. The reality of the situation is that the very first piece of plastic that was ever made is still in existence today, and it will likely be hundreds if not thousands of years before it is no longer around. We continually hear the narrative from the Conservatives that we need specialized plastics …
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives keep talking about this as though it is as a government bill. I would remind the member that the burgundy shade on the screen where it lists the name of the bill, along with the S in front of it, means that it came from the Senate. It is not a government bill. Nonetheless, the way the Conservatives are approaching this is that as we have to use so many plastics now…
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To that end, Mr. Speaker, had the province submitted a plan that met the standards of the national requirements, it would have been excluded, just like Quebec has. Quebec never even had to touch this issue because it was years, if not a decade, ahead of the rest of the country with respect to this issue. Ontario used to be in that same position. When the price on pollution was first introduced in …
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Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely right, Quebec has, quite frankly, led the way when it comes to clean energy. Ontario, Quebec and California signed on to the first cap-and-trade deal. It is extremely unfortunate that the first thing a Conservative premier did in Ontario when he was elected was to bail on that agreement. However, what we have seen in the last four and a half years since that…
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Madam Speaker, one thing that I think is extremely disingenuous, and I am curious if the member would agree, is that every time the Conservatives talk about the price on pollution, they conveniently neglect to talk about the rebate that Canadians will be getting. They say the price on pollution will triple, triple, triple, but the reality is that the rebate will triple, triple, triple. I wonder if…
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