Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about Bill C-39, the building Canada strong act, not to be confused with the Building Canada Act or whatever act was before that. Nearly 18 months ago, the Prime Minister promised that we would build “at speeds not seen in generations”. A year and a half later, the situation is dire, and I think most Canadians would agree. Not a single major project has gone from announcement to shovels in the ground. Antidevelopment laws like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 are still on the books, and they are stifling investment and innovation in this country. The tanker ban and the industrial carbon tax remain, as does the stack of regulations and red tape that makes it next to impossible to build in this country. All of that remains despite Bill C-5. I know those watching at home are confused by the numbers. The Liberals brought Bill C-5 through this place almost 18 months ago. They said it was revolutionary legislation that was going to have projects built. We passed it through the House in a record five days. They called it a catalyst, one of the Prime Minister's favourite words. They said it would let them do bigger things and do it faster with a brand new Major Projects Office to lead the way. Today, there are zero shovels in the ground, zero new major projects moving forward, and that office has spent more on bureaucracy and hiring people than it has on building a single project. Once again, the words outrun the results. We have to ask if Bill C-39, the legislation that we are discussing today, which is absolutely needed after the Liberals got the legislation passed that they initially needed, is the solution that members opposite have been claiming it is or if it is another announcement, another press release, another sort of time stamp in the road so they can restart the clock, saying this is the thing that they need to move forward. Before, they said that was the last thing we needed to move forward. I am inclined to believe it is the latter, because past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, and Canadians should not forget that. Over 10 years, the government has driven investment out of Canada. It threw up roadblocks. It called anyone who wanted to build a pipeline a climate change denier. It discouraged risk-taking in this country with punitive taxes, and they picked winners and losers. The result was $1 trillion of capital leaving this country and going elsewhere. Our productivity stagnated. Our standard of living declined. If productivity had kept pace even with the United Nations since 2015, every Canadian would be roughly $11,000 richer, $11,000 better off than today. Instead, half of full-time workers are spending their income or more on their living expenses, and half are living paycheque to paycheque. This is in a country that only a few years ago had the richest middle class in the developed world. We do not need to look at the past to suspect that the sizzle of this bill, Bill C-39, is bigger than the steak. We have seen this before. The present tells the exact same story. The Prime Minister likes to say we should control what we can control, and I agree. Let us look at what he controls. Right now, there are over 500 proposals sitting on his desk, and all they need is a signature. They do not need a new slogan. They do not need a new bill. They do not need a new trade mission. They do not need a new photo op. He just has to sign them. That is his choice. Even the signature is no guarantee because we have seen investment summits, memorandums of understanding, agreements, press conferences and just yesterday, we saw the OECD downgrade Canada's growth outlook while peer countries saw theirs upgraded. The people now promising to fix this are, in many cases, the same ministers and MPs whose high-tax, anti-growth agenda caused this problem in the first place. If we were to look outside this place, we could forgive people for being skeptical. The results keep being pushed down the road with a new piece of legislation, a new MOU or a new announcement, but the results have not arrived. Nowhere is the gap between promise and delivery wider than it is in resource development here in this country. I want to speak directly to the members of the left flank of the Liberal caucus. For a decade, they told Canadians that resource development was a moral question. To them, it was not about economics or engineering, and it was not about trade-offs. It was truly, in their eyes, a test of character. If we wanted a pipeline, we were deniers. If we wanted a mine, we did not care about our planet or our children's future. If we wanted to sell our energy to other markets, which would buy them from somebody else anyway, we were on the wrong side of history. They enforced that standard relentlessly on everybody who disagreed with them. They enforced it against the opposition, against premiers and against members of their own party who sometimes asked whether all of that was working. Now, members can read Bill C-39. They can read what it would do to the federal review permitting. They can read about the exemption powers. They can read the section on labour. What would they have said if a Conservative government tabled a 246-page piece of omnibus legislation that would do nothing for workers and would build nothing? The bill claims to fast-track the very projects those Liberals once called a moral failure in the House, and that was not that long ago, but it even fails at that. They would have called it a betrayal. They would have used exactly that word. The question is not whether they have changed their position. We know they did. The question is what that left flank of the Liberal Party got for it. They spent their political capital. They asked their most loyal supporters, people who believed this was about the planet, to accept their reversal, and 18 months in, with a Major Projects Office and legislation on the move, not one of these projects' delivery is under way. They burned all of that political capital passing these pieces of legislation without having a single shovel in the ground. They made the trade. They just did not get anything for it. If they now believe that the last decade was too rigid and this country needs to build, then they should get up out of their seats to say so plainly, acknowledge that the cost was measured in projects that died and that investment went elsewhere outside of the country. That would at least be honest. However, what we are going to see over and over again is the left flank of the Liberal Party hiding behind rhetoric that just is not true, and they traded it away for nothing. It is the same pattern with big announcements, with there being little to show for them. After last week's investment summit, the Prime Minister came away promising a half a trillion dollars of investment, and we welcome that. The problem is that people are filling their gas tanks, which were already empty, half full. A trillion dollars of investment left this country. That is why the skepticism runs high. The skepticism runs high when people look at the government and see it acting one way for 11 years. It had 18 months to change everything, but it is yet another piece of legislation, one that has produced no results. I am going to end with this: I do not want members to take away that we are going to dismiss the bill before us. Conservatives are not rejecting Bill C-39, but we will study it, press for details, scrutinize it and work to improve it to make sure it actually builds something. That is our job as the official opposition, and that is how we are going to hold the government to account on what it brings before the chamber. However, we will not simply take the government's word and accept all the promises the Liberals have made. Canada has everything it needs to succeed. We have fields of crops. We are rich in minerals. We have resources, oceans full of fish and the people with the talent to make it all happen. What we need is a government that will get out of the way, and one that will talk about repealing legislation already on the books, but everything we have seen until now tells us that is not this government.

Madam Speaker, the Liberals can change their leader, they can change their buzzwords and they can change the legislation number from Bill C-5 to Bill C-39, but they cannot change a record. They cannot change the legacy that Stephen Harper left in this country and I am glad to talk about it. Under Stephen Harper's government, we had the richest middle class in the world. A young person could buy a home. Canada was a well-respected country on the world stage with moral clarity. It was so much so that the Prime Minister invited Stephen Harper to his investment summit to close it out to remind Canadians of a Canada that used to be.

Madam Speaker, the member is certainly right that there are concerns with the legislation. A major concern with the legislation is it is not going to deliver what it says it is going to deliver. We saw that in the past. We see that with the Major Projects Office. We see that with Bill C-5. Now we see it potentially with Bill C-39. As I said before, we are going to take the time to scrutinize the legislation and look for pieces in the legislation that we can improve. Once it gets to that legislative committee, we are going to propose the amendments necessary to actually get shovels in the ground instead of promises into people's pockets.

Madam Speaker, it is not about whether we are friends with labour. It is about whether labour supports a party that supports it. In the last election, it certainly came over in droves and the member knows it. I wish the member would speak this vigorously against the inflation that is driving down the paycheques of every single worker in this country. I wish he would stand up for labour when it comes to the fact that its buying power is not nearly as much because of the government's spending. I wish he would stand up for labour.

Mr. Speaker, despite the assurances, the endless commitments and the half measures from Liberal Ottawa, Canada's affordability crisis is bad and is getting worse. The National Payroll Institute just revealed that half of employed Canadians now spend all or more of their net pay, with no savings and more debt. Meanwhile, the OECD is cutting Canada's growth forecast while raising forecasts for almost all of our G7 partners because of the uncertainty and stalled productivity. Despite all the MOUs, the speeches and the photo ops, Canada's economy is still stuck and affordability has been forgotten by them, so when will the Liberals adopt our Conservative plan to get our country growing, moving and working again?

Mr. Speaker, if any of those plans worked, we would not hear story after story of struggling Canadians. The numbers are the numbers, and no amount of Liberal promises without results is going to change that. However, it is not just about the numbers. It is about real people, and that is why one in four employed Canadians is now living paycheque to paycheque in this country. That is why I hear from people like Alan in my community, who works full-time and helps his mom with gas and groceries. There is nothing left in his bank account at the end of the month. There are so many people like him across the country. When will the Liberals realize that there are real costs to their failed policies?

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot. It is good to be back in the House doing the work that Canadians sent us here to do. I think everyone agrees that it has been a long summer for the Canadian economy, for our trade relationships and for families, especially for families watching their bills climb faster than their paycheques. For three months, the doors of this Parliament stayed closed while government members were unable to answer for any of it, some because they truly did not know what was going on and some because they simply do not see their role as being accountable in this place. Let me say it plainly. This sitting is overdue, this debate is overdue, this policy prescription is overdue and the people we represent right across the country who are being locked out of accountability deserve much better than this. Our approach to this session is very simple. When the government does something that helps Canadians, we will support it, and when it makes things worse, we will oppose it, as we always have, strongly and without apology. Today's bill falls into that first category. This legislation would finally remove the federal excise tax on gasoline until January 31 and cut it in half until the end of March. That is real, although temporary, relief, and Conservatives will support it. However, I would ask the government to be honest about something: where the idea came from. We have been calling on exactly this since the spring. This is once again the government adopting a Conservative solution after insisting for months it was not at all necessary and after looking families in the face and saying no. We are pleased that the Liberals have come around, but we simply ask why on earth it too so long and, more importantly, why it stops here. It is worth remembering what the Prime Minister said before he had this job. In February 2025, he built his entire leadership pitch around fiscal discipline. He said, “spend less, invest more”, warning that Ottawa could not keep borrowing from the future to pay for today. Let me be clear. We are not opposed to this relief, as we have been asking for it since the spring, but relief and recklessness are not the same thing, and the difference is simple: find the money. Conservatives have identified $150 billion in savings from wasteful spending precisely so that Canadians can get relief without adding another dollar to the tab that their own kids will pay for. The government has not done the work. It simply added this tax measure onto a deficit it has already doubled, a deficit that has strangled families at home and that has made it less affordable to buy food, groceries and gas. The question is not whether to give Canadians relief. It is whether the Prime Minister still believes what he told Canadians before he had the job and whether “spend less, invest more” is just something one says to win an election, not something one does after it has already been won. Here is the other answer. This is the part we see very clearly and that I think Canadians ought to see very clearly, and it is where some in the House may be confused. It is what this bill tells us about the government's real position. The government cut the excise tax, but it left the clean fuel standard in place. It left it completely untouched. That is not actually an oversight. It is a regulation that exists specifically to keep fuel expensive in this country, and it is by design. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, not just some newspaper article, it is already adding seven cents a litre and is set to climb to 17¢ by 2030. That is not real relief. It is not even temporary relief. It is policy by design to keep gas expensive in this country. I am sure I can continue when we resume after question period, but I want to end with this. The government wants Canadians to believe that it is fighting for cheaper gas. That simply is not true. It is protecting the one policy that guarantees gas gets more expensive in this country every single year, more expensive than the last. It cannot claim relief at the pump on one hand while holding the other hand on the tax that keeps prices high. If people take one thing from this debate, it should be this, because it is not a change in policy. It is a temporary relief measure for Canadians that we will absolutely support, of course.

Mr. Speaker, it is a day into the session, and there is nothing from the government to fix the affordability crisis on rent, on mortgages and on groceries. This is at a time when Canadians pay more in taxes than they do for bare essentials: Canadians such Olesya, who told me that she is going into credit card debt just to cover rent and food for her family, or Ariella, a student who wonders if she will ever be able to live independently and own a home. Will the government commit today to adopting our Conservative economic plan to save Olesya and Ariella money by lowering debt, taxes and the cost of living for both of them?

Mr. Speaker, again, we get all talk and no results. The minister does not need to take lessons from us, but he should take lessons from or at least listen to Olesya and Ariella. We believe that money belongs in the hands of the people who earned it instead of in the hands of the government that continues to tax it. We have identified $150 billion in irresponsible spending here in Ottawa on things such as consultants, foreign aid and bureaucracy. That is nearly $10,000 for families such as theirs. If the minister does not take lessons from them, will he at least listen to Canadians who are struggling out there?

Mr. Speaker, I will start off where I ended just before question period, just to say that one tax cut on one product does not undo an affordability crisis 11 years in the making. Let us just be clear about where Canadians actually stand today. Nearly one in four families cannot afford the housing they live in. One in 10 people in Toronto relies on a food bank. Gas still sits over $1.80 a litre in Toronto today, and over $2.06 a litre in Vancouver, the highest gas price in the country. Inflation sits at 3%, the top edge of what the Bank of Canada considers tolerable, and we lost 42,000 jobs in August alone before the latest round of tariffs even hit. Behind every one of those numbers is somebody like Hamid, a constituent who wrote me this month. Despite doing everything right, searching for work, trying to keep up, he told me that he is now in debt and struggling to afford basic necessities, including a pair of glasses that he needs to see clearly. We are in Canada. That is not a policy footnote. That is not just some random example. These are real people with real stories. That is the real cost of 11 years of decisions made in this building. That is the story that the government needs to hear, because the promise of this country has always been simple: If a person works hard and follows the rules, the country works for them too. Right now, for too many Canadians, it simply is not working. If the government is serious about affordability and not just borrowing language along with our policies, here is how the Liberals could finish the job they started today. Go further on gas. Do not just cut the excise tax, but scrap the clean fuel standard and the GST on fuel too. That is another 15¢ a litre for every fill-up, and 15¢ a litre on every fill-up for a guy like Hamid means something. In fact, it means something for a lot of Canadians right across the country who are struggling. Do not stop at March. Hold it for a full year or longer if Canadians are not seeing the benefit by then. That is roughly $1,000 back in the pockets of every average family, not a few hundred, but $1,000, and that is a meaningful difference. Scrap the GST on new homes. That alone can save a family $65,000 on a new build. It is the difference between renting forever and actually owning a place they can call their own for their families, to have kids and for their kids to have. Get the spending under control. We have said this before. The government has doubled the deficit it inherited. In fact, it was the front members on the Liberals' bench who added to that deficit. They have actually inherited something they have done themselves. We have identified $150 billion in savings, which is roughly $10,000 for a Canadian family. That is the cost of three and a half average Canadian mortgage payments. That is real relief for real families everywhere across the country. The Liberals can find this savings by cutting consultants. They can find it by cutting corporate welfare, boondoggles like the Alto rail project or a gravel pit launch pad that went nowhere. That money can go back to Canadians, or at minimum it could stop being borrowed against their children's future. None of this is complicated. A tank of gas should not cost a day's wages. A home should not cost a lifetime savings for a down payment. Everyone in this place knows that this is not an ideological position. This is how this country is supposed to work. This is the deal that this country has on offer for every single Canadian, no matter where they came from and how they got there. I will close with this. It is day two after three months of silence from the other side, and we have already passed something real, or we are about to. Imagine what could have been done for Canadians if this House had sat all summer, instead of shielding the government from questions it did not want to answer. Imagine if it was not all summits and MOUs, and it was real relief for real people who are undoubtedly scratching their heads today and wondering if this year is going to be any different than last year or the year before. What is before us today is a step. It is a small one in the right direction, and we think it should go further. We will keep saying this every single day. We will keep saying it for the millions of Canadians who have entrusted us with the responsibility to fight for a more affordable future in this country, to fight to save them money, to fight for every single Canadian no matter where they live, where they came from and how they got here. We will support the bill and we will push until the government actually finishes the work that we started for it.

Mr. Speaker, it is still all talk and no results, and we will continue to see no results. What we cannot do with commitments on projects that cannot get built in this country is fill a car full of gas. We cannot put food on the table. We cannot pay our mortgage. Every single Canadian who is scratching their head wondering what these summits and MOUs mean for affordability in this country is going to continue to keep scratching, while the member all the way from Winnipeg looks to Toronto and looks at a bunch of commitments that are not real.

Mr. Speaker, the answer is simple: It is a whole lot more. What I want to say is, on this side of the House, for the last 11 years, we had members turning themselves in circles, screaming about burning the earth down because we would lower the price of gas in this country. Let us make no mistake about it, they can go a lot further. They can scrap the clean fuel standard and make sure to take 15¢ a litre off the price of gas for eternity, but they are not doing that. That is a policy choice. The member brings up a good point on the summit. We cannot put a commitment in our gas tank. We cannot put a commitment on our table. For so long, this deal book has been full of deals that Canadian private capital said no to long ago. They said no because of the job-killing, energy-killing policies of the last 11 years that are continuing from the government.

Mr. Speaker, it is rare when I agree with my NDP colleague, but a clock is right twice a day. He is right about one thing. This place was shut down for three months, and nobody from the government, including a whole bunch of backbench Liberal MPs who probably do not know the answer because they are not in the know either, along with a number of ministers, would answer to the Canadian people on the biggest crisis we face. That biggest crisis is affordability. It is an affordability crisis for every single Canadian, an affordability crisis that has people scratching their heads as to why these guys do not come to work and why these guys do not answer to the public.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the secretary of state confirmed what many Canadians already feared. A foreign government is funding and directing attacks on synagogues, businesses and the U.S. Consulate, and now the murder of a Toronto police officer. This government has known for years; they did nothing. The Liberals imported terror, they weakened criminal justice laws, they slashed penalties and they offered zero accountability to foreign actors operating on our soil. Eleven years of this Liberal government and foreign regimes are paying hitmen to shoot up our cities. Canadians deserve an answer. Who knew, when did they know and why did they not do anything about it?

Mr. Speaker, one thing is clear, which is that the families of those police officers deserve better answers than that. The Liberals are in government. They have been there for 11 years. They are not bystanders in any of this. They let terrorists flood our country. They built a catch-and-release bail system. They allowed judges to ignore almost every mandatory minimum, including for drive-by shootings. One of these shooters was out on bail, the other one was out on probation, and now the minister told everybody that a foreign regime did it. Is that really her answer?

moved for leave to introduce Bill C‑288, An Act to enact the Protection Against Online Fraud Act and to amend the Criminal Code. Mr. Speaker, Canadians are being robbed at home on their keyboards, and the platforms where it is happening are profiting from the traffic. Today, I introduce the protection against online fraud act. In 2024, Canadians reported $643 million stolen through fraud. That is nearly 300% more than in 2020 and about 5% or 10% of what is actually happening. These are seniors losing their retirements and families losing their homes. It is happening to people in every riding right across the country. AI is making scams faster, cheaper and nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. The platforms hosting the content know it is there, and the bill would hold them accountable. It would require digital platforms to actively remove fraudulent content. It would require them to notify users who have already been exposed. It would add a Criminal Code aggravating factor when scammers deliberately target the most vulnerable people, such as with a grandmother's life savings. That is not even fraud. It is predatory. The U.S., Australia, the EU and the U.K. have already moved on this. Canada cannot be the last one at the table. We regulate what happens on our streets. It is long past time we regulate for the people who are getting scammed online, so I urge members of this House to support this piece of legislation. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Madam Speaker, before we can even talk about this bill in Parliament, we have to talk about whether members of Parliament are even allowed to talk at all anymore. That is what the motion is about. A government that claims to defend Canadian rights is using every tool at its disposal to make sure those things cannot even be debated on the floor of the House of Commons. That is what people are seeing tonight. The Liberals are pushing the House to ram through legislation in its current form that nobody asked for, nobody wants and nobody thinks is a good idea, according to the testimony at the committee that they have just shut down. Let me be clear about what this debate is actually about, because it is not about the bill. It is about whether lawful access matters. It does. Lawful access is a tool that every police officer in this country needs, and we are ready to give them that bill, but Bill C-22 would not stop there, and that is exactly where the government has lost the plot on all this. Tonight, instead of a serious debate on a serious bill, we are listening to the Liberals mount an obnoxiously loud defence of the indefensible. They want to debate whether we should ignore the rights of the House, the will of our constituents and the basic principles of good governance that everybody came here to carry out. The government abandoned those a long time ago, but I know a lot of members of the House come here every day to scrutinize the very legislation that the Liberals are trying to ram through tonight. Let me say this to anybody watching at home at this late hour: The Liberals' argument in this debate is completely disingenuous, and they know it. I appreciate the police chief of York Regional Police. We have an enormously good relationship, a great one. I have also met with the commissioner of the OPP and with the Toronto police chief. They have all asked us to help pass lawful access, and we told them we would. Everything they asked for was in part 1 of the bill. We support that and are ready to pass that today. We were ready to pass that long ago. It is the Liberals who said no. However, not one of these police chiefs asked for the unprecedented expansion of government surveillance powers, secret ministerial orders, no oversight and a massive erosion of Canadians' privacy protections. That is all in part 2, and that is exactly what the problem is. The Liberals' trying to ram it through is a disgrace to the House. The Liberals say the police are demanding it, and I think that is as much of an insult to the police as the last 10 years of their leadership on this file has been, full stop. I do not think they can find anybody who says they need every provision in this bill, because it is just not true. We came to the government with a straightforward proposal: Pass part 1 now, give the police chiefs what they are asking for, and we will support it through the House, every part of it; then take time to properly fix part 2 instead of programming a motion that would ram it through the House without any debate. We want to fix it by hearing from the civil liberties advocates who raised concerns in committee, from the private companies and from ordinary Canadians who have every right to be heard by every member of Parliament, every member of the House, because the legislation would affect them directly. They all sounded the alarm bells at committee. Making this go away would not protect Canadians. It would protect the Liberals. The government said no to us, because the minister presenting the bill cannot even defend it. If we put him in front of a microphone, we will see. He would be blundering all over the place, not answering questions, and giving entirely wrong answers, because he does not know the contents of the bill. If he did know the contents of the bill, he would admit that it is part 1 that police officers were asking for to protect people. When the Liberals stand up and say that Conservatives are blocking lawful access, that is simply false. Every member of the House should know that. The culprit is the government's own stubbornness, its refusal to listen to anyone outside of its caucus, and, of course, it is the minister who is incapable of defending his own bill. What is the Liberals' response to that refusal? It is a motion to cut off debate, to limit how long the bill is discussed, to limit committee study and, in an unprecedented move, to retroactively pass the bill through committee without ever hearing the remaining amendments that were in committee. That has never been done in this place except with Bill C-9, the last bill the government passed through the House. My colleague mentioned that she had never seen that happen in her 15 years in this place, which is longer than I have been here. This is not procedural housekeeping, but that is what the Liberals are going to make it sound like. It is a very real, very clear threat to the rights and freedoms of all Canadians from coast to coast to coast. The government has heard this loud and clear. That is exactly why it is ramming this bill through, because its members cannot go off on a summer break and have Canadians raise the alarm bells on it. They want to get it through the House. One of the members opposite supporting this motion, and we need to talk about this, is the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. In a previous life, she sat on this side of the House as the Conservative shadow minister for civil liberties. She participated in nearly every civil liberties debate in this chamber. Every single time, she told Canadians the truth, which was that the government could not be trusted with privacy. I agreed with her then, and I agree with her now. This is what we are talking about. This is a bill that would lower the constitutional bar. This is where it gets serious. It would create secret ministerial orders with no sunlight. It would open back doors for bad actors who would mandate metadata retention as a direct precursor to AI-driven mass surveillance, and it would weaken the encryption that protects Canadians' private communications, even with their financial institutions. That is the problem. I think this bill deserves to be debated and the House should give it that. Instead, the Liberals have rammed it through with what is called the programming motion to sweep this away right before they take their summer break. Let us go back to the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. She also told the House, and I remember it, that members of the Liberal caucus wanted to see her jailed over the views that she held on these exact kinds of topics. Now she is voting with those same people. She is handing them unprecedented power to conscript private business as instruments of state surveillance and potentially break the encryption that millions of Canadians rely on every single day. This is not hyperbole. Signal, NordVPN and DuckDuckGo have all publicly said that this kind of bill would force them to leave the country entirely. With that kind of testimony at committee, does anybody in this place not think that this deserves more scrutiny and more study? That is not a talking point. They actually said that. That is a business decision that they are planning to make because of this legislation, and that tells us everything we need to know about how deeply flawed part 2 is and how it strikes at Canadian privacy rights. Normally, I might wonder out loud what the people of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong think of all of this, but in this case, I already know because I went there. Just like Canadians across the country did not vote for the construction of a surveillance state, the people of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong did not vote for her to erode their rights in this place. Police unions and police chiefs did not ask for their members to be handed these broad, sweeping powers; they asked for lawful access. We are ready to give it to them in part 1 of this bill. We asked for that and the Liberals said no. That is the conversation today. We are not prepared to write a blank cheque to the government. I do not think that anybody is. We, the members of the opposition, certainly are not prepared to do that as we watch the government of the day erode not only the rights of Canadians but also the ability to debate those rights in the House and the ability to scrutinize a bill that is deeply problematic. This is a bill that civil liberties associations, social media platforms and all kinds of private companies have raised the alarm bells on. We are certainly not going to do that with no debate, no witnesses at committee, no ability to propose amendments, no oversight mechanisms and no answers from the people who will actually be responsible for implementing the legislation. The reason that we are talking about this motion in the House is because of the public safety minister's inability to defend his own legislation in here, out there, at committee and everywhere else across the country. The government is programming this motion to save that minister, and Canadians deserve better than that. They deserve a debate, and they deserve scrutiny on this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is yet another erosion of the rights of Canadians. The same that we see in bills like this, in Bill C-11, Bill C-18, Bill C-9, Bill C-8 and Bill C-34 to some extent, although we are still studying it. This is an erosion of democracy, and it limits the participation of many in democracy. We hear every single day from our constituents, asking why we cannot do something about it. It is because they shut down debate, they shut off the cameras and they shut down committees.

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if my colleague is arguing for this motion or against it. This is about scrutiny on this and any piece of legislation in the House. We are never going to be for turning off cameras and shutting down debate the way that this programming motion has, being brought to the floor of the House of Commons. It has not happened in 15 years, except for the last piece of legislation that they did it with, Bill C-9.

Mr. Speaker, the story is the same, same and not different with this bill and all of the other money that has flowed through provinces where housing starts did not increase and the price has not gone down. In fact, it has gone up. Earlier today, we asked the Minister of Housing how many houses the $1.7 billion would build. We even asked the parliamentary secretary, who had a slightly better answer than the minister, but there is still no answer at all about how many houses the $1.7 billion of taxpayers' money would build. I ask my hon. colleague if he knows how many houses the $1.7 billion the House is being asked to approve right now will build.

Mr. Speaker, this morning, I am sure every member of this House was devastated to learn of the Toronto police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty. We grieve alongside the family, friends and colleagues of Constable Marc Pinizzotto, an 18-year veteran of the force who served his city with courage and devotion until his very final moments. To his loved ones and the men and women in uniform right across this country who put their lives on the line every single day, our gratitude is beyond measure. In the wake of this tragic loss, will the Minister of Public Safety please update the House on the government's response?

Mr. Speaker, we know, indeed, that it is a difficult time. We know that this is the second officer killed in the line of duty this week. That number is too high. Constable Pinizzotto was executing a warrant linked to several shootings, including one targeting the U.S. consulate in Toronto. With an attack on a diplomatic mission on Canadian soil, a police officer now dead and a suspect at large, can the minister please tell the House whether security agencies are engaged and what the government is specifically doing to support the investigation and keep Canadians from coast to coast safe?

Mr. Speaker, for the last 45 minutes, Canadians watching at home have known that this is not answer period. The Liberals do not have a single answer, and the ministers are out of their depth. Some are reading off their cellphones, and the President of the Treasury Board is still flipping through his binder, looking for an answer to the question. This is serious. Canadians at home are going hungry. Seniors are living on the side of the highway because they cannot afford a home. When will the government reverse its disastrous policies that got us here in the first place?

Mr. Speaker, those ministers must know that if someone is inadmissible, they are not allowed into the country. The Minister of Immigration admitted to the House that her government let people with ties to the IRGC into this country and she admitted that thousands of visas have been or needed to be reviewed since the beginning of this year, but she will not admit how many people with ties to the IRGC are actually here. Can the minister stand up now, from her seat, and finally tell the House if more than one IRGC agent has been deported from this country?

Mr. Speaker, earlier today, the Liberals actually compared the salaries and offices and the economy-class flights of the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister's $835 on orange juice on one trip or the $3,800 he spent on chocolate mousse on a flight. That is on top of the $250 million he spends on his personal office. That is 30 times more than the Leader of the Opposition. While families are forced to tighten their belts because he is the only leader in the G20 that plunged us into a recession, should he not tighten his own?

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Prime Minister delivered a speech on anti-Semitism so neutered that an anti-Semite would have given it a standing ovation. His solution was a council that includes a lawyer who went to court defending illegal encampments and a former minister whose organization lost federal funding for supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and who then lobbied the former government to keep them off the terror list. The council is led now by a minister who wants to ban passages from the Bible and funded these same anti-Semites in his own department. Jewish Canadians are being attacked on the streets, and the Liberals are giving the keys to the very people that fuelled the crisis. I have one question for the Prime Minister: Is he serious?

Mr. Speaker, that minister should ask anyone in Canada, or even the hundred Liberal donors who were in that room last night, if they feel safer today. The answer is no, because what we heard yesterday was hollow. It was reviewing previous reviews and studying studies on a crisis that the government presided over, funded and fuelled. That is not a plan. Nothing he said will stop the bullets from entering the member's own synagogue or the genocidal slogans that are uttered in the streets every single day against Canadians. Will the Prime Minister finally stand up in the House and meet the moment he so spectacularly failed—

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to recognize an extraordinary demonstration of community strength right here in Canada. When a young girl went missing in north Toronto, Shomrim Toronto, a volunteer community safety and security organization, mobilized immediately. Shomrim coordinated its members alongside local law enforcement, community organizations and thousands of residents who answered the call without hesitation. They were strangers who dropped everything to help. The young girl was found safe, and we send our deepest thanks to everyone who helped. What unfolded over those first critical hours, days and weeks is a testament to their professionalism and compassion. They are ordinary people working around the clock for days and weeks. That is a testament to their professionalism. It is not just a supplement to public safety, but an essential pillar of it, and we should recognize that. Shomrim Toronto deserves the full recognition of the House. This year, it will receive a community heroes award. Those who know Shomrim's value understand it is as sacred as the life and universe it helped save this time and every time before it.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government spent years ignoring and enabling anti-Semitism in Canada. We are now watching the consequences unfold in real time. In a single week in the country, effigies of Jews were hung in Montreal in the streets, while genocidal slogans were chanted. Government-funded organizations openly discussed a Jew-free Canada. Posters of a missing 14-year-old girl were torn down because she was Jewish. That is in just one week in Canada. Will any member on that side of the House get up and admit that we are in a full-blown crisis?

Mr. Speaker, we all know the laws exist. The member opposite knows full well that Bill C-9 and anything he mentioned would not have stopped a single thing that happened in the streets. We already know the Prime Minister will not act because he has not acted. In fact, he did not say a thing last week. More effigies will be hung, more firebombs will be thrown into synagogues and more Liberal MPs will pose for pictures with those who glorify terrorism. The question is not whether the government will finally call this a crisis. We know they will not. The question is how much more needs to happen in order for anybody to do anything.

Madam Speaker, I think the member opposite knows that the position of the Conservatives is very clear on the funding to the CBC. We are talking about what the Prime Minister does and does not have control over. That is very simple. We have a motion in the House right now to ask the government to rescind its decision. While we are at it, it can rescind the decisions on Bill C-11, which has not worked, and Bill C-18, which has taken news out of the hands of Canadians and blocked them from local journalism. We can do all of that with this motion and with future motions. There is no regulatory problem for the government here. It is imposing a tax on Canadians, and the exact thing we are arguing today is that it should take that tax off of Canadian families.

Mr. Chair, temporary foreign workers are up. Let the record show it. The minister cannot mislead the House by saying otherwise. However, let us talk about study permits for a second. The minister's department can investigate 2,000 fraud cases a year. The Auditor General flagged that there are 153,000 cases. At that pace, it is going to take 76 years. That is probably longer than I am going to be here and probably longer than she is going to be here. Is that acceptable to her?