Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for Lethbridge. She is a great champion of freedom. In short, there is no evidence that the Liberals have tendered. The ball is in their court. Where is the evidence? There is no evidence. What they are more interested in doing is playing COVID theatre, which they do in this place every single day.
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Mr. Speaker, my brother is a health care worker, a medical doctor, so I appreciate the important role that health care workers played on the front lines throughout COVID. What I would say to them, and what we owe to them, is that we do not fire them the next day after they were there on the front lines. The member speaks about COVID being here and says that Canadians are tired. Yes, we are tired; …
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Mr. Speaker, with the greatest respect to the hon. parliamentary secretary, it might have been a good question if there was any basis in fact to support it, but the problem is that there is no basis in fact to support it, because it has never been the position of the Conservative Party to impose these types of restrictions on Canadians to limit the ability of Canadians to enter and leave and re-en…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of our Conservative motion calling on the NDP-Liberal government to immediately lift all federal vaccine mandates. When one listens to the members opposite and their friends in the NDP, we hear it is all about science, and that they are following the science. I ask members of the NDP-Liberal government this: Where is the science? Where is the data? Where is th…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Canadians want to take back control of their lives, yet millions of Canadians are unable to travel freely within Canada, unable to get on a plane, unable to get on a train, because of the Liberals' punitive and ineffective vaccine mandates. This infringement on mobility rights constitutes an outlier among democracies, so on what date will the Liberals join the rest of the democracies …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is being fuelled by European dependence on Russian energy. As Europe and much of the world searches for alternatives, Canada should be part of the solution. The only thing standing in the way is the Liberal government and its war on Canadian energy. In cancelling pipelines, killing LNG projects and driving away hundreds of billions of dollars of in…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, once again, the Liberal government is demonstrating that victims of crime are a low priority for it. For the past half year, the position of victims ombudsman has remained vacant. The victims ombudsman is an integral resource for victims, including addressing their complaints and bringing forward recommendations on how to improve laws and programs to better support victims. After half…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I share the hon. parliamentary secretary's sentiments and I concur with him that Taiwan is an important ally to Canada in terms of our trade, our people-to-people links and our shared values. That is why the government's inaction to strongly signal its support for Taiwan in the face of Chinese communist aggression has been so disappointing. In that regard, Canada has fallen short of…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, on December 9, 2021, I posed a question to the government seeking clarification as to what support Canada was providing our democratic ally Taiwan, in the face of escalating tension in the Taiwan Strait and increased aggression on the part of the Chinese Communist regime. Disappointingly, the response from the minister was wanting. While it is understandable that in the last several…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right that the conditions that must be satisfied in order to invoke the Emergencies Act were not met and were not even close to being met. Member after member on the side opposite, and their friends in the NDP, downplay and minimize the exceptional nature of this legislation. This is legislation of last resort that provides extraordinary powers to the government th…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, my colleague from Terrebonne very eloquently expressed the reasons why the threshold has not been satisfied under the Emergencies Act. What we have instead is an unprecedented overreach on the part of the government that threatens the foundations of democracy. As the member pointed out, the blockades along the Canada-U.S. border were dispersed before the invocation of the Emergencie…
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member claimed that I was taking a photo with swastikas and that is an absolute—
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, this legislation, the Emergencies Act, has been on the books for 34 years and it has never been invoked. The hon. member gave a 20-minute speech but not once did he talk about the legal threshold that must be satisfied, namely that the emergency is a situation that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integ…
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Madam Speaker, the member for Shefford spoke thoughtfully about how we got here. She alluded to comments the Prime Minister made, casting a broad brush to all of the folks who came to Ottawa and the millions of Canadians who supported them. Would she agree that the Prime Minister, had he tried to extend an olive branch, listen and engage in dialogue, it could have at least turned down the temperat…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak this evening to the government's unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act. This act has been on the books for 34 years, and in those 34 years it has not been used on a single occasion: not during the Oka crisis, not during Caledonia, not in the wake of September 11, and not following the 2020 blockades of critical infrastructure, including railway lines and pipe…
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Mr. Speaker, the issue at hand is whether the threshold has been met to invoke the Emergencies Act. That is the question. Based upon a review of the legislation, it is very clear that the bar has not been set, with respect to the blockades. It was existing law enforcement tools and powers under the authority of the provinces that dispersed the situation. At Coutts, the situation was dispersed by m…
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Mr. Speaker, there are 119 Conservative members of Parliament who are working every single day to fight for their constituents, including those who have been adversely affected by the government's tyrannical policies.
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, the ball is in the Prime Minister's court. He created this crisis. It is up to him to solve the crisis, and solving the crisis does not begin by invoking the Emergencies Act. It cannot be justified in the circumstances.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition. Thirty years ago, on February 26, 1992, 613 Azerbaijanis, including 103 women and 63 children, were massacred by the Armenian army in a two-hour offensive attack on the civilian town of Khojaly. This was one of the worst massacres, and indeed, the worst massacre in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Azerba…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, for that question. No, the pandemic is not over. We will be living with COVID for a long time, but we are entering a new stage. COVID is endemic, and we need to come up with ways to live with COVID. That is why governments are lifting restrictions around the world. That is why provinces are lifting restrictions, and that is why p…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. I rise this evening to speak to Bill C-10, an act respecting certain measures related to COVID-19. Specifically, what Bill C-10 does is allocate $2.5 billion toward rapid testing. Since the outset of the COVID‑19 pandemic, Conservatives have consistently and repeatedly called on the government to ma…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for Nunavut for that question. I think she speaks to some of the serious problems that we have, in Nunavut specifically but also across the country, in terms of the lack of availability of rapid tests, which are a critical tool in managing COVID. In short, yes. I absolutely agree with her.
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Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that the government has messed up. The government has failed to provide leadership when it comes to getting rapid tests out the door. The government has dropped the ball repeatedly. Is the hon. member proud of the fact that his government delivered a third of the rapid tests that it committed to delivering to the province of Ontario? Is he proud of the fact that th…
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague's final sentence encapsulates the issue: a lack of leadership on the part of the federal government. We have seen this throughout COVID with the lack of PPE, lack of capacity in our hospitals and lack of rapid testing. The list goes on. What we need to do now, in year three of this pandemic, is realize that we will have to live with COVID. We will have to develop str…
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Mr. Speaker, I respect the parliamentary secretary, and I say respectfully that I find it a little rich for the hon. member to be talking about rapid testing. For the past two years, the government has repeatedly dragged its feet when it comes to rapid testing. We on this side of the House, from day one, were encouraging the government to act with respect to rapid testing. Now, in year three, the …
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Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Conservative motion before the House this afternoon calling on the government to finally come up with a plan to end the federally related COVID restrictions and mandates, including the government's punitive and discriminatory vaccine mandates. When it comes to the mandates, the Prime Minister says he is merely following science. If he were really follow…
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Mr. Speaker, to give the short answer, it is because the Prime Minister sees short-term political gain in dividing Canadian society. The member noted that 90% of Canadians have been vaccinated. That is a good thing. However, if 90% of Canadians have been vaccinated, what is the government seeking to achieve with the continuation of these vaccine mandates, other than to punish Canadians and divide …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition. The petitioners are calling on the government to take a stronger stand against the egregious human rights violations being perpetrated by the Chinese Communist regime, including recognizing the ongoing Uighur genocide. They call for the imposition of Magnitsky sanctions against perpetrators of these human rights violations.
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Madam Speaker, these mandates have not worked, but I do appreciate the hon. member's question about health care. I will note for her that, under the Harper government, health care transfers increased 6% annually through to 2014, every single year. With respect to the $71 billion of new spending, there is no money for health care. This is at a time when we have a serious issue in terms of capacity …
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Madam Speaker, I would respectfully say that the hon. member is misinformed. In fact, the mandate that he spoke of is one mandate, but it is not the only mandate. In my speech, I noted that if a person is not fully vaccinated they cannot get on a plane or train. Federally regulated employees have lost their jobs and they have lost benefits if they are not vaccinated. Those are punitive mandates th…
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Madam Speaker, I rise this morning to speak to Bill C-8, which would enact tax and spending measures outlined in the government's fiscal and economic update introduced in December. The Liberal government has now been in office for more than six years. Six years in, we have an inflation crisis, an affordability crisis and a supply chain crisis. The government has presided over massive deficits and …
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member is quite right. We have a significant backlog now of immigrants who are skilled workers and who are unable to get here to join the workforce. He is absolutely right that this is a serious issue that the government, despite spending a lot of money, has failed to address.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the Prime Minister's itinerary, since January 1, 2016: (a) how many times and on what dates did the Prime Minister's published itinerary contain inaccurate information regarding meetings, travel, or locations, respecting information that was known at the time the itinerary was published; (b) in each case where the itinerary contained inaccurate information, (i) why did inaccurate in…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I rise to table a petition on behalf of Canadians who are concerned about the 21-year campaign of gross human rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese Communist regime against Falun Gong practitioners, including the killing of practitioners on a mass scale for their vital organs to fuel the Communist regime's organ transplant trade. The petitioners call on the government to impo…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a petition signed by Canadians who are concerned about forced human organ harvesting. In particular, the petitioners call upon Parliament to see the speedy passage of Bill S-223, which seeks to amend the Criminal Code as well as the Immigration, Refugee Protection Act to prevent Canadians from travelling abroad to acquire human organs that were removed with…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
moved that Bill S-206, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (disclosure of information by jurors), be read the first time. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be the sponsor of Bill S-206, which passed in the Senate unanimously last week. This bill would implement a key recommendation of the unanimous 2018 justice committee report on juror supports initiated by the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford,…
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Mr. Speaker, is the hon. member serious? Has he read the bill? It is quite obvious that this legislation does roll back sentencing. It eliminates a whole series of firearm and drug offences, which I detailed. Perhaps he should read the bill.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my friend, the parliamentary secretary, for his recent appointment. The problem with the bill is that it is not as advertised. The parliamentary secretary spoke about the fact that the bill supposedly helps those who are struggling with addictions, except there is nothing in the bill that provides that. He speaks of minor possession. The Public Prosecution Ser…
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely right. There are significant problems along the Canada-U.S. border, problems that have been well identified and that the government has failed to solve.
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Mr. Speaker, the short answer is that it would help dangerous criminals. It would help drug pushers and drug dealers who are killing Canadians every single day. By contrast, the hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac introduced legislation that would help marginalized persons, with work on a framework to reduce recidivism and pilot projects to look at best practices to establish a Canadian strategy to …
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Mr. Speaker, I did put forward a recommendation. It was that we would support legislation like the bill introduced by my former colleague Bob Saroya, Bill C-238, to increase penalties for gun smugglers and those who are in knowing possession of smuggled firearms. Also, we have advocated for increasing funding for the CBSA. It is vital, and it was in our platform.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-5, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. In the six years that I have been a member of Parliament, I have never seen a greater disconnect between how a bill has been advertised and what is in the substance of the bill. The Liberals today have been doing a good job of patting themselves on the back, touting Bill C-5 a…
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Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary spoke about court decisions. Well, perhaps he should read the Hills decision from the Alberta Court of Appeal. That decision upheld as constitutional subsection 244.2(3) on the reckless discharge of a firearm. Notwithstanding that it has been upheld by the Alberta Court of Appeal, the federal government saw fit to include it among the mandatory sentences th…
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Mr. Speaker, in the last election, the Conservatives put forward a comprehensive plan to deal with mental health and addictions, including investing in drug treatment centres so that persons who are suffering from drug addictions can get the help they need and can be rehabilitated and re-enter society.
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Mr. Speaker, it goes without saying that when we let dangerous offenders out to do house arrest rather than putting them behind bars where they belong, there is a greater risk they are going to commit other offences. This will contribute to perpetuating the backlog in the courts. I think the member is absolutely right and raises a valid point.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, Communist China has upped the ante against democratic Taiwan with provocative military pressure. The U.S. Secretary of State has warned China that any move to invade Taiwan will have serious consequences. The government has been absolutely silent. Will the government join our allies and call on China to stop its campaign of aggression, and stand with Taiwan?
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, China, by far and away, is the largest emitter of GHGs and has made no hard commitment to reduce them over the next decade. One would think that this would be of concern to the Prime Minister, yet when he jet-set off to the farcical COP26, the Prime Minister, instead, launched his latest attack on Canadian energy, committing to a hard emissions cap. With Canada contributing a mere 1.5…
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Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you in that chair. It is really an honour to rise in the House for the first time in the 44th Parliament. Before I speak to Bill C-2 and this government's out-of-control spending, let me take this opportunity to thank the residents of St. Albert—Edmonton for placing their trust and confidence in me for the third time. It is a great honour, indeed it is the highest h…
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Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House we are going to study the bill carefully and identify where there are gaps. The member is quite right when she speaks of the cultural sector, which has been uniquely hurt as a result of COVID. I think it speaks to a broader problem. We have seen a government that has spent a firehose of money, in many cases giving it to people and sectors that did not need it…
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