Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the hon. member is correct. I did walk across and said that if he did not apologize, I am going to keep asking the question, and I will keep asking the question—
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Madam Speaker, does the member believe the hon. member for Winnipeg North should stand right now and apologize for saying that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills was not credible?
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Madam Speaker, it takes a stunning level of audacity for the member to give a lecture to the House on politicization and throwing stones in glass houses. On Thursday, he and his friend from Kingston and the Islands undertook a blatant strategy to discredit the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, in order to defend their incompetent government—
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Madam Speaker, on that point of order, I did not actually reference any comments that the member made—
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Madam Speaker, I will note that, through the course of the debate, both of those members had to step back from the incorrect remarks that they made. We have a chance today—
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Madam Speaker, we have a chance tonight, at the end of this debate, to right that wrong. Will the member support the motion to have PROC study this point of privilege from the member for Wellington—Halton Hills?
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot reference who is in the chamber and who is not in the chamber. All I know is that as I am speaking tonight I am getting a lot of echoing coming back from the other side. I will say this. The approach on Thursday was to sow chaos, and not just Thursday, by the way. We have seen this in question period from ministers who were answering as well. The approach on Thursday was to b…
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Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled that if the end result is that the Liberals won three elections, I guess it is all good. The member's heckle was that they won three elections, so it does not matter. One other common thread in the debate today has been the Liberals going back eight years. I know that the member for Winnipeg North takes issue with anybody rounding up to eight. He says they have only…
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Mr. Speaker, he is asking me to say the two words. The words he apologized for saying were said when he referred to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills as being “supposedly affected”. He apologized for those words. I was not going to read those words, but he is heckling me, asking me to read them.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate tonight. I will start, as I did on Thursday, with an expression of solidarity with and admiration for our colleague in the House. I say, “our colleague” and not “our Conservative colleague”. Our colleague is a member of Parliament, the member of Parliament for Wellington—Halton Hills, who has done great work representing his constituents an…
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Mr. Speaker, multiple times, probably a dozen times now, Speakers have ruled that the member's point is not a point of order. I have the two words he did say and withdrew. I have them. I was not referring to those, the ones he apologized for. I think he apologized twice on the day, but—
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Mr. Speaker, I am pretty confident that none of the points of order were actually ruled points of order—
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Mr. Speaker, the hope is that tomorrow, when people have had some more time maybe on the government side to think about what we are debating today, we will see some Liberal speakers stand up and share their own thoughts and share what they are hearing from constituents on the specifics of the motion. Again, I will remind the House that we had the motion today, and the Liberals voted against it. Th…
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Mr. Speaker, I am just curious if the Liberals are done chirping over there. Okay—
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Mr. Speaker, well, I will point out, just because this summarizes exactly what the situation has been today, that an hon. Liberal member just said, in his heckle to the group about his colleague from Kingston and the Islands, that he is doing a good job, that he is doing a good job because he is pissing all of us off. That is what he just said in his heckle across the way. This is the dynamic we h…
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Mr. Speaker, I will point out that, while I very much agree with the member on this, we do not always agree on everything. I am very thankful for a thoughtful question in this debate. She makes a very good point for all of us. We may not agree on the choices that the people in one riding or another make about who they send to debate on their behalf here, but we do have to respect that our democrac…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that important question, because I do think this is critical. One of the four elements in the motion from last week that we voted on today was the idea of having a public inquiry. There is a real power to transparency. There is a real power to us coming together as 338 members of the House and agreeing on behalf of our constituents across the country, all…
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Mr. Speaker, I will start by pointing out that given the normal practice of the House, the normal routine, it would have been time for a Liberal question, but a Conservative got up and asked a question instead. Again, I would implore the Liberals to actually take part in this debate, take a productive role in the debate and try to understand what people—
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Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled again. I cannot tell them what to do. I am imploring them. I am not telling them what to do; I do not have that power. However, I think the debate would be better if members from all parties were participating wholly and fully in it. To the point of the question, I think there is a real question on Canadians' minds as to why we are even having this conversation righ…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, he is referencing the point of order. The fact of the matter is that if we are looking at that particular point, and there is something else that you should apologize for but, on a technicality, said it was not on the record, on that particular point, you said the Prime Minister had a briefing on Monday and then you said that the member got the same briefing two years ago. The member …
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Madam Speaker, that was quite a speech after we just sat and watched a group of Liberal members of Parliament mocking and laughing at the member for St. Albert—Edmonton as he was speaking earlier. The member talks about taking these concerns very seriously, but earlier, in a question, the member for Kingston and the Islands referred to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills as “supposedly affected…
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Mr. Speaker, that is one of the most ridiculous questions I have ever heard in the House of Commons. We are talking about a member of Parliament who is serving in the government. We all wish we were serving in the government, but we are not. There is one government. There is one Prime Minister. All of this has happened under that Prime Minister's watch. The government has known for two years about…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not normally get this fired up in here. There is a lot of people who get very fired up in here, but usually I try to avoid my hockey side, in a sense. However, to the hon. member's point, I came in today expecting to discuss a motion that I thought would be unanimously supported. If we take a look at what is in the motion, including the measures on the registry and on closing com…
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Mr. Speaker, there are four main elements of the motion. There is some preamble, which is really important, but the four main elements speak to things that should be universally supported. I think Canadians across the country will support them and I am glad to hear that the NDP and Bloc support them as well. The four elements are: creating a foreign agent registry similar to Australia and the U.S.…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member is not saying that he did not say those words; he is just saying that they were not recorded. He absolutely said those words. I was sitting right here and I heard him say them.
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Madam Speaker, it will not take me 20 seconds. My question, given the gravity of the situation, is very straightforward: Will the hon. member who just spoke turn around and ask his two colleagues, who hold leadership positions in his party, to unreservedly apologize to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills?
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Mr. Speaker, because the hon. member used the phrase “to correct the record”, to correct the record myself, the hon. member used the phrase “supposedly affected” in regard to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills today. He now has a chance to stand up and apologize.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby kind of touched on this as a long-serving member of the House. I want to also express my solidarity and my admiration for the Conservative member for Wellington—Halton Hills, whom we have been talking a lot about this morning. Perhaps members from all sides can recognize the important contributions that member has made over the years to this plac…
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Mr. Speaker, continuing my comments, if we actually listen to what the member for Kingston and the Islands said, he said, “if Conservatives were bothered by it”. That was the caveat he added when he mentioned that just a few minutes ago—
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That is what you said. I am not going to get into a heckling match, because that is how we got into this challenge in the first place. There were about four members at the time, including those two members, who were laughing as the conversation was happening specifically related to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills and the—
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Mr. Speaker, I will point out that the hon. member, in his defence, mentioned coming in 15 seconds before the member for St. Albert—Edmonton stopped speaking. I will point out that it was the precise moment that chaos descended on this conversation. It was his question for the hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton that triggered the condescension and mockery among his colleagues over here. It was hi…
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Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. Let us look at the context of the conversations we are having right now. There is a member of the House of Commons, a colleague who is well respected by members on all sides, whose family has been threatened and who clearly did not know about the situation. Earlier in the debate, the hon. member for Winni…
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Madam Speaker, I listened with interest as the hon. member, like all Liberal members of Parliament, talked about more and more spending, adding to the record levels of spending and record levels of debt undertaken by the government already. One thing he did not touch on was that it is Mental Health Week. If we read from the Canadian Mental Health Association's website, it says in a headline, “Budg…
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Madam Speaker, I have had a chance to chat with the hon. member about some issues, and I know we are concerned and care about similar issues regarding vulnerable Canadians. I brought up earlier, as I do many times in the House, one of the things I am concerned about. Looking back, the Liberal government of the late 1990s had to cut $35 billion in transfers to provinces for things such as health ca…
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Madam Speaker, it is astonishing to me to hear the NDP and Liberal members stand up in the House, with the record-shattering levels of debt and spending they are undertaking together, and call for, in the debate today, more spending. I hearken back to the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties and the massive debt and deficits they rang up. This resulted in record cuts to social services…
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Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled from the other side. They will not stand up and actually debate today, but they will stand up and heckle me. Then, they will probably ask questions about misinformation without making any arguments or trying to persuade anybody. They know they have the numbers tonight to just ram this through, regardless of what Canadians think. This is the issue we are talking abou…
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and to speak to this debate tonight. In 2023 alone, I have held 15 constituent round tables of two hours each. I have heard from a couple of hundred constituents on a variety of issues, and this is among the top issues that constituents have raised with me. I am not an expert to the extent that the member for Lethbridge is. She has done such fantastic work for…
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Mr. Speaker, this exercise is called democracy. The hon. member talks about how she listened until midnight the other night and did not hear anything different from me than what she might have heard the other night. I do not know what she heard the other night, but she certainly did not hear the member of Parliament for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, representing the 230,000 constituents who I represent, st…
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Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of things to that point. The bill is many pages long, and experts who have spent their entire lifetime studying this stuff have, in large numbers, come before multiple committees of the House to say that user-generated content is open to being regulated by the government through the CRTC. On the cultural side of things, I trust that Canadian creators, from across th…
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Mr. Speaker, it is actually the flip side of that argument. I think the government's response to the Senate amendments, by way of completely ignoring them and then taking to the Internet to actually attack people who criticize the government's approach, is what erodes Canadians' confidence and trust in their government, more than anything else.
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day, and a quarter century since my son, Jaden, was diagnosed. Over the years, I have focused a lot of my public words on Jaden’s strengths. This is not because he does not need help but rather because, all too often, all people see is the help he needs. To be clear, as incredible as Jaden is, he needs a lot of help. He has considerable strengths in t…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If you will indulge me, before I get to my specific motion, I would like to recognize the tireless work of Senator Leo Housakos, Senator Peter Boehm and former senator Jim Munson in support of autistic Canadians and their families. I also recognize the member for Don Valley East, members from all parties in this House who helped us get to this point and, mo…
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Madam Speaker, just after watching that exchange there, I cannot be more struck by the difference in position in 2004, 2005 and 2006 with the NDP leader at that time with the sponsorship—
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Madam Speaker, I just want the hon. member to comment on the difference in the NDP approach right now versus the NDP approach back in 2004, 2005 and 2006, around the sponsorship scandal. Those two positions, those two approaches, around transparency and holding the government of the day to account could not be more different.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak today. I will be sharing my time with the hard-working member for Dufferin—Caledon. This is a piece of legislation with good things in it that I think everybody in the House will support. It also has some things that speak to the importance of the committee system and getting a bill to committee so experts can weigh in and highlight any potential shor…
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Mr. Speaker, there are numerous potential challenges with this bill, and among the least of them might be definitions. I think that speaks to why the government has taken so long to actually bring it forward for debate. I have other concerns. We are a country right now, over the last eight years, which has had a significant challenge building anything. I want to make sure that, as we make efforts …
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Mr. Speaker, we have absolutely not changed our position. This is a different piece of legislation. The member has been around this place for a long time and understands that different legislation requires a different approach. There are important conversations we need to have. I represent an area with a significant indigenous population, with many living off reserve. The community of Maskwacis is…
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Madam Speaker, just over a year ago we had an election campaign, and in the Liberal platform there was nothing about the extension of medical assistance in dying for people with mental illness. What there was in the Liberal platform was a very clear promise to fund a Canada mental health transfer, $4.5 billion over five years, of which it is very clearly laid out, and I think it is on page 75 in t…
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With regard to spending by the government on private investigators, since January 1, 2018, broken down by department, agency, Crown corporation, or other government entity: what are the details of each expenditure, including, for each, the (i) vendor, (ii) amount of the contract, (iii) date, (iv) file number, (v) situation overview or the reason for the investigation, (vi) findings of the investig…
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With regard to guest speakers or other cases where individuals were contracted by the government to give speeches, either in person, virtually, or both, since January 1, 2019: what are the details of all such contracts, including the (i) vendor, (ii) date of the contract (iii) amount of the contract, (iv) number of speeches to be provided per contract, (v) date of the speeches, (vi) topic or purpo…
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