Government Orders
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the member's speech and heard him say something we heard earlier today. I would like him to very clear about it. Is he telling the House that the reason the Liberals cannot eliminate, even temporarily, the GST on fuel and the carbon tax, or even just on fuel, is they believe retailers would collude to prevent the tax savings from going to consumers? Yes or no, is that …
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Madam Speaker, I have disagreed with the member quite a bit in the last couple of days, but in her speech now I think she was on to something and I will ask her to comment a bit further. She talked about giving the member who has the floor the ability to yield the floor to a colleague. In the U.K., members can also yield the floor to a member of the opposition and in so doing obtain more time for …
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Mr. Speaker, the affordability crisis increasingly means that there are two kinds of families in Canada: families who own homes and families who never will. Gimmicks such as the first-time homebuyer incentive have failed to improve access to home ownership, while taxes, red tape and ridiculously long development timelines chase private capital out of construction, limit supply and lead to ever-inc…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today. I have quite a bit to say, so I am going to get right to it. I am going to talk about unanimous consent motions. I am going to talk about debates, committees, hybrid Parliament and vote pairing. I am going to begin by addressing the increasing trend toward using unanimous consent motions to make declarations of national policy on behalf of the House. I know…
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Madam Speaker, yes, indeed I would. The committee of the whole is a much better format for getting real answers. However, I am sorry; I have to say it: Since 2019, there has even been a marked decline in the quality of that forum. I have participated in several committees of the whole and have watched the ministers. They have a whole group of officials in front of them and binders of information. …
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Madam Speaker, we represent our constituents when we are in this place. Our action in this place is what we are accountable to our constituents for, so I think it is critical that we spend the time in this place to do our jobs representing them in Parliament. Now, one needs to be in touch with constituents. That is why we have lengthy constituency breaks to interact with our constituents. However,…
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Madam Speaker, that is a great question with great observations. I am not so fussed about the room layout and the adversarial nature of committee. It only becomes a problem when things become personal. If we meet in the same room rather than over video, we have the opportunity to get up from our opposite sides of the table and maybe go over to the coffee machine to have a quick, private word off t…
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Mr. Speaker, the member launches straight into an attack on the previous Conservative government while ignoring that almost all of the mandatory floor sentences being repealed in this bill were not passed under the Harper government. They came from earlier governments. Successive governments, Conservative and Liberal, with different prime ministers, have, over a very long period of time, created t…
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Mr. Speaker, indeed, one can acknowledge the vast issues that contribute to offences and acknowledge that there are different ways to deal with the problems of crime and criminal justice without the prison system. The prison system is certainly the last resort in these matters. I do not really have time to get too far beyond the bill itself, which is where we are dealing with a repeal of floor sen…
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Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that racism exists in our systems, and in our justice system. It is indeed a serious problem, but I will also point out that the victims of many of the crimes for which this bill reduces floor sentences are often the same Canadians, and members of the same communities, who face racism. I do not see that repealing these sentences will adequately address the issue of rac…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to join the debate on Bill C-5, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I will spare members the suspense and say from the outset that I do not support the bill. The bill sends exactly the wrong message from this Parliament to the judiciary. It sends the wrong message from the government to criminals. It sends the wrong message to Canada's…
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Madam Speaker, deficits, monetary expansion and consumer taxes, like the carbon tax, all drive up inflation, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Canada's housing market, where the price of housing went through the roof at a time of massive job loss and shrinking GDP during the pandemic. The government's response has been to pat itself on the back while a generation of Canadians give up on hom…
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Madam Speaker, I want to speak to the point of order that was raised. To be clear, I was listening as well and I do not think there is any reason why the member for Calgary Centre should have expected to have his wrist slapped at all. He did not call any member of this chamber a liar; rather, he brought attention to the fact that lies are repeated, and that is a—
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Mr. Speaker, my constituency office is inundated with calls from constituents unable to access passport services, and I am not alone. I am sure that every Liberal member of the House, including the minister herself, is experiencing exactly the same thing. The backlog caused by the government's lack of preparedness affects Canadians' ability to travel abroad for work, for school or to be reunited w…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and the commitments in the 2016 and 2017 federal budgets to spend, respectively, $444.4 and $523.9 million (combined total of $968.3 million over five years) to combat tax evasion, as well as the claim by the CRA that “The CRA remains on track to spend the budget investments over the 5-year period for which they have been outlined”: (a) as of the end …
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With regard to applications by federal employees for exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious or medical grounds: (a) for each federal department or agency, how many exemption applications on medical grounds were received; (b) for each federal department or agency, how many exemption applications on religious grounds were received; (c) how many applications in (a) and (b) were appro…
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With regard to Access to Information requests received by federal departments and agencies: (a) for each department and agency, how many requests were received in (i) 2018, (ii) 2019, (iii) 2020, (iv) 2021; (b) for each department and agency in (a), how many requests were resolved in each year; (c) for each department and agency in (a), what was the median processing time for requests resolved in …
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, entitled “Collection and Use of Mobility Data by the Government of Canada and Related Issues”.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to table a petition in support of Bill S-223. This is the bill to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. It would make it a criminal offence for a Canadian to go abroad to receive an organ taken without the consent of the donor. This horrific practice was first brought to light by former member of Parliament, David Kilgour, who sadly passed away just this past …
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Mr. Speaker, raising taxes on Canadians should be a test of government confidence, but the Liberal government ignored 800 years of parliamentary tradition by giving itself and future governments an automatic tax increase when it passed the excise escalator on beer, wine and spirits. Governments should have to ask Parliament every time they raise taxes. Will the government repeal the automatic tax …
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, entitled “Questions of Conflict of Interest and Lobbying in Relation to Pandemic Spending”.
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-266, an Act to amend the Excise Act and the Excise Act, 2001 (adjusted duties - beer, malt liquor, spirits and wine). Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce this bill in the House of Commons this morning. I thank the member for Kelowna—Lake Country for seconding my bill. Tomorrow, the tax on beer, wine and spirits will go up automatically. This bill would repeal…
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. I hate to interrupt members, so I did not do so, but I am a stickler for the rules in this place where we speak of matters that are relevant to the bill. I would like to bring his attention to the actual motion, which reads: That given that, (i) excessive government spending has increased the deficit, the national debt, and fuelled inflation to its h…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the tax on beer, wine and spirits will automatically go up, thanks to this government's excise escalator. Today, I tabled Bill C-266, an act to repeal the automatic excise escalator. This punitive tax harms Canada's world-leading brewers', vintners' and distillers' ability to compete internationally and punishes Canadian consumers. Tomorrow, the cost of enjoying a beer with f…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, the tax on beer, wine and spirits will increase automatically thanks to the government's excise escalator. Today, I tabled Bill C-266 to repeal this automatic annual tax increase. Under the government, simple pleasures such as enjoying a beer with friends after work, or a bottle of wine over dinner with a loved one, are increasingly unaffordable for working people. Will the …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, five weeks ago Putin unleashed a brazen attack on Russia's sovereign, peaceful and democratic neighbour Ukraine. Since then, the world has witnessed murderous Russian attacks on civilians and awe-inspiring acts of dauntless courage and determination by Ukrainians. Putin's war of conquest threatens the comfortable peace that Canada has taken for granted for decades. We must immediately…
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Madam Speaker, I do not know that I would object, but I cannot speak for all the members in the chamber, so he is welcome to try that on. He must not have listened to much of my speech, because I spoke about a number of things that the bill does and a number of things that the bill fails to do. I drew attention to the way the bill withdraws the criteria around the continuation of stimulus spending…
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Madam Speaker, I do not think I caught a question there, but I will respond to the member's comment. He is a thoughtful member. I have served at committee with him before and I know that he is a champion of transparency and accountability from government. I certainly hope that he will continue to demand that, even as his party is choosing to support the government through until 2025.
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Madam Speaker, the member seemed to refer to something that happened at finance committee. I am not sure I caught exactly the piece of tax legislation that he was concerned about for provincial jurisdiction, but provincial jurisdiction is something that Conservatives always respect. We respect the Constitution and the delineation of provincial responsibilities. I am not certain I have a specific a…
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and add my voice to the report stage debate on Bill C-8. Here we are on March 28 debating the so-called fall economic statement, which was tabled just before Christmas, three full months after the summer election. That election was supposedly called to establish a mandate for an urgent, transformational, once-in-a-lifetime moment. I do not agree with the ra…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, today I have a petition from Canadians who are rightly appalled by the unlawful and unwarranted invasion of Ukraine by Putin. They call upon the government to lift the visa requirement for Ukrainians seeking sanctuary in Canada from this terrible invasion in furtherance of free travel to Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is presiding over Canada's highest inflation rate in a generation, which has been fuelled by structural deficits that were baked in before COVID, out-of-control spending, monetary expansion, and an ever-increasing carbon tax. The Bank of Canada recently confirmed that the carbon tax alone is responsible for driving up inflation by nearly half a per cent. Will the NDP–Li…
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Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition signed by many Canadians who are appalled by the unlawful and unprovoked war against the Ukrainian people. I share their concern. The petition calls upon the Government of Canada to immediately waive all visa requirements and grant visa-free travel to Ukrainians escaping Putin's war.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (C), 2021-22”.
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Mr. Speaker, Ukrainians are fighting for their lives in a war financed by Russian energy exports. Dependence on Russian natural gas threatens Europe’s energy security and fuels Putin’s war machine. The world needs Canadian energy to displace conflict oil and gas now and for a peaceful future. Will the government agree, today, that an east-west energy corridor is vital, not just for the Canadian ec…
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Madam Speaker, in Europe, tens of millions of people do, in fact, rely on natural gas to heat their homes, and Russia is funding its war machine from those exports. I understand the member's point that we cannot build a pipeline overnight, but in his speech I noted that he kind of shrugged off the energy needs of European consumers by saying that OPEC could increase its supply. OPEC countries have…
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Madam Speaker, I have been listening to the member and he is doing his best as a member of the fourth party to hold the opposition to account. However, he has five minutes left. Could he maybe return to the motion and debate the motion? It has been probably six or seven minutes since we had any discussion that has anything to do with the motion.
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Madam Speaker, Putin's war machine is being funded by their energy exports to various places around the world, but in particular the almost half of Europeans who rely on natural gas to heat their homes. In a report to the European Parliament, “A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy”, the European Union, itself, sought to further its partnersh…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, I certainly would not refer to the presence or absence of a member in the House, but from the time that the member began to rise and engage in debate, the civility and the quality of the debate certainly took a turn for the worse. Carrying on—
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Mr. Speaker, I will answer his question by saying that I agree with the premise but not the conclusion of some of the remarks that he quoted. I would agree that there is a very serious situation of unlawful acts that required a response. I disagree that it required this response.
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Mr. Speaker, we have had an absence of leadership in Canada under the Prime Minister all the way around. I recall the remarks from the member for Louis-Hébert, who pointed out the extent to which this government made a deliberate choice to pit Canadians against each other long before this current crisis. One really must connect these two events. There is tremendous responsibility with the Prime Mi…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not think I have ever felt more compelled to add my voice to a debate in the chamber than I do in this debate about the invocation of the Emergencies Act. I am going to start by making a number of things very clear to the people listening, including my constituents. They might want to know where I stand on a number of issues that cannot be separated from this debate. I am proud t…
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree. As I said right at the very beginning of my speech, I was appalled by what happened in his riding. I did note that it was de-escalating, and the crossing, as the member pointed out, had reopened using conventional police methods and without having to resort to extraordinary powers. I would agree with the member that it is a terrible problem and a terrible imposition…
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Mr. Speaker, I was watching the debate earlier in the day, and I must say the level and quality of debate we had in the chamber was much better before the member for Kingston and the Islands came—
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member completely, and I am sure that in his riding most people rely on personal vehicles for transportation to get to work and back. There is no subway system in the member's riding, so the inflation impact, particularly on transportation, is a real problem for working people in Canada, and the PBO's concerns were well noted on the out-of-control spending.
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Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. This government has spent a lot of air time during committee meetings, and occasionally in the chamber, paying lip service to the problem of money laundering in Canada, which is a very serious problem, and we see it in the real estate industry. It is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that this government has failed to adequately address. I would agree…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-8, an act to implement certain measures included in the fall economic and fiscal update. This debate comes amid a real crisis of leadership in Canada. We know the Prime Minister called a summer election that Canadians did not want, and by cleverly sowing enough division and fear in just the right places, he managed to squeak out another minority g…
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot there, and I will do the best I can with the time I have. To start with the last point, yes, indeed there is inflation in other parts of the world, but in no other advanced economy is it like it is in Canada. This is a Canadian phenomenon compared with our peer countries. On housing, yes, indeed supply is an issue. We have seen nothing from this government to meaningful…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am sorry to say that it is clear the member did not read the report or grasp what it contains. The report is very short. It contains one recommendation to the government that is timely. It cannot just go back to committee for more study. It is not that kind of a report. This is a report that calls upon the government to suspend an RFP, with a timeline on it. We listened to a lengt…
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