Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, let me tell the House how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, explained to the Prime Minister what China thinks of us. China sees Canada as a high-priority target for influencing legislators, business executives and diaspora communities in Canada. CSIS also said that Beijing is the foremost perpetrator of foreign interference in Canada. It could not be any clearer. The P…
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Mr. Speaker, it is all well and good for the minister to announce a few million dollars to work with in the future. The problem we have is finding out that the government and the Prime Minister have known what is going on for several years now. They know that China is a critical threat. I am not making this up; the CSIS reports say as much. Can the Prime Minister now tell us whether he knew that t…
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Mr. Speaker, last year, Canadians stood in line for days to get their passports. Now the minister is asking them not to apply for a new passport and especially not to apply for a passport renewal. Never in modern history has the government of a G7 nation asked such a thing of its citizens. It is sad and embarrassing. The Prime Minister has hiked the cost of the public service by 50%, but he is fai…
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Mr. Speaker, the Patro de Charlesbourg will turn an important page in its history this spring. Carolle Pelletier will step down as executive director and take her well-deserved retirement after 35 years of good and faithful service. Ms. Pelletier started going to the community centre at the age of 12. In 1989, the board of directors named her assistant director of this venerable institution in the…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has increased the cost of the public service by 50% in eight years. He has been unable to manage its growth. Now Canada Revenue Agency employees are on strike in the middle of tax season. This is a difficult time for millions of Canadians. Many are waiting patiently for their tax refunds so they can pay their bills. Does the Prime Minister realize that Canadians are…
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Mr. Speaker, when I talk about this government's incompetence, the Minister of National Revenue is the perfect example: She is talking nonsense. Under the Harper government, as she likes to say, there were no strikes. Employees worked and everything was fine. That said, we see this government's mismanagement and the increase in the public service. Nothing is working and they are striking. All fede…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has developed a very particular type of incompetence. Since he was elected, he has increased the cost of bureaucracy by 50%. At the same time, he managed to convince the union to call the biggest strike in 40 years. Now, our veterans, immigrants, small businesses and Canadian taxpayers are deprived of services. How will the Prime Minister fix the mess he has created…
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Mr. Speaker, why is the Prime Minister not standing up and answering our questions? Why is the Prime Minister not working for Canadians? Is he busy planning another vacation with his friends at a Trudeau Foundation member's luxury hotel? He does not think about people waiting in line for their passports; someone takes care of that for him. He does not think about crowded airports; he has a private…
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Mr. Speaker, we all know that the Prime Minister is not living the same reality as the majority of Canadians. We know that he is more afraid of his reign ending than of paying bills at the end of the month. We also know that the friends he invited on vacation are extremely wealthy. As Prime Minister, he has an ethical and moral responsibility to pay for his personal expenses during his trips. Can …
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's staff briefed him before his trip and told him to be careful of the optics. We are talking about the optics of the Prime Minister vacationing during the holidays with multimillionaire friends while Canadians were suffering for lack of money. I can understand that his friends invited him, but he went on vacation at Prospect Estate, a rental property where people pa…
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Madam Speaker, do I have the same amount of time to answer my colleague's question as she took to ask it?
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Madam Speaker, a government has to make choices. It must create a list of priorities and decide what to do. Since 2015, the Liberal government has chosen to constantly increase spending without having any controls. That is the problem. Is everything a priority? Of course. If my children want ice cream every day, do I give it to them every day? No. Everyone has to learn about control sometime. The …
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question. We remember very clearly that the Prime Minister did some marketing during the 2015 election campaign. He said that the Liberals would generate small $10-billion deficits in order to heavily invest in Canadian infrastructure. However, during that government's first four years, it ran $100 billion in additional deficits. A few billion dollars were inves…
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Madam Speaker, it is the government's responsibility to manage its public service properly. There is a strike mandate right now because this government did not do its job of managing the public service properly. It hired 30% more public servants, it awards external contracts, and in the meantime, working conditions are being mismanaged. I cannot necessarily respond directly to my colleague's quest…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister spent two weeks on vacation at Peter Green's estate down south. This trip cost taxpayers $160,000. He confirmed that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner gave him the green light for the trip, but I am not convinced that the commissioner knew that the vacation would take place at the home of a Trudeau Foundation donor. Can the Prime Minister tell us toda…
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Mr. Speaker, the most ironic thing about this saga is that, according to media reports, the Prime Minister's own staff was concerned about the optics of this trip. We know that 62% of Canadians are cancelling or considering cancelling their vacations because they cannot afford them, due to inflation. Let us come back to the concerns of the Prime Minister's staff. Were they concerned because Canadi…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the reckless budget brought down by the Liberals and supported unreservedly and unsurprisingly by the NDP. In fact, the budget is truly a product of the office of the Leader of the NDP. I think it is fair to say that people underestimate him. Canadians now know that he is the one truly responsible for the government's budgetary dec…
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Mr. Speaker, this morning, we learned that, according to a survey, 74% of Quebeckers are struggling to pay for basic necessities. What is more, 45% of Quebeckers reported that they are $200 or less away from being unable to meet their financial obligations. What is the Prime Minister's solution? Here is what he said recently at a public meeting: “If you're using your credit card to go back to scho…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the minister really understood my question. This morning, we learned that 74% of Quebeckers say that they are having trouble making ends meet and that nearly half of them do not even have $200 left over at the end of the month to pay their bills. On that note, at that same townhall, the Prime Minister added, “If you're making investments that are going to return,…
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Mr. Speaker, what the Minister of Justice just said was preposterous. Before the holidays, as soon as Bill C‑5 passed, Jonathan Gravel, a man who had violently sexually assaulted a woman, was given a 20-month sentence that he could serve at home, while watching Netflix, rather than going to prison. If not for Bill C-5, that guy would be behind bars. I just introduced Bill C-325, which would correc…
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Mr. Speaker, Tuesday, in Calgary, a teenage girl was shot while sitting in a car. No one knows why. The night before in Louiseville, Sergeant Maureen Breau was killed in the line of duty. Violence in on the rise everywhere in Canada. In order to deal with this issue, the Prime Minister passed Bill C‑5, which allows violent criminals to serve their sentence from the comfort of their own home and in…
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Mr. Speaker, today, the Minister of Finance will announce a $1.4-billion cut in spending on outside consultants. However, given that the government has increased the size of the public service by 28% since 2017, even more of the work that is currently being contracted out to private companies could be done in-house. The government is spending over $21 billion a year on outside contracts, and the p…
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Mr. Speaker, what does the Associate Minister of Finance think of the fact that in 2019, the Prime Minister billed Canadian taxpayers more than $200,000 for his personal vacation to Costa Rica? He billed a further $160,000 for another personal vacation to Jamaica in December. When he is not billing Canadians for his vacations, he has a solution: He violates Canada's Conflict of Interest Act by acc…
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Mr. Speaker, I was saddened to learn that Sergeant Maureen Breau was killed yesterday evening while performing an arrest in Louiseville. Sergeant Breau had more than 20 years of experience with the Sûreté du Québec. It is true that every time an officer loses their life in the line of duty, it is a painful reminder of the constant danger they face every day they wear the badge. We do not put our l…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the parliamentary secretary was in the same twilight zone as the Prime Minister when he said that budgets balance themselves. What we must recognize is that this attitude is why the number of personal bankruptcies in Canada increased by 13.5% in January 2023 and why business bankruptcies rose by 39.1% in 2022. Canadians are suffering financially. Will the Prime Minist…
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As you know, Mr. Speaker, a new era was ushered in eight years ago, one where government budgets balance themselves. However, the reality is that, thanks to this Prime Minister's mismanagement of public funds, the cost of a mortgage has doubled since 2015, food has never been more expensive and Canadians have record credit card debt. Canadians know full well that they need to pinch pennies to pay …
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, Global News published very serious allegations about a sitting MP. These allegations came from two separate national security sources. They are saying, and I quote, that he advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off on freeing Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. I am asking the same question that was asked 11 consecutive times today. On w…
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Mr. Speaker, the media reported that CSIS informed staff in the Prime Minister's Office that Liberal candidates were receiving money and support from Beijing and that nothing had been done about it. Does the Prime Minister really expect Canadians to believe that he did not demand answers from those who withheld this information from him, or did he not ask because he already knew the information?
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With regard to expenditures related to the video released by the government titled "Minister Alghabra clears Santa for take-off in Canadian airspace": (a) what were the total expenditures related to producing the video; (b) what is the breakdown of (a) by type of expense (video editing, location rental, etc); (c) how many employees worked on the video; and (d) what are the details of any contracts…
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Madam Speaker, clearly, nothing the government did worked. Foreign interference is more widespread in Canada than ever. Now they are talking about a foreign agent registry. This morning, the minister announced he would be holding consultations to decide how to proceed. He said the same thing three months ago. The U.S. has actually had a foreign agent registry since 1938. Australia set one up in 20…
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister is trying to sweep a foreign interference scandal under the rug, but every day brings new revelations. Yesterday, we learned that the Communist regime in Beijing had reached its tentacles into Quebec by setting up two active secret police stations. The Prime Minister wants to keep everything secret, but even the RCMP is appealing to the public for help. Instead of…
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C‑325, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (conditions of release and conditional sentences). Madam Speaker, MPs have the great privilege to introduce legislation, and I am using mine today. In my political career, I have had many opportunities to question the government about measures needed to deal with violent crimi…
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Mr. Speaker, all we learn from the Prime Minister's answers is that he is not saying anything. If he does answer, it is that he is going to name a special rapporteur and that he will refer the investigation to a committee of parliamentarians who will not be able to talk about it. The members of this committee, Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc MPs, will be sworn to secrecy for the rest of their liv…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister still refuses to answer our questions about the foreign interference crisis shaking the country. Now we find out that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are actively investigating two police stations allegedly controlled by the communist regime in Beijing and run by a municipal councillor from Brossard, Ms. Xixi Li. Will the Prime Minister stop playing around with th…
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Mr. Speaker, not only are Canadians worried about foreign interference in our elections, but they are also shocked at the Liberal government's inability to take this crisis seriously. It is clear that this Prime Minister is more concerned about polling numbers than about Canadians' safety. For example, instead of agreeing to the proposal put forward by all the opposition parties to launch an indep…
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Mr. Speaker, I hope you will allow me to look directly at the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount. I want to take a look back. Thirty-nine years ago, at the tender age of 14, I became fascinated by a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, a naval officer who was the first Quebecker, the first Canadian, to become an astronaut. I remember when the space shuttle Columbia was launched …
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Mr. Speaker, this year, Canadians will feel the brunt of the 4.25% increase in the Bank of Canada's base rate. According to Statistics Canada, 35% of Canadian households reported that it was difficult for them to meet their financial needs in the previous 12 months. What is more, 44% of respondents said that they were very concerned with their household's ability to afford housing or rent. Will th…
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Mr. Speaker, this Liberal government is facing mounting criticism over Bill C-5, and for good reason. Quebec's justice minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, tabled a motion in the National Assembly with the support of all members. The motion calls on this Bloc-centralist-Liberal government to amend the law stemming from Bill C-5 to make sexual assault offences ineligible for community sentences. We are …
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Mr. Speaker, it is as though the minister always does things right. Yesterday, the media reported on the case of Sobhi Akra, who pleaded guilty in January 2022 to sexually assaulting eight women between October 2017 and November 2018. Bill C-5, the brainchild of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, who got some help from our Bloc Québécois friends, could make it possible for this crimin…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. During Oral Questions, the Minister of Environment misled the House by suggesting that people in Quebec do not pay a carbon tax. I seek the unanimous consent of the House to table my own personal propane bill, which clearly shows that I paid 6.2¢ per litre in carbon tax.
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Mr. Speaker, the Bloc-Liberal alliance continues to work against Quebec's best interests. First, their proposed bill, Bill C‑11, fails to ensure that online businesses are subject to Quebec's status of the artist legislation. Second, this bill contains no mechanism for formal consultation with the Quebec government. The Minister of Canadian Heritage has stated that his government is collaborating …
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Mr. Speaker, it is clear that everything the Bloc-centralist-Liberal alliance is currently doing for Quebec is not working. Just think of Bill C‑5, which allows rapists to stay at home, or Bill C‑75, which lets criminals who have been released to obtain bail even if they are still violent. Now, there is Bill C‑11. To add insult to injury, they are refusing to consider the motion that was adopted u…
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Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who often says that the Bloc is picking fights, all of sudden say that the Bloc is his biggest ally. As was the case for several bills, bills C‑5, C‑75 and C‑11, the Bloc is a great ally to the Liberals. Can the minister give us an answer? Will the government send Bill C‑11 to committee so it can study the request of the Government …
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Mr. Speaker, interesting news this morning: the Quebec government is urging the Liberal government to include a mechanism for mandatory consultation in Bill C‑11 to ensure the protection of Quebec culture. It is asking the Prime Minister, who still enjoys the Bloc's support, to ensure that, before Bill C‑11 passes, it includes an official consultation mechanism with the Quebec government. Do the P…
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Mr. Speaker, we know this government's relationship with McKinsey is unclear, so it came as no surprise when we learned that Roch Huppé, the Comptroller General of Canada, instructed his subordinates to be careful what they write about McKinsey. The Prime Minister is still refusing to disclose the substance of the McKinsey contracts. His ministers apparently have no idea what is going on. Now the …
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Perth—Wellington. After eight years of the Prime Minister's dismal governance, he is now trying to turn attention away from his record, the cost of living crisis of his own making, the highest spikes in inflation in 40 years and the doubling of the price of rent and the cost of mortgages. He wants to turn Canadians' attention away from the…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. Speaking of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, I think he would be a bit disappointed to see the way his son is running the country today. That said, when we talk about using the notwithstanding clause, be it pre-emptively or reactively, the fact remains that its usefulness is clear. I believe that when the Prime Minister spoke of using the notwithstanding …
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Mr. Speaker, typically, I think our answers are supposed to be as long as the questions, which means that I am going to be making another speech given how long my colleague's question was. First of all, I could respond to the member for Drummond that his question does not matter to me one bit either, but I will try to be a little more polite than he is on that front. As I said in my speech, it is …
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Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, we lived through different times, a different era, with the Bloc Québécois; today, it is a different situation. It is a very left-wing party that all too often supports the positions of the Liberal Party of Canada, which seeks to divide Canadians. The Bloc Québécois is taking advantage of this situation to separate Quebec from Canada. The Conservative Party wan…
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years under this Prime Minister, unethical firms are still welcome to do business with his government. Although deputy minister Paul Thomson stated that Canadian companies would not be eligible for federal contracts if one of its affiliates had been found guilty of a crime, he also claims that McKinsey does not meet the exclusion criteria. However, as a result of McKinsey'…
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