Government Orders
Madam Speaker, again I will reiterate that those suffering from drug addiction need that to be treated as a public health issue. That is why, in the last election, we ran on a policy to build more treatment beds for individuals who are suffering. Those who suffer from drug addiction should not be going to jail. They should be going into treatment. Unfortunately, we do not have nearly enough treatm…
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Madam Speaker, I just got some information today that there were 378 repeat offenders recently arrested for committing other crimes, who were also charged with 853 counts of breaching firearms prohibition orders. Often in these communities, it is a small group of people who are consistently caught and released who are terrorizing these communities over and over again. These individuals are respons…
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Madam Speaker, I will ask the member opposite this: Does he believe the Supreme Court was correct in saying that intoxication for violent crime can be a defence for rape and homicide?
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Madam Speaker, I could not have said it better myself. I agree completely that this bill, as he said, does surely target lawful firearms owners and does not go after the criminals shooting up our cities, including Montreal, where there have been deaths and where young people are at risk of dying from drive-by shootings. We are now seeing this almost every single day in Montreal. The minister, resp…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations, and I believe you will find unanimous consent in the House for the following: That, given that the debate on combatting gun violence needs to be depoliticized, centred on the rights of victims and the safety of communities, the House call on the government to divide Bill C-21—
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for his thoughtful remarks. He mentioned, on a number of occasions in his speech, that the government is increasing maximum penalties to send a message to criminals who commit firearms offences. Again, there is this idea “to send a message, we are increasing the penalties”. At the same time, the minister's government is also sending the message tha…
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Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to put words on the record concerning Bill C-21. We have a very serious gun violence problem in the country, one that Conservatives across the country are deeply concerned about. I have to say that when there were rumours that this announcement from the Liberals was coming forward and it was going to be a big splashy event at the Château Laurier here in downtown O…
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Madam Speaker, first and foremost, my statistics are certainly accurate. They were taken from Statistics Canada, which shows the massive increase in gun violence in our cities. I know that may make the minister uncomfortable, but those are the facts. I did acknowledge, of course, in committee, and I will acknowledge it again, that we appreciate some of the small investments they have made in polic…
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Madam Speaker, I have enjoyed working with the hon. member on the committee. On his second question, there is no data available on how many guns in this country are diverted from legal owners, or stolen, as they said. This is sort of a red herring argument. There is, of course, anecdotal evidence to suggest that this may be part of the problem. I do not believe the officer in question said it was …
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Madam Speaker, I would like to address the disrespect from the members opposite. When my grandfather was a young boy, he saved up every penny to buy a rifle that he could go hunting with to sustain his very poor family. He cherished this gun, and when he was dying in palliative care— I am speaking to the member, actually, through you, Madam Speaker. Perhaps you can learn something about gun cultur…
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Madam Speaker, when he was dying in the final weeks of his life, he brought this gun. It was wrapped up very nicely. He brought it and the cleaning tools to our house. He died about a month later. He brought it and he gifted it to my father, something very symbolically important that goes back over the five generations that we have lived in rural Canada, struggling to sustain ourselves until the t…
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Madam Speaker, I agree with many of the points that the member made. I appreciate the respect she has for legal gun owners, unlike some members of the Liberal party. Can the member tell the House what we heard in committee about Akwesasne and gun smuggling and whether this bill will resolve the problem?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety knows the severity of invoking the Emergencies Act, the historical significance and the impact on due process and charter rights. The details of why and how the government invoked the act are key. It will set a precedent in Canada on government powers. I am sure the minister would agree there is no room for being misunderstood when setting a historical pr…
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Mr. Speaker, the minister is being a bit vague answering my question on whether his government is going to release the documents. The question of cabinet confidence is critical to the Rouleau inquiry as argued by a former clerk of the Privy Council who said cabinet confidence “should not be utilized to impede the search for the truth where the validity of government action is seriously contested a…
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Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if the member is referring to my question, so maybe he can clarify it.
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Mr. Speaker, gun violence has gone up significantly over the past seven years of the Liberal government. That is a fact. It is also fact that most guns used in violent crime are smuggled in from the United States. Gun smugglers and gun traffickers are responsible for the murder of innocent Canadians in our cities, such as Toronto, Montreal, Regina and Edmonton. Why is the Liberal Prime Minister re…
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Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the Prime Minister's Bill C-5 will severely threaten the safety of families, children, mothers and vulnerable communities, because Bill C-5 would allow criminals who commit serious and deadly gun crimes to serve house arrest rather than go to jail, meaning these dangerous criminals will be kept in the communities they have terrorized, which will disproportionately …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I recently travelled to Israel on a parliamentary mission to learn about the conflict, but something else that really stood out to me was how the country has moved on from COVID. It was immediately noticeable when we got off the plane: no masks, no public health warnings and no distancing or divisive vaccine mandates. In Israel, people are living joyously in a post-COVID world. As soo…
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Mr. Speaker, the fact is that violent gun crime has only gone up under the Prime Minister. Actually, it has gone up significantly since he has formed office, and the data proves this. He has failed to keep Canadians safe from gun violence in cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg. At the same time, he has been weak on violent crime and soft on criminals by allowing them to avoid …
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is misleading Canadians. Bill C-5 and the other measures by the Liberal government are failing to keep our communities safe. They are putting them at risk. If they wanted to stop gun violence, they would put more resources to border agents to stop gun smuggling. They would put more resources to police to stop violent criminals with guns. They would put more resource…
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Mr. Speaker, the fact is that violent crime and gun crime have gone up significantly. Gangs and criminals are running rampant in our streets. Canadians are seeing it with their own eyes on the news every day. What is the Liberals' response to this? On one hand, they are eliminating mandatory prison time for criminals who commit dangerous crimes with guns, and on the hand, they are doubling down on…
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Mr. Speaker, the fact is that Canadian communities along the Great Lakes heavily depend on boaters being able to cross the water from the U.S. Prepandemic, there were 400 such check-in points, and now there are 84. It has gone from 400 to 84. Some are having to travel 76 kilometres out of the way, rather than just going 800 meters across the river. It has been disastrous for local communities, and…
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Madam Speaker, I do not have a lot of confidence at all. I certainly do not have a lot of confidence in the government to maintain transparency. For example, this House compelled the Liberal government four different times to provide the Winnipeg lab documents. For the first time in a century, we brought someone to the bar, compelling them under the democratic powers that we have in this House to …
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Madam Speaker, proposed section 4.2 of the bill actually provides an exception to the exception that would allow the CRTC to regulate user-generated content. Further, proposed subsection 7(7) would provide the Liberal government's cabinet the ability to, in essence, dictate the policies of the CRTC concerning online content. Again, it is very concerning. These are new powers for the CRTC that did …
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Madam Speaker, what is really concerning, and what I discussed in my speech, is giving the Liberal government the ability to decide what is misinformation and disinformation. That is very concerning. Just the other day, our critic and our shadow minister for defence quoted an Ottawa Citizen news article talking about the military surveillance exercise that flew around the convoy, which was taking …
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Madam Speaker, the Internet is an incredible invention. We have all the information in the world in the palm of our hands. Just as the creation of the printing press in the 1400s changed the course of history forever by allowing information to be disseminated to the masses, rather than just to the elites of society, bringing literacy to millions of people, so too has the Internet revolutionized ho…
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Mr. Speaker, it is important to remember that the Ambassador Bridge and the Coutts, Alberta crossings were cleared before the Emergencies Act was invoked. The act was not needed to clear the border blockades, and police were well equipped to take care of this with all the existing laws and powers. What, then, was the national security threat that met the extraordinarily high threshold needed to in…
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Mr. Speaker, the protest organizers are being held accountable in courts as we speak, but this inquiry is to ensure the government is being held accountable. Invoking an act with the power to override charter rights is dangerous, so the purpose of the inquiry is to tell the public whether the threshold needed to invoke the act was in fact met. The Liberal government has not made a convincing argum…
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Madam Speaker, I would say that any Liberal who suggests that they support the oil and gas industry is living in a fantasy. All they need to do is look at the electoral map. They have no seats in the areas of the country that generate some of the most economic wealth because they are consistently ignored and consistently abused by the Liberal government and its policies. Any words from a Liberal m…
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Madam Speaker, I think the answer to the housing crisis is that we simply need to build more houses more quickly. We need to ensure that federal dollars are incentivizing municipalities to build homes more quickly. I think we need to be moving forward in our economy. If our economy is going to keep growing, and if our population is going to keep growing, we need to ensure that our housing continue…
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Madam Speaker, I certainly would appreciate a government that takes the needs of the disability community very seriously. There are many seniors in my riding who suffer from disabilities as well. What I would say is that whenever we talk about inflation or gas prices, heating prices and grocery prices going up, we have to see that it impacts those who are on a fixed income the most, such as those …
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Beauce. The Canadian dream is dying, and the Liberals are digging its grave. They put us on an economic suicide mission, and the world that millennials are inheriting will be far different, after six years of the Liberals' rule in this country, from that of the baby boomers who preceded us and that of our parents. I am very concerned a…
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Mr. Speaker, the Emergencies Act is one of the most powerful laws in the land, with an extremely high threshold needed to invoke it. That is a good thing, otherwise charter rights could be easily abused by governments. That threshold is whether there is a national threat to public safety so serious that it cannot be addressed by any other law, yet we well know that there are many existing laws tha…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to say that the Conservative members of the public safety and national security committee are providing a supplementary report to the official report from the national security committee. The supplementary report just outlines that we feel that the billions of dollars to be spent on the federal so-called buyback program and proposed provincial handgun ban should be direc…
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Mr. Speaker, that inquiry will be useless unless the Liberals waive cabinet confidence and allow Canadians to know the whole story. Really, the stakes could not be higher for Canadians, given that their charter rights are at risk with this unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act. To be clear for Canadians at home, the emergency powers allow the government to freeze their bank accounts, sei…
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Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is Canada's first-ever NDP-Liberal government budget, and the stakes have never been higher for my generation. Many of us cannot afford a house. We cannot afford groceries. We cannot afford to fill our tanks with gas. We know dental care is not going to solve it. Pharmacare is not going to solve it. Child care is not going to solve it. Spending more money is not going to solv…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for his speech. I particularly appreciated his remarks on critical minerals and the importance of developing them in Canada. I want to get the member's thoughts on whether he feels it is important to use national defence spending to upgrade our early North Warning System, in particular expanding it to include coastal surveillance, maritime a…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, with the first NDP-Liberal budget in history coming in a few days, it is important to take stock of the world the millennial generation is inheriting. Half of us will never be able to buy a home, despite Canada being the second-largest land mass on earth. There is plenty of land to build houses. Why is it getting less and less affordable to do so? Around $300 might buy someone four sm…
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Mr. Speaker, we really do not appreciate the arrogant tone coming from the housing minister day after day, especially since after six years of this government, housing prices have effectively doubled. Half of my generation will never be able to afford a home as a result of its failed policies. A little humility would be welcomed from the Minister of Housing. When will the government abandon its fa…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to get my colleague's thoughts on the concerns being raised by YouTube and Michael Geist, foremost expert in Canada on the Internet and e-commerce, concerning the threat that Bill C-11 would be forcing streaming platforms to push Canadian content. It sounds great, but as a consequence it may actually downgrade that content abroad, which I think would be very concerning to our o…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to statistics held by the RCMP in relation to firearms: (a) what definition does the RCMP use to determine if a firearm is domestically sourced or foreign sourced; (b) is the definition in (a) universally used by other police jurisdictions in Canada that trace the origins of firearms; (c) does the designation of a firearm as domestically sourced (i) include firearms that entered Canada…
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Mr. Speaker, Russia has 40 nuclear-powered weaponized icebreakers. Does the House want to know how many Canada has? It is zero. Russia has 18 military bases near Canada's Arctic border, whereas we are struggling to get one naval base up and running. Yesterday, Russia's foreign affairs minister said that a third world war will be “nuclear and devastating”. These remarks are deeply concerning and pr…
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives of course support every effort to aid Ukraine in its battle against the Russian invasion. Given Canada's very vocal support internationally and given the threats issued by Putin and the Russian regime to punish those who try to stop them, Canada must be prepared for a worst-case scenario. This is the government's paramount responsibility. What meetings has the defenc…
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Mr. Speaker, I asked about Canada's emergency preparedness. This is a very serious matter. Putin has publicly directed an alert of Russia's nuclear forces. Canada's national security and public safety must be the paramount priority for the Prime Minister. Canadians have every right to know what our emergency preparedness plan is should Russia launch, for example, a major cyber-attack or move in on…
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Mr. Speaker, Conservatives strongly support every effort to aid Ukraine in its battle against the Russian invasion. That being said, Putin has warned those who defend Ukraine, saying, “Whoever would try to stop us...should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and lead you to such consequences [as] you have never faced in your history.” Is Canada prepared if Putin follows through on his th…
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Madam Chair, it is really great to see the very civil discourse tonight. This is probably the most civil I have seen any debate in the House in my few years as a parliamentarian. I thank the hon. member for those efforts. I would like to ask the member what his thoughts are on Europe's dependence on Russia for gas. What does he feel the impact of that is on Europeans and their ability to support U…
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Madam Chair, what I think is not viable is having Europe dependent on Russian gas and having our country's own sovereignty and security at the whim of 40 nuclear-powered weaponized icebreakers. I do not really care about the cost. We need to ensure that the security of Canada is first and foremost the priority of the federal government.
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Madam Chair, one of the things we can do immediately is move to remove Russia from the G20 and from other international organizations. They have no place, having violated the international order, on those international bodies. Again, I mentioned that we can expand our pipeline capacity to ensure we are offsetting the European dependence on Russian gas. We have gas, if only we could get it to tidew…
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Madam Chair, the hon. member and I worked together on the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I very much support seeing the government put more resources into ensuring we have a visa-free regime with which we can bring Ukrainians to Canada to be reunited with their families, to be reunited with Canadians and to bring them to safety. That is something we can move forward with immedi…
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Madam Chair, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley. I rise today on a very serious issue, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We know that Russia's attack is the most serious threat to rules-based international order since the Second World War. Since 1945, we have not faced something like this. It really threatens the longest period of relative pe…
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