Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, Toronto-area home builders reported the worst January on record since 1981. Last month, only 269 new homes were sold in the city of Toronto. The slump in new-home sales has lasted longer than the downturn of the 1990s. Because of these Liberals, the dream of home ownership is gone for many Canadians. We already know that the Liberal housing plan is dead on arrival. That is because, ac…
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's speech was thoughtful. I certainly agree on the fact that choices and the free economy, not government, are what builds homes. However, what I do not really understand about the bill is why we need a fourth bureaucracy. We already have the ministry of housing, which can do what the new agency would seek to do. We have CMHC. We have the Canada Lands Company, headquart…
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Madam Speaker, I ask colleagues to look at what, essentially, this bill is doing. It would create a fourth housing bureaucracy. We already have a ministry of housing, the CMHC and the Canada Lands Company, which is based in the great riding of York Centre. Now the Liberal government is saying that we need another layer, a fourth layer of bureaucracy, to build homes in Canada, which is the primary …
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Mr. Speaker, the only thing the Liberals are building is a fourth housing agency, more desk jobs for Liberal insiders and more Liberal waste. CMHC is telling the Liberals that their housing plan is dead on arrival. New housing starts will fall every year for the next three years. Builders are laying off workers. BILD is warning that 100,000 construction jobs are now at risk. Instead of building a …
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Mr. Speaker, because of the Liberals, the dream of home ownership is fading for young Canadians. According to CMHC, new housing starts will drop every year for the next three years. Nearly half of Canadians say they have to move out of the community they grew up in, because they cannot afford a home. Instead of incentivizing new construction, the Liberals are building a fourth housing bureaucracy …
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Mr. Speaker, my North York riding is home to thousands of Canadian Kurds. I and my Conservative colleagues are gravely concerned about recent reports of attacks by Syrian forces against civilians in Aleppo. The attacks target the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods, which are home to half a million Syrians, mainly Kurds but also Christians, Yazidis and Druze. Innocent civilians, including …
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Mr. Speaker, it is almost a year since the election. The Prime Minister should be judged not by his words but by his actions. He did not get a trade deal. He doubled the deficit. No new pipelines have been approved. Interprovincial trade barriers remain. We have the highest rate of food inflation in the G7 with 2.2 million Canadians at food banks. We need to start building pipelines and sell Canad…
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Mr. Speaker, new research from Rosenberg says Canada's economy is on life support. Per capita GDP is falling. Construction is flat, and the economy may shrink by half a per cent. Food inflation is out of control, and billions of dollars are fleeing south. Because of these Liberals, Canada is now on a recession watch. Conservatives are ready to work with the government to repeal anti-development la…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on Bill C-16. It is good to be back after the winter break. It certainly got colder. I welcome back all of my colleagues and wish everyone a very happy and healthy new year. On December 9, 2025, the government introduced Bill C-16, known as the protecting victims act. The bill proposes reforms to the Criminal Code “to protect victims and survivors of sexual violen…
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Mr. Speaker, I specifically said that we should be fixing this bill at committee. Here is something that I really do not appreciate about the members' remarks and generally his conduct in this chamber. I stood here for the last 20 minutes making a legal argument, not a political argument. There was no bravado or nonsense. I cited the precise scenario that was contemplated by the framers of the cha…
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Mr. Speaker, what I will say with respect to hypotheticals is that one can always come up with a hypothetical wherein the Supreme Court would deem a provision absurd. A first-year law student would be able to come up with a hypothetical that would make the situation absurd. What happens in these situations is that the police do not prosecute and the Crown attorneys do not proceed. If we have absur…
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Mr. Speaker, for weeks now, the Conservative members on the justice committee have been imploring the government to prioritize bail and sentencing, which Canadians so sorely deserve. Finally today, after this morning, the Prime Minister and the government House leader said that they wanted to move on with Bill C-14. We said, “Wait a minute. The Conservatives have been asking the government to move…
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Mr. Speaker, I 100% agree with the member, and I agree with the Conservative justice critic. I hope that the members opposite were here for the majority of my remarks. There are quite a few good elements of the bill, many of them incorporated from previous proposals by various Conservative members on this side of the aisle. Canadians voted for a minority government. They voted for us to have good …
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, it was a safety valve, not a safety clause. I would recommend that the member study his own legislation. Second of all, I would ask that he respect all members of the House and give them due respect by not taking their own words out of context. Here what is clear about the safety valve: It would completely dilute the mandatory minimum sentencing regime, it would grant ju…
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Mr. Speaker, today is the first day of debate on the bill. It was introduced during the last week of the sitting of the current Parliament in 2025. There are some good elements to the bill, but Conservatives have serious reservations with respect to the safety valve and the effective elimination of mandatory minimum sentences. Right now, if someone wants to challenge a law as cruel and unusual, th…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has no regard for taxpayer money. The budget that was just passed proposed a $78-billion deficit, so they should not lecture me about taxpayer dollars. What these Liberals are now trying to do is shield this bill from clear sight by all Canadians who now understand that this is beyond Liberal platitudes. This is not about hate. This is not about defending the Je…
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Mr. Speaker, it is conformity of thought. It is like my friend from Bowmanville—Oshawa North. There is either Liberal think or no think. Like I said, in the Soviet Union, the only religion allowed was communism, which is why the holding of a religious text would have been punishable by labour camp. The Bais Chaya Mushka school for girls in my riding has been shot at three times. When we first came…
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Mr. Speaker, I hear my friend, the Bloc member, and I enjoy working with him at committee. I would like to understand if he has any knowledge of what is actually happening at the justice committee. He just referred to the Bloc having an agreement in the past tense. The meeting was cancelled last Tuesday and tonight's meeting has been cancelled. We have major pieces of legislation between us, but i…
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Mr. Speaker, I represent one of the largest Jewish communities in the country, and I will not take any lessons from the Liberals on safeguarding the Jewish community. I am also tired of the other side accusing the Conservatives of slowing this down. I would like to ask the member a very clear question. Last Tuesday, the justice committee was ready to sit and listen with respect to bail or to Bill …
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Mr. Speaker, what are the Liberals doing? To those at home who still do not understand what is happening vis-à-vis this bill, let me provide them with a quick summary. It is going to be a professional summary. The first thing the Liberals are doing is lowering the threshold for the definition of hatred. The Supreme Court has articulated the test for hatred in a case called Keegstra, 35 years ago. …
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Mr. Speaker, I do not mind their heckles. I welcome their heckles. The Liberals did not have the courage to show up at the justice committee today. They cancelled the committee that was to consider the bill clause by clause. They are afraid because they know the bill is going nowhere and that it is a terrible bill. Therefore, we should be travelling across the country, from coast to coast to coast…
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Mr. Speaker, for my friend from the Bloc, the defence is this: if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text; The section itself arises out of section 2 of the charter. It is not only an extension of it; it is effectively part and parcel of it. I have not seen a situation where …
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Mr. Speaker, over 35,000 families fled the GTA last year because they could not afford a home. CTV News followed a Toronto woman who could not buy a house with a $200,000 income. The Liberals pretend that the impact of the industrial carbon tax on a new house is imaginary, but clearly the industrial carbon tax increases the cost of cement, the cost of steel and the cost of all materials that go in…
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Mr. Speaker, “Who cares?” answered the Prime Minister, when asked about contact with the U.S. President on a trade deal. Everyday Canadians care, everyday Canadians who are going broke or who are losing their jobs because of this trade uncertainty. In my city of Toronto, investment, commerce and real estate have been frozen. Only 25 new condos were sold last month in a city of three million. Other…
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Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the member with respect to housing and the housing plan the Liberals put forward, so I have a few very specific questions for him. First, why did the Prime Minister have to create a whole new office, the Build Canada Homes agency, instead of running this program from the Ministry of Housing? Second, the total budget for this program is apparently $13 billion, …
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-257, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (promotion of terrorist activity or group). Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a bill that would amend the Criminal Code. The bill would create a new criminal offence against the wilful promotion of terrorism, a terrorist group or terrorist activity, with a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. Canada already crim…
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Mr. Speaker, intifada is violent resistance. It must be criminal to call for intifada on Canada's streets. It must be criminal to celebrate Hamas monsters by glorifying their death. That is why we need a bill to amend the Criminal Code, to criminalize the promotion of terrorist groups or terrorist activity. Canada already criminalizes participation and aiding of terrorism, but there is no offence …
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Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the Liberals are trying to address problems they created, but they never address the actual problem. Instead, all they do with their proposed programs is create more bureaucracy. We can think about what they have done to date. They proposed to build more homes, but instead of doing that out of the Ministry of Housing, they created a new agency, Build Canada Homes. …
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud of my political career. I am proud of my career in the provincial legislature of Ontario. I am proud for standing up for millions of Canadians who did not have a voice, and I am proud of the Leader of the Opposition for welcoming me into this party and Parliament and also of the people of York Centre for bringing me back to represent them.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the member is saying. In 2008 and 2009, we had a global financial crisis that the former Conservative government handled with flying colours. That is what happened in 2008 and 2009. Just 10 years ago, Canada had the wealthiest middle class. This is according to The New York Times. Ten years ago the Liberals came into power, and now we have two million people at food…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Long Range Mountains. Everyone is depressed. Why? It is because everyone is broke. We are more broke than we think. Do others remember the old Scotiabank commercial, “You're richer than you think”? We are Canadians in the 11th year of a Liberal government who are more broke than we think. Two days ago, the government tabled a 400-page…
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Mr. Speaker, last year, we imported oil from Russia. We are importing oil from Kazakhstan and Venezuela. We have some of the highest proven oil reserves in the world. We should be the wealthiest country in the world instead of relying on other countries for energy.
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Madam Speaker, I am mindful of the member's concern. We need to remember why we are here. We are here because the Liberal government finally woke up to the fact that bail needs to be fixed. One of the challenges we have is the surety regime. I am here to say that we can look at how other jurisdictions address this, but if a surety is going to be meaningless, if there is no risk of forfeiting that …
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Madam Speaker, this week, I heard the OPP commissioner, Thomas Carrique, agree with me that there are at least four, five or six serious concerns, which I have articulated today, with this bill. I respect the member opposite. I commit to working with him in good faith in trying to fix this bill at committee.
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Madam Speaker, I do not propose to politicize this issue. I just want to speak about the shortcomings of the bill and ask the secretary of state specifically why there is an absence of any stiffer sentences for young offenders. Why is the bill silent on parole? Why is the bill silent on cash bail, something that police associations across the country are talking about? Most importantly, I am very …
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Madam Speaker, finally, after years of us pleading with the Liberal government, the Liberals are trying to do something about bail and sentencing in Canada. If the Liberals admit there is a problem, we know there is a problem. The problem is crime and chaos on our streets. Violent criminals, gang violence, guns and auto thefts are terrorizing Canadians. Like many Torontonians, I get up in the morn…
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Madam Speaker, I had my first legal gig as a young law student at the community legal clinic at the law school in London. I dealt with a lot of young offenders. This is what I really want to stress: We have to delineate, or separate, those who got into the system because of a good-faith error, such as those who broke a vending machine or those who stole their parents' car on the day of their prom.…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member does not understand how bad it is out there. More than a quarter of Canadians cannot afford to eat, and now the Prime Minister is telling a roomful of students they will have to sacrifice even more. Young people have sacrificed enough; they have already sacrificed home ownership, and yesterday CTV reported that young Canadians cannot even land a minimum-wage job. Wi…
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Mr. Speaker, this year the Liberal government will spend $1 billion on interest every week, and while the Prime Minister is planning a record-breaking deficit, his accounting gimmick may put Canada's credit at risk. Last week the Prime Minister told students they will have to sacrifice even more. Canadians should not be made to sacrifice. After a decade of Liberal failure, they have sacrificed eno…
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Mr. Speaker, she should tell that to the 15% of young people in Toronto who cannot find a job. With $54 billion of net investment fleeing Canada, the Prime Minister is leaving Canada's automotive workers destitute. With job losses at GM and Stellantis, we now learn that auto tariffs are here to stay. Christmas is just around the corner, but thousands of Ontario's auto workers are on the chopping b…
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Mr. Speaker, just before the Prime Minister left Brookfield, he made sure that Brookfield's headquarters left for the United States. The Prime Minister loves creating jobs in the United States. That is why youth unemployment rose in September to 14.7%. In Ontario alone, 17,000 young people lost their jobs. In fact, the youth employment rate is sitting at a level not seen since 1999, with a brief e…
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Mr. Speaker, something I took very much to heart from the hon. member's comments is the Liberal government's failure with regard to the justice system, specifically on bail and sentencing reform. At the justice committee, we did a bit of math. We noticed that, in the last 557 days, the only two pieces of justice legislation the government brought forward have been the online harms act and Bill C-9…
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Mr. Speaker, we will remember the babies sliced, the women raped and the fathers beheaded. It has been two years since October 7. We keep saying “never again”, but it happened again. I do not want the Liberals doing the Jewish community any favours. They rewarded the worst possible act of terror with a terrorist state, for votes. They are morally bankrupt. However, it gets worse. Today, at the Uni…
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Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to clarify. There is no question that our capable and professional Crowns are able to intervene in private prosecutions and stay or withdraw the charges. The problem is that, at times, a Crown may take a non-position. However, even if it would be appropriate to stay or withdraw, and the Crown did take that position and charges were stayed or withdrawn, an informant wou…
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Mr. Speaker, I have very serious concerns about the legislation in its current form. We see a serious assault on free speech by virtue of the dilution of the definition of “hatred” and by allowing private prosecutions for hate charges to proceed without Attorney General consent. I am very concerned about essentially non-criminal statutes with prescribed offences being coupled with an allegation of…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals rewarded terror. Hamas started the awful war. It sliced babies, raped women and killed 1,200 people. It kidnapped over 250 people, and still holds 48 hostages. Listen to Hamas; it says that state recognition is a fruit of October 7, and they vow to repeat it again and again. The Liberals reward the barbarism by recognizing Hamastan without preconditions, not even a return…
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Madam Speaker, to follow up on the concern articulated by the shadow minister, it was open for the government to lean on the subsequent definition in Whatcott, where the Supreme Court defined “hatred”. I cannot help but notice that the words “extreme manifestations” are missing from the proposed definition in Bill C-9. To add to that, I have a further concern that I hope the Attorney General can a…
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Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for my friend. First, why does the government appear to be diluting the definition of “hatred”? The language the Supreme Court articulated, language that we have been relying on for 35 years, includes the words “extreme manifestations” before the words “detestation and vilification”. Why have these been dropped from the definition of “hatred”, thereby diluting the…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. Would anyone like to come visit the intersection of Sheppard and Bathurst in North York on a Sunday afternoon? Every Sunday, a group of thugs shows up at Sheppard and Bathurst in my riding. Most of the thugs cover their faces, and they chant “intifada”, a violent resistance, in protest of a peaceful rally in one of Canad…
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Mr. Speaker, since Friday, I have been in regular communication with various Jewish community groups, and essentially all of them have expressed one reservation or another about some of the contents of this bill, which I articulated earlier. The private prosecution concern is top of mind. One of the leading organizations, in fact, is generally concerned with respect to the removal of the AG's cons…
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