Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, these out-of-touch Liberals have spent years allowing repeat offenders to cycle through our justice system while law-abiding Canadians pay the price. Violent offenders, burglars and car thieves deserve real consequences, not endless bail, house arrest, and catch-and-release. Canadians are tired of watching the same criminals return to the streets again and again. When will the Liberals stop siding with repeat offenders and start standing with the Canadians who obey the law?

Mr. Speaker, in late medieval Europe, the church sold something called indulgences. Indulgences were cash donations that would allegedly result in a person's temporal sin being removed or mitigated if they contributed money to the church. It was a highly innovative business plan that succeeded wildly until it backfired into 200 years of Reformation. The Liberals have rediscovered a remarkable new form of indulgences, and they call it standing up for Canadians. First, they demand cash and tell us it will help save the planet. Second, they make it a tax so people have no choice. Then, when Conservatives try to stop them, they call us regressive for supposedly not wanting to save the planet. Finally, they bow to reality and common sense, adopt half of the Conservative ideas and expect kudos because no longer doing what they did in the first place is such a great idea that they expect thanks from Canadians. They did it first with the carbon tax. First, they taxed energy. Then, when Canadians complained that making energy more expensive was making everything else more expensive, they told them it would clean the air. When Canadians finally got angry enough, the Liberals stopped collecting part of the tax and held a press conference to announce that they had rescued Canadians from the problem they created in the first place. Now they are doing it with the excise tax, the tax they installed over 50 years ago that they have only now discovered is not really necessary after all, until next year, that is, and then apparently the Liberals need half of it back. This doublespeak and magical thinking has become a hallmark of the last decade of Liberal government. Instead of looking toward the good of Canadians, it looks toward the health of the government coffers, already shrunk to nothing under the weight of its wild and irresponsible spending. Should we not instead be asking how this tax benefits the people of this country, rather than how it helps the Liberal government and Brookfield? Is the federal fuel excise tax a good tax or a bad tax for Canadians? Is it helping us or hurting our small and large businesses and our productivity as a nation? Is it helping our families? Do our jobs feel safer because of the excise tax? Are our streets cleaner? Are we more secure as a nation? Are those not the kinds of questions we should be asking about the excise tax? Ottawa's message now seems to be that the tax is necessary until it is not. Removing it is irresponsible until the Liberals do it, and once they do it, we need to applaud them for protecting us from it. It is a little like setting somebody's pants on fire, handing them a bucket of water and expecting a thank-you note. There are only so many things to say about this bill. I am going to vote for it not because it is a wonderful bill but because it is the best we are going to get from this gang. I am going to talk about something else instead. The Prime Minister spoke to the European Parliament and got a standing ovation. The president of the European Union says she wants Canada to become the EU's first-ever associate member. There is even a line going around about how it would be lovely if Canada became the 28th state of the European Union instead of the 51st state of the United States. Those are lovely words, and they pair well with the Prime Minister's tendency to swan about in European sitting rooms, sipping wine and eating caviar, or whatever else it is that drives the bills to Canadian taxpayers into the stratosphere. I have no doubt that the EU would love to get its hands on Canadian natural resources, but let us look at the reality. In 2008, the European economy and the American economy were roughly the same size. Today the American economy is roughly 50% larger. In 18 years, one of them grew like a teenager and the other one grew like a lump of coal. Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, a man of the same political convictions as the Liberals, wrote a report for the EU. His findings were that in the last 50 years, Europe had not created a single company from scratch worth more than 100 billion euros, not one. In the same 50 years, the Americans created six companies worth more than $1 trillion. Europe's response to the Draghi report was, naturally, to hold a summit about the Draghi report. As for red tape, members have probably heard about the bendy cucumber regulation. Europe even had rules on how curved a cucumber could be. It repealed them in 2009, and to this day, that is the fastest decision the EU has ever made. It tried to ban refillable olive oil bowls in restaurants. It even gave us the cookie banner, that little thing that comes up asking us to accept all or not. It is the single greatest destruction of human productivity since Solitaire came pre-installed on Windows. Here is my favourite: our free trade deal with Europe, or CETA, which we started negotiating in 2009 and signed in 2016. Now it is 2026, and it is still only provisionally in force because member states have not ratified all of it. The French Senate actually voted it down two years ago. It has been 17 years. My daughter went from kindergarten to a university degree in the time it took Europe to decide whether it likes Canadian beef. Now we are told that the EU is going to be our new security partner too. This was clearly done without anyone thinking to ask the Canadian Armed Forces. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe announced strategic autonomy: no more dependence on America. Then, and this number comes straight from the European Defence Agency, nearly 80% of what the European government bought for its militaries came from outside the EU, and about 60% came from the United States. Almost 100% of the discourse the EU spends on strategic subjects is spent pleading with the U.S. to send more of it. Apparently, strategic autonomy is when someone declares independence from a country and then sends their credit card to the folks they just declared independence from. Europe has 27 armies, one currency and no phone number. Henry Kissinger reportedly asked 50 years ago, “Who do I call if I want to talk to Europe?” It has since answered him: Call a switchboard, press “4” for defence, and be placed in a queue that is currently working on the 60-year-old question of Cyprus. As well, there is a hot war in Europe, the biggest since World War II. It threatens to spread into a third general European war that will almost certainly become a conflagration on a scale we have never seen before. We should help the west in every way we can, but the Liberals want to make us political and economic partners with the combatants too. Again, that will be good for Europe and wonderful for Brookfield, but is it good for Canadians? Here is Canada's situation in plain numbers. About three-quarters of everything we export goes to the United States. The EU, with a CETA deal we spent 17 years on, takes under 10%. Roughly $3.5 billion in goods crosses the American border every day. If we replaced the U.S. with the EU, we would need to sell Europe eight times more than we currently do, and we would have to do it by sailing past the one country that is actually next door. The Americans are now the world's largest oil producer and largest natural gas exporter. Europe pays two to three times the American price for industrial electricity, and having shut its nuclear plants, it is now heating itself by burning press releases about hydrogen. One does not leave a booming neighbour for an anxious war-torn continent because the neighbour is going to be rude for the next two years. I will take a rude customer who buys 75% of my product over a polite one who buys 8% and needs a subcommittee to even approve the invoice. Here is the part the Prime Minister's speech writers skip. Donald Trump leaves office on January 20, 2029. That is a hard date. It is a constitutional date less than two and a half years from tonight. Therefore, Canada has two good options. Option one is to negotiate with Trump now. He likes deals. It is the one thing everyone agrees he likes, and we have leverage. He needs our potash, our oil, our uranium, our electricity and the aluminum in every beer can from Buffalo to Bakersfield. Option two is to hold our ground, protect our industries, not give away anything permanent and wait 28 months. That is it. That is less time than it took Europe to schedule a second reading of our trade deal. Either way, the worst option is option three, which is to rebuild our entire economy around a partner engaged in a war and whose greatest strategic achievement of the decade is creating a unified phone charger, which, I will grant, is a real achievement. I have one, and it is excellent, but it is not a foreign policy. My message to the Prime Minister, delivered with all the affection of a rural Conservative to a central banker, is this. The Europeans gave him a standing ovation. He can enjoy it. He can frame it. They are very good at applauding. They have had 70 years of practice in applauding historic steps by others. When the applause stops, our biggest customer is still just a walk across the border, still growing, still the largest economy on earth and in 28 months, under new management. Mr. Carney, if you want to move to Europe, enjoy the wine and caviar, but please do not take us with you because the rest of us cannot afford it. Fix the—

Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister's intent all along was to move toward the EU and join it as much as possible. He has been presented a perfect opportunity with all the tantrums going on south of the border. The meeting with the Chinese is quite likely another red flag, a gratuitous red flag, to throw in front of Mr. Trump, who will hit the ceiling as usual, further making it difficult for the next American administration to repair the damage that he has done. Mr. Carney is making it almost impossible for the next administration—

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the poison pill. First of all, mandatory sentences, obviously, as my other colleague pointed out much earlier, do in fact stop crime because it is very hard to commit a crime when in jail. As far as the poison pill goes, when I raised my kids and told them to clean their rooms, I did not say at the end of it, “Unless you don't feel like it.” This, I believe, is what is happening with this bill: If we do not feel like it, we do not have to obey the law. I would like my colleague to expand on that, if she would.

Mr. Speaker, with regard to Norway's sovereign wealth fund, I decided to do the same thing as the Prime Minister, because he is a wise person. I decided that what I would do is take the bulk of the money out of my credit card, put it in my savings account and call it “Scott's retirement fund”. Then I went to my accountant, who said that I would never retire. I was wondering if the member could explain to me why that is.

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the sovereign wealth fund, I recently asked my colleague the same question. The other day, my neighbour showed me his bank account, and it was enormous. I thought, “This is a secret”, so I maxed out my credit cards and put the money in my savings account. For some reason, when I went to my accountant, he said I will never retire. I am wondering if the member can explain to me the difference between my neighbour's bank account, in which he saved money over time, and my savings account that I just put money into. Can you explain the difference between those two?

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has put a new face on what happened. In fact, the government has been trolling our benches, and some did slither over. The House is not reflective of Canadians' wishes. About 93% of the vote goes to the party now, by custom, and about 7% goes to the individual. By law, yes, we are elected as individuals. The Liberal Party's explanation is that it is “a big tent”, but I would say it is more like a circus tent. I wonder if the member agrees with the views of his party's newest acquisition on vaccines and the convoy.

Mr. Speaker, Winston Churchill famously remarked that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. The parliamentary system is not a perfect system. It is only as good as the actors in it. When 93% of the electorate votes for the party and not for the candidate, and only 7% vote for the candidate, that is a distortion of democracy in the way parliamentary democracy is set up. The member mentioned reinstating the $1,000, because the same problem applies to the people in the long ballot. They are doing this. I was wondering if the member could talk about the $1,000 reinstatement—

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary democracy is a loose framework and is only as good as the actors in it. If the actors use good ethics, then it works well. For example, when 93% of the electorate votes for the party customarily rather than for the candidate and when a floor crossing happens in a case like that, we can see intent of parliamentary democracy. I wonder if my colleague could expand on whether she considers the long ballot to be similarly detrimental to democracy.

Mr. Speaker, first, I would suggest that my colleagues not use “chain of command” until they understand what it means. People are removed from the chain of command today and put into the JAG system, or at least they were prior to this. I want to quote Dr. Karen Breeck, who is a former officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and is also a medical doctor. She testified that the military of 2025 has changed. She said: Today the chain of command has extensive awareness and training. The sexual misconduct support and resource centre is fully operational. Victims' rights legislation is in force. Independent legal and victim supports exist.... What evidence still shows that [the civilian system] remains the best way forward? I wonder if my colleague could comment on one of the victims who said much the same thing as—

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-11, when it first came to the national defence committee, was meant to transfer sexual assault cases from the military to the civilian justice system. It was not supposed to be a controversial bill. It arose because of the need to address sexual assault in the military. All of us in the House have, I believe, deep down, the best interests of Canadians at heart. As a former officer, the bill matters to me. All of us in the room value the strength and dedication of our troops, but not one of us wants to see greater physical strength turned against our own. I have another personal reason for taking the bill seriously. I have a daughter who recently earned a university degree and a civilian pilot's license. She has recently applied to the Canadian Armed Forces to fly as a pilot in defence of our country. Those of us in the House who are fathers of daughters will understand all too well the deep rage that wells up at the mere thought of someone doing harm to our daughters. I want to assure the House that I take the bill very seriously indeed, and that I really mean what I am about to say. Those of us who have sons should be aware that, because of the higher number of men serving, 40% of sexual assault cases involve male victims. Like all of us, I had heard over the years horror stories involving sexual predation in the military, and I assumed, after having listened to the media, that this bill would be a sort of rubber stamp because everyone would want it. I assumed that victims of sexual predation in the military would want to stay far away from anybody in uniform. I assumed the victims would believe they would get a better shake in an inherently less structured and more liberal civilian justice system. I thought the victims would associate the military with the crime and understandably believe that, if their case were to be tried in the military, somehow the chain of command could influence the outcome, even though it has nothing to do with actual chain of command. The Liberals told us that the victims of criminal sexual assault would be too traumatized to choose between a civilian investigation and a military investigation. It was best, according to the Liberals, if the state chose for them. This sounded a little bit like the old TV show Father Knows Best. When we first started this investigation, I had no reason to believe that the victims would want anything to do with the military system, so I let it go. I think there are all sorts of other problems with the bill that we could fix with other amendments, and I am sure my colleagues will address those, but I want to talk specifically about the importance of choice. Like I said, I had assumed that no one would object to moving the crime into the civilian system. I was shocked. I was surprised at the responses of the academics, the military and the civilian police, and I was truly shocked at the response of the victims. We talked to academics. One professor pointed out that the conviction rate for sexual offences was not very high in the military justice system. Another academic, former JAG officer Rory Fowler, responded that, if the object were a high rate of conviction, perhaps Canada should emulate the North Korean justice system. He said that, quite likely, the reason for a low rate of conviction was an excellent defence team available in the military and referenced a recent high-profile case in which a JAG lawyer, Major Francesca Ferguson, supplied quality defence for a private who was falsely accused, right up to the Supreme Court. Rory Fowler argued that the culture in the military has changed radically over the years. Back in the 1990s and earlier in this century, high-profile cases of sexual predation drew national attention to a real problem with sexual assault and the way it was handled in the military justice system. As a result, the government reacted and ordered high-level independent reviews of the military's handling of sexual assault in the military. The Deschamps report came out 11 years ago and the Fish and Arbour reports followed it. They all had ideas for change. The Arbour report had 48 recommendations, including steering victims toward the civilian justice system. The problems in the military had not just kicked off a few reports, like most government studies do. They also kicked off a significant institutional culture change within the military. The senior leaders in the CAF did not just treat the Arbour and Fish reports as annoyances that had to be suffered through; they treated them as a new mission. By late last year, the CAF had actioned all 48 of the Arbour report recommendations and were still actively engaged in culture change. Culture change is much faster in a top-down chain of command. When the organization is built around instant obedience, instant cultural change can happen very quickly when it comes from the top in a sincere effort. Next, we listened to the defence and prosecution teams from the military. They argued that the studies the bill was responding to were out of date or no longer applied to current military culture. They said that they had both the know-how and the professionalism to handle the job. In fact, they said they were surprised to learn that the Liberals intended to remove jurisdiction because the CAF had made sweeping changes and spent enormous effort reforming the system. They also said the culture of the CAF had changed. We have two bodies of experts who are saying that the culture has changed. Then we listened to the civilian police who told us that, although they had the capability, they no longer had the capacity to absorb yet more work, especially in locations with military bases close by. One such police chief told us that the witnesses might be scattered in redeployments to other jurisdictions in Canada or internationally. She said a case in those circumstances would be almost impossible for her department to investigate. Then we listened to the victims of sexual assault in the military. These brave soldiers rose above the crimes that were done to them and were brave enough to testify in front of the nation in hopes that what had happened to them would not happen to others. Their testimony shocked me. These are the very people I thought would have the strongest desire to stay out of the military system, but the vast majority insisted that they wanted a choice. For various reasons, they wanted a choice. After numerous victims spoke, it became obvious that the victims wanted choice, so we co-operated with the Bloc member on the committee to amend an outdated Liberal motion into one that every stakeholder, from victim to investigator, wanted. Our amendments gave the victims choice. Dr. Karen Breeck, a former medical officer in the CAF and a victim of sexual assault, put it to us succinctly: First, the military of 2025 [has changed]. Today the chain of command has extensive awareness and training. The sexual misconduct support and resource centre is fully operational. Victims' rights legislation is in force. Independent legal and victim supports exist. What evidence still shows that [the civilian system] remains the best way forward? So far so good, but late Friday afternoon, the Minister of National Defence tabled Bill C-11 at report stage. Instead of our amended bill, and in defiance of civilian lawyers, military lawyers, civilian police, military police and even the victims themselves, what came into the House had been stripped of all our amendments. Why? It is because the artificial Liberal majority can now just stiff our soldiers and download the problem onto lower levels of government. The Liberals are not doing it to help our soldiers. They are doing it to push the problem off the federal plate, and then they will just not have to worry about it anymore. I appeal to my fellow veterans and to the MPs on the other side of the aisle to listen carefully to what one of our own veterans had to say about this. The veteran said that this bill, if it were stripped of all the amendments that were asked for by victims, cannot claim to be putting people first and that the bill, without the amendments, is not about making life easier for uniformed members but about making life easier for politicians. That is a very different thing and it is, frankly, dishonourable.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have put to us that we should remove choice because victims are going to be too traumatized after an assault to actually make a choice. This reminds me of the 19th-century idea that women became hysterical and really had to be directed and taught by men, because when they became hysterical, they were not capable of making good choices. I find that this is paternalistic and insulting to the women who are victims. Frankly, the Liberals are simply throwing out the Arbour report as if it concretizes their point, but it does not. It tends to push people toward the civilian system, but it does not make it mandatory.

Mr. Speaker, this bill, in its original intent, and that is the reason the amendments were stripped off, is simply to help the government, because the government has to deal with these problems when they arise. If the Liberals get it off their plate and dump it into the municipal police force or into the civilian provincial courts, they will not have to deal with it anymore and it will now be somebody else's problem. I just do not see how the Liberals can keep a straight face and keep saying “Arbour” over and over again as if it means something. It does not. The victims want choice.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Davenport mentioned that this is a better bill than before. In fact, this is the third attempt the Liberals have made to introduce a bill that is similar to this, each one a little less intrusive than the last one. My concern, if we let the bill go to committee, is around whether the Liberals would actually respect the amendments we make in it, because I have just come out of a committee with Bill C-11 where we had made some very important amendments to the bill, and on Friday the Liberal Minister of National Defence simply attempted to strip all the amendments away. I wonder if the Liberals intend to actually respect the amendments we make in committee.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Riding Mountain. I originally hail from Manitoba as well. One thing I can say about it is it is cold and flat and has many mosquitoes. I love it too. We live in a technological society that is so advanced most of us here do not understand some of the capabilities that are out there, and I do not pretend to know what technologies are employed by criminals around here. On the one hand, we have pure anarchy when we address governance and on the other, we have severe authoritarianism. As my colleague mentioned, there have been several bills and several attempts to do this. I wonder if he thinks this bill comes closest to striking a proper balance between severe authoritarianism on the one hand and pure anarchy on the other.

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said, quite rightly, that 15 years ago we did not have this problem, and that is absolutely true. Technology has advanced since then. He also said that his new government is laser-focused on crime. I would like to point out that the government is not a new government. It is 11 years old. While technology has advanced, criminality has galloped forward. I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary would like to explain why, in 11 years, when technology has advanced at a certain pace, crime has galloped ahead at a much faster pace.

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22 is like so many other bills that show good promise and strong potential to be shaped into good policy in committee. It is right here in second reading that the problems with Bill C-22 are initially identified, and that is what my colleagues on this side of the chamber have been doing: probing, asking questions and identifying weak spots that could be eliminated or good points that could be strengthened. If after this debate the House agrees, Bill C-22 would go to committee stage where it would be debate and have amendments introduced, and then the amendments would be voted on. Committees are an exceptional tool in which all parties can take a mediocre bill and shape it into good policy, or they can take a good bill and make it even better. We conduct witness interviews, and we incorporate the concerns of everyone until we have a bill that works for all parties, and by extension, for all Canadians. Unfortunately, this is what the Liberals have recently taken to calling obstruction, but it is not. This is how our Canadian parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. I want to address this manufactured Liberal claim of obstruction, because with the compliant media out there, if I do not tell Canadians in the House, they are not going to find out. Contrary to the narrative of obstruction the Liberals are trying to create, we Conservatives truly did hope that the Prime Minister would steal another of our platform promises and build the so-called energy corridor he promised. We believed him when he said he would make Canada an energy superpower. We hoped he would move quickly and decisively to get our clean Canadian energy to an energy-starved world. That is why we Conservatives voted for Bill C-5 early in the Prime Minister's tenure, and with it gave him more power than any previous prime minister has ever had to achieve those goals. The Prime Minister has more jurisdictional power than Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had when he built thousands of miles of continental railway through some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable. The Prime Minister has technologies that would leave Macdonald in shock. We can do in a day what it took a year to do in Macdonald's day. The Prime Minister can look down in real time from 100 kilometres above and see right into the earth with lidar. He can view the route. He can model a pipeline. He can even watch it in real time as it is built from the comfort of his airplane seat. He could have a pipeline built in two years if he wanted to, yet a year after Bill C-5, he does not even have a pipeline started. He does not have a plan to build one. He does not have a route, not even a gleam in a surveyor's eye. What would a rational person think about this? The Prime Minister promised grand projects of great national importance. He promised a deal with the Americans by this time last year. He promised to move at speeds not seen in generations to unleash our Canadian economy. However, he has not landed in Canada long enough to move anything. Instead of an energy corridor, we have silence. Instead of housing, we have an enormously expensive bureaucracy and empty props that are taken down as soon as the photo op is over. Instead of a continental railway from coast to coast, we have a $90-billion boondoggle between two eastern cities that will likely never get built, and even that is mired in scandal and controversy before the land snatch even begins. Unfortunately, our Prime Minister is usually absent from Ottawa, flitting about the world here and there in no particular direction, at enormous taxpayer expense and with a catering budget that would make Emperor Nero blush, all apparently to avoid hard questions in question period, since nothing much has been produced except an undergrad international relations term paper at Davos. The reason I bring this up is that there is a problem, and I am troubled by it. If we send Bill C-22 to committee by voting for the legislation, how can we be confident the Liberals will respect the committee process and not try to do an end run around Canadians? Can we be sure that our efforts in committee will be respected by the Liberals? What is supposed to happen is all-party input, all-party witnesses, all-party debate and amendments put forward and voted on, and ultimately the result is a bill modified by the people of Canada through the process of representative democracy. That is what is supposed to happen. It is not what is actually happening, and I want to talk for a minute about what is happening. I want to talk about a troubling tactic the Liberals are using to subvert that process. I am fearful that what happened to Bill C-11 is going to happen to Bill C-22. I am a member of the national defence committee. We recently studied Bill C-11, a bill whose central purpose is to transfer sexual assault cases from the military to the civilian justice system. I assumed, probably like most of us here, that after listening to the horror stories in the media, this would be a rubber stamp, and we would simply transfer the authority to the civilian system. However, all of us at committee were surprised. We listened to the defence and the prosecution teams from the military argue that the studies the bill was responding to were a decade old and no longer applied to the current military culture. They argued that they had both the capability and the capacity to address the cases, and that the culture within the CAF had radically changed in those 10 years. We listened to the civilian police, who told us that, although they had the capability, they no longer had the capacity to absorb yet more work, especially in locations with military bases close by. Then we listened to victim after victim of sexual assault in the military. It was really the victims who surprised me and I think most of us at committee, the people I thought would have the strongest desire to move out of the military justice system. I thought perhaps one or two might say they would like to have a choice, but it turned out that just about every single witness we talked to wanted a choice between the military justice system and the civilian system. After numerous victims spoke, it became obvious that the bill needed to be modified, so, with the support of the Bloc member on the committee, we co-operated to amend an outdated Liberal motion into one that every stakeholder, from victim to investigator, wanted. We gave the victims a choice. So far, so good. We took a bill that was okay and made it into a good bill. Late this Friday afternoon, the Minister of National Defence, in defiance of civilian and military lawyers, civilian and military police, and even the victims themselves, came into the House and tabled Bill C-11 at report stage. He is trying to strip our amendments from the bill. Why are the Liberals doing this? We had a decent bill that we turned into a much better bill. There seems to be no explanation for it at all. Why would the Liberals defy both the military and civilian justice systems and the victims? There is a reason. The Prime Minister has not, will not and cannot fulfill his campaign promises. The cracks in our economy have become chasms, and he needs an election before Canadians feel the full brunt of his purposeful inaction. He knows Canadians are going to start to notice the growing divide between these grandiose announcements and the cold, grey reality of their pocketbooks, so he needs a majority government, and fast. He trolled the opposition benches and, yes, sure enough, an artificial majority did manage to slither across the aisle, but the Prime Minister is afraid that his majority will unravel, since he now has both far right and far left members in his caucus. He has called this a big tent, but it has become more like a circus tent, so he needs an election. However, the Prime Minister does not want to be blamed for calling an election, so the Liberals are banging on about obstruction to make it look like the normal processes of Parliament are somehow wrong. If he employs tactics like this now that he has a majority government, he knows it is to create the kinds of division within Parliament that he can point to and claim are obstruction. Bill C-22 may have the potential to be a good bill, if it makes it past second reading and goes to committee. My fear is that it will meet the fate of Bill C-11, be subjected to the scrutiny of experts, be modified into a much clearer, better bill, and then have all the positive changes stripped out once it hits report stage. This is obstruction, to be sure, but not by Conservatives. Conservatives are doing what we are supposed to be doing for the benefit of Canadians. The Prime Minister and the Liberal Party, on the other hand, are acting on behalf of the Liberal Party. They are attempting to fabricate another election that no one wants by trying to make it look like it is not their fault. This is not order and good government, but devious arrogance by the Liberals. Canadians had better brace themselves.

Mr. Speaker, there was not a question there. There was a statement, so I am going to make a statement. Potentialities are not the same thing as actualities. We have MOUs worth whatever amount of money. What we actually have is very little. I could talk about the great mineral exploration we are going to be doing on Saturn, but that does not mean we are going to have it today, tomorrow or ever. I am just talking about it. That is my statement.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think we should trust the Liberals at all. We just heard that over 10 years, crime has galloped ahead, and it is being blamed on technology creep. Crime has galloped. Technology has moved. The reason for that is fairly obvious: The Liberals are now playing catch-up to a decade of ignoring crime and hoping that it would go away. Now they are dealing with the actuality. They are scrambling to do it and somehow yelling and screaming that they need to do it quickly.

Mr. Speaker, I see a great deal of potential in the bill. I have been talking to people overseas as well. There is absolutely no recourse in our laws, and I certainly think we need that, but we have to draw a balance between, on one hand, the anarchy of pure freedom, and on the other hand, really heavy-handed authoritarianism. I think the bill has the potential to hit the middle ground there, but it must go to committee and have all-party input. I hope that the Liberals abide by that, and I hope that they honour the process of Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, Liberal catch-and-release policies have actually caused this crime. Before Trudeau came along 10 years ago, we did not have a crime wave; now we do. We also did not have Bill C-22. The difference here is actually the catch-and-release problems, the catch-and-release policies we are suffering under. Would it not make more sense to stop shooting down Conservative bills, anti-crime bills, and leave the privacy of Canadians alone?

Mr. Speaker, the minister is telling us half the story about the pay raises. What he is forgetting is that overseas, reductions of over $1,500 a month are being taken back from living allowances. These are real families putting their lives on the line abroad who were given just six days' notice and are now scrambling to adjust. The Liberal government increases pay only to claw it back. The headlines all scream about increased military pay, but why are so many frontline soldiers deployed overseas actually being forced to take a pay cut?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Henry Ly for his leadership in the Father's Knowledge Circle, a weekly meeting run by the North Okanagan Friendship Center Society in Vernon, British Columbia. The circle creates a respectful, supportive space for fathers to come together and share knowledge and stories. Speaking at the knowledge circle took me back 20 years, to the day I suddenly found myself a single father with my three young kids, living in a motel room. Things worked out for me, but for far too many men the extra stress can be deadly. Single fatherhood is a growing demographic in our society, and the challenges and lack of support can be overwhelming. Nearly a million Canadian men suffer from major depression annually, and 75% of all suicides in Canada are men. Volunteer support programs like this save lives. Thanks to leaders like Henry Ly and programs like Father's Knowledge Circle, dads have a place to turn and a community that says to them that they are not alone.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I believe in a free, democratic Canada. I believe in a country where people can speak their minds, practise their faith and engage in open debate without fear of punishment from their government. That is why I am deeply concerned about Bill C-9. I recently held a town hall in my city, with the help of my colleague from Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. Usually, these town halls see maybe 50 or 100 people. That evening, over 600 people from my riding and others showed up. These are not fringe voices. Many were religious thought leaders from established Christian and other denominations, some were officials from other levels of government and all were thoughtful, engaged citizens deeply concerned about what they see as an assault on civil liberties. That level of concern should make all of us pause. This is not about defending hate. Hate should be condemned. Where it crosses into violence or incitement, we already have those laws, and we need to enforce them instead of making more of them. This bill would expand government power over speech, and whenever government takes more power in this area, we know it is not coming back. Intent matters, and I do not doubt for a second that the framers of this bill had good intentions. The original bill contained provisions that many of us would support, but at committee, the Liberal Party accepted a Bloc amendment to remove the religious exemption. That is a hard no from this side of the House, and I believe from many other Canadians. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not treat religion as an afterthought or something to be bargained away in committee. Freedom of religion is listed among our fundamental freedoms because that freedom to hold beliefs, to express them and to live them out is foundational to human dignity. For decades, Canadian law has reflected this through a religious exemption in hate speech provisions. That exemption ensures Canadians can cite scripture, preach, teach, debate and discuss matters of faith, even when those teachings are controversial, without fear of criminal prosecution. Bill C-9 would remove that protection. Religious expression is a charter-protected freedom. Let us think about what that means. Expressing a traditional religious teaching, something that has been part of faith for generations, could now be interpreted as criminal, depending on how someone else perceives it. The old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions is not just a saying. It is on full display here. The government may mean no harm and the next government may mean no harm, but we do not know the future and what future governments may plan. What we do know is that if Bill C-9 passes, future governments will have the tools they need to legally repress Canadians by simply redefining “hate” to mean whatever they say. That does not mean they necessarily will, but it was not that long ago that the Liberal government accused anti-government protesters of hate and invoked the Emergencies Act. It is not a long walk to imagine future misuse of that term. This brings us to another major issue: the definition of “hate” in this bill. The bill describes “hate” as detestation or vilification, stronger than dislike or disdain, but what does that actually mean? Who decides what qualifies as detestation? Who determines when strong disagreement becomes criminal speech? It is not voters or Parliament. It is unelected officials, police, prosecutors and courts making subjective judgments about tone, intent and interpretation. That should concern all of us, every single Canadian. Once the state begins policing subjective thresholds in speech, it creates uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to a chilling effect. People begin to self-censor. They avoid difficult conversations, they stay silent rather than risk investigation or complaint, and that silence weakens democracy. If the exemption is removed, many clergy, imams, rabbis, elders and faith leaders will feel compelled to self-censor, not because they promote hatred but because the line between controversial and criminal becomes very blurred. Think of everyday faith community life: sermons, youth programs, marriage preparation classes, theological debates and small group discussions. In all of these settings, people discuss difficult moral questions. Without the exemption, these conversations could be misinterpreted or taken out of context, leading to complaints or investigation. A law that intimidates people out of participating in their own faith tradition is not protecting freedom but chilling it. Another troubling aspect of this bill is how it would be enforced. It would rely heavily on a complaint-based system. That means investigations could be triggered not by clear violations, but by complaints, by perception. In today's world, especially online, context is easily lost and disagreement is constant. Do we really want a system where a social media post can lead to police knocking on our door? Do we want a country where people fear that what they said months ago in the heat of an argument could suddenly bring police to their door? I do not like the “frog in the pot” analogy because it tends to smack of conspiracy theory. This analogy, as we know, says that if we put a frog in a pot of cold water and turn on the heat the frog will not notice the water getting warmer until it is boiling and it is way too late. However, many Canadians feel that negative change is happening gradually, bit by bit. They see rising crime, economic strain and increasing government reach into everyday life. They see their firearms being confiscated and the Emergencies Act misused. They see bank accounts frozen and their jobs disappearing. If they manage to succeed, they are demonized and called greedy. Now they feel that their deepest beliefs may be taken away. Their concern is real and should not be simply dismissed. Perhaps the most serious issue is the precedent that it sets, that the state can determine which religious beliefs are acceptable and which are criminally suspect. A government should never be in the business of judging which scripture passages are allowed or which doctrines may be taught. I thought western society was over that in the 16th century. Once that door is reopened, it becomes easier for future governments to go further. Today's controversial belief may become tomorrow's punishable offence. It is one thing to uphold the separation of church and state, but it is another to allow the state to define “acceptable church”. We all want a country that is safe, respectable and just, but safety cannot come at the cost of freedom. The issue is not whether we oppose hate; we all do. Bill C-9 introduces ambiguity where we need clarity. It removes protections where we need safeguards. It shifts power away from Canadians toward institutions that are not directly accountable to them.

I think the Conservatives have been very clear about this. We are opposed to the removal of the religious exemption, which was never a campaign promise made by the Liberals at any point. At no point in the campaign were we told they were going to remove religious exemptions from Canadians. The laws already exist. I cannot think of an offence that this particular bill covers that is not already covered in the Criminal Code.

Mr. Speaker, I have been called a religious maniac and all the usual terms that come from across the floor many times, despite the fact that I think I have gone to church three or four times in the last 10 years and always on Christmas eve. I am not a religious maniac. I am very concerned about the curbs on free speech that the bill contains. It is crucial to democracy that we hear all opinions. We cannot form opinions without hearing all of those opinions. Sometimes they are controversial. Sometimes they are not controversial. Personally, I am against all forms of censorship, because I feel that society itself polices this very well. I find free speech to be an absolutely crucial element to democracy. We cannot have democracy unless we have a reasonable amount of free speech.

Mr. Speaker, we face a situation similar to the one we faced after the Second World War, with millions of people looking for homes. The solution then was quite different and quite a bit more effective. By 1947, Canada was building 80,000, 90,000 or as many as 100,000 homes per year. Not one Crown corporation was involved, though I should say there was only one, CMHC, and that was explicitly for veterans. How was it done? The private sector did it by responding to demand at the time, and the government helped by getting out of the way. I wonder if the member could explain to the Liberals how that possibly happened without a giant bureaucracy to do it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who would like to see Bill C-9 withdrawn. Given the atrocious record of this Liberal government in overstepping its bounds, given the Emergency Act and freezing bank accounts, these Canadians are asking what exactly is preventing this government from expanding its powers under the bill, just to squash dissent. Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the Liberal government to withdraw Bill C-9.

Mr. Speaker, given the Liberal track record of flagrantly misusing government power, and I cite the misuse of the Emergencies Act, the freezing of citizen bank accounts, the intrusion on provincial jurisdiction numerous times, the arbitrary firearm confiscation by executive order and the elements of the Impact Assessment Act that were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, if the government can punish speech it considers hateful now, what is stopping it from silencing any dissent tomorrow? Furthermore, if the government can do that, what about future governments? Are they going to be able to silence dissent simply by ruling it hateful?

Madam Speaker, recently a Canadian journalist was fined three-quarters of a million dollars for observing that there are only two genders. The reason I mention this is that it is an example of how well-meant but subjective ideas can slide sideways into something that is completely against free speech. Could my colleague elaborate on why it is so important that any changes to the system fully respect the freedoms guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly the freedom of religion, and what safeguards she believes should be included to ensure those rights remain protected?

Mr. Speaker, not one person has emailed me or contacted me to ask me to support this bill. In fact, I have more Liberal members emailing me asking me to cross the floor than to support this bill. On the other hand, many have phoned me to oppose it. This does not sound like a bill anybody wants. The member across the aisle claims that this is all a plot by the Conservative Party to raise funds. He has a point, because it is a great fundraiser. I actually have people phoning me to say they will donate if I can stop this bill. If it is a fundraising tool, it is a pretty good one. I cannot stop it. Only the Liberals can stop it. The Liberals keep telling us this bill is harmless, yet they also claim it is crucial. I am wondering if the member could speak a little about this.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are trying to build a narrative that the Conservatives are obstructing them at every turn, despite the irony of actually doing this on a bill that we are presenting. I watched the Liberals obstruct it. Every single speech has the word “obstructionism” in it. I think even a new word was created today, “obstructionality”, by one of the speakers. I am wondering if the member, who talked about how terrible it is to work with the Conservatives, has any views on the actual bill.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are telling us that soaring grocery bills are caused by external factors, as if the cost of living is going up everywhere. It is not. We have higher food costs than almost anywhere else in the G7. Meanwhile, the government piles on carbon taxes and red tape that make it more expensive to grow, transport and sell food. Let us be honest. These handouts are an admission of failure and a small band-aid for large, self-inflicted wounds. When will the government stop blaming others and start scrapping the policies that are driving food inflation at the checkout?

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honour a family in my riding, in Lumby, British Columbia, who have endured a devastating loss. Tatjana Stefanski's loved ones carry not only the grief of her murder but also the painful knowledge that she died almost a full year before Bailey McCourt, and that nothing was done. Tatjana's husband, Jason, has worked tirelessly to bring attention to the need for real, meaningful change. Had he been heeded earlier, it is possible that Bailey might have been protected by a Tatjana's law. As a country, we must do better at protecting our vulnerable. We must enact common-sense rule of law and then enforce it. Tatjana's family has shown remarkable strength in unimaginable sorrow. We honour them and Bailey's family by turning their pain into real change that protects the vulnerable when it matters most. I thank the member from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola for bringing forward Bailey's law. Let us remember Tatjana as well.