Routine Proceedings
With regard to government funding for the management of aquatic invasive species: (a) what is the total amount of funding provided, broken down by year and by department or agency, between 2016 and 2022; (b) what is the total amount of funding budgeted for 2023, broken down by department or agency; (c) what is the breakdown of (a) by province or territory; (d) what are the details of all such fund…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned the data, which says that 70% of incarcerated people in provincial jails are in pretrial detention. They have not even been tried or convicted yet. He says that in his opinion, this counters the false narrative that the Canadian judicial system is lenient. However, maybe it is evidence that our courts and Crown prosecutors are under-resourced. Accused people h…
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Madam Speaker, Canada's criminal justice system is broken. Earlier this year, Leger, a polling company, polled Canadians on how they feel about public safety in this country. A significant majority, two-thirds, feel that they are now less safe than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, and most Canadians think that provincial and federal governments are doing a poor job of addressing crime and p…
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Madam Speaker, of course we all stand behind the age-old principle of the presumption of innocence and the right to reasonable bail. However, I am going to talk again about the 40 people who have been responsible for 6,000 interactions with the police, which is 150, on average, per person. At some point, perhaps they lose their right to be free on bail. The problem with Bill C-75 is that it gutted…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Madam Speaker, I give a big shout-out to the dedicated staff at Langley Memorial Hospital, who continue to deliver top-quality health care despite many challenges, such as a lack of personnel, space and resources. Despite our Prime Minister doubling the national debt, our hospitals and clinics are suffering more than ever. Conservatives will cut the waste, speed up approval for foreign-trained doc…
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Madam Speaker, I completely agree that the appointment of judges and people to the Canadian Judicial Council should be non-partisan. One of the problems we have seen is that it has become too partisan, so I completely support that.
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Madam Speaker, I have been asked this question a few times. We think these amendments make a lot of sense. They improve the legislation. That is exactly the way the process is supposed to work after the other place looks at it, and we think the House should accept those amendments.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her well-thought-out speech on this very important topic. One of the amendments the Senate is recommending is that there be one more appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal because the appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada is really a faint hope, likely never to happen. One of the reasons the minister has given for there not to be an appeal to the Federal Cour…
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Madam Speaker, I just want to set the record straight. The member for New Westminster—Burnaby was suggesting that my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands was spreading misinformation. I want to read into the record a quote from his colleague, the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, from December 9. This was after he came back from committee for third reading, when we voted unanimously. He said:…
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Madam Speaker, I am surprised and shocked that the debate on something as fundamental as the way this House operates is now going to be cut off. If we are going to have a hybrid Parliament, we need to come to an agreement on how it is going to operate. I recall many years ago that Chuck Cadman, a member of Parliament for Surrey, in my area, came here to vote even though he was undergoing cancer tr…
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague referenced Chuck Cadman, whom I knew. He was from my neck of the woods, and I know that when he was seriously ill, he came here to vote, but an alternative option would have been for the government side of the House to have paired somebody with him so that he would not have had to go through the trouble and pain and inconvenience of travelling. Is that a way forwar…
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Madam Speaker, we agree that it is high time that Bill C-9 becomes law. I am disappointed to hear that the government is rejecting an amendment put forward by the other place that we think is very important, and that is the right to appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal. Right now Bill C-9 says that there can be an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but that is really just a right to apply for…
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Madam Speaker, I would completely agree with that. As the Minister of Justice said, there was an appeal process built within the four walls of this legislation and likely that is the end. However, the experts who came to committee said there must be that one appeal into the court system that everybody recognizes as being fair, judicious and generally accepted by the Canadian public. I do not think…
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise here this evening to engage in the debate on Bill C-9, a bill to update the Canadian Judicial Council review process for judges’ conduct. The last time I spoke to Bill C-9 was in December 2022, when it was here for third reading. At that time, I used an example of a case that had gone through the court system. I think the Minister of Justice referred t…
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Madam Speaker, this is very important legislation, and it has been dragging on for a long time, so some of my colleagues want to speak to it. This is important legislation, and we have important things to say about it. As for the amendment I just put forward, it says to accept all the amendments put forward by the other place. We think they are important. One of them is actually our own, which the…
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Madam Speaker, I do not even know where to start with that.
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Madam Speaker, some of the Senate amendments we would be approving speak to exactly that, so we are on record as saying we want to go forward with that. As for there not being enough judges, that is another point I could have raised. I did not, but the shortage of judges is an issue Chief Justice Wagner raised as well in his press conference. There are 80 vacancies right now. At the justice commit…
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Madam Speaker, once again we have a colleague saying we are delaying things. We are not. On December 9, we passed this unanimously. It went to the other place, which came up with some amendments, and we think they make a lot of sense. One of the amendments is one of the amendments Conservative members put forward at the justice committee. If it had not been ruled out of scope, and if the Liberal m…
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Madam Speaker, I am not going to speculate on that. This has come back from the Senate with amendments, and we think they are good. One of them is an amendment that the Conservatives put forward initially, and the Senate picked up on that. I do not know why the member would impute bad motives to the senators. They are just trying to do their job to the best of their ability. After a reflection of …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, the budget adds more than $60 billion in new deficit spending, meaning more taxes, more inflation and higher interest rates. The former Liberal finance minister John Manley said that the government is stepping on the gas with new spending while the Bank of Canada is stepping on the brakes with higher interest rates. Ordinary Canadians are getting caught in the middle, like Jeff from L…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague's speech was well thought out. We are talking about economic sanctions against people who are essentially terrorists. The intention of that is to inflict financial and economic pain on them. If the whole western world comes together on that, it can have a very positive effect. Unfortunately, on the other hand, we are still doing business with Russia. The Prime Minister …
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois for a very impassioned speech. I want to refer to a comment made by the member for Winnipeg North. We have heard many times from the Liberal side that there has never been a government that has done more for housing than the current government. I have been around for a long time. I have never seen a crisis in housing like there is right now…
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Madam Speaker, I am presenting a petition signed by a number of Canadian citizens, including those in my riding. They call on the Government of Canada to publicly and unequivocally support a private member's bill, Bill C-314. This bill is sponsored by my colleague from Abbotsford; it would clarify that MAID, medical assistance in dying, should not be available to those whose only underlying health…
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Mr. Speaker, one of the objectives that the Minister of Transport gave in his introductory speech on Bill C-33 was to combat inflation caused by supply chain disruptions, yet it seems to do very little of that. I was at a round table discussion with marine operators and they said the new regulations are just going to make things more expensive for them and that this does not tackle inflation at al…
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Madam Speaker, it is my understanding that the train in the Lac-Mégantic tragedy was carrying oil. I do not know if all the cars were carrying oil, but that added to the gravity of the disaster. Can my colleague comment on whether pipeline construction would be a safer option than transporting oil by train?
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Mr. Speaker, this evening we are talking about Bill C-33, an act strengthening our ports and improving rail safety. One of the stated objectives of this bill is to improve supply chain disruptions, which are causing inflation. It looks like a very substantial bill, more than 100 pages long, and amends six or seven acts of this Parliament, but when we read through it we notice that it does not say …
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and I are just going to have to fundamentally disagree on that. If members talk to grain farmers in the Prairies, and I am surrounded by a number of them, they had a bumper crop, and the problem was getting the grain to port. There are not enough trains, not enough people working on trains and not enough railroad capacity. These are the problems, an…
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Mr. Speaker, the motion is pretty self-explanatory. I do not know what more I could say in depth. We think that Bill C-33, as well-intentioned as it is, just does not do enough. It needs a major rethink. The people who drafted it need to go back and read this report, which I was just referencing, and the very good, well-written reports coming out of the transportation committee.
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Mr. Speaker, I am in full agreement. Worker safety is number one. Safety is always number one for any company, and I applaud any company that has a good safety record. This bill does not do enough. As I said, it needs a major rethink. It needs to go back to the drawing board. That is one of the issues that needs to be addressed.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's tax-and-spend policies are driving up the cost of everything, and now he has plans to push the tax on gas to 41¢ a litre. What happened to his promises to help the middle class? Brandon from Langley wrote to me recently and said, “I am one of many middle-class citizens getting pushed down to the lower class”. My question for the Prime Minister is this: Will he rev…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Thornhill talked about the evaporation of the dream of home ownership for so many young people, but I have talked to businesspeople. One of their challenges is getting workers, and that is tied to the lack of available housing close to where the jobs are. This goes right to the very heart of our economy. Could the member comment on that?
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Madam Speaker, the member said that the ratio of housing costs to income should be roughly 25% to 30%. Unfortunately, it is about twice that much in Canada, despite the best intentions of the current government and all its spending. Does she have any comments on what ideal housing affordability is and what has gone wrong with the government's plans, which have obviously failed the mark?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about social housing and the problems of Quebec. British Columbia has similar problems. Despite massive, historic amounts of spending by the Liberal government, the problem seems to be getting worse. Could he comment on that and compare Quebec's problems to British Columbia's problems?
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member and I might not agree on the importance of having this pipeline built, but we agree that the government has mismanaged it. It is inexplicable that costs have risen from $7 billion to $30 billion. The government should just get out of the way. It does not know how to run a business.
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Madam Speaker, today we are talking about budget 2023, the budget that the Minister of Finance had signalled would be a budget of restraint. Let us take a look at what “restraint” means for our Minister of Finance. This is what it means: $63 billion in new spending. That does not look much like restraint. To put it into a number that people can understand, that works out to about $4,300 per averag…
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Madam Speaker, on this side of the House, we were pointing out early on, during the pandemic debates about the economy, that inflation was a real threat. The Minister of Finance said, well, no, it is not, that deflation is the bigger threat and that, as a matter of fact, it would be irresponsible for the government not to engage in deficit spending because, after all, money is free or almost free …
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Madam Speaker, the fact that public service workers feel they have to go on strike to fight for inflation-adjusted wages just goes to show us the insidious harm that inflation can inflict on the people of Canada. That is why it is so important that the government manage the economy in a way that is going to bring inflation down. It is no answer to say that, well, every other country in the world h…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague went to some length to explain that Bill C-11 would not impact user-generated content, so my simple question would be this: Why would we not just accept the amendment proposed by the Senate to do exactly that? It would remove user-generated content from the bill. Would the bill not, thus amended, still have all the other positive effects the member is promoting?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by thousands of Canadians across the country who are deeply concerned that the government's proposed freeze on the sale and transfer of handguns is an ineffective way to combat violent crime and that these regulations disproportionately affect law-abiding firearms owners. The petitioners are calling on the government to immediately repeal this…
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Madam Speaker, to be honest, I think the question from my colleague from Manitoba makes a whole lot more sense. If the Liberal government would pause, think carefully about what the experts are telling us, what people like Margaret Atwood are telling us, what the Senate is now saying and what ordinary Canadians are telling them, maybe they would just decide that removing user-generated content all…
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Madam Speaker, it might have started as a good idea, but the Liberals, with the support of their NDP allies, could not resist the temptation to take this opportunity to reshape Canadian culture and society in their own image, so we are here in the House of Commons this evening, late at night, talking about Bill C-11, the so-called online streaming act. This act has morphed into the Liberals' attem…
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Madam Speaker, I think that would be a question to put to Margaret Atwood. I am just going to take her at face value. This is what she thinks. This is her experience. She believes what Canadians want to see, write and publish and how they are going to have a conversation with each other should be up to Canadians to decide, not up to the government bureaucracy. I think that is what she is talking a…
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Madam Speaker, I am not quite sure how to answer that question. The Internet is a new invention. It changes everything. Just like when the Gutenberg printing press was invented, it upset culture and completely overturned society, but it came out stronger. I think the Internet will do the same. We are too close right now to see what effect it will have, but we have already started seeing some of th…
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Madam Speaker, if I get a well-drafted email, like I did from the Springman family, I am going to assume that they have thought about this carefully and that this is something that they wrote of their own volition and to express their own opinions. I think that we should respect it. I think the Liberal government should respect voices like this.
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by a number of Canadians who are deeply concerned the Government of Pakistan has failed, and continues to fail, to afford protection and legitimate rights to persecuted Christians. A good number of those persecuted Christians have found refuge in Canada, having escaped persecution in Pakistan via Thailand, from where they are able to apply for refug…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments, particularly about not wanting to add more bureaucracy and more red tape to small and medium-sized enterprises, especially small start-ups. I am looking at a study from the public safety committee about Canada's security posture in relation to Russia. I will just read one of the committee's recommendations. Recommendation number 4 states: That t…
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Madam Speaker, in her last budget and latest fall economic update, our Minister of Finance talked about Canada's lagging productivity numbers compared to those of our trading partners. She even called this “Canada's Achilles heel”. I wonder if my colleague shares that concern. What does he think is the source of the lagging productivity problem, and could he point to some solutions?
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Madam Speaker, I am very intrigued by the concept of CERB amnesty. I would like to hear some more details about my colleague's thoughts about that. Will there be means testing? I am assuming that applicants for this amnesty would have to be below a certain income or below a certain wealth level. Would there also be inquiries as to why applicants for amnesty applied for CERB when they clearly did n…
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Mr. Speaker, I am reading from the summary of Bill C-26, which would amend the Telecommunications Act to “authorize the Governor in Council and the Minister of Industry to direct telecommunications service providers to do anything, or refrain from doing anything, that is necessary to secure” our telecommunications security. Although it is a laudable goal, those are very broad powers to give to a m…
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With regard to the regulatory changes related to amendments to the Insurance Companies Act made in budget 2018: (a) what is the status of the drafting of the regulations; (b) what is the anticipated timeline for publishing the regulations in the Canada Gazette; and (c) what is the anticipated date of bringing these changes into force?
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