Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to table quickly today. The first petition is from constituents whom I heard from over the summer. They are very concerned with the fact that the medical assistance in dying regime has not been banned entirely for those with mental health conditions. The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to stop the expansion of medical assistance in dying to t…
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Madam Speaker, the second petition is from my constituents who, over the summer, made this very clear to me. The petitioners are asking for the House of Commons to call for non-confidence in the government and call for an election within the next 45 days.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I just want to make sure the member understands the 1977 Citizenship Act was amended in 2009. Actually, those portions would not be amended here; that was done way before. In 2009, Bill C-37 introduced the first-generation limits. It was supported by all parties. It was supported twice by the Liberal Party of Canada, by the NDP and by the Bloc, and yes, it was a Conservative bill. It …
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask a question about numbers, but I just want to preface by saying to the member that Bill C-37, when it was passed in 2009 and introduced the first-generation limit, was actually supported by all parties in the House twice, on February 8 and on February 15, with unanimous consent votes. With respect to numbers, I looked at Statistics Canada, and in 2016, a study done by…
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Madam Speaker, the previous member who spoke, the member for London West, made a point, so I want to make a point to the parliamentary secretary. I want to just congratulate him on the multi-meeting filibuster he conducted on the draft report on Afghanistan. He was able to make it last from May well into September, and it ended only yesterday. He did quite the job on it. It is unusual to have a dr…
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Madam Speaker, sometimes it is hard to notice. Standing Order 16 was a great standing order when it was suspended temporarily, so we could sit at any place and actually speak. That way, we could represent our constituents from anywhere in here. I think benches were a great solution. The member for Calgary Centre heard, as I did during the debate on a previous private member's bill that dealt with …
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Madam Speaker, I want to remind the member that when the original first-generation limit was introduced in Canada in Bill C-37, all parties, including the Liberal Party of Canada, the NDP, the Bloc and the Conservatives, unanimously voted twice on it, on February 7, 2008, and February 15, 2008. Australia, the United Kingdom and America all have similar types of legislation that offer a first-gener…
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Madam Speaker, I hear the member for Waterloo heckling me, as she did yesterday. I had asked the minister a question earlier in the debate, and I am going to ask the parliamentary secretary: How many persons who are abroad currently would be eligible for the provisions in Bill C-71?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the Liberals seem to be implying that there is a rush to get this legislation passed. The ruling by the judge was at the end of December, and the government took until May 23 to table the bill. There were 19 sitting days before the June break and this bill never came up. In fact, we are only on the second day of debate. I would like to hear from the member why there is a sudden need…
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Madam Speaker, I am glad to be the first member of the official opposition to rise for Bill C-71. After hearing the minister speak, it tells me that he came here unprepared to deal with the substance of the legislation that he himself tabled in this House. First of all, I will debunk a bunch of things that were said that are incorrect. They are not true. If we look at the record, as I said in my q…
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With regard to the temporary foreign worker programs for caregivers, broken down by year since 2019 until 2024: (a) what is the total amount of workers hired through the (i) Home Child Care Provider Pilot (HCCPP), (ii) Home Support Worker Pilot (HSWP); (b) broken down by province and territory, what is the total amount of workers hired under the (i) HCCPP, (ii) HSWP; (c) what is the median annual …
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Madam Speaker, it is always interesting to hear the NDP complain about committee work because they always want to send things to committee. I want to do the work at committee, and when it is presented to me, I do it. We proposed well over 49 amendments. I am looking at them because I have them with me. Ten times, we voted with the Liberals in support of their amendments that we agreed with, so we …
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Madam Speaker, the member is heckling me now. If she would allow me, I will give a thoughtful answer, as best I can. Her own party voted for this legislation twice, back when it was Bill C-37, the first-generation limit—
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With regard to Immigration and Refugee Board hearings on refugee claims, in 2023: (a) for accepted written hearings, (i) what is the total number of persons on all applications, (ii) what is the amount of applications that had one person's name attached, (iii) what is the amount of applications that had more than one person's name attached, (iv) what is the amount of applications that had a marita…
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Madam Speaker, if this bill goes to committee, would the member be willing to support a Conservative amendment that would require a criminal record check for everyone who applies for citizenship by descent?
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Mr. Speaker, this morning when the minister rose to speak to this legislation, he did not give a number for how many potential new Canadians would be created through the legislation. When I asked him the question, he did not have a response; he dodged it. This was a question asked to government officials back when Bill S-245 was being debated at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigratio…
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Madam Speaker, the member well knows, as the parliamentary secretary on the government side, who speaks often in the House, that we will only use it with respect to justice bills. This is not a justice bill; this is the Citizenship Act. I want to remind the member, because again he implied or basically said that there is a taking away of rights here, that the Liberal Party of Canada, on February 7…
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With regard to visas for international students in Canada: how many international students (i) are currently studying in Canada, (ii) are studying at institutions accredited by Universities Canada, (iii) are studying at institutions that are members of the National Association of Career Colleges, (iv) have transferred institutions within Canada during their period of study, (v) are in a K-12 progr…
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Madam Speaker, I am being heckled again.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is interesting that this is the first day back, and I think I have been heckled more as a member today than I have, probably, in the entire last session. I am not a member who does the heckling. I hope you will agree. I try to restrain myself. I am not always perfect. I have a member next to me who sometimes does the same. With respect to the committee work and the amendments, we…
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Madam Speaker, to continue what I was saying, when we had Bill C-37, the first-generation limit was introduced, and the Liberal Party of Canada voted in favour of those changes, twice. The Liberals cannot now claim that it is a charter violation and that they have changed their minds. They supported it then for the reasons they had, and I do not know exactly what those were, but they did, twice, s…
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Madam Speaker, coming back from the summer recess, I was hoping the minister would not start by being so partisan on the bill before us. I want to remind the minister, because he mentioned it several times, about the Harper government. In the session of Parliament on February 7, 2008, the Liberal Party voted for the first generation limit and then proceeded to vote again for it at third reading. T…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my Bloc Québécois colleague. We work together on the committee as much as we can. Sometimes we are on opposite sides, but I do not make it personal when we have differences of opinion or political differences. It happens. We are in different parties. People in our ridings voted for us because we belong to different parties. The problem is that the last time we …
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With regard to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's Humanitarian and Compassionate immigration category, in 2023: (a) what is the total amount of applications under this category that (i) have been submitted, (ii) have been accepted, (iii) have been rejected, (iv) have been withdrawn, (v) are still waiting to be processed; (b) what is the total number of individual names and the total nu…
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Mr. Speaker, Bill S-245, which was the original legislation, led to Bill C-71 partially because of the Ontario Superior Court decision. The Ontario Superior Court decision in Bjorkquist states specifically, in the 260 paragraph series, that one of the reasons the judge found the current legislation non-compliant was because of all the administrative burdens, delays and incompetence of government o…
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Madam Speaker, forgive me for the error of reading the Prime Minister's name into the record. Thank you for reproaching me for doing so. I see that I have about six minutes left to address the backlog of applications at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. We always forget that it is the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. These are two matters we are dealing with at the same time…
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Madam Speaker, to the point I think the member was making, nobody would lose their citizenship through Bill C-71. There is no new person who would lose their citizenship.
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Mr. Speaker, I know that the member is from Quebec; usually I would speak French, but I want to be clear to the parliamentary secretary, who keeps raising the point, and I would like to hear the member on it. I am an Alberta MP. The Local Authorities Elections Act in my province, in section 11, says that any municipality can move up its election to the Saturday before a federal or a provincial ele…
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to tell where to start, but I would like to start by commenting on the very first part of the member's afternoon maiden speech, where he talked about the Liberal income tax cut to the middle bracket. That was not a cut for the middle class. The median earnings for the middle class in 2016, were about $34,000. The middle income only started at $44,000. In fact the Liberal …
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask for a recorded division.
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Madam Speaker, a talking point the minister often likes to use is that Alberta is going to have a municipal election in 2025. He uses the talking point repeatedly, despite the fact that the Local Authorities Election Act allows any council across Alberta to move the election from the Monday to the Saturday just with a bylaw change. I would hope the minister's staff would go back and do their homew…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Just a reminder to the member that she cannot refer to the name of the Prime Minister or any member of the House.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, the NDP-Liberal government misled Canadians by claiming they would be better off with a carbon tax scam. It turns out that the environment minister's own carbon tax data shows that it will cost families nearly $2,000 more after the higher costs on groceries, home heating and gas. That is $30 billion in economic vandalism per year. Now, Conservatives have forced the release of all th…
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Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's explosive report on the NDP-Liberal green slush fund shows that personal friends of the Prime Minister voted themselves millions in taxpayer cash. With 96 cases of declared conflicts by board members, they still voted to award themselves that taxpayer cash. In another 90, they failed to disclose the conflict of interest and still then gave themselves the cash any…
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Mr. Speaker, that member's response does not make any sense. That organization, in 2017, got a clean bill of health from the Auditor General. Then when the government took it over, it dumped the chair within three days, a record amount of time. That new board member gave $217,000 to a company she had a direct relationship with. The question remains: Will the government then release all of the docu…
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Mr. Speaker, I agree that morale among the workers, the officers who work for the Canada Border Services Agency, is rather low these days. It is hard because the Liberal federal government refuses to support them in the very difficult work that they do. This agency is being asked to do a lot of things in our country. It takes care of the ports and airports and also ensures that people who stay lon…
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Mr. Speaker, this bill will enable people to file complaints and report incidents that happen at the Canadian border. One of my constituents sent me an email a few months ago describing how he was mistreated. He and his wife were coming back from the United States and they felt they were treated inappropriately. In some cases, these incidents are so serious that it will be up to the commission to …
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad I caught your eye so that I could join the debate during this evening's sitting and contribute my thoughts on Bill C-20. I have been reviewing some of the committee records, as well as some of the prior debate on what members have said about the bill. I just want to kind of run down what this bill is about, so that people back home in my riding of Calgary Shepard will know a…
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, the NDP-Liberals poison and corrupt everything they touch. In 2017, they inherited a green government program with a clean bill of health from the Auditor General, and then they took it to the depths of corruption only the NDP-Liberals are capable of. The Auditor General found that Sustainable Development Technology Canada is now a slush fund for NDP-Liberal swindlers, with $123 milli…
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Mr. Speaker, I obviously disagree with the member. I have been at committees where I have proposed 40-plus amendments, and I think of my amendments as being substantive. That is what we came here to do: to work the hours that are needed to make legislation better, to make sure that we make the points on behalf of stakeholders, on behalf of the residents of our ridings, and if we have good ideas to…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not believe we have quorum.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour, obviously, to rise and speak on behalf of my constituents in Calgary Shephard. I know that the residents have seen it fit to send me back here to speak on their behalf. One of the issues that I often get emails and phone calls about is the daily cost of living. Whether it is constituents' cellphone bill, rent, mortgages or prices at the grocery stores and elsew…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, we request a recorded vote.
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I am glad to be joining this debate with respect to Bill C-353, the foreign hostage-takers accountability act. Again, it is always an honour and a privilege to rise in the House and speak not only on behalf of my constituents, but also on behalf of a lot of friends of mine from the Middle East: Kurds, Persians and a lot of Chaldeans and Arab-Iraqis and Turks whom I know and who are …
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, off the top, just so that this is not a surprise, not to you as the Chair, but to the Speaker, I want him to know that I lost confidence in him long before now. I know I am supposed to split my time, but I usually look around to see if the member is in the chamber; he is behind me now. I was hoping to get the whole 20 minutes, but I will split my time with the member for Stormont—Du…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the Bloc Québécois member for his good question. I am currently serving my third term in the House thanks to my constituents in Calgary Shepard, and I have to say that it is a great privilege to serve as an MP. I find that, before every election, the tone and the words that are used in the House become more intense. I think that we need an election. We need to either…
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Madam Speaker, what I did not hear the member talk about is his statement. I will remind him of it. He said, leading up to the vote, “This cannot happen [again] moving forward. From now on, you cannot have the Speaker engage in partisan activity.” He said that if there were any derogation from that, in the weeks and months to come, his party would join in voting non-confidence in the Speaker. He h…
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Madam Speaker, let me say a few kind things about another member of Parliament, of the House, who is a former Speaker himself, the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming. He was a good Speaker. He applied the rules as best he could and tried to control us as well as any person can control us from the chair. That member made one mistake, and he resigned honourably to protect the Speaker's job and the rol…
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Madam Speaker, the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming honourably stepped down to protect the speakership and the Speaker's office from being further attacked and from further losing the confidence of members of Parliament, and he made one mistake. He was a Speaker whom I voted for, because I had the confidence that he would be neutral in his role. The current Speaker does not have my confidence.
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, after nine years of this NDP-Liberal government, more Canadians are hungry and homeless. The latest Salvation Army report reveals alarming statistics: 68% of Canadians now rely on discounted food and 44% have to cut the grocery bills just to make ends meet. A staggering 40% are forced to buy less nutritious food due to cost, while 26% skip meals because they cannot afford groceries. T…
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