Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I am being heckled again.
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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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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under this category that (i) have been submitted, (ii) have been accepted, (iii) have been rejected, (iv) have been withdrawn, (v) are still waiting to be processed; (b) what is the total number of individual names and the total nu…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, 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, 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…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask for a recorded division.
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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Just a reminder to the member that she cannot refer to the name of the Prime Minister or any member of the House.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad I caught your eye, and I am glad you also caught the fact that I had mistakenly put my phone a little bit too close to the microphones. It is now far away. I want to start by thanking the residents and constituents of my riding for again allowing me the opportunity to represent them in the House. We are now several years into this particular Parliament, but we all know tha…
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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Mr. Speaker, we were carefully listening, the group of us here, to the member's comments on what I had said and proposed, including the fact that we have legislation that we had proposed before the House. That member voted it down. The NDP-Liberal coalition voted down a piece of legislation that would have addressed the housing crisis created by the massive spending by the Liberal-NDP government. …
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Mr. Speaker, tens of thousands of families in my riding depend on jobs in these energy companies. These are companies that were founded in Alberta. Many of them started as small businesses. Thanks to the Government of Alberta, and thanks to the quality of the workers in my riding, we have built companies and wealth worth billions of dollars. The jobs they create pay for the houses, vacations and e…
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moved: Motion No. 17 That Bill C-69 be amended by deleting Clause 97. Motion No. 18 That Bill C-69 be amended by deleting Clause 98. Motion No. 19 That Bill C-69 be amended by deleting Clause 99. Motion No. 20 That Bill C-69 be amended by deleting Clause 100. Motion No. 21 That Bill C-69 be amended by deleting Clause 101. Motion No. 22 That Bill C-69 be amended by deleting Clause 102. Motion No. 2…
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Mr. Speaker, I have sad news for the member. If he carefully reads the piece of legislation, Bill C-69, he will see that the capital gains tax is not in it. In fact, the Minister of Finance said that she would table a separate piece of legislation. It is as if the Liberals were completely unprepared to table a single piece of budgetary legislation that included all of their taxing schemes because …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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 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, 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 …
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 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…
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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, 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…
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Madam Speaker, with respect to the piece of legislation before us, the defeated Liberal MPs' protection act or, forgive me, it says it is the electoral participation act, the parliamentary secretary did not answer the colleague for St. Albert—Edmonton's question about the pension, specifically. All the parliamentary secretary has talked about is supposed electoral participation improvements and pr…
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Mr. Speaker, the NDP caucus is heckling me once again. I know the New Democrats get really upset when I raise this. The government is the one that actually cancelled the original rare disease strategy in 2016, and at the time, the head of the organization called it “the kiss of death” for rare disease patients. Does that member agree?
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Madam Speaker, I want to commiserate with the member for Davenport in having her office vandalized in such a gruesome manner that now the Toronto Police Services Hate Crime Unit is investigating it as a hate crime. As one member of Parliament to another, we do not enjoy such things being done to our offices and the risks that come to our office staff. A previous member of the Liberal Party mention…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I am joining the debate on my colleague's bill, Bill C-377, this “need to know” piece of legislation that I support. In some of my work in the past, it would have been useful to have at least secret level clearance in order to be able to receive a briefing from the government or even to get information on what the current state was of parliamentary work. In my particular case, as me…
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to know where to begin with the speech the parliamentary secretary just gave. I have heard some of this before at rare diseases conferences. I just want people at home to know that not a single rare disease drug would be paid for through this legislation. That is for starters. It is only mentioned once in this entire piece of legislation. Second of all, the Canadian drug …
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Mr. Speaker, I will actually ask the member a question about the legislation. In Bill C-64, clause 6, “Payments”, it says very specifically that it is supposed “to provide universal, single-payer, first-dollar coverage”. First-dollar coverage means that if a private insurance company today covers diabetic medication, it will not be able to do so if this legislation comes into force. In fact, it wo…
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Mr. Speaker, for constituents at home and Canadians wondering whether any rare disease drugs will be covered by anything, as the member mentioned rare diseases, not a single medication will be covered. In fact, the government's own 2019 budget announcement of $1.5 billion for rare diseases has not covered a single medication for any patient in Canada. I would ask the member the same question I ask…
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Mr. Speaker, the member did mention rare diseases, and I cannot pass up the opportunity to clarify a couple of things. It is only mentioned once, in clause 5 of the legislation. To all my constituents back home, and all the rare disease organizations and patients across the country, not a single person will have their rare disease drugs paid for by this legislation, not a single one. It is not in …
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 …
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Madam Speaker, we request a recorded vote.
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.
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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…
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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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Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, more Canadians are now going hungry and homeless. The latest annual risk outlook from OSFI highlights that 76% of mortgages will come up for renewal by the end of 2026. Now, the Prime Minister's high mortgage rates are creating misery for Canadian homeowners. Again, the Liberal government's own bank regulators are flashing red stop s…
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Mr. Speaker, that overheated and over-the-top rhetoric is cold comfort to homeowners who are facing hundreds of dollars per month of increased mortgage costs because of the Liberal government's decisions during the pandemic. The Liberals doubled the national debt and increased spending by $600 billion over that time period, which led to higher mortgage interest costs at the same time that the Prim…
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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Madam Speaker, I think that the reason why the Bloc Québécois is opposed to Government Business No. 39 and this bill is, of course, that this falls under Quebec's jurisdiction. We should put our trust in all the provinces. They know how best to manage their health care system and health insurance for the patients and families in their own territory. We are talking about programs that existed 24 ye…
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Madam Speaker, I will return to the debate on the gag order for the Standing Committee on Health. I want to remind the Minister of Justice that he makes the same claim that the Minister of Health makes, which is that we need to quickly rush this through the process. This has been a promise that has been lingering for years from their side. There have only been three days of debate, April 16, May 6…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to correct the member. I think the most unpopular government today is the NDP government in British Columbia. Premier Eby is now going to be facing the electorate after going along with the Liberal plan to basically approve all hard drugs and just spread them across the streets of Vancouver. I have door-knocked in the member's riding, I have met church groups in his rid…
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Madam Speaker, just to confirm, now that the motion has passed regarding Motion No. 39, I lose my unlimited time and I now have a 20-minute slot. Therefore, I will have to share my time with the member for Cumberland—Colchester, even though I would have enjoyed continuing to speak to an issue that I hold very dear to my heart, which is the approval of drugs for rare diseases in Canada and how pati…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the government side why it felt the need to do this, to shut down debate on a gag order, because Motion No. 39 is a gag order being directed at the Standing Committee on Health. I will also remind members, before they give me talking points, that just two days before Motion No. 39 was tabled before the House, the Minister of Health said, “there will be time for the…
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I would ask for a recorded division.
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Madam Speaker, if my constituents or members of this House look at my speaking time in this chamber and compare it to that member's speaking time on government bills, they will see that he has delayed more government bills than any Conservative in this House.
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Madam Speaker, I listened attentively to the health minister's speech. He talked about, at one point, finding common ground and finding solutions. He recited every single anecdote in this speech that he did in his second reading speech on the bill. This bill, Bill C-64, only got three days of debate in the House, and it was then sent to committee. Now, we have a programming motion, so it is a guil…
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